#17 A License to Kill …

R.I.P.

Charlie

Casually, one of the three mountain bikers I pass tosses the wrapper of the bar he's eating onto the ground. In their brightly colored outfits, the three are sitting on the edge of a stone trough where spring water flows in and out, and where, in the not-too-distant past, farmers herded their goats and cows for a drink. The mountain bikers drink from their water bottles and eat their bars, and whoever judges me a loser for just cycling past is right. But I'm not feeling all that well right now, and the last thing I’d like is to get into a row over bar wrappers being tossed onto the ground.

June 15, 2025. Sunday. The rain has stopped in Andalusia. It's been cloudless for days, and the temperature is rising rapidly. That takes some getting used to, although now, at half past ten in the morning, it's still pleasantly cool. Everything that can bloom in Andalusia is blooming, colors as far as the eye can see. Man, I love flowers and colors, and whoever judges me a loser for not enjoying the splendor of flowers and colors surrounding me is right. But, dammit, I'm going cross-eyed with pain ...

Heidi and I—we’re both Dutch—have been living in Antequera, a small city in Andalusia, for about ten months now. Busy writing and translating, and partly due to the rain—which holds for months on end every few years, I remember from previous periods living in Andalusia—I haven’t been cycling as much as I’m used to. This morning, I worked on a translation for a few hours, mapped out a route of about forty kilometers, and through its narrow, cobblestone streets, I hurtled downhill out of Antequera. I didn't feel in top condition, but until just before the Boca del Asno, the donkey's mouth, a saddle between two mountain ranges eight or nine kilometers from home, the cycling was fine. Just past the Boca del Asno, things went sideways.

For years, every now and again, I’ve suffered from a weird pain in my groin, and for years, every now and again, I've convinced myself it was a psoas muscle acting up. Technically speaking, that’s possible. Stress can trigger our psoases to act up, and Heidi and I haven't exactly been stress-free the last few years. Still, our first months in Antequera were relatively calm. We worked on our books sin prisa pero sin pausa, as they say in Spain—no haste but no pause either—until we were surprised by an offer from a Dutch journalist who was starting a publishing house. He proposed publishing Heidi's book and the revised second editions of mine. That relieved our Spanish publisher, who would ensure our work would remain available in the Netherlands, but it set us up with stress once more because suddenly there was haste to complete our work. My psoas acted up slightly and acted up explosively when, two months later, the plug was pulled on the prospective publishing house and I had to tell Mansoor Adayfi.

Complicated perhaps, but Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni citizen, was taken prisoner in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 at the age of nineteen. Under inhumane conditions, he spent the next fourteen years of his life in the Guantánamo Bay prison. Since his release, he has been forced to live in Serbia, where I once interviewed him. The Dutch journalist had asked me to approach Mansoor about publishing his book Don’t forget us here in the Netherlands. Mansoor was happy with the offer I was able to make him, and after the plug was pulled on the prospective publishing house, it took me weeks—my psoas acting up like never before—to find Mansoor another Dutch publisher. A few days ago, everything was all set. I got the green light to start translating Mansoor’s book, my psoas reverted back to acting up only mildly, and … a 4x4 slowly passes me. White fender, olive-green door …

“Por qué no llevas casco why aren't you wearing a helmet?” a Guardia Civil officer snaps at me from his open window.

“No tenéis nada más importante que hacer don't you have anything more important to do? Just before the Boca del Asno, some colleagues of yours asked me the same thing.”

“Y sigues pedaleando and you keep on cycling?”

“Logicamente,” I reply as the driver of the 4x4 steers toward me, forcing me to brake hard. The 4x4 is now in front of me, diagonally across the road, and I feel like a bank robber who's been cornered.

“Logicamente?”

“Logicamente,” I repeat. "Tu trabajo your job is to guarantee the safety of society. No tienes nada que ver con mi seguridad personal you have nothing to do with my personal safety, unless someone has it in for me como tu compañero al volante like your colleague behind the wheel. Multa me o largate fine me or get lost," and I swallow the word imbécil that my sudden anger encourages me to use. But friend Flufhead doesn't give up and just like his colleagues who pulled me over me ten minutes ago, he babbles on about the burden I put on the healthcare system if I fall from my bike.

“Te falta un tornillo do you have a loose screw? If you want to prevent cyclists from burdening the healthcare system, you should make training wheels mandatory on bikes. If you're concerned about the healthcare system as such, you block access to McDonald's instead of bothering healthy people who are working out, and if you ..." Out of the corner of my eye, I see three mountain bikers cycling toward us.

“Espera wait!" I call out to friend Flufhead before getting off my bike, my psoas protesting harshly. I drop the bike in the grass at the side of the road, stagger to the back of the 4x4, and gesture the three mountain bikers to a halt. As the two Guardia Civil officers get out of their 4x4, I tell the three mountain bikers, “Señores, necesito el código DIN de sus cascos I need the DIN code of your helmets y prueba de la fecha de compra and proof of the date of purchase."

People get out of cars that stop in front of us and behind us on the narrow road, and in an instant, the melee is complete. Everyone screams, and friend Flufhead's colleague grabs me by the shoulder. He shakes his head and says, "Hombre, qué follón estás formando, what kind of madness are you creating?"

