500 years later the Habibs are looking for a house in Portugal

Most of the nationality applications from Jewish descendants expelled from Portugal in the XV century come from Turkey. Half of Habib’s family, from Istanbul, is already Portuguese. They have all come on a journey to the country where; after all, they departed from. They walked through the streets of Lisbon, sparing no detail: “I wonder if they are like us?”

29/01/2017

He does not mean to show off, but Sargon Metin has a particular gift to be able to choose “the right present for the right person.” A present he brought over from Mongolia, for instance, led his friends to tears. But having given Ceyda Habib a Barcelos cockerel from Portugal the first time they went out together was a bit too much. Sargon would have never guessed that Ceyda would receive a telephone call from a cousin to reveal that; “after all, they had come from Portugal.” Thus all his family could try to become Portuguese. And come back.

When things got a lot more serious with his then girlfriend, Sargon, who is a businessman, wanted to take Ceyda on a ten-day journey through the country he had brought the porcelain cockerel from, and where he had worked for three years. Ceyda swears that “when I arrived in Lisbon, a tourist city like London and Pairs, I felt: that this was my home. Lisbon, I had such a strange feeling about the place.”

One has grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents, great-great-great grandparents, but we do not talk about great-great-great-great grandparents. How can we call a relative who lived over 500 years ago?

There is no way to call that relative whose name, as Ceyda found out through her cousin, was Jacob Ibn Habib, born in 1460 in the Castilian city of Zamora, but who, seeking safety for his family, moved to Lisbon after 1492. This was the time when the Catholic Kings Isabella I and Ferdinand II, the monarchs of Castile, Leon y Aragon, ordered: “that Jewish people of all ages living in our kingdom leave with their children, relatives of all ages, and that they dare not return to our land. If any Jew is found around these territories, he will be sentenced to death.”

Unlike the more humble ancestors, Jacob was the last prominent Chief Rabbi, thus he left traces of his life, which means that Ceyda and all her family could become Portuguese. “A Chief Rabbi! It would have never crossed my mind, never ever. I thought that my ancestors were traders,” admits Refik Habib, Ceyda’s father, who is a businessman in Istanbul and who had also been to Portugal by chance, for his cousin wedding, Arik, a Turk, with Rita, a Portuguese. “What’s the likelihood of a Turk falling in love with a Portuguese girl in India and getting married in Mafra?” asks Ceyda, adding up the coincidences that, to her, after finding out about Jacob, became meaningful. “Everything is leading us to Portugal.”

“We’re going to become Portuguese,” said Ceyda’s father to the family after finding out about the ancestor who had lived in Lisbon. This is now possible since, in a measure intended as historical reparation, from March 2015 the Portuguese Government grants citizenship to those who can prove that they are descendants of the XV century Sephardic Jews forced to leave the territories now known as Spain and Portugal (Sefarad was the name by which the Iberian Peninsula was known for, hence the term “Sephardic”). It has been possible to be granted citizenship in Spain for several years, but at the end of 2015 a new law was brought in.

Picturing a refugee camp at Alto Alentejo

However plausible the chance for Habib’s family of becoming Portuguese had become, attaining this was like a sort of legend, recalls Ceyda. After all, there were many Jewish people living in Turkey who had applied for Spanish citizen and had been waiting for seven to eight years.

It was said that the Portuguese law was as tricky as the Spanish one. Refik Habib remembers that rumours spread that the Portuguese authorities demanded videos to prove that Ladino was spoken (the language used by the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal), and even DNA tests. It took two months of family gathering and council in order to agree how they were going to prove their link to that distant relative.

We are all sitting for dinner at Ceyda’s father large flat in a private gated residential complex in Istanbul. At the living room table, surrounded by golden and white décor, I asked whether they could picture what their ancestors’ lives would be like. There isn’t any image of Jacob. Being a Chief Rabbi, did he have a beard? All left was his name and a book he penned, “EinYaakav- Ethical and Inspirational Teachings of the Talmud”, a classic of Jewish religious literature.

The truth is that, from the horror of the persecutions of the Jewish, the Holocaust is a lot more current and emotional that the time of the Inquisition, says Refik, as there are photos and films, but from 500 years ago, there is little left. “It’s a sad story, but it’s ancient.” So one has to picture what it must have been like.

Going back to this part of the Portuguese past, that of the Jewish people who fled from Spain, we have to go by what we know, by what is familiar to us at present, so let us think of a Syrian refugee camp like the ones we see on TV – and it could be one in Greece – and then let’s place it, for instance, in Alto Alentejo: one of the escape gateways for the Jewish from Spain. It wouldn’t be that different.

Susana Bastos Mateus, a historian from the Alberto Benveniste Department of Sephardic Studies at the College of Arts and Letters from the University of Lisbon, comes up with the comparison: there are stories about a giant camp set up at the gates of the Castelo de Vide town to shelter four to five thousand people who had become homeless, and who were waiting there for King Manuel I in order to enter Portugal, where, it was said that Jewish people could live peacefully.

Many ended up staying at the border area: Bragança, Elvas, Idanha-a-Nova. Others continued until the coast. It is not known what route the Habibs took that led them, probably by horse and cart, to Portugal. The fact is that the family settled in Lisbon. We do not know for sure where, but we can try to guess. Jacob and his family probably lived at the Baixa, where the Jewish neighbourhood was (an area occupying part of where Augusta Street stands today); and having become Chief Rabbi he probably lived close to the Synagogue (which was somewhere around the area where Madalena Street stands today).

Yet the calm did not last long. “The Jews have tail; Jewish men have periods as women do; Jews kill children; Jewish have a smell that has stayed with them from the death of Christ.” These were the sorts of popular medieval legends at the time, mentions Susana Bastos Mateus, many of which were capitalized on by Nazism. Another legend was that, after baptism, even the Jews’ skin improved due to the purification.

Banned even from Gil Vicente’s Barge of Hell

In 1496 King Manuel I ordered the expulsion of the Jews, aimed at purifying the country. This was one of the conditions set so that princess Isabella, the daughter of the Catholic kings, married the Portuguese monarch.

But the Portuguese King’s policy is fraught with ambiguity. On the one hand, he orders them to leave; but in practice, he prevents them from doing so. What he actually does is to officially extinguish the existence of Jews, thus artificially creating a wholly “Christian” society.

