When I got to Madrid, I learned the extraordinary news that an Islamist cell had just seized the Irish embassy on Paseo de la Castellana. Seeing the images on the screens in the airport, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS!
Groups of soldiers were patrolling the corridors of the terminal, nervous and aggressive, asking for papers and frisking anyone they thought looked suspicious, especially those with dark skin or of Arab appearance. People crowded around the monitors with expressions of fear on their faces, as if saying, what else is going to happen now?
I hadn’t known anything about it when I left Rome, and the flight had lasted barely two hours, which meant it was all very recent, but everything that happens in the world is unexpected seconds before it happens, except to those who plan and execute it. A red news ticker at the bottom of the screens presented a permanent flash:
TERRORISTS SEIZE IRISH EMBASSY IN MADRID!
Distant sirens and the clatter of a helicopter engine mingled with the deafening announcements from the loudspeakers. Iberia flight to Palma de Mallorca . . . !!! To make matters worse, the airport employees increased the volume of the monitors with every new bulletin. Perhaps worst of all was the din of the crowd. The cries of people yelling to each other, people talking and gesticulating, in person or on their cell phones, the shouts and the laughter, the protests, the comments and explanations. Some travelers were sleeping on the rows of seats or even on the floor, beside the machines dispensing drinks and candy, using them to lean their backs against because they were empty. A number of mothers were breastfeeding their babies on the escalators, which were out of service.
I went into the bathroom. The smell knocked me back. There was no toilet paper in the cubicles and the bowls were overflowing with shit and urine. I waited in line to pee in one of the urinals, which was oozing a dark liquid. As for washing your hands, forget it.
Outside, very close to the entrance, I saw a family sitting in a circle on the tiled floor of the arrivals lounge. They were eating from a pan, on plastic plates. What was happening in Madrid? What were all these people doing? They were leaving. They were waiting their turn to leave Spain on charter flights to Northern Europe or Latin America. Just as in Italy, here, too, many people had decided to leave, or simply to return home.
I walked out of the terminal and found a taxi amid the crowds. The driver had the radio tuned to a news program, although he preferred to tell me himself what was happening, looking in the rearview mirror, putting both of us at risk. He was nervous, slapping the wheel and waving his hands as he talked.
“What they’ve said so far is that first three black guys walked into the embassy, quite casually, and then two more, acting as if they were coming to apply for something. And nobody knows how, those five sons of bitches killed the guards and opened the door to the others to come in with weapons and bombs. Apparently they even drove a car into the garage. On the radio they’re saying some of these guys are Spanish, but how can they be Spanish? They must be blacks with Spanish passports, which isn’t the same thing. They’re holding thirty people hostage, and they say they’re going to cut their throats and blow up the building if they don’t give them God knows how much money. How can those bastards be Spanish? They’re screwing us.”
Blacks? I thought. Black terrorists? That’s what the taxi driver said. They must be Africans. Let’s wait and see.
I was nervous by the time I got to the hotel, but when I registered there was no message from Juana. When would I see her? I felt worried and reread the message on my phone: “Please go to Madrid, Consul, to the Hotel de las Letras. Book into Room 711 and wait for me. Will be in touch. Juana.”
“Is Room 711 free?” I asked at reception.
The girl looked on her screen.
“Yes, sir, but there’s a small supplement.”
“I’ll take it.”
When I entered the room, I understood why Juana had chosen it. It had a big picture window looking out on the corner of the Gran Vía, with the Telefónica building almost opposite. Thanks to the isolation, the sounds were vague and distant, even though the avenue was clearly visible. Would I see her that night? I was nervous.
I switched on the TV.
Channel One was broadcasting developments live. Twenty heavily armed and apparently well trained men were still inside. Three people had died, the two guards at the entrance and one in the garage.
The latest news was that the terrorists had just issued a first press release. The taxi driver had been right to say they were black. Well, Africans. But they didn’t want money. They said they belonged to Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group, and they demanded an immediate stop to the bombing of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. They were prepared to die “for their brothers in the caliphate” and if there was no response they would cut the throat of one of the hostages after six hours, in front of the cameras, and put it out on social media. That was their fearsome threat: one every six hours, available on the Internet. How much time was left? It was already starting to get dark. The images showed the police operation, with hundreds of men deployed around Paseo de la Castellana, armored cars blocking the adjacent streets, and helicopters circling with floodlights. Somewhere in the shadows there were probably special forces and snipers lurking.
