Voce Fala Portugues

 I went to the doctor here in LA. It was one of those small clinics for uninsured people (Blue Cross what are you for?) and got the most peculiar doctor's appointment.
"Eu falo Portugues" the sixty-year-old bald doctor who was seeing me said. "Great another Mexican who saw one too many Brazilian football games." I thought, but he continued "My father was Basque and my mother was Sicilian." That intrigued me, you see, my friend Charly Zarur was born in Mexico and keeps telling me he is not Mexican because he is Jewish and that minorities in Mexico do not consider themselves Mexican because they don't mix. Now I had a half Basque, half Sicilian, Portuguese speaking Mexican in front of me, so much for Zarur's theory!
"I was born in Sao Paulo and I moved to Mexico when I was 12. " The man was beginning to make sense, especially because he was prescribing some antibiotics for my flu while he spoke. I always find doctor's stories make more sense when they are told next to an antibiotics prescription. "We had a problem in my house, my mother was Palmeiras and my father was Corinthians." There! I bought his story! I have this weird interest in Brazilian football clubs that remained with me from a couple of lost summers in Brazil while I was growing up. I know Palmeiras is the club of the huge Sao Paulo Italian colony because they had to change their name from Palestra (what a fucked up name!) to Palmeiras during the Second World War. Brazilians were dying in Italy and Palmeiras (palm trees) sounded more Portuguese than the Italian Palestra. So if a half Sicilian was from Palmeiras that makes sense but "Why would your father be from Corinthians?" I asked.
"Because Corinthians was the club of the Spanish colony." Spaniards? In Sao Paulo? I always thought Corinthians and Sao Paulo F.C were the Brazilian clubs of the city and Portuguesa dos Desportos and Palmeiras were the clubs of the two big foreign communities: Portuguese and Italian. But the good doctor explained to me that Corinthians was actually founded by Eastern European Jews and later the club moved from Bairro da Luz to the Spanish neighborhoods. The Spaniards embraced Corinthians and that was what most likely alienated the Portuguese community from the club forcing them to create Portuguesa. It made sense the last president of Corinthians was Andrés Sanchez, a Spaniard...
 "I didn't know there were that many Jews in Sao Paulo in the 50's." I said, and the doctor replied "There were... thousands The polish girls" he explained "opened the first brothels of the city in the 20's." This might sound like an exaggeration to you, dear reader, but it was the Askenazi women who first smoked in the cafes of my native Lisbon so this was sounding kosher to me.
"I once got lost in the red light district of Bairro da Luz." This man was beginning to sound like a novel to me. I just wanted some antibiotics for my LA flue and I was having a lesson on 1950's Sao Paulo Jewish Polish hookers and coming of age boys.  "It was magical!" God knows what the doc saw in that red-light district street when his Sicilian mother was not paying attention but whatever it was, it still makes this 60-year-old man smile all these years later. "Yes, we are all refugees", I thought, I had to run from Portugal here, his parents had to run from Spain and Italy to Sao Paulo he had to run from Sao Paulo to Mexico, and those girls, those glorious girls he saw that make him smile had to run to Sao Paulo from some really horrible situation because for them giving pleasure to strangers was better than being a slave in a camp. Little did these girls know that there is a happy doctor in LA who smiles when he thinks of them and greets his Portuguese clients with a friendly "Eu falo Portugues."