find all difficult words in this book , dont need to tell me meaning just find words and write them"
For S.F.X., 

a sun who spread light and 
warmth wherever he went, 
and was an example to all those 
who think beyond their horizons 


f 

O Mary conceived without sin, 
pray for those who turn to you. 
Amen. 


f 

No man, when he hath lighted a candle, 
putteth it in a secret place, 
neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, 
that they which come in may see the light. 

— L U K E 1 1 : 3 3 


Contents 

Epigraph v 
Begin Reading 1 
About the Author 
Other Books by Paulo Coelho 
Credits 
Cover 
Copyright 
About the Publisher 


f 
Before these statements left my desk and followed the fate I eventually chose 
for them, I considered using them as the basis for a traditional, painstakingly 
researched biography, recounting a true story. And so I read various biogra-
phies, thinking this would help me, only to realize that the biographer’s view of 
his subject inevitably influences the results of his research. Since it wasn’t my 
intention to impose my own opinions on the reader, but to set down the story of 
“the Witch of Portobello” as seen by its main protagonists, I soon abandoned the 
idea of writing a straight biography and decided that the best approach would be 
simply to transcribe what people had told me. 

HE RO N RYA N , F O RT Y -F O U R , J O U R NA L I S T 

No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the 
purpose of light is to create more light, to open people’s eyes, to 
reveal the marvels around. 
No one sacrifices the most important thing she possesses: love. 


2 P a u l o C o e l h o 

No one places her dreams in the hands of those who might 
destroy them. 
No one, that is, but Athena. 
A long time after Athena’s death, her former teacher asked 
me to go with her to the town of Prestonpans in Scotland. There, 
taking advantage of certain ancient feudal powers that were due 
to be abolished the following month, the town had granted of-
ficial pardons to eighty-one people—and their cats—who were 
executed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for practic-
ing witchcraft. 
According to the official spokeswoman for the Barons 
Courts of Prestoungrange & Dolphinstoun: “Most of those 
persons condemned . . . were convicted on the basis of spectral 
evidence—that is to say, prosecuting witnesses declared that 
they felt the presence of evil spirits or heard spirit voices.” 
There’s no point now in going into all the excesses commit-
ted by the Inquisition, with its torture chambers and its bonfires 
lit by hatred and vengeance; however, on our way to Prestonpans, 
Edda said several times that there was something about that ges-
ture which she found unacceptable: the town and the Fourteenth 
Baron of Prestoungrange & Dolphinstoun were “granting par-
dons” to people who had been brutally executed. 
“Here we are in the twenty-first century, and yet the de-
scendants of the real criminals, those who killed the innocent 
victims, still feel they have the right to grant pardons. Do you 
know what I mean, Heron?” 
I did. A new witch hunt is starting to gain ground. This time 
the weapon isn’t the red-hot iron, but irony and repression. Any-


3 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

one who happens to discover a gift and dares to speak of their 
abilities is usually regarded with distrust. Generally speaking, 
their husband, wife, father, or child, or whoever, instead of feel-
ing proud, forbids all mention of the matter, fearful of exposing 
their family to ridicule. 
Before I met Athena, I thought all such gifts were a dishon-
est way of exploiting people’s despair. My trip to Transylvania to 
make a documentary on vampires was also a way of proving how 
easily people are deceived. Certain superstitions, however absurd 
they may seem, remain in the human imagination and are often 
used by unscrupulous people. When I visited Dracula’s castle, 
which has been reconstructed merely to give tourists the feeling 
that they’re in a special place, I was approached by a government 
official who implied that I would receive a “significant” (to use 
his word) gift when the film was shown on the BBC. In the 
mind of that official, I was helping to propagate the myth and 
thus deserved a generous reward. One of the guides said that the 
number of visitors increased each year, and that any mention of 
the place would prove positive, even a program saying that the 
castle was a fake, that Vlad Dracula was a historical figure who 
had nothing to do with the myth, and that it was all merely a 
product of the wild imaginings of one Irishman [Editor’s note: 
Bram Stoker], who had never even visited the region. 
I knew then that, however rigorous I was with the facts, I was 
unwittingly collaborating with the lie; even if the idea behind 
my script was to de-mythologize the place, people would believe 
what they wanted to believe; the guide was right, I would simply 
be helping to generate more publicity. I immediately abandoned 


4 P a u l o C o e l h o 

the project, even though I’d already spent quite a lot of money 
on the trip and on my research. 
And yet my journey to Transylvania was to have a huge im-
pact on my life, for I met Athena there when she was trying to 
track down her mother. Destiny—mysterious, implacable Des-
tiny—brought us face-to-face in the insignificant foyer of a still 
more insignificant hotel. I was witness to her first conversation 
with Deidre—or Edda, as she likes to be called. I watched, as if 
I were a spectator of my own life, as my heart struggled vainly 
not to allow itself to be seduced by a woman who didn’t belong 
to my world. I applauded when reason lost the battle, and all I 
could do was surrender and accept that I was in love. 
That love led me to see things I’d never imagined could 
exist—rituals, materializations, trances. Believing that I was 
blinded by love, I doubted everything, but doubt, far from para-
lyzing me, pushed me in the direction of oceans whose very 
existence I couldn’t admit. It was this same energy which, in dif-
ficult times, helped me to confront the cynicism of journalist 
colleagues and to write about Athena and her work. And since 
that love remains alive, the energy remains, even though Athena 
is dead, even though all I want now is to forget what I saw and 
learned. I could only navigate that world while hand in hand 
with Athena. 
These were her gardens, her rivers, her mountains. Now that 
she’s gone, I need everything to return as quickly as possible 
to how it used to be. I’m going to concentrate more on traffic 
problems, Britain’s foreign policy, on how we administer taxes. I 
want to go back to thinking that the world of magic is merely a 


5 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

clever trick, that people are superstitious, that anything science 
cannot explain has no right to exist. 
When the meetings in Portobello started to get out of con-
trol, we had endless arguments about how she was behaving, 
although I’m glad now that she didn’t listen to me. If there is 
any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we 
love very much, it’s the necessary hope that perhaps it was for 
the best. 
I wake and fall asleep with that certainty; it’s best that 
Athena left when she did rather than descend into the infer-
nos of this world. She would never have regained her peace 
of mind after the events that earned her the nickname “the 
Witch of Portobello.” The rest of her life would have been a 
bitter clash between her personal dreams and collective reality. 
Knowing her as I did, she would have battled on to the end, 
wasting her energy and her joy on trying to prove something 
that no one, absolutely no one, was prepared to believe. 
Who knows, perhaps she sought death the way a shipwrecked 
victim seeks an island. She must have stood late at night in many a 
Tube station, waiting for muggers who never came. She must have 
walked through the most dangerous parts of London in search of 
a murderer who never appeared or perhaps tried to provoke the 
anger of the physically strong, who refused to get angry. 
Until, finally, she managed to get herself brutally murdered. 
But, then, how many of us will be saved the pain of seeing the 
most important things in our lives disappearing from one mo-
ment to the next? I don’t just mean people, but our ideas and 
dreams too: we might survive a day, a week, a few years, but we’re 


6 P a u l o C o e l h o 

all condemned to lose. Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later 
our soul will receive the mortal blow. The perfect crime—for we 
don’t know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or 
where the guilty parties are to be found. 
Are they aware of what they’ve done, those nameless guilty 
parties? I doubt it, because they too—the depressed, the ar-
rogant, the impotent, and the powerful—are the victims of the 
reality they created. 
They don’t understand and would be incapable of under-
standing Athena’s world. Yes, that’s the best way to think of 
it—Athena’s world. I’m finally coming to accept that I was only 
a temporary inhabitant, there as a favor, like someone who finds 
himself in a beautiful mansion, eating exquisite food, aware that 
this is only a party, that the mansion belongs to someone else, 
that the food was bought by someone else, and that the time 
will come when the lights will go out, the owners will go to bed, 
the servants will return to their quarters, the door will close, 
and we’ll be out in the street again, waiting for a taxi or a bus to 
restore us to the mediocrity of our everyday lives. 
I’m going back, or, rather, part of me is going back to that 
world where only what we can see, touch, and explain makes 
sense. I want to get back to the world of speeding tickets, people 
arguing with bank cashiers, eternal complaints about the weather, 
to horror films, and Formula 1 racing. This is the universe I’ll 
have to live with for the rest of my days. I’ll get married, have 
children, and the past will become a distant memory, which will, 
in the end, make me ask myself: How could I have been so blind? 
How could I have been so ingenuous? 


7 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

I also know that, at night, another part of me will remain 
wandering in space, in contact with things as real as the pack 
of cigarettes and the glass of gin before me now. My soul will 
dance with Athena’s soul; I’ll be with her while I sleep; I’ll wake 
up sweating and go into the kitchen for a glass of water. I’ll un-
derstand that in order to combat ghosts you must use weapons 
that form no part of reality. Then, following the advice of my 
grandmother, I’ll place an open pair of scissors on my bedside 
table to snip off the end of the dream. 
The next day, I’ll look at the scissors with a touch of regret, 
but I must adapt to living in the world again or risk going mad. 

AN D R E A MC CA I N , T H I RT Y -T WO , AC T R E S S 

“No one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both 
parties know what they’re doing, even if one of them complains 
later on that they were used.” 
That’s what Athena used to say, but she herself behaved 
quite differently, because she used and manipulated me with no 
consideration for my feelings. And given that we’re talking about 
magic here, this makes the accusation an even more serious one; 
after all, she was my teacher, charged with passing on the sacred 
mysteries, with awakening the unknown force we all possess. 
When we venture into that unfamiliar sea, we trust blindly in 
those who guide us, believing that they know more than we do. 
Well, I can guarantee that they don’t. Not Athena, not Edda, 
nor any of the people I came to know through them. She told 


8 P a u l o C o e l h o 

me she was learning through teaching, and although, at first, I 
refused to believe this, later I came to think that perhaps it was 
true. I realized it was one of her many ways of getting us to drop 
our guard and surrender to her charm. 
People who are on a spiritual quest don’t think, they simply 
want results. They want to feel powerful and superior to the 
anonymous masses. They want to be special. Athena played with 
other people’s feelings in a quite terrifying way. 
I understand that she once felt a profound admiration for 
St. Thérèse of Lisieux. I have no interest in the Catholic faith, 
but from what I’ve heard, Thérèse experienced a kind of mysti-
cal and physical union with God. Athena mentioned once that 
she would like to share a similar fate. Well, in that case, she 
should have joined a convent and devoted her life to prayer or 
to the service of the poor. That would have been much more 
useful to the world and far less dangerous than using music 
and rituals to induce in people a kind of intoxicated state that 
brought them into contact with both the best and the worst 
of themselves. 
I sought her out when I was looking for some meaning to my 
life, although I didn’t say as much at our first meeting. I should 
have realized from the start that Athena wasn’t very interested 
in that; she wanted to live, dance, make love, travel, to gather 
people around her in order to demonstrate how wise she was, to 
show off her gifts, to provoke the neighbors, to make the most 
of all that is profane in us—although she always tried to give a 
spiritual gloss to that search. 
Whenever we met, whether it was to perform some magical 


9 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

ceremony or just have a drink, I was conscious of her power. It 
was so strong I could almost touch it. Initially, I was fascinated 
and wanted to be like her. But one day, in a bar, she started 
talking about the “Third Rite,” which has to do with sexuality. 
She did this in the presence of my boyfriend. Her excuse was 
that she was teaching me something. Her real objective, in my 
opinion, was to seduce the man I loved. 
And, of course, she succeeded. 
It isn’t good to speak ill of people who have passed from 
this life onto the astral plane. However, Athena won’t have to 
account to me, but to all those forces that she turned to her own 
benefit, rather than channeling them for the good of humanity 
and for her own spiritual enlightenment. 
The worst thing is that if it hadn’t been for her compulsive 
exhibitionism, everything we began together could have worked 
out really well. Had she behaved more discreetly, we would now 
be fulfilling the mission with which we were entrusted. But she 
couldn’t control herself; she thought she was the mistress of the 
truth, capable of overcoming all barriers merely by using her 
powers of seduction. 
And the result? I was left alone. And I can’t leave the work 
half-finished—I’ll have to continue to the end, even though 
sometimes I feel very weak and often dispirited. 
I’m not surprised that her life ended as it did: she was always 
flirting with danger. They say that extroverts are unhappier than 
introverts and have to compensate for this by constantly proving 
to themselves how happy and contented and at ease with life 
they are. In her case, at least, this is absolutely true. 


10 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Athena was conscious of her own charisma, and she made all 
those who loved her suffer. 
Including me. 

DE I D R E O’NE I L L , T H I RT Y -S E V E N , 
D O C TO R , K N OW N A S ED DA 

If a man we don’t know phones us up today and talks a little, 
makes no suggestions, says nothing special, but nevertheless pays 
us the kind of attention we rarely receive, we’re quite capable of 
going to bed with him that same night, feeling relatively in love. 
That’s what we women are like, and there’s nothing wrong with 
that—it’s the nature of the female to open herself to love easily. 
It was this same love that opened me up to my first encoun-
ter with the Mother when I was nineteen. Athena was the same 
age the first time she went into a trance while dancing. But that’s 
the only thing we had in common—the age of our initiation. 
In every other aspect, we were totally and profoundly dif-
ferent, especially in the way we dealt with other people. As her 
teacher, I always did my best to help her in her inner search. 
As her friend—although I’m not sure my feelings of friend-
ship were reciprocated—I tried to alert her to the fact that the 
world wasn’t ready for the kind of transformations she wanted 
to provoke. I remember spending a few sleepless nights before 
deciding to allow her to act with total freedom and follow the 
demands of her heart. 
Her greatest problem was that she was a woman of the 


11 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

twenty-second century living in the twenty-first, and making 
no secret of the fact either. Did she pay a price? She certainly 
did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had 
repressed her true exuberant self. She would have been bitter 
and frustrated, always concerned about “what other people 
might think,” always saying “I’ll just sort these things out, then 
I’ll devote myself to my dream,” always complaining that “the 
conditions are never quite right.” 
Everyone’s looking for the perfect teacher, but although their 
teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that’s 
something people find hard to accept. Don’t confuse the teacher 
with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the 
symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our en-
counter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring 
this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, 
and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow. 
Pity those who seek for shepherds, instead of longing for 
freedom! An encounter with the superior energy is open to any-
one but remains far from those who shift responsibility onto 
others. Our time on this earth is sacred, and we should celebrate 
every moment. 
The importance of this has been completely forgotten: even 
religious holidays have been transformed into opportunities to 
go to the beach or the park or skiing. There are no more rituals. 
Ordinary actions can no longer be transformed into manifesta-
tions of the sacred. We cook and complain that it’s a waste of 
time, when we should be pouring our love into making that 
food. We work and believe it’s a divine curse, when we should 


12 P a u l o C o e l h o 

be using our skills to bring pleasure and to spread the energy of 
the Mother. 
Athena brought to the surface the immensely rich world we 
all carry in our souls, without realizing that people aren’t yet 
ready to accept their own powers. 
We women, when we’re searching for a meaning to our lives 
or for the path of knowledge, always identify with one of four 
classic archetypes. 
The Virgin (and I’m not speaking here of a sexual virgin) is 
the one whose search springs from her complete independence, 
and everything she learns is the fruit of her ability to face chal-
lenges alone. 
The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, 
surrender, and suffering. 
The Saint finds her true reason for living in uncondi-
tional love and in her ability to give without asking anything 
in return. 
Finally, the Witch justifies her existence by going in search 
of complete and limitless pleasure. 
Normally a woman has to choose from one of these tradi-
tional feminine archetypes, but Athena was all four at once. 
Obviously we can justify her behavior, alleging that all those 
who enter a state of trance or ecstasy lose contact with reality. 
That’s not true: the physical world and the spiritual world are the 
same thing. We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that 
doesn’t stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine 
doesn’t disappear; it’s transformed into the clean surface. 
Athena should have been more careful. When I reflect upon 


13 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

the life and death of my pupil, it seems to me that I had better 
change the way I behave too. 

LE L L A ZA I NA B , S I X T Y -F O U R , N U M E RO LO G I S T 

Athena? What an interesting name! Let’s see . . . her Maximum 
number is nine. Optimistic, sociable, likely to be noticed in a 
crowd. People might go to her in search of understanding, com-
passion, generosity, and for precisely that reason, she should be 
careful, because that tendency to popularity could go to her 
head and she’ll end up losing more than she gains. She should 
also watch her tongue, because she tends to speak more than 
common sense dictates. 
As for her Minimum number eleven, I sense that she longs 
for some leadership position. She has an interest in mystical 
subjects and through these tries to bring harmony to those 
around her. 
However, this is in direct conflict with the number nine, 
which is the sum of the day, month, and year of her birth re-
duced to a single figure: she’ll always be subject to envy, sadness, 
introversion, and impulsive decisions. She must be careful not to 
let herself be affected by negative vibrations: excessive ambition, 
intolerance, abuse of power, extravagance. 
Because of that conflict, I suggest she take up some career 
that doesn’t involve emotional contact with people, like comput-
ing or engineering. 
Oh, she’s dead? I’m sorry. So what did she do? 


14 P a u l o C o e l h o 

What did Athena do? She did a little of everything, but if I had to summarize 
her life, I’d say: she was a priestess who understood the forces of nature. Or, 
rather, she was someone who, by the simple fact of having little to lose or to hope 
for in life, took greater risks than other people and ended up being transformed 
into the forces she thought she mastered. 
She was a supermarket checkout girl, a bank employee, a property dealer, and 
in each of these positions she always revealed the priestess within. I lived with her 
for eight years, and I owed her this: to recover her memory, her identity. 
The most difficult thing in collecting together these statements was persuad-
ing people to let me use their real names. Some said they didn’t want to be 
involved in this kind of story, others tried to conceal their opinions and feelings. 
I explained that my real intention was to help all those involved to understand 
her better, and that no reader would believe in anonymous statements. 
They finally agreed because they all believed that they knew the unique and 
definitive version of any event, however insignificant. During the recordings, I 
saw that things are never absolute, they depend on each individual’s perceptions. 
And the best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us. 
This doesn’t mean that we should do what others expect us to do, but it 
helps us to understand ourselves better. I owed it to Athena to recover her story, 
to write her myth. 

SA M I R A R. KH A L I L , F I F T Y -S E V E N , 
H O U S E W I F E , AT H E NA ’S M OT H E R 

Please, don’t call her Athena. Her real name is Sherine. Sherine 
Khalil, our much-loved, much-wanted daughter, whom both my 
husband and I wish we had engendered. 


15 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Life, however, had other plans—when fate is very generous 
with us, there is always a well into which all our dreams can 
tumble. 
We lived in Beirut in the days when everyone considered it 
the most beautiful city in the Middle East. My husband was 
a successful industrialist, we married for love, we traveled to 
Europe every year, we had friends, we were invited to all the 
important social events, and once, the president of the United 
States himself visited my house. Imagine that! Three unforget-
table days, during two of which the American Secret Service 
scoured every corner of our house (they’d been in the area for 
more than a month already, taking up strategic positions, rent-
ing apartments, disguising themselves as beggars or young lov-
ers). And for one day, or rather, two hours, we partied. I’ll never 
forget the look of envy in our friends’ eyes, and the excitement 
of having our photo taken alongside the most powerful man on 
the planet. 
We had it all, apart from the one thing we wanted most—a 
child. And so we had nothing. 
We tried everything: we made vows and promises, went to 
places where miracles were guaranteed, we consulted doctors, 
witch doctors, took remedies and drank elixirs and magic po-
tions. I had artificial insemination twice and lost the baby both 
times. On the second occasion, I also lost my left ovary, and 
after that, no doctor was prepared to risk such a venture again. 
That was when one of the many friends who knew of our plight 
suggested the one possible solution: adoption. He said he had con-
tacts in Romania, and that the process wouldn’t take long. 


16 P a u l o C o e l h o 

A month later, we got on a plane. Our friend had important 
business dealings with the dictator who ruled the country at the 
time, and whose name I now forget [Editor’s note: Nicolae Ceau-
sescu], and so we managed to avoid the bureaucratic red tape and 
went straight to an adoption center in Sibiu, in Transylvania. 
There we were greeted with coffee, cigarettes, mineral water, and 
with the paperwork signed and sealed. All we had to do was 
choose a child. 
They took us to a very cold nursery, and I couldn’t imagine 
how they could leave those poor children in such a place. My 
first instinct was to adopt them all and carry them off to Leba-
non, where there was sun and freedom, but obviously that was a 
crazy idea. We walked up and down between the cots, listening 
to the children crying, terrified by the magnitude of the decision 
we were about to make. 
For more than an hour, neither I nor my husband spoke 
a word. We went out, drank coffee, smoked, and then went 
back in again—and this happened several times. I noticed that 
the woman in charge of adoptions was growing impatient; she 
wanted an immediate decision. At that moment, following an 
instinct I would dare to describe as maternal—as if I’d found a 
child who should have been mine in this incarnation, but who 
had come into the world in another woman’s womb—I pointed 
to one particular baby girl. 
The woman advised us to think again. And she’d been so 
impatient for us to make a decision! But I was sure. 
Nevertheless—trying not to hurt my feelings (she thought 
we had contacts in the upper echelons of the Romanian gov-


17 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

ernment)—she whispered to me, so that my husband wouldn’t 
hear: “I know it won’t work out. She’s the daughter of a gypsy.” 
I retorted that culture isn’t something that’s transmitted 
through the genes. The child, who was barely three months old, 
would be our daughter, brought up according to our customs. 
She would go to our church, visit our beaches, read books in 
French, study at the American School in Beirut. Besides, I knew 
nothing about gypsy culture—and I still know nothing. I only 
know that they travel a lot, don’t wash very often, aren’t to be 
trusted, and wear earrings. Legend has it that they kidnap chil-
dren and carry them off in their caravans, but here, exactly the 
opposite was happening: they had left a child behind for me to 
take care of. 
The woman tried again to dissuade me, but I was already 
signing the papers and asking my husband to do the same. On 
the flight back to Beirut, the world seemed different: God had 
given me a reason for living, working, and fighting in this vale of 
tears. We now had a child to justify all our efforts. 
Sherine grew in wisdom and beauty—I expect all parents 
say that, but I really do think she was an exceptional child. One 
afternoon, when she was five, one of my brothers said that if, in 
the future, she wanted to work abroad, her name would always 
betray her origins, and he suggested changing it to one that gave 
nothing away, like Athena, for example. Now, of course, I know 
that Athena refers not only to the capital of Greece, but that it 
is also the name of the Greek goddess of wisdom, intelligence, 
and war. 
Perhaps my brother knew not only that but was aware too 


18 P a u l o C o e l h o 

of the problems an Arab name might bring in the future, for he 
was very involved in politics, as were all our family, and wanted 
to protect his niece from the black clouds that he, and only 
he, could see on the horizon. Most surprising of all was that 
Sherine liked the sound of the word. That same afternoon, she 
began referring to herself as Athena and no one could persuade 
her to do otherwise. To please her, we adopted the nickname 
too, thinking that it would be a passing fancy. 
Can a name affect a person’s life? Time passed, and the name 
stuck. 
From very early on, we discovered that she had a strong reli-
gious vocation—she spent all her time in the church and knew 
the Gospels by heart; this was at once a blessing and a curse. In 
a world that was starting to be divided more and more along 
religious lines, I feared for my daughter’s safety. It was then that 
Sherine began telling us, as if it were the most natural thing in 
the world, that she had a series of invisible friends—angels and 
saints whose images she was accustomed to seeing in the church 
we attended. All children everywhere have visions, but they usu-
ally forget about them after a certain age. They also treat inani-
mate objects, such as dolls or fluffy tigers, as if they were real. 
However, I really did feel she was going too far when I picked 
her up from school one day, and she told me that she’d seen “a 
woman dressed in white, like the Virgin Mary.” 
Naturally, I believe in angels. I even believe that the angels 
speak to little children, but when a child starts seeing visions of 
grown-ups, that’s another matter. I’ve read about various shep-
herds and country people who claimed to have seen a woman in 


19 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

white, and how this eventually destroyed their lives, because oth-
ers sought them out, expecting miracles; then the priests took 
over, their village became a center of pilgrimage, and the poor 
children ended their lives in a convent or a monastery. I was, 
therefore, very concerned about this story. Sherine was at an 
age when she should have been more concerned with makeup 
kits, painting her nails, watching soppy TV soaps and children’s 
programs. There was something wrong with my daughter, and I 
consulted an expert. 
“Relax,” he said. 
According to this pediatrician specializing in child psychol-
ogy—and according to most other doctors in the field—invisible 
friends are a projection of a child’s dreams and a safe way of help-
ing the child to discover her desires and express her feelings. 
“Yes, but a vision of a woman in white?” 
He replied that perhaps Sherine didn’t understand our way 
of seeing or explaining the world. He suggested that we should 
gradually begin preparing the ground to tell her that she was 
adopted. In the pediatrician’s words, the worst thing that could 
happen would be for her to find out by herself. Then she would 
begin to doubt everyone, and her behavior might become un-
predictable. 
From then on, we changed the way we talked to her. I don’t 
know how much children remember of what happens to them, 
but we started trying to show her just how much we loved her 
and that there was no need for her to take refuge in an imaginary 
world. She needed to see that her visible universe was as beauti-
ful as it could possibly be, that her parents would protect her 


20 P a u l o C o e l h o 

from any danger, that Beirut was a lovely city and its beaches 
full of sun and people. Without ever mentioning “the woman in 
white,” I began spending more time with my daughter; I invited 
her school friends to come to our house; I seized every oppor-
tunity to shower her with affection. 
The strategy worked. My husband used to travel a lot, and 
Sherine always missed him. In the name of love, he resolved to 
change his way of life a little. Her solitary conversations began to 
be replaced by games shared by father, mother, and daughter. 
Everything was going well. Then, one night, she came into 
our room in tears, saying that she was frightened and that hell 
was close at hand. 
I was alone at home. My husband had had to go away again, 
and I thought perhaps this was the reason for her despair. But 
hell? What were they teaching her at school or at church? I de-
cided to go and talk to her teacher the next day. 
Sherine, meanwhile, wouldn’t stop crying. I took her over to 
the window and showed her the Mediterranean outside, lit by the 
full moon. I told her there were no devils, only stars in the sky and 
people strolling up and down the boulevard outside our apart-
ment. I told her not to worry, that she needn’t be afraid, but she 
continued to weep and tremble. After spending almost half an 
hour trying to calm her, I began to get worried. I begged her to 
stop; after all, she was no longer a child. I thought perhaps her first 
period had started and discreetly asked if there was any blood. 
“Yes, lots.” 
I got some cotton wool and asked her to lie down so that 
I could take care of her “wound.” It wasn’t important. I would 


21 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

explain tomorrow. However, her period hadn’t started. She cried 
for a while longer, but she must have been tired, because then 
she fell asleep. 
And the following morning, there was blood. 
Four men had been murdered. To me, this was just another 
of the eternal tribal battles to which my people have become 
accustomed. To Sherine, it clearly meant nothing, because she 
didn’t even mention her nightmare. 
Meanwhile, from that date onward, hell came ever closer, 
and it hasn’t gone away since. On that same day, twenty-six 
Palestinians were killed on a bus, as revenge for the murders. 
Twenty-four hours later, it was impossible to walk down the 
street because of shots coming from every angle. The schools 
closed, Sherine was hurried home by one of her teachers, and 
the situation went from bad to worse. My husband interrupted 
his business trip halfway through and came home, where he 
spent whole days on the phone to his friends in government, 
but no one said anything that made any sense. Sherine heard the 
shots outside and my husband’s angry shouts indoors, but to my 
surprise, she didn’t say a word. I tried to tell her that it wouldn’t 
last, that soon we’d be able to go to the beach again, but she 
would simply look away or ask for a book to read or a record 
to play. While hell gradually put down roots, Sherine read and 
listened to music. 
But, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to dwell on that. I 
don’t want to think about the threats we received, about who was 
right, who was guilty, and who was innocent. The fact is that a 
few months later, if you wanted to cross a particular street, you 


22 P a u l o C o e l h o 

had to catch a boat across to the island of Cyprus, get on an-
other boat, and disembark on the other side of the street. 
For nearly a year, we stayed pretty much shut up indoors, 
always hoping that the situation would improve, always thinking 
it was a temporary thing, and that the government would take 
control. One morning, while she was listening to a record on her 
little portable record player, Sherine started dancing and saying 
things like: “This is going to last for a long, long time.” 
I tried to stop her, but my husband grabbed my arm. I real-
ized that he was listening to what she was saying and taking it 
seriously. I never understood why, and we’ve never spoken about 
it since. It’s a kind of taboo between us. 
The following day, he began taking unexpected steps, and 
two weeks later we were on a boat bound for London. Later, we 
would learn that, although there are no reliable statistics, dur-
ing those years of civil war about 44,000 people died, 180,000 
were wounded, and thousands made homeless. The fighting 
continued for other reasons, the country was occupied by for-
eign troops, and the hell continues to this day. 
“It’s going to last for a long, long time,” said Sherine. Unfor-
tunately, she was right. 

LU K Á S JE S S E N -PE T E R S E N , T H I RT Y -T WO , 
E N G I N E E R , E X -H U S BA N D 

When I first met Athena, she already knew that she was adopted. 
She was just nineteen and about to have a stand-up fight with 


23 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

a fellow student in the university cafeteria because the fellow 
student, assuming Athena to be English (white skin, straight 
hair, eyes that were sometimes green, sometimes gray), had made 
some insulting remark about the Middle East. 
It was the first day of term for these students and they 
knew nothing about one another. But Athena got up, grabbed 
the other girl by the collar, and started screaming: “Racist!” 
I saw the look of terror in the girl’s eyes and the look of 
excitement in the eyes of the other students, eager to see what 
would happen next. I was in the year above, and I knew exactly 
what the consequences would be: they would both be hauled 
up before the vice chancellor, an official complaint would be 
made, and that would probably be followed by expulsion from 
the university and a possible police inquiry into alleged racism, 
etc., etc. Everyone would lose. 
“Shut up!” I yelled, without really knowing what I was 
saying. 
I knew neither of the girls. I’m not the savior of the world, 
and to be perfectly honest, young people find the occasional 
fight stimulating, but I couldn’t help myself. 
“Stop it!” I shouted again at the pretty young woman who 
now had the other equally pretty young woman by the throat. 
She shot me a furious glance. Then, suddenly, something 
changed. She smiled, although she still had her hands around 
her colleague’s throat. 
“You forgot to say ‘please,’ ” she said. 
Everyone laughed. 
“Stop,” I asked again. “Please.” 


24 P a u l o C o e l h o 

She released the other girl and came over to me. All heads 
turned to watch. 
“You have excellent manners. Do you also have a cigarette?” 
I offered her my pack of cigarettes, and we went outside for 
a smoke. She had gone from outrage to nonchalance, and min-
utes later, she was laughing, discussing the weather, and asking 
if I liked this or that pop group. I heard the bell ringing for class 
and solemnly ignored the rule I’d been brought up to obey all 
my life: do your duty. I stayed there chatting, as if there were no 
university, no fights, no canteens, no wind or cold or sun. There 
was only that young woman with the gray eyes, saying the most 
boring and pointless things, but capable, nonetheless, of hold-
ing my interest for the rest of my life. 
Two hours later, we were having lunch together. Seven hours 
later, we were in a bar, having supper and drinking whatever our 
limited budgets allowed us to eat and drink. Our conversations 
grew ever more profound, and in a short space of time, I knew 
practically everything about her life—Athena recounted details 
of her childhood and adolescence with no prompting from me. 
Later, I realized she was the same with everyone, but that day I 
felt like the most important man on the face of the earth. 
She had come to London fleeing the civil war that had bro-
ken out in Lebanon. Her father, a Maronite Christian [Editor’s 
note: a branch of the Catholic Church, which, although it comes under the au-
thority of the Vatican, does not require priests to be celibate and uses both Middle 
Eastern and Orthodox rituals], had started to receive death threats 
because he worked for the Lebanese government, but despite 
this, he couldn’t make up his mind to leave and go into exile. 


25 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Then Athena, overhearing a phone conversation, decided that it 
was time she grew up, that she assumed her filial responsibilities 
and protected those she loved. 
She performed a kind of dance and pretended that she’d 
gone into a trance (she had learned all about this kind of thing 
at school when she studied the lives of the saints), and started 
making various pronouncements. I don’t know how a mere child 
could possibly persuade adults to make decisions based on what 
she said, but that, according to Athena, was precisely what hap-
pened. Her father was very superstitious, and she was convinced 
that she’d saved the lives of her family. 
They arrived here as refugees, but not as beggars. The Leba-
nese community is scattered all over the world, and her father 
soon found a way of reestablishing his business, and life went 
on. Athena was able to study at good schools, she attended 
dance classes—because dance was her passion—and when she’d 
finished at secondary school, she chose to take a degree in en-
gineering. 
Once they were living in London, her parents invited her 
out to supper at one of the most expensive restaurants in the 
city and explained, very carefully, that she had been adopted. 
Athena pretended to be surprised, hugged them both, and said 
that nothing would change their relationship. 
The truth was, though, that a friend of the family, in a mo-
ment of malice, had called her “an ungrateful orphan” and put 
her lack of manners down to the fact that she was “not her 
parents’ ‘real’ daughter.” She had hurled an ashtray at him, cut-
ting his face, and then cried for two whole days, after which she 


26 P a u l o C o e l h o 

quickly got used to the idea that she was adopted. The malicious 
family friend was left with an unexplained scar and took to say-
ing that he’d been attacked in the street by muggers. 
I asked if she would like to go out with me the next day. She 
told me that she was a virgin, went to church on Sundays, and 
had no interest in romantic novels—she was more concerned 
with reading everything she could about the situation in the 
Middle East. 
She was, in short, busy. Very busy. 
“People think that a woman’s only dream is to get married and 
have children. And given what I’ve told you, you probably think 
that I’ve suffered a lot in life. It’s not true, and, besides, I’ve been 
there already. I’ve known other men who wanted to ‘protect’ me 
from all those tragedies. What they forget is that, from Ancient 
Greece on, the people who returned from battle were either dead 
on their shields or stronger, despite or because of their scars. It’s 
better that way: I’ve lived on a battlefield since I was born, but I’m 
still alive and I don’t need anyone to protect me.” 
She paused. 
“You see how cultured I am?” 
“Oh, very, but when you attack someone weaker than your-
self, you make it look as if you really do need protection. You 
could have ruined your university career right there and then.” 
“You’re right. Okay, I accept the invitation.” 
We started seeing each other regularly, and the closer I got 
to her, the more I discovered my own light, because she always 
encouraged me to give the best of myself. She had never read any 
books on magic or esoterics. She said they were things of the 


27 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Devil, and that salvation was only possible through Jesus—end 
of story. Sometimes, though, she said things that didn’t seem 
entirely in keeping with the teachings of the Church. 
“Christ surrounded himself with beggars, prostitutes, tax 
collectors, and fishermen. I think what he meant by this was 
that the divine spark is in every soul and is never extinguished. 
When I sit still, or when I’m feeling very agitated, I feel as if 
I’m vibrating along with the whole Universe. And I know things 
then that I don’t know, as if God is guiding my steps. There are 
moments when I feel that everything is being revealed to me.” 
Then she would correct herself: 
“But that’s wrong.” 
Athena always lived between two worlds: what she felt was 
true and what she had been taught by her faith. 
One day, after almost a semester of equations, calculations, 
and structural studies, she announced that she was going to leave 
university. 
“But you’ve never said anything to me about it!” I said. 
“I was even afraid of talking about it to myself, but this 
morning I went to see my hairdresser. She worked day and night 
so that her daughter could finish her sociology degree. The 
daughter finally graduated and, after knocking on many doors, 
found work as a secretary at a cement works. Yet even today, my 
hairdresser said very proudly: ‘My daughter’s got a degree.’ Most 
of my parents’ friends and most of my parents’ friends’ children 
also have degrees. This doesn’t mean that they’ve managed to 
find the kind of work they wanted. Not at all; they went to 
university because someone, at a time when universities seemed 


28 P a u l o C o e l h o 

important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to 
have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excel-
lent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers.” 
I asked her to give it some more thought before taking such 
a radical step, but she quoted these lines by Robert Frost: 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference. 

The following day, she didn’t turn up for class. At our fol-
lowing meeting, I asked what she was going to do. 
“I’m going to get married and have a baby.” 
This wasn’t an ultimatum. I was twenty, she was nineteen, 
and I thought it was still too early to take on such a commit-
ment. 
But Athena was quite serious. And I needed to choose be-
tween losing the one thing that really filled my thoughts—my 
love for that woman—and losing my freedom and all the choices 
that the future promised me. 
To be honest, the decision was easy. 

FAT H E R GI A N C A R LO FO N TA NA , S E V E N T Y -T WO 

Of course I was surprised when the couple, both of them much 
too young, came to the church to arrange the wedding ceremony. 
I hardly knew Lukás Jessen-Petersen, but that same day, I learned 


29 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

that his family—obscure aristocrats from Denmark—was totally 
opposed to the union. They weren’t just against the marriage, 
they were against the Church as well. 
According to his father—who based himself on frankly un-
answerable scientific arguments—the Bible, on which the whole 
religion is based, wasn’t really a book, but a collage of sixty-six 
different manuscripts whose authors’ real names or identities re-
main unknown; he said that almost a thousand years had elapsed 
between the writing of the first book and the last, longer than 
the time that has elapsed since Columbus discovered America. 
And no living being on the planet—from monkeys down to 
parrots—needs Ten Commandments in order to know how to 
behave. All that it takes for the world to remain in harmony is 
for each being to follow the laws of nature. 
Naturally, I read the Bible and know a little of its history, 
but the human beings who wrote it were instruments of Divine 
Power, and Jesus forged a far stronger bond than the Ten Com-
mandments: love. Birds and monkeys, or any of God’s creatures, 
obey their instincts and merely do what they’re programmed to 
do. In the case of the human being, things are more complicated 
because we know about love and its traps. 
Oh dear, here I am making a sermon, when I should be tell-
ing you about my meeting with Athena and Lukás. While I was 
talking to the young man—and I say talking, because we don’t 
share the same faith, and I’m not, therefore, bound by the secret 
of the confessional—I learned that, as well as the household’s 
general anticlericalism, there was a lot of resistance to Athena 
because she was a foreigner. I felt like quoting from the Bible, 


30 P a u l o C o e l h o 

from a part that isn’t a profession of faith, but a call to common 
sense: “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother; 
thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger 
in his land.” 
I’m sorry, there I am quoting the Bible again, and I prom-
ise I’ll try to control myself from now on. After talking to the 
young man, I spent at least two hours with Sherine, or Athena 
as she preferred to be called. 
Athena had always intrigued me. Ever since she first started 
coming to the church, it seemed to me that she had one clear 
ambition: to become a saint. She told me—although her fiancé 
didn’t know this—that shortly before civil war broke out in Bei-
rut, she’d had an experience very similar to that of St. Thérèse of 
Lisieux: she had seen the streets running with blood. One could 
attribute this to some trauma in childhood or adolescence, but 
the fact is that, to a greater or lesser extent, all creative human 
beings have such experiences, which are known as “possession by 
the sacred.” Suddenly, for a fraction of a second, we feel that our 
whole life is justified, our sins forgiven, and that love is still the 
strongest force, one that can transform us forever. 
But at the same time we feel afraid. Surrendering completely 
to love, be it human or divine, means giving up everything, in-
cluding our own well-being or our ability to make decisions. It 
means loving in the deepest sense of the word. The truth is that 
we don’t want to be saved in the way God has chosen; we want to 
keep absolute control over our every step, to be fully conscious 
of our decisions, to be capable of choosing the object of our 
devotion. 


31 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

It isn’t like that with love—it arrives, moves in, and starts 
directing everything. Only very strong souls allow themselves 
to be swept along, and Athena was a strong soul. So strong that 
she spent hours in deep contemplation. She had a special gift 
for music; they say that she danced very well too, but since the 
church isn’t really the appropriate place for that, she used to 
bring her guitar each morning and spend some time there sing-
ing to the Holy Virgin before going off to her classes. 
I can still remember the first time I heard her. I’d just finished 
celebrating morning mass with the few parishioners prepared to 
get up that early on a winter’s morning, when I realized that I’d 
forgotten to collect the money left in the offering box. When I 
went back in, I heard some music that made me see everything 
differently, as if the atmosphere had been touched by the hand 
of an angel. In one corner, in a kind of ecstasy, a young woman 
of about twenty sat playing her guitar and singing hymns of 
praise, with her eyes fixed on the statue of the Holy Virgin. 
I went over to the offering box. She noticed my presence and 
stopped what she was doing, but I nodded to her, encouraging 
her to go on. Then I sat down in one of the pews, closed my 
eyes, and listened. 
At that moment, a sense of paradise, of “possession by the 
sacred,” seemed to descend from the heavens. As if she under-
stood what was going on in my heart, the young woman began 
to intersperse music with silence. Each time she stopped play-
ing, I would say a prayer. Then the music would start up again. 
And I was conscious that I was experiencing something 
unforgettable, one of those magical moments which we only 


32 P a u l o C o e l h o 

understand when it has passed. I was entirely in the present, 
with no past, no future, absorbed in experiencing the morning, 
the music, the sweetness, and the unexpected prayer. I entered 
a state of worship and ecstasy and gratitude for being in the 
world, glad that I’d followed my vocation despite my family’s 
opposition. In the simplicity of that small chapel, in the voice 
of that young woman, in the morning light flooding everything, 
I understood once again that the grandeur of God reveals itself 
through simple things. 
After many tears on my part and after what seemed to me 
an eternity, the young woman stopped playing. I turned round 
and realized that she was one of my parishioners. After that, we 
became friends, and whenever we could, we shared in that wor-
ship through music. 
However, the idea of marriage took me completely by sur-
prise. Since we knew each other fairly well, I asked how she 
thought her husband’s family would react. 
“Badly, very badly.” 
As tactfully as I could, I asked if, for any reason, she was be-
ing forced into marriage. 
“No, I’m still a virgin. I’m not pregnant.” 
I asked if she’d told her own family, and she said that she 
had, and that their reaction had been one of horror, accompa-
nied by tears from her mother and threats from her father. 
“When I come here to praise the Virgin with my music, I’m 
not bothered about what other people might think, I’m simply 
sharing my feelings with her. And that’s how it’s always been, 
ever since I was old enough to think for myself. I’m a vessel in 


33 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

which the Divine Energy can make itself manifest. And that en-
ergy is asking me now to have a child, so that I can give it what 
my birth mother never gave me: protection and security.” 
“No one is secure on this earth,” I replied. She still had 
a long future ahead of her; there was plenty of time for the 
miracle of creation to occur. However, Athena was determined: 
“St. Thérèse didn’t rebel against the illness that afflicted her; 
on the contrary, she saw it as a sign of God’s glory. St. Thérèse 
was only fifteen, much younger than me, when she decided to 
enter a convent. She was forbidden to do so, but she insisted. She 
decided to go and speak to the pope himself—can you imagine? 
To speak to the pope! And she got what she wanted. That same 
Glory is asking something far simpler and far more generous of 
me—to become a mother. If I wait much longer, I won’t be able 
to be a companion to my child, the age difference will be too 
great, and we won’t share the same interests.” 
She wouldn’t be alone in that, I said. 
But Athena continued, as if she wasn’t listening: 
“I’m only happy when I think that God exists and is listen-
ing to me; but that isn’t enough to go on living, when nothing 
seems to make sense. I pretend a happiness I don’t feel; I hide 
my sadness so as not to worry those who love me and care about 
me. Recently, I’ve even considered suicide. At night, before I 
go to sleep, I have long conversations with myself, praying for 
this idea to go away; it would be such an act of ingratitude, an 
escape, a way of spreading tragedy and misery over the earth. 
In the mornings, I come here to talk to St. Thérèse and to ask 
her to free me from the demons I speak to at night. It’s worked 


34 P a u l o C o e l h o 

so far, but I’m beginning to weaken. I know I have a mission, 
which I’ve long rejected, and now I must accept it. That mission 
is to be a mother. I must carry out that mission or go mad. If I 
don’t feel life growing inside me, I’ll never be able to accept life 
outside me.” 

