tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53072790744626240492024-03-19T12:30:47.817-07:00Translating ThoughtsThis is my attempt to translate my Portuguese written blog Descolonizando a Mente.Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-56793513568988883562012-09-09T10:41:00.002-07:002012-09-09T10:42:00.632-07:00Migrated to Wordpress<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have transferred all my posts to <a href="http://translatingthoughts.wordpress.com/">Translating Thoughts</a><br />
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Hope to see you there :)</div>
Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-35140178221272856242012-08-21T01:54:00.002-07:002012-08-21T01:54:18.327-07:00Tel Aviv- Being a Bridge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Tel Aviv. I meet Jaafar. I haven't seen him since last year when I was in the West Bank. </span><br />
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I had met Jaafar in Nablus, because of Yahyah who is Sam's brother. I had become their friend learning this way about all the intricacies of the thoughts of these young boys from Nablus.</div>
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They had driven me to Bethelem telling me they were already going there anyway. Which I realized quite soon it was not true, they were just being kind to me. I have written here before, about how difficult it was that time for me and my three Palestinian friends to be taken by my Italian friend to see the separation wall. I wrote extensively about how unhappy I was by his poor choice of making us walk inside of the metal bar corridors that lead us to the checkpoint. I wrote about how much I silently cried feeling like we were animals. How sad I was to realize that my friends here could not meet my friends there. How much I hated that wall. I wrote about taking refuge in an icecream with them.</div>
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Now Jaafar is here in Tel Aviv. He works with computers in Ramallah and had been invited by Microsoft in Herzelya to go visit them. Microsoft had applied for the permissions for Jaafar and 2 other Palestinians to come to Israel. It is not the first time that he comes to Microsoft. This time however, he could not make it. They were held too many hours in the checkpoint.</div>
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I know nothing of this when I go meeting him. All I know is that at 8pm he would be free for not very long as it was a one-day permit and they have to return soon from Tel Aviv to Ramallah.</div>
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I walk the streets towards the place we are supposed to meet in but Jaafar sees me first. He is inside of a natural shop with his friends. I go in. I am puzzled by what they are buying. "Protein" they explain. "It is for the gym". I laugh and walk around the shop. Being intrigued by the amount of health food they hold. They speak to the older Jewish Israeli owner in English. He is curious and wants to know where they are from.</div>
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They say they are from "Schem" the Hebrew name of Nablus. The old man says he had been there as a child. That it was a wonderful place. He wished he could visit. They tell him he should come. I am intrigued by how friendly the conversation is.</div>
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We walk out. And Jaafar and I go for a walk. Michal, my Israeli Jewish friend, is coming to meet us. I feel some joy about it. </div>
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We meet her, and walk while we talk about all that has happened since I last saw him. Who got married, changing of jobs, ramadan, etc.... </div>
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I see in Jaafar's face how happy he is to see me. I am happy to see him too.</div>
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I tell him about my settler friend. I ask him whether it disturbs him I had been out with a settler. He asks me what kind of a settlement it is from. I explain it was a neighborhood mainly consisting of Palestinian people. That I was told that there were Jewish people who had always lived there. I ask him what he thinks about it </div>
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"I think it is ok."</div>
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"Do you think they should be made to move back to Israel?"</div>
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"I think the new settlements yes. But people who have always been there no. Palestinians and Jews mostly lived in peace for years. The can stay.. but the new ones should go."</div>
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I ask him what he feels about Palestinians Citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis). Should they move to Palestine once (if) there is a state? He does not think so. They live here. They are used to their lives here. They have always lived here so they should not have to move.</div>
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We are now seating in Habima beautiful square. Right in front of the Theater and right on the garden. We seat on a corner. Jaafar is to on the middle.</div>
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Michal asks him things as well. We talk about Nablus which Michal did not know it was the same place as Schem. We look for the etymology of the name. I tell him she wanted to come but is afraid. He tells her she is more than welcome to come. She explains she does not have a different passport. She is Israeli and according to the law Israelis can't go to the West Bankn ( unless they are settlers, or IDF soldiers). He tells her she could ask for a Permit like he had done it. She explains she feels it might be dangerous for an Israeli to go there. She says it politely, careful, as she cares about what he thinks, and because she also wants to know more, and is afraid. He suggests she does not go around screaming she is an Israeli and that she speaks English. But he does not believe she would have a problem.</div>
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She explains she is certain that most people would be nice but she is afraid of terrorists. Her mother, she explains, would be terrified if she went to the WB. She is curious but at the same time she is afraid of going. She does not want to have to conceal her Israeli identity. He understands her fear thought he still thinks it would be fine.</div>
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I love Michal. And I understand her. I really do.</div>
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She is so young and so different than most people I know. She always is honest and says whatever she thinks. I met her in India and through having an accident in a bus we became more connected than ever. We traveled India together <wbr></wbr>till I flew away. We sat for hours sometimes by the Rishikesh bridge in India just looking at the people. The saris. Saying yes to every man, boy, girl, woman, parents who wanted to take pictures with us. We must feature in hundreds of pictures. We found it funny. And because we always took pictures of people we thought it would be nothing but balanced to let people take pictures of us.</div>
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We once traveled to Rajasthan in a fully packed bus. We were 5 westerners in the bus. The other 3 did not want to have any contact with Indians. We gave one of our beds out so that 5 guys could go spend a whole night there rather than in the floor. Because of this they took cared of us.</div>
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And then when I broke my foot in Thailand she took 18 hours of a bus ride to see me. </div>
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And now I am here with her in Tel Aviv. She seats next to my Palestinian friend and I know she feels as sad as I do when she hears he missed the appointment because of the check point. Though we don't talk about it I know it is hard for her to see him. It is nothing about him or her. But these meetings they are too human. I was once told by a philosopher I met in Jerusalem he could not deal with reading me. I pressed him to tell me more about it.</div>
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" It is too human Jules. If you talked politics I could fully agree or disagree with you. But when you tell me of the lives of people then I noticed something that is unbearably painful that as much as I am against the occupation it still functions in my mind in a certain way because we draw lines of separation"</div>
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I was thankful to him for saying that out loud to himself and to me. I knew it was incredibly hard to get it out of him. But when two human beings meet as humans. Not as a category of a specific group, all ideologies seem to fall. You cant possibly sustain an occupation of normal human beings. So we play with people's minds. Some are convinced that all of those on the other side of the wall are dangerous. Others think is just a portion. And even the nicest feel that the existence of one terrorist is enough to occupy a whole country...</div>
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It work both sides as well... and in many places of the world.</div>
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It is hard to be a bridge. </div>
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I ask Jaafar to text me once he is back to the West Bank so that I know it went all fine.</div>
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A few hours later I get his message "Back to reality"</div>
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It hurts to be a bridge.. It hurts that the possibilities of encounter seem yet for all like a distant dream. It is hard to cross frontiers and internal borders. No matter who you are. Yet, I still think we must always do it. We must all embrace the pain. With it comes a silent more complex understanding. An everlasting faith that eventually, all walls fall down...</div>
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Love,</div>
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me</div>
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Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-91728444004445259402012-08-21T01:53:00.001-07:002012-08-21T01:53:23.791-07:00Jerusalem, different perspectives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Elick smiles and says Amit was an Engineer. Amit is terrified.</div>
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" I worked as an engineer because there is no theoretical part to the army! Everything is applied.. but I was NEVER an engineer. I worked temporarily as one"</div>
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He says it with disgust. I laugh. I am in Jerusalem. I stay with Elick who I traveled Kashmir and Mc Leod in India with. Elick, for those who remember, had been raised in a Yeshiva in a very religious family. He had quit religion through literature to study physics, and in physics he discovered math. </div>
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I stay with Elick and his girlfriend Tali now. Tali has her last exams while I am there. She who also comes from a family of mathematicians. She however, grew up in the secular world in Haifa a city where Palestinians and Jews live together.</div>
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Amit is apparently a mathematics genius. Someone who does not sleep, and thinks the whole time of geometry. He loves mathematics to the point that anything else seems to not exist for him. He finds physicists are liars as they are always making approximation about everything. He makes jokes about physicists. So calling him an engineer was nothing short of an offense. </div>
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He despises applied use of mathematics, he cares about the abstractions.</div>
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I laugh. Listening to this highly educated men talking about abstractions of abstractions. I left the West Bank and all my partial fasting ( I drank water) to cross Jerusalem in a festival day. Mahane yehuda, the main market is packed with artists ... and I went from hearing the love stories and practical reality of the occupied territories to now listen to music and have very philosophical conversations which I can barely grasps about religion and maths.</div>
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How can I do it? Sometimes I wonder. What kind of cognitive dissonance do I need to be able to cross the wall and have everything change so much in minutes?. How is it that now I go out with Elicks ex-religous friends to the Muslim quarter when the fasting has been broken to see it. They ask me about the westbank, How is it that I ended up knowing more about human lives there in few months then they have in all of their lives? I am surrounded by the ex-religious friends of Elick. Some are mathematicians, others doctors, and one, in special was a settler.</div>
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I never met a settler before. And now I went out with one. A settler who lived in a Palestinian neighborhood in the Westbank. He takes me there to see it. He speaks fluently Arabic. He is a beautiful man. He has never believed. He can't explain me very well how is it that he quit the Yeshiva. He seems to have no political opinions though he is a journalist and studies the middle east.</div>
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He has Palestinian friends, though when he explains to me about these relationships he can see the details that my left wing friends in Israel can't. He explains me the intricacies of the languages. I am confused. I never thought I d be in the Occupied Territories with a settler... and now I swim in the springs among religious Jews, while I am accompained by an ex-religious who was raised in the occupied territories..not exactly a settlement, but a Palestinian neighbourhood where there are only 4 Jewish families living.</div>
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I dont know what to think about it. It is definitively a first.</div>
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I ask him about it. And I am not sure I can reproduce what he told me. He lived in an area where Jews had always lived. during the 48 war jews had no water and were saved by these Palestinians who brought water for them to survive. He says he grew up knowing that. That he was taught they had to respect the Palestinians because they had saved them. I listen without knowing what to think. I don't even know very well what the word "respect" here means. He talks of a Palestinian girl he would marry if it would not mean to loose both all of his family and for her to loose all of hers. We listen to the Lebanese band Mashrou Leila. A highly politicized Lebanese band and he can sing all the lyrics in Arabic while it plays. He learned about them through the Palestinian friend. I, as well, heard them for the first time, when I first arrived in the west bank a bit more than one year ago. </div>
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"Jules, you dont understand. These hollywood stories cannot happen here!"</div>
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I hear. I pay attention to his linguistic explanations. I am confused. I ask him about how did his very religious family react to him quitting the Yeshiva. They never talk about it. It is not the first time I am with the ex-religious and I am always intrigued by them.</div>
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I am in fact always so intrigued about the people who quit their lives, all that was familiar. Elik though nonreligious finds his friends who went to the Yeshiva more inteligent than his mathematician secular friends. My secular friends who do not know the ex-religious have despise to the yeshiva people. It all goes back to an economical ( and ideological?) situation. And again I cant do justice to explain this properly here. It suffixes to say that through the years the right and the left have conceded more and more rights to the religious to get their political support. </div>
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They are now in a situation where the religious population grows exponentially. They pay less taxes, are paid by the state once they have more than 4 children ( which most of them do). Their Yeshivas is fully financed. They usually ( but not all) are very right wing and were exempted from going to the army. Now, as the law has expired there is lots of discussion on the matter. Whether it is fair or not for the religious to not go to the army. What modifications would the IDF ( Israeli defense Force) have to do to accommodate for young religious boys who already are married with lots of children and are not supposed to have contact with women. And of course, this whole discourse on "fairness" also rises the question whether Palestinian Citizens of Israel ( also know as as Arab Israelis- who are the Palestinians who are citizens in Israel and not leaving in the occupied territories) should not be required as well. This is a moot discussion of course. They do not want the the Palestinians Citizens of Israel in the IDF but those are the kinds of debates that are happening here right now.</div>
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I dont know what to think. As the improbable bridge that I have become I learn from all sides..challenging always my certainties. I end up as the bridge of a Facebook conversation between my friend from Nablus Ihab and my Jewish Israeli friend Michal in Tel Aviv. She is curious to know what they think, She wished she could also visit Nablus and meet them. He thinks she can.According to the law she can't. He understands her fear to come as an Israeli. Though he wished she could just come speaking English. It is sad to be that bridge.</div>
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<br />I also meet an UN manager here. He is cool. He came from South Sudan. He loves the life in Jerusalem. He also lived before in Togo. He is from Belgium and thought he seems to be a problem solver I feel he does not really understand anything about the middle east. He is kind. He wants to help the project. But the coldness and the mechanic way he looks at things both shock me and surprise me. </div>
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Who knows...maybe it is what they need in the middle east.. to be more practical... more clear....but at the same time, this idea alone, seems soooooooo foreign here...</div>
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Love,</div>
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Jules</div>
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Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-18111897218252233482012-08-21T01:52:00.001-07:002012-08-21T01:52:30.489-07:00Love in The Middle East<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Love. I rarely feel equipped to talk about love. Love in the middle east or anywhere else in the world in fact. I barely understand myself so I observe other's lives and love stories. I pay attention to them. What is it that is love? What is it that they value? And I am simultaneously taken aback by both how similar we are as human beings, and yet how different we seem to represent things.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I seat in the veranda with cats around me, Mahmood, and Ihab, and we wait for Sam in Nablus. Sam is my friend since the first time I came to the west bank. He is probably my most assiduous reader and has commented almost in all the texts that I have ever written. And Sam believes in Love, Love with capital letters. The archaic type you read once about in a fairy tale.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Sam has had a life that is nothing short of epic and yet he loves the same woman for the past 18 years. I now know his whole family. He is tall. He is strong. And now he is nervous like a child. He speaks Arabic. We are all tense. We all know what that call means. It is a call to render life in the middle east a bit like the Arabian Nights...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Sam, like most boys here, married when he was very young. In Palestine boys and girls rarely speak alone, and never touch each other if they are not part of the same family. They are expected to marry virgins. I know little about the Christian Palestinians but I realise that even the way they greet each other sets the boundaries of "no transgressions". How you say Hello and how you answer establishes immediately which relationships are possible to you or not.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I know the Muslim Palestinian better since I have stayed in their houses every time I stayed in the West Bank. And they love like in a story tale. They love for years on end a particular woman they have never really known much about. They love them forever. They marry different girls to revenge from disrupted hearts. Some fight for them. I am something like a psychologist here. I hear what they don't tell others. The stories of their broken hearts and that of others. I am puzzled by the amount of love they can feel, but I can recognise the fear everybody of my generation and younger seem to have of love.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I left my marriage a year ago never understanding what it really meant to leave. I never wanted anyone to have so much power over me. So I was married but I was never fully there. Not that I knew that consciously. Did I ever understand what it meant? I am not sure. I am not even sure I understand it now. I know I have been searching for rescue all over the path. In Gods, Goddesses, silences dances and eventually in Love.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I loved an Israeli in secret. I never wrote about it. It was a fairy tale like. A fairy tale like the rare ones you hear in Palestine. And as a fairy tale they can only exist in our imaginations. I crossed the world for it. And when I was finally there I was met by despair. I just needed to go away. I could not stay. I just needed to go. It was a palpable fear. A lack of air. A feeling of being a burden. A fear of possibly being abandoned and so I left while I could.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There is this stupidity about fear. It makes you generalise. It makes you less empirical and feel safe. I left and I suffered all the pain I could not even grasp where it came from during this year. The pain of my abandoned marriage, of my lost academic life, my house... It felt like I had been uprooted, so it was easier for me to relate to travellers and to refugees. The only big difference is that while refugees have a clear enemy..mine was never going to leave me, it would go with me everywhere I went.