Gioconda Belli (Managua, 73 years old) has lived in exile in Madrid since, in the fall, the persecution of Daniel Ortega's regime made life in Nicaragua impossible.
She is a friend of Salman Rushdie, she has news that the writer is “improving”: “Salman is absolutely earthy and accessible.
And fear has not been able to with him.
As a writer he is a modern classic, a male version of Scheherazade”.
She, who publishes a book of essays in September ―
Luciérnagas
(Seix Barral)―, spends August writing a novel and looking at the sky: waiting (by day) for the first downpour at the end of summer and (at night) for the last rain of stars.
Her passions are ice cream and astronomy.
Ask.
What idea of summer does someone who is…
Response.
Tropical.
P.
I was going to say cosmopolitan, but from a country without four seasons.
R.
I met the summer when I came to study in Madrid, when I was 14 years old.
For us it did not exist, we lived in summer.
The boarding school girls arrived in September crying: “Summer is over!”
I said: “What is this about summer and so much disappointment?”.
Q.
Did you discover it?
A.
And I didn't like it: the heat was excessive.
In Nicaragua our summer is dry, tremendous.
It is an atmosphere.
There is like a heavy air.
And suddenly, it rains.
That day is wonder.
I took my daughters out to the patio to get wet.
I felt like a singing frog.
Q.
Do you miss it?
R.
That downpour made me a horrible need.
I wondered if I was ever going to smell like wet earth again.
But it rained in Madrid, I opened the window and it smelled!
Q.
Did you spend the day looking at the sky?
R.
Rather the night.
I am a fan of celestial phenomena.
Especially the shower of stars and eclipses.
I am subscribed to the NASA
newsletter
and everything is announced there.
Q.
Isn't there too much artificial light in the city?
R.
But I like Madrid in August.
She has a lot of vibe.
And there is another kind of beauty in people.
If you write about your intimacy, they tell you that you write women's literature”
P.
Although there are few people from Madrid.
In Madrid everyone is from abroad.
R.
Do you know the Jorge Drexler song?
“I'm not from here, but neither are you.
Nowhere at all.
A little from everywhere."
I'm lovin 'it.
Also Joaquin Sabina.
They are my music from Spain.
And the Mocedades group, who accompanied me in a difficult time, when I began to serve in the Sandinista Front.
P.
Youth?
A.
The first colleague they killed was the boyfriend of a girl in my cell.
When they killed him, she went to my house to cry with me because in her house she couldn't say anything.
It's you
was her song.
Q.
It doesn't seem like the most revolutionary or committed song.
A.
She was engaged because they were in love.
He was a beautiful, intelligent man.
I also had an affair with a wise man, Eduardo Contreras.
He knew languages, he knew history.
He was the one who thought of the Sandinista strategy to succeed.
And they killed him.
That is one of the tragedies of revolutions.
When we triumphed, the best cadres had already died.
Gioconda Belli points to the Madrid sky waiting for it to rain.Claudio Álvarez
Q.
You were one of the few women in a male environment.
How did you experience it?
R.
I noticed that they saw me as a sexual object [laughs].
But, look, she was super pretty at the time.
Men stared at me like forbidden fruit because I also dared.
And they criticized me.
At one point I said to myself: “I have to forget about all these mediocre people.
Not everyone will like you."
They killed the geniuses.
None of those who remained were so intelligent.
And in the end, Daniel Ortega.
But I don't want to talk about politics.
Q.
Why?
R.
Life takes one thing from you and gives you another.
Being in Spain has been getting Nicaragua out of my head.
It was an obsession.
And it's scrubbed.
Q.
Are you writing?
R.
Oh, yes, but it cost me... A novel that happens in Madrid.
Three pages a day minimum.
I met the summer when I came to study in Madrid, when I was 14 years old.
For us it did not exist, we lived in summer”
P.
Was it always disciplined?
R.
I did not think to be a writer.
I started writing letters.
At boarding school I was alone and the letters took me out of school.
That's when I discovered that I liked to write.
About 20 years old I started with poetry.
And in 1988, when I was 40, I published a novel:
La mujer habitada
.
Q.
You were a pioneer in giving voice to what is now called women as a desiring subject.
A.
It was thanks to my idea of freedom.
I left home young.
Also, I had a very healthy sense of my body.
I learned from my mother, that she felt great pride in being a woman.
Writing from the body made me conspicuous.
Q.
Did you feel understood?
R.
For the readers, yes.
For the critics, no.
That which was so important to tell for us because nobody had told it, became a critical taboo.
If you write about your privacy, they tell you that you write women's literature,
light
.
As if that lowers your literary ability.
Q.
In a world taken over by men, you wrote about women.
Then, in one that idolizes youth, about maturity.
A.
I laughed at that.
You have to get menopause out of the
closet
.
It's really fucked up to see how women are despised as they become wiser, more interesting.
She has dedicated years to her children and her husband, she is no longer fertile... But she is a gift of life!
Finally your body is yours.
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