"There is a lot of my childhood, of my family, and even a few names, but the book is 90% fiction," the author said.

The son of an Alawi Muslim father and of a mother whose parents were Orthodox Christian Syrians, Abrão was born in 1943. He reports that as a child, he would constantly hear the stories of the land of his ancestors, because every weekend his father would gather his fellow countrymen at home, they would cook a lamb or a goat, sing and dance. "They would celebrate the past; it was a session of nostalgia," he said.

The author also sought inspiration for his character's profession from his childhood days. The tinsmith, according to him, would walk the streets hammering on a pan, signaling for housewives to bring their cooking pots to be fixed. The professional would smooth out the pots, replace the handles and make cups using oilcans. In the neighborhood he lived in, there was even one whose name was Mohamed.

At age 10, Abrão took the opposite direction of his father and grandparents and went to live at an aunt's house in Lebanon. His father wanted him to learn more about Arab culture, Arabic and the Muslim religion. After returning to Brazil, aged 14, he kept the habit of reading books in Arabic, a language that he speaks fluently to this day.

He has returned to visit the region several times and, in the first half of the 1960s, was even a volunteer in the United Nations (UN) mission responsible for surveillance of the frontier between Israel and Gaza Strip, then under Egyptian control.

"It was a very good experience. As a Brazilian, I clearly learnt about the Palestinian problem, and felt it, in my skin. Although I am of Arab origin, this problem had been distant up to that moment," he said. Abrão remained in the country for one year and four months at the service of the UN, as a frontier guard and later as an interpreter, as he spoke both English and Arabic fluently.

When he returned to Brazil, in 1965, he started teaching English and now owns an English school. Abrão entered the literature world in the 1970s, when he started writing short stories and chronicles for a supplement of newspaper Zero Hora, from Porto Alegre, turned to the Sinos Valley region, where Novo Hamburgo, the city in which he lives, is located.

The idea of writing a book, however, came recently and was influenced by Juracy Saraiva, a Literature teacher and friend. "She always stimulated me to write, until, in 2007, I had a knee operation, bought a notebook and started the book." The text, according to him, took a year and a half to be completed.

Although he is releasing his first book, Abrão has already finished his second book, whose title is "The Martyr". He explains a little about it: "It is a love story, between a Brazilian Jew and a Brazilian of Palestinian origin, who meet in Israel. Controversial, eh?"

Mohamed, o Latoeiro, by Gilberto Abrão
Primavera Editorial publishing house
432 pages
Suggested price: 47.80 reais (US$ 26.30)

Anba

Voices of the Desert recounts the story of Scheherazade, the Vizier’s daughter who singlehandedly wages psychological warfare against the Caliph of Baghdad, an overweight, middle-aged man who is exacting revenge against his wife, the Sultana, who defiantly slept with another man. He had them put to death. After that, he began taking a virgin bride every night and in the morning would order her execution.

Into this epidemic of senseless deaths steps Scheherazade, determined to put an end to it, and of course there’s no way of knowing if hers is an altruistic folly or simply a meaningless martyrdom. Where has she acquired such self-assurance and bravery?

It should be emphasized that this is not a fairy tale or an entertainment to be read for colorful thrills. Piñon immerses us in Scheherazade’s endless fears and anxieties. Each evening she weaves a tale, assuming the roles and voices of countless characters, young and old, male and female, but she also leaves the Caliph with a little cliffhanger, some unfinished thread that will convince him to stay the sentence of death for one more day.

Each evening, when the Caliph enters the chamber where Scheherazade awaits (her only companions being her elder sister, Dinazarda, and the slave girl, Jasmine), he engages her in perfunctory sex, mere copulation without joy, then rearranges himself and sits back to hear her stories.

They are, of course, the tales in (or associated with) The Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Sinbad and Aladdin and Ali Baba and all the rest, colored with impressions drawn from Baghdad marketplaces when Scheherazade was a girl, or, more recently, since she cannot leave the palace, from the devoted Jasmine (after all, the three women have to combine their resources, especially as the weeks and months drag by).

Despite the daily copulation, Scheherazade has no affection for the Caliph. “She is struggling for her life,” Piñon writes early on, “obeying the instinct of narrative adventure and passion for justice.” A hundred pages later, her goal and focus remain unchanged: “to save the young women of the kingdom caught in the sights of a despot.”

