The Magical Kingdom

Her name was Amelia. The inspiration for it came from a character of a French movie that her parents used to watch over and over. They loved to watch movies because it was a way to visit places that were very different and distant, ones they couldn’t have known otherwise, because they were stuck in a drastically different reality.

Going to the cinema was expensive, they simply couldn’t afford it. But that was not necessarily a bad thing. Movies at the cinema were all the same, or at least that’s what Amelia’s parents used to say. They preferred other kinds of movies, ones with less action and cheap romance and with more life on them; that was one of the bright sides of being born and raised in that particular place.

Even though being a small neighborhood, the people of Bugambilias had access to more than what their resources seemed to afford. Like in many other places in the country, the law was not something written in stone and much less something their people blindly believed in. It was more a suggestion and kind of a better way of behaving, but if there was an alternative that worked, they took it without a regret. To have illegal and cheap copies of movies, was a great example of it. Piracy was as in every place illegal, but for the people of Bugambilias, it was not impediment to access an unlimited amount of art in any existing medium. For Amelia that was simply magical. Every Saturday morning her father went on an adventure to look for the greatest and most exiting stories to enjoy together. He used to tell her about this journey.

First, he had to pick the right clothes to bend in with the people, a sports cap and shades were essential. He then had to walk out the house and cross the common area of the condominium in which they lived. The path was dark and cold, the sunlight could not reach into it. Buildings to both sides grew far past their austere house, hiding it in a sort of closed cliff. There was no regulation for construction dimensions, and nobody cared how they affected other people’s property. At the end of the common road, the only thing separating the safety of home and the dangers of the outside, was a metal door painted in deep-dark-green that struggled to cover the rust growing from the inside-out.

Once past the door, he had to walk to the right, up a street made of dirt and rocks with no sidewalks. The rocks on it sometimes turned into dangerous projectiles propelled by the cars passing at a higher than recommended speed. But walking this road was not just dangerous because of that, it was a two-way street only broad enough to fit one car at a time. People in Bugambilias were not known to be patient, everyone had something to do or somewhere to be that was more important than the others. So they went as far as to bend the laws of physics and make two complete cars fit in the street at the same time, while the pedestrians had to figure out on their own how to survive that event.

And just at the end of the street, the biggest of all the threats waited; a big road where three-meters-high, smoke-spitting metal made monsters that moved in four wheels crossed at the highest possible speed looking for victims run over. Surviving all that was rewarded with nothing less but access to the magical kingdom. A place in which her parents got absolutely anything they needed, even in times when they lacked the so-called money that people asked in exchange. All the food they ate came from there, so it must have had fields where vegetables and fruits grew. It had to have an enormous section where all the chickens, cows, and pigs grew fat and died of happiness in their sleep. The clothes section must have been of at least five stores high, to cover the need of so many people living nearby. But the most magical section, the one in which the music, video games and movies were made, must have been an underground factory that only distinct citizens of the Kingdom could access.

She had heard her parents referred to it as “The Market”, and a couple of times a strange name that she couldn’t understand; Zapata or something of the sorts. But for her, this was The Magical Kingdom. It was just not right to call it otherwise.

by Iván Plouganou

Photo by Aldo Plouganou: https://flickr.com/people/plouganou/