MIGRATIONS

(An essay play)

by Maximiliano de la Puente

“All that is sacred in human beings is the non-

personal that is within them. Everything that is
impersonal in human beings is sacred, and nothing
else.”
Simone Weil

Beginning

NARRATOR: We find ourselves in a kind of abandoned hospital, one that, a long time ago, was
used as a hotel for immigrants and refugee camp. It is a huge and empty space. The walls, covered
by big stains of mould and damp patches, are almost completely cracked, making it impossible to
know which were the original colours they were painted with. If they had ever, at some time, were
painted. At first sight, we notice that the place has two levels: a kind of floor and first floor, where
we see a series of corridors and big curved openings, similar to the boxes of the old opera houses,
from which light beams emanate, lighting certain areas but leaving others hidden, leaving a great
part of the place in the dark. The floor, which originally was wooden, shows marked uneven levels.
The great majority of the wooden blocks are sunk. Others are broken by halves. The remaining
worm-eaten pieces of wood, in a state of putrefaction, are located everywhere. We are at night, it is
very late. We don’t see anyone, but we can hear the dripping sounds of water running through the
pipes, the wood of the floor creaking, swollen by the humidity of the foundations, and some small
animals, specially rodents and cockroaches, going from one place to the other.
But what fills the air and the environment of the place are the voices. An infinity of voices
whispering, exclaiming, yelling and talking constantly. Voices that question us in many different
languages. A white Man, pale-skinned, perfectly upright and shaved, of middle height, dressed neat
and tidy, neutral (white polo neck, light brown trousers, and black shoes) enters clumsily into the
space, slipping. He raises his eyes. He looks with a certain air of analytic attitude towards the boxes
or curved openings. Afterwards, his eyes cover with an extreme slowness each minuscule and little
corner of the place. He leaves nothing unexamined. If it is necessary, on some occasions he gets
close to a specific spot in space that calls his attention, takes a sample of some material that is
located there (be it a chip of wood or a cockroach) with pliers he takes from the pocket of his
trousers, he places the sample inside a plastic bag, and puts it back on the same pocket.
He examines, in short, each corner with the same level of attention and the curiosity of a scientist.
However, there is something odd in his movements. The Man moves with hardness instead of doing
it in a natural way. He seems not to be used to his own body. He walks as if he had to think and
program himself to execute each movement. Each step he takes places a weight on him. Each step
raises a level of complexity to which he is not used. There is something extremely artificial in his
slow and rhythmic gait. He moves as out of inertia. His movements have something of a delay, they
are unsettled in time, as if he were using his body for the first time. He has to make each movement
with an extreme slowness and concentration. He executes a choreography previously designed by
others. Never thought by him.
With each step he takes, with each movement of his body, his body learns. It turns more skilful.
Each time more ductile. And therefore, more undifferentiated form other bodies.
At times, all the voices that can be heard in this sordid place, except one, make silence in unison,
and the Man can listen exclusively this single voice. But this happens on the most infrequent of
occasions. During most of the time, the Man hears a continuous, penetrating, bothersome and
persistent whisper, generating thus a slow, unstable and unpleasant cadence. The multiple
overlapping voices are different in their rhythms and intensities: they speak at times with a great
speed, and sometimes with a very slow rhythm. Each of the voices tells simultaneously its own
story. So there are as many particular stories as voices that can be heard. The life stories of each of
the voices fill completely the spatial environment. Therefore, though it looks uninhabited, the place
is filled by the intense, tragic, comic, ironical, sarcastic, vacuous, superfluous, desperate tales of
each of that voices. They are mutating voices, which change their time-spans: the past, the present
and the future are mixed within them. The narrator also changes: we listen to them talking in the
first person, in second person, in the third person. The plural and the singular get mixed. They never
get bound to a unique and single register. They constitute a choir of alternating voices: the narrative
lines that each of the voices develops gets interrupted, alternated, squashed, clashing, swallowed up
one by another.
In spite of being always absolutely intelligible, the voices have a way of expressing themselves that
in the real world are mediated by a technical device: telephonic voices, TV and radio announcers
voices, answering machine voices, of alarm clocks, computers, cell phones, language learning
voices, voices that correspond to the emphasis used by sports commentators, specially from football
and box, and the commentators of horse races, the voices of dubbed American movies, and the
dubbing of any other foreigner voice, voices of journalists when they interview famous writers,
voices that provide the information of the subway services, of planes, tramways and trains, voices
of gym teachers, of sergeants, colonels, and generals, which adopt their way of speaking and of
giving precise orders according to the type of movement or the indicated exercises, voices of
policemen distorted by loudspeakers, each time they address criminals in a hostage, etc., etc., etc.
At first, the Man is unsettled. He feels surprised at the sound of these strange voices: they speak in a
language that for him is only noise, and that he cannot recognize. When he gets used to the sound of
these voices, he feels curious. He wants to know what they are saying. To whom they speak. Are
those voices addressing him? Where they waiting for him or something? Is it possible that it was he,
and only he, the unique and single addressee of the stories told by all those voices? With time, the
Man understands that those voices that speak desperately, slowly, quickly, alternately, speak from a
distant past, very far away, long time forgotten. Voices that need to speak. That want to tell stories.
That do not speak for him. They don’t address specifically this Man in particular. They don’t
address anybody. Except themselves. The voices have understood long time ago that what they have
to say is not of interest to anyone. They know that. And therefore they act correspondingly.
Gradually the Man –the only visible witness of what happens there– starts to embody the discourses
delivered by the voices he hears. Little by little he starts to repeat these discourses, he starts
adopting them, necessarily distorting and modifying them, introducing a new series of discourses,
which work as variations of the others.
When he hears these voices for the first time, the Man reacts in the following ways: First he gets
scared. Then he tries to move away (but he sees that this is not possible, because the voices come
from the four sides and from himself). Later he cries. And he covers his eyes. And he grumbles. And
he laughs. And protests. And crouches down. And he gets laid on the floor of rotten wood. And
jumps. And eats. And runs. And crawls. And gets tired. And stands up again. And he feels himself.
And he adjusts himself. And circulates. And licks himself. And he breaks. He gets disarticulated. He
scratches himself (because it itches). And he smokes. And he gets transformed. And he reveals
himself. And he cleans himself. And he brushes himself. He slithers. He faints. He returns to his
senses. He smells himself. He has a déjà vu. He paints himself. He gets exhausted. He shoots
himself (but fails). He bursts. He composes himself. He gets asleep. He awakens. He loses himself.
He finds himself. He falls. He looses blood. He moans. He boxes. He submerges. He emerges. He
gets transformed. He rolls (trough the floor of rotten wood). He makes silence. Het gets deformed.
He orders himself. He opens. Gives birth. Vomits. He sharpens himself. He assist himself. He wraps
himself. He rubs himself out. He spies on himself. He kisses himself... And he kisses himself again.
And once more. He kisses himself three times. (He loves that, that’s why he kisses himself so many
times). He sucks himself. He pricks himself. He writes. He gets blocked. He whistles. He gets
naked. He saws himself. He combs his hair. He gets dressed again. He inhales. He bites. He plays.
He sings. He deploys. He gets tangled up. He gets wrapped. He wears himself. He gets reduced. He
gets balance. He invades himself. He drives himself. He gets anchored. He fights. He fixes himself.
He spies on him. He presses himself (too much). He clenches his fist. He freezes. He calls himself
(loudly, yelling). He gets absorbed. He changes himself. He eludes himself. He spits on him. He
processes himself. He cheers himself. He sweeps himself. He gets prepared. He makes a hole in
himself. He gets unstuck. He polishes himself. He moves away. He mounts on him. He gets cut into
pieces. He replaces himself. He explodes. He designs himself. He slips. He oxygenates. He pushes
on him. He avoids himself. He gets dried. He escapes. He expands. He swallows him up. He locks
himself up. He reinvents himself. (Many times. At different moments). He vacillates. He mops. He
screws himself. He takes a picture of himself. He feeds himself. He times himself. He gets isolated.
He measures himself. He bleeds. He stops bleeding (after a long while). He weaves. He sews
himself. He sniffs himself. He gets camouflaged... And finally he accepts it. He accepts to live by
all those voices. Which were waiting for him. That love him. And that question him...
And all of this I know it, and all of this only I can know it, because that man, the one which listens
and embodies all that voices, IT’S ME …

1.
Migrations
ME: Migrations. Voyages. Travels. Becoming. Transformation. Movement. Change. Now I am one
thing, then another. Now I am not anything, then I’m everything. Everything I want to be.
Everything everyone else want me to be. A void. An empty signifier full of alien desires. Everything
changes. It moves. It travels. It moves in another direction. Against the wishes. We move. We get
modified. We move from one place to another. Since we love each other so much, we cannot make
anything but change. Manipulate ourselves. One another. We get transformed. We are others. We
don’t notice, and suddenly, without anyone perceiving it, we are others. Everything in us gets
modified forever. Irreversibly. From one moment to the other. What we had until that moment is
abandoned. Everything we were is abandoned by us. We leave our belongings. We prepare our
suitcases. We escape. We leave more than half of our things in that place we want to leave. We don’t
think, at that instance, how our absence will feel. How much we are going to miss that what we are
leaving. We leave. We disappear. We escape. Nobody knows anything else about us. Nobody gets to
know. Nobody misses us. We are the ghosts of that place that we now leave. And once again. To
some other place. To another region. To another planet. To start again. In another space. Where
nobody knows us. Where nobody knows who we are. What we do. What we think of the increase in
infant mortality and damages to health from exposure to pesticides. An incessant flux that never
stops. Not even by night. As the traffic on the highways. As the planes over the terrace roofs.
Incessant flux that doesn’t stop. That never ceases. First we move one foot. Then the other. And
again the first. And once again the other one. And we also move, rhythmically, the arms and the
heads. And the knees, the thighs. The ankles. And like that, almost without noticing, without unrest,
we walk. We are able to walk. To make a way by walking. We move enough to regret it. To notice
that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. Our goal is never to rest, we think. And then we start moving
again. Nothing ever stops. And we can’t stop. And we don’t want to stop. We will never ever stop.
We’ll keep marching, with the eyes front, our look stuck always at the same spot. The head upright.
And raised shoulders. Always. To contract ourselves. To hurt ourselves. Not to stop moving again,
ever. If I stop, I die. The movements of our bodies acquire a life of their own. They become
independent. They don’t ask permission. They are not sorry. They don’t apologize. We cannot stop
them anymore. I would not be convenient for us to do it. Or we will suffer, from now on, the
consequences. Atrophy. Decay. Severe depression. We cannot stop. We walk, always in a straight
line. Without forks. Without concrete deviations. If I follow you, I die. If I abandon you, I die too.
That’s why I stay. That’s why I do all I can to stay. I exhaust the last resort. I work doing whatever I
can find. I beg. I crawl, if it is needed. I can’t get what I want. Although the corners belonged to me,
although they had my name written on fire due to my having walked them so many times, so many
history lived together, I must go. I am rejected. I am expelled. I am limited. I am inhibited in my
freedom of association, of expression, of circulation, of making money. In this place I am excluded
from the possibility of making money. They don’t let me. So I make my suitcases again. I leave.
Towards another corner. Towards another party. Where people want me. Where I can be accepted.
Where I could be solvent. But if I leave you, I die. I fall struck by lightning. I know it. I understand
it. Making money is not everything. Good luck is not everything. But what I cannot ever do, what I
cannot allow myself, is to stop. Nervous arse. Arse full of ants. If I ever stop, I will instantly
become old. My skin will become chapped. Mi lips will get chapped. I will become impotent. I am
already. I am already impotent. That’s lucky. My stomach will contract. My legs, weak, will not be
able to support the weight of my decaying body. I’m going to fall. At any moment. It’s a question of
days. Of hours. Of minutes. One by one. Movement makes me younger. Miracle. Circulation makes
me younger. Another miracle. The mere inertia of movement keeps taking me to other places.
Where people dress funny. Where they eat with their hands. Where dogs are maybe the masters.
And suddenly now, I’m at an airport. And suddenly now, I’m amidst a skyscraper. And suddenly
now, I’m standing in the middle of the desert. At an avenue in Middle East. Next to an elephant. Or
next to a camel.
Migrations? Migrations. Do I miss? They ask me if I miss. Yes, of course, naturally. I’m a stranger
in this new continent. Yes, of course, naturally. I miss the corners, the pubs, the bottles, the people.
Much less. But a bit. Something remains. The routine, which is so strange here. So different. I will
never come back. No. I have decided it. Let them die. Or don’t let them die, never. But I want to be
left in peace. To be left... So then, I will return. When nobody want me, when nobody expect me, I
will be there. I won’t know anyone then. Nobody will know me. It will be like starting again. It will
be like arriving at a new continent. Only that nothing, really, will be new...

2.
Homeland, Property, Religion
ONE: Immigrants are...
OTHER: ...Monsters, murderers, delinquents, criminals, animals, uncivilized, mentally weak,
alcoholics, rapacious, bossy, treacherous, docile, accomplices, thugs, irrational subjects that don’t
doubt when they set bombs aimed at presidents, lawmakers and kings …
ONE: And they are also...
OTHER: ...Fighting cocks, imbeciles, delirious, outsiders, automatons, servile and courtesan
individuals, sycophants, stuck-up and ignorant exhibitionists, leftovers, stinking, foul-smelling,
sinister priests of their creed, apostles of human rendition that yearn for destruction, whose life is
only determined to comply with oaths of vengeance.
ONE: And besides they are...
OTHER: ...Masses of individuals prone to disorder and vice, opposed to work and to an orderly way
of life, that do not recognize...
ONE: ...Homeland, Property, Religion, Authority or Law.
OTHER: And they also believe that they are...
ONE: ...The dispossessed of Fortune or Humanity; exalted beings that do not distinguish...
OTHER: ...Age, sex, purchasing power, height, colour, size, language, methods of payment, debit
card, credit card, cash, jeans and snickers, suit and overcoat.
ONE: When they commit their acts …
OTHER: …They are stubborn …
ONE: …By an egalitarian fanaticism.
OTHER: They are prone to have …
ONE: ...Scandalous, prohibited, blasphemous and revolutionary ideas.
OTHER: They are characterized by a hate of …
ONE: …Their Fellow Men, the Republic, the National Flag.
OTHER: That is to say, everything that is …
ONE: …An Inviolable, Sacred, Definitive Commandment.
OTHER: They are also known as …
ONE: …Occasional anarchists, indirect suicides, louts through misery, contagion or compassion.
OTHER: They possess behaviours associated to attributes belonging to primitivism, such as …
ONE: …The use of slang, tattoos and gambling.
OTHER: Apart from the fact that they murder distinguished mandataries, they have also
exterminated…
ONE: …Innocent men, children and women.
OTHER: And they have put in jeopardy…
ONE: …Everything that provides Culture, Regularity and Order to the life of the people.
OTHER: And they cannot adapt themselves to the prevailing stereotype of …
ONE: …Obedience, Inertia and Stupidity.
OTHER: Therefore, immigration is…
ONE: …A virus, a bacteria, a germ, a social illness that has to be eradicated now.
OTHER: MP Roldan, red with anger, his eyes injected by the enraged blood, with the gestures of a
medieval judge, says (said, will say)…
MP ROLDAN: …We congratulate and welcome those healthy and good immigrants, that add new
red corpuscles to the arteries of the Republic, and each of whom they may be said, paraphrasing a
“foreign” concept, that each is a letter in the Great Alphabet of National Progress.
ONE: Which explicitly excludes the letters...
OTHER: F, O, R, E, I, G, N, E, R.
ONE: Besides many other letters that are considered to be also politically, socially, ethically,
economically, racially, psychologically and morally dangerous. That’s why finally, the letters that
make up the Great Alphabet of National Progress can be expressed by a formula whose result is
equal to zero.
OTHER: So, in mathematical terms: G.A.N.P.= 0
ONE: Right at that (this) moment, the multitude sings with fervour...
MULTITUDE: One by one, none will remain!!!
OTHER: And MP Roldan says (said, will say) …
MP ROLDÁN: …We congratulate and welcome those foreigners, whose surnames have been of use
for us to baptize all the geographical accidents of the Patagonic Coast.
ONE: And the multitude exclaims (exclaimed, will exclaim)...
MULTITUDE: Very good!!! Very good!!!
OTHER: And the MP Roldan, with an unrestful spirit, asks himself …
MP ROLDAN: …When will the foreigner, then, acquire the right to inhabit this land?
ONE: The same MP Roldan answers himself... (While he has the multitude in the back of his hand,
expectant and content, attentive to the foreseeable but not for that less expected, round off)...
MP ROLDAN: ...When he has complied with the conditions established by the Constitution.
Therefore, the foreigner that does not comply with the conditions established by the Constitution,
has not acquired the right to inhabit the national territory.
OTHER: And the multitude exclaims (exclaimed, will exclaim)…
MULTITUDE: Very good!!! Very good!!!
ONE: And, adding his voice, and his unconceleable eloquence, MP Ayarragaray, who, worried
about the ethnic consolidation of the Nation, says (said, will say)…
MP AYARRAGARAY: …And it is against this situation that this country has already inferior
ethnical elements in its population, it must take precautions bringing elements from a Superior
Order, selecting from the migratory current to incorporate the healthy elements, and such that will
allow to have a future race well-constituted physiologically based on pure ethnical dispositions.
OTHER: At the same time, the Specialists (Professors, Doctors, Judges), diagnose, compare and
prescribe …
SPECIALISTS: As in the case of cities, that when they receive a great population, they need for
physical sanity drainage and healthiness works at the risk of a great mephitic overflow, likewise,
moral healthiness works are needed which are the repressive institutions, made to contain the
criminal overflow of the immigrant.
ONE: And we are exhorted to proceed and take into effect the measures that will tend to its cure.
SPECIALISTS: The prophylaxis forks in the control of the freed patogenous agents and the
prevention of their future emergence. In the first case it is recommended the banishment of the
Dangerous Individuals (Born Criminals) to the penitentiary colonies of New Guinea, and for those
who made their way into politics through the doors of hysteria and epilepsy, the reclusion in mental
hospitals.
OTHER: The diagnoses and remedies continue and expand, achieving a deep social commotion.
ONE: In this respect, the Great Italian Specialist defines the foreigner as …
GREAT ITALIAN SPECIALIST: …That being that for its impulsive nature and hatred of
institutions that only strives for their well-being, using with that aim the most virulent repression, is
a perpetual political rebel that finds in mutiny, the way to vent his passions and be sometime
acclaimed by the public at large.
OTHER: The immigrant is then a failed actor, that cannot leave without the applause of his public.
GREAT ITALIAN SPECIALIST: In order to cure this plague there is no other method than fire and
death.
ONE: Senator Macia expresses with grave and heartfelt words this concern that covers the whole
society.
SENATOR MACIA: I am frightened both by the facts that seem to be great and noticeable, as by
the ones that look small and trivial. As in the case, small in its outlook, that has taken place in the
streets, of the rosettes ripped off forcefully from the lapel of the jackets of defenceless children of
primary schools.
OTHER: And the Multitude exclaims (exclaimed, will exclaim)...
MULTITUD: Very good!!! Very good!!!
ONE: The Home Secretary, categorical, states...
HOME SECRETARY: ...In order to stop this terrible evil that affects us all, it is prohibited the
entrance and exit from the territory to the designated classes of foreigners …
OTHER: A. Idiots, lunatics and epileptics.
ONE: B. Individuals affected by TB or any other contagious, dangerous or repugnant disease.
OTHER: C. Beggars and the deformed.
ONE: D. Mutilated and persons that for their physical and moral condition would represent a
useless load for the Nation.
OTHER: E. Those subjects that for their mentality are prepared for crime, terrorist attack, arson,
bombing.
ONE: F. The bands of degenerates and fanatics who practice with true application and joy
polygamy; and the women, men and animals introduced for the exercise of prostitution.
OTHER: The Home Secretary, with that humble humility that characterizes him, kindly shows thus
the frontier of the country to...
ONE: ...Trucci, Ravioli, Lupano, Tori, Valdastre, Orlandi, Fanfani, Luchini, Locascio, García,
Camba, Palau, Ríos, Alfonsín, Lagos, Magrassi, Berri, Ovidi, Basterra, Ristori, Ripoll, Acha,
Reguera, Varengo, Orsini, Gallo, Creaghe, Nata, Pacheco, Balta, Montesano, Anselmi, Pérez, Rey,
Orlandi, Jari, Conrado, Roque, Sacrenelo, Batuztini, Stropani, Carbonel, Irrañea, Garfagnini, Mella,
Serantoni...
OTHER: And he tells them that their stay is not convenient, that they are not appropriate to the laws
that order our social organization.
ONE: Therefore, all immigrants shall be...
OTHER: ...Expelled, Confined, Imprisoned, Put in Solitary Confinement, Murdered.
ONE: Being the aforementioned to be (was, is, will be) immediately executed.