LU K Á S JE S S E N -PE T E R S E N , E X -H U S BA N D 

When Viorel was born, I had just turned twenty-two. I was no 
longer the student who had married a fellow student, but a man 
responsible for supporting his family, and with an enormous 
burden on my shoulders. My parents, who didn’t even come to 
the wedding, made any financial help conditional on my leaving 
Athena and gaining custody of the child (or, rather, that’s what 
my father said, because my mother used to phone me up, weep-
ing, saying I must be mad, but saying too how much she’d like 
to hold her grandson in her arms). I hoped that, as they came 
to understand my love for Athena and my determination to stay 
with her, their resistance would gradually break down. 
It didn’t. And now I had to provide for my wife and child. I 
abandoned my studies at the Engineering Faculty. I got a phone 
call from my father, a mixture of stick and carrot: he said that if 
I continued as I was, I’d end up being disinherited, but that if I 
went back to university, he’d consider helping me, in his words, 
“provisionally.” I refused. The romanticism of youth demands 
that we always take very radical stances. I could, I said, solve my 
problems alone. 


35 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

During the time before Viorel was born, Athena began help-
ing me to understand myself better. This didn’t happen through 
sex—our sexual relationship was, I must confess, very tenta-
tive—but through music. 
As I later learned, music is as old as human beings. Our 
ancestors, who traveled from cave to cave, couldn’t carry many 
things, but modern archaeology shows that, as well as the little 
they might have with them in the way of food, there was always 
a musical instrument in their baggage, usually a drum. Music 
isn’t just something that comforts or distracts us, it goes beyond 
that—it’s an ideology. You can judge people by the kind of mu-
sic they listen to. 
As I watched Athena dance during her pregnancy and lis-
tened to her play the guitar to calm the baby and make him feel 
that he was loved, I began to allow her way of seeing the world 
to affect my life too. When Viorel was born, the first thing we 
did when we brought him home was to play Albinoni’s Adagio. 
When we quarreled, it was the force of music—although I can’t 
make any logical connection between the two things, except in 
some kind of hippyish way—that helped us get through dif-
ficult times. 
But all this romanticism didn’t bring in the money. Since I 
played no instrument and couldn’t even offer my services pro-
viding background music in a bar, I finally got a job as a trainee 
with a firm of architects, doing structural calculations. They 
paid me a very low hourly rate, and so I would leave the house 
very early each morning and come home late. I hardly saw my 
son, who would be sleeping by then, and I was almost too 


36 P a u l o C o e l h o 

exhausted to talk or make love to my wife. Every night, I asked 
myself: When will we be able to improve our financial situation 
and live in the style we deserve? Although I largely agreed with 
Athena when she talked about the pointlessness of having a de-
gree in engineering (and law and medicine, for example), there 
are certain basic technical facts that are essential if we’re not to 
put people’s lives at risk. And I’d been forced to interrupt my 
training in my chosen profession, which meant abandoning a 
dream that was very important to me. 
The rows began. Athena complained that I didn’t pay enough 
attention to the baby, that he needed a father, that if she’d sim-
ply wanted a child, she could have done that on her own, with-
out causing me all these problems. More than once, I slammed 
out of the house, saying that she didn’t understand me, and that 
I didn’t understand either how I’d ever agreed at twenty to the 
“madness” of having a child, before we had even a minimum of 
financial security. Gradually, out of sheer exhaustion and irrita-
tion, we stopped making love. 
I began to slide into depression, feeling that I’d been used 
and manipulated by the woman I loved. Athena noticed my in-
creasingly strange state of mind, but instead of helping me, she 
focused her energies on Viorel and on music. Work became my 
escape. I would occasionally talk to my parents, and they would 
always say, as they had so many times before, that she’d had the 
baby in order to get me to marry her. 
She also became increasingly religious. She insisted on 
having our son baptized with a name she herself had decided 
on—Viorel, a Romanian name. Apart from a few immigrants, I 


37 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

doubt that anyone else in England is called Viorel, but I thought 
it showed imagination on her part, and I realized too that she 
was making some strange connection with a past she’d never 
known—her days in the orphanage in Sibiu. 
I tried to be adaptable, but I felt I was losing Athena because 
of the child. Our arguments became more frequent, and she 
threatened to leave because she feared that Viorel was picking up 
the “negative energy” from our quarrels. One night, when she 
made this threat again, I was the one who left, thinking that I’d 
go back as soon as I’d calmed down a bit. 
I started wandering aimlessly round London, cursing the 
life I’d chosen, the child I’d agreed to have, and the wife who 
seemed to have no further interest in me. I went into the first 
bar I came to, near a Tube station, and downed four glasses of 
whiskey. When the bar closed at eleven, I searched out one of 
those shops that stay open all night, bought more whiskey, sat 
down on a bench in a square, and continued drinking. A group 
of youths approached me and asked to share the bottle with me. 
When I refused, they attacked me. The police arrived, and we 
were all carted off to the police station. 
I was released after making a statement. I didn’t bring any 
charges, saying that it had been nothing but a silly disagreement; 
after all, I didn’t want to spend months appearing at various 
courts, as the victim of an attack. I was still so drunk that, just 
as I was about to leave, I stumbled and fell sprawling across an 
inspector’s desk. The inspector was angry, but instead of arrest-
ing me on the spot for insulting a police officer, he threw me 
out into the street. 


38 P a u l o C o e l h o 

And there was one of my attackers, who thanked me for not 
taking the case any further. He pointed out that I was covered in 
mud and blood and suggested I get a change of clothes before 
returning home. Instead of going on my way, I asked him to do 
me a favor: to listen to me, because I desperately needed to talk 
to someone. 
For an hour, he listened in silence to my woes. I wasn’t re-
ally talking to him but to myself: a young man with his whole 
life before him, with a possibly brilliant career ahead of him— 
as well as a family with the necessary contacts to open many 
doors—but who now looked like a beggar—drunk, tired, de-
pressed, and penniless. And all because of a woman who didn’t 
even pay me any attention. 
By the end of my story I had a clearer view of my situation: 
a life that I had chosen in the belief that love conquers all. And 
it isn’t true. Sometimes love carries us into the abyss, taking with 
us—to make matters worse—the people we love. In my case, I 
was well on the way to destroying not only my life, but Athena’s 
and Viorel’s too. 
At that moment, I said to myself once again that I was a 
man, not the boy who’d been born with a silver spoon in his 
mouth, and that I’d faced with dignity all the challenges that had 
been placed before me. Athena was already asleep, with the baby 
in her arms. I took a bath, went outside again to throw my dirty 
clothes in the bin, and lay down, feeling strangely sober. 
The next day, I told Athena that I wanted a divorce. She 
asked me why. 
“Because I love you. Because I love Viorel. And because all 


39 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

I’ve done is to blame you both because I had to give up my 
dream of becoming an engineer. If we’d waited a little, things 
would have been different, but you were only thinking about 
your plans and forgot to include me in them.” 
Athena said nothing, as if she had been expecting this, or as 
if she had unconsciously been provoking such a response. 
My heart was bleeding because I was hoping that she’d ask 
me, please, to stay. But she seemed calm and resigned, concerned 
only that the baby might hear our conversation. It was then that 
I felt sure she had never loved me, and that I had merely been 
the instrument for the realization of her mad dream to have a 
baby at nineteen. 
I told her that she could keep the house and the furniture, 
but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’d stay with her parents for a 
while, then look for a job and rent her own apartment. She asked 
if I could help out financially with Viorel, and I agreed at once. 
I got up, gave her one last, long kiss, and insisted again that 
she should stay in the house, but she repeated her resolve to go 
to her parents’ house as soon as she’d packed up all her things. I 
stayed at a cheap hotel and waited every night for her to phone 
me, asking me to come back and start a new life. I was even 
prepared to continue the old life if necessary, because that sepa-
ration had made me realize that there was nothing and no one 
more important in the world than my wife and child. 
A week later, I finally got that call. All she said, however, was 
that she’d cleared out all her things and wouldn’t be going back. 
Two weeks after that, I learned that she’d rented a small attic 
flat in Basset Road, where she had to carry the baby up three 


40 P a u l o C o e l h o 

flights of stairs every day. A few months later, we signed the 
final divorce papers. 
My real family left forever. And the family I’d been born into 
received me with open arms. 
After my separation from Athena and the great suffering 
that followed, I wondered if I hadn’t made a bad, irresponsible 
decision, typical of people who’ve read lots of love stories in 
their adolescence and desperately want to repeat the tale of Ro-
meo and Juliet. When the pain abated—and time is the only 
cure for that—I saw that life had allowed me to meet the one 
woman I would ever be capable of loving. Each second spent by 
her side had been worthwhile, and given the chance, despite all 
that had happened, I would do the same thing over again. 
But time, as well as healing all wounds, taught me something 
strange too: that it’s possible to love more than one person in 
a lifetime. I remarried. I’m very happy with my new wife, and 
I can’t imagine living without her. This, however, doesn’t mean 
that I have to renounce all my past experiences, as long as I’m 
careful not to compare my two lives. You can’t measure love the 
way you can the length of a road or the height of a building. 
Something very important remained from my relationship 
with Athena: a son, her great dream, of which she spoke so 
frankly before we decided to get married. I have another child 
by my second wife, and I’m better prepared for all the highs and 
lows of fatherhood than I was twelve years ago. 
Once, when I went to fetch Viorel and bring him back to 
spend the weekend with me, I decided to ask her why she’d re-
acted so calmly when I told her I wanted a separation. 


41 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“Because all my life I’ve learned to suffer in silence,” she 
replied. 
And only then did she put her arms around me and cry out 
all the tears she would like to have shed on that day. 

FAT H E R GI A N C A R LO FO N TA NA 

I saw her when she arrived for Sunday mass, with the baby in her 
arms as usual. I knew that she and Lukás were having difficul-
ties, but until that week, these had all seemed merely the sort 
of misunderstandings that all couples have, and since both of 
them were people who radiated goodness, I hoped that, sooner 
or later, they would resolve their differences. 
It had been a whole year since she last visited the church 
in the morning to play her guitar and praise the Virgin. She 
devoted herself to looking after Viorel, whom I had the honor 
to baptize, although I must admit I know of no saint with that 
name. However, she still came to mass every Sunday, and we 
always talked afterward, when everyone else had left. She said I 
was her only friend. Together we had shared in divine worship; 
now, though, it was her earthly problems she needed to share 
with me. 
She loved Lukás more than any man she had ever met; he was 
her son’s father, the person she had chosen to spend her life with, 
someone who had given up everything and had courage enough 
to start a family. When the difficulties started, she tried to con-
vince him that it was just a phase, that she had to devote herself 


42 P a u l o C o e l h o 

to their son, but that she had no intention of turning Viorel 
into a spoiled brat. Soon she would let him face certain of life’s 
challenges alone. After that, she would go back to being the wife 
and woman he’d known when they first met, possibly with even 
more intensity, because now she had a better understanding of 
the duties and responsibilities that came with the choice she’d 
made. Lukás still felt rejected; she tried desperately to divide 
herself between her husband and her child, but she was always 
obliged to choose, and when that happened, she never hesitated: 
she chose Viorel. 
Drawing on my scant knowledge of psychology, I said that 
this wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a story, and that in such 
situations men do tend to feel rejected, but that it soon passes. 
I’d heard about similar problems in conversations with my other 
parishioners. During one of our talks, Athena acknowledged 
that she had perhaps been rather precipitate; the romance of 
being a young mother had blinded her to the real challenges 
that arise after the birth of a child. But it was too late now for 
regrets. 
She asked if I could talk to Lukás, who never came to church, 
perhaps because he didn’t believe in God or perhaps because he 
preferred to spend his Sunday mornings with his son. I agreed 
to do so, as long as he came of his own accord. Just when Athena 
was about to ask him this favor, the major crisis occurred, and 
he left her and Viorel. 
I advised her to be patient, but she was deeply hurt. She’d 
been abandoned once in childhood, and all the hatred she felt 
for her birth mother was automatically transferred to Lukás, al-


43 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

though later, I understand, they became good friends again. For 
Athena, breaking family ties was possibly the gravest sin anyone 
could commit. 
She continued attending church on Sundays, but always went 
straight back home afterward. She had no one now with whom 
to leave her son, who cried lustily throughout mass, disturb-
ing everyone else’s concentration. On one of the rare occasions 
when we could speak, she said that she was working for a bank, 
had rented an apartment, and that I needn’t worry about her. 
Viorel’s father (she never mentioned her husband’s name now) 
was fulfilling his financial obligations. 
Then came that fateful Sunday. 
I learned what had happened during the week—one of the 
parishioners told me. I spent several nights praying for an an-
gel to bring me inspiration and tell me whether I should keep 
my commitment to the Church or to flesh-and-blood men and 
women. When no angel appeared, I contacted my superior, and 
he said that the only reason the Church has survived is because 
it’s always been rigid about dogma, and if it started making ex-
ceptions, we’d be back in the Middle Ages. I knew exactly what 
was going to happen. I thought of phoning Athena, but she 
hadn’t given me her new number. 
That morning, my hands were trembling as I lifted up the 
host and blessed the bread. I spoke the words that had come 
down to me through a thousand-year-old tradition, using the 
power passed on from generation to generation by the apostles. 
But then my thoughts turned to that young woman with her 
child in her arms, a kind of Virgin Mary, the miracle of mother-


44 P a u l o C o e l h o 

hood and love made manifest in abandonment and solitude, and 
who had just joined the line as she always did, and was slowly 
approaching in order to take communion. 
I think most of the congregation knew what was happen-
ing. And they were all watching me, waiting for my reaction. I 
saw myself surrounded by the just, by sinners, by Pharisees, by 
members of the Sanhedrin, by apostles and disciples and people 
with good intentions and bad. 
Athena stood before me and repeated the usual gesture: she 
closed her eyes and opened her mouth to receive the body of 
Christ. 
The body of Christ remained in my hands. 
She opened her eyes, unable to understand what was going on. 
“We’ll talk later,” I whispered. 
But she didn’t move. 
“There are people behind you in line. We’ll talk later.” 
“What’s going on?” she asked, and everyone in the line could 
hear her question. 
“We’ll talk later.” 
“Why won’t you give me communion? Can’t you see, you’re 
humiliating me in front of everyone? Haven’t I been through 
enough already?” 
“Athena, the Church forbids divorced people from receiving 
the sacrament. You signed your divorce papers this week. We’ll 
talk later,” I said again. 
When she still didn’t move, I beckoned to the person behind 
her to come forward. I continued giving communion until the 


45 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

last parishioner had received it. And it was then, just before I 
turned to the altar, that I heard that voice. 
It was no longer the voice of the girl who sang her worship 
of the Virgin Mary, who talked about her plans, who was so 
moved when she shared with me what she’d learned about the 
lives of the saints, and who almost wept when she spoke to me 
about her marital problems. It was the voice of a wounded, hu-
miliated animal, its heart full of loathing. 
“A curse on this place!” said the voice. “A curse on all those 
who never listened to the words of Christ and who have trans-
formed his message into a stone building. For Christ said: ‘Come 
unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest.’ Well, I’m heavy laden, and they won’t let me come to him. 
Today I’ve learned that the Church has changed those words to 
read: ‘Come unto me all ye who follow our rules, and let the 
heavy laden go hang!’” 
I heard one of the women in the front row of pews telling 
her to be quiet. But I wanted to hear, I needed to hear. I turned 
to her, my head bowed—it was all I could do. 
“I swear that I will never set foot in a church ever again. 
Once more, I’ve been abandoned by a family, and this time it has 
nothing to do with financial difficulties or with the immaturity 
of those who marry too young. A curse upon all those who slam 
the door in the face of a mother and her child! You’re just like 
those people who refused to take in the Holy Family, like those 
who denied Christ when he most needed a friend!” 
With that, she turned and left in tears, her baby in her arms. 


46 P a u l o C o e l h o 

I finished the service, gave the final blessing, and went straight to 
the sacristy—that Sunday, there would be no mingling with the 
faithful, no pointless conversations. That Sunday, I was faced by 
a philosophical dilemma: I had chosen to respect the institution 
rather than the words on which that institution was based. 
I’m getting old now, and God could take me at any moment. 
I’ve remained faithful to my religion, and I believe that for all 
its errors, it really is trying to put things right. This will take 
decades, possibly centuries, but one day, all that will matter is 
love and Christ’s words: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” I’ve devoted my entire life 
to the priesthood and I don’t regret my decision for one second. 
However, there are times, like that Sunday, when, although I 
didn’t doubt my faith, I did doubt men. 
I know now what happened to Athena, and I wonder: Did it 
all start there, or was it already in her soul? I think of the many 
Athenas and Lukáses in the world who are divorced and because 
of that can no longer receive the sacrament of the Eucharist; all 
they can do is contemplate the suffering, crucified Christ and 
listen to his words, words that are not always in accord with 
the laws of the Vatican. In a few cases, these people leave the 
church, but the majority continue coming to mass on Sundays, 
because that’s what they’re used to, even though they know that 
the miracle of the transmutation of the bread and the wine into 
the flesh and the blood of the Lord is forbidden to them. 
I like to imagine that, when she left the church, Athena met 
Jesus. Weeping and confused, she would have thrown herself 
into his arms, asking him to explain why she was being excluded 


47 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

just because of a piece of paper she’d signed, something of no 
importance on the spiritual plane, and which was of interest 
only to registry offices and the tax man. 
And looking at Athena, Jesus might have replied: “My child, 
I’ve been excluded too. It’s a very long time since they’ve allowed 
me in there.” 

PAV E L PO D B I E L S K I , F I F T Y -S E V E N , 
OW N E R O F T H E A PA RT M E N T 

Athena and I had one thing in common: we were both refugees 
from a war and arrived in England when we were still children, 
although I fled Poland over fifty years ago. We both knew that 
despite the physical change, our traditions continue to exist in 
exile—communities join together again, language and religion 
remain alive, and in a place that will always be foreign to them, 
people tend to look after one another. 
Traditions continue, but the desire to go back gradually 
disappears. That desire needs to stay alive in our hearts as a 
hope with which we like to delude ourselves, but it will never be 
put into practice; I’ll never go back to live in Czestochowa, and 
Athena and her family will never return to Beirut. 
It was this kind of solidarity that made me rent her the third 
floor of my house in Basset Road—normally, I’d prefer tenants 
without children. I’d made that mistake before, and two things 
had happened: I complained about the noise they made during 
the day, and they complained about the noise I made during 


48 P a u l o C o e l h o 

the night. Both noises had their roots in sacred elements—cry-
ing and music—but they belonged to two completely different 
worlds, and it was hard for them to coexist. 
I warned her, but she didn’t really take it in and told me not 
to worry about her son. He spent all day at his grandmother’s 
house anyway, and the apartment was conveniently close to her 
work at a local bank. 
Despite my warnings, and despite holding out bravely at 
first, eight days later the doorbell rang. It was Athena, with her 
child in her arms. 
“My son can’t sleep. Couldn’t you turn the music down at 
least for one night?” 
Everyone in the room stared at her. 
“What’s going on?” 
The child immediately stopped crying, as if he were as 
surprised as his mother to see that group of people, who had 
stopped in mid-dance. 
I pressed the pause button on the cassette player and beck-
oned her in. Then I restarted the music so as not to interrupt the 
ritual. Athena sat down in one corner of the room, rocking her 
child in her arms and watching him drift off to sleep despite the 
noise of drums and brass. She stayed for the whole ceremony 
and left along with the other guests, but—as I thought she 
would—she rang my doorbell the next morning, before going 
to work. 
“You don’t have to explain what I saw—people dancing with 
their eyes closed—because I know what that means. I often do 
the same myself, and at the moment, those are the only times 


49 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

of peace and serenity in my life. Before I became a mother, I 
used to go to clubs with my husband and my friends, and I’d see 
people dancing with their eyes closed there too. Some were just 
trying to look cool, and others seemed to be genuinely moved 
by a greater, more powerful force. And ever since I’ve been old 
enough to think for myself, I’ve always used dance as a way of 
getting in touch with something stronger and more powerful 
than myself. Anyway, could you tell me what that music was?” 
“What are you doing this Sunday?” 
“Nothing special. I might go for a walk with Viorel in Re-
gent’s Park and get some fresh air. I’ll have plenty of time later 
on for a social calendar of my own; for the moment, I’ve decided 
to follow my son’s.” 
“I’ll come with you, if you like.” 
On the two nights before our walk, Athena came to watch 
the ritual. Her son fell asleep after only a few minutes, and she 
merely watched what was going on around her without saying a 
word. She sat quite still on the sofa, but I was sure that her soul 
was dancing. 
On Sunday afternoon, while we were walking in the park, I 
asked her to pay attention to everything she was seeing and hear-
ing: the leaves moving in the breeze, the waves on the lake, the 
birds singing, the dogs barking, the shouts of children as they 
ran back and forth, as if obeying some strange logic incompre-
hensible to grown-ups. 
“Everything moves, and everything moves to a rhythm. And 
everything that moves to a rhythm creates a sound. At this mo-
ment, the same thing is happening here and everywhere else in 


50 P a u l o C o e l h o 

the world. Our ancestors noticed the same thing when they tried 
to escape from the cold into caves: things moved and made noise. 
The first human beings may have been frightened by this at first, 
but that fear was soon replaced by a sense of awe: they under-
stood that this was the way in which some Superior Being was 
communicating with them. In the hope of reciprocating that 
communication, they started imitating the sounds and move-
ments around them—and thus dance and music were born. A 
few days ago, you told me that dance puts you in touch with 
something stronger than yourself.” 
“Yes, when I dance, I’m a free woman, or, rather, a free spirit 
who can travel through the universe, contemplate the present, 
divine the future, and be transformed into pure energy. And that 
gives me enormous pleasure, a joy that always goes far beyond 
everything I’ve experienced or will experience in my lifetime. 
There was a time when I was determined to become a saint, 
praising God through music and movement, but that path is 
closed to me forever now.” 
“Which path do you mean?” 
She made her son more comfortable in his stroller. I saw that 
she didn’t want to answer that question and so I asked again: 
when mouths close, it’s because there’s something important to 
be said. 
Without a flicker of emotion, as if she’d always had to en-
dure in silence the things life imposed on her, she told me about 
what had happened at the church, when the priest—possibly 
her only friend—had refused her communion. She also told me 


51 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

about the curse she had uttered then, and that she had left the 
Catholic Church forever. 
“A saint is someone who lives his or her life with dignity,” 
I explained. “All we have to do is understand that we’re all here 
for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh 
at our sufferings, large and small, and walk fearlessly, aware that 
each step has meaning. We can let ourselves be guided by the 
light emanating from the Vertex.” 
“What do you mean by the Vertex? In mathematics, it’s the 
topmost angle of a triangle.” 
“In life too it’s the culminating point, the goal of all those 
who, like everyone else, make mistakes, but who, even in their 
darkest moments, never lose sight of the light emanating from 
their hearts. That’s what we’re trying to do in our group. The 
Vertex is hidden inside us, and we can reach it if we accept it 
and recognize its light.” 
I explained that I’d come up with the name “The Search 
for the Vertex” for the dance she’d watched on previous nights, 
performed by people of all ages (at the time there were ten of 
us, aged between nineteen and sixty-five). Athena asked where 
I’d found out about it. 
I told her that, immediately after the end of World War II, 
some of my family had managed to escape from the Communist 
regime that was taking over Poland, and decided to move to 
England. They’d been advised to bring with them art objects and 
antiquarian books, which, they were told, were highly valued in 
this part of the world. 


52 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Paintings and sculptures were quickly sold, but the books 
remained, gathering dust. My mother was keen for me to read 
and speak Polish, and the books formed part of my education. 
One day, inside a nineteenth-century edition of Thomas Mal-
thus, I found two pages of notes written by my grandfather, who 
had died in a concentration camp. I started reading, assuming it 
would be something to do with an inheritance or else a passion-
ate letter intended for a secret lover, because it was said that he’d 
fallen in love with someone in Russia. 
There was, in fact, some truth in this. The pages contained 
a description of his journey to Siberia during the Communist 
revolution. There, in the remote village of Diedov, he fell in love 
with an actress. [Editor’s note: It has not been possible to locate this village 
on the map. The name may have been deliberately changed, or the place itself 
may have disappeared after Stalin’s forced migrations.] According to my 
grandfather, the actress was part of a sect that believed they had 
found the remedy for all ills through a particular kind of dance, 
because the dance brought the dancer into contact with the light 
from the Vertex. 
They feared that the tradition would disappear; the inhabi-
tants of the village were soon to be transported to another place. 
Both the actress and her friends begged him to write down what 
they had learned. He did but clearly didn’t think it was of much 
importance, because he left his notes inside a book, and there 
they remained until the day I found them. 
Athena broke in: 
“But dance isn’t something you write about, you have to do it.” 
“Exactly. All the notes say is this: Dance to the point of ex-


53 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

haustion, as if you were a mountaineer climbing a hill, a sacred 
mountain. Dance until you are so out of breath that your organ-
ism is forced to obtain oxygen some other way, and it is that, 
in the end, that will cause you to lose your identity and your 
relationship with space and time. Dance only to the sound of 
percussion; repeat the process every day; know that, at a certain 
moment, your eyes will, quite naturally, close, and you will begin 
to see a light that comes from within, a light that answers your 
questions and develops your hidden powers.” 
“Have you developed some special power?” 
Instead of replying, I suggested that she join our group, since 
her son seemed perfectly at ease in the room with the dancers, 
even when the noise of the cymbals and the other percussion 
instruments was at its loudest. The following day, at the usual 
time, she was there for the start of the session. I introduced her 
to my friends, explaining that she was my upstairs neighbor. No 
one said anything about their lives or asked her what she did. 
When the moment came, I turned on the music, and we began 
to dance. 
She started dancing with the child in her arms, but he soon 
fell asleep, and she put him down on the sofa. Before I closed 
my eyes and went into a trance, I saw that she had understood 
exactly what I meant by the path of the Vertex. 
Every day, except Sunday, she was there with the child. We 
would exchange a few words of welcome, then I would put 
on the music a friend of mine had brought from the Russian 
steppes, and we would all dance to the point of exhaustion. Af-
ter a month of this, she asked me for a copy of the tape. 


54 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“I’d like to do the dancing in the morning, before I leave 
Viorel at my mum’s house and go to work.” 
I tried to dissuade her. 
“I don’t know, I think a group that’s connected by the same 
energy creates a kind of aura that helps everyone get into the 
trance state. Besides, doing the dancing before you go to work is 
just asking to get the sack, because you’ll be exhausted all day.” 
Athena thought for a moment, then said: 
“You’re absolutely right when you talk about collective en-
ergy. In your group, for example, there are four couples and your 
wife. All of them have found love. That’s why they can share 
such a positive vibration with me. But I’m on my own, or, rather, 
I’m with my son, but he can’t yet manifest his love in a way we 
can understand. So I’d prefer to accept my loneliness. If I try to 
run away from it now, I’ll never find a partner again. If I accept 
it, rather than fight against it, things might change. I’ve noticed 
that loneliness gets stronger when we try to face it down but gets 
weaker when we simply ignore it.” 
“Did you join our group in search of love?” 
“That would be a perfectly good reason, I think, but the 
answer is no. I came in search of a meaning for my life, because, 
at present, its only meaning is my son, Viorel, and I’m afraid I 
might end up destroying him, either by being overprotective or 
by projecting onto him the dreams I’ve never managed to realize. 
Then one night, while I was dancing, I felt that I’d been cured. 
If we were talking about some physical ailment, we’d probably 
call it a miracle, but it was a spiritual malaise that was making 
me unhappy, and suddenly it vanished.” 


55 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

I knew what she meant. 
“No one taught me to dance to the sound of that music,” 
Athena went on, “but I have a feeling I know what I’m doing.” 
“It’s not something you have to learn. Remember our walk in 
the park and what we saw there: nature creating its own rhythms 
and adapting itself to each moment.” 
“No one taught me how to love either, but I loved God, I 
loved my husband, I love my son and my family. And yet still 
there’s something missing. Although I get tired when I’m danc-
ing, when I stop, I seem to be in a state of grace, of profound 
ecstasy. I want that ecstasy to last throughout the day and for it 
to help me find what I lack: the love of a man. I can see the heart 
of that man while I’m dancing, but not his face. I sense that he’s 
close by, which is why I need to remain alert. I need to dance in 
the morning so that I can spend the rest of the day paying at-
tention to everything that’s going on around me.” 
“Do you know what the word ecstasy means? It comes from the 
Greek and means ‘to stand outside yourself.’ Spending the whole 
day outside yourself is asking too much of body and soul.” 
“I’d like to try anyway.” 
I saw that there was no point arguing and so I made her 
a copy of the tape. And from then on, I woke every morning 
to the sound of music and dancing upstairs, and I wondered 
how she could face her work at the bank after almost an hour 
of being in a trance. When we bumped into each other in the 
corridor, I suggested she come in for a coffee, and she told me 
that she’d made more copies of the tape and that many of her 
colleagues at work were also now looking for the Vertex. 


56 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“Did I do wrong? Was it a secret?” 
Of course it wasn’t. On the contrary, she was helping me 
preserve a tradition that was almost lost. According to my 
grandfather’s notes, one of the women said that a monk who 
visited the region had once told them that each of us contains 
our ancestors and all the generations to come. When we free 
ourselves, we are freeing all humanity. 
“So all the men and women in that village in Siberia must 
be here now and very happy too. Their work is being reborn in 
this world, thanks to your grandfather. There’s one thing I’d like 
to ask you: What made you decide to dance after you read those 
notes? If you’d read something about sports instead, would you 
have decided to become a footballer?” 
This was a question no one had ever asked me. 
“Because, at the time, I was ill. I was suffering from a rare 
form of arthritis, and the doctors told me that I should prepare 
myself for life in a wheelchair by the age of thirty-five. I saw 
that I didn’t have much time ahead of me and so I decided to 
devote myself to something I wouldn’t be able to do later on. 
My grandfather had written on one of those small sheets of 
paper that the inhabitants of Diedov believed in the curative 
powers of trances.” 
“And it seems they were right.” 
I didn’t say anything, but I wasn’t so sure. Perhaps the doc-
tors were wrong. Perhaps the fact of being from an immigrant 
family, unable to allow myself the luxury of being ill, acted with 
such force upon my unconscious mind that it provoked a natural 
reaction in my body. Or perhaps it really was a miracle, although 


57 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

that went totally against what my Catholic faith preaches: dance 
is not a cure. 
I remember that, as an adolescent, I had no idea what the 
right music would sound like, and so I used to put on a black 
hood and imagine that everything around me had ceased to ex-
ist: my spirit would travel to Diedov, to be with those men and 
women, with my grandfather and his beloved actress. In the si-
lence of my bedroom, I would ask them to teach me to dance, 
to go beyond my limits, because soon I would be paralyzed for-
ever. The more my body moved, the more brightly the light in 
my heart shone, and the more I learned—perhaps on my own, 
perhaps from the ghosts of the past. I even imagined the mu-
sic they must have listened to during their rituals, and when a 
friend visited Siberia many years later, I asked him to bring me 
back some records. To my surprise, one of them was very similar 
to the music I had imagined would accompany the dancing in 
Diedov. 
It was best to say nothing of all this to Athena; she was eas-
ily influenced and, I thought, slightly unstable. 
“Perhaps what you’re doing is right,” was all I said. 
We talked again, shortly before her trip to the Middle East. She 
seemed contented, as if she’d found everything she wanted: love. 
“My colleagues at work have formed a group, and they call 
themselves the Pilgrims of the Vertex. And all thanks to your 
grandfather.” 
“All thanks to you, you mean, because you felt the need to 
share the dance with others. I know you’re leaving, but I’d like to 
thank you for giving another dimension to what I’ve been doing 


58 P a u l o C o e l h o 

all these years in trying to spread the light to a few interested 
people, but always very tentatively, always afraid people might 
find the whole story ridiculous.” 
“Do you know what I’ve learned? That although ecstasy is 
the ability to stand outside yourself, dance is a way of rising up 
into space, of discovering new dimensions while still remaining 
in touch with your body. When you dance, the spiritual world 
and the real world manage to coexist quite happily. I think clas-
sical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they’re simultane-
ously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies.” 
As far as I can remember, those were her last words to me. 
During any dance to which we surrender with joy, the brain loses 
its controlling power, and the heart takes up the reins of the 
body. Only at that moment does the Vertex appear. As long as 
we believe in it, of course. 

PE T E R SH E R N E Y , F O RT Y -S E V E N , M A NAG E R 
O F A B R A N C H O F [NA M E O F B A N K O M I T T E D ] 
I N HO L L A N D PA R K , LO N D O N 

I only took on Athena because her family was one of our most 
important customers; after all, the world revolves around mutual 
interests. She seemed a very restless person, and so I gave her 
a dull clerical post, hoping that she would soon resign. That 
way, I could tell her father that I’d done my best to help her but 
without success. 
My experience as a manager had taught me to recognize 


59 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

people’s states of mind, even if they said nothing. In a manage-
ment course I attended, we learned that if you wanted to get rid 
of someone, you should do everything you can to provoke them 
into rudeness, so that you would then have a perfectly good 
reason to dismiss them. 
I did everything I could to achieve my objective with Athena. 
She didn’t depend on her salary to live and would soon learn 
how pointless it was: having to get up early, drop her son off 
at her mother’s house, slave away all day at a repetitive job, pick 
her son up again, go to the supermarket, spend time with her 
son before putting him to bed, and then, the next day, spend 
another three hours on public transport, and all for no reason, 
when there were so many other more interesting ways of filling 
her days. She grew increasingly irritable, and I felt proud of my 
strategy. I would get what I wanted. She started complaining 
about the apartment where she lived, saying that her landlord 
kept her awake all night, playing really loud music. 
Then, suddenly, something changed. At first it was only 
Athena, but soon it was the whole branch. 
How did I notice this change? Well, a group of workers is 
like a kind of orchestra; a good manager is the conductor, and 
he knows who is out of tune, who is playing with real commit-
ment, and who is simply following the crowd. Athena seemed 
to be playing her instrument without the least enthusiasm; she 
seemed distant, never sharing the joys and sadnesses of her per-
sonal life with her colleagues, letting it be known that, when 
she left work, her free time was entirely taken up with looking 
after her son. Then, suddenly, she became more relaxed, more 


60 P a u l o C o e l h o 

communicative, telling anyone who would listen that she had 
discovered the secret of rejuvenation. 
Rejuvenation, of course, is a magic word. Coming from some-
one who was barely twenty-one, it sounded pretty ridiculous, 
and yet other members of the staff believed her and started to 
ask her for the secret formula. 
Her efficiency increased, even though her workload re-
mained unchanged. Her colleagues, who up until then had never 
exchanged more than a “good morning” or a “good night” with 
her, started asking her out to lunch. When they came back, they 
seemed very pleased, and the department’s productivity made a 
giant leap. 
I know that people who are in love do affect the environment 
in which they live, and so I immediately assumed that Athena 
must have met someone very important in her life. 
I asked, and she agreed, adding that she’d never before gone 
out with a customer, but that, in this case, she’d been unable 
to refuse. Normally this would have been grounds for immedi-
ate dismissal—the bank’s rules are clear: personal contact with 
customers is forbidden. But, by then, I was aware that her behav-
ior had infected almost everyone else. Some of her colleagues 
started getting together with her after work, and a few of them 
had, I believe, been to her house. 
I had a very dangerous situation on my hands. The young 
trainee with no previous work experience, who up until then 
had seemed to veer between shyness and aggression, had become 
a kind of natural leader among my workers. If I fired her, they 
would think it was out of jealousy, and I’d lose their respect. If I 


61 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

kept her on, I ran the risk, within a matter of months, of losing 
control of the group. 
I decided to wait a little, but meanwhile, there was a definite 
increase in the “energy” at the bank (I hate that word energy, be-
cause it doesn’t really mean anything, unless you’re talking about 
electricity). Anyway, our customers seemed much happier and 
were starting to recommend other people to come to us. The 
employees seemed happy too, and even though their workload 
had doubled, I didn’t need to take on any more staff because 
they were all coping fine. 
One day, I received a letter from my superiors. They wanted 
me to go to Barcelona for a group meeting, so that I could ex-
plain my management techniques to them. According to them, I 
had increased profit without increasing expenditure, and that, of 
course, is the only thing that interests executives everywhere. 
But what techniques? 
At least I knew where it had all started, and so I summoned 
Athena to my office. I complimented her on her excellent pro-
ductivity levels, and she thanked me with a smile. 
I proceeded cautiously, not wishing to be misinterpreted. 
“And how’s your boyfriend? I’ve always found that anyone 
who is loved has more love to give. What does he do?” 
“He works for Scotland Yard.” [Editor’s note: Police investigation 
department linked to London’s Metropolitan Police.] 
I preferred not to ask any further questions, but I needed to 
keep the conversation going and I didn’t have much time. 
“I’ve noticed a great change in you and—” 
“Have you noticed a change in the bank too?” 


62 P a u l o C o e l h o 

How to respond to a question like that? On the one hand, I 
would be giving her more power than was advisable, but on the 
other, if I wasn’t straight with her, I would never get the answers 
I needed. 
“Yes, I’ve noticed a big change, and I’m thinking of promot-
ing you.” 
“I need to travel. I’d like to get out of London and discover 
new horizons.” 
Travel? Just when everything was going so well in my branch, 
she wanted to leave? Although, when I thought about it, wasn’t 
that precisely the way out I needed and wanted? 
“I can help the bank if you give me more responsibility,” she 
went on. 
Yes, she was giving me an excellent opportunity. Why hadn’t 
I thought of that before? “Travel” meant getting rid of her and 
resuming my leadership of the group without having to deal with 
the fallout from a dismissal or a rebellion. But I needed to ponder 
the matter, because rather than her helping the bank, I needed her 
to help me. Now that my superiors had noticed an increase in 
productivity, I knew that I would have to keep it up or risk losing 
prestige and end up worse off than before. Sometimes I under-
stand why most of my colleagues don’t do very much in order to 
improve: if they don’t succeed, they’re called incompetent. If they 
do succeed, they have to keep improving all the time, a situation 
guaranteed to bring on an early heart attack. 
I took the next step very cautiously: it’s not a good idea to 
frighten the person in possession of a secret before she’s revealed 
that secret to us; it’s best to pretend to grant her request. 


63 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“I’ll bring your request to the attention of my superiors. In 
fact, I’m having a meeting with them in Barcelona, which is why 
I called you in. Would it be true to say that our performance has 
improved since, shall we say, the other employees began getting 
on better with you?” 
“Or shall we say, began getting on better with themselves.” 
“Yes, but encouraged by you—or am I wrong?” 
“You know perfectly well that you’re not.” 
“Have you been reading some book on management I don’t 
know about?” 
“I don’t read that kind of book, but I would like a promise 
from you that you really will consider my request.” 
I thought of her boyfriend at Scotland Yard. If I made a 
promise and failed to keep it, would I be the object of some re-
prisal? Could he have taught her some cutting-edge technology 
that enables one to achieve impossible results? 
“I’ll tell you everything, even if you don’t keep your promise, 
but I can’t guarantee that you’ll get the same results if you don’t 
practice what I teach.” 
“You mean the ‘rejuvenation technique’?” 
“Exactly.” 
“Wouldn’t it be enough just to know the theory?” 
“Possibly. The person who taught me learned about it from 
a few sheets of paper.” 
I was glad she wasn’t forcing me to make decisions that went 
beyond my capabilities or my principles. But I must confess 
that I had a personal interest in that whole story, because I too 
dreamed of finding some way of “recycling” my potential. I 


64 P a u l o C o e l h o 

promised that I’d do what I could, and Athena began to describe 
the long, esoteric dance she performed in search of the so-called 
Vertex (or was it Axis, I can’t quite remember now). As we talked, 
I tried to set down her mad thoughts in objective terms. An 
hour proved not to be enough, and so I asked her to come back 
the following day, and together we would prepare the report to 
be presented to the bank’s board of directors. At one point in 
our conversation, she said with a smile: “Don’t worry about de-
scribing the technique in the same terms we’ve been using here. I 
reckon even a bank’s board of directors are people like us, made 
of flesh and blood, and interested in unconventional methods.” 
Athena was completely wrong. In England, tradition always 
speaks louder than innovation. But why not take a risk, as long 
as it didn’t endanger my job? The whole thing seemed absurd to 
me, but I had to summarize it and put it in a way that everyone 
could understand. That was all. 
Before I presented my “paper” in Barcelona, I spent the whole 
morning repeating to myself: “My” process is producing results, 
and that’s all that matters. I read a few books on the subject and 
learned that in order to present a new idea with the maximum 
impact, you should structure your talk in an equally provocative 
way, and so the first thing I said to the executives gathered in that 
luxury hotel were these words of St. Paul’s: “God hid the most 
important things from the wise because they cannot understand 
what is simple.” [Editor’s note: It is impossible to know here whether he is 
referring to a verse from Matthew 11:25: “I thank thee, O Father, thou hast 
hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes,” 
or from St. Paul (1 Corinthians 1:27): “But God hath chosen the foolish 


65 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things 
of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” ] 
When I said this, the whole audience, who had spent the last 
two days analyzing graphs and statistics, fell silent. It occurred 
to me that I had almost certainly lost my job, but I carried on. 
First, because I had researched the subject and was sure of what 
I was saying and deserved credit for this. Second, because al-
though, at certain points, I was obliged to omit any mention 
of Athena’s enormous influence on the whole process, I was, 
nevertheless, not lying. 
“I have learned that, in order to motivate employees nowa-
days, you need more than just the training provided by our own 
excellent training centers. Each of us contains something within 
us which is unknown, but which, when it surfaces, is capable of 
producing miracles. 
“We all work for some reason: to feed our children, to earn 
money to support ourselves, to justify our life, to get a little 
bit of power. However, there are always tedious stages in that 
process, and the secret lies in transforming those stages into an 
encounter with ourselves or with something higher. 
“For example, the search for beauty isn’t always associated 
with anything practical and yet we still search for it as if it were 
the most important thing in the world. Birds learn to sing, but 
not because it will help them find food, avoid predators, or drive 
away parasites. Birds sing, according to Darwin, because that is 
the only way they have of attracting a partner and perpetuating 
the species.” 
I was interrupted by an executive from Geneva, who called 


66 P a u l o C o e l h o 

for a more objective presentation. However, to my delight, the 
director-general asked me to go on. 
“Again according to Darwin, who wrote a book that changed 
the course of all humanity [Editor’s note: The Origin of Species, 
1859, in which he first posited that human beings evolved from a type of ape], 
those who manage to arouse passions are repeating something 
that has been going on since the days we lived in caves, where 
rituals for courting a partner were fundamental for the survival 
and evolution of the human species. Now, what difference is 
there between the evolution of the human race and that of the 
branch of a bank? None. Both obey the same laws—only the 
fittest survive and evolve.” 
At this point, I was obliged to admit that I’d developed this 
idea thanks to the spontaneous collaboration of one of my em-
ployees, Sherine Khalil. 
“Sherine, who likes to be known as Athena, brought into 
the workplace a new kind of emotion—passion. Yes, passion, 
something we never normally consider when discussing loans or 
spreadsheets. My employees started using music as a stimulus 
for dealing more efficiently with their clients.” 
Another executive interrupted, saying that this was an old 
idea: supermarkets did the same thing, using piped-in music to 
encourage their customers to buy more. 
“I’m not saying that we used music in the workplace. People 
simply started living differently because Sherine, or Athena if 
you prefer, taught them to dance before facing their daily tasks. I 
don’t know precisely what mechanism this awakens in people; as 
a manager, I’m only responsible for the results, not for the pro-


67 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

cess. I myself didn’t participate in the dancing, but I understand 
that, through dance, they all felt more connected with what they 
were doing. 
“We were born and brought up with the maxim that ‘time is 
money.’We know exactly what money is, but what does the word 
time mean? The day is made up of twenty-four hours and an infi-
nite number of moments. We need to be aware of each of those 
moments and to make the most of them regardless of whether 
we’re busy doing something or merely contemplating life. If we 
slow down, everything lasts much longer. Of course, that means 
that washing the dishes might last longer, as might totting up 
the debits and credits on a balance sheet or checking promissory 
notes, but why not use that time to think about pleasant things 
and to feel glad simply to be alive?” 
The director-general was looking at me in surprise. I was 
sure he wanted me to explain in detail what I’d learned, but some 
of those present were beginning to grow restless. 
“I understand exactly what you mean,” he said. “I under-
stand too that your employees worked with more enthusiasm 
because they were able to enjoy one moment in the day when 
they came into full contact with themselves. And I’d like to com-
pliment you on being flexible enough to allow such unorthodox 
practices, which are, it must be said, producing excellent results. 
However, speaking of time, this is a conference, and you have 
only five minutes to conclude your presentation. Could you pos-
sibly try to list the main points which would allow us to apply 
these principles in other branches?” 
He was right. This was fine for the employees, but it could 


68 P a u l o C o e l h o 

prove fatal to my career, and so I decided to summarize the 
points Sherine and I had written together. 
“Basing ourselves on personal observations, Sherine Khalil 
and I developed certain points, which I would be delighted to 
discuss with anyone who’s interested. Here are the main ones: 

“1. We all have an unknown ability, which will probably 
remain unknown forever. And yet that ability can be-
come our ally. Since it’s impossible to measure that 
ability or give it an economic value, it’s never taken 
seriously, but I’m speaking here to other human be-
ings and I’m sure you understand what I mean, at 
least in theory. 
“2. At my branch, employees have learned how to tap 
into that ability through a dance based on a rhythm 
that comes, I believe, from the desert regions of Asia. 
However, its place of origin is irrelevant, as long as 
people can express through their bodies what their 
souls are trying to say. I realize that the word soul 
might be misunderstood, so I suggest we use the word 
intuition instead. And if that word is equally hard to 
swallow, then let’s use the term primary emotions, which 
sounds more scientific, although, in fact, it has rather 
less meaning than the other two words. 
“3. Before going to work, instead of encouraging my 
employees to do keep-fit or aerobics, I get them to 
dance for at least an hour. This stimulates the body 
and the mind; they start the day demanding a certain 


69 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

degree of creativity from themselves and channel that 
accumulated energy into their work at the bank. 
“4. Customers and employees live in the same world: re-
ality is nothing but a series of electrical stimuli to the 
brain. What we think we ‘see’ is a pulse of energy to a 
completely dark part of the brain. However, if we get 
on the same wavelength as other people, we can try 
to change that reality. In some way that I don’t un-
derstand joy is infectious, as is enthusiasm and love. 
Or indeed sadness, depression, or hatred—things 
that can be picked up ‘intuitively’ by customers and 
other employees. In order to improve performance, 
we have to create mechanisms that keep these posi-
tive stimuli alive.” 

