Category Archives: Middle East

The World Cup, Resilience and Strength

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Copa

People take me not to bet from Brazil all the time.  And that has nothing to do with the fact that now it is the world cup. It happened before too. Maybe the only places people took me to be from there were Italy, France, Turkey, and Israel.  It is funny, but apparently the amount of time that I have spent abroad has changed the way I structure my sentences. I wish it was only that, apparently it has also changed my mind 🙂

It is the world cup here  as you might know. Yes I am in Brazil.  And first people wrote me to ask how excited I was about it, and then  they wrote to ask whether I am safe. I must say that nothing has really changed in my life, apart from the bars that I like being more crowded by foreigners grabbing me. You know Brazil… where most football fans imagine Brazilian women are all sluts!

People usually also asked me from abroad whether Brazilians were excited about the world cup. And I remember Brazil being stopped in the middle of the night to see the world cup in Asia. I remember the excitation all had about every single cup. But this time it has been different.

It is really the beginning of it, but I must say that before this week most people were furious. I read somewhere that the last world cup costed 4 billion dollars, and this one 11 billion. Brazilians in spite of all their love for football were furious. Money that was not spent in education, health, welfare  system was spent to build stadiums in the middle of nowhere, and of course who knows where else. So there were protest against it all. No tube, no busses people in the street. On the other hand TV tried to get people to be very excited about football for months. And I heard from rich and poor that they would rather have Brazil loose games immediately so that the people could wake up for the disparity, the corruption that has been part of Brazilian culture for centuries.

And then the world cup started, and little by little you started to see Brazilian flags in cars, and houses. I must say there are not that many. Still it felt somehow poignant  that people could not resist. They cheered.

I must say I usually like football but I did not see a single game so far. And I started to pay attention to something I thought was rather more interesting than the football itself. And that was the amount of foreigners in Sao Paulo, and Brazilians who started to go out to meet them.

Brazilians are in general very friendly people. The women were dazzled by these people some have never met before. Most of them have never been abroad. But also even men were taking care of foreigners around. When  a total asswhole came to disturb me in a bar where I know everybody…. And I was polite to him till he told me Palestine did not exist, a guy came to check on him. They were not friends, he was a Brazilian man that came to check whether he was well.  He asked the guy ” are you ok?”

How could I be a threat to an Israeli soldier? He told the guy I was actually very interesting and tried to  hold me several times. I dismissed it and went to dance with the waiter who is my friend. See this is Brazil. Even the waiter stops sometimes to have fun.

I met another Israeli and told him about that guy. He was appalled  and embarrassed. I told him he did not have to explain any of that to me. Yet the reason I write about this is because in any country there are amazing people, and stupid people. We should not generalise a whole population by what we have heard from someone, or from one encounter.  My Israeli, and Palestinian friends know this. They know I have been to both sides of the wall, that I have friends there and that I inherently trust people.

What is quite amazing about not seeing the world cup that is taking place here. Is to see people who have never met foreigners and who would like to know them. They come to meet them. They take pictures, have brief encounters etc. Obviously there are exponentially more men than women who come from abroad to see the world cup. And that is funny too. Brazilians pretend to be foreigners to attract their own fellow citizens.

We hosted 2 Mexicans here. And we taught how to get by in Brazil, basics of Portuguese. Today when I passed by the lady where we practiced putting credit in a phone she asked me. ” Where are you from? You speak portuguese quite well!”

I explained  her I am from here. Actually from the street around the corner but as I walked I realised she is write I am not from here. I have spent too much time everywhere to be from somewhere. I asked the doorman where he thought I was from. He knows I am from here. I explained him  the story and he said ” Maybe, they think you are not from here because you speak very fast!”

And as I stopped here to write I realised it is true. I am not from here.  I am so scattered, there are so many parts of me in so many places, the people that I trust and love are not simply in different cities, they are in different countries, they are in different continents. My language has been so cut in so many ways, the philosophies and religions that have penetrated my mind come from so many different places, that it does not even surprise me that my brain has stopped sometimes either going too fast or too slow.

I stopped to think about the door man and he is write “it is because I speak too fast”. More than that I live too fast, too intensively.

I don’t care about the world cup. Not sure for how long Brazilians will also not care.  We all know it is panis et circenses. But there is some beauty in seeing their smiles back in their faces. Nothing has changed. All the structural problems are here. Yet they still smile.  I have written about this before… maybe this is the most powerful form of protest and resilience there is! It is to simply not allow all of the absurdity that goes on to go inside one’s soul. They stand up, they see the unfairness for what it is,   they find and know it is absurd and then they still dance and smile. There is no greatest strength than this one.

 

Freedom in solitude.

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freedom

I have encountered in my life many refugees, many of which who had been kept as hostages. I have been to enough places to know that some people speak with fear and in almost silent words in front of me. Others speak casually about it all. I have learned through the path to recognise someone in pain. Nothing special about me, it is something that some people just also feel.

Today I was sent  an article to read about the life of a hostage who was kept in Iran for a long time. Nowadays , I choose carefully what I read. Yet I read it. And it moved me so much. It was a letter. I wondered how many people could actually identify with these words. I did.

I thought so much about it. I have never been kept as a hostage, nor have I ever been tortured why was it that I knew that, how was it that those words made so much sense to me?

There is something intriguing about reading it.  I did not laugh like someone told me, would have been the most compassionate way to read it. I could not possibly laugh at it. I did once see an Iraqi speak in a conference ” laughter is the easiest way to cope with something that is so painful that you can’t deal with.” I was impressed that day. He was Iraqi, ironically at the time ( the time of the Iraqi war) he had studied public health in Syria. Then he became a student at Harvard. I was an undergrad at the time, but because I was always so interested in the Middle East I was introduced to him by my professor. This was NY, a couple years after 911.

As I read it today, many years after. Having met so many people who are from countries that were, or are in a war now, those images lingered in my  mind.  Somehow I definitely could understand a student from Harvard, a doctor writing about laughter when his country was being bombed. He was a doctor.  But I can not laugh.

I read the article again and wondered why was it? And that are some thoughts there which are so powerful.  Shane bauer, the hostage, and journalist, in some part of his page says he never thought prisons in the US could be worse than in Iran.

But the reason I went to his page was to see who he was. More importantly because I was very intrigued by something in that article. And that is such a non popular notion but I really understood it.

Somehow he said it that being freed was harder than to be a hostage. If you are to say that to anyone. They would invoke the “Stocholm syndrom”. Yet this is not really why I thought it was so powerful. It is something else. The return to freedom, in a world where suddenly you can realise the superficiality of it all. The invoked tones.  The questions.  All of this is unbearable.

This is not even knew. I guess in manufacturing consent it is quite clear.  But the idea of the whole west being addicted to pleasures, chemical releases…. Addiction to Freedom, is always hard to tell people.

How many steps further you have to go to understand that a total search for “that” freedom cannot be disentangled from total abandonment of responsibility to the world where you live in. Where you actions do matter!

And so I go back to my love of Mountains, the admiration of those who do not need to conquer them for the chemical release that comes from that. They were born there.

In my mind I go back to Tibetan  lamas who are capable to be in silence, self-contained,  and are able to control brain chemistry through meditation.

In my mind I go back to the indigenous I have met in South America, who tell you all over to not take away a person from a hole. Let them lay there.  I used to find it cruel. Yet, it is not. It comes from an awareness of discovering  self resilience, strength, and the value of one’s own life.

I doubt any Tulku, or Shaman abandons anyone. They are there in silence.

