Mangoes

A gigantic, overwhelming jungle. Green branches greedily extend over the dirt and stone path, giving the impression that they will swallow up the path forever at any moment. Except for the wind and the chirping of strange birds, the silence is crushing. If it weren't for the path itself, clearly traced by human hands or technology, I could find myself in any geological era; I could be the only human being on earth. After several days of solitude, I feel tired and hungry. However, the sound of the wind and the endless greenery give me a joy that is very difficult to describe. The solitude is palpable, and yet I don't feel alone. I haven't spoken in days and I don't know where I am, and yet I don't feel lost. Perhaps it is this greenery, aggressive and infinite, that calls to me and accompanies me.

I walk slowly along the dirt road. It is a road in poor condition, but it is clear that it is used. It is wide enough to accommodate a vehicle. It must be around noon and it is quite hot. The backpack on my back is heavy, even more so when I haven't eaten for many hours (or days?) and I hear the sound of an engine in the distance. The noise gets closer and closer, until I have no doubt that it is some vehicle approaching. I don't know if it is going in the same direction as I am going or the opposite, but considering that I don't know where I really am, it doesn't matter; I can ask to be taken wherever I am going.

Sure enough, a few minutes later I see a rickety truck that was, coincidentally, going in the same direction in I was wearily walking. When it comes up next to me, I raise my hand in the classic signal asking for a ride—a signal which I have used so many times throughout my life. The truck, which was going very slowly anyway, stops. The driver, without saying a word, nods to me toward the back. This is a very old vehicle, which must have seen many years and stories, worlds I would like to know in depth. To a certain extent, this truck, I think, knows much more about life than I do. It has high wooden railings, and when I get on I realize that, surprisingly, it is full of people, all locals. There are men and women and the vast majority of them are very old, although I must admit that life under the sun and working the land leaves many furrows in the skin; perhaps they are not as old as I think. Most of them are sitting, but a few are standing, leaning on the railing. The closest one helps me up, with a bright smile on his face. They look at me with curiosity, and most of them have friendly smiles. Apparently, not a single one of them speaks my language. I hear conversations in what I think is Quechua. Many of them drink from glass bottles. In the back of the truck, under an awning, there is a considerable amount of mangoes, some in cardboard boxes, others loose and rolling around.

Maybe it's something in my eyes that betrays my hunger or maybe it's something natural in the kindness of those people, but one of them, with an unforgettable, beautiful, kind, infinite and toothless smile, takes a mango and cuts it with a small knife, offering me its tender and beautiful pulp. Another of them offers me a drink from his bottle - a transparent liquid that looked like water to me. I take the cut mango in my hands, while drinking from the bottle. I understand that it's not water—it's corn chicha, with a not inconsiderable alcohol content—and something on my face when I taste it generates friendly laughter from everyone around me. The taste is bittersweet, not bad at all. In fact, it isn't the first time I have had it... however, the mango, curiously, I had never tried before. Its sweet aroma had already fascinated me, but when I tried it the world changed. It was probably the beautiful circumstances, lost in a jungle, in a truck surrounded by ancient and wise people whom I would love to understand, but I can't, either because of language or customs; it may have been because of the days without eating, or it may have been a combination of both, plus who knows what other chaotic factors. But at that moment I felt like I was tasting the most exquisite food I had ever tasted before. A delicacy of the gods, ambrosia, soma, or something far beyond my human nature. My face must have also reflected ecstasy, because the laughter multiplied. After satisfying my hunger with one, two mangoes, and drinking plenty of chicha, I sat next to a man who smiled and who put his hand on my shoulder in a gesture that went beyond friendship. It was surrender, it was understanding between our cultures, it was forgetting differences, it was sharing lives and worlds so far apart in a single embrace. It was his memories and mine united, his life and mine intertwined. I smiled and hugged him back, tears in my eyes—gratitude for his devotion, for the devotion of all of them to an extraterrestrial being like me, gratitude for the taste of mango, for the intoxicating sensation of chicha, for the jungle, for the road and the old truck, for life itself for being able to give me moments like this, moments that I already knew would be unforgettable. To this day, many years later, the taste of mango is linked to this memory. And through memory I feel linked to those unknown lives. It is very possible that most of them are no longer in this world. It is very possible that their lives and memories have become extinct—including the memory of that strange being who one day shared chicha and mango with them on a truck—and it is very possible that part of me has left with them. But my memory is as real as the sun I see today through the window, as real as the breeze on my face or the sound of the leaves, and I can't help but feel that perhaps part of them is still here today, with me, reflected in the same mirror, hugging each other on the same railing.

by El Peregrino