The carelessly discarded husks of the sunflower seeds were sprewn everywhere on the rocky granite ground. They contrasted jarringly with the feminine black and silver fabric of Amira's long skirts. So were her dirty and cracked toenails which peeped from under the folds. She mindlessly cracked the husks with her teeth and scooped the seeds with her tongue and her eyes were glazed as she looked out at her children. They were screaming delightfully wile waddling ankle-deep in the dirty jetty water. For them holiday was lounging in the backwaters of the otherwise tranquil picture postcard of the Meditarranean islet that thousands of holiday makers come streaming to to feel a wisp of wind from the sails of the white crusing ships.

Amira has always been a make-believer, that girl. She used to make-believe that the fish-women in the sea which she saw pictures of in that story book would help her father, being enticed by his well-worn gray beard, by bringing up fishes to the surface for them to pull in. Never mind that these women were half-fishes themselves; haven't they been enchanted with the two feet that the humans in the boats have, and believe that if they give of enough of their half-blood, their big undulating scales would thin in the middle and split into flesh? Or else how else would the fish swim into the net again and again, amidst the numerous nets suspended sensually in the sea? For once she had dived from the boat to catch sight of the fish-women who would scoop the fishes into the silver nets, but before she was hurled up on board amidst curses she had caught sight of the silver threads glistening softly in the quiet waters, the implanted invader of the natural deep-and no fish-women. They had been scared off, no doubt by her uninvited presence in the waters. They had been hiding from amongst the rocks and the reefs, the underwater floating reeds and plants swirling through the cracks of the huge rocks being the dark hair of the fish-women, the only part of their bodies daring, unwittingly to express their longing to reach out and touch the human child.

The fish trade teetered off when she married her husband; much of the fishing now being done by the huge fishing boats with their infinitely large chain-ropes stretched roaring across the waters-no longer silver and beautiful and wispy, but big and dark and heavy, enough to oppress. Amira herself had watched while the fishermen drew the traps up from the waters groaning with the fishes dragged out into the sun where they got no respite. Her husband had no choice but to repaint the old family fishing boat, and Amira herself had added a crudely drawn picture of a fish-woman with her hair like floating grass swirling around her body on the front of the ship, hoping that they who had helped her father then would help her husband now-to draw tourists-the white people-onto the boat. She believed that if she walked long enough along the sea, on the decks, with her children in tow, unknowing live sacrifices yet as objects of pleading to the fish-women, her proximity to them would make a success of her husband's boat, she would be the earth fish-woman who would draw people to help make her life complete, free from anxiety.

But her make-believe ceased, even as Amira did not want it to. She had to leave her home, her sea. Her husband had gone to Germany-JER--MA--NEEE to seek work, not in the catching, but in the building--far from the sea, on hot rocky concrete, and she will go. She and her children. They will have to go to that land of JERMANEE and make believe a new life , away from the placid yet turmultous one that she had always known and love.

She cocked her head up, her thoughts interrupted by the girl who came up and pointed at her camera. Oh yes-one of those things. Perhaps she could get one in JERMANEE. Then there needn't be make-believe, no, there wouldn't be: just hard outlines and images which gives all there is to see, to believe. The girl pointed to her face, made a rounded motion around it and gave it a thumbs-up. The girl loves her face. Amira thought she could be-maybe-one of the fish-women who have climbed from the sea, her black hair straightened and dried in the sun, no longer circling portentously, frighteningly, beautifully around her crown.  She wants an image of Amira. To capture and freeze Amira.

Amira turned and looked behind her. At the sea, the people, the men who used to be fishermen, and the boats she loved so much. Why not? She smiled at the human fish-woman. She would never have to make-believe of her home and the sea again; she would go to JERMANEE and make believe there on new and strange ground, just like how now, it is this human fish-woman's turn-indeed many like her-to make believe of the new lands that they see.