So when I read Shane Bauer I can but think, that I understand he found his strength his value. And was almost convinced he was freed. Only to realise that Freedom is internal, to be externally Free in a world where  most people have not found their own strength leads you to feel completely lonely. Free in a world of disconnection, oppression done under your name.

It is painful to see around you all of those addicted to something vaguely related to Freedom. It almost makes you hate freedom. It almost makes you want to be trapped so that you can at least know who your enemy is. But, in the end, we must realise that this is not  freedom. Freedom is inside.

 

 

 

The article by Shane Bauer is here

“You’ll Need to Relearn How to Be a Person”: A Letter to Bowe Bergdahl From a Fellow Former Hostage

 prison 3

 

News, the Repetition of the Old??

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Sometimes news come from where you least expect… I actually wonder what are news, are they really new? Sometimes it feels they are all a variation, some kind of repetition of the old.

Indian news coming as a gift all the way from Bahia here are news… strange and pleasant but they feel like news.

The sudden arrival of  travellers that are cruising the world in my house is now already common to me. Just like it has become common suddenly the sudden appearance in my life of people who have crossed Mongolia by horse.

The reencounter with my cousin who returns from Asia having reconciled with herself is both old and new… it falls in the wonderful news.

My friend from the Phd sharing with me his frustration of friday seminars is hilarious and touching. His desire to help me recover is new and old and definitely also wonderful .

A cad driver telling me his desire to make something called youtaxi to record all the amazing stories he hears in his cab. To me it seemed incredibly new, only till I translated to my guest…”oh yes, that already exists”. Not, in Brazil is what the taxi driver tells me.

I feeling almost totally recovered and having non stop conversations about the relationship between thought and language feels like an old practice feeling so new now.

Even half asleep putting the right shoes to be able to dance the whole night. That feels old and new and also wonderful.

I guess the only new thing…. is that the bar of Cidāo will no longer open his door. The bar is demolished by now. That is new….and final. That is sad…

In my mind echoes a song  “Saudosa Maloca” Peguemo todas nossa coisa e fumos pro meio da rua aprecia a demolição.

And that falls in a hard thing to translate. It is a samba song that talks of something very sad, about a house that is being demolished. The song sounds however happy..

It is time to put back the right shoes again. That is new and old. I finally feel good!

Wanderings of a full moon Night…

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I ride on a bus. It is usually faster to go some places in place by buses than by car. No traffic in the lanes destined to buses and taxis. In any case I could not drive anyway. I actually take joy to walk places. Sao Paulo was never a place I walked before. I usually drove.

Cre, my childhood nanny is next to me. The moon is almost full in the sky. I look around delighted looking at the sky. I have just been to Aquiles, my psychologist and it was a great section.  I had the chance to have my childhood nanny who took care of me since I was a baby till I was 6 talk to  talk to Aquiles. Cre could  tell my psychologist how was the beginning of my life. I listened it all, sometimes with tears in my eyes. I must say I do not remember almost anything of my childhood. But as she spoke I did. It did really feel like like a gift.

We take the bus home I look around  and the whole country seems to be decorating for Christmas. Though the country is secular, most people are christians here.  Actually most people are believers, of all kinds of beliefs mixed together. I live in In a neighbourhood where there is a large Jewish community.

Though Brazilians like to praise our miscegenation, most people in this neighbourhood are Europeansor or Sirian-Lebanese descendants.  The African descendant people you ever see are usually workers , such as drivers, nannies, cooks, and waiters in the nice restaurants around here. I of course do agree  there are more mixed people here than in other places of South America.

In a brief and poor explanation of Brasil. Brazil was colonised by Portugal at a time when Spain and Portugal dominated the world. Aside from Brasil, the two Guyanas and Suriname, all other countries in South America speak Spanish. That is why it is very difficult and funny to be asked to answer which “race” we are from in American forms. I always put  homus sapiens or human. Since  in Brazil we are never really asked these questions.. and In America there was no option where I felt i could be in. Being usually told to say I was Hispanic, I often explained we spoke portuguese and not Spanish. In any case, Brazilians, did always feel that form was just stupid.

Maybe it is because we put so little attention to our origins that we feel that there is little prejudice here. That is somehow a complex topic, and to talk about it I would need a lot of time.

Slavery was finished in several steps being finally abolished in 1888. I am no specialist in this, but I learned in schools and through reading and talks that when slavery was abolished ( officially though we all know there is still slavery around in the world) there was a shortness of workers which led to an opening of Brazil for immigration.

Since farmers had never been able to slave indigenous peoples before, they called  the new immigrants. Promising a d new world, delivering hard labour.   There is evidence that it was a true holocaust of indigenous peoples in the continent.  I believe the first immigration  after the Portuguese were the Italians who came searching fora new life in the new world.

Later on came  the Japanese, and in the  end  of the first war  Sirian-Lebanese people who came still using their Ottoman passports. Ironically in Brazil, they sometimes call themselves Turcos…. Though they precisely know they are Arabs… Here in Brazil, I think most people do not really think about that. Then in the second war came loads of Jews, and Germans.

Paulistanos, people who are born in the city of Sao Paulo ( Sao Paulo is a state and city) like to call Sao Paulo a Cosmopolitan city. When I saw my friend my Caue who just came from Beijing  we had a long conversation about what it ” what made us go.?”

I feel that while we are away we are so entertained with the other that when it reaches you it is time to move.. so us people of the world once we cross so many borders, it is just so difficult to stay. And so as we talk I wonder. About these courageous immigrants who came from their old world in this ships to a new one, having no idea of the trip, of the place, and definitely of a return.

So as I sat yesterday with these friends who have lived or traveled many places I did and we could talk about the profoundness of life, the difficulty to come back to a world that in your mind seems too mysterious, where you are not even able to eat in the same way, or where you just don’t care for the small details of those who went out for too little or not at all. So when we met it was all still that world were we floated from shamanism, politics, countries and philosophy for hours. Floated in the world were people who live the real world never usually go.

Than as I sat in the bus last night and as I looked the moon  I thought  of the cities I lived in Sao Paulo, London and New York  and realised they are not cosmopolitan in the same way at all. I guess if we define what we even mean by cosmopolitan.. and I guess if we take a very loose explanation such as “a city where there are many people who were not born there living and who are still preserving some of their original culture” then we could put so many others. And yet those cities we always will feel not containing the world.

I like being in Sao Paulo because I feel protected by it, by my friends and my family and definitely by my Dr Getulio, Aquiles and Dona Euthimia.

But when I sat with Gustavo and Caue who are people who lived in many places and now live very different lives I am intrigued.  While one is married with a child and though is still reading and engaging with the outside world is now settled .The other cant just stay, he arrived arrived last month and now cant wait to go back to Asia.

And as I open my email and sea Mark is going back to London to finish the PhD, while I know Maria now quit it and has a baby and will be married in Greece soon, and Chi and Aidan are in the road, while I see how much my friend Leila in Morocco and Lebanon has writer and prayed for me… I feel my heart overflow with love. The moon will be full tonight.. whatever I ll do, I know it will be good.

Love, from Sao Paulo

The link to my last post… hope it works :)

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I flow in words. It is hard to write, but I try it because Doctor Getullio , my neurologist, realises it might be a good way to see what has happened to me . The truth is that it is not really that in the minds of those who reach the organic collapses, what I think, so we do all exams all over the place, and I don’t even mind them actually anymore. In the past they were my greatest nightmares. I don’t even mind so much exams, and the unabated hunger that reaches  me everyday. I do it all. I simply imagined he knows, and might have finally realised how  much I have always lived deeply in the symbolic world, through words, through so much that the pragmatic people  feel it is not that important now.