“How very esoteric,” commented a woman who managed 
investment funds at a branch in Canada. 
I slightly lost confidence. I had failed to convince anyone. 
Nevertheless, I pretended to ignore her remark and, using all my 
creativity, sought to give my paper a practical conclusion: 
“The bank should earmark a fund to do research into how 
this infectious state of mind works, and thus noticeably increase 
our profits.” 
This seemed a reasonably satisfactory ending, and so I 
preferred not to use the two minutes remaining to me. When 
I finished the seminar, at the end of an exhausting day, the 
director-general asked me to have supper with him, and he did 
so in front of all our other colleagues, as if he were trying to 


70 P a u l o C o e l h o 

show that he supported everything I’d said. I had never before 
had an opportunity to dine with the director-general, and so I 
tried to make the most of it. I started talking about performance, 
about spreadsheets, difficulties on the stock exchange, and pos-
sible new markets. He interrupted me; he was more interested in 
knowing more of what I’d learned from Athena. 
In the end, to my surprise, he turned the conversation to 
more personal matters. 
“I understood what you meant when, during your paper, you 
talked about time. At New Year, when I was still enjoying the holi-
day season, I decided to go and sit in the garden for a while. I picked 
up the newspaper from the mailbox, but it contained nothing of 
any importance, only the things that journalists had decided we 
should know, feel involved in, and have an opinion about. 
“I thought of phoning someone at work, but that would 
be ridiculous, since they would all be with their families. I had 
lunch with my wife, children, and grandchildren, took a nap, and 
when I woke up, I made a few notes, then realized that it was 
still only two o’clock in the afternoon. I had another three days 
of not working, and however much I love being with my family, 
I started to feel useless. 
“The following day, taking advantage of this free time, I 
went to have my stomach checked out, and, fortunately, the tests 
revealed nothing seriously wrong. I went to the dentist, who said 
there was nothing wrong with my teeth either. I again had lunch 
with my wife, children, and grandchildren, took another nap, 
again woke up at two in the afternoon, and realized that I had 
absolutely nothing on which to focus my attention. 


71 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“I felt uneasy: Shouldn’t I be doing something? Well, if I 
wanted to invent work, that wouldn’t take much effort. We all 
have projects to develop, lightbulbs to change, leaves to sweep, 
books to put away, computer files to organize, etc. But how 
about just facing up to the void? It was then that I remembered 
something that seemed to me of great importance: I needed to 
walk to the letter-box—which is less than a mile from my house 
in the country—and post one of the Christmas cards lying for-
gotten on my desk. 
“And I was surprised: Why did I need to send that card today? 
Was it really so hard just to stay where I was, doing nothing? 
“A series of thoughts crossed my mind: friends who worry 
about things that haven’t yet happened; acquaintances who man-
age to fill every minute of their lives with tasks that seem to me 
absurd; senseless conversations; long telephone calls in which 
nothing of any importance is ever said. I’ve seen my directors 
inventing work in order to justify their jobs; employees who feel 
afraid because they’ve been given nothing important to do that 
day, which might mean that they’re no longer useful. My wife, 
who torments herself because our son has got divorced, my son 
who torments himself because our grandson, his son, got bad 
marks at school, our grandson, who is terrified because he’s 
making his parents sad—even though we all know that marks 
aren’t that important. 
“I had a long, hard struggle with myself not to get up from 
my desk. Gradually, though, the anxiety gave way to contempla-
tion, and I started listening to my soul—or intuition or primary 
emotions, or whatever you choose to believe in. Whatever you 


72 P a u l o C o e l h o 

call it, that part of me had been longing to speak to me, but I 
had always been too busy. 
“In that case, it wasn’t a dance, but the complete absence of 
noise and movement, the silence, that brought me into contact 
with myself. And, believe it or not, I learned a great deal about 
the problems bothering me, even though all those problems had 
dissolved completely while I was sitting there. I didn’t see God, 
but I had a clearer understanding of what decisions to make.” 
Before paying the bill, he suggested that I send the employee 
in question to Dubai, where the bank was opening a new branch, 
and where the risks were considerable. As a good manager, he 
knew that I had learned all I needed to learn, and now it was 
merely a question of providing continuity. My employee could 
make a useful contribution somewhere else. He didn’t know this, 
but he was helping me to keep the promise I’d made. 
When I returned to London, I immediately told Athena 
about this invitation, and she accepted at once. She told me 
that she spoke fluent Arabic (I knew this already because of her 
father), although, since we would mainly be doing deals with 
foreigners, not Arabs, this would not be essential. I thanked her 
for her help, but she showed no curiosity about my talk at the 
conference and merely asked when she should pack her bags. 
I still don’t know whether the story of the boyfriend in Scot-
land Yard was a fantasy or not. If it were true, I think Athena’s 
murderer would already have been arrested, because I don’t 
believe anything the newspapers wrote about the crime. I can 
understand financial engineering, I can even allow myself the 


73 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

luxury of saying that dancing helps my employees to work bet-
ter, but I will never comprehend how it is that the best police 
force in the world catches some murderers but not others. Not 
that it makes much difference now. 

NA B I L AL A I H I , AG E U N K N OW N , BE D O U I N 

It made me very happy to know that Athena had kept a photo 
of me in a place of honor in her apartment, but I don’t really 
think what I taught her had any real use. She came here to the 
desert, leading a three-year-old boy by the hand. She opened her 
bag, took out a cassette tape player, and sat down outside my 
tent. I know that people from the city usually give my name to 
foreigners who want to experience some local cooking, and so I 
told her at once that it was too early for supper. 
“I came for another reason,” she said. “Your nephew Hamid 
is a client at the bank where I work and he told me that you’re 
a wise man.” 
“Hamid is a rather foolish youth who may well say that I’m a 
wise man, but who never follows my advice. Mohammed, the 
Prophet, may the blessings of God be upon him, he was a wise man.” 
I pointed to her car. 
“You shouldn’t drive alone in a place you don’t know, and 
you shouldn’t come here without a guide.” 
Instead of replying, she turned on the tape player. Then all I 
could see was this young woman dancing on the dunes and her 


74 P a u l o C o e l h o 

son watching her in joyous amazement; and the sound seemed 
to fill the whole desert. When she finished, she asked if I had 
enjoyed it. 
I said that I had. There is a sect in our religion that uses 
dance as a way of getting closer to Allah—blessed be his name. 
[Editor’s note: The sect in question is Sufism.] 
“Well,” said the woman, who introduced herself as Athena, 
“ever since I was a child, I’ve felt that I should grow closer to 
God, but life always took me farther away from him. Music 
is one way I’ve discovered of getting close, but it isn’t enough. 
Whenever I dance, I see a light, and that light is now asking me 
to go further. But I can’t continue learning on my own; I need 
someone to teach me.” 
“Anything will do,” I told her. “Because Allah, the merciful, 
is always near. Lead a decent life, and that will be enough.” 
But the woman appeared unconvinced. I said that I was busy, 
that I needed to prepare supper for the few tourists who might 
appear. She told me that she’d wait for as long as was necessary. 
“And the child?” 
“Don’t worry about him.” 
While I was making my usual preparations, I observed the 
woman and her son. They could have been the same age; they 
ran about the desert, laughed, threw sand at each other, and 
rolled down the dunes. The guide arrived with three German 
tourists, who ate and asked for beer, and I had to explain that 
my religion forbade me to drink or to serve alcoholic drinks. I 
invited the woman and her son to join us for supper, and in that 
unexpected female presence, one of the Germans became quite 


75 

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animated. He said that he was thinking of buying some land, 
that he had a large fortune saved up and believed in the future 
of the region. 
“Great,” she replied. “I believe in the region too.” 
“It would be good to have supper somewhere, so that we 
could talk about the possibility of—” 
“No,” she said, holding a card out to him, “but if you like, 
you can get in touch with my bank.” 
When the tourists left, we sat down outside the tent. The 
child soon fell asleep on her lap. I fetched blankets for us all, 
and we sat looking up at the starry sky. Finally, she broke the 
silence. 
“Why did Hamid say that you were a wise man?” 
“Perhaps so that I’ll be more patient with him. There was 
a time when I tried to teach him my art, but Hamid seemed 
more interested in earning money. He’s probably convinced by 
now that he’s wiser than I am: he has an apartment and a boat, 
while here I am in the middle of the desert, making meals for 
the occasional tourist. He doesn’t understand that I’m satisfied 
with what I do.” 
“He understands perfectly, and he always speaks of you with 
great respect. And what do you mean by your ‘art’?” 
“I watched you dancing today—well, I do the same thing, 
except that it’s the letters, not my body, that dance.” 
She looked surprised. 
“My way of approaching Allah—may his name be praised— 
has been through calligraphy, and the search for the perfect 
meaning of each word. A single letter requires us to distill in it 


76 P a u l o C o e l h o 

all the energy it contains, as if we were carving out its meaning. 
When sacred texts are written, they contain the soul of the man 
who served as an instrument to spread them throughout the 
world. And that doesn’t apply only to sacred texts, but to every 
mark we place on paper. Because the hand that draws each line 
reflects the soul of the person making that line.” 
“Would you teach me what you know?” 
“First, I don’t think anyone as full of energy as you would 
have the patience for this. Besides, it’s not part of your world, 
where everything is printed without, if you’ll allow me to say so, 
much thought being given to what is being published.” 
“I’d like to try.” 
And so, for more than six months, that woman—whom I’d 
judged to be too restless and exuberant to be able to sit still for 
a moment—came to visit me every Friday. Her son would go to 
one corner of the tent, take up paper and brushes, and he too 
would devote himself to revealing in his paintings whatever the 
heavens determined. 
When I saw the immense effort it took her to keep still and 
to maintain the correct posture, I said: “Don’t you think you’d 
be better off finding something else to do?” She replied: “No, 
I need this, I need to calm my soul, and I still haven’t learned 
everything you can teach me. The light of the Vertex told me 
that I should continue.” I never asked her what the Vertex was, 
nor was I interested. 
The first lesson, and perhaps the most difficult, was: “Patience!” 
Writing wasn’t just the expression of a thought but also a 
way of reflecting on the meaning of each word. Together we be-


77 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

gan work on texts written by an Arab poet, because I do not feel 
that the Koran is suitable for someone brought up in another 
faith. I dictated each letter, and that way she could concentrate 
on what she was doing, instead of immediately wanting to know 
the meaning of each word or phrase or line. 
“Once, someone told me that music had been created by 
God, and that rapid movement was necessary for people to get 
in touch with themselves,” said Athena on one of those after-
noons we spent together. “For years, I felt that this was true, 
and now I’m being forced to do the most difficult thing in the 
world—slow down. Why is patience so important?” 
“Because it makes us pay attention.” 
“But I can dance obeying only my soul, which forces me to 
concentrate on something greater than myself, and brings me 
into contact with God—if I can use that word. Dance has al-
ready helped me to change many things in my life, including my 
work. Isn’t the soul more important?” 
“Of course it is, but if your soul could communicate with 
your brain, you would be able to change even more things.” 
We continued our work together. I knew that, at some point, 
I would have to tell her something that she might not be ready to 
hear, and so I tried to make use of every minute to prepare her 
spirit. I explained that before the word comes the thought. And 
before the thought, there is the divine spark that placed it there. 
Everything, absolutely everything on this earth makes sense, and 
even the smallest things are worthy of our consideration. 
“I’ve educated my body so that it can manifest every sensa-
tion in my soul,” she said. 


78 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“Now you must educate only your fingers, so that they can 
manifest every sensation in your body. That will concentrate 
your body’s strength.” 
“Are you a teacher?” 
“What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches 
something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her 
best in order to discover what she already knows.” 
I sensed that, despite her youth, Athena had already experi-
enced this. Writing reveals the personality, and I could see that 
she was aware of being loved, not just by her son, but also by her 
family and possibly by a man. I saw too that she had mysterious 
gifts, but I tried never to let her know that I knew this, since 
these gifts could bring about not only an encounter with God, 
but also her perdition. 
I taught her not only calligraphy techniques. I also tried to 
pass on to her the philosophy of the calligraphers. 
“The brush with which you are making these lines is just an 
instrument. It has no consciousness, it follows the desires of the 
person holding it. And in that it is very like what we call ‘life.’ 
Many people in this world are merely playing a role, unaware 
that there is an Invisible Hand guiding them. At this moment, in 
your hands, in the brush tracing each letter, lie all the intentions 
of your soul. Try to understand the importance of this.” 
“I do understand, and I see that it’s important to maintain 
a certain elegance. You tell me to sit in a particular position, to 
venerate the materials I’m going to use, and only to begin when 
I have done so.” 
Naturally, if she respected the brush that she used, she would 


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realize that in order to learn to write she must cultivate serenity 
and elegance. And serenity comes from the heart. 
“Elegance isn’t a superficial thing, it’s the way mankind has 
found to honor life and work. That’s why, when you feel un-
comfortable in that position, you mustn’t think that it’s false or 
artificial: it’s real and true precisely because it’s difficult. That 
position means that both the paper and the brush feel proud of 
the effort you’re making. The paper ceases to be a flat, colorless 
surface and takes on the depth of the things placed on it. Ele-
gance is the correct posture if the writing is to be perfect. It’s the 
same with life: when all superfluous things have been discarded, 
we discover simplicity and concentration. The simpler and more 
sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be, even though, at 
first, it may seem uncomfortable.” 
Occasionally, she would talk about her work. She said she 
was enjoying what she was doing and that she had just received a 
job offer from a powerful emir. He had gone to the bank to see 
the manager, who was a friend of his (emirs never go to banks to 
withdraw money, they have staff who can do that for them), and 
while he was talking to Athena, he mentioned that he was look-
ing for someone to take charge of selling land, and wondered if 
she would be interested. 
Who would want to buy land in the middle of the desert or 
in a far-flung port? I decided to say nothing, and looking back, 
I’m glad I stayed silent. 
Only once did she mention the man she loved, although 
whenever she was there when tourists arrived, one of the men 
would always start flirting with her. Normally Athena simply 


80 P a u l o C o e l h o 

ignored them, but one day a man suggested that he knew her 
boyfriend. She turned pale and immediately shot a glance at her 
son, who, fortunately, wasn’t listening to the conversation. 
“How do you know him?” 
“I’m joking,” said the man. “I just wanted to find out if you 
were unattached.” 
She didn’t say anything, but I understood from this exchange 
that the man in her life was not the father of her son. 
One day, she arrived earlier than usual. She said that she’d 
left her job at the bank and started selling real estate, and would 
now have more free time. I explained that I couldn’t start her 
class any earlier because I had various things to do. 
“I can combine two things: movement and stillness; joy and 
concentration.” 
She went over to the car to fetch her cassette tape player, and 
from then on, Athena would dance in the desert before the start 
of our class while the little boy ran round her, laughing. When 
she sat down to practice calligraphy, her hand was steadier than 
usual. 
“There are two kinds of letters,” I explained. “The first is 
precise but lacks soul. In this case, although the calligrapher may 
have mastered the technique, he has focused solely on the craft, 
which is why it hasn’t evolved, but become repetitive; he hasn’t 
grown at all, and one day he’ll give up the practice of writing, 
because he feels it is mere routine. 
“The second kind is done with great technique but with 
soul as well. For that to happen, the intention of the writer must 


81 

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be in harmony with the word. In this case, the saddest verses 
cease to be clothed in tragedy and are transformed into simple 
facts encountered along the way.” 
“What do you do with your drawings?” asked the boy in 
perfect Arabic. He might not understand our conversation, but 
he was eager to share in his mother’s work. 
“I sell them.” 
“Can I sell my drawings?” 
“You should sell your drawings. One day, you’ll become rich 
that way and be able to help your mother.” 
He was pleased by my comment and went back to what he 
was doing, painting a colorful butterfly. 
“And what shall I do with my texts?” asked Athena. 
“You know the effort it took to sit in the correct position, to 
quiet your soul, keep your intentions clear, and respect each let-
ter of each word. Meanwhile, keep practicing. After a great deal 
of practice, we no longer think about all the necessary move-
ments we must make; they become part of our existence. Before 
reaching that stage, however, you must practice and repeat. And 
if that’s not enough, you must practice and repeat some more. 
“Look at a skilled blacksmith working steel. To the un-
trained eye, he’s merely repeating the same hammer blows, but 
anyone trained in the art of calligraphy knows that each time the 
blacksmith lifts the hammer and brings it down, the intensity of 
the blow is different. The hand repeats the same gesture, but as 
it approaches the metal, it understands that it must touch it with 
more or less force. It’s the same thing with repetition: it may 


82 P a u l o C o e l h o 

seem the same, but it’s always different. The moment will come 
when you no longer need to think about what you’re doing. You 
become the letter, the ink, the paper, the word.” 
This moment arrived almost a year later. By then, Athena 
was already known in Dubai and recommended my tent as a 
place for her customers to dine, and through them I learned that 
her career was going very well: she was selling pieces of desert! 
One night, the emir in person arrived, preceded by a great reti-
nue. I was terrified; I wasn’t prepared for that, but he reassured 
me and thanked me for what I was doing for his employee. 
“She’s an excellent person and attributes her qualities to 
what she’s learning from you. I’m thinking of giving her a share 
in the company. It might be a good idea to send my other sales 
staff to learn calligraphy, especially now that Athena is about to 
take a month’s holiday.” 
“It wouldn’t help,” I replied. “Calligraphy is just one of the 
ways which Allah—blessed be his name—places before us. It 
teaches objectivity and patience, respect and elegance, but we 
can learn all that—” 
“Through dance,” said Athena, who was standing nearby. 
“Or through selling land,” I added. 
When they had all left, and the little boy had lain down in 
one corner of the tent, his eyes heavy with sleep, I brought out 
the calligraphy materials and asked her to write something. In 
the middle of the word, I took the brush from her hand. It was 
time to say what had to be said. I suggested that we go for a little 
walk in the desert. 
“You have learned what you needed to learn,” I said. “Your cal-


83 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

ligraphy is getting more and more individual and spontaneous. It’s 
no longer a mere repetition of beauty, but a personal, creative ges-
ture. You have understood what all great painters understand: in 
order to forget the rules, you must know them and respect them. 
“You no longer need the tools that helped you learn. You no 
longer need paper, ink, or brush, because the path is more im-
portant than whatever made you set off along it. Once you told 
me that the person who taught you to dance used to imagine the 
music playing in his head, and even so, he was able to repeat the 
necessary rhythms.” 
“He was.” 
“If all the words were joined together, they wouldn’t make 
sense, or, at the very least, they’d be extremely hard to decipher. 
The spaces are crucial.” 
She nodded. 
“And although you have mastered the words, you haven’t 
yet mastered the blank spaces. When you’re concentrating, your 
hand is perfect, but when it jumps from one word to the next, 
it gets lost.” 
“How do you know that?” 
“Am I right?” 
“Absolutely. Before I focus on the next word, for a fraction 
of a second I lose myself. Things I don’t want to think about 
take over.” 
“And you know exactly what those things are.” 
Athena knew, but she said nothing until we went back to the 
tent and she could cradle her sleeping son in her arms. Her eyes 
were full of tears, although she was trying hard to control herself. 


84 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“The emir said that you were going on holiday.” 
She opened the car door, put the key in the ignition, and 
started the engine. For a few moments, only the noise of the 
engine troubled the silence of the desert. 
“I know what you mean,” she said at last. “When I write, 
when I dance, I’m guided by the Hand that created everything. 
When I look at Viorel sleeping, I know that he knows he’s the 
fruit of my love for his father, even though I haven’t seen his 
father for more than a year. But I . . .” 
She fell silent again. Her silence was the blank space between 
the words. 
“. . . but I don’t know the hand that first rocked me in the 
cradle. The hand that wrote me in the book of the world.” 
I merely nodded. 
“Do you think that matters?” 
“Not necessarily. But in your case, until you touch that hand, 
your, shall we say, calligraphy will not improve.” 
“I don’t see why I should bother to look for someone who 
never took the trouble to love me.” 
She closed the car door, smiled, and drove off. Despite her 
last words, I knew what her next step would be. 

SA M I R A R. KH A L I L , AT H E NA ’S M OT H E R 

It was as if all her professional success, her ability to earn money, 
her joy at having found a new love, her contentment when she 


85 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

played with her son—my grandson—had all been relegated to 
second place. I was quite simply terrified when Sherine told me 
that she’d decided to go in search of her birth mother. 
At first, of course, I took consolation in the thought that the 
adoption center would no longer exist, the paperwork would all 
have been lost, any officials she encountered would prove impla-
cable, the recent collapse of the Romanian government would 
make travel impossible, and the womb that bore her would long 
since have vanished. This, however, provided only a momentary 
consolation: my daughter was capable of anything and would 
overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. 
Up until then, the subject had been taboo in the family. 
Sherine knew she was adopted, because the psychiatrist in Bei-
rut had advised me to tell her as soon as she was old enough to 
understand. But she had never shown any desire to know where 
she had come from. Her home had been Beirut, when it was still 
our home. 
The adopted son of a friend of mine had committed suicide 
at the age of sixteen when he acquired a biological sister, and so 
we had never attempted to have more children of our own, and 
we did everything we could to make her feel that she was the 
sole reason for our joys and sadnesses, our love and our hopes. 
And yet it seemed that none of this counted. Dear God, how 
ungrateful children can be! 
Knowing my daughter as I did, I realized that there was no 
point in arguing with her about this. My husband and I didn’t 
sleep for a whole week, and every morning, every evening, we 


86 P a u l o C o e l h o 

were bombarded with the same question: “Whereabouts in Ro-
mania was I born?” To make matters worse, Viorel kept crying, 
as if he understood what was going on. 
I decided to consult a psychiatrist again. I asked why a 
young woman who had everything in life should always be so 
dissatisfied. 
“We all want to know where we came from,” he said. “On 
the philosophical level that’s the fundamental question for all 
human beings. In your daughter’s case, I think it’s perfectly 
reasonable that she should want to go in search of her roots. 
Wouldn’t you be curious to know?” 
“No, I wouldn’t. On the contrary, I’d think it dangerous to 
go in search of someone who had denied and rejected me when 
I was still too helpless to survive on my own.” 
But the psychiatrist insisted: “Rather than getting into a 
confrontation with her, try to help. Perhaps when she sees that 
it’s no longer a problem for you, she’ll give up. The year she 
spent far from her friends must have created a sense of emo-
tional need, which she’s now trying to make up for by provoking 
you like this. She simply wants to be sure that she’s loved.” 
It would have been better if Sherine had gone to the psy-
chiatrist herself, then she would have understood the reasons for 
her behavior. 
“Show that you’re confident and don’t see this as a threat. 
And if, in the end, she really does go ahead with it, simply give 
her the information she needs. As I understand it, she’s always 
been a difficult child. Perhaps she’ll emerge from this search a 
stronger person.” 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

I asked if the psychiatrist had any children. He didn’t, and I 
knew then that he wasn’t the right person to advise me. 
That night, when we were sitting in front of the TV, Sherine 
returned to the subject. 
“What are you watching?” 
“The news.” 
“What for?” 
“To find out what’s going on in Lebanon,” replied my hus-
band. 
I saw the trap, but it was too late. Sherine immediately 
pounced on this opening. 
“You see, you’re curious to know what’s going on in the 
country where you were born. You’re settled in England, you 
have friends, Dad earns plenty of money, you’ve got security, 
and yet you still buy Lebanese newspapers. You channel-hop un-
til you find a bit of news to do with Beirut. You imagine the 
future as if it were the past, not realizing that the war will never 
end. What I mean is that if you’re not in touch with your roots, 
you feel as if you’ve lost touch with the world. Is it so very hard 
then for you to understand what I’m feeling?” 
“You’re our daughter.” 
“And proud to be. And I’ll always be your daughter. Please 
don’t doubt my love or my gratitude for everything you’ve done 
for me. All I’m asking is to be given the chance to visit the place 
where I was born and perhaps ask my birth mother why she 
abandoned me or perhaps, when I look into her eyes, simply say 
nothing. If I don’t at least try and do that, I’ll feel like a coward 
and I won’t ever understand the blank spaces.” 


88 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“The blank spaces?” 
“I learned calligraphy while I was in Dubai. I dance when-
ever I can, but music only exists because the pauses exist, and 
sentences only exist because the blank spaces exist. When I’m 
doing something, I feel complete, but no one can keep active 
twenty-four hours a day. As soon as I stop, I feel there’s some-
thing lacking. You’ve often said to me that I’m a naturally rest-
less person, but I didn’t choose to be that way. I’d like to sit here 
quietly, watching television, but I can’t. My brain won’t stop. 
Sometimes I think I’m going mad. I need always to be dancing, 
writing, selling land, taking care of Viorel, or reading whatever I 
find to read. Do you think that’s normal?” 
“Perhaps it’s just your temperament,” said my husband. 
The conversation ended there, as it always ended, with Vio-
rel crying, Sherine retreating into silence, and with me convinced 
that children never acknowledge what their parents have done 
for them. However, over breakfast the next day, it was my hus-
band who brought the subject up again. 
“A while ago, while you were in the Middle East, I looked 
into the possibility of going home to Beirut. I went to the street 
where we used to live. The house is no longer there, but despite 
the foreign occupation and the constant incursions, they are 
slowly rebuilding the country. I felt a sense of euphoria. Perhaps 
it was the moment to start all over again. And it was precisely 
that expression, ‘start all over again,’ that brought me back to re-
ality. The time has passed when I could allow myself that luxury. 
Nowadays, I just want to go on doing what I’m doing, and I 
don’t need any new adventures. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“I sought out the people I used to enjoy a drink with after 
work. Most of them have left, and those who have stayed com-
plain all the time about a constant feeling of insecurity. I walked 
past some of my old haunts, and I felt like a stranger, as if noth-
ing there belonged to me anymore. The worst of it was that my 
dream of one day returning gradually disappeared when I found 
myself back in the city where I was born. Even so, I needed to 
make that visit. The songs of exile are still there in my heart, but 
I know now that I’ll never again live in Lebanon. In a way, the 
days I spent in Beirut helped me to a better understanding of 
the place where I live now, and to value each second that I spend 
in London.” 
“What are you trying to tell me, Dad?” 
“That you’re right. Perhaps it really would be best to understand 
those blank spaces. We can look after Viorel while you’re away.” 
He went to the bedroom and returned with the yellow file 
containing the adoption papers. He gave them to Sherine, kissed 
her, and said it was time he went to work. 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 

For a whole morning in 1990, all I could see from the sixth-
floor window of the hotel was the main government building. 
A flag had just been placed on the roof, marking the exact spot 
where the megalomaniacal dictator had fled in a helicopter only 
to find death a few hours later at the hands of those he had op-
pressed for twenty-two years. 


90 P a u l o C o e l h o 

In his plan to create a capital that would rival Washington, 
Ceausescu had ordered all the old houses to be razed to the 
ground. Indeed, Bucharest had the dubious honor of being de-
scribed as the city that had suffered the worst destruction out-
side of a war or a natural disaster. 
The day I arrived, I attempted to go for a short walk with 
my interpreter, but in the streets I saw only poverty, bewilder-
ment, and a sense that there was no future, no past, and no 
present: the people were living in a kind of limbo, with little 
idea of what was happening in their country or in the rest of 
the world. When I went back ten years later and saw the whole 
country rising up out of the ashes, I realized human beings can 
overcome any difficulty, and that the Romanian people were a 
fine example of just that. 
But on that other gray morning, in the gray foyer of a 
gloomy hotel, all I was concerned about was whether my in-
terpreter would manage to get a car and enough petrol so that 
I could carry out some final research for the BBC documen-
tary I was working on. He was taking a very long time, and I 
was beginning to have my doubts. Would I have to go back to 
England having failed to achieve my goal? I’d already invested 
a significant amount of money in contracts with historians, 
in the script, in filming interviews, but before the BBC would 
sign the final contract, they insisted on me visiting Dracula’s 
castle to see what state it was in. The trip was costing more 
than I expected. 
I tried phoning my girlfriend but was told I’d have to wait 
nearly an hour to get a line. My interpreter might arrive at any 


91 

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moment with the car and there was no time to lose, and so I 
decided not to risk waiting. 
I asked around to see if I could buy an English newspaper, 
but there were none to be had. To take my mind off my anxiety, I 
started looking, as discreetly as I could, at the people around me 
drinking tea, possibly oblivious to everything that had happened 
the year before—popular uprisings, the cold-blooded murder 
of civilians in Timisoara, shoot-outs in the streets between the 
people and the dreaded secret service as the latter tried desper-
ately to hold on to the power fast slipping from their grasp. 
I noticed a group of three Americans, an interesting-looking 
woman who was, however, glued to the fashion magazine she 
was reading, and some men sitting round a table, talking loudly 
in a language I couldn’t identify. 
I was just about to get up yet again and go over to the entrance 
to see if my interpreter was anywhere to be seen, when she came 
in. She must have been a little more than twenty years old. She 
sat down, ordered some breakfast, and I noticed that she spoke 
English. None of the other men present appeared to notice her 
arrival, but the other woman interrupted her reading. 
Perhaps because of my anxiety or because of the place, 
which was beginning to depress me, I plucked up my courage 
and went over to her. 
“Excuse me, I don’t usually do this. I always think breakfast 
is the most private meal of the day.” 
She smiled, told me her name, and I immediately felt wary. 
It had been too easy—she might be a prostitute. Her English, 
however, was perfect, and she was very discreetly dressed. I de-


92 P a u l o C o e l h o 

cided not to ask any questions and began talking at length about 
myself, noticing as I did so that the woman at the next table had 
put down her magazine and was listening to our conversation. 
“I’m an independent producer working for the BBC in Lon-
don, and, at the moment, I’m trying to find a way to get to 
Transylvania . . .” 
I noticed the light in her eyes change. 
“. . . so that I can finish the documentary I’m making about 
the myth of the vampire.” 
I waited. This subject always aroused people’s curiosity, but 
she lost interest as soon as I mentioned the reason for my visit. 
“You’ll just have to take the bus,” she said. “Although I 
doubt you’ll find what you’re looking for. If you want to know 
more about Dracula, read the book. The author never even vis-
ited Romania.” 
“What about you, do you know Transylvania?” 
“I don’t know.” 
That was not an answer, perhaps it was because English— 
despite her British accent—was not her mother tongue. 
“But I’m going there too,” she went on. “On the bus, of 
course.” 
Judging by her clothes, she was not an adventuress who sets 
off round the world visiting exotic places. The idea that she 
might be a prostitute returned; perhaps she was trying to get 
closer to me. 
“Would you like a lift?” 
“I’ve already bought my ticket.” 
I insisted, thinking that her first refusal was just part of the 


93 

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game. She refused again, saying that she needed to make that 
journey alone. I asked where she was from, and there was a long 
pause before she replied. 
“Like I said, from Transylvania.” 
“That isn’t quite what you said. But if that’s so, perhaps you 
could help me with finding locations for the film and . . .” 
My unconscious mind was telling me to explore the terri-
tory a little more, because although the idea that she might be a 
prostitute was still buzzing around in my head, I very, very much 
wanted her to come with me. She politely refused my offer. The 
other woman joined in the conversation at this point, as if to 
protect the younger woman, and I felt then that I was in the way 
and decided to leave. 
My interpreter arrived shortly afterward, out of breath, say-
ing that he’d made all the necessary arrangements, but that (as 
expected) it was going to cost a lot of money. I went up to my 
room, grabbed my suitcase, which I’d packed earlier, got into the 
Russian wreck of a car, drove down the long, almost deserted 
avenues, and realized that I had with me my small camera, my 
belongings, my anxieties, a couple of bottles of mineral water, 
some sandwiches, and the image of someone that stubbornly 
refused to leave my head. 
In the days that followed, as I was trying to piece together 
a script on the historical figure of Dracula, and interviewing 
both locals and intellectuals on the subject of the vampire myth 
(with, as foreseen, little success), I gradually became aware that 
I was no longer merely trying to make a documentary for Brit-
ish television. I wanted to meet that arrogant, unfriendly, self-


94 P a u l o C o e l h o 

sufficient young woman whom I’d seen in a café in a hotel in Bu-
charest, and who would, at that moment, be somewhere nearby. 
I knew absolutely nothing about her apart from her name, but 
like the vampire of the myth, she seemed to be sucking up all 
my energy. 
In my world, and in the world of those I lived with, this was 
absurd, nonsensical, unacceptable. 

DE I D R E O’NE I L L , K N OW N A S ED DA 

“I don’t know what you came here to do, but whatever it was, 
you must see it through to the end.” 
She looked at me, startled. 
“Who are you?” 
I started talking about the magazine I was reading, and after 
a while, the man sitting with her decided to get up and leave. 
Now I could tell her who I was. 
“If you mean what do I do for a living, I qualified as a doc-
tor some years ago, but I don’t think that’s the answer you want 
to hear.” 
I paused. 
“Your next step, though, will be to try to find out, through 
clever questioning, exactly what I’m doing here, in a country 
that’s only just emerging from years of terrible oppression.” 
“I’ll be straightforward then. What did you come here to do?” 
I could have said: I came for the funeral of my teacher, be-
cause I felt he deserved that homage. But it would be impru-


95 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

dent to touch on the subject. She may have shown no interest 
in vampires, but the word teacher would be sure to attract her 
attention. Since my oath will not allow me to lie, I replied with 
a half-truth. 
“I wanted to see where a writer called Mircea Eliade lived. 
You’ve probably never heard of him, but Eliade, who spent a 
great part of his life in France and the USA, was a world author-
ity on myths.” 
The young woman looked at her watch, feigning indiffer-
ence. I went on: 
“And I’m not talking about vampires, I’m talking about people 
who, let’s say, are following the same path you’re following.” 
She was about to take a sip of her coffee, but she stopped: 
“Are you from the government? Or are you someone my parents 
engaged to follow me?” 
It was my turn then to feel uncertain as to whether to con-
tinue the conversation. Her response had been unnecessarily ag-
gressive. But I could see her aura, her anxiety. She was very like 
me when I was her age: full of internal and external wounds 
that drove me to want to heal people on the physical plane and 
to help them find their path on the spiritual plane. I wanted 
to say, “Your wounds will help you, my dear,” then pick up my 
magazine and leave. 
If I had done that, Athena’s path might have been com-
pletely different, and she would still be alive and living with the 
man she loved. She would have brought up her son and watched 
him grow, get married, and have lots of children. She would be 
rich, possibly the owner of a company selling real estate. She had 


96 P a u l o C o e l h o 

all the necessary qualities to find success and happiness. She’d 
suffered enough to be able to use her scars to her advantage, and 
it was just a matter of time before she’d manage to control her 
anxiety and move on. 
So what kept me sitting there, trying to keep the conversa-
tion going? The answer is very simple: curiosity. I couldn’t un-
derstand what that brilliant light was doing there in the cold 
hotel foyer. 
I continued: “Mircea Eliade wrote books with strange titles: 
Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions, for example. Or The Sacred 
and the Profane. My teacher” —I inadvertently let the word slip, 
but she either wasn’t listening or else pretended not to have no-
ticed—“loved his work. And something tells me it’s a subject 
you’re interested in too.” 
She glanced at her watch again. 
“I’m going to Sibiu,” she said. “My bus leaves in an hour. I’m 
looking for my mother, if that’s what you want to know. I work 
as a real estate agent in the Middle East, I have a son of nearly 
four, I’m divorced, and my parents live in London. My adoptive 
parents, of course, because I was abandoned as a baby.” 
She was clearly at a very advanced stage of perception and had 
identified with me, even though she wasn’t aware of this yet. 
“Yes, that’s what I wanted to know.” 
“Did you have to come all this way just to do research into a 
writer? Aren’t there any libraries where you live?” 
“The fact is that Eliade only lived in Romania until he grad-
uated from university. So if I really wanted to know more about 
his work, I should go to Paris, London, or to Chicago, where he 


97 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

died. However, what I’m doing isn’t research in the normal sense 
of the word: I wanted to see the ground where he placed his feet. 
I wanted to feel what inspired him to write about things that 
affect my life and the lives of people I respect.” 
“Did he write about medicine too?” 
I knew I had better not answer that. I saw that she’d picked up 
on the word teacher and assumed it must be related to my profession. 
The young woman got to her feet. I felt she knew what I was 
talking about. I could see her light shining more intensely. I only 
achieve this state of perception when I’m close to someone very 
like myself. 
“Would you mind coming with me to the bus station?” she 
asked. 
Not at all. My plane didn’t leave until later that night, and 
a whole, dull, endless day stretched out before me. At least I 
would have someone to talk to for a while. 
She went upstairs, returned with her suitcases in her hand 
and a series of questions in her head. She began her interroga-
tion as soon as we left the hotel. 
“I may never see you again,” she said, “but I feel that we have 
something in common. Since this may be the last opportunity 
we have in this incarnation to talk to each other, would you 
mind being direct in your answers?” 
I nodded. 
“Based on what you’ve read in all those books, do you believe 
that through dance we can enter a trancelike state that helps us 
to see a light? And that the light tells us nothing—only whether 
we’re happy or sad?” 


98 P a u l o C o e l h o 

A good question! 
“Of course, and that happens not only through dance, but 
also through anything that allows us to focus our attention and 
to separate body from spirit. Like yoga or prayer or Buddhist 
meditation.” 
“Or calligraphy.” 
“I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s possible. At such moments, 
when the body sets the soul free, the soul either rises up to 
heaven or descends into hell, depending on the person’s state of 
mind. In both cases, it learns what it needs to learn: to destroy 
or to heal. But I’m no longer interested in individual paths; in 
my tradition, I need the help of— Are you listening to me?” 
“No.” 
She had stopped in the middle of the street and was staring 
at a little girl who appeared to have been abandoned. She went 
to put her hand in her bag. 
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Look across the street at that 
woman, the one with cruel eyes. She’s put the girl there purely 
in order to—” 
“I don’t care.” 
She took out a few coins. I grabbed her hand. 
“Let’s buy her something to eat. That would be more useful.” 
I asked the little girl to go with us to a bar and bought her a 
sandwich. The little girl smiled and thanked me. The eyes of the 
woman across the street seemed to glitter with hatred, but for 
the first time, the gray eyes of the young woman walking at my 
side looked at me with respect. 
“What were you saying?” she asked. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“It doesn’t matter. Do you know what happened to you a few 
moments ago? You went into the same trance that your dancing 
provokes.” 
“No, you’re wrong.” 
“I’m right. Something touched your unconscious mind. Per-
haps you saw yourself as you would have been if you hadn’t been 
adopted—begging in the street. At that moment, your brain 
stopped reacting. Your spirit left you and traveled down to hell 
to meet the demons from your past. Because of that, you didn’t 
notice the woman across the street—you were in a trance, a dis-
organized, chaotic trance that was driving you to do something 
that was good in theory, but, in practice, pointless. As if you 
were—” 
“In the blank space between the letters. In the moment when 
a note of music ends and the next has not yet begun.” 
“Exactly. And such a trance can be dangerous.” 
I almost said: “It’s the kind of trance provoked by fear. 
It paralyzes the person, leaves them unable to react; the body 
doesn’t respond, the soul is no longer there. You were terrified by 
everything that could have happened to you had fate not placed 
your parents in your path.” But she had put her suitcases down 
on the ground and was standing in front of me. 
“Who are you? Why are you saying all this?” 
“As a doctor, I’m known as Deidre O’Neill. Pleased to meet 
you, and what’s your name?” 
“Athena. Although according to my passport I’m Sherine 
Khalil.” 
“Who gave you the name Athena?” 


