I was on a bus listening to Lauren Graham’s audiobook “Have I Told You This Already?”. The book narrates very random stories and recollections from Lauren’s life. It made me enter a space in my mind dedicated to fun, curiosity and randomness. A space where creativity is nourished and new ideas are born. I was lost in thought enjoying the book. I was also enjoying being in touch with this side of me. A side that’s always been a very large aspect of my personality. It was also a side that was being demolished by reality. I’ll explain later.
The bus stopped randomly. An officer in military uniform entered and started asking people for their IDs. He reached my seat and I handed him my expired document. He looked at it, and asked again for a valid document. I told him this is it. He asked again so I took out the paperwork I had in a folder. It showed an upcoming appointment I have to renew the document. He looked at it for a while. He then handed me all my documents and left without a word.
It passed. I was not detained.
A man was once detained on a similar bus I was taking. I still remember his glasses, his thin demeanor and the look of fear on his face. His ID didn’t pass the check. What surprised me was how the bus just continued without him. People went back to their lives and I was left wondering, in complete silence, what will happen to him. What If, like him, my ID doesn’t pass the check one day? What if my renewal application is rejected for some technical or political reason? Who will wonder about me in complete silence?
I put my headphones back on and continued listening to Lauren’s book. I couldn’t continue. I completely lost interest in anything that was not related to my ability to survive and my current state of heart and mind. I lost my curiosity, yet again. I switched to angry hip hop. The music was more in tune with how I felt yet out of touch with the context and reality closing up on me. I felt isolated, silenced and very weak in the face of this new police state I found myself in. I needed new words and music to capture all that was happening.
It took me a while to realise this but I didn’t lose my curiosity, which I have been grieving for a while. What happened was that my curiosity was no longer directed at the future and all the great and fun possibilities. It was now directed towards the dark places life can take me. The dark places my people were being forced to. Detention centres. Prison cells. Border Camps. Towns under militia rule and bombardment. The country that was once our home, where hundreds of thousands were tortured, killed and enforcedly disappeared.
I was extremely curious to figure out where our trajectory was heading? The future and its positive possibilities were still out there. However, danger was larger and scarier, demanding my full attention. It’s no time for building and daydreaming, it’s the season to run, as fast as you can and as far away as your legs can carry you.
Pack up your dear things, and dear people if you can. Pretend the bonds you have will survive visa regimes and border checks. It’s a lie. But pretend, it will make you lighter.
“I'll make them mad, yeah, somebody gotta do it
I'll take the G-pass, shit, watch me do it
Huh, we survived outside, all from the music, what?”