So, suddenly  even the most pragmatic people had to realise what had affected me leading to a sequence of weird diseases  with no final diagnosis were led by my own despair in my mind.

It was in 2007  that l had my first epileptic attack. It was in the middle of the night and I was in a friends house. I had travelled Morocco first with Haiko my ex,  and  with Adriana, but they had to go home and  I decided to follow the trip on my own. Eventually  encountering Leila who is a brilliant photographer and has worked in borders… I had been in that crazy border when you cross a door remain into African continent to the fictional Europe of Ceuta. I felt a certain puzzlement then and I returned to Morocco the following day. I travelled on my own following Ramadan , and the villages I was recommended, taking rides, trains, and buses. I did never feel threatened as respect. Though all restaurants were open for tourists.

Then I returned eventually to Marrakech to stay longer with Mounia. I loved my stay with Mounia how friendly and carrying were their family with each other. A certain night as I was about to sleep, I felt like a shock. I did not want to call help though when I woke up I was very confused. Now I know I had an epileptic attack then, that day on my own I was confused and let it be.

On my own, not knowing what had triggered, and not wanting to call for help from my dear friend Mounia. I remained a few more days till I flew back to the UK.  To me, very soon I started to realise that these triggers seem to have happened every single time when I felt an  enormous sense of vulnerability. And the scary part is that every single time, it feels more dangerous. And so I write, open my soul, to how these collapses feel,  it is almost  like a desire, a plea for survival as what I am: simply very fragile in these world.  It scares me that it seems almost like a non-conscious plea for care in my own terms…

So I write and apologise right now for how poorly these lines are put down. In fact I guess I have this strange mind where it is not so much interested in perfection but rather in breaching of the separation of beings. I will talk about this one day. These basis of oneness and the others. Categories are in the depth of my interest. My studies have gone through science, the brain, the psychological aspects of  peoples minds, cultures and the mysticism.. so, stimulated  by Dr. Getulio I seat to write once more about it, it felt great, then very difficult, though I knew it would have been very hard.

It is hard after it means with oneself observing itself. The technique of Dra Euthimia, my psychiatrist  reminded me is part of the practice of Mindfulness (and yoga meditation technique), felt like a good thing  to do. Though meditating with no obligation to report to the other (nor oneself) is way easier. There we are back to complication of existing in the world, the explanation to the world.  So let me tell you it is hard for me to read, to see films and hold all the basic activities. It is now much better to be slow.. and rest. but I ll write more.

In the past I flew through these words, really hallucinating most of the time and in silence, till one day I wrote in portuguese, for some reason it felt easier to write it in English but I knew I should attempt to connect to the world where I came from, that would have been what Aquiles, my psychologist would have said. Then I felt my own words were telling me different things, like another person editing me, or criticism that were being written by my brother. A gentle world but out of place. Then I did understand that the process of thought was fast and that my brain is still inflamed and until I am still having Cortisone I would be eating more, looking swollen  and having strange thoughts… oh wow now I felt relieved.

I have a few blogs and one of them is called http://www.descolonizandoamente.wordpress.com, which means decolonizing the mind. It is called that way as an homage to all that I had learned from my friend, professor and ex-boss Mustapha Masrour. I am so thankful to Mustapha that it is not possible for me to put it into words now… I will make sure to write it more about it in time.  Though I must say that I did decolonize my mind and became more aware of the prejudices I was born into… I therefore also realised that total  de-affiliation brings with itself a certain total loneliness, or a new very strong affiliation to a very strong conviction to a new faith. I am in an interesting time now wondering into how to travel my mind rather than to colonise it.

It makes me laugh here realising I am trapped by languages…. I must reconnect to where I come from, but I never want to leave the world that I connected to, a world of beauty and difference, buta world that always opened arms to my never ending internal loneliness. I would like to point out that as I write this text I felt I had not written that sentence. The words where ”  buta world that always opened arms to my never ending internal ”

I  was first furious, feeling like someone else was editing my blog. Now however I am even capable to accept that my own brain might have realised  that there it is an inhabitant loneliness and that what I attribute to my brother might be one more strange progress of my myself. As I say my brain is doing much better.

So, I seat here in a process of gentle recovering. I go to several doctors. I am medicated. I have strange feelings but when it is all good I can tell a whole story and the thought starts in the centre and then flies to the right. It feels like a river in the amazon going to the right like most western languages seem to do.

The strange thing I have is that times my whole head turns to the the left…. like if I were looking back to search for my past.  If feels it is all very far away, like in some desert where all that I have is lost now. The words, the memories, all there and I want to reach it. And inevitably these times I feel languages feels like it wants to run even more back  to reach to the left, though more and morel I just feel the desire to come to the present walking back to the right to, the present, leaving behind what happened in the hospital in Asia and searching for the present. Looking for the present.  

Put it simply the thought mainly always appears in the the present. Sometimes I look back. I have a desire to go even more backwards to reach something far. I try to do it less since I noticed (or when it started….). Most of the time I turn and I can speak and feel language like it is in the western, like  people  seem to do  language go to the  right  in these places.

I don’t think I ever started from the left. It feels like it is a progress, like  in an  middle  eastern  language that  goes from where it starts to the left.. This is so complex, too hard, in an confused mind. I hope you get something 🙂

Being that all that we know about  the mind is very temptative…  and I must say  though I have no desire, nor capability of debating these patterns of learning languages  or the mind and definitely especially now I also  know I should put effort as it might happened to help.

I started so long ago searching for meaning, and I was so cared for through these diseases I was examined in painful ways, lost so much of my ability to be my own person but I did every time struggled to search for more, was every single time I was taken care of. I loved and was loved all the time, and yet I always felt I was lonely.

I did it so many times. There are no regrets. I was always met with gentleness because you encounter  what you expressed was always kindness. And as I guess I always feared more my own own loneliness I met the stranger in its real place, with the other.

But I laugh as I remember about the Brazilian Joy, I remember, once upon a time I had written about it. How it felt that in Brazil happiness joy was the less refugee against the oppressions, people simply went out and danced not letting their minds being inffected.

So, though feels like it is the best way out, and I am reminded that I had once written about how in arriving arrived in Brazil that I felt the joy all over the place and that eventually I thought it felt joy was like the last form of resistance

So I seat here, in my grandmothers s house, who also is recovering. I do the basic recovering process and we laugh seeing Michael Pailin going around the world. It is not total joy as we are all recovering, she   is 89 and I have crazy diseases but we laugh.So even little things like writing this whole mail with basic no help feel great… a few weeks ago I knew not some people.

I realised only many of you might even know what I am talking about. Too late now…. The fast section 🙂 II have been severely sick 3 times. I almost died… And the case I did not it is because I was with Edu and who  took care of me …We were about to go to Burma and I was caught up in a series of Epileptic attacks, I was then induced into in a forced coma for a while. Once I woke up I could not  even know anyone not even my parents who had flown to Thailand. I felt most of the time in a another reality.  I ha felt I was constantly being poisoned.  Ir attempted to be be kidnaped, all of these happened in september. More precisely I  arrived in Brasil the 20 an of September having left Brazil in end of of April.  Once I arrived I could not still could not really  recognise peopleIt…..

