WALKING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

The "Bom Fim"neighborhood

I see many elderly people walking in the streets of "Bom Fim", the renowned Jewish neghborhood where I live in Southern Brazil. Some are in their 80's, other already in their 90's. Some walk alone, others with their caregivers or their family members. Most of them have been living here for over 50 years. Not all of them are Jewish. But each of them carry a particular set of memories, a history. I don't see them as old, but as bearers of a past that doesn't exist anymore. They remember a type of childhood that will be forgotten. They hold a specific kind of life that is gone. 

As time passes, these groups of people will disappear, and the next one will arrive. Historical events will build up one on top of another, and we will have even more things to remember. History will inevitably be extended, information expanded - so things will make sense.

For now I enjoy watching the elders. They remind me of something familiar, like relatives I don't have anymore. It makes me feel at home. And sometime in the future I might be one of them, and I might enjoy watching youngsters, knowing I was one years ago.

MITL - A TALE INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS

My grandmother Amália was sick in the hospital, very weak, with a feeble memory. I came to visit her, we tried to talk, and luckily she remembered me. But hardly enough. Most of her recollections would dwell in an early past. At some point she said the word "Mitl". I asked her again and she repeated: "Mitl, mitl...” And then fell back to deep sleep.

I had never heard this word before. What could it mean? Grandma spoke Yiddish, so it could be a Yiddish word. Or maybe the name of a relative?  A special recipe from Bessarabia her mom used to cook?

I asked my mom, daughter of grandma. Never heard about Mitl. Asked my dad, known as the family scholar, and also a Yiddish speaker. Never heard it either. What secrets could possibly lie under this mysterious word?

I went for the first resource mankind goes for when faced with an unanswerable question: Google. But I'm pretty sure Amália was not referring to a networks corporation, a tennis league or stock exchange group. 

I called my uncle and aunts. I called grandma's two sisters. I called cousins. I asked the Rabbis. Nothing. Who was this Mitl? I was by then convinced it was a person. Maybe grandma's first love? Or somebody she really liked? Or lived a tragedy with? Or her favorite pet?

But wait. Could it be that I heard it wrong? Grandma was weak and her voice frail. Maybe was it Motl? I looked it up on the internet. Motl is the abbreviation for March of the Living. But I doubt Amália was referring to this event on her hospital bed. I started researching all possible variations, but couldn't reach a satisfactory resolution.

Then I reached out to genealogy groups. These are great people. If they don't know something, they know somebody who does. But even they could not help me. 

Next week I went back to the hospital. Amália didn't say a word. She would just look at my shirt, like trying to read something. "Vlei"she said. I looked at my shirt: it read "fly". It was then I realized! Mitl was not a person, a pet or some dish from Bessarabia, where her family had come from. The day I first visited Amália I had a shirt and on it was written "Midtown". I bought it because it was the name of the neighborhood I used to live in Los Angeles. Well, grandma couldn't speak or read English, so "Midtown" became... MITL! She was just reading my shirt all along.

So, if you ever have a Jewish Brazilian grandmother at the hospital saying "Mitl", it could just be your shirt.

By the way, Amália is already out of the hospital, recovering just fine. I haven't told her this story yet.

TIME

Two recent events made me think of time and how we handle it. First, my 95 year old grandmother was hospitalized, and still there at this moment. Secondly, a fellow filmmaker whom I met in Chisinau while shooting Mamaliga Blues, died of cancer.

I was able to record many conversations with my grandmother, and made some videos of her cooking old Jewish recipes. People say that photography and video made people immortal. They are there for us - forever. Somewhat. But this event also made me think of the many stories she never told on video, that I always used to hear but can also forget so easily. There is always so little time to devote to it.

I was unaware my friend had cancer and learned of his death on Facebook days ago. Viorel and I hung for a few days in Chisinau, he showed me the city's nightlife, we went to some bars, a rock concert and local restaurants. He introduced me to some of his friends and told me stories of the Soviet era. Kind and always available, I admired Viorel's sense of humor. I remember he said it was hard to film in Moldova's countryside because every little village he stopped the locals would make sure he tried their homemade wine. Inevitably drunk, the crew ended up not making the film. And then he said Moldovans regarded themselves as the Latin people of Eastern Europe. But most of his other stories I already forgot. Viorel was not recorded by me. I have only a picture with him. 

Everybody knows life is short, but the other problem is time. We always wished we had more time. Time can be interrupted all of a sudden. And it can only live through preservation of memory. Memory is endless time.

Viorel and I - our only picture - in Chisinau, 2008