3.
Very close at a distance
HE: It is a detachment. I know it. I feel it very much inside of me. I get used to it more each day. At
each moment. I need to rip it off from my memories. And forget it. Fundamentally to forget it.
Forget everything. My house. My streets. My corners. My places of belonging. Specially my dogs. I
need to forget my dogs forever. They don’t look like anybody. No one can replace them. Anywhere.
Wherever I go.
SOCIOLOGIST: Emigrants take a categorical, absolute decision …
X: We are all involved in his decisions. Not only him. We want to know about each of his
movements. Follow him closely. Know if he is all right. If he received the appropriate treatment.
SOCIOLOGIST: …But, when he does, he enters into a relative world, in a world of “more or less”,
a contradictory and fluctuating world, made only of oscillations, both internal and external.
Z: He is so selfish sometimes. He believes that he interests us. That we do nothing for him. We have
given our life for him. And this is the way that he rewards us.
SOCIOLOGIST: They leave in the “full age of reproduction”, producing an aging of the population.
W (FATHER): I agree that what happens to V is nice... it is... taking into account his children are
OK... it’s an option... but now... I think we are failing at the level of family structure... and I’m not
saying he is locking himself up, but maybe...
N (MOTHER): Failing? Why?
W: Because the project we had, it was like we were going to be all together.
N: That’s impossible. If we were never together before. Why were we going to be together now?
SOCIOLOGIST: There are three generations involved: parents, children, and the children of
children, which affects, besides, the social fabric in its deep structure.
HE: I love you, I do. But don’t ask anything more from me. There isn’t anything else I can give to
you...
SOCIOLOGIST: Among the various losses it entails, we can include: Family events, The
Expectations of “making things together”, The distance from “being together”, From expressing
affectionately, Not to be allowed to touch each other, The interruption of the family project, The
people and “people’s quality”, Habits, Identity, Self-esteem, Affection, Understatements, Everyday
Life, (Already non-existent) Communication.
HE: Stop from loving them, stop being necessary...
SOCIOLOGIST: The joint project disappears, fearing the loss of the bond, individual failure, of the
children facing the difficulty of returning...
HE: ...To burn the boats.
SOCIOLOGIST: ...And personal failure.
HE: Here, outside, where I am now, there is more order and organization, more respect and
education, more progress, more consumption, autonomy, money, goods, services, sophistication,
freedom and democracy. Even though I do not rule out the idea that this is, truly, a fantasy, an utopia
or an illusion. However, I assume the risk it implies: The unknown about my future, Anxiety and
Vacillation...
SOCIOLOGIST: The individual assumes risks (he becomes ever more individualistic), and he
leaves in order to: Have more opportunities, Better experiences, By contagion, To prove something
to himself, Due to globalization.
W: We were more in a hurry to graduate so as to produce. Before you just worked from morning till
night.
SOCIOLOGIST: That’s how a commitment of feeling towards the family and the country is kept...
W: Nowadays that thing of globalization has become a general issue, that in other countries you
work and you earn much more. Here you work, you work, but you never have anything.
SOCIOLOGIST: ...But you can’t keep anything else.
HE: The things that make us notice we are in our country are: a gesture, a look, a wordless
agreement. At: a shop, a means of transport, a building, at traffic lights, in a stadium, a
manifestation, at a drugstore, a bar, an ambulance.
SOCIOLOGIST: When we leave, we gain in: Recognition (we value the subject for its merits),
Intellectual mobility, Contact with other Cultures, The (other) future for the family, Quality of life.
HE: Here, outside, where we are now, there is always the possibility of an understatement. Or a
misunderstanding …
N: We never leave to tell you the truth. The answer of my son is “I’m fine”.
SOCIOLOGIST: The possibility of having “a place to live” is to have a place where there is: Work,
Health Services, Money, The Possibility of Relating with others, Education, To have Friends
without difficulty, To have security, Capitalism, Where there is no discrimination against someone
who arrives, Welfare state, Where you can have fun, Housing, Unrestrained Consumerism, Social
Equity, Ethics, Security, 24 hour Bakeries, Where the language is not a difficulty.
MB: The other day I spoke to L at night, but then I told her, How do you feel?... A moment of
silence came by. As if she didn’t expect that. A dialogue, something like... (Crying).
PB: What is it better?: To cry because he left, but to know that he will be economically better...
MB: I told her, write a traditional letter to me... (Crying) ... As to give her the possibility of
establishing an exclusive bridge between the both of us, everybody reads the e-mails, maybe she
has something to tell me. Maybe everything’s all right, but maybe not. Computerization is great.
I’ve always been on that, my children too, where I worked, but I’ve never... That has made me sit
down and to be in touch. Telephone calls are too expensive, but I think that once in a while a little
traditional letter... an exclusive bridge...
PB: ...Or being here, and being here on Saturdays, help them with the bags from the groceries,
society, everything...
SOCIOLOGIST: Maybe people has to leave, but the motive remains unclear. There is a component
of “adventurous spirit”.
V: My daughter, the one who is here, suffers it a lot. The loss of her brothers, because for her it is as
if she had lost her brothers. I didn’t feel it that way because I go every year and spend six months
there... It’s very difficult, because my grandchildren make me promise to them that I will return. I
even have to tell them the date. So I am without my husband for five months. We have talked about
it much and after 45 years of marriage, you say... the relationship with one another is very
important, very healthy. But I know that here he feels alone, because even if... I leave him the fridge
full of food... but he is alone a lot of months... But I tell the truth: I don’t miss anything, I know
there is a lot of distance, but I don’t miss anything, I live happily there, I don’t speak too much, but
it is as if I understand well and I can communicate... What I have there is very big... I think that
with time we are going to leave. Now it’s not the moment... because I am very close to my sisters...
and... I feel a little that I abandon them when I leave. But I don’t feel that way with my daughter, for
example, because I see her very active, I don’t feel I leave her. But I do feel it with my sisters. Each
time I step into a place, (and now I’ve come back very recently), I put in my mind the idea to feel
well... And I think: I have to assimilate it very well, because this is going to be like this my whole
life. I’m going to have people out there and people here. But on the other hand, my husband and I
feel very happy with the idea that they can live in a place where they are so well treated...
SOCIOLOGIST: One does not only searches to “do”, but “to be”, to turn into “another” after the
frontier, in a subject whose identity becomes fragmented, as it happens with the society from where
he leaves...
MOTHER: You don’t know how much I miss you. Each night I go to your room, waiting to find
you. But I only find your empty bed. I see that bed where you are not, where you will never be, and
you can’t imagine the hatred I feel. But it’s like that. I know it’s like that. It’s life. I know you are
fine there. I know that if you weren’t OK, you wouldn’t be there. You would come back here, with
us. That’s what we want. We want you to come back. Please come back, as when you were a kid.
And you depended on us. We want to see you. We want to know how you look like. Who you are
now. What have you turned into. You left so long ago. You left so long ago that we can’t recognize
you anymore. Surely if I saw you now, I wouldn’t be able to recognize you. You would walk by my
side, in the street, like a perfect stranger. And I wouldn’t even know that it’s you... Call me.
Remember me. I’ll always be here, waiting for you. I’m waiting for you right now. And each time
you don’t think about me, each time you decide to forget me a little more, you hurt me so. You don’t
know how much.

4.
Exile
NARRATOR: Exile is: A nuclear bomb. A way of starting to colonize. A brand similar in time. A
style of fragrance. A state of memory. The colour of a season. A smell of inflation. A certain
emotional instability. A state of permanent discontent. A piece of land leaving. A new dress to
assimilate. A piece of land to incorporate. A liver pain that doesn’t leave me alone. A particular
smell of a subway, like the A line. A flavour of honey in my peaceful nights. An empty table,
without tablecloth. Cutlery that is not there anymore. A new void to fill. A different way of thinking.
A very precise spasm on the chest. A trembling in my hands that doesn’t leave. A privilege of the
middle class. Young legs to walk on. A half-peeled orange. Pale eyes not to emigrate. A present
marked by light and darkness. A colour of skin that does not make me different from the others.
Body odour because of continuous work. A world to put with its hinds on the back. An opportunity
not to eat more than enough. Un uncertainty to add. A pending debt to account for. A discovery,
difficult to explain. A new stupidity to write about or to shoot. A pin stuck right in the middle of my
spinal chord. A sword to fight evil. A certain smell of final decomposition. A piano to play alone. An
empty toy to fill. New friends to discover. A place to cry until getting tired. A new confusion (one
more) to adopt. A hospital bed where to, finally, die in peace.

5.
Those outside
THEM: The eyes fixed on the road. The police is close. I have to be in shape. I have to get into
shape. The police lies in wait of us. I can’t go on with this belly. Not anymore. The torn shirt. The
dirty trousers, stained with mud, split in two. I run. Keeping an eye at the cars that go by very close.
Alert. As much as I can. Expectant. I keep on running and I cross a part of the road. Cars pass by
almost touching us. We are saved, almost, by a miracle. Many of us are running. Next to me, many
like me cross the road. They have no home, no car, no family, no money. I don’t have anything of
that neither. For the rest, I am defined by not having. We are many, each time more, hiding. We are
forced to hide. The police is very close. They chase us. They want us far away. Or dead. That’s why
they are so close. They follow each of our steps. During the whole day. Until dusk. During the day,
we run, and run. Without stopping, from one place to another. Without rest. In search of a saving
refuge. Provisional. Alien. As everything that surrounds us. Just when dawn arrives, the wailing of
the patrols awake us. And we already know what we have to do. Escape. That’s how we start the
day. That way. We stop for a while, for lunch. When we can. When we are allowed to do it. The
policemen stop for it. They take their time. Then everything starts all over again. That eternal game.
Which is not a game really. Not for us, at least. And once more, a new day moves away from us.
Always in the same way. With the same vertigo. In that foreign land. At night, the police abandons
us. The night is ours. It belongs to us. Nobody bothers. We do what we want. We hide. We are so
used to crouch, expectant, in secrecy, that it has become a habit. And practically it is the only thing
we know how to do. Besides working, of course. Working to live. To survive. Working at what we
can. At what we are left to do. At what it’s not prohibited for us. Because they still need us. They
chase us but they need us. So that we can make the dirty work. To clean their sewers. To polish their
floors with our tongues. Someone has to do it. Someone. Some other one. Anyone. We are that other
ones. Those outside.

6.
Model phrases
NARRATOR: Now we are going to teach You the model phrases you will have to use in your lives
as decent persons...
ONE: The foreigner is different, but it doesn’t matter.
OTHER: The other is other, but robust.
ONE: The other is my friend, though he hates me.
OTHER: The foreigner is Mediterranean, though Caucasian.
ONE: Work is decent, but unbearable.
OTHER: Working is healthy, but it makes me sick.
ONE: Working is my passion, but it gets on my nerves.
OTHER: The other loves me, but he envies me.
ONE: The other doesn’t know what awaits him.
OTHER: The other heals his wounds only if there is time.
ONE: If the other dies, it’s not my fault.
OTHER: If freedom ends, go out to the streets.
ONE: If oppression returns, welcome.
OTHER: The foreigner doesn’t understand his name.
ONE: The foreigner doesn’t know how to count up to ten.
OTHER: The foreigner has cold, hunger and thirst.
ONE: The foreigner has clear eyes and a short leg.
OTHER: The foreigner doesn’t know how he got here.
ONE: The foreigner doesn’t know why the hell he came.
OTHER: The foreigner doesn’t feel any more pain.
ONE: The foreigner adapts himself to the prevailing mediocrity.
OTHER: If the foreigner doubts, he becomes insensitive.
ONE: The insensitive foreigner hides in the squares.
OTHER: The foreigner forgets who he was before.
ONE: The foreigner knows he will never come back.
OTHER: The other is golden, even if he doesn’t know it.
ONE: Hunger is horrible, but there are worse things.
OTHER: Slave work is a disgrace, but unavoidable.
ONE: Slave work is a burden, but also likeable.
OTHER: This is not freedom, but licentiousness.
ONE: Freedom does not belong to a single individual, but to everyone.
OTHER: The colour of my skin is reprehensible, but you have to see the positive side.
ONE: Mi race is despicable, but our food is exquisite.
OTHER: My dark eyes are disgusting, but nobody can compete with my arms.
ONE: My armpits smell like a thousand devils, but my legs are very quick.
OTHER: The other is poor, but honest.
ONE: Money is magnificent, but it doesn’t provide happiness.
OTHER: The other is exotic, but a good worker.
ONE: The other is well considered anywhere.
OTHER: I have a thousand employees, but I never pay them.
ONE: Nobody that is honest exploits his fellow men.
OTHER: Every human being deserves respect.
ONE: Even the cleaning woman.
OTHER: Even the immigrant...

7.
Cows
“I bought a country house, to allow my children, who live in the XV (district of Paris) to see cows instead of
Arabs”
Jean-Marie Le Pen

ONE: I don’t know where I am.

