Portugal 2: On the way to Bom Jesus

 

Had it not been for that child, nothing would have been unusual: a father and a child having their lunch on a bench in MacDonald's on one sunny day in Portugal. The father took the child and went inside, soon the potato chips would be scattered; I would see pigeons and hear the monotonous sound of their beaks hitting the table. I took a bite of the sandwich, looked to the young ladies wearing the same style of blouse.

I must have moved the falling strips of my hair behind my ears, covered my sandwich and sank in the bench. The boy, would come now and find his potato chips gone. I was still contemplating the shoulderless blouse of the young lady opposite me. Looking towards the sun, I  was free of my clothes; I became an X-Ray skeleton, shooting the birds. In a book, one bird was fluttering and turned into a giant creature with wings. I put my hands on my cheek. Why would bats appear in daylight? I turned my eyes towards the shade. The man and the boy appeared, passed indifferently by the table, and left. I put the sandwich and the bottle of water in my bag;  I would move along, I said.

I was climbing the hill. Before coming here, I knew the hostel was close to university and I would go on foot. A year and seven months, I became an explorer (not the Internet one!), a human with shoe skates, going from Greaves to Alexandra Park, from Scotforth to town, from Dr Michael Owen Street to Minho University, from Minho University to Bom Jesus on foot.

In my room, my eyes would fall upon my shoes and a small pot of mint on the window sill; I got the shoes from Clarks.  I would remember my mother, recycling papers, putting seeds of watermelon in our garden, teaching me over the phone how to grow the sprout of mint she gave me in a small pot in England. Does not she deserve a bit of shoe skating, move, move your muscles, I would tap my hips, when it got difficult in that slope towards university.

I put on my shoe skates, tightened them and started smoothly from the beginning of the road; I took a picture of a house covered with tiles; the other house had a checked fence with a fountain and a bare child.

My right knee hurts a couple of days before my cycle. Towards the middle, I was tired, checking the ground as if looking for a lost treasure. I saw paintings for Jesus, the suffering of black men; candles that are not yet lit behind a metal frame.

Three months later at Lancaster, I would pay the money to the young lady in return for a small card that I would show the driver each time I got on, an Id that I have to show to cross from border to border, from Scotforth to town, from town to university, in the same destiny with young men and women sitting on chairs, or clinging to yellow stands with small red buttons. Gone were the days of shoe skating. In the last time I was in Cairo, I proudly told my niece that I went to university on foot three days a week. What would I tell her now?   

Climbing those zigzag stairs, I saw them, their backs towards the Church, their faces towards town, like gods contemplating the world from above, overlooking the creamy church, I took my camera out, I stood still trying to comprehend the scenery… confused where to put the cover, thinking from where and how can I find the cadre, and press the button…

Portugal 1: My name is Red!

As for my umbrella, I got it from One Pound World in Manchester; I was on my way to Portland Street for the VISA interview when it started to rain heavily. The first thing I thought about was taking the bus… but when I saw One Pound World an advertisement moved like a banner in my head: ‘With a pound or more you can get an umbrella for life, for life, and enjoy walking… enjoy walking in the rain..’ I went inside, had a look around and did not see umbrellas. I asked the shop assistant; he pointed to a stall: red and black umbrellas were lying in a cardboard box; I quickly grabbed the red one, paid the money (a pound and half by the way!) and walked –diligently- figuring out my way to Portland street! I finished my VISA errand and in a matter of two days, this red crab became my favorite Hunny Bunny; the new umbrella!

But it broke in one windy day at Lancaster; it was exactly when I was past the bus stop; it turned inside out and while pulling the umbrella up towards the sky, its junctures were torn leaving one of its steel metal bare without a cloth; I inadvertently tried to pull the cloth to cover it but it obviously needed to be stitched. In the next day, my old umbrella- that my father gave me- broke too; I threw it in the bin at university and for seconds afterwards I thought if my father would be cross if he saw me throwing his umbrella. I obviously needed a new one.

In New Look, I looked anxiously at the umbrellas on the stall: brown with some yellow dots. I was willing to pay eight pounds (with some thinking really :)) but the red colour of my umbrella kept flagging in my mind:  it is red, clear red like the Egyptian cotton t-shirt I bought from downtown Cairo and like the coral pendent I had from Khan El Khalili when my mother was with me. ‘I will think about it’, I told my friend.

In the morning, I put my accessories in my bag and remembered to put red thread and a needle; I was in John Lennon’s airport four hours ahead; and what good circumstances like these to fix my great fantastic red project?! I put the thread in the needle’s eye, asking myself if I have ever seen a human stitching something in an airport. The café and the policewoman were the last thing I saw before my eyes would be blocked by waves of red color; if I know how the stitches are done in the old junctures, I can fix the torn ones… In the swimming pool in Cairo, going from line to  line, I moved through one light hazy blue colour, everything was smooth till I got to that plucked ceramic towards the middle, a dark spot, a deep whole, a whirling centre of a hurricane, I took my head out; the policewoman was looking at me.

