Raduan Nassar vs. Roberto Freire

I regret that I cannot yet write with the necessary detachment. I even tried to spend more time without speaking, hoping that the roar of the wave would fade on the horizon. But I must no longer do so, lest I be accused of omission. Please understand the urgency and excuse the poorly written lines that follow.

At the ceremony where Raduan Nassar received the Camões Prize, almost the entire Brazilian press chose to ignore the beauty of the writer's speech. Here, however, the situation was reversed. According to the news, more important than the Camões Prize was the baseness, treated as a response, of the Minister of Culture. In the Jornal da Cultura (that word so degraded in today's Brazil), a commentator even recalled the minister's past as a man of the left, and therefore an impartial defender of the new government: "he comes from the PCdoB". Utter and utter ignorance, because the commentator was completely unaware of what happened to the communist movement in Brazil. The degraded Minister of Culture came from the PCB, from where he left for the PPS, the most infamous version of what a party with ex-revolutionary overtones can be.

The minister attended a prestigious award ceremony for a Brazilian writer, but he didn't know what the award was, much less who the recipient was. In other words, he was like a cultural charlatan. But who exactly is Roberto Freire? – This hoofed Minister of Culture is an individual who has disregarded his history and nature in several missteps, which he must call opportunities. In the first, he renounced his communist past. In the second, he renounced his own birth state, Pernambuco, because he threw it away to better live under the shelter of the PSDB party in São Paulo. Betraying and betraying is a method of survival for him. In an enlightening profile, Altamiro Borges already outlined him in these lines: "A minor, resentful politician who created a party to be a mere sub-party of the PSDB...". In Pernambuco, when he returned for Miguel Arraes' funeral, many called him a traitor. Cynically, he looked sideways and smiled. That's because, to their ears, the word "Traitor" had come to sound like a compliment.

In December 2016, he was acclaimed with shouts of "coup plotter, coup plotter" during a ceremony at the Pernambuco state government palace. And the more he tried to raise his voice to overcome the clamor, the more he received the grace of loud boos. Of course, he would very much like to receive the treatment of His or Your Heron, like the secretaries and cardinals of King Henry VIII in Tudor England, figures to whom Roberto Freire is similar in their indignity. But he receives the grace of boos.

Moving on, because I must speak about Raduan Nassar. Given the urgency of the moment, I won't write about Raduan Nassar's excellent writing. That will have to wait for another time. Now, I can talk about him as a person.

I met Raduan Nassar in 1977. That year, when I arrived in São Paulo, I was lucky enough to get a job at the Jornal da Semana newspaper. I got there through literature, or rather, through the need to eat, although carried by literature. Unemployed, without a work permit, I went to a writers' congress at the Hotel San Rafael looking for Astolfo Araújo, my only São Paulo reference. Astolfo had published one of my short stories in the magazine Escrita, and that was my passport to survival. I asked someone, who I later discovered was the writer Moacir Scliar:

Do you know Astolfo Araújo?

No. But please ask that gentleman over there. He knows Astolfo.

And I went to the man, Raduan Nassar, whom I also didn't know. Nor did he know my story, apparently. I ask:

Do you know Astolfo Araújo? Do you have his phone number?

I could have added, in the style of Groucho Marx: answer the second question first. But I remained silent, and the man replied:

Yes, he's my friend. Please write that down.

So on the same day I call Astolfo Araújo from a public phone. I ask him for a job, work at a newspaper, anything. And Astolfo:

The person you spoke to is Raduan Nassar. He's the editor of the largest neighborhood newspaper in South America. Go to Pinheiros and talk to him. He's a great guy.

At that time, I didn't know—and the reader will forgive the repetition of "I didn't know," because great was my innocence—that Raduan Nassar, the editor and writer, had already published *Lavoura Arcaica*. But I soon found out: he gave me assignments to write for the newspaper. At the time, my paid reporting consisted of writing columns as a freelancer, and nothing more. Raduan's family, I didn't know again, owned the Bazar 13 supermarket chain, the second largest supermarket chain in São Paulo. How could I have guessed that a fellow writer, who invited me for coffee while we spent hours talking about Graciliano Ramos, was rich? In my perception, and even today, writers are generally screwed. The truth is, I knew that the newspaper paid well for the texts. But, damn it, my 20 weekly lines weren't enough to cover expenses. Perhaps they weren't even worth the little lead printed.

I search through some stored papers and unearth a short text I published in Raduan's newspaper on October 23, 1977:

"Inca god, much talked about"

What does a citizen expect from a bar named 'Latinoamericano'? Bullfighters from Spain in Mexican lands, Sarita Montiel singing 'La Violetera', the Fellini-esque Mama Dolores in tears seconded by Parra with a musket, with pairs of Mexicans in sombreros strolling among the tables shaking 'que bonitos ojos tienes' (what beautiful eyes you have), an individual stepping on a young lady in a daring tango, an Indian in a poncho chewing with his eyes squinted in the Andes? Well, if the only thing Latin American about a citizen understands is the brochures distributed in travel agencies, don't go to this bar or you'll get a terrible shock: at the foot of the stairs, on Henrique Schaumann Street (almost at the corner of Avenida Rebouças), you'll find an Inca god painted on the wall, holding, at chin height, what euphemism recommends saying, a vigorous phallus.

Let's put it this way: you revere the god of power, climb the stairs, and enter an environment whose touch is calm, quiet, the bar, sweet bar – attributes that, naturally, cost a few coins, which would be a burden for a worker, which shouldn't be your case. In a corner where the near twilight invites peace (so difficult outside), you sit down, because this bar isn't one of those infernal dives where you get drunk standing up, until you fall; you sit and savor, at the whim of chance, a tequila, a pisco, a Don Ramón, or a Latin Negroni, which will certainly light up your nostrils, but will be contained, softened by the gentle music that comes from the tropics, in the sweet waves of the voices of the folkloric groups from Paraguay, Chile, Peru... embedded in gentle tapes of a recorder that hums and creates the atmosphere. From 19:30 PM until the last customer, depending on the customer, of course. Got it?"

Of course, with such a vast output, nobody could really live on it. Unless each line was worth a stall at Bazar 13. The most important thing is that I remember that in literary conversations, in discussions, Raduan Nassar never proclaimed socialist ideas or more daring interventions in reality. He didn't know me. But even then he was making important contributions against the Brazilian dictatorship. Almost nobody knows to this day, but Raduan's printing press produced the newspaper Movimento, one of the best newspapers of the democratic resistance. He took risks for this feat, even though he charged for the service.

And so we come to the end. I now return and connect the two ends of the link between Raduan Nassar and Roberto Freire. I have already observed this in a novel:

Often, life is prolonged in a dishonorable way. As if it were taut guitar strings that broke and were mended, whose sound is no longer music. Fate often seems to give people a second chance, turning the overflow into a swamp. The torrent that no longer is, stagnates, turns to mud. Understanding them in this second phase is the same as "analyzing this shadow."

Regarding the observation about the novel, I add in 2017: there are other people who, in their later years, transform life into a song of freedom. This was the case with the greatest Russian, Tolstoy, who in his old age wrote short stories and novels of extraordinary humanity, and transported literature to the real world, because he only wanted to rid himself of the burden of the land, whose ownership was a centuries-old injustice. Raduan Nassar follows the model of this Russian genius. He donates a 643-hectare fertile farm to the university, acts, speaks for the majority of Brazilians at a time when literature was expected to be the smile of society. In short, he excels where others decline, at the age of 81. Congratulations on the Camões Prize, Raduan Nassar. The award, the honor, and the platform are yours. The rest is silence.