If I Could

by Kate Carlson (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Spain

Katja and I clicked down the tile stairs to the metro platform at Diagonal. Peering off to the left of me from a movie poster for Alma Salvaje was Reese Witherspoon, bigger than life. Alma Salvaje translates to “Wild Soul” and is the name of the foreign release of the movie Wild. I said to Katja, “I have a story for you.” The train thundered into the station blowing gusts of dust around. We were heading up to Parc de Montjuic, a hill on the western coast of Barcelona with a breathtaking view of the city shoreline below. We boarded the train and stood, clutching the pole in between us for balance, eyes darting around us for any potential pickpockets with which Barcelona teems. I noticed a Guatemalan man standing on the platform preparing to busk. He held a well-worn wooden pan flute tied together with rust red string. As the doors closed and the train started to pull away from the station, he began to move his lips over the top of the pipes and I recognized the mystical notes. He was playing El Condor Pasa (If I Could) by Paul Simon. It’s a song I had heard a few times before, but not one I had heard often or had a particular connection with until it was in Wild’s soundtrack. It’s haunting melody sticks right to your bones in sequences of flashbacks that Cheryl Strayed is experiencing on her solo 1,100 mile transcendental hike. Bittersweet memories of her mother who had battled cancer. And here I was on a metro in Barcelona on a spontaneous trip with a new German friend and a Guatemalan man with a pan flute playing this obscure song that only recently had become popular again due to its appearance in this movie based on a book whose author was hosting a writing workshop to which me and my closest friend (whose daughter’s name is Alma) had both been accepted. Chills ran down my left arm. Wanting to capture the moment in video, I searched my coat pockets for my phone. Not finding it, I started digging through my shoulder bag, too. My stomach dropped. Katja asked if I wanted to go back to the hostel to check there. “We better,” I said. “I don’t want to risk it. I must have left it on the bed.” We got off the train at the next station, switched direction and headed back to the hostel. I apologized, saying, “I don’t do this.” But on the return journey I told her about Wild, about the emotional connection I had to Cheryl and her journey and the way it connected to mine and the loss of my ex and how the experience had changed my life in so many stark and courageous ways, and the writing program, and how I kept seeing the movie posters everywhere since my arrival in Barcelona and how serendipitous and surreal it was to hear a busker play those notes just as I was about to tell her my story. When we got back to the hostel, I raced to my room and threw back the covers on my bed. I swiped my hand underneath it. Under the pillow. No phone. Panicking, I checked my bag again – it was new and had some pockets that maybe I had missed. There was one on the outside that I had warned myself against using because it could be an easy target for pickpockets – and there was my phone, tucked neatly away. Relieved and annoyed, I headed back to reception to wait for Katja who had gone to her room to grab gloves. Time lost from our day when I had it all along. I sheepishly tried to think of what to tell her. A couple minutes later, Katja teetered through reception with a stunned look on her face. “It’s a good thing we came back,” she said. “I never clicked the lock closed on my bag and my brand new MacBook was sitting right on top.” Another little light from above. I never did tell Katja that I had my phone all along.