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">And that is why I understand why some Palestinians marry other women they do not care about. It is because though they are not afraid of bombs, fasting when is incredibly hot, or the war they are terrified, like me, of Love. Some lucky ones among you might not understand it. But those of you who do know what I am talking about know how our brains can just flee any situation. While they escape to live temporarily safer lives instead of paying the price of real truthful commitment. While in the west we entertain ourselves with other relationships, in the middle east they marry someone else.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">But not Sam... Sam marry young, and according to him, for all of the wrong reasons, and so he divorced her. And then he married an American even though he had always loved for the past 18 years the same woman. A woman who would not say yes to a divorced man, nor would she say yes to anyone else.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In the middle east love is like the earth...it belongs to someone forever, and you either fight for it or it will destroy your life and someone else's. And now after, 18 years, we wait for that one call which is to settle for good whether the woman Sam, now divorced again, always has loved would accept him or not as her husband.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">We are tense. Sam is tense. He can barely contain his anxiety. We seat waiting. Seconds .. Maybe minutes but the weight of the years weigh in the air. But suddenly all the heaviness seems to lift up and be replaced by enormous agitation in the air. I still have not heard it, but I feel the particles dancing around me. That huge tall man is under uncontrollable joy. The answer is yes!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Not a yes that was said by her. She could not speak to him. Her brothers, and nephews were giving the answer that was given to them. That is how it is how it happens here. Sam is over the moon. Now that the men have agreed to it that would be much harder for her to change her mind about getting married. He wants to marry yesterday. It is Ramadan so things must wait.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Aida, his mom, is over the moon she has accompanied this love story for the past 18 years. Now it was her turn to visit the lady bringing gifts. The lady was very happy I was told. Every person is happy. I am invited for the wedding. I go buy clothes with them. I feel a mixture of total admiration and just awe.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I needed so much to be rescued like that in this past year. I needed so much a god, goddess or a man to rescue me from myself. But now I look in admiration. I can admire it, but I am fine. There is something true about time. There was something soothing about me waking my parents in the middle of the night and hoping to sleep with them on a broken foot. An internal agitation that never seemed to leave me. I remember my father just saying half asleep noticing my pain, saying calmly that " It will pass".</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It did. I am now in the Middle East and I still travel but now I have a home. It did not depend of God or a man. It is inside creating itself. Sometimes I loose it. Sometimes I run outside but it is creating itself. And when I see Sam's joy I admire the commitment to it rather of letting my cynicism win the argument. When I hear of the Palestinians who married someone else as a form of revenge, of self-preservation I feel sad. And in this deeply religious and contested place the only prayer I can possibly utter is one to love. I rarely pray but when I do I pray that I too learn to be patient and that I never let my mind leave when all that I am wants to stay.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Love, me</span></div>
Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-42538853556867373042012-08-21T01:49:00.000-07:002012-08-21T01:50:52.158-07:00Keep Living, Nablus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I want you all to always remember that I am not a Middle East, Palestinian or Israeli expert. I am not hoping to say that what I say can represent the whole of the people of anywhere. People vary a lot everywhere, but they especially do here in the Middle East. Remember always when you read me that these are but the experiences of a woman who crossed the wall a few times and in her path encountered the people she did.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It is but my experience with strangers that through the journey have become friends. Whatever ideological or political beliefs you come from remember that we must always be more empirical about what we think to be true. I am not saying this is Palestinian or this Is Israeli, I am just telling you what happened to m when I encountered these specific human beings.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Now that I have taken this out of my chest I will write about what it is like for a 30 year old separated women to travel in the middle east after already having been here before.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">First it is to be taken to be a friend. In my particular case, with my previous abandoned PhD research it also means to avoid whenever I can political conversations. Which is to me almost impossible. It means that most people ask you about babies, and husbands. And that they all wish you all the best, which here means a family.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It means that being sick in the house of the family of my Russian Jewish friend Maya, or sick in the house of the family of my Palestinian friend Sam is basically almost the same. They are 100% of their time changing everything around for me to feel better. And also that when my natural feeling of wanting to go away to not disturb them even more are usually met with shock. They hold me, comfort me, and tell me I can always stay.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">That is how yesterday after fasting another day I ended spending the day in the living room with the two brothers (in their twenties) of my friend Sam and Aida his mom. It is hot in Nablus and I enjoy fasting even though they tell me to eat and drink bc I am not Muslim. I explain I am doing it to recover from being sick and they accept it even though they don't understand it. Then I show pictures of Brasil on my Facebook to Aida, and her sons. We attempt some conversation and little by little I no longer need language.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">We lay down in a mattress in the living room. It is hot. Then her sons show me songs in Arabic they like on youtube. Songs about what happened to a rapper who did too much drugs and his family collapsed, then Bob Marley, and they finish by showing me Lady in Red. There is something incredibly cute about these beautiful tall Palestinian men being moved by the songs they are. And when it is time to break the fast we all gather around a table.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I had not eaten for 24 hours and today I feel good. I seat around the table. Yahyah, who</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I knew from before, has now gotten married. He brings his wife and we eat. Bread, lentil soup, Hummus, Babaganoush, falafel, zaatar bread, salad and some other things I cant remember the name of.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">They laugh, talk, eat. They translate to me. I practice the little Arabic I know. We use my Iphone to show images of things I don't know how to explain. Coffee is served and I who love the smell of cardamon refrain from it. I am fasting and have been taking coffee totally out. It is hard. Extremely hard. We have some arabic desert and then we go into town.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Have you ever been to a Muslim place in Ramadan? The night is precious. Here The temperature cools down. There are children running everywhere. Couples hold hands. There are bands playing traditional songs. There are Palestinian flags. Lots of street vendors selling coffee that the cardamom seems to carry you flying like in a cartoon. Corn with spices. Almonds. Nuts. Meat and who knows what else. Shops are opened. Balloons fly in the air people and cars walk in the street and you hear the joy of people.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">My friend and I talk about their lives. How did he meet his wife. Whether he is happy. I ask them if they get upset I was in love with an Israeli. They say it does not matter for them because I come to both sides of the wall. But that talk brings us back to the many talks we had before about the region. We talk of Syria and they assert no one really knows what is going on in Syria. I ask them if they think there will be another war just like my Brazilian journalist friend had told me before and they say they don't think now , but that they think that eventually it will happen.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I ask them if they are not scared of it. They are not. And I cant really assess if they don't think it will affect them, or if because they have experience with the Intifada and the conflict between Hamas and Fatah they are just used to it. Used to the possible enormous violence towards them? they know I don't understand and they explain to me that they don't complain that they just go on living as this is all we can do.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">We reach home. And I go to bed and I fall asleep. I am suddenly awaken by explosions. If I were in Brasil I would think they were firecrackers. Here I just don't know. I hear cars racing. And a siren. it is all so close to my window. I am terrified. Is this a war? Is this the IDF coming in the middle of the night? Fights between different parties?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The more I hears cars racing the more scared I am. I am so close to the window and to scared to look up. But as there is nothing you can do I write. I call my friends in vain. After a while I stand and I walk to the living room where Aida sleeps during Ramadan. When I get there I see her sleeping deeply.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I still don't know if it is a war, or celebrations of ramadan. Yet somehow I realise like I had in Bolivia when every single Bolivian passenger slept while we almost fell in a precipice that humans get used to anything. Somehow my fear eventually vanishes as well, my heart slows down and I too not knowing what is happening in the Middle East fall asleep.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I wake up with a call from my friend to tell me it had been nothing. It seemed so distant now. Another day was starting I squat</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> to shower feeling happy that today Aida would teach me how to cook Mahalabia a desert I adore. Yes, that is what people do, they just keep living.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Love,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Me</span>
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Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-71676815340615973022012-08-01T22:21:00.000-07:002012-08-01T22:21:27.033-07:00All too familiar- The Middle East<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There's barely anything as pleasurable for me as to squat on the ground and let water gently swim down my back as if it was a gentle caress. I still remember how my first bucket shower ( while I volunteered in Thailand ) went from total dislike to becoming my favourite activity of the day. I remember how the hot bucket shower available in the himalaya mountains in Ladakh put a smile from ear to ear on my face. There the bucket was given to me with boiling water and I decided with the cold water available in the bathroom which temperature I wanted it to slide down my body. It usually made me remember how little pressure, knobs and water we need to have a wonderful time.<br />
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And so tonight, the water, I chose to be cold. I let it pour down my exhausted body in this hot sunny day. I had never imagined this morning I would be sleeping where I am now. I have been on and off sick since I arrived in the middle east. I went from being totally cared by my Israeli friend Maya to suddenly be totally cared by my Palestinians friends on this side of the wall. But when I woke up I knew none of it. I just left Maya to go back to the place I am officially staying in Tel Aviv but as I reached the station I decided to take a bus to Jerusalem.<br />
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I love Jerusalem, where even the newest tram can create confusion in the minds of those who live in this city known to so many for so many thousands of years. As I stood close to the machine under a boiling sun watching religious of all kinds pass one in front of the other. As I heard them have discussions ( I could not understand) with tourists, and soldiers while being "helped" by some kind of worker (whose job seemed to be to take the money of a few people to buy the tickets for them rendering the automatic , self-service machine useless and taking longer than a counter )I had to laugh....It somehow felt suddenly that I was back in the middle east.<br />
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I met a friend in the beautiful mahane yehuda which is one of my favourite markets in the world. As I walked through it I just wanted to stay in Jerusalem forever! I remembered every friend that disliked Jerusalem and I thought they must not know the secret details. I realised within seconds they probably feel the same about me. The truth is that in all its chaos I love Jerusalem for its incoherence.<br />
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My friend invited me to stay but somehow I knew where I was going. I promised to come back but since my feet knew where to walk to I took the path. I was coming to Nablus in the West Bank. I knew where to find the bus, I knew how to go from Ramallah to Nablus without having to figure out where the bus station was. I walked the whole time remembering how all too strange and difficult it had felt the first time I came. I knew no one, i knew not my path, my Israeli friends were terrified I was coming here alone. But I just came. I confess, that as I walked I felt some slight pride for that stranger so much stronger and braver than I am today. It has been a while since I don't try for the first time an unknown language, and an unknown shower.<br />
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It is Ramadan and I am once again in a Muslim place. Not eating to get better had not been understood by my Israeli friends, nor is it here. Luckily, it is Ramadan and I am not the only one fasting. <br />
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27hours of fasting and no desire for food even inside of Mahane Yehuda That is how sick I have been. But when the Harira breaks, and the fasting of Ramadan has been suspended till is morning... When all your friends are around a table to drink their first sip of the day, to eat there is no way you can resist it even if you are sick. I sat and I ate. Close to the whole family of my friends I sat listening to conversations in Arabic I don't understand with joy. I looked a mother next to her adult children talk and laugh. We attempted conversation in her few english words, and my barely non existing arabic. And once again I remembered how much we can get trapped in distant discussions where we know so well the language. There in a "real talk", in one that your barely understand, you seem to get more. You seem to put more effort into listening. Or maybe you just observe all else that language would have stolen from you. I broke my fast with these all too familiar faces. I did not understand them but they knew me. I had been here before.<br />
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And then yet not feeling great I squat to shower. I remember all the other times I had squatted before. I feel thankful I am here. I feel happy to have reencountered these people I met around the world before. I once again remember the part of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" where the author understands why his young son can't understand the beauty he sees in the birds on the road. The beauty he states lies on the fact that they are familiar and you recognise them. So I gently squat down remembering it all, all the places I have squatted before, all the joy that came from that act. I suddenly remembered how much joy I feel for having reencountered my friends. And in a all too familiar sentiment flushes back through me, I realise what is so obvious, that In both sides of this wall (that I hate so much) I feel anything else but love.<br />
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Love,<br />
Me</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-26278227795510848012012-08-01T22:18:00.001-07:002012-08-01T22:18:12.766-07:00By the Seine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I seat in the TGV on our way from Paris to Marseilles. Seating in front of me is my 87 year old grandmother that no amount of complex problems in the beginning of our trip has shaken. Next to me is my 21 year old cousin, together we are going to travel Provence. Every year my grandmother says this is her last trip, but every year we see her looking happier and younger in these always beautiful but undoubtedly exhausting trips. So here we are enjoying the beauty of France.<br /><span></span><br /><span>As I mentioned in my last post I was supposed to meet my friend Yonathan who is a brilliant Israeli pianist. We did and It was an absolutely fascinating night.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>We sat for a while in a little jazz cafe but then I suggested we walked. We met midnight in Paris, in the most agreeable summer night, and under a full moon.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>We walked by the river bank of the Seine. We went down the stairs to get closer to it. We passed some young people drinking and smoking. We chose an empty bench to seat on and talk. Yonathan who is quiet and reserved was impressed by all the movement around.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>We talked, and talked and suddenly a drunk man approached us saying something about the past thousand of years of human history. He had just interrupted me explaining my friend why I always talk to strangers...</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>I asked the man's name. Assab, if I am not mistaken. And then a long night started. The man carried a guitar on his back. He came from Ethiopia. He knew all there was to know about Semitic languages. He was drunk but he made full sense. It seemed sometimes like a dream. He explained he was a musician and that his grandfather was the brother of Haile Selassie's wife and did not want him to be a musician.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>At first I did not take the talk so seriously but as he went further and further into the explanations of Ethiopian history I did no longer even care how true this was. Then he told me he had once played with Brazilian famous composer Gilberto Gil. Hearing this, yet not convinced, I asked him to take his guitar out and show us something from Ethiopia.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>I was accompanied by an absolutely brilliant jazz pianist and somehow I did not expect what was about to happen.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>We were by the river which was placid reflecting the lights and the beauty of Paris. We were surrounded by young French boys and girls of north African descent. They were drunk and smoking weed. they were loud. They were exactly what so many people are afraid of. They had this energy of youth wildness, mixed with economic frustration, and desperate unresolved cultural and national identities. They wanted to be French but not.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>But once the Ethiopian took his guitar out and started to play in different Ethiopian languages little by little stillness came. The youngsters had come before that, seeing the guitar on his back they wanted him to go to their circle and play. Assab said he was going to play to us, if they wanted to listen they could, but that they should move.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>It seemed a bit unreasonable logistically as we were 3 and this group alone had more than 10. They were unconvinced, and went back to their place. But as soon as Assab's voice suddenly started to float around the river bank we all became flabbergasted. We were suddenly all quiet. People started to move their little gangs towards us. Assab who could speak tigre, tigrinya, amharic, arabic, and so many other languages played the sound of Africa .</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>And then came a Moroccan from the desert. He was a gorgeous black man looking incredibly Gnawan. He was carrying what looked like to be a guitar case. The group around us begged him to stop. He seemed to be famous in Paris, maybe in Africa as well. He hesitated but listening to Assab music he did.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>He opened his case to take out a Gimbri (three stringed skin-covered bass plucked lute used by the Gnawa) people. Suddenly, we were making music. My Israeli friend took out a flute that had broken out but in his music genius he could still steal some melody out of it. The beautiful African girl next to me joined the songs in new invented melodic lines. I sang in Portuguese over the Ethiopian, desert, Gnawan sounds</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>The boy who looked like the sharpest and angriest at first suddenly said</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>" I never imagined this morning I would have such gift this night."</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>Neither had I.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>North Africans greeted themselves in their Salem aleikums . They often wondered where I came from. I asked them to guess. They guessed I was Italian usually. Yonathan, my Israeli friend, was usually taken to be Arabic. Assab when confronted with Yonathan being an Israeli Jew said</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>" Oh well, I am also originally Jewish and then history takes place. Invasions, expansions , conversions. it does not matter really, does it?"