The Year Without Rain

Greetings to whomever stumbled across this blog. I am diligently working to finish translating the first entry in my commentary on the top to bottom reform of the Mexican Judiciary, but in the meantime I wanted to share a story which I wrote roughly three years ago for the IE Prizes in the Humanities.

My original intention with this piece was to therapize myself. The idea of the story was to explore the life of people who are forced to become immigrants; to leave their home and everything they know in search of something which, so the stories go, is ‘better’. I remember growing up in Mexico and constantly being told that the USA was the land of opportunity; a place where dreams could come true. But when I moved to the US those words started to ring hollow: it was during the lead up to the 2016 elections and I was living in North Carolina at the time so lets just say that immigrants were not necessarily welcome. After that I immigrated again, this time to Spain, and though the process and integration was considerably easier something still didn’t sit right.

I have been, for most of my life at this point, a stranger in a strange land: every year having to renew a residency permit; every year needing to justify to whatever authority gives me that permit that I deserve to be there; every year being afraid of whether I could stay or I was going to be sent back.

The story is, or at least I thought it was, an exploration of how immigrants are often told that there is a better life somewhere else; only for that somewhere else to spit in their face and tell them to go home.

Now that I reread it, however, I realize its also a story about climate change.

Aside from my passion for the study of democracy, the past few years have seen me becoming increasingly involved in rights based climate litigation and, more concretely, the manner in which regional human rights protection mechanisms may best address what is, most definitely, an existential threat.

It’s one boy’s reflection, but it may, perhaps, provide an insight into the world we may come to live in should immediate action not be taken. I hope you enjoy.

Blood, fire, and fractured memories are all I have left of that day. Things had been bleak for quite some time; the rain had left us almost six months earlier; the rivers ran dry four months ago; two months ago, we had nothing. All that was left were the agaves my grandfather had planted – tequila and mezcal was all that quenched our thirst since then. Not ideal. But it helped us forget.

The desert came to our doorstep almost a month ago. We were once surrounded by tall trees, bushels of fruit, and grass as far as the eye could see. Nothing can grow here now. Well, except for those plants that scarcely need water to grow. Or maybe just to stay alive.

My mother had sent me to my grandma’s house up the road earlier that morning to drop off some bottles. The walk felt longer than usual. Left, right, left, right. Each step felt like moving through an ocean of flames; the heat current was flowing into me, each breeze lashing me like a whip. Left, right, left, right. I kept my head down. Tracing each crack in the ground as I made my way forward; who knows, maybe they led somewhere. Somewhere better than abuela’s at least. In any case, there wasn’t much to see anymore. The desert had taken over our earth, stretching out far into the horizon in every direction. Well, maybe not to the North.

My grandmother woke me from my sleepless daydream with her honey like voice. “Eyes up, chamaco,” she exclaimed.

“What did you bring me today little one, the beverage of the gods perhaps?”

“I never understood why you call it that, abue,” I retorted putting the bottles of mezcal on the ledge next to the little stool she was sitting on. The door was slightly askew, giving the most minimal glimpse of what lay inside. My grandmother had a small house. But it was bigger on the inside. Family pictures, countless nick knacks from journeys long ago, empty fruit baskets, tablecloths with apples, bananas, little sugar skulls as accents on the fringes, and half empty bottles of mezcal. A world hidden in a wooden shack.

“Our ancestors said that it was a way of getting closer to them. A way of seeing what was otherwise hidden in smoke and mirrors.” She took a big gulp. Her once gray and cracked skin recovered a peachy hue – blood flowed through her veins again.

“They were just getting drunk abue, seeing figures in the sky where there were none. Where are those gods now? What explains all of this?”

“You need an explanation for everything don’t you, chamaco?” She extended her hand towards me, gesturing me to help her up; her wrist cracked loudly as she did. “This is just water by another name, mijo. Take it in. Have it fill your veins with the hope we lost. There is still something out there for us, I am sure. I can see it. These old eyes see it, mijo.” She opened her eyelids as if extending her field of vision. Funny. She used to do that all the time when I was little.

My head fell as I helped her up. She was heavier than she looked. The hope of many years compounded in one person, I suppose. I shook my head. Cracked a broken smile. “So abue, what do you see with these magic eyes of yours?”

She sighed. “Well, whenever I have a sip, I see the trees again. I see the river that used to flow next to our house. I see the children playing. Your mother preparing some food. I see my husband.” Her voice cracked slightly. “I see an oasis to the North where we can find that, mijo. Well…Almost all of that. Your father’s told you about his time up there, hasn’t he? Ohhh, the stories he used to tell would always put wind in my wings again. I see a path to the North, little one. That’s what I see.”

We started making our way back to my house. I figured it would do my father some good seeing her. The walk would be far slower with her by my side. Her legs weren’t what they used to be. Again. Left, right, left, right. She tripped slightly on a crack in the ground. Being blind makes you clumsy, I guess.