I visit great doctors: Dr. Getulio, neurologist,  Dr. Aquiles,psychologist

For Mounia Paintings: http://www.mouniadadi.com/

For Leila Photos: http://leilaalaoui.com/

My First Interview- Mosaic the Path In Between

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Dear friends as I keep getting questions about people who cant get my book. And I def want that all of you who want to are able to read it.. Here it goes:

1. It is only available online now…
2. You can buy it in any amazon in any country you are!!!!.
The link i put was the one local to the UK but you can find it in any amazon inthe world 🙂
3. You do not need to have a kindle to read it.
You can download the application of kindle for ipads, smart phones, computers for free
Here for downloading kindke app
The book is called
Mosaic the Path in Between
You can get it in any amazon!
This is the link to the UK one,
 if uou are not in the UK go to the site of amazon in your country and search for the book with the title
Mosaic, the path in betweev
If you have any problem let me kbow!  🙂 and if you are reading .. Please let ne know about it!!
Love Jules in Rome in ny way back to Asia 🙂

INTERVIEW – JULIETA FALAVINA, AUTHOR “MOSAIC, THE PATH IN BETWEEN”

by Eduardo Simantob, (Journalist, Zurich – Switzerland)

1. You have been to a few hotspots in the world (Kashmir, Palestine). How is it to travel in places like this, being a woman?

JF – People ask me this quite often, but I had to pass by a certain psychological “preparation”. I used to fear going to a place as charged as Palestine, but there was a situation I lived once in Paris, in a very dodgy neighborhood, where I was faced with a very hostile encounter with a young Algerian in the street at night. But eventually we had a very interesting exchange, and the estrangement and hostility turned into empathy and understanding. Suddenly I felt I was ready. That night I felt I could go anywhere. Palestine, Kashmir, slums in Brazil, any conflict zone.

In all of these places I was welcomed. Not because I was parading as a savior, simply because I was just plain human. People know it, they can feel it. When you try to be respectful people act accordingly. More often than not my Palestinian and Kashmiri friends were intrigued by what they called “my goodness”. They usually took me in, and often told me I had to be very careful in the next village. Once I left them I should pay more attention, not all people are as nice as they were, they would say. I guess this deep fear of the unknown is a common thing everywhere. And though I know most of my friends shiver just to think of me talking openly to strangers…. I can’t avoid it. I find the risk of dying or being hurt really less scary than the reality of not knowing the other.

2. How does the fact of being a Brazilian woman affect the access to the people, and to the stories you tell?

JF – Being a woman makes it harder and easier at the same time, though I don’t know how it is to be a man. But being a woman makes it possible to be anywhere in a more gentle way. All people I met had mothers; some had sisters, and daughters. Whenever people were aggressive I usually asked about their family. I never felt scared for being a woman anywhere. Fortunately it has been so long that I do not feel harassed that I barely know how I react to this. I usually talk back to people. And they get puzzled, and eventually start telling me their stories. Or else, when they could not talk to me, they would offer sweets in a bus, or a smile… I really cannot think of a time when I felt really scared.

Being Brazilian also makes a huge difference. I did not notice it immediately… but soon enough I realized that by the fact that Brazil is mainly known for football and carnival, it made people relate to me very differently. Not having a history of being a colonial power, or an imperial power (although in Latin America this perception is a bit different) often allowed me to ask whatever I wanted. Having been born in Brazil also prepared me to the idea of syncretism and to accept difference, in spite of all economic problems arising from the enormous inequality that exists there. We usually boast how we are used to difference, but it took me a long time to feel at home in Brazil again. And if there is one thing I do admire from where I come from is the usual acceptance people have towards difference. And of course, the proverbial optimism and joy. Being Brazilian allowed me to always laugh and to be emotional at things. Seeing difference was the norm in my life rather than the exception. So people often ask me about football players or Carnival, which are happy events. It makes my journeys significantly easier.

3. You avoided taking sides when describing the conflict zones you travel through, and keep the politics in the back. But how could you describe yourself, politically?

JF – My book came out of a series of emails I sent to people to explain the place I was in. I was, and still am, more interested in people than in the political reality of a place. I studied international politics and social sciences, so I was not unaware of the political facts on the ground. But I felt misinformed by it. I find it very important to know the history of a place, yet what always moves me are personal stories. And the more I wrote about them the more I realized how similar we are in the world.

As an anthropologist I always defended the plurality of the world. I wanted to cherish the languages, the cultural manifestations, and as a student of psychology I also always felt we were exactly the same everywhere. It did not matter even whether I spoke the language of the place, soon enough I could grasp what was going on.

The reason I never write that much about politics in my e- mails is because politics permeate the world where we live, but if we focus too much on it we are taken by ideas and lose touch with the human aspect.

I don’t even classify myself politically anymore. I am interested in people, but without ever losing the notion that we are the same in diversity. It is tricky when you think of borders, that on one hand they should  preserve differences, and yet, on the other we should  not allow them to fully separate us  from the other.

4. And spiritually?

JF – Brazil is a very syncretic country. I was born in a Catholic family who is not practicing and that doesn’t attend church. As a child I believed in nothing, and had no affiliation to any specific religion. As soon as I could define myself as something, I would say I was an agnostic. Later, following the trends of the time I became a fundamentalist atheist. Until I met a friend who is deeply involved into religious studies, and asked him whether he was a “believer”.

He said, “I guess I am a believer trapped in the body of an atheist”. To what I replied, “I guess I am an atheist in the body of a believer.” We became very good friends ever since. I believe both of us relieved our atheist parts somewhere along the path. I have always felt both.  Sometimes a believer trapped in an atheist body, sometimes an atheist trapped in a believer body. Never were the two in the same place at the same time. Till the day I stopped trying to be that coherent. Nowadays I am very interested in religious beliefs, but my biggest religious practice has to do with compassion. A value I learned to understand better with Dostoyevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov”, and that I see in almost all religious manifestations in the world.

5. What is the meaning of the “path in between”?

JF – I wanted to call my book ‘In-betweeners’ because I always felt we were trapped in between worlds, ideas etc. But something that happened in Brazil made me realize that we do not have to choose all the time. We do not have to be perfect. We have to make a Mosaic. Mosaic is a celebration of art. It is a celebration of what is made by hand, the art of the possible. Taking things that were broken and making something better with them. Something beautiful. And celebrating what is most human: living the symbolic.

Art is for me the best manifestation of humanity. And a mosaic is a form of art that leaves the idea of perfection (in disruption) aside. A mosaic is beautiful because it is made of pieces. We are all made of pieces.

What matters is the journey, not where we come from or where we end. This movement to go back is a search for belonging and we belong both to the All and to a specific thing. We must go back to realize that we are inheritors of all the joy and pain that exists.

The middle path is a Taoist idea, a Chinese concept. But it is something beyond that I wanted to bring, because it has nothing to do with being in the middle as being “right”, “correct”, but of being really in between things, conflicts, ideas. It contains the idea of the middle from Buddhism. But not a perfect middle.Just in between, in what humans are; in this human experience we can make a mosaic.

But this is just one narrative. There are others and they should all be heard. Because it is only in hearing the other that we find our own voice. And I have finally found mine.

6. What was your plan when you started to write your blog, and how did it change in the course of your travels?

JF – My book is in fact a series of emails I started to write to my friends when I first went to volunteer in Asia.

As soon as I started asking people whether what I wrote about them was ok, they told me they wanted to be part of my list to know about the other people I met. Soon many of the people I had met were reading my stories somewhere else. This has fundamentally changed the way I wrote because all that I saw I wanted to share with people I had left on the journey. So my emails were always an attempt to share with others what I saw.