</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>Assab was a fascinating character and I did not expect anything else from him. I was however surprised when seating in between Yonathan and Ahmad. </span><br /><span></span><br /><span>Ahmad was loud, extremely tribal about being north african. He greeted with extreme joy other north africans, and stronger joy and noise Moroccans. I sat there wondering what would happen when that talk would come.. As I just knew it would. </span><br /><span></span><br /><span>There was something fascinating about the fact that they all felt it was very important reinforcing similarity between these people coming from different places but it happened together with cherishing the culture of where they came from. I wondered now surrounded by predominantly North African Muslims how they would act to Yonathan once they found out he was from Israel.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>I was not scared or worried, I was just curious. Yonathan is not like me who just talks to people so I also wondered how he felt about being there. And then suddenly the question came. Ahmad asked me where was Yonathan from.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>I told him to guess and he said " Arabia"</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>Some silence stood still and then</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>Yonathan said</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>" Israel"</span><br /><span></span><br /><span></span><br /><span>" Palestinian?" ahmed asked</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>There was some probably millisecond of silence but it seemed like ages. I thought of the irony of it... People cant even tell these differences looking. They can only identify labels...</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>" No. I am Jewish, yemenite descendent."</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>Ahmad smiled took his hand out in Yonathan's direction and said </span><br /><span></span><br /><span>"Salem my friend". </span><br /><span></span><br /><span>Yonathan shook his hand. It was a hand shake that happen above me, it happen crossing my body. </span><br /><span></span><br /><span>And that crossing made my thoughts meddle. As a result of my last post I got answers that made me think about that hand shake over my body. A Brazilian friend of mine who comes from an elite in Brasil told me she thought I was looking the world through an Western European academic point of view where labels mattered. She thought in Brazil that was not the case.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>I argued that maybe not to us because we had been blind by being always part of a Brazilian elite. We had never had to think about whether their was any consequence being what we were, but that was not true for all Brazilians. it was a consequence of being an elite. I agreed with her that studying in The western world had probably modified me, but I often think it is more in the sense that I am capable to see these labels now, not that I create and impose them. I could, of course, be wrong </span><br /><span></span><br /><span>Then I received a message from another Brazilian friend who thanked me for writing the last post. She told me she understood it well as she was Lebanese descendent in both sides.</span><br /><span></span><br /><span>As I sat under this crossing of hands I thought about it. There was some sense of acknowledgement of difference and acceptance to it at the same time. But there was this huge silence just before and though and I wondered why I felt no fear. I realise a part of it is due to me being Me (.always trusting...) But the other huge came from me being Brazilian. And on that case, like in most others in my life, It meant nothing. Not nothing as in a pejorative sense but in the great sense of all, the one of being allowed to let people be empirical as the national label you carry is in this case quite politically neutral.</span><br /><span></span><br />I sat in between a Muslim Moroccan who did not com from a Moroccan elite, and an Israeli Jewish brilliant jazz piano player. And I realised that silence I did not fear carried with it a million of possible old as time prejudices. And when the smile and handshake came I thanked the music. I thanked the shared time we had all spent before we identified our labels. And then listening to the Ethiopian song in the background I thought of the thousands of years of human history that started my conversation wi both Assab and Yonathan. In these thousand of years humans have always been trying to reconcile this desire to be particular and cherish their own kind while at the same time encountering others. It is so good when both happen simultaneously in music. Even better if you are by the Seine and the moon is full.</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-92042687051106622332012-06-22T06:37:00.001-07:002012-06-22T06:41:00.196-07:00Tales of Inequality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">We seat around the table. We are upper class in Brasil. Claudia, the maid, serves us. My grandmother is 87 and seats next to me. My aunt and cousin seat across the table. It is a huge apartment. There is one dinning room which is used only for meals. When lunch is served we are invited to come in. My aunt, when she is in town, wakes up very early. She listens to all of the stories Claudia has to tell. Claudia came from the northeast of Brasil as I have once explained. She always smiles. Sometimes she has tears in her eyes but she still smiles. Her life should be written down by a real writer. I am no writer, so I write about lunch.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">We seat. She serves us. Her phone rings. It sometimes scares her as it vibrates loudly inside of her pocket. She has two children she has finally managed to bring from the northeast to live with her in Sao Paulo. She lives in my grandmother's house. They lived till last week somewhere else in a poor and far away neighbourhood of Sao Paulo. Jessica, the 17 year old daughter has a boyfriend who also lives with her and her 12 year old brother Jemerson. Sometimes the police comes to the house because neighbours think Jessica is being abused by her boyfriend. It turns out that she hits him. Jessica calls daily to ask Claudia for money. Now they had a fight. The phonecalls scare Claudia because they are usually violent calls. Violent in that they are always related to some aporetic situation.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">Claudia tells me Jessica had been very offensive and that Claudia had hit her. I am shocked. I attempt something simultaneously silly and fundamental. It is something I really believe but saying it out loud while I am being served simply feels completely wrong. I explain disturbed that violence breeds more violence. I say it wondering what on earth I even mean by that. I say that under no circumstance a person should hit another. Claudia explains me she had lost her temper. I say it and I believe it though while I am being served, while posing the silver knife in some artifact also made of silver which is called in Portuguese "a rester" it feels idiotic. A silver knife rest in a silver "rester', I seat being served in a dinning room while Claudia, a poor lady, who like many other northeasterners who had left it all for a dream of a better life serves me and my family. What do I even mean by violence? She explains that Jessica had now abandoned the brother and left with the boyfriend taking with her all the furniture her mother had bought for this far away shack they were living in. So now the brother, Jemerson, lives in the centre of Sao Paulo, in some equally crappy place with an uncle that he barely knows and he visits Claudia in the afternoons. My grandmother suggests that he should come visiting during lunch time, so that he could eat. Claudia with so little is moved.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">Jemerson also gets into to troubles in school all of the time. He beats his younger classmates because they make fun of him because he is older.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">Claudia works like crazy. Every night she parties. And she studies to become a hairdresser. And she dates complicated guys that come from economically underdeveloped countries in Latin America and in Africa. Men who came to Brazil also looking for a better life. She never really knows which language they speak. They never really call her back.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">I ask her how many siblings she had? It is complicated. Her mother had so many children she once explained. For every new partner her mother had she named the children of that man with the same first letter so she would remember who the father was. Sandro, Sueli, Sonia etc. My aunt knows many names. Many died. My aunt knows most of these stories as they are told to her during breakfast. I am never awake that early and I never really know how to react to them. In fact none of us do. We just hear.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">Claudia tells the story of her sister Monica who died because of the flood.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">They were all sleeping in a room and the flood came. The mother was sleeping and the young Monica could not wake her up in time so she was taken away by the flood. Claudia has tears in her eyes. Then she says.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">"My mother is crazy. She had sooooo many children. Once we killed one."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">We don't say anything. I am first appalled. I dont even know what this could possibly mean. She says something else. Then I ask details. I am speechless. the story is so unclear. It is also told in a mixture of incoherence and different words we from upper class sao paulo dont know.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">"She left us taking care. We were little too. We gave her baby food. She had "ventre caido" (fallen womb)."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">It is not the first time the ladies from the northeast of Brasil who work in my grandmothers house refer to that. I never understood what on earth it meant. It seemed to change meanings depending on the story. It seems to be used for something that kills and cant really be explained.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">I ask what does it mean in this context.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">"we gave her to much baby food?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">My aunt asks whether the baby had chocked and she says that yes.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">The story is so surreal. We seat being served in some fancy building in Sao Paulo listening to that. This story different than so many others does not bring tears to Claudia s eyes. It leaves me and my aunt so speechless that it takes us hours and in fact even days to talk about what it really meant.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">And what it really means, is that incredibly painful fact that we often try to hide. That inequality whatever form it is, leads us all to accept that some lives are worth more than others.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">But it is lunch time. And we don't touch this. We drink our coffee which Claudia says laughing that it tastes like medicine. It was gift from a friend to me. It is expensive coffee with cardamon. I drink it and I try to push the whole thought aside of my mind as I have done it in so many other places of the world.</span>
</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-27555577336301518102012-05-20T15:20:00.000-07:002012-05-20T15:20:08.585-07:00The Diary of The Unsaid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I should have flown to India. Instead I bought a diary. I called it the Diary of the Unsaid. I now seat in a recently discovered cafe in Sao Paulo. It is now my favourite place here. I discovered it because of the Diary of The Unsaid.</div>
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I seat alone with a crazy idea on my mind, confronted with all its implications.</div>
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What is the Idea? It is a modern version of a message inside of the bottle that crossed the world to enlighten someone. The modern version, my modern version, is a Diary. I call it the Diary of the Unsaid. The objective (the initial one at least) is to have a secret message arrive in a secret destination, to a secret receiver. The message is something I had left unsaid. Instead of letting it float I decided to trust the people I connect the most to: travellers!</div>
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Would it be possible to have a diary passing hand in hand all the way across the world? I chose for a Diary because I wanted that the travellers who would volunteer to carry it around the world could also be able to write themselves a message they had left unsaid to someone important to them.</div>
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I then created a blog <a href="http://thediaryoftheunsaid.wordpress.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://thediaryoftheunsaid.<wbr></wbr>wordpress.com/</a></div>
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and asked in the diary for people to send me an e-mail with the story of how it was that the Diary came to them. They should write their unsaid message on the diary and they could also write their unsaid message to me if they wanted me to post a letter to the person.</div>
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And now it is all ready. In about three days I wrote it all. I got lots of friends excited about the idea. And now, I seat again on the newly discovered cafe waiting for the first carrier to arrive. I wait for him knowing fully well it is him. What a great feeling that is!</div>
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Life is quite ironic. Once I told my friends about it I had very mixed responses. Ivana who is a psychologist said " Julieta but do you understand you have only the power to choose the first person? Once it leaves your hand you have to trust others. I know you are a control freak so that is going to be very good for you".</div>
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I barely slept that night thinking about this. It is true, I realized, I have but the power to choose the first person. And then when I had finally come into terms with that I decided it was time for me to find the right person. I knew it had to be a traveler. I am a traveler, I recognise them, but not here in my own town. Here I had no idea where to find them.</div>
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So I let destiny take me. I drove my car aimlessly and stopped in a trendy street. I entered a hostel and looked at total strangers realizing it immediately that it could not be them. I felt totally powerless. How could I find the right person?</div>
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And then I found this beautiful cafe. “La da Venda” it is called. It means from the store. It is a lovely cafe/old store themed place. I sat and told the story to the lady who worked there. She sympathized with the idea and said that maybe I could find someone here.</div>
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I turned on my Ipad to write and suddenly an Israeli friend of mine came online to tell me I was going about it totally the wrong way. I could not search for the right person. He asked me why did I not go there and deliver the message myself, why did I not say it to the person? And I explained to him what I had realised while writing the Diary. I did not simply want my message to be delivered. I wanted to connect to a sense of serendipity, a sense of fate. I wanted for the message to arrive through the blessings of the people I connect most to: travellers. And so he completed, “then you must wait for the traveler to find you!”</div>
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It was a poignant moment to be seating in the most bucolic place ever and to realise the irony. I did not even have the power to choose the first carrier. My power relied on recognizing the carrier for its specialness. Retrospectively, I knew exactly who they could have been in the past. It could have been Michal, Sara, Vesna, Francis, Caue, Fred, Nick. It could have been so many people I encountered. I would have recognized them.</div>
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What my friend statement seemed to imply was that not only I could not control things, but that I needed to do what I am the most disastrous at doing: I needed to be patient! </div>
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I drank my last sip of coffee, looked around at the white wall, which is filled with green vases; I looked up at the blue sky, down to the pebbled ground. I looked at all the colours in the little cafe and felt if nothing else the diary had already given me a lot. It had given me a place in Sao Paulo!</div>
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I then drove home knowing it would probably take time till I would encounter the right person.</div>
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The irony of life never seizes to amaze me..... As I reached home I got a message from Ilan. </div>
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When I lived in Nong Khai I became close friends with a Brazilian couple who were finishing a one year trip around the world. It was somehow rare to find Brazilians in the hidden places I go to. They came and I just wanted them never to stay forever.They had to leave, and were going to meet Ilan in Laos. They told me then that I should meet him since he was such a great guy.</div>
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I broke my foot in Thailand and came back to Brazil. One day out of the blue Ilan sent me a message saying that considering we had so many friends in common and that we had lived and had travelled so many similar places he thought we should meet. I replied jokingly that I d become friends with any Brazilian who knew that Laos existed.</div>
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And so when he randomly wrote me just as I had stopped searching for the right carrier I knew in my whole body it was him. I asked him if he wanted to be the carrier, and even before I explained anything he said yes!</div>
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And then, he had a million ideas. He was excited. He called it “our” diary. <span> </span>He said it was “A treasure”. He wanted to write a book about. All that dismay feeling I had disappeared. What an illusion power and control are. The greatest gift that this diary has already shown me is that if we let it go a bit we can be witness of the mystery of the universe.</div>
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I seat here under a blue sky. I am back at La da Venda. Where else could I pass on my diary? Where else could the diary seize to be mine to be freed to do whatever is intended for?</div>
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In the mood of recognizing synchronicity everywhere I received an e-mail from the great jazz pianist Yonathan Avishai. We had spoken of this feeling of connection. We spoke of music. Now as I am about to let my words fly out there, I feel like a musician whose music transforms, and is transformed in the path. I remember again that cry of the of Rajasthan, I remember the klezmer. I remember that nothing is ours, but temporarily in our company. I am about to let go of the Diary of the Unsaid and I feel great joy.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigYYEu9YTYjhv5Ee3cp5o-Aq76zeGzAsWS62ZKTllSM8yJRNHprdTjilGKgbsQYaldC6eNQat5wohjaH9s2mrb8eUtmp7Lx1I49d9tDfuiOzaxUWyOmnqc-B5Mr9pmiSvz2DwFMPCYIBs/s1600/Ilan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigYYEu9YTYjhv5Ee3cp5o-Aq76zeGzAsWS62ZKTllSM8yJRNHprdTjilGKgbsQYaldC6eNQat5wohjaH9s2mrb8eUtmp7Lx1I49d9tDfuiOzaxUWyOmnqc-B5Mr9pmiSvz2DwFMPCYIBs/s320/Ilan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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6 hours later. We drank teas and coffees, we travelled through distant lands. We recognized a million synchronicities. The weather changed. And I let the Diary go… I feel a bit of hesitancy, a bit of fear, but yes, I feel great joy.</div>
