CRISTO RAUL'

 

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

 

What it takes for a man to play with the mind of a kid? And what for a God to play with the life of a man? There it is, the ball, in the hands of someone. You want that ball, precisely that ball, to be in one certain place. The guy who holds it in his hands he does not know you or your intentions, he simply plays with it and throw it as far as he can. So what? You shot against the ball your own ball to cause the right effect you’re looking for. A simple equation. No big deal.

The problem begins when the one who plays with your life he’s got not really good intentions. Because at the end of the day this life is a battle between God and Death.

Me? I was there, sitting in front of the ambassador of Spain in Islamabad.

“Yeah, you know? Things never happen to you until they happen to you. Stupid things only happen to the stupid people, you are not stupid, ergo, those stupid things don’t happen to you. And here I am, another stupid guy. What can I say? I lost my passport and I need a new one to keep my trip back to Europe”

“And you got no money”

“Nop”

“How are you thinking to make it?”

“Hell I know, I will. I just need a new passport. One thing at a time”

“Well, we have here a bit of a problem”

“Hell, a bit? You’re kidding me?”

“No. How did you say was your name?”

“Was? My name is! With or without passport I am the same stupid fellow”

“But your name is not stupid fellow. And you say you was from…”

“Holy shit, am not dead man. I lost my passport, not my life”

“You see, I need to know to whom I am to deliver the documentation required from me, and still I don’t know what is all this about”

“You don’t know?”

“You sound to me like a young fellow from Argentina. Who has learned his lesson pretty well, by the way”

“Thank you. Hell no…”

“You see. I don’t know for sure how much free time I have to waste this morning. What do you think?”

“As much as take you to fill my papers”

“And that is an order”

“I don’t know. Was it?”

“Now you are talking in past tense”

“You started”

“You know who you are talking to?”

“Am not stupid, I was just philosophizing”

“Not many in your country, philosophers, I mean”

“Where are you taking me? Feel like you leading me are out of the line”

“Got to be sure”

“Sure of what?”

“You are not who you’re saying you are”

“Your turn, to philosophize. What is this, a ping pong match?”

“You tell me”

“I’m telling you all the time. I want a new passport. I don’t like you much neither. So what? You are not a pedée, are you?”

“Now you getting on my nerves”

“I make love, not war. What’s wrong with you?”

“OK. Let’s star it all over again”

“What for?”

“The only thing you need is to pick up that phone, ring home, and tell my dad his stupid son is in your Embassy. Once he hear me, that’s it”

“And you want me to believe that the man on the other side will be your dad”

“Excuse me?”

“How will I know is your partner on the other side of the line?”

“This is too much”

“I’m not done with you yet. You see, you are a very curious case of acting. You are a real actor. You have mastered the Andalucian accent so well that I’m impressed”

“My ass is impressed too, but not for that reason. You got to cut this crap”

“Say that again”

“Cut the shit, man. Are you out of your mind? Have I interrupted something you were very much into it? What’s all this about? Do you receive all the Spanish people crossing that door, questioning their identity? What’s wrong with you, even a nuts can see than I’m an Andalucian man to the bones. You mean because my hair I cannot be a Spanish guy? I give you that, I haven’t seen many hairy Spanish guys around. So what?”

“You are really begging me to kick your ass out of here”

“No man, listen to me”

And then was when I lifted up the mind of the bastard straight on to the Moon. You know, there is a certain area of a Language pretty much reserved for the natives. To master the native slang of a country you got to live in that country and for many years. A living Language, as the Spanish, no doubt the richest Language in the Planet, is growing day after day, and the slang evolves daily with it. Spanish words got more than one meaning, mostly like all the intelligent languages of the world. No foreign student can master these changes because the National Academy of the Language don’t pick up those meaning, and even those new born words, until their lives have shown beyond question. Only a real born Spanish master those changings and can poured them on you as easy as we breath. Every Language got this native area where to break in cost many years. Me?, since am a kid I have the honor to be master in Spanish Slang, I can send you to hell in five hundred ways, and fool you with words in one thousand manners. It was not my intention to offend the Ambassador. I didn’t like the bastard for that matter. I mean, he was the Ambassador of Spain in Pakistan, and he couldn’t make a difference between the accent of an Argentinian and one Andalucian lad? Imagine the English Ambassador in China with a brain so mellow and fuck up as having no power of recognition and differentiation between the accent of a guy from Wyoming and a guy from South Africa. A fucking idiot, man. And I had it, right in front of me, a fucking idiot of that sort. You don’t know the difference between a guy from Manchester and another from London, and you are an Englishman? Bollocks! I mean, I was serious, I had no intention to offend the idiot, but the way I shot against in his face the entire dictionary of the Spanish Slang was like having a sparring session with Mohamed Ali. I didn’t take my eyes from his. I said it with all the seriousness the case required. It was becoming a case of life or death. And, tough stupid, I was a smart guy. If that motherfucker put me in the street and by any reason the Pakistani police got me without papers, I could pass years and years in jail until a change of guard in the Embassy sent that son of a bitch back to the shithole where he came from. I was thinking all this while shooting in his face the entire litany of beautiful words we have in our back pocket mind. And when I unloaded the gun on him I understood my plan was not working. He took it personal. He rang the bell and two security guards came straight in and kicked my ass of the embassy.

