A Facebook Album
“Do not forget the plum, blooming in the thicket.” Basho
On my way
“In a photo album, you don’t have to show every detail of your life, Daddy,” my eldest daughter explained. “Just the highlights.”
I’d met her recently in Manhattan, when I was up visiting from D.C., on the first leg of my journey after retiring from The Agency, and she told me that I needed to edit my facebook photos more thoroughly before uploading them as albums. Then she smiled and added, as if to punctuate that statement: “If I were you, I’d also try to have a specific purpose for showing any album.”
Well there ya go, I thought. Pointed advice from a girl who, though half Japanese, certainly had learned the art of directness. (I knew living alone in the Big Apple would be an education for her.) And in light of my recent success story, in particular in the line of duty with The Agency, I wondered silently if she might have had anything to add about the value of patient, methodical and well-focused retribution pursued with a clear purpose.
Of course, the idea of choosing the highlights amongst digital photos (in short, editing) was something I could easily relate to, from a number of angles. For starters, who on facebook hasn’t winced at an album of 60 similar “cam-whoring photos” (to use my daughter’s phrasing) of a drinking party or a walk along a beach at sunset?
Secondly, after an entire career of purposeful analysis, not just of photos, of course, but of the small details of entire lives, it seemed to me that perhaps the only one around me with whom I hadn’t practiced much serious analysis was myself.
Of course, because of the nature of my work, I had been by necessity more than discreet throughout much of my life --- in a very real sense, I’d lived parallel lives, with separate identities: one the person-oriented, socially effusive family man, the other a highly private professional, in a world where even my job description was classified. In light of my recent professional achievement though, one that had been recognized worldwide (while in anonymity) by hundreds of millions of people, maybe it was time for me to do a brief review, and by editing out some of the less important things, take stock of – or highlight, as my kid would say – some of the more important details.
With that thought in mind, I continued on from Manhattan to my hometown in the Midwest, and quickly agreed to help my mother with housecleaning. Per her request, I was to focus on my boyhood bedroom, and that’s how I got around to opening a wine crate filled with photographs of the time when I was living in Portugal, a box that for half a lifetime I’d stored in the top of the doublewide closet. There I sat one fine morning with a trash bag and the idea that I’d go through and create “albums” of any meaningful photos and dump the rest.
In retrospect, most of the shots taken were terrible, the varied angles of castle walls, beach scenes and grape vines nearly laughable, remnants of a largely carefree youth, and the process of editing became so tiring I was tempted to chuck the whole lot. Then I happened upon one group of photos that I’d nearly forgotten, but which brought back the proverbial flood of memories. For among the many bad angles and cliché shots was a cache of a dozen or so 3” by 5” blow ups I’d developed from photos taken on Praia do Meco, Portugal’s best known nude beach, in the early 80s, along sun-bleached Costa de Caparica, the wedge of coastline just south of Lisbon and the bordering River Tejo. Looking at these gave me reason to pause as it occurred to me how deeply the experience of that time period had impacted my life’s direction, culminating most recently in the part I was to play as senior analyst on the team that would locate and eliminate the world’s most infamous terrorist.
The time-worn photos were of three Portuguese friends, my dear buddy José Coelho dos Santos – more affectionately known as Zé -- and the two lovely half-sisters, Sasha and Sonya Santa Maria, each of the three of them covered in blue-gray mud, posing naked at surf’s edge. One photo, obviously taken by me lying on the golden sand, pitted Zé and his sculpted jawbone and muscular frame (sans genitalia, hidden in the angle of his thigh) projected against the azure sky; there he affected the pose of an Egyptian festival dancer, as if straight from the side of an ancient urn. In another, Sonya, the younger and more out-going of the two girls, sat with her long, straight auburn-colored locks piled in a bun on her head, closed eyelids and lowered face feigning a Buddhist greeting. And in another, this one a close up of the elder sister Sasha lying back on her elbows, the dried bluish powder seemed like a cosmetic paste, spread from the roots of tightly wound black curls down her forehead and across pale cheeks to the tip of her prominent Moorish nose. She stared straight and doubtful at me the photographer, as if to ask, “Why this?”
While many of the photos in the musty box were faded and some even molded together, the condition of this particular set was immaculate, the composition varied and the colors, even after many years, still vivid, to the extent that the events of the whole day replayed in my mind as if they had just transpired. And what a disturbing day that had been.