This course of actions started in 1497, a year after the supposed expulsion began, and it led to forced baptisms. It started with 4 to 14 year-old children. Apart from being baptised, some were taken away by force from their parents and given to Christian families. “Some parents, driven to despair, roamed the streets as if they were insane. Many would rather kill their own children with their own hands, throwing them into wells or rivers, then committing suicide right after,” points out Esther Mucznik, former Chairman of the Jewish Community in Lisbon, in her book “Grácia Nasi – The XVI Century Portuguese Jewish Woman Who Challenged her Own Destiny” (Esfera dos Llvros Publishing House).

After taking away the young, King Manuel I then ordered to take away from their families the children who were up to 25 years old. And it was probably in this group that another of Ceyda’s ancestors, Levi, Jacob’s son, was baptised; plucked out from his family at 17 in 1497. “A Chief Rabbi wasn’t going to be subjected to this,” remarks Sargon at the family dining table, picturing what the religious man must have felt then; escape as a matter of honour. In an American edition of the book “Ein Yaakov” (Rowman & Little­ field publishers), it is just mentioned that Jacob found the way to recover his son and then fled Portugal, but it does not say how.

Once the Jewish faith was officially wiped out, they also wanted to destroy the physical traces of their presence. The Synagogues were shut down; the one in Lisbon was destroyed; and the Jewish cemetery in Lisbon turned into pasture for animals; and the stones were used to build the Todos­os-Santos Hospital, as the historian points out. 

Despite the fact that after converting many Jews changed their names to Christian names and began attending Mass, it was known that they were converts (ex Jews) who were called new Christians. Thus the Portuguese society continued divided, and the “old Christians” looked mistrustfully at the “new Christians.”

This cultural mix of suspicion and intolerance led to the Lisbon massacre* on 19 April 1506, thus showing that “the integration had not worked out,” adds Susana Bastos Mateus. “Was there a massacre of Jews in Lisbon?” asks the  Habib family at the table. They did not know.

I read to the Habibs parts of the historical accounts of the days when the dead were thrown onto the bonfire where there were still people alive; of pregnant women flung through windows towards spears. And of such cruelty “that led to the execution of children and babies in cribs, grabbing them by their feet, ‘breaking’ them into pieces and smashing them against walls,” (Damião de Góis). On hearing this Ceyda shivers; perhaps because there are three children in the living room and two of them are babies: Kevin, her four-month-old baby, and her nephews, two-and-a-half-months-old Rayn and four-year-old Jamie, who had brought over some toys to the table.

All sources suggest that over a thousand people were killed, wrote Susana Bastos Mateus and Paulo Mendes Pinto in the book, “The Massacre of the Jews” (Alêtheia Editores).

Moris Levi, the Vice President of the Jewish Community in Turkey, isn’t keen on listening to the description of the Portuguese massacre, as there is nothing different about it. “Lisbon, Girona, Venice; as far as I know it was something mathematical. At that time, there was a massacre of Jews every three years”.

“Murdering Jews was normal during the XIV and the XV century,” wrote both historians in the same work, explaining that the Moors were then “the external enemy”, whilst “in the cities, between the walls, there was another internal enemy: the Jews.”  “That which was different and had to be banished.” And a sign of the times was the fact that even *Gil Vicente’s devil banned “the Jew” from entering his Barge of Hell”, as he was “a very bad person.”

Returning to our kingdoms freely

After the Lisbon massacre many Jews left Portugal, and on the following year a decree was passed by King Manuel I allowing them; in the end, to leave the country. This decision carries a message that could be read as a premonition: “And those who leave can return to our kingdom freely when they want, when it is suitable for them, or when they wish to do so; and in their comings and goings they will not be oppressed nor constrained.” Furthermore, “those who return afterwards” will be “helped and well treated.”

There were steady movements of people leaving Portugal during those years, but they surged with the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal in 1536.

At Largo de São Domingos Street in Lisbon there is, since 2008, a monument lest we not forget the 1506 massacre. By its side there are today two Guineans selling peanuts and okra (quiabos), a man begging for alms supporting himself with crutches, and a couple sipping that ginginha* that is sold there. In her book, “Identity and Memory in the Israeli Community in Lisbon” (2014), the author, Xénia Venusta de Carvalho, wrote that one of the Jews interviewed said he was never able to go to the Teatro Nacional (The National Theatre) “due to the Inquisition,” because it was right “there where they were burned.”

But about the Court of the Holy Office there isn’t any physical trace left in the city. Here, where Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II is staging “The Last Days of Humanity”, the Holy Office headquarters once were. And it was from here that, surrounded by a crowd of people, the processions of the punished set out, dressed in white and with their own faces painted among the flames to anticipate what was to come. “Yes, it was that dramatic,” remarks historian Susana Bastos Mateus. Painters were hired to replicate the burning faces of those sentenced in pieces of fabric that were hung like canvas in the central nave of the São Domingos church, which still preserves its name. Many of those pieces were restored so that they lasted longer.

Somewhere around here, by the river, along Chafariz D’el Rei, where today two tourists in love with rucksacks on their backs stroll by, and a traffic sign shows that stopping or parking isn’t allowed, the bonfires were lit. Even the ashes from the heretics’ bodies weren’t removed, as they were deemed “impure” and thus one couldn’t even touch them, recalls Susana Bastos Mateus; they were left until the wind and the tide carried them onto the Tejo river.

The bonfire was not the most common punishment, but the “abjurations”, declarations by the person admitting that he had erred and would like to be forgiven; these took place at Terreiro do Paço, with specific platforms for the officials.

The sentences or punishment meant that many Jews were sent to the “penitential neighbourhood” so that they left this place “re-educated.” This used to be where today Rua das Escolas Gerais bends along the 28 tourist tram in Alfama. They were prevented from having contact with the outer world. They were locked in cells and could not get out except for mass or to listen to prayers.

Underground escape routes

After the massacre, only the persecuted Jews who headed for Christian kingdoms were allowed by King Manuel I to leave Portugal, lest they became Jewish again in the land of the Moors.

Underground escape routes were created, and often small fishing boats carried Jewish to ships along the coast. The Jewish that were already settled then called other Jews, as it usually happens during migrations.

There were some who set out by ship through North Africa or through the North of Europe, via Antwerp, England, and then on to Flanders, Amsterdam, then afterwards on to Italy, states Susana Bastos Mateus.

Many left, but many stayed. Evidence of this? An study published in 2008 in “The American Journal of Human Genetics” showed that, on average, 35% of men in the South of Portugal and 25% in the North carry the genes of Sephardic Jews, which means that many mixed, thus surviving religious intolerance.

