Friday night, time to party. We take a taxi to the other side of town to see a friend play; this time it’s samba rock. The bar is not packed, so we even manage to get a table near the band. Unsurprisingly, we sip some cold beer as we listen. Every now and then a bigger or smaller shaking bunda* obscures the view - in Brazil, virtually everyone knows how to dance (more or less effectively). The show ends early and, due to a problem with the computer system, we spend much more time queueing to pay our bill** than we did enjoying the covers of Seu Jorge, Djavan, Jorge Ben Jor and Tim Maia. The friend, a bass player, offers us a lift home. In a city like São Paulo, that’s something you don’t refuse as there are only two ways to go back after a night out: a taxi, easy and accessible but not always cheap, especially if you go far; or a car, preferably someone else’s (so that you can enjoy your beer!). You want to avoid walking the streets at after dark at all costs. So, we gladly go with João; the boys sit in the front, while I doze off at the back seat, hugging the bass guitar. It’s going to be a while before we reach our destination. At one point, we seem to be very close, I start to recognise the buildings with my sleepy eyes, but then, a wrong turn and we end up having to make a huge circle. “I’ll take another nap!”
Uh-uh. Behind the corner flashing lights make us slow down and harsh voices tell us to pull over. It’s the military police. I’ve heard a lot about these middle-of-the-night stop-and-searches and, trust me, they were never nice stories. I instantly have scenes straight from Tropa de Elite*** in front of my eyes, but I decide to keep my calm. It can’t be that bad. The boys leave the car slowly, hands at the back of their heads, ready to be searched, while I’m still inside, fully woken up by now, thinking “What the hell do I do?!”. A policeman summons me too and politely tells me to wait on the pavement as they check the documents. Oh, by the way, do I have mine? I think he’s surprised to see my Polish ID (for safety reasons, I leave the passport at home, but it’s obligatory to have some sort of an ID with you), but doesn’t bother me with any more questions after I tell him that I’m a foreigner. A couple of minutes pass and my teeth start to chatter. I wonder if it’s because of the cold or ...fear and then a thought strikes me – I’ll have something to write about in my blog! How comforting. Another few minutes later, we get back our IDs and hit the road again. Among nervous smiles I learn that we have just been enquadrados, or “squared” by the police, and we’re luckier than we think. First of all, a blitz**** rarely goes as peacefully as this, and, secondly, João’s ID is out of date and he’s forgotten the car documents at home. But you don’t have to believe any of that.
*your or somebody else’s rear
** I’ll explain the paying system in a later post
*** a film about police brutality (among other things), the English title is Elite Squad (2007)
****another name for these police traffic stops
No comments:
Post a Comment