OTHER: You tightened your fists.
ONE: I try to calm down.
OTHER: You take a breath.
ONE: Here everything is dark.
OTHER: You listen to your heartbeats.
ONE: I tell myself that nothing can happen to me.
OTHER: A cold sweat runs through your forehead.
ONE: I’ll be safe. It must be a mistake.
OTHER: You listen to steps behind the door.
ONE: Boots getting closer. One-two. One-two.
OTHER: The door opens violently.
ONE: I’m there again.
OTHER: The booming voice makes you jump.
ONE: I tremble. I piss.
OTHER: They ask you for answers.
ONE: A single shiver runs down my spine.
OTHER: They demand you to apologize.
ONE: It concentrates in the stomach and it expands from there.
OTHER: You are marked by your colour and condition.
ONE: I already kicked and screamed.
OTHER: The more you yell, the worse it gets.
ONE: I hold myself to the walls.
OTHER: They say your religion doesn’t predicate love.
ONE: They tell me I’m a cow. That’s my new condition.
OTHER: The door is already closed.
ONE: Some of them, next to me, still breathe.
OTHER: The other have your same colour.
ONE: But they smell much worse.
OTHER: They have their hands over their heads.
ONE: I still breathe.
OTHER: Outside thuds can be heard.
ONE: I still hear them.
OTHER: Protests, screams and whispers.
ONE: I was already naked.
OTHER: You can’t distinguish cold from heat.
ONE: My eyes get cloudy. I don’t know who I am anymore.
OTHER: You can still hear loose shots.
ONE: I still hear them.
OTHER: Blood cries out at the sky.
ONE: My blood has a better colour.
OTHER: They stop just in front of you.
ONE: I still can run.
OTHER: Don’t even try. It’s gonna be much worse.
ONE: I hide my head.
OTHER: The coward trembles...
ONE: Things are about to change.
OTHER: If you raise your head now, you will live after this.
ONE: I was already laughing.
OTHER: They came along.
ONE: I still listen to their steps.
OTHER: They can’t trust in you.
ONE: They can’t apologize.
OTHER: Music at full volume.
ONE: I was already screaming.
OTHER: And the others next to you.
ONE: To be white is my salvation.
OTHER: There are still incorrigible ones.
ONE: My teeth are still chattering.
OTHER: Whole months without seeing the sun.
ONE: I have cross-eyes from pain.
OTHER: Months filled with shit, piss and vapour.
ONE: They kindly ask me to leave.
OTHER: They take you by force. In a truck.
ONE: We don’t know where we are taken. Not even who the driver is.
OTHER: They don’t tell the obvious: they take them directly against the wall.
ONE: To be white is to be saved.

8.
Who knows
HE: We are taken to the back side of a cargo truck. By force. Inside everything is dark. Pools and
pools of sweat. An uncountable amount of men. Of people without names. Who knows how many.
All of them stacked up. One next to the others. Stuck to one another. Half-naked torsos. Some of
them. Others wearing white shirts. A lot of white shirts amidst darkness. The smell of humidity.
Omnipresent. The screams of those left outside accumulate. You suffer them. The truck starts. We
don’t know where it is going to take us. Which is our final destination. If we have one. But we are
heading towards a place that is very far away. Apparently. The trip takes hours and hours. At least
that is what we believe. I’m about to faint. At the exact moment. Just in the edge. At the limit of my
sanity. Intact. Conscious. One step more and I won’t be able to remember anything. Who I am. Who
I was. What did I do. Who are my friends. But mainly why I’m there. One step more. A single one.
One more and it’s over. I left. It’s gone. I push. I am pushed. The struggle is continuous. Our breaths
get mixed, so cramped we are. Some are in the throes of death. Very slowly. Firm, decided,
unyielding in their dying. Death. Inside that. In that cargo truck. We keep going on. The truck keeps
going on, not us. While some living dead are dying beside me, giving their last death rattles.
Suddenly, someone touches my hand. I think: “it doesn’t matter the uncertain destination, nothing is
worse than this”. Another one slaps me on the back. One more frightens me with his screams. He
throws into my face his fetid breath. Most of them waste all their time and the little energy they
have, asking for help, aid, apologies. The only aid they receive is silence. They lose their voices for
screaming too much. They become blind, from forcing their sight to see among that thick and
profound darkness. Other remain in silence and observe everything, attentive. As if they were
storing in their memory the little they can still perceive. For ever. Or at least for a while. Everything
they can stand, packed up in there, in their brains.
The reddened face. Some of them, due to the continuous and persistent rubbing of the bodies, have
their faces reddened. There’s always one who gets impatient to know where we are going. And what
will become of us. Me, for instance, I am one of them. Sleep, you can’t. There is no place. There’s
no place for even a single pin more. You have to stay standing on your feet during the whole trip.
Stock-still, in silence, and with the eyes wide open.
It rains. It rains outside. Or it seems to be raining. First it is a drop. But quickly you can hear the
noise made by a million of heavy raindrops, hitting against the bodywork of the truck. The noise of
the drops speeds up the moods. It disturbs them. It turns them more confusing. Nobody knows what
to feel. Even less what to do. The rain grows worse. Screams increase. I start to envy those who are
dying. The dead. Unable to listen to the thunder produced by the combination of screams and rain.
The trucks carries on. The asphalt road turns into stone. Everything trembles. My white shirt drips
with sweat. My body shivers. If I keep trembling in this way, nothing will remain of me. Nothing
conscious. Nothing lucid. I’m going to lose my patience. Now.
No, not yet. Soon. Very soon. Everybody watch me. As soon as I faint, they are going to jump over
me and take out everything I have. The little that remains. If they haven’t done it yet. Suddenly, the
rain stops. Or it looks like stopping. And the road clears too, miraculously. After the stones, the
asphalt returns, once more. Everything returns to its old calm. Precarious. The bare minimum. The
others stop watching at me. Nobody is interested in me anymore. All of a sudden. Suddenly. I don’t
shake anymore. I recover my normal pulse. The breath. Or at least that’s what I think. The track
carries on along the road. Who knows where it takes us. We all watch the others. Like they watched
me before. All of a sudden too. A series of eyes looking at a poor guy. Someone like me. Without
prior notice. Someone who trembles, as I trembled. Only a couple of minutes ago.
We wait crouching. All of us together. We wait for this man to become unconscious. To take him the
little he has. His white shirt. His black, worn, scruffy shoes. Some golden teeth he still retains.
That’s our ethics. Waiting for that poor bastard to faint. Before leaping on him. Me too. I am one
more of them. Those vultures …
Meanwhile, outside, maybe the night has arrived. Maybe there is a full moon, after the storm. Who
knows.

9.
Photo 1: Immigrant in Italy
NARRATOR: He, with the index finger of his right hand standing, tensely, and the accompanying
thumb. She, with her black leather handbag hanging from her left arm, staring at him, with a serious
and concentrated look. The tension expressed by her eyebrows and her tight lips show that She has
a grimace of anguish, but also of apathy.
He, with his frowning lips, showing a grimace that turns into an insult, and the eyes half-closed.
She, with her hands crossed in front of her, and the back rigidly straight.
He, wearing dark worker’s trousers. And an olive green jacket, zipped at the neck. She, with tight
black trousers and a light shirt buttoned up to the neck. He and She distanced by a few inches. He is
black like a night without moon. She is pale white. Around them, six black people stare at their
meeting. Attentive to the slightest movement. Attentive to any change in the correlation of forces.
They, the ones that surround them, are even blacker than Him, if that were possible.
One can feel the tension in the air. The argument has been increasing its tone. The fight is going to
start at any moment. Everyone is prepared for the moment in which that will happen. They all yearn
for it to happen. They can’t, in fact, wait any longer... Close to the upper right corner of the image,
in the background, a pale man, with a white sweater and light brown trousers, shows his back,
completely unaware of what is happening. He looks towards the trees, towards the olive groves
bathed by the afternoon light. It is summer...

10.
Birds have obsessions
NARRATOR: Birds have obsessions. They follow people. They chase them compulsively. Until
they suffocate them. If at any moment, or in some instance, the lower their guard, there they are.
Firm. At the end of the canyon. Lying in wait for them. The birds. Of every colour and size. Fierce.
Naive. Delicate. Spying on the lives of lonely people. Men and women of all the ages. Races.
Beliefs. And religions. Loneliness does not discriminate. I doesn’t give a damn. Spying neither. It
passes over any preventive action. Over all the cares of each of the cities. The birds know all the
secrets of lonely people. They know everything. Up to the slightest detail. They inspect even the last
corner of their belongings. They watch them while they sleep. They have seen them being born,
develop and die. One after the other. In a lengthy succession. But not an infinite one. Everything has
a limit. An end. Not only for the spied upon lonely people. But also for the birds. The birds
comment with each other about the secrets of lonely people. At what time do they get up. What they
have for breakfast in each season of the year. How was their day at work. What they do when they
return home. Who they live with. If they live with anybody. You don’t have to live alone, to be a
lonely person. And that You already know it … The birds comment among themselves who do
lonely people dream with when they sleep. If they allow themselves to dream. Or to sleep. Because
some of them no longer can. The birds listen to the voices of the lonely people. They are so
different. So distinctive. So befitting. Voices of every colour. Tones. Rhythms. And moods. From
euphoria to depression. From unrestlessness to anguish, which is a form of lack of hope. (We will
not talk here neither about joys nor sorrows). Two moments so common in life. The birds know
that. They know them. They are no fools. They have led complex lives. Full of vicissitudes. And ups
and downs. And the birds are not used at all to the contradictory folds of the moods of the lonely
people. That’s what call powerfully their attention. What catches them. What fascinates them. When
the lonely people finally decide to talk, in a loud voice, in the night, at very late hours early in the
morning, there they are. Lonely people finally meet the birds. They recognize them as their peers.
As part of a same nature. They hug. If they still can do it. If there still exists the instance in which
two or more beings from different species can hug. If it is so, they hug each other. For a long while.
They remain together. Heaped. Indiscernibly together. Birds and lonely people. And then they return
to normalcy. They split up. Each one to his own business. The birds, attentive, expectant. Capturing
everything. Not to lose the slightest blink. The lonely people return to their cages. Once again. To
live their lives of invisible bars. The birds fly to comment among themselves, jokingly, the
alternatives of the lives of the lonely people. Betraying them. Forgetting the mutual hug. Which
only moments ago, only some instants before, have united them with the lonely people. Then
friendship breaks. The cycle starts again. As every morning, afternoon and night. Who knows until
when. Who or what may stop it. There is no answer for that. Not for now, at least. There is no
possibility of concord. Nor of reunion... Silence. Only silence.

11.
Enclosure
ME: A barrier. A wall. A highway. A bank. A space of two by two by two. An exhausting job. A
shabby office. Breaking into pieces. Peeled walls, about to “implode”. A jail. You choose one. A
house. A house full of debts. A terminal illness. A family: with two kids, with two aunts, with a nosy
mother and a compulsively alien woman. A ship, a plane, a train. A subway at eight in the morning
on a working day. With the smell of sweat -one’s own and others’- invading it all. Stainless steel
sweat. Can you spare a penny, sir? Sir, can you help me with some coins, sir? A watch. Digital. With
plastic or metal hands. A TV set. A plasma TV. A super plasma with ultra-big screen. A carbon-fiber
HDTV. Broadband. Without restrictions. Without pauses. Without inhibitions. Everything we’ve
ever dreamt. Expensively paid. A box where to put my things. A routine. Always the same. Or also
different, which finally is the same. Always the same, every day. The different, every week. Except
on Christmas. Or for the Magi. Or for Independence Day. Hail to diversity. I get up, I have
breakfast, I go to work. Or in search of work. I have lunch. I have tea. I have dinner. I entertain
myself as I can. TV. Cinema. Video. Home Theatre. Netflix. Measles. Once in a while I get sick and
everything stops. So as to begin again in a while. Almost immediately. Now. A reduced space,
minimal. To think. To act. I act. One, two, three. Everything timed. Everything legal. Pre-
established. Ruled. Time goes by. It flies. And me having nothing to do. And me without making up
my bed. Without cleaning the sheets. A void space. Nothing for me. And for You? Nothing either.
Put yourself in place of a bull, they tell me. Put yourself in place of the oyster. I put myself: I run as
close I can to the oyster, without reaching it. Who knows what will happen, if I touch it. Maybe it
loves me. Let’s love the oyster. Let’s love the other. Other: love us. Love us, because if not... A city
trip. Every morning. A new one. The same one. One that is always the same to the other. One plus
one. They pile up. They crash. They tire. They are fed up. We’ve come up to here, they say. And
they hug. The trips cover its hug. I hug the Parliament. The Pink House. The White House. The
Estate House. A home at the cemetery house. With walls, with barriers, with a redesigned bathroom.
And an air lung that I cannot tell you: you’re going to lick your fingers when you breathe that pure
stuffy air… An autumn day, any day, I’m walking down the street, easily. A huge avenue. Wide. The
widest in the world. Without space. We are so many. We are nothing, says my grandmother in flip-
flops. We are pigs swimming in the mud, says the dog of my neighbour, while he eats a steak. And
he scratches the flies from his body and legs. Legs suitable for walking, to tramp around. To shit
freely in the parks. A way of protest. A manifestation. To shit in the parks. Organic fertilizer. Is a
manifestation a way of protest? Is it, still? Will it be? A group of people stay in a square for a while.
A group of women burnt. A hundred and forty six women at the exit of the clandestine textile
factory of your neighbourhood, dear neighbour. Any neighbourhood... Yours, for a start. A true
story. No. Don’t laugh, my friend. Neighbour. Uneducated. Don’t laugh. Don’t look to other side.
Don’t look back. It could happen to you, without your expecting it. When your a not on your guard.
A fire. Incendiary bombs. I don’t leave the square due to the low salaries and the disgraceful
working conditions, your Honour. You kill me, your Honour. So supreme. So hypocritical. So busy.
So wise. Come and certify. Come. Love me. In the square. In this square. Exactly in this one, here,
today, the Judge leaves me to my own devices and tells me: calm down, calm down. Learn from the
dog, that can shit everywhere. Learn from the oyster, that loves its lord. This square is my square. It
belongs to me. I bought it from a gentleman in a suit that only works on public holidays... There is
no more place. What do you want? What are you searching for? What do you like? There are no
more squares. Everything is occupied. I was displaced. I was tramped down. I was fired... In the
subway. At eight in the morning. The sweat running down everywhere. Running down. From the
head to the toes. From the continent to the English Channel. Two by two by two. A room. Like the
Japanese. Like the Taiwanese. One has to occupy spaces. If I don’t occupy it, the other comes, and
takes it away from me. The oyster comes, who loves me so much, it loves me and fires me. At the
school. In my house. A bomb at my square. I’m going to put a bomb in my square and everything
will be over. End of the question. An incendiary bomb. Today I get up in the morning and I think: I
set a bomb and everything will go to hell. I have apples for breakfast. Delicious. Luckily there are
still apples...

12.
Demolition Politics
WE: Against xenophobia and demolition politics, We say: Freedom, Equality, Fraternity. They, on
the other hand, say …
THEY: Slavery, Inequality, a War of Everyone against Everyone, Save yourself if you can, Don’t
fear, Hail the market, Hail the Revolution, Bad things don’t come alone, In the end everything will
be consumed by fire, But now (before), They are coming for the water...
WE: Gathered for this initiative, there are: All the syndicates, the Socialist Party, the Communist
Party, the Labor Party, the Humanist Party, the Divisionist Party, the Peronist Party, Amnesty
International, Small Groups form the Extreme Left, People from the Right, Anarchists, Papists,
Militant Associations, Widows of Ex-Presidents, Singers, Whole Families, The Government Party,
The Opposition Party, Corporations, The Home Secretary, The Immigration Minister, The National
Identity Minister, Groups for the Defense of Us, Small Groups for Aggression of Them, A Jazz
Orchestra, A Rock Orchestra, A Pop Orchestra, A Tango Orchestra, A Grunge Orchestra, A World
Music Orchestra, Young Secondary School Students, And even … Outraged people.
THEY: An angry trade unionist said: The world has to know that in this country, people don’t lose:
The reason, The passion, The heart, The elevator, The truck, Love, Hate, Fear, Their Tremor,
Innocence, Memory, Humanity, Dignity, Prosperity, Property, Dignity (again), The hat, The
underpants, The umbrellas, and specially: Nationality...
WE: A fifty-year old accountant, divorced and with two kids, was carrying a banner that read …
THEY: “We are all foreigners”
WE: Everybody Except Them. We Add.
THEY: Everybody except Us. We Add.
WE: The banners’ that populated the streets had messages like …
THEY: “No to repression - End xenophobia”
WE: And there were other that said …
THEY: “Repression’s xenophobia - Stop no”
WE: And other even said …
THEY: “Repression to xenophobia - Not to stop”
WE: And others, still, which read …
THEY: “Stop SB 1070 - Boycott Arizona”
WE: And the last ones, that said …
THEY: “Stop Boycott – Arizona SB 1070”
WE: But We said: With the excuse of trying to defend Human Rights, the demonstrations accepts:
Laxism, Angelism, Realism, Dadaism, Journalism and Peronism...
THEY: The aforementioned accountant added, outraged: The security of a democracy cannot
justify: The violation of rights, The lack of housing, The designation of foreigners as scapegoats,
The refusal to accept the values of this country, Let’s get back to the Middle Ages, Let’s share the
kitchen and the living room, No more public payphones, That education turns into crap, That roofs
of schools fall, That disgusting smells multiply in the streets, That rivers get privatized, That access
to lakes becomes restricted, Shortage of water, That the rate of income decreases, That credits raise,
That the floors of bars get dirty, That people die of typhus, That honest work disappears, That we
eat our own animals, That we don’t have green spaces, That we don’t live in the open, That cash
disappears, That energy is wasted... But specially, and above all: That we do not know what to do
with our free time...