The twenty-something Sonya had just come down to Lisbon from Dusseldorf, and from what I understood to be at the time as marital problems with her husband, a German musician cum sound engineer named Dirk. I’d known both Sonya and Dirk since the three of us had met as young backpackers sharing a guesthouse on the island of Mykonos, back in August of 1979. One evening there we did a bar crawl together, and after too many shots of ouzo, somehow made our way to the sea for much philosophizing and an early morning swim, becoming fast friends in the process, and eventually agreeing to take our party south on a cruise to the Isle of Rhodes.
The events of that mesmerizing week in paradise were documented in many of the photos I found in the crate, including far too many of the randy Dirk hoisting a smiling Sonya in his arms, their budding love in the foreground of numerous castle ruins. Along with those I found others of my Europass train journey through postcard cities like Skopje, Venice, Geneva and Paris – a slideshow waiting to happen if I’d just been bright enough to take slides. Still, the collection made a convincing statement about adventures to be had, so much so that when showing them to family and friends upon my return to the US in September of ‘79, I could easily explain why I wouldn’t be starting that PhD program in linguistics and instead was moving to Europe.
And that was how it happened that within three months I’d stopped school, passed my rental to my cousin, moved boxes of stuff back to my hometown, and caught an early December flight to London to see where my instincts took me. Dirk, meanwhile, would continue to serenade Sonya by phone and numerous visits over the next year, eventually wooing her away from an au pair’s job in London and marrying her in Germany in 1981.
Like Sonya I also had thoughts of trying to gain employment in England, but found the weather atrocious and my hostel unlivable. So on Sonya’s recommendation I spent the year-end holidays with her and Dirk at his parents’ country place just outside Munich, then flew south to Lisbon, where I would take up temporary residence with her family. Eventually I found my wings with a decent livelihood through teaching, and I achieved sufficient emotional sustenance in Sonya’s older half-sister Sasha, a pretty but shy graduate student of Portuguese history.
Again, though they will never be shown in public, musty photos show the period as an enriching one. Having arrived in Lisbon in January of 1980, I benefitted from the generous hospitality of Sonya’s family, her gracious and youthful mother, Maria Luisa, helping me add Portuguese to my growing repertoire of languages, her well-connected and distinguished-looking surgeon father, Dr. Antonio, helping me meet people to arrange work. Sasha, who from the first struck me as socially awkward and far less confident than the younger Sonya (traits that I would later hear blamed on the fact that Sasha’s mother had been taken from her in a car accident when she was just three), enticed me with a willingness to share her knowledge and her own fair share of feminine mystique.
In that way I enjoyed a personalized introduction to Lisbon and its many wonders. By March of ‘80, in fact, I had moved into a wonderful country house a few miles north of the city, on Rua de São Bartoloméu, a cobble-stoned lane in the shadow of olive groves in the rustic village of Ameixoeira. Most importantly, only working part-time allowed me ample time to read and write, and to sample many of the city’s sidewalk cafes. By June I was busy, too, with Sasha, day tripping to local castle towns, wine-tasting at night, every encounter a boon to my developing language skills and another inroad to her heart. Our enjoyment of each other and future plans reached a crescendo with our noivádo a mere two years later, with an elaborate engagement party held amongst the flowering plum and tangerine trees in the garden of the Ameixoeira house.
As I reviewed photos of that party, with Sasha dressed in a simple white lace dress, its thin straps covered by her radiant curls, I felt a deep tinge of melancholy, seeing how the love affair had generally been so pleasurable and expansive, and yet had ended abruptly only weeks after the noivádo, thanks to a silly misunderstanding and amidst unnecessary acrimony.
As I reminisced, I also recalled how it had been just months before the noivádo that I became close to Zé, a would-be artist friend of Sasha’s who’d recently reappeared on the scene. As I was quick to learn, Zé was a considerate fellow, ever willing to spend his last wad of escudo notes on a bottle of tavern wine for a friend. He was also extremely reserved and unassuming, apparently oblivious to how handsome he was, a man of medium height, yet trim and athletic, with a shock of coal-black hair, ovular eyes, high cheekbones and thick lips, all set on a rectangular face.
