On Madrid... and on prostitution

I passed through Madrid last summer, 2009. I’d gone there for a religious conference and also to start a tour to Southern and Central Spain. I really liked Madrid. I went to the Prado, the Reina Sofia, El Parque del Buen Retiro, the Thyssen-Bornemisza, and a few other spots. We weren’t there very long, but I really came to like it. It felt like a city I could very definitely live in. I was almost used to it already and we were only there for a short while.


In the main mall, in one of the streets that comes off the Plaza del Sol, there was a long stretch of shops and restaurants. Every city has that, even where I live. Every few metres the mall is decorated with small trees to both sides of a very wide footpath. Common, I know, my city has that too. Beside every one of these trees and just about every few metres of the mall, though, there were these girls. Girls, young girls, and older women dressed as girls. Most of them looked of Central or Southern American appearance. And there they were in little tight clothing, others in full tracksuit pants, just hanging about. Prostitutes. Everyone walked by them, around them, near them, just the same way you walk past the trees, the benches, the lightposts, the shops. Amongst them walked the shoppers, police officers from the nearby police station, and all of us tourists seeking the next tourist attraction. What the girls were seeking was business, same as you and me: a meal to eat. They looked so glamorous, so fit, so ready to take on the world. But what do you eat from when you have no job, possibly no legal immigrant status, and little workplace skills? It broke my heart, and I found it so hard to pinpoint the emotion. Any of those girls could have easily have been me.

Literally, there were all types of women there, some white, most moreno, some black, some malnourished skinny, some very chubby, some old, some very young-looking, some very femininely-dressed, others very boyish, and some probably were boys. Which one would I be? Would I be there? Where had they come from? South America, Slovenia, Russia, Africa, Spain? What had they done? Did they think moving to another country illegally would be easier? Would it get easier? What of the local girls, maybe they couldn’t finish high-school for whatever reason? What role did drugs play? Where did these girls really want to be? Could I be as brave as they if I had to be? And where were the pimps? It was all too organized, the girls well-placed equal distances apart, never offering to be selling or doing anything, they just stood there. It’s an ancient profession, it rarely needs to be advertised, but it just seemed like everyone knew what they were there for and who they were and no-one was bothered by it, not even the cops.

Sometimes some men in fancy designer clothes would stop and talk to the girls, you’d see them haggle for a few seconds, then they either walked away together or the men would walk away alone, a little further up the mall. As I watched this scenario, I came to really wish that more men would stop and talk to them and then walk away with them. I don’t know why I wished this, I couldn’t understand it then, but I guess it’s the same way you watch a starving child and hope that someone will have the will and power to feed him. I knew how these girls would get their next meal, and regardless of the same Christian feeling that had brought me to Madrid, I could not judge these girls as less than human. What broke my heart further is when the men would haggle with them and eventually walk away, leaving a very unhappy-looking girl to continue standing there. He’d walk to the next girl and have the same conversation. That stuff would really break my heart. Imagine having your own product judged, devalued, and then rejected – to leave you to starve another day.

There are people who see prostitution as an easy way out, but truth is most things seem easy when your belly is full, you’re warm, and there’s a shelter over your head. I don’t see a prostitute; I see a human trying to survive. Maybe it is partly because my mum had taught me as a child that every job is a dignified job, unless you’re stealing or taking advantage of your fellow man. These girls weren’t stealing from me, when I guess they really could have. They both inspired me and filled me with gratitude to my God.

Madrid was a truly spiritual experience. I really loved Madrid.
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The Two Madonnas

Luisa was troubled by the story of Pilar and her companion, let’s call him Paulo.

Luisa was a lot like Pilar. Pilar wondered, “Why can’t I love? Why can’t I be loved?” Luisa knew what this felt like, and she had her theories. ‘Is it because I love too readily, too hastily? Is it because I hold back so much? Is it my unwillingness to believe, to succumb, to trust? Is it my self-doubt; because these things preoccupy me? Is it because I am spiritual? Is it because I am sexual? Is it because I’m all these things at the same time? Is it because I’m nothing and no-one and too easily defeated by my own self doubt?’ Pilar wondered if Paulo thought her too profane or too holy. Either way, why was she so untouchable to him? What did Paulo see? What was he failing to see?

Before Paulo and before Pilar, a man had told Luisa that she was too pure (meaning too spiritual) for him to concede to love her (and waste her). Before him, another man had told Luisa that she was too dirty for him to believe that she could honestly and sincerely pray before God. Luisa knew they were both wrong and right in a way neither of them were worthy of.

Madonna thought herself unworthy of her calling. Luisa liked to think of Madonna. Madonna, as Roman Christians called the mother of Christ; she of ultimate faith who was given the privilege and challenge to bear Our Saviour and all that came with it, and accepted. The one woman of ultimate faith and spirituality was chosen. She is Madonna.

Luisa knew a song by one Madonna called ‘Like a virgin’. This Madonna represented all that is sexuality. Sexuality because we are sexual beings and one cannot talk of humanity without talking about sexuality. Denying it would be denying our being and existence. No matter how spiritual, we are ultimately sexual.

