There's some dispute about the very concept of arrival. The Venerably Spiteful Nightfall got there first with his well-chosen Enigma of Arrival. But we lesser insects and bedbugs could first consider the intention behind a journey, which supposedly must terminate in some kind of arrival, or indeed another departure. Is the traveller on a freely-chosen journey, or the object of another's manipulation, coercion?
Can we equate the sentiments felt by European Jews arriving in the death camps, or even the ovens and gas chambers of the Shoah, with the relief which slakes the dried throat of the shipwrecked sailor, or boatperson finally washed up on shore? Did the first of the Jahaji Bhai greet the Nelson Island shoreline with anything like the emotions experienced by those Africans getting hosed down in readiness for the auctioneer's block on Puerta Espana's waterfront?
Is there any connection between the woman who willingly absconded from her arranged marriage in an Uttar Pradesh village to travel the Kala Pani to some kind of freedom, or bondage–and the woman stolen from her Yorubaland village and the warmth of her children's breath on her shoulder, to be shackled below decks in the day and nightmares of a nauseous Atlantic Middle Passage?
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