Books

Why are there still books?

Because they keep us afloat.

We build life boats out of books when drowning in an ocean of loneliness and fear.

We hang on to the words of the wise: to the print-out of their knowledge, the transcript of their soul, their heartbeat recorded between two covers.

The paperback takes us out of the painful now and brings us back to paper, with its prophets and poets, its stories and songs.

Books transfer us from our sick minds to a healthy world.

They transfer us from this sick world to a healthy mind.

Books are where we take shelter until it’s safe to come out again.

La vita non è solo pannelli solari

I was just about to take my bike to cycle to the library when the doorbell rang. It is precisely because of that kind of interruptions that I prefer to work at the library, because if you work from home, you are an easy prey to anyone who has anything to offer, be it alarm systems, lottery tickets or eternal bliss in Heaven after the Judgment Day. And there are also days where you can’t safely make it to lunchtime without having been handed a Christmas load of postal packages for the entire neighbourhood (who are wisely working away from home), which will convert your house into a sorting and distribution centre for the rest of the week.

So, to the library. But then the bell rang.

I opened the door and saw a skinny fifty-something in a green cardigan. He had greying hair, a narrow face and bags under eyes in which there was not a glimmer of hope or joy. The leaflet he had in his hands bore the same company logo as his vest. Whether I was interested in solar panels, he asked in Spanish with an Italian accent. Simultaneously, his non-verbal expression conveyed the message that vita was not half as dolce as was generally claimed in his mother tongue, or maybe it was when you could speed through Naples on a scooter, but not when you had to sell solar panels in Rafelbunyol.

Solar panels?

No me interesa, I said.

The Italian countered my short answer with an even shorter vale, gracias – something I had never before heard from anyone of his trade, at least not that early on in the interchange – and promptly walked away.

There I stood on my doorstep, bewildered like a girl who had rejected a boy who had asked her for a dance and then was crestfallen because he had not insisted. No, I didn’t want to buy a solar panel, but surely he could make some effort? (Next I was equally perplexed by my own reaction, because I always try to get the people on my doorstep to leave as quickly as possible, even if I have to start talking in a different language or make up a religious conviction in order to get them to move on).

I thought back to his depressed look. Was he so dejected because he wasn’t selling anything? I almost felt like going after him and making his day by ordering a solar panel, but of course this was not the right motivation to make investments of that order, and also, I couldn’t imagine a new housing estate in sunny Valencia being a challenging market for that kind of products.

Besides, I had to learn to set boundaries. The last thing I had been talked into buying was a ticket for a lottery that, as I learned after the purchase, would take place more than six months later (try to not lose a lottery ticket over the course of half a year). Since then, I had refused everything I had been offered, even the Fallas calendar, though it was offered by a teenage girl, which was really the last demographic that I, as a feminist, wanted to deny a win. Also, refusing anything that has to do with Fallas doesn’t exactly earn you much social credit in a village like this.

Would I shout after him: molto coraggio?

Or: life is more than just solar panels?

I just hope he soon comes across a sun that recharges his battery.

Huevos

I was at the supermarket, staring at a carton of eggs that I had in my hand. You see, I am one of those people who actually read the labels, and no purchase will be made without pondering over its nutritious and ethical consequences.

Suddenly an old man appeared next to me – short, fat, actually looked like an egg himself. He glanced at me playfully and said, “Así que te gustan los huevos…”

That literally means So you like eggs, but I’m afraid I have to add that huevos is also used as an everyday alternative to testicles.

I thought to myself, Man, thou knowest not what thou art getting thyself into. For a moment I looked into his expectant eyes, then turned my attention back to the box of eggs I had in my hand, and started off:

“I want to buy eggs from hens that are not in cages, free-range, you know, and now this box says gallinas camperas, but it’s not clear if that means that the hens can actually go outside, or if they are just fed with ecological fodder. And here on the side it does say that the number on the eggs refers to the modo de crianza, so the way in which the chickens are kept, but it doesn’t say what the code for those numbers is…”

The little man couldn’t get away fast enough.

That’ll teach him, trying to flirt with a millenial.

