TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Immigration: The Contest

those of a Haketia that no longer exists and that I would have liked to learn; but that’s another story.

While I watched him through the screen, I entered a state of sad ecstasy; once again, my bodywas invaded by the strange influence of Little Red Riding Hood; I forgot his departure and other dark elements of our separation that still rattled painfully within me, and the alchemy that the sight of himproduced within me served as an incentive to stop being a hostage of my own fate. A frantic impulse to participate in the contest drove me to try again. It happened on my next walk, as I roamed along with eleven of those young men with copper skin and white teeth; I don’t know how to explain it; instead of looking again at the seductive and dangerous Strait, I set my sights on the abandoned dinghy beside the dock around which the waves churned, and on the opening that had been revealed after the recent storm in the section of fence outside the contestant admission center that bordered on the sea; it must have been a stroke of luck, a gift from Allah; I didn’t think twice and, in the blink of an eye, I had jumped onto the boat, passed through the hole in the fence, and beaten the contest’s first challenge, albeit in anunorthodox fashion, together with Nadir, one of those young men with copper skin and white teeth, who accompanied me on my attempt. We spent a while there, in the contestant admission center; forty days to be exact, with very little space because the turnout was tremendous this year. We exercised on the adjoining patio, since the center was originally planning to organize more challenges in order to choose the contestants, but in the end they changed the script and decided to make the cut according to age. I’m the Kid, 125