A NIGHT FULL OF
SAUDADE
When did that
word enter my vocabulary?
Saudade.. Long
before Cesaria Evora sang Sodade in 1994.
An unbridled
sensation of nostalgia, mixed with a tenderness in which you feel you are in
love with the world, and that you want that tenderness to spread to every one
you know…
I am in one such
moment.
I am with American
Indians. As I was about to leave, JLP comes in, in his hands two photographs of
me, with long hair taken the year I had begun to come here…. Once a month, rain
or shine or snow…this loyalty has paid off, people now think of me not as a
stranger who lives in far away lands but a member of the family who goes and
comes back.
You must love
us, because you come back, month after month…
You arrive back
to the blue house where you are staying; the cold night is approaching, and the
sensation that you had done something for others. A sacrifice for other people,
they return their thanks mixed with their smiles.
I open the door;
pour myself a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from Aoetearoa, that long white cloud of
a land in our south…
Think of all
those I love, starting with the little ones. How I wish Miss Ruby were here. Calling
me Oncle Oncle.
Grateful for
Paris, Grateful for Hocank and UmonHon Indians, and the Lakota whom I would
visit next week…
This nostalgia
is a combination of love and affection that you have in your life, and the
sudden desire to poses them knowing it is far away…
I had Caspian
Caviar with a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Oz just recently at Le
Rits, in Phnom Penh.
The names of the
cities roll of your tongue without difficulty, who was holding my hands in that
resto in Palermo, in that distant land that produces a good drop of Malbec? Was
it only yesterday or was it years ago?
I listened to Enrico
Macias, born Gaston Ghranassia in Constantine, Algeria to where his Andalusian Jewish
ancestors had been exiled in 1492. Jewish music that survives as Chaabi in
among the Berbers of North Africa. Ya Rayah. A popular song indeed, sung by
that great Dahmane El Harrachi but popularized by Enrico Macias. Longing for
his land, visa denied because he is Jew who also loves Israel…
Yasmin Levy
whose father was the editor of aki yerushalayim , the ladino newspaper from
Israel, who sings very haunting Judeo-Spanish songs of the Middle Ages.
I listen to them
one by one, and as always a song by my all time favourite, Cesaria Evora.
Dear friends and
other lovers, thanks for being here with me, as I write this full of love for
all of you.
Soheil nafisi,
Ahmed Shamlou. what a great poet. How does he conjure up such images?
A nice day among
the Indians, content to be a Jew, content to be a lover to my friends, content
to be a human being away from the commercialism of profit and losses.
My first visit
to Jakarta begins in just a few days. Do you remember, Multatali? Pramoedya
Ananta Toer?
Ah well I am
traveling to their lands.
Gracias, mis amigos, muito obrigado...
