Brazilian Arabesque By Milton Hatoum
Early in the 20th century,
at the height of the “rubber boom,” my paternal
grandfather Fadel Hatoum traveled from Beirut to the then Bolivian territory
of Acre, where he traded goods on a river between the cities of Rio Branco
and Xapurí. He was one of the first to migrate in my family. Eight years later,
he returned to Beirut with images and words of the Amazon, which he passed
onto his children and relatives.
They say he told Kafkaesque stories of shipwrecks, duels, floods,
epidemics, hunting in the forest and fishing in hidden lakes; they also say
that, before he died in Beirut, surrounded by a bunch of children and
relatives, he named a countless number of Amazonian fish and animals. One
episode narrated by my grandfather Fadel – and recollected by my father –
has a tragicomic pitch: he said that, before landing in the port of the Acre
river, he found himself in the middle of a shootout. He jumped off the boat
he was on, swam to the riverbank, and crawled toward the forest. My
grandfather was crouched down amidst the plants and leaves when someone
gave him a Winchester rifle and shouted: “Long live Acre’s revolution.” He
then started shooting at the other side of the river. Unbeknownst to my
grandfather, he was taking part in the final battle against the Bolivians, who
were defeated and lost a vast territory. Shortly after, the Brazilian state
definitively annexed this one-time Bolivian territory.
“If I had swum to the other bank of that river,” Fadel recalled
to my father, “I could have been killed or taken prisoner, and
that would have been the end to my Brazilian adventure.”
My father grew up listening to these fantastical stories and decided to….
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Brazilian Arabesque