The Slums, and the border of within

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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

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It is incredibly hard to decide what to write about from Rio. The days have been blue, the sun has never left the sky, and carnival has been carnival. I have reencountered friends I met when studying in Brasil 12 years ago, in NY 11 years ago, in England a few years ago, and even travellers I crossed Kashmir with last year. I have made a great new friend. A gorgeous Iraqi English woman. Of the strange things that happen to me. In one day I am partying with a broken foot in the street carnival with a Bahraini girl, and of the other I meet an Iraqi in Brazil.

 

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

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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

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“Nao existe pecado do lado debaixo do equador”. Literally means that sins do not exist below the equator. This lyrics are part of one of Chico Buarque’s song. The singer and composer Chico Buarque is the nephew Brazilian Portuguese dictionary author, and the son of one of Brasil´s most important historian. Chico, as he is known, has composed love songs, carnival songs, passionate songs, political songs, stories and songs about so many other topics.  He has giving voice to men and women of so many different brazilian worlds. There are many many worlds within Brasil. He is considered by many our greatest composer. I include myself in this list that considers him as such.

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

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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.

Departure

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I write this from inside the plane. I am almost in Doha. Two of my 3 flights are almost done. I slept the entire time in both of them. They are usually narcotic to me. Buses, trains, planes any means of transport. This time it was not so much the effect of the plane but probably the accumulated emotion caused not only by my leg, the fever but especially by saying goodbye to my little place in front of the Mekong. I surely will miss the jack trees, the palm trees, the communal tables, the Mekong, the tropical Muesli, the Pad Thai and the sunsets. But what overwhelms me is not and probably will never be a place, for me it is always about the people.

As I hopped around in my crutches being followed by the whole of Mut Mee staff and some guests who became friends a cascade of tears streamed down my face. I feel so much love for this people. I have so much to be thankful for.

Ian who had spent 11 hours with me in Hospital and had come every day since to see me brought me a set of gifts. A package for the trip, three amulets and bracelets for me to give people.

” You are a giver my dear.”

What better gift could be given to me? They are beautiful simple bracelets I could put in the arms of those I love. The generosity of such a gift is indescribable. And so it was that a day before my departure I put a bracelet around the arm of every single friend I made. Every time I did I explained the origin of the gift and I “wayed” in the Buddhist Thai style.

Doing it to my friends from the Kitchen was the most moving as every single way was followed by a clumsy hug where I tried to not fall nor drop my crutches. every single one was followed by kisses and tears.

And then this morning the ladies who work in the Kitchen presented me with a T-shirt of Nong Khai. These wonderful women who work in the Kitchen Tia, Joy, Noy, Wii, Pook, kung, Man, Yong and Gaew do not make much money, they do not have spare money and yet they tipped in to get me a gift. The t-shirt was covered in messages in a foreign language to them so that I could understand. The amount of thought that went into this moved me beyond belief. While I was left in my room reading the shirt I sobbed. On the top it read “Memories are a treasure of the mind”. As I read this message I knew that that had been written by the always smiling Yong (who had once offered to rescue me from the rapist). I have never seen Yong not dressed in white, I had never seen her without a smile and not spreading joy around. Yong seems to be quite spiritual and very connected to Buddhism. Yong’s message was the most philosophical the others were pure emotion.

Then I got from Pook a handmade bag. A bag made of Mut Mee (which is a type of fabric). These bags are meticulously made selling one would be the equivalent of approximately one quarter of Pook’s monthly salary. She gave me one as a gift. A bag made by someone who worked with me at Mut Mee made of Mut Mee!!! More tears.

Wii as I was about to go showed up with a bag full of Guava which she knew was my favourite fruit.

My very dear friend Michal hearing about my accident hoped on a bus for 18 hours to come and meet me. I love Michal for her eternal willingness to question her own knowledge and assumptions. i love her for being the kind of person who pays attentions to the details. We had met in India in Mc Leod, we drove together in that bus that had an accident where a man died. We have had a million Palestinian Israeli talks. We travelled together after that accident until I left ( against her advice) India. She has taught me more Hebrew and about Israeli music then all of all my other friends together. We have laughed about every surreal situation to the point of exhaustion. Now on hearing about my accident she hoped on several buses for several hours to be able to see me… To be able to help me pack, shower, laugh and of course find whose fault it was that I broke my foot 🙂 I still think it is hers since if she had been more persuading I would just never have left India 🙂

As I was about to go I suddenly lost it. i started to sob uncontrollably. San, toothless homeless, also showed up to say goodbye. Julian filmed the whole parade. A handicapped hoping about being followed by all this loving people. i hugged and hugged and kissed people. As we made our way out and I saw all of my friends there, I saw Tia ( who is always so reserved) waiting in front of the Pavilion for me. Behind her was the Mekong. Next to me Nick carried my bags. As I enter the van I see my last last glimpse of the sunsets I have gotten used to admire everyday. It somehow seems so insignificant that my eyes go back to all these people who are there.

