Frida is 29 years old; she is driving her car on the bridge in the rush-hour traffic. She checks her rear-view mirror, nervously smoking a cigarette and moving her head in quick jerks. She is suffering from withdrawal. If I don't smoke heroin every day I feel sick, not just a bit sick: very, very sick she writes on a blog about her life as an addict. Every night after working as a clerk Frida walks down a path running behind the tower. Journalists have christened this area Tossic Park (“tossico” is the Italian for “junkie” – translator’s note), an open-air cut-price market for drugs. Currently it is policed by the Army, troops patrol the area, stopping anyone caught there for identification purposes. This is not a problem for Frida, the drug-scene has moved a little further down the river. A Senegalese guy is waiting for her under another bridge, wearing a hoodie and holding a bag of white in his hand. Ten euros are enough to secure her daily dose.
With each new invasion Frida moves further along the river seeking out her trusted contacts. She is at ease in the scrub along the riverbanks, far from family worries, a boring job and the prospect of a “normal” life. On the river Frida is alone with herself and her demon. Here she doesn’t have to care about the future and she can let go: I want to shoot up until I die, here is her motto.
But the arrival of the military will soon mark the end of the drug market on the river banks bringing Frida the chance to free herself of her habit, to start again far away from here, leaving the mud, the scrub and this damned river behind.
