SUFUS HUFUS - migration is not a crime
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I'm a ghost and I'm in the most visited city in the
world, here where the amount of recorded reality exceeds by far the physical
reality. The area with more number of clothing stores and mobile-phone shops
per square meter. No dark corners around here. All the spaces are taken.
Everything is business. Even the surveillance cameras, are a kind of business.
The entrances to some bigger buildings in the back of the shops are barricaded
with security codes, there are no escaping streets, all kind of alleys are surrounded
with railings and in the main street, the construction works, are covered with
huge placards, hiding the excavations, like the this ones on the back of the
Totenham Court subway station. I\u2019m already peeking through the breaches, I want
to see some real reality, some chaos, mud and scrap metal. Little mans with
helmets and green waistcoats, the striking of pneumatic hammers, the thrusts of
underground backhoe loaders and the welding machines, dropping their sparks
over all this wreckage, construction and deconstruction. I wish I could be
there, improving their methods of work, but no, I have to return to a more
ordinary reality. I notice that in this area, one of the ways for the traffic
is cut off, follow only one direction, and the red double-decker buses passing
slowly, one after other, almost touching, the people inside watching the
tourists, and the tourists watching them. And this monochromatic red of the
buses, also present in public works or telephone booths, it\u2019s depressing to me.
But let\u2019s forget that. Let\u2019s get away from here. Getting through the masses.
to differentiate the bodies, observe their movement, their apparently
standardized actions. Now passing in front of the blue \u201cCarPhone Warehouse\u201d.
The front of the store advertising \u201ca year of free home broadband'. Here, a
dude in a Jamaica-colored hoodie, speaks on his cell phone in front of the shop
window, ignoring the people around, forced to bump against him in order to
pass. Many Asian tourists, European
tourists, African tourists. Everybody can be a tourist. Wanna-be tourists.
Pseudo businessmen of all nationalities, bluish suits; girls in cleavage and
knee out; T-shirt boys with letterings like \u201cJust do it now\u201d; \u201cGood girls go
to heaven Bad girls go to the moon\u201d; \u201cSometimes pretending to be normal\u201d; \u201cI'm
not rude I'm just saying what everybody is thinking\u201d; \u201cNot perfect, just
limited edition\u201d; \u201cWarning! explicit contention\u201d; \u201cStop following me!\u201d; \u201cPizza
princess\u201d; \u201cBlink if you want me\u201d; \u201cObey\u201d; \u201cToo much self control\u201d; \u201cetc.\u201d and
so on. Some of them with colorful haircuts, sharp hair, curly hair, no hair at
all. All kind of accessories attached to the clothes. People looking inside
shops. Others waiting in corners. Munching. Chatting. Yawning. No one caring
about my presence. The only thing they care is their phones. Some of them
pushing suitcases. Suitcases pushing them. Polished jeans carrying legs with
gait that reflect the personality of the user, sometimes manly, sometimes
nervous, calm, confused, relaxed, curious, late, pre-mature, disintegrated,
attentive, sleepwalking, tired, greedy, sly, self-centered, bizarre,
normal-looking individuals\u2026 From \u201cThe Tottenham\u201d pub, big-bellied Englishmen
come out with haughty eyes, and others with minor bellies and shifted eyes,
some enter in the next Mcdonald's. Meat hungry, after a day of work organizing
information, serving as a fitting piece in a virtual hierarchy fed on
petrol-coffee, lewd looks, black humor, and an authoritarian desire for
self-realization through the usage of various types of plafonds and bank cards,
trading and recreation membership cards, discount-bought happiness cards and
premiums for the worker of the week and the tourist of the month.
But,
also me, go into this Mcdonald's to ask for numbers, numbers that even the
store manager can't say now, or he's not too put up with me, but then he goes
inside his office, maybe to use the internet, and when he sees that I'm already
consuming something, a pig's vomit ice cream, he comes goes back to me and confides
that this M. brand, is able make about 190 hamburgers a second worldwide. And
every ten hours a new store of the group is inaugurated somewhere in the world.
