MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH PARIS
KESIA CARDOSO
I wonder if there is such a thing as fate, destiny or just coinci- dence. When I think of those stories, I can’t help asking myself if certain things in life happen because they are meant to be, or it is just life. Coincidences or not, those hidden treasures that we carry, secret desires, private silly dreams ‒ they could all be the prophetic flashbacks from a memory that is yet to be recorded. We all want something that may not make sense outside of our own imagination, something that may not even make sense to ourselves. And we all wonder if those thoughts could actually be true. This story of mine, which I am about to share with you, started with a love for Paris and ended with a love for life.
It all began long ago, still in the warmth of Brazil, when my parents asked me where I wanted to go for vacation that year. I was about seven years old, and they expected me to say anything like the beach, the circus, or an amusement park. For their surprise, I answered without hesitating, that I wanted to go to Paris.
Here is the thing: I used to tell my parents that someday in the future I would become a famous journalist, or a famous actress (the important thing was to become famous!) and live in Paris. Now, I didn’t go to Paris when I was seven years old; that was too far away, too expensive, and nothing but one of my parents’ random questions. But still, I feel like my whole life I have been dreaming about seeing the Eiffel Tower and singing the original version of La Vie en Rose, in French.
Since I was very young, the French language has always touched me in a different way. It had something bewitching and even spiritual every time I used to hear it. My first encoun- ters with French language happened through music; the small church where I used to go as a child had French hymns and choir songs performed almost every Sunday. The words and the piano melodies, the conversations between European fami-
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lies, it all had the power to transport me to a different world of poetry and tunes. My own personal experience with French got mixed up with magazine pictures and jazzy songs about Paris, portraying a sweet and glamorous image of the French culture in my mind. Watching those films made me dream about living in a story, just like Audrey Hepburn, where I would go to Paris to be transformed into a beautiful and sophisticated Sabrina.
Well, I grew up and life happened. Later on, I decided to go see the world, and I went to other places before going to France. I also engaged myself into learning other languages before learning French, trying to respond to life’s priorities and op- portunities somehow. But that little old dream never really died. You know what they say ‒ and it could even be true ‒ that it will come to you when you are ready to receive it, when the time is right. I guess I wasn’t ready until I was in my twenties, standing one day at the airport waiting for a delayed flight and expecting to see the Eiffel Tower very soon and for the first time.
At that point in my life I wasn’t living in Brazil anymore; I was now somehow engaged in a series of travel experiences around the world. From South America to North America then finally Europe, that day I found myself confined ‒ together with my expectations about Paris ‒ inside a waiting room of a European airport crowded by people who were also waiting to depart.
At that airport I waited, and looked around the shops and cafeterias, had a cheese bagel and apple juice, and continued to wait. Then I started to think. Do you know when you are wait- ing and you have nothing else to do but wait ‒ you know how the mind can just take advantage of this situations to come up with news from long ago, or even the things you had already succeeded in forgetting. Those many thoughts in my mind, when they have a chance to appear and talk to me about my day, family, friends, books and the president of the Mauritius
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