100 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“No one important. But I didn’t ask you for your name, I 
asked who you are and why you spoke to me. And why I felt 
the same need to talk to you. Was it just because we were the 
only two women in that café? I don’t think so. And you’re saying 
things to me that make sense of my life.” 
She picked up her bags again, and we continued walking 
toward the bus station. 
“I have another name too—Edda. But it wasn’t chosen by 
chance, nor do I believe it was chance that brought us together.” 
Before us was the entrance to the bus station, with various 
people going in and out—soldiers in uniform, farmers, pretty 
women dressed as if they were still living in the 1950s. 
“If it wasn’t chance, what was it?” 
She had another half an hour before her bus left, and I could 
have said: “It was the Mother. Some chosen spirits emit a spe-
cial light and are drawn to one another, and you—Sherine or 
Athena—are one of those spirits, but you need to work very 
hard to use that energy to your advantage.” 
I could have explained that she was following the classic path 
of the witch, who, through her individual persona, seeks contact 
with the upper and lower world but always ends up destroying 
her own life—she serves others, gives out energy, but receives 
nothing in return. 
I could have explained that although all paths are different, 
there is always a point when people come together, celebrate 
together, discuss their difficulties, and prepare themselves for 
the Rebirth of the Mother. I could have said that contact with 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

the Divine Light is the greatest reality a human being can ex-
perience, and yet, in my tradition, that contact cannot be made 
alone, because we’ve suffered centuries of persecution, and this 
has taught us many things. 
“Would you like to have a coffee while I wait for the bus?” 
No, I did not. I would only end up saying things that might, 
at that stage, be misinterpreted. 
“Certain people have been very important in my life,” she 
went on. “My landlord, for example, or the calligrapher I met 
in the desert near Dubai. Who knows, you might have things 
to say to me that I can share with them, and repay them for all 
they’ve taught me.” 
So she had already had teachers in her life—excellent! Her 
spirit was ripe. All she needed was to continue her training, oth-
erwise she would end up losing all she had achieved. But was I 
the right person? 
I asked the Mother to inspire me, to tell me what to do. I got 
no answer, which did not surprise me. She always behaves like 
that when it’s up to me to take responsibility for a decision. 
I gave Athena my business card and asked her for hers. She 
gave me an address in Dubai, a country I would have been un-
able to find on the map. 
I decided to try making a joke, to test her out a little more. 
“Isn’t it a bit of a coincidence that three English people should 
meet in a café in Bucharest?” 
“Well, from your card I see that you’re Scottish. The man 
I met apparently works in England, but I don’t know any-


102 P a u l o C o e l h o 

thing else about him.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m . . . 
Romanian.” 
I gave an excuse and said that I had to rush back to the hotel 
and pack my bags. 
Now she knew where to find me. If it was written that we 
would meet again, we would. The important thing is to allow fate 
to intervene in our lives and to decide what is best for everyone. 

VO S H O “BU S H A LO ,” S I X T Y -F I V E , 
R E S TAU R A N T OW N E R 

These Europeans come here thinking they know everything, 
thinking they deserve the very best treatment, that they have the 
right to bombard us with questions that we’re obliged to answer. 
On the other hand, they think that by giving us some tricksy 
name, like “travelers” or “Roma,” they can put right the many 
wrongs they’ve done us in the past. 
Why can’t they just call us gypsies and put an end to all the 
stories that make us look as if we were cursed in the eyes of 
the world? They accuse us of being the fruit of the illicit union 
between a woman and the Devil himself. They say that one of 
us forged the nails that fixed Christ to the cross, that mothers 
should be careful when our caravans come near, because we steal 
children and enslave them. 
And because of this there have been frequent massacres 
throughout history; in the Middle Ages we were hunted as 
witches; for centuries our testimony wasn’t even accepted in the 


103 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

German courts. I was born before the Nazi wind swept through 
Europe and I saw my father marched off to a concentration 
camp in Poland, with a humiliating black triangle sewn to his 
clothes. Of the five-hundred-thousand gypsies sent for slave 
labor, only five-thousand survived to tell the tale. 
And no one, absolutely no one, wants to hear about this. 
Right up until last year, our culture, religion, and language 
were banned in this godforsaken part of the world, where most 
of the tribes decided to settle. If you asked anyone in the city 
what they thought of gypsies, their immediate response would 
be: “They’re all thieves.” However hard we try to lead normal 
lives by ceasing our eternal wanderings and living in places where 
we’re easily identifiable, the racism continues. Our children are 
forced to sit at the back of the class, and not a week goes by 
without someone insulting them. 
Then people complain that we don’t give straight answers, 
that we try to disguise ourselves, that we never openly admit our 
origins. Why would we do that? Everyone knows what a gypsy 
looks like, and everyone knows how to “protect” themselves 
from our “curses.” 
When a stuck-up, intellectual young woman appears, smil-
ing and claiming to be part of our culture and our race, I’m 
immediately on my guard. She might have been sent by the Se-
curitate, the secret police who work for that mad dictator—the 
Conducator, the Genius of the Carpathians, the Leader. They 
say he was put on trial and shot, but I don’t believe it. His son 
may have disappeared from the scene for the moment, but he’s 
still a powerful figure in these parts. 


104 P a u l o C o e l h o 

The young woman insists; she smiles, as if she were saying 
something highly amusing, and tells me that her mother is a 
gypsy and that she’d like to find her. She knows her full name. 
How could she obtain such information without the help of the 
Securitate? 
It’s best not to get on the wrong side of people who have 
government contacts. I tell her that I know nothing, that I’m just 
a gypsy who’s decided to lead an honest life, but she won’t listen: 
she wants to find her mother. I know who her mother is, and I 
know too that more than twenty years ago, she had a child she 
gave up to an orphanage that she never heard from again. We had 
to take her mother in because a blacksmith who thought he was 
the master of the universe insisted on it. But who can guarantee 
that this intellectual young woman standing before me really is 
Liliana’s daughter? Before trying to find out who her mother is, 
she should at least respect some of our customs and not turn 
up dressed in red if it’s not her wedding day. She ought to wear 
longer skirts as well, so as not to arouse men’s lust. And she 
should be more respectful. 
If I speak of her now in the present tense, it’s because for 
those who travel, time does not exist, only space. We came from 
far away, some say from India, others from Egypt, but the fact is 
that we carry the past with us as if it has all just happened. And 
the persecutions continue. 
The young woman is trying to be nice and to show that she 
knows about our culture, when that doesn’t matter at all. After 
all, she should know about our traditions. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“In town I was told that you’re a Rom Baro, a tribal leader. 
Before I came here, I learned a lot about our history—” 
“Not ‘our,’ please. It’s my history, the history of my wife, my 
children, my tribe. You’re a European. You were never stoned in 
the street as I was when I was five years old.” 
“I think the situation is getting better.” 
“The situation is always getting better, then it immediately 
gets worse.” 
But she keeps smiling. She orders a whiskey. One of our 
women would never do that. 
If she’d come in here just to have a drink or look for com-
pany, I’d treat her like any other customer. I’ve learned to be 
friendly, attentive, discreet, because my business depends on 
that. When my customers want to know more about the gyp-
sies, I offer them a few curious facts, tell them to listen to the 
group who’ll be playing later on, make a few remarks about our 
culture, and then they leave with the impression that they know 
everything about us. 
But this young woman isn’t just another tourist: she says she 
belongs to our race. 
She again shows me the certificate she got from the govern-
ment. I can believe that the government kills, steals, and lies, but 
it wouldn’t risk handing out false certificates, and so she really 
must be Liliana’s daughter, because the certificate gives her full 
name and address. I learned from the television that the Genius 
of the Carpathians, the Father of the People, our Conducator, 
the one who left us to starve while he exported all our food, the 


106 P a u l o C o e l h o 

one who lived in palaces and used gold-plated cutlery while the 
people were dying of starvation, that same man and his wretched 
wife used to get the Securitate to trawl the orphanages, selecting 
babies to be trained as state assassins. 
They only ever took boys, though, never girls. Perhaps she 
really is Liliana’s daughter. 
I look at the certificate once more and wonder whether or 
not I should tell her where her mother is. Liliana deserves to meet 
this intellectual, claiming to be “one of us.” Liliana deserves to 
look this woman in the eye. I think she suffered enough when 
she betrayed her people, slept with a gadje [Editor’s note: foreigner], 
and shamed her parents. Perhaps the moment has come to end 
her hell, for her to see that her daughter survived, got rich, and 
might even be able to help her out of the poverty she lives in. 
Perhaps this young woman will pay me for this information; 
perhaps it’ll be of some advantage to our tribe, because we’re liv-
ing in confusing times. Everyone’s saying that the Genius of the 
Carpathians is dead, and they even show photos of his execu-
tion, but who knows, he could come back tomorrow, and it’ll all 
turn out to have been a clever trick on his part to find out who 
really was on his side and who was prepared to betray him. 
The musicians will start playing soon, so I’d better talk 
business. 
“I know where you can find this woman. I can take you to 
her.” I adopt a friendlier tone of voice. “But I think that infor-
mation is worth something.” 
“I was prepared for that,” she says, holding out a much larger 
sum of money than I was going to ask for. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“That’s not even enough for the taxi fare.” 
“I’ll pay you the same amount again when I reach my desti-
nation.” 
And I sense that, for the first time, she feels uncertain. She 
suddenly seems afraid of what she’s about to do. I grab the money 
she’s placed on the counter. 
“I’ll take you to see Liliana tomorrow.” 
Her hands are trembling. She orders another whiskey, but 
suddenly a man comes into the bar, sees her, blushes scarlet, and 
comes straight over to her. I gather that they only met yesterday, 
and yet here they are, talking as if they were old friends. His eyes 
are full of desire. She’s perfectly aware of this and encourages 
him. The man orders a bottle of wine, and the two sit down at a 
table, and it’s as if she’s forgotten all about her mother. 
However, I want the other half of that money. When I serve 
them their drinks, I tell her I’ll be at her hotel at ten o’clock in 
the morning. 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 

Immediately after the first glass of wine, she told me, unprompted, 
that she had a boyfriend who worked for Scotland Yard. It was a 
lie, of course. She must have read the look in my eyes, and this was 
her way of keeping me at a distance. 
I told her that I had a girlfriend, which made us even. 
Ten minutes after the music had started, she stood up. We 
had said very little—she asked no questions about my research 


108 P a u l o C o e l h o 

into vampires, and we exchanged only generalities: our impres-
sions of the city, complaints about the state of the roads. But 
what I saw next—or, rather, what everyone in the restaurant 
saw—was a goddess revealing herself in all her glory, a priestess 
invoking angels and demons. 
Her eyes were closed, and she seemed no longer to be con-
scious of who she was or where she was or why she was there; it 
was as if she were floating and simultaneously summoning up 
her past, revealing her present, and predicting the future. She 
mingled eroticism with chastity, pornography with revelation, 
worship of God and nature, all at the same time. 
People stopped eating and started watching what was hap-
pening. She was no longer following the music, the musicians 
were trying to keep up with her steps, and that restaurant in 
the basement of an old building in the city of Sibiu was trans-
formed into an Egyptian temple, where the worshippers of Isis 
used to gather for their fertility rites. The smell of roast meat 
and wine was transmuted into an incense that drew us all into 
the same trancelike state, into the same experience of leaving 
this world and entering an unknown dimension. 
The string and wind instruments had given up, only the per-
cussion played on. Athena was dancing as if she were no longer 
there, with sweat running down her face, her bare feet beating on 
the wooden floor. A woman got up and very gently tied a scarf 
around her neck and breasts, because her blouse kept threatening 
to slip off her shoulders. Athena, however, appeared not to no-
tice; she was inhabiting other spheres, experiencing the frontiers 
of worlds that almost touch ours but never reveal themselves. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

The other people in the restaurant started clapping in time 
to the music, and Athena was dancing ever faster, feeding on 
that energy, spinning round and round, balancing in the void, 
snatching up everything that we, poor mortals, wanted to offer 
to the supreme divinity. 
And suddenly she stopped. Everyone stopped, including the 
percussionists. Her eyes were still closed, but tears were now 
rolling down her cheeks. She raised her arms in the air and cried, 
“When I die, bury me standing, because I’ve spent all my life on 
my knees!” 
No one said anything. She opened her eyes, as if waking 
from a deep sleep, and walked back to the table as if nothing 
had happened. The band started up again, and couples took to 
the floor in an attempt to enjoy themselves, but the atmosphere 
in the place had changed completely. People soon paid their bills 
and started to leave the restaurant. 
“Is everything all right?” I asked when I saw that she’d recov-
ered from the physical effort of dancing. 
“I feel afraid. I discovered how to reach a place I don’t want 
to go to.” 
“Do you want me to go with you?” 
She shook her head. 
In the days that followed, I completed my research for the 
documentary, sent my interpreter back to Bucharest with the 
hired car, and then stayed on in Sibiu simply because I wanted to 
meet her again. All my life I’ve always been guided by logic and I 
know that love is something that can be built rather than simply 
discovered, but I sensed that if I never saw her again, I would 


110 P a u l o C o e l h o 

be leaving a very important part of my life in Transylvania, even 
though I might only realize this later on. I fought against the 
monotony of those endless hours; more than once, I went to the 
bus station to find out the times of buses to Bucharest; I spent 
more than my tiny budget as an independent filmmaker allowed 
on phone calls to the BBC and to my girlfriend. I explained that 
I didn’t yet have all the material I needed, that there were still 
a few things lacking, that I might need another day or possibly 
a week; I said that the Romanians were being very difficult and 
got upset if anyone associated their beautiful Transylvania with 
the hideous story of Dracula. I finally managed to convince the 
producers, and they let me stay on longer than I really needed 
to. 
We were staying in the only hotel in the city, and one day she 
saw me in the foyer and seemed suddenly to remember our first 
encounter. This time, she invited me out, and I tried to contain 
my joy. Perhaps I was important in her life. 
Later on, I learned that the words she had spoken at the end 
of her dance were an ancient gypsy saying. 

LI L I A NA , S E A M S T R E S S , AG E 
A N D S U R NA M E U N K N OW N 

I speak in the present tense because for us time does not exist, 
only space. And because it seems like only yesterday. 
The one tribal custom I did not follow was that of having 
my man by my side when Athena was born. The midwives came 


111 

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to me even though they knew I had slept with a gadje, a foreigner. 
They loosened my hair, cut the umbilical cord, tied various knots, 
and handed it to me. At that point, tradition demands that the 
child be wrapped in some item of the father’s clothing; he had left 
a scarf, which reminded me of his smell and which I sometimes 
pressed to my nose so as to feel him close to me, but now that 
perfume would vanish forever. 
I wrapped the baby in the scarf and placed her on the floor so 
that she would receive energy from the earth. I stayed there with her, 
not knowing what to feel or think; my decision had been made. 
The midwives told me to choose a name and not to tell any-
one what it was—it could only be pronounced once the child 
was baptized. They gave me the consecrated oil and the amulets 
I must hang around her neck for the two weeks following her 
birth. One of them told me not to worry, the whole tribe was 
responsible for my child, and although I would be the butt of 
much criticism, this would soon pass. They also advised me not 
to go out between dusk and dawn because the tsinvari [Editor’s 
note: evil spirits] might attack us and take possession of us, and 
from then on our lives would be a tragedy. 
A week later, as soon as the sun rose, I went to an adoption 
center in Sibiu and placed her on the doorstep, hoping that some 
charitable person would take her in. As I was doing so, a nurse 
caught me and dragged me inside. She insulted me in every way 
she could and said that they were used to such behavior, but that 
there was always someone watching and I couldn’t escape so eas-
ily from the responsibility of bringing a child into the world. 
“Although, of course, what else would one expect from a 


112 P a u l o C o e l h o 

gypsy! Abandoning your own child like that!” 
I was forced to fill in a form with all my details, and since I 
didn’t know how to write, she said again, more than once: “Yes, 
well, what can you expect from a gypsy. And don’t try to trick us 
by giving false information. If you do, it could land you in jail.” 
Out of pure fear, I told them the truth. 
I looked at my child one last time, and all I could think was: 
Child without a name, may you find love, much love in your life. 
Afterward, I walked in the forest for hours. I remembered 
many nights during my pregnancy when I had both loved and 
hated the child herself and the man who had put her inside me. 
Like all women, I’d dreamed of one day meeting an enchanted 
prince, who would marry me, give me lots of children, and 
shower attentions on my family. Like many women, I fell in love 
with a man who could give me none of those things, but with 
whom I shared some unforgettable moments, moments my child 
would never understand, for she would always be stigmatized in 
our tribe as a gadje and a fatherless child. I could bear that, but I 
didn’t want her to suffer as I had suffered ever since I first real-
ized I was pregnant. I wept and tore at my own skin, thinking 
that the pain of the scratches would perhaps stop me thinking 
about a return to ordinary life, to face the shame I had brought 
on the tribe. Someone would take care of the child, and I would 
always cherish the hope of seeing her again one day, when she 
had grown up. 
Unable to stop crying, I sat down on the ground and put my 
arms around the trunk of a tree. However, as soon as my tears 
and the blood from my wounds touched the trunk of the tree, 


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a strange calm took hold of me. I seemed to hear a voice telling 
me not to worry, saying that my blood and my tears had purified 
the path of the child and lessened my suffering. Ever since then, 
whenever I despair, I remember that voice and feel calm again. 
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I saw her arrive with 
our tribe’s Rom Baro, who asked me for a coffee and a drink, 
then smiled slyly and left. The voice told me that she would 
come back, and now here she is, in front of me. She’s pretty. She 
looks like her father. I don’t know what feelings she has for me; 
perhaps she hates me because I abandoned her. I don’t need to 
explain why I did what I did; no one would ever understand. 
We sit for an age without saying anything to each other, 
just looking—not smiling, not crying, nothing. A surge of love 
rises up from the depths of my soul, but I don’t know if she’s 
interested in what I feel. 
“Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?” 
Instinct. Instinct above all else. She nods. We go into the 
small room in which I live, and which is living room, bedroom, 
kitchen, and sewing workshop. She looks around, shocked, but 
I pretend not to notice. I go over to the stove and return with 
two bowls of thick meat and vegetable broth. I’ve prepared some 
strong coffee too, and just as I’m about to add sugar, she speaks 
for the first time. 
“No sugar for me, thank you. I didn’t know you spoke 
English.” 
I almost say that I learned it from her father, but I bite my 
tongue. We eat in silence, and as time passes, everything starts 
to feel familiar to me: here I am with my daughter; she went off 


114 P a u l o C o e l h o 

into the world and now she’s back; she followed paths different 
from mine and has come home. I know this is an illusion, but 
life has given me so many moments of harsh reality that it does 
no harm to dream a little. 
“Who’s that saint?” she asks, pointing to a painting on 
the wall. 
“St. Sarah, the patron saint of gypsies. I’ve always wanted to 
visit her church in France, but I can’t leave the country. I’d never 
get a passport or permission . . .” 
I’m about to say: “And even if I did, I wouldn’t have enough 
money,” but I stop myself in time. She might think I was asking 
her for something. 
“. . . and besides, I have too much work to do.” 
Silence falls again. She finishes her soup, lights a cigarette, 
and her eyes give nothing away, no emotion. 
“Did you think you would ever see me again?” 
I say that I did, and that I’d heard yesterday, from the Rom 
Baro’s wife, that she’d visited his restaurant. 
“A storm is coming. Wouldn’t you like to sleep a little?” 
“I can’t hear anything. The wind isn’t blowing any harder or 
softer than before. I’d rather talk.” 
“Believe me, I have all the time in the world. I have the rest 
of my life to spend by your side.” 
“Don’t say that.” 
“. . . but you’re tired,” I go on, pretending not to have heard 
her remark. I can see the storm approaching. Like all storms, it 
brings destruction, but at the same time, it soaks the fields, and 
the wisdom of the heavens falls with the rain. Like all storms, it 


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will pass. The more violent it is, the more quickly it will pass. 
I have, thank God, learned to weather storms. 
And as if all the Holy Marys of the Sea were listening to me, 
the first drops of rain begin to fall on the tin roof. The young 
woman finishes her cigarette. I take her hand and lead her to my 
bed. She lies down and closes her eyes. 
I don’t know how long she slept. I watched her without 
thinking anything, and the voice I’d heard once in the forest 
was telling me that all was well, that I needn’t worry, that the 
ways in which fate changes people are always favorable if we 
only know how to decipher them. I don’t know who saved her 
from the orphanage and brought her up and made her into the 
independent woman she appears to be. I offered up a prayer to 
that family who had allowed my daughter to survive and achieve 
a better life. In the middle of the prayer, I felt jealousy, despair, 
regret, and I stopped talking to St. Sarah. Had it really been so 
important to bring her back? There lay everything I’d lost and 
could never recover. 
But there too was the physical manifestation of my love. 
I knew nothing and yet everything was revealed to me: I re-
membered the times I’d considered suicide and, later, abortion, 
when I’d imagined leaving that part of the world and setting off 
on foot to wherever my strength would take me; I remembered 
my blood and tears on the tree trunk, the dialogue with nature 
that had intensified from that moment on and has never left me 
since, although few people in my tribe have any inkling of this. 
My protector, whom I met while I was wandering in the forest, 
understood, but he had just died. 


116 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“The light is unstable, the wind blows it out, the lightning 
ignites it, it is never simply there, shining like the sun, but it is 
worth fighting for,” he used to say. 
He was the only person who accepted me and persuaded the 
tribe that I could once again form part of their world. He was the 
only one with the moral authority to ensure that I wasn’t expelled. 
And, alas, the only one who would never meet my daughter. I 
wept for him while she lay sleeping on my bed, she who must be 
used to all the world’s comforts. Thousands of questions filled 
my head—who were her adoptive parents, where did she live, 
had she been to university, was there someone she loved, what 
were her plans? But I wasn’t the one who had traveled the world 
in search of her. On the contrary, I wasn’t there to ask questions, 
but to answer them. 
She opened her eyes. I wanted to touch her hair, to give her 
the affection I’d kept locked inside all these years, but I wasn’t 
sure how she would react and thought it best to do nothing. 
“You came here to find out why . . .” 
“No, I don’t want to know why a mother would abandon her 
daughter. There is no reason for anyone to do that.” 
Her words wound my heart, but I don’t know how to re-
spond. 
“Who am I? What blood runs in my veins? Yesterday, when 
I found out where you were, I was absolutely terrified. Where 
do I start? I suppose, like all gypsies, you can read the future in 
the cards.” 
“No, that’s not true. We only do that with gadje as a way of 
earning a living. We never read cards or hands or try to predict 


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the future within our own tribe. And you . . .” 
“I’m part of the tribe. Even though the woman who brought 
me into the world sent me far away.” 
“Yes.” 
“So what am I doing here? Now that I’ve seen your face I can 
go back to London. My holidays are nearly over.” 
“Do you want to know about your father?” 
“No, I haven’t the slightest interest in him.” 
And suddenly I realized that I could help her. It was as if 
someone else’s voice came out of my mouth. “Try to understand 
the blood that flows in my veins and in your heart.” 
That was my teacher speaking through me. She closed her 
eyes again and slept for nearly twelve hours. 
The following day, I took her to the outskirts of Sibiu where 
there’s a kind of museum of the different kinds of houses found 
in the region. For the first time, I’d had the pleasure of preparing 
her breakfast. She was more rested, less tense, and she asked me 
questions about gypsy culture, but never about me. She told me 
a little of her life. I learned that I was a grandmother! She didn’t 
mention her husband or her adoptive parents. She said she sold 
land in a country far from there and that she would soon return 
to her work. 
I explained that I could show her how to make amulets to 
ward off evil, but she didn’t seem interested. However, when I 
spoke to her about the healing properties of herbs, she asked me 
to teach her how to recognize them. In the park where we were 
walking, I tried to pass on to her all the knowledge I possessed, 
although I was sure she’d forget everything as soon as she returned 


118 P a u l o C o e l h o 

to her home country, which by then I knew was England. 
“We don’t possess the earth, the earth possesses us. We 
used to travel constantly, and everything around us was ours: 
the plants, the water, the landscapes through which our caravans 
passed. Our laws were nature’s laws: the strong survived, and we, 
the weak, the eternal exiles, learned to hide our strength and to 
use it only when necessary. We don’t believe that God made the 
universe. We believe that God is the universe and that we are 
contained in him, and he in us. Although . . .” 
I stopped, then decided to go on, because it was a way of 
paying homage to my protector. 
“. . . in my opinion, we should call ‘him’ ‘goddess’ or ‘Mother.’ 
Not like the woman who gives her daughter up to an orphanage, 
but like the Woman in all of us, who protects us when we are in 
danger. She will always be with us while we perform our daily 
tasks with love and joy, understanding that nothing is suffering, 
that everything is a way of praising Creation.” 
Athena—now I knew her name—looked across at one of 
the houses in the park. 
“What’s that? A church?” 
The hours I’d spent by her side had allowed me to recover 
my strength. I asked if she was trying to change the subject. She 
thought for a moment before replying. 
“No, I want to go on listening to what you have to tell me, 
although, according to everything I read before I came here, 
what you’re saying isn’t part of the gypsy tradition.” 
“My protector taught me these things. He knew things the 


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gypsies don’t know and he made the tribe take me back. And as I 
learned from him, I gradually became aware of the power of the 
Mother, I, who had rejected the blessing of being a mother.” 
I pointed at a small bush. “If one day your son has a fever, 
place him next to a young plant like this and shake its leaves. 
The fever will pass over into the plant. If ever you feel anxious, 
do the same thing.” 
“I’d rather you told me more about your protector.” 
“He taught me that in the beginning Creation was so lonely 
that it created someone else to talk to. Those two creatures, in an 
act of love, made a third person, and from then on, they multi-
plied by thousands and millions. You asked about the church we 
just saw: I don’t know when it was built and I’m not interested. 
My temple is the park, the sky, the water in the lake, and the 
stream that feeds it. My people are those who share my ideas 
and not those I’m bound to by bonds of blood. My ritual is 
being with those people and celebrating everything around me. 
When are you thinking of going home?” 
“Possibly tomorrow. I don’t want to inconvenience you.” 
Another wound to my heart, but I could say nothing. 
“No, please, stay as long as you like. I only asked because I’d 
like to celebrate your arrival with the others. If you agree, I can 
do this tonight.” 
She says nothing, and I understand this as a yes. Back home, 
I give her more food, and she explains that she needs to go to 
her hotel in Sibiu to fetch some clothes. By the time she returns, 
I have everything organized. We go to a hill to the south of the 


120 P a u l o C o e l h o 

town; we sit around a fire that has just been lit; we play instru-
ments, we sing, we dance, we tell stories. She watches but doesn’t 
take part, although the Rom Baro told me that she was a fine 
dancer. For the first time in many years, I feel happy, because I’ve 
had the chance to prepare a ritual for my daughter and to cel-
ebrate with her the miracle of the two of us being together, alive 
and healthy and immersed in the love of the Great Mother. 
Afterward, she says that she’ll sleep at the hotel that night. I 
ask her if this is good-bye, but she says it isn’t. She’ll come back 
tomorrow. 
For a whole week, my daughter and I share together the 
adoration of the Universe. One night, she brought a friend, 
making it quite clear that he was neither her boyfriend nor the 
father of her child. The man, who must have been ten years 
older than her, asked who we were worshipping in our rituals. I 
explained that worshipping someone means—according to my 
protector—placing that person outside of our world. We are 
not worshipping anyone or anything, we are simply communing 
with Creation. 
“But do you pray?” 
“Myself, I pray to St. Sarah, but here we are part of every-
thing and we celebrate rather than pray.” 
I felt that Athena was proud of my answer, but I was really 
only repeating my protector’s words. 
“And why do this in a group, when we can all celebrate the 
Universe on our own?” 
“Because the others are me. And I am the others.” 
Athena looked at me then, and I felt it was my turn to wound 


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her heart. 
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said. 
“Before you do, come and say good-bye to your mother.” 
That was the first time, in all those days, I had used the 
word. My voice didn’t tremble, my gaze was steady, and I knew 
that, despite everything, standing before me was the blood of 
my blood, the fruit of my womb. At that moment, I was behav-
ing like a little girl who has just found out that the world isn’t 
full of ghosts and curses as grown-ups have taught us. It’s full 
of love, regardless of how that love is manifested, a love that 
forgives our mistakes and redeems our sins. 
She gave me a long embrace. Then she adjusted the veil I 
wear to cover my hair; I may not have had a husband, but ac-
cording to gypsy tradition, I had to wear a veil because I was no 
longer a virgin. What would tomorrow bring me, along with the 
departure of the being I’ve always both loved and feared from a 
distance? I was everyone, and everyone was me and my solitude. 
The following day, Athena arrived bearing a bunch of flow-
ers. She tidied my room, told me that I should wear glasses be-
cause my eyes were getting worn out from all that sewing. She 
asked if the friends I celebrated with experienced any problems 
with the tribe, and I told her that they didn’t, that my protec-
tor had been a very respected man, had taught us many things, 
and had followers all over the world. I explained that he’d died 
shortly before she arrived. 
“One day, a cat brushed against him. To us, that means 
death, and we were all very worried. But although there is a 
ritual that can lift such a curse, my protector said it was time for 


122 P a u l o C o e l h o 

him to leave, that he needed to travel to those other worlds that 
he knew existed, to be reborn as a child, and to rest for a while 
in the arms of the Mother. His funeral took place in a forest 
nearby. It was a very simple affair, but people came from all over 
the world.” 
“Among those people, was there a woman of about thirty-
five, with dark hair?” 
“I can’t be sure, but possibly. Why do you ask?” 
“I met someone at a hotel in Bucharest who said that she’d 
come to attend the funeral of a friend. I think she said some-
thing about ‘her teacher.’ ” 
She asked me to tell her more about the gypsies, but there 
wasn’t much she didn’t already know, mainly because, apart from 
customs and traditions, we know little of our own history. I 
suggested that she go to France one day and take, on my behalf, 
a shawl to present to the image of St. Sarah in the little French 
village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. 
“I came here because there was something missing in my life,” 
she said. “I needed to fill up my blank spaces, and I thought just 
seeing your face would be enough. But it wasn’t. I also needed to 
understand that . . . I was loved.” 
“You are loved.” 
I said nothing else for a long time. I’d finally put into words 
what I’d wanted to say ever since I let her go. So that she would 
not become too emotional, I went on: 
“I’d like to ask you something.” 
“Ask me anything you like.” 
“I want to ask your forgiveness.” 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

She bit her lip. 
“I’ve always been a very restless person. I work hard, spend 
too much time looking after my son, I dance like a mad thing, I 
learned calligraphy, I go to courses on selling, I read one book 
after another. But that’s all a way of avoiding those moments 
when nothing is happening, because those blank spaces give me 
a feeling of absolute emptiness, in which not a single crumb of 
love exists. My parents have always done everything they could 
for me, and I do nothing but disappoint them. But here, during 
the time we’ve spent together, celebrating nature and the Great 
Mother, I’ve realized that those empty spaces were starting to 
get filled up. They were transformed into pauses—the moment 
when the man lifts his hand from the drum before bringing it 
down again to strike it hard. I think I can leave now. I’m not 
saying that I’ll go in peace, because my life needs to follow the 
rhythm I’m accustomed to. But I won’t leave feeling bitter. Do 
all gypsies believe in the Great Mother?” 
“If you were to ask them, none of them would say yes. 
They’ve adopted the beliefs and customs of the places where 
they’ve settled, and the only thing that unites us in religious 
terms is the worship of St. Sarah and making a pilgrimage, at 
least once in our lifetime, to visit her tomb in Saintes-Maries-
de-la-Mer. Some tribes call her Kali Sarah, Black Sarah. Or the 
Virgin of the Gypsies, as she’s known in Lourdes.” 
“I have to go,” Athena said after a while. “The friend you 
met the other day is leaving with me.” 
“He seems like a nice man.” 
“You’re talking like a mother.” 


124 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“I am your mother.” 
“And I’m your daughter.” 
She embraced me, this time with tears in her eyes. I stroked 
her hair as I held her in my arms, as I’d always dreamed I would, 
ever since the day when fate—or my fear—separated us. I asked 
her to take good care of herself, and she told me that she had 
learned a lot. 
“You’ll learn a lot more too because although nowadays 
we’re all trapped in houses, cities, and jobs, there still flows in 
your blood the time of caravans and journeyings and the teach-
ings that the Great Mother placed in our path so that we could 
survive. Learn, but always learn with other people by your side. 
Don’t be alone in the search, because if you take a wrong step, 
you’ll have no one there to help put you right.” 
She was still crying, still clinging to me, almost begging 
me to let her stay. I pleaded with my protector not to let me 
shed one tear, because I wanted the best for Athena, and her 
destiny was to go forward. Here in Transylvania, apart from 
my love, she would find nothing else. And although I believe 
that love is enough to justify a whole existence, I was quite 
sure that I couldn’t ask her to sacrifice her future in order to 
stay by my side. 
Athena planted a kiss on my forehead and left without say-
ing good-bye, perhaps thinking she would return one day. Every 
Christmas, she sent me enough money to spend the whole year 
without having to sew, but I never went to the bank to cash her 
checks, even though everyone in the tribe thought I was behaving 
like a foolish woman. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Six months ago, she stopped sending money. She must have 
realized that I need my sewing to fill up what she called the 
“blank spaces.” 
I would love to see her again, but I know she’ll never come 
back. She’s probably a big executive now, married to the man she 
loves. And I probably have lots of grandchildren, which means 
that my blood will remain on this earth, and my mistakes will 
be forgiven. 

SA M I R A R. KH A L I L , H O U S E W I F E 

As soon as Sherine arrived home, whooping with joy and clutch-
ing a rather startled Viorel to her, I knew that everything had 
gone much better than I’d imagined. I felt that God had heard 
my prayers, and that now she no longer had anything more to 
learn about herself, she would finally adapt to normal life, bring 
up her child, remarry, and forget all about the strange restless-
ness that left her simultaneously euphoric and depressed. 
“I love you, Mum.” 
It was my turn to put my arms around her and hold her to 
me. During all the nights she’d been away, I had, I confess, been 
terrified by the thought that she might send someone to fetch 
Viorel, and then they would never come back. 
After she’d eaten, had a bath, told us about the meeting with 
her birth mother, and described the Transylvanian countryside 
(I could barely remember it, since all I was interested in, at the 
time, was finding an orphanage), I asked her when she was going 


126 P a u l o C o e l h o 

back to Dubai. 
“Next week, but first I have to go to Scotland to see someone.” 
A man! 
“A woman,” she said at once, perhaps in response to my 
knowing smile. “I feel that I have a mission. While we were cel-
ebrating life and nature, I discovered things I didn’t even know 
existed. What I thought could be found only through dance is 
everywhere. And it has the face of a woman. I saw in the . . .” 
I felt frightened. Her mission, I told her, was to bring up her 
son, do well at her job, earn more money, remarry, and respect 
God as we know him. 
But Sherine wasn’t listening. 
“It was one night when we were sitting round the fire, drink-
ing, telling funny stories, and listening to music. Apart from in 
the restaurant, I hadn’t felt the need to dance all the time I was 
there, as if I were storing up energy for something different. 
Suddenly I felt as if everything around me were alive and pulsat-
ing, as if the Creation and I were one and the same thing. I wept 
with joy when the flames of the fire seemed to take on the form 
of a woman’s face, full of compassion, smiling at me.” 
I shuddered. It was probably gypsy witchcraft. And at the 
same time, the image came back to me of the little girl at school, 
who said she’d seen “a woman in white.” 
“Don’t get caught up in things like that, they’re the Devil’s 
work. We’ve always set you a good example, so why can’t you lead 
a normal life?” 
I’d obviously been too hasty when I thought the journey in 
search of her birth mother had done her good. However, instead of 


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reacting aggressively, as she usually did, she smiled and went on. 
“What is normal? Why is Dad always laden down with work, 
when we have money enough to support three generations? He’s 
an honest man and he deserves the money he earns, but he al-
ways says, with a certain pride, that he’s got far too much work. 
Why? What for?” 
“He’s a man who lives a dignified, hardworking life.” 
“When I lived at home, the first thing he’d ask me when he 
got back every evening was how my homework was going, and 
he’d give me a few examples illustrating how important his work 
was to the world. Then he’d turn on the TV, make a few com-
ments about the political situation in Lebanon, and read some 
technical book before going to sleep. But he was always busy. 
And it was the same thing with you. I was the best-dressed girl 
at school; you took me to parties; you kept the house spick-
and-span; you were always kind and loving and brought me up 
impeccably. But what happens now that you’re getting older? 
What are you going to do with your life now that I’ve grown up 
and am independent?” 
“We’re going to travel the world and enjoy a well-earned rest.” 
“But why don’t you do that now, while your health is still 
good?” 
I’d asked myself the same question, but I felt that my hus-
band needed his work, not because of the money, but out of a 
need to feel useful, to prove that an exile also honors his com-
mitments. Whenever he took a holiday and stayed in town, he 
always found some excuse to slip into the office, to talk to his 
colleagues and make some decision that could easily have waited. 


128 P a u l o C o e l h o 

I tried to make him go to the theater, to the cinema, to muse-
ums, and he’d do as I asked, but I always had the feeling that it 
bored him. His only interest was the company, work, business. 
For the first time, I talked to her as if she were a friend and 
not my daughter, but I chose my words carefully and spoke in a 
way that she could understand. 
“Are you saying that your father is also trying to fill in what 
you call the ‘blank spaces’?” 
“The day he retires, although I really don’t think that day 
will ever come, he’ll fall into a deep depression. I’m sure of it. 
What to do with that hard-won freedom? Everyone will con-
gratulate him on a brilliant career, on the legacy he leaves behind 
him because of the integrity with which he ran his company, 
but no one will have time for him anymore—life flows on, and 
everyone is caught up in that flow. Dad will feel like he is an 
exile again, but this time he won’t have a country where he can 
seek refuge.” 
“Have you got a better idea?” 
“Only one: I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. I’m 
too restless, and please don’t take this the wrong way, because 
I’m not blaming you and Dad at all for the example you set me, 
but I need to change, and change fast.” 

DE I D R E O’NE I L L , K N OW N A S ED DA 

She’s sitting in the pitch-black. 
The boy, of course, left the room at once—the night is 


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the kingdom of terror, of monsters from the past, of the days 
when we wandered like gypsies, like my former teacher—may 
the Mother have mercy on his soul, and may he be loved and 
cherished until it is time for him to return. 
Athena hasn’t known what to do since I switched off the 
light. She asks about her son, and I tell her not to worry, to leave 
everything to me. I go out, put the TV on, find a cartoon chan-
nel, and turn off the sound; the child sits there hypnotized— 
problem solved. I wonder how it must have been in the past, 
because the women who came to perform the same ritual Athena 
is about to take part in would have brought their children, and in 
those days there was no TV. What did teachers do then? 
Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about that. 
What the boy is experiencing in front of the television—a 
gateway into a different reality—is the same state I am going to 
induce in Athena. Everything is at once so simple and so com-
plicated! It’s simple because all it takes is a change of attitude: 
I’m not going to look for happiness anymore. From now on, I’m 
independent; I see life through my eyes and not through other 
people’s. I’m going in search of the adventure of being alive. 
And it’s complicated: Why am I not looking for happiness 
when everyone has taught me that happiness is the only goal 
worth pursuing? Why am I going to risk taking a path that no 
one else is taking? 
After all, what is happiness? 
Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has 
brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of 
anxiety, a battlefield; it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the 


130 P a u l o C o e l h o 

time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of 
ecstasy and agony. 
All right then, peace. Peace? If we look at the Mother, she’s 
never at peace. The winter does battle with the summer, the sun 
and the moon never meet, the tiger chases the man, who’s afraid 
of the dog, who chases the cat, who chases the mouse, who 
frightens the man. 
Money brings happiness. Fine. In that case, everyone who 
earns enough to have a high standard of living would be able 
to stop working. But then they’re more troubled than ever, as 
if they were afraid of losing everything. Money attracts money, 
that’s true. Poverty might bring unhappiness, but money won’t 
necessarily bring happiness. 
I spent a lot of my life looking for happiness; now what I 
want is joy. Joy is like sex—it begins and ends. I want pleasure. 
I want to be contented, but happiness? I no longer fall into 
that trap. 
When I’m with a group of people and I want to provoke 
them by asking that most important of questions—Are you 
happy? —they all reply: “Yes, I am.” 
Then I ask: “But don’t you want more? Don’t you want to 
keep on growing?” And they all reply: “Of course.” 
Then I say: “So you’re not happy.” And they change the 
subject. 
I must go back to the room where Athena is sitting. It’s dark. 
She hears my footsteps; a match is struck and a candle lit. 
“We’re surrounded by Universal Desire. It’s not happiness, 
it’s desire. And desires are never satisfied, because once they are, 


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they cease to be desires.” 
“Where’s my son?” 
“Your son is fine; he’s watching TV. I just want you to look 
at the candle; don’t speak, don’t say anything. Just believe.” 
“Believe what?” 
“I asked you not to say anything. Simply believe—don’t 
doubt anything. You’re alive, and this candle is the only point in 
your universe. Believe in that. Let go of the idea that the path 
will lead you to your goal. The truth is that with each step we 
take, we arrive. Repeat that to yourself every morning: ‘I’ve ar-
rived.’ That way you’ll find it much easier to stay in touch with 
each second of your day.” 
I paused. 
“The candle flame is illuminating your world. Ask the can-
dle: ‘Who am I?’ ” 
I paused again, then went on. “I can imagine your answer. 
I’m so-and-so. I’ve had these experiences. I have a son. I work in 
Dubai. Now ask the candle again: ‘Who am I not?’ ” 
Again I waited and again I went on. “You probably said: 
I’m not a contented person. I’m not a typical mother concerned 
only with her son and her husband, with having a house and a 
garden and a place to spend the summer holidays. Is that so? You 
can speak now.” 
“Yes, it is.” 
“Good, we’re on the right path. You, like me, are a dissatis-
fied person. Your ‘reality’ does not coincide with the ‘reality’ of 
other people. And you’re afraid that your son will follow the 
same path as you, is that correct?” 


