Walking the dog round the block last night we encountered a neighbour we haven’t met before.
“Where are you from?” came the inevitable question.
“We live up there” I say, pointing to our house.
“No, but where are you from, originally?” Comes the follow-up refrain.
“I’m from Kenya” I say and “I’m from Switzerland” says my husband. Then there’s that pause as people process that I’m not black and search for a box for this kind of “estrangeiro” couple.
My mind wanders back to thirty-five years ago when I first came to Portugal. I was thirty and still partying. I lived in Lisbon and regularly did the rounds of bars in “Bairo Alto”. They opened after midnight and you’d go to one and then to another with a sort of invisible understanding of where it was at. “It” being the dancing, the cool people, and the drinking if you had a handful of escudos.
The price of my rented room in someone’s house in Saldanha got me an entire (tiny) apartment in Carcavelos along the “linha”. From there I commuted into Lisbon to work. For the first few months I didn’t have enough money to buy an alarm clock, so I drank lots of water before going to bed – just to be sure I woke up on time.
Monday was the most difficult day to go to work. Sunday afternoon and evening took place in a large wooden empty room above the “bombeiros”. It was the “sambodia” and I never missed one. Brazilian musicians, men, women, children – and me – dancing and laughing like it was our one chance of fun. I met Júlio at the sambodia and we had a good fun relationship for several years. It was easier to learn Portuguese with the Brazilian crowd. No Brazilian entered a full-on panic when I opened my mouth to speak Portuguese. Few foreigners spoke Portuguese then and few Portuguese spoke English. And if you tried to speak (while pointing) in a shop, for example, the Portuguese shop owner would likely call out their 5-year-old son to try and understand you. Brazilians, on the other hand, would smile and laugh and respond whether they understood you or not. Communication was warm and wonderful even if no-one understood.
Júlio and his friends used to gather round the “quiosque” outside Estoril railway station, drinking small cold beers. I went to work in the morning and they were there. I came back in the evening and they were there. Most had jobs in restaurants or bars. Júlio was from Belo Horizonte, his photos of home showed him from a middle-class family. I learned the Portuguese subjunctive from him through his ongoing complaint about me, which always started with “Se fosse uma Brazileira”.
Júlio and his friends, the lucky ones, had a mistress from Lisbon. A wealthy and influential Portuguese woman who had a family and husband in Lisbon, but who came to Cascais or along that way for some days or weekends – alone. They would call on their young Brazileiro for entertainment when they showed up. The Brazileiros could be hanging round the quiosque drinking an imperial (beer) when the message would come that “Dona so-and-so” was on her way. The lucky guy would rush home to prepare himself for what was to come.
My relationship with Júlio was during a time when his mistress hadn’t been for some time. She did show up after a couple of years and offered to help fund his dream venture, which was to have a snack bar caravan somewhere on the coastline between Cascais and Oeiras. He was sure it would make his fortune. But it came at the price of our relationship.
My friend, Sónia, helped me get over it. Sónia was always smiling. She had come over from Mozambique and both her attitude and her energy contributed to finding a partner who hung round the quiosque with Júlio. Otherwise, her friends were people who lived in the favela outside Cascais. She easily found work in bars in Cascais because she was great at making people feel good about themselves. I was, however, shocked to see how many men thought it was OK to touch her breasts and bum. Portuguese men like African women, she told me.
One day a mature student of mine (Portuguese living in Mozambique) asked if I would like to pay a nominal rent for her large three-bedroom apartment in Parede. She had rented it out before, but the people had ruined the house, not paid their rent, and she only managed to get them out with threats made by some muscular street guys she knew. In Mozambique she worked with helping child soldiers reintegrate back with their families and communities. It was often a thankless task. I took up her offer. There wasn’t a single mirror in the entire apartment and I never had to worry what I looked like.
Then I met Carlos who was a friend of some friends of mine. He lived in Malveira de Serra and I agreed to leave my big apartment and live with him. I thought I had found my forever home. We had so much fun together, wild camping, tennis, great music nights… He had built his own house. The design was open and minimal with spectacular views. The kitchen door was a design flaw, however, as the wind blew everything in the kitchen upside down when you opened it. Still, I had my own “horta” and grew maize and vegetables. Carlos and his brother, who lived next door, were “retornados” – the returned from Angola. He claimed they were spat on when they came to Portugal, being associated with the colonialists. His father had committed suicide. His mother had another relationship. But she was white and her boyfriend black. So she was largely shunned by the whites.
I left Carlos because he went through phases of grandiosity and paranoia and wouldn’t get help. Among other things, he was convinced he was fulfilling an ancient prophecy and would save the world with his wise words. He thought he was about to revolutionise Portugal with “seitan”, an alternative to tofu. Sousa Cintra, the then President of Sporting Football Club, even came over for lunch to try it as a possible investment. Carlos made it from scratch (you wash and wash flour until it becomes 100% gluten). It was delicious but Sousa Cintra didn’t make the investment Carlos wanted.
I moved to a 60’s apartment in Monte Estoril. It was very simple and very white. I loved living there. I had no furniture except mattresses on the floor.
I started a relationship with Bruno. Bruno was (and still is) twelve years younger than me. Or is it sixteen? He lived with me in Monte Estoril and then we moved to his family house in a tiny village near Alenquer. His parents lived in Lisbon but came to the house at the weekends. His grandparents lived in the traditional house on the plot, while we lived in the new house built by his parents. Weekends and holidays involved a lot of food and drink. At breakfast we talked about what we were going to have for lunch and at lunch we planned “lanche” and dinner. Bruno and I got married and had a big party at the house. It was important for Bruno that people took our relationship seriously. My name changed to “Beverly Trayner Tomaz”.
Bruno’s grandfather, who couldn’t read or write, always referred to me as the “Espanhola”. That was because for him anyone who wasn’t Portuguese was Spanish. When he and Bruno’s grandmother were treated to a coach trip to the Algarve (by Bruno’s parents) they were concerned to get all their documents up to date for when they crossed the border.
Bruno and I split up. He moved to Lisbon and I carried on living at his family house. They were gracious and kind and never made me feel unwelcome. Bruno’s father helped me find a house in Setúbal, where there was a job I wanted. He was well-connected and helped me get a mortgage with the bank manager he knew in Faralhão. Bruno now works in the Polícia Judiciaria.
I loved my life in Setúbal. For around twenty years I was in my spirit home. Restaurants still cooked their fish on outside barbecues. I felt privileged to be the owner of an apartment with marble floors. During that time I made friends with São who lived in the same block of apartments. We mostly found ourselves walking our dogs at the same time and getting to know each other. We both loved cross-country cycling and walking in the Arrábida. She had a relationship with a Swiss nurse who was working for Santa Casa de Misericórdia. It was a noble job and her stories of the kinds of conditions some people lived in in Setúbal were heart-breaking. She spoke excellent Portuguese. São and I had a relationship that overlapped with São’s relationship with the nurse.
My musings about where I’m from are interrupted by the dog-friendly neighbour. This neighbour can’t have been more than ten when I arrived in this country. With a broad, friendly smile she is wishing us a warm “Welcome to Portugal”.
