It was a winter afternoon, cold and damp, with heavy clouds announcing rain. She felt restless, but she very much wanted to see “Out of Africa”, recently arrived on Lisbon cinemas, so she agreed when he suggested they go and see it. As usual, when the lights went out he searched for her hand. She let herself hold his but she felt ice cold. And then, as the beautiful, intense, romantic and ultimately sad story unfolded before her eyes, she …
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In your life sometimes you meet someone with whom you feel a strong connection, a special empathy, and when you get to know that person a little better you suddenly find yourself thinking: ” If only…”. If only we were not married, if only we didn’t live so far apart, if only our lifestyles were not so different, if only I could find a job in another city…”. As life goes on and you get older it seems your “if …
It’s been almost thirteen years since you left us and many times I wish I could tell you about so many things that have happened, so many things that have changed. And then I think why not, maybe I can. I want to tell you how empty it felt when you left, how I understood at forty what it felt like to be an orphan. When I lost you I lost a father, but also my anchor, the only person …
For the past few days in Portugal, social media and the media in general have been seething over a court decision that reads like a throwback to the 19th century, or as a pronouncement from one of those countries where women enjoy the social status of a cow or a table. But we’re talking about a court in a democratic, European, 21st-century country like Portugal, where the Constitution enshrined equality for men and women 40 years ago. This is a country …
I met her in high school when I was 14 and she was 16, one year and a half older than me. I believe the first thing that brought us closer together was that we were two tall girls in a world of short people, but we soon discovered we had many things in common. Such as our dislike of the 1974 revolution and the changes it had brought into our lives. It had cost me my native land Mozambique …
Padua is a lovely Italian city, known worldwide as “St. Anthony’s city”. In fact, St. Anthony lived and preached there for some years, and died there, although he was born in Lisbon, Portugal. As I once heard the archbishop of Lisbon say during mass on St. Anthony’s day, 13 June: “St. Anthony from Lisbon, of Padua”. I wholeheartedly agree with him – St. Anthony, after all, belongs to us all, even if in Lisbon we are proud that he has …
She was a nun and he was the king, and they lived one of the most passionate love stories in Portuguese history. Paula was a nun without a call for religious life. Her father was an impoverished goldsmith who, facing hard times, had no option but to send two of his daughters to the monastery of Odivelas, first the elder, Luz and then his second daughter, Paula. But while Luz accepted her fate meekly, not so Paula, who rebelled against …
I’m on a plane once again and I close my eyes and look back to the summer that has just ended. I’m a summer person – I suppose due to being born in Mozambique where we had warm weather almost all year long – so I long for Spring and Summer, strongly dislike autumn and really dread the winter months. In April and May I feel that delightful expectation of the summer months to come, and September, even if the …
Last summer it was the fashionable book (rather, books, as there are four of them) to read and every VIP (beginning with the President of the Republic, who is highly popular so his advice taken into consideration) said they were fantastic; every newspaper column about books recommended it. In addition, the author was a mysterious lady hiding behind a pseudonym and no one knew exactly who she was, apart from being Italian. By now you have probably guessed that I’m …
The boys have just returned from a holiday on the island of São Tomé with their father and they tell me they have spent a wonderful week exploring this island, a former Portuguese colony in the equatorial area. In fact the country is called São Tomé e Príncipe, the main island being São Tomé where the capital city is located; Príncipe (meaning prince, thus called after a prince of Portugal) is much smaller, but even more beautiful, or so people …