A Fat Man Dances to Shakira

I am eating snapper caked in sea salt and potatoes in paprika oil while a fat man dances to Shakira. The waiters all laugh and give each other knowing looks. I smoke a cigarette (because I am bored, and I have one) and tap my feet to the rhythm coming from the boombox.

Five years ago I swear this street was full of prostitutes and thieves. A few grungy hostels stood nearby, residents clutching their purses during the short walk to the walled city. I remember wandering through this same plaza hastily taking photos of abandoned houses, courtyards crumbling into chunks of plaster and wires, feral cats lounging in the wreckage. Now the walls are covered in art. Young bohemians sell jewelry to tourists who lounge under streetlamps drinking cheap cans of Aguila.

This is how a city changes. It isn’t that we love the old Cartagena with its shifty looks and stray dogs; but the passing of time goes so much faster than the ever-dragging heart. Never again those hot and musky streets that I find in my dreams, nor the woman selling arepas chanting “niña” with vacant eyes. Toda la ciudad vieja es seguro, say the taxi drivers with pride. All of the old city is safe.

Tomorrow I will be another tourist with my indigenous-made mochila, earned not through knowledge, friends, or work, but through money alone. I will laugh at the fat man dancing and say no, gracias to the hat vendor as I stumble through the walled streets of the old city.

The fat man, now dressed only in a skirt and bikini top, turns off his boombox. Shakira disappears. In her place is a potbellied beggar who shuffles from table to table, eyes fixed on the ground. I place a few sorry coins in his can: 500 pesos, the equivalent of 22 cents. 

My snapper is reduced to bones. The gringos with their Aguilas are getting drunker by the minute. The fat man gathers his clothing, pulls up his skirt, and slowly wheels away.