The wet cobbles of Alfama

Dear Delyara, The streetlamps are going out one by one along the narrow alley, leaving the blue ceramic tiles on the walls looking grey and dead in the dawn light. My grandfather’s small wine shop has been in our family for three generations, but the mortgage interest doubled in January, and the tourists don't buy regional wines—they want cheap draft beer in plastic cups. I spent the whole night pacing the stone steps down to the river, holding a envelope containing the bank’s repossession notice. If I sign the surrender papers on Friday, my father will lose the apartment above the shop where he was born. My throat feels like it’s choked with salt, and the sunrise over the Tagus river just feels like a cruel joke.