The final day in the Big Land

The big day had finally arrived, although I was reluctant to believe that it was the time already. Even though the whole process had taken 6 months, the last 2 months had passed like a blur, while handling different informal jobs and selling pieces of furniture/personal items. My house had become a strange fragment of what my wife and I had lived in for the past two years. All of a sudden, the empty and cluttered house carried a lot of memories that were materialized by their absence, i.e. the emptiness in the space where the dining table used to be had reminded me of countless nights of us eating dinner together, to the sound of the evening news or some nostalgia-based YouTube channel.

 

Time seemed to stretch out, even though every glance at the clock brought me closer and closer to my time to leave. And my heart wanted every minute to stretch at least a second longer, if only so I could notice the empty space on the shelves once more or swap things from one box to another for the fiftieth time (after all, all the Spider-Man comic books need to be together and maybe that “Daredevil: Yellow” should be next to Spider-Man, since they’re both from New York…).

 

There was no longer a stove or a fridge, so lunch was a simple marmitex [delivery lunchbox] from the restaurant “Ed Carnes” or something close to it. These days of moving out, especially one as blatant as this, are some of the strangest. We try to maintain a sense of normality, which is partly real because the day is full of trivialities, like picking up a lunchbox from the iFood delivery guy or taking a shower before heading to the airport, but it’s not a normal day because we already know that, at least for a while, we won’t have such a direct contact with that reality. As a result, many of the facts of that day have become a blur, as I can no longer remember the taste of that lunch or the drops of the shower on my body. I can’t even remember if I listened to music when I showered, which has been a routine since I got my first phone with .mp3 over 15 years ago.

 

What I remember from that day was a frenzy to try and leave the house minimally tidy (?), because I wanted to leave as little of a mess as possible for those who would be finishing my moving process. After all, I’m the one going to the “Small Land” and almost everything I own stays in the “Big Land”. My “gigantic” estate of more than 600 films, books and comics… That wealth that I don’t have to declare for income tax, thankfully, because I don’t want to have to explain my alleged cinephilia, whose collection includes the Blu-ray of “Jumper” (2008) with Hayden Christensen, but I still haven’t seen Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather”.

 

The ticking of the clock is unforgivable. So, at 3 p.m., we were already making final adjustments and close to ordering my Uber to the airport. Open suitcase, try to fit in some more clothes and a book that is unlikely to ever be opened, close suitcase, open suitcase again, take out the damn book and try to fit in another sock, close suitcase, open suitcase again… (and the cycle was repeated even at the airport, in order to check in the hold luggage within the 23 kg allowed). At the end of this whole cycle, I gave my wife one last hug alone, as our paths ended up diverging for a few months and she is staying in the Big Land to complete her post-doc. Another experience of time dilation, because I don’t know how long that hug lasted, I think it was two minutes, but emotionally, I still feel that hug as if it was only two minutes ago. If I close my eyes, I can travel back to that moment and this is an exercise that I regularly do in my new immigrant life.

 

Still in my beloved Condomínio Edifício São Roberto, located in the Cambuci neighborhood, I was able to say goodbye to Edson, the co-tenant who had helped us so many times in the building that had been our home for almost two years. Before I could even say anything about how I was feeling that day, Edson came up to me and said: “sometimes we don’t know where this life is going to take us, Lucas. But if it brings us the opportunity, it’s because this is our path now. We never understand what it wants, but we have to fight, fight, fight and one day we’ll get there, always moving forward…”. This unexpected moment of deep reflection, coming from someone with whom I was always exchanging some brief words about soccer, reminded me of Heidegger’s words, which I heard for the first time when I was still beginning my studies in philosophy circa 2013:

 

The point is that we are in no way “outside” philosophy; and not because, for example, we might have a certain amount of knowledge about philosophy. Even if we don’t explicitly know anything about philosophy, we are already in philosophy because philosophy is in us and belongs to us; and, in fact, in the sense that we have always philosophized. We philosophize even when we don’t know anything about it, even if we don’t “do philosophy”. We don’t just philosophize once in a while, but constantly and necessarily because we exist as men. Being-there as man means philosophizing. (Heidegger, 2009, pp. 3-4)

