Gibberish. That’s all his thoughts were while he watched the city workers filling a pothole with steaming asphalt and gravel, working at a good pace and questioning one another in loud peppery words about whether they’d slept with a woman the night before.
Bolivia stayed in the refuge of Alfredo’s room for almost two days, collapsed in bed, overwhelmed by the ruthless gods of shrapnel and gunpowder causes, feeling that although her body was here, on the island of Montreal, her soul was still meandering through Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar and Frankfurt’s cold avenues. Meanwhile, Alfredo was itching to hear about everything that had happened during her long absence. He couldn’t tell if he was simply curious or if he was just happy to see her again. Walking among the pyramids of fruit, mint and sweet potatoes at the Jean-Talon Market, he felt like dancing but not sure to what, an enlightened devil, a kusillo nimble on the snow, feeling that Bolivia’s arrival had warmed even the air, taking the harsh chill out of the morning air. Thanks to Bolivia, his heart’s winter and nostalgia were subsiding—the wind blowing through the streets chilled his gloveless hands and wrapped around his naked head, rubbed against his large ears. Thanks to Bolivia, winter felt less cannibalistic. “No… This can’t be. A Kurdish woman named Bolivia…” he said in endless amazement as he realized that yes, such an encounter was indeed possible on this island, surrounded by the powerful arms of the Saint Lawrence River, with its large chunks of ice balancing on the current, the ice that was now nipping at his toes, feet so remote he was unable to make out their shape, unable to focus on the body’s boundaries, unable to see later that day the spider of fate descend upon the trapped fly that swung from the pale ceiling. Looking towards one side of the room, the corner where the horizontal plane of the ceiling met the verticality of the wall—there was something there. A shape, a shadow, something that remained still, perhaps looking in this direction, or calculating the right moment to sink its furry arachnid fangs into the winged insect trapped in the centre of the room, or descend this way and find arms, face, bite into an eye, the only one allowing the light into the well where memories slept. Gradually scents began to reveal what was happening all around—it smelled of therapeutic dreams, heart attacks and surgically removed nostalgia cells. A weak voice kept repeating a series of “ayoye…ayoye…ayoye…ayoye…” like some sort of drunken, dancing crab. Alfredo keeps walking through the market, a dancer celebrating a feast day by the sacred lake. “Sweet Bolivia has returned.” “Faites attention à la marche, monsieur!” He looked over to see whose voice was scolding him and found a creole woman staring in frustration as her broccoli rolled down across the ground. “Oh, caramba, quel brute je suis! Madame, s’il vous plait excusez-moi!” With his dancing enthusiasm, Alfredo’s sudden turn among the people at Jean-Talon Market—a little waka-tokori step, a rhythmical move forward, then backwards to the sound of rockets and horns—had caused the vegetables and roots to spill behind him. The owner of the broccoli was a Haitian woman. After carefully picking up the fallen produce, Alfredo’s musical register changed, this time he tried to dance caporales, a type of dance in fashion in a Bolivia that was rocked by whips and bullets (in Bolivia? how was he going to establish the difference between that flatulent, ungraspable concept of nation and the woman sleeping in his bed at that very instant? Which one was more important? That is, which one was worthy of being named with the honour and elegance of an upper case letter? And which one should remained confined to the lower case? He thought of discussing the issue with the Scribe but decided the matter was his sole responsibility. So, at this very instant, Alfredo faces a wide, invisible audience of ten million Bolivians, and clad in lluchu and tie, mestizo, mixed, trilingual, under the spotlights he grabs the microphone and gives a solemn official declaration: “ahem! ahem! cough… cough… onetwothreetestingtesting: My fellow tacalo citizens, I hereby present the following official declaration, colon, next line (:) Whereas the undersigned has been subject to circumstances beyond his control, he hereby declares for all judicial purposes that his birth took place in an unspecified geography completely unbeknownst to the undersigned; Whereas the aforementioned fact has been evidenced by his first reaction, namely, inconsolable wailing upon the exact moment of birth, subsequent to delivery from the womb, due to a brutal smack on the bottom which forcefully extracted him from profound existential and territorial cogitations; Whereas the consequences of being birthed in a specific location cannot be attributed to the noble kingdom of the birds, represented herein by their attorney the stork; Whereas the birth of the undersigned was in its stead the result of physical ardours unleashed by the beneficial outpouring of Punata chicha, the single and symbolic corn practice that enables the unmasking and liberation of all Roman Catholic Apostolic self-control; Whereas the undersigned has suffered the emotional consequences of a severe case of acute homonymia which threatens to confound his loyalties due to the double and multiple connotations of the sound and name ‘Bolivia’; Namely, (1) as a concept of origin, birth and languages, there exists a geographic region known by the name of Bolivia; (2) As of a recent unspecified date, said name contains within it a second, affective concept, due to the existence of a physical female person on the island of Montreal also named Bolivia. In view of the foregoing, and in consideration of the ethereal, windy, ungraspable and unstable qualities of the concepts of national identity and geographical origin, and in consideration of the human qualities, tenderness, companionship and emotional presence of a woman named Bolivia, the undersigned subscribes this duly notarized and registered document and hereby resolves… RESOLVES…resolves! Article 1. Sole Paragraph. It is hereby ordered by irreversible decree that the human being shall heretofore take precedence over the abovementioned ethereal concept. The conceptual apeiron of what is designated as the nation shall heretofore be secondary to the primary human manifestation of affection, and said physical person shall heretofore be named ‘Bolivia.’ The conceptual and invisible notion, the fancy of a viceroyalty, the colonial construction and functioning of the aforementioned republic shall heretofore be named ‘volibia.’ Signed in the City of Montreal, in this month of February in the year of our Lord 1995,) a type of dance in which one person pretends to be the foreman—the slave driver, whip in hand, forcing slaves to work, always perfecting his methods of inflicting pain. Alfredo tried to turn his ankles out, as though he were wearing ankle bells ready for feint steps and jumps. The Haitian woman stared at him while rearranging her broccoli in her basket, puzzled by what he may have been trying to convey through his pirouettes. Perhaps he was possessed by ancient gods. After reflecting for a moment about the minor accident, Alfredo stopped moving. He stopped playing a caporal because the practice suddenly struck him as impossible and awkward, stripped of its historical context. He turned into a run-of-the-mill guy, a caserito peacefully wandering through the market stalls, surrounded by vegetables, looking for eggplants of a lilac sheen, dark as the night that seeped through the window and made him shiver. The light was ill. As the fly and the spider were beginning to fade in the growing twilight, a nurse walked into the room and made the fly burst into an iridescent halo. Seconds later the spider of fate, curled up in the corner waiting for asleep to arrive, was suddenly lit up by the bright shapes of hockey players running around and armed with their sticks. Hockey Night in Canada. Another attempt to focus on things in the room—only shadows moving around were visible. The other eye, the blind one, was covered with a bandage; bones were still running through with murmurs, the echo of someone tapping on the counter at Fromagerie Hamel, a woman ordering a quarter pound of goat cheese. When it was his turn, he ordered some blue cheese, the most suitable for reading the old modernists and to eat with a fake marraqueta and café con leche. He wandered through the neighbourhood and found himself at the corner of Jean-Talon and Saint-Laurent. Possessed by an irresistible idea, he headed west to the Kurdish social centre for refugees. All tables were empty except for one: four men with fierce moustaches and nostalgia in their eyes were si
pping steaming green tea out of plastic cups, watching on a small TV a video Alfredo thought he recognized as the one they’d been watching the first time he’d stopped in looking for Bolivia. On the screen, a group of women and men clad in beautiful costumes were performing a folk dance on a stage, surrounded by an excited audience, accompanied by powerful drums and a small flute similar to the one used by snake charmers. The music filled the place with its penetrating, undulating rhythm. He was shocked to see all the men were wearing the infamous tricolour socks. He also noticed tricolour socks for sale behind the counter, bags and bags of patriotic socks along with the usual banners, jerseys and coffee cups with the red, yellow and green of the Bolivian flag—or rather, the Kurdish flag. They were smoking and focused on the television when Alfredo jumped in front of them screaming, “Bolivia! Bolivia? You remember Bolivia? ¿Se acuerdan? Do you? Yes? No?” They stared at him with a mix of interest and surprise, perplexed by what the effusive man was screaming at the top of his lungs. He pointed at the screen showing the close-up of a woman. “Bolivia! Bolivia! J’ai trouvé Bolivia, I found her, Ich habe, damn, how do you say in German, les amis, écoutez! J’ai trouvé ma femme, ma Bolivie et merci à vous tous!” They shook their heads, not understanding even a shred of what the gesticulating dancer was saying, trying to describe and swear in vain the depth of his joy upon having found the most beautiful damsel in the world again. He’d figured his attempt to share his sublime happiness had failed and then the door behind the counter opened and a Kurdish man Alfredo recognized walked in—or at least he thought he’d recognized him from the days he’d gone to the café almost daily to ask where Bolivia might be. The man also recognized him. He frowned and started screaming, gushing words that electrified the four men sitting at the table. They jumped to their feet, tensed up like springs. Alfredo was stunned. “¡Qué es lo que pasa! Mais quoi? What’s happening here?” The man giving orders felt obliged to translate his frenzied words: “L’espion c’est lui! C’est lui le salaud! De spiee, de spiee!” Now the four men at the coffee shop were perplexed by their compatriot’s screaming in French as he pointed at Alfredo, who turned around to check if the enraged man was pointing at someone else behind him. He was getting ready to explain that he was not a spy at all, him a spy for god’s sake—stopping to notice the sound of the word and its vowel, the “e” in the word espía, “e” like extremely happy, which was applicable in his case. He was getting ready to share the reason for his happiness with the anxious group of bearded men who’d fixed their dilated pupils on him, but he didn’t manage to utter a word because suddenly they jumped on him, picked him up and threw him against the wall like a tomato. The screaming man, who seemed to be in charge of those eight arms of Kali, leaped to the entrance and flipped the door sign to Fermé. From inside, the door now read Ouvert and Alfredo thought the surprise attack would now lead him to the gates to the afterlife. The owner turned the lights off and cracked his knuckles as Alfredo fell to the floor again like a