Mi Muro; My Garden Wall — Gabriela Duran Garcia
There was a wall.
There has always been a wall.
The Berlin wall.
The Great Wall of China.
The West Bank barrier.
In the summer of 85’ my dad asked me to build one. It was a small garden wall, barely reaching above my knees.
I was to build it between ours and your house. Five meters long and half a meter wide. No gaps between the wall from the front of our house to the main road. The reason why was never explicitly spoken of or asked about. The only form of explanation came in the wrinkles that would appear in my dad’s forehead whenever you were brought up in conversation. He would laugh and ignore. That was always the strategy. If the topic was taken lightly, it could not bear any weight. And if it bore no weight, it was not worth asking about.
It was summer.
I did not ask
I just built.
The first step of building a wall is the trench.
In order for it to not topple, it needs to be planned, needs roots, a history. Clear intentions with a clear goal, not a last-minute decision. Fear of communism and capitalism did not sprout overnight, and neither did the land dispute over the Holy Land. We stood on opposite ground, I understood that. Your family, they had different values from mine.
Digging the trench took longer than expected. My hands had multiple blisters, my muscles burned, and my skin fried under the sun. The pain and exhaustion became frequent.
I think I met you once. I think I met you several times. It was like a badly taken photograph; I could only see the outline of your life. You would bike in the mornings, play football after lunch, and go to town on weekends. Your eyes were green, or maybe blue, or brown. I’m not sure. I don’t know.
Once, you dropped your football into the hole. I took it and held it out for you to grab. A peace offering, a white flag, a way of saying “I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but maybe we can try.” You grabbed the ball, slightly nodded your head, and left. Your eyes were the color of steel, they were made of steel.
You didn't look at me.
Not once.
Not at all.
The second step to building a wall are the materials.
A family friend, Pacho, agreed to give us some leftover ones from his construction projects. Leftovers that he voluntarily kept.
The patio of his house resembled a junkyard more than an actual backyard. Broken metal tubes and open bags of sand littered the floor, slabs of wood reclined against the wall, and in the corner lay the stack of bricks. The majority were chipped at the corners and were no longer terracotta, leaving behind a bland, used-page sort of color. It was as if they had gotten sick throughout the passage of time, they were all pale.
“Why do you keep this? Most of it you can’t use,” I asked.
“One cannot throw away God’s gifts so easily,” he said.
What God had to do with this went beyond me, but my dad smiled kindly and responded with a slight nod, as if saying a mellow “I know, Pacho. I know exactly what you mean.”
My dad grabbed a beer and joined him in another rocking chair. It was a usual occurrence. They would talk, and then they would listen. To each other, to vallenato, to the night.
Five years later, Pacho died of lung cancer.
That night, my dad took me to his house. To the patio where the rocking chairs were, and told me a story. Francisco Manuel Alvarez had been born in the small town of Soledad, in a family of campesinos. He was the middle child in a family of seven. A loud boy that could never keep still in his childhood and a quiet one in his adolescence. A good book became better company than the kids on his block. It became the only company when he was not allowed to leave his house due to the guerilla recruitment. Civil war had ensued. La Violencia had started. If people did not see them, if they kept their heads down, maybe they became invisible, maybe they would not have to face it.
But, in the end, the societal divide, the chaos and the war, came knocking at their door with a gun in its hand. His family was given two options: for Pacho and his two younger brothers to join the guerilla or for his family to leave their land. His father–a priest–condemned all acts of impurity, violence being one of them. So they fled, packed their bags with their most important belongings and followed the trail of the displaced. They built a house, with a roof of tin and walls of anything that could resist.
That night, as I sat listening to my dad, I saw tears in his eyes for the first time.
“He is—he was a good man. All this,” he opened his arms and pointed around “all his work, all his life, was to make theirs better.”
My dad looked directly at me, his eye bags a testament to the tears he was still carrying, “understand that you are graced by God. When you build the wall, know that many cannot.”
The last step of building a wall is putting it up.
It is simple, layer the bricks with the mortar, repeat until done.
That year we were both juniors. Seeing the bricks and mortar, you had finally realized what the trench was for. You stood in front of me, the almost finished garden wall separating us.
“Why are you afraid of us?”
Silence. I was too shocked to speak, you had finally acknowledged my existence. It was a big day; It was too late.
When I met your gaze, your eyes were already on mine. They were not green or blue or grey. They were light brown, the color of honey.
“I am not afraid,” I responded.
“You are building a wall.”
“A garden wall.”
“A barrier all the same.”
“It’s for protection.”
“Against what?”
“Your gaze.”
And then, after completing all the steps, after building your wall, you hope.
That you are safe.
That nobody invades your land.
That your intentions are justified.
Gaby Duran Garcia is a sophomore who deeply enjoys cinematography, literature, and controversial discussions. She writes poetry in her free time and constantly listens to rap. Although grateful she lives in a place like Massachusetts, she aches for her home in Colombia–where she was born–and misses her native tongue. Five years ago, when she started learning English, she fell in love with reading and writing and hopes to improve these skills through her high school career. Gaby sees herself living in London while studying political science or sociology.