For many of those who wanted and managed to flee, the Ottoman Empire became one of the main destinations; news came from there that it was an oasis, a safe haven. There, unlike in Europe, Christians let us be Jewish freely, as long as we paid our taxes.

This fact accounts for Turkey being the country from where most of the Portuguese citizenship applications come, about 40% out of the total (2103 out of the total 5566 applications submitted from March 2016 to December last year). Then follows Israel and Brazil.

We do not know for certain the date when the Habib family fled Portugal, but the final destination would be Salonika, which it is now part of Greece, but back then it was part of the vast Ottoman Empire. Jacob, the ancestor, would die there at the age of 56, around 1516, before finishing the book that would immortalize him; this task was completed by his son Levi who also became a Rabbi and reached 65 years of age. The work made it possible for the family to be traced in time by its Turkish descendants many centuries later; and since then it has been published over a hundred times. These Habibs did no longer return to their home, either to Spain or Portugal. 

A key passed down from generation to generation

It has been said that some of the Sephardic Jews families kept the key to their original homes they were forced to abandon, hoping they could return to their land one day. These would be heavy keys that were handed down from generation to generation throughout five centuries.

The Portuguese-Brazilian writer Tatiana Salem Levy, whose family was from Castelo de Vide and during the XV fled to Smyrna*, in today’s Turkey, always heard her family talk about the key to their Portuguese home. They always said that it had gone missing during a fire, but that it did exist.

Karen Sarhon, the coordinator of the Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Culture Research Centre in Istanbul, deals with this subject with sarcasm. They came with that question from Spain: “Have you got the key to the house? The key to the house?!. It is merely a romantic myth, I am a realist.” She then said sarcastically: “Can anyone really think that someone who is being persecuted and unable to carry anything but a small suitcase will carry a big rusty key? It’s nonsense, and even more so the idea of a family having kept the key for over 520 years. I’m not a fool.”

At Castelo de Vide Synagogue’s museum, Esther Mucznik, the former Chairman of the Jewish Community in Lisbon was asked to talk about the keys. “Things that are real or mythical feed the imagination, turning the past into a paradise,” she tells us.

“The key is symbolic. It could be a key, a quilt, even if it does not exist physically any longer,” says Susana Bastos Mateus. One of the “forms of evidence” stipulated in the Portuguese law regarding granting citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews is precisely “the oral tradition of the family.” 

A language that epitomises home

More relevant than the keys is the story of the key and other stories, which indeed were handed down from generation to generation in Ladino. The greatest proof of belonging to this minority isn’t physical but intangible: it is called “Ladino.”

It is amazing that it has survived, says the researcher, who is in charge of one of the few newspapers in Ladino in the world, “Dawn”, a monthly supplement sold together with weekly Jewish newspaper Shalom. “They predicted the disappearance of Ladino, and it’s been already 40 years. It hasn’t happened yet,” she smiled. Because Ladino [learning] was interrupted in Turkey; it is a language that wasn’t taught at school, which was confined to the home, mainly to women. As learning Turkish was compulsory to the Jewish, in the first half of the XX century Ladino began to fade away.

“Ladino is still the mother tongue of Turkish Jewish over 70 to 80 years old; the generation who is about 60 years old still masters it; the generation in their 40s still understands it and can say a few things; but the younger generation doesn’t speak anything,” she points out. Yet it is still something that binds us together. “It embodies this cultural community.” It isn’t 58 year-old Karen Sarhon’s mother tongue but that of her grandfather, so she feels it is her duty to foster and safeguard this language without a country.

Ladino is a language that carries with it the map of the places through which these Jews passed during their endless exiles. “It mixes Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek and Turkish. It is a very humanistic language,” says Moris Levi, the Vice President of the Jewish Community in Turkey. “So to us, this language embodies psychologically the idea of a home.”

Most words come from Castilian Spanish (that is why it is also called Judeo-Spanish), but others are closer to the medieval language than the modern-day one. Moris Levi recalls that, visiting Spain a few years ago, on a business trip, he used the word “aldiké­ra”, and was surprised that no one recognised it. To him it meant “pocket”. Then he discovered that that word was still used in Ladino; however, it had disappeared in Spanish, which now used the word bolsillo. This was a word that, when the Jewish left what today is Spain, would be used to refer to a bag out of which seeds are taken, explains Levi. It was a word that came directly from Spain, from the Middle Ages, and which no one recognised in XXI century Spain. In the Ladino-Turkish dictionary, edited by Karen Sarhon, words have, whenever possible, their origin explained. Ladino has Portuguese, but less than Turkish, where they have lived for five centuries, but it does have some Portuguese. Sephardic Jews in Turkey keep on using the Portuguese word “ainda” (yet, still) instead of the Spanish term “aún” (yet, still), and “agora” (now) instead of “ahora”. There are Portuguese words which survived in present-day Ladino, albeit with the spelling altered, such as “izolado”, “risko”, “enkorajar“, “desbafar” (desabafar), “mobilizar”, “reskaldo”. Being able to speak in Ladino is one of the “forms of proof” required by the Portuguese law.

Journey through Portuguese lands  

Since September last year Ceyda Habib, her father and her brother-in-law, are officially Portuguese. There are two members of the Habib family waiting to be granted citizenship, her mother and her sister Deniz. The process involved, the legal basis, is the same: it is Jacob; it is the Ladino language.

Whilst waiting so that the whole family becomes Portuguese, they planned a trip last year, a journey to the country where; after all, they came from. Even their female dog Mia, and Ceyda makes sure that she too appears in the picture.

Ceyda recalls how, during those Portuguese days, the whole family walked through the streets of Lisbon and Porto looking at people, staring at the faces of the Portuguese. “I wonder if we are similar to them? I wonder if they are like us?

She says that she realised that they did, that they came from there. “There is a way to talk and to behave, even a way to walk, to live, which is different to that of other European countries,” such as England and France, for instance. 

Ceyda’s husband, Sargon Metin, has family in Strasbourg; and when they go to visit them in the French city, Ceyda says that she feels that “it is a different world. It is so quiet that we can even hear our footsteps; people talk so quietly.” It isn’t like in Portugal, “where you can hear people talking. Turkish people talk in a loud way too. I want to feel the energy.” This is because, as a matter of fact, they feel more Turkish than Jewish, explains Ceyda, so they feel more at home in Portugal than being with Jewish people in France, “who are different to us.” “The Portuguese are similar to the Turkish, we’re both Mediterranean people.” Portugal has more to do with them than even Israel, where she says she felt a lot more like a foreigner as she does not speak Hebrew. “When you speak in Ladino to a Spaniard, they say that it isn’t Spanish; when you speak in Ladino to a Portuguese, they say that it isn’t Portuguese.” Not being one thing or the other, led them to feel more at home in Portugal.