</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-31253695362530743492012-05-20T15:17:00.002-07:002012-05-20T15:17:50.085-07:00A Wondering Soul<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I have not been writing that much. It always happens when I am quite uncertain. Which is often :) I am about to start a road trip with my brother in Brazil. My brother and I, even though we come from the same family, are incredibly different. He works crazy hours for the financial market, I travel. We have not lived in the same country for almost 15 years. We were always somehow in different places. It only happens for us to spend time together ( lately ) when he changes jobs. Last time he came to Europe, and I felt I was actually meeting him for the first time.<br /><br /><br /><br />I shamefully confess, I knew little of what my brother thought, and never did I imagine in my wildest dreams he was so intelligent. Capable of always pining down a flaw in an argument in a second even if he had never heard any of that stuff before. I took him everywhere I thought was interesting. And he tried his hardest to hear the stories of anthropologist, philosophers, scientists, and artist, but as he left me he confessed, though it had been an incredible experience, and though he thought the people he met worked incredibly hard to live what he considered “ economically difficult lives”, he could not wait to go back to work, and to go back to his comfortable life. I understood it. It was a nice time, but it had to end.<br /><br /><br /><br />Now, he has changed jobs again to do something more important in some new important place in his world. And he has one week to travel. In his life, that is a lot. And so we decided on the spur of the moment to go somewhere together on a road trip. Could we even manage to accommodate both of our personalities in a road trip? Who knows, but I am looking incredibly forward to it as I wait for him to appear here in a second having signed up all papers he had to do before we go.<br /><br /><br /><br />It is a road trip. And that is already me...It is in a fancy car, in Hotels and that is him :)<br /><br /><br /><br />I spent this weekend listening to music. Music that spoke directly to my soul. In Sao Paulo some years ago started something called the “Virada Cultural”. It is 24 hours of music and art, and cultural events all over the city. For twenty-four hours people gather all over the city to do different things. It is an 18 million people place, a violent city, In that one night people go by tube (which works that day 24 hours )to places they usually don’t. Economically underprivileged citizens can afford to go to the expensive theatres they usually cant, rich kids go downtown to spend the night in the middle of all they usually don’t see.<br /><br /><br /><br />I had never been in Brasil for a Virada Cultural. And I absolutely loved it. Though I confess I ended up joining before the virada ( which is only Saturday to Sunday) on Thursday to take part on a program called “music connections” organised by the Pianist Benjamin Taubkin. The project brought together Israeli and Brazilian musicians. For 5 days I spent time with these people which led me to feel again that I have such a strange connection to music, the middle east, and a wondering soul.<br /><br /><br />As I sat on the first night in the theatre inside of the cultural Jewish Centre I started my internal travel. It actually started when I entered the building and had to scan my things in a metal detector. It felt like I was in Israel. But back to the Music. I sat. And suddenly came together on stage Brazilian- out -of –this- world percussionists who played from traditional percussion instruments to pans and plates, with Israeli Talmudi brothers (Accordion, Sax and Clarinet) and Brazlian Tuba, Trumpet and trombone players. As I sat there and the Clarinet screamed I could see in my mind the Rajasthani musician singing the Kabelya gipsy cry. The joy and the wondering pain that comes with a wondering soul was there. I traveled in my mind from India all the way to Brazil. I saw Kashmir, Rajasthan, Mc Leod, Israel, Palestine, passing thought the Balkans, Turkey to arrive in northeast Brazil. What is it about music?<br /><br /><br /><br />The following nights of jam sessions and concerts were stronger and stronger. Seeing the musicians who come from different worlds getting so excited, so moved recognising rhythms and melodies in music that apparently comes from another world was breathtaking. It becomes so evident this humanity that connects us all.<br /><br /><br /><br />I sat there feeling home. In that essence. In that music. I was so moved that I wondered whether I was a Gipsy, or a Diaspora lost Jewish woman. I felt so at ease again in just being. I felt so thankful for these musicians. I then joined the Virada cultural in an unexpected concert at 6 am. In the centre with people of different social classes, listening to Beatles in the rhythm of Samba!<br /><br /><br /><br />It ended last night for me in Jazz. I was back to New York for a while. The jazz pianist Yonathan Avishai played with a Joata, a Northeastern Trumpet player from Brazil. And then in the end back were the Talmudi brothers to end it all up in a celebration of diversity and similarity.<br /><br /><br /><br />Yonathan told me he was moved. He had not been used to exchanging so much. Usually he just goes for a while to play but spending so many days exchanging had been amazing. I knew all too well what he meant.<br /><br /><br /><br />Reacquiring my gypsy soul I made peace with myself. It is time to go. I am going on a road trip with my brother, and then I ll follow the cry from Rajasthan, the trumpet from Klezmer. Yes, I guess I have not written before because I was postponing confessing I am going back to the Road. And I am not sure where it will take me.<br /></span></div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-14062563181594813932012-04-02T13:02:00.001-07:002012-04-03T07:13:19.690-07:00Brasilia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, which was built from nothing in the end of the 50's and "opened" in the 60's. I had never been here before. Gabi, my friend who studied with me at the Lse, seats next to me, she is writing a report. People around us study to pass the exams to get a governmental career. It is one that pays well, and is stable. it is one that non public workers usually condemn.<br />
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Brasilia is a strange place. Wide open, full of concrete, green, disconnected. It feels to me to reside stereotypically in the Autism spectrum. It is mechanic, functional, and deprived of "theory of mind". People are not seen walking in streets and to go anywhere it seems to take ages inside of a car in endless roads. There seems to be not that many corners, to change sides I feel we are always taking rounds and crossing under roads. It is like people don't cross each other, they go round.<br />
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I am no specialist in architecture and I am not a visual person so all I feel here is the absence of emotion in the streets. It looks soviet. I wonder what would my dear friend Michele say seeing all of this. I actually wonder whether he has ever been here when in Brasil. When I was in Rome he had the brilliancy of inventing a way to tell me about architecture. He told me (invented) stories of the people behind the buildings he showed me. He realised within minutes I would never be able to focus that much in architecture alone, so he adapted and brought people into it, he brought stories. And in Rome architecture is so full of life that it was probably not a difficult task. Mic what would you say here? I keep wondering...<br />
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Most people would conclude from these lines that I am therefore not liking Brasilia. That is actually not really accurate at all! I probably would have not liked had I not known Gabi... but Gabi took me to Beto, and he played the bass, and Beto took me to Oswaldo, and then they took me to a house party. Oh, yes apparently people are bored here with their bars and so they have house parties where everybody knows everybody.<br />
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Brasilienses are a new people. They are the children of people who came from everywhere in Brasil to live in a constructed city in the middle of nowhere.<br />
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I look around and I see people who study. They want stability. As Gabi puts it "they want no challenges after the exam". But Gabi is not like that, nor is Felipe, nor is Beto. I guess here in Brasilia inbetweeners and rooted are more seeable than most people in other places. The stability that seems to have been so inorganically built attracts some. It also drives others out. others that come back and no not how to adapt.<br />
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And Brasilia is surrounded by a world of esotericism I am yet to discover. So many cults, and groups and villages. It seems truly like polar manifestations. Brasilia feels concrete, these villages sound non material. In the houses of the people I met here I feel warmth. The time, thanks goodness, passes slower than in Sao Paulo.</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-1894216572177784472012-03-28T08:01:00.001-07:002012-03-28T08:01:09.991-07:00Jardim Horizonte Azul<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today I am going back to the slum. I have been postponing
writing properly about the organization where I spent one week because I want
to be the most accurate on the information as possible. As time goes by however,
I loose the accuracy of feelings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this
weekend as I spent the days in a mountainous region around Sao Paulo, with
people who rock climb I was given back both the feeling of encountering within,
and new possibilities of movements in my foot.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I stood there night and day far from the constructions of
the city watching the sun set with even more colours then in the Mekong. What
is about the sunset and me? When it starts, and I feel a relief for the day
being swallowed by the night I always become static. It is not any sunset that
does this to me. It happens only with the ones that take time, the ones where the
disappearance of the sun is in fact but the beginning of it. The festival of
colours then seems to never stop. It is never just a fast transition between
night and day. It is a whole journey that seems to pass through infinity of
colours that never repeat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I sat there watching the night little by little swallow the
day. Watching every single star show up for work. The moon smiled gently there
in the horizon just a bit above the mountains. And as I looked at the moon I
remembered the joy I felt in this institution in the slums of Sao Paulo.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I left you last time in the buses. And so it is that as I
walked out from the last bus, I had to walk up a street to find the Associacao
Jardim Horizonte Azul. It was not too hard to find it I had to just follow the
sounds of happiness. The gate opened into a large green area with little houses
built simply but full of colours. Inside, and I could see from outside children
laughed and ran and played. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I went in everyone in my path greeted me. “ Are you a
foreigner?”. Or are you here with the school? Probably both, probably none I
thought to myself. “I am looking for Joana.” “Oh, you are looking for the
teacher? She is always everywhere.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Joana is my aunt, and what an exceptional woman she is! I
always knew that but spending this week with her and her 12<sup>th</sup> grade
class there made me realize it even more strongly. She takes her year 12<sup>th</sup>
of middle upper class students to spend a week volunteering in this association.
She is not only a teacher. She is their council, and friend, and idol. It is
not because she is perfect. Not at all, it is simply because she has taught
them as she has always taught me that we must embrace our vulnerability. Accept
the possibilities of our behavior and never compare ourselves to others,
neither to feel better, nor worse. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A week in an Association in a very poor area of our city
trashes all of our conceptions. It is hard for me who have been working on it
for years for those 17 years old full of doubts, and dreams it is mindboggling.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why should I be talking about them and not the association
is the question in my mind. Well, it is because it was through them that I
discover the work of the Association. This 17-year-old boys and girls worked
everyday from 7 to 4 in a range of activities. We painted houses to make them
more colorful for all of us, we worked in the vegetable garden to have real
food, organically grown for the children, we worked in the kitchen making
breakfast and lunch that would pass any considerations of Jamie Oliver. We
helped the workers in the nurseries, and in the classes from babies to 17 year
old. We worked on crafting and of course through all this work we met the
community and each other.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every night my aunt made the class seat in the room we all
slept to tell their day. It was a written journal. It was moving beyond belief
to hear these sheltered kids tell of the tiredness, joy, and difficulties
during the day. It was wonderful to be able to share with them what happened
and together discover parts of the place we could not have seen on our own.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I spent lots of time in the kitchen. Anyone who knows me well
knows how truly remarkable that is. I don’t really cook. I like kitchen tales
though. And Silvana the lady who lives there in the community and works in this
kitchen for years feeds not only people’s body but also their souls. She was
patient to have us there I d imagine probably making it all slower. She always
smiled saying we were helping. And as we cooked, and cut and talked the
children from the Association would stop in front of us on the open kitchen window
to talk to the ladies and men who worked there. From little children to 17 year
old they all came after having left their school.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These are the lucky ones, who have gotten a place in the
Associaiton. It takes about 2 years for them to be able to get in. Not enough
place, nor money for everything. They never want to leave there. It is
incredible. I feel like it does not matter how much I write I will not be able
to convey the importance of this work. When these 17 years old are there
learning music, planting, playing, wood work they are not in the streets
falling prey to drugs. When these children come it might be the first time they
ever have fruit in their lives. When their mothers start to participate in the
project they learn how to keep breastfeeding longer, how to raise their
children in a healthier way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This became clear to me when I visited the UBS ( Basic Unit
of Health) in the area. This organization is so respected that the government
of Sao Paulo put them in charge of taking care of 14 UBS. I went for a visit
and by chance arrived on a day where mothers with babies of the slums, and neighborhood
around where there for a talk. I was quite moved to see how clean and spotless
was the place. There was even a garden built with money of the workers to make
the place nicer. I sat in the meeting and saw the lady of the Institution I was
coming from invite these mothers to join them in the Institute for a weekly
conversation on motherhood.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“All of us have something to learn”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She put it nicely. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the group were two ladies who had been part of the
program (which for lack of money is now closed) “Dear Mom”. The program took 40
pregnant women and taught them about being mothers. It paid them about 150
dollars a month in order to keep them from working for 6 months so they could
stay home and breastfeed, and take care of their babies. In this meeting there
were two ladies who had been part of the group before. They immediately said
they would come for the weekly meetings, and praised how much that project had
made the development of their children better.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Later on, I sat with the nurse watching the procedure with
babies of the community. Apparently, mothers should bring their babies every
month to check if all is ok. I watched lots of mother come in. The nurse always
asked them what they were feeding the babies, and about their general
development. I could see empirically how the program “Dear Mom” worked. All
other mothers except from the ones who had taken part on the program had babies
that were less developed. The mothers who had been to the program not only were
more articulated, but fed their children fruits, and vegetables, had breastfed
them for a longer time, and did not use walkers, nor baby bottles, nor
pacifiers. They also had adopted Steiner philosophy for toys, preferring wood
and invented ones, to plastic ones bought in a store.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was moved beyond belief. So much of my own (hidden)
prejudices being trashed there. The idea that nothing works in Brasil, the idea
that poor people don’t care, don’t know, the idea that little interventions in
a sea of disparity does not make a difference. There I watched people from the
community working hard as hell in maintaining something they could see (just as
I could) made their lives better.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How many times did I hear from the workers that if the money
was to finish they would have to work somewhere else but would come to
volunteer there. It is not an aseptic place. It is full of emotions. Sometimes 17-year-old
stop in front of the kitchen to tell something awful they did in the school.
The ladies in the kitchen give advice. Sometimes 7 years old stop in front of
the main office. The coordinator asks “ Do you need something”. The child says
no. “Oh. I know what it is. Do you want a hug? I want a hug!” And so defying
all laws in the developing world these workers hug and children and adults feel
happier and continue their day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is what it is. This association is a place that not
only brings food, medical care, and activities for these communities. But it
actually turns them into a community where people realize how important they
are for each other’s lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a
place of tolerance to diversity, of craving for knowledge, of the possibility
of art and holistic approach to living. But above all, it is a place that
teaches what my aunt has taught her students and me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
must embrace our vulnerability. Accept the possibilities of our behavior and
never compare us to others, neither to feel better, nor worse. Only in the
limits of our development can we truly encounter others. We have to be honest
about that. In doing so we transpose our own limitations. This would become
even more clearer later on the night of poetry, and on the farewell day where
12<sup>th</sup> graders from upper class Sao Paulo where put to exchange openly
with the 15-17 year old kids from the area their perceptions of each other. There
all of our limitations and prejudices would be spoken out loud. I felt like in
an encounter of Israeli and Palestinian. I was somehow shocked to notice how
deluded we are in Brasil to ignore the fact that this is just as much an
apartheid state. But I guess I will have to write about this later. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-35704423220141008782012-03-17T16:26:00.001-07:002012-03-17T16:26:18.911-07:00The Slums, and the border of within<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">People were always intrigued that I was never afraid of crossing borders to arrive in places that most people do not go to. It is true that when I crossed the wall to stay in the houses of strangers in Palestine I was slightly scared, or that when I visited Bolivia on my own I was at first apprehensive, or that when I decided to celebrate Ramadan in Kashmir (against all advices) I had a small hesitation. But never did I actually believe it was difficult to get to those places. I took all forms of transportation to arrive in the last village in Nubra Valley and climbed a rocky mountain, which was a few km from Pakistan without thinking it was far. I always ignored these voices of hesitation because I wanted to meet the other. As I have often put it: I wanted to hear those who have no voice.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">So when my aunt, who teaches in a Waldorf school, invited me to spend one week volunteering in an association in one of Sao Paulo’s slums I was quite intrigued to realised I thought it was so difficult to get there. I did not really research the association I just asked her where it was. And my first thought was that it was too hard to get there, too far, too dangerous. I did not voice the thought, out of shame, but the truth is that my first impulse was of ‘impossibility”. <span> </span>It is just out of the question to go there, I thought. This thought brought me immediately the question: How could it be that I who cross all kinds of borders. I who fly for days, and take several times buses for dozen of hours, and ricksaws, and tuk tuks, and boats, and shikaras in countries I often know no one nor speak the language found it sooo hard to take 3 buses to get to a slum in my own city of Sao Paulo?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">It is because going to the slum in Sao Paulo involves crossing the borders of within. And those are way harder to cross. The return to my own country allows me to finally hear all of those who have no voice next to me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">It is also not without reason that I was apprehensive. As I talked to my Israeli friend who was talking on the Gaza situation I decided to research the statistics of homicides in the area of the association I was going to go to. In one of the neighbourhoods I was passing by only in one year (a bad one) 1777 people were killed. We are talking of one neighbourhood that houses 300 thousand people!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">But so it is that puzzled by my own prejudices I decided to put my back on my back, retrieve my adventurer soul, a bit left aside since I arrived here, to cross all the borders of my own prejudices.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I took the first bus seeing things that were at first familiar. I drove it till the last point by that time not recognizing anything else anymore. On this bus alone it took me 1,5 hours. As I took this bus I kept thinking of the thousand (or maybe millions) of workers who take this journey (that only one part took me over one hour) every single day. <span> </span>The second bus in another hour was going to take me to Jardim Angela the neighbourhood, which was considered in 2001 by Unesco as one of the most violent places in the world. It was truly like being in a different country for me. I knew nothing around and when I finally took the third bus with my backpack on my back intrigued to see how green this area was I was asked whether I was a foreigner.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I was puzzled. Has the time I have spent abroad changed me so much? And pondering about it I remembered that when I visited the neighbourhood where many illegal African immigrants live in Tel Aviv (which is so feared and avoided by my Israeli friends) people often started conversations immediately in English. I am usually taken for being Israeli in Israel and all over the world, but in that neighbourhood they never thought I was. It puzzled me then, like it puzzled me here.<span> </span>But I came to realise that that assumption had to do more with my attitude then with my looks. The truth is that the only volunteers, or people who were not from this poor neighbourhoods that went there were foreigners. This conclusion brought me another insight. Maybe it is because for all of us it is easier to help where we “know” of the less the context. It is probably easier to be empirical where our societies have not tainted us by prejudice of so called “factual information.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">People looking like me in the slum are foreigners. They, probably like me, are not capable to cross the borders of within in their own countries so they take buses and planes and do it somewhere else. And quite honestly it does not matter to me where we help and encounter the other. It is the fact that we do that matters. It is in going to those places that we might start to learn to challenge our own prejudices which are always there does not matter what we do or where we come from.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">And so it is that I arrived. I arrived in the Jardim Horizonte Azul. I arrived in an association that did far more than my wildest dreams. An association created by a German woman in the end of the 70’s. The work of this lady has transformed the lives of babies, children, adults, and the physical structure of three very poor areas in Sao Paulo. I in crossing the borders of within have been able to finally see what I always knew from the world. It does not matter where we are, we are always so alike.