13.
Pole
SHE: North Pole... I’m there, but I don’t live there... Too much snow and ice, but not cold... A
white, dry desert … Snow melts while we all look. The strings of a bass sound... A man sings with a
grave voice, barefoot over that snow that melts. The notes of his music fall… Like the dirty ice
from the roofs… of that white moor... Little houses, industrial waste. The new moor of this world.
The last refuge in this world. We wander, we wander, nobody wants us… Anywhere... We are the
only ones that feel the cold now. They search for us. They are afraid of us… They are afraid of our
excesses. But we, the only thing we want is to overcome... This cold... It’s been a while since we
passed through the strait. We are too much to the north, we’ve passed the latitude... I whistle a little.
The white of the ice burns the eyes. It stop… They search for me. They want us to find a polar bear.
They are the new pets of the place, of this latitude... We find one, in a cave, in the middle of the
snow. With a black, hurt muzzle. The red blood stains the white snow. And melts with it... The bear
looks at us. And raises his muzzle, so that we can touch it. I caress his polar bear hair. Friendly as a
cat. That only wants to rest in the shadow... Then I walk alone. In the middle of the snow... There is
some fire further away. I’m afraid. I don’t know why... The red drops and the tremor... Dryness at
my throat. Like before, when I was in the desert … I’m wearing a jacket... That I found among the
trash. It’s old. Like the ones they used before. It doesn’t matter... I’m cold... I wander almost
barefoot, with my good jacket. With my dark skin. Amidst this polar clarity... It’s as easy as that...
To be found. But what can I do. What to do... Nothing, except to walk. I get back to the fire. I still
feel afraid. I fall asleep and dream. The fire grows bigger and bigger. It comes from everywhere. It
melts the ice. Under it, there is only water. And nowhere to go...

14.
Frontier
NARRATOR: A man. Not a man. A prisoner. Taking flight. Inside a stream. His body without body
hair completely sunk in the limpid water. Except for his nose and his mouth. That remain outside.
So that he can breathe and feel the soft contact of the air. He tries to escape from the nose of the
dogs and the flashlights of the guards. Who lie in wait for him. They are very close. Just a step. Very
close. Almost over him. He feels the barks almost on the back of his neck. He is being followed
painstakingly. Throughout the stream. During the whole night. The footsteps of the guards surround
him. The grass is fresh due to the dew of the afternoon. If he moves slightly, even a millimetre, he is
a dead man. He knows it. He feels it. He sweats. Even inside the water he sweats. The night never
ends. Time does not passes. It stagnates. It grows longer with the clamour of the noises of this
pursuit that involves more and more guards. And more dogs. His naked body freezes. He feels it
lifeless. Hard. He cannot stand anymore the minimal temperature of that frozen stream. In some
more seconds-minutes-hours-months-years, everything will be finished. Because the guards and the
dogs would have left. Or maybe because he would be drowned, naked, livid and frozen. His lifeless
body would sink at the end of that stream, that a this time of the day looks brownish. Through the
effect of the moonshine and the dark night.
How much longer could he stand this suffering? How long could he stand without being noticed?
He asks himself, while he lies there, on the bed of the stream. He stands. Stoic. Just a moment.
Some hours more. Until dawn. Until finding daylight. And then being able to escape from this hell.
Once and for all. Forever. Definitively.
When the light of dawn would emerge from the depths of that closed night, they are going to stop
searching for him. He knows. He has already lived it. In other occasions. Not so distant. That will
be his moment. His opportunity to send everybody and everything to hell. That’s his bet. He is
betting all to reach that expected daylight. That does not arrive. Making you wish for it. He had
never wished for the morning to come so urgently. But that night is not any night. It is the first night
of winter. The longest in the year. And that’s why the barking of the dogs, the lights of the
flashlights and the footsteps of the guards become eternal. Or seem to be. Until they dwindle. They
become sporadic. What has been a constant, continuous presence, stops. A menace that disappears.
Evaporates. It becomes uncertain. The man remains alive. Miraculously. Not the man. The prisoner.
Paying attention to each movement. Controlling each of the muscles of his body. Beyond the cold.
Against all predictions, a timid daylight appears, as if asking for permission, it becomes present.
The prisoner is free. Finally. Or he believes he is. He raises. He leaves his bed of water. The one that
allowed him to confront that relentless pursuit. He moves toward the fresh grass. Towards the
daylight of a cold and unpleasant morning. Just when he is making himself to the idea of enjoying
his definitive escape, a lost dog, dropped behind in the nocturnal pursuit, watches him. Without
barking. With an absent expression. Both, dog and prisoner, stare at each other for a long while. In
silence. Mute. Not even a fly gets between them. Nothing.
The prisoner knows, feels, forecasts his end. In the encounter with the animal. Lost and free like
him. For a few minutes they look at each other, unsure. One suspicious of the other. Then they stop
looking at each other. They don’t pay more attention to the other and each of them follows his way.
Not another word. Low profile. Absolutely discreet. The dog returns from where he came. In search
of his master. Maybe one of the guards. The man walks along the stream. In the opposite direction.
On the frontier. Who knows towards where. Neither he nor anyone can imagine what he will find at
the end of the road. Nothing can be worse than this, he thinks, while he continues the trail of that
modest line of water, which is becoming scarce.

15.
Syllogisms
NARRATOR: Now You will be taught the reasoning you must use in your lives as honest people...
ONE: Every Positive Law was promulgated.
OTHER: The Residence Law is Positive.
ONE: Therefore, The Residence Law was promulgated.
OTHER: Every law is compulsory.
ONE: The love for the foreigner is not a law.
OTHER: Therefore, love for the foreigner is not compulsory.
ONE: Every judge administers justice.
OTHER: Every judge is a white man.
ONE: Therefore, all the white men administer justice.
OTHER: Every criminal breaks the law.
ONE: Every immigrant breaks the law.
OTHER: Therefore, all immigrants are criminals.
ONE: All foreigners will be punished with imprisonment.
OTHER: Johnny has been a foreigner.
ONE: Therefore, Johnny will be punished with imprisonment.
OTHER: There are some corrupt judges.
ONE: Some honest people are judges.
OTHER: Therefore, some honest people are corrupt.
OTHER: Some judges are truthful.
ONE: Peter is a foreign judge.
OTHER: Therefore, Peter is a corrupt judge.
ONE: Every law is compulsory.
OTHER: Foreignness is not a law.
ONE: Therefore, foreignness is not compulsory.
ONE: What is nothing does not exist.
OTHER: Rumanians are nothing.
ONE: Therefore, Rumanians do not exist.
OTHER: If Hakim is an adult, he can emigrate.
ONE: Hakim is an adult.
OTHER: Therefore, Hakim can emigrate.
ONE: There is law or there is chaos.
OTHER: That’s why there are laws.
ONE: Therefore there is no chaos.
OTHER: If there were complete justice, there would be peace.
ONE: That’s why, if we expel all the undocumented...
OTHER: There would be complete justice.
ONE: Therefore, if the undocumented are far away...
OTHER: ...There would be peace.
ONE: MODUS PONENDI PONENS...
OTHER: If the law reigns, order reigns.
ONE: So the law reigns.
OTHER: Therefore order reigns.
ONE: MODUS PONENDI TOLLENS...
OTHER: If the law reigns, there are no unpatriotic people.
ONE: So as here the law reigns.
OTHER: Therefore here there are no unpatriotic people.
ONE: MODUS TOLLENDI TOLLENS...
OTHER: Where there is no law there is no order.
ONE: So in Jauja there is no law.
OTHER: Therefore, in Jauja there is no order.
ONE: Justice condemns the Bolivians.
OTHER: Therefore, Justice is optimal.
ONE: Any Justice punishes the Palestinians.
OTHER: To give each what he deserves is justice.
ONE: Therefore, to give each what he deserves punishes the Palestinians.
OTHER: Every virtue is in-between.
ONE: In-betweens strike a balance.
OTHER: A balance is a perfection.
ONE: A perfection is an ideal that comes true.
OTHER: Therefore, every virtue is an ideal that comes true.
ONE: Immigrants are either guilty or innocent.
OTHER: If they are guilty, Why do you prohibit their interrogation?
ONE: And if they are innocent, Why do you order to condemn them?
OTHER: Therefore, the decree is unfair.
ONE: When the caliph Omar took the city of Alexandria, he ordered to burn its library adducing the
following dilemma…
OTHER: Either the content of the books is in the Koran or not.
ONE: If they are in the Koran, they are useless, because the Koran is enough.
OTHER: And if they are not, they are dangerous, because there is no salvation outside of the Koran.
ONE: Therefore, all books shall be burned.
OTHER: Either the judge condemns this gipsy to thirty years of prison or he absolves him.
ONE: If he chooses the first option, he is cruel; if he chooses the second option, he is unfair.
OTHER: Therefore, in both cases he is acting wrongly.
ONE: Either when we die we sleep eternally, or the soul migrates to a happier state.
OTHER: If the first happens, I will rest forever; if the second happens, I will be eternally happy.
ONE: Therefore, the best is to die.
16.
Sunflowers
BORIS: I’m tied. Not trespassing. I’m hampered. It’s not possible to infringe their regulations. I
sniff. I smell everything I can. What I have around me. It is not much what I can sniff, from here.
My nose is everything I have. I can only trust in it. Nothing else helps me. I’m alone in this. I don’t
have possibilities of success, I know it. I’ll never get out of this place. I don’t want to make myself
illusions. I prefer to know the truth from the beginning. Without anaesthetics. Mi clear fur, very
blonde, my snout very black, my pointed nose, have always made me a very realist being. Since I
was puppy I knew exactly what I wanted. And how things were. Since the beginning, I’ve never
accepted to perceive the world from the floor. That’s why I enjoy climbing anywhere. Where I find
a wooden box, a dustbin, a stair that allows me to look at the world from a prominent position, there
you will see me. I’m not interested in having an owner. I don’t need it. I’ve always been alone, a
dog living outdoors. When my mother left me, when I was forty days, I knew that my fate would be
the permanent transhumance. I would see the world. I’ve known places. Maybe not so much as I
would have liked. I’ve always been a provincial animal. I have never transcended its geography.
When I’m left free, I walk wearily. Without hurry. I don’t go anywhere particularly. Nobody waits
for me. I know they are going to take me to the dog pound. Or to the slaughterhouse. It’s the same.
The name does not count. It’s the logic of murder what terrifies us. I’m old. I hurt myself. My
mental faculties are not what they were. I know it perfectly. I still can see that, in my periods of
lucidity. Which are nowadays very seldom. I have a broken spine. My hips are in a terrible state.
They cannot hold the weight of my body. My eyes hardly can distinguish the light from the
darkness. I bark to who is in front of me, either friend or unknown. Everybody disturbs me. I love to
remain seated. To press my back paws on the cold wooden box. And let myself go. Wander off. To
be hours and hours looking at the trees. Make out how their leaves move, while they are rocked by
the rhythm of the wind. I’ve never liked to bite. I don’t know why. Many have asked me. I’m a
weird dog, I know. They can’t blame me for that. I have my own personality. Every dog has. I don’t
blame them for putting me in the dog pound. I understand them. It’s the cycle of life. Everything
starts again. Once and again. I know my time is about to finish. I know I’ll become earth, which
will become fertilizer for a flowerpot. I would like a sunflower to grow over my remains. Many
sunflowers. I’d like to be the seed of a big series of sunflowers. Bright yellow. As Van Gogh painted
them.
Once I met a human. A very long time ago. When I was still a very young, and impetuous puppy.
We became friends. We became brothers. I followed him everywhere. I came to think in him as my
owner. He was a young man, with very dark hair, and very untidy. He dressed in such a strange way.
He never managed to combine efficiently the colours. He had an old, unsteady, weary gait. That was
what I liked about him. We understood each other from the beginning. No words were needed. We
guessed what the other thought just by looking at each other. I came to miss him when he left in the
mornings, to his work. At night, when he returned, I always did the same play to him. I fell to the
floor. I whined. With my front paws I would cover my eyes. As if I were ashamed. Each time I
pretended to be ashamed, he would put himself by my side and caressed me without end. Cuddles
everywhere. On the back, on the muzzle, on the ears. Specially on the head. Sometimes he held my
in his arms. On other occasions he danced. He turned round and around himself. And if I were
angry with him, because he have forgotten to feed me or taking me for a walk, I snorted at him, full
of fury. At that moments he was not my master anymore. He was my serf. He was forced to look
after me. I had to abandon him. I couldn’t stand him anymore. When he was forty, I left his home.
On the same day of his birthday, I abandoned him. He had became sullen and hostile to me. It was a
woman. She didn’t like me. She never did. Since she came to live with us, he forgot about me. He
didn’t caress or cuddle me anymore. He fed me, only some times. He tried to bathe me. I didn’t let
him. Water makes me sick. It has always been like that. For me water is just to drink. Never to get
wet. Since then, I’m on the street. Once I left him, I preferred not to get in touch with anyone
anymore. Until now. Exactly now. They say I’m a danger for others. Even for myself. I know. I
accept it. Some time before going to the dog pound, I decided to climb on this box. To rethink my
life. Remember it. It smells weird. Here where there is only garbage. Now I get it. I understand
where that smell comes from. It’s a smell of sunflowers and toasted corn. Two mixed smells.
Different, but familiar. Two smells I like so much... I get to know them when I was very young.
When I was a puppy. My owner taught me. I wonder how he is. If he had children. If he ever
remembers me. Dusk is about to come. At this time, sunflowers don’t look yellow anymore. They
become orange-blue in a way that makes me panic. I’ve always been afraid of the night. Now that
I’m old it’s getting worse. Tomorrow will be a new day. I will get up early. To breathe in intensely
the smells of a cold, frozen winter night... I will breathe in until dying those smells I like so much...

17.
Immigrant himself offered any service
NARRATOR: What we have today to offer to our beloved audience is something simply
spectacular. Our very friend himself is offered. But he is not offered by himself in any way, oh no,
that’s clear. This immigrant, that may be he, she, lady, queer, transsexual, transvestite, gay, lesbian,
faggot, whore, or as You prefer (because You, the payer, has the right to choose the label you want),
is sold to the higher bidder. He is offered any service. And what does he has to offer Your, Dear
Master Sir. Work, work, and more work. Without complaints. Without regret. Without nostalgia. But
fundamentally and, above all, without stop. Take advantage of this offer, Dear Master Sir, this
immigrant is expensive only for today. Tomorrow others will come. Millions like him. And you
could get them for nothing, Lord Sir. But that will be another story. It is not for us to tell it. Let’s
better listen to his version...
INMIGRANT: I’m educated and honest. A fine worker, firm, sincere. I have good feelings. I can
handle without doubting it, in a single movement, three hundred bags of up to a hundred kilograms
each. I can work throughout the day, from dawn till dusk, without blinking an eye. I am apt for
working in the sand, the mountain, the stone, the mine, the plains, under the cold and the heat. You
can pay me with coins. I’ll never complain. You can whip me night and day without any problem.
You can insult me, kick me, kick me savagely. You can call me shitty nigger, Jew, yellow, Chinese,
pig, filth, trash, disgusting rat, rotten blood, fleshless bones, good for nothing, mentally weak, bum,
pusillanimous, idiot, imbecile, bipolar, psychotic, horse manure and instrument corruptive of my
captors. Nothing of that will ever bother me. I won’t even be annoyed. I will continue working. I
will work alone. If it is necessary, I will keep on even when everybody has left. You can feel easy.
You can trust me. You will not get disappointed. I’ll work to the end...
PAUSE.
I’m another. I feel like I’m another. I think I’m another. I know I’m another. I look at my hands, my
feet, my chest, and I understand how quickly I have managed to adapt myself. I don’t miss anything
of what I had before. I don’t feel nostalgia for anyone. Neither of that foul place I left long ago,
looking for a better life. I can be alone, locked up in a room, without any comfort. I don’t need
them. I don’t want them. They distract me. They disturb me. They make me feel unrest. Never
more, since I got here, I had had any comfort. Never more, since I got here, anyone has touched me.
Nor given a hug. And never a kiss, of course. Not even a caress in the cheek. I have not been worthy
of the sadness and pity of others. They couldn’t find me in any affectionate attitude. With anyone. I
cannot be more proud of my self-control …

18.
Photograph 2: Barbs
NARRATOR: 1999. Bihac. Ex Yugoslavia. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
fifteen, thirty-five, forty-two people on a queue. Looking towards the right of the frame. Except for
Her, a teenager of about thirteen years old who is directly looking at the camera. She wears a dark
sweater, with an unintelligible legend on the front. She has her hands on her hips. Pursed lips,
slating eyes. Her face is pale, with all of its muscles in tension, expressing the pain produced by the
intrusive look of the camera. In front of her, and of the others, a huge series of concentric barbed
wires, surrounding them. Preventing them to get out from there. At he top borders of the image,
people seem to gather much more tightly. The figures fit together, placing one on top of the other
and in strange shapes. They seem to make up a single body. A single body waiting only the arrival
of the night...