People who have not travelled for a while don’t imagine how profound can be the links you developed on the road. As I stood there I felt enormous love and gratitude. I felt part of it. Part of that little village where even the ex homeless guy bakes me a gift and shows up to say goodbye.

That place is mine not because I was born there, not because I married someone who had to be there. that place was mine because it is where people know me for what I am. They know me with all of my tears, insecurities, flaws. That place became mine because I connected to the people.

Nick takes me to the airport and flies with me to Bangkok. I don’t know how I would have done without him. Once I reach Qatar Airways, he waits for me to be checked in and for a wheel chair to take me to yet another flight. He hugs me and when I thank him he tells me to not be silly he would not have offered to come if he did not mean it. ” It was a nice road trip! if I had not come many other people would have. Tomorrow I ll be back to Mut Mee.”

In my last email I wrote I was certain I would meet other strangers who would help. I was right. As I am introduced to Udom, the man who is in charge of driving my Wheel chair he smiles and says:

” Do not worry Madam I will take care of you until you are inside of the airplane.”

I put my hands in a sincere “way” and say a fragile, exhausted ” Kopum ka” (Thank you).

He does as promised, he cruises the messiness and rush hour of the airport making sure nothing and no one inadvertently hits my foot. He wonders if I need to go to the bathroom, or drink, or have a coffee. And when he finally puts me on the plane he wishes me a good trip, a speedy recovery and a fast return to Thailand.

I have by now managed to get myself together. And I put my hands confidently in front of my chess and in that Kopum ka I thank the whole of Thailand. I thank every person I have met in Asia.

I have been living my life in the illusion of being open. I used to feel covered but always open to letting people go in. Yet I was always afraid of being hurt. Always afraid of being abandoned. So when they would penetrate me within I would freak out.

Leaving a PhD, a marriage, a life and crossing borders aimlessly crushed me so many times in so many ways. Weirdly enough when all broke down I found out that it is just better to be fragile all the time. In Portuguese we say ” a flor da pele” which literally means in the flower of skin. But I visualise it as being in a sense without skin, being raw without protections. It is a softer way of being. It is a scary way of being. You undress yourself of all the clothes, all the fears, and vulnerabilities you have accumulated through life. And then you stand there naked with all of the wounds, and marks, and broken parts. Then you just are. It is just so good to just be.

As I put my hands in way and thank Udom he is for me the embodiment of all of this transformation that has started to take place on me.

Udom is for me Asia and I thank it.

Kopum KA 🙂

Thank You

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There were a few amazing things that have happened from me getting this accident. One I have talked about before. The enormous (and I cant actually put into words how enormous) help I have gotten here. I feel like the most spoiled of people. If I move people tell me not to. Whatever it is that it is their specialty I am offered.

The second thing is that I got emails from all over the world. My Brazilian friends and family welcoming home, my friends from abroad wishing me to go home enjoy my family and friends and hoping to meet somewhere in the future.

The third thing that happened which touched me deeply is that most of my friends wrote to tell me not to stop writing “Around the World”. Some told me they were addicted to reading the stories of the people I encountered. One of the things that made me really sad to stop traveling was not to be allowed to share stories. But I wont stop. I will keep writing wherever it is that I am.

I wish I could write about all replies that I received. You would not imagine how much they touch me.

When I read Carley’s words ( yes I could hear them), telling me she was going to be a granny to me because all the pain she had felt through her journey in Kashmir could not be wasted in vain. I felt blessed. When Mirte who was here for few days told me she never writes because she feels insecure about it but read all of my emails and was touched by it I was grateful beyond belief. When Sam who is in Palestine wrote me saying

“If I learned anything in my 40 years of life, I learned that no matter how hard life is, how painful it is, how unfair it is… It always comes with unplanned, unexpected joy… All our bad experiences, crappy feelings, we end up learning, feeling better and have the benefit of our worst experiences”

I felt the greatness of pain is that it allows for you to be compassionate even of some small problem. Sam lives under an occupation has been illegally held in prison for 11 months and yet he finds the time and compassion to sympathise with a “broken foot”.