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span lang="EN-GB">It was an intense week. And I want to write properly about it. I want to write about the different experiences I had. But I will do it in parts. So first I will start here. Where it started for me. It started on the simple but incredibly hard first step. It commenced on the internal one, on the decision to go where you learned never to go to, nor to see.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span lang="EN-GB">On the way there, on the first bus, I stood next to an old lady. She had a perfect posture that was not destroyed by the years, nor the hard work I could see marked by the lines in her face. I hesitated on whether to tell her about it or not. She did not look particularly happy, nor did she look sad… It was just a resignation of someone who takes probably many buses to go to work everyday. I thought she looked so beautiful, in her flawless posture, in her austere presence. And I wanted to tell her about it.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">So I did. She was touched. And decided to tell me her life. She told me she was 78. And then she told she came from the slums from a very poor family and that she had been the first black woman in one of Sao Paulo’s prestigious Universities. She had studied pedagogy. She had worked very hard in being the best student there. She told me she had studied to prove the world, and herself that the colour<span> </span>of a person skin does not matter. I heard her quite moved. <span> </span>And pondered about our country that prides itself of having no racism. I heard the woman in a mixture of admiration and sadness. I admired her austerity and strength but was sad that somehow she had needed to fight so hard against racism. I also felt uncomfortable that she searched in me some sort of validation. Then I realised I also searched in her, and in our conversation a validation. I expected in our brief encounter to erase the centuries of separations between classes, which in Brasil is highly correlated with colour. I was also searching for some kind of redemption.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I had no idea on that bus how much I would understand that better on the days to follow. How much I would understand how the capital culture, as Bourdieu puts, it is used to reinforce social distinctions. I never imagined how much of our relationships would be coloured by these distinctions. I never knew on that moment how much of my prejudices I believed not to have would be massacred listening to the poetry night in the slums. So I can’t let you know in one go. It takes time to discover the association, their work, the people, the art, the boundaries, the social and physical structure of the poor suburbs of Sao Paulo.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">On that bus I carried my backpack as a foreigner. Because yes, that is what I am. A stranger. A stranger who is always searching for connection. We all are. On that bus I started to cross the frontiers of within. And I invite you all to do it. To help, to see those we have heard are so different than us. If you still can’t do it next door go far away. But go because we cannot afford to just stay still watching TV and reconfirming our untested judgments. I invite you to learn more about this world I have discovered this week. A world that was always there, next to me, a world which inhabitants work on our houses in the centre, our bars and restaurants, beauty parlours, stores, buses, subways, constructions, supermarkets etc. I invite you to learn about what happens to their children when they take every single day this journey, I thought it was impossible, to come here and work on this side.</span></div>
</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-44717234777110912932012-02-27T10:14:00.000-08:002012-02-27T11:58:01.401-08:00Carnival and the Ephemeral Identity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It is incredibly hard to decide what to write about from Rio. The days have been blue, the sun has never left the sky, and carnival has been carnival. I have reencountered friends I met when studying in Brasil 12 years ago, in NY 11 years ago, in England a few years ago, and even travellers I crossed Kashmir with last year. I have made a great new friend. A gorgeous Iraqi English woman. Of the strange things that happen to me. In one day I am partying with a broken foot in the street carnival with a Bahraini girl, and of the other I meet an Iraqi in Brazil.</div>
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There is something that makes me feel at ease with these gorgeous and complex women of the Orient. They have identities that are so complex. I myself feel a little bit divided in this mosaic of identities. So I lay in Bikini in Ipanema, admiring the gorgeous people around but hoping for Sara to arrive since I know she will understand this multiplicity I have inside.</div>
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We will inevitably talk about the world. About emotions. About our experiences in Israel and Palestine. We will laugh and be intrigued by it all. Like foreigners who have crossed too many borders we will feel no belonging to a specific identity, while at the same time feeling a bit of them all. We will feel just like human beings, we will find familiar and strange things here together. Oh yes, it is true, I forgot, but this my country, I should somehow be an expert on it. I am not. In fact, I am not at all.</div>
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I walk around the Carnival in the street with my broken foot. The street is packed. There is music, there is joy. I have no phone. I search the purple hat of yet another friend. People are surprised I am alone. Boys and men offer kisses, marriage proposals, unforgettable nights, smiles, and when I explain I have just come back from another world that I do not want to waste their time of Carnival to my surprise they offer help.</div>
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The thing is that Carnival is a time, an ephemeral possibility of it all. It is a time in Brasil where people party in spite of it all. And in Brasil partying is incredibly related to sexuality. The Bahraini girl is shocked and marvelled by some gorgeous Carioca ( native of Rio) who just out of the blue kisses her. I am Brazilian and I am shocked too. So I explain as I walk around to these beautiful guys that they should not waste their breath on me, I am here on a mission, I am searching for a friend.</div>
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To my surprise my apparent lack of desire to engage sexually, but still engage humanly puzzles these boys. They then want to know where I come from, who am I, about Buddhism, and the East, do I need help? It is almost like once I just talk plain normally they feel they must take care of me in a non sexual way. It is funny. I have many conversations which are not typical at all. It somehow feels like anywhere else in the world.</div>
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There is one part of me that loves this joy, this easiness of it all. People look at my broken foot and congratulate me on not letting it stop me from partying. I love the fact that everybody talks to everybody. Another part of me feels incredibly lonely. I have yet another conversation with yet another stranger and he tells me of a poetry book called " distracted we will win". I who always feel we can either in life use things to distract ourselves from ourselves, or encounter ourselves and the others feel very puzzled.</div>
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I just can't, and do not know how to do it. I love the joy. But if I am distracted I am not fully present I therefore cannot feel it. The stranger then explains to me that he sees "distraction" as a way of stopping the mind. A way of just being in the body. I am completely puzzled. That sounds Buddhist to me. Stop the mind, being present. But how can he call this being distracted? I walk a bit more till some other stranger seats next to me. </div>
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I am tired I seat on the stairs. I need a rest and I decide to just look at the parade in front of me. This new stranger has melancholic eyes. She offers me a smile, candy, and many words. </div>
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I seat observing this human manifestation. I feel happy. I feel puzzled. I feel intrigued by how much Brazilians touch each other. Sara is Iraqi and having spent one carnival night in rio while the rest in Bahia feels this carnival is quite moderate. Almost European.</div>
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As she says that I laugh. I remember meeting in Rome my Italian friend who lives in Palestine and who in Rome was now shocked at the clothes of Italian girls. </div>
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This multiplicity of identities is woven in such an intricate way that I need as much touch as a Brazilian when I am in Europe, I need to feel it viscerally like they feel in the middle east when I am in South East Asia, and I need to be present in a Buddhist way in the Middle East. In Brasil now, I feel I need space like they have in Thailand. I suddenly realise that the fabric of a traveller's identity is not only complex but it is circumstantial. I am suddenly in Brasil and I feel home with a Middle Eastern. But certainly in the Middle East I would be listening to samba.</div>
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</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-75203710207569524452012-02-27T10:13:00.000-08:002012-02-27T10:13:13.378-08:00Kitchen Tales in Brasil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In Brazil it is said that nothing starts before Carnival. It actually means that when millions of people go down to the coastline of Brazil to celebrate New Year's eve dressed in white and jumping waves (it is summer in Brazil) in a celebration of Brazilian syncretism that mixes African and European traditions we do not really celebrate the new year. We celebrate this interim period we know will last until the year really starts after Carnival. Everything between the 1st of January and Ash Wednesday is not really that serious. Well, one could argue nothing is ever that serious in Brazil. In some corners the preparation for carnival starts as soon as carnival is over.</span><br />
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It has been 11 years I have not been in Brazil for carnival. And had I not broken a foot I would not be here this year either. But I am and in a broken foot I decided to behave in a Carnival way. I decided to live my fantasies for a brief period when all is possible. I decided to go back to Rio, which is known by the Carioca ( people born in Rio), as the cidade maravilhosa ( the wonderful city).</div>
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Rio is without a question beautiful to the point of taking your breath away. Every single time I go to Rio I am flabergasted. I do understand every single time why it is that Cariocas have a tougher time living abroad then we Paulistas ( people who come from Sao Paulo) do. In all inequality that Brasil is, Rio's beaches are democratic spaces, the bars where the traditional Samba is played is a democratic place where young and old, rich and poor gather to sing and play music. Yes I love Rio. It is usually there, in this little bars, with owners who tell the clients to shut up to hear the music that I feel more Brazilian. Usually I feel adrift wherever it is that I am.</div>
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Oh, the contradictions of me and Brasil. I live in a huge house. There are people here who work on making my life, and my family's lives easier. Much easier. We don't cook, nor wash, nor clean. Yet it is not that these work is made invisbly. No, as I wrote in my last e-mail, Claudia, one of the ladies who works here, even without knowing me as I arrived to say Hello flung her arms wide open around me and hugged me. Ever since that day whatever it is I am doing she shows up to tell me about her day, and nights, and life.</div>
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She, like million other northeastern Brazilians, came to the south east region to search for a better life. People in the south usually make fun of them. They laugh of their accents. An accent that is even more melodic than the portuguese foreigners already feel is music. She told me her story. In pieces. Every piece amounts to one more tragedy which in her mouth comes out in laughter</div>
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Claudia is 34. She got pregnant as a teenager. Her mother had 8 children. She lost one to drugs. Claudia with a baby in her arms left her house after a fight and found a job as a maid. In the northeast, in some house where she had to work doing it all, she considered the boss a mother. The boss indeed helped her a lot while exploiting her at the same time. How can it be that these relationships are so mixed in Brasil? She speaks of her with love. Eventually she went back to her mother's house. And her life ever since has been like that. Looking for jobs, leaving her children behind, and bringing them close whenever she was more stable.</div>
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Yes. she got pregnant again. She entered a relationship with a man she did not love to have her daughter close. He was nice at first, then he beat her. And then she beat him back. And he used her. And she left. To find temporary solace in the arms of other men. No she never lost her smile. Everyday when I hear a little more she has both tears in her eyes and a smile in her face. Every day she works incredibly hard, every night she goes out. Oh the contradictions of Brasil... </div>
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Nininha, a gorgeous northeastern girl, also works here. She is really beautiful. She also has a child who now cannot go to school because there is no place in the public school of the neighbourhood. Private school is unthinkable for those who do all the jobs that people in my social class do not. As I am here writing she shows up to ask me whether I have seen a cd with the pictures of her daughter. Apparently my aunt had borrowed it. I had not. But I had seen the whole album of pictures of Claudia's family and so had my cousin, my aunt, my grandmother.</div>
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They love my grandmother who is according to them the best boss they had ever had. They would never leave her even if she wanted them to go. They even bought her a gift the other day. My grandmother who is 87 and still goes to the gym, and drives, travels, and goes to museums told them "she needed nothing and that they should not waste the money they had worked so hard for with her". But they wanted to. Hearing them tell me that story I remembered my own wedding when Terezinha, who is my age, and works for my parents for almost two decades gave me a huge amount of money compared to her salary as a gift for my wedding. I told her I could not possibly take it. She insisted it was her way of helping me to start a new life. With my eyes full of tears, I took it, and then told my mom to give it back as complimentary bonus after. Oh, the contradictions of Brazil.</div>
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I am going to Rio this weekend. Searching in these brief illusions of carnival solace for my contradicted body and soul. Claudia is happy beyond belief. It is not so much because of Carnival. It is because now she is stable enough to bring her children from the north to live with her here.</div>
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"I have never abandoned my children. They know. When I organise myself I go get them."</div>
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That is a bit of Brasil. A world of inequality where in one place people are shot because of it, and in others people share laughter, stories, and warmth in spite of it.</div>
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Let's see what happens when the year finally begins. Happy Carnival.</div>
</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-15390436448203540732012-02-27T10:09:00.001-08:002012-02-27T10:09:51.578-08:00Chico Buarque<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"Nao existe pecado do lado debaixo do equador". Literally means that sins do not exist below the equator. This lyrics are part of one of Chico Buarque's song. The singer and composer Chico Buarque is the nephew Brazilian Portuguese dictionary author, and the son of one of Brasil´s most important historian. Chico, as he is known, has composed love songs, carnival songs, passionate songs, political songs, stories and songs about so many other topics. He has giving voice to men and women of so many different brazilian worlds. There are many many worlds within Brasil. He is considered by many our greatest composer. I include myself in this list that considers him as such.<br /><br />I usually say that as soon as I land in Brasil I feel 3 things in the air : the violence, the sensuality and the joy. This time in a broken foot I did not stop to observe anything. Now I feel it all around me again. I just came back from a concert/play of Chico Buarque´s songs. It was a presentation on love. And in Brazil love is passionate. There are fights, and jealousy, and betrayals and forginviness, and passion, and fights and forgiveness and passion and figths and forgiveness and passion....<br /><br />I looked around me and I saw women and men who sat around touched viscerally by those songs. They all knew them. They had all loved in that way. They had all once loved "slowly but desperately" because there was no time, they had all made " samba and love" , they had all "mixed their legs through the nights not knowing which ones to use when they had to depart". They all knew these lyrics. So their eyes carried tears. It came from inside, from within, from the guts.</div>
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<br />On stage a woman and a man enacted a couple ( did they enacted or were they really the thing ?) that went through an almodovarian vicious cycle of passion. They loved and cried, fought and laughed. They sang, danced, recited poetry from all over the world.... the painted with neruda the night. In my poor translation it goes.<br /><br />I only want 5 things<br />The first is love without an end<br />The second is to see autumn<br />The third is the grave winter<br />Fourthly comes the summer<br />The fith thing are your eyes<br />I dont want to sleep without your eyes<br />I dont want to be without you looking at me<br />I give up on spring so that you keep looking at me<br />neruda<br /><br />I looked around and I could feel all of this violence, and passion, and joy in the air. It suddenly striked me what a world apart I was from spiritual chaotic India, Buddhist reserved and warm Thailand. Oddly enough Chico reminded me of different moments in Asia. It reminded of me floating in the Gaia listening to two older musicians play Dylan. I never liked Dylan but that night I learned to like. Mark, my friend from my PhD who came to visit me was there seating next to me. We were observing the small details of the night.<br /><br />Mark is American but like me he left his country too long ago to actually feel connected to the culture. That night he connected to something. He connected to the music that came from his home country. Tonight I connected to mine. I remembered being in a vipassana meditation retreat and learning that passion was as much of a negativity as anger. Through meditaiton we were practicing to erradicate this. I remember thinking to myself that a cure to passion would not sell that well in Brasil.<br /><br />I sat throught the night not as moved as everybody around. I heard the music. The craving for passion. The feelings floating around me and thought I was somehow less brazilian in that I was not sure that that was such a great way to go about love. But then came the last song where Chico used the tenses of verbs to create and atemporal notion of love. A love that is not bounded by time. And then he talked about the "time of gentleness" that comes after the chaotic time. And then somehow the music walked within me in places that other songs do not reach. I shed a tear. I somehow knew in my body that my soul was finally arriving here.</div>
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</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-29830723994123428072012-02-07T07:20:00.000-08:002012-02-07T07:20:22.915-08:00The Arrival in BrasilIt is 30 degrees here in Sao paulo. I arrive and go straight to the hospital after more than 30 hours travelling. Emergency room. There is something comic about it. The man who calls out the patients does not manage to get anyone to come in. After calling out 5 people n a roll who seemed to have disappeared he exclaims<br /><br />
" i guess i should go call the patients in Deola".<br /><br />
I stop to wonder for a second what is Deola and then I remember it is the bakery next door. i am amused. " That is Brasil", I think , "even the patients don't take their sickness that seriously."<br /><br />
All is so wonderfully informal. The way the fellow Brazilian/Lebanese who also needed a wheel chair in the airport starts to chat with me while we wait for our luggage. As soon as I mentioned I had been to Israel and Palestine he exhales with admiration." Have you been to Nablus? What a nice place." He then teaches me how to be able to go from Israel to Jordan into Lebanon by " losing" my passport there." Easier this way. " Then he gets my email so that I can get tips on where to buy Humus, and Tahina, and Zaatar and anything Middle Eastern I might need here in Sao Paulo.<br /><br />
I had been enchanted by the cordiality of Udom, my Thai wheel chair carrier, then surprised by the intense energy of my Dohan porter, and had been relived to be welcomed home by Paulo the Brazilian one. He wanted to know what had happened to me, where was I, told me stories and then when he had cut all paths to make my way shorter, because my flight had landed earlier he told me not to worry he would stay with me till my parents would arrive.<br /><br />
It was not necessary as I could see my parents smiling and carrying me a flower as soon as I went out. When my father asked Paulo, the porter, whether he could take me all the way outside so that he could drive to pick me up, he offered to take me all the way to the parking lot so that I would not have to wait any longer. " she has already travelled too much".<br /><br />
It is a culture of exceptions, or "circumtiality" that creates many problems but also this feeling of easiness, of particularity, and happiness.<br /><br />
I am happy but slightly off place, mixing words in English, wanting to "way" people.