19.
Carnavalito
ONE (FEMALE): I travel to a city to which I’ve gone many times before. It’s just that this time it’s
a strange city, very different to the one I got to know many years ago, when I had the opportunity of
coming for the first time. A city that looks very much like Bolivia. Or that it has a Bolivian air. Even
if I can’t say exactly why. I arrive to a hotel rather far away from town. It’s a very precarious motel.
My room has a single mattress on the floor and nothing else. Not even a side table. Nor any
windows. Nothing. A dark hole and rather filthy. I realize I have to change my lodgings. I must go.
It’s urgent. I will do it immediately, on the next day. Not today, I’m very tired and it’s too late to
look for a place to stay at this time of the night. However, I go out. I don’t want to stay in that room,
alone. I go toward a place where there is a man, singing something like a crazy and odd carnavalito.
Next to him, another man, on an improvised dance floor for the occasion, wearing a blonde wig,
dancing that heterodox and dazzling carnavalito. He dances with passion and fury, swinging his
fake hair. I can’t stop looking at him, while he is there, in the middle of the dance. Someone –I have
never seen before– comes close to me and tells me that this man is someone I know. A very close
relative. He tells me this and leaves, without allowing me to ask him to whom he refers. And his
name. I look at him closely, trying to decipher who he could be. Then I realize. That person was
right. The dancer is someone close to me. I know him. It’s juts that I haven’t noticed before.
Because of the wig and the frantic dance. But now I know exactly who is that dancer. Someone.
Someone important for me. That man is my father. Who I haven’t seen for along time. He has aged.
He is fatter. Shorter than the man I used to know. But even that way he is my father. Changed by
time. But always the same. Exactly. Capable of doing these kind of things. Of dancing a strange
carnavalito here, in this city, at this time of the night. I look at him in detail once more, before
starting to leave. I get very close to him. Enough for him to see me. He notices something strange in
me. For an instant, he stops dancing. He looks at my amazed. He doesn’t recognize me. I notice. I
see it in his eyes. He asks me what do I want. Who am I. If I know him, if I need something from
him. Because he has nothing to offer me, if that’s what I want. Two seconds more to look him up
and down. It’s the time it takes me. I turn around and leave. I return again to my room at the cheap
hotel. To my mattress. Only for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll change my hotel. One where there are
windows in the rooms. From where I could watch this strange and silent city. Maybe I’ll return to
that place. Tomorrow. Or the day after. In order to try to talk with my father. Or maybe I just return
to watch him. Again. Like today. Like always. Dancing a frenzied carnavalito.
20.
Slaves
ONE: Immigrants have …
OTHER: Snake eyes.
ONE: The head of an ass.
OTHER: Fish fins.
ONE: A donkey’s back.
OTHER: Camel legs.
ONE: Frog legs.
OTHER: Ostrich arms.
ONE: Giraffe ears.
OTHER: Pachyderm feet.
ONE: Stinking thighs.
OTHER: Destroyed lungs.
ONE: Squashed nose.
OTHER: Kidneys full of stones.
ONE: Vulture claws.
OTHER: Sunk shoulder blades.
ONE: Dirty mouth.
OTHER: Fractured ribs.
ONE: Rat jaw.
OTHER: Folded vertebras.
ONE: Elephant male member.
OTHER: Drunkard liver.
ONE: Dark skin.
OTHER: Riddled pancreas.
ONE: An intestine...
OTHER: Small and large.
ONE: Dented skull.
OTHER: Curved superciliary arch.
ONE: A golden heart.
OTHER: Just a groin.
ONE: But above all...
OTHER: And more importantly...
ONE: Immigrants have...
OTHER: ...the mentality of slaves.

21.
Leaving
WOMAN: I knew you were going to leave.
SUPERINTENDENT: Once on the first floor...
WOMAN: Today I finally saw you leaving.
SUPERINTENDENT: There is a corridor of about twelve meters long...
WOMAN: I feared you were going to leave.
SUPERINTENDENT: Perpendicular to the entry stairs...
WOMAN: Today I heard your voice saying …
SUPERINTENDENT: ...And at both sides of the same, many rooms.
WOMAN: …I’m leaving this place.
SUPERINTENDENT: Placed at the entry door...
WOMAN: I’m leaving this place.
SUPERINTENDENT: On the floor of the living room...
WOMAN: I have nothing to give you.
SUPERINTENDENT: And in a ventral position...
WOMAN: The other side of the solution.
SUPERINTENDENT: There are five bodies of male sex...
WOMAN: Everywhere.
SUPERINTENDENT: Still warm they show evident signs of being dead...
WOMAN: A rumour can be heard.
SUPERINTENDENT: Through the action of firearms...
WOMAN: I’m leaving this place.
SUPERINTENDENT: Since there can be seen big pools of blood...
WOMAN: I saw you leaving.
SUPERINTENDENT: And spread around all the room...
WOMAN: Now I’m alone.
SUPERINTENDENT: Nine millimetres capsules and projectiles...
WOMAN: Alone without you.
SUPERINTENDENT: Which are being taken.
WOMAN: I saw you leaving.
SUPERINTENDENT: To facilitate its identification...
WOMAN: Leaving, leaving, leaving.
SUPERINTENDENT: The dead bodies are numbered from one to five...
WOMAN: It’s already been two days without you.
SUPERINTENDENT: From left to tight...
WOMAN: Today Peter runs screaming towards me.
SUPERINTENDENT: Starting from where you get in.
WOMAN: He brings in his hand a grey newspaper.
PRIEST: The effect was as if suddenly...
WOMAN: There is a lost article among a thousand.
PRIEST: ...One lost one’s sense of time and space.
WOMAN: Talking about you.
PRIEST: The floor moved.
WOMAN: It speaks about you.
PRIEST: The mind remained as in suspense.
WOMAN: “DEAD WET, TRYING TO ESCAPE”
PRIEST: The limbs, petrified.
WOMAN: It doesn’t say anything, No explanation.
PRIEST: The mouth dried-up.
WOMAN: You were a pig hidden in a truck.
PRIEST: I remained like that, paralyzed...
WOMAN: Trying to escape.
PRIEST: For some ten minutes...
WOMAN: I cry for you.
PRIEST: Trying to understand the information fully.
WOMAN: I hear at my back a voice saying...
PRIEST: Everything in me said it was a mistake...
WOMAN: I saw him leaving...
PRIEST: That it couldn’t be.
WOMAN: Leaving, leaving, leaving...
PRIEST: That I was dreaming and I had to leave...
WOMAN: Leaving, leaving, leaving...
PRIEST: Leaving, leaving, leaving...
WOMAN: Leaving, leaving, leaving...
PRIEST: Leaving, leaving, leaving...
22.
Photo 3: Night at Pakistan
NARRATOR: Pakistan. 1984. Seven men and seven women are setting up a tent, in order to avoid
having to spend the night out in the open. And not to die freezing. The women and the men pull
from the ropes of the tent. Night is approaching quickly at that place. Time is exhausting. The wind
blows each time with a greater force. They have to fight against the night and the cold and to win
over them. They act and move rapidly. In the background, a series of similar tents are set, one after
another, over the waste land, sandy and arid. Farther away, at the right top border of the image,
another group of men and women are performing the same task that we see the people in the
foreground doing. It’s just that the latter look to be more behind time. With each second, darkness
becomes more present. It seems that they are not going to make it. They shall spend the night
somewhere else. In a cave, maybe. Otherwise directly in the open.

23.
Blood
WE: So I define myself...
THEM: We are America.1
WE: I’m not outside. I’m inside.
THEM: Secure our borders.
WE: I’m not excluded. I belong.
THEM: ¡Here are we and we won’t leave!
WE: There’s a limit. A contour.
THEM: I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
WE: Something is over here. Something is over there.
THEM: All humans are illegal.
WE: A trajectory. A previously fixed trajectory. Determinate.
THEM: We are America.
WE: When we are born, we are told where we are able to transit.
THEM: You despise me because I’m a bum...
WE: Which roads to take. Which are better to avoid.
THEM: ...But my fate is to live like this.
WE: What is it what we should aspire to.
THEM: I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
WE: Which desires we should accumulate.
1 These phrases in italics, and the following, in English in the original (Translator’s Note).
THEM: I know I’m outside...
WE: Which to discard. Forget. Ignore...
THEM: But when I die you’ll cry for me.
WE: Secure our borders.
THEM: While we grow up, we are still being delimited...
WE: We are America.
THEM: We are given trajectories...
WE: ¡Here we are and we won’t leave!
THEM: We are anchored to a fate...
WE: Exoticism...
THEM: Immobile and immutable.
WE: Colonialism.
THEM: We are born black, Arabs, Jews, Gypsies, slaves, Africans, Latino, or Arian...
WE: The others.
THEM: Rich or poor...
WE: Hegemony.
THEM: Tall or short...
WE: Dominance.
THEM: Everything gets divided by two. Here everything is mutually exclusive...
WE: Denken Sie immer daran, uns zu nicht vergessen!
THEM: We split. The other’s the other.
WE: Ich kann keine Kunst meher sehen!
THEM: I can’t recognize myself in him. I know he is foreign to me.
WE: All humans are illegal.
THEM: Different. Distinct.
WE: Europäische Gemeinschaft.
THEM: We don’t belong to each other. We are nothing together.
WE: Sichern unsere Grenze!
THEM: He and I... We and them.
WE: I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
THEM: You make me sick. You give me pity. You make me puke. You make me afraid. I love you...
WE: ¡Here we are and we won’t leave!
THEM: So I define myself...
WE: We are America.
THEM: You have to kill them. Isolate them. Put them aside. Kiss them. Study them. Understand
them. Touch them. Take care of them. Hide them...
WE: Wir sind Vereinigte Staaten von Nordamerika.
THEM: Our care is not innocent.
WE: ONU. Organisation der Vereinten Nationen.
THEM: Nothing is innocent here. We know it.
WE: I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
THEM: We have to extract fruitful results from our investment. So much plunder should not be in
vain.
WE: No Human Being is Illegal.
THEM: We need their skin, their sweat, their odour.
WE: Colonialism.
THEM: But above all and most importantly...
WE: ¡Here we are and we won’t leave!
THEM: …We want, we ask for, and demand your blood.

24.
Images, smells
BR: An image...
DF: A smell...
BR: Mud.
DF: The one from the Argentine embassy in Mexico.
BR: The touch, the smell, the taste of mud in the areas close to the pond, each time I went fishing.
DF: It smells of Argentine. Don’t ask me how, why, or in which way.
BR: To touch mud, feel it in your hands, in the face, in the body, its sticky and warm essence.
DF: But as soon as I went into the embassy, I smelled of Buenos Aires.
BR: Fishing is precisely what I cannot do in this city without ponds …
DF: Precisely at the centre of DF, in the kidney itself of that monstrous and gigantic city, I met with
the smell of Buenos Aires.
BR: …That I miss so much. Even if it never was an activity I had done alone.
DF: It’s not just the smell, but the encounter, the touch, the contact.
BR: ’Cos I only went fishing with my Dad. Always.
DF: People treat you so bad. They ignore you.
BR: When I lived there.
DF: The employees, each day, without any desire to work.
BR: And each time we met.
DF: Everything in that place stinks.
BR: When I went back to Bragado.
DF: But there it is: the smell of Buenos Aires, precisely at the centre of the Mexican capital city.
Where you would never expect to find it.
BR: That’s why I always return, once and again, remembering mud.

25.
Ruins
PALESTINE: We went towards the ruins of the city. We live in what remains of a crashed airplane.
It’s my baby who asks for his father. Whom he will never know. It’s been a while he rejects, with
apprehension, my lean and faded milk. I’m rotting inside. It is not only me who knows it, but also
my baby. That’s why he absolutely rejects to take my milk. It’s impossible, I can’t find anything to
feed him. His fate is sealed. Like for all of us. He’ll surely die, soon. Meanwhile we keep on
walking. We escape from the siege of others. Of those obtuse invaders, the ones we have to meet. At
each place we leave, we abandon something that belongs to us. We travel light, now we practically
carry nothing. We know we’ll never reach nowhere. We’ll die in the way, either of thirst or of
hunger. During the voyage, which has started so long ago, we have been losing everything. Under
the all-burning sun. In the middle of the desert. If we are lucky they’ll bury us in the sand. Our
vultures will eat us. Or maybe, in the worst of the cases, we will get caught by soldiers. And then it
will not be worthwhile, to continue with this story.

26.
Homeland 2
WE: We are the fighters...
THEM: The blue and white flag...
WE: The patriotic fake news...
THEM: Rolling through the soil...
WE: ’Cos they’re the entire ruin...
THEM: And in its place the red …
WE: Of all humanity …
THEM: And in its place the red …
WE: Because homeland and its laws...
THEM: It’s there fluttering...
2 In English in the original (Translator’s Note.)
WE: Are the ones that engender war...
THEM: And it’s the flag of the people …
WE: Words, words, words...
THEM: Sowing over all the earth...
WE: The most beautiful flag …
THEM: Misery and being and orphan...
WE: For its libertarian emblem...
THEM: Misery and being an orphan...
WE: It’s the color of a rose...
THEM: Only honest foreigners will be admitted in the country...
WE: In him everything positive of the autochthonous man is conjoined...
THEM: They come to work …
WE: Noble, he never drives back...
THEM: But foreigners on strike will not be admitted...
WE: When friendship of the principles of loyalty are at stake.
THEM: …For a foreigner, on the homeland soil.
WE: Of a single piece, always a whole.
THEM: The next national holiday, you can’t lose it.
WE: The native cunning …
THEM: Please assist with your whole family to the national reaffirmation act …
WE: That intuition that makes him see who is and who isn’t.
THEM: And the property rights.
WE: Their cunning applies to their relationship with the police and authority …
THEM: We await you.
WE: As a typical native he is rebellious …
THEM: Ninety-five per cent of the victims are not Argentines.
WE: Rebel from its inception …
THEM: That makes one think of the character of the worker’s assembly that took place...
WE: He doesn’t like to be ordered or stepped over.
THEM: And it also explains the violence...
WE: What comes from Russia to this country is the dregs of a people.
THEM: So the speakers refer in their discourses to the national symbols.
WE: Specially the Jews …
THEM: In this country the poor in spirit are the rich.
WE: Which conform an incoherent mass …
THEM: Not the foreignizing and unwholesome yeast.
WE: Incapable of shaping a serious plan of a revolutionary character.
THEM: And You shall devote yourself wholeheartedly to the support of the rich …
WE: And least of all to make of reality a great theory.
THEM: The only ones that are spiritually in need.
WE: From one pole to the other it echoes...
THEM: HOMELAND.3
WE: That shout that frightens the bourgeoisie …
THEM: Clericalism.
WE: And the children repeat it in a chorus …
THEM: Nationalism, Army, Church.
WE: Our homeland, bourgeois, is the earth.

27.
Sensory Exploration
I: It’s been eight years now that I live in Mexico. Twelve years B lives in Israel. Eight that U lives in
Paris. Ten of Y living in London... As I reread the evaluation response M gave me of my class, and I
saw once more the picture of Z with the belly, I thought about this of the instructions of my
workshop: “explore in a sensory level, not conceptually”... I always pride myself of keeping a
constant communication with my whole-life-friends, wherever they are: them or me. We send each
other emails and we talk a lot on WhatsApp. And even if I have a constant communication with
everybody, I lack the sensory explorations. I know that Z and O are pregnant, we share this and we
talk about it. But I don’t share what they feel, what are their sensory feelings... The same happens
with my other friends, in each of their things and in them towards me. The everyday staff, the
presence... That is only provided by the sensory exploration. Being there … It’s been a long while
since I’ve felt like today that I miss a lot...

