They are proud, the lords of these farmlands. Without a penny to their names, their families came to this island, cleared the land, and cultivated a garden. Several hundred years later, despite the Conquest, they are still here, as rooted as ever. On the island, there is the whiff of eternity. The bridge linking them to the rest of the world is still recent. Even so, time on the island is no longer cyclical. The city devours the surrounding countryside. Now that the land soaks up fuel rather than sweat, now that it’s worth millions, it doesn’t belong to them as before. Even the family plots of land handed down for generations have become huge businesses operating twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
