Death is a phone without hanging up.
“Barry’s dying, man.
Álvaro Barrantes, Barry, was an extraordinary cameraman just for the right amount of time to shoot, the rest of the day he was too busy being a generous, funny, good friend and loyal guy. He was tall and agile, he had even played in the lower categories of Estudiantes until an injury dashed his hopes, but he always walked slightly stooped; as if he couldn’t carry such goodness on his shoulders. Since we learned that Barry was dying on us, Madrid became a pilgrimage of friends who went to the door of the hospital to send strength. To be.
I always teased Barry, who is crazy about basketball, that aerial petanque is a very boring sport until the last two minutes and he said that it’s not more than a club or anything, that Barça is the same as Real Madrid, only that we culés perfume the banknotes with a few drops of values. Barry was not interested in football but he always accompanied me, regardless of the African country, in my efforts to watch the Barça match. I’m not going to leave you alone, dude, he said. And we would go to any bar together.
Together we toured Kenya, South Africa, Congo and some other countries. He hated Nigeria with all his soul. On the second day of endless gridlock in Lagos, with cops yelling their corruption at us on every corner, he stopped in the middle of a gritty street, tossed the camera aside, and cursed in Hausa.
–Let’s get out of this country, Aldekoa, you can’t work here.
A week later, on a dirt road in the middle of the Niger Delta, our car was cut off by angry Nigerians threatening to shatter the windshield with a massive rock. A stranger had been driving our car into the jungle for a long time when we realized that we had just been kidnapped. Barry didn’t stop cursing. In the end, that express kidnapping came to nothing: we had inadvertently entered a disputed territory of two Nigerian kings and the monarch, wounded in his pride, had sent his people to let us know.
Who is Barry? A guy who, if I had asked him the next day to accompany me on another trip to Nigeria, would have cursed a thousand hyenas and then accepted without hesitation. I’m not leaving you alone, dude.
After weeks of the worst omens, the miracle happened in the hospital. After an eternity in a coma, Barry was released from the Intensive Care Unit and his body and head slowly began to react. On Thursday, he sent a message to my muzunguero brother, Rodri, which made us cry like children.
— “Hello partner, I finally woke up”.
Don’t even think of leaving us alone again, dude.
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