limbo #2: son humanos todos

“Son humanos todos,” says Carlitos, the night guard. “Faltamos, pero trabajamos en equipo. Olvidó la alarma, dice, pero la salvé. Si ella falta, yo la salvo. Si los dos falta…” His hand slashes across his neck. “Nos necesitamos, uno al otro.”

This is something I have been needing to hear. We’re all human. We need each other. Someone has my back.

I called Mark to say that I was going out to grab some dinner before it got dark, and that I would try to be back within a half hour. He called back almost immediately to ask where I was going to eat. “If you want to join,” I offered, “I’ll meet you at the desk.”

We walk right up the street to Fonfone, the cutest café I have seen, with an open doorway full of books and salsa remixes of pop songs. I recommend the locro, a traditional potato soup with cheese and avocado. We talk about travelling, languages, culture shock, and rabble-rousing. The state of American education. The numerous species of hummingbirds in the Cloud Forest, about his daughters and my parents, what I will be doing three years from now. He is a biologist, I am a sociologist. We are both estadounidenses in Ecuador, faltando la comunicación, the nuances of interacting with people we meet on the street. We bond in our outsiderness.

And then the propiedora comes over and smiles, “¿Quieren cafés, algo, mi Corazon?” Yo soy su Corazon. Yo vivo aquí, en esta calle, y yo la conozco a esta mujer. She gives me a discount and a smile and we walk back to Casa Foch, the home amidst the discos. Chad and Carlitos stand in the foyer, teasing each other and talking about fútbol.

Today I dropped $10 on the street, and it was gone. Un militar appeared to help me look for it, but I knew it wasn’t worth it and tried to disappear quickly. Ten bucks is not much, but when I have challenged myself to spend no more than that each day, its loss is a thing to mourn. Yesterday I bought two things in the Mercado Artesanal, went to an art-history museum, and bought something for dinner on that allowance. Today I walked up and down Avenida Amazonas, dropped my allowance, and lost whatever energy I had to stay out on the street, stay confident and to walk with a purpose.

Then something pops, a rack of bright magazines in the entryway of a shop. A bookshop. My weakness and my strength. The clerks greet me, amused. ¿Una gringa buscando libros en español? ¡Claro que no! Pero sí, y encuentro a whole shelf of Paulo Coelho books, in Spanish. La propiedora approaches me and offers her help. I tell her I am just looking, but she points out the scant shelf of English novels, with special attention to the few Coelhos, and then asks, “Pero ¿hablas español?” For the first time since being here, I say yes with confidence, though I admit that it’s hard to read. “But it will be good for your Spanish!” she tells me in Spanish, and I know she’s right. “Especially Coelho, he’s simple but it will help your vocabulary.” And she pulls a book off the shelf. “Eso es un libro muy lindo.” I tell her I don’t have any money today and she invites me back anytime (even Saturday!) but warns me against trying to read Marquez. Even in English, he is not easy.

Chad and I share a passion for maracuyá, passion fruit. He goes to Supermaxi every day and comes back with random treasures, leaving bits and pieces of them on the desk for me. Yesterday it was a jar of Nutella, a tiny teacup of five-dollar wine to celebrate Ecuador’s victory over los argentines orgullosos; today another teacup, this time of the ten-dollar variety, and half a maracuyá! “I don’t have anything to eat it with,” he shrugs, laugh lines crinkling like Gramma Hazel’s. “You’ll have to use your hands…” I am in awe of it, and go in face-first, using my tongue as a straw. The little fingers lining the skin try to grab onto their fruit, in vain. It has been too long since I have tasted passion fruit. He shoots me a conspiratorial smile with the news that he requested fresh maracuyá juice for the breakfast.

We have taken to sharing breakfasts, talking about abstract things. That is where I get my intellectual fill: he tells me about his research, his days spent photographing old court records in the archives downtown. Today we talked about religion, the reasons we step inside of churches that have little to do directly with our faith, or lack thereof. Whether it is possible for God and suffering and compassion to all coexist. Why it can be wearisome to live in Ecuador, wearisome to be alive; why we close ourselves off to our fellows and discriminate against them when, as Carlitos says, “Son humanos todos.”

It gets harder to find kind people as you age, says Juan Miguel. He has been betrayed and cheated too many times. He knows the walls that people put up, he has seen and felt the things we do to hurt each other. And yet he also is aware of our capacity to love. In fact he is in possession of great stores of it. He sees my face brighten up when he invites me for lunch, or un cafecito, when I tell stories about my mom and the way she runs our house. When Nicolas and I chase each other around the yard for hours on end, when Natalia comes home and picks up a sword to join us. When she calls home from a friend’s house to say goodnight, especially to her little brother. When I saunter into the hotel, taking off my shades and baring my wares, and when I finish my sandwich when he still has half of his left. When Lori asks him to do something around the house. When he tells me about photographing my cousin Alex. He can snap, and be weary with the world, but he knows son todos humanos. He knows we need each other and that we have the capacity to be good to each other.

Sometimes, it is a matter of what we need to see in this moment.