My Invented Country (15 page)

For a while I earned a living as a secretary, I married, and immediately became pregnant with my first child, Paula. Regardless of my feminist theories, I was a typical Chilean wife, selfless and servile as a geisha, the kind of woman who makes a baby of her husband, with premeditation and treachery. Enough to say, as proof, that I had three jobs, I ran the house, I looked after the children, and I ran like a marathoner the whole day to fight my way through the pile of responsibilities that had fallen on me, including a daily visit to my grandfather, but at night I waited for my husband with the olive for his martini between my teeth and the clothing he would wear the next morning carefully laid out. In any free moments, I shined his shoes and cut his hair and fingernails . . . just a run-of-the-mill Elvira.

Soon I was transferred to a different office, the department of information, where I was supposed to edit reports and act as press officer, either of which was much more entertaining than counting trees. I must admit that I didn't choose journalism, I was caught off guard; the profession simply sank its claws into me. It was love at first sight, a sudden passion that has determined a large part of my life. It happened during the early days of television in Chile, which consisted of two black-and-white channels originating from the universities. The only screen I'd ever seen was at the movies, but it was Stone Age TV, the most primitive stage, and though I hadn't taken regular courses at the uni
versity, I found myself launched upon a career. In those days, journalism was still a profession you learned on the job, and there was a certain tolerance for spontaneous practitioners like me. I should note here that in Chile women make up the majority among journalists, and are more prepared, visible, and courageous than their male colleagues; it is also true that they nearly always work under a man's orders. My grandfather was indignant when I told him what I was doing; he considered reporting an occupation for knaves; no one of sound mind would talk with the press, and no decent person would choose a calling in which the main order of work was talking about other people. However, I think he secretly watched my television programs because occasionally he let slip some revealing comment.

By the early sixties the rings of poor settlements around the capital city had grown in alarming fashion: cardboard walls, tin roofs, people in rags clearly visible along the road from the airport. Since this made a very bad impression on visitors, for a long time the solution was to put up walls to hide them. As one politician said, “Where there is poverty, hide it.” There are marginal areas still today, despite the sustained effort of various governments to relocate the squatters in more decent barrios, but the situation is greatly improved. Back then, immigrants from the country and the most remote provinces came in massive numbers looking for
work, and being unable to find decent housing they gravitated to these miserable hovels. Despite police harassment of the occupants, these shantytowns grew and became organized: once people took over a piece of land it was impossible to remove them or keep others from joining them. Shacks lined unpaved little streets that were a dust bowl in summer and a swamp in winter. Hundreds of barefoot children ran wild among the huts while parents went off every day to the city to look for a day's work that would “feed the pot,” a vague term that could mean anything from earning a pitiable wage to buying a bone to make soup. Several times I visited these communities with a friend who is a priest, and afterward, when feminism and political unrest forced me out of my shell, I went often, trying to help. As a journalist I could make reports and tape interviews that helped me better understand our Chilean mentality.

Among the most acute problems, tied to the absence of hope, were alcoholism and domestic violence. Many times I saw women with battered faces. My sympathy fell on deaf ears because they always had an excuse for the aggressor: “He was drunk,” “He got angry,” “He was jealous,” “If he hits me it's because he loves me,” “Who knows what I did to provoke him?” I'm told that this situation hasn't changed much despite campaigns to prevent battering. In the lyrics of a popular tango, the man waits for his woman to fix his
mate
and then “knifes her thirty-five times.” Police are now trained to burst into houses without waiting for the door to be opened normally, or before a corpse with thirty-five stab wounds is found hanging at the window, but there is still a
long way to go. And we haven't even touched on the subject of child beatings! Every so often there is a story in the paper about some horrifying case of children tortured or beaten to death by their parents. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, Latin America is one of the most violent areas of the world, second only to Africa. Violence in the society begins at home; you can't eliminate crime in the streets unless you attack domestic aggression, since children who have been abused often become violent adults. Today there is a great deal of discussion on the subject, it is denounced in the press, and safe houses and education programs and police protection are available for victims, but in those days domestic crimes were taboo topics.

There was a strong class-consciousness in those squatter's settlements I visited, pride in belonging to the proletariat, which surprised me in a society as snobbish as Chile's. That's when I discovered that social climbing was a middle-class phenomenon, the poor never gave it a thought, they were too busy trying to survive. Over the years these communities acquired political savvy, they organized and became fertile territory for leftist parties. Ten years later, in 1970, they were decisive in electing Salvador Allende and for that reason had to suffer the greatest repression during the dictatorship.

I was very serious about journalism, even though colleagues from that time believe that I invented my reports. I didn't invent them, I merely exaggerated slightly. The
experience left me with several obsessions: I find I am forever on the prowl for news and stories, always with a pencil and notepad in my handbag for jotting down anything that catches my eye. What I learned then helps now in my writing: working under pressure, conducting an interview, doing research, using the language efficiently I never forget that a book is not an end in itself. Just like a newspaper or a magazine, a book is a means of communication, which is why I try to grab the reader by the throat and not let go to the end. I don't always succeed, of course; readers tend to be elusive. Who
is
my reader? Well, when the North Americans were in Panama and arrested General Noriega, who had fallen from grace, they found two books in his possession: the Bible and
The House of the Spirits.
You never know for whom you're writing. Every book is a message in a bottle tossed into the sea with the hope it will reach a different shore. I feel very grateful when someone finds it and reads it, particularly someone like Noriega.

