El modesto misterio

Unidentified Male Immigrant

Author: Martín Solares

Photo: Nicola Ókin Frioli

For some time now, I dream about a device with lions. There are variations, but is always the same dream. In the latest dream I find myself in a desert land, a sheet suitable for animal survival. The action begins the instant I see myself running with a group of people in a kind of corridor, along which, there are arranged 12 rooms, one for each month of the year and in each one awaits a lion. We can see the lions because the doors are made of a transparent material but solid enough to contain these big animals. There are more people with me, strangers, specially the faces that one may find out into the streets. We are a large group, running in single line like we are going to work.  Every now and then a door opens and a lion comes out to devour someone, causing panic to those around the scene. Then, someone assigns a number to the fallen and we gradually forget his name. The group continues to progress and at the end of the day we come back to where we started. Today it happened to the person in front on me. I hadn’t notice, but the device treats us as if we were an anonymous and stupid herd, destined to die. That’s how the building is made of, a cruel perfection.  The architecture itself is not enough to explain everything. We assume that magic is involved here because something else happens: every time we complete a round we stop using a word. I wouldn’t have believed how fast certain words can be forgotten; how impoverishes us to lose sight of these words. Perhaps that explains why some people have started to scream. Contrary to what other people say, we are not idly. We have tried everything in the sleep’s variants: from escape the situation to lock these beasts. But nobody wants to die, the walls are too high and nobody ever taught us how to stop the lions. Many succumb to despair or reluctance. It is enough to realize that it wasn’t us who designed this, nor we deserve it. Or maybe it was enough that we ignore the existence of lions over the years, for them to be imposed in the place where they are. The device is strong and lasting. Perhaps I’ll get worse. On days like this, nothing that comes from the mind or spirit promises to be able to mitigate the pain. But then, other nights come when we arrive at our homes disappointed and exhausted, and conclude how badly we need a mythology, some legends that talk about those who were imprisoned here before us and their lucky or naive attempts to find their way out.

Honduran immigrant shot in Tapachula, Chiapas.

Translated by: Teresa Cabrera