by Dina Bennett
This is when the chickens appear. They are moving like a feathered school of fish toward a coarse stone structure opposite the cottage, running first in one direction, then abruptly and collectively veering in another. Figuring they’re used to showing strangers the way, I follow them. Soon I’m swept up in a strange Argentinean poultry tango. When they see me willing to move with them they gather speed and swarm around, clucking happily as we approach the hut door. The appearance of the turkeys turns their clucks to cries of alarm. “Hurry!” they seem to be warning me. “Don’t let them get there ahead of us or you’ll have to stand in line forever.”
I am always slightly nervous at borders. There’s an ominous sense, which I can’t quite pinpoint, that something in our paperwork will be awry, that we’ll be missing an essential signature or an obvious document, and the official won’t let us through. While it’s not a disaster to be turned back at a border, for me a driving trip means moving forward. I hate the thought of retracing steps. It smacks of failure to get ahead.
So, despite the support of the chicken chorus, it is with a mild sense of trepidation that I grab the leather strap that serves as a handle on the hut door and push. The door creaks, as an old wood door should, and swings open. Inside it is dark, sunlight filtering through cracks in the roof tiles, dust motes floating up light beams that slice through the dimness. There’s a musty odor of disuse, coupled with something vaguely sweet-smelling. As I take a step, decades of rodent droppings crunch underfoot. I move gingerly onto the uneven dirt floor tamped down by countless shoes and peer around. Something doesn’t feel right.
The chickens, however, are beside themselves with glee. They scurry through the open doorway and begin to romp around the floor, turkeys hot on their heels. I step farther into the deeply shadowed interior. Surely someone should be welcoming me, urging me forward with a practiced flick and swirl of the wrist, and a commanding “Entra, señora.” But it is eerily still in this hut.
I pause to let my eyes adjust to the dark and my heart thumps a bit harder while I stand there, waiting. I can see something in the back corner, but I can’t distinguish any details other than that it’s a large, huddled mass. I move forward just a little more, unwilling to completely let go of the door in case whatever’s in the corner moves. And then it all falls into place. The huddled mass is a tumbled pile of grain sacks. No wonder the poultry are happy. Not only have I led them to the promised land, I’ve flung open the pearly gates and they think I’m going to feed them.
Exiting the feed shed, I see the officer waving at me from the more proper-looking building behind it. Trying not to betray how dopey I feel, I stride up to the customs office, still surrounded by my flock. I believe they would have come right into the customs office with me had they not been turned away for lack of passports. Their clucks of dismay as I disappear inside are distressing.
In the office I find Soldier Cabral, a man of perhaps thirty-five years, the lone resident of this isolated border post. Knowing that I’ve roused him from his midmorning snack, or nap, I expect to see striped pajama bottoms peeking out from his dark olive regulation-issue army trousers. But no, he is fully pressed, buttoned, polished, and tied, all set to go through the formalities.
I respectfully place myself in front of his desk while he searches through drawers for the necessary books and forms. There’s a wedding band on his ring finger, evidence that there’s a life for this man away from Paso Roballos. I feel sorry for him, posted here in the middle of nowhere, and so it pleases me to know that he is married. Filled with the desire to make our encounter as memorable and full of human contact as possible, I ask him if his family is here too. “No. Están en la ciudad,” he answers. “Es demasiado aislado aquí para ellos.”
Cabral seems to have lost the habit of speaking at length, and who can blame him, living as he does in such intense solitude. As if suddenly realizing there’s more he can say, he tells me that every few months a relief officer comes up to allow him time off so he can go visit his family. Apart from that it’s just him and the chickens. Cabral is manning the border entirely by himself—no compadres, no computer, and, usually, no cars.
Finally, he brings forth the necessary ledgers and places each lovingly on the desktop. To track the infrequent comings and goings, he maintains four journals, one each for vehicles arriving and those departing Argentina and one each for people doing the same, all with meticulous handwritten entries. As he begins flipping the pages, moistening his thumb and carefully lifting the edge of each page to turn it, I can see that the pages offer mute testimony to Cabral’s dedication and precision. They are flawless. No errors, no crossed-out or smudged entries are going to take place on his watch.