132 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“Yes.” 
“Nevertheless, you know you cannot stop. You struggle, but 
you can’t control your doubts. Look hard at the candle. At the 
moment, the candle is your universe. It fixes your attention; it 
lights up the room around you a little. Breathe deeply, hold the 
air in your lungs as long as possible, and then breathe out. Re-
peat this five times.” 
She obeyed. 
“This exercise should have calmed your soul. Now remem-
ber what I said: believe. Believe in your abilities; believe that 
you have already arrived where you wanted to arrive. At a par-
ticular moment in your life, as you told me over tea this after-
noon, you said that you’d changed the behavior of the people 
in the bank where you worked because you’d taught them to 
dance. That isn’t true. You changed everything because, through 
dance, you changed their reality. You believed in the story of 
the Vertex, which, although I’ve never heard of it before, seems 
to me an interesting one. You like dancing and you believed in 
what you were doing. You can’t believe in something you don’t 
like, can you?” 
Athena shook her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the can-
dle flame. 
“Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that 
need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the 
space around us, as you did with your work at the bank. But for 
that you also need Desire. Please, concentrate on the candle! 
“Your son left the room and went to watch TV because he’s 
afraid of the dark. But why? We can project anything onto the 


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darkness, and we usually project our own ghosts. That’s true for 
children and for adults. Slowly raise your right arm.” 
She raised her arm. I asked her to do the same with her left 
arm. I looked at her breasts, far prettier than mine. 
“Now slowly lower them again. Close your eyes and breathe 
deeply. I’m going to turn on the light. Right, that’s the end of 
the ritual. Let’s go into the living room.” 
She got up with some difficulty. Her legs had gone numb 
because of the position I’d told her to adopt. 
Viorel had fallen asleep. I turned off the TV, and we went 
into the kitchen. 
“What was the point of all that?” she asked. 
“Merely to remove you from everyday reality. I could have 
asked you to concentrate on anything, but I like the darkness 
and the candle flame. But you want to know what I’m up to, 
isn’t that right?” 
Athena remarked that she’d traveled for nearly five hours on 
the train with her son on her lap, when she should have been 
packing her bags to go back to work. She could have sat look-
ing at a candle in her own room without any need to come to 
Scotland at all. 
“Yes, there was a need,” I replied. “You needed to know that 
you’re not alone, that other people are in contact with the same 
thing as you. Just knowing that allows you to believe.” 
“To believe what?” 
“That you’re on the right path. And as I said before, arriving 
with each step you take.” 
“What path? I thought that by going to find my mother in 


134 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Romania, I would, at last, find the peace of mind I so need, but 
I haven’t. What path are you talking about?” 
“I haven’t the slightest idea. You’ll only discover that when 
you start to teach. When you go back to Dubai, find a stu-
dent.” 
“Do you mean teach dance or calligraphy?” 
“Those are things you know about already. You need to 
teach what you don’t know, what the Mother wants to reveal 
through you.” 
She looked at me as if I had gone mad. 
“It’s true,” I said. “Why else do you think I asked you to 
breathe deeply and to raise your arms? So that you’d believe that I 
knew more than you. But it isn’t true. It was just a way of taking 
you out of the world you’re accustomed to. I didn’t ask you to 
thank the Mother, to say how wonderful she is or that you saw 
her face shining in the flames of a fire. I asked only that absurd 
and pointless gesture of raising your arms and focusing your at-
tention on a candle. That’s enough—trying, whenever possible, to 
do something that is out of kilter with the reality around us. 
“When you start creating rituals for your student to carry 
out, you’ll be receiving guidance. That’s where the apprentice-
ship begins, or so my protector told me. If you want to heed 
my words, fine, but if you don’t and you carry on with your life 
as it is at the moment, you’ll end up bumping up against a wall 
called ‘dissatisfaction.’ ” 
I rang for a taxi, and we talked a little about fashion and 
men, and then Athena left. I was sure she would listen to me, 
mainly because she was the kind of person who never refuses a 


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challenge. 
“Teach people to be different. That’s all!” I shouted after her 
as the taxi moved off. 
That is joy. Happiness would be feeling satisfied with every-
thing she already had—a lover, a son, a job. And Athena, like 
me, wasn’t born for that kind of life. 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 

I couldn’t admit I was in love, of course; I already had a girl-
friend who loved me and shared with me both my troubles and 
my joys. 
The various encounters and events that had taken place in 
Sibiu were part of a journey, and it wasn’t the first time this kind 
of thing had happened while I was away from home. When we 
step out of our normal world and leave behind us all the usual 
barriers and prejudices, we tend to become more adventurous. 
When I returned to England, the first thing I did was to 
tell the producers that making a documentary about the his-
torical figure of Dracula was nonsense, and that one book by a 
mad Irishman had created a truly terrible image of Transylvania, 
which was, in fact, one of the loveliest places on the planet. Ob-
viously the producers were none too pleased, but at that point, I 
didn’t care what they thought. I left television and went to work 
for one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers. 
That was when I began to realize that I wanted to meet 
Athena again. 


136 P a u l o C o e l h o 

I phoned her and we arranged to go for a walk together be-
fore she went back to Dubai. She suggested showing me around 
London. 
We got on the first bus that stopped, without asking where 
it was going, then we chose a female passenger at random and 
decided that we would get off wherever she did. She got off at 
Temple and so did we. We passed a beggar who asked us for 
money, but we didn’t give him any and walked on, listening to 
the insults he hurled after us, accepting that this was merely his 
way of communicating with us. 
We saw someone vandalizing a telephone booth, and I wanted 
to call the police, but Athena stopped me; perhaps that person 
had just broken up with the love of his life and needed to vent 
his feelings. Or, who knows, perhaps he had no one to talk to and 
couldn’t stand to see others humiliating him by using that phone 
to discuss business deals or love. 
She told me to close my eyes and to describe exactly the 
clothes we were both wearing; to my surprise, I got nearly every 
detail wrong. 
She asked me what was on my desk at work and said that 
some of the papers were only there because I was too lazy to 
deal with them. 
“Have you ever considered that those bits of paper have a 
life and feelings, have requests to make and stories to tell? I don’t 
think you’re giving life the attention it deserves.” 
I promised that I’d go through them one by one when I re-
turned to work the following day. 
A foreign couple with a map asked Athena how to get to a 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

particular tourist spot. She gave them very precise, but totally 
inaccurate, directions. 
“Everything you told them was completely wrong!” 
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll get lost, and that’s the best way 
to discover interesting places. Try to fill your life again with a 
little fantasy; above our heads is a sky about which the whole 
of humanity—after thousands of years spent observing it—has 
given various apparently reasonable explanations. Forget every-
thing you’ve ever learned about the stars and they’ll once more 
be transformed into angels, or into children, or into whatever 
you want to believe at that moment. It won’t make you more stu-
pid—after all, it’s only a game—but it could enrich your life.” 
The following day, when I went back to work, I treated each 
sheet of paper as if it were a message addressed to me personally 
and not to the organization I represent. At midday, I went to 
talk to the deputy editor and suggested writing an article about 
the Goddess worshipped by the gypsies. He thought it an excel-
lent idea and I was commissioned to go to the celebrations in 
the gypsy Mecca, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. 
Incredible though it may seem, Athena showed no desire to 
go with me. She said that her boyfriend—that fictitious police-
man, whom she was using to keep me at a distance—wouldn’t be 
very happy if she went off traveling with another man. 
“Didn’t you promise your mother to take the saint a new 
shawl?” 
“Yes, I did, but only if the town happened to be on my 
path, which it isn’t. If I do ever pass by there, then I’ll keep my 
promise.” 


138 P a u l o C o e l h o 

She was returning to Dubai the following Sunday, but first 
she traveled up to Scotland with her son to see the woman we’d 
both met in Bucharest. I didn’t remember anyone, but perhaps 
the “phantom woman in Scotland,” like the “phantom boy-
friend,” was another excuse, and I decided not to insist. But I 
nevertheless felt jealous, as if she were telling me that she pre-
ferred being with other people. 
I found my jealousy odd. And I decided that if I was asked 
to go to the Middle East to write an article about the property 
boom that someone on the business pages had mentioned, I 
would read everything I could on real estate, economics, politics, 
and oil, simply as a way of getting closer to Athena. 
My visit to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer produced an excellent 
article. According to tradition, Sarah was a gypsy who happened 
to be living in the small seaside town when Jesus’s aunt, Mary 
Salome, along with other refugees, arrived there, fleeing perse-
cution by the Romans. Sarah helped them and, in the end, con-
verted to Christianity. 
During the celebrations, bones from the skeletons of the 
two women who are buried beneath the altar are taken out of 
a reliquary and raised up on high to bless the multitude of 
gypsies who arrive in their caravans from all over Europe with 
their bright clothes and their music. Then the image of Sarah, 
decked out in splendid robes, is brought from the place near the 
church where it’s kept—for Sarah has never been canonized by 
the Vatican—and carried in procession to the sea through nar-
row streets strewn with rose petals. Four gypsies in traditional 
costume place the relics in a boat full of flowers and wade into 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

the water, reenacting the arrival of the fugitives and their meet-
ing with Sarah. From then on, it’s all music, celebration, songs, 
and bull running. 
A historian, Antoine Locadour, helped me flesh out the 
article with interesting facts about the Female Divinity. I sent 
Athena the two pages I’d written for the newspaper’s travel sec-
tion. All I received in return was a friendly reply, thanking me 
for sending her the article, but with no other comment. 
At least I’d confirmed that her address in Dubai existed. 

AN TO I N E LO C A D O U R , S E V E N T Y -F O U R , 
H I S TO R I A N , ICP, FR A N C E 

It’s easy to label Sarah as just one of the many black Virgins in 
the world. According to tradition, Sarah-la-Kali was of noble 
lineage and knew the secrets of the world. She is, I believe, one 
more manifestation of what people call the Great Mother, the 
Goddess of Creation. 
And it doesn’t surprise me in the least that more and more 
people are becoming interested in pagan traditions. Why? Be-
cause God the Father is associated with the rigor and discipline 
of worship, whereas the Mother Goddess shows the importance 
of love above and beyond all the usual prohibitions and taboos. 
The phenomenon is hardly a new one. Whenever a religion 
tightens its rules, a significant number of people break away and 
go in search of more freedom in their search for spiritual con-
tact. This happened during the Middle Ages when the Catholic 


140 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Church did little more than impose taxes and build splendid 
monasteries and convents; the phenomenon known as “witch-
craft” was a reaction to this, and even though it was suppressed 
because of its revolutionary nature, it left behind it roots and 
traditions that have managed to survive over the centuries. 
According to pagan tradition, nature worship is more im-
portant than reverence for sacred books. The Goddess is in ev-
erything and everything is part of the Goddess. The world is 
merely an expression of her goodness. There are many philo-
sophical systems—such as Taoism and Buddhism—that make 
no distinction between creator and creature. People no longer 
try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a 
part of it. There is no female figure in Taoism or Buddhism, but 
there too the central idea is that “everything is one.” 
In the worship of the Great Mother, what we call “sin,” usu-
ally a transgression of certain arbitrary moral codes, ceases to 
exist. Sex and customs in general are freer because they are part 
of nature and cannot be considered to be the fruits of evil. 
The new paganism shows that man is capable of living with-
out an institutionalized religion, while still continuing the spiri-
tual search in order to justify his existence. If God is Mother, then 
we need only gather together with other people and adore her 
through rituals intended to satisfy the female soul, rituals involv-
ing dance, fire, water, air, earth, songs, music, flowers, and beauty. 
This has been a growing trend over the last few years. We 
may be witnessing a very important moment in the history of 
the world, when the Spirit finally merges with the Material, and 
the two are united and transformed. At the same time, I imagine 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

that there will be a very violent reaction from organized reli-
gious institutions, which are beginning to lose their followers. 
There will be a rise in fundamentalism. 
As a historian, I’m content to collate all the data and analyze 
this confrontation between the freedom to worship and the duty 
to obey, between the God who controls the world and the God-
dess who is part of the world, between people who join together 
in groups where celebration is a spontaneous affair and those who 
close ranks and learn only what they should and should not do. 
I’d like to be optimistic and believe that human beings have 
at last found their path to the spiritual world, but the signs are 
not very positive. As so often in the past, a new conservative 
backlash could once more stifle the cult of the Mother. 

AN D R E A MC CA I N , T H E AT E R AC T R E S S 

It’s very difficult to be impartial and to tell a story that began 
in admiration and ended in rancor, but I’m going to try, yes, I’m 
really going to try and describe the Athena I met for the first 
time in an apartment in Victoria Street. 
She’d just got back from Dubai with plenty of money and 
a desire to share everything she knew about the mysteries of 
magic. This time, she’d spent only four months in the Middle 
East: she sold some land for the construction of two supermar-
kets, earned a huge commission, and decided that she’d earned 
enough money to support herself and her son for the next three 
years, and that she could always resume work later on if she 


142 P a u l o C o e l h o 

wanted. Now was the time to make the most of the present, to 
live what remained of her youth, and to teach others everything 
she had learned. 
She received me somewhat unenthusiastically. 
“What do you want?” 
“I work in the theater and we’re putting on a play about 
the female face of God. I heard from a journalist friend that 
you spent time in the Balkan mountains with some gypsies and 
would be prepared to tell me about your experiences there.” 
“You mean you only came here to learn about the Mother 
because of a play?” 
“Why did you learn about her?” 
Athena stopped, looked me up and down, and smiled. 
“You’re right. That’s my first lesson as a teacher: teach those 
who want to learn. The reason doesn’t matter.” 
“I’m sorry?” 
“Nothing.” 
“The origins of the theater are sacred,” I went on. “It began 
in Greece with hymns to Dionysus, the god of wine, rebirth, 
and fertility. But it’s believed that even from very remote times, 
people performed a ritual in which they would pretend to be 
someone else as a way of communing with the sacred.” 
“Second lesson, thank you.” 
“I don’t understand. I came here to learn, not to teach.” 
This woman was beginning to iritate me. Perhaps she was  
being ironic. 
“My protector—” 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“Your protector?” 
“I’ll explain another time. My protector said that I would 
only learn what I need to learn if I were provoked into it. And 
since my return from Dubai, you’re the first person to demon-
strate that to me. What she said makes sense.” 
I explained that, in researching the play, I’d gone from one 
teacher to the next but had never found their teachings to be 
in any way exceptional; despite this, however, I grew more and 
more interested in the matter as I went on. I also mentioned that 
these people had seemed confused and uncertain about what 
they wanted. 
“For example.” 
Sex, for example. In some of the places I went to, sex was 
a complete no-no. In others, they not only advocated complete 
freedom, but even encouraged orgies. She asked for more details, 
and I couldn’t tell if she was doing this in order to test me or 
because she had no idea what other people got up to. 
Athena spoke before I could answer her question. 
“When you dance, do you feel desire? Do you feel as if you 
were summoning up a greater energy? When you dance, are there 
moments when you cease to be yourself ?” 
I didn’t know what to say. In nightclubs or at parties in 
friends’ houses, sensuality was definitely part of how I felt 
when I danced. I would start by flirting and enjoying the desire 
in men’s eyes, but as the night wore on, I seemed to get more 
in touch with myself, and it was no longer important to me 
whether I was or wasn’t seducing someone. 


144 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Athena continued. 
“If theater is ritual, then dance is too. Moreover, it’s a very 
ancient way of getting close to a partner. It’s as if the threads 
connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of 
preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the 
luxury of being you.” 
I started listening to her with more respect. 
“Afterward, we go back to being who we were before— 
frightened people trying to be more important than we actually 
believe we are.” 
That was exactly how I felt. Or is it the same for everyone? 
“Do you have a boyfriend?” 
I remembered that in one of the places where I’d gone to 
learn about the Gaia tradition, a “druid” had asked me to make 
love in front of him. Ridiculous and frightening—how dare 
these people use the spiritual search to advance their own more 
sinister ends? 
“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked again. 
“I do.” 
Athena said nothing else. She merely put her finger to her 
lips, indicating that I should remain silent. 
And suddenly I realized that it was extremely difficult for me 
to remain silent in the presence of someone I’d only just met. 
The norm is to talk about something, anything—the weather, 
the traffic, the best restaurants to go to. We were sitting on the 
sofa in her completely white sitting room, with a CD player and 
a small shelf of CDs. There were no books anywhere, and no 
paintings on the walls. Given that she’d traveled to the Middle 


145 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

East, I’d expected to find objects and souvenirs from that part 
of the world. 
But it was empty, and now there was this silence. 
Her gray eyes were fixed on mine, but I held firm and 
didn’t look away. Instinct perhaps. A way of saying that I’m not 
frightened, but facing the challenge head-on. Except that every-
thing—the silence and the white room, the noise of the traffic 
outside in the street—began to seem unreal. How long were we 
going to stay there, saying nothing? 
I started to track my own thoughts. Had I come there in 
search of material for my play or did I really want knowledge, 
wisdom, power? I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that had 
led me to come and see . . . what? A witch? 
My adolescent dreams surfaced. Who wouldn’t like to meet 
a real witch, learn how to perform magic, and gain the respect 
and fear of her friends? Who, as a young woman, hasn’t been 
outraged by the centuries of repression suffered by women and 
felt that becoming a witch would be the best way of recovering 
her lost identity? I’d been through that phase myself; I was inde-
pendent and did what I liked in the highly competitive world of 
the theater, but then why was I never content, why was I always 
testing out my curiosity? 
We must have been about the same age . . . or was I older? 
Did she too have a boyfriend? 
Athena moved closer. We were now less than an arm’s length 
from each other, and I started to feel afraid. Was she a lesbian? 
I didn’t look away, but I made a mental note of where the 
door was so that I could leave whenever I wished. No one had 


146 P a u l o C o e l h o 

made me go to that house to meet someone I’d never seen before 
in my life and sit there wasting time, not saying anything and not 
learning anything either. What did she want? 
That silence perhaps. My muscles began to grow tense. I was 
alone and helpless. I desperately needed to talk or to make my 
mind stop telling me that I was being threatened. How could 
she possibly know who I was? We are what we say! 
Had she asked me anything about my life? She’d wanted to 
know if I had a boyfriend. I tried to say more about the theater, 
but couldn’t. And what about the stories I’d heard about her 
gypsy ancestry, her stay in Transylvania, the land of vampires? 
My thoughts wouldn’t stop: How much would that con-
sultation cost? I was terrified. I should have asked before. A 
fortune? And if I didn’t pay, would she put a spell on me that 
would eventually destroy me? 
I felt an impulse to get to my feet, thank her, and say that I 
hadn’t come there just to sit in silence. If you go to a psychiatrist, 
you have to talk. If you go to a church, you listen to a sermon. 
If you go in search of magic, you find a teacher who wants to 
explain the world to you and who gives you a series of rituals to 
follow. But silence? Why did it make me feel so uncomfortable? 
One question after another kept forming in my mind, and 
I couldn’t stop thinking or trying to find a reason for the two 
of us to be sitting there, saying nothing. Suddenly, perhaps after 
five or ten long minutes of total immobility, she smiled. 
I smiled too and relaxed. 
“Try to be different. That’s all.” 
“That’s all? Is sitting in silence being different? I imagine 


147 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

that, at this very moment, there are thousands of people in Lon-
don who are desperate for someone to talk to, and all you can 
say to me is that silence makes a difference?” 
“Now that you’re talking and reorganizing the universe, you’ll 
end up convincing yourself that you’re right and I’m wrong. But 
as you experienced for yourself—being silent is different.” 
“It’s unpleasant. It doesn’t teach you anything.” 
She seemed indifferent to my reaction. 
“What theater are you working at?” 
Finally, she was taking an interest in my life! I was being re-
stored to my human condition, with a profession and everything! 
I invited her to come and see the play we were putting on—it 
was the only way I could find to avenge myself, by showing that 
I was capable of things that Athena was not. That silence had 
left a humiliating aftertaste. 
She asked if she could bring her son, and I said no, it was 
for adults only. 
“Well, I could always leave him with my mother. I haven’t 
been to the theater in ages.” 
She didn’t charge for the consultation. When I met up with 
the other members of the cast, I told them about my encounter 
with this mysterious creature. They were all mad keen to meet 
someone who, when she first met you, asked only that you sit 
in silence. 
Athena arrived on the appointed day. She saw the play, 
came to my dressing room afterward to say hello, but didn’t say 
whether she’d enjoyed herself or not. My colleagues suggested 
that I invite her to the bar where we usually went after the per-


148 P a u l o C o e l h o 

formance. There, instead of keeping quiet, she started answering 
a question that had been left unanswered at our first meeting. 
“No one, not even the Mother, would ever want sex to take 
place purely as a celebration. Love must always be present. Didn’t 
you say that you’d met people like that? Well, be careful.” 
My friends had no idea what she was talking about, but they 
warmed to the subject and started bombarding her with ques-
tions. Something troubled me. Her answers were very academic, 
as if she didn’t have much experience of what she was talking 
about. She spoke about the game of seduction, about fertility 
rites, and concluded with a Greek myth, probably because I’d 
mentioned during our first meeting that the theater had begun 
in Greece. She must have spent the whole week reading up on 
the subject. 
“After millennia of male domination, we are returning to 
the cult of the Great Mother. The Greeks called her Gaia, and 
according to the myth, she was born out of Chaos, the void that 
existed before the universe. With her came Eros, the god of love, 
and then she gave birth to the Sea and the Sky.” 
“Who was the father?” asked one of my friends. 
“No one. There’s a technical term, parthenogenesis, which 
is a process of reproduction that does not require fertilization 
of the egg by a male. There’s a mystical term too, one to which 
we’re more accustomed: Immaculate Conception. 
“From Gaia sprang all the gods who would later people the 
Elysian Fields of Greece, including our own dear Dionysus, 
your idol. But as man became established as the principal politi-
cal power in the cities, Gaia was forgotten, and was replaced by 


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Zeus, Ares, Apollo and company, all of whom were competent 
enough, but didn’t have the same allure as the Mother who origi-
nated everything.” 
Then she questioned us about our work. The director asked 
if she’d like to give us some lessons. 
“On what?” 
“On what you know.” 
“To be perfectly honest, I learned all about the origins of 
theater this week. I learn everything as I need to learn it, that’s 
what Edda told me to do.” 
So I was right! 
“But I can share other things that life has taught me.” 
They all agreed. And no one asked who Edda was. 

DE I D R E O’NE I L L , K N OW N A S ED DA 

I said to Athena: You don’t have to keep coming here all the time 
just to ask silly questions. If a group has decided to take you on 
as a teacher, why not use that opportunity to turn yourself into 
a teacher? 
Do what I always did. 
Try to feel good about yourself even when you feel like the 
least worthy of creatures. Reject all those negative thoughts and 
let the Mother take possession of your body and soul; surrender 
yourself to dance or to silence or to ordinary, everyday activi-
ties—like taking your son to school, preparing supper, making 
sure the house is tidy. Everything is worship if your mind is 


150 P a u l o C o e l h o 

focused on the present moment. 
Don’t try to convince anyone of anything. When you don’t 
know something, ask or go away and find out. But when you 
do act, be like the silent, flowing river and open yourself to 
a greater energy. Believe—that’s what I said at our first meet-
ing—simply believe that you can. 
At first, you’ll be confused and insecure. Then you’ll start to 
believe that everyone thinks they’re being conned. It’s not true. 
You have the knowledge, it’s simply a matter of being aware. All 
the minds on the planet are so easily cast down—they fear illness, 
invasion, attack, death. Try to restore their lost joy to them. 
Be clear. 
Reprogram yourself every minute of each day with thoughts 
that make you grow. When you’re feeling irritated or confused, 
try to laugh at yourself. Laugh out loud at this woman tormented 
by doubts and anxieties, convinced that her problems are the 
most important thing in the world. Laugh at the sheer absurdity 
of the situation, at the fact that despite being a manifestation 
of the Mother, you still believe God is a man who lays down 
the rules. Most of our problems stem from just that—from 
following rules. 
Concentrate. 
If you can find nothing on which to focus your mind, con-
centrate on your breathing. The Mother’s river of light is flowing 
in through your nose. Listen to your heart beating, follow the 
thoughts you can’t control, control your desire to get up at once 
and to do something “useful.” Sit for a few minutes each day 
doing nothing, getting as much as you can out of that time. 


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When you’re washing up, pray. Be thankful that there are 
plates to be washed; that means there was food, that you fed 
someone, that you’ve lavished care on one or more people, that 
you cooked and laid the table. Imagine the millions of people 
at this moment who have absolutely nothing to wash up and no 
one for whom to lay the table. 
There are women who say: I’m not going to do the wash-
ing up, let the men do it. Fine, let the men do it if they want 
to, but that has nothing to do with equality. There’s nothing 
wrong with doing simple things, although if I were to publish 
an article tomorrow saying everything I think, I’d be accused of 
working against the feminist cause. Nonsense! As if washing up 
or wearing a bra or having someone open or close a door could 
be humiliating to me as a woman. The fact is, I love it when a 
man opens the door for me. According to etiquette this means, 
“She needs me to do this because she’s fragile,” but in my soul 
is written: “I’m being treated like a goddess. I’m a queen.” I’m 
not here to work for the feminist cause, because both men and 
women are a manifestation of the Mother, the Divine Unity. No 
one can be greater than that. 
I’d love to see you giving classes on what you’re learning. 
That’s the main aim of life—revelation! You make yourself into 
a channel, you listen to yourself and are surprised at how capa-
ble you are. Remember your job at the bank? Perhaps you never 
properly understood that what happened there was a result of 
the energy flowing out of your body, your eyes, your hands. 
You’ll say: “No, it was the dance.” 
The dance was simply a ritual. What is a ritual? It means 


152 P a u l o C o e l h o 

transforming something monotonous into something differ-
ent, rhythmic, capable of channeling the Unity. That’s why I 
say again: be different even when you’re washing up. Move your 
hands so that they never repeat the same gesture twice, even 
though they maintain the rhythm. 
If you find it helpful, try to visualize images—flowers, birds, 
trees in a forest. Don’t imagine single objects, like the candle you 
focused on when you came here for the first time. Try to think 
of something collective. And do you know what you’ll find? 
That you didn’t choose your thought. 
I’ll give you an example: imagine a flock of birds flying. How 
many birds did you see? Eleven, nineteen, five? You have a vague 
idea, but you don’t know the exact number. So where did that 
thought come from? Someone put it there. Someone who knows 
the exact number of birds, trees, stones, flowers. Someone who, 
in that fraction of a second, took charge of you and showed you 
her power. 
You are what you believe yourself to be. 
Don’t be like those people who believe in “positive think-
ing” and tell themselves that they’re loved and strong and ca-
pable. You don’t need to do that, because you know it already. 
And when you doubt it—which happens, I think, quite often at 
this stage of evolution—do as I suggested. Instead of trying to 
prove that you’re better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your 
worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will 
be difficult at first, but you’ll gradually get used to it. 
Now go back and meet all those people who think you know 
everything. Convince yourself that they’re right, because we all 


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know everything, it’s merely a question of believing. 
Believe. 
As I said to you in Bucharest, the very first time we met, 
groups are very important because they force us to progress. If 
you’re alone, all you can do is laugh at yourself, but if you’re with 
others, you’ll laugh and then immediately act. Groups challenge 
us. Groups allow us to choose our affinities. Groups create a col-
lective energy, and ecstasy comes more easily because everyone 
infects everyone else. 
Groups can also destroy us, of course, but that’s part of 
life and the human condition—living with other people. And 
anyone who’s failed to develop an instinct for survival has under-
stood nothing of what the Mother is saying. 
You’re lucky. A group has just asked you to teach them some-
thing, and that will make you a teacher. 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 

Before the first meeting with the actors, Athena came to my 
house. Ever since I published the article on St. Sarah, she’d been 
convinced that I understood her world, which wasn’t true at all. 
I simply wanted to attract her attention. I was trying to come 
round to the idea that there might be an invisible reality ca-
pable of interfering in our lives, but the only reason I did so was 
because of a love I didn’t want to believe I felt but which was 
continuing to grow in a subtle, devastating way. 
I was content with my universe and didn’t want to change it 


154 P a u l o C o e l h o 

at all, even though I was being propelled in that direction. 
“I’m afraid,” she said as soon as she arrived. “But I must go 
ahead and do what they’re asking of me. I need to believe.” 
“You’ve had a lot of experiences in life. You learned from the 
gypsies, from the dervishes in the desert, from—” 
“Well, that’s not quite true. Besides, what does learning 
mean: accumulating knowledge or transforming your life?” 
I suggested we go out that night for supper and to dance a 
little. She agreed to supper but rejected the dancing. 
“Answer me,” she said, looking around my apartment. “Is 
learning just putting things on a shelf or is it discarding what-
ever is no longer useful and then continuing on your way feeling 
lighter?” 
On the shelves were all the books I’d invested so much 
money and time in buying, reading, and annotating. There 
were my personality, my education, my true teachers. 
“How many books have you got? Over a thousand, I’d say. 
But most of them you’ll probably never open again. You hang on 
to them because you don’t believe.” 
“I don’t believe?” 
“No, you don’t believe, full stop. Anyone who believes will 
go and read up about theater as I did when Andrea asked me 
about it, but after that, it’s a question of letting the Mother 
speak through you and making discoveries as she speaks. And 
as you make those discoveries, you’ll manage to fill in the blank 
spaces that all those writers left there on purpose to provoke the 
reader’s imagination. And when you fill in the spaces, you’ll start 
to believe in your own abilities. 


155 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“How many people would love to read those books but 
don’t have the money to buy them? Meanwhile, you sit here 
surrounded by all this stagnant energy, purely to impress the 
friends who visit you. Or is it that you don’t feel you’ve learned 
anything from them and need to consult them again?” 
I thought she was being rather hard on me, and that in-
trigued me. 
“So you don’t think I need this library?” 
“I think you need to read, but why hang on to all these 
books? Would it be asking too much if we were to leave here 
right now, and before going to the restaurant, distribute most of 
them to whomever we happened to pass in the street?” 
“They wouldn’t all fit in my car.” 
“We could hire a truck.” 
“But then we wouldn’t get to the restaurant in time for sup-
per. Besides, you came here because you were feeling insecure, 
not in order to tell me what I should do with my books. With-
out them I’d feel naked.” 
“Ignorant, you mean.” 
“Uncultivated would be the right word.” 
“So your culture isn’t in your heart, it’s on your book-
shelves.” 
Enough was enough. I picked up the phone to reserve a table 
and told the restaurant that we’d be there in fifteen minutes. 
Athena was trying to avoid the problem that had brought her 
here. Her deep insecurity was making her go on the attack, 
rather than looking at herself. She needed a man by her side and, 
who knows, was perhaps sounding me out to see how far I’d go, 


156 P a u l o C o e l h o 

using her feminine wiles to discover just what I’d be prepared to 
do for her. 
Simply being in her presence seemed to justify my very ex-
istence. Was that what she wanted to hear? Fine, I’d tell her over 
supper. I’d be capable of doing almost anything, even leaving the 
woman I was living with, but I drew the line, of course, at giving 
away my books. 
In the taxi, we returned to the subject of the theater group, 
although I was, at that moment, prepared to discuss something 
I never normally spoke about—love, a subject I found far more 
complicated than Marx, Jung, the British Labour Party, or the 
day-to-day problems at a newspaper office. 
“You don’t need to worry,” I said, feeling a desire to hold her 
hand. “It’ll be all right. Talk about calligraphy. Talk about danc-
ing. Talk about the things you know.” 
“If I did that, I’d never discover what it is I don’t know. 
When I’m there, I’ll have to allow my mind to go still and let 
my heart begin to speak. But it’s the first time I’ve done that, and 
I’m frightened.” 
“Would you like me to come with you?” 
She accepted at once. We arrived at the restaurant, ordered 
some wine, and started to drink. I was drinking in order to get 
up the courage to say what I thought I was feeling, although 
it seemed absurd to me to be declaring my love to someone I 
hardly knew. And she was drinking because she was afraid of 
talking about what she didn’t know. 
After the second glass of wine, I realized how on edge she 


157 

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was. I tried to hold her hand, but she gently pulled away. 
“I can’t be afraid.” 
“Of course you can, Athena. I often feel afraid, and yet, 
when I need to, I go ahead and face up to whatever it is I’m 
afraid of.” 
I was on edge too. I refilled our glasses. The waiter kept 
coming over to ask what we’d like to eat, and I kept telling him 
that we’d order later. 
I was talking about whatever came into my head. Athena was 
listening politely, but she seemed far away, in some dark universe 
full of ghosts. At one point, she told me again about the woman 
in Scotland and what she’d said. I asked if it made sense to teach 
what you didn’t know. 
“Did anyone ever teach you how to love?” she replied. 
Could she be reading my thoughts? 
“And yet,” she went on, “you’re as capable of love as any 
other human being. How did you learn? You didn’t, you simply 
believe. You believe, therefore you love.” 
“Athena . . .” 
I hesitated, then managed to finish my sentence, although 
not at all as I had intended. 
“. . . perhaps we should order some food.” 
I realized that I wasn’t yet prepared to mention the things 
that were troubling my world. I called the waiter over and or-
dered some starters, then some more starters, a main dish, a 
pudding, and another bottle of wine. The more time I had, the 
better. 


158 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“You’re acting strangely. Was it my comment about your 
books? You do what you like. It’s not my job to change your world. 
I was obviously sticking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted.” 
I had been thinking about that business of “changing the 
world” only a few seconds before. 
“Athena, you’re always telling me about . . . no, I need to talk 
about something that happened in that bar in Sibiu, with the 
gypsy music.” 
“In the restaurant, you mean?” 
“Yes, in the restaurant. Today we were discussing books, the 
things that we accumulate and that take up space. Perhaps you’re 
right. There’s something I’ve been wanting to do ever since I saw you 
dancing that night. It weighs more and more heavily on my heart.” 
“I don’t know what you mean.” 
“Of course you do. I’m talking about the love I’m discover-
ing now and doing my best to destroy before it reveals itself. I’d 
like you to accept it. It’s the little I have of myself, but it’s not 
my own. It’s not exclusively yours, because there’s someone else 
in my life, but I would be happy if you could accept it anyway. 
An Arab poet from your country, Khalil Gibran, says: ‘It is well to 
give when asked, but it is better to give unasked.’ If I don’t say everything 
I need to say tonight, I’ll merely be a spectator watching events 
unfold rather than the person actually experiencing them.” 
I took a deep breath. The wine had helped me to free myself. 
She drained her glass, and I did the same. The waiter ap-
peared with the food, making a few comments about the various 
dishes, explaining the ingredients and the way in which they had 
been cooked. Athena and I kept our eyes fixed on each other. 


159 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Andrea had told me that this is what Athena had done when 
they met for the first time, and she was convinced it was simply 
a way of intimidating others. 
The silence was terrifying. I imagined her getting up from 
the table and citing her famous, invisible boyfriend from Scot-
land Yard, or saying that she was very flattered, but she had to 
think about the class she was to give the next day. 
“And is there anything you would withhold? Some day, all that you have 
shall be given. The trees give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.” 
She was speaking quietly and carefully because of the wine 
she’d drunk, but her voice nevertheless silenced everything 
around us. 
“And what greater merit shall there be than that which lies in the courage 
and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving? You give but little when you 
give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” 
She said all this without smiling. I felt as if I were conversing 
with a sphinx. 
“Words written by the same poet you were quoting. I learned 
them at school, but I don’t need the book where he wrote those 
words. I’ve kept his words in my heart.” 
She drank a little more wine. I did the same. I couldn’t bring 
myself to ask if she accepted my love or not, but I felt lighter. 
“You may be right. I’ll donate my books to a public library 
and only keep those I really will reread one day.” 
“Is that what you want to talk about now?” 
“No. I just don’t know how to continue the conversation.” 
“Shall we eat, then, and enjoy the food. Does that seem a 
good idea?” 


160 P a u l o C o e l h o 

No, it didn’t seem like a good idea. I wanted to hear some-
thing different, but I was afraid to ask, and so I babbled on 
about libraries, books, and poets, regretting having ordered so 
many dishes. I was the one who wanted to escape now, because I 
didn’t know how to continue. 
In the end, she made me promise that I would be at the the-
ater for her first class, and for me that was a signal. She needed 
me; she had accepted what I had unconsciously dreamed of of-
fering her ever since I saw her dancing in a restaurant in Tran-
sylvania, but which I had only been capable of understanding 
that night. 
Or, as Athena would have said, of believing. 

AN D R E A MC CA I N , AC T R E S S 

Of course I’m to blame. If it hadn’t been for me, Athena would 
never have come to the theater that morning, gathered us all to-
gether, asked us to lie down on the stage and begin a relaxation 
exercise involving breathing and bringing our awareness to each 
part of the body. 
“Relax your thighs . . .” 
We all obeyed, as if we were before a goddess, someone who 
knew more than all of us, even though we’d done this kind of 
exercise hundreds of times before. We were all curious to know 
what would come after “. . . now relax your face and breathe 
deeply.” 
Did she really think she was teaching us anything new? We 


161 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

were expecting a lecture, a talk! But I must control myself. Let’s 
get back to what happened then. We relaxed, and then came a 
silence that left us completely disoriented. When I discussed it 
with my colleagues afterward, we all agreed that we felt the exer-
cise was over, that it was time to sit up and look around, except 
that no one did. We remained lying down, in a kind of enforced 
meditation, for fifteen interminable minutes. 
Then she spoke again. 
“You’ve had plenty of time to doubt me now. One or two 
of you looked impatient. But now I’m going to ask you just one 
thing: when I count to three, be different. I don’t mean be another 
person, an animal, or a house. Try to forget everything you’ve 
learned in drama courses. I’m not asking you to be actors and to 
demonstrate your abilities. I’m asking you to cease being human 
and to transform yourselves into something you don’t know.” 
We were all still lying on the floor with our eyes closed and 
so couldn’t see how anyone else was reacting. Athena was playing 
on that uncertainty. 
“I’m going to say a few words and you’ll immediately associ-
ate certain images with those words. Remember that you’re all 
full of the poison of preconceived ideas and that if I were to say 
fate, you would probably start imagining your lives in the future. 
If I were to say red, you would probably make some psychoana-
lytic interpretation. That isn’t what I want. As I said, I want you 
to be different.” 
She couldn’t explain what she really wanted. When no one 
complained, I felt sure they were simply being polite, but that 
when the “lecture” was over, they would never invite Athena 


162 P a u l o C o e l h o 

back. They would even tell me that I’d been naive to have sought 
her out in the first place. 
“The first word is sacred.” 
So as not to die of boredom, I decided to join in the game. 
I imagined my mother, my boyfriend, my future children, a bril-
liant career. 
“Make a gesture that means sacred.” 
I folded my arms over my chest, as if I were embracing all my 
loved ones. I found out later that most people opened their arms 
to form a cross, and that one of the women opened her legs, as 
if she were making love. 
“Relax again, and again forget about everything and keep 
your eyes closed. I’m not criticizing, but from what I saw, you 
seem to be giving form to what you consider to be sacred. That 
isn’t what I want. When I give you the next word, don’t try to 
define it as it manifests itself in the world. Open all the channels 
and allow the poison of reality to drain away. Be abstract, and 
then you will enter the world I’m guiding you toward.” 
That last phrase had real authority, and I felt the energy in 
the theater change. Now the voice knew where it wanted to take 
us. She was a teacher now, not a lecturer. 
Earth, she said. 
Suddenly I understood what she meant. It was no longer my 
imagination that mattered, but my body in contact with the soil. 
I was the earth. 
“Make a gesture that represents earth.” 
I didn’t move. I was the soil of that stage. 
“Perfect,” she said. “None of you moved. For the first time 


163 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

you all experienced the same feeling. Instead of describing some-
thing, you transformed yourself into an idea.” 
She fell silent again for what I imagined were five long min-
utes. The silence made us feel lost, unable to tell whether she 
simply had no idea how to continue, or if she was merely unfa-
miliar with our usual intense rhythm of working. 
“I’m going to say a third word.” 
She paused. 
“Center.” 
I felt—and this was entirely unconscious—that all my vital 
energy went to my navel, where it glowed yellow. This frightened 
me. If someone touched it, I could die. 
“Make a gesture for center!” 
Her words sounded like a command. I immediately placed 
my hands on my belly to protect myself. 
“Perfect,” said Athena. “You can sit up now.” 
I opened my eyes and saw the extinguished stage lights up 
above me, distant and dull. I rubbed my face and got to my feet. 
I noticed that my colleagues looked surprised. 
“Was that the lecture?” asked the director. 
“You can call it a lecture if you like.” 
“Well, thank you for coming. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we 
have to start rehearsals for the next play.” 
“But I haven’t finished yet.” 
“Perhaps another time.” 
Everyone seemed confused by the director’s reaction. After 
some initial doubts, I think we were enjoying the session—it 
was different, no pretending to be things or people, no visualiz-


164 P a u l o C o e l h o 

ing apples or candles. No sitting in a circle holding hands, as if 
we were practicing some sacred ritual. It was simply something 
slightly absurd, and we wanted to know where it would take us. 
Without a flicker of emotion, Athena bent down to pick up 
her bag. At that moment, we heard a voice from the stalls. 
“Marvelous!” 
Heron had come to join her. The director was afraid of him 
because Heron knew the theater critics on his newspaper and 
had close ties with the media generally. 
“You stopped being individuals and turned into ideas. What 
a shame you’re so busy, but don’t worry, Athena, we’ll find an-
other group to work with and then I can see how your ‘lecture’ 
ends. I have contacts.” 
I was still thinking about the light traveling through my 
whole body to my navel. Who was that woman? Had my col-
leagues experienced the same thing? 
“Just a moment,” said the director, aware of the look of 
surprise on everyone’s face. “I suppose we could postpone re-
hearsals today . . .” 
“No, you mustn’t do that. Besides, I have to get back to the 
newspaper and write something about this woman. You carry on 
doing what you always do. I’ve just found an excellent story.” 
If Athena felt lost in that debate between the two men, she 
didn’t show it. She climbed down from the stage and went off 
with Heron. We turned to the director and asked him why he’d 
reacted like that. 
“With all due respect, Andrea, I thought the conversation 
in the bar about sex was far more interesting than the nonsense 


165 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

we’ve just been engaging in. Did you notice how she kept falling 
silent? She didn’t know what to do next!” 
“But I felt something strange,” said one of the older actors. 
“When she said center, it was as if all my vital energy were sud-
denly focused in my navel. I’ve never experienced that before.” 
“Did you? Are you sure?” asked an actress, and judging by 
her words, she’d experienced the same thing. 
“She’s a bit of a witch, that woman,” said the director, inter-
rupting the conversation. “Let’s get back to work.” 
We started doing our usual stretching exercises, warm-ups, 
and meditation, all strictly by the book. Then after a few im-
provisations, we went straight into a read-through of the new 
script. Gradually, Athena’s presence seemed to be dissolving, 
and everything was returning to what it was—a theater, a ritual 
created by the Greeks thousands of years ago, where we were 
used to pretending to be different people. 
But that was pure playacting. Athena wasn’t like that, and I 
was determined to see her again, especially after what the direc-
tor had said about her. 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 

Unbeknownst to Athena, I’d followed exactly the same steps as 
the actors, obeying everything she told us to do, except that I 
kept my eyes open so that I could follow what was happening 
onstage. The moment she said, “Make a gesture for center,” I’d 
placed my hand on my navel, and to my surprise, I saw that 


166 P a u l o C o e l h o 

everyone, including the director, had done the same. What was 
going on? 
That afternoon, I had to write a dreary article about a visit-
ing head of state—a real drag. In order to amuse myself be-
tween phone calls, I decided to ask colleagues in the office what 
gesture they would make if I said the word center. Most of them 
made jokey comments about political parties. One pointed to 
the center of the Earth. Another put his hand on his heart. But 
no one, absolutely no one, thought of their navel as the center 
of anything. In the end, though, I managed to speak to someone 
who had some interesting information on the subject. 
When I got home, Andrea had had a bath, laid the table, and 
was waiting for me to start supper. She opened a bottle of very 
expensive wine, filled two glasses, and offered me one. 
“So how was supper last night?” 
How long can a man live with a lie? I didn’t want to lose 
the woman standing there before me, who had stuck with me 
through thick and thin, who was always by my side when I felt 
my life had lost meaning and direction. I loved her, but in the 
crazy world into which I was blindly plunging, my heart was far 
away, trying to adapt to something it possibly knew but couldn’t 
accept: being large enough for two people. 
Since I would never risk letting go of a certainty in favor of 
a mere possibility, I tried to minimize the significance of what 
had happened at the restaurant, mainly because nothing had hap-
pened, apart from an exchange of lines by a poet who had suf-
fered greatly for love. 
“Athena’s a difficult person to get to know.” 


