{"id":60697,"date":"2025-05-21T14:51:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T14:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fiestaybullshit.com\/?p=60697"},"modified":"2025-05-22T18:01:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T18:01:01","slug":"nowhere-now-here-hector-castells-travel-journal-nepalese-capsules-episode-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiestaybullshit.com\/en\/nowhere-now-here-hector-castells-travel-journal-nepalese-capsules-episode-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"NOWHERE-NOW HERE, HECTOR CASTELLS TRAVEL JOURNAL \u2013 DEATH OF A HERO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now Here: Kathmandu and Varadero, May 13<\/b>th<\/sup><\/b><\/span> 2025<\/b><\/h4>\n

On the first day of Life without Pepe Mujica in it, I\u2019m downtown Kathmandu oblivious to the news, wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh that my metaphorical twin, the insatiable Ada, gifted me with as a farewell present.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m looking for a SIM card through potholes and holy trees, hairy stray dogs and red dotted foreheads. The air is as dusty as in Mad Max<\/i>: it coats your lips, drains the corners of your mouth, and turns them into a graveyard of petrified saliva. Not even the keffiyeh can save you.<\/p>\n

The Voice<\/b><\/h4>\n

Everyone is selling something or inventing crosswalks, including the stray dogs, and I elude a number of stoners from other heavens juggling torches, apples and hashtags, before I hear the distant voice chanting a familiar, chilling lyric.<\/p>\n

\u201cLa milonga es hija del candombe as\u00ed como el tango es hijo de la milonga.\u201d<\/em> \u2014Milonga is the daughter of candombe just as tango is the son of milonga.<\/p>\n

I walk towards the voice and find a derelict counter where a woman dressed in a red silk robe says: \u201cSIM card?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I wonder if I\u2019m that predictable or if she has a superpower. Then she starts singing in perfect Spanish. She is the voice. And now it definitely hits me: \u201cA mi que sembr\u00e9 en sus campos mi pobreza y mi sudor.\u201d \u2014To me who sowed in his fields my poverty and my sweat.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWere you singing Alfredo Zitarrosa?\u201d<\/em> I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo tip for the artist?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I follow the sequence of questions and unrelated answers: I quote Seneca.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing poor is not having too little, it is wanting more.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She stares at me mystified, makes a circle with her thumb and index, closes her eyes, and levitates: \u201cVamo\u2019 Arriba con el Pepe, bo\u2014Let\u2019s go up with Pepe, dude,\u201d<\/em> she says while installing the SIM.<\/p>\n

I give her the money and a tip for the music, and she is already floating above me. The pigeons bring flowers to her head and draw rainbows with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this enlightenment?\u201d<\/em> I wonder.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the death of a hero,\u201d<\/em> she replies, and hands me the phone.<\/p>\n

My WhatsApp is flooded. La Maga, my favourite Uruguayan, claims most of them.<\/p>\n

She is in Cuba writing what she didn\u2019t want to write. I\u2019m in Nepal reading what I didn\u2019t want to read.<\/p>\n

Unmissed <\/b><\/h4>\n

\u201cI was walking down the Malec\u00f3n when my sister rang and\u2026 She didn\u2019t even need to say it. There is a very specific silence to death communications, don\u2019t you think? My sister sighed and I knew it was our Uncle. Since it happened, all the Cubans have been hugging and kissing me. You wouldn\u2019t believe it: my Uncle is a total hero here. I couldn\u2019t be in a better foreign place to mourn him. God bless the Tupamaros!<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/b><\/h4>\n

Now Here, Dublin, September 2007<\/b><\/h4>\n

It is the first morning of my life in Dublin. The house is lovely and freezing, and Selby, my current housemate and future partner, is quiet and unreadable. Before leaving for work he says that I can borrow his fancy bicycle. I say thank you, see you later.<\/p>\n

I leave the house, jump on the bike, and immediately after the door of a parked car opens. The front wheel crashes against it. I fly over it, and perform an unexpectedly neat Mae Ukem<\/i>i, AKA aikido front roll. Sadly, the asphalt is no tatami and I\u2019m lying on the road bruised and scratched like a 90s hip-hop record.<\/p>\n

The AudiNazi<\/b><\/h4>\n

The driver gets out. He is massive and looks much worse than the car \u2014and the car is not looking great.<\/p>\n