And Ceyda, who doesn’t speak Ladino that well, remembers what happened to her mother in Lisbon. The whole family was at the Colombo shopping centre, on the second floor, the restaurant area, and each family member wanted to satisfy their appetite. As Sargon had learned Portuguese during his previous stay, he had to accompany each diner to the restaurant of his choice, translate what he wanted to order and then wait until it was prepared. Ceyda and him opted for a pasta dish, her father chose meat at a rodízio restaurant, and her sister ordered chicken.

”My mother-in-law was the last one; she was hungry and angry, tired of waiting for her guide,” recalls Sargon. She doesn’t speak English but French, and not many people could realise that she was there, so she decided to go by herself and order in Ladino. It would have been a piece of quiche, he cannot remember right. What he does remember though is that they understood her, and how important this was. 

“She came back very happy with her tray”, remembers her daughter. She had managed to make herself understood in Ladino. “It was a good thing that happened to me, having been understood,” says her mother Sevim. It was a sign that something, despite so many centuries, brought them closer together.

After that day Sevim Habib began talking to people in the street. “In Portugal, my mother was happy.”  She then started saying to the family: “I can go by myself,” recalls the couple, Ceyda and Sargon.

After Sargon began frequenting the house and listening to their grandmother talk to the children, he rightly told them: “but you’re speaking in Portuguese,” and they replied: “No, we are speaking in Ladino.”

“Fitting in won’t be that hard,” concluded Ceyda. The fact is they have already made up their minds, so after the family visit to meet their relatives, Sargon and her started looking for a house in Portugal. The rest of the family is doing the same; her parents, Ceyda’s sister and her brother-in-law. During dinner many of the questions asked are about house prices, and they also sought advice about the best areas to live in Lisbon.   

To be called “Miguel”

Turkey has undergone many changes since their first Valentine’s Day dinner when Sargon gave Ceyda the Barcelos cockerel. They got married; and four months ago they had a baby, a baby born in a day of change in Turkey. 

The days when your children are born are always special days, and they stay with you as events that are repeated time and time again in the family. Yet the day Kevin came into the world wasn’t just unique because he was born then.

Ceyda and Sargon describe that incident in an anecdotal tone of voice, now that it is all over. Then Ceyda’s mother lay by the bedside of her daughter in labour, trying to calm her down in an odd way, they say. “Calm down, it is not an earthquake.” The hospital was shaking.

“It wasn’t an earthquake but fighter jets and bombs flying over the hospital and making its windows shake,” recalls Sargon. It was the 15 June 2016, the day of the coup d’état.  

They were unsure about what was happening; they just rushed to hospital. At the time when the planned trouble-free Caesarean section was supposed to take place at Acibadem hospital, the operating theatre was filled with the injured from the coup. Kevin was born on 16 June at 16:45 hours.

The atmosphere is different since then, not just because they say so, the press covers it day by day: “Turkey has ordered the arrest of 100 soldiers due to their link with the coup plotters; 170 newspapers, magazines and TV stations are shut down, 125 journalists imprisoned; Turkey shuts down NGO and asks for life imprisonment for writers; Turkey is investigating ten thousand people for terrorist activities; after the failed coup, the Government has already suspended, dismissed and arrested 35 thousand people from the army, the police and the justice system.”

Ceyda and Sargon decided to name their son Kevin, but also Michael. The second name was added thinking about Portugal, so that one day he could be called “Miguel”.

“I want Kevin to grow up in the two worlds, that is my wish. We’re going to leave everything as it is in Turkey, but we want to have a house in Portugal. The idea is to spend half the time in Portugal, and the other half in Turkey. We go there, then we come back.”

Sargon and Ceyda are pioneers in this outbound journey that is also a return journey. “I am like a bridge for them,” says Ceyda, who meanwhile has become the representative of the Porto Jewish Community in Turkey, one of the bodies in Portugal that approves the qualified applicants to proceed with the process that leads to being granted citizenship.

What the law requires     

“What’s Portugal like? What’s life like there? What’s their economy like? Insurance? Schools?” are some of the questions the couple are asked by those waiting to become Portuguese. In the list of Turkish Jewish families waiting to become Portuguese there are the Faro, the Franco, the Karmona, the Moreno, the Casado, the Pinhas, the Ventura, the Sarda, Gomel! (from Gomes?), the Ferara (from Ferreira?). The Sephardic Jewish community in Turkey is made up of about 16.5000, and 2103, about 13%, have submitted applications to try to become Portuguese (data provided by the Portuguese Ministry of Justice).

When someone in Turkey has different surnames that do not sound like Turkish, and he is asked where he came from, the swift reply is always: “My ancestors came from Spain.” If many Sephardic Jews did not know the difference between Spain and Portugal, the two new laws will help them find out.

Up until December last year, Portugal has granted Portuguese citizenship to 431 Sephardic Jews, and about 63% are Turkish; Spain has only granted it to three people, sums up Yoram Zara, a Turkish origin lawyer living in Israel who deals with Turkish nationals’ applications.

Five hundred years later, the Portuguese law will enable Sephardic Jews in Turkey to discover that Portugal is a generous country when it comes to admitting its historic error, remarks lawyer Yoram Zara. “The Portuguese law is more reasonable.”

Spain had opened the legal door to granting citizenship some years ago, by Royal Decree, but it only granted in 2015, at one go, citizenship to 4522 people. But the new Spanish law requires doing a knowledge test on language and culture, which means that the applicant has to appear before a notary in Spain. Therefore, the main applicants come from countries like Argentina and Venezuela, but not from Turkey.

The Spanish law has been met with criticism. Some Turkish Jews, who prefer not to be identified, say that it is unfair that a country that expelled them 500 years ago is now demanding knowledge of a culture they do not know about, and should not be expected to know about. The multiple-choice test has questions such as: Who is the current King of Spain? What is Penélope Cruz profession? Which is Spain’s main export? Being able to speak Portuguese isn’t a requirement of the Portuguese law, nor is it having knowledge about the culture here; what is required is evidence of your past ancestry.

