City as Microcosm
A city that boasts that it contains the best of every country while belonging to none, such is Pangaya. Observe, you nomadic types, how it rises mid desert, riding the sands like a ship rides the swell. Now you see it, now you don't; and now, see, you find yourself standing, one early morning, before one of its numerous gates. Enter via the South East Gate and you'll find yourself in Japan with its avenues of cherry trees and its Bullet Train; through the North West lies solid, stolid Germany; through the South South East, mustachioed and rich in murals, Mexico; and so on and so forth. No need to produce a passport—the gates lie open to expectant arrivals—but you carry one in your pocket just the same.
Wander! Explore! Pangaya, it soon strikes you, is all of a jumble. A drunken jigsaw, where the French share no border with the Spaniards, where Chad cozies up with Laos, and tiny Belize is all but engulfed by Russia. From Caribbean white-sandy beaches, you hop across a narrow alley—this most international city is less melting pot than mosaic—into a pine-scented square with an onion-domed tower. The temperature has plummeted. Breath rises like puffs from a pipe. Snowflakes dart and swirl. You shiver and, dashing across another alley, are relieved to find yourself in an Algerian souk or Turkish Hamam. At some stage it strikes you that there are no animals in Pangaya, no cats or lizards, not even any insects.
So it starts for all visitors to Pangaya. Your feet carry you the short distances from Alaska to Mali to Portugal and New Zealand, while your mind struggles to connect the pieces, to make sense of their arrangement. But the world (as you know it) has been shuffled like a pack of cards. Happening in mid-afternoon upon the country you came here to seek, you join a lengthy line at the visa window.
A DEMOGRAPHER, so says her badge, appears to engage you in lengthy conversation. Why, she asks, do people cross the Great Desert, braving the shifting, blinding sands, to visit Pangaya.
The city is a unique staging post—you're paraphrasing your guidebook—one that provides entry to all the world's assorted countries. It's essentially a means to an end.
And, of course, each of the countries that here make up Pangaya is a carefully scaled-down version of one over there—she makes a gesture, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb—that shares its name.
Of the original country, you mean.
Tsk, tsk, chicken or egg? she counters. And this law of scales applies to geographic territory, which doesn't change much, and, too, to populations, which change constantly.
Hence the master computer, and the army of demographers.
She smiles. I see you have done some homework. So, everything in accordance with those laws of scales, right? As it is there—again the gesture with her thumb—so it is here. Vice versa. Mutatis Mutandis. And the data constantly updated, constantly processed. Population rise in this country prompts a higher birth-rate in that. A decrease in population there, through epidemic or famine, and you start to notice more funerals here.
Yes, I see, you tell her, although your head is spinning. You're far from sure that you do see: how this law of scales operates and the master computer; populations rising and falling. Vice versa! You ask what seems to be an easier question: immigration?
You may be unaware of this, she tells you, but not everyone who travels to Pangaya leaves the city. To be sure, plenty, their passport sealed and stamped, duly recross the desert to their country of choice, there to present their hard-won credentials. But there are some, too, who, having explored Pangaya, no longer feel any desire to leave it, but choose to remain here.
You notice that, while you were talking to the demographer, the sun has begun its slow descent. The visa window is now cast in shadow and you stand at the head of the line. Indeed, you are the line. A uniformed official bluntly asks, Stay or Go? You open your passport to the picture page and look to your DEMOGRAPHER. Time to choose, she says. Either you get the stamp in your passport, and leave the city by nightfall, or you choose to stay, in which case you must surrender the passport to this gentleman forthwith.
You mean to say I have to decide this today?
Those are the rules.
Choose to stay how long?
If you turn in your passport, it is no longer permitted to leave Pangaya.
You allow her words to settle, then ask, And what do these immigrants do?
For a while they travel the world, within the confines, that is, of our city walls. Often, they'll learn a language, or three. Some find the same work they practised before. Or they might settle down and start a new business. Others tend to wander the streets, itinerant musicians, actors, dancers, snake-charmers, street-walkers, peddlers, poets, or simply vagrants. Many find a place, like me, doing research in our Bureau of Demographics. Fascinating work, I assure you. And you needn't think you'll be an immigrant forever. Sooner or later, everyone finds a country here to call their own. In the mean time you have the whole world to discover every day. Admire styles of dress and headwear, taste the desserts, smell blossoms and perfumes, hear strange accents and music, relish in forms of architecture, decipher alphabets, sample spices . . . Variety's the spice of life. No more you'll go a wandering. The city you saw as a means becomes an ideal end.
Her pitch, too, seems to have reached an end but, as I continue to hesitate, she couldn't resist: What do you say?
Do I give you a stamp or do you give me your passport? asked the visa official. The sun will soon be set.
Paul Blaney has recently retired from a teaching position at Rutgers University. His novel, Jardin des Animaux, was published in 2024 by Signal 8 Press. This is the eleventh time his work has appeared in The Cafe Irreal, most recently in Issue 87. His work also appeared in our print anthology, The Irreal Reader: Fiction & Essays from The Cafe Irreal (Guide Dog Books 2013).