When Carol who I have not seen in almost 7 years wrote to me to give me support and advice I felt thankful.

When Natasha who I met in India 4 years ago ( when I was then sick with my brain) wrote me inviting to come to her mothers temple in Brasil I was surprised she read my emails. Her reply was

“that she always prayed for me.”

I met Natasha in my first journey to Tibetan lands. When she was studying Tibetan Buddhism with high lamas. At the time she gave me an amulet that had been given to her by a lama. It was to protect her but she passed it on to me. I was speechless. I carried it with me for years till I felt my brain was healed and that I could pass it on to someone who needed. Just like it was once done to me.

Kica my friend in London wrote me several lovely emails to tell me things that come from within. Joana who I met here offered to come back from Laos to take me down to Bangkok and carry my bags. My dear dear dear friend Paula who I know since I am child wrote to say she was worried about me. A short message. To the point…enough for me to know she is there. My cousin Olivia wrote to wish me to be welcomed. Ricardo who I met when I was a child and have not seen in almost 20 years wrote me too. And so did many other people I cannot do justice here now.

This email is just to say thank you. To let you know I will keep writing. And that yesterday’s pain is already brighter.

I fly to Brasil on Sunday. My Israeli friend changed her plans to come and visit me here before I go. I will be taken to Bangkok by Nick ( an angel who is just going to take me and come back the day after here). I am a 100% sure that once he leaves me I will encounter other nice strangers who will help me along the way. At some point I will be able to help other strangers too. Some will pass through my life briefly. Some I will never see again. Some will stay forever even if we are not in the same place.

This e-mail is to say Thank You. It is to say that I am not a brave person as many people feel that I am. Once you put your bag on your back and cross borders you will realise it is way easier than it appears. It is to say that even though there are painful parts. That you do get hurt emotionally and physically. You do fall and break yourself sometimes. That you have to re-evaluate who you trust who you don’t. If you are open enough you will always encounter help along the way.

I am going home. I am now happy to go. But today I realise that I could just as well have stayed here. It is one more mark in my body, one more scar in my soul. I am learning to uncover it. I am learning to reveal it and attempt not to run away. It is difficult. It is painful. Some people look at you and they see it. When we encounter them we recognise our pain. We accept our fragility. When it happens you feel you will die but little by little that despair becomes familiar. And you know sometimes it takes simply time. And of course the support of those around you.

To those who wrote me telling me of their pain that they keep secret. It is true that it is us who must heal our own wounds. However, our fragility is what makes us human. Do not hide your pain. Open up in face of it all. Open it up. I guarantee that whatever reason it is you feel pain you will find out that we all feel it. And when you do you will like me find help all over. In spite of language, of culture, of social class. When you do others do it as well.

It is not a matter of being brave. It is just accepting our own fragility. Mine has taken me a long way. It has brought me to a world of gratitude.

This e-mail is just to say really thank you.

One More Trip to The Hospital

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They say it comes in threes. I really hope that is it. I cannot take anything anymore. I wish I could write a positive e-mail but as I seat here to write my last e-mail of around the world I feel pain and sadness. There are of course, the positive things, the ladies in the kitchen who seeing my tears stream down my face tell me they are sorry. They want me to go home and come back in three months. There is of course the general help that I got since I stupidly fell on the floor for no particular reason leading me to be unable to walk properly. I first thought it was just not walk properly for a day, a week, never that I would have to actually cancel my stay here, and Burma and India. Never that I would hear from the doctor that I might just have problems walking in the future.

I entered the hospital in a good mood. I had been there 2 other times before. I had always been well treated. I only went because Mark, who I met at the LSE during my PhD, and who came here to visited me insisted I should. I only went because Ian, the Scottish 60 year old expat who I became close friends with during this 3 months stay in Thailand would not stop bugging me about it. I was certain it could not be anything too serious.

I felt a bit stupid to be dropped in emergency room and be put in a wheel chair. I could walk. Not perfectly but I could limp and hop about. And then I felt it was absurd that I should be given attention when around me laid lots of people with obviously more serious problems.

It went little by little. The first ride along the hospital in a wheel chair I was in happy mood. I observed the corridors. Particularly the one that had wood boards on the floor. It looked to me somehow like Latin America. I was in great mood and when Ian said that in worse case scenario I would have to put a cast and not go to Burma I was shocked.

