Countryless

He came to love the place where he lived before being forced to leave it. He liked the people he met there; most of them, at least. He enjoyed its culture, its landscapes, its cooking. He believed in all of these clichés as if they were really true. But probably he would say the same if he had arrived or been living on the other side of the planet.

Now he is living in an airport lounge although he used to live in a country scarred by racist violence, war, corruption and poverty, misfortune everywhere. Then he arrived in a country that he hardly knew; a country that does not exist for a large number of people in the world; a country that most of Americans, for instance, can not place it on a world map; a country of which many people only know the name of its soccer teams; a country where its people are not very appreciated by their close neighbours who consider them poor, lazy, jealous, boastful, rude and noisy.

People tend to think that a country is made of boundaries, territory, laws, barbed wire, customs, traditions and so on. And they are right. Nevertheless, the true land of a man, of a woman, is made of memories, emotions, thoughts and all manner of blazing, incandescent material that remains softly and silently in our hearts. Mistaken things, obviously, flotsam making up an artificial island, homelands without lands, mother countries without a ground. “In my mind, my homeland does not have a physical territory, do not have even a name, just cloudy boundaries. Nevertheless, I can clearly distinguish an broad cane field close to the river, my grandfather’s vegetable garden, my schoolyard where my friends, my people, get along” he told me.

Hearing that reminded me that a few, especially writers and poets, have said that childhood is the true homeland of a man. And others have said that a homeland is where freedom remains, where one can be free. Even so, there are a lot of definitions for a mother country. Others more down-to-earth, said with Aristophanes that a man’s homeland is where he prospers. “They did not allow me to”, he said. For some, according to a French proverb, the mother country is just the money. “They did not allow me to earn it,” he added. The Swedish said that a homeland is where one is useful. Even more, we can say with Ovid that every land is a homeland for the courageous man, as water is a homeland for the fish. So the whole world could be a homeland to the courageous man, even if she or he is far away from his home. However, poor people are always strangers even in their own native land. “So, where is my homeland, considering I am a poor man, a useless one and my bravery has ran out?” he asked me.

Patria est ubi bene sit cuique: Each person's homeland is where things go well for him 


During this chat and for an instant, my mind was absent in a sort of naive dream. The perfect country, I thought, should contain Japanese gardens everywhere, the most beautiful beaches, happy people dancing, bloodless volcanos, people enjoying their jobs, the aurora borealis, a full moon every night, happy people talking, summer mornings, happy people caring, a government worried about your happiness, a worldwide market, the aroma of coffee in the morning and tea time at five, happy people cherishing each other, weddings that last several days and divorces that go on for weeks, wine, support without corruption, music, people in good mood, paella and fireworks as the only expression of violence. As well as vast boundaries as wide as the biggest meridian and as large as the last parallel. And everybody should be able to cross the door and take their place in it.

I thought I was a citizen from a kind of civil heaven called Europe and that understanding made me feel safe and relieved just for a while. Europe? What Europe? An idyllic place where the police are British, the chefs are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is managed by the Swiss. But I looked at him and felt I was out of there, just like he was. I could not be in such a paradise like a Robinson.

Then I felt myself as a citizen of the world. But, to what segment of this world would I belong? The ones who bleed and threaten to flood the promised lands? The ones who live in opulence surrounded by man-made oceans over the sands and put barriers in order to keep others from stepping on their artificial gardens? Surely not, I concluded. I am not from there. So, I must be a citizen of the Universe. But what Universe? The one which is expanding or the one which is becoming smaller?

Finally, we said goodbye. I took a flight to my home country, a region in the South of a quasi-paradise called Europe where the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are Italian, the lovers are Swiss and the Greeks rule everything. That is the truth.

Bart Ptolomy