The photos from that day on Praia do Meco captured Zé’s restlessness as well, with each of his poses broad in gesture and in stance. I can’t remember all the details, but I can guess he’d shown up at my place that morning as he often had, with nothing much to do, and he was probably quick to accept the invitation to go to Meco when he heard that we’d be joined by Sonya and Sasha, both of whom he’d known during their childhood in Mozambique.
Like Sasha and Sonya’s family, Zé’s had returned to Portugal from Mozambique in 1974 with nothing but their suitcases after they‘d been ordered out by the newly independent nation’s left-leaning government. Since arriving in Lisbon, Zé had been drifting, taking random courses here, doing odd jobs there, always thinking about life as art and each day as a piece, but never quite getting settled. Zé confided to me that he had saudade for his life in Mozambique, where he’d often taken to the countryside for long treks, camping alone and doing sketches of the wildlife. To create the feeling of still being in Africa, deep in the savannah, he’d even set up a tent in the living room of his tiny apartment in the nondescript ‘burbs of Lisbon. From that saudade or whatever other reasons, there usually seemed to be an aching melancholy about Zé, one that only disappeared when he had his hands in finger paints, or when he’d be beating wild rhythms on pots and pans.
I found a photo of just such a moment, Zé sitting in the back of my Fiat, wide smile revealing beautiful teeth and effortless contentment as he pounded rhythm from the top of a two-gallon cookie can, on it an image of the explorer Magellan, one of Portugal’s favorite sons, decked out in princely robes, extending his arms over a globe floating at his waist. While treating the cookie container between his knees as a well-lubricated djembe, Zé seemed to discover new worlds, too, orbiting within himself.
The day we headed to Praia do Meco, Sonya seemed to pick up on Zé’s unbridled spirit. She was sided up to him during that same photo shoot in the back of my car, sharing laughter, a cigarette and a camaraderie that continued as we split the highways and byways from Ameixoeira, through the western outskirts of Lisbon, south over the River Tejo, to the narrow country lanes of Caparica, finally reaching the track that jostled us over sandy ruts and under canopies of pine to the stretch of beach reserved for brazen nudists like ourselves.
The photos that I have of the four of us that day, the ones with us lathered in mud, will never make it to facebook. And just in case my mother would ever find her way into the wine crate, I hid the ones I didn’t take back to D.C with me within a large envelope now at the bottom of the box. What I was more open about with her after the photo editing session was the main event of that day 30 years past, one that upon my move back to the US had inspired me to study various martial arts and put my linguistics training to practical use by joining The Agency.
On Praia do Meco
The start of our beach visit was normal enough. Like other bronzeádos searching for solace and a suntan on Meco, we walked with our picnic basket from the pine-shaded parking area to the broad expanse fronting the Atlantic’s rough waves. Again, I can’t remember all the details, and the photos don’t help much, but I imagine that after we found a spot, we’d laid out towels and disrobed, and then sat there beneath the friendly sun and cloudless sky and chatted away, eventually taking a swim, eventually lathering ourselves with mud at a spring that trickled from the nearby clay cliffs. It was at that time that we took those revealing photos. And at some point, upon getting bored, the four of us discussed taking a beach walk. Consistent with Sasha’s mild character, she had declined, probably content to lie and watch the waves. So Zé, Sonya and I took to the horizon, nonplussed by our own nudity; oblivious to any observation by others, we carried on down the beach in rapt conversation, in the direction of the fishermen’s beach.
At this late date I have no idea how far we walked that mid-summer day or what we were discussing. It must have been nearly a mile of light-hearted blather. But I do remember vividly the moment when, from behind a rise in the dunes, our ease was shattered as we were set upon by a middle-aged woman broad of shoulders and face, dressed in a knee-length smock. While showering the three of us with sand, she shouted these words to Sonya: “Você é puta! Você é puta!”
Sonya flinched and stopped dumbstruck, her limbs all but frozen. None of us had a chance to react; instantly we were set upon by three others, two older adolescent boys and a thick-set man, whom, in retrospect, I presumed to be the woman’s husband and the boys’ father. Each of the males held weapons, the man a small-headed golf club, and the boys equal-sized halves of what had once been an oar. Fishermen, indeed.
