Names for the Sea Sarah Moss (list of ebook readers txt) đ
- Author: Sarah Moss
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We meet the man who manages the logistics of distribution. He takes us over to his computer and shows us his spreadsheet. There are social security numbers, names, numbers of adults and children in each household. Data protection, I think, identity theft! But no-one in Iceland worries much about data protection. You have to give your social security number, your kennitala, to the vendors of electrical goods to validate basic consumer rights. (The kennitala incorporates your date of birth and also gives access to tax records, held in real time and online using information supplied by the bank, the Icelandic version of the DVLA, the insurance company, the Ministry of Immigration and your employer.) Bank tellers often request my PIN. Students hand in assessments blazoned not only with their names but with their kennitala. CVs, I will discover, routinely state not only age but marital status and number and age of children. You canât be anonymous in Iceland anyway, says Matthew, when I complain about this state of affairs. Thereâs no point pretending people donât know who you are, and who youâre married to, and who you slept with when you were in high school and how your degree was classified and why you crashed your car. But identity theft would be impossible for the same reasons. No, I think, impersonation might be difficult but the theft of someoneâs official identity would be rather easy.
âWe give cards to the regulars,â the man explains. âPeople present themselves at the desks where the computers are, we print out a list of what they can have and then they are given it at the tables.â
âIn what state are the people who come here?â I ask. âAre they really starving?â
âSeveral people I know have been hungry for quite a while before coming here. Months. Itâs been changing a little because of all the media coverage of this place. People are a little less ashamed. But no-one wants to be seen here.â
âAre you carrying them through a short-term crisis, or are they dependent on you for a long time?â
He begins to unpack cheese. âQuite a lot of the Icelanders who come here are disabled, so thatâs not going to change. Most of the foreigners are unemployed, and thatâs not going to change either. Unless they go home.â
âMigrant workers probably wouldnât be here if there were jobs at home,â I point out. This is not the moment to argue that for some of the âforeignersâ, this is home.
He shrugs. âOK. So thatâs not a short-term problem either. And weâve no steady income, itâs just donations. Weâre a charity with no state support. And food prices are going up, and there are more and more people coming here. Weâre running out of money. Weâll probably be closed by December.â
âDo the supermarkets give you anything?â Einar asks. âDo you have to buy it all?â
The man explains about food distribution chains, in which supermarkets have to return unsold produce to the supplier. But the supermarkets give them whatever discounts they can. âItâs a lot of work, chasing these bulk buys and special deals, and thereâs only one person here full-time, everyone else just volunteers two or three days a week.â
âHow far do people come?â I ask. âI noticed on your database, there are people from outside the city.â From towns over a hundred kilometres away.
âYes, from all over. Weâve been giving people who come from more than fifty kilometres away one-and-a-half times the usual amount.â
âDoesnât the petrol to get here cost more than the food would?â I wonder, knowing the prices of both.
âYes, the price of gas is ridiculous now.â
The question I always ask in Iceland, and one that clearly doesnât make sense in some way
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