The Ghost at the Mirror Pavilion.

My time in Lahore was drawing to a close and I knew I had to return to the Emperor’s fort just one last time. The Mirror Pavilion a place of serene melancholy, built during the reign of Shah Jahan. The Shah was born in this very fort in 1592, the son of Jahangir. Shah Jahan would later commision the world’s most beautiful building, the Taj Mahal in 1631.

During my life there have been certain places, town squares and buildings that I have been, for some inexplicable reason, drawn to. I would return to these places and stay for many hours in reflection often wondering to myself why it was so hard to leave.

In Milan it was the cloister of Santa Maria della Grazie, in Bucharest the Romanian Patriarchal Cathedral, in Vrindavan a stretch of the Yamuna River near the Laksmirani Kunja temple where I would try to catch the reflection of the moon in it’s waters at night.

In this romantic city of high drama and quiet reflection for me it was the Pavilion of Mirrors within Lahore Fort that would not let me go. There was just something so hauntingly beautiful about this building, it’s silent distress heartbreaking in it’s own way. The sunlight trapped behind black clouds that were crossing the plains of the Punjab would now and again elongate the building’s shadows, shadows that have been confined here for centuries, and the rain, the rain like a million teardrops, the teardrops that must have been shed here throughout the centuries.

Now and again a tourist would pass through or the occasional school group but for the most part I was alone. After much pondering I concluded the people passing through were on tight schedules or just caught up in modern living. They were passing through, making selfies and looking at the pavilion, but actually I feel they never saw it at all, their time too brief to ever having been there in the first place.

I was in Lahore to honour my mother, we had a magical connection to this city, a distant city that we had never visited. The first time I realised that our world was beautiful, that life was beautiful, that my mother was beautiful was trudging through the snow one night as a four year old and her crouching down beside me and pointing telling me to look at the night sky for there was a falling star to behold.

I remember many years later seeing a clip of a man setting fire to newspapers just through sheer willpower, holding his palms above the paper until it ignited. There is so much of the metaphysical realm we do not understand. I feel that mirrors have, at times, the capability to capture energy.

Once while rummaging through an antique shop in Amsterdam I caught sight of my reflection in an old mirror and in angst fled the store for I knew within every part of my being that that mirror had witnessed something so evil, so cruel, that to this day the energy was still caught there.

As the tourists passed through and left again my eyes would wander across the old kangal murals, painted onto it’s walls during another era, it’s gold leaf portraying the magnificence of days gone by, of emperors and kings, of dancing girls and elephants, all those who must have passed through. I had visions of sultry nights of long ago, the palace lit in the moonlight as the string music from sitars drifted through it’s halls, the love stories and betrayals, births and deaths, whole life spans passing infront of the mirrored glass.

There is one room within the pavilion, it is away off to the side, rather forgotten and very dark. In weak light I remember looking into the mirrors within that room, looking at my reflection and trying to look beyond the glass, trying as hard as I could to see into another world but there was nothing there, just my lonely reflection standing in an old palace, just another person with their tragic story, just another future ghost.

Feeling dejected at least I still had the beauty of Lahore and what it had given to my soul, a sense of closure, at peace now with the memory of my mother.

I don’t know why but I took out my phone, the light of the screen capturing my face in the dark room. I noticed the light from the phone screen reflected in the mirrors beside me. Feeling rather silly I switched on the phone’s torch and pointed it to the celing and that’s when I started to cry for infront of me it seemed like a thousand twinkling stars all lit up and as I moved the phone to an angle it made the stars move, as if they were falling, a thousand falling stars in the night sky.

As with the pavilion the murals are in a state of disrepair, here are a few of my favorite one’s I was able to photograph, here are the other ghosts of the Mirror Pavilion:

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Shot to death in Lahore.

Men infront of Badshahi

It seems I have crossed a vast ocean, maybe I have crossed time itself. I find myself living in northern Africa now. I, infact, have lived here for years, in a world I no longer recognise, in a world I no longer understand, within a person I almost no longer know.

My memories are like rocks on this ocean, islands, the summits of an endless mountain range that stands submerged somewhere within me. Those memories are the landmarks of my life that I cling to when the currents seem to want to pull me under.

On one of those islands I remember a far off city called Lahore, I remember being four or five years old, the snowy nights. I try to recall my mother’s voice on those nights as she read to me about this exotic city, about a boy called Kim who lived there, the books of Rudyard Kipling.

The Imperial City

It has been many years, decades infact since my mother, in torment, so brutally left this world and my memories of her seem to fade more as the years progress. I have never forgotten those nights though, they are still vivid, how beautiful she had seemed. I have never forgotten about that magical, faraway city called Lahore.

The reactions were always the same when I told people I was travelling to Pakistan. Worry, suspicion, drama. I would often hear “…..but no one goes to Pakistan”. I could only reply “for the mountains!” and that seemed to quieten them. Yes, it is true, it was for the mountains indeed but not the Himalaya, it was for other peaks far greater than them.

Inside Badshahi Mosque at night.

“Towards the Land of the Giants” I thought as I swept in from the Gulf of Oman, the mountains of Beluchistan like huge steps, climbing upwards across distressed patchworks of yellow and gold.

I remember when I arrived in Delhi in 2009 the utter shock I felt being out of my comfort zone. My life before that had been a series of beautiful hotels, restaurants and museums in what was supposed to be the greatest cities of the world. To see dead animals – and even a dead man – lying on the street had for me been highly upsetting. I think living in Africa now has changed me in alot of ways. Driving into Lahore late afternoon, the vibrant, noisy streets and life, the chaos and endless car horns framed in a gentle fading sun, felt no different from my daily African life and I guess you could say I was in my element.

The shadows in Shalimar

They say that Lahore is the most polluted city on Earth but to me it was, to put it simply, beautiful. Walking through the old gardens of the Mughal emperors early in the morning was very moving. To experience shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), to smell the flowers and soil and hear nature was unbelievably soothing.

Shalimar early morning

I found myself alone in what seemed like a flooded section of the gardens, dense with trees and quite dark where birds were swooping down from the branches, their reflections in the water. It was rather sensational and dramatic, a precious gift from the natural world. If I had to make an ukiyo-e print of an experience in my life it could be that very moment.