I can also see that the lack of foot or vehicle traffic through his post means a distinct lack of familiarity with the paperwork. At one point in the laborious proceedings, Cabral reveals that he rarely sees more than five hundred cars a year at this post, most of which come months earlier than we. There are days at a stretch when no car at all comes his way. Nevertheless, Cabral’s motto, if he could express it, seems to be, “Better slow and safe than sorry.” He is careful and meticulous to a fault. This is not a man you want in the infantry with you, and I begin to understand why his superiors have given him this particular assignment.
Every action Soldier Cabral takes, he takes three times: The first is in preparation: I am now going to make an entry in this book by looking at the label and opening to the proper page. The second to double-check himself: Did I pick up the correct book? Better look at the cover again and check a few pages back to be sure. And finally, once to make the entry needed: Yes, this is the proper book and nothing has changed since I checked the cover label two seconds ago. He does this without self-consciousness, simply going about his business with stern seriousness and, no doubt, some prayers.
At one point, baffled, Soldier Cabral feels the need for written support. Rising from his scarred office chair, he turns to a slender wood cabinet containing two columns of small drawers with filigreed brass handles, each perhaps two inches high. He pulls open the top two simultaneously and peers inside. From my vantage point, I can see that they hold blank forms. No help. He goes down the chest, drawer by drawer, getting increasingly perturbed as he finds them all empty. Although he’s the only one who could have filled them, he betrays shock at finding nothing in them. By the time he gets to the last of the twenty drawers in the chest, I can tell by how wearily he pulls them open that he’s given up hope of finding answers in any of them. He sits slowly back down in his chair, flexes his arms several times, and is ready to lick the nib of his pen, realizing only at the last moment that it’s a ballpoint, not a quill.
Though the proceedings take longer than expected, I have to say that my half hour with Soldier Cabral seems par for the course at such a forsaken crossing. I am inclined to excuse his clumsy lack of fluidity. After all, how can anyone become acquainted with their responsibilities if they have few opportunities to practice them? A hint of melancholy sets in as I return to our car and Bernard starts the engine. Who knows when Cabral will next see a human being?
He raises the bar, a symbolic gesture only, since it’s so thin it’d barely stop a bicycle, and waves us into the no-man’s-land between Argentina and Chile. I imagine he might feel a certain despair to see us go. We wave as we drive off, feeling fortunate that we are free to leave this solitary spot and equally stricken for Soldier Cabral, alone, far from his family, uncomfortable with his job. On the desolate plateau separating Argentina and Chile, we brace ourselves for what we expect will be an even more distressing entry post for Chile.
Without doubt, border crossings are some of the more intense cultural experiences one can have on a long road trip, especially a trip designed to tempt fate by hopping between Chile and Argentina over and over again. It’s at the border that a country’s true feelings about its neighbors, as well as foreigners, are brought into the bright light of day.
Relations between A
rgentina and Chile are sometimes cordial, but often sour. Even though the two countries gained their independence from Spain at nearly the same time two hundred years ago, they haven’t been happy neighbors since. This is due primarily to disagreements on who owns what in Patagonia. The countries are like fighting cocks on leashes, strutting and pecking in each other’s direction. I think this is a legacy of each country’s military juntas, though no one I talk to dares formally agree with me. Take, for example, El Chaltén, where the clatter of helicopters fills the sky. It’s almost as if we’re in a war zone. Bernard and I wander over to the landing pad, which happens to be just below the little hill on which sits our hotel. “Hey, what are you guys up to?” I say, or something in Spanish to that effect. This is just my opening gambit, since the green drab uniforms with bars and chevrons on the sleeves, and the slouching, leather-rimmed matching berets on each head, give me an inkling this is a military operation. That, and the fact that the soldier barring our access to the landing pad has a rifle firmly held across his chest, which he now puffs in our direction, confronting us with an unwavering, steely gaze. Nevertheless, I persist. “Nice helicopters. Can we offer ourselves as passengers on your next flight?” This last is meant to break the ice, which right now is as vast as the Southern Patagonian Ice Field they’re overflying. It succeeds enough that the soldier gives us a two-sentence explanation of why choppers are taking off and landing for eight hours a day. They’re establishing GPS points for certain peaks in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, determined to prove to the inch what belongs to Argentina. This despite the fact that Chile doesn’t agree that the border even runs along the highest peaks. In Chile’s view, the border is defined by the drainages from those peaks. It’s too complicated for me. And apparently too complicated for them also. The two countries signed a treaty about this in 1881, and one hundred twenty-five years later, there’s a spat going on that reminds me of five-year-olds on the school playground.