167 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Andrea laughed. 
“That’s precisely why men must find her so fascinating. She 
awakens that rapidly disappearing protective instinct of yours.” 
Best to change the subject. I’ve always been convinced that 
women have a supernatural ability to know what’s going on in a 
man’s soul. They’re all witches. 
“I’ve been looking into what happened at the theater today. 
You don’t know this, but I had my eyes open throughout the 
exercises.” 
“You’ve always got your eyes open. I assume it’s part of being 
a journalist. And you’re going to talk about the moment when 
we all did exactly the same thing. We talked a lot about that in 
the bar after rehearsals.” 
“A historian told me about a Greek temple where they used 
to predict the future [Editor’s note: the temple of Apollo at Delphi] and 
which housed a marble stone called ‘the navel.’ Stories from the 
time describe Delphi as the center of the planet. I went to the 
newspaper archives to make a few enquiries: in Petra, in Jordan, 
there’s another ‘conic navel,’ symbolizing not just the center of 
the planet, but also of the entire universe. Both ‘navels’ try to 
show the axis through which the energy of the world travels, 
marking in a visible way something that is only there on the ‘in-
visible’ map. Jerusalem is also called the navel of the world, as is 
an island in the Pacific Ocean, and another place I’ve forgotten 
now, because I had never associated the two things.” 
“Like dance!” 
“What?” 
“Nothing.” 


168 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“No, I know what you mean—belly dancing, the oldest 
form of dance recorded, in which everything revolves about 
the belly. I was trying to avoid the subject because I told you 
that in Transylvania I saw Athena dance. She was dressed, of 
course, but—” 
“All the movement began with her navel and gradually spread 
to the rest of the body.” 
She was right. 
Best to change the subject again and talk about the theater, 
about boring journalistic stuff, then drink a little wine and end 
up in bed making love while, outside, the rain was starting to 
fall. I noticed that, at the moment of orgasm, Andrea’s body was 
all focused on her belly. I’d seen this many times before, but had 
never thought anything of it. 

AN TO I N E LO C A D O U R , H I S TO R I A N 

Heron started spending a fortune on phone calls to France, ask-
ing me to get all the information I could by the weekend, and 
he kept going on about the navel, which seemed to me the least 
interesting and least romantic thing in the world. But, then, the 
English don’t see things in the same way as the French, and so, 
instead of asking questions, I tried to find out what science had 
to say on the subject. 
I soon realized that historical knowledge wasn’t enough. I 
could locate a monument here, a dolmen there, but the odd 
thing was that the ancient cultures all seemed to agree on the 


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subject and even use the same word to define the places they 
considered sacred. I’d never noticed this before and I started to 
get interested. When I saw the number of coincidences, I went 
in search of something that would complement them—human 
behavior and beliefs. 
I immediately had to reject the first and most logical expla-
nation, that we’re nourished through the umbilical cord, which 
is why the navel is, for us, the center of life. A psychologist im-
mediately pointed out that the theory made no sense at all: man’s 
central idea is always to “cut” the umbilical cord and, from then 
on, the brain or the heart become the more important symbols. 
When we’re interested in something, everything around us 
appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenonema “signs,” 
the sceptics “coincidence,” and psychologists “concentrated fo-
cus,” although I’ve yet to find out what term historians should 
use). One night, my adolescent daughter came home with a na-
vel piercing. 
“Why did you do that?” 
“Because I felt like it.” 
A perfectly natural and honest explanation, even for a histo-
rian who needs to find a reason for everything. When I went into 
her room, I saw a poster of her favorite female pop star. She had 
a bare midriff, and in that photo on the wall, her navel did look 
like the center of the world. 
I phoned Heron and asked why he was so interested. For the 
first time, he told me about what had happened at the theater 
and how the people there had all responded to a command in 
the same spontaneous, unexpected manner. It was impossible to 


170 P a u l o C o e l h o 

get any more information out of my daughter, and so I decided 
to consult some specialists. 
No one seemed very interested until I found François Shepka, 
an Indian psychologist [Editor’s note: the scientist requested that his name 
and nationality be changed], who was starting to revolutionize the 
therapies currently in use. According to him, the idea that trau-
mas could be resolved by a return to childhood had never got 
anyone anywhere. Many problems that had been overcome in 
adult life resurfaced, and grown-ups started blaming their par-
ents for failures and defeats. Shepka was at war with the various 
French psychoanalytic associations, and a conversation about 
absurd subjects, like the navel, seemed to relax him. 
He warmed to the theme but didn’t, at first, tackle it directly. 
He said that according to one of the most respected psycho-
analysts in history, the Swiss analyst Carl Gustav Jung, we all 
drank from the same spring. It’s called the “soul of the world.” 
However much we try to be independent individuals, a part of 
our memory is the same. We all seek the ideal of beauty, dance, 
divinity, and music. 
Society, meanwhile, tries to define how these ideals should be 
manifested in reality. Currently, for example, the ideal of beauty 
is to be thin, and yet thousands of years ago all the images of 
goddesses were fat. It’s the same with happiness: there are a series 
of rules, and if you fail to follow them, your conscious mind 
will refuse to accept the idea that you’re happy. 
Jung used to divide individual progress into four stages. The 
first was the Persona—the mask we use every day, pretending 
to be who we are. We believe that the world depends on us, 


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that we’re wonderful parents and that our children don’t un-
derstand us, that our bosses are unfair, that the dream of every 
human being is never to work and to travel constantly. Many 
people realize that there’s something wrong with this story, but 
because they don’t want to change anything, they quickly drive 
the thought from their head. A few do try to understand what is 
wrong and end up finding the Shadow. 
The Shadow is our dark side, which dictates how we should 
act and behave. When we try to free ourselves from the Persona, 
we turn on a light inside us and we see the cobwebs, the cow-
ardice, the meanness. The Shadow is there to stop our progress, 
and it usually succeeds, and we run back to what we were before 
we doubted. However, some do survive this encounter with their 
own cobwebs, saying: “Yes, I have a few faults, but I’m good 
enough, and I want to go forward.” 
At this moment, the Shadow disappears and we come into 
contact with the Soul. 
By Soul, Jung didn’t mean “soul” in the religious sense; he 
speaks of a return to the Soul of the World, the source of all 
knowledge. Instincts become sharper, emotions more radical, 
the interpretation of signs becomes more important than logic, 
perceptions of reality grow less rigid. We start to struggle with 
things to which we are unaccustomed and we start to react in 
ways that we ourselves find unexpected. 
And we discover that if we can channel that continuous flow 
of energy, we can organize it around a very solid center, what 
Jung calls the Wise Old Man for men and the Great Mother 
for women. 


172 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Allowing this to manifest itself is dangerous. Generally 
speaking, anyone who reaches this stage has a tendency to con-
sider themselves a saint, a tamer of spirits, a prophet. A great 
deal of maturity is required if someone is to come into contact 
with the energy of the Wise Old Man or the Great Mother. 
“Jung went mad,” said my friend, when he had explained the 
four stages described by the Swiss psychoanalyst. “When he got 
in touch with his Wise Old Man, he started saying that he was 
guided by a spirit called Philemon.” 
“And finally . . .” 
“. . . we come to the symbol of the navel. Not only people, 
but societies too fit these four stages. Western civilization has 
a Persona, the ideas that guide us. In its attempt to adapt to 
changes, it comes into contact with the Shadow, and we see mass 
demonstrations, in which the collective energy can be manipu-
lated both for good and ill. Suddenly, for some reason, the Per-
sona or the Shadow are no longer enough for human beings, 
and then comes the moment to make the leap, the unconscious 
connection with the Soul. New values begin to emerge.” 
“I’ve noticed that. I’ve noticed a resurgence in the cult of the 
female face of God.” 
“An excellent example. And at the end of this process, if 
those new values are to become established, the entire race 
comes into contact with the symbols, the coded language by 
which present-day generations communicate with their ancestral 
knowledge. One of those symbols of rebirth is the navel. In the 
navel of Vishnu, the Indian divinity responsible for creation and 
destruction, sits the god who will rule each cycle. Yogis consider 


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the navel one of the chakras, one of the sacred points on the 
human body. Primitive tribes often used to build monuments 
in the place that they believed to be the navel of the world. In 
South America, people who go into trances say that the true 
form of the human being is a luminous egg that connects with 
other people through filaments that emerge from the navel. The 
mandala, a design said to stimulate meditation, is a symbolic 
representation of this.” 
I passed all this information on to Heron in England before 
the agreed date. I told him that the woman who had succeeded 
in provoking the same absurd reaction in a group of people 
must have enormous power, and that I wouldn’t be surprised if 
she wasn’t some kind of paranormal. I suggested that he study 
her more closely. 
I had never thought about the subject before, and I tried to 
forget it at once. However, my daughter said that I was behav-
ing oddly, thinking only of myself, that I was, in short, navel 
gazing! 

DE I D R E O’NE I L L , K N OW N A S ED DA 

“It was a complete disaster. How could you have put the idea in 
my head that I could teach? Why humiliate me in front of other 
people? I should just forget you even exist. When I was taught to 
dance, I danced. When I was taught calligraphy, I practiced callig-
raphy. But demanding that I go so far beyond my limits was pure 
wickedness. That’s why I caught the train up to Scotland, that’s 


174 P a u l o C o e l h o 

why I came here, so that you could see how much I hate you!” 
She couldn’t stop crying. Fortunately, she’d left the child with 
her parents, because she was talking rather too loudly and there 
was a faint whiff of wine on her breath. I asked her to come in. 
Making all that noise at my front door would do nothing to help 
my already somewhat tarnished reputation, with people putting 
it around that I received visits from both men and women and 
organized sex orgies in the name of Satan. 
But she still stood there, shouting, “It’s all your fault! You 
humiliated me!” 
One window opened, and then another. Well, anyone work-
ing to change the axis of the world must be prepared for the 
fact that her neighbors won’t always be happy. I went over to 
Athena and did exactly what she wanted me to do: I put my 
arms around her. 
She continued weeping, her head resting on my shoulder. 
Very gently I helped her up the steps and into the house. I made 
some tea, the recipe for which I share with no one because it was 
taught to me by my protector. I placed it in front of her and she 
drank it down in one gulp. By doing so, she demonstrated that 
her trust in me was still intact. 
“Why am I like this?” she asked. 
I knew then that the effects of the alcohol had been neu-
tralized. 
“There are men who love me. I have a son who adores me 
and sees me as his model in life. I have adoptive parents whom I 
consider to be my real family and who would lay down their lives 
for me. I filled in all the blank spaces in my past when I went in 


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search of my birth mother. I have enough money to spend the 
next three years doing nothing but enjoying life, and still I’m 
not content! 
“I feel miserable and guilty because God blessed me with 
tragedies that I’ve managed to overcome and with miracles to 
which I’ve done credit, but I’m never content. I always want 
more. The last thing I needed was to go to that theater and add 
a failure to my list of victories!” 
“Do you think you did the wrong thing?” 
She looked at me in surprise. 
“Why do you ask that?” 
I said nothing but awaited her answer. 
“No, I did the right thing. I went there with a journalist  
friend, and I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do, but sud-
denly things started to emerge as if out of the void. I felt the 
presence of the Great Mother by my side, guiding me, instruct-
ing me, filling my voice with a confidence I didn’t really feel.” 
“So why are you complaining?” 
“Because no one understood!” 
“Is that important? Important enough to make you travel up  
to Scotland and insult me in front of everyone?” 
“Of course it’s important! If I can do absolutely anything 
and know I’m doing the right thing, how come I’m not at least 
loved and admired?” 
So that was the problem. I took her hand and led her into 
the same room where, weeks before, she had sat contemplating 
a candle. I asked her to sit down and try to calm herself a little, 
although I was sure the tea was already taking effect. I went to 


176 P a u l o C o e l h o 

my room, picked up a round mirror, and placed it before her. 
“You have everything and you’ve fought for every inch of 
your territory. Now look at your tears. Look at your face and 
the bitterness etched on it. Look at the woman in the mirror, 
but don’t laugh this time, try to understand her.” 
I allowed her time to follow my instructions. When I saw 
that she was, as I intended, going into a trance, I went on. 
“What is the secret of life? We call it ‘grace’ or ‘blessing.’ 
Everyone struggles to be satisfied with what they have. Apart 
from me. Apart from you. Apart from a few people who will, 
alas, have to make a small sacrifice in the name of something 
greater. 
“Our imagination is larger than the world around us; we go 
beyond our limits. This used to be called ‘witchcraft,’ but fortu-
nately things have changed, otherwise we would both already have 
been burned at the stake. When they stopped burning women, 
science found an explanation for our behavior, normally referred 
to as ‘female hysteria.’ We don’t get burned anymore, but it does 
cause problems, especially in the workplace. But don’t worry, 
eventually they’ll call it ‘wisdom.’ Keep looking into the mirror. 
Who can you see?” 
“A woman.” 
“And what is there beyond that woman?” 
She hesitated. I asked again and she said, “Another woman, 
more authentic and more intelligent than me. It’s as if she were 
a soul that didn’t belong to me, but which is nonetheless part 
of me.” 
“Exactly. Now I’m going to ask you to imagine one of the 


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most important symbols in alchemy: a snake forming a circle 
and swallowing its own tail. Can you imagine that?” 
She nodded. 
“That’s what life is like for people like you and me. We’re 
constantly destroying and rebuilding ourselves. Everything in 
your life has followed the same pattern: from lost to found; from 
divorce to new love; from working in a bank to selling real estate 
in the desert. Only one thing remains intact—your son. He is 
the connecting thread, and you must respect that.” 
She started to cry again, but her tears were different this time. 
“You came here because you saw a female face in the flames. 
That face is the face you can see now in the mirror, so try to 
honor it. Don’t let yourself be weighed down by what other 
people think, because in a few years, in a few decades, or in a few 
centuries, that way of thinking will have changed. Live now what 
others will only live in the future. 
“What do you want? You can’t want to be happy, because 
that’s too easy and too boring. You can’t want only to love, be-
cause that’s impossible. What do you want? You want to justify 
your life, to live it as intensely as possible. That is at once a trap 
and a source of ecstasy. Try to be alert to that danger and ex-
perience the joy and the adventure of being that woman who is 
beyond the image reflected in the mirror.” 
Her eyes closed, but I knew that my words had penetrated 
her soul and would stay there. 
“If you want to take a risk and continue teaching, do so. If 
you don’t want to, know that you’ve already gone further than 
most other people.” 


178 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Her body began to relax. I held her in my arms until she fell 
asleep, her head on my breast. 
I tried to whisper a few more things to her, because I’d been 
through the same stages, and I knew how difficult it was—just 
as my protector had told me it would be and as I myself had 
found out through painful experience. However, the fact that it 
was difficult didn’t make the experience any less interesting. 
What experience? Living as a human being and as a divin-
ity. Moving from tension into relaxation. From relaxation into 
trance. From trance into a more intense contact with other peo-
ple. From that contact back into tension and so on, like the 
serpent swallowing its own tail. 
It was no easy matter, mainly because it requires uncondi-
tional love, which does not fear suffering, rejection, loss. 
Whoever drinks this water once can never quench her thirst 
at other springs. 

AN D R E A MC CA I N , AC T R E S S 

“The other day you mentioned Gaia, who created herself and 
had a child without the help of a man. You said, quite rightly, 
that the Great Mother was eventually superseded by the male 
gods. But you forgot about Hera, a descendant of your favorite 
goddess. Hera is more important because she’s more practical. 
She rules the skies and the earth, the seasons of the year and 
storms. According to the same Greeks you cited, the Milky Way 
that we see in the sky was created out of the milk that spurted 


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forth from her breast. A beautiful breast, it must be said, because 
all-powerful Zeus changed himself into a bird purely in order to 
be able to have his way with her without being rejected.” 
We were walking through a large department store in Knights-
bridge. I’d phoned her, saying that I’d like to talk, and she’d invited 
me to the winter sales. It would have been far more pleasant to 
have a cup of tea together or lunch in some quiet restaurant. 
“Your son could get lost in this crowd.” 
“Don’t worry about him. Go on with what you were tell-
ing me.” 
“Hera discovered the trick and forced Zeus to marry her. 
Immediately after the ceremony, however, the great king of 
Olympus returned to his playboy lifestyle, seducing any woman, 
mortal or immortal, who happened by. Hera, however, remained 
faithful. Rather than blame her husband, she blamed the women 
for their loose behavior.” 
“Isn’t that what we all do?” 
I didn’t know what she meant, and so I carried on talking as 
if I hadn’t heard what she’d said. 
“Then she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine 
and find a god or a man to take to her bed. Look, couldn’t we 
stop for a while and have a coffee?” 
But Athena had just gone into a lingerie shop. 
“Do you think this is pretty?” she asked, holding up a pro-
vocative flesh-colored bra and panty set. 
“Yes, very. Will anyone see it if you wear it?” 
“Of course, or do you think I’m a saint? But go on with 
what you were saying about Hera.” 


180 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“Zeus was horrified by her behavior, but Hera was leading 
an independent life and didn’t give two hoots about her mar-
riage. Have you really got a boyfriend?” 
“Yes.” 
“I’ve never seen him.” 
She went over to the checkout, paid for the lingerie, and put  
it in her bag. 
“Viorel’s hungry, and I’m sure he’s not the slightest bit inter-
ested in Greek myths, so hurry up and finish Hera’s story.” 
“It has a rather silly ending. Zeus, afraid of losing his be-
loved, pretended that he was getting married again. When Hera 
found out, she saw that things had gone too far. Lovers were one 
thing, but divorce was unthinkable.” 
“Nothing new there, then.” 
“She decided to go to the ceremony and kick up a fuss, 
and it was only then that she realized Zeus was marrying a 
statue.” 
“What did Hera do?” 
“She roared with laughter. That broke the ice between them,  
and she became once more the queen of the skies.” 
“Great. So if that ever happens to you . . .” 
“What?” 
“If your man gets himself another woman, don’t forget to 
laugh.” 
“I’m not a goddess. I’d be much more vengeful. Anyway, why 
is it I’ve never seen your boyfriend?” 
“Because he’s always busy.” 
“Where did you meet him?” 


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“At the bank where I used to work. He had an account there. 
And now, if you don’t mind, my son’s waiting for me. You’re 
right, if I don’t keep my eye on him, he could get lost among all 
these people. By the way, we’re having a meeting at my place next 
week. You’re invited, of course.” 
“Yes, and I know who organized it.” 
Athena kissed me lightly on both cheeks and left. At least 
she’d got the message. 
That afternoon, at the theater, the director made a point of 
telling me that he was annoyed because, he said, I’d arranged for 
a group of actors to go and visit “that woman.” I explained that 
it hadn’t been my idea. Heron had become obsessed with the 
subject of navels and had asked me if some of the other actors 
would be prepared to continue the interrupted “lecture.” 
“That said,” I added, “it was my choice to ask them.” 
Of course it was, but the last thing I wanted was for him to 
go to Athena’s house alone. 
The actors had all arrived, but instead of another read-through 
of the new play, the director decided to change the program. 
“Today we’ll do another exercise in psychodrama.” [Editor’s 
note: a therapeutic technique that involves people acting out their personal ex-
periences.] 
There was no need. We all knew how the characters would 
behave in the situations described by the playwright. 
“Can I suggest a subject?” 
Everyone turned to look at me. The director seemed sur-
prised. 
“What’s this, a revolt?” 


182 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“No, listen. We create a situation where a man, after great dif-
ficulty, manages to get a group of people together to celebrate an 
important ritual in the community, something, let’s say, like the 
autumn harvest. Meanwhile, a strange woman arrives, and because 
of her beauty and the various rumors circulating—about her be-
ing a goddess in disguise, for example—the group the man has 
formed in order to keep alive the traditions in his village breaks 
up, and its members all go off to see the woman instead.” 
“But that’s got nothing to do with the play we’re rehearsing!” 
said one of the actresses. 
The director, however, had understood what I was driving at. 
“That’s an excellent idea. Let’s begin.” 
And turning to me, he said, “Andrea, you can be the new 
arrival. That way you can get a better understanding of the situ-
ation in the village. And I’ll be the decent man trying to preserve 
the old ways. The group will be made up of couples who go to 
church, get together on Saturdays to do work in the community, 
and generally help one another.” 
We lay down on the floor, did some relaxation, and then be-
gan the exercise proper, which was really very simple. The main 
character (in this case, me) created various situations, and the 
others reacted to them. 
When the relaxation was over, I transformed myself into 
Athena. In my fantasy, she roamed the world like Satan in search 
of subjects for her realm, but she disguised herself as Gaia, 
the goddess who knows everything and created everything. For 
fifteen minutes, the other actors paired up into “couples,” got 
to know each other, and invented a common history involving 


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children, farms, understanding, and friendship. When I felt this 
little universe was ready, I sat at one corner of the stage and 
began to speak about love. 
“Here we are in this little village, and you think I’m a stranger, 
which is why you’re interested in what I have to tell you. You’ve 
never traveled and don’t know what goes on beyond the moun-
tains, but I can tell you: there’s no need to praise the earth. The 
earth will always be generous with this community. The important 
thing is to praise human beings. You say you’d love to travel, but 
you misuse the word love. Love is a relationship between people. 
“Your one desire is for the harvest to be a good one, and that’s 
why you’ve decided to love the earth. More nonsense: love isn’t 
desire or knowledge or admiration. It’s a challenge, it’s an invisible 
fire. That’s why, if you think I’m a stranger on this earth, you’re 
wrong. Everything is familiar to me because I come in strength 
and in fire, and when I leave, no one will be the same. I bring true 
love, not the love they write about in books or in fairy tales.” 
The “husband” of one of the “couples” began looking at 
me. His “wife” became distraught. 
During the rest of the exercise, the director—or, rather, the 
decent man—did all he could to explain the importance of main-
taining traditions, praising the earth, and asking the earth to be as 
generous this year as it had been last year. I spoke only of love. 
“He says the earth needs rituals, well, I can guarantee that if 
there’s love enough among you, you’ll have an abundant harvest, 
because love is the feeling that transforms everything. But what 
do I see? Friendship. Passion died out a long time ago, because 
you’ve all got used to one another. That’s why the earth gives 


184 P a u l o C o e l h o 

only what it gave last year, neither more nor less. And that’s why, 
in the darkness of your souls, you silently complain that nothing 
in your lives changes. Why? Because you’ve always tried to con-
trol the force that transforms everything so that your lives can 
carry on without being faced by any major challenges.” 
The decent man explained, “Our community has survived 
because we’ve always respected the laws by which even love itself 
is guided. Anyone who falls in love without taking into account 
the common good will be condemned to live in constant fear 
of hurting his partner, of irritating his new love, of losing ev-
erything he built. A stranger with no ties and no history can 
say what she likes, but she doesn’t know how hard it was to get 
where we are now. She doesn’t know the sacrifices we made for 
our children. She doesn’t know that we work tirelessly so that 
the earth will be generous with us, so that we will be at peace, 
and so that we can store away provisions for the future.” 
For an hour I defended the passion that devours everything, 
while the decent man spoke of the feeling that brings peace and 
tranquility. In the end, I was left talking to myself while the 
whole community gathered around him. 
I’d played my role with great gusto and with a conviction I 
didn’t even know I felt. Despite everything, though, the stranger 
left the village without having convinced anyone. 
And that made me very, very happy. 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

An old friend of mine always says: “People learn twenty-five per-
cent from their teacher, twenty-five percent from listening to them-
selves, twenty-five percent from their friends, and twenty-five per-
cent from time.” At that first meeting at Athena’s apartment, where 
she was trying to conclude the class she had started at the theater, 
we all learned from . . . well, I’m not quite sure from what. 
She was waiting for us, with her son, in her small living 
room. I noticed that the room was entirely painted in white and 
was completely empty apart from one item of furniture with 
a sound system on it, and a pile of CDs. I thought it odd that 
her son should be there, because he was sure to be bored by the 
class. I was assuming she would simply pick up from where we 
had stopped, giving us commands through single words. But she 
had other plans. She explained that she was going to play some 
music from Siberia and that we should all just listen. 
Nothing more. 
“I don’t get anywhere meditating,” she said. “I see people 
sitting there with their eyes closed, a smile on their lips or else 
grave-faced and arrogant, concentrating on absolutely nothing, 
convinced that they’re in touch with God or with the Goddess. 
So instead, let’s listen to some music together.” 
Again that feeling of unease, as if Athena didn’t know exactly 
what she was doing. But nearly all the actors from the theater 
were there, including the director, who, according to Andrea, had 
come to spy on the enemy camp. 
The music stopped. 
“This time I want you to dance to a rhythm that has nothing 
whatever to do with the melody.” 


186 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Athena put the music on again, with the volume right up, 
and started to dance, making no attempt to move gracefully. 
Only an older man, who took the role of the drunken king in 
our latest play, did as he was told. No one else moved. They all 
seemed slightly constrained. One woman looked at her watch— 
only ten minutes had passed. 
Athena stopped and looked round. 
“Why are you just standing there?” 
“Well,” said one of the actresses timidly, “it seems a bit ri-
diculous to be doing that. We’ve been trained in harmony, not 
its opposite.” 
“Just do as I say. Do you need an explanation? Right, I’ll 
give you one. Changes only happen when we go totally against 
everything we’re used to doing.” 
Turning to the “drunken king,” she said, “Why did you 
agree to dance against the rhythm of the music?” 
“Oh, I’ve never had any sense of rhythm anyway.” 
Everyone laughed, and the dark cloud hanging over us 
seemed to disperse. 
“Right, I’m going to start again, and you can either follow 
me or leave. This time, I’m the one who decides when the class 
ends. One of the most aggressive things a human being can do is 
to go against what he or she believes is nice or pretty, and that’s 
what we’re going to do today. We’re all going to dance badly.” 
It was just another experiment, and in order not to embar-
rass our hostess, everyone obediently danced badly. I struggled 
with myself, because one’s natural tendency was to follow the 
rhythms of that marvelous, mysterious percussion. I felt as if 


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I were insulting the musicians who were playing and the com-
poser who created it. Every so often, my body tried to fight 
against that lack of harmony and I was forced to make myself 
behave as I’d been told to. The boy was dancing as well, laughing 
all the time, then at a certain point, he stopped and sat down 
on the sofa, as if exhausted by his efforts. The CD was switched 
off in midstream. 
“Wait.” 
We all waited. 
“I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.” 
She closed her eyes and held her head between her hands. 
“I’ve never danced unrhythmically before . . .” 
So the experiment had been worse for her than for any of us. 
“I don’t feel well . . .” 
Both the director and I got to our feet. Andrea shot me a fu-
rious glance, but I still went over to Athena. Before I could reach 
her, however, she asked us to return to our places. 
“Does anyone want to say anything?” Her voice sounded 
fragile, tremulous, and she had still not uncovered her face. 
“I do.” 
It was Andrea. 
“First, pick up my son and tell him that his mother’s fine. 
But I need to stay like this for as long as necessary.” 
Viorel looked frightened. Andrea sat him on her lap and 
stroked him. 
“What do you want to say?” 
“Nothing. I’ve changed my mind.” 
“The boy made you change your mind, but carry on anyway.” 


188 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Slowly Athena removed her hands and looked up. Her face 
was that of a stranger. 
“No, I won’t speak.” 
“All right. You,” Athena said, pointing to the older actor. 
“Go to the doctor tomorrow. The fact that you can’t sleep and 
have to keep getting up in the night to go to the toilet is serious. 
It’s cancer of the prostate.” 
The man turned pale. 
“And you”—she pointed at the director—“accept your sex-
ual identity. Don’t be afraid. Accept that you hate women and 
love men.” 
“Are you saying—” 
“Don’t interrupt me. I’m not saying this because of Athena. 
I’m merely referring to your sexuality. You love men, and there 
is, I believe, nothing wrong with that.” 
She wasn’t saying that because of Athena? But she was Athena! 
“And you.” She pointed to me. “Come over here. Kneel down 
before me.” 
Afraid of what Andrea might do and embarrassed to have 
everyone’s eyes on me, I nevertheless did as she asked. 
“Bow your head. Let me touch the nape of your neck.” 
I felt the pressure of her fingers but nothing else. We re-
mained like that for nearly a minute, and then she told me to get 
up and go back to my seat. 
“You won’t need to take sleeping pills anymore. From now 
on, sleep will return.” 
I glanced at Andrea. I thought she might say something, but 
she looked as amazed as I did. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

One of the actresses, possibly the youngest, raised her hand. 
“I’d like to say something, but I need to know who I’m 
speaking to.” 
“Hagia Sofia.” 
“I’d like to know if . . .” 
She glanced round, ashamed, but the director nodded, ask-
ing her to continue. 
“. . . if my mother is all right.” 
“She’s by your side. Yesterday, when you left the house, she 
made you forget your handbag. You went back to find it and dis-
covered that you’d locked yourself out and couldn’t get in. You 
wasted a whole hour looking for a locksmith, when you could 
have kept the appointment you’d made, met the man who was 
waiting for you, and got the job you wanted. But if everything 
had happened as you planned that morning, in six months’ time 
you would have died in a car accident. Forgetting your handbag 
yesterday changed your life.” 
The girl began to weep. 
“Does anyone else want to ask anything?” 
Another hand went up. It was the director. 
“Does he love me?” 
So it was true. The story about the girl’s mother had stirred 
up a whirlwind of emotions in the room. 
“You’re asking the wrong question. What you need to know 
is are you in a position to give him the love he needs. And 
whatever happens or doesn’t happen will be equally gratify-
ing. Knowing that you are capable of love is enough. If it isn’t 
him, it will be someone else. You’ve discovered a wellspring; 


190 P a u l o C o e l h o 

simply allow it to flow and it will fill your world. Don’t try 
to keep a safe distance so as to see what happens. Don’t wait 
to be certain before you take a step. What you give, you will 
receive, although it might sometimes come from the place you 
least expect.” 
Those words applied to me too. Then Athena—or whoever 
she was—turned to Andrea. 
“You!” 
My blood froze. 
“You must be prepared to lose the universe you created.” 
“What do you mean by ‘universe’?” 
“What you think you already have. You’ve imprisoned your 
world, but you know that you must liberate it. I know you un-
derstand what I mean, even though you don’t want to hear it.” 
“I understand.” 
I was sure they were talking about me. Was this all a setup 
by Athena? 
“It’s finished,” she said. “Bring the child to me.” 
Viorel didn’t want to go; he was frightened by his mother’s 
transformation. But Andrea took him gently by the hand and 
led him to her. 
Athena—or Hagia Sofia, or Sherine, or whoever she was— 
did just as she had done with me, and pressed the back of the 
boy’s neck with her fingers. 
“Don’t be frightened by the things you see, my child. Don’t 
try to push them away because they’ll go away anyway. Enjoy 
the company of the angels while you can. You’re frightened now, 
but you’re not as frightened as you might be because you know 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

there are lots of people in the room. You stopped laughing and 
dancing when you saw me embracing your mother and asking 
to speak through her mouth. But you know I wouldn’t be doing 
this if she hadn’t given me her permission. I’ve always appeared 
before in the form of light, and I still am that light, but today I 
decided to speak.” 
The little boy put his arms around her. 
“You can go now. Leave me alone with him.” 
One by one, we left the apartment, leaving the mother with 
her child. In the taxi home, I tried to talk to Andrea, but she said 
that we could talk about anything but what had just happened. 
I said nothing. My soul filled with sadness. Losing Andrea 
was very hard. On the other hand, I felt an immense peace. The 
evening’s events had wrought changes in us all, and that meant 
I wouldn’t need to go through the pain of sitting down with a 
woman I loved very much and telling her that I was in love with 
someone else. 
In this case, I chose silence. I got home, turned on the TV, 
and Andrea went to have a bath. I closed my eyes, and when I 
opened them, the room was full of light. It was morning, and I’d 
slept for ten hours. Beside me was a note, in which Andrea said 
that she hadn’t wanted to wake me, that she’d gone straight to 
the theater, but had left me some coffee. The note was a roman-
tic one, decorated in lipstick and a small cutout heart. 
She had no intention of “letting go of her universe.” She was 
going to fight. And my life would become a nightmare. 
That evening she phoned, and her voice betrayed no particular 
emotion. She told me that the elderly actor had gone to see his 


192 P a u l o C o e l h o 

doctor, who had examined him and found that he had an enlarged 
prostate. The next step was a blood test, where they had detected 
a significantly raised level of a type of protein called PSA. They 
took a sample for a biopsy, but the clinical picture indicated that 
there was a high chance he had a malignant tumor. 
“The doctor said he was lucky, because even if their worst 
fears were proved right, they can still operate, and there’s a ninety-
nine percent chance of a cure.” 

DE I D R E O’NE I L L , K N OW N A S ED DA 

What do you mean, Hagia Sofia! It was her, Athena, but by 
touching the deepest part of the river that flows through her 
soul, she had come into contact with the Mother. 
All she did was to see what was happening in another reality. 
The young actress’s mother, now that she’s dead, lives in a place 
outside of time and so was able to change the course of events, 
whereas we human beings can only know about the present. But 
that’s no small thing: discovering a dormant illness before it gets 
worse, touching nervous systems and unblocking energies are 
within the reach of all of us. 
Of course, many died at the stake, others were exiled, and 
many ended up hiding or suppressing the spark of the Great 
Mother in their souls. I never brought Athena into contact with 
the Power. She decided to do this, because the Mother had al-
ready given her various signs: she was a light while she danced, 
she changed into letters while she was learning calligraphy, she 


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appeared to her in a fire and in a mirror. What my student didn’t 
know was how to live with her, until, that is, she did something 
that provoked this whole chain of events. 
Athena, who was always telling everyone to be different, was 
basically just like all other mortals. She had her own rhythm, a 
kind of cruise control. Was she more curious than most? Pos-
sibly. Had she managed to overcome her sense of being a victim? 
Definitely. Did she feel a need to share what she was learning 
with others, be they bank employees or actors? In some cases the 
answer was yes, but in others, I had to encourage her, because we 
are not meant for solitude, and we only know ourselves when we 
see ourselves in the eyes of others. 
But that was as far as my interference went. 
Maybe the Mother wanted to appear that night, and perhaps 
she whispered something in her ear: “Go against everything 
you’ve learned so far. You, who are a mistress of rhythm, allow 
the rhythm to pass through your body, but don’t obey it.”That 
was why Athena suggested the exercise. Her unconscious was 
already prepared to receive the Mother, but Athena herself was 
still dancing in time to the music, and so any external elements 
were unable to manifest themselves. 
The same thing used to happen with me. The best way to 
meditate and enter into contact with the light was by knitting, 
something my mother had taught me when I was a child. I knew 
how to count the stitches, manipulate the needles, and create 
beautiful things through repetition and harmony. One day, my 
protector asked me to knit in a completely irrational way! I found 
this really distressing, because I’d learned how to knit with affec-


194 P a u l o C o e l h o 

tion, patience, and dedication. Nevertheless, he insisted on me 
knitting really badly. 
I knitted like this for two hours, thinking all the time that 
it was utterly ridiculous, absurd. My head ached, but I had to 
resist letting the needles guide my hands. Anyone can do things 
badly, so why was he asking this of me? Because he knew about 
my obsession with geometry and with perfection. 
And suddenly it happened: I stopped moving the needles 
and felt a great emptiness, which was filled by a warm, loving, 
companionable presence. Everything around me was different, 
and I felt like saying things that I would never normally dare to 
say. I didn’t lose consciousness; I knew I was still me, but, para-
doxically, I wasn’t the person I was used to being with. 
So I can “see” what happened, even though I wasn’t there— 
Athena’s soul following the sound of the music while her body 
went in a totally contrary direction. After a time, her soul dis-
connected from her body, a space opened, and the Mother could 
finally enter. 
Or, rather, a spark from the Mother appeared. Ancient, but 
apparently very young. Wise, but not omnipotent. Special, but 
not in the least arrogant. Her perceptions changed, and she began 
to see the same things she used to see when she was a child—the 
parallel universes that people this world. At such moments, we 
can see not only the physical body but people’s emotions too. 
They say cats have this same power, and I believe them. 
A kind of blanket lies between the physical and the spiri-
tual world, a blanket that changes in color, intensity, and light; 
it’s what mystics call “aura.” From then on, everything is easy. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

The aura tells you what’s going on. If I had been there, she 
would have seen a violet color with a few yellow splodges 
around my body. That means that I still have a long road ahead 
of me and that my mission on this earth has not yet been 
accomplished. 
Mixed up with human auras are transparent forms, which 
people usually call “ghosts.” That was the case with the young 
woman’s mother, and only in such cases can someone’s fate be 
altered. I’m almost certain that the young actress, even before 
she asked, knew that her mother was beside her, and the only 
real surprise to her was the story about the handbag. 
Confronted by that rhythm-less dance, everyone was really 
intimidated. Why? Because we’re used to doing things “as they 
should be done.” No one likes to make the wrong moves, espe-
cially when we’re aware that we’re doing so. Even Athena. It can’t 
have been easy for her to suggest doing something that went 
against everything she loved. 
I’m glad that the Mother won the battle at that point. A man 
has been saved from cancer, another has accepted his sexuality, 
and a third has stopped taking sleeping pills. And all because 
Athena broke the rhythm, slamming on the brakes when the car 
was traveling at top speed and thus throwing everything into 
disarray. 
To go back to my knitting: I used that method of knit-
ting badly for quite some time until I managed to provoke the 
presence without any artificial means, now that I knew it and 
was used to it. The same thing happened with Athena. Once 
we know where the Doors of Perception are, it’s really easy to 


196 P a u l o C o e l h o 

open and close them, when we get used to our own “strange” 
behavior. 
And it must be said that I knitted much faster and better af-
ter that, just as Athena danced with much more soul and rhythm 
once she had dared to break down those barriers. 

AN D R E A MC CA I N , AC T R E S S 

The story spread like wildfire. On the following Monday, when 
the theater was closed, Athena’s apartment was packed. We had 
all brought friends. She did as she had on the previous evening; 
she made us dance without rhythm, as if she needed that collec-
tive energy in order to get in touch with Hagia Sofia. The boy 
was there again, and I decided to watch him. When he sat down 
on the sofa, the music stopped and the trance began. 
As did the questions. The first three questions were, as you 
can imagine, about love—will he stay with me, does she love me, 
is he cheating on me. Athena said nothing. The fourth person to 
receive no answer asked again, more loudly this time, “So is he 
cheating on me or not?” 
“I am <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON>, universal wisdom. I came into the world 
accompanied only by Love. I am the beginning of everything, 
and before I existed there was chaos. Therefore, if any of you 
wish to control the forces that prevailed in chaos, do not ask 
Hagia Sofia. For me, love fills everything. It cannot be desired 
because it is an end in itself. It cannot betray because it has 
nothing to do with possession. It cannot be held prisoner be-


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cause it is a river and will overflow its banks. Anyone who tries 
to imprison love will cut off the spring that feeds it, and the 
trapped water will grow stagnant and rank.” 
Hagia looked around the group, most of whom were there 
for the first time, and she began to point out what she saw: the 
threat of disease, problems at work, frictions between parents 
and children, sexuality, potentialities that existed but were not 
being explored. I remember her turning to one woman in her 
thirties and saying, “Your father told you how things should 
be and how a woman should behave. You have always fought 
against your dreams, and ‘I want’ has never even shown its face. 
It was always drowned out by ‘I must’ or ‘I hope’ or ‘I need,’ but 
you’re a wonderful singer. One year’s experience could make a 
huge difference to your work.” 
“But I have a husband and a child.” 
“Athena has a child too. Your husband will be upset at first, 
but he’ll come to accept it eventually. And you don’t need to be 
Hagia Sofia to know that.” 
“Maybe I’m too old.” 
“You’re refusing to accept who you are, but that is not my 
problem. I have said what needed to be said.” 
Gradually, everyone in that small room—unable to sit down 
because there wasn’t enough space, sweating profusely even 
though the winter was nearly over, feeling ridiculous for having 
come to such an event—was called upon to receive Hagia Sofia’s 
advice. 
I was the last. 
“Stay behind afterward if you want to stop being two and 


198 P a u l o C o e l h o 

to be one instead.” 
This time, I didn’t have her son on my lap. He watched ev-
erything that happened, and it seemed that the conversation 
they’d had after the first session had been enough for him to 
lose his fear. 
I nodded. Unlike the previous session, when people had 
simply left when she’d asked to talk to her son alone, this time 
Hagia Sofia gave a sermon before ending the ritual. 
“You are not here to receive definite answers. My mission is 
to provoke you. In the past, both governors and governed went 
to oracles who would foretell the future. The future, however, is 
unreliable because it is guided by decisions made in the here and 
now. Keep the bicycle moving, because if you stop pedaling, you 
will fall off. 
“For those of you who came to meet Hagia Sofia wanting 
her merely to confirm what you hoped to be true, please, do not 
come back. Or else start dancing and make those around you 
dance too. Fate will be implacable with those who want to live 
in a universe that is dead and gone. The new world belongs to 
the Mother, who came with Love to separate the heavens from 
the waters. Anyone who believes they have failed will always fail. 
Anyone who has decided that they cannot behave any differently 
will be destroyed by routine. Anyone who has decided to block 
all changes will be transformed into dust. Cursed be those who 
do not dance and who prevent others from dancing!” 
Her eyes glanced fire. 
“You can go.” 
Everyone left, and I could see the look of confusion on most 


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of their faces. They had come in search of comfort and had 
found only provocation. They had arrived wanting to be told 
how love can be controlled and had heard that the all-devouring 
flame will always burn everything. They wanted to be sure that 
their decisions were the right ones, that their husbands, wives, 
and bosses were pleased with them, but instead they were given 
only words of doubt. 
Some people, though, were smiling. They had understood 
the importance of the dance and from that night on would 
doubtless allow their bodies and souls to drift—even though, as 
always happens, they would have to pay a price. 
Only the boy, Hagia Sofia, Heron, and myself were left in 
the room. 
“I asked you to stay here alone.” 
Without a word, Heron picked up his coat and left. 
Hagia Sofia was looking at me. And, little by little, I watched 
her change back into Athena. The only way of describing that 
change is to compare it with the change that takes place in an 
angry child: we can see the anger in the child’s eyes, but once 
distracted and once the anger has gone, the child is no longer the 
same child who, only moments before, was crying. The “being,” 
if it can be called that, seemed to have vanished into the air as 
soon as its instrument lost concentration. 
And now I was standing before an apparently exhausted 
woman. 
“Make me some tea.” 
She was giving me an order! And she was no longer universal 
wisdom but merely someone my boyfriend was interested in or 


200 P a u l o C o e l h o 

infatuated with. Where would this relationship take us? 
But making a cup of tea wouldn’t destroy my self-esteem. 
I went into the kitchen, boiled some water, added a few cham-
omile leaves, and returned to the living room. The child was 
asleep on her lap. 
“You don’t like me,” she said. 
I made no reply. 
“I don’t like you either,” she went on. “You’re pretty and 
elegant, a fine actress, and have a degree of culture and educa-
tion which I, despite my family’s wishes, do not. But you’re also 
insecure, arrogant, and suspicious. As Hagia Sofia said, you are 
two, when you could be one.” 
“I didn’t know you remembered what you said during the 
trance, because in that case, you are two people as well: Athena 
and Hagia Sofia.” 
“I may have two names, but I am only one—or else all the 
people in the world. And that is precisely what I want to talk 
about. Because I am one and everyone, the spark that emerges 
when I go into a trance gives me very precise instructions. I 
remain semiconscious throughout, of course, but I’m saying 
things that come from some unknown part of myself, as if I 
were suckling on the breast of the Mother, drinking the milk 
that flows through all our souls and carries knowledge around 
the earth. Last week, which was the first time I entered into con-
tact with this new form, I received what seemed to me to be an 
absurd message: that I should teach you.” 
She paused. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“Obviously, this struck me as quite mad, because I don’t like 
you at all.” 
She paused again, for longer this time. 
“Today, though, the source repeated the same message, and 
so I’m giving you that choice.” 
“Why do you call it Hagia Sofia?” 
“That was my idea. It’s the name of a really beautiful 
mosque I saw in a book. You could, if you like, be my student. 
That’s what brought you here on that first day. This whole 
new stage in my life, including the discovery of Hagia Sofia 
inside me, only happened because one day you came through 
that door and said: ‘I work in the theater and we’re putting on 
a play about the female face of God. I heard from a journalist 
friend that you’ve spent time in the Balkan mountains with 
some gypsies and would be prepared to tell me about your 
experiences there.’” 
“Are you going to teach me everything you know?” 
“No, everything I don’t know. I’ll learn through being in 
contact with you, as I said the first time we met, and as I say 
again now. Once I’ve learned what I need to learn, we’ll go our 
separate ways.” 
“Can you teach someone you dislike?” 
“I can love and respect someone I dislike. On the two oc-
casions when I went into a trance, I saw your aura, and it was 
the most highly developed aura I’ve ever seen. You could make a 
difference in this world, if you accept my proposal.” 
“Will you teach me to see auras?” 