Then I was brought back to the ward with all ladies and men lying around in beds. I like observing the nurses. They looked so friendly. I was certain I was there just wasting their time. But then I got to see a doctor and in broken Thai he told me I had fractured some bones. I had to be admitted to the Hospital.

I still did not know what on earth that meant so even though my eyes filled with tears I was still ok. Then came a lady to ask me to sign some paper in Thai.

“What is this for?”

I can’t understand anything. Not even what the letters look like let alone the meaning. Now I start to get nervous. I call Mut Mee and get someone who speaks Thai and English to talk to the Nurse.

“They want to do an X-Ray of your lungs?”

“Why”

“Because you might have to have an operation.”

Ok now I am shocked. Terrified. I am absolutely terrified of doctors. Of operations in general and especially of operations in public hospitals of countries I do not speak the language of.

The following 10 hours in hospital were nothing short of nightmarish to me. Not that anyone mistreated me. But it was this continuous guessing of what the heck is going on. People would show up with IVs, and syringes, hospital clothes. I who at first was terrified of needing a cast now was praying for one.

I could not contact anyone. I had barely any credit on my phone. Enough to send a message to the people I trusted the most: my parents, my brother and Haiko. They needed to call me. If they thought I should operate it I would swallow my despair and do it. But none of them called. My parents were not in Sao Paulo, Haiko just never replied to any of my messages, and my brother could not figure out what my Thai number was.

Life got significantly better when Ohn Ian s girlfriend an angel fallen from heaven arrived to translate what was happening. This lady worked the whole day and spent about 6 hours with me after work there. Being me I wanted to go. I felt bad to hold them there so long. She silently held my hand and said she would stay with me till the end. And that the most important thing was to find out what was happening.

Life got significantly better when my brother called me and told me to come home. He told me calmly to just fly home as soon as I could. Having an operation in a public hospital in a country you do not speak the language of was for him completely out the question. That calmed me down. As elitist as it was I felt safe by the fact he also though it was legitimate to want to be somewhere you actually can read the consent for you are signing. Still took several hours till I was now driven around in a bed seeing the different colours of the ceiling. Seeing the families of patients camping under mosquitoes nets around corridors. Still took a while till I could understand from the doctor that I should operate, and that I would be in a cast for the following months and any plans to go to India and Burma should be canceled.

I asked him whether I should operate that night. He said it would be better but he would understand if I wanted to do somewhere else. They were not specialists and being home would be easier for me. I tried to gently say to Ians girlfriend and the doctor that it was not that I was not trusting of the Thai hospital. I was actually incredibly impressed by the conditions of a public hospital in Thailand. It was simply that I was terrified I needed to talk to my parents first. They understood. It took several other hours. I fell asleep while Ian, his girlfriend and Buck my friend stayed around. Mark had to go away he had a flight to catch. I was taken home put in bed given numbers.

I was and still am being helped by every single person here. As I sat to write this earlier on, Tia, the head chef, hugged me. She is usually very reserved. She just said “ I am really sorry Julieta. I like you very much. You go home and get better then come back to Mut Mee.” My eyes fill with tears. Tears that do not stop. Joy comes to hug me too. Then Wii blows magic spell. So does Yong. Then Kung and Pook. “Keep your window open and shout we do everything for you.” I cry some more. Then Om says she will pack all my things for me and take to the post office since I cannot carry anything in this flight. Then Nick offers to come with me to Bangkok to put me on the plane with my luggage. “It is too much Nick” “I would not offer if I did not want to do it.” So my eyes have more and more tears. Yesterday when I thought it was nothing and kept working I had already gotten help from the whole of guesthouse. Guests and staff.

So I have pain and sadness but everything might also be an opportunity to grow. When my parents finally manage to reach me my mom says “ I am sad you are hurt but I am very happy you are coming home.” Sam, my Palestinian friend has been telling me to go home for ages now. “I have a feeling you have to be home now.” He always says. Maybe he is right. Maybe it is time for me to be home. It has been almost 11 years I left. Although I am about to leave Thailand with a broken foot. Although I am sad I will have to postpone it all I feel enormous gratitude for those I encountered on the way. So many of you are on this list. I thank you all. Thanks for reading. Thanks for writing. Thanks for having made one way or another my life richer. Thanks for augmenting my eternal faith in humanity. In the kindness of strangers. In the ability we all have to change for better someone else’s day. In special today I must thank Ian for making me go to Hospital and staying more than 11 hours there cheering me up. Ohn for translating my fears and calming me down in hospital. And Mark for the silent words. Thank you

Kitchen Talk

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I love the Thai ladies who work in kitchen. Thailand might be the land of smiles, but Isaan, the poorest province of Thailand, is the land of roaring laughter. Laughter of the kind that makes you feel first embarrassed, then upset, then it makes you simply abandon your ego and accept that yes all you do is plain stupid. You farang ( foreigner) coming from another world definitely have no clue what is going on so you might as well just embrace it. I love the ladies in the kitchen. They laugh without restrain. They never really care what someone else might be thinking of their laughter. They laugh at you, and at each other. They laugh at themselves. If you pay close attention you might realise that in their generosity they are in fact inviting you to laugh with them.