Zamzammah – Kim’s cannon from Rudyard Kipling’s book “Kim”

Rudyard Kipling called Lahore “The City of Dreadful Night” having spent his days along it’s dark alleyways, brothels and opium dens but to me the city was majestic, far more than Delhi or Isfahan. I feel that Lahore had been a city that reached it’s zenith away back in time.

Inside the Lahore Museum where Kipling’s father was curator, the locals call it “Ajaib-Gher” The Wonder House

I have many moments in Lahore that I will never forget, some good and some bad. Walking through the gardens of Jahangir’s mausoleum and admiring it’s impressive architecture a police constable insisted he walk with me “for my own safety” and even though a few times I told him i’m perfectly safe by myself he would not leave me alone often asking if he could come to my hotel. It became so unbearable I had to leave the mausoleum just to get away from him.

Jahangir’s Mausoleum

I was in a deeply reflective state while I was in Lahore and to be honest I didn’t want to talk to anyone at all. I wanted to enjoy the memories of my mother, it was because of her that I was in Lahore in the first place.

One day I wanted to observe the light and shadows across Badshahi Mosque as the hours progressed, instead I was harrassed hundreds of times for selfies. sometimes by large groups. I would gladly make photos but after hours of this it became unbearable, some people were so disrespectful or would just make them anyway. After a while their camera’s seemed like weapons, shot to death by camera lens indeed. If you ever see someone famous please just let them be.

I could not refect as deep as I wanted that day because of those interruptions but I do vaguely remember the great mosque in changing light until after nightfall when it’s domes seemed suspended, I felt they were like moons and I almost could touch them.

Badshahi in fading light

Almost Night

Walking under Delhi gate and along crowded lanes, through elaborately painted hammams and past exotic spices, colorful mosques like jewellery boxes, laughing children and the curious elderly where every man would stare, the scruffy street dog staring at the butcher shop and me going in and buying it breakfast, smiling boys driving my rickshaws and taxi’s, strange delicious sugary sweets and burning hot parantha, puppet shows, milky tea – actually the best tea in the world , the skylines of emperors and kings and through it all memories of my beloved mother whom I felt in some way was with me spiritually.

Inside Wazir Khan

Lahore, millions of people have passed through your streets across hundreds of years and i’am just another one of them with just another story, but like you, I also have a history that is bittersweet and just like you, I continue to survive through it all.

Northern Africa in Retrospect.

As Greece and Turkey burn across the sea to the north, experiencing their worst heatwave in thirty years I write to you from an even hotter place, from a tiny sliver of life, perched between the Western and Eastern deserts of northern Africa.

This post finds me wandering around the “Religious Complex”, better known as Coptic Cairo which can be found towards the south of the great Ibn Tulun Mosque. I thought I understood the beloved city very well but this interfaith district has a certain charm all of it’s own, reminding me of how the intertwining districts of Jerusalem could possibly be, reminding me of my days spent in the enchanting lavra under the city of Kiev with it’s burrow of chapels and shrines, of hushed whispers and candlelight.

It seems like an eternity now that I had left northern Europe, washing up on this new continent, full of promise of what might be. An emotional refugee you could say, escaping from my haunting past, escaping from the ghosts that had consumed me so entirely, how they had conspired together with the demons within me, playfully dancing on top of my soul, crushing me with every waltz.

They say that you cannot escape from your past by running away and as I spend my remaining days here I realize that to be true.

You could say the only consolation I have is in the indecipherable script above doorways and on shop windows, the distant tones and guttural sounds of the unknown language, of the moments seeing fireworks reflect in my eyes making me wonder, just for one precious instant, which celebration it could signify this time and of course, the city, the magical, supreme city which arises with every blazing dawn and at night bathes in the sultry and balmy air of the world’s greatest river.

Even it´s moon is beguiling. I can assure you only from this point on Earth is she at her most beautiful, her otherworldly crescent and dim light, her tranquility indescribable as she lingers in solitude above the crowded city below.

Church of Saint George

I love to spend my days discovering the most beloved of cities and this district has been a real eye opener, the heavy presence of religion confronting me with my own mortality, the dust of the ancient manuscripts, the still traces of Roman blood on Babylon Fort, the love and devotion to God. I realize my struggle is but of a temporary nature. In some strange way I feel a deep connection to this district, it’s religious expression giving hope while adding serene joy to my eyes, to a soul starved of ethereal beauty.

This alien civilization is the only thing that can console me inside, it keeps me preoccupied during the daily toil of a humdrum life. As I try to spell and pronounce the nursery words from the unintelligible instruction manual it keeps me at the certain and, above all, necessary level of distraction. Distracted from the flames of the natural disaster which forever lies within me. I live each day as a newborn, given the possibility of hope, of the chance that I might one day be able to live again.

I have been living here for a few years now and when thinking back I realize I must have gone through a major life cycle and at night I often wonder if I’am better or worse for it. I do know that since I was very young I have always been adamant on living a life full, to savor every emotion, whether they be good or bad. To one day know, on my deathbed that I had lived, that I had truly lived.

Ben Ezra Synagogue

A service inside a Coptic Church

Icon in Coptic Cairo

It has been a strange journey and indeed that of a newborn.

I always thought I would have missed the restaurants and art galleries of Europe, the food and entertainment but in fact the only thing I miss are the forests. I first noticed this during my first autumn in the desert when I had asked my friends to make photos of the forests for me, and in particular of bright green moss. An urgent need for my most basic wants to be appeased. I found these photos to be mesmerizing and I longed to walk through a summer forest at dawn once more, the droplets of dew, the life elixir of everything or to swim in the lakes between the lotus flowers as I had often done in a time less pressing.

As winter approached I would close the blinds to the endless blazing sun and inside watch videos about the frozen forests of Sweden and the Arctic Circle and of life there, as if my body was aching for the winter months once more.

When I first emigrated here I thought it such a novelty to sunbathe in March, gleefully calling my friends to speak of sunlight and warmth. These days clouds, the blacker the better are my favorite due to the rarity of such vision. The first drops of rain after summer usually stop me in my tracks as if in suspended animation, my soul dancing in totality, my hands raised to the heaven.

Notice the beautiful facade of the building in the background with it’s Pharonic hieroglyphics.

These are some of the oldest known streets in Cairo, very atmospheric. I spoke to some of the residents in broken Arabic and they in broken English and we seemed to have reach the same conclusion that we were charmed by each other.

The photo above is of the Saint Virgin Mary’s Coptic Orthodox church, built during the patriarchate of Isaac in the 7th Century. This church is unusual, being built atop the ruins of Babylon Fort.