Once I started going back to places, my writing changed again. I remember a class I attended at the LSE where Professor Fuller explained how his experience with the people he researched made him much more accurate.

“When you write about people in Tuvalu and they do not read you, you can say anything. Now when you talk about Indian Brahmins and they will read you and be in your audience, you have to be more careful”.

I often thought of those words when I wrote about Palestinians and Israelis. I always knew they would read it. I needed to be as accurate as I could. That is why, when I published my book and I asked people whether I could write about them, they said yes. Not only they knew me, but they had read me. They knew what I wrote was what they had told me.

7. Did you change much of your writings when transcribing your blog to the book? Is the voice you found in the book the same as the one in the blog?

JF – Most of my writing is exactly as it was. The only corrections were made by my editors for most of these emails were typed from my I-Phone or I-Pad, and I simply never edit anything. I don’t know how to, and was always on the go.

8. Do you think that your experience as an anthropologist is more an advantage or a hindrance to your sensibility?

JF – I actually am not sure. I believe I was born an anthropologist because of my interest in the other. In the beginning I used social theories, political theory, cognitive theory to attempt to understand life. Then this was all thrashed. I guess I took from anthropology the admiration for a plural world, and from cognition an interest in the things that connect people. From my Professors Rita Astuti and Maurice Bloch I learned that what people say and what people think can be fundamentally different. Maybe from my whole time in academic life this is the most important lesson I have learned. What people say usually has to do with society, now what people feel and think…. that is way harder to tap into scientifically.

9. You studied music and have composed quite a few songs. Is your music some kind of link to Brazil, or do you feel it more in tune with your international experience?

JF – Well, I started to compose when I was a child. I used to feel that Brazilian music touched my soul while other music travelled to other places in my body. Nowadays I do not feel that anymore. I remember hearing Klezmer in Brazil and feeling I was a nomad. Music connects me to my body, and that is where home is to me.

10. Do you still feel like writing songs?

JF – I am not sure. Since it is quite hard for me to sing now, because of a health issue, it is difficult to say. I love playing with a French musician called GaspardDeloison, a very talented boy I met in Asia. Gaspard has the ability to transform what he hears in something more beautiful. He is so humble that he can’t see it. If I ever were to record a cd it would have to be with him. Yet I prefer nowadays to just play the piano (which I can’t actually play).

“Mosaic, The Path in Between” can be purchased for kindle. You do not need to have a Kindle to read it.  If you do not have kindle you may download a kindle app for free on your phone, Ipads, or computers.

For Kindle here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CSAJHP4/ref=r_soa_w_d

MOSAIC, THE PATH IN BETWEEN

SYNOPSIS

“Mosaic” is the journey of a woman who always

felt lost, but who never feared the Other, and went after It. It is the journey of a woman coming of age while trying to understand boundaries as well as her roots

in search of a sense of home. It is a human journey through her body and with a soul open to

record the so many voices that helped her finally find her own. The voices of Thais, Palestinians, Israelis, Tibetans, Europeans

and so many others, calling for a gentler world, a world in which all of us feel less alone.

The book does not follow a strict chronological order. Instead, it delves on an inner path. Mosaic starts with an old self of the author, still naïve but at the same time quite skeptical of faiths, dogmas and deep-rooted beliefs, leaving a precocious and short- lived marriage to do voluntary work in a school in Thailand. It is a seemingly harmless world, and her travels then also follow no plan or any specific curiosity, until she decides to focus her PhD in a research about how Israelis and Palestinians perceive and act upon the very idea of peace. Suddenly the individual stories and the humanity of the people she meets become much more interesting than any academic work. The PhD will eventually be dropped, but the trip will rage on up to the limits of physical endurance, as she is faced with odd health issues, the proximity of death and a reassessment of spirituality. She starts to realize that “home” transcends geography; it is made by people, by love, by managing to conciliate her roots with the antennae that connect her to the wider world.

The book also includes original illustrations done by artists Thomaz Bondioli (São Paulo/Amsterdam),Valérie Ciriadès (São Paulo/Belgium), Sandra Naxara(São Paulo) and Mounia Dadi (Marrakesh). Original graphic design made by Gustavo Soares (Rio de Janeiro).

“Mosaic, The Path in Between” can be purchased for kindle. You do not need to have a Kindle to read it.  If you do not have kindle you may download a kindle app for free on your phone, Ipads, or computers.

For Kindle here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CSAJHP4/ref=r_soa_w_d

Mosaic, The Path in Between

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julieta Falavina (1981) was born in São Paulo, Brazil, but attended French schools in order to follow a constant curriculum while following her parents’ errands. At the age of 19 she won a Fulbright scholarship and graduated in Music and Anthropology at Hofstra University (New York), later continuing her studies at University of Amsterdam (Social Sciences & Conflict Resolution) and finally settling at the London School of Economics, where she completed her Masters in Cognitive Anthropology

and started the PhD program. She was also teaching assistant at Birkbeck College and University of East London in Political Approaches to Social Conflict (2011).

Julieta’s nomadic life started at a tender age, having lived in Buenos Aires and in South Australia still in her teens. While pursuing her academic career in Europe, she traveled extensively in South America, Southeast Asia, India, North Africa and the Middle East. In 2009, while volunteering in Thailand, she began to narrate her stories via e-mail to about 20 friends. The characters in her stories started to become readers, too, firstly to know what was being told about them, but then to also follow the world through the eyes of someone they knew so well. Soon the mailing list had more than 500 names, many of them replicating the stories to their own friends. In parallel, Julieta kept two blogs, one in English and another in Portuguese (with different contents), where newcomers could read what she had written before. As a prolific songwriter, Julieta has also dozens of songs composed in several languages, and many of them can be seen in her own YouTube channel. She is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian and French.

Links:

http://www.translatingthoughts.wordpress.com (blog English)http://descolonizandoamente.wordpress.com/ (blog Portuguese)http://www.youtube.com/user/julietafalavina/videos?view=0 (YouTube Channel)

“Mosaic, The Path in Between” can be purchased for kindle. You do not need to have a Kindle to read it.  If you do not have kindle you may download a kindle app for free on your phone, Ipads, or computers.

For Kindle here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CSAJHP4/ref=r_soa_w_d

Mosaic, The Path in Between

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Posted on May 4, 2013

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Dear friends as I keep getting questions about people who cant get my book. And I def want that all of you who want to are able to read it.. Here it goes:

1. It is only available online now…
2. You can buy it in any amazon in any country you are!!!!.
The link i put was the one local to the UK but you can find it in any amazon inthe world 🙂
3. You do not need to have a kindle to read it.
You can download the application of kindle for ipads, smart phones, computers for free
Here for downloading kindke app
The book is called
Mosaic the Path in Between
You can get it in any amazon!
This is the link to the UK one,
 if uou are not in the UK go to the site of amazon in your country and search for the book with the title
Mosaic, the path in betweev
If you have any problem let me kbow!  🙂 and if you are reading .. Please let ne know about it!!
Love Jules in Rome in ny way back to Asia 🙂

“ It is not because I do not know my way. It is because I love you. And when we part we should know that. we should make it as a ritual. So that I know that  a piece of me is going. And i kneed to know that.”

 

Dear friends,

 

I know I owe an email to you. I started this email on the plane. And I will finish today as I am about to fly tomorrow to London.

Bear with me, I still make the same mistakes as usual.

 

So it starts…

Here I am again, on a plane. The first 4 hours I slept non stop. I was exhausted. For those of you who do not know I am flying to Switzerland to show my book in a sort of literary Salon.

