Pays infini

C’était quoi, le bonheur ? Pas un épanouissement personnel égoïste, elle en était sûre : cela, c’était plutôt la recette pour le contraire. La joie naissait de l’amour qu’on éprouvait pour les autres, du soin qu’on prenait d’eux.

Comment les gens pouvaient-ils encore considérer Gringolandia comme une sorte de terre promise, sachant ce qui s’y passait ?

What was it about this country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.

She would have been happy living all her life in her country. There was an alegría inherent to Colombians, optimism even through tears, but never the kind of self-interrogation of “happiness” she observed in the north, the way people constantly asked themselves if they were content as if it were their main occupation in life. And what was happiness? Not selfish fulfillment, of this she was certain. That seemed like a recipe for the opposite. Joy was in the loving and caring of others.

Elena thought gringo households were full of unnecessary objects. Children had more toys than fit on their shelves. The wives’ and daughters’ closets overflowing with clothes and shoes. Husbands and sons with more cables and gadgets than a laboratory.

She wondered about that, if by birth one could already be out of step with destiny, but only replied that she was very tired and ready to sleep.