saw.
As the youngest of five siblings - all male except for her - Andrea had grown up in an environment in which she felt entirely protected. And which was utterly banal. Her father was a police sergeant, her mother a housewife. They lived in a working-class area and ate macaroni most nights, chicken on Sundays. Madrid is a beautiful city, but for Andrea it served only to highlight her family’s mediocrity. At fourteen she swore that the minute she turned eighteen she’d be out the door and would never come back.
Of course the arguments with Dad about your sexual orientation sped up your departure, didn’t they, honey?
It had been a long journey from the time she left home - they threw you out - until her first real job, with the exception of the ones she had had to take in order to pay for her Journalism studies. The day she started at El Globo she felt as if she had won the lottery, but that euphoria didn’t last long. She bounced from one section of the paper to another, each time feeling as if she was falling upwards, losing her sense of perspective as well as control of her personal life. She had ended up in the International section before leaving . . .
They threw you out .
And now this impossible adventure.
My last chance. The way things are going for reporters in the labour market, my next job will be as a supermarket check-out girl. There’s just something about me that doesn’t function. I can’t do anything right. Not even Eva, who was the most patient person in the world, could stand being with me. The day she left . . . What did she call me? ‘Recklessly out of control’, ‘emotionally frigid’ . . . I think ‘immature’ was the nicest thing she said. And she must have meant it, because she didn’t even raise her voice. Fuck! It’s always the same. I’d better not screw up this time.
Andrea shifted mental gears and turned up the volume on her iPod. The warm voice of Alanis Morissette calmed her spirits. She leaned her seat back, wishing she was already at her destination.
Luckily, First Class had its advantages. The most important one was being able to get off the plane ahead of everyone else. A young, well-dressed black driver was waiting for her next to a clapped-out jeep at the edge of the runway.
Well, well. No Customs, right? Mr Russell has arranged everything , Andrea thought as she descended the staircase from the plane.
‘Is that it?’ The driver spoke English, pointing to Andrea’s carry-on bag and backpack.
‘We’re heading out to the fucking desert, aren’t we? Drive on.’
She recognised the way the driver was looking at her. She was used to being stereotyped: young, fair, and therefore stupid. Andrea wasn’t sure if her carefree attitude to clothes and money were her way of burying herself still further in this stereotype, or were simply her own concession to banality. Maybe a mixture of both. But for this trip, as a sign that she’d left her old life behind, she’d kept her baggage to a minimum.
While the jeep travelled the five miles to the ship, Andrea took photos with her Canon 5D. (It wasn’t really her Canon 5D but the one that belonged to the paper, which she had forgotten to return. They deserved it, the pigs .) She was shocked at the extreme poverty of the land. Dry, brown, covered in stones. You could probably cross the entire capital on foot in two hours. There seemed to be no industry, no agriculture, no infrastructure. The dust from the wheels of their jeep coated the faces of the people who stared at them as they sped by. Faces without hope.
‘The world’s in a bad way if people like Bill Gates and Raymond Kayn earn more in a month than this country’s Gross National Product in a year.’
The driver shrugged in response. They were already at the port, the most modern and well-maintained part of the capital, and virtually its only source of income. Djibouti profited from its favourable location within the Horn of Africa.
The jeep swerved to
As the youngest of five siblings - all male except for her - Andrea had grown up in an environment in which she felt entirely protected. And which was utterly banal. Her father was a police sergeant, her mother a housewife. They lived in a working-class area and ate macaroni most nights, chicken on Sundays. Madrid is a beautiful city, but for Andrea it served only to highlight her family’s mediocrity. At fourteen she swore that the minute she turned eighteen she’d be out the door and would never come back.
Of course the arguments with Dad about your sexual orientation sped up your departure, didn’t they, honey?
It had been a long journey from the time she left home - they threw you out - until her first real job, with the exception of the ones she had had to take in order to pay for her Journalism studies. The day she started at El Globo she felt as if she had won the lottery, but that euphoria didn’t last long. She bounced from one section of the paper to another, each time feeling as if she was falling upwards, losing her sense of perspective as well as control of her personal life. She had ended up in the International section before leaving . . .
They threw you out .
And now this impossible adventure.
My last chance. The way things are going for reporters in the labour market, my next job will be as a supermarket check-out girl. There’s just something about me that doesn’t function. I can’t do anything right. Not even Eva, who was the most patient person in the world, could stand being with me. The day she left . . . What did she call me? ‘Recklessly out of control’, ‘emotionally frigid’ . . . I think ‘immature’ was the nicest thing she said. And she must have meant it, because she didn’t even raise her voice. Fuck! It’s always the same. I’d better not screw up this time.
Andrea shifted mental gears and turned up the volume on her iPod. The warm voice of Alanis Morissette calmed her spirits. She leaned her seat back, wishing she was already at her destination.
Luckily, First Class had its advantages. The most important one was being able to get off the plane ahead of everyone else. A young, well-dressed black driver was waiting for her next to a clapped-out jeep at the edge of the runway.
Well, well. No Customs, right? Mr Russell has arranged everything , Andrea thought as she descended the staircase from the plane.
‘Is that it?’ The driver spoke English, pointing to Andrea’s carry-on bag and backpack.
‘We’re heading out to the fucking desert, aren’t we? Drive on.’
She recognised the way the driver was looking at her. She was used to being stereotyped: young, fair, and therefore stupid. Andrea wasn’t sure if her carefree attitude to clothes and money were her way of burying herself still further in this stereotype, or were simply her own concession to banality. Maybe a mixture of both. But for this trip, as a sign that she’d left her old life behind, she’d kept her baggage to a minimum.
While the jeep travelled the five miles to the ship, Andrea took photos with her Canon 5D. (It wasn’t really her Canon 5D but the one that belonged to the paper, which she had forgotten to return. They deserved it, the pigs .) She was shocked at the extreme poverty of the land. Dry, brown, covered in stones. You could probably cross the entire capital on foot in two hours. There seemed to be no industry, no agriculture, no infrastructure. The dust from the wheels of their jeep coated the faces of the people who stared at them as they sped by. Faces without hope.
‘The world’s in a bad way if people like Bill Gates and Raymond Kayn earn more in a month than this country’s Gross National Product in a year.’
The driver shrugged in response. They were already at the port, the most modern and well-maintained part of the capital, and virtually its only source of income. Djibouti profited from its favourable location within the Horn of Africa.
The jeep swerved to
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