Thus they became keen on Portugal. “There will be hundreds of Turkish Jews buying houses and properties in Portugal, and thinking about setting up their companies here,” noted Yoram Zara.

Under this new law Yoram Zara became a Portuguese citizen in December last year. He agrees with a recent article in the Turkish press that shows that Istanbul is similar to Lisbon: “Both sit on hills, both have rivers, both have a bridge linking the two river banks, there are roasted chestnuts for sale in the street during the cold weather, the pavement is made up of small stones.” “Lisbon is a bit like the East,” he observes.

Yet whether you want to become Portuguese or not depends on your age and your needs. There are different reasons between the elders and the youth. Some do not need it any longer, and some may still need it.  

The roots of the Albukrek

Viktor always knew that his Albukrek came from some Albuquerques who had come from Portugal. Through centuries its spelling changed, thus the “que” became a “k”, as the Turkish language lacks this syllable. He always heard about his pretty similar and pretty famous namesake, Afonso de Albuquerque, the Viceroy of India. The family used to joke, father to son, “our ‘ancestor’ had so much land, yet he left us none.”

When his son, an environmental engineer living in Canada, visited Portugal four years ago, every time he came across a sign with the family surname written on it in the old-fashioned way, he would send photographs. He joked about the sign: “Another one of our roads.” 

The family’s Portuguese origin was like a folk tale, and it had no impact on their lives; even when, recently, his friends started asking Viktor Albukrek: “Why don’t you try ringing the Portuguese bell? Take advantage of this opportunity.” “What opportunity?”, he replies.

Viktor Albukrek, 85-years-old, points at the wall by an old rose-coloured sofa decorated with a white lace napperon displayed over it – it is painted grey and it is fading. He thought it might be a good idea to give it a new coat of paint, but his wife Rahel insisted it would be better leaving it as it is. It is ‘too late’ for renovations. “We haven’t got any strength left to paint the walls or move home; I am not thinking about moving from this country,” says Viktor. In the unlikely event of coming back to Portugal one day, he will do what he has always done: “Apply for a visa.”

The time for long journeys has ended for us, says Viktor, who keeps in an ashtray in the living room boxes of matches from all over the world, from the Crown Princess in Kuala Lumpur, Le Meridien in Melbourne, the International Hotel in Nairobi, or  Palacio de Madrid.

“Our roots are here,” says Viktor. His wife, Rahel Albukrek, was ill. She used to be, like him, a tour guide, but due to the stroke she had lost her ability to speak French, Spanish, English and Ladino. Only Turkish stayed.”

Yet like most people, Viktor Albukrek is curious about something he slightly mistrusts, as someone who has got used to thinking that there must be some explanation about such generosity. “Why did Portugal pass this law?” “Was there pressure from Israel?” I answered that there was a petition and then the parties in Parliament unanimously approved it.

Regardless of the reasons, Viktor says that “hearing they’re opening the doors for Jews to go back, to return, fills one with joy.” To the oldest, its significance is merely symbolic,” he adds. It is like putting an end to an era.

That elderly lady had no intention whatsoever of becoming Portuguese. She was ill with cancer, eighty-two years old; and she arrived together with her husband David and a nurse to the Castelo de Vide village in Alentejo. The former president of the Town Council, Carolino Tapadejo, himself of Jewish descent from Jews expelled from Toledo, realised that this would be the last journey she would ever undertake. He saw her arrive on 31 May in 2015.

“She wanted to say good-bye to her “homeland”, a “homeland where she had never been.” She carried with her an object she wanted “to give back”, recalls the former mayor. It was a black rusty key that would open the door to the family’s Portuguese house.

Esther Cohen, the lady whose family had fled Portugal during the XV century to what it is now Turkey, said that it had been handed down from generation to generation, by women. In addition to the key, she brought along the names of neighbours from 500 years ago. The lady knew that on Rua da Fonte, whose name she still knew, her long gone family used to live together with “a Ana, a Benta, a Arrenega, a Tristão and a Penhasco”, recalls Carolino Tapadejo, who had thoughtfully written down all those names.

The former mayor had always heard about the story of the key, yet he never thought that it existed. “Try picturing what that thrilling moment was like, upon seeing this lady crying; she was crying and so was I, her husband and the nurse, placing in my hands this amazing relic, together with a smaller key, no doubt that of a wardrobe.” She had no children to leave it with, so she was giving it back to the Alentejo village.

Carolino Tapadejo took hold of her and led her to the road that has kept its name for over 500 years, the one that leads from the synagogue (now a museum) to Fonte da Vila (the village fountain). The road is located on the North side of the village, where the Jewish Quarter used to be, as this was the gloomier, wetter and steeper side. He tried the key in, door after door. “What are you doing here?” asked the locals who knew him well, as his parents-in-law live in that road. “I’m trying to find out whether the key slots in.” They did not mind he had tried it in fourteen locks. None opened. The houses are in the same place; the wooden doors will have decayed with time. “I would have liked so much that a door had opened.”

Every time Carolino Tapadejo leads guided tours to the gloomier side of Castelo de Vide, Esther Cohen’s story is the latest highlight. The key is just waiting for a display cabinet, just for itself, at the synagogue museum.

Opportunities for children

Although to the old the law is merely symbolic, to the young a Portuguese passport can still change lives.

We are in the middle of the interview with Karen Sarhon, at the Shalom newspaper’s premises, when Gila Barokaa Erbes, a library employee approaches us: “Where are you from? From Portugal? Are you Portuguese from Portugal?”. I said we were. And she jokes: “it’s as if it were the coming of the Messiah.” She said she needed a lot of help from us. She does not have the funds to pay for a lawyer and a translator, so she is trying to do all the application process by herself. She is doing it herself with Google Translator, although she is well aware it has flaws, but that is what she’s got. “Will they understand this?”, she shows me a document written in Portuguese which, at the very least, one can say that it has errors.

In the lady’s brown handbag, which she carries everywhere she goes, there are four letters from198 Rua Rodrigo da Fonseca, Lisbon, from the Institute of Registry and Notary Services. Her husband’s family are the descendants of a   Barrocas family that time changed into Barokaa.

Gila is 56-years old and has two children; one is autistic. It is more for her healthy child that she is doing everything to become Portuguese. Holding a European passport is like an open door for opportunities. It’s Schengen. But it seems like a never-ending process. I want this to end.”

