HITCHHIKING diaries - Algeciras/Marseille

I just left Algeciras, this is, I walked all around the Bay of Gibraltar, passing Playa de El Rinconcillo, Palmones, the Derichebourg industrial park, say, a complex for industrial waste treatment and vehicle decontamination, and then, already on the intersections leading to the Gibraltar peninsula, I would get a ride with this guy with blond hair, goatee and sideburns, Yan his name, actually a “man with a van” transporting goods for English expatriates living along the Andalusian coast. And so, say, as we actually advance along the A-383, here he is already presenting himself, actually saying things like this, “yes I may be an English motherfucker but, in fact, I was born in the Balkans... my mother was from there… I mean, if you wanna know, I actually spent my childhood hopping through different islands on the Aegean Sea… places like Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Naxos, and so on… and then, on my teens, I would be sent to an auntie in Italy, and then, to another relative in France, and just then I went to visit the old folks in North Yorkshire where I would spend four or five year doing some sort of schooling… that, before getting into a parade with a bunch of con hippies that would actually drive me away from Europe into Anatolian lands, I mean east Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, the Siam area… I mean, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, and then just then, from Indonesia into Australia we went… I mean, on the way we would be passing through many Indonesian islands, places like Java, Bali, Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, Timor and other smaller ones… and just then Australia…”, “Uouhhh what a bit journey” I would exclaim, and then, “What about Australia, how was it?”; “pretty boring actually… I mean, soon I exchanged it for New Zealand where people are more... and then, I would actually jump onto a big ship that would take me across the pacific ocean into South America, and so, in the meanwhile I would actually hit countries like Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and then… then the Caribbeans…”; “Ohu, that looks amazing, I myself I have only been in Mexico…”. And thus, while I actually talk about my experiences in Mexico and he talks about his experiences through he Caribbean islands, on the going, we would be passing cities like Manilva, Estepona, Marbella, Fuengirola, Malaga, Motril, and so, on the suburbs of Almeria, I would actually get a ride with some kind of truck actually coming from port, say, a truck with an Arab plate, and so, on the way, Amir, a Maroccan guy, would actually tell me how he had actually reached Europe, long time ago, when he was still a kid, “I mean, the first time going across the Bāb al-Maghrib, as you may have heard about it, we actually did it in a really small dinghy made of inner tubes from truck wheels… trucks like this one I’m actually driving now, but, as you may expect, it happened that the sea dragged us too much to the west and instead of landing on the Spanish coast, we actually ended up landing in south Portugal… in what they call Algarve… and thus, with some luck, we weren't pulled into the Atlantic sea… but, let’s see, as soon as we moored there, my friends quickly left to Spain, leaving me alone there, and so, in the meanwhile I would actually wonder around Tavira, Lagos, Faro, and then Lisbon, the capital, where I would remain during some time, and well, I may say that… I liked the Portuguese people, they are humbler than the Spanish, but, there aren't great job opportunities in that country, so, soon I would actually leave Portugal and go to work negro in the huge orange tree farms in south Spain, mainly located around Valencia, where we are actually going now, yes Valencia…. a city that have ferries to the famous island of Ibiza, and, well, at some point, I would also manage to get into one of that ferries going to there, but, well, I would get caught on the arrival and then, then they just sent me to some special kind of prison for illegals that turned out to be a nice house with some kind of sort of labor camps, and so, actually, it was there, in these labor camps that I got to know and make friendship with other people from the Maghreb countries, say, countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and also some sub-sahariens, say, people from Mali, Niger, Chad etc… and also, it was there, that I learned to properly speak and write Spanish, and then, some months later, when I was already integrated, they sent me back to Morocco… I mean, my mother was happy to see me again, but, my older brother… as soon as I arrived he would throw me out of the house, this because, he would say that I had become an infidel, and thus, I left again, this is, I wandered through the country and actually ended up not far from Ouarzazate, a touristic city at the doors of the desert, this is, on the side of the Barrage el Mansour Eddahbi I would work, this before taking the caravan to Merzouga, a city on the border with Algeria…” and thus, as we actually pass on the vicinities of cities like Lorca, Murcia, Alicante, Gandia and then Valencia, Amir would reveal that, “fter Merzuga, I would actually find myself in Tunis, Tunisia's capital, where I actually would hear about a new place where people could cross into European lands, the so called the Djerba peninsula... and so, there I went into some kind of dinghy again… this one due to Malta, this is, a European island at the time I had never heard about… an island where people can actually speak Arab, Italian and French, all mixed up… and so, from there I actually passed to Sicilia and instantly started working for the mafia, this is, I was a courier, say, I traveled between Sicily and another cities in south Italy a dozen times per month, cities like Napoli, Taranto, Lecce, Catanzaro, Bari, Brindisi, etc. And it happened that, at some point, I really had to escape the mafia because they actually wanted to kill me, they were making some accusations and so… I went to France, this is, it was my first time in France and… I may say that I stayed mainly between Marseille and Montpelier, but, soon got into a series of problems with some Algerian guys, the majority there, and, well… these Algerians were actually very different from the ones I had actually known in Algiers and other Algerian cities. Thus, I would actually get into pitch battles with them, and so... in one of this brawls the police came by, I was arrested, they found out that I was illegal and to Morocco I was sent