S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Writer Gilberto Abr\u00e3o, from the city of Curitiba, will release today (22nd) in the city of S\u00e3o Paulo, the book \u201cMohamed, o Latoeiro\u201d (Mohamed, the Tinsmith), which narrates the story of a Syrian immigrant who arrived in Brazil in the early 20th century. Himself an Arab descendent, Abr\u00e3o used many of the stories that he heard and lived in his debut novel. "There is a lot of my childhood, of my family, and even a few names, but the book is 90% fiction," the author told ANBA.<\/p>\n
The son of an Alawi Muslim father and of a mother whose parents were Orthodox Christian Syrians, Abr\u00e3o was born in Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paran\u00e1, in 1943. He reports that as a child, he would constantly hear the stories of the land of his ancestors, because every weekend his father would gather his fellow countrymen at home, they would cook a lamb or a goat, sing and dance. \u201cThey would celebrate the past; it was a session of nostalgia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The author also sought inspiration for his character\u2019s profession from his childhood days. The tinsmith, according to him, would walk the streets hammering on a pan, signalling for housewives to bring their cooking pots to be fixed. The professional would smooth out the pots, replace the handles and make cups using oilcans. In the neighbourhood he lived in, there was even one whose name was Mohamed.<\/p>\n
At age 10, Abr\u00e3o took the opposite direction of his father and grandparents and went to live at an aunt\u2019s house in Lebanon. His father wanted him to learn more about Arab culture, Arabic and the Muslim religion. After returning to Brazil, aged 14, he kept the habit of reading books in Arabic, a language that he speaks fluently to this day.<\/p>\n
He has returned to visit the region several times and, in the first half of the 1960s, was even a volunteer in the United Nations (UN) mission responsible for surveillance of the frontier between Israel and Gaza Strip, then under Egyptian control.<\/p>\n
"It was a very good experience. As a Brazilian, I clearly learnt about the Palestinian problem, and felt it, in my skin. Although I am of Arab origin, this problem had been distant up to that moment," he said. Abr\u00e3o remained in the country for one year and four months at the service of the UN, as a frontier guard and later as an interpreter, as he spoke both English and Arabic fluently.<\/p>\n
When he returned to Brazil, in 1965, he started teaching English and now owns an English school. Abr\u00e3o entered the literature world in the 1970s, when he started writing short stories and chronicles for a supplement of newspaper Zero Hora<\/i>, from Porto Alegre, turned to the Sinos Valley region, where Novo Hamburgo, the city in which he lives, is located.<\/p>\n
The idea of writing a book, however, came recently and was influenced by Juracy Saraiva, a Literature teacher and friend. "She always stimulated me to write, until, in 2007, I had a knee operation, bought a notebook and started the book." The text, according to him, took a year and a half to be completed.<\/p>\n
Although he is releasing his first book, Abr\u00e3o has already finished his second book, whose title is "The Martyr". He explains a little about it: "It is a love story, between a Brazilian Jew and a Brazilian of Palestinian origin, who meet in Israel. Controversial, eh?"<\/p>\n
Service<\/b><\/p>\n
Release of book "Mohamed, o Latoeiro", by Gilberto Abr\u00e3o
Today (22) at the Modern Art Museum (MAM), Ibirapuera Park, gate 03, at 7:30 pm
Primavera Editorial publishing house
432 pages
Suggested price: 47.80 reals (US$ 26.30)<\/p>\n
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum and Mark Ament<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gilberto Abr\u00e3o will release his debut novel, \u201cMohamed, o Latoeiro\u201d, in S\u00e3o Paulo, today. The author, a son to Arab immigrants, tells the saga of a Syrian who got to Brazil in the early 20th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1454,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"wps_subtitle":"Gilberto Abr\u00e3o will release his debut novel, \u201cMohamed, o Latoeiro\u201d, in S\u00e3o Paulo, today. The author, a son to Arab immigrants, tells the saga of a Syrian who got to Brazil in the early 20th century.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}