2 days since we landed in Portugal and 2 days of feeling like I’ve been hit by a tonne of bricks. Great weather, lovely company, fabulous food and still this strange feeling of heaviness. Maybe it has something to do with the lunar cycle. May be it’s the accumulated tiredness of the past few months finding an outlet. Unsure of what to make of it, I speak to my friend about it and she tells me about ‘saudade’. It’s the Portuguese name for an emotion that lives in this land, its people, music and culture.

It is a wistful longing, drenched in sorrow, for something that can never be had again. It is nostalgia, but melancholic. It is longing, but knowing it cannot be. A type of self-delusion. So, “saudade” is a feeling of lost connection with the most important feeling or thing you ever had, a desire for something that you lost – a country, a grandmother, youth, a son, a lover.

In English, it means ‘to miss’. It is a verb.
In Portuguese, it is a thing. A noun. Saudade.