In the meantime, Tío Ramón had been named the Chilean representative at the United Nations in Geneva. Letter exchange between my mother and me now took much less time than from Turkey, and occasionally it was possible to talk by telephone. When our daughter Paula was a year and a half old, my husband received a fellowship to study engineering in Belgium. On the map, Brussels looked very close to Geneva, and I didn't want to miss an opportunity to visit my parents. Ignoring the promise I'd made myself to put down roots and not go abroad for any reason, we packed our suitcases and set out for Europe. It
was an excellent decision; among other reasons because I was able to study radio and television and renew my French, which I hadn't used since those days in Lebanon. During that year I discovered the Women's Lib movement, and realized that I wasn't the only witch in the world, there are many of us.

In Europe very few people had ever heard of Chile, but the country became fashionable four years later, with the election of Salvador Allende. It was in the news again in 1973 because of the military coup, then because of human rights violations, and eventually because of the arrest of the former dictator in London in 1998. Every time our country has made news, it has been for major political events, except for brief notes on the occasion of an earthquake. When someone in Europe asked my nationality in the sixties, I had to give long explanations and draw a map to demonstrate that Chile is at the southern tip of South America, not in the heart of Asia. It was often confused with China because of the somewhat similar name. The Belgians, used to the idea of colonies in Africa, were surprised that my husband spoke English and that I wasn't black. Once they asked me why I didn't wear traditional garb; they may have been thinking of Carmen Miranda's costumes in Hollywood movies: a multiruffled skirt and a basket of pineapples on her head. We traveled through Europe from Scandinavia to the south of Spain in a beat-up Volkswagen, sleeping in a tent and eating sausages, horse meat, and fried potatoes. It was a year of frenetic touring.

We returned to Chile in 1966 with our daughter Paula,
who at three spoke an academician's Spanish and had become an expert on cathedrals, and with Nicolás in my womb. In contrast with Europe, where long-haired hippies were a normal sight, student revolutions were brewing, and the sexual liberation was being celebrated, Chile was boring. Once again I felt like a foreigner, but I renewed my promise to grow roots and never leave.

As soon as Nicolás was born I went back to work, this time for a brand-new women's magazine called
Paula.
It was the only journal that promoted the feminist cause and featured subjects never aired until then, like divorce, contraception, domestic violence, adultery, abortion, drugs, and prostitution. Considering that in those days you couldn't say the word “chromosome” without blushing, we were suicidally audacious.

Chile is a hypocritical, prudish country bristling with scruples in respect to sex and sensuality, a nation of “old ladies,” male and female. The double standard rules. Promiscuity is tolerated in men, but women must pretend that sex doesn't interest them, only love and romance, although in practice they must enjoy the same liberties as men—if not, who are the men dallying with? A female must never seem to be collaborating with the macho during the course of the seduction, she must be sly. It is supposed that if a girl is “difficult,” the suitor's interest is held and she is respected; on the other hand, there are some very inelegant epithets for describing her reluctance. This is but a further manifestation of our hypocrisy, another of our rituals for maintaining appearances, because in truth there is as much adultery, as many teenage pregnancies, children
born out of wedlock, and abortions, as in any other country. I have a woman friend who is a gynecologist and has specialized in looking after unmarried pregnant teenagers, and she assures me that unwanted pregnancies are much less common among university students. That happens more in low-income families, in which parents place more emphasis on educating and providing opportunities to their male children than to their daughters. These girls have no plans, they see a gray future, and they have limited education and little self-esteem; some become pregnant out of pure ignorance. They are surprised when they discover their condition because they have followed admonitions “not to go to bed with anyone” literally. What happened standing up, behind a door, surely didn't count.

More than thirty years have passed since
Paula
took a prudish Chilean society by storm, and no one can deny the effect of that hurricane. Each of the controversial articles in the magazine stirred my grandfather to the verge of cardiac arrest; we would argue at the top of our lungs, but the next day I would go back to see him and he would welcome me as if nothing had happened. In its beginnings, feminism, which today we take for granted, seemed extreme, and most Chilean women wondered why they needed it since they were already queens of their households and it was natural for men to be the bosses outside, the way God and Nature had intended. It was hard work to convince them that they weren't queens anywhere. There were not many visible feminists; at the most, half a dozen. I try not to remember what aggravation we had to put up with! I realized that to wait to be respected for being a feminist was
like expecting the bull not to charge because you're a vegetarian. I also went back to television, this time with a comedy show, and while doing that acquired a certain visibility, as happens to anyone who appears regularly on the screen. Soon every door was open to me, people greeted me in the street, and for the first time in my life I felt I belonged.

I
often ask myself what exactly nostalgia
is.
In my case, it's not so much wanting to live in Chile as it is the desire to recapture the certainty I feel there. That's my home ground. Each country has its customs, its manias, its complexes. I know the idiosyncrasies of mine like the palm of my hand; nothing surprises me, I can anticipate others' reactions, I understand what gestures mean, silences, formulas of courtesy, ambiguous responses. Only there do I feel comfortable socially—despite the fact I rarely behave as I'm expected to—because there I know how to behave and my good manners rarely fail me.

When I was a recently divorced forty-five, I immigrated to the United States, obeying the call of my impulsive heart. The first thing that surprised me was the infallible optimism of North Americans, so different from people in the south
ern tip of South America, who always expect the worst to happen. Which it does, of course. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to the pursuit of happiness, which anywhere else would be an embarrassing presumption. North Americans also believe they have the eternal right to be entertained, and if any of their rights are denied, they feel frustrated. The rest of the world, in contrast, expects that on the whole, life is hard, and boring, so they celebrate sparks of joy and diversion, however modest, when they occur.