Free Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies by Alastair Bonnett

cemetery and brought up her three children within its walls, said, “I’ve had to teach myself to like living here.” As she explained to an interviewer on National Public Radio, “This is where I have a chance to earn a little bit. You get used to it, and it’s a lot safer here than most places outside.” Other tomb dwellers, like Boyet Zapata, complain that the restless spirits of the newly dead can interfere with their lives, taking over their bodies.
    But the residents have reached an understanding with the departed, based on reciprocal respect and care: they look after the dead’s resting places, and in return the spirits of the dead, for the most part, leave them be. Over recent years it is not the dead but an influx of squatters, including alcoholics and drug addicts, that is disturbing residents’ peace of mind in North Cemetery. These interlopers misuse the tombs, hassle mourners for money, and disrupt burials. Their behavior shatters the special kind of patience that is required to make North Cemetery a place that works for both the living and the dead. This influx of undesirables has also stung the city authorities into threatening to clear out the entire community. To be swept out into the hostile world would be a terrible injustice to the people who, for generations, have cared for this place, but even if this happens, they and others like them would soon find a way back in. With city rents staying stubbornly high, for many people coming to an accommodation with the dead is one of the few viable ways to sustain life in the city.

North Sentinel Island
    11° 33′ 20″ N, 92° 14′ 77″ E
     
Wild men, estimate more than 50, carrying various home-made weapons are making two or three wooden boats. Worrying they will board us at sunset. All crew members’ lives not guaranteed.
     
    This radio distress call was received at the Regent Shipping Company in Hong Kong on August 5, 1981. It was from the captain of the MV
Primrose
, a cargo ship heading to Australia through the Bay of Bengal. The ship had struck a coral reef and was grounded some one hundred meters away from dense forest. The
Primrose
had run onto the shore of the only island in the world entirely occupied by an “uncontacted” indigenous people. There are roughly a hundred inhabitants, and their language, religion, and customs remain unknown. The outside world calls them the Sentinelese, and they live on a round isle that is five miles across, North Sentinel, one of the necklace of 361 islands that make up the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a Union Territory of India that lies about eight hundred miles to the east of India.
    The captain had good reason to worry. The usual response of the Sentinelese to intruders is a hail of arrows. But this time the seas were rough enough to keep their canoes at bay, and their unfletched arrows, which have a range of only forty meters, fell into the water. A long week passed before the crew of thirty-three were lifted off their vessel by civilian helicopters.
    DNA results from related tribal groups in the Andamans indicate that the ancestors of the Sentinelese migrated to the islands from Africa some sixty thousand years ago. North Sentinel is the last redoubt of an ancient community. The island has no natural harbors and is surrounded by reefs and year-round rough seas. It is a fortress against the world. For many years all attempts to approach the island were met with the same level of hostility. In 1974 a film director had received an arrow in his thigh while laying out a selection of ingratiating gifts on the beach: pots, pans, a live piglet, and toys. However, in the 1980s and early 1990s the Indian authorities began a concerted effort to win the islanders over. Anthropologists and local officials made regular forays to the shoreline, always bearing gifts. After numerous hesitant and unsuccessful efforts came the breakthrough. On January 8, 1991, the front page of the Andaman newspaper, the
Daily