Saint George killing the demon, the dragon.

Charming ancient streets of an ancient city.

The photo above is showing A’mr ibn Al’as Mosque, built in the 7th Century as the center of the newly founded city of Fustat.

I spoke to a rather wonderful if not eccentric homeless bag lady (as I often do) and she spoke surprisingly good English. She explained to me that the area is being cleared so that eventually this great mosque, the oldest in Egypt, will look uninterrupted onto the waters of the Nile.

I’m developing a deep rooted fascination for the Greek community who live and have lived in Egypt and of ancient Greece itself. I was caught rather of guard by this photo on a tombstone, the girl’s eyes totally compelling.

I guess you could say I needed a gentler life, and as ironic as it sounds I have found peace here in a city of 20 million. This new world seems poetic. I feel for once that I’m living in a place that somehow matters to the person who i’am inside, an old soul in the ancient holy world, where the Fertile Crescent links me to Mesopotamia, towards the cradle of civilization. and even further away to the mountains of Iran.

I´m very much at home here, where old fashioned manners matter, where families still know each other and children are respectful to their elders. No matter their hardships the Egyptians still smile, their resilience a lesson to us all. I have witnessed so many incredible acts of kindness, it is always the smallest things, like watching someone help a stranger whose moped has broken down, or for instance a security guard who went out of his way to help me find where I needed to go, that matters the most.

It has been one of the greatest joys and honors of my life to have had the chance to spend my days in northern Africa and I feel a true blessing from God and the angels when I was in my darkest hour.

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend for they shall never be broken'” – Saint Francis de Sales.

Goodbye Amsterdam, farewell Europe, it was nice knowing you.

There was a time when Amsterdam was the coolest, most progressive, most hip place in the world to me. I was so much younger back then and that tolerant mini city with it’s majestic canals and left wing ideals was all I ever wanted. I would have given away everything for Amsterdam and I did, my friends on the other side of the world, my exciting life in New York City, even my parents and siblings,  I gave them up all up to start my new life in Amsterdam.

I spent a great portion of my life in that watery world.  I guess we all have some sort of relationship with the place we live in. Eventually I got caught up in my own life, in the lives of my friends and the illusive beauty of the city faded into the background. Yet for me I could never forget those first days and this most precious of wallflower could still find a way to comfort me when I needed her most.

Just recently I had passed a nondescript café while sitting in the tram. I remembered that café, that time sitting there one Spring afternoon as people sat around me laughing in animated conversation. It was at that very table, sitting on that very chair where my lover told me he was leaving me. The conversations of those around us, the music, the people, all noise infact blocked out as I felt that primal silent scream coming from the deepest part of me and those feelings, like salt slipping through my hands. It was at that moment my life as I had known it slipped away forever. I remember that pain like it was just yesterday, it was that pain that was the most defining moment of my life, it will be that pain I will still remember on my deathbed. In the end the memory of him and me, of us, of our places in Amsterdam became too painful for me to deal with. Everywhere I seemed to go memories of us lurked. Certain streets, certain parks became off limits, my mind became a war zone and my soul became collateral damage. In the end my once beloved city could do nothing but crush me and it wasn’t the cities fault but mine. Amsterdam became the hulk of a great ship slipping below the waves and I was no more than a little child screaming on it’s deck. Amsterdam could never be the same again.

I lost faith in humanity. I had loved and cared for someone so carefully, there was no sign that our relationship was in trouble. I had been betrayed on such an immense scale that I couldn’t quite grasp. I hurt so badly inside. It sounds so strange but all I had was God. I felt I could never trust a human being again. Can you imagine I was unable to go outside into my city of ghosts yet the inside of the apartment would torment me too as we had chosen all the furniture and paintings together.

Seperating from him and how I struggled to find my place in the world again was the hardest thing I ever had to go through. I’m forever changed now. Things that I used to hold dear became irrelevant. Someone once said that with each passing decade a person changes so subtly yet so profoundly that they almost become unrecognizable to the person they once had been.

My perception became so strong around that time. I seemed to be able to look through people, through places, through things, through everything. I couldn’t stand sitting in places like Paris or Zurich anymore with their sidewalk cafés, it all seemed so dead and neat and airbrushed, I needed to live whether good or bad, I needed to feel something again.

Even as I went through these irreversable shifts Amsterdam would sometimes catch me off guard and I would notice hints in her understated beauty once more. The last time she seduced my eye was just after returning from Beijing when the moon was positioned so perfectly above the rooftops of a row of townhouses on the Herengracht canal. The water glistened that summer night, the city glistened too.

Flying over the Alps for the last time towards my new home in Africa.

Now I sit here in my new home in the Sahara desert, far from the watery world. Amongst the shifting sand dunes, amongst the flies in the market, amongst the inhabitants of this honeycomb African city I listen to them speak in tongues I do not know. I left Amsterdam, I left Europe, I left that certain pain forever. I thought I would have cried as the plane took off but infact I felt no emotion at all. The weeks prior to emigration had all gone by so quickly, resigning from my job, giving up my home, destroying letters and photos I had cherished since childhood, destroying all trace of me infact.

My last image of the Netherlands was a few farmhouses huddled on a polder being lashed by sleet as the plane climbed higher until my Dutch life became obscured behind the grey clouds for eternity. Amsterdam slipped once and for all below the waves. That plane was my life raft. European refugees sometimes arrive on the shores of Africa, I should know, i’m one of them.

I will never forget you Amsterdam, I don’t know why I was meant to suffer beside you but don’t remember my tears. Remember me when life was so much more innocent, when I would laugh cycling over your bridges on summer days, remember me learning to ice skate on your frozen canals, remember me when I used to lie in the park amongst your flowers looking up at the sky counting the clouds, remember me walking in the snowflakes, the rain, the falling cherry blossoms, the blizzards, the sunrays, the hailstones, the moonlight.

I will never forget you. I gave you the best part of me, the best part of my life and when I think back now I realise you gave me the best part of you too.

Low vibrations in Kiev.

Ever since I first heard of Kiev it seemed rather fantastical with it’s forests topped off by pastel coloured churches with golden onion-domed steeples, it’s myriad of underground chapels within the hillsides, a land with a turbulent history, a land so close to Romania (my favorite European country) so when given the chance to visit either Moscow (a city far younger than the Ukrainian capital) or Kiev itself ofcourse I chose the latter.

