MIGRATION IS NOT A CRIME - quarantines on the southern banks of the english channel

 So, I was coming from the old Finisterra. I did all of northern Spain and almost all of northern France by the coast, walking, hitchhiking, running, watching the sea, speaking with local fishermen here and there… And so, along the way, I remember to have passed through cities like Ferrol, Gijón, Santander, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Hendaye, Balona, Nantes, Rennes, Saint-Malo, Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, Caen, Le Havre and Boulogne-sur-Mer, from where I just came. And thus, here I go, walking by the English Channel, on my left side, getting close to the port of Calais, and as I advance it’s getting night, and here I am, staring at the white dots of the ships that seem to be stopped in the middle of the Chanel, afar. And then, after walking a bit more, I start to hear some kind of noise like cans tinkling, or something like that… and then, I looking the stars on the sky, as if… this is, down there, in between some boulders by the sea, I spot some lights, awnings shaking with the wind, and then, some silhouettes moving around it… and so, there I go, already jumping onto the beach and then, while hidden in the back of some big rocks, I peep at this vision of people building fires by the water, awnings shaking on their back, and then, as I’m getting closer to that makeshift constructions in between the big boulders, I can already understand some voices, Arabesc and African language sounds… and then, as I reach that place, some of these people are already coming to me with distrust, asking what am I doing there, and so, they ask me that in a mix of broken french and broken english, but others also welcome me passionately, inviting me to join in the fires, laughing at my palaness, and then, as I join them around the fire, some Somali guy even offer me some tea, “Lizard drops tea!” some guy says, and then a couple of Iraqis are talking to me in turkish coz they think that I’m a turk, and to that I say “I’m no turk but I know Turkey, I lived there…” and then there I go, already quoting the name of some neighborhoods of Istanbul, I talk about Şişli, Beşiktaş, Kadıköy… and they also recognize Kadıköy, they have lived close to there, they say, more precisely close to the Fenerbahçe Stadium, and then some Morocco guy starts to speak in French to me, he asks me if I’m spanish, and I say “No, I’m not spanish, I’m actually Caribbean...” I say, and they seem to ignore what is the Caribbe, and so, as I try to explain, they pretend they are still not understanding, and then, I show them my passport from Puerto Rico, and I also show them my other passports from Dominica, Guadalupe and Martinica… this is, in a while I start to distribute these passports through the folks around, and actually, some want to buy it from me, others want to exchange it for goods, but I say “No, it’s all free, you can take it… you can choose your nationality, take whichever you want…” and then a guy from Afghanistan dressed as Elvis Presley come to me offering me some kind of spirit he calls “raki” and afterward, there we go, already mixing that distilled drink with the teas boiling on the fire in front of us… and then, as we drink it, we go on a conversation about old “rock n roll” artists, quoting american starts like John Lee Hokker, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and british groups like The Animals, The Sex Pistols, etc… and then, he also informs me about a rock n’ roll star from his country, a certain Ahmad Zahir, and thus, in this terms we would continue through the night, listening to songs from their mobile phones, talking bullshit and the old and the modern world, about the differences between those worlds, and then, drinking more raki, while staring at the fire, staring at the sky, and staring at the lights of the ships down there, passing by… this is, what happened after I don’t exactly remember. I just know that I woke up next morning inside this cabin, my clothes worn out and then I see some niggas around, niggas smoking big cigarettes, staring into the broken ceiling, and at some point, one os them says without turning to me “les tsiganes ont volé tes chaussures”; and this comment provoked some giggles on the other guys around, lying over bare mattresses, and so, “what?” I ask, still half asleep. “He said, the gypsy guys came here really morning and stole your shoes!”, someone translated, “ah ok” I say, and then, as I stand up, I’m already coming out of the hut, going through this cobbled beach, and then taking a piss over some rock in front of the sea while staring at that huge wire fence around the port area, this is, I haven’t seen it yesterday coz when I got here it was already dark, and so, now I’m shuddering while thinking that actually I can be pissing over some cable connected to that electrified grid.