Al-Alim

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Al-Alim العليم

 

It wasn’t me! The cat was near that small guitar when I left the room and the next thing I heard was, bang! I was in the bathroom, and I went back to see what happened. The cat run away to the balcony and there was your guitar, on the floor, broken in two. I am sorry!  I’m so sorry! That’s what the teenage girl said to him when he came back from a ride in the Colombian city.

 

It wasn’t a guitar. And it wasn’t the cat. The cavaquinho is useless now. It fell or perhaps it was a change on temperature or humidity in this weird weather. A long crack on the soundboard and the neck removed from the body. It is a sad view. That cavaco was traveling with him during months. It was the perfect instrument to carry in a bicycle. Small, light, flexible. He could play all type of melodies and he could also accompany local musicians. Everybody liked its percussion-type quality when strummed it. But now it is over.

 

I will pray for you. And you, the girl says looking at him, you should put yourself in God’s hands. God hands? He’s furious. What do you mean? Does He have hands? What for? He needs nothing, right? He doesn’t need any hands either. I mean, she insists, you should just control yourself and ask God for a new guitar. It’s not a guitar, whatever.

 

He left the apartment rather upset and went down for a coffee or something. He sat on a bench in the nearby park. I’m fed up of this place. Fed up of this host family. They are nice people though. So kind, so generous. They have been hosting me for a week now. Difficult to put a label on them. They laugh, they pray, they speak about God’s will. So religious. With all their Jewish rules and rituals. They remind me of another period in my life, so long ago. A young student at a Catholic off-campus residence in Buenos Aires. Winter.

 

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June 1974. A rainy day in the incredibly humid winter of Buenos Aires. Water pouring from balconies, flooded streets, treacherous sidewalks. Cold and windy. The city succumbs to the chaos of traffic and blocked streets. The political climate matches the dreadful weather. A deranged government can’t manage feuds between uncontrolled extremist groups. Fear is is out there every day in the streets, parks and public places. Photos of murdered people are so frequent on the newspapers that they attract no attention anymore. Guerrillas attack army units, police detachments, government security forces. And they fight with other guerrilla groups. Kidnapping is so common. Politicians, businessmen, labour union leaders move from one place to another protected by private armies of heavy-armed guards. Eventually, when adversaries meet, there are battles in daylight with plenty of blood spelt on the streets. Bombs explode in offices, police stations, private houses, cars, parks. On top of this, the Argentinean national football team was beaten by Poland, a rather depressing piece of news to add to the general situation.

 

But there is a group of people who are smiling. They gather at beautiful houses in well-to-do neighbourhoods. Strictly separated in men and women, they laugh, they make plans, they organize. Their “Father” Josemaría arrives from Europe on a visit to the agitated country. Preparations are made for various gatherings: members, non-members, married people, unmarried men and women, domestic aid workers, priests, well-organized and strictly separated. There is a weird excitement in the air, good humour, even jokes, so out of place within the context of the brutal political violence.

 

The Father is a Spanish-born saintly man. He lives in Rome, near the Vatican and close to the life of cardinals and bishops and papal regiments of priests, nuns and officials. He knows how to deal with big audiences. One of the “tertulias”, a large meeting by invitation only, is in Teatro Coliseo, with capacity for two thousand seated persons.

 

You follow Guillermo and others who are already members. It feels good hanging with them. They say “let’s go home” referring to the centre where they live. It’s like family. They are respectful, educated, clean, well-dressed. They laugh and they can be serious as well. We all get into the big theatre hall. The Father appears on stage with other priests and important members. Among them are a few armed guards in plain clothes.

 

We pray, everybody seats. He speaks clearly with a heavy brogue from Spain. He shares smiles with the public and thanks Argentina for the reception. First question, a fat banker (he later finished in prison in Mexico) takes the microphone and asks about religion in business. Then comes a lady, Father I hated you! Her two of her sons joined the group and she became angry, but later she understood it as the will of God. Now she is also a member. The Father says something about the group as a family. More questions. A man speaks against gynecologists who recommend abortion, a horrendous offense according to the Father. Somebody else makes a reference to the political situation. “Communism is a sin” he replies. Everybody applauds. “I’m not speaking about politics”. I think to myself that he is supporting the right-wing zealots at the government, and the bankers and the elites, including the army and the security forces. More questions.

