Earthquake

My plate, crammed with an abundant Moqueca, started to tremble. Just slightly in the beginning. Then increasing in intensity, at the pace the vibration that comes down the street penetrates the restaurant’s windows, walls and floor. My heart also starts to beat faster, following the rhythm that starts to take me over at the pace this earthquake’s intensity is magnified by the drums’ frenetic beat. I’m almost deaf. My untamed heart decides to leave my chest, flying around at its own will, following the beat that invaded him. The earthquake is no longer on the outside, it is now inside me. I can hear nothing but the Olodum, which makes me fly above my own self. I’m not sitting at the table anymore and the Moqueca is just a colorful dot hardly seen down there, in one of Salvador’s streets I fly over in the wings of this ‘alien’ beat. I fly away, looking at the blue sky reflected in this bay’s waters, the very same bay that embraces this city. I see streets crowded with color, baianas on street-corners selling acarajé, frantic capoeira circles, loads of people filling-up the Pelourinho. I can see boats arriving, an old slave boat coming from Africa, way too crowded with slaves. They seem lost, secluded from themselves, from their roots, with their eyes filled with fear and anger at the same time. They are taken to a market, chained to the walls, beaten, sold, their muscles stressed to inhuman limits... But they resist, they prevail, they have Africa inside their hearts, the strength and the will to survive, the rhythm that gives them life, which gives life to this city as well, to this country, today as always. The very same rhythm that now makes this earthquake alive, which I experience side by side with this Moqueca plate. The plate looks at me impassively while it gets colder, indifferent to this rhythm, the rhythm of which Salvador is made of. The drumbeats slowly fade away without ever leaving the room. Looks like the Olodum passed by but decided to stay inside me for ever.

Salvador, Brazil, February 2009