I’m at the Transnational station.
Most Saturdays it’s crowded. Not so much with people going away or coming for weekend breaks, but with forlorn souls.
Today, given the tight security mounted for the Grand Mufti’s visit, Pinkies and Gendarmerie abound.
In general, a sizeable percentage of travellers carry troubled lives. They’ve either hit a crisis or hope to escape from one. Often, they find it easier to unburden their woes to strangers. So Belkis and I came here regularly to offer empathetic ears. Hrant compared us to the spirit world’s soul-rescuers who help those snatched from this world suddenly or violently and are disoriented in the hereafter.
I’ve come to empathise with three groups.
The first, Mothers of the Disappeared, comprising women of all ages, gather every day. They sit on the forecourt holding pictures of sons and daughters who, caught in the fringes of politics, have vanished.
When people stop by, they show the photographs and ask if they’ve spotted the children somewhere or have information about what happened to them. These mothers know that the disappeared are invariably executed soon after their arrest, yet they cling to the hope that a traveller or two may have seen a dazed youth in a corner of the land or in a labour camp. (Throwing detainees into the sea from helicopters is Fatherland Security’s favourite method of execution. It can then claim that the youths, assessed as misguided romantics, have not been detained and are either lying low or have fled the country.)
To date, no traveller has come forth with any news. Even if there were some with snippets of information, they would be too afraid to tell. Pinkies meticulously log those who approach the Mothers.
Nonetheless the mothers’ plight touches people’s hearts. Wives of soldiers killed in action somewhere unknown linger mournfully. Pregnant women and those with kids stop and commiserate. Occasionally some Mothers burst into Mothers of the Disappeared honouring the Argentinian women whose children, too, disappeared during the Junta’s dictatorship.
Today there are about sixty mothers. The numbers vary, though seldom drop below fifty. The regulars, the group’s backbone, are mainly middle-class, intellectual or artistic urbanites. The rest languish in the provinces. Age, poverty, illness, travel restrictions and fear of losing their other children prevent them from getting to the city regularly.
The other groups are inside the station.
One consists of families of soldiers on leave from the current engagement with ‘terrorists’. They flock the platform where a train has just brought their men.
The terrorists are the large indigenous minority in our eastern provinces. Numen condemned them to ethnic cleansing for campaigning for an autonomous canton – as in the Swiss confederation – where they can speak their own language and pursue their own culture. To date the conflict has claimed thousands of lives on both sides. Lately Numen has intensified the hostilities.
The reunions are restrainedly joyous. The soldiers maintain their military bearing, yet their eyes are tenebrous from the carnage they’ve seen and barely survived. Their commanding officer, a paternal Major, tries to animate them, but they – and their families – know that after the brief respite, they’ll be back at the front and that the next time they return they might be in body-bags.
The other group, assembled at the adjacent platform, is a gathering of families sending off sons, brothers and husbands to the war zone.
Despite brave miens, horseplay and camaraderie, the atmosphere there is elegiac. The commanding officer, a pugnacious Colonel, hurries his men officiously, occasionally wrenching apart couples trying to prolong their goodbyes.
A year ago, there used to be a fourth group. That, too, was composed of families seeing off loved ones. However, the latter were not soldiers but the weekly crop of liberals indicted as traitors, secessionists, or anarchists, and sentenced to internment in remote labour camps. But as those families and deportees often behaved ‘turbulently’ these transportations now take place in the early hours of a weekday when the city is asleep.
I approach the Mothers of the Disappeared.
A middle-aged woman, sitting wrapped in a blanket with a thermos flask by her side, catches my attention. Softly humming, she displays a large photograph of a young man hugging a guitar.
I recognise the youngster: the musician Belkis and I met while distributing Amador’s poems at the University.
The woman notes my reaction. Her dusky eyes float in a lake of tears. ‘Do you know him? Have you seen him? My son, Danny?’
I hesitate.
‘Please look … Danny – Daniel Cuenca.’
