Moroccan Nikita's

It's not even the end of the world day, or it already passed without no one noticing it, but today looks like it. Some were saying the world would be in darkness, well I can say that in this part of the world, we already live in darkness except for the grayish milky light we get for a few hours a day around noon.  I'd rather join the imaginary Christmas some friends have made up for us hybrids - the one of cobras rattling merry carols on well known Moroccan Christmas markets.  Just for you to know, we hybrids didn't only go to school on camels in Casablanca but we also had harnessed cobra-teams when we needed a swift ride across the desert. And of course , our pets were no dogs or cats , they were baby cobras ...  Speaking about these lovely animals, I couldn't forget to mention this friend who refuses to eat bananas because, as everyone knows , snakes , especially the highly venomous ones, have a perverted habit of biting the ...

She gave me a call and asked if I could be the angel... I didn't really like the idea of personifying the angel, since I thought the devil's part was a much funnier one to play, but when she subtly added that her mother, who had just arrived from Vietnam, would be cooking that evening, I was ready to agree with anything on earth just to be there. In the Czech republic, Saint Nicolas' day is nearly as important as Christmas. Every year, on December 5th, you will meet loads of Saints walking around the streets with angels and devils, and children in most households expect, with fear and respect, the arrival of the trio to their homes. I had never received the visit of the noble (yet scary) guests in my childhood, and now for the first time, I had the opportunity to be part of the show. She had invited me to a colorful gathering.When I arrived, first thing I saw was the kitchen table covered with Mummy's delicious Vietnamese specialties. There was ma...

Saturday night. I was left with silence after the long phone call got abruptly cut, sitting on a bench beneath the imposing church, left with my thoughts and the shades of the dark square when laughter and a conversation in Hebrew broke the surrounding stillness. Three guys were walking by with beers in their hands and imagine my surprise when I recognized (or in fact he recognized me first)  one of them as the brother of an acquaintance from Sevilla. I was offered (and welcomed) a sip of beer, and the guys asked if I wouldn't join them for some drinks downtown. So I ended up going back home to change outfits and joining them for a proper night out till late hours, carousing around known and unknown places, being surrealistically taken around by three Israeli young men in my own town, getting lost to them in one bar for hanging with other people and then finding them again at the good old last resort, the bar that used to be my second home from my 18 to 21 ye...

"Romantic lady, single baby, sophisticated mama,  Oh yes it's ladies night and the feeling's right,  Oh yes it's ladies night oh what a night!" Women stuff.. one week, every afternoon spent in one of the most girly environment , presenting the refined handbags of my talented friend and designer Mimi at the Prague Design & Fashion week.  So far from what I am , hating shopping, but so close to what I love, for all the beauty.  I have to admit I realised I was smiling more genuinely at the  men who were timidly daring the world of women to get a beautiful present for their beloved than at certain wannabe posh bitches with Louis Vuitton bags looking at the whole world with contempt, just because they had the (possibly fake) LV handbag.  Dressed up in LFM clothes and thus wearing high heels (Devil knows I did suffer for LFM :) , I was probably looking like a sweet candy to these men. It was the aim anyway. These guys were sweet too, especially whe...

How long, Essaouira... a place that seems always wrapped in a dreamy haze. A place where everything goes very very slowly. You ordered a coffee or an orange juice in one of the town's trendiest cafes? well you have to wait. Call the waiter three times, remind him you are there, repeat your order, cause no, it's not a tea you wanted, and in the end maybe you'll get your coffee or you'll have to deal with a tea. You're coming from Europe where things go more or less fast and precise, normally you would complain, but when you get the tea that you never ordered and the waiter smiles at you as if the world was perfect, well you inhale the perfume of the fresh mint, taste your sweet tea, lay back and start to believe the world is perfect, indeed. After a few days in town, nothing can bother you anymore, for you're so relaxed that you couldn't care less about the surrounding slow motion. You're probably smoking some dope, too, which helps. I remember thes...