He is flailing his arms and shouting. I\u2019m groggy, my head pounding.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you seen what you have done? This is going to cost you so much money.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was in Ireland, not in Israel,\u201d<\/em> I deliberately say after spotting the gold star in his necklace.<\/p>\n

Cabbage Call<\/b><\/h4>\n

The line works instantly. His head becomes an explosive cabbage, and he starts kicking me all over. I don\u2019t feel anything since 1995, except, perhaps, for the two freshly cracked ribs.<\/p>\n

Next thing, I see a Gucci loafer coming to my face and a giant coming from behind the shoe. The giant tackles him and says that the cameras of his shop are recording everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet the fuck out of here if you don\u2019t want to get in serious trouble.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know who I am,\u201d<\/em> Mr. Shiny Loafers says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, you are a piece of shit. Everybody knows who you are and nobody wants you around. Get lost.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I look ahead and I see the shop: it is called Lilliput.<\/p>\n

I ask the giant if he wants to marry me, I\u2019m an accomplished Lilliputian: there is so much shortage of me.<\/p>\n

He smiles and suggests getting inside and cleaning the wounds first.<\/p>\n

The Silver Indian AKA La Maga<\/b><\/h4>\n

She is instantly greater than dignity.<\/p>\n

She looks up, sees my bloody face and smiles from behind the counter. She\u2019ll forever be smiling, which is probably why a stolid amount of customers are looking at her motionless and transposed.<\/p>\n

She is stuffing olives and green pesto into plastic containers with a wooden spoon. It amounts to the most biblically sensual thing you can see on a Sunday morning in the most catholic country in the world.<\/p>\n

She has a stunning jaw, muscular and taut like the shock absorbers of the Concorde. She plays tunes, gives change, seals containers, roasts coffee and warms up milk and sandwiches for the sake of the hypnotised witnesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cSisi,\u201d<\/em> the giant says. \u201cCan you fix him up? I\u2019ll take over the counter.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Only then the customers turn around and look at the giant with disgust. \u201cWe want her not you,\u201d<\/em> they seem to whisper.<\/p>\n

Sisi looks at me, plays Suicide\u2019s \u201cDream Baby Dream<\/i>,\u201d asks me to follow her, and says: \u201cThis song is for you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSeriously? It was the favourite song of my favourite writer,\u201d<\/em> I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you bang your head?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat? No. I\u2019m not delusional.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She turns around and says, \u201cBola\u00f1o was the writer, right? My uncle loves him too.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

ARGENCHINIAN<\/b><\/h4>\n

I\u2019m speechless. Then I talk. Big mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cArgentinian, I presume\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She turns around. She is not smiling anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you wanted to piss me off, that\u2019s the right thing to say. And if you want to piss off the Irish, ask them if they are English.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so sorry, you are my first Uruguayan, Sisi.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She is smirking now.<\/p>\n

\u201cSisi? Jesus: you are great at destroying countries and names.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Embarrassed emoji face.<\/p>\n

She fully smiles again.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can call me La Maga although my uncle might kill you if you do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll call you Silver Indian,\u201d I say. <\/em>Her face looks like it was carved in Eastern Island, so ancient and dignified. She is also sporting a contemporary, better version of Susan Sontag\u2019s lock of grey hair. \u201cYou are such an adulator,\u201d<\/em> she says.<\/p>\n

Now Here, Dublin, September 2007<\/b><\/h4>\n

La Maga would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste. <\/i>(Hopscotch<\/i>, Julio Cort\u00e1zar)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

La Maga smiles and the streak of silver gushes from her fringe to her earlobe like a fat shooting star.<\/p>\n

It is 2007, so the abhorrent MAGA hats haven\u2019t replaced the name of one of the most beloved characters of 20th<\/sup><\/span> century literature just yet.<\/p>\n

We walk to the back of the shop and La Maga stitches me up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid to ask more questions. She does instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you a writer?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI would prefer not to.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI knew it! I\u2019m only asking because I\u2019m looking for a good one. Are you?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not for me to say, you know that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cExcellent. Right answer. You are hired.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?<\/em><\/p>\n

I feel like Prince for a second. I want to say \u201cI would die for you,\u201d<\/em> but I\u2019m already dying. So is she.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world needs to know about my Uncle as much as you do, although no one will write about him as much as you will. Shall we start tomorrow?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPlease.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Nowhere Sometime in Between<\/b><\/b><\/h4>\n

