Smile!

When I stepped out­side the house for a last smoke, right after mid­night, I caught sight of a shadow on the side­walk. A young woman was stand­ing there, look­ing in my direc­tion. She started to walk away but turned around again a few sec­onds later and stood there, wait­ing for me to catch up:

– Tak­ing a mid­night walk?

– Just going out for a smoke.

– I’m look­ing for a walk partner…

– I usu­ally go this way, I replied, point­ing at the mail­boxes at the very end of our street.

We walked side by side in the dark, enjoy­ing the still sum­mer night. We talked a bit too: yes, she was liv­ing around here, yes I was French, yes the sum­mer had been wet but the hope­fully we will have a nice Indian summer.

A few blocks later, I fin­ished my cig­a­rette and told her I’d be going home to sleep. “Good night then”, she said. And spon­ta­neously, we hugged and said goobye. I didn’t get a good look at her face because it was dark, and I’m not sure I will see her ever again. But I will prob­a­bly remem­ber the late night walk girl.

I met a lot of peo­ple for a day, for a night while trav­el­ing. I remem­ber them.

I remem­ber Maxime.

In 2002, Feng and I arrived in Flores-Santa Elena, a small town in Guatemala, only famous because it’s a base to visit the nearby Tikal ruins, lost in the jun­gle. We had been trav­el­ing all day from Belize and between the missed bus con­nec­tions and the erratic bor­der cross­ing, it was already late by the time we arrived.

Exhausted and hun­gry, we walked around the dusty town, look­ing for a bank or some kind of ATM, since we didn’t have Quet­zals. The banks were all closed. The only ATM we found didn’t accept our credit cards. And there was no one around to exchange trav­el­ers cheques. We were fucked.

Feng had some US dol­lars which we used to rent two beds in a dark hospedaje. The place was grim and dirty. We climbed the few stairs to the room, dread­ing the state of the beds. We pushed the door, and walked into a tiny room with three beds. On one of them was a guy, lying down, star­ing at the ceil­ing. “Hola”, I said.

I rec­og­nized his accent as soon as he replied: French. Well, from Bel­gium, actu­ally. I sat on my own bed (a camp bed which springs could be felt pok­ing through the mat­tress) and we started chat­ting. I was frus­trated with every­thing that night: we were hun­gry (no money to eat), sweaty (no water in the shower), broke and tired. On top of that, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Feng was hard for me at the time, since my Eng­lish was so lim­ited. We had only been trav­el­ing together for a cou­ple of weeks. I was glad to finally speak French with someone.

I told our mis­for­tunes to Maxime, he told me his. He was from Bel­gium but was work­ing in Switzer­land, in some kind of modern-age hippy com­mu­nity. He had some­how won a trip to Cuba, but once arrived at the cus­tom, the bor­der offi­cers had turned him down. Can’t blame them: his only lug­gage was a big army duf­fel bag and well, he did look like a hippy with his long messy hair. He had been put on the flight back to Europe imme­di­ately, but they had a two hours stop-over in Can­cun, Mex­ico. He had escaped from the plane, went through the Mex­i­can cus­toms and had made his way to Guatemala. And here he was, as broke, as sweaty and as dirty as us (although I was guess­ing his last shower had prob­a­bly been days before mine).

We climbed on the hotel roof and talked all night. I have no idea what we actu­ally chat­ted about but it was deep, mean­ing­ful and quite fun. Bet­ter than stay­ing in the ant-infested room anyway.

The fol­low­ing day, Feng and I decided to go to Uax­ac­tun, a small vil­lage lost in the jun­gle. Maxime stayed in Flores-Santa Elena and we said good­bye at the bus station.

A few weeks later, we arrived in La Lib­er­tad, a small beach town in El Sal­vador. Our first day there hadn’t been that good, for many rea­sons. At night, I slouched in the ham­mock out­side the room and smoked. Sud­denly, I heard foot­steps behind me. “Encore toi?”, said the shadow. I sat upright, sur­prised to hear French. “Maxime?”, I asked, incred­u­lously. Him­self. He was stand­ing behind me, hair still messy, the same old teeshirt and the same jeans with holes every­where, car­ry­ing in duf­fel bag on his shoulders.

“What are you doing here?”, I won­dered aloud. Well, same as us, it turned out. He had even­tu­ally trav­eled through Guatemala, like we did (although he had hitch­hiked and we had bused) and had wanted to go to El Sal­vador. And as it turned out, we had checked into the same hos­tel. We spent another night talk­ing and the next morn­ing, we left to San Sal­vador, the cap­i­tal. I’m not sure where Maxime went. We didn’t meet again, and we never thought of exchang­ing email addresses.He is just a mem­ory, a nice mem­ory.

I met a lot of Maximes when trav­el­ing. A bunch of girls, guys we would meet in hos­tel rooms, bus sta­tions or at the bor­der con­trol. I remem­ber Lluis, with whom we played chess in Belize and met again in a church in Guatemala — he still emails me every new year. I remem­ber Nick, the “polite” Eng­lish back­packer in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, who would ask for per­mis­sion before smok­ing his lat joint in the hos­tel dorm. I remem­ber a Shaun in Syd­ney with whom I shared a bot­tle a bad wine (in all fair­ness, he drunk it mostly by him­self) in the dark kitchen. I remem­ber a French chef in New Zealand. The Aussie who sold us his car in Auck­land. A Brazil­ian pho­tog­ra­pher in Rio de Janeiro.

So many peo­ple, so many late night chats, so many blurred faces — I have never been good at mem­o­riz­ing faces. Hell, I can’t remem­ber people’s names, half of the time. But I remem­ber them. Meet­ing peo­ple is easy: just open your eyes.

Related arti­cles:

1. Five Strenghs, Four People
2. Where I Think Some Peo­ple Are Just Plain Stupid
3. Hap­pi­ness
4. Pic­ture of the Week: Fender Bender
5. Sun­set And Night