We were warned that the border crossing from Argentina into Chile was one of the strictest in South America. The geography of the country, isolated by the Andes, has led to concern about the introduction of any foreign plants, animals or vegetable products. We had heard stories of serious fines for banana-smuggling and signs in the bus station seemed to confirm the rumours. After much deliberation, I decided to abandon a crumpled box of instant soup sachets, fearing almost certain imprisonment.
We nestled on the night bus for the eight-hour journey. My friend fell asleep almost immediately, while I gazed around at our fellow passengers. Across the aisle were two women, one in her fifties with cropped hair and a dull yellow fleece, the other younger with her hair in long plaits. The elder had a handful of tissue in her lap. When she looked up and saw I was watching her, she stuffed the tissue in the pocket of her fleece.
I turned around and fell into a trance watching the moonlit mountains flashing by. A tiny noise caught my attention. My mother kept chickens, and I was almost certain it was the chirping sound of a baby chick. My friend told me I was losing it and to get some sleep.
Later I heard it again, and turned around. The woman in the fleece had fished her bundle of tissue from her pocket, and I saw that it was swaddling a fluffy yellow chick. She was feeding it from a handful of seed. After a few minutes she handed it gently to her friend, who lifted it to drink from the pool of condensation which had gathered on the rubber rim of the window. Then she wrapped it up in tissue and put it back in her pocket.
Over the next few hours, she took the chick out of her pocket every few minutes to feed it and whisper to it. As the bus climbed into the Andes towards the border and the temperature dropped, she shoved it inside the fleece, deep into her cleavage, for warmth.
I chatted to the young Chilean woman sitting in front of me, and looked with wavering enthusiasm at a picture of her enormous four-year-old on her iPhone.
At 4am we evacuated to queue in the snow for border control. I kept an eye on the woman in the fleece. She kept a protective hand on her pocket. Inside, our bags were x-rayed in a room decorated with pictures of carrots threatening prosecution. Four German Shepherds were brought in and I held my breath. I had lost sight of her.
Back on the bus, I didn’t see the handful of tissue, and I didn’t hear the tiny chirp. The woman slept.
In Santiago, we collected our bags. In the bathroom, there she was, the chick in her palm, dripping beads of water into its tiny beak.
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