 

The Uber arrives and then I’m on my last hour in the traffic of my beloved and hated São Paulo. I’m anxious about maybe arriving just three and a half hours before my flight, but I’m also anxious due to knowing that it’s the last time that I’ll see my city in a while. I’ve kept three images from that journey: my “eternal fifth grade” Brazilian spirit as I laughed at a car whose license plate read “feces”; the melancholic look of a dog in the car next to me, which seemed to reflect my agonized state of mind at the imminent departure; the mural in a children’s school, whose author Iasmim was emphatic in saying: “Say no to racism. Brazil wants peace” – a phrase I’ve kept close to my heart and which I often come back to when I experience xenophobic episodes or discussions here in Portugal. It’s as if I was once again recognizing some cultural and social aspects of my contemporary Brazilian society before my departure, namely our humorous mechanism for dealing with adversity and the desire for peace and unity made by children, beings who, as Nietzsche (2006, p. 24) would say, are those whose spirit is capable of envisioning something new from their innocent gaze.

 

Figure 1. Car with the license plate “FZS” [feces]

Figure 2. Dog in the back seat of a car

Figure 3. Graffitti: “Say no to racism. Brazil wants peace”

Source: the author (2024)

 

Already at the Guarulhos Airport, I meet up with my family for one last goodbye, which I try to extend as much as possible, which includes smoking three cigarettes in a row with my grandmother – a habit that wasn’t very well received at first, because “where have you ever seen a grandson who smokes?”, but which over the years had become one of our moments to establish bonds. I take one last photo of the brilliant yellow sun of my “tropical country blessed by God”, as Jorge Ben Jor would say, have one last coffee and head for the boarding line.

 

 

Figure 4: Sunset at Guarulhos airport

 

Due to Federal Police security protocols, the transition to the departure lounge took longer than expected, which increased my anxiety (since time was already short) and also led me to observe the surroundings. The average profile of that queue, which led to international flights, was made up of many families going on a Disney vacation in Miami (one of the main destinations for the middle and upper-middle classes in Brazil), young middle-class people who looked like exchange students, intercultural couples (i.e. a French-Brazilian man, his Indian wife and their couple of children) and, notoriously, very few black people. Among the airport staff, there were more black employees in the security areas, but hardly any at the passport checkpoints.

 

Crossing into the departure lounge is like stepping through a dimensional portal, because everything that once was your reality is left on the other side of the portal and you are suddenly taken into a new universe of constant adaptation. You leave what is safe and launch yourself into the unknown. In a matter of one step, your loved ones are left behind and, instead of hearing about “our São Paulo [soccer team] sucks” or the absurd price of coffee in the supermarket, your ears start to adapt and you hear the family next door saying: “we’ll never fly American Airlines again after this nonsense, we paid for business class and we’ve been waiting in line for over an hour” – not judging the airline’s (possible) mistake, but just comparing the different complaints from different socio-economic realities, in which many can hardly choose an airline.

 

I arrive at the last second to board, buy a bottle of water and one last overpriced Prestígio chocolate, take a photo of the moon saying goodbye to me and try to pull myself together because my body stopped being 70% water a while ago. I hear the first “Olá, b’noit’! S’jãm muit’bêmvind’s” [Hello, g’d evenin’! Welcom’aboard] from the flight attendants and then I take a deep breath, looking for my place in front of the universe that is reaching out to me.

 

Text and images: Lucas Novais (CECS/Universidade do Minho)

 

Published in December 17, 2024

 

This micro-essay is the first part of a micro-essay entitled “The arrival: last impressions of my land and first impressions of the (new) old world”.

 

References

Heidegger, M. (2009). Introdução à filosofia. WMF Martins Fontes.

Nietzsche, F. (2006). Assim falava Zaratustra (C. Mioranza, Trans.). Escala Educacional.