The boys held their ground just to the side of their mother, while Dad came quickly at us from behind, and before anyone could move away, he’d lurched in toward Zé, slamming the blunt nose of his club across Zé’s lower shoulder and upper back. The strike nearly dropped Zé to his knees while Sonya instantly added a high-pitched scream to her physical lockdown. I did have an instant to respond, ducking just to Zé’s side, and reaching across his back I caught the metal club in its ricochet from Zé’s shoulder, ripping it from the man’s grasp. Once in control of the club, I lifted it high into the air. I still remember that moment, for time seemed to stop; and even now, 3o years after, I can recall the eyes of one and all as they fell toward me.
With newfound power, I waved the golf club in the air, then brought it down with merciless force, catching the jaw of Zé’s assailant not with the head of the club but with the rod’s midpoint. Even with the abbreviated impact, the guy’s head seemed to explode, and he fell back on his ass as the blood spewed. I reflexively dropped the club and took off in a sprint, getting about 15 yards between myself and the others before turning around to see Zé staring at me as he embraced the ever wailing Sonya.
Lucky for Zé and Sonya, the fisherman’s wife took aid to her husband. But then the sons turned their full attention to Zé. And that’s when I held up both arms in mock resistance and shouted the words that came most naturally: “Hey assholes! Stop it! I’m the one you want! Come here!”
For an instant it seemed as if the boys couldn’t believe their ears. They stood in check, and while they were gathering their thoughts around my voice, around my English, Zé tugged violently at Sonya, helping her remove the mental block that might have crushed them both. Within a breath, Zé pulled Sonya and they ran back toward Meco.
The sons stood for yet another second, as if trying to ascertain who the real culprit was, and then they took after me. But the game was up: I was already far enough away to be able to coast to the safety of a path that wound up the clay bluff. The two waved their oars at me but gave up pursuit before I had run out of breath.
Though I don’t remember much else from that day, I do recall that after the three of us returned to our towels, very much traumatized, Sonya and Sasha tended to the thickening welt on Zé’s back. Meanwhile, I sat in the sand and began plotting a plan for revenge. I can’t remember all that I planned now, but I know I worked everything out in my mind, a scheme involving reconnaissance of the fishing shacks lining the beach, a schedule of clandestine daytime and moonlit visits for observing the fishermen’s habits, and for scavenging and stockpiling supplies: highly flammable pine needles, bits of fine drift wood and dry grass, and rope and fishing net. Then in my mind I drew up the ultimate objective: I’d return during a festive holiday, in the dark of night when I could be assured that no one would be present, I’d return with my knapsack full of Molotov cocktails, and after placing my flammables at a prime spot at the side of each maritime cabana, I’d send my bombs away.
My escape route was also well planned. In the months before I owned a car, if I visited the nude beach, I had taken public transport from Ameixoeira to the village nearest Meco, and hiked in on an infrequently used walking path. In my plan I would take the same route again, this time with my pack and tools, and after I’d finished the arson, once the places were all set ablaze, I would continue to walk overland in the direction opposite of Lisbon, south, all the way to Sesimbra, just to elude recognition and possible capture. And I’d do that whole trip alone, at a date in the future when the fishermen would have forgotten my face.
Fortunately, before I ever had a chance to pursue my plot, I said something to my friends about it, probably along the lines of “I’ll get those assholes. I’ll go back and burn down their fishing camp.” Zé must have been characteristically silent on the idea, knowing time would heal all wounds, while the girls must have offered voices of reason, explaining how we had strayed from the nudist section of the beach into the fishermen’s zone, how we were to some extent to blame for the peril.
But then the memories fade, and more photos don’t exist. I do know that within a few weeks of the Praia do Meco incident, just after Sasha and I had had our noivado, Sonya returned to Germany. Zé must have moped quite a bit at first, because immediately after the attack, he and Sonya were drawn even more closely together, and they had a hard time at the engagement party not showing their love for each other in front of the relatives. Soon, however, she was gone, her departure perhaps having something to do with the evolving affair. About that decision I never heard anything, not even from Zé.
Then in late June of ‘82, Sasha and I had our falling out, including a fight like none we’d ever had earlier, and by late July, I had quickly tidied up my affairs and bought a plane ticket home. I have photos of the occasion of my leaving, of me standing outside the Lisbon airport with my escorts, Zé and his younger brother. I remember us promising to meet again --- a suggestion, sadly, that was never fulfilled.
