Lisbon is a loveable pooch

I’ve got Fernando Pessoa’s Lisbonne in my hot little hands at the moment, and although he wrote it in the 1920s, reading through his description of Lisbon, I’m re-seeing the city in which I spent a few days last week. The book is really just a guide to the city, but a guide written by one of Portugal’s most renowned poets and writers, adorned with heavy chandeliers of adjectives which light up the pages in praise of Lisboa.

When he was eight years old Pessoa left Lisbon with his family to live in Durban, South Africa and he lived there until he was about seventeen years old. According to someone who probably knows better than me, during this period, Pessoa missed the city like we miss the loveable pooch of our childhood years which we are forced to abandon because our mother is a naval officer who needs to move frequently. Having a pooch in every port won’t compensate for the loss of the first pooch of our childhood.

In Durban (which doesn't rhyme with Pessoa), Pessoa felt alienated, surrounded by people whose brains weren’t cluttered with memories of Lisboa, people who didn’t understand his cobweb covered background. He dreamt of going back to Portugal. When he finally did get back to Lisbon he burrowed into the cobblestones and lived there for basically the rest of his life. For Pessoa, Lisbon was where it was at, the rest of Portugal could just be considered suburbs of Lisbon.

In a street by street account, Pessoa's guide on Lisbon makes use only of the positive adjectives. He probably would have written a less idealistic, different kind of guide if he hadn’t been forced to rupture with the city in his childhood. From a distance you can’t see pus and pimples, nose hairs and stretch marks.

The guide is a defiant homage. We can feel an undercurrent of Pessoa’s belief that Lisbon should be the most talked about and appreciated city in the world. He nods at the boutiques of 1920s Paris, and then dismisses them, saying that the boutiques in Lisbon were just as good.

I’ve now got a proper crush on Lisbon. Obviously as I’ve only spent a couple of days there I’ve also got an uneven view and I could sing you all to sleep with lullabies about the river and city views from my loft bedroom window near the castle, pineapple milkshakes and fish sandwiches in laid back bars full of reclining patrons, azulejo winking in dark alleys, haggling and laughing like hippos, parks for ducks, african beats and a sun that parts buildings in order to be with you.

Looking at Pessoa’s book it seems I did miss many of the statues and landmarks here and there, and I smile to myself seeing that I took a photo of a sculpted elephant’s well-shaped butt when I should have probably been taking a frontal photo of the important Signor so and so who was standing next to the elephant.

But I did see some of Lisbon’s blemishes and scars, such as frequent graffiti saying Go home Brasiliens - racism seeping through the city walls, you hit me, I’ll hit someone else. I’ve talked about racism towards Portuguese immigrants in France now I see racism towards Brasilian immigrants in Portugal, and on and on.

But I haven’t seen enough of Lisbon and my hot little head is now steaming with schemes to live there one day or at least go back soon.

There is a Portuguese saying: Coimbra studies, Braga prays, Lisbon shows off and Porto works. I’ll go with the show pony any day, but I need to keep this under wraps as H’s family are devout followers of Porto, as both a city and a football team – it doesn’t seem possible to support one without supporting the other.

We see strong regional loyalties in lots of countries. In France the rest of the country makes snide remarks about Parisians. It’s the same in Portugal. H’s sister made a telling comment while chewing on her plate full of nothing (mysteriously H’s sister would set a plate for herself at the dinner table each night - even though she clearly was going to eat out later with her boyfriend - and each night we’d put the plate in the dishwasher to clean the nothing off it). She lives near Porto and during our tales about our days in Lisbon she interrupted: “Oh Lisbon as a city is ok, it’s just the Lisboetes I can’t stand!”

Football fever never leaves Portugal. You don’t need a World Cup in order for every television to be broadcasting football matches and if there is no game on they will just play re-runs from 1970s World Cups or else other derivatives of football such as beach football, indoor football, water football etc.

Rivalry between the cities of Porto and Lisbon comes to a head in the form of football. Walking through a flea market in Lisbon, H was sporting a Porto club football t-shirt which gloats over Porto being champion five times. Various boyz in the market directed disgruntled comments at H which seemed like jest to me, but in the end H said that wearing his t-shirt in Lisbon was really an act of provocation and that he was actually upsetting people.

Makes me wonder if H’s family would be as welcoming with all those plastic spiders and stuff if next time I show up dressed to the nines in the Benfica red (the football club of Lisbon).