“Many Turkish Jews have their children studying abroad, in the United States, in Israel, but they end up having to go back since the Turkish passport does not help that much when it comes to moving around freely,” points out Karen Sarhon.

Being Spanish or Portuguese means being able to move around freely, being able to stay without having to account for it, without having to apply for a visa. It means being able to do your masters in Spain, as Karen Sarhon’s daughter has been thinking since her mum became Spanish. “The law is important especially for our children,” stresses the researcher. And that is all they say. Despite the questions, these are like talks that have broken down.

“We don’t know whether you can help us become Portuguese or not…” (Gila Barokaa Erbes); “You never know what tomorrow may bring…” (Refik Habib) “You never know what the future holds.” (Ceyda Habib Metin).

These are clichés that could be uttered by any person in any country, at a café or on the bus, yet when spoken by Jewish people living today in Turkey they acquire a new dimension. These are phrases left unfinished which end up becoming like the full stops. These are talks filled with missing words they themselves cannot fill out.

P2 was in Istanbul during the week when the ruling party, The Justice and Development Party (AKP), submitted a bill aimed at suspending the convictions against those charged with indecent assault to minors as long as the offender married the victim. It ended up being withdrawn.

On the Cosmopolitan Istiklal Avenue, there is a discreet stand where signatures are collected against this bill, and when someone approaches and asks what this is about, he is looked at with apprehension. “It’s against the children’s law,” goes the laconic reply.

During talks to Sephardic Jews, they all shun questions about the political situation in Turkey; and the name of the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is never uttered; it is even avoided.

“There is a sense of concern,” says lawyer Yoram Zara, who can talk freely because he lives in Israel. “Turkey is steadily becoming less of a democracy, increasingly less secular. Jewish people are naturally for secularism, for freedom of expression, thus they do not identify with the Islamic ruling party.”

What we are witnessing is the “islamisation of society” Some feel that the sound from the Mosque’s loudspeakers, where calls are made for the five prayers of the day, is now higher. “They also feel that, after the terrorist attacks, Turkey is a lot more unstable,” adds Zara. Every reason to be ready.

Neve Salom is the largest synagogue in Istanbul, yet there is no sign pointing to where it is. The same goes for the Shalom newspaper at number 12 Istanbul where even in the hall of the building you cannot find any sign showing we are in the right place. Both places are tucked away. This is a community that is intentionally discreet. “My father always says, you’re Jewish, be careful, don’t talk loud, be discreet,” says Gila.

The synagogue and the newspaper are also two protected spaces. There is a security man at the Neve Salom’s door; then you go through a metal detector until a black armoured door, thick as a large wall, opens; and the passport is kept at the entrance. At the Shalom building the doorkeeper is the one who confirms that we are in the right place before opening our bags and checking them through with a metal detector, telling us we should go up to the third floor where the staircase is blocked by a grey fence. You then ring another bell and someone opens the door. And only inside there, on the wall, and with each and every letter, the Jewish newspaper logo is written.

Discreetly Jewish    

Experience has shown them that it is far safer being Jewish behind doors. It isn’t fear of persecution. In 1986, 22 people praying at Neve Salom were killed by bombs allegedly by Hamas; in 2003, two trucks bomb targeted roads where the Neve Salom and the Bet Israel synagogues are located, 23 people died and about 600 hundred were injured, attacks supposedly carried out by AI-Qaeda.

One thing is the political climate, and another the social climate. And there isn’t any better way to measure the levels of intolerance, of Anti-Semitism, says Gabay, than travelling by taxi and listening to the drivers, and of course, social media. And there, indeed, he notices a rise of conspiracy theories involving Israel and the Jewish people in general, a minority used to being the scapegoat. As a columnist, he has already advocated for the criminalisation of Anti-Semitic hate speeches, with the right to impose fines, and an education system that does not portray the Jewish as “ others.” After all, we’ve been living here since the Inquisition. I love Istanbul, my roots are here.”

There are some neighbourhoods in Istanbul where he first tries to find out whether it is safe for him to say his name is Mois, a name that comes from Moses – “I got a very Jewish name, I have to be careful,” so in those places where he doesn’t feel at ease, Mois is Musa.

Adding to the political climate the social climate, Esther Mucznik believes there is “a fear that became almost visceral, instinctual. Jews always fear that, anywhere in the world, they may have to leave.” Thinking about this possibility became something “atavistic.”

“Every Jew has within himself this sort of distress, of being expelled; I don’t know whether the word is ‘fear’ or ‘ghost’. They were expelled many times, and from many places,” says Tatiana Salem Levy. Since their expulsion from Egypt. The Inquisition. The Holocaust. It defines the identity of a people. Being Jewish also means thinking about being expelled.”

Being Jewish is also living in disquiet, like an existential fear, says Karen Sarhon. “We’re the wandering people, never accepted, never with a home. It’s part of our heritage: we’re those who can be sent away at any moment.’

That’s why having a Portuguese or a Spanish passport is, to many of them, a sort of insurance, a plan B. “You never know,” says Michael Rothwell, chairman of the Jewish Community in Porto, “if the country they were expelled from in the XV century can be the same that saves them in the XXI century.” To Gila Erbes Barokaa, “the Portuguese law can be the key.”

“Oh Lord, I hope that you can forgive me. I want a new life” – The Murder of Nercy

The president’s war on drug

In June 2016, 71-year-old Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated as the President of the Philippines. Among his election pledges were: “Forget legislation on human rights. You drug dealers, pistol holders and layabouts have better disappear– because  I will kill you. I will dump all your bodies into Manila Bay and fatten up all the fish with you”. 

Like in a national tv speech, when he said to the people: “Feel free to call us or the police or do it yourself, if you have a gun. You have my support.”

He has kept his election pledge. Since then over 7,000 people have been killed. On 24 April 2017, a Philippine lawyer complained about Duterte to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. He accused the president of crimes against humanity.

Indblik Sunday 7 May 2017

Ten days before the funeral 

Her name is Nercy Galicio. She was born on 11 July 2000. Now she is dead.

It is Thursday night on 20 April. Nercy must be brought to the mortuary, so that the family can subsequently bring her home in an open coffin.

Her 22-year-old sister, Grace Galicio comes along during the transport of the deceased. Almost all her life she has slept on the floor with her younger sister Nercy by her side.

Right up until last Monday, when the sisters woke up next to each other for the last time on the chipboard that Nercy Galicio had covered with wallpaper of the cartoon figure Hello Kitty.

