Sometimes they have a face. Sometimes we see their big eyes. Their great expression of sadness, supplication, or even relief and satisfaction for having concluded a journey that costs many their lives. Sometimes they move us. Their eyes ...
Sometimes they have a face. Sometimes we see their big eyes. Their great expression of sadness, supplication, or even relief and satisfaction for having concluded a journey that costs many their lives. Sometimes they move us. Their eyes manage to peek into our hardened souls, and bring us closer for an instant, even if small, to a world that is nothing like ours. And then, in that instant, some of our immense day-to-day problems become somewhat absurd.
But most of the time, the thousands of men, women and children who throw themselves into the sea in search of a better life have no face. They are just numbers, and a threat that endangers our first world, our established order. We are not able to be moved by their stories or their misery. They are just numbers.
Perhaps the biggest and hardest example of this was experienced just a few days ago in Lanzarote, when the lifeless body of an anonymous man appeared on our coasts. Not even his name, his age or his country of origin was known. His mother, his brother, his wife or his children could not be called to give them the sad news, because it was not even known who they are, or if they exist. An identity document found on the beach, next to the boat in which he is supposed to have tried to reach Lanzarote, was the only clue initially available, but it could not be assured that the document was his, and it was necessary to wait for the autopsy to know more data. Meanwhile, in his country of origin, someone will continue waiting for a call or a letter that will never arrive.
We know all this, we have seen it. We have seen how they lifted his corpse, abandoned for five days at the mercy of the waves and beaten by the rocks. They found him on the beach. In one of the Fortunate Islands he dreamed of. Perhaps it even makes us reflect, and dedicate a few minutes of our thoughts to it, or a few lines in this opinion space, but in a few hours, in a few days or at most in a few weeks, we will have forgotten him. That's something. The vast majority, we don't even dedicate a second to them. They are just numbers.
The tragedy is less of a tragedy the further away it touches us. And although it may not seem like it, Africa is very far away. Almost as far as the Middle East. From time to time we stop to think about those poor people in Lebanon. Perhaps in that family we saw in a photograph: a mother with a baby in her arms, a father loaded with bags and a child walking in the middle of the two, holding their hands. There is no blood, no corpses, but that image can be almost as dramatic, if one imagines for a moment the anguish of that family, of those parents who are forced to abandon a bombed city, leaving everything behind and perhaps without knowing where they are going or what they will find at the end of that journey.
Simply, it's terrifying. The world we are living in is terrifying. And not because there are wars, hunger, misery and suffering, but because we are getting used to all that existing. At least, as long as it doesn't exist too close to our reality and our world.
The problems of State, be it the United States, France or Spain, are others. The problems of Lanzarote are others. And, above all, the problems of our daily life are others. If the situation is very serious, perhaps we may be affected by what happens to someone outside our closest circle, but it is like watching a movie. It can excite us and even bring us to tears, but shortly after the end credits, we will have turned the page.
From time to time we will remember a scene, or the message that the film left us, but it will be difficult for it to change our life one iota. It will be difficult for us to get used to always seeing people and stories behind the numbers, because for some they are just numbers even those who are closest. But if everyone, from the last worker to the main political leader, made an effort to always put faces to those numbers, perhaps we could win some battle.
