The Woman from Fort Aguada: A Short Story

June 20th, 2011

This story is not meant to be factual, although I have based it on historical and local research. This comes only days since I took a long drive up the coast to relieve myself from the sadness of previous days events; bribing a police officer and witnessing a brutal beating. What I found on that drive has inspired this piece. Fort Aguada is a real place and the images you see are mine. The women in my story are real women, and I feel I know them well. But I write this story as it flourishes in my imagination and here inlays the fiction. Because I have found in my life, that I heal best when the stories come.

The Woman from Fort Aguada

Just after the turn of 17^th century, the Portuguese built a fort of bricks and mortar on the rocky Sinquerim beach peering out at the Arabian Sea. The fort was named Aguada after the fresh water spring that gurgled from deep beneath the ground. Fort Aguada served not only to protect the colony from Dutch invasion but also to guide ships into the port at the mouth of the Mandovi River where they were vulnerable to attacks by the Maratha tribes of the north. A lighthouse was erected high on a hilltop and its beam projected out across the bay and onto the peninsula beyond.

On the eve of her twenty-ninth birthday a British woman lounged on a cushion in her modest home near Candolim. She had been living in Goa for several years and found herself entranced by the coconut palms, the pleasant greetings and the movement of the seasons. She wore a silk robe from the import shop she had recently opened in the urban center. A sudden breeze off the sea blew in through the window and the curtains trembled like a flag on the wind. The monsoons were coming. Her boyfriend lay sleeping in the bedroom. And a knock came at the door.

António de Oliveira Salazar came from a humble family, born at the dawn of the twentieth century. He studied Seminary and Law and rose to power in Portuguese politics during the onslaught of World War II. His fascist colonial policies echoed in the lives of Indians on the distant shores of Goa; a small but immensely beautiful land that he was reluctant to visit. When India gained its independence from Britian in 1947, Salazar refused to relieve Goans of their Portuguese statehood and a battle for freedom ensued. Salazar ordered all political prisoners to be held in the depths of Fort Aguada, where iron bars met the deadly undertows of the sea.

She refused to pay on principle although she had more than enough stowed away in a suitcase under the bed. The police had been searching the house for more than an hour when an officer in plain clothes came in through the front door holding a small black plastic bag. He said he found the hash in the garden. She loved her garden; it was brimming with blooms and mangoes this time of year. Smoking hash was out of the question; she had suffered from asthma since she was a small girl growing up in Oxford. As they wrestled her boyfriend into the back of the jeep she was calm and spoke softly to him, “We haven’t done anything wrong my dear. It will only take a moment to sort it out.”

When Indian Hotels Co. bought the 88 acres of coastal property they agreed to maintain the historical Fort Aguada. The lawyers negotiated a reduced price instead of handing over the bundles of cash it would require to have the prison relocated. They built beautiful seaside bungalows and plush spas overlooking the ruins. They allowed the peddlers to push their goods at the entrance of the historical site and offered four guided tours daily. They warned the guides that mentioning the foreign prisoners held on drug charges in the bowels of the fort could cost them their jobs. The only signs of life at Fort Aguada historical site are the deep green mosses that creep up the walls and across lawns, the mangled overgrowth in the bottomless moat and the tourists bustling about.

I wrestled my scooter into a sliver of space between two buses and wiped the sweat from my face with the sleeve of my shirt. The entrance was buzzing with tourists, although I was the only white person in site other than an overweight man in thick glasses wheezing as he sat slumped on a rock nearby. I pushed the play button on my Ipod and began to walk down the red dirt path towards the stairs to the tower. I was stopped twice on the way by groups of men asking if they could have their photograph taken with me. I refused politely the first time and the second time allowed my disdain a moment of glory.

I passed a series of iron bar doors on the way up the steps but couldn’t see down the corridors into the darkness beyond their guard. From the top the view of the sea and the city of Panjim on the far shore was breathtaking. But I felt most taken by the red door to lighthouse adorning a poorly painted sign that read, “Entry Prohibited.”

Judging from the fingernail scratches on the wall, it has been ten years and 4 days since they walked her down the stairs into her cell. She is only a shadow of the woman she once was. Her teeth are a rotten yellow and even missing. Her skin hangs from her bones, kept in place only by the ration of rice and roaches that have sustained her all these years. Her mother sobs from her gut as she walks through the gate. She can feel the weight of her frailty with the embrace of her family. She muscles a brave smile and assures them she is fine. Her thoughts wonder to a decade ago as she sat in the Mapusa police station and listened to the Commander as he revealed the charges against her. “Ten years in Fort Aguada,” he said. As they drove down the winding road away from the prison she stared off across the lush landscape. It had been a day like this when the knock came at the door. It was one of those blessed clear days when the monsoons are just beginning. As they began down the hill she saw a woman standing on the edge of the cliffs just off the road. She asked the driver to stop.

I had been standing there for quite some time. A few minutes ago a man with sacks in his arms had wandered past. I expressed to him how beautiful the view was and asked him if it was a monastery far below where the rocks met the sea. He smiled sheepishly and said, “No, no. Prison.” He motioned ahead up the road and then he meandered on his way. It was such a stunning sight to be spoiled by captivity. But I was curious and so I turned off the camera and began to prepare myself to continue on. I could see the lighthouse from where I was standing on the edge of the cliffs.

When she came up behind me I was startled. She moved quietly like a ghost. She whispered a soft hello and then stood very still and gazed out. I was frozen in her presence. She seemed ill and worn and tired, but she looked like me somehow.

Before she turned and walked painfully away she said, “If you count down five windows from the end, there dwells the spirit of a freedom fighter. He came to me in my dreams and taught me how to live.”