We have our own monsters #FaeVisions

Guest post by Arrate Hidalgo.

I’m from a land most people know as Spain. But my sea is not the Mediterranean Sea. I grew up 20 minutes away from the Cantabrian coast: that’s the same waters that lap around Britain, the island I currently call home. But when northern Europeans hear me complain about the London heat, they assume I come from a warm place, with palm trees, perhaps.

I am from the Basque Country. Our days are grey, wet, gently bleak. (Or they used to be: climate change is taking care of that.) Stereotypically rebellious, or perhaps just a bit out of the way, the Basques were left pretty much alone during the pre-modern invasions and settlements from the Mediterranean, aided by our uninspiring agricultural potential. That means we kept our own language and, until not that long ago, our own religion—goddess and all—and creatures such as the river-dwelling, duck-footed lamiak who would build a bridge for you overnight every now and then. Especially if you left them some food.

We have our own monsters, too. Or do we? There is a giant called Tartalo, or Torto, who lives in a cave and herds sheep, which he eats alongside the occasional human. Legend has it that he was once fooled by a young man who escaped from his lair by hiding under a sheep. Did I mention Tartalo only has one eye? Ring any bells yet? This story carries the scent of an inland sea, warmer waters, pungent flowers that open at night, sardines charred on coals nested in the sand. It’s impossible to know when the Cyclops was transplanted into a story about Tartalo. Just like with Scandinavian myths, most of what we know about pre-Christian Basque beliefs was retrieved in Christian times.

Whatever the case, the truth is that our mountains might have been a deterrent for ancient foreigners to make a life in them, but not for stories to find a way in, transforming in the process. The Mediterranean reaches further than we think, surfing inwards as well as outwards on travellers’ tongues. And right now it rushes in with stories that we refuse to hear.

The horrors of the Mediterranean are far from supernatural for the thousands who are leaving everything behind in order to reach a safe haven from a man-made hell. Thousands of lives are perishing in high sea or stranded in the very real islands of mythical Greece, unaided and ignored. Fortress Europe is allowing for families to be divided, for children to be abandoned at their peril, facing all too human dangers.

Fae Visions may be an anthology of the marvellous and the strange, but in the process it has created a real space that brings people and places together. Its pages speak many languages, they reach out and gather us around them. It reminds us that the borders that keep us apart are as strong as our will to wish them gone. Of course, some will take more work to break than others. But in the meantime, we share the wonder of story, and that is no small thing.

Arrate Hidalgo is the translator of “El baile de la Hipacotora” in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean

Interview with Simon Kearns #FaeVisions

This month sees the release of Fae Visions of the Mediterranean, an anthology of 24 stories and poems exploring horrors and wonders of the sea. Among these is Simon Kearns’s flash fiction horror story “Mare Nostrum,” set among the refugees and people smugglers of the North African coast. We asked Simon a few questions about his work.

Simon Kearns grew up in the North of Ireland and now lives in the South of France. His debut novel, Virtual Assassin from Revenge Ink, 2010 (left), explores personal responsibility in a corrupt society. Dark Waves from Blood Bound Books, 2014 (below) is about a powerful haunting and the rationalist determined to debunk it.

“Mare Nostrum” is one of the most classic horror stories in the anthology, economical and tight, unflinching in the face of villainy and tragedy. Can you tell us where the particular setting of the story came from?
The setting is the Libyan coast. After the fall of Gaddafi, there were huge numbers of people trying to reach the Italian islands. This was before the Turkish/Greek crossing became the big news story. Every week in 2012, the death tolls were rising. Thousands of people drowned.

What particular moment in the refugees’ journey did you choose to focus on, and why?
I chose to focus on the moment when the refugees, most of whom have crossed deserts and war zones, come up against the edge of the sea. It is here that they are at the mercy of the people smugglers. It is here that they are loaded onto unseaworthy vessels and sent out onto the merciless waters of Our Sea. How many have sunk without a trace in the waters between Libya and the Italian islands? How many children have gone down with their desperate parents? How much of a damn do we in Europe give for the plight of these people?

