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      November 21, 2021The Body Collector of SpainTamara Kreutz

      When migrants die at sea, he gets them home.
      —Nicholas Casey and Leire Ariz Sarasketa

      I washed to shore without my name.
      It had drifted away, while I floated for weeks
      off the coast of Tarifa.
       
      I was zipped in a bag, hefted into a hearse
      and driven past pines and sunflower fields
      to be shoved in a freezer
       
      where I shivered for months beside others like me.
      Remember! Remember! Imploring ourselves
      to recall who we were.
       
      Who we are now: bodies in waiting with eyes
      eaten by fish, fingers wrapped up in kelp,
      seafoam laced in our hair.
       
      Frost sprouts from our noses,
      feathers our lashes, our lips. We wait here for him—
      Martín Zamora, the body collector
       
      for those who don’t make it to Spain alive, the mortician
      who knows when we wash up on beaches
      we each have a history and names suspended beyond
       
      reach. He will come to find us, embalm us, to sprinkle
      our bodies with herbs, and shroud us in green
      sheets, as a local imam taught him to do.
       
      “I get the feeling,” Martín whispers
      to our empty ears, “The future will see us as monsters
      for letting you die this way.”
       
      He will search out our past
      through clues in clothing draped on the bones
      of our shoulders and backs.
       
      Martín sends our clothes across the sea
      back to our homes, where he lays them out in market
      squares, like museum exhibits
       
      of the dead—one purple canvas shoe, an orange jersey
      with a Nike swoosh, men’s stonewashed blue
      jeans, size thirty-six, a gold plated heart
       
      necklace engraved with a lover’s name—believing
      someone will pass by and remember
      a familiar shirt or gift. And there now
       
      a mother weeps her daughters’ name
      into an empty dress, a wife caresses the jacket
      that once held the man she loved.
       
      A father rocks a pair of trainers,
      remembering when the feet that wore them
      were barely larger than his thumb.
       
      My sister grasps gray overalls, stained with oil
      from the auto shop where I worked, and my name returns
      to me, alights on my body, gives back memory of life.
       
      I am not an Unknown to be thrown in a grave with the nameless.
      I am twenty-seven years old, a mechanic from Tangier.
      I am Achraf Ameer—
       
      I remember, remember. Remember.

      from Poets Respond

      Tamara Kreutz

      “During my morning walks, I listen to The Daily podcast by The New York Times. Sometimes an episode is so moving, I have to stop and sit down on the curb to let my mind process the story. Last week, I learned about a man, Martín Zamora, a seemingly unremarkable man, a mortician in southern Spain who is quietly, all on his own, finding the identities of drowned migrants who wash up on the shoreline near his hometown. He deals in death as a profession but understands that the dead are not nameless. They have histories, homes, and families who love them. He brings loved ones’ closure and delivers bodies back home for burial. While thinking about Martín’s story and reading more about him, I wondered what the unknown dead might think of this man who advocates for them when no one else cares to, who gives their humanity back by finding their memories and names.”

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