 

Yes, that’s the news… I finally published a book!

Last year I started to write for a Magazine called Varal do Brasil, and while I was in Colombia they sent me an email inviting to join them in this literature salon in Geneva (May 1st-5th 2013)

 

I thought it was cool although I did not have any book to show. Once I came home I told my father and he said it was preposterous… especially because it was already the end of January, there was simply no time to write, edit and publish anything. “Think about next year”, he said.

 

My friend Claudia Alcantara, however, took the initiative and enrolled me in the Salon.

 

Claudia used to have a very normal job, and she disliked the curls in her hair, which is something very common in Brazil, some old traces of racism hard to die. She also disliked the way hairdressers worked the issue. So she decided to find out how the process was done. She ended up writing a manual to straighten hair and it started selling all over Brazil.

 

Hairdressers were impressed and started to ask her whether she also had some related products to sell? She didn’t. After a few emails with the same request, she decided to say yes.

 

She went around, studied some chemistry and invented a product based in the stuff that already existed, and she mixed chocolate into it.

 

Nowadays Claudia is the owner of a cosmetics brand called Cadiveu, and she sells her products for over 50 countries. Cadiveu has a brilliant website and you can read more about it here http://cadiveu.com/.

 

Claudia is someone who always believed in good ideas. She sold a product before it existed because she believed it could exist. She enrolled me in a literary salon to show a book in Geneva before I had a book.

 

And now I am in a plane with two suitcases filled with books.

 

It is called “Mosaic, the Path in Between”.

 

Mosaic, is the art of what is possible. Nowadays I even think of it as the art of the impossible.

 

This book is a call for a more human world. It contains many of the emails I wrote throughout these last years…. It contains 4 mains ideas… Al Naqbah ( the great disaster when Palestinians lost their homes, but here I expand it to the huge disaster that most of us do not know where wer come from), borders ( what are they for?), Inbetweeners ( the feeling of always being trapped between worlds), and a search for home.

 

It contains the voices that many that I encountered Thais, Moroccans,  Israelis, Palestinians, Tibetans, Colombians, Braizlians and soo many others… to eventually reach the voices of my own family.

 

It is a treaty of love,…. that could not have been made in 2 months if people all over the world had not helped it take shape/

 

I owe special thanks to Andrey my Russian friend in Sweden for reading it, commenting it, and even helping edit it when we were all running out of time. Haiko Ballieux, my ex husband, my great friend from Holland who edited from the UK and the US,  Eduardo Simantob who is Arabic and Jewish and Brazilian and who edited from Switzerland in all of his spare time, Andrew Tope, who is British who edited on a plane between the US and UK. Then I have to thank the people of the Design Gustavo Soares, who I know since my Uni time, who designed this book in Rio while we still edited. He did the design in his spare time, while worki full time  and taking care of his 1 year old daughter,  Thomaz Bondioli  who is Brazlian/Portuguese and lives in Holland for making all maps and Illustrations. And Victor Mendes  in Sao Paulo for making the files online so that we could be doing this all over the world.

 

The Maps are hand made. They represent my experience.  Middle East map was particularly difficult for us to make. But once I was approved by a Palestinian and an Israeli I cried.

 

Then I must say that, the time was running so short that we had to ask  other people from other fields to help us.  Sabrina Rabelllo, brilliant  composer, and  who did  Phd in physics  at Kings College and Post Doc in Harward!, Henrique Sa Earp who did PhD mathematics in Imperial College and now is teacher at the univrersity of Campinas in Brasil. Marcello Sorrentino who did his Phd  in anthropology at the LSE where I left mine :)   Marcelo Fortaleza Flores who is an anthropologist and filmaker who lived in the AMazon for 6 years and had studied with Krishna Murti, taught me in the US, then at the Sorboonne. And Elizabeth Ings who is British  and is a writer and whom I met meditating in Vipassana. Finally Marisa Silveira who is in the US, and is from RIo and did her Phd in Linguistics at UCL also edited parts of this book.

 

Then came the art…. Thomaz decided to make some amazing illustration to represent the tougher chapter. He asked me to tell him. I sent him a song I had composed  and he made the illustrations of the chapter called Amit.Image

Then came Sandra….

 

Ok, Sandra came before. Sandra makes amazing Mosaic. And I asked her why she made Mosaic. And she told me she did them because she like doing art but was clumsy. She broke things. So she made a Mosaic. I told her that day, in the beach… that is beautiful. Mosaic is the art of what is possible. A celebration of that has been shattered but we make something beautiful with. That is how may book went from being in Betweeners to Mosaic…… Because it was a celebration of these in between things… the art of what is possible.

 

And so  I asked Sandra whether she could send me a picture of a Mosaic. She did. We had one day. The resolution was wrong. And she told me she collected the pieces to that mosaic by the thames… pieces she imagined that had floated…. had a journey. We managed to get the resolution by Sunday ok. We had to delivered by Monday morning.

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Actually I managed to convince Jacqueline the lady responsible for Varal to Brazil and for me being there now to allow me to bring the books with me so that we could get 2 extra days. Now we needed till monday morning.

 

Then my childhood friend whom I had not seen in decades came to visit and now as the very famous fashion designer Valerie Ciriades came for a visit. I asked her. Can you do me one drawing. She told me she no longer drew. She only did clothes. For when Jules? Tomorrow… And so I told her. Seat when you have time and read the part of the book mosaic of voices…about my family… which she knows well…. and if it comes you send it to me. It came… and to me it is how she sees me. It makes me happy because it is how I like to see myself today.. feminine, delicate and like music.

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And  then Monday we were all ready to send… and Gustavo had a doctors appointment….. and  then Mounia wrote me to Congratulate me….Mounia Dadi in Morocco. The brilliant painter, and my dear friend

 

It was in her house that I first had my  first ever epileptic attack. It was after seeing her art. Her whole following collection she  later told me was inspired on what had happened to me. So as I was about to print the book on monday… It felt now.. it is ready it has  to have Mounia’s painting

 

I asked her and she immediately said yes. and sent what she felt it represented me searching others. I sent an sms to Gustavo… Gu Don’t kill me… we need to put one more image. Can we please….??

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Resolutions wrong, electricity down… all working magically for her painting finishing my book.

 

I knew it was then right!

 

It was over.

 

We sent at 4 monday to Fabio my Grpahic Producer, and also a great friend of my father…. and he told me He was uncertain we could have them before monday.. when I flew.

I suddenly wanted Sunday because I wanted to release my book, our book in Brasil… and it was all ready at 9 am saturday.

We released at the casa do Nucleo with Benjamim Taubking palying piano ( though he had to travel soon), and me telling the story ot the book.  I won’t tell the story now. I am tired, I think I have said it all now.

I am on plane. I fly to finally deliver the book to Geneva. Just like Claudia believed one day it would happen.

 

The release was beautiful we made a mosaic…. a mosaic that features pieces put by my 88 year old grandmother and my 5 year old cousins of second degree. My dear dear dear friends were there. And now I fly. They all hugged me very strongly telling me staying 6 months away was too much.

 

It is true…. as I fly here..  I agree… I ll miss them too much. That is thought when you have finally made home inside. Then you can realise all the homes you had all over. All the love you have to all and you feel this uncontrollable desire to go there… and give one more hug, an now, our book…. which all of them feature,

 

So that I wrote on the plane. Here I met Edu my main editor. Who told me, we need to edit proper now, and then we would release online on amazon. I cried. I felt my book was not good. I still went to the fair. edu explain to me over and over the book was good. But it had to be edited by one person thoroughly. He read my my whole book. And we are doing that.