Joy is back. Whatever were the problems she had to set up home, they are now set. And so we are back to lots of hugs till you can no longer breathe. There is also a new lady in the kitchen. Kung who is 32 but like most Thai people in their 30s looks in her 20s. She is pure happiness. She always asks me if I am hungry or happy. How is it that we communicate, I wonder? Broken English, broken Thai, miming and laughter.

Today as I was walking around the garden I saw them all seating under the sun. They always do it when things calm down for some minutes. They sat under the shades of the jackfruit trees. Apart from all the women in the Kitchen there was also Non, the handyman who can do literally everything, and Oy, the massage lady. They were laughing at her. She looked sick and exhausted.

“Are you sick?” I ask.

“No”,

Then they all start laughing again. I can’t really understand what the heck is going on.

“Massage Man.”

“What? tired of the massage?” I ask.

They signal using their hands to show me the man Oy massaged smelled. Oy is now smelling tiger balm to recover.

“Oh!” I say. “Farang. They don’t shower.”

We all crack up. I can’t believe Oy is smelling tiger balm to recover. It is just too funny.

I tell them in Brazil we shower twice a day. Morning and Evening.

“Same same Thailand. Brasil good. ” exclaims Joy

“I like Ronaldinho” laughs Wii.

I can’t really believe that even the ladies in the kitchen in Nong Khai know Ronaldinho.

Then they laugh about his front teeth. They tell me Thailand is bad in football and they, the ladies, like to play cards for money.

“For MONEY?”

“Little. 1 Baht”

We all laugh.

“JulieTAH ( as they call me) work here when”

I now am an expert in speaking and understanding broken English so I know it means that they are asking me till when I will be staying here. It means more in fact. It means they care.

“February.”

They look shocked. 1 month ?

“Going to Burma.” I explain.

Lots of shocked faces looked back at me. “Maynamar ? Why?”

“Why not?”

“Not good. Not clean.”

I am curious to discover what are the prejudices these ladies who have never been there have against the Burmese. I, of course, cannot find that out in sign language. I just keep asking the same question.

Why? Why? Why?”

Eventually Pook tells me.

“Joke. Same Same Thailand”

As Roxanna appears later and attempts to speak her Thai, and I try to learn words we cannot stop laughing. People must think we are crazy.

Yes in exact one month I will be flying to finally see Burma. The country I did not see three years ago. When I bought the ticket months ago I imagined that by that time I would have had enough of being in one place. I am starting to think that I might have been wrong.

How could I possibly live without this roaring laughter? Without the Mekong? Without the sunsets? The simplicity of life. Helping people who show up. Hearing the amazing stories.

We, the Nong Khai victims, call jokingly Mut Mee a black whole. Only one month to go and I am already nostalgic. Well, I might do like everyone else. I might just have to come back once again. Well, I am sure I will.

Life Stories

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I do not like writing one day after the other but last night I heard an epic story. So interesting it was that I who had accepted the invitation of a gorgeous English man to go check up Chinese New Year celebrations in town stayed behind to hear the story of a 76 year old lady. Wow, and how worth it was.

They say in Brazil that life begins when you are forty. The sentence could not have been truer than for Carley, the Australian lady I checked in about a week ago. Until last night all I knew from her was that she had spent lots of time in Kashmir, that she read voraciously the newspaper and that she was very friendly.

Where to even start?

“I arrived in Kashmir in the 80’s. After crossing India, I arrived at the lake. I arrived in the house boat, and as I got out of the shikara I looked up. There was Kadir. I took one look and thought ‘ There you are. I was looking for you for my whole life. And I did not even know it.”

Kadir, a Muslim Cashmere married man. Kadir who lived in a place that was about to be set in turmoil, war, killings in the eternal struggle of the Kashmere valley.