Grace Galicio explains that she called Nercy when her younger sister did not arrive home Tuesday night, and that the police replied the call and said that the owner of the phone was dead. Murdered by two shots in the head and one in the right side off her torso.

She was found in a roadside lying on her right side with her long black hair down before her face and a hand extended.

***

Grace Galicio has put her feet in Nercy’s Hello Kitty flip-flops when she walks down an alley in the dark. Down to a gate. Behind it her sister is loaded onto the hearse. A pack of dogs is sneaking around in the shadows. They bark. The sister holds her hands up before her mouth. Cries almost soundlessly with eyes open.

The hearse drives slowly out of the gate. Up across a small bridge, past a lake with fish farming and through Manila to reach the mortuary.

”Eusebio 24 hours” is the text on the luminescent sign in front of the shop. As if the mortuary was a corner shop.

The undertaker Eusebio opens the door. He is dressed in a white singlet. Two men are carrying Nercy Galicio from the garage and in behind a green curtain in a room painted blue. They lay her on a couch under a fluorescent lamp. It i around 28 degrees hot. The room is not cooled down. She has a blanket over her body. The face is uncovered. The left side of her forehead has fallen slightly inward, but otherwise you cannot see that she has been shot. She looks like a wax doll after the shot wounds have been covered by a brown cream, and the mouth by lipstick. An employee with Eusebio puts Hello Kitty-socks on her. The sister Grace Galicio decided that. Her own toe nails have been varnished with Hello Kitty figures. It was something the two of them had together. She smiles, when she mentions it. The smile exposes her dental braces. Ordinarily, she works at a dentist’s. The sister shows a photo on the phone of Nercy with their little niece. Nercy was beautiful. Had a childish expression. She kept a diary. The last time Nercy wrote in her diary was the day before she disappeared.

***

In the police report the murder of Nercy Galicio is dated to around 23.10 on 18 April 2017. Just like in so many other murder cases in the Philippines the murderer is unknown. At best, the perpetrator is recorded as a masked man on a motorbike. A 14-year-old girl is an example of this. Her name is Jezell Mallari. According to the police report she was shot dead the day after Nercy Galicio by two men on a motorbike.

In June, the newly elected Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte declared war on narcotics. He announced to kill drug addicts and drug dealers. In a speech on 4 June he said, “if you know someone who is a drug addict, just kill them”.

Since then, more than 7,600 people have been killed, according to Philippine police’s own data. 2,555 of them in police actions. According to Amnesty International the rest was probably killed by assassins and people who take the law into their own hands. In August Duterte stated: I don’t care about human rights, believe me”.

And during a press conference in September 2016, the president said: “Hitler massacred three million Jews to death. There are three million drug addicts. I would be pleased to kill them all. If Germany had Hitler, so do the Philippines…” whereupon he pointed at himself.

Nine days before the funeral 

Nercy Galicio has been brought home to her own neighbourhood. She lies in a beige dress embroidered with pearls behind the coffin glass.
The coffin stands on a carpet in the middle of the slum of Manila, in the neighbourhood of Navotas to be exact.

It is covered by a home-made blind in pink Hello Kitty fabric, of course, and her entire white coffin is covered by stickers with the cartoon figure.
On the coffin lid the family has placed some of her favourite things: oranges, a chocolate drink, and the framed diploma from the bible school Born Again that she received when she had completed a course.

It was handed out to her the day before her disappearance. Grace Galicio explains that Nercy held the diploma up in front of her smiling her smile and said: “See, I did it. This is what you dreamt of on my behalf, right?”

The local church has paid for her autopsy. It cost around DKK 2,000. The family does not have that money. Her mother and father work with a little street cleaning. The mother explains that she earns DKK 250 a month.

Nercy Galicio is 1 out of 10 siblings. The family are believers in a country where the Catholic Church does not believe in contraception.

Around Nercy’s coffin about 50 people are seated on plastic chairs listening to Nercy’s favourite song from a loudspeaker, and a hip hop song. The young people are singing to her coffin with their necks craned: “Thank you and forgive me”.

When she is not serving bacon chips, Grace stands silent amidst the noise near a house wall looking at the coffin. She has a creased terry cloth in her hand. A few times she wipes it swiftly past her eyes.

One of the friends explains that Nercy had got a boyfriend, no one knew him, and that… Then the friend is interrupted to judge from the attitude by the leader of the group of girls. She sends a look that needs no translation. Shut up, the look means.

There are things here, which are not said…

***

Eusebio must open the gate to his mortuary again tonight. In the middle of Nercy’s ceremony a man is killed in the neighbourhood.

He lies on his back, half on the pavement, half on the heavily trafficked road. The feet are naked, jutting out into the road. His white blouse is coloured red by bloody stripes. Behind the main is dark night and barbed wire.

A skinny white cat comes shooting from the dark. It jumps over the man’s arm and sniffs at his face.

The police have put a yellow plastic cord around the area, their cars are blinking blue and red. The men from Crime Laboratory are taking pictures of the body from several angles.

A little girl, around four years old, is sitting quietly in the central reserve, her elbows resting on her knees and her hands under the cheek. Like approximately 50 other spectators she is observing the work of the police.

The little girl watches when one of the policemen – wearing gloves, but otherwise just in a short-sleeved police uniform – takes a firm grip of the body’s shoulder and turns it onto the side in a tough pull after which he empties the pockets. The police are looking for ID.

The policeman places himself standing astride on the man and pulls his trousers down over his hips exposing his read underpants. It happens in the middle of the street without any sealing off against gazes from passers-by.

A policeman takes a grip of the man’s armpits, and another one in his legs, and they swing him over into a black body bag and into a car.

The whole episode takes 10-15 minutes. Then it is over. The police remove the yellow plastic band. They drive off. No further investigation of the crime scene.

Only a puddle of blood remains on the pavement. A woman arrives to Eusebio’s mortuary driving a motor bike, she is a maternal aunt of the killed man. She says that he was 30 years old, was last seen alive five hours ago, and named Alvin Valladares. He is laid on the same couch behind the green curtain where Nercy Galicio lay 12 hours earlier.

The aunt’s friend ushers her gently forward towards the curtain, she must identify Alvin Valladares. She walks lightly stooped in behind the fabric. Gasps when she sees him. He was shot directly through his left hand. A man at the mortuary says that Alvin Valladares probably held his hand up in front of his face to protect himself.