And more this more that, numbers and statistics about human repetitions. So, I
offer the ice cream to a lap dog and sneak out from there. I\u2019m now in
front of the \u201cCornish Bakehouse\u201d, where we can pamper ourselves with flour and
sugar imported from South America to China
and from China to the States
and from the States to Oceania and from Oceania finally into Europe,
exclusively to this shop decorated with a collection of torture instruments,
recontextualized as art. And if I was a gypsy, I would spit on the floor, after
eat this bread, but I don't worry about politics now; let\u2019s rather go for the souvenir
shops, here you can get the London-eye made in china, or a London-eye made in
India or a London-eye made in Indonesia, the more funny and cheap. Or of
course, the famous \u201cbig-ben\u201d working as a radio-alarm, a dwarf \u201cbig-ben\u201d tower
that can serve also as ash-tray. And next to the souvenir shops, some t-shirt
stores showing off pop-rock icons, slogans of freedom, mysticism at the price
of rain, not forgetting that the weather is also a big deal. But for those who
don't want to spend a lot, we have one-pound shops where you can buy a Buddha
with magic glasses like those on the display at the
51-52. This, behind the YB bus stop where you can take bus 10 to Hammersmith,
or the 98 to Willesden Gare, or the 73 to Vitoria, or the 7 to East Acton, or
the 390 to Notting Hill Gate. Not Now. Still on oxford street, next to a Thai
massage shop, we have that green and yellow sandwich shop, the current sandwich
leader in the world, according to their advertising. I also went in to look at
the honor rollers and learned that there are about 38,000 equal restaurants in
98 countries around the world, so I figure that it is represented in only 21
countries, less than the Donald\u00b4s, but with about 4000 more stores than the
previous one. And that's it, I'm a tourist like you, but I eat no sandwiches
without money. I go through some exchange offices, and try to exchange some
Russian coins, they laugh in my face. I do the same. And not even ten meters I
have walked and we are facing another world\u2019s leaders, ladies and gentlemen,
that\u2019s the magnificent "Starbucks", the largest coffee shop in the
universe, according to the sky-news, this obviously reveling that the number of
hipsters is already surpassing the number of tourists in some developed
countries. That is, all that remains from the hippie world peace campaigns of
the sixties is now here in this ultra-tasty-biodegradable-caffeine. Brown sugar
and boredom, that\u2019s what is it all about. And directly across the street,
making direct competition with the Americans, we have the English brand
"Caffé Nero", frequented more or less by the same type of people as
the previous one, but with a more look classic look, perhaps, still attached
with a certain Italian glamour. Muffins, croissants, paninis, exotic sandwiches
ready to pick up and take away, from the red rubbish bags, at the front door.
And a sign remembering you of Soho
Street, and Chinatown.
Not now, not now, let\u2019s rather watch some publicity on the TV screens of the
Halifax bank. It\u2019s all about buying a car, and a house and a pair of rain
boots, and travel the world without getting out of your bed. Across the street,
the headless mannequins of \u201cThe London Perfume Company\u201d are here to remind us
that perfume promotes creativity of the mind and freshness in the soul. Then
you can skip the \u201cBody Shop\u201d, and the \u201cPizza Hut\u201d, and the \u201cCurrys Pc World\u201d.
