There I stood, surrounded. In every direction my eyes could drift, mountain cliffs soared to the sky. Each precipice was unique in form and shape, yet all were mutually similar in nature. In particular, to the right of me, perhaps fifty feet away, the flat land that I was standing on gently rose. This gentle incline abruptly gave way to a violent, almost vertical slope that protruded from the pit of the valley. This was a barren, brownish-red rock face that had not one flower, tree, or any other sign of vegetation on it. When thoroughly examined, the rock face had numerous hollow, tiny caves dug into it. It was a piece of Swiss cheese. This rock face stood alone among many other shallower sloped, thickly vegetated cliffs. They all towered above everything else, forming gargantuan mountains. Standing here, I was a piece of sand in a desert: one among many. 

The flora here was different than elsewhere on the island; there were evergreens and moss instead of palm trees and cacti. The temperature was different as well. It was cold but not uncomfortable: brisk. However, it was as cold as the arctic by Portuguese standards. 

Suddenly, my eyes shifted to the left to see a street sign that read, “Freiras.” In English, this means, “Nuns.”  Seeing this made me think of the village’s history and how it got its name. During the 15th century, pirate attacks on Madeira were quite often. To escape these attacks, nuns in a convent in Funchal fled inland. They eventually found where present day Freiras is, settled down, and remained undisturbed for centuries until a was made that connected the village to the rest of the island. Because of this, the valley is named after the nuns.

To the right of me there were two white, concrete houses. Between these two houses there was a path of worn stones. In between each stone there was grayish dirt that was firmly pounded so that not one spec could break free and be blown away by the wind. On the right side of the path, the pavement dipped to make a u-shape that resembled a valley. A stream of water flowed down it and, if it were not for a similar construction on the road adjacent to the path, onto the street. These constructions were levadas. The levadas were first built when the original settlers of Madeira arrived. Madeira has no natural lakes or rivers, so in order for the settlers to retrieve water, they built an elaborate system of water canals around the island that were as winding as a labyrinth.  I walked down the path. As I walked, the stones in the path became more and more worn until there were no more rocks and the path was covered with overgrown crabgrass. It was a jungle. 

Eventually, the path cleared to become concrete that was cracked in several areas. Grass was growing out of the cracks and moss, that was invading the pathway, was staining the concrete green. Even without the moss’s stain, the concrete was discolored, with some areas being a lighter gray and others being almost black. After passing the houses, a wall about five feet tall ran along the side of the path. It was also made out of discolored concrete. Various vines and branches that sprouted from above the wall drooped down the side of the wall, creating a thin covering. Some of the branches and vines were dead while the others had leaves growing from them. These leaves had holes of varying sizes in them. I imagined that perhaps bugs had been eating them.

Then, there was the house. It wasn’t much really. Just a two-story concrete box with a couple of windows and doors that was along the path. According to American standards, it could qualify for a shed. It was white, or rather, used to be. Now, the paint on the concrete exterior began to fade, revealing the grey color of the concrete that lied below. This resulted in the house seeming to be painted with blotches of faded white and gray.  The house was a blank canvas that had paint splattered on it. The house's front had three doors made of wooden planks. Each had green paint on it that was peeling. One door in particular was rotting and had its bottom left corner missing, leaving some planks with sharp, unexposed edges. Looking through this hole, I saw only an abyss of darkness. I moved my eyes to see the knobs. I saw that the doors, which opened like french doors, had there knobs tied together with metal wire. From here, I looked next to the door and, on the concrete exterior, saw that there were illegible red letters that had been spray painted onto the house. 

I turned to my grandmother and asked, “Can I go in?”

She shrugged and replied matter-of-factly, “Why not?”

So, I moved my hand to untie the metal wire. Once finished, I pushed open the door. The gloomy chasm became lit up with light. The whole room was filled up solely by red containers that had empty beer bottles in them. The only other thing in the room was a neat cobweb in the upper-hand corner of the room. I exited the building and told my grandmother what I saw.

She angrily said, “Those goddam kids come here and drink.”

I did not believe that teenagers came here to drink based on the empty beer bottles because the bottles were neatly arranged in containers which had then been meticulously stacked on one another. It seemed to neat to be teenagers.

Anyway, although this house seemed like an abandoned and run-down shack, it was much more than that. This house was the house that my great-grandmother, Fatima da Silva, was born in more than one-hundred years ago. She grew up in this house and would have spent her whole life in the village if her cast-iron fence did not break. My great-grandfather worked with all types of metal. His job was to repair broken metal structures. He lived in Brava, which was a village on the ocean. Every day, he used to climb up the mountain and descend down into the village of Freiras to do his work. One day, my great-grandmother's fence broke and he went to repair it.  They met and, well, you can guess what happened: they fell in love, got married, and moved to Brava.

My grandmother signaled for me to follow her back to the street. I did this. Then, my grandfather came and picked us up with his Mercedes. We drove off.