Vera and Anna, who are not the buying type either, join us after the deal is concluded. There is a huge tourist complex in front of us that requires careful exploration. We walk toward a river that I know nothing about, to see whatever is there. Since I did not prepare myself for the trip, I have no idea what to expect. I don’t even know the name of the river.
After passing a small pool inhabited by waterfowl, we arrive at a massive statue called Padrão dos Descobrimentos, or Monument to the Discoveries. It’s a 170-foot-tall monstrosity of white marble or granite, I can’t tell—shaped like a ship’s prow. On each side of the enormous wall there are statues of men climbing to the top of the prow. One of the men, I suspect, is Vasco de Gama. A plaque explains that the monument commemorates 500 years since the death of Henry the Navigator, whom I humbly admit I’ve never heard about. I realize that I saw this, I’m tempted to say “eyesore,” from the plane when it was descending toward the airport and wondered what it was because from up in the air it looked enormous. Which it is.
Rita takes several pictures on her phone. “Amazing,” she says.
“Fascist art,” I mumble under my breath.
“Don’t be so negative,” she berates me. “Appreciate it for what it is. It’s beautiful.”
Not to me. In my opinion this is chauvinist art. It was erected in 1960, when Portugal was suffocating under Salazar, who, like every good dictator, had to aggrandize himself with ridiculously grandiose architectural projects. This stuff I know even without preparing myself to be a tourist in Lisbon because of my Portuguese friend whose parents escaped to France from Portugal during the dictatorship and had to clean people’s apartments and chauffeur them around to support themselves. The entire monument reeks of fascism to me, but I am not sure that our self-designated tour guide understands what fascist art means. All I can see is a monument that celebrates invasions, plundering of foreign lands, destruction of cultures, slavery, and greed. I simply can’t see the beauty in it, and its grandeur does not impress me. There is nothing uplifting in that enormous wall. I wish the people of Lisbon take it down and build something a little humbler to commemorate their brave explorers, who deserve some credit for proving that the earth is not flat.
Unsurprisingly, no one in my group wants to hear what I think, so I keep my mouth shut and follow the women to the next tourist attraction. A few minutes into our walk, Anna announces that she will wait for us on a bench. She can see it’s going to be a long walk and perhaps she needs a little break from us. I think that in spite of living without a car in Spain and having to walk a few miles to buy groceries, she is not a fan of long distance walks. So we leave her sitting by the water and take off.
Vera is dedicated to walking and seeing everything there is to see like a good tourist so she is not deterred by a long walk. The boardwalk by the river ends abruptly at one point, and we have to circle the marina to reach the famous Tower of Belém. Of course, I don’t know it’s famous until I get there and see the tourist buses and cluster of souvenir shops. Most of the touristy things they are selling are new to me, but I am sure that I will see them along the way at other famous landmarks. After all, tourism is an important money maker for Portugal and useless souvenirs are part of the deal.
The large plaza by the tower is teeming with women who sell the same necklaces I saw earlier. I find a low stone wall to sit on and start a conversation with one of the women who approaches me. I don’t ask to see the necklaces. Instead I ask her about her life. I want to know where she lives, what made her choose this ungrateful job, how she survives by selling something so inexpensive and having to compete with the other women.
The woman speaks Portuguese, but Portuguese is not her first language. She came to Portugal from Slovenia in search of a better life and selling stuff on the street was the best option. She takes the bus to Lisbon every day because she can’t afford to live in the city. But she is optimistic. She has picked up enough Portuguese to get by and she makes just enough to survive off the tourists.
Our conversation comes to an abrupt end when Rita arrives. She went with Vera to buy water and a snack in one of the food carts, and now is ready for more action. She barges into my conversation with the Slovenian woman. The woman changes to English and forgets about me. She doesn’t know yet that Rita travels with me and that her chance of making a sale is moot. But she is on the clock and can’t waste too much time talking to me about life in Portugal. She shows Rita her necklaces. Rita does her usual performance; finding something to laugh about, admiring the necklaces, and making comments about this and that. She asks the woman how much she wants for the necklaces to see if she did OK near the monastery. The woman says 5 euros each. Rita is pleased. She made a good deal. She tells the woman that maybe she’ll return later to buy something because we have to go to see the tower up close.
The tower is completely surrounded by water.
The few tourists who arrived before us are posing for pictures, making me feel like I have to do it too, but I don’t. A young woman in a long shiny dress with low-cut back and high-heel silver sandals arrives at the scene with a photographer and two female friends or helpers—it is not clear to me what their role is. The woman poses on the stairs that descend into the water, indifferent to the gawking tourists, one of which is shameless me. I am tempted to take a picture of her posing in front of the tower. I think it’s a lot more interesting than taking a selfie in front of an unknown tower in the background. But I decide against it. There is no need to take a picture of the tower or the model. It’s too tacky. Or maybe not.
Unlike me, Rita loves taking selfies, especially since she started injecting her face with botox to smooth out those pesky signs of aging. She has a special smile and a special head tilt for her selfies. Her Facebook page is inundated with hundreds of selfies in front of places she visits and people she met on her travels. I never got into the selfie craze. Maybe I am too self-conscious, or maybe I just don’t love myself enough.
We leave the plaza when Vera decides she has seen enough of the tower. It is time to go back to the hideous monument and collect Anna. But the souvenir shops are calling Rita. “Come to me, come to me,” they whisper to her in a special language I have zero fluency in.
