Russia, 1978

“The first glass of vodka goes down like a post, the second like a falcon and the third like a little bird.” – Russian Saying

Photo by Gerardo Meléndez

He pointed at the largest of three glasses in front of him, indicating a waitress to fill it to the top with pure vodka. At once, the other women took away the two smaller glasses from each of the guests, and proceeded to pour the burning liquid into the remaining one, in an exact imitation of what the Commander had just ordered for himself.

The guests went silent, stood up, and fixed their attention on the man whose job was no less than leading the whole of the Soviet Union’s artillery. He was an extremely powerful individual, with a physique that revealed both his years of military training and his ethnic Georgian origins. There was no one in the region who could ever dare to question his authority; no one, except perhaps for the Colonel sitting next to him.

The General spoke in a confident tone. He directed his words to the fourteen people sharing the table with him, in particular to the three visitors from the Mexican Army who were being treated as his guests of honor. A Georgian interpreter translated every sentence from Russian to perfect Spanish as the speech developed, explaining that the Commander was flattered by their visit, and expected to build stronger ties between both military bodies.

Once he was finished, the Commander raised his glass and again pointed at it, but this time he slid his finger from top to bottom, in a slow and almost dramatic way. The interpreter told the Mexicans that this was the traditional way of ending a toast, and that all guests were expected to empty their glasses as it had been suggested by the General.

The Russians drank easily and gladly, and continued to eat and chat as usual through dinner. Some of the Mexicans, on the other hand, were neither used nor prepared for this kind of drinking, and began to feel somewhat lightheaded after complying with the protocol. It was going to be a long night.

My grandfather sat down after drinking his shot and gazed at the Colonel, who had been sent from the Kremlin with the mission of reporting everything he saw and heard during the Mexicans visit. He was a spy within his own people, reporting to the higher ranks in Moscow, and everyone, even the Commander, respected him to a degree that bordered fear.

A quintessential Russian soldier, the Colonel was tall and blonde, extremely serious, quiet, and not very friendly. When he showed the Mexicans the artillery facilities, he was especially proud of the artificial puddles installed in every dorm entrance, obliging the barefoot soldiers to step into the freezing cold water whenever they entered or left their room: ‘it builds their character’, was all that he added. He, of course, wasn’t very popular.

The Colonel caught my grandfather’s eye, just as he was wondering how to give the Georgians the information he intended to deliver without it being intercepted. They studied each other for a few seconds, oblivious to the events that were developing at the table. Their psychological war was only interrupted by a sudden silence that was too deep to be ignored.

One of the Mexican officers had stood up, glass in hand, inhibitions lost after some drinks. He started speaking about his impressions of the USSR and the interpreter quickly began translating. In spite of the large amount of alcohol he had ingested, his speech was actually good, and the Georgians quickly began smiling and applauding as he kept on praising their country. By the end of the intervention he took the only glass in front of him and pointed at it, imitating the Commander’s actions at the beginning of dinner. Everyone went crazy; they cheered as he slid his finger from top to bottom, and drank until their own glasses were empty.

Even the Colonel was caught in the euphoria, and didn’t notice when a single paper note was handed by my grandfather to the interpreter, and then from the interpreter to the Commander. The rest of the night went on as smoothly as a night with Mexicans, Russians, and vodka can go.

The book

'What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not.'

-St. Augustine, Confessions

Although the place where I stayed was situated relatively close to the Jules Joffrin métro, I refused to take the Paris subway unless it was imperative. Not only can one learn more from most countries by walking their streets than from visiting their museums or reading about their history, but it is much easier to find oneself involved in interesting situations if one develops the habit of walking through paths that lead to unknown places.

This last thought crossed my mind as I entered the antique bookstore, compelled by the thought of closely examining the main piece on display: a 1686 French translation of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, a book that I had become obsessed with after a philosophy course in my freshman year at University.

Photo by Gerardo Meléndez

The air in the room was dense, full of the scents of dust, wood, and books. Wherever I turned I could see yellowed pages with varied calligraphies, ancient volumes stacked in shelves that seemed to be about to explode, writings in every language imaginable. The orange sunset, glowing through the windows, gave the room a warm and calm appearance.

A bell attached to the door frame announced my entry. No one came right away, so I ventured deeper inside the store. Soon I stepped into a studio, where a completely absorbed old man studied a manuscript under special lighting and with the aid of a monocle. A black cat lay lazily at his feet, fixed its bright eyes on me for a second, and then decided to go back to its standard task of sleeping. The man hadn’t noticed my presence, until someone spoke behind me.

‘Bonjour monsieur’, said a soft female voice. I turned around to find an extremely beautiful woman in her early twenties. She had delicate features and a fragile constitution, blonde hair, gray eyes, and a look that made me think that, like me, she was old inside; this was matched by her seriousness and the formality with which she addressed me. ‘Puis-je vous aider?’ she added after my silence –‘Can I help you?’

