At the Canadian border a traveler found themselves accompanied by an Iraqi guide who would lead the day’s journey into the wilderness of the United States. The group had expected a fluent English speaker, yet the assigned cicerone spoke with noticeable limitations in the language. Despite this, the guide carried himself with a quiet professionalism and a biography that raised questions. How did this man arrive in the United States, and why had he chosen to be part of this expedition? The answer seemed almost self-evident: his cooperation with the American military during the years of the occupation of Iraq had earned him a particular fate. Whether as a translator, possibly as an asset in intelligence operations, he appeared to be an ideal candidate for a future reckoning, a reminder of the unresolved tensions behind Washington’s foreign policy. The traveler inferred that faith or affiliation mattered little next to the impression of loyalty that a North American visa, or perhaps a passport, symbolized in that moment. The era’s history, it seemed, had been quietly written by men who navigated danger and secrecy.
The traveler ventured with family and a trusted American friend, and the guide had grown up in Afghanistan, where his father had served on the edge of the Soviet frontier as an early figure in intelligence work. The father’s name was once exposed by Pravda, forcing a reckless flight from the region. Secrets accumulate across generations, and the keys to the past often stay tucked away, even from those who think they know all the answers. The narrator recalled how the novelist Javier Marías wove similar secrets into his recent works, including Berta Isla and Tomás Nevisón, where memory and truth dance around a web of concealment. Silence, as a thread, sometimes mends wounds, yet at other times leaves them exposed, and along with it the ache that literature—and humanity—tend to carry.
A certain melancholy clung to the traveler, the familiar ache of having witnessed too much. That mood resurfaced one evening when the family returned to a hotel after a day out. A singer from the 1980s wandered the same town’s streets, perhaps in search of conversation. When told the singer was Spanish, he responded by softly humming a Panchito song, a small sign that the world remained strange and wonderful. The traveler pondered whether the singer might be jesting, and later learned that he had once performed in New York’s comedy clubs before fading from public memory. In the town’s park, a girl sat at a piano while others played chess or table tennis. Squirrels darted through the gardens and children traced circles in the grass. An Amish family, glancing at the border through wary, careful eyes, stood apart, seemingly guided by a quiet inner compass. What aspirations drove them, what hidden meanings did their gaze hold, remained questions that lingered as the night deepened. The group dined at a hotel management school, their guests seating themselves as the sole patrons, while a waiter spoke of a desire to abandon the town for something more urban. A line of thought settled in: reality often mirrors a mental state, and beneath appearances lie meanings that only the patient observer might uncover, day after day, night after night.