Which is why an Argentine government that wouldn’t spring for a three-dollar filling in a campesino’s molar, was spending millions to prove exactly which bits of granite, in places no one would ever go, belonged to it, and which it would agree were Chile’s. That same government couldn’t be bothered to equip many of its border outposts, not just the isolated Paso Roballos post, with a computer and a stipend for family. It’s not entirely surprising that, despite formal diplomatic niceties on the subject as recent as 1998, word doesn’t seem to have reached the guys manning the actual border. How would it get there? Which is probably why the officials on one side of the border have nothing good to say about the officials across the way. Ask a Chilean how things will go when we reach the Argentine side of the border and we get a dramatic rolling of the eyes. Ask the same thing of the corresponding Argentine official and he clears his throat, indicating he’d spit on the floor if he weren’t too polite to do that in front of a lady. Strained is the word I’d use to describe relations. The Chileans disparage their Argentinian counterparts as shabby and ill-equipped. Which is true. The Argentinians can’t help but take this personally, caustically describing their Chilean counterparts as babies in cushy jobs. Which is also, almost, true. Here at Paso Roballos, despite living only fifteen minutes apart from each other, as compared to many hours from their own compatriots, these guys are never going to be passing around the mate cup.
Our spirits lift as we cross several miles of gorgeous tundra. The tiny plants struggling to grow form a green-gold velvet blanket through which our road cuts like a silk cord. Around us rise rounded peaks freshly dusted with white. These are not the granite spikes of Fitz Roy, but humble hilltops, nevertheless high enough to capture a sprinkling of snow from an early fall storm. It’s wild and desolately beautiful. When the sun breaks through the clouds, I feel I’m moving through a fresco by some alpine Michelangelo.
Soon we’re driving past neat expanses of mowed lawn dotted with shade trees. It’s another high-altitude farm in a most unexpected location. “Can you believe that there’s an estancia up here?” I say to Bernard. Not too far away is a fairytale cluster of red and white cottages, each nestled next to a flamboyant flower gardens. Workers tend a flock of fattened sheep, while others irrigate a thriving vegetable garden and everywhere, happy chickens peck for insects. Everything is upright, spruce, and flourishing, as if someone had waved a magic wand. “Whoever’s doing this is a lot more talented than those people whose places we drove through on the way here!”
“But my god, what a long way to get to market,” Bernard says, filled with respect for such hard work. “I can’t believe anyone can make it up here. These people are amazing.”
As we crane necks to get a closer look, a veritable platoon of armed men appears. And the thought that I have, because this place is so incongruous, isolated yet manicured, and because I have men in uniform around me holding automatic weapons, is “Of course, this belongs to a drug lord. How stupid of us to slow down.” One waves us forward to a neatly paved and striped parking spot. “Ah ha, drug lord’s expecting visitors.” Still unable to process what’s happening, I catch Bernard’s eye and make an imperceptible nod toward the guards that now encircle us. “Lock the car, Bernard,” I say. “Because who knows …” Now one of them points his rifle to a door in the largest cottage. I’m half-curious, half-scared about what’s going to happen next. Inside there’s a high counter and behind it are three more uniformed men, one of whom looks at me without much interest and says, “Papers, madam.” We’re at Chile’s border post, and far as I can tell, it’s a nonstop party here. There’s such a surplus of officials that they begin filling forms for us—directly on their computers. Someone lifts a whistling kettle over a small stove, pours hot water onto tea leaves, and the mate gourd with its silver straw is passed across the counter to us. In a back room, more soldiers casually stroll in and out. Conversation broken by a swift burst of laughter, they smile at us, clack confidently on their keyboards. I feel a certain arrogance from these soldiers, as if they know we know how fortunate they are to be on the Chilean side of things.
