Aquilo de que somos feitos... R02

Ainda a propósito da carta aberta de Helder Fernandes aos Finlandeses.....

Martin Page nasceu em Londres em 1938 e faceleu em 2003. Jornalista premiado, escreveu para The Guardian, Sunday Times, entre outros. Em 1988 escolheu Portugal para Viver e onde viria a escrever o seu livro "The First Global Village- How Portugal Changed the World", com uma introdução pessoal que se inicia com o seguinte excerto:

“It was the middle of the afternoon. The Congo was in the midst of another civil war. I was a novice foreign correspondent, newly arrived from London, and I was standing beside the road from Ndola to Elizabethvile. Four of my ribs were cracked. My left shoulder was fractured. The barrel of a sub-machine gun was being pressed gently into my back, by a Katangese militiaman, while his colleagues helped themselves to the contents of my luggage from the wreck of the hire-car.

There was a flow of traffic, of white, southern-African mercenaries in cars and other stolen vehicles, escaping the battle-zone I had been trying to reach. Several drivers slowed, and seeing the militia, accelerated again. It seemed to me that over fifty of them passed me by. Then came a new, white Peugeot estate. The driver slammed his brakes, reversed back towards me, opened the rear passenger door, and shouted: “Jump in”

“There’s a gun in my back”

“That’s why I’m telling you: jump in”

I obeyed. He sped off. With my shoulder broken, I could not close the door, but the wind shut it. We approached the border-post. The driver sounded his three-tone horn, flashed his head-lights, and accelerated. The guards, apparently fearing he would smash their new barrier, hurriedly raised it. We were out of the self-proclaimed Republic of Katanga. But why had the guards let us through, not opened fire on us?

“They’ve got no ammunition. They haven’t been paid any wages. We give them cigarettes they can trade for food.”

I looked at the reflection of his face, in the driving mirror. His grave, slightly wry expression was unmoving. Like his companion, he was in his thirties, with a southern European complexion, dark hair, a carefully trimmed moustache. They were dressed in freshly laundered white shirts. A small crucifix and a medallion of Our Lady hung from gold chains around each of their necks.

They told me they were cigarette smugglers, into the Congo, from what is now Zambia. They drove me to the clinic at the copper mine at Kitwe, where I was x-rayed, injected and bound. They look me to the mining company’s rest-house, and introduced me to the English manager.

She said: “Morning tea is at half past five”

“I won’t be wanting any. I need to rest”

“I’m sorry”, she said. “If I make an exception for you, all the other gentlemen would ask for one, wouldn’t they? Last breakfast in the dining room at 6.30.”

She put a phone call trough for me, to Terrence Lancaster, my foreign editor in London. Terry said: “I’m very sorry to hear of your mishap. But there’s a riot in Cape Town, at the cigarette factory. If you don’t get there by tomorrow, Ill break your other shoulder.”

My rescuers bought me a large South African brandy at the bar, gave me 500 Rothmans, checked my wallet to see I had enough cash, then left me, delivered back to my native culture, never to see them again. It was the first time I had met Portuguese knowingly- and my first encounter, not only with their extraordinary reaching-out to a stranger in need, but with their blend of bravado, honour, ingenuity and poise.”

Martin Page in "The First Global Village- How Portugal Changed the World"


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