I Spent a Night in the Gate of Bethlehem
A day like today, a few years back, I slept on the street. Mariano, who had 22 causes of justice on his back and a few hand full of jail sentences, said that night was not going to be too cold.
 Fernando Berlín the author of this blog, is the director of Radiocable.com and participates in various media in Spain.
|
That night I was lucky it was Tuesday. The weekends, -said Mariano-, were worse. The drunken youth throw bottles and kick or piss on the cardboards. Sometimes, if the cold permits one to sleep, you even find those that steal from your pockets, -he assures.
Him and Modesto made sure that the night was running well. For dinner we had a few laughs and a sandwich. I slept on a bench next to Modesto’s dogs, near Mariano’s bench and next to another bench with a man who wouldn’t stop yelling. At night we had to take walks with him, because the sindrom of alcohol abtinence causes strong nauseas and painful vomits.
After, we slept a bit. And Modesto slept with his partner on a clothing store front. What a paradox. What a gate of Bethlehem.
It was freezing. In the morning, the mothers who crossed by with their kids, on their way to school, handgripped their hands and accelerated their step. None of them looked into our faces. The children did, with their eyes wide open.
A few days after we gave Mariano a recorder to register a daily audio. I promised that everything he said, if it fit in 4 minutes, I would broadcast it on Cadena Ser. I used to work for Gabilondo in «Hoy por Hoy,» and from that grew an experience that was heard across Iñaki’s program and Channel 2 on TVE.
That night was better then many others, when I used to sleep at the house. A night just like that presents shame and fear. Not fear towards the drunk kids or the fear to the streets, but fear to the day that society will turn its back, accelerate its step and hold only the hands of its own. And when it comes to shame, it took me a very long time to bury it.
Whoever believes in a merit based society, in the effort, and in work, forgets, that one day, because of a random inestability, you see yourself being borned under a door gate and screwed. Here what they didn’t say, read the protagonist of «lunes al sol», is that some are born cicadas and others ants.
I remembered this today because Guille and Marisa coincidently sent me the same video. Is the people who knock on the streets identifying who they accelerate their step for. One day we will all be aware of the list and we will sink. So now you know what is coming for the next time.