It was strange watching the landscapes of Europe as I headed east. As the plane flew over the Netherlands and Germany the land was a vivid green, the sort of green that seemed unnatural, the shapes of the fields uniformed and huge as if all of it was mass produced and on steroids. Crossing Poland the shade of green became weaker, the farmland seemed more messy and unkept until I was over Ukrainian airspace, the land an even meaker shade of green, almost grey, the tiny allotments giving the impression that the planet here was cracked and broken. As the plane landed I decided to go into Ukraine with an open mind, to try and enjoy myself in my first post U.S.S.R. country.

Checking into the hotel, a massive Soviet building covered in bird droppings, was unnerving. The receptionist seemed frosty as if annoyed that I was disturbing her and by the time I got to my room with it’s seventies furniture and leaking bathroom taps I already knew that coming to Ukraine had been a terrible mistake. By evening I was crying on the phone to friends telling them I wanted to leave as soon as possible, that until now the Ukrainians I met had been so miserable and rude. A friend even commented that it was the first time I had ever disliked a place. I’m well known for being a really friendly and polite person with a good heart so to be driven to tears by rude people made me realise it wasn’t me, it was them.

I didn’t know how I was going to get through the days until my return flight, I was just thankful that I hadn’t booked a return flight for over a fortnight as I had originally planned. My heart broke further as I walked across Kiev’s main square with it’s cracked sidewalks and rusty playing area for children, prostitutes mingling in the crowds approaching older men, covers of old German pop songs blaring from the shops, a building on the corner a burnt out shell, the billboards loud and toxic. The buildings reminded me of Nowa Huta, a Soviet styled suburb of Kraków, rather imposing, triggering feelings of paranoia, from that very first stroll I had nicknamed the square “Stalin’s Playground.”

It’s really hard to describe Kiev. As I walked along the Dnieper River the cityscape seemed so brutally horrid and yet so stunningly beautiful. It’s strange to look at the most beautiful churches you will ever see to realise that they are facing the most unsightly modern condos and factories. I wondered who had planned the modern city and felt immense solidarity with the ancestors of Kiev who for sure would be turning in their graves.

Let me give you an example of my interactions in Kiev. I had gone to the mind bogglingly named The Ukrainian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War where there is a huge silver plated statue named The Motherland Monument. I went inside and POLITELY asked the receptionist, an older woman with a brick hairstyle (totally stereotypically Soviet) for a ticket to the upper viewing platform. In response her face dropped, she threw her hands like a maniac in the air channeling her ugly side, mimicking my voice angrily “Viewing Platform! Viewing Platform!” What then happened was so incredibly Soviet Union. She picked up a red Seventies style dial telephone and spoke coldly into it as if she was hissing to some enemy that she had been sleeping with the enemies husband all along. After a few minutes a woman appeared who marched me into a tiny elevator and took me up to the viewing platform. Kiev seemed so grim from up there, a viciously cold wind coming off the steppe onto a sea of apartment blocks looking onto factories belching out black smoke.

That’s exactly how I felt in Ukraine, seperated but hey, I got to rock some fabulous dresses!

Another time I walked into a shop politely smiling, as you do in every other country in the world, to be met by a furious shopkeeper who demanded to know what I wanted. Another time while buying herbal tea I was informed that the seller couldn’t understand Russian when I was speaking to her in English! Thats when I got thinking, maybe they thought I was Russian? My interactions with Ukrainians had disturbed me to such an extent that when returning home I tried to find answers. I did read that smiling in Ukraine to strangers is seen as fake and rude which is so strange as in the rest of the world it’s just basic human politeness. If smiling is seen as rude in Ukraine then why oh why did Ukraine get it all so terribly wrong?

 

I had searched for days for this blue tower, it had reminded me of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, luckily for me I had found this monastery on my last day in Ukraine, tucked away in a hillside facing the Dnieper River.

There was only one thing in Ukraine I was thankful for and that was it’s monasteries and churches. I would eat my breakfast as soon as I could and escape in a taxi out of there, out to them, spending the whole day in their gardens admiring the architecture. Covering my hair with a scarf and walking through a maze of tunnels while using a candle to guide through the darkness was really moving. In that network of tunnels are tiny chapels where services are going on and people kiss glass coffins where the mummified remains of monks rest. In those religious places there was something rather magical, ancient and spiritual.

The flight attendant on the KLM flight home was so totally out there gay. I told him all about Kiev, how he must never leave his hotel when having a layover there. We must have been half way home when I saw him coming along the aisle with a complimentary basket of wines and chocolates. I wondered who’s birthday it was until he and the other attendants stopped at me and said they were sorry about my experience in Ukraine. They had wrote me a card telling me just to ignore rude people and welcoming me back home to the Netherlands. In that moment I forgave KLM for my food poisoning on the way to Brazil, in that moment I loved the Dutch, I loved The Netherlands, I was glad to be home.

A certain glint in Cairo.

It must have been somewhere along the airport road heading downtown that I became aware I had fallen madly in love. The spell the city had put on me had been hypnotic and swift and as I opened the car window sighing and inhaling the dusty dawn air I knew I was done for.

This city seemed like a mysterious man dressed like a Saharan Tuareg warrior. Standing on the edge of the vast desert he seemed to speak to me in a tongue I couldn’t quite understand and knowing this his eyes danced playfully as he beckoned me to gaze towards the dowry chest that he was opening. Picking up the glittering gems my eyes fell upon all the things I had ever wanted … the pink light from a reflected moon caught on an ocean of the purest sand, ornate Fatamid doors handcrafted by a man who had turned to dust centuries ago, faded pages written over in Kufic script, the dusk light seeping through the arches of an Abyassid mosque while, above, crenellations seemed to dance like the way the people on paper doll chains do, crumbling Belle Epoque apartment buildings on carbon monoxide boulevards, the calm, balmy air above the Nile at dusk, the scent of earth and the cold touch of stone along serpentine alleyways and above them all a million voices proclaiming the greatness of God. The realisation that there could exist a place so beautifully aligned to my soul made me fall silent. I realised the Magical City really did exist and it was called Cairo.