 

Suddenly, out of the blue, he bursts out: Maldita sea Medellín!, damn Medellín. This is met with a heavy silence from the audience. Nobody dears to move. But many of us know someone supporting the “option for the poor”. That third-world priest who lived in the slums of Buenos Aires and was murdered a few weeks earlier in cold blood. Or the other priests and seminarist of an Irish order who were killed in their church. The Father refers to the group of bishops in Latin America who met in Medellín in 1968 and laid the foundations of left-leaning liberation theology, the option for the poor supported by a progressive sector of the Catholic church. I will not forget those words, and the hatred with which they were uttered: Maldita sea Medellín... I was shocked, and I felt certain confusion between the spiritual good vibes of the group and the strong opposition to the new winds in the church.

 

I went back home. I told my mother and she also felt puzzled. She was born in Medellín and she was a practising Catholic with traditional values. We tried to understand but it was not easy. We remained some time seating seating in silence, there in the lounge. Maldita sea Medellín!

 

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So many years later he became a seasoned history scholar. He corresponds via email with Pablo, a member and a historian for the group. He mentions some common friends and you tell him about the story of Medellín comment. He says he isn’t aware and he promises to check with the documents. Some days later he writes back. He went to read the transcript of the audio recording at the Opus Dei archives, and it wasn’t there. He added that it wasn’t as well in the movie nor in the original recording tapes. They chat online.

-        It must be somewhere. I heard it.

-        I checked with the video of the meeting, with the transcription of the audio, with the audio itself. And nothing.

-        But I was there and I heard it! And when I went back home I told my mother. We were shocked because she was from Medellín.

-        I’m sorry, there is nothing there.

-        Listen, I remember he also spoke against women wearing trousers. Porque hay algunas que tienen cada globo terráqueo en pantalones de hombre, or something like that. Is that in the documents?

-        Didn’t see that either.

-        And what about the bodyguards? There were bodyguards hired to protect him during the visit. I recall a blond one with the looks of an executioner behind the Father.

-        What bodyguards?

-        There were guards behind him when he was speaking. Los custodios. They were with him all the time. And they had guns.

-        Sorry, no bodyguards there.  

 

 

Did they edited out? You ask people. Many of them are angry. They have been enthusiastic members and supporters of the group. Now they feel betrayed for some reason or another. There are websites against Opus Dei. You ask them about re-writing of history but there are just a few general replies. Trauma has been too hard.

 

He did say: Maldita sea Medellín… You know that. You were there. You listened to it. You commented later with your mother. You also feel betrayed.

 

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Patroness of cyclists, Magreglio, near Lake Como.

A cheap hostel in Macedonia’s Ohrid lake after an exhausting cycling day. You watch in your phone a documentary about Charlemagne’s clepsydra. A water clock sent by Harun Ar-Rashid, the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad in the early ninth century, as a diplomatic gift to the Frankish emperor. Every hour, one of twelve small doors opens and releases little spheres. The balls fall into a brass drum sounding the hour like a modern bell tower. At the twelfth hour a mounted horseman appears and closes the doors. This technical wonder was received with suspicion at the royal court. It was considered as a mysterious conspiracy by the King of the Saracens. It was said it was a work of the devil and consequently discarded.

 

You switch to a news show with the president of the United States addressing his followers. He threatens the Chinese, the Arabs, the immigrants from Latin America and other regions. They are criminals, rapers, murderers. They live, he says, in those dirty places, "shithole countries". They want the same for our cities.

 

Another video, now speaking about the supposedly fake process of canonization of Escrivá de Balaguer. The unusually expedited way of the process in the Vatican. The critical voices were silenced. Documents and witnesses were not included in the cause. History re-written. You don’t want to know. You think on tomorrow’s journey. The high mountain pass you have to reach to cross the border and visit a new region. Another language, religion, politics. The heroes honoured with monumental sculptures. Sometimes they fall, their heads cut, their names desecrated. So many things can change in such a short time. You also try to re-write your history, sometimes. Stories, pictures. Your heart.