28.
Love of fantasy
ONE: Immigrants suffer...
OTHER: Impotence.
ONE: Undifferentiated homicidal impulses.
OTHER: Severe distressful psychosis.
ONE: Sweaty hands.
3 In English in the original. (Translator’s note)
OTHER: Dry lips.
ONE: Incessant sighs.
OTHER: Tenacious insomnia.
ONE: Behavioral disorders.
OTHER: Conscience remorse.
ONE: Serenity.
OTHER: Guilt delirium.
ONE: Suicidal conduct.
OTHER: Eating disorders.
ONE: Confusional state.
OTHER: A complete impossibility to absorb food.
ONE: Neurotic attitude.
OTHER: Thoracic oppression.
ONE: Night headaches.
OTHER: Lucidity bordering on insensibility.
ONE: Somnambulism.
OTHER: Puerperal psychosis.
ONE: A fixed attachment for paternal images.
OTHER: Sadist tendencies.
ONE: Mercy implorations.
OTHER: Mental anorexia.
ONE: Phobia to any physical contact.
OTHER: Motor instability.
ONE: Indifference to any moral argumentation.
OTHER: A strong impression of having their hands amputated...
ONE: Their heads explode...
OTHER: They swallow their tongues...
ONE: Apathy.
OTHER: Abulia.
ONE: Lack of interest.
OTHER: Disappointment.
ONE: Fear of turning on lights.
OTHER: Fear of turning on the radio.
ONE: Fear of answering the phone.
OTHER: Impossibility to distinguish the truth from falsehood.
ONE: Phobia to personal interviews.
OTHER: The interruption of the phrases they pronounce.
ONE: Brainwash.
OTHER: Prohibition of silence.
ONE: Constant rummaging in a loud voice.
OTHER: Impossibility of being alone.
ONE: Phobia to any collective argument.
OTHER: Impossibility to explain a position.
ONE: Impossibility to defend themselves.
OTHER: Stomach ulcers.
ONE: Nephritic colic.
OTHER: Vomiting.
ONE: Eating disorders.
OTHER: Sadness.
ONE: Morosity.
OTHER: Nocturnal paroxysm.
ONE: Menstruation disorders.
OTHER: Generalized tremors.
ONE: Early greying of hair.
OTHER: Paroxistic tachycardia.
ONE: Generalized contraction.
OTHER: Muscle rigidity.
ONE: Absent or low emotivity.
OTHER: Tenacious stubbornness.
ONE: Extreme suggestion.
OTHER: Impertinent credulity.
ONE: Mental puerility.
OTHER: But fundamentally...
ONE: And above all...
OTHER: Immigrants suffer from...
ONE: ...A love of fantasy …
29.
Between two houses
SALESMAN: I live between two house. None of which belongs to me. Both for me are alien. Even
though I have tried (and continue doing it) to appropriate their smells, their corners, their
chiaroscuros, their textures, and specially, their pasts and futures. I know that nothing belongs to
me. I know that nothing has ever belonged to me. Why would anything belong to me... I’m
constantly on my way. Becoming. Specially escaping. Fleeing. I run away the further I can, from
me and from the others. Each day I know fewer people. Each day that passes by, at each moment, I
get to know me less and less. Until one day, almost by accident, without any intention, through
decanting, through inertia, I’ll reach the complete and most absolute lack of knowledge of myself. I
will be a stranger. The pale face, with lines of deep rings under the eyes. The tense muscles, about
to start a long yawn. My teeth, always yellow and imperfect, now suddenly whitened and regularly
paired. If I could see me on some mirror, or in the passing reflection of any pool of water, I
wouldn’t recognize me at all. I know. In the everyday progressive effort of forgetting myself, even
my physical appearance will modify itself severely.
I go out very little. Each day less. I recognize myself as hostile and distant in the infrequent
encounters I have with others. Where do I know them. What are their names. Who has brought them
here, before me. How is it I have got, due to an unforeseen change in the circumstances, to step into
them. Why do I have no choice but to talk with them. If I already don’t desire them. They have
disappointed me. Everyone without exception. I look for comfort. Isolation for me is the best
possible comfort. My ivory tower. In the flow of the street, at the very heart of intense circulations,
I tremble. As I walk, I look warily to those that are so indifferent to me. I don’t know their codes.
And I’m not either interested in knowing them.
Only when the afternoon approaches, I offer with painstaking patience my merchandise through the
bars in the area. I sell very little. Almost nobody accepts me. Sometimes, on very rare occasions,
some eventual customers get tempted. They always bargain. I take my merchandise, every day, in a
black suitcase. Like the ones people that work in offices use. Almost at the end of the day, as night
sets in, I rest. I abandon the bars. I walk towards the closest square. Always the same one. The one
that has been accompanying me all these years. I look for tranquillity. I sit at the same bench every
day. Which at that time is invariably unoccupied. The bench looks towards the avenue. And it’s
located in the southern area of the square.
I raise my head. I look in the heavens the constellations that fascinate me. Specially Orion, one that
is easier to recognize. I can stay for hours looking at the stars, deciphering their sizes, their shapes,
their ages. I can stay for hours with my head tilted towards the sky. And the torso firmly erect.
Every night, the same routine. I stay in the same position until the morning comes. It calms me
down. It provides a consolation. I makes me remember I’ve been very far away from home for a
long time. It makes me believe, for an instant, that nothing of this is true. All distances become
closer. Distant points are now negligible. Ends touch each other. They are an invention. We are just
one step one from the others. Everything is possible. At any moment, my luck will change. I will
return home. One of my two houses. The one I love more. I know all of this is a lie. I know nothing
belongs to me. I know I am irreversibly far away. Without any possibility of return. Nowhere. I
have two houses, that’s true. That’s my consolation. But also that none is certainly mine. Not even a
little. Why should anything belong to me, I ask myself again. Why should things have my name
inscribed on them. When my eyes get wet, I raise my eyes to the sky. I laugh. Looking at the stars
clam me down. It centres me. Only at four o’clock in the morning, I tell myself my day has ended.
At that time the party is over. I leave the bench that is mine, only once each night. I cross the
avenue. I go to my room. If it is summer, I stay there until dawn. Until the noises of the night
disappear. And only after that, when I’m almost unconscious due the continuous yawns, I
disappear... Before falling asleep, I have a soup. A vegetable broth, sweet corn, carrot. And then,
yes, sleep arrives.

30.
When You and your fellow men …
WE: Foreigner.
THEM: I huaj.
WE: Utländska.
THEM: We must…
WE: …Cut the hands of foreigners, only after the nap.
THEM: …Drill a hole in the lips of the dissatisfied, to close them with chains.
WE: Ju, të cilët vijnë për të vizituar mua, unë jap nder...
THEM: You…
WE: Straniero.
THEM: …That know the crimes committed in our name...
WE: Buitenlands.
THEM: …It is no good for you not to say anything to no one...
WE: Étranger.
THEM: …So many years of silence are degrading.
WE: Tuji.
THEM: Now the blinding sun of torture is in its zenith …
WE: Udenlandske.
THEM: …Its light shines over the whole country.
WE: Immigrant.4
THEM: There is not a single face without make-up...
WE: Immigrant.
THEM: …To hide the hate or the fear.
WE: Einwanderer.
THEM: We, the European élite …
WE: Immigrant.
THEM: …We have manufactured a native élite.
WE: Přistěhovalec.
THEM: Mouths open by themselves …
WE: Sisserändajate.
THEM: …Yellow and black voices insult from the netherworld.
WE: Innflytjandi.
THEM: Wherever you find them …
WE: Pendatang.
THEM: …Europe does not stop killing people.
WE: Invandrare.
THEM: You are not colonists …
WE: Eksil.
THEM: …But they are not worthier than them.
WE: Mërgim.
THEM: Exile.
WE: The Third World finds itself in…
THEM: Mother country.
WE: …New York.
THEM: Fatherland.
WE: …London.
THEM: …Home.
WE: …Heimat.
THEM: …Paris.
WE: …Homeland.
THEM: …Milan.
WE: …Heimaten.

4 This, and the following in italics, In English in the original (Translator’s Note).
THEM: …Tokyo.
WE: …Homeland.
THEM: …Berlin.
WE: …Heimatort.
THEM: …Rome.
WE: …Home town.
THEM: …Madrid.
WE: …Home village.
THEM: …Montreal.
WE: To fight or die for the country.
THEM: Se battre pour la patrie.
WE: Morrer pela pátria.
THEM: Blows are not enough …
WE: Vdesin për vendin.
THEM: …You have to put pressure with malnutrition.
WE: Mourir pour le pays.
THEM: There are those who assert themselves throwing themselves with the naked hands into the
rifles …
WE: To fight or die for one’s country.
THEM: …Others become grown-ups killing Europeans.
WE: Të gjithë të huajt janë mbeturina.
THEM: All foreigners are trash.
WE: Tous les étrangers sont nulls.
THEM: The obsessive avoids thus his deep demand …
WE: Alle Ausländer sind Müll.
THEM: …Inflicting on himself manias that occupy him at every moment.
WE: Tots els estrangers no valen res.
THEM: The Not they can’t say …
WE: Tots els estrangers són escombraries.
THEM: …The murders they not dare to commit.
WE: Všichni cizinci jsou nesmysl.
THEM: The sick gets closer to dementia.
WE: Svi stranci su smeće.
THEM: People are dissociated.
WE: Alle udlændinge er skidt.
THEM: Squads, rat hunting, concentrations, punitive expeditions …
WE: όλοι οι ξένοι είναι σκουπίδια
THEM: …Children and women are being killed.
WE: All foreigners are rubbish.
THEM: We’ll eradicate in a bloody operation …
WE: Tutti gli stranieri sono spazzatura.
THEM: …The colonist that lives in each of us.
WE: Semua orang asing adalah sampah.
THEM: …Let each one reflect as he wishes …
WE: Todos os estrangeiros são lixo.
THEM: God save the country!
WE: Længe leve hjemland!
THEM: …If like that you make him think once in his lifetime.
WE: Да живее родината!
THEM: Long live atdheut!
WE: The territory census made by the Ministry of the Interior ….
THEM: Es lebe das Vaterland!
WE: …Registered 17,925 inhabitants…
THEM: Visca la pàtria!
WE: … 17,480 of which were foreigners.
THEM: Vive la patrie!
WE: 2,108 leagues of the territory belong to 439 owners…
THEM: Éljen a haza!
WE: …36 of which possess 1,164 leagues…
THEM: Leve het vaderland!
WE: …That is to say, 55% of the total.
THEM: Lengi lifi heima!
WE: When You and your fellow men get exterminated like dogs …
THEM: Lai dzīvo dzimtenē!
WE: …You don’t have any other option but to restablish your weight as individuals.
THEM: Niech żyje ojczyzna!
WE: You don’t find yourselves in their places …
THEM: Lenge leve hjemland!
WE: …Not yet, still.
THEM: Да живее татковината!
WE: You can’t choose …
THEM: Viva l-patrija!
WE: …You are only useful to accumulate.
THEM: Long sống quê hương!
WE: Our value is what we are.
THEM: Länge leve hemland!
WE: We all take advantage of them …
THEM: God save Colombia, or Spain, etc.
WE: …And they of us.
THEM: Adopted country.
WE: Adopted country.
THEM: Hometown.
WE: Hometown.
THEM: Mother country.
WE: Latin America.
THEM: The domestication of the inferior races is obtained by …
WE: To fly the flag for one’s country.
THEM: …Through the conditioning of their reflexes.
WE: Për të tokës!
THEM: To fly the flag!
WE: Kujdestari.
THEM: Words, words, words...
WE: Paroles, paroles, paroles...
THEM: Our beautiful souls are racists.
WE: Fjalë, fjalë, fjalë...
THEM: Worte, Worte, Worte...
WE: We order to reduce the inhabitants of the annexed territory...
THEM: Custody.
WE: …To the level of superior monkeys.
THEM: Die Obhut.
WE: Or you remain terrorized …
THEM: Guardianship.
WE: …Or one becomes terrible.
THEM: The child is in the custody of his uncle.
WE: Guardianhip.
THEM: L'enfant est en garde à vue de son oncle.
WE: The child is under the custody of his uncle.
THEM: Sein Onkel hat die Vormundschaft über das Kind.
WE: The Nation does not let him go away …
THEM: The mother was given (or awarded) the custody of the children.
WE: …It is wherever he goes.
THEM: Die Kinder wurden der Mutter zugesprochen.
WE: Different sets of words...
THEM: Heimatland.
WE: If you are not Victims …
THEM: Home.
WE: …Undoubtedly you are executioners.
THEM: Maison.
WE: We do our bit for our country only by drinking Spanish wine.
THEM: We do our bit for our country by only drinking Spanish wine.
WE: You know well …
THEM: Për ta bërë atdheun është gjëja e vetme që ne pijë verë spanjisht.
WE: …How exploitative we are.
THEM: Pour la patrie est la seule chose que nous buvons du vin d'Espagne.
WE: A man among us …
THEM: Land att dricka är det enda spanska vinet.
WE: …Means an accomplice.
THEM: Để làm cho quê hương là điều duy nhất chúng ta uống rượu vang Tây Ban Nha.
WE: Freedom, equality, fraternity, love, honour, homeland…
THEM: Да једине земље коју пијемо вино шпански
WE: …Words, words, words...
THEM: Untuk membuat tanah air adalah satu-satunya hal yang kita minum anggur Sepanyol.
WE: We are the language of cities …
THEM: Para fazer pátria é a única coisa de que beber vinho español.
WE: …That speak all time of themselves.
THEM: Do ojczyzny jest jedyną rzeczą, którą pijemy wino hiszpańskie.
WE: Racist phrases …
THEM: Kad tėvynės yra vienintelis dalykas, kurį mes geriame Ispanijos vynas.
WE: …Filthy black, filthy Jew, filthy mouse.
THEM: Padarīt dzimtene ir vienīgā lieta, mēs dzeram spāņu vīns.
WE: It’s necessary to tire the body …
THEM: Om vaderland is het enige wat we drinken Spaanse wijn.
WE: …In order to make the mind not to reason …
THEM: Jotta kotimaa on ainoa asia, juomme Espanjan viini.
WE: …In order not to exist anymore …
THEM: Et kodumaa on ainus asi, me joome Hispaania veini.
WE: Each has his rights, except if he comes from outside.
THEM: Til að gera heima er það eina sem við drekka spænsku vín.
WE: Muslims are trash …
THEM: Upang gumawa ng sariling bayan ay ang tanging bagay na uminom kami Espanyol alak.
WE: …You have to clean with kerosene.
THEM: Um Heimat ist das einzige, was wir trinken, spanischer Wein.
WE: Gypsies have a deep psychological problem …
THEM: Per fer pàtria l´únic que bevem és vi espanyol.
WE: …because they are all thieves.
THEM: Shtëpi.
WE: Homeland.
THEM: Native land.
WE: Atdhe.
THEM: Natural habitat.
WE: We are not angels but at least we have …
THEM: Habitat naturel.
WE: …Regrets.
THEM: Mjedisit natyral.
WE: The tensions that arise out of the meanings of words...
THEM: Bill deguste une succulent cheeseburger.
WE: Bill is eating a succulent hamburger.
THEM: Where are the savages now?
WE: Ashissata is eating a succulent hamburger.
THEM: Where do we see barbarism?
WE: Rachid is eating a succulent hamburger.
THEM: Ahmed is eating a succulent hamburger.
WE: The African uses very little …
THEM: Khoumba is eating a succulent hamburger.
WE: …Their front lobes.
THEM: Fatou is eating a succulent hamburger.
WE: Africans kill each other because …
THEM: La France est la maison de champagne.
WE: …Their brain cortex is underdeveloped.
THEM: Ihr ist Frankreich zur zweiten Heimat geworden.
WE: The civil war is predicted for Autumn …
THEM: France has become her second home.
WE: …Or for next Spring.
THEM: France has become his second home.
WE: Violence turns around …
THEM: Frankreich ist die Heimat des Champagners
WE: …One day it explodes in Metz…
THEM: France is the country of champagne.
WE: …Next day in Bordeaux.
THEM: Franca është shtëpia e shampanjë.
WE: It is not good for a police officer …
THEM: France is the home of champagne.
WE: …to be forced to torture up to ten hours per day.
THEM: ...Even if the tortured men are Muslims.

31.
Migratory birds
NARRATOR: Migratory birds develop an acute sense of time, because they fly from one present to
another, and the first thing that they perceive when they arrive are the memories of another present.
One that is not there anymore. From the one which they have left. A present from which they have
fled. Birds have possibilities. They choose which present to live. And they also choose from which
present, from which place, from which past, to flee. Birds do not fly though space. But throughout
time. They move in circles, from present to present. From past to past. Future does not exist. It’s an
invention of humans. They know it. That’s why they don’t care about it.
ME: One year. One month. Fifteen seconds. Ten minutes. A decade. Fragments of time that throw
their breath into my face. At every moment. Each time. Can I really apprehend them? If I enter now,
for instance, the empty city, I should see it full. Festooned as in its better times. In the case that city
is mine, it would be like that and in no other way. When I go over my spaces, those that I find
familiar, I’m making a trajectory through time. It’s that, and not something else, which allows me to
recall people, events, textures, smells, rumours, images, lies, unfortunate events, joys. Moments that
an external observer (that is me) would name as: “My life”.