And, again, a hundred pages more: “Her strategy is to gain time and suffer the Caliph’s stony heart, to have him rescind the curse cast upon the young women of the realm, and only then to flee.”

The achievement of Voices of the Desert is in the way that Piñon forces us to agonize with her female characters. If the Caliph is displeased and tires of the stories he need only gesture to the executioner who stands guard outside the entrance to the chamber. Dread and apprehension are a veil, and they’re never lifted.

This comes at a price, in that the weariness of the characters and the harrowing repetition of their day-to-day lives in turn emanates from the page. There is not very much excitement here in what the reader is given; presumably all the excitement is in the tales that Scheherazade somehow, almost miraculously, is able to conjure up. We receive only hints of those stories, but never the stories themselves. In the end there is no reason for us, unlike the Caliph, to remain on the edge of our seat.

Possibly there’s a short story or a novella here, but Voices of the Desert runs out of steam. Piñon’s female readers may tap into psychological levels that male readers may not, and it’s even possible to see the book as a meditation on storytelling and the creative process, but this reader was not entertained, and so it’s a good thing he’s not the Caliph or heads would roll.

Excerpt:

Scheherazade has no fear of death. She does not believe that worldly power as represented by the Caliph, whom her father serves, decrees by her death the extinguishing of her imagination.

She tried to persuade her father that she alone can break the chain of deaths of maidens in the kingdom. She cannot bear seeing the triumph of evil that marks the Caliph’s face. She will oppose the misfortune that invades the homes of Baghdad and its environs, by offering herself to the ruler in a seditious sacrifice.

Her father objected when he heard his daughter’s proposal calling upon her to reconsider but failing to change her mind. He insisted again, this time smiting the purity of the Arabic language, employing imprecations, spurious, bastardized, scatological words used by the Bedouins in wrath and frolic alike. Shamelessly he marshaled every resource to persuade her. After all, his daughter owed him not only her life but also the luxury, the nobility, her rarefied education. (…)

Despite the Vizier’s protests when faced with the threat of losing his beloved daughter, Scheherazade persisted in this decision, which really involved her entire family. Each member of the Vizier’s clan evaluated in silence the significance of the decreed punishment, the effects that her death would have on their lives.

Service:

Voices of the Desert, by Nélida Piñon, translated by Clifford Landers (Alfred A. Knopf, 254 pp., $24.95)

Bondo Wyszpolski is the Arts and Entertainment Editor for Easy Reader newspaper in California.

The images of the dreadful event that shook the city on the morning of
December 6th, 1957, are still fresh in the memories of its citizens. Swimming in
puddles of blood were the corpses of Wanderley Matteucci, his wife Lourdes
Pinheiro, and four young children, in the bedroom of his home, located at the
74th Street, at the back of the “São Mateus” warehouse, owned by the victim.
(1)

The passage above is just one of the many reports published by the newspapers in the city of Goiânia, about an episode known as “The 74th Street Crime”, in which the couple Wanderley and Lourdes Matteucci, and their children Walkíria (6 years old); Wagner, 5; Wolney, 4 and Wilma (8 months) were brutally murdered.

Except for Wagner, who was hanged with a tie and stabbed, all the other members of the family were killed with an ax. The only survivor was Wânia Márcia, who was also their daughter and was, at that time, around two years old.

The first suspect arrested was Rubens de Oliveira, also known as Alberto D’Lassere. He was captured in Salvador, in the state of Bahia, where he confessed to be the one who committed the crime. However, after being transferred to Goiânia, he denied his guilt. He was the main suspect just because he left the city on the dawn of the day that the crime took place.

The second suspect was Pedro Vaz, whose name was, in fact, José Lázaro da Silva, commonly known as Lazinho, but he couldn’t have committed the crime, because he was in jail in the city of Patos de Minas, in the state of Minas Gerais, at that time.

Afterwards, they arrested Wilson Matteucci, Wanderley’s brother, and Santino Hildo da Fonseca, accused of being hired by Wilson to kill the family. Both also admitted they were guilty.

Following his arrest, Santino told the police that Francisco da Silva Rocha helped him to murder the Matteucci family. Then, he made a detailed report of the crime, which read like a movie script.

Another suspect was named by Maria Cardoso da Silva, maid of the family. According to her, Gercino, Lourdes’ brother, had threatened to kill the couple after they had an argument.

