The waters were choppy, very choppy, it made Giuseppe feel sick to his stomach, he obviously didn't have sea legs.

They were approaching the city, the big apple, New York. The masses of weary and beleaguered immigrants from the old country all looked up and saw the beacon that they had waited so very long to see. They saw the monument that gave them hope and dreams of what their lives could be like in this new world. They saw the Statue of Liberty.

Giuseppe clenched his clammy hands together to stop their incessant shaking, his head was pounding so hard that he thought that it would blow off. The boy from Favara was scared like he had never been before, he worried about a great many things.

What if they, the Americans discover that he is a wanted man? They may send him back to Italia, back to the clutches of the corrupt police. How would he survive in the unknown and strange land? How would he feed himself?

There were so many questions, so many, to which he had no answers. It was not the time nor the place to dwell on such things, he was concentrating on how he would manage to get past the immigration staff and how he would even get into the country of dreams to begin with.

They had docked in the harbour at Ellis Island and were being filed from the boat into a huge dilapidated brick building in droves. These people, carrying all that they had in the world in one suitcase, if that.
Giuseppe realised that he had received a few dirty looks and glances from some of the guards, he felt like he was being watched. He couldn't make out on whether he was paranoid or they were onto him.

"Keep calm!" He thought to himself, "They don't know, how could they!?"

Giuseppe wiped the sweat from his brow and straightened himself out to look half way respectable, as much as he could in what he was wearing. He did not come from such extravagant background, but he was not used to these worn and torn itchy clothes.

He entered a huge hall with hundreds of other foreign people looking to settle here. He was ushered toward an old, time beaten cop that was sat behind a large wooden desk with a large ledger and a pen.

"Name?" His voiced boomed, even for an older gent it was a commanding one.

Giuseppe didn't have a clue what he was saying. He looked to the much younger man standing next to him that looked like his paesano.

"Che cosa ha detto?" Giuseppe asked the young Italian looking cop.

"Ti ha chiesto che cosa il vostro nome" He answered back with a thick Southern accent.

"Ah, Giuseppe Favara"

The two officials conferred with one another before the older man looked up again toward his colleague.

"Where does this wop come from?"

The man of Italian heritage looked insulted but gritted his teeth.

"Da dove vieni?

"Favara" Giuseppe snapped back.

"Aha! Io vengo da Agrigento paesano!" He exclaimed

The old man looked in a disapproving manner at the younger cop, and he then turned to Giuseppe.

Giuseppe could see in the old man's cold eyes that he did not want to let him through, but he had no choice. He signalled to his underling who led Giuseppe away, toward what Giuseppe had presumed was freedom and safety a nice and quite life which he had dreamed of since his father and brother were both taken away from him.

He couldn't have been more wrong..

~

A month or so has passed by, one of the doctors had found one reason or another to keep him in solitary quarantine.

Footsteps could be heard from down the hall, they continued to get closer and closer. There was a heavy clank from the door and it was opened.

Giuseppe arose from his bed, there was a dominating figure at the door, his eyes were only just awakening the figure was a blur, he couldn't make out a face.

"Get your things together, you're being released" the shadowy man's voice instructed.

There was no time for a reply as the footsteps had begun again down the hallway and Giuseppe was left to assemble his belongings and make his way in his new home.

After being frogmarched out of the prison to which he had been a guest for over a month, he was taken by boat across the river to Manhattan.

He finally stepped off the boat and was immediately taken aback by the hustle and bustle of this great city, people darting around on the packed streets always in a rush to get somewhere. Motorcars, he had not seen so many of them in one place, they completely blocked the roads. It was amazing, he had never seen so much, life and electricity in all of his time. It was nothing like back home that much was obvious.

Giuseppe Favara, now set out to find his fortune in this beautiful city, by any means necessary.