A Desaparecida

 I made it back Monday night from my latest trip to Portugal, my eighth. Every time it's harder to come, leaving behind a place I dearly love for a country that I'm growing to hate. It was a wonderful week, and, in addition to everything else, I got so much great writing done. It's amazing how much writing I do when I'm overseas in Portugal, but more on that later. Last Sunday, my last night in Lisbon, I was flipping around the TV looking for the Portugal vs. Spain championship match (I wish I had remembered it was being played that night, I would have watched it in a bar) and stumbled across John Ford's The Searchers, in English with Portuguese subtitles. It has long been, and remains, my favorite Western, and a film that I believe is one of the five greatest American films of all time. I snapped this picture of John Wayne and Ward Bond. As discussed below, The Searchers was turned into A Desaparecida, meaning something like "the missing" or "the disappeared." Janet and I were texting while I was gone (she stayed home to try and sort out the madness of her job, and, of course, regretted the decision) and she pointed out that if we had not gotten together I'd already be living in Portugal. One of these trips I'll probably go missing, referred to, from then on, simply as "o desaparecido."

I think it's interesting that in Portugal The Searchers was rendered as A Desaparecida. In doing so, the emphasis almost passes from the men searching (mainly John Wayne as Ethan Edwards and Jeffrey Hunter as Martin Pawley) to the missing girl (Natalie Wood as Debbie Edwards - played by Natalie's younger sister Lana as Debbie at the moment of the kidnapping). It made me wonder if that might have been closer to the original intent, but the film is based on a novel of the same name, The Searchers, by Alan Le May (born in Indianapolis, of all places) so I guess not. I might have to track down a copy of the original novel.