was divided, when East German soldiers armed with rifles and shoot-to-kill orders cordoned off West Berlin. And I returned to join the throngs that chipped away at the concrete after the wall was breached—pieces of it I brought back to America remain in my office as reminders. Today a few preserved lengths of the wall lure busloads of the curious, visitors anxious to understand how the divided city coped. I listened as a smiling tour guide enthusiastically informed his clients, “Here you can actually see a part of the Berlin Wall!” And while the tourists took their selfies it was easy to imagine how even today’s harshest fortifications will eventually devolve into educational delights complete with nearby ice cream and T-shirt stands.
Tuscany’s graceful old walls, alive with flowers blooming between stones, now shade visitors at gelaterias and osterias, upscale leatherwork shops and haute couture outlets. Repairing the wall damage was Mayor Bassi’s priority when we talked. Visitors to San Gimignano’s walls fuel the little city’s economy. “We are going back in history,” Mayor Bassi said, worried about the worldwide resurgence of obstacles. “We no longer need walls.” Travelers and migrants, he insisted, should be free to cross borders. It’s an appropriate attitude for an official whose city lies on a pilgrimage route from England to Rome.
Yet we are living at a time when a new generation of walls separates us. The Hungarian border fence along its line at Serbia, created to stop refugee traffic from Syria and Afghanistan. The Israeli underground wall, designed to prevent tunneling under the wall that already exists on its 40-mile border with Gaza. The Indian wall of barbed wire along its border with Bangladesh, strung to keep out unwanted migrants. Morocco’s sand and land mine wall against incursions from Western Sahara. The ugly concrete wall in Lima, Peru, built by a wealthy neighborhood fearful of the poor folks from across the street (pocked with doors to allow maids and cooks and gardeners access to their jobs on the rich side). The list is long and global. The Canadian border with the Lower 48, touted as the longest international border in the world free of a military defense, is hardened with police, various types of bulwarks and mandated formal border crossing points where official documents must be shown by cross-border travelers—even those who live in villages that straddle the border with no physical barrier face a conceptual wall delineated by signposted warnings that they must cross their own town only at official control points.
Walls Surround Us
Some walls are metaphoric and transcend a physical barrier. After the Berlin Wall came down Berliners on both sides of the destroyed barrier noted the “wall in the head” because of the east-west cultural divide that developed during the years the city was separated, a divide that did not disappear with end of the wall. We create walls of silence when we socially shun others. We build invisible walls based on our expectations of personal space in crowds or when we meet others. In some cultures, at least prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, friends and acquaintances kiss their hellos and are almost lip-to-lip in conversations, while in others folks maintain a judicious distance when talking and rarely touch each other unless their relationships are intimate.
Venice is a walled city, walled off by nature: water. The Grand Canal and its tributaries protected its Roman settlers from the marauding Attila the Hun. Other walls we build in our relentless attempt to control nature. The seawall at the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, for example—a failed barrier designed to hold back tsunamis. The Netherlands and Singapore hope seawalls keep rising waters from inundating their cities. Nature again reminds us who is boss with walls of flames such as the devastating fire in my home California county of Sonoma, fire walls that destroyed thousands of homes in just one deadly night. Surly homeowners create spite fences, walls of trees and bushes planted to block the views of neighbors they dislike. The paranoid and worried among us build walls around themselves, living in gated communities where the houses are equipped with panic rooms—hardened interior walls—in case those gates fail.
Walls can be art. On the west side of divided Berlin—where access to the wall was not restricted by the well-armed guards, ferocious guard dogs and automated machine guns of East Germany—the concrete barrier became a miles-long canvas for painters, the politics of control a common theme. Likewise, the Palestinian side of the West Bank barrier built by Israel is fabulously graffitied by Banksy—particularly arresting is his “Girl Frisking a Soldier” imagery. Sculptor Andy Goldsworthy created his long, meandering stone wall installation in upstate New York countryside. Graffitists and muralists find opportunities for their work on urban walls worldwide. Decorated sound walls muffle highway noise. Phil Spector produced his Wall of Sound to back up singers with his trademark cacophony and the Grateful Dead built the group’s wall of sound, the massive array of amplifiers and speakers the band required to blast its music to huge crowds of fans. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” offers an operatic ode to desperation. Libraries and bookshops show off their colorful walls of books. Walls figure in jargon and slang: “Throw it at the wall and see what sticks,” which also describes a folk technique for testing when spaghetti is properly cooked.
“We construct borders, literally and figuratively,” Frances Stonor Saunders explained in a 2016 lecture at the British Museum (before Brexit recreated a border), “to fortify our sense of who we are. And we cross them,” said the journalist and historian, “in search of who we might become.”12
All this wall thought brings me back to the Mexican border with California and the slabs of steel and concrete soaring into the desert air as examples of a future American dream wall—the Hollywood stage set of samples built in 2017 to show the world examples of what Trump envisioned for his dream of a fortress America. Or an American nightmare, depending on one’s point of view. “These prototypes,” Border Patrol officer Olmos told me approvingly as we stood in their shadow, “are going to make our job efficient.” His piercing eyes glinted against the bright sunlight as he looked along the border wall toward where it disappears into the Pacific. Much of the pre-Trump wall is made from surplus Vietnam War-era landing mats—steel mesh that’s relatively easy to compromise with a Sawzall or an axe. “They use whatever tools they can get their hands on,” Olmos said about his nemeses who break through the barrier. The risk of capture is worth taking because the wall crashers know Eduardo Olmos and his patrolling colleagues—despite their fast trucks and sophisticated surveillance tools—cannot be everywhere. The wall is vulnerable.
“We humans are resourceful,” I suggested to the patrolman, “especially if we’re trying to get somewhere.”
“Very resourceful,” he agreed. “We have video of a smuggler making a cut in the wall with an axe in a minute and twenty seconds.”
Barely Touching through the Wall
We drove in the patrol wagon along the north side of the wall down toward the Pacific and Friendship Park. There, for a few hours on weekends, family and friends separated by the border can meet and communicate through the wall that separates the Tijuana and San Diego sides of the park. The wire mesh is too tight to touch anything other than finger tips.
At the gathering place I met Sergio Bautista. Smiling, he was talking through the tiny holes in the wall with a woman on the Mexican side, a woman who appeared only as a shadowy outline through the dense mesh barrier between them. Bautista had flown across the States from Chicago to spend just over an hour with his friend, their first visit in thirteen years. The park opening hours are severely restricted on the California side by U.S. border authorities. I did not want to infringe on their limited time together, but after their visit Bautista and I talked. “It’s just so difficult,” his emotions were mixed: happy for their time together, frustrated by the strained circumstances. “It’s pretty hard just to be able to touch the tips of your fingers, your little fingers” (Figure 1.3).
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