I hear the bombings on a muted television. The images of destroyed neighborhoods, of people fleeing, of children who have unlearned how to cry because their childhood was wasted… I also see António Guterres, older and tired.
Not long ago I got lost in Bairro da Bica. I went down the tracks of a stopped tram and stopped at an old shoe store, perhaps the last one in a Lisbon that, despite everything, is still dawning. We talked about Guterres, about the days he spent treating tired shoes.
We were happy and we didn’t know it, says David Martins, who came to the city at age 12. Born in a village in the interior of Coimbra, his father had a dream that he expressed on difficult nights: being able to find a street corner with many men in need of grease. He found his place and his son followed him.
Leave a Reply