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'A Tangerine dream'
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When my father arrived to the port of Buenos Aires in the 50s, being himself a teenager; Buenos Aires was the centre of a prosperous country, far ahead from any other of South America, comparable with an Australia or a New Zealand; those places lost in the oceans of the southern hemisphere, full of cows and sheep. By those years, the self-proclaimed regent, and head of State, Francisco Franco, was leading Spain towards an iron fist transition -transition that did last until his death in 1975- from the II Republic (a socialist experiment of republic that did last few years, and that Franco, in the name of the Roman Church and the Borbons, didn't hesitate in shatter in pieces), to the modern monarchy of today. In the 50s Spain was poor, and there was hunger: everything was scarce and the country was isolated from the world.
The north was particularly harassed and chastised, due to the huge amount of anarchists and leftists, specially in Basque Country, Catalonia, and in Asturias: the miners...
The ship (years later, and by his own lips I knew it was an English ship) did weigh anchor from the port of Vigo, in Galicia, Spain; having several stopovers: Dakkar in Senegal, and crossing the ocean road, Santos in Brazil, and finally Buenos Aires.
But the first stopover was in Tangier, Morocco...
II)
In my dream; I was in that ship; a little child, 5 or 6 years old, breathing the marine air, feeling the travel like something natural, without any fear or doubt. My father was there, but it was just like a phantom. A shadow, that was caring me, slightly; rather distant, silent. A blurred image blended with the rest of the people aboard, diffuse... I just travelled, happy; naturally. During the whole travel there wasn't night.
...When the ship arrived to Tangier; it was afternoon; the Sun was in the streets, and an aroma of fried damasks got blended with an intense perfume of strong coffee. My father took me by the hand for a while.
There were children there, playing football, on bicycle; more children than I've ever seen. They were there, and I just was another one, playing, falling on the sidewalk, getting bruises in my knees... Everything was natural. As the orange colour of the Tangerine afternoon, that seems to me now, like seen on through a cylindrical glass... Everything was children there; children, children under a fluorescent orange afternoon...
My father disappeared. I didn't even realise; and just kept on playing... suddenly; the atmosphere started becoming strange... ...the light became more intense, the colour became unreal orange; my vision turned to be every time more obtuse; lineal...the sounds became more ample and profound: everyone and everything seemed like moving slower, not realising about anything. Only I felt this.
...In a moment, I saw several smiling-little faces looking at me; laughing: I saw all them like on through a kaleidoscope; they were at centimetres of distance, but I saw them as if they were kilometres away.The orange became offensively intense, the horizon became tubular, conic; like filtered on through a plastic sky.The afternoon never ended; instead of it, the light was more brilliant at every moment: I felt a strange sensation of warmth two seconds before the lights would fade away violently.
Then; everything was to fall. I didn't see anything else, and all was to fall; to fall into a neverending abyss, absolutely black, without any sound of light at all.
Maybe similar to the death itself? To fall; for hours? Days? Years..?
When I did wake up, couldn't tell if it were days or years. But... Did I wake up..?
...And the Tangerine, orange afternoon goes by...
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