I was, of course, speechless. I opened my mouth and tried to utter a more or less understandable sentence in French, but nothing came out. She looked at me inquisitively, ‘Monsieur?’ she repeated. I tried again, and fortunately this time I was able to mutter some words: ‘Augustin, Les Confessions’. Her expression transformed slowly, and a smile appeared on her face after a few seconds. I smiled back, hoping I had made myself clear. She looked at the old man, who limited himself to nodding before fixing his attention on the document again. ‘Suivez-moi’ she said -‘Follow me’.

She took me to a small room away from the old man’s studio, and asked me to wait. A minute later she was back with the piece, holding it close to her body as if it were a treasure of her belonging. She placed the volume in front of me and then gazed into my eyes, I felt as if she were searching for something inside my soul. Then she spoke in English, with a heavy French accent: ‘Do you think about it too? Do you wonder about time?’

I gazed back at her, and it was my turn to try to find something in her depths. Perhaps she had stayed up all night many times, angry, anxious, trying to find an answer for the question. Maybe she had considered the idea of every second existing for eternity: still drops of time not flowing, but staying, and our lives being the illusion of their movement. Possibly, she had explored the thought of every act repeating itself an infinite amount of times, which is the same as saying that it never happened. Or the notion that anything that could happen at any moment will eventually occur or has occurred, in the next time, the previous time, or the other times, if there are such things.

-‘Oui’ I said, trying to get over my perplexity, ‘it is all I can think about sometimes’.

She looked down and opened the book, carefully turning its pages until she reached the fourteenth chapter. ‘Voilà’, she said, almost in a whisper. And there it was, the question that would always haunt us:

Qu’est-ce donc que le temps?

Behind the veil

Photo by Gerardo Meléndez

Her penetrating green eyes were locked on mine for a couple of seconds, and then she looked down while rushing past me, getting lost within the busy crowd of the Médina’s market. Her body was covered from head to toes by a distinguishing white robe, her face sheltered by a veil, leaving only her eyes exposed; this wasn’t strange attire for a woman in the middle of an Islamic country, yet there was something about her that didn’t quite fit in. I’ll never know how I could possibly tell that by only looking at her eyes, but I kept thinking about it for the whole day as I explored the surroundings.

Armed with a map in Arabic and a bottle of water, I walked across the city trying to decipher its secrets. I visited Bahia Palace, where the sequences of arches and the details in every brick made me think of infinity. I then moved to Badii Palace, where gold and onyx were once traded for sugar, though today only ruins of columns and mud walls remain. I circled the perimeter of the fortified city, and found a garden with plants from every country of the world; there I rested under the shade of a fellow Mexican tree and then decided to go back to the riad where I was staying.

Morocco can get quite hot in the middle of July. Perhaps this explains why over a hundred orange juice stands have been able to proliferate one next to the other in the city square, offering exactly the same product for a modest amount of dirhams. Stand-owners call tourists in different languages (not unlike every other store owner in the city), trying to guess their nationalities and offering relief for the heat: ‘A glass of juice for 5 dirhams amigo!’ -Sometimes, once the glass is empty, the owner offers to refill it a bit and gives the tourist a wink, ‘just remember to come back to stand number 39’, he’ll say while pointing up to the only mark that differentiates his business from all the others. The wide eyed tourist will drink his juice in the middle of the show involving snake charmers, monkey traders, fakirs, and fortune tellers that is Marrakesh.

That day had been a particularly hot one. The shade of the Mexican tree had helped me recover, and a glass of orange juice from stand number 79 (my favorite) had kept me alive on the way to the riad, but once I arrived there, all I really wanted was a fresh shower and a change of clothes. I walked through reception and greeted Shazam, one of the employees, then ran up to the large room I shared with other young travelers, and reached for the bathroom’s doorknob, but as I did someone opened the door from inside.

She was about as tall as I was and around my age; her brown hair -still wet from the shower- was kept up, leaving her neck and shoulders visible. Her skin was fair and smooth, especially around her face, and her eyes were piercing green, framed by long dark eye-lashes. I hesitated for a second, fixing my attention around her eyes. She smiled almost imperceptibly, and then I noticed that she was only wearing a towel.

I turned around and closed my eyes, trying to apologize, not quite knowing what to say. She laughed as she walked to her bed, giving no importance to my babbling, and sat down in a relaxed position. I was clearly much more embarrassed than she was.

After a moment of silence, she finally spoke: ‘I saw you in the market today, do you remember me?’ -It was her after all…

-‘I think I do… but you were all covered’

-‘Yes, but I know you saw me walk by, and I noticed you too. You looked… different’. This remark took me by surprise, partly because very often locals thought I was also an Arab, asking me things in their language and getting surprised once I replied in English; why would I be any different? On the other hand, I had also found her unusual when I first saw her. ‘What is your name?’, she went on.

-‘My name is Gerardo; I’m from Mexico, how about you?’

-‘My name is Sophie, I’m from Belgium and I came to visit some relatives. Why are you here?’

The answer I gave to her question got us talking for a long time. I took my shower and when I came out Sophie was wearing jeans and a top. She had covered her hair with a light purple scarf, but her face was still visible. ‘I dress like this when I’m in Belgium, the scarf is optional’ she told me as we zipped through our glass of whiskey marocaine (sweet hot mint tea), watching the sun come down from the rooftop of the riad.

