“He had Astérix comic books for reading, chocolate-covered hazelnuts for support, and his personal belongings in a fairly large knapsack.”
– Mavis Gallant, Irina
The cost of living is the average cost of the necessities of life, in a particular place, at a particular time. This definition varies and fluctuates; its scope expands and contracts as a function of what constitutes a necessity: food, shelter, clothing …
Healthcare? An education? Beauty, culture, art, poems? Music, fresh fruit in season? Friendship, sun, an unobstructed sky, blue air, a park with a slide, a swing, a seesaw …
The cost of living varies by time, place, income, culture, gender, age, society.
It varies, by definition.
In 1939, Lilly Cassirer gave up a painting for $360 and a visa out of Germany. A view of Rue Saint-Honoré, Paris, après-midi, effet de pluie. By Camille Pissarro, worth $30 million. The cost of living.
Actually, priceless: a moment, captured, glimmering and glistening in creamy whites and lilacs and peaches and greys beneath powdery white clouds. A view, someone’s view of a street, a sky, a world. Someone’s, in Paris, one afternoon.
Food, shelter, clothing… “The killers came into their home, whoever they were, and savagely cut my neighbour and his two sons”… Omar left it all in Damascus and fled to Domiz camp in Iraq. The cost of living: the buzuq, the only thing he took: a long-necked lute he plays because it “reminds me of my homeland.”
For Dowla, from Sudan, twenty-two and mother of six, the cost of living is a pole she balanced on her shoulders, a basket hung from each side, to carry the children, in turn, when they were tired, on the ten day journey to safety from the bomb raids over her village.
The cost of living, someone’s, in Mali: A moped and a tank of petrol. In Angola, a bible. A Quran somewhere else. A water jug. A solar panel; “when night comes, the light allows me to pray and cook.” Hafaja, from Myanmar.
“When the light is on, I feel more safe. I lost my land, my money and my house, but it doesn’t matter. I still have my husband and my children.”
A goat, because it was a friend; because it gave hope, solace, not milk. A pot small enough to carry, large enough to cook sorghum for three children. A walking stick. A coat. Some notebooks and a pen, because
“I couldn’t take my school bag, my shoes or the coloured ribbons for my hair.”
The cost of living: the weight of what to leave and what to take. The dog, the necklace, the friends, the spices sprinkled on Sunday dinners, the family, the songs and anecdotes and jokes on all those long evenings, that went by too fast. Time and place. Captured moments. A view of the world, someone’s world, sky, street.