I read a chronicle by Nelson Dias entitled «The Shipwreck of Humanity», recently published in Algarve Informative magazine. He touched me so much, but so much, that I wanted to talk to him. Here is the result of this conversation.
At the base is an exercise in imagination that I forced myself to do: when things don't happen on our side, imagination is a strong instrument to awaken empathy. From empathy arises indignation on behalf of the other into whom the imagination has projected us. For a brief moment, we are the other and, therefore, when we return to ourselves, we are no longer the same.
I now invite you to the same exercise. On the banks of the uncertain river, every companion that can be gained is a treasure not to be wasted.
There are already more than 70 million, of which it is estimated that half are children and young people. They flee extreme poverty, violence, political persecution, war and other similar abuses, driven by the hope of finding shelter where they can live with dignity and in peace. Many risk and lose their own lives, such is the desperate situation in which they find themselves. They have names, affections, professions, dreams, fears, families, vices and virtues – but what makes them human, we know nothing.
However, nothing distinguishes them from each one of us, except the extreme vulnerability they are left in the day they decide to go in search of lost – or never experienced – dignity. They leave everything behind – even when, from a material point of view, it is nothing.
They carry pain and exhaustion in their body. Many still carry the memory of horror. Either they never knew or they lost happiness as we define it on this side, but they know the dung of an unhappiness very different from the one we are able to describe and name like no one else. Those of them who faced Death or felt it hovering near, bring in their eyes the vision of the destruction they escaped, but in which many others have foundered.
They are living witnesses to the absence of a universal pact that truly unites us, they are the surviving proof of the worst that, as a species, we are capable. Their simple existence is uncomfortable, calling into question the coming of the best ideals that Humanity has ever been able to conceive, because it was in the name of the inhuman denial of these ideals that misfortune overthrew them.
Will they know the deep meaning of the condition we call “well-being”? Those who lost it still have the now unbearable memory of the comfort, security, and joy it provides. For them, where once there had been a solidly supported building, a wide and deep cave opened. In the mind, in the heart, in the stomach. The others, those exiled at the birth of the human species, only know him from hearing about it. They don't know that the grave is also there, because they never had a building there.
For the former, it is a goal of reconquest. For others, I dream only to be interviewed. But, above all, they are all motivated by the hope of obtaining – and to this they have an absolute right – nutritious food; potable water; treatment for the diseases they suffer from; safe housing; education; in short, basic conditions enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Do they know the deep meaning of what we call "human rights" and their absolute right to see them fulfilled? A part, the one that is driven by the urge to overcome the incalculable loss that happened to it, yes. But the collapse of the social, economic and affective structure in which they lived and their subjection to indignity certainly removed all previously existing certainties. Another part, the one created in the normalization of undignified misery, no.
And the adjective "unworthy" can only be of those who still enjoy those rights, since the misery mentioned here only becomes unacceptable in light of the awareness of the universality of these rights in terms of the very condition of those who observe them.
For those who see them from afar trying to climb almost impassable walls, cross oceans and tumultuous rivers, they are xenoi, plural of the ancient greek word xenos, which could mean either "foreigner" or "enemy" or "invited friend". The word "xenophobia" not only does not contemplate the latter, it denies it outright: no one is afraid ("phobia") of a friendly guest. Only the other two remained, "foreigner" and "enemy", and xenophobia impregnates the first of the attributes of the second: if it is a "foreigner", it is an "enemy".
This sad feeling, instead of xenophilia, leads to xenophobia that quickly transforms fear into hate. It is another form of misery, disguised under the clothes and ornaments of this civilization that so much preaches "good values" but is unable to practice them consistently. It's like, from the inspiring song, knowing the lyrics by heart without knowing the music.
"Terrorists", "drug dealers", "criminals", "violators". I have not heard of "pedophiles", but it would also serve the purposes of turning the wild packs against them. Always described as a formless and anonymous mass, with a view to its depersonalization and the de-responsibility of those who stir and allow themselves to be stirred, epithets are thrown over them that generalize what on this side of this country we would not accept to be generalized.
And so they become the easy targets of the nationalist extreme right, with great electoral success in Hungary, Italy, the United States of America, France, that is, in the heart of this increasingly uncivilized civilization.
Around here, the dress rehearsal has already started, through Chega's coarse voice and the chronicles that intend to give it pseudo-historical support. And because I don't want to treat them as they treat my refugee brothers, I single out the most notorious: André Ventura and his tribe; Fátima Bonifácio and her troupe.
I confess to you a feeling that I do not want to free myself: I am proudly “xenophobic” towards the wolves that stir up packs. They, yes, deserve the epithet of "enemy aliens", because they behave like warriors transported in the bowels of a Trojan Horse that has already entered through the gates of the castle that we thought was walled.
Ah, Europe, what is missing is your son Radamante!!!
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