At this time of the morning in Spain, so early here and so late in Ukraine, Héctor Abad Faciolince, a Colombian writer who on the evening of this last Tuesday was about to be killed in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, sends a photograph by wasap and this brief caption: "Passing the border on foot. All good."
In the photograph you can see a quiet line of people who seem to wait for entry through a door that, at that moment, with the background that is already known, could be the same door of paradise.
Although what the camera reflects at that moment is the mute set of a fleeing crowd, surrounded by walls that look like civilian barbed wire, you can hear in the distance the echo of the news, ruthless, forced by themselves to be part of the chronicle of stupor.
Héctor Abad is there, with his companion Sergio Jaramillo, his countryman, returning to a land without bombs, about to cross the border that takes him to territory without war, because until a while ago, or even now, they have been crossing, they, their friend Catalina Gómez Ángel, journalist, the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who is very serious, The greatest danger of their lives, the instant that sounds when even the air carries the news of death.
It is a specific group of people, apart from those we have mentioned, those who are in that report line of walkers in pursuit of the border, are nameless people: they flee.
Like those who fled the Spanish Civil War, or those who went to the concentration camps, downcast, those who knew that the rifles, the carabiners, were not there for their sake but to kill them, those who are leaving Ukraine, like Hector, like his friends, have already heard the roar of death and smoke, and death, and they are here, portrayed with the first light of day, and they are now part of this wasap that is friendly news for those who have asked him in the Spanish dawn: "Hector, how are you?".
In response, "Walking across the border. All right", there are centuries of history of others, who have crossed similar places, barbed wire, looking for the place where the word refuge is a concrete place where at least the immediate memory, the fear, the noise that followed the dry, cruel blow, which a few hours ago explained the exact size of the stupor, is relieved.
Speaking of something else, life itself, this writer who now offers this two-line dispatch, in his book about the heart of a Colombian priest friend of his says something similar from the title: Except my heart everything is fine.
The future acts, said Fernando Arrabal, in theatrical coups. And there is the past walling up with danger and blood this image of the future, the people fleeing the war in the image that has just crossed the air to settle in a distant house where news of Hector and his friends were awaited. They are at the border, leaving, "all right."
In the photographs of the day before yesterday appeared Hector and his friend Sergio stained by the scourge of war, its consequences. In the case of the latter, a former commissioner for peace, Colombian like him, accustomed like Hector to the word war and the cruel news of shrapnel, was seen hanging on a leg that had been hit by shrapnel that fell, it was a howitzer, on the restaurant in which they had just sat down.
In this case, in Sergio's, his face was down to the pain, which was strong as a battle grievance. Hector appeared full length, looking at the camera, his cockade of Hold Ukraine attached to his sack, and all his clothes stitched with black paints, as if of blood.
But it was not blood, but the imprint of all the shrapnel that joined the disaster that his eyes denounced. I never saw Héctor Abad Faciolince showing that stupor on his face, as if he saw the darkest past of his life again.
Victoria Amelina and he, and Sergio, had been laughing about the anecdotes that usually exist at the end of the afternoon, there is no real beer, you have to drink without alcohol, at last we are sitting, they laugh, and at the peak of that laughter the bomb exploded and the evidence of the future that seems crossed out also exploded. part of one of those spots that combine with the face of Héctor Abad Faciolince.
If one stops looking at his clothes, so stained, or the sore foot of his companion, and looks at his eyes, at the eyes of the writer who is looking at the camera, one could see there, in their exact dimension, incredulous, the exact size of the stupor.
It is impossible, at the end of that look that is like a verse written by one fleeing death, not to suddenly imagine what happened in the life of this man, who was a boy then, when he saw in the street, bloodied, dead, his own father, Dr. Héctor Gómez.
It was in Medellín, Colombia, in the midst of that huge collection of as many stupors as murders, on August 27, 1987. He, a skinny boy as he appears in the film, El olvido que seremos, by Fernando Trueba, in his own poetic book, of the same title, is now a living part of the stupor of another war to which he has gone with others to proclaim Endure Ukraine.
Weeks ago, at the Madrid Book Fair, he wrote down circumstances of the lives of others and laughed at the occurrences that had happened in the booth of the Sin Tarima bookstore where he had been signing.
Already dressed for lunch, that little boy of August 1987 was this man of 2023 who counted the hours or days left to move to Ukraine in search of what he always was, before that din that broke his adolescence, his human passion as a writer: to tell life, to repudiate death.
He took notes, he always took notes, of anything he heard; with his pen of tiny letters, with his glasses to see very closely, with his heart repaired a while ago, perhaps with the same guayabera with which he traveled to Ukraine, he was going to move to the epicenter of the disaster and found, that is what he said now on the radio of Colombia, on the radio of Spain, talking with Carles Francino in the Ser, everywhere he was called.
Chance and death, together, doing their painstaking work against people's lives, the horrible viciousness of the Russian army falling to lead against the peaceful laughter of those who are in Ukraine to proclaim life against death. "We sat down, there was no beer, we laughed, the bomb is designed to do harm."
Everything happened in slow motion, and suddenly, after the din, he noticed Victoria, his friend, straight, in her chair, clean, unresponsive ... Very serious news would then be had of her, and what remained in her memory, in the memory of Hector, in that face that is seen in the photographs, is, as he said, "horror and horror".
This morning, in the long line of the getaway, as if he were once again titling that book about the heart of others, and about his own, he wrote to a Spanish friend this telegram that he attached to that line of hope and drama of those who manage to leave: "Crossing the border on foot. All good."
The syntax of stupor, the finger that falls on the keyboard to relieve the restlessness of those who, being so far from that line of escapees, are walking beyond fear and death.
Kramatorsk, Ukraine, 27/6/2023. Colombian writer Héctor Abad, survivor of a Russian cruise missile attack on the restaurant where he was dining with other personalities. Photo EFE/Catalina Ángel.