We were about half a year in Trancoso when we finally could start to build on a piece of land we had purchased on the borders of the quadrado, the village square    
         
   
   
   
in the first stage of construction
    
         
    I started with some simple drawings of the first building, which was to house the restaurant and ourselves. The village square of Trancoso is a protected area of historical importance, and it's not allowed to build anything but one-storied small houses in the local style, with the equal amount of windows as the buildings which occupied the same spot previously.    
    In our case it was the ruins of a one-window, one-door affair built from mud, that sat on our strip of land when we bought it, which determined how my restaurant was gonna look from the outside.    
         
    My wish was for our house to have two floors: The restaurant downstairs and our living quarters above. We decided to build the first room on a level with the village square, and to have two stories in the back. We couldn't add any height because of the restrictions, so we added depth by excavating the ground out back behind the first room, to get space for two levels.    
         
   
   
   
 our first building seen from the side
    
         
    To stay true to local style, we hired one of the last few old timers who still knew how to fashion wooden roof tiles, that weren't in use anymore. People usually preferred modern tiles. Even the pegs that held our wooden tiles in place had to be hand carved each. They are clearly visible on the photo just below. The drawback of those old fashioned tiles was that a heavy rain or wind could displace them, and water would drip into the rooms.    
         
   
   
   
Cleude, the oldest son of our carpenter, helping out after school
    
         
    Our house caused quite some excitement because of the arched doors and windows. None of the locals had any problem with anything, they congratulated us and said it was beautiful. It was a few of those dropouts from the southern cities who got jealous and tried to incite the prefeito, the major of Porto Seguro, against us, telling him those arches of wood and coloured glass were something Indian that didn't fit in with the regulations about constructing in Trancoso. As mentioned before, the village was under protection as a historical site, and it was only allowed to build in local style.    
         
   
Now I have rather strict standards myself about style, and not in my wildest dreams would I have thought of including any Indian elements where they clearly wouldn't belong. Those arched windows are a common feature of Portuguese colonial architecture. Before Trancoso became such an impoverished, forgotten place it once had been a rather important center of commerce, and I could well imagine that back in those better times exactly the same type of windows had adorned local houses too. I had first seen noticed them on a small old building in Porto Seguro, liked them and made a few sketches. Coloured glass has always fascinated me, as far back as I can think. Anyway, the only result of the complaints was that a few envious paulistas were no longer welcome at my place.
   
         
    Out in the back of our property I didn't care about any rules. The pousada buildings were clearly oriental, the way I liked them. But they weren't visible from the village square at all, so they didn't interfere with the historical look of the village.    
         
   
   
   
Grande was our first mason, he built my little stupa as well
    
         
   
Until the space upstairs was ready I slept down in the restaurant with Ahmed. As soon as our quarters were terminated, we moved up. I was truly excited about the newly finished part, it looked exactly as I had imagined, and in the early mornings the room was alight with colours from the sunbeams passing through the window's glass panes.
   
    The only problem was with the front row of windows, they couldn't be properly closed. We had made wooden shutters that doubled (or rather tripled) back, but due to their size they were too heavy, so they hung askew and didn't really close the window gaps. Actually we never used them.    
         
   
   
   
upstairs
   
         
    We had brought our cushions, wall hangings, pictures and a Tibetan carpet along from Nepal, and as we were used to sit and sleep on the floor, there was not much more we needed for our living and sleeping quarters, apart from some quilted cotton mats to sleep on. Two cupboards, true to my preferred style with latticed doors and many arches and niches, were ordered from a furniture carpenter in Porto Seguro.    
         
    I derived great pleasure from the fact that my simple plans had turned solid reality, and everything looked exactly as I had imagined it. The pousada buildings were getting ahead as well, and soon we were able to rent out the first one with the cupola.    
         
    In our second year of living in our own house, something weird happened.    
         
    One night when I was alone in the house with the kids and fast asleep, a shout from Fatima woke me. She said somebody had been touching her. I tried to turn on the light; it didn't work. So I called out for help, hoping some neighbor would maybe see the fleeing intruder.    
    Finally, in answer to my shouting, a woman living nearby appeared. Not a native from Trancoso herself, she had only recently moved up from Minas. I had never before met her. She turned on the main electric switch, which, convenient for any burglar, is located in the outer wall of the building.    
    Warily I moved downstairs. Without light I had been scared to descend, not knowing if the intruder had left or was hiding in one of the pitch black downstairs rooms. As it was, there was nobody in the house.    
    I was very angry. I really wanted to catch the malandro, the scoundrel and punish him for frightening us, and especially my little girl. The rest of the night I spent waiting downstairs outside the back door, the shotgun ready. I really wished for that creep to come back, so I could vent my anger and indignation with a volley of lead directed at his backside. No luck though.    
    Next day we indeed found fresh footprints on the window sill of our upstairs sleeping quarters. The intruder must have practically stepped over my sleeping body to reach the part where the kids were sleeping. Nothing from the room was missing.    
    The culprit might have been one of our workers, a young, somewhat girlish fellow from the south with some strange habits like eating flowers and not taking proper care of body hygiene. I didn't suspect him back then, but years later my daughter told me he had been pestering her with love letters. This happened when she was a mere child of ten or twelve, and he was over twenty years old. Fatima also told me that she took her revenge on him for making her feel uncomfortable by treating him with cold disdain and insulting him in public whenever she could. Served him right.    
         
   
   
   
just moved in
    
         
    When next I met my nearest neighbor's wife I asked if they hadn't heard me calling out for help that night. Well, said she, they had indeed heard my shouts, but her husband had been too scared to go out and see what was up!    
    Too many men in Trancoso not only are lazy and irresponsible, but terrible wimps as well. If it wasn't for their wives, they probably wouldn't survive. They're quite useless. I heard of guys refusing to sit down to eat if there wasn't any meat on the table. Money being short and families big, for the prize of half a kilo of meat their wives could have gotten enough vegetables to fill all the bellies around the table. As it was, kids often couldn't eat their fill, and cried because they were still hungry.    
         
    One of my neighbors told me that despite having five children to feed, she thought she'd be better off without her husband. Who was a pleasant enough fellow and even worked, but also liked to drink and squandered his wages with his cronies, ignoring the fact that the money was desperately needed to feed his family.