On why Portugal feels so familiar
(yes I did cause a ruckus in a whole country, again)
I recently made my second visit to Portugal - it was eventful for completely unforeseeable reasons.
The first time I visited Portugal was for my mother’s 50th birthday. I worked for the UNHCR in Turkey and flew over to join my parents at my mother’s insistence - I pulled the pin on a solo trip to Iran to celebrate with the person who brought me life, blah blah blah. My brother flat out refused to join because he is the youngest and a man so he can do whatever he wants. We never travelled well as a family - my parents excel at verbal sparring and the tension usually overrides the tourist activities. They finally separated and divorced in my third decade of life but that is a story for another time.
Everyone’s parents have their strange moments but my mother hit a new level in Portugal. She walked around touching things and whispering I feel like I’ve been here before. She delightedly pointed as words she understood - mesa!, she’d say, that’s the same as Sinhalese for table!
I didn’t pay much attention because my hands were full - planning where we should go, what we should do and brokering peace on an hourly basis with my parents. We walked around Lisbon and did day trips to Porto and Sintra. Mum walked around in a happy trance and dad sought out Vasco da Gama’s grave - to spit on, for the trouble the Portuguese brought to Sri Lanka. We locked ourselves out of the hotel room a number of times and mum managed to unlock the door each time with a credit card, I still can’t explain how.
When I returned to Portugal for a holiday last month, without my parents’ antics to keep me distracted, I realised - mum was right. There is something odd about a country that instantly feels so familiar, recognising words in a language that you’ve never studied, spoken half way around the world. It took me some days to put my finger on it - it’s because the language, the music, the names - they’ve all permeated Sri Lanka culture for centuries.
The Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka in the 1500s and took hold of parts of the country for over 150 years. They facilitated mass conversions to Christianity and embedded the Portuguese language. Although they left over 300 years ago - involuntarily, as they were bested by the Dutch arriving - many words remain in the language today.
There’s a whole category of Sri Lankan music called baila which is the Portuguese word for dance. There are many Portuguese surnames in Sri Lanka - Perera, De Silva, Fernando - because better jobs and tax breaks were offered for changing your last name. This is the history behind my surname, Perera.
I find all this fascinating - how the whispers of colonisation echo from so far in the past to so many spaces of today. How interlinked we all are and were, long before anyone coined the phrase globalisation. How events of three hundred years ago can result in me and a lady in Peniche, a tiny beach town in a country halfway around the world, sharing the same surname despite having no relation by blood. A name we share with many around the world because our ancestors were once either the conqueror or the conquered.
I made a short reel explaining all this - I woke up to over million views overnight. The response, as always, was varied.
Some people shared my interest in this information - many chimed in to say they have surnames borne of similar histories.
I didn’t expect the sheer volume of comments telling me to get over it, to stop being angry, to stop being condescending, to stop being patronising, to change my name, to shut up, I’m welcome because I’d be living in a mud hut without these events taking place, to stop demanding apologies of people who weren’t even alive when all this took place.
Quite a few were worried about the state of my lips and face, every woman’s dream - to have the words they’re saying heard by ears that cannot transmit to the brain, for the brain is too incensed by the visuals from the eyes.
I can’t speak for everyone born in a thrice colonised country but when I speak of the past, it is not an apology I expect. All I want is to speak and say hey - this happened, wild times but isn’t it all interesting? It’s strange to speak of one personal, quirky effect of colonisation - with no anger and a little tongue in cheek - and provoke such heated vitriol. Why must we always remember some parts of history and forget the rest? Who decides the history that we revere and discuss and the history that we get over?
For every yin there’s a yang - plenty of lovely people got involved in the comments and I got many encouraging messages from others. It’s always the negative people that are the loudest and most visible but I firmly believe that they represent a very small proportion of the world. There is so much good and so many good people out there.
Plus, it was very easy to tune out the negativity in such a beautiful place. We avoided the crowds at the Algarve and went first north to Peniche then inland to Chaos and Tomar - a city filled with history as the former seat of the Knights Templar.
We spent many lazy days at Casa Adega, made simple meals and watched the sunset over the olive groves. Four identical kittens played outside our front door in the sunlight every morning. The real world is always a peaceful antidote to the virtual one.
I was very sorry when it was time to leave - I learned the term saudade this holiday.
It’s a term for the feeling of longing. It traces back to the period of history where Portuguese sailors went on voyages with no certain return and longed for their homeland and the families they left behind. Their families longed for them in return. I wondered how many of the Portuguese in Sri Lanka actually wanted to be there, instead of home in this beautiful place. History is complicated - that alone is a reason for discussing it, frequently.
I have no doubt I’ll be back. My mother loved Portugal so much, she returned to do a home stay and language lessons. I’m now on tour in the UK and I can’t wait to tell you all about it because MY, it’s a grand time. If you know anyone in Edinburgh, please send them my way!
I hope you’re all well out there, big hugs
Sashi
watched your reel mid-read and was like, huh. didn’t know that! and then came back to finish reading and was gobsmacked by some of the responses to your video! (alas, not surprised.)
it is amazing how others take a “hey, isn’t this interesting” and attach their baggage to it to hear something completely different.
love your comedy, love your writing — i read pieces of this aloud to my husband at the breakfast table — and i hope you can find your way to the US some time!