Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss (the unexpected everything .txt) 📕

the police station. It had been peaceful until then, and we spent hours waiting outside, with slogans and speeches, but then it reached boiling point and the door got kicked in. And that was the beginning of everything, that day in January. After that we knew it was real. They sprayed the crowd with pepper spray, with no discrimination and no warning. They’re supposed to warn you first, but we were all in the lobby of the police station – we had kicked in the first door, so they might have felt threatened – and this hand just reached round and started spraying. There was a sixteen-year-old in hospital with burnt corneas. It was – hilarious.’ He doesn’t sound amused. He sounds disbelieving, betrayed. ‘I had great respect for the police. I used to think about joining the police, to help people. They handle very dear matters, very delicate situations. If someone dies at home, they are first on the scene. They help grieving families and people escaping domestic violence. But you expect the people who uphold the laws to follow the laws, and when they don’t – well, the social contract is breached. It’s a different situation. If the police don’t respect the law, why should we?’

Tómas Gabríel is speaking fast, his eyes on the wall above my head, as if he’s seeing the scenes from last year projected there. I sip my coffee, wait for the next instalment. Traffic swishes through the slush outside; we’re getting towards rush hour. He tells me about the beginning of the protests, the anger and excitement among his friends. After their philosophy class, they walked around the lake to parliament.

‘We barricaded it, front and back, and let no-one in and no-one out, and it went on until the police broke it up at 3 a.m.. The police kept pushing us back. That’s when I got pepper-sprayed the first time, a direct shot in my eye. It hurt. Quite horrible. That made me really angry. Before that, I was just protesting but after that – well, I was focussed. I had to get back at them. It was such a good feeling you had from being there, watching the politicians being carried out through secret tunnels. It was the first time in my life I really felt proud of being Icelandic when I saw all those people, thousands of people, gathered round the parliament, taking part. Some just watching and some up against the riot shields.’ He tails off, as if the images are fading. People talk much more about ‘being Icelandic’ than I’ve ever heard anyone talk about ‘being British’. Britishness seems to be largely an accident of birth, whereas being Icelandic, like being American, requires the observance of certain events and practices. The Pots and Pans Revolution may be one of them. ‘I don’t know. It got out of control. People went too far, police and protesters both.’

They went back the next day, 21st January, and again on the 22nd, determined not to stop until the protests were heard. Excitement crackles through Tómas Gabríel´s voice, remembering those days of bonfires and shouting, when to hope was to act. The exact chronology, through that sleepless week of darkness, blurs as he talks.

‘I don’t remember if they burnt a flag, but everyone was sweaty and tired and it was awesome. It was a really cool, cool day to be outside.’ Tómas Gabríel is talking as if protesting is a sport, an outdoor activity that makes you feel sweaty, tired and good. I don’t know if the coolness of that January day is literal or metaphorical, but I recognise the feeling of being young and taking control. Wordsworth’s account of the early days of the French Revolution murmurs in my mind:

For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood

Upon our side, we who were strong in love!

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!

‘Then I remember I went home and I got a phone call around midnight. My friend said, “Tómas, are you real about this? Are you willing to go to the end for the demonstrators? Are you really into this?” I said yes. And she said, “OK, come down to parliament. They are shooting tear gas.”’ He stops. Tear gas. In Iceland. The Icelandic police gassing the Icelandic people. In Austurvöllur.

‘I jumped into warm boots, got a good coat and a scarf to cover my face and ran down the whole way, the whole way across Reykjavík. It was freezing and I kept slipping but I ran. And when I got there it wasn’t Reykjavík, it wasn’t Iceland. It was dark, this disgusting smog in the air. There were people, teenagers and young people, walking away and cradling a friend of theirs and everyone choking and puking and crying and it was – I was – I kept going. And when I got there I saw this barricade of riot shields. On the other side of the square there were people gathered together, and I was standing there like an idiot in front of the riot shields, maybe ten, twenty metres away. And something landed at my feet and I look and I go, shit, that’s tear gas. They shot a canister at me because I was the only person standing there. I looked at it and thought, no. Walk away. I held my breath but it got in deep and I was coughing up and my throat and eyes were burning away. I have asthma and lung problems and I felt I was suffocating. That was when everything turned, everything went surreal. It didn’t feel as if it was happening.’

I notice the detail of Tómas Gabríel’s topography, the way his story moves around the few hundred metres of Reykjavík’s centre. His apartment, the university over the road, the parliament buildings across the park. His city is gathering new stories before my eyes, the meanings of space changing. These demonstrations were domestic in more than