Strong Female Character

Fern Brady (1986) is a Scottish stand up comedian, who knows a lot more about autism than 99 percent of the rest of us, mainly because she has autism herself and has done her research – thoroughly, like a true autistic person.

A large part of that research is a study of her own life, which she talks about in this book with brutal honesty (never before have I read a non fiction book where the expression ‘brutal honesty’ was more fitting. I don’t know how she managed to get her parents’ consent to have this published and still be on speaking terms).

By page two I was laughing out loud. After that I kept registering the humour with which she described what had happened to her in her teenage and adolescent years, but the painful realisation of how our society and health care system (at least in those years) kept failing over and over again to deal with neurodivergent people hit me so hard that it was difficult to keep laughing. I finished the book in two days, and if during that time I hadn’t been dealing with a work deadline and the care of a sick child, I would have finished it within a day. 

The last part, in which Brady describes her meltdowns, made me cry. I am not autistic; if anything I might have undiagnosed ADHD. But the process of how Brady’s meltdowns are triggered, take over her mind and body, and cruelly interfere with her daily life felt very recognisable to me. I have been dealing with aura-migraines since I was ten, and have been on the same path of trying to keep my life together while everything and everyone around me seemed to work against me, trying to live up to standards set by a society that ignores the fact that those standards make me ill. 

Looking back now it makes a lot more sense why so many of us neurodivergent girls growing up in the eighties and nineties had to go through the same ordeals like self harm, depression, eating disorders, spending time in mental wards, getting in and out of toxic relationships, failing at higher education despite our intelligence, etc.

Thank you, Fern Brady, for writing this book. And thank you, Fern’s mum, for letting her publish it.

 Fern Brady, Strong Female Character, 287 p, Octopus Publishing Group

Something beautiful

When I got divorced, my ex took all the furniture, which wasn’t something I was upset about, to be honest. I had never really liked the sofa that much, for example. It was a big and grey, and it had fitted nicely in our previous appartement, because there, it was placed against the wall. In our house, however, it stood in the middle of the room – or rather it lay there, like a beached whale.

I knew exactly what kind of sofa I wanted instead: one with a somewhat organic shape, and a striking, preferably deep colour.

But the better you know what you want, the harder it is to find. I skimmed through dozens of second-hand apps and furniture shop websites, but couldn’t find the sofa of my dreams. One evening, on my way to a rehearsal in Alboraya, I passed a furniture shop. I looked in the shop window and there it was: the sofa that met all my criteria. A fake Chesterfield in dark green velvet. I bought it, no need to think twice.

Now that sofa is standing here in my living room, and it’s the only new piece of furniture I have bought. Everything else is second-hand: my grandma’s olive-green armchair, my other grandma’s dressing table, a charming little wooden side table, a slender and simple coffee table I picked up for five euros. Every evening I sit myself down amidst this old wood and shades of green, as if I am in the forest that the ancestral part of my brain is homesick for.

That sofa makes me happy. It is far from perfect: it’s a bit tight, the cushions can’t be washed, and the stuffing is already sticking out here and there. But its beauty comforts me, because every time I look at it, I feel at home.

You are not alone

This is the speech that Asad Rehman gave to the activists who were demonstrating at the 28th UN Climate Change Conference. The highlights are mine.

“Some ask us why do we care about the Palestinians? Why do climate justice groups mobilise in their millions from Pakistan to the Philippines, from Belgium to Brazil, from South-Africa to Sweden? Why is it our people from all around the world – black, white, brown, jew, muslim, christian – are taking to the streets?”

“It’s because we have seen the masks that have slipped. We have seen how the Palestinians are not even viewed as human beings. And in the faces of the Palestinians, for black, brown and indigenous people, we see our past, our present, and our future, of lives deemed less valuable than others, of an arc of 500 years of colonialism and racialised capitalism, of sacrificed people and of sacrificed land, of the powerful profiting from oppression, but then saying they don’t have any money for climate finance, but billions for bombs and bullets against the people.”

“And we say, we say to those powerful countries, who put words of human rights into texts over there, that no amount of empty words will ever erase your complicity. You not only wrote the blank check, you enabled this. You own this. You own this as much as those who are dropping the bombs on the terrified people of Palestine. So here, today, we, the peoples of the world say to the Palestinian people, the international community over there may have forgotten you, but you are not alone. You will never be alone, because we are all Palestinians. Ceasefire now! End settler colonialism! End apartheid! End the occupation! Free Palestine!”