Now it's official, we are three. Three people, in two eyes. Doesn't make sense?  Well someone , somewhere wrote I was a fanatic xenophile, which maybe explains I was meant to gladly welcome strangers not only in my country (ies), in my home(s) but also in my own body to coexist and more, to live together till death make us part.  The receiving of donor tissue is a quite curious thing. This time, when I was taken to the operation room by this funny guy who was telling me about his testicles operation (?!) they gave me a box and some files to hold in my arms and take with me, which was fine until I read "donor tissue " on the box and asked, horrified, if the box was containing what I thought it was. One nurse laughed and said, "well it's for you, you gotta bring it with you!"  I was feeling really weird to transport in a box the human cornea that was going to be a part of me. Well, I didn't drop the precious treasure, only asked them to put it...

“ Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.” Rumi Sadness, blues, spleen, anger, fear, all those who settled in my mind lately in a kind of final assault of a soul under siege for a long time. They entered, triumphant, displaying their Trojan horse , that suitcase I had bought from the Chinese and that started to break up right at the beginning of my complicated journey from F. to P. via two other cities. No, you don't want to be in a big city taking the metro with two suitcases, the heaviest one having a broken handle. Well I felt that the whole universe had conspired against me, and I felt like drowning myself in the Guadalquivir out of shame (but even the Guadalquivir was gone), or just leaving the luggage somewhere in a corner, hell take whatever makes my life so horrible. It is probably my raging nature that made me hold on till my final destination with all that stuff. (cursing the Chinese industry all day long helped, obviously). My arrival marked, though, m...

In solis sis tibi turba locis (In solitude, be a multitude to thyself) Tibullus  I surely have no problems with this. As much as I agree with Montaigne when he says we need solitude, I think that arriving to a new country or a new city is the best time for a retreat with yourself.  I've always done that for a few days  at least  (to entire weeks),  in any new place I was settling for a bit longer than just holidays. Is it to absorb the surrounding atmosphere, take a deep breath of the environment and appreciate it on your own. The timing is ideal, you are on site, but not really yet, which gives a kind of freedom that one gradually looses - voluntarily - while integrating a society. Once you'll have lost it , you'll seek to get it back again etc... The first moments are magic.  And here, in F. with the beach within bike reach, solitude can be a luxury. Who needs people to go to the beach with? it's like going to the movies , or...

"ay que si el mar es tan azul es de mirar tanto al cielo ay que si el mar es tan azul es de tanto mirar pal cielo" It was definitely the best house in town. In fact it is located in a district named like one of ex-Yugoslavia’s republics. After a surprisingly good meal made of cuttlefish, leaves of the garden’s over present basil, apple and more secret ingredients, all served in green melon, we moved to the terrace to enjoy coffee and cigarettes. The sun was high in a pristine blue sky, a light but refreshing breeze was blowing and we were gazing at this beautiful orange grove surrounding us. After the blue (or white, or bright purple - depending on the pair of eyes) painted orange trees, there was the marsh, silver blue naps among deep green isles. On one side this scenery continued toward the sea, on the other side, we could see, in the distance, the buildings of the city center.  It looked as if these were part of another world. From the Laranjal,  where we felt...

It started the day when the weather was so hot some would see kangaroos flying in the crowns of the courtyard trees. Coming from Sevilla, I was finally feeling at ease, or better said, I was not feeling cold. As I was sitting in that kitchen where everybody was complaining about the heat I suddenly noticed this glass filled with all the sky and the moon of that summer night. Prague becomes so beautiful when the sun shines and illuminates both buildings and faces. Since I arrived I could not miss a traditional walk crisscrossing the river, one bridge after the other, carefully avoiding the sightseeing rush on the Charles Bridge for, in the end, for an ex-homie, that one is much better to look at from a hill above or from another bridge. I had forgotten this little path just across my bridge that I had taken last time some 25 years ago since the restaurant Expo 58 had closed down in 1991. Good surprise to see that the building that impressed Brussels so much together with the Latern...