Next came footage from a security camera in a nearby building, footage that showed the exact moment when the terrorists entered the embassy. According to one of the pundits, there was a logic to the seizure, since of all the Anglo-Saxon embassies the Irish was the least closely guarded. At this point, the program was interrupted and they went over to Moncloa Palace, where the emergency committee was meeting.
A senator from the Popular Party said the following:
“This is an unprecedented disaster, but the public can be confident that we are taking all necessary measures to deal with this attack and to make sure that such unprecedented disasters do not happen again in the future.”
Questioned about the security measures being put in place, Madrid’s chief of police told the interviewer, a woman:
“I can hardly tell you about the operation, can I, my dear? Not if the terrorists in there are also watching television. Not even with my hand over my mouth, like the soccer people.”
The Irish prime minister expressed his gratitude for the actions of the Spanish police, and said that democracies had to remain united against terrorism. He ended his speech with a strange slogan:
“We’ll win and they won’t!”
From Washington, the president of the United States made it clear that he was in direct contact with Moncloa Palace, looking for the best way to bring the crisis to an end and safeguard the lives of the hostages. He offered all the logistical and material help that might be necessary.
Jordan and Egypt expressed their solidarity with Spain. King Abdullah II said:
“The fight against Islamic State and its Jihadist offshoots around the world is World War III.”
I lay down on the bed and watched the endlessly repeated images go by. To be honest, in the security footage showing the attack on the embassy they didn’t all look like Africans, although since it was in black and white and had been taken from a distance it was difficult to be sure of anything. Then TVE aired a segment on Boko Haram, who they were and what their best known acts in the past were, like the abduction of 219 schoolgirls in Nigeria. I learned that they had been in existence since 1979 and that their strange name is translated literally as “Western education is a sin.” Its leader, Abubakar Shekau, majored in Islamic Studies in the city of Maidaguri, capital of the province of Borno in the north of Nigeria.
Suddenly the news ticker appeared again at the bottom of the screen, flashing:
BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS!
From somewhere in Iraq, the grand caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had sent an online message welcoming the Madrid attack and calling for a worldwide revolt against the power of the West. He praised the “brothers” of Boko Haram in Spain and called for more actions not just in Europe but around the world. At the end of his speech he quoted, or rather paraphrased, a famous phrase by Che Guevara: “We have to create not one but many Vietnams against the West.” The European fronts of Islamic State—also known as direct action cells—were ready to go into action and were almost invisible to the police. In London and Paris there were highly organized structures; in Berlin and Madrid, too, although smaller. Boko Haram had reached Europe not long before, but was already strong in the black banlieues of Paris and especially in Belgium, in the Matongé district of Brussels, which had become a headache for the police. In its violent way, it was participating in globalization and making it its own.
In addition, the recruitment of white Europeans was making progress. Marginalized young people with histories of failure and problems of adaptation. Jihadism was an outlet for their resentment and desire for revenge. In this way, those who were the system’s losers were coming together, some of them, although not all, aware of, and feeling guilt at, the historical responsibility their respective countries bore in the humiliation of vast areas of the globe. They identified with this struggle not because they were religious, but because of the worldwide rebellion against a power that had excluded them in their own countries. The war was no longer between Christians and Muslims, or even between white Europeans and their African or Middle Eastern fringes, but between winners and losers.
That seemed to be the new paradigm.
A section of those who weren’t with the Christian far right opted for Jihadism. And so, little by little, ISIS was spreading to high schools and social clubs, winning over people with more balanced profiles and even academic backgrounds. In France there were believed to be 20,000 followers, men and women, although not all of them were fighters.
Most joined the various Muslim Brotherhoods—so, too, in Britain, Belgium, and Holland—which already had a significant number of members.
I tried to close my eyes, what time was it? Around ten. Getting to sleep in the middle of such chaos, and anxious for Juana to arrive, seemed like an impossible task. I thought about taking a stroll, because there were many memories for me in Madrid, where I had spent an important period of my life. It was here that I had followed a university course in Hispanic Philology and taken my first steps in the literary world. As a young man I had walked a thousand times down these streets in the center of the city, although everything was different now. The streets that glittered today, in spite of the crisis, were dark alleys in those years. An icy wind blew along the Gran Vía that made the bones ache in winter. It drizzled frequently, and in the doorways were gaunt figures straight out of Goya’s darkest paintings. They were junkies. Prostitutes with rotting teeth walked up and down in front of the Telefónica building hoping for someone desperate to approach them, and there were robbers and people with knives, just like in any Third World city.
