Very short book with so much emotion. This is the journey of a sister searching for his brother. The journey is through different geographical plains. She is from Mexico crossing the border illegally to USA . She is observant,curious and street smart. The first line "I’m dead, Makina said to herself when everything lurched" sets the tone for story. That line gives lots to think even before one proceed further.
Makina, who runs the only switchboard in miles was asked by her mother to deliver the letter and bring his son back . She had a way to fix everything and readily talks to anyone and she knew three languages. She helped many in her village in their relationship through her work. She knows how to to stay in the correct side of the local gangsters ,she meets a gangster who gave her a package to deliver. Will she return back ? or does she have any intention to return ?
You are the door, not the one who walks through it.
She is the door, she knew it and she cannot go through it, that's the reason why she was able to gain access to any where.She is a conduit , everyone relies on her. She journeys from Village to little town to big Chilango . Her plan was to come back as soon as she meet her brother. After meeting her brother she realized that she cannot go back and she remains there.
Makina risks her life in search of her brother using all her skills in fighting the immigrants and security forces. She also understood the life of her brother after her brother explained his complex life in United States. She also realizes there is no escaping from the reality that she will stay in the unknown land may be forever as her brother. The end is inevitable.
“All families had started off in some mysterious waay: to repopulate the earth, or by accident, or by force, or out of boredom; and it's all a mystery what each will become.”
This is a strange story but memorable.The crossing of border is a allegory.The writing is poetic. Lots of overlapping words in a sentence - rain and snow ,anglo and latin . The journey itself moving in two ways -forward and backward sort of Inferno and Paradise. The contradiction is explained beautifully in this passages - "They speak an intermediary tongue that Makina instantly warms to because it’s like her: malleable, erasable, permeable; a hinge pivoting between two like but distant souls, and then two more, and then two more, never exactly the same ones; something that serves as a link. . . . More than the midpoint between home grown and anglo their tongue is a nebulous territory between what is dying out and what is not yet born. . . . In it brims nostalgia for the land they left or never knew when they use the words with which they name objects; while actions are alluded to with an anglo verb conjugated latin-style, pinning on a sonorous tail from back there."
The sinkhole which devours a man, a cat and a dog is a sign at the beginning of the story which talks about the end. The names of each chapters describes how the places looks like and it geographical features "The Place Where The Wind Cuts Like A Knife," , “The Place Where People’s Hearts Are Eaten.” and "The Place Where Flags Wave" etc.The author also highlights the need of some kind of paper whether its for crossing or for marriage of any sorts - "perhaps they just want the papers, she said to herself, any kind of papers, even if it’s only to fit in" .
Below quote is a very powerful message and this is the only lengthy monologue by Makina which explores anti-immigration and xenophobia.
We are to blame for this destruction, we who don’t speak your tongue and don’t know how to keep quiet either. We who didn’t come by boat, who dirty up your doorsteps with our dust, who break your barbed wire. We who came to take your jobs, who dream of wiping your shit, who long to work all hours. We who fill your shiny clean streets with the smell of food, who brought you violence you’d never known, who deliver your dope, who deserve to be chained by neck and feet. We who are happy to die for you, what else could we do? We, the ones who are waiting for who knows what. We, the dark, the short, the greasy, the shifty, the fat, the anemic. We the barbarians.
I'm reading "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari , in this book the author describes the eternal differences of "us" and "them", the above quote confirms that. I think the translator did a very good job in bringing the essence of the original.
Read the book for its language and the sense of hope and kindness.
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