202 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“Until it happened to me the first time, I myself didn’t know 
I was capable of doing so. If you’re on the right path, you’ll 
learn too.” 
I realized then that I too was capable of loving someone I 
disliked. I said yes. 
“Then let us transform that acceptance into a ritual. A ritual 
throws us into an unknown world, but we know that we can-
not treat the things of that world lightly. It isn’t enough to say 
yes, you must put your life at risk, and without giving it much 
thought either. If you’re the woman I think you are, you won’t 
say: ‘I need to think about it.’ You’ll say—” 
“I’m ready. Let’s move on to the ritual. Where did you learn 
the ritual, by the way?” 
“I’m going to learn it now. I no longer need to remove my-
self from my normal rhythm in order to enter into contact with 
the spark from the Mother, because once that spark is installed 
inside you, it’s easy to find again. I know which door I need to 
open, even though it’s concealed among many other entrances 
and exits. All I need is a little silence.” 
Silence again! 
We sat there, our eyes wide and staring, as if we were about 
to begin a fight to the death. Rituals! Before I even rang the bell 
of Athena’s apartment for the first time, I had already taken part 
in various rituals, only to feel used and diminished afterward, 
standing outside a door I could see, but not open. Rituals! 
All Athena did was drink a little of the tea I prepared for her. 
“The ritual is over. I asked you to do something for me. 
You did, and I accepted it. Now it is your turn to ask me some-


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thing.” 
I immediately thought of Heron, but it wasn’t the right mo-
ment to talk about him. 
“Take your clothes off.” 
She didn’t ask me why. She looked at the child, checked that 
he was asleep, and immediately began to remove her sweater. 
“No, really, you don’t have to,” I said. “I don’t know why I 
asked that.” 
But she continued to undress, first her blouse, then her jeans, 
then her bra. I noticed her breasts, which were the most beauti-
ful I’d ever seen. Finally she removed her knickers. And there she 
was, offering me her nakedness. 
“Bless me,” said Athena. 
Bless my “teacher”? But I’d already taken the first step and 
couldn’t stop now, so I dipped my fingers in the cup and sprin-
kled a little tea over her body. 
“Just as this plant was transformed into tea, just as the water 
mingled with the plant, I bless you and ask the Great Mother 
that the spring from which this water came will never cease flow-
ing, and that the earth from which this plant came will always be 
fertile and generous.” 
I was surprised at my own words. They had come neither 
from inside me nor outside. It was as if I’d always known them 
and had done this countless times before. 
“You have been blessed. You can get dressed now.” 
But she didn’t move, she merely smiled. What did she want? 
If Hagia Sofia was capable of seeing auras, she would know that 
I hadn’t the slightest desire to have sex with another woman. 


204 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“One moment.” 
She picked up the boy, carried him to his room, and re-
turned at once. 
“You take your clothes off too.” 
Who was asking this? Hagia Sofia, who spoke of my poten-
tial and for whom I was the perfect disciple? Or Athena, whom 
I hardly knew, and who seemed capable of anything, a woman 
whom life had taught to go beyond her limits and to satisfy any 
curiosity? 
We had started a kind of confrontation from which there 
was no retreat. I got undressed with the same nonchalance, the 
same smile, and the same look in my eyes. 
She took my hand, and we sat down on the sofa. 
During the next half hour, both Athena and Hagia Sofia 
were present; they wanted to know what my next steps would 
be. As they asked me this question, I saw that everything really 
was written there before me, and that the doors had only been 
closed before because I hadn’t realized that I was the one person 
in the world with the authority to open them. 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 

The deputy editor hands me a video and we go into the projec-
tion room to watch it. 
The video was made on the morning of April 26, 1986, and 
shows normal life in a normal town. A man is sitting, drinking 
a cup of coffee. A mother is taking her baby for a walk. People 


205 

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in a hurry are going to work. A few people are waiting at a bus 
stop. A man on a bench in a square is reading a newspaper. 
But there’s a problem with the video. There are various hori-
zontal lines on the screen, as if the tracking button needed to be 
adjusted. I get up to do this but the deputy editor stops me. 
“That’s just the way it is. Keep watching.” 
Images of the small provincial town continue to appear, 
showing nothing of interest apart from these scenes from ordi-
nary everyday life. 
“It’s possible that some people may know that there’s been 
an accident two kilometers from there,” says my boss. “It’s pos-
sible that they know there have been thirty deaths—a large 
number, but not enough to change the routine of the town’s 
inhabitants.” 
Now the film shows school buses parking. They will stay 
there for many days. The images are getting worse and worse. 
“It isn’t the tracking, it’s radiation. The video was made by 
the KGB. On the night of April 26, at twenty-three minutes past 
one in the morning, the worst ever man-made disaster occurred 
at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. When a nuclear reactor exploded, 
the people in the area were exposed to ninety times more radia-
tion than that given out by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. 
The whole region should have been evacuated at once, but no one 
said anything—after all, the government doesn’t make mistakes. 
Only a week later, on page thirty-two of the local newspaper, 
a five-line article appeared, mentioning the deaths of workers, 
but giving no further explanation. Meanwhile, Workers Day was 
celebrated throughout the former Soviet Union, and in Kiev, the 


206 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Ukrainian capital, people paraded down the street unaware of 
the invisible death in the air.” 
And he concludes, “I want you to go and see what Chernobyl 
is like now. You’ve just been promoted to special correspondent. 
You’ll get a twenty percent increase in your salary and be able to 
suggest the kind of article you think we should be publishing.” 
I should be jumping for joy, but instead I’m gripped by a 
feeling of intense sadness, which I have to hide. It’s impossible 
to argue with him, to say that there are two women in my life at 
the moment, that I don’t want to leave London, that my life and 
my mental equilibrium are at stake. I ask when I should leave. 
As soon as possible, he says, because there are rumors that other 
countries are significantly increasing their production of nuclear 
energy. 
I manage to negotiate an honorable way out, saying that, 
first, I need to talk to experts and really get a grip on the subject, 
and that I’ll set off once I’ve collected the necessary material. 
He agrees, shakes my hand, and congratulates me. I don’t have 
time to talk to Andrea, because when I get home, she’s still at the 
theater. I fall asleep at once and again wake up to find a note say-
ing that she’s gone to work and that coffee is on the table. 
I go to the office, try to ingratiate myself with the boss who 
has “improved my life,” and phone various experts on radiation 
and energy. I discover that, in total, nine million people world-
wide were directly affected by the disaster, including three to 
four million children. The initial thirty deaths became, accord-
ing to the expert John Gofmans, 475,000 cases of fatal cancers 
and an equal number of nonfatal cancers. 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

A total of two thousand towns and villages were simply 
wiped off the map. According to the Health Ministry in Be-
larus, the incidence of cancer of the thyroid will increase con-
siderably between 2005 and 2010, as a consequence of con-
tinuing high levels of radioactivity. Another specialist explains 
that in addition to the nine million people directly exposed to 
radiation, more than sixty-five million in many countries around 
the world were indirectly affected by consuming contaminated 
foodstuffs. 
It’s a serious matter, which deserves to be treated with re-
spect. At the end of the day, I go back to the deputy editor 
and suggest that I travel to Chernobyl for the actual anniversary 
of the accident, and meanwhile do more research, talk to more 
experts, and find out how the British government responded to 
the tragedy. He agrees. 
I phone Athena. After all, she claims to be going out with 
someone from Scotland Yard and now is the time to ask her a 
favor, given that Chernobyl is no longer classified as secret and 
the Soviet Union no longer exists. She promises that she’ll talk 
to her “boyfriend” but says she can’t guarantee she’ll get the 
answers I want. 
She also says that she’s leaving for Scotland the following 
day and will only be back in time for the next group meeting. 
“What group?” 
The group, she says. So that’s become a regular thing, has it? 
What I want to know is when we can meet to talk and clear up 
various loose ends. 
But she’s already hung up. I go home, watch the news, have 


208 P a u l o C o e l h o 

supper alone, and later go out again to pick Andrea up from the 
theater. I get there in time to see the end of the play, and to my 
surprise, the person onstage seems totally unlike the person I’ve 
been living with for nearly two years; there’s something magical 
about her every gesture; monologues and dialogues are spoken 
with an unaccustomed intensity. I am seeing a stranger, a woman 
I would like to have by my side, then I realize that she is by my 
side and is in no way a stranger to me. 
“How did your chat with Athena go?” I ask on the way home. 
“Fine. How was work?” 
She was the one to change the subject. I tell her about my 
promotion and about Chernobyl, but she doesn’t seem interested. 
I start to think that I’m losing the love I have without having 
yet won the love I hope to win. However, as soon as we reach 
our apartment, she suggests we take a bath together, and before I 
know it, we’re in bed. First, she puts on that percussion music at 
full volume (she explains that she managed to get hold of a copy) 
and tells me not to worry about the neighbors—people worry too 
much about them, she says, and never live their own lives. 
What happens from then on is something that goes beyond 
my understanding. Has this woman making positively savage 
love with me finally discovered her sexuality, and was this taught 
to her or provoked in her by that other woman? While she was 
clinging to me with a violence I’ve never known before, she kept 
saying, “Today I’m your man, and you’re my woman.” 
We carried on like this for almost an hour, and I experienced 
things I’d never dared experience before. At certain moments, I 
felt ashamed, wanted to ask her to stop, but she seemed to be in 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

complete control of the situation, and so I surrendered, because 
I had no choice. In fact, I felt really curious. 
I was exhausted afterward, but Andrea seemed reenergized. 
“Before you go to sleep, I want you to know something,” she 
said. “If you go forward, sex will offer you the chance to make 
love with gods and goddesses. That’s what you experienced to-
day. I want you to go to sleep knowing that I awoke the Mother 
that was in you.” 
I wanted to ask if she’d learned this from Athena, but my 
courage failed. 
“Tell me that you liked being a woman for a night.” 
“I did. I don’t know if I would always like it, but it was some-
thing that simultaneously frightened me and gave me great joy.” 
“Tell me that you’ve always wanted to experience what you’ve 
just experienced.” 
It’s one thing to allow oneself to be carried away by the situ-
ation, but quite another to comment coolly on the matter. I said 
nothing, although I was sure that she knew my answer. 
“Well,” Andrea went on, “all of this was inside me and I had 
no idea. As was the person behind the mask that fell away while 
I was onstage today. Did you notice anything different?” 
“Of course. You were radiating a special light.” 
“Charisma—the divine force that manifests itself in men and 
women. The supernatural power we don’t need to show to any-
one because everyone can see it, even usually insensitive people. 
But it only happens when we’re naked, when we die to the world 
and are reborn to ourselves. Last night, I died. Tonight, when 
I walked onstage and saw that I was doing exactly what I had 


210 P a u l o C o e l h o 

chosen to do, I was reborn from my ashes. I was always trying to 
be who I am but could never manage it. I was always trying to 
impress other people, have intelligent conversations, please my 
parents, and at the same time, I used every available means to do 
the things I would really like to do. I’ve always forged my path 
with blood, tears, and willpower, but last night, I realized that I 
was going about it the wrong way. My dream doesn’t require that 
of me. I have only to surrender myself to it, and if I find I’m 
suffering, grit my teeth, because the suffering will pass.” 
“Why are you telling me this?” 
“Let me finish. In that journey where suffering seemed to 
be the only rule, I struggled for things for which there was no 
point struggling. Like love, for example. People either feel it or 
they don’t, and there isn’t a force in the world that can make 
them feel it. We can pretend that we love each other. We can get 
used to each other. We can live a whole lifetime of friendship 
and complicity, we can bring up children, have sex every night, 
reach orgasm, and still feel that there’s a terrible emptiness about 
it all, that something important is missing. In the name of all 
I’ve learned about relationships between men and women, I’ve 
been trying to fight against things that weren’t really worth the 
struggle. And that includes you. 
“Today, while we were making love, while I was giving all I 
have, and I could see that you too were giving of your best, I 
realized that your best no longer interests me. I will sleep beside 
you tonight, but tomorrow I’ll leave. The theater is my ritual, 
and there I can express and develop whatever I want to express 


211 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

and develop.” 
I started to regret everything—going to Transylvania and 
meeting a woman who might be destroying my life, arranging 
that first meeting of the “group,” confessing my love in that 
restaurant. At that moment, I hated Athena. 
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Andrea. “That your 
friend Athena has brainwashed me, but that isn’t true.” 
“I’m a man, even though tonight in bed I behaved like a 
woman. I’m a species in danger of extinction because I don’t see 
many men around. Few people would risk what I have risked.” 
“I’m sure you’re right, and that’s why I admire you, but aren’t 
you going to ask me who I am, what I want, and what I de-
sire?” 
I asked. 
“I want everything. I want savagery and tenderness. I want to 
upset the neighbors and placate them too. I don’t want a woman 
in my bed, I want men, real men, like you, for example. Whether 
they love me or are merely using me, it doesn’t matter. My love 
is greater than that. I want to love freely, and I want to allow the 
people around me to do the same. 
“What I talked about to Athena were the simple ways of 
awakening repressed energy, like making love, for example, or 
walking down the street saying: ‘I’m here and now.’ Nothing very 
special, no secret ritual. The only thing that made our meeting 
slightly different was that we were both naked. From now on, 
she and I will meet every Monday, and if I have any comments 
to make, I will do so after that session. I have no desire to be 


212 P a u l o C o e l h o 

her friend. Just as, when she feels the need to share something, 
she goes up to Scotland to talk with that Edda woman, who, it 
seems, you know as well, although you’ve never mentioned her.” 
“I can’t even remember meeting her!” 
I sensed that Andrea was gradually calming down. I prepared 
two cups of coffee, and we drank them together. She recovered 
her smile and asked about my promotion. She said she was wor-
ried about those Monday meetings, because she’d learned only 
that morning that friends of friends were inviting other people, 
and Athena’s apartment was a very small place. I made an enor-
mous effort to pretend that everything that had happened that 
evening was just a fit of nerves or premenstrual tension or jeal-
ousy on her part. 
I put my arms around her, and she snuggled into my shoul-
der. And despite my own exhaustion, I waited until she fell 
asleep. That night, I dreamed of nothing. I had no feelings of 
foreboding. 
And the following morning, when I woke up, I saw that her 
clothes were gone, the key was on the table, and there was no 
letter of farewell. 

DE I D R E O’NE I L L , K N OW N A S ED DA 

People read a lot of stories about witches, fairies, paranormals, 
and children possessed by evil spirits. They go to films show-
ing rituals featuring pentagrams, swords, and invocations. That’s 
fine, people need to give free rein to their imagination and to go 


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t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

through certain stages. Anyone who gets through those stages 
without being deceived will eventually get in touch with the Tra-
dition. 
The real Tradition is this: the teacher never tells the disciple 
what he or she should do. They are merely traveling compan-
ions, sharing the same uncomfortable feeling of “estrangement” 
when confronted by ever-changing perceptions, broadening ho-
rizons, closing doors, rivers that sometimes seem to block their 
path and which, in fact, should never be crossed, but followed. 
There is only one difference between teacher and disciple: 
the former is slightly less afraid than the latter. Then, when they 
sit down at a table or in front of a fire to talk, the more expe-
rienced person might say: “Why don’t you do that?” But he or 
she never says: “Go there and you’ll arrive where I did,” because 
every path and every destination are unique to the individual. 
The true teacher gives the disciple the courage to throw his 
or her world off balance, even though the disciple is afraid of 
things already encountered and more afraid still of what might 
be around the next corner. 
I was a young, enthusiastic doctor who, filled by a desire to 
help my fellow human beings, traveled to the interior of Roma-
nia on an exchange program run by the British government. I set 
off with my luggage full of medicines and my head full of pre-
conceptions. I had clear ideas about how people should behave, 
about what we need to be happy, about the dreams we should 
keep alive inside us, about how human relations should evolve. I 
arrived in Bucharest during that crazed, bloody dictatorship and 
went to Transylvania to assist with a mass vaccination program 


214 P a u l o C o e l h o 

for the local population. 
I didn’t realize that I was merely one more piece on a very 
complicated chessboard, where invisible hands were manipulat-
ing my idealism, and that ulterior motives lay behind everything 
I believed was being done for humanitarian purposes: stabilizing 
the government run by the dictator’s son, allowing Britain to sell 
arms in a market dominated by the Soviets. 
All my good intentions collapsed when I saw that there was 
barely enough vaccine to go round; that there were other diseases 
sweeping the region; that however often I wrote asking for more 
resources, they never came. I was told not to concern myself 
with anything beyond what I’d been asked to do. 
I felt powerless and angry. I’d seen poverty from close up and 
would have been able to do something about it if only someone 
would give me some money, but they weren’t interested in re-
sults. Our government just wanted a few articles in the press so 
that they could say to their political parties or to their electorate 
that they’d dispatched groups to various places in the world on a 
humanitarian mission. Their intentions were good—apart from 
selling arms, of course. 
I was in despair. What kind of world was this? One night, 
I set off into the icy forest, cursing God, who was unfair to 
everything and everyone. I was sitting beneath an oak tree when 
my protector approached me. He said I could die of cold, and I 
replied that I was a doctor and knew the body’s limits, and that 
as soon as I felt I was getting near those limits, I would go back 
to the camp. I asked him what he was doing there. 
“I’m speaking to a woman who can hear me, in a world in 


215 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

which all the men have gone deaf.” 
I thought he meant me, but the woman he was referring 
to was the forest itself. When I saw this man wandering about 
among the trees, making gestures and saying things I couldn’t 
understand, a kind of peace settled on my heart. I was not, after 
all, the only person in the world left talking to myself. When I 
got up to return to the camp, he came over to me again. 
“I know who you are,” he said. “People in the village say that 
you’re a very decent person, always good-humored and prepared 
to help others, but I see something else: rage and frustration.” 
He might have been a government spy, but I decided to tell 
him everything I was feeling, even though I ran the risk of being 
arrested. We walked together to the field hospital where I was 
working; I took him to the dormitory, which was empty at the 
time (my colleagues were all having fun at the annual festival 
being held in the town), and I asked if he’d like a drink. He 
produced a bottle from his pocket. 
“Palinka,” he said, meaning the traditional drink of Romania, 
with an incredibly high alcohol content. “On me.” 
We drank together, and I didn’t even notice that I was get-
ting steadily drunk. I only realized the state I was in when I tried 
to go to the toilet, tripped over something, and fell flat. 
“Don’t move,” said the man. “Look at what is there before 
your eyes.” 
A line of ants. 
“They all think they’re very wise. They have memory, intel-
ligence, organizational powers, a spirit of sacrifice. They look 
for food in summer, store it away for the winter, and now they 


216 P a u l o C o e l h o 

are setting forth again, in this icy spring, to work. If the world 
was destroyed by an atomic bomb tomorrow, the ants would 
survive.” 
“How do you know all this?” 
“I studied biology.” 
“Why the hell don’t you work to improve the living condi-
tions of your own people? What are you doing in the middle of 
the forest, talking to the trees?” 
“In the first place, I wasn’t alone; apart from the trees, you 
were listening to me too. But to answer your question, I left biol-
ogy to work as a blacksmith.” 
I struggled to my feet. My head was still spinning, but I was 
thinking clearly enough to understand the poor man’s situation. 
Despite a university education, he had been unable to find work. 
I told him that the same thing happened in my country too. 
“No, that’s not what I meant. I left biology because I wanted 
to work as a blacksmith. Even as a child, I was fascinated by 
those men hammering steel, making a strange kind of music, 
sending out sparks all around, plunging the red-hot metal into 
water, and creating clouds of steam. I was unhappy as a biolo-
gist, because my dream was to make rigid metal take on soft 
shapes. Then, one day, a protector appeared.” 
“A protector?” 
“Let’s say that, on seeing those ants doing exactly what 
they’re programmed to do, you were to exclaim: ‘How fantastic!’ 
The guards are genetically prepared to sacrifice themselves for 
the queen, the workers carry leaves ten times their own weight, the 
engineers make tunnels that can resist storms and floods. They 


217 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

enter into mortal combat with their enemies, they suffer for the 
community, and they never ask: ‘Why are we doing this?’ People 
try to imitate the perfect society of the ants, and as a biologist, 
I was playing my part until someone came along with this 
question: ‘Are you happy doing what you’re doing?’ ‘Of course 
I am,’ I said. ‘I’m being useful to my own people.’ ‘And that’s 
enough?’ 
“I didn’t know whether it was enough or not, but I said that 
he seemed to me to be both arrogant and egotistical. He replied: 
‘Possibly. But all you will achieve is to repeat what has been done 
since man was man—keeping things organized.’ 
“ ‘But the world has progressed,’ I said. He asked if I knew 
any history. Of course I did. He asked another question: ‘Thou-
sands of years ago, weren’t we capable of building enormous 
structures like the pyramids? Weren’t we capable of worship-
ing gods, weaving, making fire, finding lovers and wives, send-
ing written messages? Of course we were. But although we’ve 
succeeded in replacing slaves with wage slaves, all the advances 
we’ve made have been in the field of science. Human beings are 
still asking the same questions as their ancestors. In short, they 
haven’t evolved at all.’ At that point, I understood that the per-
son asking me these questions was someone sent from heaven, 
an angel, a protector.” 
“Why do you call him a protector?” 
“Because he told me that there were two traditions, one that 
makes us repeat the same thing for centuries at a time, and an-
other that opens the door into the unknown. However, the sec-
ond tradition is difficult, uncomfortable, and dangerous, and if 


218 P a u l o C o e l h o 

it attracted too many followers, it would end up destroying the 
society which, following the example of the ants, took so long 
to build. And so the second tradition went underground and 
has only managed to survive over so many centuries because its 
followers created a secret language of signs.” 
“Did you ask more questions?” 
“Of course I did, because, although I’d denied it, he knew I 
was dissatisfied with what I was doing. My protector said: ‘I’m 
afraid of taking steps that are not on the map, but by taking 
those steps despite my fears, I have a much more interesting life.’ 
I asked more about the Tradition, and he said something like: 
‘As long as God is merely man, we’ll always have enough food 
to eat and somewhere to live. When the Mother finally regains 
her freedom, we might have to sleep rough and live on love, or 
we might be able to balance emotion and work.’ My protector 
then asked: ‘If you weren’t a biologist, what would you be?’ I 
said: ‘A blacksmith, but they don’t earn enough money.’ And he 
replied: ‘Well, when you grow tired of being what you’re not, go 
and have fun and celebrate life, hammering metal into shape. In 
time, you’ll discover that it will give you more than pleasure, it 
will give you meaning.’ ‘How do I follow this tradition you spoke 
of ?’ I asked. ‘As I said, through symbols,’ he replied. ‘Start do-
ing what you want to do, and everything else will be revealed to 
you. Believe that God is the Mother and looks after her children 
and never lets anything bad happen to them. I did that and I 
survived. I discovered that there were other people who did the 
same but who are considered to be mad, irresponsible, supersti-
tious. Since time immemorial, they’ve sought their inspiration in 


219 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

nature. We build pyramids, but we also develop symbols.’ 
“Having said that, he left, and I never saw him again. I 
only know, from that moment on, symbols did begin to appear 
because my eyes had been opened by that conversation. Hard 
though it was, one evening I told my family that, although I 
had everything a man could dream of having, I was unhappy, 
and that I had, in fact, been born to be a blacksmith. My wife 
protested, saying: ‘You were born a gypsy and had to face end-
less humiliations to get where you are, and yet you want to go 
back?’ My son, however, was thrilled, because he too liked to 
watch the blacksmiths in our village and hated the laboratories 
in the big cities. 
“I started dividing my time between biological research and 
working as a blacksmith’s apprentice. I was always tired, but I 
was much happier. One day I left my job and set up my own 
blacksmith’s business, which went completely wrong from the 
start. Just when I was starting to believe in life, things got mark-
edly worse. One day I was working away and I saw that there 
before me was a symbol. 
“The unworked steel arrives in my workshop and I have to 
transform it into parts for cars, agricultural machinery, kitchen 
utensils. Do you know how that’s done? First, I heat the metal 
until it’s red-hot, then I beat it mercilessly with my heaviest 
hammer until the metal takes on the form I need. Then I plunge 
it into a bucket of cold water and the whole workshop is filled 
with the roar of steam while the metal sizzles and crackles in 
response to the sudden change in temperature. I have to keep 
repeating that process until the object I’m making is perfect: 


220 P a u l o C o e l h o 

once is not enough.” 
The blacksmith paused for a long time, lit a cigarette, then 
went on. 
“Sometimes the steel I get simply can’t withstand such treat-
ment. The heat, the hammer blows, the cold water cause it to 
crack. And I know that I’ll never be able to make it into a good 
plowshare or an engine shaft. Then I throw it on the pile of 
scrap metal at the entrance to my forge.” 
Another long pause, then the blacksmith concluded: “I know 
that God is putting me through the fire of afflictions. I’ve ac-
cepted the blows that life has dealt me, and sometimes I feel as 
cold and indifferent as the water that inflicts such pain on the 
steel. But my one prayer is this: ‘Please, God, my Mother, don’t 
give up until I’ve taken on the shape that you wish for me. Do 
this by whatever means you think best, for as long as you like, 
but never ever throw me on the scrap heap of souls.’” 

I may have been drunk when I finished my conversation with that 
man, but I knew that my life had changed. There was a tradition 
behind everything we learn, and I needed to go in search of people 
who, consciously or unconsciously, were able to make manifest the 
female side of God. Instead of cursing my government and all the 
political shenanigans, I decided to do what I really wanted to do: 
heal people. I wasn’t interested in anything else. 
Since I didn’t have the necessary resources, I approached the 
local men and women, and they guided me to the world of me-
dicinal herbs. I discovered that there was a popular tradition that 


221 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

went back hundreds of years and was passed from generation 
to generation through experience rather than through techni-
cal knowledge. With their help, I was able to do far more than 
I would otherwise have been able to do, because I wasn’t there 
merely to fulfill a university task or to help my government to 
sell arms, or, unwittingly, to spread party political propaganda. I 
was there because healing people made me happy. 
This brought me closer to nature, to the oral tradition, and 
to plants. Back in Britain, I decided to talk to other doctors and 
I asked them: “Do you always know exactly which medicines to 
prescribe or are you sometimes guided by intuition?” Almost all 
of them, once they had dropped their guard, admitted that they 
were often guided by a voice and that when they ignored the 
advice of the voice, they ended up giving the wrong treatment. 
Obviously they make use of all the available technology, but 
they know that there is a corner, a dark corner, where lies the 
real meaning of the cure, and the best decision to make. 
My protector threw my world off balance—even though he 
was only a gypsy blacksmith. I used to go at least once a year to 
his village, and we would talk about how, when we dare to see 
things differently, life opens up to our eyes. On one of those 
visits, I met other disciples of his, and together we discussed our 
fears and our conquests. My protector said: “I too get scared, 
but it’s at such moments that I discover a wisdom that is beyond 
me, and I go forward.” 
Now I earn a lot of money working as a GP in Edinburgh, 
and I would earn even more if I went to work in London, but I 
prefer to make the most of life and to take time out. I do what I 


222 P a u l o C o e l h o 

like: I combine the healing processes of the ancients, the Arcane 
Tradition, with the most modern techniques of present-day 
medicine, the Hippocratic Tradition. I’m writing a paper on the 
subject, and many people in the “scientific” community, when 
they see my text published in a specialist journal, will dare to 
take the steps which, deep down, they’ve always wanted to take. 
I don’t believe that the mind is the source of all ills; there 
are real diseases too. I think antibiotics and antivirals were great 
advances for humanity. I don’t believe that a patient of mine with 
appendicitis can be cured by meditation alone; what he needs is 
some good emergency surgery. So I take each step with courage 
and fear, combining technique and inspiration. And I’m careful 
who I say these things to, because I might get dubbed a witch doc-
tor, and then many lives that I could have saved would be lost. 
When I’m not sure, I ask the Great Mother for help. She has 
never yet failed to answer me. But she has always counseled me 
to be discreet. She probably gave the same advice to Athena on 
more than one occasion, but Athena was too fascinated by the 
world she was just starting to discover, and she didn’t listen. 

A LO N D O N N E W S PA P E R , AU G U S T 24, 1991 

T H E W I T C H O F P O RT O B E L L O 
London (© Jeremy Lutton)—“That’s another reason why 
I don’t believe in God. I mean, look at the behavior of 
people who do believe!” This was the reaction of Robert 


223 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Wilson, one of the traders in Portobello Road. 
This road, known around the world for its antique 
shops and its Saturday flea market, was transformed last 
night into a battlefield, requiring the intervention of 
at least fifty police officers from the Royal Borough of 
Kensington and Chelsea to restore order. By the end of 
the fracas, five people had been injured, although none 
seriously. The reason behind this pitched battle, which 
lasted nearly two hours, was a demonstration organized 
by the Rev. Ian Buck to protest about what he called “the 
Satanic cult at the heart of England.” 
According to Rev. Buck, a group of suspicious indi-
viduals have been keeping the neighborhood awake every 
Monday night for the last six months, Monday being 
their chosen night for invoking the Devil. The ceremonies 
are led by a Lebanese woman, Sherine H. Khalil, who calls 
herself Athena, after the goddess of wisdom. 
About two hundred people began meeting in a former 
East India Company warehouse, but the numbers in-
creased over time, and in recent weeks, an equally large 
crowd has been gathering outside, hoping to gain entry 
and take part in the ceremony. When his various verbal 
complaints, petitions, and letters to the local newspapers 
achieved nothing, the Rev. Buck decided to mobilize the 
community, calling on his parishioners to gather outside 
the warehouse by 1900 hours yesterday to stop the “devil 
worshipers” from getting in. 
“As soon as we received the first complaint, we sent 


224 P a u l o C o e l h o 

someone to inspect the place, but no drugs were found 
nor evidence of any other kind of illicit activity,” said 
an official who preferred not to be identified because an 
inquiry has just been set up to investigate what happened. 
“They aren’t contravening the noise nuisance laws because 
they turn off the music at ten o’clock prompt, so there’s 
really nothing more we can do. Britain, after all, allows 
freedom of worship.” 
The Rev. Buck has another version of events. 
“The fact is that this witch of Portobello, this mistress 
of charlatanism, has contacts with people high up in the 
government, which explains why the police—paid for by 
taxpayers’ money to maintain order and decency—refuse 
to do anything. We’re living in an age in which every-
thing is allowed, and democracy is being devoured and 
destroyed by that limitless freedom.” 
The vicar says that he was suspicious of the group right 
from the start. They had rented a crumbling old building 
and spent whole days trying to renovate it, “which is clear 
evidence that they belong to some sect and have undergone 
some kind of brainwashing, because no one in today’s 
world works for free.” When asked if his parishioners ever 
did any charitable work in the community, the Rev. Buck 
replied: “Yes, but we do it in the name of Jesus.” 
Yesterday evening, when she arrived at the warehouse 
to meet her waiting followers, Sherine Khalil, her son, and 
some of her friends were prevented from entering by the Rev. 
Buck’s parishioners, who were carrying placards and using 


225 

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megaphones to call on the rest of the neighborhood to join 
them. This verbal aggression immediately degenerated into 
fighting, and soon it was impossible to control either side. 
“They say they’re fighting in the name of Jesus, but 
what they really want is for people to continue to ignore 
the teachings of Christ, according to which ‘we are all 
gods,’ ” said the well-known actress Andrea McCain, one 
of Sherine Khalil’s, or Athena’s, followers. Ms. McCain 
received a cut above her right eye, which was treated at 
once, and she left the area before your reporter could find 
out more about her links with the sect. 
Once order was restored, Mrs. Khalil was anxious to 
reassure her eight-year-old son, but she did tell us that 
all that takes place in the warehouse is some collective 
dancing, followed by the invocation of a being known as 
Hagia Sofia, of whom people are free to ask questions. 
The celebration ends with a kind of sermon and a group 
prayer to the Great Mother. The officer charged with 
investigating the original complaints confirmed this. 
As far as we could ascertain, the group has no name 
and is not registered as a charity. According to the lawyer 
Sheldon Williams, this is not necessary. “We live in a free 
country, and people can gather together in an enclosed 
space for non-profit-making activities, as long as these 
do not break any laws such as incitement to racism or the 
consumption of narcotics.” 
Mrs. Khalil emphatically rejected any suggestion that 
she should stop the meetings because of the disturbances. 


226 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“We gather together to offer mutual encouragement,” 
she said, “because it’s very hard to face social pressures 
alone. I demand that your newspaper denounce the reli-
gious discrimination to which we’ve been subjected over 
the centuries. Whenever we do something that is not in 
accord with state-instituted and state-approved religions, 
there is always an attempt to crush us, as happened today. 
Before, we would have faced martyrdom, prison, being 
burned at the stake, or sent into exile, but now we are in 
a position to respond, and force will be answered with 
force, just as compassion will be repaid with compassion.” 
When faced with the Rev. Buck’s accusations, she 
accused him of “manipulating his parishioners and using 
intolerance and lies as an excuse for violence.” 
According to the sociologist Arthaud Lenox, phenom-
ena like this will become increasingly common in the future, 
possibly involving more serious clashes between established 
religions. “Now that the Marxist utopia has shown itself 
incapable of channeling society’s ideals, the world is ripe for 
a religious revival, born of civilization’s natural fear of sig-
nificant dates. However, I believe that when the year 2000 
does arrive and the world survives intact, common sense 
will prevail and religions will revert to being a refuge for the 
weak, who are always in search of guidance.” 
This view is contested by Dom Evaristo Piazza, the 
Vatican’s auxiliary bishop in the United Kingdom. “What 
we are seeing is not the spiritual awakening that we all long 
for, but a wave of what Americans call New Ageism, a kind 


227 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

of breeding ground in which everything is permitted, where 
dogmas are not respected, and the most absurd ideas from 
the past return to lay waste to the human mind. Unscrupu-
lous people like this young woman are trying to instill their 
false ideas in weak, suggestible minds, with the one aim of 
making money and gaining personal power.” 
The German historian Franz Herbert, currently work-
ing at the Goethe Institute in London, has a different 
idea. “The established religions no longer ask fundamen-
tal questions about our identity and our reason for living. 
Instead, they concentrate purely on a series of dogmas 
and rules concerned only with fitting in with a particular 
social and political organization. People in search of real 
spirituality are, therefore, setting off in new directions, 
and that inevitably means a return to the past and to 
primitive religions, before those religions were contami-
nated by the structures of power.” 
At the police station where the incident was recorded, 
Sergeant William Morton stated that should Sherine 
Khalil’s group decide to hold their meeting on the follow-
ing Monday and feel that they are under threat, then they 
must apply in writing for police protection and thus avoid 
a repetition of last night’s events. 
(With additional information from Andrew Fish. Photos by Mark 
Guillhem.) 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 


228 P a u l o C o e l h o 

I read the report on the plane, when I was flying back from the 
Ukraine, feeling full of doubts. I still hadn’t managed to ascer-
tain whether the Chernobyl disaster had been as big as it was 
said to have been, or whether it had been used by the major oil 
producers to inhibit the use of other sources of energy. 
Anyway, I was horrified by what I read in the article. The 
photos showed broken windows, a furious Reverend Buck, 
and—there lay the danger—a beautiful woman with fiery eyes 
and her son in her arms. I saw at once what could happen, both 
good and bad. I went straight from the airport to Portobello, 
convinced that both my predictions would become reality. 
On the positive side, the following Monday’s meeting was 
one of the most successful events in the area’s history: many 
local people came, some curious to see the “being” mentioned 
in the article, others bearing placards defending freedom of re-
ligion and freedom of speech. The venue would only hold two 
hundred people, and so the rest of the crowd were all crammed 
together on the pavement outside, hoping for at least a glimpse 
of the woman who appeared to be the priestess of the op-
pressed. 
When she arrived, she was received with applause, handwrit-
ten notes, and requests for help; some people threw flowers, and 
one lady of uncertain age asked her to keep on fighting for wom-
en’s freedom and for the right to worship the Mother. The parish-
ioners from the week before must have been intimidated by the 
crowd and so failed to turn up, despite the threats they had made 
during the previous days. There were no aggressive comments, and 
the ceremony passed off as normal, with dancing, the appearance 


229 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

of Hagia Sofia (by then, I knew that she was simply another facet 
of Athena herself ), and a final celebration (this had been added 
recently, when the group moved to the warehouse, lent by one of 
its original members), and that was that. 
During her sermon, Athena spoke as if possessed by some-
one else. 
“We all have a duty to love and to allow love to manifest it-
self in the way it thinks best. We cannot and must not be fright-
ened when the powers of darkness want to make themselves 
heard, those same powers that introduced the word sin merely to 
control our hearts and minds. Jesus Christ, whom we all know, 
turned to the woman taken in adultery and said: ‘Has no man 
condemned thee? Neither do I condemn thee.’ He healed peo-
ple on the Sabbath, he allowed a prostitute to wash his feet, he 
promised a thief that he would enjoy the delights of Paradise, 
he ate forbidden foods, and he said that we should concern our-
selves only with today, because the lilies in the field toil not, 
neither do they spin, but are arrayed in glory. 
“What is sin? It is a sin to prevent Love from showing itself. 
And the Mother is Love. We are entering a new world in which 
we can choose to follow our own steps, not those that society 
forces us to take. If necessary, we will confront the forces of 
darkness again, as we did last week. But no one will silence our 
voice or our heart.” 
I was witnessing the transformation of a woman into an 
icon. She spoke with great conviction, with dignity and with 
faith in what she was saying. I hoped that things really were like 
that, that we truly were entering a new world, and that I would 


230 P a u l o C o e l h o 

live to see it. 
She left the warehouse to as much acclaim as she had entered 
it, and when she saw me in the crowd, she called me over and 
said that she’d missed me. She was happy and confident, sure 
that she was doing the right thing. 
This was the positive side of the newspaper article, and 
things might have ended there. I wanted my analysis of events 
to be wrong, but three days later, my prediction was confirmed. 
The negative side emerged in full force. 
Employing the services of one of the most highly regarded 
and conservative law practices in Britain, whose senior part-
ners—unlike Athena—really did have contacts in all spheres of 
the government, and basing his case on published statements 
made by Athena, the Reverend Buck called a news conference 
to say that he was suing for defamation, calumny, and moral 
damages. 
The deputy editor called me in. He knew I was friendly with 
the central figure in that scandal and suggested that we publish 
an exclusive interview. My first reaction was of disgust: How 
could I use my friendship to sell newspapers? 
However, after we had talked further, I started to think that 
it might be a good idea. She would have the chance to present 
her side of the story; indeed, she could use the interview to 
promote all the things for which she was now openly fighting. 
I left the deputy editor’s office with the plan we had drawn up 
together: a series of articles on new trends in society and on 
radical changes that were taking place in the search for religious 
belief. In one of those articles, I would publish Athena’s point 


231 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

of view. 
That same afternoon, I went to her house, taking advantage 
of the fact that the invitation had come from her when we met 
outside the warehouse. The neighbors told me that, the day be-
fore, court officials had attempted to serve a summons on her 
but failed. 
I phoned later on, without success. I tried again as night 
was falling, but no one answered. From then on, I phoned every 
half an hour, growing more anxious with each call. Ever since 
Hagia Sofia had cured my insomnia, tiredness drove me to bed 
at eleven o’clock, but this time anxiety kept me awake. 
I found her mother’s number in the phone book, but it was 
late, and if Athena wasn’t there, then I would only cause the 
whole family to worry. What to do? I turned on the TV to see 
if anything had happened—nothing special, London continued 
as before, with its marvels and its perils. 
I decided to try one last time. The phone rang three times, 
and someone answered. I recognized Andrea’s voice at once. 
“What do you want?” she asked. 
“Athena asked me to get in touch. Is everything all right?” 
“Everything’s all right and not all right, depending on your 
way of looking at things. But I think you might be able to help.” 
“Where is she?” 
She hung up without saying any more. 

DE I D R E O’NE I L L , K N OW N A S ED DA 


232 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Athena stayed in a hotel near my house. News from London 
regarding local events, especially minor conflicts in the suburbs, 
never reaches Scotland. We’re not much interested in how the 
English sort out their little problems. We have our own flag, our 
own football team, and soon we will have our own parliament. 
I let Athena rest for a whole day. The following morning, 
instead of going into the little temple and performing the ritu-
als I know, I decided to take her and her son to a wood near 
Edinburgh. There, while the boy played and ran about among 
the trees, she told me in detail what was going on. 
When she’d finished, I said, “It’s daylight, the sky is cloudy, 
and human beings believe that beyond the clouds lives an all-
powerful God, guiding the fate of men. Meanwhile, look at your 
son, look at your feet, listen to the sounds around you: down 
here is the Mother, so much closer, bringing joy to children and 
energy to those who walk over her body. Why do people prefer 
to believe in something far away and forget what is there before 
their eyes, a true manifestation of the miracle?” 
“I know the answer. Because up there someone is guiding 
us and giving his orders, hidden behind the clouds, unques-
tionable in his wisdom. Down here we have physical contact 
with a magical reality, and the freedom to choose where our 
steps will go.” 
“Exactly. But do you think that is what people want? Do 
they want the freedom to choose their own steps?” 
“Yes, I think they do. The earth I’m standing on now has 
laid out many strange paths for me, from a village in Transylva-


233 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

nia to a city in the Middle East, from there to another city on 
an island, and then to the desert and back to Transylvania. From 
a suburban bank to a real estate company in the Persian Gulf. 
From a dance group to a bedouin. And whenever my feet drove 
me onward, I said yes instead of saying no.” 
“What did you gain from all that?” 
“Today I can see people’s auras. I can awaken the Mother in 
my soul. My life now has meaning, and I know what I’m fight-
ing for. But why do you ask? You too gained the most important 
power of all—the gift of healing. Andrea can now prophesy and 
converse with spirits. I’ve followed her spiritual development ev-
ery step of the way.” 
“What else have you gained?” 
“The joy of being alive. I know that I’m here, and that every-
thing is a miracle, a revelation.” 
The little boy fell over and grazed his knee. Instinctively, 
Athena ran to him, wiped the wound clean, told him not to 
worry, and the boy continued running about in the forest. I used 
that as a signal. 
“What just happened to your little boy, happened to me. 
And it’s happening to you too, isn’t it?” 
“Yes, but I don’t think I stumbled and fell. I think I’m being 
tested again, and that my next step will be revealed to me.” 
At such moments, a teacher must say nothing, only bless the 
disciple. Because however much the teacher may want to save 
her disciple from suffering, the paths are mapped out and the 
disciple’s feet are eager to follow them. I suggested we go back 


234 P a u l o C o e l h o 

to the wood that night, just the two of us. She asked where she 
could leave her son, and I said that I would take care of that. 
I had a neighbor who owed me a favor and who would be de-
lighted to look after Viorel. 

