Chasing Bohemia Read Online Free

Lebanese ancestry, presumably part of the Arab diaspora that had flooded into the Americas between the world wars.
    â€˜Is there a large community of Arabic people in Brazil? Do you have a Muslim community here also?’ I asked.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ she admitted apologetically. ‘My grandfather did not like to talk about Lebanon …’
    She looked away, sucked in her lips, and let a polite moment pass before brightening up and moving swiftly on to a topic that would surely be of more interest to both of us than the tired minutiae of multiculturalism. The topic that, I was to soon discover, the good people of Rio de Janeiro — at any age, of any orientation, and of any religious persuasion — never ever tire of discussing, with anyone. Sex, of course.
    â€˜So, tell me,’ she asked eagerly, ‘Are Australian men really good in bed? Is what they say about them untrue?’
    As I struggled with the quantum leap from Arab communities in Brazil to the standard of Australian men in bed, torn between staying silent and seeming prudish to the flamboyant Brazilian, or answering and giving too much of myself away, Carina tapped her foot impatiently.
    â€˜I don’t know, really,’ I eventually began with an evasive tone. ‘Maybe … I’ve had a lot of foreign boyfriends.’
    â€˜Well, from my limited experience, which is only three,’ Carina dragged the conversation along, ‘they were terrible. They were just like, bluuurghhhh …’ This last sound was accompanied by an expansive slump of her shoulders. I swallowed a gulp of my coffee with an instinctive splutter of offence.
    â€˜So many from such a small country!’ I exclaimed, a rare patriotism rising within me. ‘But, I mean, who are my dear countrymen’s competition? From which luminous nation is your main sample-base derived?’
    â€˜Luminous sample … what ?’
    â€˜I mean, where do your lovers mostly come from?’
    Then came the devastating answer. ‘England.’
    The conversation plundered on, hewing and smiting male egos from Reykjavik to the Rio Negro, pillaging a veritable United Nations of lovers, clearly none of whom stood a chance against the sheer might of the lusty Brazilians, until eventually, disappointed at my reluctance to contribute the more sordid details of my fellow countrymen’s sexual prowess (or lack thereof), Carina got bored and dismissed me with a map.
    â€˜Go and see the sights. You know, Copacabana and all that hustle. Then we can have a drink at Bar do Mineiro here in Santa Teresa later tonight, if you want.’
    I stayed in the hostel for a while after she left, watching as the travellers came in and out in a blur of voices and accents.
    THE HOSTEL WAS HALFWAY up one of the steep hills that surround the city of Rio de Janeiro in a natural amphitheatre. It was a city built into the contours of the land, the buildings flowing over the mounds and into the grooves. Different epochs of the city lay side by side before the dramatic backdrop of the Bay of Guanabara: a solitary white stone convent of early times; the staggered terracotta roofs of a colonial era; and a scattering of the obligatory property-development disasters of the seventies. Two enormous futuristic structures dominated the centre: the first, a modernist construction in the form of a metal and glass Rubik’s cube, with some cubes pulled out to form open-air garden terraces; and the second, a giant stained-glass pyramid which Carina had informed me earlier was the Metropolitan Church of São Sebastião.
    It was an arresting cityscape with the mark of visionaries in its making, even if there was something that remained unfulfilled about it. The dramatic avenues, which one could imagine should have connected this modernist vision to its colonial past, were now crowded with ugly condominiums, robbing the structures of their grandeur. More inescapable yet was the