But that is not where the story starts. The story starts with a girl in Australia who got pregnant and married very early. A girl who spent a life in academia, in a loveless marriage and then became a political activist. A woman who is part of the group who set all legislation that till this day protects the forests of New South Wales and the rivers of Tasmania. By her forties her husband changed political activism for Rajneesh, also know as Osho. That was it for Carley.

Carley left the world of academia and learned to be a nurse, a practical work that could ensure her work anytime, anywhere. And so it was that she left at forty for the first time to see the world. She never stopped since then. She first went to China.

“I went in as a socialist, came back as an avid supporter of democracy.”

Back to Australia to work a bit more and off she went to India. Met by the unscrupulous heat of India she immediately realized she needed to go up to the mountains. How to do it? At the time traveling through these roads was not so easy as they were mainly for the military. She met an Indian devotee of Gandhi and followed him to Manali. From Manali she went to Kashmir on her own carrying with her a bottle of Cointreau .

For those of you who know the very famous book Shataram Carley spent the first three nights of her Kashmir stay drinking with Kadir and Gregory David Roberts. Wishing him to disappear and leave her to be alone with Kadir. And so it happened that they started an affair that would change both of their lives forever.

Kadir’s wife was sent away and Carley stayed. She became close to his kids. She did not fully understand at first the impact she had had in that poor woman’s life. When she met Kadir he was suicidal. Unhappily married in an arrange wedding. He was unhappy in Kashmir having lost his older son and having left two daughters. In some parts of the world that is a true disaster. Carley was herself recovering from her own traumas. They helped each other.

For the next years she went back to Kashmir. She brought tourists. She paid for schooling and doctors and everything that was needed for his family. Always going back to work as a nurse. She was then able to get him a visa to come to Australia and so he worked every Cashmere winter of the following 10 years in Australia.

Carley suddenly realized she wanted to see more of the world. She could not just keep going to Kashmir. In the middle of the 80 she traveled alone through all the Stan countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan etc ), Azerbaijan, Armenia in winter seeing first hand starvation and what the Soviet Union was doing to the place. As she arrived in Turkey and saw piles of Tomatoes and fruits all around she knew the Soviet Union would collapse very soon.

She loved Istanbul, but tired of the cold went south to Egypt. Loved Cairo hated how she was treated. After having seen the beauty of Islamic architecture all over she found Egypt was all about building big things. She missed Kadir and wanted to go back to India. In Egypt they would not give her a visa, she went to Jordan, they also refused it, she took a bus to Damascus only to arrive in the middle of Palestinian uprising because of the killing of someone I do not remember the name of.

She was eventually able to go back to Kashmir. By this time the violence had restarted. The army would round up man and make one Cashmere pick three militants or else that man would be killed. The women many times would come and surround men and army. Then violence escalated with children being shot in shikaras and even inside mosques.

She was furious. She was too outspoken.

“There was it. I had to either pick up weapons or leave. I was putting my family in danger for being so outspoken. The girls were growing up and I was a huge scandal there. His children needed their mother. I paid for her to have an operation to no longer have babies. I made a mess in that lady’s life. By then I started understanding the real dimensions of my arrival in their life. I had to go.”

“When was this Carley?”

“2003. I left.”

“Have you been back?”

“No.”

“ Are you going to see him again ?”

“In another life I am sure. I am certain if there are other lives we have met many times before.”

“Do you feel guilt?”

“Yes. I feel some guilt for what I caused to that woman’s life.”

But her face lifts up.

“Do you want to know something incredible? My daughter was in India last year and she wrote me to ask whether she could go visit Kadir. She loved him. He was a charming man who enchanted my whole family. I agreed and was very clear that it was of outmost importance that she should be respectful to his wife. And so she went and I saw a million pictures of them together. His wife hugging my daughter! And then she told me that Kadir told her that neither him nor his wife will have anything to do with the decision of who his daughters will marry. It will be their own choice. I was shocked. I was shocked. I felt happy beyond belief. This is the most important thing now. They must have good weddings.”

As I hear the story in details. Ask every single question in the world. Go through the feelings myself. The complexity of humanity. The coexistence of a multiplicity of feelings. As I imagine in my mind the places I have visited being in war, being destroyed I feel an eerie feeling. I am so moved. I know these mosques, these boats, these shikaras she talks about. I even know Kadir. How many Kadirs have I met along the way in a mixture of gentleness with old traditions. People who we imagine so different but are always willing to go to different places than the ones they have been to.

“Carley, Thank You. This is an amazing story. I am so thankful to have heard.”

“Thank You. It is just a life!”