<br /><br />I had been travelling more than 30 hours but I somehow don't mind at all going straight to hospital. The doctor looks at the X-ray I brought with me. He sees no reason for needing an operation.<br /><br />
" if you foot is as it is here you should be fine just with imobilisation. "<br /><br />
I feel a sudden rush of adrenaline inside my stomach. i remember every fall I had since I casted my foot. Every walk, and climbing stairs, and attempts to dance, and step, and hop, and climb. Could it possibly be that I managed to dislocate a simple fracture because of my inability to stay still?<br /><br />
I have to do a new X-ray. It is Brazil which means everybody asks you what happen to you and they all tell you what had happened to them. I want to kill the man who keeps telling me about operating my foot. He speaks with the confidence of a surgeon. He is just a patient thank god.<br /><br />When I am brought back to the doctor have he exclaims " the good news is that this is a simple injury and whoever told you have to operate is crazy." I am relieved and terrified at the same time.<br /><br />
"What are the bed news?"<br /><br />
" There are no bad news."<br /><br />
I am relieved beyond belief. I want o hug him and the whole world.<br /><br />
" In two months you should be ok do do whatever you want".<br /><br />
I go back to my grandmothers home and I meet Claudia the new lady who works there. I had spoken to her many times before. I walk towards her to introduce myself. Before I even finish the sentence she walks towards me, flings her arms around me and gives me a hug.<br /><br />
I am slightly surprised. I am surprised that I am surprised? The truth is that I realise so many things seem strange to me. I am so affectionate by most standards in the world, I am so informal. But that what made me feel a little bit Brazilian abroad now seem like diluted here. And what is odd is all the rest that I picked up living abroad.<br /><br />
I am not very sure what will I do in Brasil. It has only been one day. It might even be that it is odder than going to Burma. Surely more strange than going back to India. Maybe that is it. Maybe there is truly never going back anywhere. Those are figures of our imagination. We are usually simply just going. Going "home" might just mean you go to a place where the social rules apply to you more, where the people expect you to know them. And some you do, but some have been trashed so long ago that they are just as odd as the ones that belong to the foreign villages.<br /><br />
There is just "going" I guess. I try to remember the beginning of India. one step at the time. Now this is a literal and figuratively thing. I tried to remember that it takes a while for the soul to arrive. I guess mine still is watching the sunset in the Mekong. Getting ready to float in the Gaia. One step at the time and I know it will also arrive here.<br /><br />Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-91167953483290115182012-02-07T07:15:00.000-08:002012-02-07T07:16:43.863-08:00DepartureI write this from inside the plane. I am almost in Doha. Two of my 3 flights are almost done. I slept the entire time in both of them. They are usually narcotic to me. Buses, trains, planes any means of transport. This time it was not so much the effect of the plane but probably the accumulated emotion caused not only by my leg, the fever but especially by saying goodbye to my little place in front of the Mekong. I surely will miss the jack trees, the palm trees, the communal tables, the Mekong, the tropical Muesli, the Pad Thai and the sunsets. But what overwhelms me is not and probably will never be a place, for me it is always about the people.<br /><br />
As I hopped around in my crutches being followed by the whole of Mut Mee staff and some guests who became friends a cascade of tears streamed down my face. I feel so much love for this people. I have so much to be thankful for.<br /><br />
Ian who had spent 11 hours with me in Hospital and had come every day since to see me brought me a set of gifts. A package for the trip, three amulets and bracelets for me to give people.<br /><br />
" You are a giver my dear."<br /><br />
What better gift could be given to me? They are beautiful simple bracelets I could put in the arms of those I love. The generosity of such a gift is indescribable. And so it was that a day before my departure I put a bracelet around the arm of every single friend I made. Every time I did I explained the origin of the gift and I "wayed" in the Buddhist Thai style.<br /><br />
Doing it to my friends from the Kitchen was the most moving as every single way was followed by a clumsy hug where I tried to not fall nor drop my crutches. every single one was followed by kisses and tears.
<br /><br />And then this morning the ladies who work in the Kitchen presented me with a T-shirt of Nong Khai. These wonderful women who work in the Kitchen Tia, Joy, Noy, Wii, Pook, kung, Man, Yong and Gaew do not make much money, they do not have spare money and yet they tipped in to get me a gift. The t-shirt was covered in messages in a foreign language to them so that I could understand. The amount of thought that went into this moved me beyond belief. While I was left in my room reading the shirt I sobbed. On the top it read "Memories are a treasure of the mind". As I read this message I knew that that had been written by the always smiling Yong (who had once offered to rescue me from the rapist). I have never seen Yong not dressed in white, I had never seen her without a smile and not spreading joy around. Yong seems to be quite spiritual and very connected to Buddhism. Yong's message was the most philosophical the others were pure emotion.
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Then I got from Pook a handmade bag. A bag made of Mut Mee (which is a type of fabric). These bags are meticulously made selling one would be the equivalent of approximately one quarter of Pook's monthly salary. She gave me one as a gift. A bag made by someone who worked with me at Mut Mee made of Mut Mee!!! More tears.
<br /><br />Wii as I was about to go showed up with a bag full of Guava which she knew was my favourite fruit.
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<br /><br />
My very dear friend Michal hearing about my accident hoped on a bus for 18 hours to come and meet me. I love Michal for her eternal willingness to question her own knowledge and assumptions. i love her for being the kind of person who pays attentions to the details. We had met in India in Mc Leod, we drove together in that bus that had an accident where a man died. We have had a million Palestinian Israeli talks. We travelled together after that accident until I left ( against her advice) India. She has taught me more Hebrew and about Israeli music then all of all my other friends together. We have laughed about every surreal situation to the point of exhaustion. Now on hearing about my accident she hoped on several buses for several hours to be able to see me... To be able to help me pack, shower, laugh and of course find whose fault it was that I broke my foot :) I still think it is hers since if she had been more persuading I would just never have left India :)
<br /><br />As I was about to go I suddenly lost it. i started to sob uncontrollably. San, toothless homeless, also showed up to say goodbye. Julian filmed the whole parade. A handicapped hoping about being followed by all this loving people. i hugged and hugged and kissed people. As we made our way out and I saw all of my friends there, I saw Tia ( who is always so reserved) waiting in front of the Pavilion for me. Behind her was the Mekong. Next to me Nick carried my bags. As I enter the van I see my last last glimpse of the sunsets I have gotten used to admire everyday. It somehow seems so insignificant that my eyes go back to all these people who are there.<br /><br />
People who have not travelled for a while don't imagine how profound can be the links you developed on the road. As I stood there I felt enormous love and gratitude. I felt part of it. Part of that little village where even the ex homeless guy bakes me a gift and shows up to say goodbye.
<br /><br />That place is mine not because I was born there, not because I married someone who had to be there. that place was mine because it is where people know me for what I am. They know me with all of my tears, insecurities, flaws. That place became mine because I connected to the people.
<br /><br />Nick takes me to the airport and flies with me to Bangkok. I don't know how I would have done without him. Once I reach Qatar Airways, he waits for me to be checked in and for a wheel chair to take me to yet another flight. He hugs me and when I thank him he tells me to not be silly he would not have offered to come if he did not mean it. " It was a nice road trip! if I had not come many other people would have. Tomorrow I ll be back to Mut Mee."<br /><br />
In my last email I wrote I was certain I would meet other strangers who would help. I was right. As I am introduced to Udom, the man who is in charge of driving my Wheel chair he smiles and says:
<br /><br />" Do not worry Madam I will take care of you until you are inside of the airplane."<br /><br />
I put my hands in a sincere "way" and say a fragile, exhausted " Kopum ka" (Thank you).<br /><br />
He does as promised, he cruises the messiness and rush hour of the airport making sure nothing and no one inadvertently hits my foot. He wonders if I need to go to the bathroom, or drink, or have a coffee. And when he finally puts me on the plane he wishes me a good trip, a speedy recovery and a fast return to Thailand.
<br /><br />I have by now managed to get myself together. And I put my hands confidently in front of my chess and in that Kopum ka I thank the whole of Thailand. I thank every person I have met in Asia.
<br /><br />I have been living my life in the illusion of being open. I used to feel covered but always open to letting people go in. Yet I was always afraid of being hurt. Always afraid of being abandoned. So when they would penetrate me within I would freak out.<br /><br />
Leaving a PhD, a marriage, a life and crossing borders aimlessly crushed me so many times in so many ways. Weirdly enough when all broke down I found out that it is just better to be fragile all the time. In Portuguese we say " a flor da pele" which literally means in the flower of skin. But I visualise it as being in a sense without skin, being raw without protections. It is a softer way of being. It is a scary way of being. You undress yourself of all the clothes, all the fears, and vulnerabilities you have accumulated through life. And then you stand there naked with all of the wounds, and marks, and broken parts. Then you just are. It is just so good to just be.
<br /><br />
As I put my hands in way and thank Udom he is for me the embodiment of all of this transformation that has started to take place on me.<br /><br />
Udom is for me Asia and I thank it.<br /><br />
Kopum KA :)Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-80180482198646131412012-02-07T07:07:00.000-08:002012-02-07T07:07:49.959-08:00Thank YouThere were a few amazing things that have happened from me getting this accident. One I have talked about before. The enormous (and I cant actually put into words how enormous) help I have gotten here. I feel like the most spoiled of people. If I move people tell me not to. Whatever it is that it is their specialty I am offered.
<br /><br />
The second thing is that I got emails from all over the world. My Brazilian friends and family welcoming home, my friends from abroad wishing me to go home enjoy my family and friends and hoping to meet somewhere in the future.
<br /><br />
The third thing that happened which touched me deeply is that most of my friends wrote to tell me not to stop writing “Around the World”. Some told me they were addicted to reading the stories of the people I encountered. One of the things that made me really sad to stop traveling was not to be allowed to share stories. But I wont stop. I will keep writing wherever it is that I am.
<br /><br />
I wish I could write about all replies that I received. You would not imagine how much they touch me.
<br /><br />When I read Carley’s words ( yes I could hear them), telling me she was going to be a granny to me because all the pain she had felt through her journey in Kashmir could not be wasted in vain. I felt blessed. When Mirte who was here for few days told me she never writes because she feels insecure about it but read all of my emails and was touched by it I was grateful beyond belief. When Sam who is in Palestine wrote me saying
<br /><br />
“If I learned anything in my 40 years of life, I learned that no matter how hard life is, how painful it is, how unfair it is… It always comes with unplanned, unexpected joy… All our bad experiences, crappy feelings, we end up learning, feeling better and have the benefit of our worst experiences”
<br /><br />
I felt the greatness of pain is that it allows for you to be compassionate even of some small problem. Sam lives under an occupation has been illegally held in prison for 11 months and yet he finds the time and compassion to sympathise with a “broken foot”.
<br /><br />When Carol who I have not seen in almost 7 years wrote to me to give me support and advice I felt thankful.
<br /><br />
When Natasha who I met in India 4 years ago ( when I was then sick with my brain) wrote me inviting to come to her mothers temple in Brasil I was surprised she read my emails. Her reply was
<br /><br />
“that she always prayed for me.”
<br /><br />
I met Natasha in my first journey to Tibetan lands. When she was studying Tibetan Buddhism with high lamas. At the time she gave me an amulet that had been given to her by a lama. It was to protect her but she passed it on to me. I was speechless. I carried it with me for years till I felt my brain was healed and that I could pass it on to someone who needed. Just like it was once done to me.
<br /><br />
Kica my friend in London wrote me several lovely emails to tell me things that come from within. Joana who I met here offered to come back from Laos to take me down to Bangkok and carry my bags. My dear dear dear friend Paula who I know since I am child wrote to say she was worried about me. A short message. To the point...enough for me to know she is there. My cousin Olivia wrote to wish me to be welcomed. Ricardo who I met when I was a child and have not seen in almost 20 years wrote me too. And so did many other people I cannot do justice here now.
<br /><br />This email is just to say thank you. To let you know I will keep writing. And that yesterday’s pain is already brighter.
<br /><br />
I fly to Brasil on Sunday. My Israeli friend changed her plans to come and visit me here before I go. I will be taken to Bangkok by Nick ( an angel who is just going to take me and come back the day after here). I am a 100% sure that once he leaves me I will encounter other nice strangers who will help me along the way. At some point I will be able to help other strangers too. Some will pass through my life briefly. Some I will never see again. Some will stay forever even if we are not in the same place.
<br /><br />This e-mail is to say Thank You. It is to say that I am not a brave person as many people feel that I am. Once you put your bag on your back and cross borders you will realise it is way easier than it appears. It is to say that even though there are painful parts. That you do get hurt emotionally and physically. You do fall and break yourself sometimes. That you have to re-evaluate who you trust who you don't. If you are open enough you will always encounter help along the way.
<br /><br />I am going home. I am now happy to go. But today I realise that I could just as well have stayed here. It is one more mark in my body, one more scar in my soul. I am learning to uncover it. I am learning to reveal it and attempt not to run away. It is difficult. It is painful. Some people look at you and they see it. When we encounter them we recognise our pain. We accept our fragility. When it happens you feel you will die but little by little that despair becomes familiar. And you know sometimes it takes simply time. And of course the support of those around you.<br /><br />
To those who wrote me telling me of their pain that they keep secret. It is true that it is us who must heal our own wounds. However, our fragility is what makes us human. Do not hide your pain. Open up in face of it all. Open it up. I guarantee that whatever reason it is you feel pain you will find out that we all feel it. And when you do you will like me find help all over. In spite of language, of culture, of social class. When you do others do it as well.<br /><br />
It is not a matter of being brave. It is just accepting our own fragility. Mine has taken me a long way. It has brought me to a world of gratitude.
