From Alien to Alien. The true story of his life.

We are in this Victorian-type bathroom somewhere in Amsterdam. It’s few moments before the sunrise. The faint light from the window in a wooden frame painted aged white catches a worn-out ornamented rag in front of the tab. A typical room of a maid who once had tea with Darwin and walked dinosaurs.

A water slosh breaks the morning silence. Skinny Asian boy slowly drowns in the tab. Imagine this mundane episode to be a movie-like experience for someone who grew up at the foot of Everest. Yesterday his mother cooked him dinner on fire. Then the plane took him miles and miles away from his family, the mountains. The beliefs he inherited, the gods who have been guiding him for 16 years left miles away.

Imagine it’s his first morning in Europe. He is not aware that people here sleep till late, 4 am is a silent hour. His olive skin vanishes in the fluffs of soap. Washing out what he believed was right. Washing out his old world habits. In his language, his name means sunray. His school performance let him skip a few years. By the age of 16, he was in the second year of the university and after classes worked as a manager at the furniture factory of his uncle. Nothing felt impossible. Even applying to an exchange program in the Netherlands.

Welcome to another world. The territory of anxiety and ignorance. In a few moments, water splashes will disturb the old lady’s vague sleep. In a few moments, coarse knocks on the door and the lady screaming to stop making noise will interrupt a dream-like bathroom scene. To add to this chaos, on the way to the bathroom, she will meet the second tenant smoking in the corridor.

Anyway, she will make them breakfast, they will apologize. His roommate will cash the check and in the evening they pay for the week. All good. No problem.

When they come back after studies they will find their luggage by the entrance door. The landlady will exclude a week’s rent from the cash she’ll find under his pillow. How little he knew coming with 300 euros in his pocket. Now his money decreased by half. Landlady will call the police. No matter in your country you were managing people and men three times older than you were saying “thank you, Sir” on a payday, the law is not on your side when you are an alien.

Cut to a night scene of a deserted quay with wooden benches along the river somewhere in Lisbon. It’s less than one hour before the curfew. We are sitting on one of these benches, a shapeless silhouette in the darkness. That’s the setting for his life story to be revealed. He is holding my hands, I’m stretching my legs over his. It’s quite windy and we hug, trying to warm up a bit. It’s been almost two years since I walked into his barbershop to have my hair shaved. My past detached. My old beliefs are thrown away in the bin with the hair leftovers. This could serve as an explanation for this strange emotional attachment. Two aliens united by the identity loss.

“People often invite me to join hiking activities. I say, man, that’s how I spent all my childhood, hiking and climbing the mountains. I’ve been working so hard not to do it anymore”.

After being kicked out of the apartment, he found another place to stay. That’s how all his money was gone in less than a week. No need to say he was taking any job offered.

If my story of shifting to Lisbon alone, with one suitcase and 1000 euros, looks crazy, my friend’s journey is insane. Someone told, that you don’t face obstacles bigger than you can deal with. Must be someone secured by social services, paid vacation leaves, medical insurance, and dole in case of a job loss. Entering the country under the law doesn’t make you legal. Paying taxes to the country of your stay doesn’t give you equal rights. If with my Caucasian face it’s easier, my friend’s look reveals an alien immediately.

The harder the path, the stronger the survival mechanism. Cut back to Amsterdam years ago. It’s my friend’s first day as a chef. Once he watched a cook in an Indian restaurant. Nothing complicated, he can do it too. The good thing about shifting is nobody will check the facts in your CV. There’s the first order to come. Tandir bread. Of course, he saw how to do it. Simple! Shape the dough into flats, put it on the walls of the tandoor. For your information, it’s a round oven made of clay. It’s one of those hot hours when the kitchen turns into hell. To add a spicier flavor to this, right now he watches all his bread on fire fallen from tandoor walls to the bottom of the oven. To add even more Piri Piri, the owner watches it behind his back. That’s not an achievement to add to the employment history. That night his employer asked to wait aside till the closing hour, gave him twenty euros, and gave him a lift home. He got a call shortly after. “It’s clear you’ve lied. But you were brave to deal with it. I liked your energy.” That’s how he began as an apprentice in the kitchen. After as little as few months he was ready to substitute the chef. That’s what he did.

Nothing is mission impossible when you don’t take it too seriously. Use it as fuel for goal-reaching. My friend has just opened his second barbershop. To generate more leads from Instagram, he shoots videos. Common practice. He asked my consultation about how to prepare for the shooting. The shooting was a mess.

Anyway, after getting stacked with editing he brought me the material. “It’s not useless. I can easily cut it”. We spend the evening in the darkness of my studio. Me cutting pieces from two cameras and phone into an entertaining piece, him clinging to me in a vain attempt to kiss me. Impossible at the moment, as I’m with a guy. Okay, it’s not literary I’m with someone. There is a hypothetical guy in Luxembourg who calls me five times a day and calls himself my boyfriend. When he doesn’t call to say how much he loves me, he texts, how he misses me. His love confessions pop up while I’m editing. “I need some time to adapt to a new situation,” says my friend when I restrain his head from mine. However, foot massage is something hard to reject. This workflow takes us the whole evening.

In a few days, he sends me the link to the second video he cut himself. I’m amazed so smoothly it looks. “That’s thanks to a brilliant teacher I had,” he says. Man! I doubted you were barely watching.

Nothing is too hard to learn if there is a YouTube tutorial. That’s a philosophy we both share. That’s how I mastered studio lighting and video editing. That’s how he started as a barber. “I was watching videos and cutting my university mates after classes. After a two-week practice I thought I was ready to work in a barbershop”. He has been turned down every time after confessing he had no experience in the craft. It was his good imagination that helped to overcome this insignificant obstacle. To get the first trial cut he invented a barbershop where he’s been working for two years. He even got tips for it. “Man, it’s crap. What have you been doing for two years? Who taught you this?” My friend explained that’s why he would love to change the place, to have some guidance. After a few days, my friend got a call from that old barber, another victim of his good energy. That’s how he became an apprentice.

He never studied art. When I shoved my drag queens series, he just shakes his head. However, until YouTube tutorials exist, I believe he has an enormous life force to master anything.

That night in the studio he pierced my ears.

“You sure, you know how to do it?”

“Don’t worry, I do.”

“Ah yes, you watched a video.”

An hour later, armed with a piercing pistol, he is running after me all around the studio.

“Damn! stop chasing me like a maniac! Give me a hug. Pleaseeeee.”

Normally you don’t share these stories with earthlings. These are only aliens who can relate after years of disconnection from the roots. It’s only when you face that the entire evaluation system that served you over years crashes into pieces in one day you stop being so judgmental about anything that doesn’t fit in your understanding of what is right.

In his country, there is still such thing as an organized marriage exist. Parents are the ones to choose your future bride. You meet and after a conversation; you decide. It’s not that strict nowadays, though. It doesn’t seem that my friend has any prejudices. The only thing, all his girls are from the same culture. I’ve been joking many times that our dating will make his mother cry.

That night in the studio, he confessed. “I want my future wife to speak my mother’s language, that’s why. Now you know my secret.”