On April 25, 1974, the sun also rose. Little did Teresa know that day marked the absolute end of childhood. Thousands of miles away in Lisbon, the capital of a crumbling empire, the military had turned against the heads of state, and people had taken to the street en masse, handing out carnations to armed men who never fired a single shot. The ‘New State’ was no more. News of the revolution reached Mozambique the following day. Teresa’s …
Tag: Mozambique
This story is about a girl. Teresa. It begins in 1975, when she’s only twelve. She’s just left her homeland, Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, now riven by revolution and madness. In the wake of civil war, fear and terror crack open Teresa’s idyllic childhood. Even the family pets act distraught. Granny no longer tends to her roses. Everybody starts sleeping in the same room, afraid of knives in the night. They must flee the land they have …
There was a girl who lived in a land of perpetual summer. She could not imagine it would come to an end sooner than she thought. Teresa lived with her family in a huge house, surrounded by a luscious garden. She, her brother and playmates capered in the shade of massive trees and played games of make-believe where princes and princesses fought dragons and wizards and saved the day and fell in love. In that garden, where her …
This story is about a girl. Teresa. It begins in 1975, when she’s only twelve. She’s just left her homeland, Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, now riven by revolution and madness. In the wake of civil war, fear and terror crack open Teresa’s idyllic childhood. Even the family pets act distraught. Granny no longer tends to her roses. Everybody starts sleeping in the same room, afraid of knives in the night. They must flee the land they have …
On April 25, 1974, the sun also rose. Little did Teresa know that day marked the absolute end of childhood. Thousands of miles away in Lisbon, the capital of a crumbling empire, the military had turned against the heads of state, and people had taken to the street en masse, handing out carnations to armed men who never fired a single shot. The ‘New State’ was no more. News of the revolution reached Mozambique the following day. Teresa’s …
This story is about a girl. Teresa. It begins in 1975, when she’s only twelve. She’s just left her homeland, Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, now riven by revolution and madness. In the wake of civil war, fear and terror crack open Teresa’s idyllic childhood. Even the family pets act distraught. Granny no longer tends to her roses. Everybody starts sleeping in the same room, afraid of knives in the night. They must flee the land they have …
When we were young there was no expression such as “BFF” (Best Friends Forever) and it’s difficult to tell, when a friendship begins, how long it will last, but after almost fifty years of friendship, I believe we can say we are Best Friends Forever. When we were young Only yesterday when you organised the usual family reunion that happens whenever we come over for holidays, I was telling someone we were classmates for only two years, back in …
So it’s over, and we are now on the plane back to Lisbon. After what has undoubtedly been one of the trips of my life, if not “the one”. Even if my feelings about these last days are still in a turmoil and I know it will take some time to fully understand how I stand regarding my past, there are some conclusions to be taken. First of all, this trip was the fulfilling of a dream. For years …
A friend kindly provided us with his car and driver and on Monday we set out to discover the city of Maputo. First stop was downtown. I looked at the streets’ names but of course they have all been changed; they were mostly named after Portuguese remarkable citizens, having been substituted by characters related to African and Mozambican history and politics. I found the correspondence with the old names on internet so I could recognize them and tell the …
After a night on the plane I feel surprisingly well and energetic. I look at the travel route on the screen map and see we are almost there. In fact the captain has already announced our descent to Maputo. Again the screen shows us the course taken: a straight line from Lisbon to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Almost eleven hours to get us there but then I remember the sixteen hours it took us back in the …