again… this is, on the arrival my mother was happy again, but not my old brother… same old shit… and, in the meanwhile, I would get to know that one of my girlfriends in France was actually pregnant, and so, again, I would find a way to cross the bahar, this is, I came back to France in order to marry that french woman, so I could get the European papers, but, it happened that she didn't want to marry me, this coz her family was actually Algerian, and so, no Algerian woman should marry a Moroccan man… therefore, I left again, I mean… I went to German and to Switzerland but I couldn't adapt to that coldness, so, I decided to come back to Italy, and again, I ended up in Sicily… this is, again, I would be in problems with the mafia guys… and so, this time, I would run away in opposite direction… this is, I would go to Libya, and so, in the meanwhile… I would actually find some serious work in Tripoli, this is, I even shook hands with one of the sons of Gaddafi... and...” in the meanwhile we would already be reaching Barcelona, where I actually would get another ride, this is, this time in a Mercedes Benz, its driver, a cinephile. and so, while already advancing in the direction of the French border, we would actually begin some sort of conversation about directors like Buñuel, Pedro Almodóvar, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, Alain Resnais, Jacques Tati, Tarkovsky, Béla Tarr, etc…. and so, when he actually paraphrase Béla Tarr, I just say that “Effectively… Sátántangó is one of my all time favorites, I mean, there is something in this movie that reminds me of my childhood, I guess…” I say. “Hum OK, like what!?”; “I don’t know… what I best recall in that movie is this scene in that sort of decrepit bar or tavern, the accordionist playing, drunk people dancing and messing around, the man with the stick hitting the table non-stop, the woman with big boobs dancing with a man with a beret, dancing and rejecting him at the same time, and the little girl outside looking through the window what is happening inside...”, I say, and “yes…” he says “that's an amazing scene, very visceral, happy and sad at the same time… that scene also reminds me of another movie called The House, a French-Lithuanian production directed by Šarūnas Bartas” he says. “Yes, and now is my time to ask… what actually happens in that movie?”, “Hum, nothing great… it's just people wandering inside a house in silence, a ramshackle mansion in the middle of the woods, strange individuals wandering about, some naked, some dressed with rags, they eat, they sleep, they roam between the desolated rooms, always in strict silence...” and then, also in silence, we would keep rolling, by the sea, this is, by now already inside the French territory, and so, in this fashion we actually would pass cities like Perpignan, Narbona, Béziers, Nimes Arles… and then, already on the Marseille area, I would somehow get another ride, to say, this time with some guy with bottle-bottom glasses, a guy that, along the way, as we actually approach the city, would tell me about La Corse, the island, and so, “after a brief occupation by the Carthaginians and by the ancient Greeks, and an only slightly longer occupation by the Etruscans…” he says, “La Corse was incorporated by the Roman Republic at the end of the First Punic War, with Sardinia, actually became a province of the Roman Republic… this is, the Romans, that actually built a colony in Algerie considered Corsica as one of the most backward regions of the Roman world… so, the products that the island exported at that time were only, honey, resin and wax, and exported many slaves, not well considered because of their fierce and rebellious character…” he says, and then “moreover, it was known for its cheap wines, exported to Rome, and was used as a place of relegation, one of the most famous exiles being the Roman philosopher Seneca... and so, administratively the island was divided into Pagi, which in the Middle Ages became the Pievi, the basic administrative units of the island until the eighteenth century... then, during the diffusion of Christianity, which arrived quite early from Rome and the Tuscan harbors, Corsica was become home to many martyrs and saints, among them, the most important are Saint Devota and Saint Julia, both patrons of the island… then in the fifth century, the western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, and the island was actually invaded by the Vandals and the Ostrogoth… then, briefly recovered by the Byzantines, it soon became part of the Kingdom of the Lombard… they made it a dependency of the March of Tuscany, which used it as an outpost against the Saracens. Then, Pepin the Short, king of the Franks and Charlemagne's father, actually expelled the Lombards and nominally granted Corsica to Pope Stephen II… and then, in the first quarter of the eleventh century, Pisa and Genoa together freed the island from the threat of Arab invasion and after that, the island came under the influence of the republic of Pisa… then there was a massive immigration from Tuscany, which gave to the island its present toponymy and rendered the language spoken in the northern two-thirds of the island very close to the Tuscan dialect… this led to the traditional division of Corsica into two parts, along the main chain of mountains roughly going from Calvi to Porto-Vecchio, the eastern Banda di dentro, or Cismonte, more populated, and open to the commerce with Italy, and the western Banda di fuori, or Pomonte, almost deserted, wild and remote… then, the crushing defeat experienced by Pisa in the Battle of Meloria against Genoa had among its consequences the end of the Pisan rule and the beginning of the Genoese influence in Corsica… a popular revolution against this and the feudal lords, led by Sambucuccio d'Alando, got the aid of Genoa and after that, the Cismonte was ruled as a league of comuni and churches... then around one-thousand-five-hundred, Genoa ceded the administration of the island to its main bank, the Bank of Saint George, which brought peace… then, in the sixteenth century, the island entered into the fight between Spain and France for supremacy in Italy and in the meanwhile a Franco-Ottoman fleet occupied it…” and so as he says this things, we actually reach the coast around Viaduc de Corbière, an old railway bridge with some huge arches and some exotic beaches under it actually featuring Mesozoic limestone formations, this is, a site from where we can already sea the big ships making their way onto the port of Marseille, just about five ten kilometers away from here.