It will be night

Not long ago, I was walking and listening to NPR on the radio. Ari Shapiro was interviewing Karina Sainz Borgo, a Venezuelan journalist who just published a novel, It Would Be Night in Caracas. 

The novel is about a woman struggling to survive amid chaos in crumbling Venezuela. I haven’t read it yet. Ari asked the author about the difference between journalism and fiction-writing, and she said “Journalism provides answers and fiction provides questions.”

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the idea of fiction as a question or a way to figure out the truth was appealing to me. Sainz Borgo left Venezuela in 2013 and she hasn’t been back. She has to just imagine how much Venezuela has deteriorated in the last six years. She has more questions than answers.

Sainz Borgo also talked about survivors’ guilt. She still has family in Venezuela. She has friends and former neighbors and schoolmates who are struggling to survive, while she lives safely in Europe, and the guilt weighs on her.

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I walk almost every day. I finish work pretty early, around 4, and I walk when I get home, before I start dinner. Soon it’ll be dark early, and I won’t be able to walk after work. I’ll have to go to the gym instead.

For months, I have walked almost the same route every day. I didn’t even think about it. I just put on my sneakers and my earbuds and walked. During the last few weeks, the route has seemed longer and longer every day. On the day I listened to this broadcast, I almost dreaded going and then I realized that I was probably just tired of the same walk, and I could just walk a different way. And I did. And it was lovely.

My neighborhood is small, and I’ve lived here for 15 years. I’ve been walking through this neighborhood for a decade and a half and so I know every street and every corner. It’s all so familiar. Every house reminds me of a neighbor or a friend or a kid’s friend or a friend’s kid.

I’d miss this place if anything happened. And anything can happen. A reviewer wrote that It Would Be Night in Venezuela is a reminder of how quickly things can change and how fast the world you know can just disappear. Some people never think about this; I never stop thinking about it. The worst-case scenario is my default option. Believe it or not, there are advantages to this all-anxiety all-the-time mindset. When it finally does all hit the fan, I won’t be surprised. I won’t necessarily be ready, but I won’t be surprised.

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Karina Sainz Borgo misses the Venezuela that she grew up in, but as she told Ari Shapiro, “The country I want to go back to doesn’t exist anymore.” She probably remembers her old neighborhood. She probably remembers her old walking routes and her neighbors’ houses with their children and their dogs. Maybe she hung out at a swimming pool or a park, or maybe she had a favorite coffee shop. Maybe she dreams sometimes about her old haunts, and wakes up grieving her loss.

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I was a baseball fan when I was young, and I still really like the game (thought not as much as hockey). My grandfather taught me how to watch a game, and how to score a game. The Philadelphia Phillies were my team. And I still like the Phillies, but we are a Washington Nationals household now; and if you have been following the news, then you know that the Nationals are playing in their first-ever World Series.

During Game 1 of the NLCS, Nats vs. St. Louis, I thought about Venezuela as I watched Anibal Sanchez take a no-hitter against the Cardinals into the eighth inning. How does Sanchez feel, I wondered. Does he think about Venezuela and wonder why he’s here enjoying great success in the United States when his country has descended into chaos, and his fellow Venezuelans are suffering and struggling to survive amid shortages of food, medicine, and other basic necessities. Does he feel fortunate, or guilty, or both? Does he dream about returning to a country that no longer exists?

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So Daylight Savings Time is over now, and we’re back on Standard Time. Last night, everyone got a single one-time-only extra hour of sleep in exchange for losing an hour’s worth of daylight every single day for six months. Not a good bargain at all. I’ll have to get my walk in as soon as I get home from work, until late November or so, when I’ll have to give up the afternoon walk and go to the gym to exercise. We don’t have sidewalks here, so night walking is kind of hazardous. Plus bats and foxes. I don’t socialize with wildlife.


At the end of the NPR interview, Sainz Borgo read a short excerpt from the novel. The passage ended with the words “It's always night there. The people look like ghosts.” I guess that’s what I’ll try to think about every time I feel like complaining about the early darkness, which will be every single day until April. I’ll try to think about every place in the world where people can’t depend on the basic things in life--the bare necessities like food and water; and the not-quite-necessary-for-survival-but-still-really-nice-to-have things, like bright cheerful light on a dark evening. I’ll miss the early daylight, but it will be back. I hope the lights will come back on in Venezuela soon. I hope that the lights will come on in the rest of the world, too. Let’s go Nats.