I went to the frontier, intending to be awed by the dramatic scenery. I was, but I also suffered gender dysphoria. You might ask how.
Well, I took the train from Italy to the first town in France, which is Menton. It's a pretty place sometimes referred to as "the pearl of France". From the town centre, where I took this photo, it's a little over a mile to the Italian frontier. You see that crack in the mountain towards the right? That's the frontier.
The viaduct on the left a third of the way up the mountain carries France's A8 motorway that melds seamlessly into Italy's A10 motorway. It's all part of the E80 route from Lisbon, capital of Portugal, to Mount Ararat on the Turkish-Iranian border where it joins Asian Highway AH1 to Tokyo. So if you fancy taking your bored kids on an 18,000-mile long car journey next Sunday afternoon, you could consider this. I mention the road as it will be part of the story. And also because a route 18,000 miles (29,000 km) long is a pretty awesome thought.
On the very far right of my photo, in Italy, are the famous Balzi Rossi, the "Red Cliffs", with their beach of curious egg-shaped pebbles (which you are forbidden from removing), the famous Michelin-starred restaurant of the same name, and the especially famous caves that have been home to mankind for an estimated half a million years.
The French frontier post is right at sea level. I was splashed by the churning waves as I approached. But it's an open border under the European Union's Schengen agreement* and despite my feminine attire and shoulder bag, spattered with salt water and flecks of seaweed as they were, the police didn't even look at me. My face is my fortune here: I am white, you see, and obviously a local.
(*The border is not as open as the law says, as we shall see.)
It is exciting here. Political geography fascinates me. Why do we plot borders where we do? Furthermore, I was brought up in the Cold War and I can't help thinking of borders as ultimate heart-stopping moments where your escape or mission will meet with success in safe haven ...or in recognition, failure and possibly death. I have my ID card in my pocket. Could it be a forgery? It might fool the uniformed cops but will it fool the snoops in their macintoshes and homburg hats? Agent Sue sashays towards freedom, attempting nonchalance ...
I digress. Here is the dramatic frontier landscape I have come to see. I am a few yards into Italy, standing on the San Ludovico bridge over a small torrent that meets the sea just behind me. The Italian border post is the red-orange building up on the right of the upper, San Luigi, bridge.
I cross back into France to take the upper road. I am now approaching that narrow San Luigi bridge. The white triangle marks the frontier for the benefit of ships at sea. The fruit lorry is in France, the tiny wine shop perched over the chasm is just within Italy. Their only customers are French - Italian booze is cheaper, you see.
The space is too narrow for me adequately to photograph the terrifying defile by the bridge, that crack in the mountain you saw in the first photo. It is over 100 metres (330 feet) from the path above to the torrent below.
But the near sheer drop to the sea from where I'm standing is also hair-raising.
The old smuggler's route across the border is called Paradise Pass. There's a similar Bandits Pass at the top of the mountain I live on.
But Paradise Pass is also known locally as the Pass of Death (Passo della Morte). It's even beginning to appear as such on official maps now, like the one I am carrying.
Why would Paradise Pass, that sounds idyllic, end up being called the Pass of Death?
Because so many people die trying to cross the border. I can cross at will as I am a European Citizen. If I wasn't, I'd have a Schengen visa. I actually crossed six times that day! But refugees, mainly from war-torn Africa and the Middle East, do not, so crossing into France is illegal. This is the end of the migrant conveyor that begins in Southern Italy on boats, at least for those who have survived the journey across the Mediterranean. They make their way up Italy, some obtaining permission to stay, others not. They want to get to France as much of Africa is former French colonies, they speak French and usually have relatives and friends already in France. A new, better life awaits.
Despite the Schengen agreement, the border is not, in fact, open. Not to them at least, and to a degree, not even to me, as the French police are crawling all over the frontier. Every train across the border must stop at Menton Garavan to be searched. They usually barely glance at me. But anyone who is not white gets asked for their papers. There is always a handful of people hauled off, charged, and then minibussed back to Italy. I pass the Italian border post and a young soldier and I exchange good days as I go to a bar for some tea. On my way back I witness a handover. The same soldier accepts paperwork from a plainclothes French police officer, whose tall muscly colleague is bringing along three migrants all handcuffed to him. The young Indian on his right is trembling as he brushes past me. They are not mistreated, but the adrenalin and worry tell.
They are the lucky ones. Others, not able to cross by train, try more dangerous methods. They pay a passeur, a person to smuggle them across, on foot, by lorry or van. The price is high to reflect the illegality of the move. Not everyone can afford it. Some try to ride under trains. They usually get sniffed out by the Italian police and troops crawling all over the last station in Italy. Some migrants discover there's a nice hiding space under the pantograph on top of a train. Electric trains are a rarity in Sub-Saharan Africa so they don't know that when the train starts, the current will kill them. Others try to cross by the motorway viaducts and tunnels. There are no pavements, the drop into the ravine is immensely deep, the traffic fast moving. Many have died one way or the other. You could swim, but the currents and eddies here where the mountains tumble into the sea are treacherous. Olympians only, therefore. One man recently made it, only to be apprehended by the police as he crawled exhausted up the beach. You could try crossing higher up the mountains which rise steeply for the next 300 miles to the three-mile-high massif of Mont Blanc. The clothes you wore in the tropics are no use here in the snowfields of the high Alps; many freeze to death.
The rest try crossing the border on foot here at Paradise Pass, the Pass of Death. By night, of course. Once at the high point of the smuggler's path your instinct is to make towards the lights of Menton. But that instinct is fatal; no-one has ever survived the 300 foot sheer drop. Counterintuitively, you must follow the path away from apparent salvation, you must scrabble through undergrowth, clamber up the rocks, cut through the barbed wire fence at the top and scramble down the other side of the mountain. On the Italian side, kind people have put luminous markers, placed planks and hung ropes at strategic points. You mustn't assist an undocumented migrant directly as that will land you in trouble with the law. They are undocumented by now as they shed their clothes and papers in the ravine, and their old names and identities with them, and put on smarter clothes to enter a better life, leaving the old one behind, the life that didn't work.
As a trans woman, that last bit of the story hits me in the gut. As did sight of the rock monument by the French border post to those who didn't make it, titled "The Third Paradise".
It is neglected and weed-ridden, the plaques with names now half hidden and some broken. Names that are known, that is. Others are never known, those of people who have simply ceased to exist, unknown to anyone.
At this point I cry. The next day will be Transgender Day of Remembrance, another testament to those who didn't make it to a better life. Maybe it is unsuitable to associate the story of dead migrants with trans people dying for having transitioned but I cannot help the parallels striking me. But many of these migrants leave home because they are LGBT+ and fear for their lives. I myself am wearing women's clothing, but I am not presenting as female here. There is a difference, and it's a barrier that I don't feel secure enough to cross yet.
A piece of graffiti in France says quite simply: la frontière tue. Not so simple to translate. It means both the border (i.e. this border) kills and borders (in general) kill. Barriers of all kinds do kill. And to think that plenty of people rejoice at that.
I go home awed by the scenery as intended, and sobered by the suffering.
Take care.
Sue x
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