One day, if we’re lucky, an Indian will write a book like this. That Indian will probably not be a homegrown citizen. It will be the kind of Indian who crosses international borders without effort, who might live in a richer part of the world but is wholly at ease with the home country. The kind who has shrugged off the defensiveness/pugnacity with which most Indians face the West. The kind who isn’t boringly trapped in the class-caste-language-city paradigm of Indian English fiction.
Someone like Luis Urrea, the Mexican-American author of this satisfying book and of a dozen other titles that straddle this complicated political and cultural divide.
Urrea writes the story of four young Mexicans who cross illegally into Los Yunaites (aka the USA) at the border city of Tijuana — not in search of dollars but to gather up and bring back to their home town a posse of Mexican men. Tres Camarones, in the coastal province of Sinaloa, is a fictional small town but it faces some of the problems that all of small-town Mexico does: an absence of men, who have mostly gone across the US border, a drowsy local economy, and the growing presence of the drugs mafia, which has dropped a blanket of fear and insecurity over the town and its mostly women residents.
Being small and out-of-the-way, Tres Camarones is a civilised place. (Think of R K Narayan’s Malgudi or Giovanni Guareschi's unnamed Italian town, home of Don Camillo.) Here the drugs mafia, represented by young thugs in SUVs with dark windows and motors idling, is a visible and painful wound.
There is nobody to stand up for the townspeople. Even García-García, “the sole rich man of the town” and owner of the tin-roofed movie-hall, the Cine Pedro Infante, is thrown out of his own house one night by the mafia men. He arrives at the doorstep of Tía Irma, a tough old spinster who is “Sinaloa’s retired Lady Bowling Champion” and mayor of Tres Camarones.
At the Cine Pedro Infante a few days previously, the four young friends who are the core of this story had watched The Magnificent Seven. In that film Yul Brynner and his gunslingers defend a Mexican village against a bandit gang. It gave Nayeli, leader of the four friends, the idea around which the book turns. She decides that they must go to the USA and bring back a team of good Mexican men to fight off the thugs. She has the support of Aunt Irma the mayor, who collects a small budget for the mission and drives her “warriors” to the bus station in her ancient Cadillac to see them off on their quest.
Here are the four: Nayeli, teenage, dark-skinned, attractive and a natural commander. Years ago her father left to work north of the border and never returned. He once sent her a postcard from the town of Kankakee, Illinois. She wants to find him. Yolo, pretty and clever but without initiative. She’s interested in finding Missionary Matt, the blonde American who worked in Tres Camarones the previous year. Matt gave his address to every girl in the town. Vampi (short for La Vampira), Tres Camarones’ only goth. She wears all black, is ignorant of current affairs and is an instinctive sort of person. She would like to meet someone who shares her tastes.
The fourth warrior, Tacho, is the town’s only homosexual and owner of the La Mano Caída taco stand. The name means “The Fallen Hand” and refers to the limp-wristed gesture for “queer”. By using the name openly, Tacho has won everyone’s respect — although he really wants a chance to go where there are other gay people. That is, Beverly Hills.
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It is impossible to summarise the story. The friends, after a long and adventurous bus journey, arrive at Tijuana, and are promptly chewed up by the big city. They lose their bags, fail to find Aunt Irma’s contact, are almost attacked in their hotel room. Frightened and dispirited, they wander the city until an elderly beggar couple invites them home to the garbage dump.
The dump! You’ve never seen a landfill described and peopled with such affectionate humour and verisimilitude. Urrea once worked for an NGO at a Tijuana dump. Here “he dompe” throws up a fabulous character: “I am Atómiko!” yells the wiry, persistent, annoying, magical and loyal stranger, as he whirls his heavy homemade lathi. With Atómiko, Urrea’s quest motif is complete. Here is a knight errant, slightly mad but totally pure. Not unlike Don Quixote.
It is Atómiko who gets them across the border, and — after they are caught by smirking Border Patrol agents, violently separated from Tacho (he says “La Mano Caída”, the agents hear “Al Qaeda”) and ejected back into Tijuana — it is Atómiko who gets them across again. Then he stays to help them on their adventure in America. Where they find Missionary Matt, a kindred soul for Vampi, Nayeli’s father and the noble warriors they went in search of.
This book is a substantial achievement. Urrea is always serious, even when he is hilarious. He swings on the stereotypes, but never loses his grip. Here he gives us the kind of book an Indian should be proud to write: full of sweat and dirt, rich and poor, city and town, wallet and soul, north and south, tied together by a storyful of spectacular and unique characters. It is a book that shines with the brilliance of an unconflicted soul.
INTO THE BEAUTIFUL NORTH: A NOVEL
Luis Alberto Urrea
Hachette
X+358 pages; Rs 595