I SEE A TREE RIGHT NOW WHERE THERE IS NONE

The power of suggestion is a remarkable thing. It’s a seed dropped from a bird passing overhead, a seed culled from elsewhere unknown. That seed sits on the land, the land and the environment nourish it, so it sprouts and flourishes. As if out of nowhere, that seed is a tree.

A little background. The word shaman is mentioned to me by a psychic astrologer who asks if I know any. I don’t. She says she sees a shamanic farm where I’ll be planting medicinal products. I immediately think ‘marijuana’ and shake my head. I have no interest in mind-altering substances, sufficiently satisfied as it were with the chemistry of my brain and body. She then tells me emphatically I’ve been a medicine woman and my soul wants to remember this role and I must honor it as it’s beyond worldly stuff. I tell the astrologer that earlier in the day, I signed a contract for a farm along with Sigrun, a Norwegian, whom I met two weeks earlier. That evening too, Sigrun had introduced me on Facebook to her son-in-law’s Portuguese friend, Manuel, as he’d set up a farm similar to what we planned with ours.

It is now three days later. Manuel and I have spent a chunk of the afternoon chatting at a café in Lisbon where I learn he is a shaman in the making. Things clearly are well beyond my understanding and control. It’s not an alternative universe. It’s a crazy, magical, magnificent, inexplicable one. The more he speaks, the more I am convinced he is to be there when Sigrun and I become the keepers of the land. He tells me his mother’s family is from the eastern Algarve. My and Sigrun’s farm is situated perhaps ten minutes away. Surely he has been sent to perform sacred rituals on this ancient land from which his maternal line springs?

Another hour or so has passed when we realize we have other appointments. Myriam, a Lebanese living in Paris, is meant to rendez-vous with Manuel. She is staying with him. Michel whom I recently met at Almashala, a magical yoga center in Ericeira, is scheduled to meet me. “Why don’t we have them join us?” he says. “Fine idea,” I answer. Texts fly back and forth before the two arrive to the cobblestoned square where we are seated outside beneath a sun umbrella. People pass by, some sitting on adjacent tables. We are next to a central train station yet it is quiet, calm and the conversation between the four of us flows. The air is feathery, the lightest warm breeze brushing my skin. It’s partly cloudy. Jamaicans know this is the optimal weather forecast in Kingston. I may be in Lisbon but if heaven is anything like this, I’d be happy dead.

Since I am quite alive, I realize I’m hungry. So is Manuel who suggests we all eat together. This is a fluid quartet of three foreigners and one local so we leave the restaurant choice to the latter. “Everyone eats fish?” he asks. Myriam and Michel nod enthusiastically. I’m ‘mostly vegetarian,’ a self-appointed label having let go of my inflexible approach to group meals after years of either being miserable and/or making everyone else so. This is an instance where the ‘mostly’ comes into play.

Manuel guides us to a seafood restaurant frequented by his family that, unlike every other restaurant I’ve been in across Portugal, is filled exclusively with Portuguese. Other than his entourage covering six countries via a Lebanese-French, a Greek-Belgian and a Jamaican-American. Yet we are not as varied as the trays of fresh ocean fare overflowing with creatures I’ve never seen, be it in or out of the sea. Its snail season and Manuel and Myriam are salivating. They order some as appetizers. Large-shelled crustaceans appear at our table, boiled and salted, along with metal picks and a small thick cutting board. Manuel shows us how to slip the L-shaped hook beneath the exoskeletal disc attached to the soft curly creature. The disc serves as a suction-sealed door to the hard shell, the otherwise defenseless animal muscling the door closed within. But a hooked tug easily pulls out the well-cooked animal.

The first few bites of a boiled, salted snail are chewy but almost as flavorful as a smoked oyster. The chewy parts are muscle that had held the disc door closed. The rest is soft and giving. The cutting board is not for cutting however. There’s nothing to cut. It’s for tapping the mostly empty shell on to loosen the upper swirl of the snail from deep within. Tap-tap-tap a hundred times will cause the softest and most succulent bits to drop out. This appetizer is an activity in and of itself, well beyond eating. It consists of quiet taps, not thumps, a contained technique that bears a certain civility. Tap-tap-tap like a distant woodpecker. A precision of movement making sound, setting forth the rhythm of the meal. In that moment, I realize that eating snails straight out of their shells is but a concerto in the symphony of a full-length conversational meal.