As evening fell, we returned to that same place, and on the way, 
we spoke of things that had nothing to do with the ritual we 
were about to perform. Athena had seen me using a new kind 
of depilatory wax and was intrigued to know what advantages 
it had over the old methods. We talked animatedly about van-
ity, fashion, the cheapest places to buy clothes, female behavior, 
feminism, hairstyles. At one point she said something along the 
lines of: “But if the soul is ageless, I don’t know why we should 
be so worried about all this,” then realized that it was all right just 
to relax and talk about superficial subjects. More than that, such 
conversations were really fun, and how we look is something that’s 
still very important in women’s lives (it is in men’s lives too, but in 
a different way, and they’re not as open about it as we are). 
As we approached the place I’d chosen—or, rather, which 
the wood was choosing for me—I started to feel the presence 
of the Mother. In my case, this presence manifests itself in a 
certain, mysterious inner joy that always touches me and almost 
moves me to tears. It was the moment to stop and change the 
subject. 
“Collect some wood for kindling,” I said. 
“But it’s dark.” 
“There’s enough light from the full moon even if it’s ob-


235 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

scured by clouds. Train your eyes: they were made to see more 
than you think.” 
She began doing as I asked, occasionally cursing because 
she’d scratched herself on a thorn. Almost half an hour passed, 
and during that time, we didn’t talk. I felt the excitement of 
knowing that the Mother was close by, the euphoria of being 
there with that woman who still seemed little more than a child 
and who trusted me and was keeping me company in the search 
that sometimes seemed too mad for the human mind. 
Athena was still at the stage of answering questions, just as 
she’d responded to mine that afternoon. I had been like that 
once, until I allowed myself to be transported completely into 
the kingdom of mystery, where it was simply a matter of con-
templating, celebrating, worshiping, praising, and allowing the 
gift to manifest itself. 
I was watching Athena collecting firewood and I saw the girl 
I once was, in search of veiled secrets and secret powers. Life had 
taught me something completely different: the powers were not 
secret and the secrets had been revealed a long time ago. When 
I saw that she had gathered enough firewood, I indicated that 
she should stop. 
I myself looked for some larger branches and put them on 
top of the kindling. So it was in life. In order for the more 
substantial pieces of wood to catch fire, the kindling must burn 
first. In order for us to liberate the energy of our strength, our 
weakness must first have a chance to reveal itself. 
In order for us to understand the powers we carry within us 
and the secrets that have already been revealed, it was first nec-


236 P a u l o C o e l h o 

essary to allow the surface—expectations, fears, appearances— 
to be burned away. We were entering the peace now settling 
upon the forest, with the gentle wind, the moonlight behind 
the clouds, the noises of the animals that sally forth at night to 
hunt, thus fulfilling the cycle of birth and death of the Mother, 
and without ever being criticized for following their instincts 
and their nature. 
I lit the fire. 
Neither of us felt like saying anything. For what seemed like 
an eternity, we merely contemplated the dance of the fire, know-
ing that hundreds of thousands of people, all over the world, 
would also be sitting by their fireside, regardless of whether they 
had modern heating systems in their house or not; they did this 
because they were sitting before a symbol. 
It took a great effort to emerge from that trance, which, 
although it meant nothing specific to me, and did not make 
me see gods, auras, or ghosts, nonetheless left me in the state 
of grace I needed to be in. I focused once more on the pres-
ent, on the young woman by my side, on the ritual I needed to 
perform. 
“How is your student?” I asked. 
“Difficult, but if she wasn’t, I might not learn what I need 
to learn.” 
“And what powers is she developing?” 
“She speaks with beings in the parallel world.” 
“As you converse with Hagia Sofia?” 
“No, as you well know, Hagia Sofia is the Mother manifest-
ing herself in me. She speaks with invisible beings.” 


237 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

I knew this, but I wanted to be sure. Athena was more silent 
than usual. I don’t know if she had discussed the events in Lon-
don with Andrea, but that didn’t matter. I got up, opened the 
bag I had with me, took out a handful of specially chosen herbs, 
and threw them into the flames. 
“The wood has started to speak,” said Athena, as if this were 
something perfectly normal, and that was good, it meant that 
miracles were now becoming part of her life. 
“What is it saying?” 
“Nothing at the moment, only noises.” 
Minutes later, she heard a song coming from the fire. 
“Oh, it’s wonderful!” 
There spoke the little girl, not the wife or mother. 
“Stay just as you are. Don’t try to concentrate or follow my 
steps or understand what I’m saying. Relax and feel good. That 
is sometimes all we can hope for from life.” 
I knelt down, picked up a red-hot piece of wood, and drew 
a circle around her, leaving a small opening through which I 
could enter. I could hear the same music as Athena, and I danced 
around her, invoking the union of the male fire with the earth, 
which received it now with arms and legs spread wide, the fire 
that purified everything, transforming into energy the strength 
contained in the firewood, in those branches, in those beings, 
both human and invisible. I danced for as long as the melody 
from the fire lasted, and I made protective gestures to the child 
who was sitting, smiling, inside the circle. 
When the flames had burned down, I took a little ash and 
sprinkled it on Athena’s head. Then with my feet I erased the 


238 P a u l o C o e l h o 

circle I’d drawn around her. 
“Thank you,” she said. “I felt very loved, wanted, protected.” 
“In difficult moments, remember that feeling.” 
“Now that I’ve found my path, there will be no more dif-
ficult moments. After all, I have a mission to fulfill, don’t I?” 
“Yes, we all have a mission to fulfill.” 
She started to feel uncertain. 
“And what about the difficult moments?” she asked. 
“That isn’t an intelligent thing to ask. Remember what you 
said just now: you are loved, wanted, protected.” 
“I’ll do my best.” 
Her eyes filled with tears. Athena had understood my answer. 

SA M I R A R. KH A L I L , H O U S E W I F E 

My own grandson! What has my grandson got to do with all 
this? What kind of world are we living in? Are we still in the 
Middle Ages, engaging in witch hunts? 
I ran to him. He had a bloody nose, but he didn’t seem to 
care about my distress and pushed me away. 
“I know how to defend myself, and I did.” 
I may never have produced a child in my own womb, but 
I know the hearts of children. I was far more worried about 
Athena than I was about Viorel. This was just one of many 
fights he would have to face in his life, and there was a flicker 
of pride in his swollen eyes. 
“Some children at school said that Mum was a devil wor-


239 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

shiper!” 
Sherine arrived shortly afterward, soon enough to see the 
boy’s bloodied face and to kick up a fuss. She wanted to go 
straight to the school and talk to the head teacher, but first I 
put my arms around her. I let her cry out all her tears and all 
her frustrations, and the best thing I could do then was to keep 
silent and try to convey my love for her through that silence. 
When she had calmed down a little, I explained carefully 
that she could come back home and live with us, that we would 
take care of everything. When her father read about the case 
being brought against her, he had immediately spoken to some 
lawyers. We would do everything we could to get her out of 
this situation regardless of comments from the neighbors, ironic 
looks from acquaintances, and the false solidarity of friends. 
Nothing in the world was more important than my daugh-
ter’s happiness, even though I’d never understood why she al-
ways had to choose the most difficult and painful of paths. But 
a mother doesn’t have to understand anything, she simply has 
to love and protect. And feel proud. Knowing that we could 
give her almost everything, she nevertheless set off early in 
search of her independence. She’d had her stumbles and her 
failures, but she insisted on facing any storms alone. She went 
looking for her mother, aware of the risks she was running, 
and in the end, that encounter brought her closer to us. I knew 
she had never once heeded my advice—get a degree, get mar-
ried, put up with the problems of living with someone without 
complaint, don’t try to go beyond the limits set by society. And 
what had been the result? 


240 P a u l o C o e l h o 

By following my daughter’s story, I became a better person. 
Obviously I didn’t understand about the Mother Goddess or 
Athena’s need always to surround herself with strangers, or her 
inability to be content with all that she’d achieved after so much 
work. But deep down, even though it may be rather late in the 
day for such ideas, I wish I could have been like her. 
I was about to get up and prepare something to eat, but she 
stopped me. 
“I want to stay here for a while with your arms around me. 
That’s all I need. Viorel, go and watch TV. I want to talk to your 
grandmother.” 
The boy obeyed. 
“I must have caused you a lot of suffering.” 
“Not at all. On the contrary, you and your son are the source 
of all our joy and our reason for living.” 
“But I haven’t exactly—” 
“I’m glad it’s been the way it has. I can say it now: there were 
moments when I hated you, when I bitterly regretted not having 
followed the advice of that nurse and adopted another baby. 
Then I’d ask myself: How can a mother hate her own daughter? 
I took tranquillizers, played bridge with my friends, went on 
shopping sprees, and all to make up for the love I’d given you 
and which I felt I wasn’t getting back. 
“A few months ago, when you decided to give up yet another 
job that was bringing you both money and prestige, I was in de-
spair. I went to the local church. I wanted to make a promise to 
the Virgin and beg her to bring you back to reality, to force you 


241 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

to change your life and make the most of the chances you were 
throwing away. I was ready to do anything in exchange for that. 
“I stood looking at the Virgin and Child. And I said: ‘You’re a 
mother and you know what’s happening. Ask anything of me, but 
save my child, because I think she’s bent on self-destruction.’ ” 
I felt Sherine’s arms holding me tighter. She was crying 
again, but her tears were different this time. I was doing my best 
to control my feelings. 
“And do you know what I felt at that moment? I felt that 
she was talking to me and saying: ‘Listen, Samira, that’s what I 
thought too. I suffered for years because my son wouldn’t listen 
to anything I said. I used to worry about his safety, I didn’t like 
the friends he chose, and he showed no respect for laws, cus-
toms, religion, or his elders.’ Need I go on?” 
“Yes, I’d like to hear the rest of the story.” 
“The Virgin concluded by saying, ‘But my son didn’t listen 
to me. And now I’m very glad that he didn’t.’ ” 
I gently removed myself from her embrace and got up. 
“You two need to eat.” 
I went to the kitchen, prepared some onion soup and a dish 
of tabbouleh, warmed up some unleavened bread, put it all on 
the table, and we had lunch together. We talked about trivial 
things, which, at such moments, always help to bring us together 
and justify our pleasure at being there, quietly, even if, outside, a 
storm is uprooting trees and sowing destruction. Of course, at 
the end of that afternoon, my daughter and my grandson would 
walk out of the door to confront the winds, the thunder, and 


242 P a u l o C o e l h o 

the lightning all over again, but that was their choice. 
“Mum, you said that you’d do anything for me, didn’t you?” 
It was true. I would lay down my life if necessary. 
“Don’t you think I should be prepared to do anything for 
Viorel too?” 
“I think that’s a mother’s instinct, but instinct aside, it’s the 
greatest proof of love there is.” 
She continued eating. 
“You know that your father is happy to help with this case 
being brought against you, if you want him to, that is.” 
“Of course I do. This is my family we’re talking about.” 
I thought twice, three times, but couldn’t hold back my 
words. “Can I give you some advice? I know you have some 
influential friends—that journalist, for example. Why don’t you 
ask him to write about your story and tell him your version of 
events? The press are giving a lot of coverage to that vicar, and 
people will end up thinking he’s right.” 
“So, as well as accepting what I do, you also want to help me?” 
“Yes, Sherine. Even though I may not understand you, even 
though I sometimes suffer as the Virgin must have suffered all her 
life, even if you’re not Jesus Christ with an all-important message 
for the world, I’m on your side and I want to see you win.” 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 

Athena arrived while I was frantically making notes for what I 
imagined would be the ideal interview on the events in Portobello 


243 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

and the rebirth of the Goddess. It was a very, very delicate affair. 
What I saw at the warehouse was a woman saying, “You 
can do it, let the Great Mother teach you—trust in love, and 
miracles will happen.” And the crowd agreed, but that wouldn’t 
last long, because we were living in an age in which slavery was 
the only path to happiness. Free will demands immense respon-
sibility; it’s hard work, it brings with it anguish and suffering. 
“I need you to write something about me,” she said. 
I told her that we should wait a little—after all, the whole 
affair could fade from view the following week—but that, mean-
while, I’d prepared a few questions about Female Energy. 
“At the moment, all the fuss and the fighting is only of in-
terest to people in the immediate area and to the tabloids. No 
respectable newspaper has published a single line about it. Lon-
don is full of these little local disturbances, and getting into the 
broadsheets really isn’t advisable. It would be best if the group 
didn’t meet for two or three weeks. However, I think that the 
business about the Goddess, if treated with the seriousness it 
deserves, could make a lot of people ask themselves some really 
important questions.” 
“Over supper that time, you said that you loved me. And 
now you’re not only telling me you don’t want to help me, you’re 
also asking me to give up the things I believe in.” 
How to interpret those words? Was she finally accepting the 
love I’d offered her that night, and which accompanied me ev-
ery minute of my life? According to the Lebanese poet Khalil 
Gibran, it was more important to give than to receive, but while 
these were wise words, I was part of what is known as “hu-


244 P a u l o C o e l h o 

manity,” with my frailties, my moments of indecision, my desire 
simply to live in peace, to be the slave of my feelings and to 
surrender myself without asking any questions, without even 
knowing if my love was reciprocated. All she had to do was to 
let me love her; I was sure that Hagia Sofia would agree with 
me. Athena had been passing through my life now for nearly two 
years, and I was afraid she might simply continue on her way and 
disappear over the horizon, without my having even been able to 
accompany her on part of that journey. 
“Are you talking about love?” 
“I’m asking for your help.” 
What to do? Control myself, stay cool, not precipitate things 
and end up destroying them? Or take the step I needed to take, 
embrace her and protect her from all dangers? 
My head kept telling me to say, “Don’t you worry about a 
thing. I love you,” but instead I said, “I want to help. Please trust 
me. I’d do anything in the world for you, including saying no if 
I thought that was the right thing to do, even though you might 
not understand my reasoning.” 
I told her that the deputy editor on my newspaper had pro-
posed a series of articles about the reawakening of the God-
dess, which would include an interview with her. At first it had 
seemed to me an excellent idea, but now I saw that it would 
be best to wait a little. I said, “You either carry your mission 
forward or you defend yourself. You’re aware, I know, that what 
you’re doing is more important than how you’re seen by other 
people. Do you agree?” 
“I’m thinking of my son. Every day now he gets into some 


245 

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fight or argument at school.” 
“That will pass. In a week, it’ll be forgotten. That will be the 
moment to act, not in order to defend yourself against idiotic 
attacks, but to set out, confidently and wisely, the true breadth 
of your work. And if you have any doubts about my feelings and 
are determined to continue, then I’ll come with you to the next 
meeting. And we’ll see what happens.” 

The following Monday I went with her to the meeting. I was 
not now just another person in the crowd; I could see things as 
she was seeing them. 
People crowded into the warehouse; there were flowers and 
applause, young women calling her “the priestess of the God-
dess,” a few smartly dressed ladies begging for a private audience 
because of some illness in the family. The crowd started pushing 
us and blocking the entrance. We had never imagined that we 
might need some form of security, and I was frightened. I took 
her arm, picked up Viorel, and we went in. 
Inside the packed room, a very angry Andrea was waiting 
for us. 
“I think you should tell them that you’re not performing 
any miracles today!” she shouted at Athena. “You’re allowing 
yourself to be seduced by vanity! Why doesn’t Hagia Sofia tell 
all these people to go away?” 
“Because she can diagnose illnesses,” replied Athena defiantly. 
“And the more people who benefit from that, the better.” 
She was about to say more, but the crowd was applauding 


246 P a u l o C o e l h o 

and she stepped up onto the improvised stage. She turned on 
the small sound system she’d brought from home, gave instruc-
tions for people to dance against the rhythm of the music, and 
the ritual began. At a certain point, Viorel went and sat down 
in a corner—that was the moment for Hagia Sofia to appear. 
Athena did as I’d seen her do many times before: she abruptly 
turned off the music, clutched her head in her hands, and the 
people waited in silence, as if obeying an invisible command. 
The ritual followed its unvarying path: there were questions 
about love, which were rejected, although she agreed to com-
ment on anxieties, illnesses, and other personal problems. From 
where I was, I could see that some people had tears in their eyes, 
others behaved as if they were standing before a saint. Then 
came the moment for the closing sermon, before the group cel-
ebration of the Mother. 
Since I knew what would happen next, I started thinking 
about the best way to get out of there with the minimum of 
fuss. I hoped that she would take Andrea’s advice and tell them 
not to go looking for miracles there. I went over to where Vio-
rel was sitting, so that we could leave the place as soon as his 
mother had finished speaking. 
And that was when I heard the voice of Hagia Sofia. 
“Today, before we close, we’re going to talk about diet. For-
get all about slimming regimes.” 
Diet? Forget about slimming regimes? 
“We have survived for all these millennia because we have 
been able to eat. And now that seems to have become a curse. 


247 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Why? What is it that makes us, at forty years old, want to have 
the same body we had when we were young? Is it possible to stop 
time? Of course not. And why should we be thin?” 
I heard a kind of murmuring in the crowd. They were prob-
ably expecting a more spiritual message. 
“We don’t need to be thin. We buy books, we go to gyms, we 
expend a lot of brain power on trying to hold back time, when 
we should be celebrating the miracle of being here in this world. 
Instead of thinking about how to live better, we’re obsessed with 
weight. 
“Forget all about that. You can read all the books you want, 
do all the exercise you want, punish yourself as much as you 
want, but you will still have only two choices—either stop living 
or get fat. 
“Eat in moderation, but take pleasure in eating: it isn’t what 
enters a person’s mouth that’s evil, but what leaves it. Remember 
that for millennia we have struggled in order to keep from starv-
ing. Whose idea was it that we had to be thin all our lives? I’ll tell 
you: the vampires of the soul, those who are so afraid of the fu-
ture that they think it’s possible to stop the wheel of time. Hagia 
Sofia can guarantee that it’s not possible. Use the energy and ef-
fort you put into dieting to nourish yourself with spiritual bread. 
Know that the Great Mother gives generously and wisely. Respect 
that and you will get no fatter than passing time demands. Instead 
of artificially burning those calories, try to transform them into 
the energy required to fight for your dreams. No one ever stayed 
slim for very long just because of a diet.” 


248 P a u l o C o e l h o 

There was complete silence. Athena began the closing cer-
emony, and we all celebrated the presence of the Mother. I 
clasped Viorel in my arms, promising myself that next time I 
would bring a few friends along to provide a little improvised 
security. We left to the same shouts and applause as when we 
had arrived. 
A shopkeeper grabbed my arm. “This is absurd! If one of 
my windows gets smashed, I’ll sue you!” 
Athena was laughing and giving autographs. Viorel seemed 
happy. I just hoped that no journalist was there that night. 
When we finally managed to extricate ourselves from the crowd, 
we hailed a taxi. 
I asked if they would like to go somewhere to eat. “Of 
course,” said Athena, “that’s just what I’ve been talking about.” 

AN TO I N E LO C A D O U R , H I S TO R I A N 

In this long series of mistakes that came to be known as “the 
Witch of Portobello affair,” what surprises me most is the in-
genuousness of Heron Ryan, an international journalist of 
many years experience. When we spoke, he was horrified by the 
tabloid headlines: 
“The Goddess Diet!” screamed one. 
“Get Thin While You Eat, Says Witch of Portobello!” roared 
another from its front page. 
As well as touching on the sensitive topic of religion, Athena 
had gone further: she had talked about diet, a subject of national 


249 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

interest, more important even than wars, strikes, or natural disas-
ters. We may not all believe in God, but we all want to get thin. 
Reporters interviewed local shopkeepers, who all swore blind 
that, in the days preceding the mass meetings, they’d seen red and 
black candles being lit during rituals involving only a handful of 
people. It may have been nothing but cheap sensationalism, but 
Ryan should have foreseen that, with a court case in progress, 
the accuser would take every opportunity to bring to the judges’ 
attention what he considered to be not only a calumny, but also 
an attack on all the values that kept society going. 
That same week, one of the most prestigious British news-
papers published in its editorial column an article by the Rever-
end Ian Buck, minister at the Evangelical Church in Kensington. 
It said, among other things: 

As a good Christian, I have a duty to turn the other 
cheek when I am wrongly attacked or when my honor is 
impugned. However, we must not forget that while Jesus 
may have turned the other cheek, he also used a whip to 
drive out those wanting to make the Lord’s House into a 
den of thieves. That is what we are seeing at the moment 
in Portobello Road: unscrupulous people who pass them-
selves off as savers of souls, giving false hope and promis-
ing cures for all ills, even declaring that you can stay thin 
and elegant if you follow their teachings. 
For this reason, I have no alternative but to go to the 
courts to prevent this situation continuing. The move-
ment’s followers swear that they are capable of awakening 


250 P a u l o C o e l h o 

hitherto unknown gifts and they deny the existence of 
an All-Powerful God, replacing him with pagan divini-
ties such as Venus and Aphrodite. For them, everything is 
permitted, as long as it is done with “love.” But what is 
love? An immoral force that justifies any end? Or a com-
mitment to society’s true values, such as the family and 
tradition? 

At the next meeting, foreseeing a repetition of the pitched 
battle of August, the police brought in half a dozen officers 
to avoid any confrontations. Athena arrived accompanied by a 
bodyguard improvised by Ryan, and this time there was not only 
applause but also booing and cursing too. One woman, seeing 
that Athena was accompanied by a child, brought a charge two 
days later under the Children Act 1989, alleging that the mother 
was inflicting irreversible damage on her child and that custody 
should be given to the father. 
One of the tabloids managed to track down Lukás Jessen-
Petersen, who refused to give an interview. He threatened the 
reporter, saying that if he so much as mentioned Viorel in his 
articles, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. 
The following day, the tabloid carried the headline: “Witch 
of Portobello’s Ex Would Kill for Son.” 
That same afternoon, two more charges under the Children 
Act 1989 were brought before the courts, calling for the child 
to be taken into care. 
There was no meeting after that. Groups of people—for 
and against—gathered outside the door, and uniformed officers 


251 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

were on hand to keep the peace, but Athena did not appear. The 
same thing happened the following week, only this time, there 
were fewer crowds and fewer police. 
The third week, there was only the occasional bunch of 
flowers to be seen and someone handing out photos of Athena 
to passers-by. 
The subject disappeared from the front pages of the London 
dailies. And when the Reverend Ian Buck announced his deci-
sion to withdraw all charges of defamation and calumny, “in the 
Christian spirit we should show to those who repent of their ac-
tions,” no major paper was interested in publishing his statement, 
which turned up instead on the readers’ pages of some local rag. 
As far as I know, it never became national news but was re-
stricted to the pages that dealt only with London news. I visited 
Brighton a month after the meetings ended, and when I tried to 
bring the subject up with my friends there, none of them had 
the faintest idea what I was talking about. 
Ryan could have cleared up the whole business, and what his 
newspaper said would have been picked up by the rest of the 
media. To my surprise, though, he never published a line about 
Sherine Khalil. 
In my view, the crime—given its nature—had nothing to 
do with what happened in Portobello. It was all just a macabre 
coincidence. 

HE RO N RYA N , J O U R NA L I S T 


252 P a u l o C o e l h o 

Athena asked me to turn on the tape recorder. She had brought 
another one with her, of a type I’d never seen before—very so-
phisticated and very small. 
“First, I wish to state that I’ve been receiving death threats. 
Second, I want you to promise that, even if I die, you will wait 
five years before you allow anyone else to listen to this tape. In 
the future, people will be able to tell what is true and what is 
false. Say you agree; that way you will be entering a legally bind-
ing agreement.” 
“I agree, but I think—” 
“Don’t think anything. Should I be found dead, this will be 
my testament, on condition that it won’t be published now.” 
I turned off the tape recorder. 
“You have nothing to fear. I have friends in government, 
people who owe me favors, who need or will need me. We 
can—” 
“Have I mentioned before that my boyfriend works for 
Scotland Yard?” 
Not that again. If he really did exist, why wasn’t he there 
when we needed him, when both Athena and Viorel could have 
been attacked by the mob? 
Questions crowded into my mind: Was she trying to test me? 
What was going through that woman’s mind? Was she unbal-
anced, fickle, one hour wanting to be by my side, the next talking 
about this nonexistent man? 
“Turn on the tape recorder,” she said. 
I felt terrible. I was beginning to think that she’d been using 


253 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

me all along. I would like to have been able to say: “Go away. 
Get out of my life. Ever since I first met you, everything has 
been a hell. All I want is for you to come here, put your arms 
around me and kiss me, and say you want to stay with me for-
ever, but that never happens.” 
“Is there anything wrong?” 
She knew there was something wrong. Or, rather, she couldn’t 
possibly not have known what I was feeling, because I had never 
concealed my love for her, even though I’d only spoken openly 
of it once. But I would cancel any appointment to see her; I was 
always there when she needed me; I was trying to build some 
kind of relationship with her son, in the belief that he would 
one day call me Dad. I never asked her to stop what she was do-
ing; I accepted her way of life, her decisions; I suffered in silence 
when she suffered; I was glad when she triumphed; I was proud 
of her determination. 
“Why did you turn off the tape recorder?” 
I hovered for a second between heaven and hell, between 
rebellion and submission, between cold reason and destructive 
emotion. In the end, summoning up all my strength, I managed 
to control myself. I pressed the button. 
“Let’s continue.” 
“As I was saying, I’ve been receiving death threats. I’ve been 
getting anonymous phone calls. They insult me and say I’m a 
menace, that I’m trying to restore the reign of Satan, and that 
they can’t allow this to happen.” 
“Have you spoken to the police?” 


254 P a u l o C o e l h o 

I deliberately omitted any reference to her boyfriend, show-
ing that I’d never believed that story anyway. 
“Yes, I have. They’ve recorded the calls. They come from 
public pay phones, but the police told me not to worry, that 
they’re watching my house. They’ve arrested one person: he’s 
mentally ill and believes he’s the reincarnation of one of the 
apostles, and that ‘this time, he must fight so that Christ is not 
driven out again.’ He’s in a psychiatric hospital now. The police 
explained that he’s been in the hospital before for making similar 
threats to other people.” 
“If they’re on the case, there’s no need to worry. Our police 
are the best in the world.” 
“I’m not afraid of death. If I were to die today, I would 
carry with me moments that few people my age have had the 
chance to experience. What I’m afraid of, and this is why I’ve 
asked you to record our conversation today, is that I might kill 
someone.” 
“Kill someone?” 
“You know that there are legal proceedings under way 
to remove Viorel from me. I’ve asked friends, but no one can 
do anything. We just have to await the verdict. According to 
them—depending on the judge, of course—these fanatics will 
get what they want. That’s why I’ve bought a gun. I know what 
it means for a child to be removed from his mother, because I’ve 
experienced it myself. And so, when the first bailiff arrives, I’ll 
shoot, and I’ll keep shooting until the bullets run out. If they 
don’t shoot me first, I’ll use the knives in my house. If they take 


255 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

the knives, I’ll use my teeth and my nails. But no one is going 
to take Viorel from me, or only over my dead body. Are you 
recording this?” 
“I am. But there are ways—” 
“There aren’t. My father is following the case. He says that 
when it comes to family law, there’s little that can be done. Now 
turn off the tape recorder.” 
“Was that your testament?” 
She didn’t answer. When I did nothing, she took the initia-
tive. She went over to the sound system and put on that mu-
sic from the steppes, which I now knew almost by heart. She 
danced as she did during the rituals, completely out of rhythm, 
and I knew what she was trying to do. Her tape recorder was 
still on, a silent witness to everything that was happening there. 
The afternoon sunlight was pouring in through the windows, 
but Athena was off in search of another light, one that had been 
there since the creation of the world. 
When she felt the spark from the Mother she stopped danc-
ing, turned off the music, put her head in her hands, and didn’t 
move for some time. Then she raised her head and looked at me. 
“You know who is here, don’t you?” 
“Yes. Athena and her divine side, Hagia Sofia.” 
“I’ve grown used to doing this. I don’t think it’s necessary, 
but it’s the method I’ve discovered for getting in touch with her, 
and now it’s become a tradition in my life. You know who you’re 
talking to, don’t you? To Athena. I am <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON>.” 
“Yes, I know. The second time I danced at your house, I dis-


256 P a u l o C o e l h o 

covered that I had a spirit guide too: Philemon. But I don’t talk 
to him very much, I don’t listen to what he says. I only know that 
when he’s present, it’s as if our two souls have finally met.” 
“That’s right. And today Philemon and Hagia Sofia are go-
ing to talk about love.” 
“Should I dance first?” 
“There’s no need. Philemon will understand me, because I 
can see that you were touched by my dance. The man before 
me suffers for something which he believes he has never re-
ceived—my love. But the man beyond your self understands 
that all the pain, anxiety, and feelings of abandonment are 
unnecessary and childish. I love you. Not in the way that your 
human side wants, but in the way that the divine spark wants. 
We inhabit the same tent, which was placed on our path by 
her. There we understand that we are not the slaves of our 
feelings, but their masters. We serve and are served, we open 
the doors of our rooms and we embrace. Perhaps we kiss too, 
because everything that happens very intensely on earth will 
have its counterpart on the invisible plane. And you know that 
I’m not trying to provoke you, that I’m not toying with your 
feelings when I say that.” 
“What is love, then?” 
“The soul, blood, and body of the Great Mother. I love you 
as exiled souls love each other when they meet in the middle of 
the desert. There will never be anything physical between us, 
but no passion is in vain, no love is ever wasted. If the Mother 
awoke that love in your heart, she awoke it in mine too, although 


257 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

your heart perhaps accepts it more readily. The energy of love 
can never be lost—it is more powerful than anything and shows 
itself in many ways.” 
“I’m not strong enough for this. Such abstractions only leave 
me feeling more depressed and alone than ever.” 
“I’m not strong enough either. I need someone by my side too. 
But one day, our eyes will open, the different forms of Love will 
be made manifest, and then suffering will disappear from the face 
of the earth. It won’t be long now, I think. Many of us are return-
ing from a long journey during which we were forced to search for 
things that were of no interest to us. Now we realize that they were 
false. But this return cannot be made without pain, because we have 
been away for a long time and feel that we are strangers in our own 
land. It will take some time to find the friends who also left, and the 
places where our roots and our treasures lie. But this will happen.” 
For some reason, what she said touched me. And that 
drove me on. 
“I want to continue talking about love,” I said. 
“We are talking. That has always been the aim of everything 
I’ve looked for in my life—allowing Love to manifest itself in 
me without barriers, letting it fill up my blank spaces, making 
me dance, smile, justify my life, protect my son, get in touch 
with the heavens, with men and women, with all those who were 
placed on my path. I tried to control my feelings, saying such 
things as ‘he deserves my love’ or ‘he doesn’t.’ Until, that is, I 
understood my fate, when I saw that I might lose the most im-
portant thing in my life.” 


258 P a u l o C o e l h o 

“Your son.” 
“Exactly. He is the most complete manifestation of Love. 
When the possibility arose that he might be taken away from 
me, then I found myself and realized that I could never have 
anything or lose anything. I understood this after crying for 
many hours. It was only after intense suffering that the part of 
me I call Hagia Sofia said: ‘What nonsense! Love always stays, 
even though, sooner or later, your son will leave.’ ” 
I was beginning to understand. 
“Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn’t what 
romantic songs tell us it is—love simply is. That is the testament 
of Athena or Sherine or Hagia Sofia—love is. No definitions. 
Love and don’t ask too many questions. Just love.” 
“That’s difficult.” 
“Are you recording?” 
“You asked me to turn the machine off.” 
“Well, turn it on again.” 
I did as she asked. Athena went on. 
“It’s difficult for me too. That’s why I’m not going back 
home. I’m going into hiding. The police might protect me from 
madmen, but not from human justice. I had a mission to fulfill 
and it took me so far that I even risked the custody of my son. 
Not that I regret it. I fulfilled my destiny.” 
“What was your mission?” 
“You know what it was. You were there from the start. Pre-
paring the way for the Mother. Continuing a Tradition that has 
been suppressed for centuries, but which is now beginning to 
experience a resurgence.” 


259 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

“Perhaps . . .” 
I stopped, but she didn’t say a word until I’d finished my 
sentence. 
“. . . perhaps you came too early, and people aren’t yet 
ready.” 
Athena laughed. 
“Of course they’re not. That’s why there were all those con-
frontations, all that aggression and obscurantism. Because the 
forces of darkness are dying, and they are thrown back on such 
things as a last resort. They seem very strong, as animals do be-
fore they die, but afterward, they’re too exhausted to get to their 
feet. I sowed the seed in many hearts, and each one will reveal the 
Renaissance in its own way, but one of those hearts will follow 
the full Tradition—Andrea.” 
Andrea. 
Who hated her, who blamed her for the collapse of our 
relationship, who said to anyone who would listen that Athena 
had been taken over by egotism and vanity, and had destroyed 
something that had been very hard to create. 
Athena got to her feet and picked up her bag—Hagia Sofia 
was still with her. 
“I can see your aura. It’s being healed of some needless suf-
fering.” 
“You know, of course, that Andrea doesn’t like you.” 
“Naturally. But we’ve been speaking for nearly half an hour 
about love. Liking has nothing to do with it. Andrea is perfectly 
capable of fulfilling her mission. She has more experience and 
more charisma than I do. She learned from my mistakes; she 


260 P a u l o C o e l h o 

knows that she must be prudent because in an age in which the 
wild beast of obscurantism is dying, there’s bound to be con-
flict. Andrea may hate me as a person, and that may be why she’s 
developed her gifts so quickly—to prove that she was more able 
than me. When hatred makes a person grow, it’s transformed 
into one of the many ways of loving.” 
She picked up her tape recorder, put it in her bag, and left. 
At the end of that week, the court gave its verdict: various 
witnesses were heard, and Sherine Khalil, known as Athena, was 
given the right to keep custody of her child. 
Moreover, the head teacher at the boy’s school was officially 
warned that any kind of discrimination against the boy would 
be punishable by law. 
I knew there was no point in ringing the apartment where she 
used to live. She’d left the key with Andrea, taken her sound system, 
some clothes, and said that she would be gone for some time. 
I waited for the telephone call to invite me to celebrate that 
victory together. With each day that passed, my love for Athena 
ceased being a source of suffering and became a lake of joy and 
serenity. I no longer felt so alone. At some point in space, our 
souls—and the souls of all those returning exiles—were joyfully 
celebrating their reunion. 
The first week passed, and I assumed she was trying to re-
cover from the recent tensions. A month later, I assumed she 
must have gone back to Dubai and taken up her old job; I tele-
phoned and was told that they’d heard nothing more from her, 
but if I knew where she was, could I please give her a message: 


261 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

the door was always open, and she was greatly missed. 
I decided to write a series of articles on the reawakening of 
the Mother, which provoked a number of offensive letters ac-
cusing me of “promoting paganism,” but which were otherwise 
a great success with our readership. 
Two months later, when I was just about to have lunch, a 
colleague at work phoned me. The body of Sherine Khalil, the 
Witch of Portobello, had been found in Hampstead. She had 
been brutally murdered. 


f 

Now that I’ve finished transcribing all the taped interviews, I’m going to give her 
the transcript. She’s probably gone for a walk in the Snowdonia National Park as 
she does every afternoon. It’s her birthday—or, rather, the date that her parents 
chose for her birthday when they adopted her—and this is my present to her. 
Viorel, who will be coming to the celebration with his grandparents, has 
also prepared a surprise for her. He’s recorded his first composition in a friend’s 
studio and he’s going to play it during supper. 
She’ll ask me afterward: “Why did you do this?” 
And I’ll say: “Because I needed to understand you.” During all the years 
we’ve been together, I’ve only heard what I thought were legends about her, but 
now I know that the legends are true. 
Whenever I suggested going with her, be it to the Monday evening celebra-
tions at her apartment, to Romania, or to get-togethers with friends, she always 
asked me not to. She wanted to be free, and people, she said, find policemen 
intimidating. Faced by someone like me, even the innocent feel guilty. 
However, I went to the Portobello warehouse twice without her knowledge. 
Again without her knowledge, I arranged for various colleagues to be around 


264 P a u l o C o e l h o 

to protect her when she arrived and left, and at least one person, later identified 
as a militant member of some sect, was arrested for carrying a knife. He said 
he’d been told by spirits to acquire a little blood from the Witch of Portobello, 
who was a manifestation of the Great Mother. The blood, he said, was needed 
to consecrate certain offerings. He didn’t intend to kill her, he merely wanted 
a little blood on a handkerchief. The investigation showed that there really was 
no intention to murder, but nevertheless, he was charged and sentenced to six 
months in prison. 
It wasn’t my idea to make it look as if she’d been murdered. Athena 
wanted to disappear and asked me if that would be possible. I explained that if 
the courts decided that the state should have custody of her child, I couldn’t go 
against the law, but when the judge found in her favor, we were free to carry 
out her plan. 
Athena was fully aware that once the meetings at the warehouse became 
the focus of local gossip, her mission would be ruined for good. There was no 
point standing up in front of the crowd and denying that she was a queen, a 
witch, a divine manifestation, because people choose to follow the powerful and 
they give power to whomever they wish. And that would go against everything 
she preached—freedom to choose, to consecrate your own bread, to awaken your 
particular gifts, with no help from guides or shepherds. 
Nor was there any point in disappearing. People would interpret such a 
gesture as a retreat into the wilderness, an ascent into the heavens, a secret pil-
grimage to meet teachers in the Himalayas, and they would always be awaiting 
her return. Legends and possibly a cult could grow up around her. We started 
to notice this when she stopped going to Portobello. My informants said that, 
contrary to everyone’s expectations, her cult was growing with frightening speed: 
other similar groups were being created, and people were turning up claiming 
to be the “heirs” of Hagia Sofia. The newspaper photograph of her holding 


265 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

Viorel was being sold on the black market, depicting her as a victim, a martyr 
to intolerance. Occultists started talking about an “Order of Athena,” through 
which—upon payment—one could be put in touch with the founder. 
All that remained was “death,” but the death had to take place in completely 
normal circumstances, like the death of any other person murdered in a big city. 
This obliged us to take certain precautions. 

1. The crime could not in any way be associated with martyrdom for 
religious reasons, because, if it was, we would only aggravate the 
very situation we were trying to avoid; 
2. The victim would have to be so badly disfigured as to be unrecogniz-
able; 
3. The murderer could not be arrested; 
4. We would need a corpse. 

In a city like London, dead, disfigured, burned bodies turn up every 
day, but normally we find the culprit. So we had to wait nearly two months 
until the Hampstead murder. We found a murderer too, who was also con-
veniently dead—he had fled to Portugal and committed suicide by blowing 
his brains out. Justice had been done, and all I needed was a little cooperation 
from my closest friends. One hand washes the other: they sometimes asked 
me to do things that were not entirely orthodox, and as long as no major 
law was broken, there was—shall we say—a certain degree of flexibility 
in interpreting the facts. 
That is what happened. As soon as the body was found, I and a colleague 
of many years’ standing were given the case, and almost simultaneously, we got 
news that the Portuguese police had found the body of a suicide in Guimarães, 
along with a note confessing to a murder whose details fitted the case we were 


266 P a u l o C o e l h o 

dealing with, and giving instructions for all his money to be donated to chari-
table institutions. It had been a crime of passion—love often ends like that. 
In the note he left behind, the dead man said that he’d brought the woman 
from one of the ex-Soviet republics and done everything he could to help her. He 
was prepared to marry her so that she would have the same rights as a British 
citizen, and then he’d found a letter she was about to send to some German 
man, who had invited her to spend a few days at his castle. 
In the letter, she said she couldn’t wait to leave and asked the German to 
send her a plane ticket at once so that they could meet again as soon as possible. 
They had met in a London café and had only exchanged two letters. 
We had the perfect scenario. 
My friend hesitated—no one likes to have an unsolved crime on their 
files—but when I said that I’d take the blame for this, he agreed. 
I went to the place where Athena was in hiding—a delightful house in 
Oxford. I used a syringe to take some of her blood. I cut off a lock of her hair 
and singed it slightly. Back at the scene of the crime, I scattered this “evidence” 
around. I knew that since no one knew the identity of her real mother and fa-
ther, no DNA identification would be possible, and so all I needed was to cross 
my fingers and hope the murder didn’t get too much coverage in the press. 
A few journalists turned up. I told them the story of the murderer’s sui-
cide, mentioning only the country, not the town. I said that no motive had been 
found for the crime, but that we had completely discounted any idea that it was 
a revenge killing or that there had been some religious motive. As I understood it 
(after all, the police can make mistakes too), the victim had been raped. She had 
presumably recognized her attacker, who had then killed and mutilated her. 
If the German ever wrote again, his letters would have been sent back 
marked “Return to sender.” Athena’s photograph had appeared only once in the 
newspapers, during the first demonstration in Portobello, and so the chances of 


267 

t h e w i t c h o f p o rt o b e l l o 

her being recognized were minimal. Apart from me, only three people know this 
story—her parents and her son. They all attended the burial of “her” remains, 
and the gravestone bears her name. 
Her son goes to see her every weekend and is doing brilliantly at school. 
Of course, Athena may one day tire of this isolated life and decide to 
return to London. Nevertheless, people have very short memories, and apart 
from her closest friends, no one will remember her. By then, Andrea will be the 
catalyst and—to be fair—she is better able than Athena to continue the mis-
sion. As well as having all the necessary gifts, she’s an actress and knows how 
to deal with the public. 
I understand that Andrea’s work is spreading, although without attract-
ing unwanted attention. I hear about people in key positions in society who 
are in contact with her, and when necessary, when the right critical mass is 
reached, they will put an end to the hypocrisy of the Reverend Ian Bucks of 
this world. 
And that’s what Athena wants, not fame for herself, as many (including 
Andrea) thought, but that the mission should be completed. 
At the start of my investigations, of which this transcript is the result, I 
thought I was reconstructing her life so that she would see how brave and impor-
tant she had been. But as the conversations went on, I gradually discovered my 
own hidden side, even though I don’t much believe in these things. And I reached 
the conclusion that the real reason behind all this work was a desire to answer a 
question to which I’d never known the answer: Why did Athena love me, when 
we’re so different and when we don’t even share the same worldview? 
I remember when I kissed her for the first time, in a bar near Victoria Sta-
tion. She was working for a bank at the time, and I was a detective at Scotland 
Yard. After we’d been out together a few times, she invited me to go and dance 
at her landlord’s apartment, but I never did—it’s not really my style. 


268 P a u l o C o e l h o 

And instead of getting annoyed, she said that she respected my decision. 
When I reread the statements made by her friends, I feel really proud, because 
Athena doesn’t seem to have respected anyone else’s decisions. 
Months later, before she set off to Dubai, I told her that I loved her. She 
said that she felt the same way but added that we must be prepared to spend 
long periods apart. Each of us would work in a different country, but true love 
could withstand such a separation. 
That was the only time I dared to ask her: “Why do you love me?” 
She replied: “I don’t know and I don’t care.” 
Now, as I put the finishing touches to these pages, I believe I may have  
found the answer in her last conversation with the journalist. 
Love simply is. 
February 25, 2006 19:47:00 
Revised version completed on St. Expeditus’s Day, 2006 


About the Author  

PAULO COELHO is one of the most beloved writers of our 
time. With sales of over 85 million copies worldwide, his books 
have been translated into 63 languages and published in 150 
countries. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious 
international awards and was inducted into the Brazilian 
Academy of Letters in 2002. Mr. Coelho also writes a weekly 
column syndicated throughout the world. 

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ELEVEN MINUTES 

THE ZAHIR 

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Credits 

Designed by Jennifer Ann Daddio 
Jacket photograph © Artem Efimov/Shutterstock 


Copyright 

THE WITCH OF PORTOBELLO. Copyright © 2006 by Paulo 
Coelho. English translation copyright © 2007 by Margaret Jull Costa. 
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