About my father — João Almeida, A Memoir

Those who are born crooked can barely be straightened later

Me in my pre-teens and my father.

My father always had a rough life. You could say it like this, rough, like the feeling of eating a green persimmon. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but an unpalatable taste stays on the tongue for quite a while. Not pleasant. My father’s life was too long, like that flavor you can’t stand. No wonder. His story begins immediately as if taken from a fantastic tale involving screams, blood, and a lot of pain.

When she was still alive, his mother, Marcolina, said that my father was born on the steps of the house of some very important people in Paredes, a tiny village in the Portuguese countryside. This area is best known for the existence of a Cistercian Monastery, founded early in the foundation of Portugal, around the 12th century.

I believe that the local inhabitants of this land are unaware of this monastery's great importance, both in local and national history.

The great names of Portuguese history are also part of the history of those walls, from the founder Afonso Henriques to the eccentric D. João V… they all left their legacy there. Of course, like what happened to countless other monasteries throughout Lusitania, it fell into decay at the turn of the 19th century when the once invaluable…