I don’t know why I was so different as a child and why now I was being drawn to Cairo instead of London and all the other “usuals.” Around the age of four I had almost died of meningitis and maybe at that time somewhere in my psyche I had decided to really live, to explore, to live life to the fullest. In a way I guess I could never quite forget that I had been granted a second chance at life. While others were playing with toy soldiers and dolls I, in my mind, was travelling amongst the stars. I wanted to see everything, to know everything, to feel everything. During my childhood adventures in dusty attics and along tree branches I knew I had already found treasure. It was the cover of one of my grandmother’s old records and on it a photo of the dome of a mosque. How I would look at it for hours, mesmerized by the ornate patterns and hints of the exotic. Later at around eight years old I was awestruck by a photo of the Taj Mahal and would draw it over and over. I already knew back then I would see them all one day. I was aware of Islam even before I knew the name of the language I spoke or the street I lived in.

My journey towards love, towards Cairo, had been a long one. Over the years I had wandered across many cities and some of them had even charmed me. I had been in search of something I couldn’t quite explain, a driving force you could say, and like a tiny fish in a vast ocean I knew I had to persevere, to continue. Like lovers those cities had stood before me holding bronze scales in their hands balancing their treasures which, in the end, could never quite match mine.

There had been Manhattan, it’s vibrant lights and optimism matching the energetic bursts of my teenage years. Then there had been Isfahan and how on one starry night I had noticed the moonlight caught in the azure tiles of the dome of it’s vast mosque and how to console myself when leaving I had carried off it’s heart, a broken piece of glazed tile which I still treasure today. Then there had been my great love which had reigned over me for nine years, the city of Delhi and it’s old ramshackle Muslim quarter of Shahjahanabad. It was the way the gingerbread sandstone of the Mughal architecture and the red cloth of women’s saris had made me feel, the way stranger’s faces had peered out to me from behind the wooden latice screens of ancient havelis. On top of that there had been the frenetic streetscapes of Delhi itself, a Dickensian underworld full of street urchins and the dreams they held, renewed in their eyes by the sunlight of every dawn and how at night, dejected, those same eyes seemed to soften and resign themselves to what life had so cruelly thrown at them. Delhi though, in hindsight, had been the kind of lover that had been quite brutal. The kind of lover who could reduce you to tears with the flick of an eye and who would try to kiss you better at night.

Cairo on the other hand released an optimism within me without question. Since that first day I have returned to the city a number of times and walked it’s streets for many hours to try and pinpoint, to try and understand, but each time I seem to move further towards oblivion. It’s hard to say what it is that draws me there. It could be it’s traffic clogged boulevards and abandoned artdeco cinemas, or timewarped Café American where men in suits seem to work for the CIA or Mossad, or it’s busy sidewalks where you still see old waiters standing outside Café Riche in tattered tuxedos where, inside, amongst rickety chairs and tables hang faded photographs of old Egyptian writers and filmstars of long ago, maybe it’s when drinking Qahwa Arabiya I stare out towards the streets and notice an old type of glamour, where at times the call to prayer seems repeated through every radio in every shop. The Islamic Paris and yet so much more than Paris could ever be.

As I have grown older I think one of the most important things I have learned is that life is not so much about what you say or do but more about the energy that you project towards others. Humans seem to like bright, shiny things and seeing as that is how I feel in Cairo it’s inhabitants seem to be drawn to me in the most incredible ways. One fine afternoon I remember walking through a poor neighbourhood at the foot of the Citadel where I went around with a gang of teenage girls and how they told me about their lives, how they had never heard of the country I had been born in, how they loved the color of my hair and shade of lipstick, how they admired me because my hotel was near the Nile and I was lucky enough to look at it’s waters everyday, how I became aware that luck to those girls was nothing more than to simply be able to look at a river.

I will never forget the moment one afternoon when, while waiting for a taxi, I glanced across the dusty dual carriageway to gaze upon the most beautiful skyline I have ever seen in my life, in that instant I wished a taxi would never arrive. Why I didn’t photograph that skyline I do not know. How to describe it? I can only say it was medieval, exotic, Aladdin, an oasis of minarets and palm trees. I suspect it was a group of tombs within the City of the Dead, a vast area where over a million people live amongst the corpses.

Cairo is a city of surprises too, where on my birthday while walking amongst the pyramids in Giza a group of men had followed me and whistled and called me “Hot Girl! Hot Girl!” over and over again, how it had taught me about myself. I could never have imagined in middle age being described as hot or even as a girl! The pyramids for me were just a footnote though. To me Cairo has little to do with Pharonic Egypt or Tutankhamun, to me the city is Al Qahira, the Islamic city named after the planet Mars which astronomers had noted was in ascend when they were attempting to name the city, Mars, the warrior, the victorious. An infinite exoticism so perfectly balanced, yet it’s beauty seemed to hold in it’s hand a trace of savage.

It was on my first day with jetlag and unable to sleep after a long flight from China that, half dazed, I had wandered into the old Fatamid city. Under a scorching sun I had sought refuge along darkened alleyways, touching cold marble and lost, dressed in a cocktail dress and high heels I remember I had stepped over dead cats and animal entrails, had peered into the eyes of terrified rabbits caged next to the butcher’s slab, through swarms of flies and clouds of snowy dust thrown up by men hammering names onto pearly white grave stones, and how I had felt burning sparks on my skin as I passed the blacksmith, how my eyes had gazed upon the glint of ornate goldleaf calligraphy above a half submerged doorway which was being devoured further by discarded newspapers and amongst it all lay a sleeping leper. Upon my magic carpet odyssey I had reached the foot of a gigantic, honeycomb gate which seemed to tower above me, topped off by two stunningly beautiful minarets.

Sometimes the stars align so perfectly and that is what happened as I reached the top of one of those minarets as, on cue, what seemed like a thousand muezzins called the faithful to pray as white birds flew in unison through a cobalt sky. I had been reminded of a day at the end of the 20th century when I had stood on a bridge in Luxembourg City and had watched a solar eclipse and, as the sun blackened I had, for a split second, forgot who I was. Lost in that celestial moment I had become aware I was wearing old clothes of crude, rough fabric as if I were back in the dark ages. I felt, possibly, I had viewed an eclipse back then too. It was a very strange feeling, something I have never been able to forget or to figure out. A conscious out of body experience I guess. Timeless. That moment above Cairo was almost the same, profound and majestic. The sensory overload one of the highlights of my life. I always return to those minarets now whenever I visit the city to coincide with the call to prayer and everytime I try to absorb the city below into my being, to make it a part of me for eternity. I have come to learn that the gate is called Bab Zuweila, a place steeped in history, most of it gory.

