Hou jou maat naby, selfs op diens

Aitor is deployed in Lebanon with the Spanish contingent of UNIFIL. Sara stayed in Zaragoza with Jimena, four years old. The first month was the hardest: Jimena asked for "daddy" every morning and Sara didn't know what to show her beyond a pixelated 9 PM video call. Then Aitor started scheduling wallpapers from camp, whenever there was wifi in the mess hall. One Friday at 7:22 AM, Sara unlocks her phone to check the forecast and sees a photo of the sunset over the Mediterranean with a line written along the edge: "same sea as the one in Peñíscola, Jime. remember". She shows it to her daughter before school. There's nothing else to say.

Pablo has been at sea for four months aboard the BAM Meteoro, off the Horn of Africa. The connection out on open water is what it is: it comes in patches and disappears in patches. Inés learned early that chasing him on WhatsApp was pointless. What did work was leaving him a wallpaper ready for whenever the ship hooked into a network. One Sunday at 0007 — already the small hours back in Spain — Pablo's phone finally syncs and a photo appears: their kitchen at home with the coffee maker on, two empty cups, and three words: "saving you a place". Pablo looks at it in silence from his bunk. He doesn't reply. He doesn't need to.

Claudia is on a six-month posting at the base in Ādaži, as part of NATO's eFP deployment in Latvia. Martín, a teacher in Sevilla, counts the days on a chalkboard in the hallway. Every Sunday night he schedules three wallpapers for the week ahead: one with a silly photo of the cat, one with a drawing from his nephews and nieces, one with something of his own. On Wednesday at 0605, Claudia gets out of her bunk for the first formation of the day, picks up her phone and sees a photo of the patio at home with the lemon tree in bloom. Underneath, in Martín's handwriting: "it blooms the same without you, just less". She holds onto it in her head all day.