And the years passed. And passed. My life’s path carried me away from academia, much to the surprise of my family, first through part-time teaching, then a failed attempt at joining the air force as a pilot, and finally, over the various hurdles required for joining The Agency. By 1985 I held a minor portfolio at the Soviet/Balkan desk, one that duly expanded, until by the fall of the Berlin Wall, I could eventually claim some minor successes. And then in the mid 90s, I was assigned to a focus on the Middle East, and eventually, to Al Qaeda.
Through the years I had heard bits and pieces of my Lisbon friends: for a while Sasha worked for a major port wine exporter, eventually moving to the UK and completing a PhD. I just heard more recently that she has been teaching at a university there. As for Sonya, after we last met, she had apparently reconciled with Dirk and had a daughter. But the good times were not to last. Somewhere along the line, I learned that by the late 80s she and Dirk had divorced, and then I heard nothing. Once the Internet was in vogue, I did want to find out more, and I had done a couple web searches, yet turned up nothing.
And then there was Zé. Unfortunately, shortly after I’d left Lisbon in ’82, I received a letter from his brother, and learned that my dear friend had committed suicide. That was a shocker for me. Zé had never given me any indication that he was so unhappy. And to top it off, I never discovered any of the details of his passing, but I could imagine, assuming it was related to a combination of his unbreakable nostalgia for the wild open spaces of southeast Africa and his unrequited love for Sonya.
On facebook, On Skype
Fast forward 29 years. I’m living in the D.C. area, having had a job with The Agency for over 25 years. All that I have left of my youth in Portugal are the memories, and the photos in my mother’s closet.
But now the Digital Age is in full swing, and on facebook one morning before I go to my office I’m surprised to discover a message from a name I recognize not as that of a member of my closely guarded group of connections but as a friend from an era long past: Dirk. He asks me to friend him, which I do.
Of course, one of the first moves I make is to check out Dirk’s facebook albums. One of those includes various shots of him in a sound studio (he had been a recording engineer until retirement, I later learned), and another is of him in and around what I take to be his holiday home, labeled as being on the island of Madeira. In another album, there are several shots of him as a young man, sitting at a beachside café quaffing directly from a bottle of wine. In Greece. That one takes me back, and I send him a facebook message.
Soon enough Dirk responds and explains things, how he is retired on Madeira, how he has just divorced again, and how impressed he is by the photos of me and my family, especially my two daughters. In a later message he writes to say that seeing photos of me with the girls has inspired him to reestablish contact with his own child, a girl with the lovely name of Stella, now living in Lisbon. As a postscript to that message, he asks me if I have a Skype address. And he gives me his.
I put off any more contact for the time being though. It was a busy period at The Agency, and with the whole bin Laden operation -- my professional focus for the previous ten years or so -- coming down to a particular house in Abbotabad, Pakistan, I had to be very focused. So a month or two passed before our next communication, a month of intense emotions, of uncertainties, then amazing highs, and at last an invite to Obama’s White House.
But now all that has passed as well. Out of the limelight again, I was sitting at home alone one evening, online, and I saw that Dirk had also come online, so I skyped him. And there we were, face to face after 30 years, with nothing but a couple facebook messages and distant memories in common. But it felt great.
Dirk looked well, tanned, and a bit heavier, but very happy. We reminisced about the good old days, joking about how it seemed just yesterday that we’d been partying the new year away at his parents’ country place, and before that, in Greece with Sonya (and yes, the photos documenting those parties were in the wine crate).
Dirk also told me how he had just had a wonderful time with Stella, who was an amazingly creative and fun-loving young lady, as they’d spent ten days together in Madeira and Lisbon, drinking, eating, sightseeing and generally catching up on things. As he talked about her, I went to his facebook page, and sure enough, there was an album of photos of the two of them, in various states of elation. I was struck by the young lady’s beauty, and commented to Dirk how she was the spitting image of Sonya. Before we could talk more though, I got a call that I had to take, and I asked Dirk if we could continue on another day, to which he agreed.
It wasn’t an hour later though that I got another message from Dirk, and this is what he had to say: While Stella was in Madeira with him, she had agreed to visit a clinic with him and have a paternity test done. He also explained that even though Sonya had always insisted otherwise, he’d had suspicions through the years that Stella was not his biological daughter, and now that she was an adult, he felt comfortable discussing the issue with her and inviting her to do the test. The results had come back conclusive, he added, and corroborated those suspicions: indeed, he was not Stella’s biological father.