He drove to fair. And I met amazing people. There was so much. So many people I felt so tired. ALl the tlack of sleep suddenly appeared. And I made a new friend. Nairubia and indigenous gril from a tribe called Iny in the island of Bananal. She put her hands in my lip. Closed them. She touched my face. She was there as the artist of the illustrations of the book. She was so special that I walk out.

 

She look into my eyes. Adns she said. He knew of your pain, dont ever let the light go away. Darkeness is just absence of light. She touched my face. Caressed my temples. She sang. And she said

 

“ I have nothing to teach you. You know. but one thing. dont get out of the litght anymore”

 

And then she gave me a profound gift. She told me people like me make her want to live. It imediatelly came to me the conversation I had with an anthropologist who told me the indigenous were different. I looked into her eyes. And I knew what I preached in my whole book was truly real. That day I felt… I don’t know indigenous people. As Nairubia touched my faced. Released the tension from my eyes. I knew compassion exactly the same anywhere is always [present. I cried.

 

I asked her whether she wanted me to take her back to the place where authors were and she said yes.

 

“ It is not because I do not know my way. It because I love you. And when we part we should know that. we should make it as a ritual. as if a piece of me is going. And i kneed to know that.”

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I knew fully what she meant. I walked with her. we toasted with juice. We hugged. and I felt in place.

 

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Then I cam home. The house of the travelling family you will read about. I met them on the road. Seing them again was like a part of me was being made put back. They cooked for me, they hugged me. We remembered all that once was. I am happy.Image

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Edu took care of me for all the time he could. They take care of me now, and tomorrow I fly to London.

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It is all good in this side of the world. And it will always be good wherever I am because I am in place.

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Love,

from Switzerland

Love is Subversive- Written for Varal do Brasil

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“ Love is subversive”

 

It was what I thought  when I finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez “Love in the Time of Cholera”. Florentino lived stories where he was never present, waiting his whole life for a childhood love. In Colombia of the book, it was only possible when the flag separates them from it all, the flag of the Cholera. Because Cholera is contagious, and love could only exist in this way contained in a boat in a river because in society it corrupts everything. It corrupts all the visions.

This thought came to my mind a thousand times. Every single time that I have been to violent places. Every single time when I have been to very developed places. Why is it that love is so difficult?

In my whole life I have searched to give love to so many people in so many places. There was however always a point that I left. It was because the love that I searched to rescue me from myself, could not do it. Love made me vulnerable. It was because love was missing inside of me.

Love collapses something from which we are not prepared for Ideas versus the body. We feel love or some form of it in our body and we think about it in some other way.

I feel that love is compassion. Compassion is to understand what Asians philosophers; religious men, sociologists and many others have touched the idea that we are all of the time individuals in a plural world. Love collapses separation from the other. Love is human.

And as has Victtorio Arrigoni, the Italian activist killed in Gaza, said, we must stay human.

When I crossed the wall of separation in Israel, to get to the West Bank, (against the will of my friends) I, for the first time, met Palestinians. At the time I already used to write the stories of the people I met around the world. From Palestine I wrote about my daily life.

One day an Israeli philosopher with whom I was supposed to meet and kept postponing because I kept staying everyday one more day in the West Bank, sent me a text message saying he wished he could see what I was seeing.

I offered to send him the emails I had sent to my friends and within hours he sent me a text message saying,

“I cannot see you anymore”.

I asked him whether it was because of what I had written in my emails and he agreed. I was intrigued since I had not written anything about the occupation or the politics. I called him and he explained to me he did not know why it was so difficult. I insisted, after all he was a philosopher that was his job to make something familiar, strange.

“It is too human”.

It was difficult for him to say this. I was thankful. He followed by saying: “had you written about the occupation or the politics, I would have understood. I could have agreed or disagreed, I am prepared for that. But when you write about yoga or love or how they take care of you like we do here, it is too human”.

That day I went to Jerusalem to talk to him. I have never seen him again. But that has remained in my mind forever. When I write about the Human, I collapsed all separations, all of them.

And there is nothing more human than love, collapsing the mind versus the body dichotomy. It is very difficult to deal with all the confusion that comes from the enormous vulnerability of love, of being human of not being separate from the other, the others.

In Colombia, not along ago, I met a man from Gaza. He has a bar/restaurant in Taganga, (a fishermen village by the Tayrona Park). It was his way for fighting for Palestine: serving food.

In front of his cafe/restaurant, there were drawing of Handalas and “revolucion” written on the wall.

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Handalas is a cartoon. He is the most famous character by the Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali. Handala is depicted as a ten year-old boy, the figure has turned his back to the viewer, and has clasped hands behind his back.

He has always his back turned to the viewer and hands clasped because Naji Al Ali was critical of both Israeli and Arab leaderships. He rejected all peace solutions that came from outside.

It is different in Colombia. When I arrived in Taganga, I first saw the Palestinian flag, and then the Revolucion written in the wall and then the Handalas. I introduced myself to Yassert, the owner of the cafe/restaurant as someone who loves the Middle-East and who has friends in both sides of the wall.

I went back to Yassert’s cafe every single day. I went back to hear his story, to drink his coffee, and to see his son, he had become a friend.

Right on the first day I had been there, I went back to my hostel and decided to research more about the character Handala. I read why he had clasped hands. He refused help of the outside world.

I immediately remembered that there in Colombia the Handalas painted in the restaurant of a man who had fought in the Intifada, who had been released by the Red Cross, held hands in a massive hug. I remembered that one carried a key, the other a weapon; one had a sling shot downwards. All carried by their shoulders.

I disliked seeing a weapon. I however, when I read that Naji al Ali had made them in clasped hands and separated, with their back to the viewer, felt relief. There in Colombia they held each other. There is one who carries a weapon in his shoulder, but his arms and hands supports the other. The neighbour.

I looked back on my mind, to remember that the WORD Revolucion was written differently as well. There was the word LOVE in the middle backwards. It was in bright red letters. There where love was so subversive that was kept in a boat, a man who had fought in an Intifada, serves food. He fights for his cause with his restaurant, feeding people, bringing those who are willing to talk to talk.

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And in his wall Handalas hug and the biggest word is LOVE.

Love, is subversive, but has not been contained by the boat of Florentino. Love is human. With all it perfect imperfection. And Vittorio Arrigoni, italian activist who was killed in Gaza, knew that.

I have been sometimes disturbed by activists who seem to all fight their own ghosts in other places. The same thing I have done myself in so many places in the world.

That day, someone I love, showed me for the first time Vittorio’s blog. His main message was “Stay Human!”

To love is to remain human. With the weapons, the cameras, and the fears. Love is subversive because it forces us to stay. It collapses all divisions.

So from Colombia, from Taganga, I thanked the universe, humans, god…. that cholera had been contained, but not love. Love exists in every part we allow it to be. That might be the path: to allow it to be in its full humanity, in all its perfect imperfection.

The Bracelet and The Key

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I have found my bracelet. Mysteriously like everything else that happens here in Colombia. In this mixture of  Africa, Europe and indigenous culture we can expect anything to happen. I however, never expected   for the first email that I got as a response to my last to come from Palestine, from my first Palestinian friend I had met the first day when I crossed the separation wall. That day it was the birthday of his best friend, and so Lorenzo (who is now here with me) was also there. It was in Ahmad s house that I met Lorenzo for the first time. This only came to mind as I read Ahmads email saying he thought it was a beautiful story and that he wished I found my misplaced bracelet, and that he wished he could be here with us.