Already on the intersection of Newman
Street, I notice the thongs of the \u201cIntimissi\u201d
store, right in front of the heartbroken \u201cHarmony\u201d, two blond-haired ladies in
long silk dresses pointing the latex instrumentation. Now passing through the
\u201cFoot Locker\u201d, \u201cUnited Colors Of Benetton\u201d, which has balloons saying \u201c70%
off\u201d, then there's "Clarks" that reminds me of the movie of the same
name, the "Claire's" with the chalala style. Then the commons
"T-Mobile", "Phones 4 u", "Vodafone" and
"Virgin Media". A bookstore named 'Waterstone's where people doesn\u2019t
look like book readers, more like sports people, and I don't know how many
souvenir shops more after this, so, I\u2019m getting bored. But the description will
continue in your head as I come across one of these taxi-bicycles with three
wheels. The driver wink at me while slurping spaghetti, long beard, tanned
skin, pieces of spaghetti getting stuck on his beard. He says that it\u2019s not his
bike, he only receives commission over each fair, but he can charge what he
want, it\u2019s not the distance that makes the price, obviously, that are many
other differentials in that equation. Anyway, he is talking on the phone now,
video conference, it\u2019s his girlfriend, she is in Kuala Lumpur, on the other
side of the world, he shows me her face, on the video, a kind of fluffy face,
her eyes exuberantly painted with black shadows, I say to her some words in her
language, she gets all enthusiastic, revealing that she also want to come to
Europe, but not to London, she want to come to Berlin, \u201coh, why Berlin\u201d, I ask
\u201cbecause the big angel\u201d she says \u201cwhat angel\u201d I ask, \u201cthe one the was moved by
the Nazis and survived the war\u201d; \u201chave no idea about that\u201d; \u201chaven\u2019t you seen
the movie Wings of Desire from Win
Wenders, with Nick Cave, the Australian singer\u201d; \u201cNo, I guess, but it says
something to me\u201d; \u201cwell, well\u201d interrupts her so-called \u201cboyfriend\u201d, taking the
phone away from my hand and moving it closer to his ear, he speaks softly now,
no more swaggering,\u2026 he even moves bit away from me in order to get some
privacy, then he turn to me again, covering the phone with the hand and saying
\u201cshe is a professional singer\u201d, and keeps his communication, again hiding, and
smiling, smiling to the showcases. I get away, not wanting to be there
disturbing anything, or holding the candle, as some people say\u2026 I pass
\u201cH&M\u201d; \u201cBoots\u201d; "Gap", "Mango" and "Zara",
looking the dead mannequins, and still thinking about that angel conversation,
I have been to Berlin yes, but did I miss the angel? \u201cWas it big? And why was
it been moved by the Nazis? Were the Nazis trying to save an angel? And a movie
with Nick Cave, cave like cavern? What was she talking about? Well, I know Wim
Wenders, now I remember, I have seen that movie \u201cParis-Texas\u201d, but I just
remember the beginning, the guy walking on the desert, on the railway\u2026 or was
it the end? And what kind of woman was that? A cinephile? Wasn\u2019t she too
cultured to be flirting with that guy? But did I know the guy? Were they
really flirting? Maybe she was just a random internet friend\u2026 and he? Who was
he? What was he pretending? Was he trying to convince her to come in
London? Did she understand what his job was? Was she ok with that? And why
am I bothering with all that?\u201d Over. I need to change shoes. My feet are
hurting. I\u2019m about to enter inside \u201cZara\u201d, but as I stand here, wondering, the
guy with the taxi-bicycle catch up with me again. Now he has a Dr. Peppers can
in the hand, drinking and dropping it out, as he drives the bicycle. Right now
he stops his Mercedes by my side and
invites me to get in. \u201cFor free\u201d he says. He takes me to Hyde park. The park was established
by Henry VIII
in the 16th century and used as a hunting ground. Now, not so
different. We seat on the grass. Smoking a spliff. I
take off my shoes. He tells me his story. Actually he came from the
Caribbean\u2019s, in a yacht, with some a rich guy, a Dutch. \u201cThe journey took ages,
we stopped in all the islands, the Dutch were looking for some kind of
treasure, yes he was crazy, in the middle of the sea he would get drunk and
start yelling at nothing, we fought a lot, we almost killed each other, finally
the yacht sank, result: we finished up in a kind of desert island, we thought
it was desert in the beginning, but no, there was police there also, result:
and we ended up in jail, both arrested for trafficking, I didn\u2019t even know what
we were trafficking at the time, but after I came to understand, the yacht
didn\u2019t sink because of the big waves or the weight of the big wine bottles, we
were attacked, from underwater\u2026 that\u2019s what it was\u201d; \u201coh you guys were attacked
by, let\u2019s say, a submarine? \u201c; \u201cI guess you can say so, something like that, I
never came to understand totally\u201d; \u201cand how it was in the jail?\u201d; \u201cterrific,
and good too, but I don\u2019t want to talk about that, pardon me, what about you,
what you doing in this city? Are you a tourist?\u201d; \u201cYes, affirmative, you can
say that, I\u2019m a big tourist, have been around for a long time, not in this
country, mainly in Africa\u2026\u201d; \u201cso are you from Africa?; \u201cI guess you also can
say so\u201d; \u201cfrom where precisely?\u201d; \u201cI\u2019m not from a country, I\u2019m more like an
orphan, I don\u2019t know where I was born exactly, and it\u2019s not important\u2026 but I
grew up in the Heliopolis\u201d; \u201cwhat\u2019s that?\u2019\u201d; \u201cthe city of the dead\u201d; \u201cWhat?
