Colombian Short Stories

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

–I–

This morning I heard the sound of a gunshot, bang, bang, bang, bang! I have heard this
sound again and again, being in bed in many countries. The noise resounded and resonated
in my skull. I started to become very interested in the sounds as they intensified during my
trip to Colombia. Most times I listened to them just before dawn. Sometimes I listened to
them in my dreams. I was walking through a restaurant and I could hear bang, bang!, for
example. I knew it was a dream because I thought to myself: when I wake up, I’ll write it
down.

I told this to a psychiatrist in Cali while we talked about the hallucination. She told me that
maybe the sound came from the veins behind my ears, that maybe it was an internal
pressure before dawn. I thought if there was a symptom called “ghost ears” or maybe I was
possessed by the sounds of the past.

– II –

One day, on a street in Bogotá, I heard a loud noise. I quickly looked and saw a man
dressed in a business suit lying on the grass. He covered his head with both hands. I noticed
that people watched and pointed from a bus that stopped. It turns out that one of his tires
had exploded. The bus stopped, unbalanced, on the side of the road. The passengers went
down one by one. The pedestrians resumed their activities. Nearby, the man in the grass
lifted his head, scanning the area. Then he jumped and ran down the road. He ran very fast
as if he was running away from a shooting.

The illusion is an (erroneous) interpretation of reality. Living is an illusion in process, with

successes and mistakes. Dreaming is hallucinating. This private hallucination helps us to
situate ourselves in the world. We have a constant superimposition of delusions and
hallucinations in our daily lives. What went through the head of the businessman when he
threw himself to the ground? His childhood could be illuminated as in a movie, with the
days, with every dream. He may have practiced a shootout with his buddies in the forest, he
may have seen a documentary of a mass murder somewhere, he might remember being on a
beach at night and heard a loud thunder, ‘Bang’, and that he confused with a guerrilla
fighter firing at civilians. It was maybe like a dream explosion.

– III –

Sofiane prepared a trip after finishing with his girlfriend and probably also to create some
distance from his mother, who devotes all the minutes of his life to Allah. A year later,
Sofiane is in Colombia, in a forest, with her back to a rock, with a tremulous waterfall on
her head and shoulders. This paradise is one of the many landscapes that you have visited.
Throughout his trip, he films himself with sunglasses and smiling in tune with the music in
wonderful places visited by few tourists. The videos are for her mother who is ready to call
any embassy to ask about the whereabouts of her son. This concern may be based on the
fact that your child’s arms are very open to the world. In France he was once a minor drug
dealer. In prison, he was still active in the sale of drugs, and with free food and a lot of free
time, he managed to buy his mother a new house in Algeria. That did not interfere with his
mother’s relationship with Allah.

The music videos are Sofiane’s revenge or an invitation to freedom, to the woman from
whom she cannot escape. They are also your merchandise, which teaches strangers who see
in these clips, dreams that will never live. The clips of one or two minutes are shown on
your cell phone in exchange for some company. Like a bottle in the sea, Sofiane continues
to create more dreams of unexplored routes. A life devoid of routines. A conscience in the
morning when our ears, eyes and arms open, unguarded. A provocation. A stage.