The End
“One has to change the skin, develop a new way of thinking, attempt to create oneself again”
Frantz Fanon

ANDROMEDA: I had at that time fifty-two tears, and I left everything here. And when I say I left
everything, I mean: I left my job, I left my son, I left very important things, my friends …
ORION: We left Buenos Aires on the first day of spring, in order to arrive, four days later, at the
beginning of autumn in our new hemisphere.
ANDROMEDA: I neither left my house nor I would leave it, because it’s the place to return...
EUROPE: It is a story not so different, there where we are stuck we... from Balcanic countries it is
called... But it is East Europe... It has its history... very long... Like Rome, like Athens...
ORION: We went to live to a tree-lined street. Calm. That seemed like the set for a movie of the
fifties.
ANDROMEDA: My parents lived at that time in Spain: my old folks are emigrants too, they are
refugees from the Spanish Civil War, they lived for seventy years here in Argentina, and at eighty-
five they decided to return to Spain. Incredible.
EUROPE: In the end we are brothers with them... Because thousands of years it was together... And
Alexander the Great, with a Greek father, but with Albanian mother... Imagine that we are a very
close people. Almost, almost brothers...
ORION: Empty and nice streets, with bushes and gardens in the borders. Nobody seemed to be
living in that houses.
ANDROMEDA: My father lives today, he is almost a hundred years. And that was one of the
reasons why I left, because my mother was sick...
EUROPE: That is how Albanese language was born. But I don’t think they speak Albanian before...
A language of our own. Then necessity came, as we said, and one has to speak to communicate, to
live.
ORION: The literature of the exiles: magazines that asked for subscriptions and that after three
issues they disappeared.
ANDROMEDA: There was an agreement between her and I, if she felt ill, I was going to go. I
wanted to be with her at that time. And it was like that, because eight months after I arrived, she
died.
EUROPE: And thus Albanese language born and then the people... the wise in Albania made a
language more fair, more modern, that is base in Latin. That is why our temperament is Latin. We
are very close to You. We are... very close to Italian...
ORION: I am at a train station where I’ve never been before in my life, doing the favour to this
country of bringing my charm, my family, my experience, and no money.
ANDROMEDA: At that time, I said: well, why not. Why not to go and try. Why don’t I try. I said:
it’s now or never. And there I went, without any contact at work level. I left with some money so as
to live for a while without working. And to do everything. That’s how it was.
EUROPE: Language is own... Accent comes because it’s close to Italy, but very different. Not
Slavic... Language of us is Latin. Based this modern language in Latin...
ORION: We have arrived with everything in order. You have to talk English with a good accent.
Everything is easier when you’re white.
EUROPE: History we have us with Slavic... But completely different... History, war, dominion of
Serbs that always ate earth from Albania... Greece in the south that stole a lot.
ANDROMEDA: I believe that the most important thing that Spain is providing to me is something
personal. Not something professional. It’s the flexibility. The fact of having to adapt myself …
ORION: It takes time to overcome the fear that has become a part of our lives. We are in a country
where you fear more the tax inspector than the police.
EUROPE: Turks occupied four centuries, like Bulgarians occupied Romania... Greece... Four
centuries occupied the Turks... Like Spaniards, eight centuries the Arabs... ¡Eight Arab centuries!...
My God...
ANDROMEDA: If I have any addiction, it is to adrenaline. I always need changes in my life. And
I’m… risky. Because it produces pleasure to me. The vertigo of having to do everything anew… it
gives me certain pleasure...
ORION: The dates are necessary in the place of the world from the one we had escaped, where
there are no registries, or the ones that exist are destroyed.
EUROPE: Albanians are very kind people, like here. They invite you. They have their customs.
They are very “hospitilarian”... Foreigners like them much. We make them a lot of favours... I come
with you... I give you... They are good. They are well-educated. We talk about cultivate people.
Intellectuals...
ANDROMEDA: We had a very interesting experience with my son. Here, in this apartment …
ORION: Here it’s not the same. Everything is meticulously registered by the civil servants, whose
task is to preserve the data throughout decades and centuries.
EUROPE: I was born in a very small place. City more south... I worked ten years as a professional
actor. Then teachers sent me to Art Academy. Y played many characters. I participated many
movies. Forty, fifty movies acting. Many theatre plays...
ANDROMEDA: I had to strip down my whole library and my books because I was taking boxes of
books there. We have arranged with my son that he would come to help me. And he arrived late.
Very late. Three hours late. I was very nervous. We had to go to the harbour to take the boxes...
ORION: You, the foreigners: do you keep your pyjamas during sexual intercourse? You must feel
very cold, here in this city.
EUROPE: To be free is difficult. Too much censorship... Franco, dictator. Pinochet, dictator. But...
Communism had a more humane approach. Hypothesis of Lenin for a more humane world... I
wasn’t hungry. I had school for children free. Free medicine. I have to make an urgent surgery. You
had your bed. Surgery was done, then they asked you for money...
ANDROMEDA: So when he came, I got angry with him. He had a nervous breakdown. He took
books and threw them... He went crying. He remained in the stairs and started crying...
ORION: There are telltales everywhere...
EUROPE: Money they never asked you because you worked, and you received ninety-five per
cent... That is humanity that was practiced.
ANDROMEDA: It was very tough. And for him it was tougher than for me. Because I was leaving,
but he had to stay here.
ORION: The decision had been taken: I felt relieved. But I also felt: the emotion of leaving, the
anxiety for the definitive departure, the security of having overcome a stage.
EUROPE: A country so small, full of heroes such are the Irish, such as are the Vietnamese. They are
heroic peoples. I love them, I respect them very much...
ANDROMEDA: Of course I miss you, of course I would like you to be here, but I agree with what
you are doing. You have your life, you do what you think. For some reason you are there.
ORION: I know I don’t have to escape anymore. I neither think of the horrors to come. After
relaxation, comes anxiety.
EUROPE: Twenty-five years spent fighting Vietnamese. But they for independence. We had half
independence, because Kosovo was occupied by Serbs. It’s half my country. But they didn’t fight
like Vietnamese. And Vietnamese, said Ho Chi Minh, until the end, until the last people Vietnamese,
we are going to fight. And they won.
ANDROMEDA: There’s a reason for my being there, of course.
ORION: I arrive to my new place: I go from hysteria to uncertainty.
EUROPE: For me they are heroes. Irish the same. Patriotic nationalism. But we are such a small
country. Italy is very big. Greek always wanted to eat us.
ANDROMEDA: On the first year, the feeling I had... was that I was on a roller-coaster from where
I couldn’t go down.
ORION: There are many experiences to share, too much world to tell about.
EUROPE: My sisters are Catholic. We never fought about religion. Because Homeland first. As
Peron said: first Homeland, then...
ANDROMEDA: I was totally de-centred. For instance, I lost all my documents. Everything. By
chance. I found them, sure, because there they are so ordered... I recovered them. But the truth is I
left all of it in the bus. On the day I was having my first job interview.
ORION: With time I will understand that nobody is interested in listening.
EUROPE: Past of Albania... Communism... Communism fell because it failed, because it didn’t
fulfil what promised. Russia failed because they didn’t want it, or had doubts. And everybody
failed. I don’t know if they are happy now the Russians, they have democracy. All are epithets.
Slogans. The issue is how the people live. You live well. That’s it. Politics is well done. You live
bad. Politics is useless. You have to throw it away to the trash. Because there is too much slogan.
And Albania is another slogan.
ANDROMEDA: Me, the feeling I have in Spain, is that I’m in a movie. That I’m living inside a
movie. Sometimes I get in. Sometimes I am in that movie. Because I see it from the outside. It
doesn’t belong to me. No. It doesn’t belong to me.
ORION: Exile is a privilege of the middle class: the advantage of being alive. Of having another
country to go to. That, and nothing else, is our consolation.
EUROPE: Albanian are like that. We are different North from South. There are places where you...
you kill someone in the Capital city, and travels to hide. If you knock on door, bell, they open the
door. ¿Something came in? No, nothing here.
ANDROMEDA: I met again with my family, I haven’t seen for a long time. I had the feeling I was
treated as if I were fifteen years old, and I was fifty-two… I hated my parents.
ORION: How could I judge the facts clearly, if I allow myself to be emotional at this moment?
EUROPE: But then with time, another day they ask you why police is behind you. Why they search
for you. And you say: I killed one, two, three... Here you’re going to be for two more days. Because
you are bad. I’m going to have you for two more days. Today at night I go with you, if you want, to
the frontier of somewhere else. Because here in my house, you can’t stay.
ANDROMEDA: I went to live to a shared apartment, where there were … they were friends of my
nephew who lived there, all of them kids of about thirty-something.
ORION: Problems of exile: the money, a house, a job, an environment, schools, old friends,
memories, ties.
EUROPE: Albanians like very much vengeance like south of Italy. Blood vengeance. You kill me.
My son will kill your son. Communism prohibited it. Do you want to kill? Thirty years of jail. Now
they started again. Freedom. Democracy. Are we better?
ANDROMEDA: They start on Friday to make noise, to make noise, and they keep like that all the
weekend until Monday without stopping. They keep on drinking, stoned, and going to bars, they
don’t stop …
ORION: Being an exile implies to observe something special in what is common.
EUROPE: The South is more civilized. Life more civilized. There is religious respect. Muslim has
mosque. He goes visit mosque. Orthodox has orthodox church. Catholics have their church. Before,
prohibited religion. Another history. Afterwards churches opened, like anywhere in the world.
ANDROMEDA: In a society like the Spanish, where consumption is something so basic and
fundamental, they silence them with money. They have access to money relatively easy: they make
money working relatively little.
ORION: The exile will never be accepted as an equal.
EUROPE: Father said: Albania is a country of devils. A people of the damned, because they don’t
believe in God.
ANDROMEDA: There it is a sport: they spend months drawing the dole and without working. And
then they get another job, they work for a while, until they are on the dole again. They work just to
get another subsidy then. Do you know what is it to be on the dole?
ORION: I live like a suspect, humiliated by dependency.
EUROPE: Milosevic, a complete asshole. A psychopath. And a very old-fashioned regime.
Communist the same. Because Albania went into... a democratic process. Albania wanted
democracy. They didn’t. They fell at last. Brute communists.
ANDROMEDA: Because they have it easy. They are against the consumer society, but they are
absolutely accomplices and victims of the consumer society.
ORION: I’m attracted by the doubtful protection of the refugee committees. I am among people that
speak my own language. I exchange anecdotes about friends, places and recipes with them.
EUROPE: There are no Albanians that put bombs somewhere to kill people. Serbs kill themselves
and World War I started: 1914, in Sarajevo.
ANDROMEDA: Europe makes things all the time so as the old structure doesn’t fall.
ORION: We pass each other worn out cuttings, which we quote on each absurd reunion where we
find ourselves. Until everybody gets fed up and weighed down for hearing all the time the same
anecdotes. The same memories of the same lives. Once and again.
EUROPE: I went to Sarajevo. Five times. I travelled a lot with theatre. Because I had a job... Art
director of a theatre, and I was invited to everywhere in the world. I didn’t make money but... I
visited. I ate well.
ANDROMEDA: They spend all the time restoring the old to keep it. But they don’t have a future as
society, they don’t have a life project. The horizon of the youngsters is here... Here... Just to live
today.
ORION: Pessimism floats. There is no return date. We are unable to recognize what is evident: we
are foreigners. They have won.
EUROPE: I travelled as a tourist to Albania in 2000. To here I came in year 1993.
ANDROMEDA: At Barcelona, all my friends were Argentines. We didn’t have Catalan friends.
ORION: I think about what I left behind. Faces, incidents, situations get hold of me.
EUROPE: Albania in a sense, it changed. New cities changed. Because it was feudal country. Total
misery. It didn’t worked. Robbed everything and then he died. Son of a bitch...
ANDROMEDA: That burdens many Argentineans who go to Barcelona: their friends are
Argentineans. It’s very difficult to make Catalan friendships.
ORION: I dream with them all the time. I make them live again. I am about to become mad. I go
over once and again my last actions, while I was there. What did I do well. What did I do wrong.
Why everything have to turn out this way.
EUROPE: We didn’t have weapons. I shot many times there because I was officer there. In Albania,
where everybody was an enemy, we very much the military service. I was an officer. I had a
battalion. Because of university, we directed.
ANDROMEDA: What for them is a friend, to us it is an acquaintance. We have that code, that way.
We get in. And we let others get in.
ORION: I live then, I know it, in a state of permanent discomfort.
EUROPE: The Americans... where they go there is fire. And they don’t build anything. They leave
misery. Before them, the French, the Italians, left something… a building… The Americans don’t.
They burn everything up. They destroy. What are they doing in Irak?…
ANDROMEDA: Not the Catalan. Catalan is tough, reserved, untrustful. He is very conservative,
the Catalan. About the structure and everything. About thought and about …
ORION: The story stopped forever, they day I left. I live only in the present, on the condition of
allowing myself to remember to create my own fantasy of the past.
EUROPE: Irak was three times… for times… five times more backward. Americans went, and three
time… four times… five times more backward. Because they started religious wars. And this is
sadness now. Sadness.
ANDROMEDA: When they talk, it’s different. They just talk. When they talk they are like… like
the Republicans, the revolutionaries, the freethinkers of Spain. But then in practice, it isn’t like that.
A lie. It’s not like that.
ORION: I can’t share with anyone the things I remember. Nobody seems trustworthy. Specially my
family.
EUROPE: I make mistake of migration. But why I did it. I did it because they were hard times in
my country. Complete anarchy. Economy was miserable... Anarchy... My spirit cried. Or the soul.
And I travelled far away. Imagine why I wanted to leave. I had no choice.
ANDROMEDA: Andalusians are different. I don’t know Argentineans there. I went to Malaga
because I had Andalusian friends. And I know there are many Argentineans in Malaga. But I don’t
know where they are and I’m not interested in searching for them.
ORION: Some thought the we exiles were heroes because we had survived.
EUROPE: I left my job. I left my home. I left my life. I left my family. I left my friends. I left my
profession. It’s not easy. I suffered a lot. And here I suffered a lot because I had to do things I never
did in my life. But then... for my family... I lowered my head and did anything … professions... but
honestly, not for...
ANDROMEDA: Andalusians are more standard too. More standard. He doesn’t reflect on things as
much.
ORION: They forgot that those that have stayed looked at us as anti-heroes. Or even worse: as
traitors, victims of our own fantasies. The true heroes, they said, were the ones that survived in their
own country.
EUROPE: And why did I leave. Because I lost and didn’t won. Let’s speak the truth. But I did
something. And I didn’t win. But I am fighting, like everybody. My problem is not this country... I
came alone, free. And the country received me well.
ANDROMEDA: They solve everything going to the beach to have a beer. And that’s it. They can
talk for two minutes about some social problem, but then …
ORION: The native language adopted accents, or dialects, or it became faulty.
EUROPE: Why Argentina. That’s simple. Because I had my wife, cousins here. And they received
me well. Because I could go other places. I had doubts and at that time Italy didn’t treat you well.
Prohibited entering. I can’t go in a ship, because my name is other. I am a well known actor. I came
to America... I travelled by plane. I’m not a foreigner that hides everything. You understand?
ANDROMEDA: I feel I don’t have interlocutors. But I didn’t have them in Barcelona either. It’s a
great loneliness.
ORION: The jokes, the songs, the music, everything that is missed so much, was getting lost in the
children.
EUROPE: I came free and it received me very well. I do love Argentina very much now. Many
times I criticize because I want it to go well. I don’t want to talk bad about it. No. No. Argentina is
very good.
ANDROMEDA: I had a group of people with whom I could do what I wanted. When I managed to
find a rented flat to live … Did I tell you that? I rented a bar.
ORION: As the months went by, they found themselves losing the communication with their
children faster than other parents.
EUROPE: For me it’s tough. Because I know I could be better now there. Like my fiends. Which
less well-known than me and they are better.
ANDROMEDA: It was great, because I had a little attic, like a mezzanine really, and then I had
everything that was the bar …
ORION: Dr. S, a famous criminal lawyer, and his partner, pasted posters in the streets of Costa del
Sol.
EUROPE: Anyhow, I feel hopeful. I have faith. I am for emigration, but not forever. For a time.
ANDROMEDA: Because in Barcelona I had the job stuff, but on a personal level I felt as lonely as
a dog...
ORION: XL, who had always sold knickknacks in the streets of Buenos Aires, had read and
understood the new Spanish tax law, and he had founded a consultancy that progressed rapidly.
EUROPE: Limiting countries is not as tough. So cruel. Because it is cruel...
ANDROMEDA: What happened to me with that bar I rented, where I felt so happy, is that I started
to got locked up, and I got worried about that, I became isolated. There came a time when I was
locked up there inside.
ORION: Manuela, in Caracas, sent her children to the Argentine school, “so that they wouldn’t lose
the language”. Their teachers were Paraguayan.
EUROPE: I made a mistake. But... we are living. My children studied here. You always have to
look the good things. It’s not always bad. What you won. What you lost. I can’t win everything.
ANDROMEDA: I didn’t feel the desire to be outside, of being in the city, of establishing a contact
with people.
ORION: It took time to get used to the accents. Adapt yourself to the idea of living in a country
where speaking English was something common.
EUROPE: Here it is tough. Very bad. In the times of Menem as a foreigner I lived better. But it was
a trap. The truth is he was artificial, wasn’t he?
ANDROMEDA: The feeling I have is that my Argentine friends from there have turned very
Catalan. And that they buy what the consumer society sells them. Most of them have been there for
a long while, they are people that left in times of the dictatorship.
ORION: It took much time to adapt to a country that has at least six different ways to refer to
nullity...
EUROPE: They are governments that work for the rich. Then they throw something to the people.
Me, I’m more of a nationalist... they buy you... they buy you... there corruption works...
ANDROMEDA: My sister left at that time and she is a Catalan, a full Catalan. She doesn’t even
think of Buenos Aires: when she comes here, everything looks horrible for her.
ORION: NOTHING, NOUGHT, NIL, LOVE, ZERO and “O” (the letter that replaces the zero when
pronouncing telephone numbers).
EUROPE: But now Albanians are a little better. I’ve seen them much better than before. And I’m
happy. Capitalism is there, isn’t it? Not easy. But there are more lights. There are movements. There
is more food. More movement. More beach... This is capitalism.
ANDROMEDA: Finding the streets dirty and broken... Everything, everything looks horrible to her
when she comes to Buenos Aires...
ORION: And the inhabitants aren’t called with warm words, like citizens or fellow countryman, but
subjects and taxpayers.
EUROPE: Films that show Albanians don’t mean nothing. Vulgarity. An idea of Neorealism...
