Many neighbors in the village, when they learned about my pregnancy, compared me with Sarah, Abraham’s wife, who got pregnant when she was a hundred years old or something like that. Others compared Edelmiro and me with Joaquin and Ana, Jesus’s grandparents. Frankly, I can’t say which of the two compliments I like best, but I’m sure I’ve heard insults much less insulting.
Despite being stunned at first, both of us were really happy about this pregnancy. We had thought this was an episode of our lives that had closed – being parents, I mean. Now we had to face this new twist of fate. Amelia, my elder daughter, was amazed, yet also really happy, since now, apart from her own daughter, she would have a new baby sister to spoil. The poor thing had felt somewhat lonely and longed for a sister or brother her whole life. At least she was finally going to have one as a grown adult. This prompted Amelia to say that she deserved the prerogative to choose a name for her sister: it was a beautiful traditional name from the Canary Islands.
So we called our new daughter Dara.
“We hear lots of horrid stories these days. Rioting, looting, fires and broken glass everywhere. Allegedly representatives of the far right affirm that the unrest was triggered by several knife attacks perpetrated by members of the Muslim community. The Islamic Self-Defense League patrols the streets, escorted by the police to prevent fascist attacks on their mosques and shops.
Moreover, the police had to act in order to control Antifa groups that were expected to confront far-right demonstrators across the whole city. Police spokespersons say that the state police is overwhelmed. The prime minister called for the public to calm down in her speech on TV.”
“Recent research conducted at the University of Cambridge provides evidence of the importance of polarization and extremism in social networks and the mass media. Fake news and disinformation play an essential role in foreign government’s social engineering strategies to destabilize the West. Hate language in the social networks should be prosecuted by new regulations issued this month at the Spanish Congress.”
“Protesters encircled the European parliament at Strasbourg; some tried to enter the hemicycle but have been arrested by the police…”
The Complutense University of Madrid, especially its Faculty of Political Science, has been a stronghold of revolutionary and leftist ideas since the late years of Franco’s dictatorship and over the last 60 years of democracy. New ideas, public debates and very insightful conversations used to take place in every corner of the old college building, and not only during classes. The atmosphere captivated me from the very beginning: there are faculties of political science in the Canary Islands too, but I knew that the core of national political life was in Madrid, and I admit that I was also attracted to the huge cities of Europe so apparently ferocious and full of conflict. My parents knew that sooner or later I would leave the nest and fly away, but deep in their hearts they harbored the hope that I would study something like agricultural engineering, veterinary or human medicine, nursing, teaching or something like that, and stay in El Hierro. My parents are really the best: one cannot think of progenitors more supportive and affectionate than them. At the same time, they encouraged me to be free, think for myself, be independent and never tried to force me to take one path or another.
However, since childhood I couldn’t help but wonder why people act in a certain way, or how different societies are organized. I wondered why wars start over and over again between countries or inside the same country; why some countries are successful, and others fail; what the true sources of evil are… I asked myself, and others, too many questions. Dad had told me once that I would have loved my grandpa (his dad) because he was always talking about those issues, although curiously enough he always used his own mother, my great grandmother Ofelia, as a source of wisdom. My grandpa’s name was Antonio, but unfortunately I never had the chance to meet either Ofelia or Antonio.
Either way, I decided to exchange the soft hills and the green terraced plots of land where fig, peach, pears, lemon and orange trees grew in my home village, El Mocanal, on the island of El Hierro, for Madrid’s wide streets clogged with traffic.
I lived in a shared apartment with two roommates, one of them, Maria, was also my best friend, was getting a degree in neuroscience and engaged in very interesting research on how to save the human brain’s thoughts, dreams and feelings.
“Daraaaaa!, Daritaaaaaaaaaaa! Wooooooh! Yeaaaaaah! We made it! We finally made it!” – Maria couldn’t stop screaming. Yet, suddenly, pulling herself together, she changed her expression from happy to serious and grave and said: “Hey listen, listen, don’t tell anyone, it still isn’t published. We don’t want anyone to copy our findings…. Listen, today, we’ve been able to record a human’s perception of things. We have seen what people see as if we were inside their heads. We’ve recorded somebody’s dreams and memories. We can even play images inside people’s minds! Can you believe it!!!”
“Well, I’m happy for you, since you’ve worked so hard… You are going to be famous I think, and rich, no? Then you’ll have to treat me to a long trip to the Caribbean or something. No, no, the trip to Bali we planned last summer! Remember?” I was aware that I was reacting a bit childishly and shallowly to María’s discoveries, but I just wanted to distract myself from the lugubrious thought of that whole thing about “playing images inside people’s minds.”
“Ok, fine I see you are very interested in what I’ve just told you. I come to you with the greatest discovery ever in human history and all you care about is a trip to Bali….”
“Oh! Come on! Don’t be so self-defensive with me! I was just joking. You haven’t received the Nobel Prize yet and you’re already so serious and dignified. You know I love you the most. I’m your best friend, and your success is like mine. It’s just that… I’ve been reading a lot lately about totalitarian regimes and polarization and extremism in societies… I wonder… how your new invention would affect that….”
“Every new discovery can be used for good or for bad…”
“Yes, you are right…”
(…to be continued…)
Transadaptation Volume 6 – Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted
January: A Regular Train Trip – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)
February: Growing Up – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)
March: Mess – Veronika Groke (Austria)
April: The Roads We Take – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
May: Need – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)
June: “Next Sunshine” – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
July: Intentions – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
August: Planet Kyiv – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)
September: Feeling like a Fool – Ulrike Bergmeister (Germany)
October: Stories of Outcast Souls – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
November: Ronaldinha – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)
December: Aimlessly – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Center photo: Lanzarote, Spain – The village – Yingna Cai (Shutterstock)
Left to right at top: 1. Tenerife, Spain – A day on the island – Patriot O.A. (Shutterstock); 2. El Hierro, Spain – The road – Dynamoland (Shutterstock); 3. El Hierro, Spain – Life on the island – Dynamoland (Shutterstock)
Left to right on bottom: 1. La Palma, Spain – The rock houses – Kristof Bellens (Shutterstock); 2. Tenerife, Spain – The trunk – Patriot O.A. (Shutterstock); 3. El Hierro, Spain – Rustic houses – Dynamoland (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed