Buenos Aires

Can you fall in love with cities you’ve never been to? Can you fall in love without smelling the odour of its streets, without breathing the air in its open spaces?

Then why do I have a strange fascination for the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. A fascination that Colm Toibin’s novel, The Story of the Night (set in Buenos Aires), did nothing to dissipate. It only made me believe that I knew its streets better, that I somehow had an intimate connection with the city.

That’s why I was stunned after reading Robert Elms’ observation in The Guardian. He writes,

The greatest surprise about Buenos Aires is that it’s so familiar. You’ve crossed continents to land in a misplaced shabby Milan or retro Madrid. You soon realise that this is not exotic South America. BA is not a colourful town of ancient indigenous cultures or African rhythms, but broad stately avenues adorned with a surfeit of statues, fountains, parks and an endless grid of apartment blocks with a newsstand and cafe on every corner. The whole feel of the place reflects the millions of Spaniards and Italians who left their homelands to start again in a new world, determined to make an even more grand facsimile of the towns they originated in. And they’ve succeeded.
Buenos Aires is one of the great American cities precisely because it tells the immigrant story, a place so potently yearning for the lands left behind.

Or is this familiarity not uncommon, or weird? As Roosevelt said, “Remember, remember always, that all of us… are descended from immigrants.”

(Also can’t help mentioning that from the fringes of this town, from its crowded streets, once upon a time a boy named Diego Armando Maradona rose to glory.)