There weren’t many Latin Americans in the university, but in the squares and parks it was common to meet Argentinians selling leather masks and something they called billuta, which as far as I could see were necklaces and bracelets. Other Argentinians read tarot cards in Retiro Park. I remember one of them, perhaps the best known. He would hand out a card saying: “Professor Julio Canteros. Contemporary Argentinian Poet.” Practically all the tarot readers were poets or writers, which at times made me harbor serious doubts about my aspiration to become a writer.
Madrid, Madrid.
Every corner of the city awaited me with some memory or other of a time I had thought was over. That human reflex that leads us to take the same old route, to retrace our steps and seek out certain streets, was I ready for that? Better to wait for a while in the hotel. Juana might be there soon.
I called room service and ordered something to eat. Nothing special, just a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke. And I again concentrated on the news on TVE.
What was happening with the ultimatum? The terrorists were asking for new things. Not only a stop to the bombing, but that the United Nations recognize the borders of Islamic State, including an exit to the Mediterranean in the north of Lebanon. Plus a condemnation of Israel and a restoration of Palestine to the 1967 borders. All highly unlikely things that they would never be able to obtain and Spain couldn’t give them. Maybe that’s what they were after: to force an intervention and die killing the hostages, going out in a blaze of glory. They were Jihadists and they didn’t mind dying in combat.
Four hours had already passed. If the threats were serious, somebody would soon be having his throat cut. The history of mankind is also the history of its throat cuttings and public sacrifices. People like to witness executions. The multitudes get up early to make sure of a good place near the hangman. Aztecs, Romans, Persians, revolutionaries, and intellectuals. Today, through the social networks, Jihadism reminds us that we have always been spectators of death.
After eating, I fell asleep on top of the bed, tired and anxious, in an uncomfortable position.
By the time I woke, morning had already broken.
The noise of the Gran Vía reached me from a long way away, muted by the window’s double glazing. The sun was flooding in, it was a glorious morning. After remembering where I was and why, the silence of the telephone started to seriously worry me.
Juana, Juana, where are you?
On the way to the shower, I had a banal thought: how would it be to stay in a hotel forever, without ever going out on the streets?
It’s what happens in Stanley Kubrick’s movie The Shining. But the true theme of that film is how bad hotels are for writers who don’t write, as happens to the unfortunate main character, who goes crazy and tries to kill his wife and son with an axe (there are worse forms of madness). But basically the hotel is innocent. Any writer who doesn’t write is a socially aggressive being, whether in a comfortable harem or on a beach.
There is a piece of performance art by Joseph Beuys that consisted of his staying in New York for three days without leaving his hotel room, which he shared with a coyote. The piece was called I Like America and America Likes Me, and the performance took place in 1974, during Beuys’s first show in the United States. Arriving in New York, he was driven in an ambulance to the art gallery, lying on a stretcher and wrapped in a felt blanket. Then he was taken to the hotel by the same means and spent three days there with the coyote, still covered in felt and carrying a shepherd’s staff. He performed a number of symbolic gestures and the coyote chewed at the blanket. At the end, Beuys and the coyote embraced. The day he left, he was taken to the airport in his ambulance and returned to Europe without touching American soil. His explanation for such a bizarre and pointless gesture was this:
“I wanted to isolate myself and see nothing of the United States apart from the coyote.”
My coyote was a telephone and the longed-for voice that couldn’t make up its mind to arrive.
Thirty years earlier, when I was scraping a living in Paris, I was also waiting for a call from a woman that, of course, never came. Such are the strange symmetries of life. My lodging in those days was an attic room, less than a hundred square feet in area, without a bath, and with a skylight looking out on the roof of the building. I was twenty-four and had everything to prove. I would buy books for ten francs from the bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine and choose the thickest so that they lasted, because I could only afford to buy one every three days. I had too much free time and had to ration it out. Never more than a hundred pages a day. I would read and look at the telephone, hating its silence. Some evenings I would sit down with the phone in my lap and fall asleep, but it never rang. I would sometimes dream of it ringing and wake with a start, but there was still only silence. Sometimes, when I was out, I would imagine the telephone ringing in my absence, again and again. I could almost hear it. As I entered my street, Rue Dulud, the sound would grow louder. I’d start running desperately, open the front door, and run up the six floors. But when I opened my door, there was nothing.
