Cumpleaños feliz
(Happy Birthday)
Another time, another placeTalk about a throwback to the Seventies. When I was still in my frilly, beribboned best attending kiddie birthday parties in the feudal, landscaped, and manicured lawn paradise that was Manila, with the nanny in the starched white uniform in tow, Felipe was in his perpetually suntanned prime, celebrating the dawning of the age of Aquarius, complete with the tight trousers, the pectorals-baring shirt, and the requisite blinding gold chain dangling from his neck, and some beauty queen or other perched on his arm.
When I met him in South Africa close to four decades later—he was visiting friends; I was, for all intents and purposes, the Betty Mahmoudy of South Africa, screaming “Not without my daughters!” while condemned to inde
