It is a starved town. Bone-white houses pave the beach like conches and oysters, although these oysters are bereft of pearls. Towards the edge of the town most distant from the beach, a thin train track etches its way through the sand to a run-down station and a dosing ticket-taker. The metal rails of the track are faded and frail, like the ribs of cattle skeletons that warn of a desert’s heat. Trains pass by the town infrequently, billowing out waves of smoke and silt which mix with the sand and vanish in minutes. Boats lie, grounded, anywhere between the beach and the station, some boarded up and full of…