The fact that all the accused people promptly confessed to the crime can be explained by the torture sessions they experienced:

“Yesterday, around 10 o’clock, after being slapped and hardly punched, Santino confessed to be the only killer. (…) The reporters got the information that Wilson Matteucci confessed under continuous beatings inflicted on him by the police, and was also subjected to all kinds of torture known by the law agents. (…) Francisco da Silva Rocha, the supposed accomplice of Santino, didn’t take part in the crime. We know, however, that he didn’t show up to defend himself, because he was afraid of being beaten up.” (2)

The newspaper Ed. Extra published that Wilson “was forced to stand up for hours and hours on the top of open tomato sauce cans, with wide open arms, holding two bricks on the palms of his hands”, and that Santino “was severely beaten up and tortured with a paddle, on his hands and buttocks.” (3)

In the course of the judicial process, Wilson and Francisco denied everything and were finally acquitted on October 14th, 1964, after staying in jail for a long time. Santino, however, didn’t deny his guilt, for he was “warned that he would be killed if he intended to contradict what he had ‘confessed to’ previously” (4), and was sentenced to 74 years and 10 months. He was just released on May 27th, 1976, but even then he alleged he was innocent.

The facts exposed above, especially the transcription of the statement made by Santino, inspired Miguel Jorge to write his novel Veias e Vinhos (Veins and Wines).

In 1981, the book was awarded by APCA (Association of Critics of Art from the State of São Paulo). It also won the 4th National Literature Contest sponsored by the Office of General Education, Cultural Foundation and the Caixa Econômica Bank from the State of Goiás.

Veias e Vinhos is divided in 39 chapters and brings an epigraph that expresses its content very well: “How many terrible things are committed in the name of justice.” (5)

Its cover was made by the plastic artist Siron Franco, who was the first person to enter the house of the Matteucci family after they were killed. He was a friend of the children murdered, was around 10 years old at that time, and, everyday, he used to call them to go to school:

“Because nobody answered that day, I went to the back of the house and saw a hole on the wall. I remember that after I went inside, while walking, I kicked an arm. I tried to go outside, but I couldn’t.” (6)

The narrator in the book is, initially, the only daughter that wasn’t murdered, named Ana by Miguel Jorge. In spite of the fact that she was very young, and not even being able to speak many words, she is the one who tells the details of how her father (Matheus), her mother (Antônia), and her brothers and sisters (Mário, José, Vilda and Valmira) were killed, as well as the fact that the murderers had wiped their hands, covered with blood, on the walls and then went to the kitchen to drink some beer and eat sausage.

An ax and a dagger were used to commit the crime, but Ana wasn’t killed just because one of the murderers lost his courage when he walked to the cradle, in order to kill her, and she said: “daddy”.

Then, Ana starts telling the story of her family before the day of the crime.

Her parents owned a warehouse called “São Judas,” located in the Popular neighborhood, where they were helped by Pedro, Matheus’ brother. Antônia had constant nightmares and was pregnant with a fifth son. Matheus had another daughter with a woman who lived in the city of Belo Horizonte, and he intended to bring her to live with them. At the beginning of the story Matheus’ mother, who is a little crazy, also lives with them.

Ana tells all the details of the story from the day of the crime until the day she was born, which takes place in the 17th chapter. Following that, we learn what happened after the tragedy.

Pedro is the main suspect. The alleged reason for it was the fact that he hated Matheus, and blamed him for the suicide of their mother, who took formicide in 1952. Pedro is tortured until he confesses:

“They took him from there and hung him on the pau-de-arara (one of the most common “instruments” to torture people), upside down. His statements start to hesitate at the same time that his right eye began to fail. The interrogation became more and more brutal. The soldier and the police chief laughed. They used all sorts of techniques and many possibilities for torture.” (7)

After facing a new hearing, Pedro denied his participation in the crime and, to escape from new torture sessions, he accuses Altino da Cruz and Felisbino Primo da Silva. After that, Altino is tortured and even goes through a kind of hypnosis session, carried out by an investigator called Raimundo Quirino, so he would sign the confession of his guilt. Even Ana is taken to see him to evaluate her reaction, but she hugs him, not expressing any kind of fear.

Pedro is acquitted by the jury of the city of Goiânia, on February 5th, 1963, and again on October 14th, 1964. In this same session, Altino is convicted to 74 years and 10 months.

While in jail, Altino starts to write a diary and decides to try to find out the real guilty ones. After more than 18 years, he finally gets his conditional freedom.

