n 1982 my initial goal was to reacquaint myself with the people of 0 Cruzeiro. We had lost contact with each other for many years. Letter writing was complicated by my friends' illiteracy, and after a few years both sides desisted. And if many of my Alto friends were peripatetic rural migrants, I was even more so during the early years of life "in the academy," when my family and I constantly moved back and forth across the country. Nonetheless, prior to my return in 1982 I sent dozens of letters to everyone I could think of ... and received no response. I feared returning to a social void and felt that I might as well begin my research anywhere at all as in Born Jesus da Mata, for clearly the social world I once knew had evaporated. But curiosity and my saudades, as Brazilians call the pull of nostalgic longings, led me to persist in the plan to return to Born Jesus. In my letters I had mentioned the approximate date of my arrival in the capital city of Recife but had given no other details. Yet when we stepped off the plane, there in the crowd waving madly to us was my old friend and sometime adversary, Seu Felix, still the reigning prefeito and "boss" of Born Jesus. "Did I forget to send you a reply?" Felix asked in his usual distracted way. I had indeed come home.
The emotional and practical challenges of sustaining long-term relationships despite distance and literacy obstacles are highlighted in this chapter. A issue pertinent to migration studies, the author's worry of returning to a "social void" is a reflection of larger worries about displacement and the loss of previous relationships. Furthermore, Seu Felix's casual comment about forgetting to react highlights the unpredictable nature of interpersonal relationships—social ties can remain in unexpected ways, even though written correspondence may not. This raises the question of how many cultures manage to stay connected in the face of challenges like migration and illiteracy. In comparable communities, are there non-written means of communication that could take the place of letters?