Camon\u2026 you joking with me just because I told you a true story about desert
islands!?\u201d; \u201cNo, relax, I\u2019m not very flabbergasted by your story\u2026 this things
happen\u2026 I accepted it, and about Heliopolis, you can check the veracity of it
in internet\u2026\u201d; \u201cI will do\u201d; \u201cso should I tell you more?\u201d; \u201ctell me!\u201d;
\u201cHeliopolis, al-Qarafa, it\u2019s the
biggest slum in the world... also a huge cemetery, or a group of cemeteries
transformed into a city, the original dwellers of this city were Sufi people
actually, the tombs were also shrines, and they still are, there was treasures
there, treasures that were looted by the westerns, through the centuries,
despite the presence of the tomb guardians, this person, tomb guardians, or
tomb keeper, would live in a shack adjacent to the shrines, and would take care
of the dead and would talk with the spirits, etc. After they brought their
families, they made their shacks bigger, other kind of people came to live
there, errands, pot greasers, copper craftsmen, women that made business with
flowers and embroidery, hawkers, artistically trained luncheons, mausoleum
decorators, desert storytellers, retired people, orphans of various kind of wars,
\u201cmororrhea\u201d sellers, a kind of vine
leafs, and \u201crass\u201d, lettuce leaves, goat herders, transporters, well diggers,
scissors sharpeners, bicycle mechanics, bakers of dark bread, astrologers, and
other kind of people without fear of the death. I was an orphan in this city,
after I became a messenger\u2026\u201d
***
***
When Free picture SUFUS HUFUS - migration is not a crime integrated with the OffiDocs web apps
I landed in Tijuana, a city with one of the bigger homicide rate in the word, I
decided to walk from the airport to the city center; the fence with the United
States was just in my back. Two fences actually, around ten meters high, one on
the Mexico side and other in the gringo\u2019s side. A big space in the middle, with
cameras, and jeeps patrolling. Not so much cars in this national road, some
pickups, some dusty vans passing by, and from times to times a very old but
robust blue bus would pass, it looked like a school bus, people with hats
inside, dozing against the windows. And as I walked by the fence, a patrol car,
on the other side, is already following me, because I have touched the fence,
before, testing it, but after some minutes they stop and got out of the car,
they don\u2019t want to call my attention, and why they should bother, if they could
keep tracking me through the cameras, for sure. But I wasn\u2019t the only one
walking by the fence, from ten to ten minutes I would cross with another mate
with a dirty backpack, walking fast, not looking to the sides, but on the exact
moment we crossed he would stand his head and do a salute, even a smile. Me the
same. Further I got to a relatively big roundabout, if I keep in front I would
go to some industrial area, and to go to the city I should do left. Here
started the suburb. I saw the first shops, small supermarkets, refresquerias
and pulquerias, in between the many improvised car garages. As I passed no one
bothered me. There was people, but they didn\u2019t stop so much in this street,
they would quickly move into the smaller ones, inside the maze. So I came to
the hill, on my right all the ups and downs of the suburban area, people with
many chains and collars around the neck, on my left the dry river / sewage and
the city, colorful buildings, not tall, all very dusty. When I asked the
direction to the center someone answered me with all the details and more all
the other possible ways of getting there and more the buses, etc. I followed
the motorway by the sewage. Under a bridge, here was a particular graffiti that
called my attention, the graffiti showed a group of people pulling shopping
trolleys full of trash, and around the graffiti some real shopping trolleys
were parked, the plastic reality and the real reality, so closed, side by side,
it looked the same thing. Later I arrived in the city center \u201cavenida de la
revolucion\u201d and also not so much people, all kind of taquerias, well arranged,
handcraft shops with colouful skulls, hamburguerias decorated with the
imaginary of the gringos, a funky bait, but strangely I haven\u2019t seen one
American in all that main street, all the ones sited inside the public houses
were Mexicans, I could tell. I got curious, so I decided asked someone about
the gringos, he pointed me the direction of a club and said \u201cai se meten todos,
por las muchachas\u201d. Yes, the fuckers, the only place you could see them was
inside the whorehouse, typical. The city has been the stage of many riots,
between the drug cartels, he said, so they are not coming anymore, \u201cthey are
afraid of Tijuana now.\u201d This man talking was from Sonora desert, he is here on
business, arranging a contract to export meat from his providers in Sonora to
the small restaurants in downtown Tijuana. \u201cHere they like more the meat from
the desert he\u201d; they preferred it instead of the local one. Then this man,
understanding that I was a foreigner, offered me to come inside and have a
pulque with him. I accepted. This was my
first pulque, I had never heard about that, \u201cnevermind the Tequila\u201d he said,
\u201cthis is way better\u201d, and was, creamy and not directly tasting ethyl alcohol,
like some tequila. Inside I sit on a table with other men and one woman. They
all have been on the other side; I mean the \u201cAlta California\u201d side. \u201cThat is
our land, they stole it from us, but our relatives still live there, they will
never leave it\u201d one said. \u201cI worked there in a fucking pineapple plantation for
almost two years but after got tired of that shit and came back\u201d one said.
