Ahmed's friends

When they saw the façade hung with painted banners, she took her husband's arm and was about to tell him: let's get out of here, this isn't for us. But Ahmed, their eldest son, was already in the building. "Hey, Ahmed," someone said. "Cris will be glad to see you." They knew Cris. She was in her son's class at school. She came running, and hung on Ahmed's neck in an embrace that, in his parents' village, would have meant a promise of matrimony at the very least. But two others joined the embrace, like a winning basketball team.

"I'm so happy you decided!" Cris - a brunette with blonde streaks, dreadlocks to the waist, leopard-print miniskirt, net stockings, army boots - kissed Ahmed's father first, then his mother. "You'll be OK here. We haven't had time to organize everything yet, but we have plenty of space."

This was true, because they had been assigned two outside rooms, spacious, connected, on the second floor of the former hotel. There were no beds; but they had brought mattresses, the ones they had bought for the flat in Pinto - which at first had been a joy, then the heaviest burden of their lives. Ahmed's parents still didn't understand very well what had happened, why the nice man at the bank - who offered candy to the children every time they went to see him, before showing them a sheet of numbers so sunny that they seemed to wink at you from the page - had since become a stone wall, a nay-saying machine. When they signed the mortgage, he promised there would never be any problem. Then, when the husband lost his job, and the wife half the houses she cleaned, he never remembered having said any such thing. This is the way it works; it's not my fault, you pay or you're out in the street. He didn't offer any more candy, either.

Since the eviction they had lived for months scattered among friends' houses: the husband with one child in one; the wife with the two smallest in another; Samia and Ahmed in two others. Until Ahmed called them to a bar in the Puerta del Sol and said: listen, there's a chance we can all live together in a big squat, right here around the corner. The 15-M movement runs it. I have friends there. At first, his father said no. "But that's illegal, Ahmed. That's not right. You can't break a lock and walk into a building, just like that."

"And what they've done to you - is that right, father?" The two stared at each other for a moment, as if about to fight. "It's legal, but it's not right. For six months we've been eating nothing but white rice, skimping on everything, wearing shoes with holes, watching every cent. You have done the legal thing, and what have you got? A 300-euro mortgage bill every month for a house they've thrown you out of, after you've paid more than 100,000 euros, more than it's worth now."

So they came here, to this building, full of unknown young people, and families like their own, some Spanish, others immigrants, Cris leading the way.

"We're getting blankets, food, schoolbooks and toys for the kids. There's a volunteer service that takes them to school in the mornings. When you're settled in, the lawyers will come and see you, to get your particulars, and see what we can do about the mortgage thing."

"Do you think we'll get our flat back?" wondered Ahmed's mother aloud, knowing even as she said it that it was a stupid question; but her son's friend didn't point this out.

"Let's hope so, but for the moment we're going to try and get the debt canceled, so you won't have to go on paying for it."

"That would be something."

Once alone in the room, Ahmed's parents embraced. They were going to be thrown out of here, sooner or later. But for the moment, they were happy and at peace.