Henry Martin (6)

Ah, to be a college-age student traveling free and easy through the cities of Europe, soaking in all the color and vitality of the peoples and culture. You hit Barcelona, walk the broad tree-lines streets, visit the Picasso Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. What a dream come true. But, then, one evening leisurely strolling down the wrong street in the wrong neighborhood, you are attacked, brutally raped and then robbed of all your money, identity cards and passport. Other than the cloths on your back, you have nothing. And going to the police is out of the question, since you are pulled down very quickly into a complex web of crime. And to make matters even worse, you don’t even speak the language. Does this sound like a dream instantly transformed into a living nightmare? Well, welcome to the world of American author, Henry Martin’s Escaping Barcelona.

I planned to read this book over the course of a week. However, when I sat down last evening and started reading, I couldn’t stop. Totally engrossed and absorbed – 220 pages in one sitting. At one point the first-person narrator muses, “Hope, once more, starts to root in my heart. The hope I so desperately need, and so futilely try to fight off. Despite the thousand reasons against it, the hope thrives, even though I know that in the end the silver lining will tarnish, and instead of a strong rope my future will hang on a thin thread that cannot support my weight. How many more breaks can I endure before my heart breaks in two?”

Escaping Barcelona makes one fact very clear: the sharpest difference between people is those who have food and those who are hungry and without food. I wouldn’t want to spoil a reader’s experience of the ins and outs, the ups and many downs of this compelling novel, so I will end with one quote I find particularly memorable, “I clean my face the best I can and splash some water on my hair. The last time I’ve had a shave was at the police station, and now I am looking like a wild beast. The uneven hairline growing on my chin, a bit here and there, sticks out like overgrown whiskers. I take out the lighter and burn off the wildest parts. After few attempts it looks much better, only the smell of burnt hair is unbearable. I get out of the bathroom before I have to throw up again. How did I become such a skeleton? It is very bizarre to see one’s self in the mirror after a long time. Any new changes in appearances become more severe, more frightening; I have grown almost unrecognizable from the image I’ve had of myself until now. When I arrived in Barcelona I weighed around one hundred and sixty pounds – the liast time I was weighed at the police station I was just a little under one hundred. That was a while ago. I don’t even want to guess what I am today. It had never hit me until I looked in the damn mirror – I have become a human ruin, a sad, pathetic excuse for a man. I have to get out of this city before it claims my life.”

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