Luisa held a certain respect for religious figures who in sacrifice, sacrificed their sexual nature. Luisa admired them in the same way she admired prostitutes who sacrificed, killed, and numbed their humanity minutes at a time to exist purely as sexual beings devoid of spirit. She admired them as she admired former alcoholics and junkies and all other addicts because they sacrificed things that were of real value to them. Luisa knew that there was no glory in surrendering what you never had, knew, or even loved. Sacrifice, if it is the physical proof of our faith, must be of something worthwhile, and in our case, also human. Sexuality and spirituality are both human. One cannot say human without saying both spirit and sex. One cannot speak of God without conjuring up man who was created in his image. Luisa respected the two Madonnas for reminding her of both sides of what it is to be human and God-like.

Luisa thought, “This is exactly why I can’t be loved”. This is what the two men before Paulo and Pilar had said. The thought enlightened her but she still lay cold and alone as every other night, reading about Pilar and her companion.

On Travelling

There’s a scene in the movie “Motorcycle Diaries” where the characters of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and his friend are travelling through the Atacama desert in Chile on their way to Peru. They meet a couple of peasants in the middle of the desert and they sit down to share stories and a hot drink over a camp fire. The peasants tell them of how they’ve been forced to leave their homeland because of political unrest and bad working conditions. Then it’s Ernesto and his friend’s turn to share their story. Ernesto tells them how they are travelling “just to travel”. A silence takes over the camp. Ernesto and his friend sit there almost in shame, and the peasants in complete disbelief that people can and do this. Finally the female peasant breaks the silence and in acceptance tells them, “Bless you... Blessed be your travels”.

The reason this scene was so significant to me was that when I was younger I never understood why people enjoyed "travelling" just for travelling. Like the peasants in the movie, I was raised in a very different place, where people only travelled when they had to, usually for work or escaping a physically dangerous situation, so unless your job was an explorer, then it didn't make sense to travel.

I couldn’t understand why people would choose to travel unless they had to. Later I came to almost despise it because a lot of the people I knew then described themselves as “travellers” when they meant to say “tourists”, or when they would try to make me believe that because they had travelled they were somehow more “cultured”, more “experienced”, better than average. Travelling to me in these cases always seemed a luxury, something someone did by choice and not for survival. It seemed redundant and I found it offensive that these travellers acted as if their journeys had been some part of a humanitarian mission. Seeing a pretty place or partying with other tourists or eating local food did not seem particularly special to me.

And then came another time of my life I found it very hard to stay in one place—the anxiety was unbearable—so I started “travelling” too. It took me ages to realise that running away doesn't make your problems disappear, because your problems have a tendency to follow you around.

As I grew up I eventually came to have more tolerance of this travelling business and I came to see some places myself which made me feel blessed because nature can be so breathtakingly beautiful. Yet still, travelling to me is still only escapism. But everything that isn't survival-related is escapism—and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Travel

One day she left to travel. I’ve always believed that those who like to travel are running away from something. For a while it seemed as if everyone was travelling. Maybe everyone was running.
One day I travelled and a lot of things happened, others changed, and the rest remained the same.
She left, but she said it wasn’t because of me. I believed her because, well, why wouldn’t I? One day she called me and asked whether I missed her. I wish I hadn’t said anything, but I said I did. (Sometimes it’s less complicated to say nothing at all.) She said she hoped I wouldn’t forget her, nor the things we had lived. After that, we said nothing at all.
When I realised that there is nothing behind travelling other than self-indulgence, I wanted to humiliate her, myself too, and to just tell everyone “the truth”. We wanted to deny it, but how could we?
She ran away from the truth and left. Me, I keep thinking that those who like to travel are running away from something.

One day I left to travel. It was early on since we’d met, but I missed her as if she had been a part of me for centuries and lives before that. She called me to wish me well. I told her that I missed her and that I loved her deeply. She didn’t know what to tell me so she told me that she had missed me too, and wished me well (again). I don’t know what happened to us since then.
One day, without saying a thing, she travelled to the same place where I had been without her. She never told me about that trip and I can only ask myself, “could it be that she forgot about me in the same place I had gone to forget about her?” The secrets that the mountains must hold.

One day, walking alone through life (or the park), I thought I heard something that sounded like my name. I wanted to cry but I kept quite. Sometimes I can get so lost in the silence that I even forget the name God himself has given me.
Lost in the silence one day, I thought I heard my name. It wasn’t anything. My consciousness was shouting at me to wake up. The vice of nostalgia was crying to tell me to let myself go. The stars tried then to tell me something, but who sees celestial things during daylight? (The faithful ones who never wander?) I got myself lost because I listened to those three things that were screaming things that I heard as my name but in reality were probably saying something closer to “No!”.

One day she tried to embarrass me for speaking of God. Who was I? Who am I? God knows who I am, the rest doesn’t matter.

—2005 (I initially wrote this story in Spanish, but I’ve recently started to think about it again because I’m on holidays – and not travelling.)