On the street

Sunday night, Rita, Helena, and I were walking through Recife Antigo, the old city built by Dutch colonists in the 16th and 17th centuries, and now a contrast of old beauty and urban decay.  The sound of drums echoed through the narrow streets, as maracatus practiced their rhythms, but few people were around, and few streetlights illuminated our way.  Crossing an abandoned street, we saw a girl of thirteen or fourteen years -- the kind of girl we might have named a "street kid" before understanding how life on the street really works -- who was kicking a light rubber ball and watching it float slowly to the ground.  Helena Iara was fascinated, and pointed to the girl and her game.

Attracted by the finger and Helena's shouts of interest, the girl approached: not with the timidity one might expect of a street girl, nor the begging tones of a poor urchin, but with an excited voice.  "Do you want to play?" she asked Helena, and then turned to us, as if asking permission.

Rita set Helena on the cobblestones, and she grabbed the string of the balloon-ball and began to kick it across the ground, limited only by Rita's hand from running and falling.  She laughed, screamed, kicked to ball to Thaisa (as the girl introduced herself) and then waited for it to come back.  Rita and I joined the laughter, which lifted the sinister air that had filled the streets.

I don't think we played any more than five minutes before we picked up Helena and headed to the bus stop, but I think that those minutes probably taught Helena more philosophy -- the encounter with difference, treating others as equal, as ends instead of means, of the chance to learn and play and not fear -- than any number of talks that she and I might have.  A beautiful night of practical philosophy and ethics.