Twenty students are racing through central Lima at night. The streets are packed with people, couples, children, cars, horns blaring, the smell of burnt corn, sugar, fried chicken, garbage. The sweating basement of the seafood restaurant I used to work at, sometimes cigarette smoke, some respite. Couples are laying down in the park without blankets holding each other on sparse and immoderately green grass from an excess of moisture not a lack. Twenty metres in every direction the thick mist takes on the character of the whole: boiling orange and green, green light. I keep thinking, the city is on fire, the city is on fire.
Jon, our pirate captain, is leading the charge, torn leather jacket and ponytail, waving his flag in the air for all to hurry. I watch our caring TA at the back of the pack, making sure none are left behind. I see my classmates dive across the street in flocks, ready for anything. I hear Jon scream:
and hurriedly jot it down on my phone as I hobble after them. I tell Jon I’ve never been to a city like this before. He says: where are you from? Vancouver. He laughs. Vancouver is not a city! Vancouver is a town pretending to be a city! Right then I had the crazy feeling I didn’t know if I’d ever been to a real city before.
All the night my nose is lightly running and when I sit my temperature fevers. I should be more concerned about spreading whatever I have to other people. I justify that it just feels like a personal fever, something that I brought upon myself and is only my duty to deal with. Yet it feels just like the city. My labour adjusting to the city. And the city is beautiful.
I wonder if you all feel the same?
2 replies on “II: A City on Fire”
“I justify that it just feels like a personal fever, something that I brought upon myself and is only my duty to deal with.” In Lima, as in any city of multitudes, these personal fevers are continually transformed by particular encounters. There is a kind of contagion (although perhaps this is not the right word) that spreads to a thousand eyes and a thousand ears. And that heat can set fire to meadows or hills. I think you have captured very well that force that runs through the city.
Oh my god Adam this is great, it’s like reading a story! I love the part where you describe Jon as our pirate captain. Lima is so different from Vancouver which does get dwarfed when you compare the two. In some ways I think Lima has more life in it, especially at night. In Lima people stay up and are out and about living life. I loved it.