by PAUL THEROUX
“Built just six months ago, this towering, seemingly endless row of vertical steel beams is so amazing in its conceit you either want to see more of it, or else run in the opposite direction — just the sort of conflicting emotions many people feel when confronted with a peculiar piece of art.” US built barrier between the Nogales, Arizona on the US side and Nogales on the Mexico side.
A SIMPLE painted sign on a wooden board — “To Mexico” — was propped near the door in the fence, but it was the fence itself that fascinated me. Some masterpieces are unintentional, the result of a freakish accident or an explosive act of sheer weirdness, and the fence that divides Nogales, Ariz., from Nogales, Mexico, is one of them.
…
You can, of course, also go through it, which is what I wanted to do. And there was the entryway, just past J. C. Penney and Kory’s clothing shop — a door in the wall at the end of hot, sunlit Morley Avenue.
After leaving my car at a secure parking lot ($4 a day), I showed my passport to the United States border guard, who asked about my plans. Business?
“Just curiosity,” I said. When he made a disapproving squint, I added, “Don’t you go over now and then?”
“Never been there,” he said.
“It’s 10 feet away!”
“I’m staying here,” he said, his squint now suggesting that I should be doing the same.
I pushed the turnstile and stepped through the narrow door — no line, no other formalities — into the state of Sonora, Mexico, where I was instantly, unmistakably in a foreign land. The roads were bumpier, the buildings vaguely distressed; I was breathing in the mingled aromas of bakeries, taco stands and risen dust.
Glancing back a moment later, I could not see Arizona anymore, only the foreground of Mexico — small children kicking a ball, men in sombreros conferring under a striped awning, steaming food carts.
I TREASURE border crossings, and the best of them are the ones where I’ve had to walk from one country to another, savoring the equality of being a pedestrian, stepping over the theoretical line that is shown on maps, from Cambodia into Vietnam, from Pakistan into India, from Turkey into the Republic of Georgia. Usually a frontier is a river — the Mekong, the Rio Grande, the Zambezi; or a mountain range — the Pyrenees, the Rwenzoris. It can also be a sudden alteration in topography, a bewildering landscape transformation — hilly Vermont flattening into Quebec. But just as often a border is a political expedient — irrational yet unremarkable — creating a seamless no man’s land, just a width of earth, bounded by fences.
The New York Times for more
(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)