"Mira look," I explain, as someone in the next approaching car honks wildly, "if we want to reduce the burden on the healthcare system, we have to make sure everyone wears a helmet that meets the right standard and is no older than two years."

The officer turns away from me, gestures the cyclists to continue their trip, gestures drivers back into their cars, and gestures his colleague back into the 4x4. The cyclists, on their electric mountain bikes, are off even faster than the cars. As the 4x4 pulls away, I take in the splendor of flowers and colors surrounding me and chuckle inwardly at how I worked myself up. But the chuckling fades as I take the first step toward my bike. Not only is my right groin cramping, but so is my right buttock. Pain radiates down my leg, and I know what's wrong. Both my psoas and piriformis have surrendered to the stress of a moment ago, and the piriformis is now pinching my sciatic nerve. Stretching is futile, and like an elderly man, I slump down in the grass next to my bike. I shake off my backpack, take out my Stanley thermos, pour coffee into its cap, and drink it as I try to relax. Then, I lie on my back, carefully pull up my knees, and stare at the mostly blue sky, pondering.

Now that people no longer hound me with vaccines they assumed would protect me from the potentially catastrophic consequences of contracting a flu strain that's harmless to me, they're hounding me for a helmet I don't wear in situations where I have the right to decide for myself whether I want the pseudo-protection of a helmet. Climbing via ferratas, climbing rocks, skiing, or cycling, it doesn't matter. Helmet, helmet, helmet is the credo, and once again, I chuckle inwardly, recalling the melee I caused when I refused to wear a swim cap while trying to do some laps in a swimming pool last week. Again, the chuckling fades. This time because I admit to myself, as a cloud passes over the sun, that the world I thought I knew has ceased to exist.

The top of the capitalist pyramid, with seamless precision, applies a divide-and-rule policy, no longer dividing the world into left and right, but into relying on emotions on the one hand and relying on reason and logic on the other. This division seems to have accelerated since the turn of the millennium, and an entire generation is now filled with the idea that we can have, achieve, and even be anything we want, that our emotions provide a sufficiently strong compass to base our actions on, and that we are right when we feel offended—which, inevitably, is the case when we’re confronted with reason and logic.

I eh… I believe in wanting, sacredly—wrote books about it—but I don’t believe in the wanting that seems to be the religion of today, and I certainly don’t believe that our emotions are a good enough compass on which to base our actions. But the divide-and-rule policy that fuels the current societal schism goes far, as I learned from a document issued for internal use by the Dutch police, a copy of which was sent to me by a Dutch friend. In that document, police officers are alerted to how to recognize people like me. In the same document, they are also alerted to how to deal with people like me, people who talk about—just talk about—topics like an elite, which I call the top of the capitalist pyramid, about Covid, about the WEF, and about the climate crisis, and who move away from authority, probably in the way I move away from babbling Guardia Civil officers and swimming pool lifeguards.

Much of the behavior the document says the police should be alert to strikes me as rooted in reason and logic and in self-sufficiency. For example, talking about or having a vegetable garden—I had to read that twice to believe it—is listed as one of the things by which people like me can be identified. And people like me, according to the document, must be treated appropriately to prevent them from radicalizing and resorting to extremism or even terrorism. Strange! Of all the people I know, most of whom recognize only reason and logic as the basis for their actions, I am the one most easily angered. But I only resort to violence if I or someone near me unable to defend her- or himself is physically attacked. In contrast, quite some people who trust emotion as an unerring compass seem to view the slightest confrontation with reason and logic as a license to kill.

Another cloud passes over the sun. I suddenly feel cold! I half-rise, put the thermos back in my backpack, sling the backpack over my shoulders, and struggle to get up. Desperation overwhelms the pain. There's simply no movement left in my hip, cycling no longer an option. I cautiously pick up my bike from the grass and, just as cautiously, take the first steps home.

Forty-five minutes to the Boca del Asno? An hour? I drink water from a stone trough, stuff two bar wrappers I pick up from the ground into a leg of my cycling shorts, and stagger on. I've lost track of time, but the temperature is rising. From the Boca del Asno, it goes downhill for a few kilometers, my hip hurting even more than when staggering uphill, I realize as a 4x4 slowly passes me. White fender, olive-green door. An arm resting on the frame of an open window. A fist clenches, a finger comes up, and in my mind’s eye, I see CIA agents stuffing my friend Mansoor into an oil drum at a black site in Afghanistan. They seal the drum and roll it around with Mansoor inside—not because they have to, but because they're allowed to. The theme song from the movie First Blood comes to life in my head, and I remember some of the lyrics.

                                It's a long road, when you're on your own,

                                               and it hurts when they tear your dreams apart.

                                                               Every new town just seems to bring you down,

                                trying to find peace of mind can break your heart.

                                               It's a real war,

                                                               right outside your front door, I tell you.

                                                                               Out where they'll kill you,

                                                               you could use a friend …

Through a mist of tears, I see a white Berlingo driving toward me. A small white-and-brown dog stands on the passenger side with its front paws on the dashboard. The Berlingo comes to a stop in front of me. A door opens, and Boris the terrier, nine months old, jumps onto the asphalt. He runs toward me and leaps up, squeaking, as Heidi gets out and says, "I just saw the Guardia Civil. Is it finally over, cycling without a helmet? That will unburden the healthcare system."

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