All the shops offer pretty much the same stuff. As far as the eye can see there are tchotchkes with imprints of azuleijos, which are the ceramic tiles that decorate the front of many apartment buildings in Lisbon. I think they are called azuleijos because azul means blue in Portuguese and many tiles are white and blue. But not all. They come in different colors and designs and they are absolutely gorgeous. I noticed Anna taking closeup photos of them on our way down the street from the apartment. As I said before, she is the artist among us. Apparently, these azuleijos are famous. When I still thought that I was going to Portugal by myself, I watched a YouTube video about them and the narrator said that people steal them from the walls of buildings and churches and sell them in flea markets to tourists. I know that I will not buy the real thing because most of the stuff in the souvenir shops is definitely made in China. There are towels, cups, cutting boards, bags and wallets, and even umbrellas with azuleijos designs.
They also sell the same idiotic-looking ceramic black rooster with a tall red crest and a variety of objects with that rooster attached to them, like wine openers and shot glasses. My Portuguese friend from back home gave me a refrigerator magnet with the rooster the last time she came back from Portugal, but she forgot to tell me it was the national symbol and that it came with a heartwarming story about a cooked rooster who came back to life to exonerate a petty thief who was sentenced to hang. Something like that.
I read the story in a small pamphlet I find hanging next to a wall of charming handbags made of cork. It’s in Portuguese so I take the time to ensure that I understand all the intricacies of the legend. And then something strange happens. I decide to buy one of the handbags; an act that stands in total contradiction to who I am. A person who doesn’t buy stuff, especially when it is a touristy tchotchke in a shop full of other useless tchotchkes. But my little fabric handbag that holds my phone and wallet and a few other small necessities has become a bit of an embarrassment lately, and the thought that I desperately need to replace it suddenly manifests in my brain. My old bag is red with white polka dots and looks more like something that a ten-year-old girl would carry than a woman of my age and stature. Plus, one or two girlfriends have already mentioned that I needed to get rid of it. It’s a bit stained, too, I think, although I’m reluctant to admit it. I look around and try to choose a bag I like. But how can one decide which bag to choose from among fifty bags that look almost exactly the same, with only the design and color of the azuleijo pattern being different?
I try to engage Rita in the decision-making process but she is not interested. She only wants to see results, which means see me buying something. She knows that there will be little excitement in the exchange of money for a bag because the prices are attached to the merchandise. As she walks away from me, I try to make up my mind. I don’t like the bags with the word Portugal printed on them because I don’t believe in being a walking advertisement, not even for friendly countries. So after I eliminate the advertisements for Portugal, I am left with fewer options that translate into less of a headache.
After much vacillation, I decide on a bag with green and red floral designs printed on the front. It looks more like an exotic landscape painted by Henri Rousseau than a Portuguese azuleijo and it suits me just fine. I pay the 15 euros without trying to haggle and leave feeling a deep sense of accomplishment. I have contributed something to the local economy and proved that I am not the stingiest person on the Iberian Peninsula. Rita congratulates me and agrees that the new bag is a welcome replacement for the silly polka dot thing that still hangs on my shoulder. Now I’m stuck with two bags until we get back to the apartment and it makes me feel a little stupid. Do I really need it? What am I going to do with it? I never do anything that requires a nice handbag. But what is done is done, and I have to live with the consequences.
We head back to find Anna. She seems pleased to see us when we spot her. She did not imagine it would take us that long to walk to the tower and back. She would have gone with us had she known we were going to take such a long time. I think she is a bit unhappy about having had to wait for us on that solitary bench, but this is what happens when you travel in a group. Sometimes you end up doing things you don’t plan to do. Just like what happens immediately after we reunite with Anna, when Rita announces, “My mom is getting hungry. We have to find a place to eat.”
We walk back to the monastery and look for a place where Vera can have lunch. Rita enters the first restaurant she sees by the tram station across from the monastery. It’s a hole-in-the-wall falafel joint, nothing to brag about. Through the window I can see a small line of Lisboetas in front of the counter. Definitely not tourists. Rita is not open to looking for another place when I suggest going for something a bit more authentic to Portugal. Vera also needs to use the bathroom. I give up. I tell Rita I will wait for them outside. I am not particularly hungry and I am not interested in experimenting with Portuguese falafel. I’ve had enough of it in Tel Aviv. Anna has already disappeared because she can’t spend money in restaurants. She might buy a coffee though, and later boil potatoes and carrots in the apartment and have them for dinner. I don’t argue with this logic. Not interested in starting a class war.
There are a couple of metal tables on the sidewalk. I take a seat by one of them and wait for the women to come out with their food. It’s nice to be outside. I can do some people watching. I have my water bottle and I am good for the next hour. Since the place does not look like it is swarming with people who might want my handbag, I hang my silly polka dot bag on the back of the chair next to me. Then I take off my jacket and hang it on top of it, to keep it hidden underneath. But I quickly change my mind. It is never safe to hang a handbag on the back of a chair even under a jacket. I’ve heard enough stories about wallets and phones that were left unattended for a second and disappeared forever. I should not take the risk. I lift the jacket and then I lift the bag to put it on my lap. And the strap breaks. And there is no way to fix it.
I don’t believe in God. But looking at the grimy, broken strap, and knowing that not an hour has passed since I bought myself a new bag and obsessed about my indefensible consumerist self, I feel the ping of divine intervention. There is a reason why I bought a new bag and it is not as shallow as I thought it was. I must be doing something right, even if I don’t know what it is.
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