What is your connection with the Mediterranean Sea itself?
When I was a child, my mother and I visited a number of countries on the Med. I remember all the other children, no matter which country we were in, could speak enough English to communicate with me. Now, I live about 50 km from the Med, and, as far as my family is concerned, it really is Our Sea.

Your novel Virtual Assassin explores personal responsibility; “Mare Nostrum” also features a complex moral situation and the bad guys who take advantage of it. Do you think it is possible to "not take a side" in crises like this?
It is possible to claim you are not taking a side, to wash your hands of a problem, or call yourself a cynic and deride any given situation. But the fact remains, the majority of people who cross the Med do so to escape the aftermath of Western interventions. And those interventions are the actions of our elected representatives. In Virtual Assassin, the protagonist reaches the conclusion that our society profits from global inequalities, and, as such, no one in the West can be called innocent.

Do you find a lot of difference between the northern end of Europe where you grew up, and the southern province where you live now?
There are many differences simply due to climate. In southern Europe people take their time to do things, eating, walking, meetings. In 30+ degrees, you don’t want to rush. As for the population, I find the locals much the same as those from my own provincial hometown: honest, hard-working, proud.

Complete this sentence: "There is a special area in hell reserved for …"
… those who knowingly profit from the misery and deaths of others.

Is there a peculiar monster that is said to haunt the streets of your hometown?
I grew up in Ireland where you can hardly walk down the street without tripping over something otherworldly. Probably the most memorable is the Banshee, a woman all in white seen when someone close to you is soon to die. Not only would it be scary enough to see such an apparition, you also have to contend with the imminent death of a loved one! As a child we told each other stories about the Banshee: she was heard crying in a housing estate, she was seen combing her hair in the children’s playground. It was often the banal locations of these reported sightings that made the stories all the more forceful.

Would you like to visit another planet?
If the journey is pleasant and the climate agreeable, yes, I would.

What are you working on now?
I’m halfway through a new novel. Four people, three siblings and a girlfriend, pass a weekend in an isolated villa in an unnamed Mediterranean country. They discuss god, death, and ghosts. I am fascinated by our ability to hold contradictory beliefs, such as the overlap of rationalism and superstition.

Thank you, Simon!

Simon Kearns’s “Mare Nostrum” can be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

Light and Passion #FaeVisions

Guest post by Maria Grech Ganado

Għanja Bla Flus / A Free Song

Towards the Light, © Ġoxwa Borg, reproduced with permission

The migration issue was a distressful problem for the Mediterranean long before it became a world-wide one. Ġoxwa Borg, a Maltese artist living in Paris, captures in this painting, Towards The Light, a familiar scene which has provoked emotions in Malta beyond those of compassion for the suffering and the drowned. Controversies caused by the inability of such a small island to cope with the incessant boatloads arriving from Africa has provoked extreme xenophobia in many, and a sense of impotence in the sensitive caring. My poem seeks to address the latter with an imaginary picture of what could have been, in the long run, preferable to an escape from drowning—worse is the horror of finishing up in Malta’s Safi detention centre for immigrants. Here, overcrowded, unhygienic conditions are far from ideal, and violence can break out to further pollute these conditions’ not only between the guards and frustrated, exhausted, disillusioned, disorientated, unhappy, desperate survivors, but also among themselves. ‘Towards the Light’ indeed!

Il-Passjoni Ta’ San Ġorġ / The Passion of St George

Mattia Preti, St. George Victorious (1678)

What I call ‘the passion of St George’ is, of course, ironically meant to deride the chauvinistic attitude of the knight in the legend. His intention in saving the helpless damsel is to prove his courage and strength, and she is cast in an image of the chaste, modest, grateful woman Religion would have her be. In Catholic Malta, where every location celebrates its patron saint with boisterous pomp and gusto, St George presides over two big towns, one on the main island and another in Gozo. Mattia Preti’s commissioned paintings of the saint are more concerned with his valour vis-a-vis the dragon, and not at all with the poor damsel (another macho trait). It is the martyrdom of St. George the feasts are meant to commemorate. I have set things to rights in the poem by having the fiery woman preferring the advances of the passionate dragon.

Maria Grech Ganado’s poems “A Free Song” and “The Passion of St George” can both be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.