The Last Shepherd

16. HAMASEI

| 89 »« The bus to Aldudes was late. I huddled at the station for four hours, waiting. A woman with both the look and smell of my amatxi (stinky cheese and rose water) was my only companion. The woman wore a black shawl over her head and worked a rosary through her fingers as her lips moved in silent prayer. Fear that the bus would come and go without me stopped me from visiting one of the nearby cafés. I wanted to ask the woman when the bus would come. But again, fear kept me silent. I didn’t speak any French. And after what had happened at the border, I was afraid my speaking Euskara might send the woman screaming down the street. Or maybe she would just reach over and smack me with her rosary. Sitting on the bench, I had time to think over what had happened. First with the man at the airport telling me to be careful with my name. Then with the soldier at the border—Es un Basco. And, finally, the man on the bus whispering to me about eta. I knew what eta was—the Basque terrorist group that wanted an independent homeland. I had read about eta in the newspaper articles given to me back home. Whenever there was any mention of Basques in the paper, everyone at school pointed it out to me. Unfortunately, the only articles for the past five years had been about eta. “You guys do anything but make bombs?” Rich had asked when an explosion in a Madrid café killed twelve people. “Yeah, guns to shoot fools like you,” I answered. In Arizona, eta didn’t have anything to do with me. I was an American who just happened to have a Basque name. eta was an ocean away. In a 16 h a m a s e i | 90« » world where the Mamu roamed and Mari flew in flames and the lamiak snuck through windows. All of them were just characters in a made-up story. None of them real for me. Until now. Now I was in that “made-up” world, where having a Basque name could get a gun pressed between my shoulders. I would have to be careful in this world and try to go unnoticed until I understood its rules. So I didn’t ask the woman who smelled of stinky cheese and rose water what time the bus to Aldudes would come. I just sat and waited. A little after 5:00 p.m.the bus arrived. I got on and began my climb into the Pyrenees. The bus passed through small towns where I saw copies of the house Aitatxi had built in Arizona repeated again and again: clean white walls and red-tiled roofs. Many of the houses had rows of red peppers hanging out front. There were names on the houses: Xalbador, Biperrenea, Mendianea , and I wondered if there was another Artzainaskena among them, but I did not see one. I pictured the families inside the houses, sitting down for dinner, glasses of red—arno gorria and white—arno zuria wine on tables crowded with lamb and cheese and bread. My stomach growled in protest of my imaginings, and to stop it I pulled out the photo I had in my pants pocket. Isabelle stared out at me from the black-and-white version of the passing houses. Did Gorrienea still look the same? Was it even still standing ? What if I couldn’t find it? What if Isabelle was gone? Dead like my father? What if I’d come all this way for nothing? I put the photo back into my pocket. It was too late for thoughts like that now. Maybe I was stupid, like the guy at the border said. A stupid BasqueAmerican who didn’t belong in this place. But the Basque part of me was also stubborn. I would get what I wanted. No matter what obstacles I had to overcome. That was a Basq-oh trait Mr. Steele hadn’t counted on. As we rose higher into the mountains, the bus twisted its way through streets that were built before things like buses existed. On these streets, I saw versions of Aitatxi and Oxea: men in black coats with matching berets. Amatxi was also there: women in below-the-knees skirts with dark shawls tucked around their shoulders. They glanced my way as the bus passed. And I shrank into my...