I have my favorite haunts in Cairo. One of them being a little nondescript teahouse which I had discovered that first day. It was after climbing that minaret I had walked further past plastic orange chairs and merchants frying food on the street that I had noticed the red petals of a tree and, captivated by the way it contrasted so deeply onto the walls of an ancient looking mosque, I had stood there for a few minutes. I sat down across the street from it at a sidewalk table of that very teahouse. It is in that teahouse I learned to love sugary jet black tea and also learned how to shoo away flies while at the same time enjoying the streetscapes. I find places like Milan and Zurich very boring now, very airbrushed. In those cities you wouldn’t see a family of six zoom past all balanced onto a single moped or a ricksaw passing it’s sole passenger a cow’s head or the indecipherable calls of merchants which go on from dawn till dusk. On that first day an elderly gentleman must have noticed me staring at that mosque and pulling out an Egyptian fifty pound note he showed me that the mosque printed on it was the very same mosque I was staring at, called Qogmas Al-Ishaqi. I love sitting in that teahouse now and have enjoyed the subtle changes of that tree in all seasons and watching the people and traffic go by. Sometimes I will go inside the mosque, like stepping inside a gigantic treasure box of stained glass.

To me Cairo is the most exciting city in the world right now and the only one I long to return to, the one I think about all of the time, the only one I gush about to my friends, the only one who can seduce me, the only one whose treasures can match mine, the place named after the stars, the place that lives up so perfectly to it’s nickname, The Mother of the Earth.

 

 

 

 

The face I deserve in Beijing.

Reminiscing and looking for signs of aging in the mirror it seemed like I had been another person who had lived in another world when I had last set foot in the People’s Republic. Memories of lush forests and the South China Sea seemed distant now, this China was not the same. Vast, remote, toxic and pale were the words that flashed across my mind as the plane circled the winter city, like crossing the surface of a crystallized moon, even the ashen buildings seemed to eradicate into the anemic soil.

Wakeup calls were always the same in this new China. Riot police would bark through loud speakers around 6am and then the clearances would begin. Not only had my former self ceased to exist but Old China would cease to exist too  … by any means possible. Boots against concrete, the sound of crashing walls and then the pleading, the crying in languages I could only assume must have been Chinese. I wondered if we would be next. Even though my hotel was beautiful and the staff didn’t seem to bat an eyelid to the asbest cloud meandering through the alley I still wondered if I would be homeless. I did notice the ramschakle buildings surrounding us seemed a bit haphazard while my hotel was well planned and firm. The hotel gave me a card to show to the riot police who had blocked off our alley so that I could come and go. I had been charmed by the idea of staying in a hutong, a traditional low-rise section of the city. These old areas are snapshots of how Peking used to be. Little did I know this was the part of the city that was being razed to make way for the 21st Century.

The say everything in America is bigger but in China it is huge. Train stations felt like airports and the queues at security check points were on a daunting scale. These checkpoints were everywhere. One frozen morning while shuffling in a queue towards a checkpoint on the outskirts of the Forbidden City I glared at one of those regimented soldiers. She was grabbing a poorly dressed man by the scruff of the neck and that man, all he could seem to do was smile politely.

Mostly central Beijing is on a grid. The wide systematic boulevards seemed to stamp their muddy footprints across the downtrodden soul of the city. Lined by dank Socialist highrise or secretive office blocks, speeding traffic and choking fumes I couldn’t work out where the appeal lay within this futuristic city planning or the sanity of the city planners themselves. Once while sitting beside a memorial to Lenin and Marx I saw a man on a bicycle get run over by a Mercedes. The driver jumped out, stuffed some money into the man’s hand then drove off again. The modern city felt warlike. While walking I managed to cover great swathes of the city and preferred to stick to the lowrise hutongs, using my phone to map through the labyrinth of alleyways. The last traces of a human soul could still be found in those alleyways. I would delight in getting lost feeling like a ghost observing the Chinese life but in no way part of it. I knew no westerner could ever be fully accepted into China and I was at peace with that. The older sections felt recognizable, familiar. It was there in the low city that I loved Beijing most, red lanterns swaying in the moonlight, the sound of opera from the radio, insects being sold as snacks, old ladies in furs walking Pekinese (everyone seemed to have a Pekinese), laughter, the sweet delicious smell of bread, pockets of silence. I imagined little had changed in the genetic makeup of Beijing there. It had a magical aura that the rest of the city didn’t have. It had life.

I had decided to visit the Forbidden City. What is strange about Beijing is that if you want to visit Tian’anmen Square (which is open space)  you have to go through security controls. I waited for over an hour in one, shuffling with the Chinese through the nippy frost. Now and then a baby would unceremoniously be placed into my arms for a photo, families lined up around me, they seemed to like my blonde hair and blue eyes. Once while standing a family had even positioned themselves behind me for a family portrait only I had my back to the lens which I thought odd.

Still China was alien. These interactions were minimal as if they didn’t see me at all,  they didn’t know me. I was just another Nordic hologram, alien to their eyes that had to be captured on camera holding their offspring. Maybe it was seen to bring luck, maybe I would be framed and put on the wall of a shack in the most obscure parts of the country. China is like Japan. People are polite but still you feel no part of their society. I thought back to Iran, Romania, Peru, India, the places where I had amazing interactions with their citizens. I longed for a deeper human connection.

I have mixed feelings about Beijing. I had heard that the Communist Annual Conference was happening on Tian’anmen Square so maybe that was why security had been tightened. Maybe that was why there were many security controls. I had heard because of the conference industry had been put on hold to clear the skies and true, I had never saw the infamous toxic fog. Maybe with Communism the people still saw westerners in some ways as an enemy and that is why interaction were to a minimum.

The Chinese are so far off from my world, to me as pale and remote as the landscapes they inhabit. As the plane took off I left memories of The Lover and China behind. I was heading towards the Middle East unbeknown to me towards the city of my dreams, towards the city of my future, Cairo.

The woman on Bloubergstrand.

Whenever I meet people who, like me, have lived in both New York and Los Angeles I always ask them which city they prefer. The answer seems to tell me so much about the personality of the person i’m talking too.

I had heard so much about Cape Town for many years, it’s stunning location, Table Mountain, the beaches, the penguins, the white sand and oceans. Cape Town seemed to have everything. So, why, as I walked across the City Centre did my heart seem to sink? I guess for me it was a matter of energy, chemistry and Cape Town didn’t have any of them.

