Sweet Towers

To the people in a small place, the division of Time into the Past, the Present, and the Future does not exist. -Jamaica Kincaid

English Harbour, Antigua

---

Reggae covers of pop songs trumpet over the airport loudspeakers. Everything is designed to make the tourist feel at ease, relaxed, in a festive mood. Happy vacationers will drink more, eat more, spend more. And they’ll come again, and continue the perpetual party fueling the island’s economy.

It almost feels like something must be wrong with me for feeling weird in Antigua, that beautiful turquoise pearl of the Caribbean. As I pass the security gates of V.C. Bird International, night shrouds the landscape around me and I am left to be patient for one more night, in order to behold the island beauty I flew so far to see. Perhaps excitement would come with daylight.

Morning is early, and it is bright. In the distance, a finger beckons me towards the sea. Like a daydream, I shed my winter skin and step into the sun. The closer I get to the ocean, the more imposing and ominous the horizon- dotted along the hills which plunge into the ocean are tall towers, those beacons I thought were calling me closer. I soon learn what they are: Slave relics. The sugar mill towers were constructed and painstakingly stacked skyward by enslaved people. My people. Those ancestors who labored under empires more cruel than the sun, where shade could only be found underneath the pillars they were forced to build.

Japanese rental cars whiz by, filled with tourists gunning for precious beach time. Antiguans drive even faster, yet they avoid the potholes in the road with stunning accuracy. My thoughts race along with them, unsure how to feel. Nevertheless, I set myself in motion to the rituals of a beach day, underneath the watchful eyes of those sugar towers.

All week, wherever I go, they pop up over the next bend like an intrusive thought. The Caribbean cliches of rum, music and turquoise waters do little to calm my unease. Tall and crumbling, they almost feel like my subconscious haunting me, so little attention is paid to them, or mention made to these sculptures abandoned in all their glorious horror. I walk past them to the beach, and keep my gaze fixed on that trillion-dollar azure horizon.

Sugar Tower, Antigua

As the sun arcs back towards the water, their shadows bleed over me. Not being able to stand it any longer, I walk across a field towards the tower, its dark stone in sharp contrast to the flowers, the cow paddies, and the sun. In the shadow of the lightless house, all I can hear is a loud buzzing in my ears. I can’t recall having ever stood by such a heartbreaking monument. Some of the stones carved, carried and stacked had fallen askew, as time reclaims its inheritance. Stepping up onto one of these fallen rocks, I hoist myself onto the lip of an arch and immediately sit, dizzy in silence. Inside the tower, the buzzing is loudest. A beehive, with bees spilling out and swarming the nooks and crannies of the tower, are occupied with its coming and going, its larvae rearing, its honey making.

For the first time that week, I relax. And I feel glad that I visited such a small place.

Honey Hives in a sugar tower