<br /><br />
This e-mail is just to say really thank you.Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-43774971698041796502012-02-07T07:00:00.001-08:002012-02-08T06:58:27.450-08:00One More Trip to The Hospital<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
They say it comes in threes. I really hope that is it. I cannot take anything anymore. I wish I could write a positive e-mail but as I seat here to write my last e-mail of around the world I feel pain and sadness. There are of course, the positive things, the ladies in the kitchen who seeing my tears stream down my face tell me they are sorry. They want me to go home and come back in three months. There is of course the general help that I got since I stupidly fell on the floor for no particular reason leading me to be unable to walk properly. I first thought it was just not walk properly for a day, a week, never that I would have to actually cancel my stay here, and Burma and India. Never that I would hear from the doctor that I might just have problems walking in the future.<br />
<br />
I entered the hospital in a good mood. I had been there 2 other times before. I had always been well treated. I only went because Mark, who I met at the LSE during my PhD, and who came here to visited me insisted I should. I only went because Ian, the Scottish 60 year old expat who I became close friends with during this 3 months stay in Thailand would not stop bugging me about it. I was certain it could not be anything too serious.<br />
<br />
I felt a bit stupid to be dropped in emergency room and be put in a wheel chair. I could walk. Not perfectly but I could limp and hop about. And then I felt it was absurd that I should be given attention when around me laid lots of people with obviously more serious problems.<br />
<br />
It went little by little. The first ride along the hospital in a wheel chair I was in happy mood. I observed the corridors. Particularly the one that had wood boards on the floor. It looked to me somehow like Latin America. I was in great mood and when Ian said that in worse case scenario I would have to put a cast and not go to Burma I was shocked.<br />
<br />
Then I was brought back to the ward with all ladies and men lying around in beds. I like observing the nurses. They looked so friendly. I was certain I was there just wasting their time. But then I got to see a doctor and in broken Thai he told me I had fractured some bones. I had to be admitted to the Hospital.<br />
<br />
I still did not know what on earth that meant so even though my eyes filled with tears I was still ok. Then came a lady to ask me to sign some paper in Thai.<br />
<br />
“What is this for?”<br />
<br />
I can’t understand anything. Not even what the letters look like let alone the meaning. Now I start to get nervous. I call Mut Mee and get someone who speaks Thai and English to talk to the Nurse.<br />
<br />
“They want to do an X-Ray of your lungs?”<br />
<br />
“Why”<br />
<br />
“Because you might have to have an operation.”<br />
<br />
Ok now I am shocked. Terrified. I am absolutely terrified of doctors. Of operations in general and especially of operations in public hospitals of countries I do not speak the language of.<br />
<br />
The following 10 hours in hospital were nothing short of nightmarish to me. Not that anyone mistreated me. But it was this continuous guessing of what the heck is going on. People would show up with IVs, and syringes, hospital clothes. I who at first was terrified of needing a cast now was praying for one.<br />
<br />
I could not contact anyone. I had barely any credit on my phone. Enough to send a message to the people I trusted the most: my parents, my brother and Haiko. They needed to call me. If they thought I should operate it I would swallow my despair and do it. But none of them called. My parents were not in Sao Paulo, Haiko just never replied to any of my messages, and my brother could not figure out what my Thai number was.<br />
<br />
Life got significantly better when Ohn Ian s girlfriend an angel fallen from heaven arrived to translate what was happening. This lady worked the whole day and spent about 6 hours with me after work there. Being me I wanted to go. I felt bad to hold them there so long. She silently held my hand and said she would stay with me till the end. And that the most important thing was to find out what was happening.<br />
<br />
Life got significantly better when my brother called me and told me to come home. He told me calmly to just fly home as soon as I could. Having an operation in a public hospital in a country you do not speak the language of was for him completely out the question. That calmed me down. As elitist as it was I felt safe by the fact he also though it was legitimate to want to be somewhere you actually can read the consent for you are signing.
Still took several hours till I was now driven around in a bed seeing the different colours of the ceiling. Seeing the families of patients camping under mosquitoes nets around corridors. Still took a while till I could understand from the doctor that I should operate, and that I would be in a cast for the following months and any plans to go to India and Burma should be canceled.<br />
<br />
I asked him whether I should operate that night. He said it would be better but he would understand if I wanted to do somewhere else. They were not specialists and being home would be easier for me.
I tried to gently say to Ians girlfriend and the doctor that it was not that I was not trusting of the Thai hospital. I was actually incredibly impressed by the conditions of a public hospital in Thailand. It was simply that I was terrified I needed to talk to my parents first. They understood. It took several other hours.
I fell asleep while Ian, his girlfriend and Buck my friend stayed around. Mark had to go away he had a flight to catch. I was taken home put in bed given numbers.<br />
<br />
I was and still am being helped by every single person here.
As I sat to write this earlier on, Tia, the head chef, hugged me. She is usually very reserved. She just said “ I am really sorry Julieta. I like you very much. You go home and get better then come back to Mut Mee.”
My eyes fill with tears. Tears that do not stop. Joy comes to hug me too. Then Wii blows magic spell. So does Yong. Then Kung and Pook.
“Keep your window open and shout we do everything for you.”
I cry some more.
Then Om says she will pack all my things for me and take to the post office since I cannot carry anything in this flight. Then Nick offers to come with me to Bangkok to put me on the plane with my luggage.
“It is too much Nick”
“I would not offer if I did not want to do it.”
So my eyes have more and more tears. Yesterday when I thought it was nothing and kept working I had already gotten help from the whole of guesthouse. Guests and staff.<br />
<br />
So I have pain and sadness but everything might also be an opportunity to grow.
When my parents finally manage to reach me my mom says
“ I am sad you are hurt but I am very happy you are coming home.”
Sam, my Palestinian friend has been telling me to go home for ages now.
“I have a feeling you have to be home now.” He always says.
Maybe he is right. Maybe it is time for me to be home. It has been almost 11 years I left.
Although I am about to leave Thailand with a broken foot. Although I am sad I will have to postpone it all I feel enormous gratitude for those I encountered on the way. So many of you are on this list. I thank you all. Thanks for reading. Thanks for writing. Thanks for having made one way or another my life richer. Thanks for augmenting my eternal faith in humanity. In the kindness of strangers. In the ability we all have to change for better someone else’s day.
In special today I must thank Ian for making me go to Hospital and staying more than 11 hours there cheering me up. Ohn for translating my fears and calming me down in hospital. And Mark for the silent words.
Thank you</div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-89016118677181183972012-01-24T22:15:00.000-08:002012-01-24T22:15:02.099-08:00Kitchen Talk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I love the Thai ladies who work in kitchen. Thailand might be the land of smiles, but Isaan, the poorest province of Thailand, is the land of roaring laughter. Laughter of the kind that makes you feel first embarrassed, then upset, then it makes you simply abandon your ego and accept that yes all you do is plain stupid. You farang ( foreigner) coming from another world definitely have no clue what is going on so you might as well just embrace it. I love the ladies in the kitchen. They laugh without restrain. They never really care what someone else might be thinking of their laughter. They laugh at you, and at each other. They laugh at themselves. If you pay close attention you might realise that in their generosity they are in fact inviting you to laugh with them.<br /><br />
Joy is back. Whatever were the problems she had to set up home, they are now set. And so we are back to lots of hugs till you can no longer breathe. There is also a new lady in the kitchen. Kung who is 32 but like most Thai people in their 30s looks in her 20s. She is pure happiness. She always asks me if I am hungry or happy. How is it that we communicate, I wonder? Broken English, broken Thai, miming and laughter.<br /><br />
Today as I was walking around the garden I saw them all seating under the sun. They always do it when things calm down for some minutes. They sat under the shades of the jackfruit trees. Apart from all the women in the Kitchen there was also Non, the handyman who can do literally everything, and Oy, the massage lady. They were laughing at her. She looked sick and exhausted.<br /><br />
“Are you sick?” I ask.<br /><br />
“No”,<br /><br />
Then they all start laughing again. I can’t really understand what the heck is going on.<br /><br />
“Massage Man.”<br /><br />
“What? tired of the massage?” I ask.<br /><br />
They signal using their hands to show me the man Oy massaged smelled. Oy is now smelling tiger balm to recover.<br /><br />
“Oh!” I say. “Farang. They don’t shower.”<br /><br />
We all crack up. I can’t believe Oy is smelling tiger balm to recover. It is just too funny.<br /><br />
I tell them in Brazil we shower twice a day. Morning and Evening.<br /><br />
“Same same Thailand. Brasil good. " exclaims Joy<br /><br />
"I like Ronaldinho” laughs Wii.<br /><br />
I can’t really believe that even the ladies in the kitchen in Nong Khai know Ronaldinho.<br /><br />
Then they laugh about his front teeth. They tell me Thailand is bad in football and they, the ladies, like to play cards for money.<br /><br />
“For MONEY?”<br /><br />
“Little. 1 Baht”<br /><br />
We all laugh.<br /><br />
“JulieTAH ( as they call me) work here when”<br /><br />
I now am an expert in speaking and understanding broken English so I know it means that they are asking me till when I will be staying here. It means more in fact. It means they care.<br /><br />
“February.”<br /><br />
They look shocked. 1 month ?<br /><br />
“Going to Burma.” I explain.<br /><br />
Lots of shocked faces looked back at me. “Maynamar ? Why?"<br /><br />
"Why not?"<br /><br />
“Not good. Not clean.”<br /><br />
I am curious to discover what are the prejudices these ladies who have never been there have against the Burmese. I, of course, cannot find that out in sign language. I just keep asking the same question.<br /><br />
Why? Why? Why?”<br /><br />
Eventually Pook tells me.<br /><br />
“Joke. Same Same Thailand”<br /><br />
As Roxanna appears later and attempts to speak her Thai, and I try to learn words we cannot stop laughing. People must think we are crazy.<br /><br />
Yes in exact one month I will be flying to finally see Burma. The country I did not see three years ago. When I bought the ticket months ago I imagined that by that time I would have had enough of being in one place. I am starting to think that I might have been wrong.<br /><br />
How could I possibly live without this roaring laughter? Without the Mekong? Without the sunsets? The simplicity of life. Helping people who show up. Hearing the amazing stories.<br /><br />
We, the Nong Khai victims, call jokingly Mut Mee a black whole. Only one month to go and I am already nostalgic. Well, I might do like everyone else. I might just have to come back once again. Well, I am sure I will.<br /><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMY1jVbjp5pCEfJs9Mvqb3DZmI5klWtbm4DHiTeFO5PJwLxwNXcwdI5PWDN9H3Yewv6ISA2B8BEUfLGy2-CyjeHPcb62HCp6EGyRDbXrDD5Dya4-vi9DuHPFONbySQF-YqjFpI_D7siKA/s1600/Kitchen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMY1jVbjp5pCEfJs9Mvqb3DZmI5klWtbm4DHiTeFO5PJwLxwNXcwdI5PWDN9H3Yewv6ISA2B8BEUfLGy2-CyjeHPcb62HCp6EGyRDbXrDD5Dya4-vi9DuHPFONbySQF-YqjFpI_D7siKA/s400/Kitchen.jpg" /></a></div>Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-89653034290627812222012-01-23T02:28:00.000-08:002012-01-23T02:28:20.605-08:00Life StoriesI do not like writing one day after the other but last night I heard an epic story. So interesting it was that I who had accepted the invitation of a gorgeous English man to go check up Chinese New Year celebrations in town stayed behind to hear the story of a 76 year old lady. Wow, and how worth it was.<br /><br />
They say in Brazil that life begins when you are forty. The sentence could not have been truer than for Carley, the Australian lady I checked in about a week ago. Until last night all I knew from her was that she had spent lots of time in Kashmir, that she read voraciously the newspaper and that she was very friendly.<br /><br />
Where to even start?<br /><br />
"I arrived in Kashmir in the 80's. After crossing India, I arrived at the lake. I arrived in the house boat, and as I got out of the shikara I looked up. There was Kadir. I took one look and thought ' There you are. I was looking for you for my whole life. And I did not even know it."<br /><br />
Kadir, a Muslim Cashmere married man. Kadir who lived in a place that was about to be set in turmoil, war, killings in the eternal struggle of the Kashmere valley.<br /><br />
But that is not where the story starts. The story starts with a girl in Australia who got pregnant and married very early. A girl who spent a life in academia, in a loveless marriage and then became a political activist. A woman who is part of the group who set all legislation that till this day protects the forests of New South Wales and the rivers of Tasmania. By her forties her husband changed political activism for Rajneesh, also know as Osho. That was it for Carley.<br /><br />
Carley left the world of academia and learned to be a nurse, a practical work that could ensure her work anytime, anywhere. And so it was that she left at forty for the first time to see the world. She never stopped since then. She first went to China.<br /><br />
"I went in as a socialist, came back as an avid supporter of democracy."<br /><br />
Back to Australia to work a bit more and off she went to India. Met by the unscrupulous heat of India she immediately realized she needed to go up to the mountains. How to do it? At the time traveling through these roads was not so easy as they were mainly for the military. She met an Indian devotee of Gandhi and followed him to Manali. From Manali she went to Kashmir on her own carrying with her a bottle of Cointreau .<br /><br />
For those of you who know the very famous book Shataram Carley spent the first three nights of her Kashmir stay drinking with Kadir and Gregory David Roberts. Wishing him to disappear and leave her to be alone with Kadir. And so it happened that they started an affair that would change both of their lives forever.<br /><br />
Kadir’s wife was sent away and Carley stayed. She became close to his kids. She did not fully understand at first the impact she had had in that poor woman’s life. When she met Kadir he was suicidal. Unhappily married in an arrange wedding. He was unhappy in Kashmir having lost his older son and having left two daughters. In some parts of the world that is a true disaster. Carley was herself recovering from her own traumas. They helped each other.<br /><br />
For the next years she went back to Kashmir. She brought tourists. She paid for schooling and doctors and everything that was needed for his family. Always going back to work as a nurse. She was then able to get him a visa to come to Australia and so he worked every Cashmere winter of the following 10 years in Australia.<br /><br />
Carley suddenly realized she wanted to see more of the world. She could not just keep going to Kashmir. In the middle of the 80 she traveled alone through all the Stan countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan etc ), Azerbaijan, Armenia in winter seeing first hand starvation and what the Soviet Union was doing to the place. As she arrived in Turkey and saw piles of Tomatoes and fruits all around she knew the Soviet Union would collapse very soon.<br /><br />
She loved Istanbul, but tired of the cold went south to Egypt. Loved Cairo hated how she was treated. After having seen the beauty of Islamic architecture all over she found Egypt was all about building big things. She missed Kadir and wanted to go back to India. In Egypt they would not give her a visa, she went to Jordan, they also refused it, she took a bus to Damascus only to arrive in the middle of Palestinian uprising because of the killing of someone I do not remember the name of.<br /><br />
She was eventually able to go back to Kashmir. By this time the violence had restarted. The army would round up man and make one Cashmere pick three militants or else that man would be killed. The women many times would come and surround men and army. Then violence escalated with children being shot in shikaras and even inside mosques.<br /><br />
She was furious. She was too outspoken.<br /><br />
“There was it. I had to either pick up weapons or leave. I was putting my family in danger for being so outspoken. The girls were growing up and I was a huge scandal there. His children needed their mother. I paid for her to have an operation to no longer have babies. I made a mess in that lady’s life. By then I started understanding the real dimensions of my arrival in their life. I had to go.”<br /><br />
“When was this Carley?”<br /><br />
“2003. I left.”<br /><br />
“Have you been back?”<br /><br />
“No.”<br /><br />
“ Are you going to see him again ?”<br /><br />
“In another life I am sure. I am certain if there are other lives we have met many times before.”<br /><br />
“Do you feel guilt?”<br /><br />
“Yes. I feel some guilt for what I caused to that woman’s life.”<br /><br />
But her face lifts up.<br /><br />
“Do you want to know something incredible? My daughter was in India last year and she wrote me to ask whether she could go visit Kadir. She loved him. He was a charming man who enchanted my whole family. I agreed and was very clear that it was of outmost importance that she should be respectful to his wife. And so she went and I saw a million pictures of them together. His wife hugging my daughter! And then she told me that Kadir told her that neither him nor his wife will have anything to do with the decision of who his daughters will marry. It will be their own choice. I was shocked. I was shocked. I felt happy beyond belief. This is the most important thing now. They must have good weddings.”<br /><br />
As I hear the story in details. Ask every single question in the world. Go through the feelings myself. The complexity of humanity. The coexistence of a multiplicity of feelings. As I imagine in my mind the places I have visited being in war, being destroyed I feel an eerie feeling. I am so moved. I know these mosques, these boats, these shikaras she talks about. I even know Kadir. How many Kadirs have I met along the way in a mixture of gentleness with old traditions. People who we imagine so different but are always willing to go to different places than the ones they have been to.<br /><br />
“Carley, Thank You. This is an amazing story. I am so thankful to have heard.”<br /><br />