I kept thinking back to Johannesburg, how people had warned me never to walk in downtown alone and how in the end I had gone against their advice and in doing so discovered Johannesburg as exciting, gritty, raw, edgy in the same way Manhattan can be. Quite simply Johannesburg had been fabulous. After a few hours walking around Cape Town I felt the city and it’s lack of energy stifling, too European, too claustrophobic, too neat and pretty. This is a city I decided where people exist but don’t live. I took one look at the Waterfront, the new development around the harbour and promised myself never to walk there again. After my seperation my soul felt vulnerable, I didn’t need pointless materialism and glass and chrome buildings to crush it further.

As for landscapes, Cape Town really does have them in abundance, probably one of the most beautifully located cities in the world matching Rio de Janeiro for sure. As I stood on Table Mountain and looked down on Cape Town I realised it could never be as visually stunning as say Hong Kong from Victoria Peak. I had planned to stay in Cape Town for a week and after the first day realised it was going to be a struggle to get through it. I wondered if it was me and if I may be just another jaded traveller.

Days were spent visiting various beaches all the while searching for penguins and seals. One day I had made my way down to Cape Point by helicopter, the coastline marvellous. Another place I truly loved was Kirstenbosch, the cities Botanical Garden nestled into the side of Table Mountain. Kirstenbosch was for me the most beautiful Botanical Garden I have ever walked through and a real pleasure to explore.

I did manage to find real meaning in Cape Town though, life changing meaning. It happened one morning as I walked along Bloubergstrand, a beach on the Atlantic with sweeping views towards Table Mountain. It was here on this beach that my life took on a new course.

Flying down the coast of Africa.

Since May 2015 you could say I had, I guess, existed mentally in some sort of parrallel life to my own. Not quite a part of my own self. I was still me ofcourse, still Grace, but I was living in denial, denial that my relationship was over, denial that I had lost the love of my life. It was on Bloubergstrand that morning that this denial stage of my lost relationship ended.

It had something to do with the ocean, the feeling of sand between my toes, the noise of sea gulls, the crashing sound of breakers hitting rocks, the Atlantic itself with it’s hints of endless possibility, the laughter of children and in the distance Table Mountain looming under a perfect blue sky. It dawned on me that the life I was living, that part of me that wasn’t in denial, was living a pretty darn incredible life, and that in that moment I was looking at Table Mountain, the iconic horizon recognised the world over.  A few months earlier I had lunch somewhere across that ocean on Corcovado, and before that had hitchhiked further out alone across the High Andes. The day before on a whim I had chartered my own helicopter to take me to where a continent ended and two oceans met. I reminded myself that I loved human beings in all their forms and they seemed to love me too, that life was incredible, that our planet was beautiful.

I took a photo of Table Mountain that morning seen from Bloubergstrand.  When I got home I framed it. It hangs on the wall of my kitchen to remind me that life goes on, to remind me that I’m lucky to live the life I lead, that in ways our planet with it’s most famous vistas have been handed to me on a silver platter. It was in South Africa that I found the ability to let the past go, to reach a turning point in my life.

That very moment on Bloubergstrand!

I had decided on that morning that, while I was incapable of falling in love again, at least for right now anyway,I would try to go on dates again and to be open to the idea of having a relationship, atleast in theory. It had been 16 months since my relationship had ended, girlfriends had reminded me that I was good looking, they had even set up blind dates in the hope I would move on with my life. It’s not you I had confessed, it’s me. In the haze of denial I had been aware that men had asked me on dates but I had been closed, they had just been holograms and nothing more.

Now I would live, things would be very different from now on. I would completely transform my appearance, I would wear dresses and dye my hair blond, I would wear the strongest red lipstick I could find, I would never wear denim again. As a broken human I promised myself that I would try to be attractive again. I promised myself that on Bloubergstrand that day, a morning when I had hardly looked in the mirror getting ready, that my hair had uncaringly been put into a pony tail, a morning when I had wore jeans and sneakers. The woman I was on Bloubergstrand would never be allowed to exist again, she would fade forever. I promised myself that.

 

They say you can never live, to truly understand what life means until you experience pain or heartbreak. I believe this to be true. If you ever find yourself going through a tough patch then do not try and rush your emotions or sweep them away but embrace them and the life lesson they carry. It may take a day, a week, years but your life will go on, you will become strong again.

 

 

Life’s lessons in Johannesburg.

 

As the final call was being made for the flight to South Africa I still had to show my boarding pass. I was in tears talking to my friend Sonja on the phone who was demanding that I must, no matter what, get on that flight, that I must get away from Amsterdam and everything familiar for a while and most important I must break away from the emotions that had been consuming me for the past months.

 

A photo of me at the top of the Carlton Center, Johannesburg.

Johannesburg, the city of what could have been

Being on long haul flights are a time when I normally reflect on my life, my actions. I had thought about my trip to Romania, how I had loved it there and of Peru and the beauty of the Andes. I realised that on those trips and the months between I had just existed but was not living. The problem was that my emotions and the fact I was unable to let them go, that these emotions were preventing me from loving life. I needed to be my old self again, the person who is endlessly sweet, so polite that your grandparents would adore me, who genuinely likes everyone when meeting them.

 

Although the drive into Johannesburg was a bit scary and downtown felt sinister at night I still knew I was going to like this city. Johannesburg was the city of what-could-have-been as in my early twenties I had been offered a job in South Africa but in the end had rejected it. Now I was seeing Jo’burg for the first time and wondered if I too, in this city, would have suffered during a painful seperation or if this city would have been kinder to me than what Amsterdam had been.

watching the sunset from the hotel lounge

The high point of Johannesburg had been the sunsets, sitting in the rooftop lounge of my hotel watching the red skies reflect in the skyscrapers. Although some men had tried to strike up conversations with me I had, as always, declined, opting to watch the birds fly in formation across downtown, just to stare out towards the city. In a way to be honest that was all I was capable of at that moment in my life.

Afternoons I would walk around downtown. The reception of my hotel had  pleaded with me to go everywhere by car and that the streets were dangerous. Now when you say that to me I will make a point of walking everywhere. Johannesburg dangerous? Actually along with the Lili Elbe movie, the sunsets from the hotel it was the people of Johannesburg who made something inside me click. Their energy, friendliness, their vulnerability gave me the first ideas of trying to live again, not to exist anymore, but to live, really live!

