Toiletries

They are small, lightweight objects: a nearly empty shampoo bottle, a tube of toothpaste, some toothbrushes, a stick of deodorant, and anti-diarrhea tablets. The colors are those of bathroom products – blues, whites, greens – but here they look faded, dulled by dust, moisture, and time spent out in the open. Even the labels have been worn away. These are objects made for everyday use, for gestures repeated so often they become almost automatic – but outside a bathroom, far from any private space, they become something else entirely. On the death pass of Ventimiglia, these remnants speak of an ordinary life struggling to hold on even in the harshest of conditions. Washing, tending to one’s body, preserving a minimum of dignity: simple acts that here become difficult, almost extraordinary. You can picture someone who, having found a hidden corner, uses a little water to rinse off, to shake the dust away, to feel like a person again rather than just a body in motion. Those bottles were opened carefully, their contents rationed. Every drop matters when you have no way of knowing when the next chance will come. Then, as with so many other things, the moment arrives when even these become a burden. They break, run out, lose their purpose – or they simply have to be left behind, because space in a backpack is tight, because the journey demands that you carry only what is absolutely essential. And so they remain, scattered among the stones, almost invisible. They don’t catch the eye the way a brightly colored piece of clothing might, but they speak in a more intimate register. They tell of a daily struggle to hold onto some sense of normalcy within a condition that is anything but normal – one that is, in fact, violent in its demands.
At home, objects like these go completely unnoticed. On the route, they become something else: tangible proof of humanity. Evidence that even along a path marked by exhaustion and danger, there is still room for a gesture of care – for the quiet attempt to remain, in some small way, oneself.