“Be my eyes, mijo… What do you see?”

“Me? I see a world on fire.”

The sun had set by the time we got close. I tried my best to navigate the path so that my grandma wouldn’t fall; avoiding all of the cracks, snakes, and divots that lay in our way. I kept my eyes down. Good call. Eyes down. We were in almost perfect darkness. Almost. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a glimmer of light. “Must be the mezcal,” I thought to myself. The little speck slowly grew as we made our way forward. My grandmother pulled me back. “Eyes up, mijo…”

All at once it hit me. It was as if the sun and the moon were in the same place at the same time. The heat broke my trance, whipping me back to the reality of my house burning to the ground. Pillars of fire extended into the sky. Piles of charred wood were scattered all over the floor in front of us. Or maybe they were my parents – I couldn’t tell. I never saw them again after that day. All I have left of them is the smell of burning flesh and the pools of blood that boiled from the heat of the ground. I stared into the mouth of hell in that house. Its fangs flared in our direction, as its jaws crushed the wood that held up our roof.

I instinctively tossed the little bit of mezcal that was left in the morning’s bottle. The flames grew. I looked around for some water. The flames grew. I scoured the terrain before me but all I found was a little glass bottle, perched next to a pile of ash that had once been the wooden side of our house. I gripped it and felt a sharp pain. Blood. The flames grew.

The world went silent for a moment. My pulse grew in speed, my hand trembled, my eyes stung. In the distance something called to me. A voice? Yes. A voice. I turned towards the sound clearing my eyes of the soot. As I opened my eyes I saw fire. Blindingly bright flames. But that voice lingered, as if an echo was trapped in the fibers of the wood. My father. My father’s voice.

It was a Monday in the second month. I had just come back from my daily round to my grandmother and was getting ready to have some lunch. My father, a once plump and vibrant man with a deep and hearty laugh, was helping my mother. “Sit down kid, we got some good stuff today,” he said with a candid smile and soft countenance.

“Rock consome,” said my mother.

I smiled and made my way to the table. Orange tablecloth. Cute. My mother had been making rock consome for the past two weeks. Cooking the mezcal with a hot rock boiled out much of the alcohol leaving a liquid with an earthy and filling taste. Water was scarce; we were only able to have one small cup once a day to make sure we had enough.

My mother came to my side and served me. The smell of roses infected my nostrils.

“I went North once you know. I can hardly remember the details, but I’ll try to sketch an outline. Oh son, it was something you wouldn’t believe. Grand boulevards filled with fountains, people gushing down sweet drinks like there was no tomorrow. Water in the air, what did they call it again? Humidity! That’s it, humidity. The air was so humid it was hard to breathe. But not like the difficulty you’re used to, my son; a burning and blistering difficulty that fills your lungs with sand. I was swimming then. Swimming in the water the air had chosen to make its own. Oh, how I wished to go back. For me, for your mother, for you… look at where we are now. For now, at least…”

He took a sip of his tequila.

“Promise me one thing, son. If you have a chance. Go North. Swim in that water that fills your lungs, your heart, your spirit. Do that for me, won’t you?”

My mother chuckled as she cleaned the dirty glass in her hand.

“Funny you say that, Jorge. There was so much water in our lungs we were drowning. Struggling to stay afloat; those Northerners, ugh, what a disgusting bunch, they do nothing but try and keep your head under that ocean of dreams.”

“Remember, mijo. No matter how much you try. You can’t see straight under water.”

I took a sip. Then I smiled.

I went back next to my grandmother. She didn’t entirely understand what was going on. As I stood staring at the burning building I shed no tears. I gripped onto my grandmother’s hand. And looked to the sky.

She turned to me. Pulled at my shoulder. “What’s going on, mijo. The heat is unbearable.”

I looked down again. “It’s nothing, abue, just a big fire. Like the ones that pop up a lot around these parts… Some poor sap left an empty bottle next to some wood. The sun must have set it ablaze.”

“Weren’t we heading home?”

“In a way.”

“So which way do we walk? Don’t forget that bottle by the way. I heard it whispering to me.”

Confused, I crouched down to pick up a bottle of water that had been left at the door of my house. I guess the fumes obscured my vision.

“North, abue. We are heading North.”

Roughly six months had passed since we left our hometown. The two of us had made our way up the archipelago of villages in the path leading towards the border; well, that is if you can call that unending expanse a path. In each encounter a roughly similar pattern took place: we made our way in, shared some mezcal, talked about the wonders of the North, and added new members to what became our little caravan. Some of these villages were wonderful - both in aesthetic and spirit. Large colorful houses were a common sight, a stark contrast to the almost transparent inhabitants. Some villages even had wells and were collecting water from under the earth. Why we didn’t stay, I am not sure. Why some of them decided to join, that was an even more intriguing question.

The young and the old were those that were most prone to leaving their home and joining the Northern caravan, leaving their parents, sons, and daughters to linger in this wasteland like ghosts trapped in purgatory. Trapped by whom, I wonder.