 

Searching for Dora at Central do Brasil.

Familiar but not quite, that is how I would describe Brazil. I came to this conclusion after watching the chocolate seller, a woman in her forties with the type of face that you’d imagine had seen it all but through everything still had enough determination to flash a smile with tones of gentleness. Watching her walk along Praia do Flamengo selling her homemade chocolates wrapped in pretty ribbons the scene seemed familiar but it was the realisation that my imagination along with Loulou’s were on overdrive that made us conclude that Brazil has a slight touch of the exotic to make it different enough to make us feel like outsiders looking in.

Top: Sugarloaf at sunset from Flamengo Beach.

Middle: Cablecar up to the summit.

Bottom: Praia do Flamengo from Sugarloaf.

Somewhere along our journey we had decided to write a book, a sort of haphazard love letter to Brazil, the country which never ceased to offer us an abundance of characters. The chocolate seller, she had now turned into a bitter serial killer, once spurned by a foreign lover her chocolates and pretty ribbons now concealed a measure of arsenic to those who reminded her of those days when love had brought her near to heaven. Then there was the beautiful girl sitting on her balcony in an expensive condo in Copacabana. To us she had married a rich man who had took her away from poverty and now a kept woman in a gilded cage she would sit there bored everyday staring towards the ramshackle huts of the favela and longing for her childhood she would reminisce of those days that had felt worth living. Then there was the beautiful boy with green eyes wearing the sky blue t-shirt riding Bus 174 through Botafogo.  He lived in the favela where he would spend his days building a chapel made of cardboard and wood. He would only come down to the asphalt city to search for discarded newspapers and posters, hoping to find images of Jesus in them which would become the great Michelangelo artwork of his sanctuary. Yes, at first sight Brazil seemed familiar but it is when you realise that you are an outsider looking in that you understand this is not some lost European country but rather somewhere with it’s own unique identity.

Warsaw-on-Sea. The Centro district Rio de Janeiro.

While I know for sure that Brazilians are the kindest people I have ever met I couldn’t quite make up my mind about the Cidade Maravilhosa and it’s reputations of beauty. Most of the architecture of downtown Rio is modern bordering on brutalist and if it wasn’t for the cities location nestled between Sugarloaf, Corcovado and Tijuca National Park I could have quite easily christened it Warsaw-on-Sea. Rio de Janeiro is definitely not my kind of city. Show me the sardines vying for space on a packed beach and I will run a mile. The same goes for certain cities with their myths of glamour and the people attracted to it, who, too busy making selfies in the latest place to be seen hardly notice the beggars they are stepping over.

Ipanema late afternoon

Of all the beaches in Rio there was only one I actually enjoyed and that was the one nicknamed The Poor Man’s Beach, Flamengo. If you just want to sit somewhere quiet sipping on a cocktail unpretentiously wrapped in polystyrene without the endless hawkers and crowds then head for Flamengo around sunset and marvel at the great hulk of Sugarloaf Mountain. Here it’s façade seems gigantic and as the slipping sun will make it’s rockface turn quite volcanic you will marvel at the children and their confidence as they swim in the breakers which seem to my eyes more used to the North Sea quite terrifying. The same cannot be said for posh Ipanema or crowded Copacabana and while the walk along Ipanema and Copacabana’s Avenida Atlântica was truly iconic I longed for the back streets of Old Delhi with their chaos and grime where life seems far more edgier.

The famous view from Corcovado.

One morning Loulou and I followed the tourist trail up to the summit of Corcovado to view Christ the Redeemer. While the statue is beautiful but much smaller than I had imagined the views were astounding. I couldn’t help but giggle to myself while watching the tourists all crammed on the balcony below, which from that angle made them look like one big angry cockroach their waving selfie sticks like the insect’s antennae reaching out trying to catch something, for the tourists just a memory. Sugarloaf was no different. Unhappy queues of tourists crammed into cable cars for the ride up to the summit and while the views again were amazing it was the crowds that made me want to flee. I was surprised though that on top of Sugarloaf there is small forest where if you search long enough you can just about escape from the crowds although I suspect the marmosets have become jaded or wise and fled the summit long ago.

The Avenue of Palms in the Jardim Botânico. When you tell me these Botanical Gardens are amongst the world’s finest I was expecting far more!

Walking in “the armpit” … this neighbourhood is nicknamed so because it’s located under Christ’s right armpit.

There was only one moment in Rio and actually the rest of Brazil that had for me eclipsed all others and that was in the unlikely location of Rio’s main train station called Central do Brasil. It must have been sometime last winter when cycling home from work in a particulary nasty downpour that I had got home looking and feeling like a drowned rat, the prospect of the upcoming darkened months seemed to have weighed heavier on my shoulders that day. Trying to cheer myself up while dancing to Bossa Nova music on Youtube I had stumbled upon a Brazilian movie called Central do Brasil.

Corcovado and Christ the Redeemer from Parque Lage.

Artwork in the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage.

Central do Brasil tells the story of a boy searching for his father who becomes friends with a letter writer who sits in the main hall of the cities train station. This film captures Brazil and it’s emotions so beautifully that I couldn’t help but watch it a number of times and it was this film that made me decide to go to Brazil. One afternoon after walking what seemed like all over the city I would say fate brought me towards the train station where approaching it’s main hall I had felt a rush of excitement, the only time I had felt that in Brazil.

The building of dreams…Central do Brasil!

This moment is when I could say I loved Brazil the most standing at a coffee counter in Central do Brasil’s main hall wearing my beat up strawhat and dusty clothes where I sipped on an intense cafezinho and gazed across the crowds searching for Dora, the letter writer and Josue, the lost boy. In doing so I saw all of Brazil unfold before my eyes. People with unfamilar provincial features were flowing into the city carrying their lives in one suitcase, their sparkling eyes crammed full of dreams, while others, the downbroken, were going back home dejected by the Marvelous City and all that it had offered them. In between it all smartly dressed business workers could have been flowing out towards the suburbs after a day’s work lost in their thoughts and drama of big city life while beggars milled around in search of a few reais. The only thing that seemed permanent was the building itself with it’s huge images lining the main wall. These were of places in Brazil like Brasilia and São Paulo now faded and covered in dirt showcasing the country in another time when Brazil had seemed more optimistic. In that moment I understood the vastness of Brazil, of the world, and us, just one in billions with our hopes and dreams we are all in someway searching for the Cidade Maravilhosa.

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