Other has been throwing chicken into hot water, same story. The younger, had
just come from San Francisco; was recently deported by the new migration laws,
after spending one year in jail. The woman also confided that have worked half
of her life there, in a Motel, as a waiter, cooker and receptionist, she has
done a bit of everything. Now she was on holydays, this side, but her husband
was an American, he was on the other side, they made jokes about it. \u201cDo you
love him?\u201d I asked her. \u201cI love my children\u201d she said. Then they made me a lot
of questions about my identity, what was I doing here, from where I came, and I
lied as I could, I was half Chinese half Spanish, half I don\u2019t know what, I
came to visit my cousins and I had a secret mission. They wanted to know more,
but I had to leave them, I wanted to go to the beach, there was a mission to be
carried out, and I couldn\u2019t drink more pulque. The beach was more than ten
kilometers distance and it was already night. I left, half drunk. Again, I took
the road by the fence, by the border, this time by mistake. No one walked along
this road, there was no sidewalks, on both sides mounds of churned earth,
almost no vegetations, some caves on this mounds would guard the illuminated
statues of Santa Morte, Virgen Guadalupe and San judas Tadeu. There was an
inhospitable valley, some fig trees, I ate some figs, a lot of rubbish, and up
the valley, the motorway leading to the border crossing, full of vehicles, both
sides, that was another world. I kept going down. In the middle of nothing a
man came walking slowly, he looked big, but after I understood, it was not all
a man, he was carrying a tray on his head and buckets on his hands, he passed
on my side, made a sound like \u201cohue\u201d and followed into the mound, through a
narrow serpentine path, sided with some tall weeds, I understood, he was a
peddler, coming home from his work. At least he had a home, I thought. I still
could see, his head and the tray, all the same now, drifting through the top of
the weeds, just a showdown. More half an hour and there was light again; I was
arriving to the beach neighborhood. I surpass now some villas, some placed
almost in the middle of the border, on the hill, excavations all around. It was
as if this houses were floating, there was no fortifications. Caterpillars were
parked all around and the border fence crossed the pit, also floating. It would
be easy to pass under it. I haven\u2019t seen any patrolling in this area. I took a
picture. Finally a perfect picture.
After the gas station the first hotels with big terraces on the back,
but the front walls are high and some have broken glass stuck against the
top. At the roundabout I turned right,
got out of the main street, into the coastal neighborhood, I passed some bars,
not many people inside, but they were noisy, noisier than in the city center. I
went down this street, in five minutes I was on the beach. Now on my front a
small amphitheater, sound of trumpets playing, a big set of percussion, like
the one you find in circus, but you couldn\u2019t hear the guitars, although the
guitarists were the more well dressed, with lines of decorative bottoms over
their jackets. A guy was singing traditional songs, and he would pass the
microphone to the passersby\u2019s, anyone would sing too, with no shame. Some
middle-aged couples were dancing, down, half in the amphitheater half in the
sand; they would jump into the concrete and fall into the sand again as the
music went on, it was funny, how they were doing it without falling, and the
trumpets were really loud. I ordered a hamburge