My grandma took the lead in conversing with the townsfolk; she always managed to convince one or two sad saps to join our crusade with the wonders of the North. “Water falls from the sky there, I tell you. Grass and fruit trees and seemingly bottomless lakes are everywhere in the North. I’ve seen it! There is no future here for us. The future is up there.”

Since that day my mouth had become so dry that even scraping the roof with my tongue led to bleeding and the taste of iron. The water in the villages helped, but that taste always lingered. I never drank from the bottle in the little satchel I had with me. “Save that for the border, mijo” my grandma said, “that way your parents can come with us too”. I told my grandmother what had happened with my parents eventually, though she didn’t seem to react to the news too much. I often found her talking to them in the evenings after a long day of walking. She would sit on the ground, down the bottle of mezcal we had to keep us hydrated and would begin to converse with both of my parents. “Don’t you see them, mijo? They are over there, shining bright over the horizon,” she would say. “I’m sure they are, abue… I’m sure they are”. I tried my best to keep my mezcal consumption to a minimum. I was young then, fit, or at least as fit as one can be, plus, my grandmother needed it more than I did.

In the last stretch of our journey there were hardly any of us left. My grandmother died about a month ago, leaving me with a little bottle of water she had taken from home to drink at the border. She was taken by the desert on an especially hot day. I guess a combination of the stress and the heat was what did her in. We were on the outskirts of a village when it happened. She was rather tired so I made my way up to see if there was any water they could spare. My grandma stayed behind sitting on a rock that we had run across. “Go ahead, mijo. I’ll wait for you here,” she said.

When I came back, I found her staring at the sky, a bottle of mezcal right next to the rock. She was smiling so I hope she went in peace. In any case, anywhere was better than here.

I set her down beside the rock and dug a hole with a spoon I had taken from her house. I like to think she saw home before she died, that she had seen that little house in that rock she was sitting on. I took the bottle of water she had in her bag and put it in my satchel. It was getting quite heavy, that bag of mine, but we were close; the North was just over the horizon.

Most of the people that had joined us on our journey also died along the way. Each of them looked at the sky before they died as if looking for the water that would be found further up the path, or perhaps a cloud which could grant them some sort of respite. Only three of us were left in the end: Chucho, Jaime, and what was left of me. One more day and we would be at the border. One more day.

Left, right, left, right, left, right. We each trudged our way through the desert, our eyes fixated on the ground. For the past few days, we had been walking downhill. The place we came from was rather high above sea-level so a walk to the North necessarily implied a walk downwards. It was less taxing that way, and we could still see where we were going even if we kept our gaze near the ground.

“I can feel the water in the air, guys,” said Jaime in a voice crackling from dry vocal chords.

“I think that’s just the heat talking,” responded Chucho.

“I’m telling you! The North is just around the corner. My mom told me that in the North water is everywhere: in the air, in the ground, hell, when you open the tap clean water actually comes out. We’ll be able to drink our fill there, you’ll see!” Jaime retorted as if he had been filled with the life he had long lost.

“Hah. My mom told me that in the North things actually grow. People use these giant machines to water fields and fields of fruits and veggies. They have so much water that they even put it in small toy guns and shoot streams at each other. Have you ever heard something so ridiculous!”

“Just because it sounds ridiculous doesn’t mean it’s not true. Maybe the rain didn’t forsake the North. In that case they have massive supplies they can do with what they wish. Water, water, water everywhere and for everyone! Plus, if you don’t believe in what is waiting for us there then why the hell have you made your way up here? You should have stayed home.”

“I probably should have. At least that way I would die with what I know as opposed to chasing a mirage. Plus, if these people have so much water to spare how come they haven’t sent us any?”

“Guys, be quiet. We are almost there,” I shouted at them.

Jaime looked forward as Chucho and I turned our gaze to the ground.

Suddenly I heard: “Eyes up, everyone.” I turned to look at Jaime. His face had gone pale as if the blood and energy that had just filled him had been stolen. Chucho too looked up, his face expressing little to no emotion.

What was it that made Jaime die right then and there? The shock of seeing all the water maybe.

No.

Ahead of us stood three other men staring at us with blank faces. “Where are you guys heading?” I asked. “South” croaked a man with a handlebar mustache, “it stopped raining for us about two years ago and we were told that there were endless streams down south.”

My hands went cold. I dropped to my knees letting the heavy satchel fall off my shoulder, spreading its contents on the ground before me: a lonely bottle of mezcal. I felt light all of a sudden, as if my soul had exited the husk that was my body. I chuckled as I downed what was left of the mezcal. I turned my gaze to the sky. My body was tired, my soul was weak.

“What a terrible day for rain, isn’t it?”

“What?! The sky is clear, and the ground is dry! It’s not raining my friend…” responded my compatriots.

I opened my eyes to let out the only two tears my body could produce.

“Yes, it is…”

– E. Amor Vázquez