Kingdoms and towns

Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the main town of San Cristobal

Tengo gripe (I have a cold), so I'm hiding out with pirated movies until the phlegm clears. I just watched The Kingdom for the first time, which has the Spanish title La Sombra del Miedo. 

It's based on a terrorist attack on an American compound in Saudi, like the one I grew up in, and opens with a softball game. Dads pitching, moms sitting it the bleachers, everyone sweating--indeed, this was my childhood! The movie wasn't great, but I liked the scattering of Arabic that I knew. Shouf (look), halas (enough), habibe (friend).

"Don't worry, we'll kill them all," said the FBI agent and the little Saudi boy at the end. It resonated unhappily, as intended, and I realize that violence has wandered far from my mind since my arrival on San Cristobal, population six thousand. There's corruption, sure, but no violence. Twice I've walked home at 3:30 in the morning and when people approached me in the dark, it was just to offer rum and coke and homegrown weed.

Funnily enough, this brings me back to Saudi, where I roamed the street day and night and felt perfectly safe, too. The difference is that the safety there was manufactured by walls and security guards that insulated us from the rest of the Kingdom, whereas here people are safe because the whole community is connected--everyone knows everything about everyone.