Tourists and refugees; New poems published by Mozaika

Two of my poems were recently published by Mozaika, which was my Fulbright host institution in Barcelona. I wrote the first poem in and on the train back from visiting Portbou, right on the French-Spanish border. Historically, many refugees have passed through Portbou, both those fleeing Spain and those fleeing Europe. It is known for being the place where Walter Benjamin committed suicide, after crossing the border and being told that Franco planned to send him back to France. Benjamin assumed this would mean into the hands of the Nazis.

Hannah Arendt visited Portbou, hoping to find Benjamin’s grave, after escaping from the Gurs internment camp at the foothills of the French Pyrenees and crossing into Spain herself—a crossing that may have been easier due to Benjamin’s suicide. His death had cast Franco in a poor light on the international stage, causing Franco to relent when faced with other prominent refugees. She called the cemetery in Portbou, which I photographed above, the most “fantastically” beautiful place she had ever seen. She would have agreed with my assessment, in my poem, on the potential beauty of being a tourist. Elsewhere, she wrote one of my favourite lines about travel: “Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.”

My poem was inspired by the strangeness of visiting a place like Portbou as a tourist, and by my own internal questions about whether I counted as a tourist or not. The irony is that when I left Barcelona, suddenly and unexpectedly due to the pandemic, there were no tourists at all left in the world, only people rushing to return home, or sheltering in place.

The second poem Mozaika published this time around was one I wrote a few years ago, but it feels surprisingly fitting for this time, on multiple levels. Part of the reason I dislike feeling held hostage by holidays, even those I appreciate the premise of, like Shabbat, is because I was held hostage by illness for so much of my early life. Now of course, I, and the rest of the world, are being affected by illness in a completely different way from my situation growing up.

You can read both and listen to me recite them, on Mozaika’s website: http://mozaika.es/magazine/portbou-and-shabbat-shabbos-by-maia-evrona/

About a month ago, Mozaika also published a third poem of mine, about Shavuot, which you can also find on their website.