Parsley dreams

Some obscene number of years ago, maybe fourteen, the husband and I went to Lisbon. We loved everything. Trudging up and down the hills, foaming at the mouth with exhaustion and lack of air. The tiles everywhere, my God the tiles! The bird cages hung outside to air. The port, of course, which I characterized to the waiter who pressed me for a review as having a pleasant, dusty tint of asbestos, to his incredulous dismay.

Of course, we did fado but we both hate crowded venues and awkward spectacles, so I found a place in a dilapidated building in Alfama. We fumbled around, searching for it in the dusk for a long time. This was before people had Google Maps wired into their brains. Also, the old town defied navigation and common logic in poetic, elegant ways.

Once there, we realized we were the only black sheep foreigners. What followed was an almost religious experience of people solemnly singing their woes in this beautiful language I could not understand a word of. Taxi drivers would walk in from outside, have a quick, quiet drink and proceed to address the crowd in song. Towards the end, the kitchen ladies came out, shyly wiping their hands on their aprons, and sang.

I will always remember the owner, a small shriveled-up old woman in black, all sharp long nose and jagged cheekbones, who sat down next to me and pointed her bony finger at the bloody dismembered sausage I had ignored on my plate. I tried to smile my way out of it, but her eyes were as dark as the rigid black collar of her dress and drilled right through me.

Eventually it was closing time, and everyone had left. We found ourselves at a communal table with some elderly Portuguese people. A dignified gentleman, upon learning that we’re Russian, told me about his involvement with an Aeroflot air hostess called Galina. He spoke no English, I spoke no Portuguese, but with the aid of French and port the story was poignant and clear.

We’d travelled all over Europe before this, having short circuited on Italy and later Spain, looping back a dozen times over. The Portuguese trip was an afterthought — let’s look at this little country over here, without much expectation. Of all the many places I’d been in my life, this unassuming land left the biggest impression. Neither the coffee nor the food was that good, the ubiquitous bacalhau was disgusting, but somehow it had gotten me right in the heart. There was a tenderness I hadn’t felt for other places I had enjoyed.

There have been moments when I was so awash in beauty, I couldn’t believe this was just another Tuesday for someone. Like when I wandered out onto an empty square in Rome at seven a.m., surrounded by pensive centuries-old statues staring at me in their marble perfection, and a jogger ran past. So matter-of-factly, pedestrianly. I was awed and gladly came back time and time again to these aesthetically perfect cities, but my soul strings didn’t suddenly vibrate like they did with Lisbon. There was an undercurrent of something deeper, a strange recognition.

The other cities knew they were stunning, every pore in their stones emanated it. Lisbon was like a breathtakingly beautiful girl with a piece of parsley stuck between her teeth, unaware of both the parsley and her beauty.

This was, perhaps, in that last year before the economic crisis and tax incentives unleashed a swarm of digital nomads on the country. Time passed, we moved to the US. During the covid craze, I stood on my New York balcony, desperately unhappy, crying over how I’d ended up so far from where I’d felt a kinship. If someone had cornered me and demanded that I pick a place to move to, it would have been Portugal. Suddenly, everyone was living out my beautiful fantasy while I took an entirely different turn.

There was a period when I had started learning Portuguese. I’d reply to my son’s caveman elementary-school Spanish in my primitive Portuguese, making him hush me indignantly. “You’re messing with my Spanish with your sh-tous, sh-top it!”

I still have that feeling of Portugal from long ago, a snapshot, a romanticized view that might distort reality beyond recognition. And yet, after all these years, I still want to follow that white rabbit one day. O coelho dos meus sonhos.