The waiter brings us menus through which we peruse. There are pages of scores of choices of fish, grilled, sautéed or baked. I am incapable of choosing. Until I see a fish head option on the menu. Fish heads contain the most succulent morsels of meat. I am salivating. (No comments on the vegetarianism, please!) But a bit embarrassed to admit my preference to these new friends. Manuel asks what I am thinking of ordering. I admit I’m thinking of a fish head. “Ah good,” he says, “I was considering it too but it’s ordered by size. Let me check with the waiter to see how many it serves as the others may also have to join us.” I wonder if he’s being polite but then he tap-tap-taps out a thin brownish-green whorl from deep within a snail shell, carefully places it on his tongue, and the pure pleasure that spreads across his face tells me he also has a penchant for fish cheeks.

The waiter comes over and Manuel asks him something or the other in Portuguese. (No, I don’t speak Portuguese… yet.) A short while later, the smiling waiter appears with a tray. He proffers it with a flourish, tipping the tray toward us. A large gleaming eye looks over at us. The eye stares wide open within a raw, glistening decapitated fish head. It fills the tray and is more than enough for four. Manuel explains that if he orders it, it will be for all of us. Michel and Myriam are game.

Myriam then orders a few other dishes. Is she taking no chances or is it cultural? The dozens of Lebanese I know in Kingston feel a meal is lacking if there are not multiple offerings on the table. They’re also convinced that if there are no leftovers, then someone has gone hungry. Now these Lebanese are also mostly Jamaican. But in fact Myriam is no different. She, like my old friends, encourages eating, urging another roasted potato, even the smallest serving, shrinking with a touch of sadness if anyone turns her down. My Jewish grandmother too was a food-pusher who also took joy in feeding others. Instead of sadness when turned down, however, she responded with a fleeting humph of annoyance.

I wonder how Michel will manage the fish head, being Belgian. It turns out he’s spent extensive holidays in Greece with his grandparents so he is unfazed. Anyway, the guillotined fish head arrives chopped up and grilled into unrecognizable, appetizing morsels. Along with Myriam’s additional dishes. This symphony of a meal is on the lengthy scale of Mahler’s Third. By the time we are finished picking the meat off of fish bones, leaving sufficient leftovers in the serving dish to satisfy my Lebanese-Jamaican friends and Myriam, the restaurant is almost empty. We disband, satiated. The seed of suggestion is germinating however.

The following day, Manuel calls. “I need to speak,” he says. “Can you come over shortly?” I don’t ask questions. He is leaving that afternoon so there is little time. He texts his address so I track it on Google Maps. It’s an easy twenty-minute walk. It’s ideal too in that Michel, Myriam and I have made tentative plans to hear fado, the Portuguese dirge-like songs made internationally famous by Amalia Rodrigues. Myriam is staying at Manuel’s so I can collect her before connecting with Michel.

I make my way to Manuel’s apartment where he greets me, leads me to the living room. We each take a seat. Only one shutter is raised, and just halfway at that. The room is dark. Myriam is in the shower. “I don’t think I can do the shaman ritual,” he blurts out quietly. “I’ve never done one.” The seed may have germinated but its not taking root. “Manuel,” I say, “What can go wrong? What’s the worst? Nothing happens? I don’t expect anything to happen. Certainly not smoke and miracles. What I do know is that it will be a celebration!” He looks a bit assured then murmurs, “I spoke with my teacher.” “And?” I say. “Nothing,” he answers. “Do you want her there?” I ask. “She’s absolutely welcome.” He responds by shaking his head. He knows as I do – in spite of my wanting to meet her – that her presence would be undermining.

I sense the tiniest fissure in the shell of this seed. “See it as an opportunity, a chance to step into and practice your gift,” I urge, a pusher like my grandmother, though not of food. I realize the seed is considering whether or not it is the time to sprout. Yes, I too have my grandmother’s propensity to express annoyance over noncompliance but I know deep within that if not this seed, then another. The farm calls for a shaman as well as hundreds of trees and my role is to deliver. Then I realize it’s not only Manuel who is being stretched and challenged to extend beyond one’s comfort level. A seed has been planted that I have attempted to squash. The mere suggestion of medicinal plants desiccates me to a state where germination is just not possible. Yet the idea recurs like a tertiary motif, a tinkling of a triangle above all other instruments of an orchestra. I had better reconsider…