How can I tell her Danny ended up in a dungeon that usually leads to Via Dolorosa? ‘Sorry. I don’t think …’
She doesn’t want to believe me. ‘The way you stared at the picture …’
‘He looks like someone I knew.’
She shushes me by wagging her finger. ‘Don’t say knew. Say know. He might be alive.’
‘He looks like someone I know.’
My change of tense doesn’t help.
A couple of Pinkies scrutinise us.
I ignore them and squat by Daniel’s mother. ‘Cuenca – the name rings a bell. And the guitar. A musician was he – is he?’
‘Yes. Songster. Recorded a couple of albums.’
‘I think I heard him on the radio.’
Enthralled, she talks breathlessly. ‘Cante grande – that’s his genre. Honouring ancestors. Songs of love. Songs against oppression. “You’re too political” people kept telling him. I warned him also. But …’
‘Serious art is always political. That’s why dictators hate it.’
She clasps my hand tightly with both her hands. ‘You think so, too. Brave lad. Not afraid to speak your mind.’
I cringe. Gently trying to extricate my hand I stand up. ‘Hardly brave.’
She clings to my hand. ‘Don’t go – stay a moment. Please. It’s good talking to you. Like talking to my son.’
I sit down, deeply affected.
She puts her head on my shoulder. ‘Maybe you can answer: why does God kill children? Why does He cut out mothers’ hearts and crush fathers’ souls? Where’s is His love?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘My husband, Emmanuel … He’s a hazan – a cantor. He says God has gone to another galaxy and left his apprentice behind. He pities the apprentice – too callow to judge life and death, he says.’
I want to say, ‘he may be right,’ but I don’t.
‘He – Emmanuel – won’t go to synagogue anymore. When Danny disappeared, so did his faith. Now he just sits by the window, singing.’
She very obviously needs to talk. I engage her. ‘Your son’s songs?’
‘No. Only Danny Boy. Non-stop.’
‘Irish, is he – your husband?’
‘And Spanish from way back.’
‘How do you mean?’
She becomes even more animated. ‘He knows every detail of his ancestors – all the way back to the Armada. He’d tell you, for instance, after the Armada’s defeat in 1588, some ships diverted to the North Atlantic and drifted to Ireland. The detour proved disastrous. Twenty-four sank. His forebear, the First Cuenca he calls him, was an Andalusian Marrano – a Jew who converted to Christianity to survive the Inquisition. This man was a gunner on La Juliana, one of the ships wrecked off County Sligo. He managed to swim ashore – helped, as Fate would have it, by dolphins.’
I’m taken aback. ‘Dolphins? Really?’
‘Yes, Emmanuel says dolphins are famous for saving shipwrecked sailors. Anyway, that’s how the First Cuenca ended up in Ireland. And because the Irish didn’t persecute Jews, he settled there. Eventually he met other refugees from the Inquisition – this time from Portugal – and found a wife. But he didn’t forget his community in Cuenca. The city was infamous for its countless autos-da-fe. So, in commemoration of the Jews burned at the stake there, he took on the name Cuenca. Generations followed. Then the potato famine struck. Some Cuencas – including Emmanuel’s ancestors – emigrated here. Which made Emmanuel, as he used to say proudly, a hybrid of three religions: Jew by birth, Islamic by Andalusian lore and Christian by Ireland. That’s why he named Danny Daniel: the perfect Jewish-Irish name.’
Her ramble has drained her. She picks up her thermos flask. ‘Want some tea? I’ve got an extra cup.’
I glance at the Pinkies. They’ve lit cigarettes. Definitely keeping tabs on us. ‘That would be nice.’
I watch her pour the teas. So motherly. ‘The story about dolphins helping the First Cuenca – how did that come about?’
‘From the First Cuenca himself, I imagine. But then families are like fishermen – they inflate sprats into whales.’
Impulsively, as she handed me my cup, I kissed her hand. ‘Let me tell you a story about dolphins …’