The aunt says to a local reporter that Alvin Valladares was studying to become a craftsman and would finish his education next week, and that she believed that he was out of his earlier problems with drugs. Reportedly the police found methamphetamine in his pockets. Whether it was planted by someone, is not known.

Out on the other side of the fabric curtain in the garage lies a living person in a bunk bed. The wall is decorated by a pair of naked breasts in a pin-up calendar. Here, the living and the dead sleep together.

Six days before the funeral 

The atmosphere has changed around Nercy’s coffin at one o’clock PM. A little girl, around eight years old, is selling cigarettes individually from a plastic cup.

The street is also a home at night. There are too many children for too few houses. A baby is lying on a piece of cardboard, while grown woman is resting next to it and fanning the warmth away.

Little boys play men. An about 11-year-old boy is swinging on his plastic chair, and with a sprawled calmness and a firm wrinkle on his forehead he scratches his head with the cigarette in his hand. Takes a slow drag.

Booze has come on the table. Some youngsters play cards. They gamble. That is prohibited. But at funeral ceremonies nobody clamps down on a violation of the rules. They have been here since eight this morning, and it continues like that for a week. Those days neighbours can donate money for the upcoming funeral.

Her corpse will lie on display here in Navotas, out to the river, where the houses at best are small sheds. At worst, they are a mixture between torn parasols, plates of corrugated sheet, concrete, and car doors.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that Duterte’s war on drugs is not a war on narcotics, but a war on the poor. The killings mainly take place in impoverished areas, where the big instigators walk free.

Based on 110 interviews, Amnesty International in January 2017 assessed that the national police in some instances pay assassins to kill.

In Amnesty International’s 66-page long report to persons explain for instance that they have taken orders from the police and that they get around USD 100 per kill.

NGO’s have pointed out that the President’s war on drugs discourage drug addicts from seeking rehabilitation. They are afraid that their name may come on the police watch lists of drug addicts and that the lists have the same effect as the Star of David on the Jews’ clothes had during World War II.

President Duterte is a product of democracy. He is elected by the people and still has popular support. For instance, from street traders Madjeeb Madid and Allan Cauvitongan, they sell Viagra and copy watches in the street in Manilla’s red-light district, respectively, and they approve the President’s project.

Allan Cauvitongan says this, while he pretends to cut his throat with his finger:

“Before, drug addicts were stumbling about everywhere in the street. It was dangerous. Now, they are gone. It has become safe again. I say: Stop human rights!”

Human rights organisations say: Don’t stop human rights, the President evades the underlying problem which leads to excessive drug abuse and drug dealing: that 12 million Philippines are living in extreme poverty. This means that they cannot afford three meals a day.  When you lack money, you find your way. One of the possible ways can be to deal in drugs.

 Three days before the funeral

Grace Galicio is serving cordial next to Nercy’s coffin. Around her the neighbours are playing bingo. Instead of tokens they use small pasta arcs. The ceremony has lasted five days by now, the flies have begun swarming around tables and coffin.

Grace wants to show where she and Nercy slept. She turns down an approximately one-and-a-half metre wide alley. In each side, there are small houses and a swarm of children. Paper, scissors, stone and basketball also works in the Philippines.

The entrance door to the family’s home is a half metre wide gate. You must bend to get to the only room in the shed – a small bamboo bunk surrounded by crowing cocks and hen in cages and piles of clothes and things. The bamboo bunk stands directly on the wet soil. A child is lying on it sleeping with a baby bottle in its mouth. There is a small TV set in the shed, no windows.

From here, Grace climbs up two fragile ladders, up on the bed loft below the ceiling, where she and her sister used to sleep.

Nercy lay outermost right up against the poster that represents Jesus at the last supper.

They have made their own small Hello Kitty universe up here on the bed loft with Hello Kitty blankets and curtain. And dresses on hangers and a Hello Kitty musical box, Grace winds it up and holds it out between her palms.

Among Nercy’s hairbands lies her diary. Grace mentions again that Nercy wrote in the diary the day before she disappeared. She wrote: Oh Lord, I hope that you can forgive me. I want a new life, I no longer want this type of life. It has been very hard (…) I open myself to you with all my heart. I hope that you can forgive me and my sins. I hope that you will give me a chance to start over”.

The family denies that Nercy was taking drugs. Their eyes lower when the talk falls on her boyfriend and his possible relation to drugs. Mourners don’t ask many questions to the police. This is a place where one must fear the police. During the bingo play at Nercy’s coffin, the photographer gets wind of something mystical under way at Police Station 1.  When he arrives, the following scene takes place:

In the official prison cells 70 people are crammed together in rooms intended for 40 people. But there is also another type of cell.

The Commission on Human Rights, an institution established by another Philippine President in 1986 has been at the police station and revealed that what looked like a bookcase in the police office is in fact a door to a secret prison cell of approx. three-square metre. Inside the cell 12 living people are crammed together. The room has no windows, no electric light.

None of them are charged with a crime. They tell The Commission on Human Rights that the police have arrested them and they demand money of their families for a release. The police seemingly earn money on keeping people captured in a secret room. The photographer was there. He saw it. He photographed the room.

But if he had not been there, who would have believed a person who told that he had been caught by corrupt policemen for no reason and had been thrown into a concealed cell behind a door designed as a bookcase, whereupon the police demanded money to let them out again?
The following day, President Durterte explained in local media that he would look into the case. The secretly imprisoned people are referred to in the article as suspect drug abusers. It is in this society that Nercy’s family must have faith that Nercy’s right killer is arrested and is put on trial.

The funeral

The time is 13.45, and it is time to say farewell. Grace has had pink T-shirts printed for the immediate family: “We love you and we will miss you” is printed on the T-shirts under a picture of Nercy.

Her coffin is loaded onto a car at 14.40.

Today, the family’s mourning is load. Behind the family walks a procession of crying friends and neighbours. In front of them drives a local Hello Kitty moped club that wants to honour Nercy by acting as a caravan. They do this with Hello Kitty insignia and decorated mopeds.

They move like this for an hour and a half, until her coffin is pushed into the grave. She will be lying in the lowest storey in a concrete complex with six storeys of coffins. Each coffin has its narrow concrete chamber. Nercy Galicio was liquidated. We don’t know by whom, and we don’t know why the murder was committed in a display of power with not only one, but three shots.

Maybe it is not considered important at all. Because she is dead in a country in which the President has given all people a license to kill. 

‘I hope that you will give me a chance to make a fresh start.’

Nercy Galicio – in her diary