On Málaga’s main walking street, there’s a man whose face, clothes, and glasses are all made of newspaper; a newspaper dog sits by his side, there’s a newspaper background behind him, and a newspaper newspaper in his hands. He’s a tourist attraction. I stop to take a picture and he gestures towards an empty seat beside him.
I sit down.
He points to his newspaper, written in Japanese.
“Only bad news today. War, death, and destruction.”
“Right.”
He turns his head in my direction, but I doubt he can see me — I doubt he can see much of anything at all, what with all the news on his glasses. Maybe it’s part of the message.
“The good news is on its way though. Trump will become president again and, as he promised, stop the Ukraine war in 24 hours.”
The newspaper man turned to be Hungarian. He thinks Ukraine lost its sovereignty and now belongs to international corporations. I saw him without the mask later in the day, as he was dragging his setup to the other side of the street, to hide from the heat of the sun. Just an immigrant in his 40s who invented a job for himself, not better or worse than others.
A 23 year-old local girl, whose father owns a cannabis farm, tells me she thinks “there will be a big war, and Spain will be inside this war.”
I ask how big she is thinking — how many countries will be involved in total?
“70%.”
“Why 70?”
“Why not? Nobody knows anything, my guess is as good as anybody’s.”
At a cannabis club, I am approached by a young guy with very red eyes, in track pants and a t-shirt, with a butt of a thick cigar in his hand. He stares at me blankly.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Where are you from?”
“I’m from Russia.”
“Govorish po-russki?”
“Da, a ty otkyda?”
“Ukraina.”
He sits down and says, “Smoke a cigar?” I decline, but we talk. It’s been only two months since he left Ukraine. Military-aged men have been prohibited from leaving since early into the war. So I ask, “How did you get out?” He shrugs, “On a bus.”
A dog that’s been walking around the club, looking for something to eat off some table and only getting scratches from me instead, comes over. Turns out it is his. She also came on a bus.
I ask if he’s got relatives back home.
“My grandpa. Everyone else is gone.”
“God. Just the grandpa?”
“Well, and grandma.”
I first think that “everyone’s gone” means that everyone’s dead, but when he mentions a brother in Spain, I think they might have just moved.
The way the Russian emigrant/refugee conversations used to go in Armenia in the first year of the war was that everybody was interested in what the other’s next steps were, but nobody had an answer. “It’s hard to plan for longer than a month or two,” people would say, and others would nod in agreement. When I ask this 19 year-old about his plans, I expect something similar.
“I’m driving an Uber, and I’m taking this one class. In a few weeks, I will go to Valencia, where my brother found a cheap apartment for the two of us. I will volunteer for the Spanish army and ask them to put me to work with computers. I want to do cyber security. After three years of that, I’ll be able to apply for citizenship.”
I don’t think I’ve ever had as much clarity about my future as he feels he has.
I pet the dog and shake the guy’s hand before leaving.
The door guy, who overheard our exchange, shakes my hand too. I can’t remember if he did that the last time I left. His shaved head is covered with tattoos.
I hear a lot of Ukrainian and Ukrainian-sounding Russian on Málaga streets. There is an occasional war-themed demonstration in the city center, but relaxed, cheerful tourists flow around it unperturbed like water around a log.
The juxtaposition makes me uneasy.
I see a girl with a tote-bag over her shoulder: it’s a scene from Fight Club, but the characters’ faces have been swapped for those of iconic Ukrainians, and the caption is Fight Club’s #7 rule, translated into Ukrainian: The Fight Will Go On As Long As It Has To.
She’s waiting to be seated in a sun-lit terrace of a cozy spaghetti place.
I wonder if she has friends or a loved one on the front lines, or if she once had but they’re dead now; or if her social circle is safely abroad, and it’s only the very extended version of it, the nation, that the tote-bag speaks on behalf of.
I cut this train of thought off and turn my attention to my own plate and drink.
At midnight at my favorite bar, an old man in a full-on elf suit, with fake but real-looking crooked nose and pointy ears is sitting alone at a slot machine, nursing a drink in his hand. The outfit makes more sense when I see him a couple days later, in daylight, passing out balloons to kids in the street.
A Chinese masseuse tells me, “At the end of the day, we must try to live a good life for those people back home who can’t.”
A Latvian masseuse says, “If you try living in Málaga, you do not leave. Málaga takes you.”
If you’re ever passing through Málaga, send me an email or a DM — we could meet for a coffee.
In the meantime, you can use the button below to schedule a one-on-one online call with me:
Classifieds
I’m starting to run advertisements to and from our community again. When we first did this, all proceedings went to humanitarian causes in Ukraine; now I’m using them to fund Psychopolitica itself. (I continue to donate money to help Ukrainian victims of the war as a personal matter; you can join me here.)
Below is the first, from reader and contributor Jeremy N. Smith.
Jeremy is a very accomplished journalist and author acclaimed by CNN, The New York Times, Bill Gates, and Jane Goodall, among others. Now, he leverages his vast experience to coach individuals on their professional projects and personal growth.
He offers a free 50-min exploratory session to any PsyPol subscriber.
The newspaper-clad man sounds like someone out of a Kobo Abe book.
I always appreciate your posts man. Hope you are well. Maybe we will speak sometime if I find the time.