flattened pizza. He was in Bolivia again, that is, in volibia, and Boxeador was pounding on him with his harsh welterweight fists, representing volibia in the Bolivarian Games organized by Great Gorilla Banzer. His fists kept multiplying and punishing his body. He yelled and screamed, trying to explain, but his attackers couldn’t understand any of the languages he used to try to communicate with them. Alfredo slipped away for an instant as agile and panicked as a fish. He found a temporary shelter in a corner between shelves full of cups, socks and newspapers. He ripped some socks out of their bags and waving the colours of the sacrosanct national flag, he screamed in despair: “Stop, stop! Man, I’m volibian. Goddammit, I’m Bolivian!” This seemed to enrage them even more. Perhaps it was his swearing, or perhaps because he’d disgraced the colours of their imaginary Kurdish patria and was now bombarding them with bags of socks, emptying the shelves, hurling anything he could grab, trying to contain the mortal charge of the Kurdish cavalry. A chair came down crashing on his head and left him stumbling, bleeding and stunned. A smart bomb of a fist zeroed in on its radar and came down lightning-fast on its target, making Alfredo see the first summer fireworks on Jacques Cartier Bridge as his eyeball bounced and haemorrhaged inside its socket. As the impact made him fly through the air, he realized the Scribe was doing nothing to get him out of his eggplant pickle. He yelled at the Scribe while writing down the following lines: “Goddammit, do something! Do something! Can’t you see they’re beating me into a pulp?” And then they both arrived at a solution, a heresy, which is the mother of necessity, or necessity is the mother of eretics—the Scribe was neglecting grammar and spelling as he was writing this text, stunned and frightened by the uneven fight. He didn’t remember the exact spelling, and he didn’t have time to go back and write the missing “h” on the last heretic strikes that were about to issue from Alfredo’s swollen lips—at the moment he needed all the help he could get from the grammar monkeys. The Scribe exerted his imagination, went back in time to the summit of Mount Hizan, gathered all the power in his lungs and jotted down an incantation that Alfredo immediately cried out: “Sharafnâma peshmerga! Sharafnâma peshmerga!” As soon as he did, the hailstorm of blows stopped pelting him, and he took advantage to wriggle away like an earthworm that knows its place. His assailants were stunned by his screams and looked at each other, then looked for an explanation all over the floor where Alfredo had just been rolling around like a corn kernel on a millstone. Alfredo thought about Bolivia—the woman, not volibia, his country of origin. He gathered what remained of his pitiful forces deep inside his battered being, somehow managed to stand up and, fooling his undeserving adversaries, stumbled out of the coffee shop. He flagged down a taxi who offered to take him to the hospital, but he gave his address and, because Allah is truly magnanimous with the infidels, he made it home alive, albeit as broken as a guitar that has been thrown from the eighth floor of the Jean-Talon Hospital, where he woke up alone and without the slightest idea of what may have happened to his eggplants. It was day now and in the light he could make out the blurry sunglasses and scarf covering the head of a woman who’d been sitting quietly by his side. “Alfgedó? Mon amour, are you better? can you ’ear me? C’est moi, ta Bolivia.”
“After the explosion it rained fingers, pieces of hands, legs, joints, shreds of skin, hair and metal, twisted and unrecognizable, all wrapped in dense phosphorous and nitrate smoke, and then you could still see tiny droplets of blood suspended in the dusty air. There were seventy-six dead and a hundred wounded after the explosion that shook the centre of Colemerik, a Turkish city located, as you say, at such a distance from this world that in your imagination there is only dust, sand, maybe a few camels, short columns of dust rising up in those corners of the world every time someone falls and dies muttering words in a language you don’t understand. But no, Alfredo, over there is just like here. People worry about the same things: groceries, children, the weather, celebrations, family. People are born, get married, love, suffer, dream and die, just like here. No, maybe the difference is that where I was born, people live but they don’t get the chance to be who they are. The law prohibits Kurds from being Kurdish; in Turkey using our language is illegal. They don’t even let them die in peace because they kill them before their time comes. True, life conditions are different, but over there it’s just like here. People live dreaming of having their own country. No, no, don’t laugh. It’s true, Alfredo. Things are just like here, people are people. Since that explosion in Colemerik nothing has been the same. Some of our movement’s leaders were assassinated. Most of the comrades in charge of operations in Turkey and Iraq died in that dreadful bomb hidden in a car that I, I parked myself on a street in Colemerik following instructions from the military wing in our party. And then I realized they were following me. They’d been following me since I left Montreal. People in the movement were the ones spying on me. We’ve been infiltrated, Alfredo, we’ve been betrayed. They’ve betrayed us! Now we live in a permanent climate of terror. No one trusts anyone. T
here are terrible divisions. People carry guns even to go to the bathroom. There are new factions, and factions within factions. Our history, our language no longer guarantees solidarity, loyalty, security the way they used to. Entire sectors of the organization have disbanded in Germany, France, even here in Montreal. Fear and paranoia have come all the way here. And I’m scared, Alfredo, I am scared for you, because of what they did to you. And I’m scared for me. What’s going to happen now?”
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