The reconciliation of two parts

I am running, sweating. It is nearly 100 degrees in the north of Portugal, and moments before Antero locked the gate to the castle, I realized I left my backpack on the terrace.

“Desculpa!” I yell to him, running from my car back to his. “Desculpa, deixei a minha mochila lá dentro.” He’s visibly annoyed, but I swear it will only take a second.

“Queres que eu ande?”

“É melhor assim, não é?” As I jog down the long driveway, trying not to huff but to steady my breath, I am wondering why this man thought it would be quicker – or just better, as he said – to have me run there and back rather than pop into the car for what could only be less than five minutes. But reason seems to have evaded this moment as I feel the sweat run down my back, my worn-to-shit Birkenstocks offering nearly no support against the centuries old cobblestone path.

It had only been six months since I discovered the castle, or Casa dos Peixotos, as it’s historically known. My research in the Azores tells me the first Peixoto – Jorge Carvalho – came to the islands in 1500 from Guimarães. “Aqui nasceu Portugal” is tiled in large letters on a medieval wall entering the old city. Indeed, it’s considered the birthplace of Portugal with history that dates long before the nation’s christening in 1143. It’s not a surprise that the Peixoto line – one of the oldest and longest in Portuguese history – has its roots there.

But why did he leave? I’ve been wondering for some time. If the family was wealthy, noble, land rich, why set sail for wild, uninhabited islands in the middle of the vast Atlantic?

Here I digress because there are many possibilities, the first of which doesn’t even take a beat for me to answer: Why not? Why wouldn’t you explore? Does the unknown not also steal your breath?

Content with what I know of my family on the islands, I become obsessed with going further back. I read of these medieval Peixotos, blessed because they’re storied, cursed because they’re colonizing bastards.

The national archives in Lisbon.

There is one note in the line that I find most interesting: In 1605, the matriarch Isabel stood in front of the Azorean court “to rid the family of discrimination”, say the documents that I read in Pico. “We are not Jewish," she professes, and pays a tax of 15,000 reis to force the harassment’s end.

Stumbling upon this information in 2019, I am shocked. A Jew tax? No one had ever spoken of any Jewish heritage in my family. But then, it had been 415 years since this moment, plenty of time for erasure.

Only not, because it was in fact a moment not erased, in fact one so important that it was documented, and notarized, and archived, and printed, and reprinted – to the point that I now could hold the information in my hands.

Suddenly, my ancestor’s departure from a highly political, militarized city in the year of 1500 – four years after King Manuel I decreed all Jews in Portugal must convert or leave, six years before the start of the Portuguese Inquisition – seems like a fairly smart move.

It’s comical, me running. I have been tired, mired in feelings of conflict that pervade my relationships, my family, my work, my voice. In Portugal, I have felt hot, uncomfortable. I long for the cold, to shiver, to feel alive instead of stale. For a moment, I stop running, and I laugh.

The house, as the castle is called, was first built in 1302. At that point, the Peixotos had been ambassadors to France, long time land barons, and one of the more esteemed families in the newly minted country. By the 1600s, their exploits in India would make them incredibly wealthy, and the house remained in the family until they sold it in the beginning of the 20th century.

I run my hands along the oldest stones and climb the ancient stairwell that leads into a kitchen. The arched windows are fitted with stained glass, and I open them, hanging out into the trees, listening to the birds. Beyond the immediate is a forest of olive. What I love is that these trees predate me and predate the accumulation of stones into this house, and so here is where I can meet them – those who came before. It is in the trees that I can catch wind of the secrets my ancestors whispered.

“I am looking for any connections to Judaism within the Peixoto line,” I tell Antero when I meet him in his office in the center of the old city, when I go to request permission to visit the closed castle.

“Judeu?” He raised his eyebrows. “No, the family would not have allowed for that. The line was kept pure.”

Isn’t that the point? I wonder.

And here is another reason to leave.

We make rules as a means of control. We impose, we do not allow, we use authority, force, guilt, and yet — humans continue to be human century after century. We sleep with people we shouldn’t. We deviate from the acceptable. We find a way to break the standard. We fight, we resist, we refuse to participate, we leave.

I take my father to the Judiaria, or, the medieval Jewish Quarter of Guimarães, or, Rua Dr. Antonio Prego de Mota, as it’s now called, a narrow street that’s not the width of a car and with no markers indicating its historical significance. In 1500, this street was the center of Jewish life. In 2025, there are modern windows framed into the aged stones’ shapes. The doorways are low, the lines sloped and uneven.

What’s the point? I wonder. What does it matter if someone lived here 500 years ago, whether they were connected to me or not?

My son runs ahead, enjoying the freedom. My father takes it in, wondering if he feels something. I walk up and down, the length of the whole thing barely a block. I wonder at the extent of the discrimination, I wonder at the mettle of stepping onto a ship heading west, I wonder at the faith it took to renounce.

It’s then I look up and my eyes meet a welcome sight. “Free Palestine” graffitied on the wall, in what I refuse to believe is a coincidence. My heart uplifts and I am reminded – we are not alone. Not in the conflict, not in the struggle, not in the suffering, not now, not 500 years ago.

I cannot explain my compulsion to conjure constellations from fixed points in time.

Later in the night on Google Maps, I measure the length of the road from the gate to the terrace where my backpack sat waiting. Three quarters of a mile roundtrip, as it turns out. I hauled ass, not wanting to push my luck with Antero, most definitely wanting to be granted another visit at a future date. But I also stopped and selfied. I also took a moment. I also touched the bark of the trees and the lichen of the rocks.