Brasilia

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jardim Horizonte Azul

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.  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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Joana is my aunt, and what an exceptional woman she is! I always knew that but spending this week with her and her 12^th grade class there made me realize it even more strongly. She takes her year 12^th 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“All of us have something to learn”

She put it nicely.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  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.   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^th 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.

The Slums, and the border of within

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.

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”.  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?

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.

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!

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.

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.  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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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  of a person skin does not matter. I heard her quite moved.  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.

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.

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.

Carnival and the Ephemeral Identity

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

Kitchen Tales in Brasil

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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... 

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.

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.

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.

"I have never abandoned my children. They know. When I organise myself I go get them."

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.

Let's see what happens when the year finally begins. Happy Carnival.

Chico Buarque

"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.

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....

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.

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.

I only want 5 things
The first is love without an end
The second is to see autumn
The third is the grave winter
Fourthly comes the summer
The fith thing are your eyes
I dont want to sleep without your eyes
I dont want to be without you looking at me
I give up on spring so that you keep looking at me
neruda

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.

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.

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.

The Arrival in Brasil

It 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

" i guess i should go call the patients in Deola".

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."

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.

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.

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".

It is a culture of exceptions, or "circumtiality" that creates many problems but also this feeling of easiness, of particularity, and happiness.

I am happy but slightly off place, mixing words in English, wanting to "way" people.

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.

" if you foot is as it is here you should be fine just with imobilisation. "

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?

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.

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.

"What are the bed news?"

" There are no bad news."

I am relieved beyond belief. I want o hug him and the whole world.

" In two months you should be ok do do whatever you want".

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.

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.

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.

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.