Although the novel is clearly based on the “74th Street Crime”, Miguel Jorge affirms that his book “isn’t a journalistic report, but a work of fiction novel.” (8)

However, we can classify it, more accurately, as a nonfiction novel, which is the kind of novel that presents “narratives, where verifiable information, in the form of a report, are dressed in narrative techniques, typically used in fiction.” (9)

The genre predominated in Brazil during the decade of 1970s, along with the magical realism, as an immediate consequence “of the political censorship that, prevented reporters from writing what they knew, and forced them to find in literature the space that was denied to them.” (10)

The nonfiction novel is a genre that was inspired by the book In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote in the USA, in 1966, which, coincidently, also tells the story of the murder of a whole family. (11)

Rildo Cosson, in his book Romance-Reportagem: O Gênero, states that a nonfiction novel follows realist narrative processes and shows, among others, elements such as memories; flash-backs; true date, location and documents; premonition; stream of consciousness; and social denunciation.

In Veias e Vinhos, Miguel Jorge elects Ana, the only survivor of the slaughter, as the main narrator. She is responsible for telling the beginning of the story, by remembering the day of the crime and starting a long flash-back that shows the daily life of her family until the fatal day.

However, Ana is not the only narrator. The same role is played by her father, Matheus, her brother, Mário, and her uncle Pedro. This interweaving of narrators “allows for the existence of many intersections in the plot and, consequently, the mutual validation of all them.” (12)

Sometimes the narration is made in the third person, but the first person predominates and the narrator is always omniscient.

The true dates and locations are present in the novel and can be checked through documents and reports published in the papers at that time, which also published statements used in detail in the plot of Veias e Vinhos.

Premonition is expressed by the character Antônia, who has constant nightmares, as described below:

Antônia dreamed that two men wanted to kill her, and saw herself dead, slashed. She wanted to cry, but had no voice. She wanted to run, but her legs didn’t obey her. Finally, she tried to hide, but they caught her with a fishing net as if she were a wild animal. Then she tried to distinguish a voice that talked louder than the others, a commanding voice, a voice that chased her through the whole dream. Antônia didn’t know how to explain for how long that torture had lasted. An eternity? She woke up suffocated in screams and tears. (13)

The stream of consciousness is clearly present in the book, especially in its last chapter, where, ignoring the existence of paragraphs or punctuation, the character Altino expresses his thoughts, while in jail.

The social justice critique, very common in nonfiction novels, is also strongly present in Veias e Vinhos. Miguel Jorge uses the book to denounce the disregard and incompetence of the police. For example, the guns used to commit the crime and the fingerprints of the murderers were simply ignored; the fact that all the suspects were tortured; and, above all, the prison of an innocent man, who was kept in jail for almost twenty years.

Miguel Jorge even visited Santino in the prison for three times, and all of them he said he was not guilty. When he was set free, in 1976, he, once more, alleged he was innocent.

All the facts presented above allow us to conclude, undoubtedly, that Veias e Vinhos belongs to the nonfiction novel genre.

The book was used as a source for a documentary called O Caso Matteucci (The Matteucci Story), made by the moviemaker João Batista de Andrade, in 2002, and also the movie Veias e Vinhos, which had its première in Goiânia, on September 6th, 2006.

Those who attended it were João Batista de Andrade, the writer Miguel Jorge, and the actress Eva Wilma. Leonardo Vieira, Simone Spalladore, Leopoldo Pacheco, and José Dumont, among others, were also part of the cast.

Miguel Jorge also helped the director to write the first script of the movie, and the time of the crime was moved from 1957 to 1964, in order to emphasize the state of terror that took place in Brazil during the military dictatorship.

Notes

(1)  DESLINDADO o mistério do assassino da Rua 74. Brasil Central, Goiânia, ano 28, n. 1-59, p. 1 e 7, 25 jan. 1959.

(2) WILSON Matteucci teria contestado a autoria do assassinato da Rua 74. Folha de Goiaz, Goiânia, p. 8, 16 jan. 1959.

(3)  CASO Matteucci, um erro judiciário. Ed. Extra, Goiânia, p. 11, 18 out. 1981.

(4)  Ibid., p. 11

(5)  JORGE, Miguel. Veias e vinhos. 2. ed. São Paulo: Ática, 1982. p. 7.

(6)  BORGES, Rogério; GUEDES, Rute. A arte imitando a vida. O Popular, Goiânia, 1 out. 2006. Magazine, p. 7.