House arrest

I’m under house arrest

for something I did or didn’t do

something I ate, maybe

who knows

I have a right to phone calls and a walk around the block

maybe tomorrow I’ll get a visitor

people on the outside tend to forget who is inside

when you are always missing at parties, outings, dinners,

at some point you are no longer missed

also: no one wants to hear the story

thirty years of punishment, probably life sentence

I must have done something wrong, right?

no one wants to hear:

every time I have a migraine, I go to jail

no one wants to hear:

this is how vulnerable we are

Reincarnation

This cat just started her fifth life (5/9):

The first one soft and vulnerable

The second innocent and scared

The third an attempt at adaptation

The fourth a mess (adaptation failed)

For the fifth I will not try being human anymore

From now on I will be the animals that I am:

A cat on the sofa

A dog in the fields

A bird in the curly branches of her favourite tree

The Annoying ADHD´er

He sat there at the back of the classroom, wobbling. One of the cutest boys in the school, smart little guy, unable to sit still. I had been working as a secondary school teacher for about three years and he was my first full blown ADHD´er. I genuinely felt sorry for him. Every class I watched him count down the minutes until the bell rang, after which he would jump up from his chair like a jack-in-the-box. I let him wipe the blackboard as often as possible.

Maybe my compassion was rooted in recognition. His restlessness struck a chord, although I didn´t know why. It wasn’t until two decades later, when a friend of my daughter was diagnosed with ADHD, that it started to dawn on me that I recognised so many of her problems in myself, albeit to a lesser extent, that the ADHD-label might apply to me as well. One of that girl’s biggest problems at the time was that her classmates had trouble accepting her. Sometimes they even bullied her. It wasn´t always hard to guess why:  having her next to you could be quite trying. She interrupted you, took things without warning, didn’t pay attention when you were talking to her, she made sudden, uncontrolled movements… By the end of a long school day, some children had had enough. Or as one of them said, “Sometimes she’s just too much.”

Fortunately, that girl managed to turn the tide before she graduated primary school. Her medication might have had something to do with that, but personally I think it was mainly her positive, ever cheerful attitude that silenced the bullies and drove the bystanders into her camp. It was just hard to stay mad at her: she was a prancing unicorn, strewing around flowers and confetti. You don´t find many kids like that on an average playground. Also, she was so creative that teachers couldn’t help but admire her instead of just scolding her.

I recognised myself in that too. Generally, I am labelled as pleasant and cheerful company (`bubbly´ was the adjective a fellow English teacher once used to describe me), but sometimes I am a bit too much (*). Especially when I take my foot off the brake for a moment or forget to turn on the filter. Then I jump from branch to branch around the forest in my head and my train of thought becomes impossible to follow for anyone in the outside world. I´ll come up with a whole story to tell about every little detail that comes into sight, and of course that story needs to be told immediately. I feel the movements of all the planets going through my body and spinning along with them is the only option. On moments like that I can see the introvert / straightforward thinker / tired person at my side taking slow, deep breaths in an attempt to stay calm until they can wave me goodbye.

So yes, sometimes I am a bit too much. Occasionally even downright insufferable. But always in a cute way.

(*) A friend once told me, “You are so much.”

“So much of what?” I asked.

He said, “So much of everything.”

Renunciar

It´s winter and the Palestinian and I are walking through the orchards around our adoptive Valencian village. The fruit trees are heavy with ripe oranges and tangerines. The air is fresh and electric blue.

“My grandparents had fields just like these,” he says. “In Palestine. They even exported to the United Kingdom.” In 1948 his grandparents were expelled from their land by Zionist militias, together with some 750.000 other Palestinians. From that moment onwards others reaped the harvest of their rich land and pocketed the profits.

“Wednesday I have to go for my papers,” he says. “Would you like to come along?”

“Of course,” I say. “I wouldn´t want to miss it for the world.” I feel honored that he´s asking me. He´s finally getting his DNI, his Spanish ID.