“Muy bien, señora. Bienvenidos a Chile.” Within ten minutes we are done, descending from Paso Roballos and leaving Soldier Cabral and his woebegone post far behind.
We are close to the Carretera Austral now, separated from that mythic route only by some thirty miles of meandering dirt road. We both feel relieved, our thoughts on the road ahead. But the solitary Soldier Cabral sticks with me. There’s no border trickery going on here. Facts are facts. There he is, alone. And here am I. With Bernard. Together.
Gated Community
KARAKUL, TAJIKISTAN TO KYRGYZSTAN, 2011
Snowflakes swirl in a wild Tajik dance as our car approaches Kyzyl-Art Pass. Behind us the road winds through a landscape of jarring potholes, ruts and rocks to the base of the pass, where it splits the Pamir plateau in a line as sharp as a scalpel cut. A five-strand barbed wire fence topped with razor coils shadows the road, placed by some shrewd Soviet who thought it would prevent Chinese from infiltrating this former Soviet republic. (As if the Pamir Mountains couldn’t do the job alone.)
Now that Tajikistan rules itself, herders who wander the Pamir plateau have cut through the wire to give their yaks, sheep, and motorbikes ease of travel. The concrete pill boxes in which bored Soviet soldiers once sat for hours have a new life. They bulge obscenely out of the sandy dirt that once cloaked them, sprayed with graffiti, walls smudged black from fires, floor littered with shattered bottles left by herders who took shelter on a day such as this.
At dawn, the Pamir peaks still shone with the white of religious conversion. Here on the pass at fourteen thousand feet, the unseasonable snowstorm has drawn a foggy curtain around the summits, and the road blends too easily into the surroundings. A final hairpin turn and we see it: a gate so shrouded by the gloom that when it emerges we are on the verge of crashing through it.
It’s a crude barrier, just a pole with a sack of rocks on one end for ballast, more a gesture than a blockade. B
ut it does the job, signaling we’ve reached the border station of Tajikistan with Kyrgyzstan. Our car tires crunch on gravel as we halt next to a hut built of wood scraps and tar paper. “Don’t worry,” says Bernard from the driver’s side, finely attuned to my border nerves from forty thousand miles of husband-wife road trips. He thumbs some dust off our GPS. My foot refuses to be still, tapping on the floorboards for what seems an interminable wait. I crack my window to get a whiff of how cold and windy it is outside. Very.
A soldier steps out of the guard shack. With a raised hand and a shrugging of his rifle he motions me to follow him. I bid Bernard what I hope is a temporary goodbye. He won’t be alone in my absence, though. A guard of insufficient status to take refuge indoors is already shambling over to get a closer look at our Land Rover. The synthetic-fur collar of his bulky blue and gray camouflage jacket is turned up, his face and neck are chapped red and raw. Warding off the wind up here is futile.
Opening a dented, creaking steel door, I enter the border office, passports and car papers in hand. Except it’s not an office, it’s the officer’s own spartan boudoir. A shaft of bleak light through a book-sized window makes the dim glow of a bare bulb look bright. The small stove in a corner chuffs and smokes, its heat struggling to reach the middle of the cell-like room, leaving the walls glacial.
I stand in a hot spot while the officer takes the one chair and scrapes it closer to a cluttered card table. When he removes his hat and looks at me I see he’s a young man, with a heavy thatch of greasy, dark hair badly in need of a shampoo. He is courteous. “Please,” he says, motioning me to sit on the only other furniture in the room: his cot. The bedding is rumpled, a coarse green wool blanket hastily pulled over graying sheets.