Oppidum-Râ
Wlad SIMITCH
Sara e Kali, Sara the Black. Fleetingly a queen, the repudiated wife of Herod the Cruel, a pagan converted to Christianity—she is said to have drifted from the burning shores of Upper Egypt to the wild lands of Oppidum-Râ, in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
The Gitan people did not welcome her as a stranger, but as an inevitability. Her mystery bewitched souls, her presence stirred hearts. They chose her, adopted her, and elevated her to the rank of patron saint. Her worship was born in Camargue in the 19th century and, carried by the Bohemians, endures through a powerful ritual: Sara returns to the waters that once carried her. This sacred immersion is more than a tribute—it is a conjuration, a calling, a secret dance to soothe the Mediterranean and dispel the spell of storms. Sara is the saint of wounded souls, of the lost and the tormented. She listens to prayers whispered in the night, gathers wishes entrusted to the wind. An invisible thread, deep and unfathomable, binds her devotees to her mystery. It is this veiled sacredness, this shiver of the infinite, that I sought to capture—in the light of faces, in the fervor of gestures, in the devotion of those who, still and always, venerate Sara e Kali.
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