At the entrance to the metro there are two closed eyes. Only those of you who have children —or those who very much wish to have them— can see the children. And not even then. The men in ties who, after fathering children, travel, attend meetings and sign papers to make the concrete grow cannot see them either. Grandmothers, who belong to the group of those who have had children, and teachers, whom everyone knows are second mothers, can see them. The rest cannot. That is why the giant sleeps. Sleep has been sealed upon him by the crust in his eyes, and the city has left him without an alarm clock: balls have been banned from public squares, theatres no longer stage children's performances, restaurants burn their high chairs, and the pounding of hydraulic hammers drowns out the running footsteps of the last child.

Into the dream of the fattest one, snoring on his back beneath the streets, a melody slips in. Through his left arm, resting within the tunnels of the R4 line as far as Molins de Rei, there comes a song with an unpronounceable name. It bears an umlaut, a "k" and an accent mark, and sounds like the name of a land born of sweet deception: "Ambaükatunàbia, Ambaükatunàbia…", echoes the railway tracks. Surely it carries an ancestral story. It speaks to him of himself, of times gone by when he kept watch, and of a cousin who lives in the forest, among the pine trees. AMBAUKA sings and the giant dreams. He dreams of one desire: to give birth. That children might grow within his belly and awaken him with their cries. Early in the morning, the city, which had once been flat, wakes up with a hill rising at its very centre. Cracked tar, buildings reduced to rubble. At the very top, two pine trees serve as goalposts.
 

Laura Tapiolas

Journalist