As with any magic place, we can forget about locating it on a map. So if I tell you of this place as the Bermuda's triangle, please do not come to me with any kind of geographical considerations. This is not about the North Atlantic ocean, this is not about the Sargasso sea, this is about getting lost and maybe considered missing  (by people not living there, or even by yourself) in Sevilla. How does this happen? One day you land in Sevilla, no matter for which reason, no matter where you came from, and the city welcomes you with its uncanny tranquility. In fact, you feel it straight away after arrival but you only adapt to slow motion after two or three days for you to get  used to a diffuse feeling of serenity and ease. The first time you leave the magic, you just think of coming back and staying longer. The second time you leave, it has already started getting into you, and you feel your heart aching. The third time you leave, your decision is made to come back for go...

Essalamu alaykum I was born with this greeting in my ears and it's only now, more than three decades later, that I understood one fundamental thing. God bless my grandfather for making me get that. Most people know that this expression, used as good day or hello, literally means "peace on you". What most people do not know, unless they speak Arabic,  is that the "you" is a plural form.  Obviously, the answer comes similar, Wa Alaykum essalam , plural form again. As if "you" when greeted were not only one person but  many . And this indeed is the answer! You, me , whoever, are never alone. For as my grandfather says, everyone of us has an angel on each shoulder. They're writing your good or bad deeds and  thoughts for after, when the final countdown comes. They also catch you if you fall, if they're not too busy writing. So when you greet someone you mean to greet the person and  their two angels. It would be rude not to greet these two, t...

"What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams"   Werner Herzog We had slept only two hours, woke up still tipsy judging from our nonsensical blabbering in the bus which no one could understand for making up new words and verb forms such as "si je chwaziland" at the crossovers of our multiple language conversation. Nevertheless, we were tired, but happy, for what was awaiting us on the other side of our journey was worth it.  Beach house was the reward : surrounded by water, Atlantic ocean in front, Ria Formosa behind, blue sky all above, what more to ask for?  Time for suspending the clock, lying immobile like a lizard, suntanning till burning and shedding an old skin  to finally come out as a new person. Time for diving in the fresh Atlantic embrace, feeling humble in front of its swell and releasing all kind of sorrow in its depths. Time for childish joy while getting rolled over by the waves, crashing ...

Things are not always what they seem to be.  Ok we all know that. But are we really aware of the huge gap between what we think they are, what we see, and what they are (supposedly) in "reality"?  When I had made an appointment with the surgeon for my cornea transplantation, I was so scared that I strongly believed I was going to die. I know it may sound funny, and exaggerated. But I knew it. It was not that I was afraid of having some complications during the surgery, and loose an eye, or that the intervention was especially dangerous and could cost my life. It was not the result of any reasonable thinking. It was just a diffuse feeling telling me that, inevitably, there would be no tomorrow after I'd have stepped into hospital. I was afraid of the hospital building itself, of the nurses, of the blood tests, of the needle they would stick into my hand for anesthesia. That fear could have killed me easier than anything else, I guess. However, once i...

"Lleva azahar, lleva olivas, Andalucía, a tus mares. " F.G. Lorca (Baladilla de los tres rios) Spring unfolded in orange blossoms. Walking in Seville at this time of the year means walking with your nostrils wide open toward the sky, catching at every step the utterly pleasant scent of these tiny white flowers flying and falling around like snowflakes. With the azahar, came the Semana Santa, kicking off April's festivities. Did I say festivities? I did my first Holy Week "madrugada" this year and if the weather was rather moody, well at least I could see quite a few Virgins and Christs dancing their ways through the city.  Last year I was waiting 4 hours for la Virgen de la Esperanza in the rain and she never came out. This time, it seems she wanted to make it up and she pursued us all night long on Holy Thursday.  We saw her come out of her church in Triana, "en la gloria", under a rain of rose petals and a thunder of shouts "Trianeeeeeeera...