That Wednesday we drive to the courthouse of Massamagrell in his little red car. After passing a security agent we take a seat on a chair in the hall. When it´s our turn, we approach the counter, that is finished off with a glass wall that extends to the ceiling. It evokes the impression that we have come to a zoo to admire the two ladies who are behind the glass taking care of administration. The chubbier of them slides a few forms on recycled paper through a slot in the glass. The Palestinian has to fill out his nationality, his place and date of birth, his old name and his new name.

“It´s like receiving a birth certificate,” he whispers to me. “I get a new name.” In Spain people have two last names: one from their father and one from their mother. So the Palestinian´s new name will be his old name plus the last name of his mother. He fills everything out and then slides the papers back through the slot, where the woman behind the counter picks them up. From behind the glass we watch her walk to her computer and start typing diligently on the keyboard. She prints out some more forms and asks the Palestinian if he can check if everything is correct. He lets his index finger slide over the page as he reads. Then taps with his fingernail on the word PALESTINA. “I wasn´t born in Palestine,” he says. “I was born in Saudi Arabia.”

After his family got expelled, his parents worked wherever they got permission, first in Saudi Arabia, where their children were born, later in Syria. The Palestinian grew up in a refugee camp in Damascus, where his father worked as a pediatrician. He studied at Damascus University. Just before he graduated, the war broke out.

The woman behind the counter walks back to her computer and corrects the mistake. She prints the documents out again. “And now?” she asks. The Palestinian flips through the papers and nods. All correct. Then she passes him more documents to read through and sign.

To escape military service he fled to Egypt and from there to Gaza. He had never truly felt at home, and was in search of his identity, his country. Which he hoped to find in Gaza, Palestine. Reality hit him hard – in Gaza he was an outsider as well. Another war broke out: in the summer of 2014 he endured seven weeks of heavy bombing. Thousands died that summer. The Palestinian sat in an abandoned apartment, without water or electricity. He slept fully clothed and with his backpack next to him, ready to run when the bombs hit. He had to flee again, but at least he had seen Palestine. He had come a little closer to the land of his grandparents.

Again his finger lingers on a word. He taps it with his nail and looks at me. RENUNCIAR. Renounce. Give up. It says he has to renounce his Palestinian nationality. That´s what he has to sign. He looks at the document again. I see a tear gliding down the side of his nose. He signs the paper and slides it through the slot.

Through the university in Gaza he enlisted in an Erasmus exchange program in Spain. He received a three month visa, but that was barely enough to get out of Gaza: most of the time the border was closed, and hundreds of people were waiting to get out. Finally he managed to get on a bus to Cairo Airport by paying a trafficker. The day before his visa expired, he arrived at Barcelona airport, with nothing more than a backpack full of clothes and books. As soon as he arrived, he asked for asylum. For a year and eight months he was kept in limbo. Then he got the message he could stay. “I don´t know what would have happened to me if I hadn´t gotten asylum,” he once told me. “I had nowhere to go.”

That was seven years ago.

After some more work at her computer, the woman behind the glass now comes walking towards us again. She slides the Palestinian´s new ID-card through the slot. He picks it up and smiles; his eyes remain serious. “I´m thirty-two years old,” he says, “and for the first time in my life I have civil rights.” I don´t know what to say. We link arms and leave the building.

In a bar around the corner we order bocatas, baguettes. One with tortilla de patata for him, one with tuna and tomato for me. The friendly barkeeper folds a handful of olives in aluminum foil for us to take along. We eat our bocatas on a bench between the parking lot and a deserted playground.

“How do you feel now?” I ask him, olive oil dripping from my fingers after the first bites of tuna.

 “Responsible,” he says. He looks up from his bocata to the empty playground, then he looks at me. “Did you know that, as we speak, hundreds of Palestinian children are locked up in Israeli prisons?” I shake my head. I didn´t know that.

“And I am here,” he says. “I got here. I have privileges now. So I should do something with that. I cannot abandon them.”

We stay silent for a while, munching the bread.

“That word,” I say. “Renunciar. That´s just on paper. To me you are still Palestinian.” He smiles. This time his brown eyes smile along. We start cracking jokes about how he should behave to be considered a true Spaniard, and those jokes keep us laughing all the way home.