The story begins on her first day of school in a new city, a new country, a new continent. She is now living in Lisbon, having been forced to leave her native Mozambique after its independence from Portugal in 1975. She is only twelve then, but a very precocious girl. The last year and a half has been painful, even traumatic: after the 1974 revolution in Portugal things changed dramatically in the colonies. Her family’s peaceful existence was substituted by …
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Strangely, I had never heard the song, but the other day as I was driving and listening to the car radio, Katie Melua’s “The closest thing to crazy” caught my attention. First of all, because it is a beautiful melody. And this melody, together with the words, becomes an irresistible mix that inevitably reminded me of how most of us, at some point in our lives, feel “close to crazy”. Always having to do with love, of course. When we are …
So many things in my life remind me of my grandfather and take me back to the times when I was young and living with him and Granny. Coming to Morocco, for instance, immediately took me back to 1980 and the cruise we did together to Gibraltar and Morocco, aboard the Portuguese ship Funchal. It was during Easter holidays and the cruise would last for a week. We first stopped in Gibraltar where I took the usual photo with the …
When I was young they were simply called “records”. Only much later, as CDs invaded our world, were they renamed “vinyl records” or simply “vinyl”. Suddenly the old records that we had put away in our attics and basements became something valuable, and soon our children were asking us if we had kept any from the old days, and where had we put them. Actually for me this revival began a few years ago when my son Afonso was still …
I have a friend who apparently has everything a person might wish for: he is successful, wealthy, with a wife and four grown children. He lives in a charming city where he is one of the prominent citizens. He is widely respected. He has several hobbies, from reading historical books to sailing, and he is the most exquisite host you may find. Yet I’ve always found there is a trace of sadness about him, a deep set melancholy as if …
She was by far the most beautiful girl in the village: tall, statuesque, with thick dark tresses and bright green eyes. She was always the belle of the ball, even if her 1,70 m made her taller than most local boys. But she didn’t mind, as she paid them little attention: she dreamed of one day finding a tall, handsome Prince Charming that would sweep her off her feet and take her away with him to see the world. She …
Only last week I read about a new TV series that will begin tomorrow on History Channel, called “Barbarians rising” – it tells the story of nine “barbarian” warriors who contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire – and one of the episodes will feature Viriato, a Lusitanian warrior that we Portuguese consider to be the first of our national heroes, long before our first king Afonso Henriques, also a revered figure in our history. Both men had at least …
She was a happy, carefree girl, and pretty too – she had large inquisitive green eyes, dark blonde long hair, perfect teeth and a contagious smile. She was reckless. She lived with her parents and brothers and sisters – there were nine of them– in a farm in Transvaal, South Africa. She loved to run across the fields and lose herself in the many acres of her parents’ property. She knew she had to take care because there were wild …
First days of September. He is driving his motorbike and he is going fast. He is meeting his girlfriend of many years ago, now with the comfortable status of an old friend, for lunch. He parks in front of the restaurant and he is leaning against his bike when he sees her at the bottom of the street. She looks almost the same as before – the same slim figure, the same dark hair – only not curly now, as …
Saturday would be our last day exploring Brittany and we had decided we wanted to see the megalithic sites at Carnac and then go to the shrine of Ste. Anne d’Auray. Soon we were on our way, quite worried at the amount of traffic we could see towards the direction we came from. We only hoped this would not be the case on our return – as Nuno had seen on TV that weekend would be one of very heavy …