Great Islands of my Soul: Nosy Be, Ilha Grande
Nosy Be
means
Ilha Grande
means
Great Island
means
Grande Île.
Nosy Be is a heavenly little island North-Northwest of Ambanja, Madagascar — the Great Island.
Ilha Grande is a paradisiac small island to the East of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
I have been to both, and I feel like both. Mentally here and there at once, drenched in an emotional memory attempting to reconcile two worlds that coexist in my soul but never meet in my life. Both the sweet, painful longing to be home and the aching, unquenchable thirst to be away — the never-ending dream of an elsewhere always better than where I am.
Madagascar, I love you so deeply — for making me the girl I once was. Madagascar, I hate you sometimes — for not giving the freedom to the woman I can fully become. But this freedom I am seeking in you, I understand now, I can only carve it out of your laterite flesh, and birth it myself into the world. Conflicting realities can be false and true at once. And my life will always be about finding balance and peace in these two connected truths of mine.
The oceans between these Great Islands of my soul reminisce me of Khalil Gibran’s prose poetry on Marriage (1923):
“But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. […]
Let [love] rather be a moving sea between the shores of your soul[s].”
What a strange idea, would I have thought then — a soul marrying herself. And yet it is the only way one can ever truly espouse oneself.
Madagascar, a younger version of me wrote a story about you a couple of years ago. I will seek some courage into myself to publish it sometime soon.
On the unknown reasons leading me to write this piece in English — acculturation and the colonized mind’s need to please the Western gaze, probably. No one is fully immune to pervasive colonial power dynamics. Or else, maybe writing in a language that is not my own grants me freedom from alien judgment. I am not supposed to master this language —so for this reason, I will.
Petit Pays, je t’aime beaucoup.
Pour toujours.
Et cette lettre d’amour, je l’écris pour toi, et toi seule — Madagasikara.
Aí estou morrendo de saudade,
Mas nem sei mais de quê.
Ny zanakao — Sua filha — Your child — Ton enfant,
Karine
[Soundtrack: Petit Pays, Cesaria Evora, 1995]
Some photographs were taken in Nosy Be, others in Ilha Grande. Or the other way round? Either and both can be true.