La Maga and I forged our friendship during my alleged research of the book that I was to write about \u201cEl Pepe,\u201d<\/em> her prodigious and insatiable uncle. We used to meet at her amusing flat in Stoneybatter, where we drank mate and reviewed revolution, justice, death, memory and astrology, until we had saliva graveyards in the corner of our lips.<\/p>\n

FACK UNDO<\/b><\/h4>\n

She was very clever and unpredictable, what most might call \u201can unreliable narrator,\u201d<\/em> therefore my main concern was that the only source of my research was the niece of the hero.<\/p>\n

GHASTLY WRITER<\/b><\/h4>\n

I had been a ghost-writer for some of the most illiterate Spaniard celebrities of this century. And my only mandatory condition to impersonate them was to get to know them face-to-face.<\/p>\n

If I were to become \u201cEl Pepe\u2019s\u201d<\/em> biographer I needed to talk to him, observe him, listen to him; see the man behind the hero, the murderer, the prisoner, the husband, the neighbour, the farmer, the uncle.<\/p>\n

La Maga was well aware and tried her best to work her magic with Facundo, her uncle\u2019s assistant. Over the next two years Fuck Undo allegedly booked me 27 flights to meet \u201cEl Pepe,\u201d<\/em> in Montevideo. He cancelled all of them overnight, therefore his nickname. I blamed him for a while, FUCK UNDO, for fucking up the book that would have retired me. FUCK SAKE FUCK UNDO!<\/p>\n

After the last FUCK UNDO YOUR FLIGHT job, I decided that it was time to move on, and gave up the book. La Maga and I kept drinking mate and talking about cinema and revolution and her uncle\u2019s past. We were early into the new century, so inevitably most of our conversations were about the former.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/b><\/h4>\n

Becoming<\/b><\/h4>\n

Perhaps that is why we never saw it coming. I spent the next nine months writing a book based on the unbelievable life of a farmer and murderer who wakes up in a well and spends 13 years inside it.<\/p>\n

This was exactly what had happened to \u201cEl Pepe\u201d<\/em>, his wife and the other seven leaders of the Tupamaros, the guerrilla they all belonged to.<\/p>\n

They were punished in an exemplary way with torture, isolation and darkness without toilet from 1973 to 1985. Before the 13 years of solitude, they all had organised and executed the greatest escape from a prison in a long time. Pepe and Luc\u00eda masterminded the simultaneous flight of 105 political prisoners, all Tupamaros. They carved a tunnel through the walls of the penitentiary with TEASPOONS!<\/p>\n

NOBLE SHAME<\/b><\/h4>\n

The embarrassment and shame of the dictatorship was proportional to the inhuman sentence.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to imagine anyone surviving inside a well for 13 years. Not a single Tupamaro died.<\/p>\n

One of them, Henry Engler, became shortlisted for the Medicine Nobel Prize in 2004 for his ground-breaking research on Alzheimer, a disease any person who has spent 13 years jailed in a well might not entirely disagree with.<\/p>\n

Another one, Mauricio Rosencor, became the most remarkable poet of his generation; again, his years NOWHERE proved to be the key to demolish all the walls of fear, panic, love, struggle and mental health, the driven force of a language that has found itself in the deepest well of the soul, far away from any of his contemporaries consciousness.<\/p>\n

A third one was called Lucia. During her years as the brains of the Tupamaros they called her the Tough one. She once said: \u201cI\u2019m ALWAYS the most committed hardworking person in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

She made \u201cALWAYS\u201d<\/em> sound equally loyal and scary.<\/p>\n

Luc\u00eda became the Senator and spokesperson that took the oath of the fourth Tupamaro, her husband, El Pepe<\/i>, who became president of Uruguay in 2010.<\/p>\n

In the blink of an eye, the unknown farmer I was struggling to find information about became a social phenomenon, a very much-deserved global hero famously labelled as \u201cThe Poorest President in the World.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Invisible Abundance<\/b><\/h4>\n

Except, he was anything but poor. He gave 90 percent of his salary to charity, and refused to live in the presidential palace because he knew what is to be locked against your will in a place you\u2019d rather not sleep in.<\/p>\n

Instead, Mujica stayed in his lovely, quiet house in the outskirts of Montevideo, where he wasn\u2019t poor but free \u2014and where I would meet him right before his death<\/p>\n

La Maga became an actress, director and professor of Creative Militias, a degree that she had coined after the many staged operations that his uncle and auntie had written as if they were plays, and executed as organised terrorism. Sometimes is what it takes to be free.<\/p>\n\n\t\t