The facade is white. As white the aura of the artist today, which seems to be a common appearance among celebrities. They shine, or so they want to show, that’s why they call them stars. The house in which she lived before becoming the famous woman that she is has an arch and a barred door at the entrance. There is an inscription at the top: SAGITTARIUS 86- 135. Above, a plate with a number “202” and just behind that wall, the access door to which, for a good time during her adolescence, was the room of the singer from Barranquilla. .
The site is located in a neighborhood of citrus nature. It’s called The Little Lemon. The apartment occupied by the Mebarak family is on the second floor of this apartment house. At that time, the facade was brown. There, the artist wrote what would later become her first single “Magia” de ella. She was just 14 years old and she was taking her first steps in the music industry. The construction stands out for its simplicity. It is one more house on Sagittarius street. On the stairs that can be seen from the outside, the young artist sat with her guitar and sang whatever came to mind.
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll is 45 years old today. She is the daughter of William Mebarak Chadid, an American of Lebanese origin who arrived in Colombia at an early age. Nidia del Carmen Ripoll Torrado is her mother, a Colombian of Spanish descent. At the age of eight, the artist wrote her first song “Your dark glasses”. She wrote it to her father. He always wore glasses of this color as a sign of mourning for the death of one of his children, a product of their previous relationship. There were eight children that she had.
Around that time, William declared bankruptcy and the young woman had to immigrate to the United States to live with other family members in Los Angeles. After a while, when she returned to Barranquilla, she discovered that several of her parents’ possessions had been sold. The house looked empty. “In my childhood head, that was the end of the world,” she once said. That episode marked her for life and she made it her mission to help others when she had the opportunity.
As a child they told her that she mightn’t sing, that her vibrato was too strong. A music teacher at her school told her that she sounded like a goat. That made her not give up until she got anything she wanted. Now look at her, famous, surrounded by luxury, living in Barcelona with her family. Where is Shakira most appreciated? In Colombia she is criticized, she is exhibited, she is imposed on her. Is that what you do with stars? We look at the sky and rebuke them for not being closer to us, for shining so brightly and leaving us down here.
The house in Barranquilla is today a space, like a synagogue or a monastery, for her fans to feel closer to the origin of the artist. They visit the city with the intention of setting foot on that street and standing in front of the white facade, fervent before a figure with curly hair and moving hips, the cousin of beauty queens, of Catalan and Lebanese descent; the woman with too high a vibrato, the Colombian who speaks with accents from around the world, the one who dazzled García Márquez at one time, and the one who today has one of the benchmarks of Spanish football in love to the core. Shakira, the star of Barranquilla.
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