ANDROMEDA: For me it’s exactly the opposite. I come back here and everything belongs to me.
But I left eight years ago, and I don’t have roots in Spain. And I will not have them. I’m a Spanish
moss.
ORION: Indifference rules.
EUROPE: We are here from far away... Ne jemi këtu nga larg ...
ANDROMEDA: I celebrate that people make demonstrations and to protest in this city. It’s good
for the people to take the streets. Everything belongs to me. Nothing makes me feel uncomfortable
here. Nothing bothers me.
ORION: In this place there is an inability to speak without irony. The importance of any crisis is
concealed.
EUROPE: You come here from far away... Keni ardhur këtu nga larg ...
ANDROMEDA: I’m used to travel for an hour for anything I need to do. I read. I look through the
window. Or I speak with someone. I don’t see it as a waste of time. For a Spaniard that is horrific.
They can’t understand I can travel for an hour to see my son. In an hour they are in London or
Paris...
ORION: Nothing is serious for these people. Everything gets solved, in any case, with a glass of
beer in the hand. Or with a whisky.
EUROPE: Unë jam këtu nga larg... I’m here from far away...
ANDROMEDA: I didn’t leave for economic reasons in 2001. People migrated at that time, they
migrated with a terrible feeling of hate against Argentina. The middle class that lost everything.
They left to start a new life in Spain. With the aim of making money, of finding a place in the
consumer society... I felt ashamed about them and I hate to talk with them.
ORION: The blood spillage in the colonies were “the problems”.
EUROPE: You, you come to visit me, for me it’s an honour... Ju, të cilët vijnë për të vizituar mua,
unë jap nder ...
ANDROMEDA: The experience of migrating is very particular. It unites a lot. Or it makes you
different. But when it unites, it does so...
ORION: Years before, the war against the rebels had been “an emergency”.
EUROPE: Your honour, big, makes me honoured... Your nder ju, e madhe, unë jap nder për mua ...
ANDROMEDA: When I leave, the contact with my son was by e-mail more than through the
phone. I went to Spain when he lived with two friends and his house worked as a cultural centre. He
had a job that was like a kind of fellowship, because he just worked for four hours a day and he
made good money...
ORION: Diminishing its importance was a way of maintaining privacy. Which here is an object of
ultimate respect. It’s part of the national heredity, even if it does not appears in the Constitution.
EUROPE: A daughter or a son dies... And there they say: Have you ever felt a pain stronger than
that?
ANDROMEDA: A few months later I receive an e-mail from my son, where he said they have
decided to leave the house. And that they also have decided to... that for them it was very important
and coherent with the project they had... they were going to occupy a factory.
ORION: We were warned that in this country you can’t succeed in life if you don’t have the support
of elements such as class, riches, education in a good school and a good university.
EUROPE: Yes. That’s painful. Like when a good friend of mine comes by, and I have nothing for
him. That is the biggest disaster, the greatest pain... Son, daughter dies. It’s sad, isn’t it? But they
say... Kur unë është një mik i mirë, dhe unë kam asgjë për të. Kjo fatkeqësi është më e madhe,
dhimbje e madhe...
ANDROMEDA: Distance distorts. Distance makes you fear things you don’t have to fear.
ORION: Everywhere there is kindness under a thick layer of indifference. The foreigner finds the
kindness and the comprehension of the repentant executioner.
EUROPE: When a friend comes by and I don’t have anything, and he is hungry... That is the biggest
pain. Because it is good and they want to treat him well...
ANDROMEDA: In my next trip to Buenos Aires, I see my son occupying the factory and living as
a squatter with around twenty people...
ORION: I began to belong to the city when I was already meeting by chance with acquaintances in
the streets.
EUROPE: And better is when friend comes, they give him drink, they make sheep like this...
charcoal-grilled we say... It takes about five hours...
ANDROMEDA: To me, returning to Buenos Aires and finding my son squatting a factory... when I
had left with him living in a rented flat...
ORION: We get used to everything: to French fries with vinegar, to cook with fat instead of oil, to
the lack of toothpicks in the restaurants, to the presence of ketchup jars...
EUROPE: Do you want any word that can share the pain?... “My condolences”... Or “I’m sorry”...
Ngushëllimet... Më vjen keq...
ANDROMEDA: He lived with two friends: one made films, the other was an artist... They had
transformed the house into a cultural centre... But now I found him occupying the factory and living
with twenty people, ten of which were down-and-outs, down-and-outs, down-and-outs... It was
hard... It was very hard.
ORION: It was not easy to forget the smells of garlic and onion, the strong breaths, and the smells
of the streets.
EUROPE: Years don’t come alone... they come with meat... With meat!... And with much loss…
physically... I have lost teeth, for instance...
ANDROMEDA: It was very hard to accept. It was not easy for me. It was such an impressive
change... In the factory they gave workshops about a lot of different things: everything, they had
snacks for the children, classes to teach them to make bicycles... It was a very intense social
movement, that was what allowed me to accept it and understand it. But it was not easy. I
acknowledge it. Even today I find it hard to accept the choice my son made.
ORION: They didn’t have an empire no more. There were no more colonies to colonize. And there
were no new jobs.
EUROPE: A friend of mine, when he went to Albania on a visit... one year ago... he told me: you
don’t leave without new teeth... We pay everything... We are going to grow you new teeth... they
told me, in Albania... I had to come, I missed the children, and I didn’t stay. I had to be there for a
month to fix everything. I paid everything less. Didn’t have problems... I didn’t stay...
ANDROMEDA: I was much more worried about him, when I left, that he for me.
ORION: I didn’t have anywhere to go. Except in the direction of my fantasies.
EUROPE: The more languages you know... the more you like it. The more I know Spanish... the
more I like it.
ANDROMEDA: The day the Twin Towers were attacked I was in Barcelona... suddenly, I return
home... I still lived with my partners in a shared apartment... I open the door and find two of them
watching the television, and they tell me: “Come”, because they were watching it live. I saw the
Towers falling live. I just went in between the first and the second.
ORION: One of the situations that create anxiety in exile is to turn from someone who is known in
the country of origin to being nobody in another country.
EUROPE: I’m from Albania... Comes here forty-four years... My wife speaks much better than I...
Better then I... Because she had luck: where she worked she was literature teacher, I cared for her...
Because she is a doctor...
ANDROMEDA: What was the first thing I’ve done, when I saw that event: to pick up the phone
and call my son, to ask him how he was. And he started laughing, ‘cos I ask him: how are you. And
he tells me: Mum, we are celebrating.
ORION: It was necessary to explain everybody that once I have been someone.
EUROPE: Here they put me a teacher three… four months. She asked me if I was thinking about
working to make money. And I said: And you?
ANDROMEDA: If I felt that something serious could happen here... I would return. Because I
wouldn’t like to be far from my son. No. Any de-stabilization... whatever, because it can always
happen there too... I also think that if I went there, I wouldn’t return... It’s a torture, an obsession,
I’m terrified about thinking that something bad could happen to me, or something serious to them,
and to be apart.
ORION: The encounter of the exile with the city of his past is like the return of someone who is
divorced to his old house. At that corner, that happened, and here, that thing...
EUROPE: She told me: how’s that. Madam, I tell her: I’m forty-four years old. I’m father of family,
I have to go to work...
ANDROMEDA: When they were removed from the factory it was terrible... I’ll never forget it. At
that time I didn’t have a phone at home, I spent a night going to a pay phone, with an infinite
amount of coins, and calling every half an hour to the factory, because they didn’t answer me. And
once I communicated, someone answered me and told me that there were... that there were
armoured personal carriers in the corner... You imagine that for me that was...
ORION: But nothing gives you back the feeling of belonging. Outside of the memories there hasn’t
been any physical change, but nothing is the same.
EUROPE: But language is language. Language comes when it has to. I want to work now. And I’ve
worked. Second month, without talking, I worked... Where... I cleaned dung, for three hundred
pesos. I cleaned bathrooms. Three months...
ANDROMEDA: At that time, when they were removed from the factory, it was very tough. It
scares you. If my son didn’t write me quickly an e-mail, I got very worried. He lived between two
and three years in the factory.
ORION: I look up in the telephone directory. But my name was not there. Not even it offers me the
guarantee of belonging.
EUROPE: Then, helping a plumber... I’ve never hammered a nail in my life, I didn’t do anything at
home, because my mother did everything for me. I opened a wall of half a meter. Why?...
Surviving. One year and a half. I was a plumber assistant. Good man. From Cordoba. He helped me
a lot...
ANDROMEDA: Generally I don’t tell my son things without filtering it. But he does not tell things
to me. Let’s not cheat ourselves.
ORION: Each walk through the city is the renewal of an adventure. In each corner you can find the
risk of being taken by memories.
EUROPE: And I learned life like that. More street. More knowledge. I read newspapers. Then
dictionaries. But I translate well. I read very well. I write in Spanish. But poetry is hard for me.
Someone told me: he liked my poetry in Albanian... wonderful... has to translate. I started... but then
I abandoned it. I’m not at ease. I’m worried. Poetry... has to have a moment... it’s difficult.
ANDROMEDA: My son always tells me: there things are easier then here. And I don’t know if he
fully understands what is the experience of being outside of your country... above all, by choosing
it, which is my case.
ORION: Any place is linked to the memory of a friend. Or to a conversation. To the memory of a
face, that won’t be there anymore.
EUROPE: Everything is sold... We are... things, merchandise... Saramago says is well: we are
numbers. Numbers. I ask: where did chiefs had numbers? In the concentration camps. We are
already numbers. There are no humans.
ANDROMEDA: He is crazy: things are not at all easy there. It is very difficult. It is very tough. I’m
still sitting for an exam. Each time. I’m sixty years old, and have thirty-five as a professional. And I
still have to be showing, step by step, who I am, what do I do... each time I want to get a job...
ORION: The departure, four years before, meant leaving almost everything behind: a job, a mother
-in-law, books, a house. I only took what I could carry in a plane.
EUROPE: Democracy... the majority of the peoples suffer... we are at the same... The languages are
different, the suffering is the same... Problems the same. Albania the same...
ANDROMEDA: To live like in a movie, in a place you don’t feel it belongs to you, also has a very
tough side.
ORION: How self-indulgent is the exile. How egoist. How vain.
EUROPE: Communism was like it was, but you weren’t hungry. I wasn’t with brute communism
me. I was close to jail, because I wanted freedom. I’m an artist. And freedom you didn’t have, you
had censorship...
ANDROMEDA: This thing of getting all the time inside new realities, have given me a lot of
flexibility... in the head, in every sense. I feel I am softer than I was when I left. And I like that. I’m
less intransigent. Because besides one needs to rescue positive things from the experience you go
through.
ORION: I look at the city through my past. I feel the anguish of the displaced.
EUROPE: Capitalism makes me restless... This type of vulgar capitalism... My problems are mine,
but we talk as citizens of the world. Are we happy?...
ANDROMEDA: At a professional level I feel that being there makes me poorer as a person.
Because I have no one to talk with. I don’t have peers.
ORION: Around me people try to forget. So that everything, once more, starts again.
EUROPE: Torturing are we... We are socially sick... Because it is logical: we have to live the world
with two pesos. We have to pay a thousand pesos. Can you pay?… Or in a litre... Can you put ten
litres of water in a bottle of a litre?
ANDROMEDA: But on a personal level I’m growing up. And I like it. It’s what I value more from
my experience. Flexibility in every sense: of thought, of acceptance, of times. There they have
another time, for everything. Much more calm.
ORION: Because history does not repeat itself. Rather, it continues.
EUROPE: You can’t. That’s why you are sad. Nobody is going to fix that for us. Nobody. This
hasn’t got to do with meetings, of the Minister of Economy. No, no, no. It doesn’t get fixed...
ANDROMEDA: And I’m very operative, I do things quickly and in a concrete way. Learning to
wait. Their time is different. The fact is you are always on the other side of the field. You’re always
the visiting team. That’s a new kind of learning.
AMÉRICA: Everyday you listen to voices alerting against the assimilation of foreign ideas.
EUROPE: Socially we are their slaves. Slaves of the rich. Here for me it is a lie, I make a show, that
I sell something I can’t pay. The rent is impossible. These rents I have to pay. Two rents kill me.
That’s how I lose things of my goals, my art, my talent... Mine... I can’t. All the day I’m thinking
how much I earned, how much I have to pay... It’s a disaster question. A suicide...
ANDROMEDA: My friend N tell me: I admire your capacity to reinvent yourself all the time, being
in Spain. And by changing, going from Barcelona to Malaga. This also has to do with flexibility.
AMÉRICA: An ideology has spread in the country which is inadequate to the national reality. It has
to do with a simple reactionary attitude, disguised as nationalism.
EUROPE: I have faith. I’m optimist in my life. But... life shows you it’s very hard. For us the poor.
Poor in money. I can’t... I’m not poor at heart... But I can’t. I can’t. What can I do?. When it comes
the time you cannot live... And that’s how we are. There we are. Every country...
ANDROMEDA: You decide to represent a certain character. I go to work to a certain place, and I
know I have to behave in a certain way and say certain things, if I want to work there.
AMERICA: They want Peru to be legislated, to think and write for the Peruvians, to solve
nationally the problems of Peruvianity.
EUROPE: And like that my friends... I repeat to them so that they don’t forget me... I’m honest... I
can’t lie.
ANDROMEDA: There, there are many things you just have to swallow, you can’t say anything.
Many of the things you think, that you have to leave aside.
AMÉRICA: Our country moves under the orbit of the Western civilization. The mystified national
reality is just a poor parcel of the vast world reality.
EUROPE: Theatre will never die, because it is direct emotion. No film. Indirect. Film is nicer, but it
is indirect. Emotion direct: theatre will never die. Because we need communicate. You
communicate to me your pain.... but inside a character, inside a play... This form will never die. You
come here to see which face I have, which teeth I have, which pain I have... I’m Albanian. I’m an
Albanian actor. But... there is not... You cannot pay this moment. They are very good. Because this
is very sincere.
ANDROMEDA: I’ve never spoken Catalan. What happens to me is that I understand everything.
There because of the subject of foreigners, they have adopted a custom. It is that they speak in
Catalan, and if you understand it, you can answer to them in Spanish. They don’t have any trouble.
It’s a bilingual dialogue: one speaks in Catalan and the other in Spanish. What bothers them is when
you don’t understand. You go, you ask for a street: Can you tell me where the “Whatever” square
is? You speak to them in Spanish, with an accent that is not Spanish, that is Argentine, and they
answer in Catalan. And you have to find out what they mean, dear. If you understood me, right; if
you didn’t understand me, go fuck yourself.
AMERICA: Is there a science, a philosophy, a democracy, an art, are there machines, institutions,
laws, which are genuinely and characteristically Peruvian? Does the language we speak and write,
is it a product of the Peruvian people?
EUROPE: But we... people, we need to feel the other’s smell, the other’s smoke, sit down, make
noise, chairs... This is human necessity. Getting outside... The house is a jail. Television, video… it
turns you mad.
ANDROMEDA: I always say that even if we talk Spanish like the Spaniards, as we do, we speak
different languages. They are two completely different languages.
AMÉRICA: The idea of freedom didn’t spring spontaneously from our soil, its origin came from
outside.
EUROPE: Misery is. They hide it. They don’t put cameras there, in misery. Capital city... Tirana...
Good... nice. Nice... But people?... And a little further over there?...
ANDROMEDA: To be a foreigner is not to belong. To be a foreigner means everything is strange
for you. Not of your own. Just living the experience... I believe that everybody should try the
experience, because it is good. But it is so difficult to explain it with words what it is about. It’s so
difficult. It has much more to do with the body, with physical sensations, than through something
rational. Because I’m not one of those who miss tango and dulce de leche…
AMÉRICA: Foreign events keep influencing in Hispano-American destinies.
EUROPE: What a lack of knowledge... They don’t know... The Italians so close there... It is sadness
with us... And they have ideas that everybody are immigrants that went... because a criminal
contingent each country has. And five per cent of them, when the borders where opened they went,
but they were robbers, sons of the bitches, without education, without shaving... And they say:
Albanians are like that.
ANDROMEDA: Feelings: lack of comfort. Tension. Fear. Vertigo. The feeling of falling and not
knowing where you’re going to end. You threw yourself and you’re there, but you don’t know
where the fuck you’re going to fall. If you’re going to be destroyed against the floor. If a parachute
is going to open and you’re going to fall in the water. If someone is going to be waiting for you...
You don’t know... You threw yourself out. I had that feeling many times.
AMÉRICA: We find freedom and democracy exotic. Industrialism, machinism, all the material
springs of progress have been received by us from the outside.
EUROPE: So we cannot mistake everybody for a five per cent of idiots... It is a people. We live
with sacrifice, but honest, decent... If Albanians are poor, very poor, that’s another issue.
ANDROMEDA: I almost lost a finger. Because I fell off a stair in the bar. In order to reach the attic,
I made myself a stairs of wood and iron. And one day, it was winter. The telephone rang, and I came
down running through the stairs, I was wearing socks, I slipped... and since I had a hand on a sort of
handrail, which was made of iron, I became trapped... all the weight of my body... all of me... by
this finger. And suddenly I take it out, and I see it was... not only blood coming out, but I said to
me: I’ve lost a finger. And I associate this to the experience of being there. I had just moved to the
bar, which was a way of having new roots. Different from the experience of having been living at
my parent’s house, or in a shared apartment, to have your own place.
AMÉRICA: National life comes to a standstill, when you have avoided our contact with foreigners.
EUROPE: But historically we are indeed friends with the Greeks, brothers with the Italians... Four
thousand years… We are very close… There…
ANDROMEDA: I had vertigo truly. I got dizzy and didn’t have anything. It was a symptom.
AMÉRICA: What would you think of someone who, in the name of Peruvian identity, would reject
the plane, radium, the linotype, considering them exotic? His tendency to become Western is not a
capitulation of its nationalism.
EUROPE: But language came, and then came egoism for each country. When a new language
appeared... We are another house, another family... Because a country without a language... Belgium
speaks French, but is country... France the same... You cannot say that Belgians... if they are French.
ANDROMEDA: It was a time in my life, when I had the feeling that I could became insane.
AMÉRICA: How could, then, Peru, which has not ended yet its process of national formation,
isolate from the European ideas and emotions? Nationalism does not spring from the earth, does not
spring from race. Deep Nationalism is the only foreign and exotic idea that here is advocated.
ANDROMEDA: In spite of the difficult it is, it’s a good experience. I don’t regret anything. If I had
any regret, I would already be here.

The End

Translated by: Leonel Livchits