The arrival of automatic answering machines was, as far as I was concerned, a therapy to counter insanity. I bought a second-hand one after I started hearing the telephone when I was downtown, miles from where I was living. My heart would skip a beat and a voice would say to me: now it’s ringing, now. And I’d hear it. I’m talking about that distant era when we humans didn’t have cell phones. But the answering machine changed everything.
Now I really liked going out, being on the streets, breathing. When I got back to my little room I’d glance at the green light on the phone that indicated the number of calls.
Generally, the number was zero.
What a strange symmetry. When was Juana planning to come?
Tocotocotocoto!!!
The noise of a helicopter brought me back to the present. I ran to the window and sensed its presence just above the hotel. Had something new happened? I switched on the TV again.
Oh, my God, the first man had had his throat cut.
His name was Kevin McPhee, he was fifty-two, and the embassy’s political advisor. In the video he was on his knees. His executioner was behind him, with a black hood, and in the background, on a cloth, was some writing in Arabic. They had dressed him in that same orange tunic ISIS uses in its executions. At this point the recording stopped abruptly, although you could see it complete on the Internet. They weren’t going to show the moment his throat was cut on TVE, of course, but it was described as “barbaric,” with the traditional blunt knife that prolongs the suffering and adds a macabre sense of spectacle. Then they showed photographs of the victim with his wife and children in Kilkenny, near Dublin, about to be welcomed by the prime minister. In one of the photographs, he was in a tie and a tweed suit. There was another in a jeep, perhaps on vacation, and a third at a Christmas party. His privacy was exposed. As if death justified displaying his life to all and sundry. These photographs, except to those close to him, already seemed posthumous.
Now they were negotiating to have his body handed over. The terrorists were threatening to throw it out the window onto the street.
Tocotoco!!!
Again, the helicopter. I leaned over the small balcony and thought I saw its shadow behind the Telefónica building opposite, but immediately afterwards it seemed to be coming from behind me. Cries and insults rose from the street. Someone was insistently sounding a car horn.
Beeeeep!!!
“I’ll show you, you dickhead!”
I went back to the TV.
A German pundit was saying that with this attack the group Boko Haram was making official its entry into the Islamic war with the West. If many young people in Islamic counties in Africa such as Niger, Mauritania, Somalia, Chad, Mali, Sudan, and even Kenya were joining at the rate of several thousand a month, it was because they interpreted it as an uprising against the former colonizers. Others, he went on, see it as a way of venting their anger at this paradise on the northern shore of the Mediterranean that rejects them. As far as this pundit was concerned, the prospects were grim: on the one hand, the fugitives in their rafts, bringing poverty and Ebola with them; on the other, the Jihadists with their historical revenge.
And he concluded by saying:
“Both movements are born out of twentieth-century colonization and the greed with which whole nations were exploited and their resources plundered, leaving the population in poverty, ignorance, and neglect. This may be the first payment due on what was done in the twentieth century.”
The helicopter passed again, although this time a little farther away. I ran to the window and opened it, but the fight was still going on down there, so I went back to the desk and took out my notebooks. I was about to go through them when the Spanish prime minister appeared on the screen.
“We continue to count on the determination of our police forces and our elite groups, who have the situation under control, and above all on the help of all the free and democratic nations of the world,” he said, sitting in his office. “What we are dealing with here is a new form of transcontinental terrorism. We are doing all that can possibly be done to protect the lives of the hostages.”
When his speech was over, they went back to the TVE studios, where a political correspondent implied that SWAT teams from the United States had arrived in Madrid, as well as the intelligence services of Ireland and Great Britain, Israel’s Mossad, and of course police officers from Nigeria, probably from Abuya and Lagos, who were well acquainted with Boko Haram. Only Russia, which was waging a second cold war with the West, had not offered to send its special forces. In fact, as another panelist pointed out, no clear statement had been received yet from Moscow, not even after the Irish official had had his throat cut. This in spite of the fact that they themselves were still facing a threat from insurgent offshoots of the Chechen guerrillas, also defined as Islamic militants.
I was tired of checking my messages in the hope of news of Juana. Like a jealous lover, I analyzed her e-mail, the time she had sent it, looking for some clue. Was she in Spain? I became convinced that she wasn’t, since it had said, “Go to Madrid,” not “Come to Madrid.” Better to work on something, focus my brain in another direction.
So I sat down at the desk with my notebooks.