You see what I mean? God does not need to handle the ball, he plays with it while the ball is flying. No one sees who shot the ball hitting the one flying and where it came from that new ball. God moves his pawn on the board creating the circumstances which will lead the pawns from one place to the next.

Me, I was point blank. Black out. I sold my guitar to buy me the Visados from Pakistan to Greece. Suddenly my passport was gone. I had neither money to send a letter home. I was stranded between hell and hell. I went to the Embassy with my head focused in a new passport. I would make it, anyway, on my own from Pakistan to Greece. However, I had never before heard of a guy being kicked out of his country embassy because he lost his passport. As a matter of fact losing the passport was quite normal. I thought it would not happen to me, but it did. I woke up in the street that morning without nothing; my small road sack was gone. Now what?

I guess I had pretty much the look of an insane idiot sitting by the madhouse bench staring at the blue with an empty brain. Still, I was twenty years old, a very brown Mediterranean long hair and a white skin so European that anyone passing by couldn’t help looking at me. A student of my age approached me. From guy to guy I told him what had just happened with a heart still floating in the wide open space like a cloud entering in the storm.

“What are you going to do”, said he.

“I need paper, a pen, send a letter home, tell my dad to call the embassy”.

“Come home, write your letter. My parents will understand”.

They lodged me for that week. I didn’t know how long a letter from Pakistan to Spain and from Spain to Pakistan would take. I though a week. I dragged my body along the streets back straight to the Embassy.

“Dios mío! you again. Indeed you are a stupid young man. Don’t you know that I can call the local police and lock you up for assuming a fake identity? I give you that, you got some bollocks”

“Por favor, hear me. I have written a letter home. Have you got any phone call from my father?”

“Boy, you must be crazy for getting in jail”

“Please, this is the telephone, call my father”.

“Get the hell out of here, you fucking idiot”

And he rang the bell. The two security guards looked at me like I was a piece of a shit, and threw me like a dog to the street.

Wow, man, it was truth. As we grew and studied Politics, there was once upon a time when Politics was obligatory in the Lyceum, we learnt with curiosity that the rich people had as family business the Public Office. A son to the Government, another to the Army, another to the Church, and the idiot of the house … to a Consulate, an Embassy, a faraway post where his stupidity would not shame the family. Man, just the truth. Look at the world. When did the diplomats help to abort a war? How many times a war was declared because the stupidity of the diplomats? It was the most stupid world ever invented, a world ruled by rich people. Rich people care about no one, love nobody, and give a shit for nothing. And this is not old shit. Truth is never old. There I was, hanging through the streets of Rawalpindi, finding me a park where to live during the next two weeks. It was clear to me that a letter from Pakistan to Spain and back it took more than one week. I had to give time to time, stay cool, call not the attention on me.

I had notice since I entered Old British Imperial Zone that wherever the British made their home in the Far East they used to build a city for them, apart from the rest of the native population. This is why Pakistan has as capitals Islamabad or Rawalpindi. You can see this in New Delhi too. The New City stand where the British lived. The Old cities is where the cows hang through the streets. Anyway, at that point it was useless to me my philosophizing. To eat every day without a rupee in my pocket and to sleep in the open without blanket or jacket, that was a challenge. Bu it was summertime. That was the great news. It is hot in Pakistan in the summertime, you can sleep beneath the stars without getting too cold. You don’t sleep much anyway. I found me a park with a fountain to drink and wash my face. The eating affair I solved it out getting out of the city; there were plants and flowers I could live upon. In Goa I loved to walk through the hills and taste fruits I never heard of. I never got killed by their flowers or their pulps. Their colors were amazing, and their taste, though wild, made me feel groovy. I used to eat roots and flowers since am a kid. The Mediterranean Flora has plenty eatable plants and the petal of the flowers are healthy too. I was strong, and I got used to hold on my hunger for few days. Of course there was the people; a young guy like me hanging around in the night because I couldn’t’ sleep, it was not very safe. People there sold the hashish in the streets, legally, and they smoked it all the time. I could see in their eyes that their invitation to stop and have a chat with them it was not healthy to me. In fact, in and out of the city I had fought my way through against bastards who thought they could touch me as I was a woman. Man, I nearly got in a killing story with three bastards in one of those funny trucks. In that Muslim Culture where women are banned from the adolescent sexual relations, men got used to fuck their young males, and they see it natural. Right from the start I played the British game, live with them, but keep them away from you.