Dirk seemed to take the news well, like a man accustomed to the vagaries of life. Most wisely, he stated that his relationship with Stella would only be strengthened by the revelation. He elaborated by saying that he was the only father she ever knew, and for him, she was his darling, the only child he’d imagined having; and despite their separation, he’d always done the right thing and sent her gifts and support money.
In that same message he then posed the first of several questions: “Any idea who the biological father can be?”
Stella had been born in January, 1983, he wrote, and it made sense that I would have seen Sonya at about the time when she got pregnant, when she was back in Lisbon in April of ‘82. “Could you give some thought for this matter?” he asked me.
The instant I read Dirk’s heartfelt words, the images came flooding in, swirling through my mind like album after album after album. Amidst those, I could see very clearly --- and as soon as I looked at the photos of Stella again, I was certain. Though there was so much about the young lady that resembled Sonya – the dark hair, the lively eyes, the smallish nose – the shape of her head was very different; it was rectangular. And she had the same high cheekbones, the same as Zé’s. To top it off, Dirk had mentioned that Stella was very artistic, “working as a graphic design person.”
I responded to Dirk the same day, stating what was obvious to me alone, that I had a fairly clear idea who Stella’s biological father might have been. I also explained that I had heard that the guy who I imagined as her father had passed away just a year or so after Sonya had returned to Germany early summer of ‘82.
Dirk wrote back to me the same day, expressing his gratitude for all the information. He then posed this final question: Would I accept a Skype call from Stella and explain the situation to her?
Indeed I would, indeed I did. And in that call, which I accepted in my office just days afterwards, I had the great honor of introducing myself to Stella. As we sat and looked at each other, I couldn’t help but see the resemblance she had to her mother, and also to Zé. As for her personality, she seemed very sweet and well mannered, just as Dirk had said, and at the same time vivacious, much like her mother. Oddly, Stella also spoke English with an accent identical to the way I remembered Sonya speaking, though she explained to me that she and her mum never spoke English together.
Stella was attentive as I explained to her what I have related to you (though only the relevant highlights, of course): I told her of my meeting with Sonya and Dirk in Greece, of how her mother had pierced my ear with a safety pin during one of our drinking bouts, how she had danced and sung for Dirk, and how the trip to Germany in December of ’79 sealed the deal for the two of them. Then I related a bit about the month when she was conceived, mainly of the day trip her mother and I had made to Praia do Meco with her aunty Sasha and a guy named Zé, an old family friend, and how a walk along the beach and an unexpected attack had brought Zé and her mother emotionally together.
Stella seemed very appreciative, then she shared news with me about Tia Sasha and her success as a college professor, about her grandparents raising her in such a happy home environment, of her grandfather’s agonizing death, and finally of her mother. She recounted the difficulties Sonya had had early on but of her recent satisfaction, remarrying, training in yoga and other meditation techniques, and eventually opening her own school for meditation, teaching and finding her place in the world.
Before we ended our first conversation, I asked Stella how she expected her mother to react to the news of her paternity. She responded that she was sure that “mum” would take it in stride, that their lives had been self-sufficient for many years, and that their love for each other was above all else. And with that statement, Stella and I bid adieu, promising to talk again soon.
And talk we did, in fact, several times. And it was to Stella that I recently sent several sets of photos – all in hard copy form – of my various journeys with the people she would love. There were the shots of Dirk and Sonya on Mykonos and Rhodes; others of the two of them again during the holidays we shared in Germany. There were photos taken of Sasha on our various tours. I also sent several pictures of Sasha, Sonya and Zé, all covered in mud on Praia do Meco. And then there was a set from the day of the noivádo, one capturing Stella’s grandparents in a hearty embrace, another of Sasha looking gorgeous, and one of Sonya, Zé, Sasha and I standing arm in arm under a plum tree, cheerful as we gazed toward the camera lens, with rays of afternoon sun illuminating the blossoms and our youthful faces.
And finally, I slipped in the one of the photos I had of Zé and me at the airport in Lisbon, our arms dangling over each other’s shoulders, our day all smiles. That one seemed especially apt for the collection, bridging as it did a departure long past with this new beginning.