When I reached Portugal, it crossed my mind that fixing the umbrella was a sign that things would be fine. It was 9.30 in the evening; the bus would come after an hour and half and when I would get to Braga, it would be almost twelve. This is ‘45 Dr. Michael Owen’, the taxi driver said as he parked the car; he gestured that he would wait for me till I got there; I passed the small gate, talked to someone over the phone, and went back to the main entrance, ‘all is fine, thank you’ I waved to him.

A Portuguese man showed me around the house. The lights of the stairs turned out automatically like those towards the gate at the  the house of my brother in New Cairo. The two-level bed reminded me of the room in a camp I went to in Sinai. In bed, I stared at the chair. I moved my hand slowly to switch off the lamp as if I am having difficulty reaching it: ‘earth is really small and boring, and they keep saying oh I have been to this country or that country when it is really a matter of tiny small cities’. That was my confession- to a secret audience- at night, but in the morning, things seemed to change…

         

I knew later that when I arrived, it was such a cold day in many winters, 27^th December, 2010. But I really did not feel it. I was literally insulated: one thick cotton sock, three cotton shirts, pullover, a coat and a hood. Every time I saw the snow out of the window, I smiled heavily as I remembered the sun I left in Cairo. I was leaning over my two bags, ready to get them down. A British woman-the landlord- was waiting for me outside; I got into her car like a pregnant woman in the last months, I had a stomachache from Manchester and was dying to get into a house, any house which has a bathroom.

She put my bags in a room in the first floor, I was confused whether to ask first about the bathroom or give her the money. I took the money from a yellow envelope in my backpack. The bathroom was upstairs. When I went down, I could not find my envelope. I searched my backpack and opened my first bag; granules of sugar were splintered all around my clothes; I saw my mother looking at me.    

In that context, I met Nami, my neighbor from Japan who would soon leave the house to work as a tour guide in the Lake District. In my mind, England was a new place and the house was old. I had to pull a rope to turn the lights in the bathroom and do the same thing to turn on the shower: first pull a rope, turn a circle that adjusts the temperature, and press the button; and do the same thing again to turn it off. Our house in New Cairo had a horizontal design but here it was all vertical: the kitchen and the TV area were in a floor and the room and the bathroom were in another.

Before leaving, Nami showed me the way to university, ‘Bailrigg Lane’ was certainly a label, a post, but for the first time I went to the university, it was a crossroad, either to wander among trees or go to university. I stopped to take a picture of the place. Remember that this is where you have to turn, she said.

Stepping on the cobbled streets of town, Nami classified shops into types: ‘Home Bargain’ is good for chocolate; Sainsbury’s is for grocery; Marks and Spenser has good quality but is more expensive. Because of her, I would refuse to get Toblerone from Sainsbury’s for 1.70, ‘I am sure I saw it in Home Bargain for only a pound’. ‘Before she left, my friend Nami told me from where to get what’. I laughed; my eyes fell on Sainsbury’s bags as we went out.

When I visited Nami in the Lake District, she was planning a tour in Europe: Poland, Czeh, Germany and Spain. I love Spain, I said. On the Internet, she looked up the prices.  ‘I am actually not sure I can make it, I will see the photos when you come back’, I said evading looking at her face.

Nami has now left England and promised to visit me in Cairo. It was not a small thing after a year and a half in England, when I told Nami on Skype that now, now, I am drifting South, not to Spain, but to Portugal!

Stamping passports, packing and unpacking, watching the clouds, feeling the airplane touch the ground, sending a message that ‘I have landed safely’ seems to me now part of the journey, an inception, a dream within a dream, a step forward Nami, isn’t it?

The labryinth...the maze...

 
I don't know from where to start. This is about one verse from a poem, that I happen to know by heart almost three years ago (the verse not the poem). I came across the verse the first time when it was written in one friend's status on Facebook.

The verse literally says and that is my translation:
Whoever you love would be bewitched/ So choose whoever you wish to love.

For a long time, it has confused me whether 'you' in the line refers to the lover himself or the one he loves? In other words, was he confidently saying to himself that I know you will bewitch anyone you love, or was he addressing her/him/his beloved telling her/him that go and do love whoever you want ? The first one is a call on freedom really; the second is a call on submission (it is like saying, OK, Ok, go and love others and I will be fine!).

Between going to Cairo, to England, to Nottingham, to Lancaster, to Scotforth (a long way...) two days ago, it crossed my mind that it is most probably the second interpretation; you may think that someone is great (when you love him of course, or may be without loving him (let us say also her) but what startles me (still) was this (....) tolerance, this submission, the (frightening) idea that you are aware that you are giving your heart to someone, only to put it in the washing machine and turn the dryer on.

Today, with another movement from Scotforth to Morecambe (still places inside England), the verse kept repeating in my mind like a refrain of a song; by the time I went home, I was under the influence of the line, literally bewitched, and whom can you resort to in these cases except Google?

Curious to know how is the poet?
yeah yeah..I understand :-)

Please check the link below; the poet happens to be from Egypt by the way (and I swear by Egypt...it is a matter of sheer coincidence!).

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/I/IbnalFaridUm/index.htm

You may like as well to check the music below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1488R7W6bTo

Hopefully, enjoy