However, after two weeks trying to be invisible, a goal easy to conquer in a western city, nearly impossible in a eastern city where even when I was sitting the people came up to me to say hello and have a chat, I made up my mind and took the decision to get back to the embassy.

Man, if by any chance that idiot told me one more time that me is not me, I swore to heaven that I would jump on him and be whatever. I was fucked anyway. I thought in crossing the border Pakistan-Iran, which probably could be done. But there was thousands of kilometers through the desert. How could I make it without sleeping bag? And I could not hold on myself for very long time in the city without finally call the attention of the police. Aleja jacta est. He gave me what I wanted or I jumped on him. And I meant it. I was absolutely serious. The Monsoon was hitting the sky so hard that I could no sleep at all in the night. And when I tried in the day there were, always, someone coming to say hello to the white hippy.

I rang the embassy’s door bell. Strange enough the security guard left me in. I had figured out a whole scene to happen before they did so. They led me to the room where everything happens, and told me to sit. From there, to the jail or to Spain. I understood that immediately. Suddenly the motherfucker came in, sat in his great throne, never looked me in the eye, got a paper, a safe-conduct, he said, a ticked for a plane back top Malaga, put some rupees on the table, and a couple of bananas. Man, a couple of bananas! What I was now, a fucking monkey. But I kept my mouth shut. The affair was over. He gave me the direction of the hotel, the famous Green Hotel, where I would stay till the day of my flight, he personally would take me to the airport. And that was. Not even a word of sorry. He never looked me in the eye. He called the security guard, they led me out, and that was. I knew that protesting would not help. I wanted my passport not a safe-conduct. But I was in no position to discuss the matter. Even if it was in his power to give me a new passport and some money, my father would had never signed other but me coming back home. That idiot had stabbed me to the soul. I didn’t want to get back to Spain because my military service. I was supposed to be in the army. I was a student, I was taking a sabbatical year; my father had connection in the army, and he had managed to arrange my situation. I would do my army time once I got back from India. And this is what I was avoiding to all cost. I didn’t want to do the army thing. One year or two years locked in a fucking cage for no good. I was the guitar man. I had people waiting for me in England and in France. There was my future, not in that Spain where to be a rocker was to be a kind of a shit.

All was over. I was conquered. There was no way out. My anger became a fire. And my soul was burning. I swear to God that if in that day and in that moment when I was flying Spain from Pakistan I had a cluster of nuclear bombs in my pocket, I would had them all on free fall over that name and flag. Family, friends, everything was like a dream. I was where I wanted to be, and suddenly I was in nowhere. My dream was over. I hadn’t set my ass in the country when the military got my by the bollocks and said it to me very clear: I was not in jail already because my dad, but in a few months’ time they were expecting me to do 18 months in the Navy. I was free under my father’s parole.

That’s how I entered in the greatest crisis of my life. The fire burning my soul grew and grew and had to explode. My soul was on the epicenter of the volcano. People in that situation give themselves to drugs, or alcohol, or religions, or whatever. I was not people. There was only One who I had to blame for all this. Where He was? I knew where He was and He was going to hear me.

One morning I woke up on fire and went straight to the mountain. People kneel before God, or throw themselves to the ground like cowards begging for their lives. He made me to His Image. And you do stay on your feet before your equal, right? Not superior to no one, not inferior to nobody. What has the Sun that I don’t have? Or the stars that I miss? Do you see the Moon getting on her knees before her Creator? There was a lot of things to complain and to be said in the face, from Creation to Creator. My soul was to die, but it would do it fighting to the last breath of mine.

The Sun and the Sky, the Air and the Seas, Mother Earth too, are my witness. I did call on God, my Creator, and my words reached their destination. The fire burning my soul, it was Him who kindled it. He made my soul from my mother’s womb. In His hands my soul is like a guitar, He need just to play a tune to take me where He wants to see me. And to see me in that mountain, calling the Creation to be my witness, this was the effect of His move.

And it came to happen, that He came up, He cooled my soul, and suddenly it was me, me again, full of life and strength, conceiving new dreams and staring at the future with the same wild eyes with which I faced the journey to India. Ergo, I wasn’t to let myself taken to that cage, call it Navy or Zoo.