Luck 
(English Translation by Alison Barbara Burrows)
 
It was many years ago. One afternoon, with friends whose name I cannot even remember, I went to the Naval Club. It was in Mozambique, there was a small sheltered port there. They gave me a line, maybe a rod, I know that I threw it in the water and the fish bit. 
It came straight away, huge! I was the only one fishing and I only caught that one. In fact I never went fishing again. I recalled this event à propos of chance, of luck, destiny, or God. 
They usually talk about "beginner’s luck". But if this luck exists is it destiny? Then it is not luck! The fish ended its days that way, just like that. I think about the mother who promised to God to stop drinking if her son stopped too... He did not stop and she drunk more and more, like she was competing with her son! They say that one day she drank a whole vat of red wine, cask and all! Then, suddenly, the son stopped drinking and the mother stopped too and now she insults all the drunks she sees on the street, calling their mothers the worst names who surely did not think to do as she did... But was that which happened to "my" fish, to the lady and her son not chance? I am inclined towards this hypothesis. I think that the son is as much of the lady’s as the fish is mine. In that case, if every mother in the World with drunken sons began drinking like that lady, soon there would be no wine and God, fed up with the masses praying for wine, would end all drunkenness, thus causing an excess in production. 
 
Carlos Mota, 2010.