3 minute read
International Voices
OUR HOUSEBOAT
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ, ADRIFT ON THE NILE.
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TEXTOS_ Raúl Burgos FOTOGRAFÍA_ Nini Cortadellas envato elements
So much happened when we were forced to stay still. It has been two years of slow but furious change. The awkwardness of wearing a mask gave place to the nakedness of not wearing one.
But we quickly adapted and found newer things to take for granted. During this time, some friendships frayed, unable to adapt to the world of Zoom happy-hours. Other friendships blossomed, like the neighbors I had never met but with whom I came to talk to every day during their walks outside. Now, the slow pace of change is giving place to a more familiar frenzy. We see it in the news. Our phones dutifully alert us to an upcoming meeting, dinner, or trip. We cannot miss those, we say. We have missed so many already. Old worries are being replaced by new ones. Will I be able to balance a return to this “new normal” with those things I came to appreciate from the time when the world stood still? I had already taken those for granted. The guests in Naguib Mahfouz’s houseboat dealt with conflict, a rapidly changing society, new norms and rules.
They were also participants in that extraordinarily common but necessary human need: connection. Mahfouz’s houseboat hosted actors, writers, businesspeople and government officials. They were friends and strangers. Allies and rivals. Insiders and outsiders. And so, as the waters of the Nile flowed beneath them, their boat would shake a little, but they lived on the water, the movement was stillness. As I embarked on my Barcelona adventure, to say that I did not know what to expect would be an understatement.
I worried about what could be. Would I be able to make friends? Could I make memories aside those delivered to me by Netflix or Glovo? And despite all that — or perhaps because of it—I rang the bell, Mr. Sales opened the door, and the houseboat we are all fortunate to be socios at shook a little as it welcomed my family in. This houseboat is different, but not in the ways that matter. Mafouz’s houseboat was creaky and battered by years on the water. This houseboat is a masterpiece. It’s been nurtured by generations of staff and guests. All of them sharing a passion to protect the vessel, but also a comittment to the the ideals that deliver stillness out of the frenzy that is life outside its doors.
Like the New York City of any good film, our houseboat refuses to be just a setting. It has become a character in my Barcelona adventure. It is not just that I have come to learn about my new city from within its walls. Or that to roam its rooms, taking in the art and architecture, has become a source of calm and inspiration.
I have seen allies and rivals break bread together. Debate. Share ideas. Get mad at each other just to see them shake hands and do it all over the following week.
I have felt how warmly insiders can welcome an outsider. I have been recipient to that fellowship and hospitality that tourist guides tell you about, but is usually out of reach to a foreigner. To be international, in this houseboat, is also to be a local.
It has become my houseboat. A borrowed home that offers refuge from a hectic life. I fear and also welcome the idea that I’ve become as much a character in this story as Mahfouz’s Samara. If you are reading this, you probably have become one too. And so the angst that hung around my arrival to this city have given way to the joy of knowing that friendship can be sparked as easily when we were kids in high-school or as adults sharing a meal at a peña. For as soon as we pass through that door, we are no longer strangers. We are connected.
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