(7)  JORGE, 1981, p.129

(8)  BORGES, 2006, p. 7

(9) COSSON, Rildo. Romance-reportagem: o gênero. São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial do Estado, 2001. p. 11.

(10)  Ibid., p. 17

(11)  Ibid., p. 19

(12)  Ibid., p. 53

(13) JORGE, 1982, p. 22

The book Veias e Vinhos has reached its 4th edition in Brazil , and Miguel Jorge is looking forward to publish it in English. If you can help him, or know someone who can do it, please contact him at migueljorge@uol.com.br.

Gilson P. Borges is a teacher in Goiânia, Brazil. You can reach him at Gilson_borges@hotmail.com.

His grandfather, whose name was Antônio, also read a newspaper that came from afar in a different way: from right to left. His grandfather spoke Arabic. And the newspaper he read was also in Arabic.

The boy went to the parties of the Syrian Society and of the Lebanese Society in the capital of the southernmost Brazilian state. And he greatly appreciated the Arab foods prepared by his grandmother, Georgina.

The boy grew up. From Luiz Carlos Verzoni Nejar he became simply Carlos Nejar. He became a poet. And a great one. Carlos Nejar is currently one of the members of the Brazilian Academy of Letters or an immortal as those members are known.

Nejar has become one of the most renowned Brazilian poets. His childhood was filled with Arab customs, later followed by reading of the literature from the region, which ended up influencing his work.

Nejar is a grandson of Syrians and Lebanese. His father, Sady Nejar, was born in Brazil. But his grandfather, Antônio, and his great-grandfather, Miguel, came to Brazil from Syria early last century. Nejar’s grandmother, Georgina, was a daughter of Lebanese.

"The food at home was Arab. My grandmother Georgina cooked like a master and was almost a matron, bringing to the table her sons and grandchildren," recalled Nejar. His great-grandfather and grandfather, who came from the Syrian city of Tartús, had a similar trajectory to that of most of the Arabs who arrived in Brazil: they worked in trade.

They sold products in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Sul and also had a shop in Porto Alegre. "I spent my childhood in Porto Alegre," stated Nejar, who currently lives in the city of Guarapari, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Espírito Santo.

Carlos Nejar does not speak Arabic. But he knows the literature well. "I have always admired the originality of this literature," he says.  The poet identifies in his own work similarities with Arab works. "Firstly due to the epic tone, with maritime verses. Then to the singing and telling. Then due to the lyric characteristic," he explained.

Nejar published, in 1984, through publishing house Record, a book called Gazéis, with songs of love in Arabic. The book was first published in 1983, by a Portuguese publishing house, Moraes Editora.

Some of Nejar’s verses have southern Brazilian characteristics, using words that are very characteristic of those born in Rio Grande do Sul. But his poetry speaks about simple aspects of life, like childhood, horses, family, and other more complex topics, like the human soul and death.

"I found my soul when I was a child. Innocence, the ark of alliances that was rusted by the rain of the Old Testament. Matured, aged? I found it soluble, busy. We didn’t even talk. It was someone I loved greatly. I only stood when I saw it was standing," says one verse of Rain of the Old Testament (Chuva do Velho Testamento).

"Enter death as you enter your home, undressing flesh, putting on your slippers and old pyjamas," is a verse of poem Smoothness (Lisura). "The shoes side by side. I will wear them, loose and huge, and maybe damaged, like two old sailors," says an excerpt of the Sonnet of Quiet Shoes.

Apart from poetry, Nejar – the name means carpenter in Arabic – has also published various novels. Most of the books he published, incidentally, are novels. Riopampa, Mill of Suffering (Moinho das Tribulações), was published last year by publishing house Bertrand Brasil.

In 2005 he published Well of Miracles (O Poço dos Milagres), a narrative in which various characters try to understand the human soul in a text that ranges from prose to lyricism. Well of Miracles was published by the same publishing house.

Carlos Nejar graduated in law. The poet worked in various jobs in the legal area, like in prosecution. He also taught Portuguese and literature in schools.

Despite his Syrian and Lebanese descent, Nejar has only been to one Arab country: Morocco. He participated in conference "The heritage of Arab culture in Latin-American cultures," promoted by Al Mu’Tamid Ibn Abbad University, in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1989. Nejar is currently aged 67.

Anba – www.anba.com.br