– The bad experiences I had as a child live in my body. The body remembers things.
The Norwegian-Chilean writer Pedro Carmona-Alvarez is having second thoughts.
– I have a constant feeling of being torn free from something. Both Marisol and I were woken up in the middle of the night, and life was never the same again, ever. That alone is enough to mark an entire life.
Carmona-Alvarez came this week with the novel “Chiquitita”. The story starts with eight-year-old Marisol, who lives with her extended family in an unnamed town. Eventually, the country collapses around them, and one day Marisol is dragged away from everything she knows and everyone she loves. At the age of ten, she gets a new everyday life at a refugee reception, where everyone around her is affected by serious war trauma.
Self-perceived
The story has several similarities with the upbringing of Pedro Carmona-Alvarez. His nuclear family of four had to flee Chile in 1982 because of his father’s political involvement during the military dictatorship. They lived several months in uncertainty at a refugee reception in Argentina.
– We ended up in a place that is very similar to the place Marisol comes from. It was the early 80s in Latin America, when the entire continent was like a slaughterhouse. At the refugee reception there was a multitude of destinies from different countries, broken, tortured, broken beings on the run. It was my first encounter with the adult world.
Carmona-Alvarez stops.
– You become a bit skinless in a place like that as a child, you cannot be protected from the violence. People sit and drink, and vomit, and unravel their terrible life stories. On the one hand, you learn a lot as a child, but there is also a lot you don’t understand – the complexity of things, the adults’ perspective is hidden, inexperienced.
CARRIED THE STORY FOR A LONG TIME: – It’s a story I’ve had up in the “cloud” all my life. It has only been waiting for a form, says Pedro Carmona-Alvarez about the book “Chiquitita”. Photo: Eivind Senneset Show more
Writes about own experiences
Pedro Carmona-Alvarez made his debut as a writer in 1997 with the poetry collection “Helter”. He has since been both critically acclaimed and awarded for his poetry collections, novels, essays and re-poetry from other languages. Having roots in two cultures is a recurring theme. He has also written about refugee experiences in the past, but this time he writes chronologically about an escape that is similar to the one he himself experienced as a ten-year-old.
– I have often focused on political or continental trauma. This is the first time I have placed a child in that world. The book tries to leave out the official language of these stories. Marisol is a child who must manage what she has seen. And I had to find an excuse for that.
And the young girl in the novel sees a lot, among the descriptions is: “The river we cross is full of corpses. Headless, twisted men and women floating like shrimp”. “There are also severed hands, broken jaws and incantations. Blackening dust, unburied corpses. The arch of the pubic bone, tufts of hair and viscera. I see a man writhing against the black sky like a bruise. He disappears. Waking up dead and soaking wet. He floats like a worn leaf”.
– I was a child who saw and experienced a cruel reality. There were stories of detailed torture, death, disappearance and mutilation. Told by those who had been tortured, those whose hands couldn’t stop shaking, people who were picked up at any time and whom we never saw again. I experienced all the things that happen when a country is in crisis, he says, adding:
– But the book is also a mixture of all the fates I have met and who have similar refugee experiences, not just from Latin America. I have had friends who grew up in Iran, and who have experienced much of the same.
– Call me a lust preacher
Poetic
Carmona-Alvarez herself came to Norway as an 11-year-old, and grew up in an exile environment where several, both adults and children, had come here as refugees. It is their shared history that he has tried to portray this time.
The novel unravels how Marisol later in life manages to live with the trauma she has experienced. Carmona-Alvarez uses a poetic and rhythmic language, and linguistic images, to make the unthinkable a little more understandable.
– I have thought that writing beautifully about it is a kind of tribute to those who experienced this. I have tried to lift something out of what is exclusively terrible, and give it a kind of dignity through the aesthetic. If the language is nice and easy to read, you give the grief some kind of value.
AWARDED: Pedro Carmona-Alvarez has received a number of awards, including the Hunger Prize 2005, after he made his debut as a writer in 1997. Photo: Eivind Senneset Show more
– Rose Carp
The 51-year-old points out that many children have experiences of flight and living in exile. He believes the experiences and traumas are something we should talk about more.
– There are many cuckoo chicks, and I think that many of us may feel a need to talk to other cuckoo chicks. We don’t just have to talk about the Norwegian reality.
The author praises younger, multicultural artists who in recent years have given insight into the stories and suffering of children of immigrants and refugees.
– My generation had one reality at home and another world out there. But the younger generation is more generous with their stories. The work that Karpe or Sumaya Jirde Ali, Priya Bains and Yohan Shanmugaratnam have done has shown our reality. Several of these experiences of having immigrant parents are in this novel as well, but in the periphery, he says.
Guide in the underworld
The 51-year-old himself has also received help writing “Chiquitita”.
– For me, it is a book that is both fast and slow at the same time. It was written between August and November last year, which is a short time for a novel to be. But it’s a story I’ve had up in the “cloud” all my life. It has only been waiting for a form. It was just like I was suddenly told to look after an eight-year-old girl, and get her out of something bad and into something good. It was a rescue operation, in a way.
Carmona-Alvarez gets a slight drawl over his voice.
– This girl in three stages of life has been my guide in the realm of the dead. It is her story that lives on. It’s very comforting for me to do it that way. The pain is no longer just mine, but everyone else’s too.
He chuckles.
– Now I feel that me and Marisol have said what we were supposed to say about being children on the run, and it feels very good. But I had to include her in it, to be able to say something.
NEW LOOK: Pedro Carmona-Alvarez has lived in Bergen for the past 28 years. He had a clear relationship with his childhood experiences, but says memories change with time. Photo: Eivind Senneset Show more
More music
It has been seven years since Carmona-Alvarez’ last novel, but the author has published both poems and essays in recent years. Between writing projects, he is also an active musician, known for everything from solo projects to bands such as Sister Sonny and constellations with Stein Torleif Bjella and Frode Grytten. The Norwegian pop jewel summarized the Dagblad review of his previous music release earlier this year, and in the future the 51-year-old also plans to tour more than before. He has settled down in Bergen, with his wife, and he enjoys getting older and at the same time working with the things he loves.
– I like to make things and thank the solar system every day for the life I have. It is a blessed life, he exclaims.
But he always carries his childhood experiences with him.
– The things that are biographically close in this novel, I live with them all the time, every day. But the literary work makes it possible for me to live with the memories. It would have been a terrifying scenario if I hadn’t had the skill to go with everything I had. It would have been dark then.
– Putin brainwashes the young
– He came out in his underpants
2023-08-07 13:00:49
#slaughterhouse