Photo by Gerardo Meléndez

We spoke as if we had known each other for a long time, talking about nothing really important, yet concealing no secrets. A few hours after dark we went back to the room and climbed into our respective beds without issuing a word. It had been an exhausting day, and I fell asleep even before my head touched the pillow.

I woke up early the next morning with the call for prayer and managed to see Sophie wearing her white robes and adjusting her veil as she left the room. Before stepping outside she turned and stared at me for a second, we both nodded, and knew that was a good enough good bye.

I took my backpack and walked down to the reception, where a small group of adventurers had already gathered, waiting for the van that would take us to Sahara.

The Fog

Photo by Quinn Ryan Mattingly

It was surprisng that some of the bus passengers were actually able to sleep despite the irregularity of the road. I conjectured that ex-communist tracks weren't much better built than Mexican ones as my head bounced from one side to the other, hitting the window in periodic intervals of time. My conjecture survived several minutes of testing, until I decided that any attempt to fall asleep would be futile, and that the seemingly sleeping passengers were only fooling themselves.

At two in the morning we were somewhere between Bohemian and Hungarian lands, making our way to Budapest. Layers of fog continued to grow thicker as we approached our destination, and the fitful path wasn't improving. The old man to my left kept shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he couldn't sleep either, it seemed like there was someone to talk to at least...

George was 83; he was Canadian and had been in the British Army for most of his life. After his retirement he moved back to Canada with his wife (who passed away a few years ago), planning to spend their last years together in the shores of Vancouver. They didn't have any offspring or close relatives, but they were happy. George suddenly found himself alone in the world, in the winter of his life.

Our friend then did the most logical thing he could think of: he enrolled at the University of British Columbia for a combined major in Archaeology and Sociology, spending his summer holidays as a backpacker. I would just like to say it again: he was 83.

He had been in London for the last couple of weeks visiting some distant cousins, but he became bored and decided to try something more exotic. Prague proved to be good enough for a few days, but now he wanted to try Budapest. Unable to find a more suitable schedule, he bought a ticket for the overnight bus we were riding, managed to get there at the last minute, and occupied the seat next to me.

We didn't stop talking for the remaining of the ride. George told me of his adventures in Korea and Africa while serving the Army, about his lessons in UBC, and his recent backpacking trips. We exchanged travelling experiences, discussed military strategy and political affairs, and wondered together about the meaning of life. For hours I read from that library of wisdom and experiences just as I am used to read from The General when I'm home. By the time we arrived, I felt like I had learned an invaluble life lesson, the sort of lesson that one can't type down because the only way to understand it is to experience it. I felt I had learned something I had been waiting to learn for some time.

It was 7 am when we finally walked outside. The fog was so thick that we weren't able to see anything further than three steps away. The air around us was completely white -the mist and rays of light interacted in such a way that it all had a dreamlike appearance. It was as if time had stopped still.

Neither of us said goodbye, we just walked into the fog and became invisible to one another. I kept walking until the bus and the rest of the passengers became invisible too, shadows of people drifting away like ghosts.

The Desert

Photo by Gerardo Meléndez

I looked up in awe and contemplated the starriest sky I had ever laid my eyes on. I gazed in disbelief at the uncountable number of luminous dots casually scattered through the galaxy, as the wind carefully displaced the sand from one dune to another, shaping the surreal landscape around me.

The Touaregs –the people from the desert- were amused by my fascination with the celestial vault, and didn’t care enough to suppress their laughter when I started dancing in circles trying to capture the essence of the firmament at once. For a moment I felt as if my eyes and brain were not able to process the beauty of every ephemeral instant; within the mighty nothingness I felt, once again, insignificant.

I chose to stay outside of my tent for the night. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep knowing where I was anyways, so I took an improvised mattress with me and spent the next few hours in the company of no one. A year earlier, if I had been told that I’d be spending a night in the Sahara, I wouldn’t have believed it.

The sequences of events that lead to a specific point in time are not always clear, and are never predictable. Our lives depend on every act in our past, yet sometimes a single episode in the chain of events that determine us can drastically alter the flow of our destiny.

This kind of thoughts went through my mind as I waited for the sunrise in the world’s vastest sand desert. I tried to trace back that single critical point in the progression when my life took a turn and converged to the moment I was living: it had been before the camel ride through the dunes, the Throats of the Todra and the nights in the Médina; before the immigrant in Barcelona, the choir in London, the old man of Budapest, and Prague’s cathedral; the convergence had been stronger after dinner in Saint Petersburg, but I was sure it preceded the sunset in Venice and the concert in Paris, the ice of the Arctic, and the cold waters of Stockholm; perhaps it was closer to China Town in San Francisco, walking through the streets of Harlem at night, or racing up the Great Wall in Beijing.

For all I know, the vital event I am looking for could be hidden in an innocent sentence I read in Borge’s Aleph, or in the day The General –my grandfather- met Haile Selassie in Addis Abeba, before I was born.

I hope I'll find my crucial moment within these recollections. You're invited to read my stories, and perhaps you'll find some connection to your own moment somewhere inside of them.