“Thank You. It is just a life!”Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-1362411370499558032012-01-23T02:23:00.000-08:002012-01-23T02:23:49.404-08:00The Power of StoriesTwo years ago I came to Mut Mee for the first time. At the time although I had studied a lot about Middle Eastern politics I had never been there, nor had I really had any personal encounters with middle easterners. It was at Mut Mee that I met the first Israeli that challenged my black and white thoughts about the Palestinian Israeli situation. From then on it has been as most of you who have been in this list long enough quite a deep dive in the political, academic, personal, emotional, rational, visceral, crazy world of that conflict.<br /><br />
It is somehow surreal how much in one way or another I always get caught up in it. It does not matter where I am Palestinians and Israelis always find me. And when they do I am now a bridge between these worlds to these individuals. Something incredibly surreal for a non Jewish, non Arab Brazilian citizen who has been crossing borders for as long as she remembers.<br /><br />
But back to two years ago, after I met the first Israeli who challenged me I met an older couple here. I wrote about them at the time. They had left Israel as a political statement. They were activist. She was a journalist. They moved to an island in the border of Thailand and Cambodia and here she changed topics of writing. Instead of writing about subversive topics she wrote the first ever written Thai food book in Hebrew.<br /><br />
I traveled Thailand at the time mainly with Israelis and once I went back my dissertation of my masters ended up being about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. From my masters I went into my PhD, I visited both Israel and Palestine, became friends with people in both sides of the wall. I cried in front of that wall and left feeling defeated.<br /><br />
I remember going to a human rights festival and watching the documentary Budrus which documents the struggle of Palestinians, Israelis and international activists to change the wall of separation that was at the time circumventing Budrus, a Palestinian village. I was deeply moved by the film. Not only because of the absurdity of a wall surrounding some villages and making it impossible for people to reach other parts of Palestine, but because of the power of people to unite in the face of absurdity to challenge injustice. The people gave me hope. Hope that humanity could go beyond ideologies.<br /><br />
I watched the film in London, found out it was made by a Brazilian friend of a friend of mine, and the people who gathered together came from everywhere in the world. The people protesting in the film came as well. As the filmmaker was present we were able to learn a lot about the 6 years of that protest. We learned about the Israelis who crossed illegally the wall to go to the protest to minimise the violence towards the Palestinians. We learned about the Israelis who slept in the house of Palestinians, about the soldiers who once released from the IDF changed sides and started to protest. We heard about the Palestinians who in turn protected the Israeli activists when the new order was to arrest Israeli activists for being illegally in Palestine. They did not care about the “imagined communities” they belonged to. They cared about what plain absurd. I cried the whole film. First out of anger then of emotion for human capacity to unite. As I watched the film I saw the man I had once met here. He was there, on a little clip of the news. I could not understand what he had said. It was not translated but I could see he was supporting the protest. I was so moved. I knew him. Even though I did not even know his Israeli name (but only his Thai one) I knew him and I knew what he stood for.<br /><br />
So it is that I am here not doing much when suddenly I see him and his wife in the garden. I am so excited. I run towards their table barely containing my emotion.<br /><br />
“Hi! You might not remember me. I know you so well. I heard you speak about your activism, and your book, and your experiences in the war, and I saw you in Budrus and and and and and” There was so much to tell. How could I explain to them how much they had changed me, affected me, how that one encounter had meant so much to me. How could I say it in one sentence all that happened since I had met them.<br /><br />
They looked at me surprised<br /><br />
“I remember you. You sing”<br /><br />
I sat and was able to vomit out some of what had happened to me in between now and then. They were of course very surprised. Now I could relate to almost all they talked about. I was astonished to find out they set up Uri Avenery, the Israeli 86 year old activist, website Gush Shalom. I really admire Uri Avnery’s writings. As I sat looking the Mekong I learned they too had moved here to Nong Khai. I learned their party had really grown. Their activism was still very active.<br /><br />
How strange is the world I thought. I am at Mut Mee. Julian, my friend and the owner, is half Palestinian. One of the new rooms and nicest rooms in the new building has a Star of David on the wall. It is a very syncretic star mixed in Buddhist and Hindu imagery. Julian had explained to me when I first arrived that the room was designed for his very good friend Carol who is Jewish Iraqi. “She is like me, cant go back to her family home, she is of the Diaspora”. Julian like, the Israeli couple does not think of nationalities, and groups he thinks of people. How many times have I heard him say “We are the same people.”<br /><br />
As I seat hearing the couple I feel an uncontained joy for being able to always encounter the nicest people. At night I don’t even want to waste time telling my Israeli friend about the terrible incident that happened two nights in a roll. I want to tell about this couple. I want to introduce them after all my friend is coming all the way here to visit me. I feel so happy.<br /><br />
As I seat looking at the Mekong I remember Uri’s words which are not new to me. As the couple tells me I have to share my experiences with the world I think I will post it. I will write once again about these people going around and changing the world. Changing perceptions in spite of ideologies. As we seat there I remember the words of Uri Avnery. They are not new but they are however important words:<br /><br />
“Nationalism is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. When a community decides to become a nation, it has to reinvent itself. That means inventing a national past, reshuffling historical facts (and non-facts) in order to create a coherent picture of a nation existing since antiquity. Hermann the Cherusker, member of a Germanic tribe who betrayed his Roman employers, became a “national” hero. Religious refugees who landed in America and destroyed the native population became a “nation”. Members of an ethnic-religious Diaspora formed themselves into a “Jewish nation”. Many others did more or less the same.<br /><br />
Indeed, Newt would profit from reading a book by a Tel Aviv University professor, Shlomo Sand, a kosher Jew, whose Hebrew title speaks for itself: “When and How the Jewish People was Invented?”<br /><br />
Who are these Palestinians? About a hundred years ago, two young students in Istanbul, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and President (respectively) of Israel, wrote a treatise about the Palestinians. The population of this country, they said, has never changed. Only small elites were sometimes deported. The towns and villages never moved, as their names prove. Canaanites became Israelites, then Jews and Samaritans, then Christian Byzantines. With the Arab conquest, they slowly adopted the religion of Islam and the Arabic Culture. These are today’s Palestinians. I tend to agree with them.”<br /><br />
As I seat by the Mekong with my old new friends I realise how much what people say changes us. Their words some two years ago had changed me. They in certain way stirred me along the way. Their words led me to go see the Middle East. To find out who these people really are. Couple weeks ago I got an email from an Israeli I met last time I was in Israel. He wrote me to tell me he had for the first time been to Palestine without a weapon. “I went and I walked with no fear. I met the people you talked about. Not the ones I had heard about.” He was not the first friend who had crossed that wall after meeting me. I never tell them to. I just tell stories. The stories of the people I encounter. Encountering the Israeli couple here again made me realise how powerful stories are. They changed my path .<br /><br />Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-91425200925257614362012-01-19T04:16:00.001-08:002012-01-19T04:16:59.167-08:00The Lowest PointI imagine that every long trip has a low point. It has been now almost 5 months and a half since I left my life in England. It has been almost eleven years that I left Brasil to go study abroad. The lowest point in my journey happened last night. After being sick for so long, my existentialism was reaching unprecedented levels. I felt abandoned by all those that I once trusted, i felt I wanted to abandon myself. Why is it again that we live for?<br /><br />
As I cannot manage to reach any of the people who know me from within I decide that this is it I must just practice vipassana. I must just accept to bear all the pain on my own. There is angst and tension in the air that seems to be not only mine. Like a sponge I am sucking it all in. I had been for the whole day.<br /><br />
In England Julian, my friend and Mut Mee owner, is in Hospital with Ben, his son, awaiting for yet another heart surgery. Since Ben is little he has been struggling through this. Roxanna who works in the Gaia, the floating bar in the raft in the Mekong in front of us, passes by me incredibly shaken.<br /><br />
I am on the phone dealing with my own feelings, my own regrets. I am so absorbed by my pain that I see hers but do not hang up. She goes away. I seat in the stairs that lead us to the raft. Then I hear my new friend from Albania anxious about all that she can not really know because is far. Feeling entirely helpless I go to bed.<br /><br />
I fall asleep and suddenly I am awaken by noises. I am a bit confused but I have the feeling someone is knocking next door in Melissa's room. Melissa, a new yorker who used to work for the UN, had left her life and came to Asia to study yoga. Although her room is technically in my house it has a door that goes outside. She has no way to reach the inside of the house as the door that goes to the communal area is locked. It was a temporary thing because since she came to Mut Mee on a day we had no rooms we arranged that room for her. Keeping the door locked was a way of ensuring my privacy.<br /><br />
Mut Mee spreads in front of the Mekong. It has beautiful bungalows, mixed with new buildings, a beautiful garden, little soys ( streets) and it is always entirely open. My house faces the Mekong. I have a balcony that leads to a bank that is filled with grass, bamboos going down to the river. I enter the house through the side door. I almost never close neither the door to my room, nor the Verandah door.<br /><br />
That is why when I hear someone knocking in Melissa's door I can hear as if it is on my own. I am confused but go back to sleep. Suddenly I am awaken by someone opening my window, and then slamming it. i get shocked but again imagine it to be a friend of Melissa. I fall asleep probably for seconds and suddenly hear Melissa scream. She screams from the top of her lungs " get the fuck out of here."<br /><br />
Now I am paranoid. I am convinced it is a man. I am terrified. What could I do? i hear noises and then someone opens my window. I decide to be totally silent. I remember all my doors being open. i want to go check on Melissa but am terrified to do so. I do not want to speak because if someone was inside all that protected me was the fact that they did not know I was there.<br /><br />
I feel charges of adrenalin inside of me. All I can do within my ability is to call for help. All I can do is to actually text for help. All the men I know in Mut Mee are gone. Rob who works in reception lives in another village. i text him. It is 3 and a half am. I call so that even though I cant speak he would be able to see the messages. A lady picks up. I feel defeated I probably have the wrong number. I text Roxanna so she could call for help. She texts me back telling me the reason she was shaken earlier was because a Thai guy had ambushed her and wanted to have sex. Reading her message I am more terrified than ever.<br /><br />
I text Europe America.. All the people I trust to make the call I could not make. It is a 40 minutes of terror when I suddenly hear a motorbike coming. i hear someone calling out my name.<br /><br />
" Rob"?<br /><br />
It is him. i have never been so happy to see a man. I scream to Melissa. " are you OK? She is. Rob calls Roxanna who is terrified alone in the raft without credit on her phone. He goes get her.<br /><br />
Melissa is calm she explains that the man had tried to break in and crawl through her window. He clearly wanted to rape her. When she shouted he open my window and then left. Nothing had happened but the tension we were in, both me and Roxanna, for the lack of knowledge and what our mind allowed us to create had us both in tears.<br /><br />
Melissa told us that she kept looking for a weapon but she had none. I was astonished. Fighting the man never crossed my mind. I don't know if it is because I am too coward, too pacifist or simply because i was not face to face with him. All I could think about was to contact people. People who could come from outside.<br /><br />
But as the sun rose and the three of us had waken up things looked brighter. Yes it was awful. Yes I had never felt so vulnerable. Retrospectively, however, I realise that all my existentialism vanished. I who knew not why we live for did not want to die. I did not want anything to happen to Melissa or anyone. I wanted to help her, Roxanna and I. As the son rose I realised that I was not alone, I was just a bit unprepared. I needed more numbers of people who live here. I needed to learn to lock my doors at night. I needed to never let my imagination run wild. Melissa who confronted the man was way calmer than both of us who imagined him, who imagined what he could do. Imagination practically paralysed us.<br /><br />
I kept remember Suu Kyi' s words "When you are feeling helpless, help someone".<br /><br />
The lowest point taught me valuable lessons. It taught me I should have helped more. But that as usual within the limits of our own incapacities I did what I know best. I reached for people. As I am thinking about that Yong, who works in the kitchen, having heard the story seats next to me.<br /><br />
" Take my number. You call I come."<br /><br />
The lowest point reminds me that we must never let the evilness of one undermine our love and faith of the vast majority of people. That is how I know this is the lowest point. It is not as some of my friends suggested time to pack and go home. It is time to start going up.<br /><br />
Lots of love,
MeJulieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5307279074462624049.post-4633131665273289582012-01-13T23:59:00.001-08:002012-01-19T04:14:34.613-08:00Sick AwayI think there are few things that are worse than feeling sick. Feeling sick for days on end while travelling is one of them. It is not that it does not matter having friends around, people offering their drugs, natural remedies, offering to buy food, or pain killers so that you don't have to move. Although these friends make you feel exponentially better there is this vulnerability that when you are sick and away from home becomes almost unbearable.<br /><br />
When you are sick home you can afford to be grumpy, not nice, close yourself in your safe room and sleep away. People will come and check on you even if you tell them not to. When you are travelling you cant inflict this on people, who as nice ad they are, are after all people who you just met a few months ago.<br /><br />
In the beggining feeling sick every single day with a fever that never leaves that makes you just accept the lethargy. But when the fever is accompanied by your head punching you, your eyes making you feel you are in a rocky boat about to throat up, always just about to, because the relief of putting outside that which causes discomfort does not come. Also when your throat stops allowing you to speak and eat you don't mind too much, but when it screams " listen i will tear apart all of your self respect, your ability to sleep and even breathe" then you cannot even just resign yourself to the fate. You want to vomit yourself out but you are too tired to. Then when you loose it. When you loose all the shred of hope and patience that you can just wait and things will be fine then you go search help.<br /><br />
It happened to me in the middle of last night. I just had it. I wanted to be magically transported to my home in Brasil. To have my mom annoy me with teas, and propolis and doctors, and notice that I have not eaten in days. I wanted my dad to bring me coconut water, and tell me not to hear depressive music, and insist that I must eat. I wanted my brother to tell me which antibiotic I should be taking and go into the details of all drugs he love so much. Then I would be a typical teenager. I would roll my eyes, storm out and just ignore them. I wanted my grandmother to ground me once again for washing my hair at night. I would disagree with them all but I would feel safe. i wanted Haiko to tell me the lights that were making me want to vomit were just migraine. But in the middle of the night here even the thought of catching a plane made me realise those were dreams. The truth is that I was too sick to even call. To even speak.<br /><br />
But when this point comes, that not only you are not better, but every second of being well is followed by feeling much worse minutes later then you discover painfully that you have to ( at some point ) to become your own mother, and father, and brother, and grandma, and husband. You have to swallow the pride, the pain, the lack of desire to move and you have to search help.<br /><br />
There are a million things that make you not want to do it. A foreign country. A foreign culture. A foreign language. the fear that it might make you more sick, be wrong, or you might just not be understood. But it comes a point that you don't care anymore about any of this. At this point you search whatever help there is. That is how I finally accepted my fate and decided finally to go to Hospital. I went once again, 2 years later, to the public hospital of Non Khai.<br /><br />
I walk to the reception.<br /><br />
" do you speak thai?"<br /><br />
i sign that I dont<br /><br />
" I speak a little english. Basics"<br /><br />
I put my hands in prayer in the "way" gesture and thank her. She is so gentle. I am so thankful. I wonder what is the likelihood of someone speaking english in a brazilian public hospital outside the big centres.<br /><br />
The place is clean. It is calm. Organised. She gives me a number. it is number 20.<br /><br />
There are not that many people that early. Another lady comes to tell me to wait a little. I try to communicate for her not to worry I was just one more patient.<br /><br />
But within minutes I am taken in. A young Thai doctor asks me about my symptoms. He looks at my throat and concludes it is bacterial. i need antibiotics. He asks me a few questions. When he notices I am from Brasil he smiles and tells me he loves the brazilian football team. Kaka, Ronaldinho. I once again want to kiss these football players who make me be so well treated everywhere.<br /><br />
I leave the hospital with a bag full of medicine, and a lovely treatment for almost no money at all. I wonder if it is the placebo effect of feeling you are now being treated that makes me feel immediately better. Not good. But better.<br /><br />
There is barely anything at all that feels as bad as being sick in the other side of the world. But there is also almost anything as good as to realise that when that moment comes you do stand up. You walk as much as needed to search for help. And when you do you can both appreciate more the people who have always taken care of you, but also yourself the one person who will always be there to lift you up.<br /><br />Julieta de Toledo Piza Falavinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315416987515515441noreply@blogger.com0