I was  exasperated first to find out Ahmad read me. I somehow never thought he did. Then I was touched he  understood it was important for me a lost  bracelet, as I did understand in life sometimes we put emotions in things. And I had mine  ( feelings of belonging) there. And somehow in reading his words, I remembered the keys Palestinians kept since Al Naqbah ( the great disaster when Palestinians lost their houses..). Palestinians kept
the key to the front door of their houses, when they had to leave them in 48, hoping one day to return.The key is full of symbolic meaning. And I till  very recently used to feel we should all just let things go and move on. Now thought I still carry this belief in me, I understand, we must do it, but not before profoundly understanding where it came from. And yesterday I understood that well.

We went out dancing, Cartagena is the land of dancing. I love dancing. I have friends from my hostel, but also locals now. And as usual I put people together. And I danced, and danced. And yet…. there was this loneliness in me last night so I walked away from my friends…and I wandered off. I was taken by a looking like middle eastern guy to dance. He was a brilliant dancer. And I was silent. I danced without saying anything particular of me. And I felt so happy. And suddenly just as he came from nowhere… he disappeared.

I, for my own shortcomings, felt abandoned, and even sadder… And I kept wandering in that place. I had a desire to cry. In fact, I just could not contain my tears… so I cried feeling like a boat that is wandering aimlessly and does not want to be seen by any fellow sails men. I remembered Ishmael in Moby Dick.

And as I made my way around and was taken to dance by other Colombians. I decided to just not care about anything anymore yet I was sad and did not want to loose connection to what i felt.. It took me so much to get here. I could not trace where it came from this saddness. Or maybe, I could the beginnings of it… but not deeply it…. I had no courage to follow the thread of my feeling of loss. And suddenly, I bumped into the guy again. And I decided to talk to him.

It was a great thing to do. Because now he has a story. My abandonment was just mine. And it had no relationship to the world.

This middle eastern looking like, came from San Diego. He was born out of a father that came form Colombia, and a mother from Mexico. Though he looked in his 30s he was 19. He had just started a trip through South America to find out where he came from. His own father left Colombia when he was 11 to become American . Chris, the boy, had never been here. He was also a climber and had saved money to come to a trip to south america. It would pass through Brazil as in California he joined some Brazilian church.

So we stood out and talked. He told me about being raised by a grandmother who usually had described the house she was from. It was hand made by the family. It was there that his father was born. Now he had been to Bogota and had visited this house. I had tears in my eyes listening to him trace back the journey of his life. Discovering all that he came from, and yet knew not. We spent hours speaking and I understood why I needed to make internal home.

I understood the keys from Palestine. I understood the need we all have to go back and understand things. This boy is wondering south america learning a new language and meeting people. He is deeply religious… and yet all I could see of his trip was how human it was.

By the time he finishes he expects to be able to speak better Spanish. He expects to talk more to his family. I expect him to find out, what is south american of him. I understood last night so much of this existential quest. I understood though I did not carry a key like that of Al Naqbah ( the great disaster) I also did wish I could go back to my home. Yet for all of us it might be unreachable. We do not need the key, nor the house, but somehow we need to understand where do we come from.

Being here makes me understand so much of me as a traveler. It also makes me understand Al Naqbah much more deeply. So I wish one day my Palestinian friends will, (like I hope I do) understand we dont need to carry a key, or a bracelet. We need to carry a bigger space inside. One that allows us to create what we are. I do understand though today that we all must take this journey to an nonexistent past by carrying some special things.

So as I mysteriously reencounter my bracelet, jut as I loose my key to my lock. I am taken by joy the bracelet is still containing me, while happiness the lock can be broke. I ask for someone to break it. I get my passport back, my money and I feel both contained by those I love, and yet free to find out where I ll go.

Joy the last form of Resistance?

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I arrived in the airport in Sao Paulo before 5 am. The airport was empty and I walked pratically alone to the imigration. As I delivered my Brazilian passport to a Brazilian lady who was working there that morning I said ” Good morning”. She looked at me and smiled and told me “good morning and welcome back.’

I pointed out that it was amazing for her to be in such a good mood that early. She explained she had been awake since last night, that her shift was about to be over.

“Oh, so you will be able to go to sleep soon :)”

But she was leaving in one hour straight to the university and eventually in the afternoon she would sleep for a couple hours before she would wake up to prepare dinner for her husband who would come home. She said all of that smiling and laughing.

The experience of leaving an Israeli airport where you have to get everything out of your bag, get asked several times the same question, that you are asked whether you are carrying a bomb, and why you have been to Muslim countries like Malaysia or Indonesia to arriving in Brasil where a lady sleep deprived who lives in a crappy neihbourhood where people probably get more killed in a weekend than years of Israeli conflict and still smiles (when she still has hours to go) is a shocking one.

Most of the time when I return to Brazil and I see the loudness and happiness of Brazilians I want to shout ” Why are you people so happy? Why is it that we laugh so much when it is all chaos?”

Not this time. This time I smiled inwardly and I felt an enormous joy to see that in spite of all Brazil´s problems people are happy.

As I am pondering about that my friend Jaafar writes me. He tells me he had just celebrated Eid ( the end of Ramadan) in Tel Aviv. I am puzzled. And I asked him how did it go. He tells me he was with friends and that they had swam in the beach. They made Israeli friends.

I ask him to tell me about it. And he tells me they were in a Restaurant  and that there were two girls that sat next to them. They asked whether they could join them. They asked in English. The girls were 18. They said yes. They did not know they were Palestinians. Once they found out they replied ” we are peace and love”

He tells me they did not know where Nablus was. I ask whether they knew where Schem is ( the Hebrew name for Nablus). They didn´t. In fact, Jaafar tells me he showed them the picture of it in the map on his phone.

They were surprised ” But that is Israel”. Jaafar tells me this laughing. He finds it funny they did not know where the West Bank was.

I wish I could have been there and seen all of this. I am not even sure what to think.

Jaafar is working with an Israeli IT girl in developing a new app. He asks me an opinion. I am not  an expert on it but I give it. And as this conversations happens through the internet I cannot help but think how small the world has become because of it. All the people I met because of Instagram, couchsurfing, and all the opinions I can now ask from far away on skype, email, Facebook etc. The fact that he can take his Iphone out and show where he comes from in a map to people who have long heard about Palestinians being their neighbours but who do not know the Israel they see is a huge part Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“How did you feel in Tel Aviv?” I ask him

” We had lots of fun. We laughed a lot!”

Strange. I had always felt Tel Aviv was a bubble for Tel Avivians. It was the first time I realised it could be a bubble to anyone.

Laughter seems to be always the refuge of the naive. Irony is said to be the only possibility when all is too painful. I ponder about that and realise only an intelectual could have come up with that. So caught up in ideas about ideas. Seriousness is always solemn and is seen as inteligence. In the world of the mind to laugh seems always frivolous, naive, out of touch with reality. But I am starting to think that those that laugh are the most in contact with reality there is. The most aware of the reality they can´t change. They laugh.

It comes to me the Tibetans. Always smilling. The Thai. Brazilians. Are these people so in contact with reality that they just refuse nowadays to let the harshness of it enter their bodies? Their minds? Is laughter after all the last possibility of resistance?

I am not sure. But it does definetely feel better to be next to those who laugh… I take my passport back and I wish the lady she will have a happy day. She smiles and says “It is already.”