The character of this story – written a few days following the explosion at the port –
being purely fictitious, any resemblance to existing or having existed persons can only be coincidental.
I am the buried man. I hear all this water rustling. Others like me no doubt are set in stone. Can I communicate with them? Send them underground waves? I marry the rock that surrounds me and enclaves me. Twisted in my hole. Living. Barely dead. Time slows down until it becomes infinitesimal.
I don’t remember what I was doing when the rustling took me hostage. I can’t remember the color of the words or the rustle of the page. Was I holding a mug in my hand?
Was I looking away? What were my thoughts? At the last moment before confinement?
Was I alone or accompanied?
If so, where are the others? Nothing surrounds me here as human. I have long loved stone, but this one shows me its implacable power, its absolute rigidity. Does she take me for a stone too?
Numb but alive. I mumble words. My voice is rough. The sound knocks, shy. In my mouth, sand seeps. With saliva, I knead a jabber of words. Moujadra, mdardra, random stuff that takes the imprint of my gums and my teeth, I shout from my overgrown mouth, I lap up with my numb tongue, I lick the words and the sonic paste. Nobody hears me. Buried, far from all. The stone decided so.
So I resign myself to listening to it. What she tells me, what she imposes on me. ” Shut your mouth. Hold on. Respect. Subdue yourself. Forget. Give up. Abdicate. Soften up. Die perhaps, no doubt. If you want. If no one finds you. »
I let myself be invaded by the message. Bury by his words. I pray. But my prayers knock. I’m crying, my tears are going to unite with the rivers of words flowing in the underground waters.
I speak, but all sorts of noises drown out my speech. Squeaks. They laugh at me down below. I scream, but I’m afraid that the sound jolts will displace the evils that afflict me and crush me even more. My body is uncomfortable. My foot is lost far. My hand needs to scratch my cheek. My forehead is sweating. My eyelashes filter the sieve of words and sand as if to form a softer, less gritty cement.
I’m waiting for you, you who will know how to find me. I don’t know if you are a woman or a man or what will be your name or your form. Or your ritual. I do not believe. The implacable logic of the stone reduces me to nothing.
An ant finds its way over my body. I pray that it is not followed by others. I can count his steps. The uncertain touch of its clumsy paws. A reflex of wind in the belly of the rain.
The building collapsed in a nutshell. The slogan of August 4. A breath. And then nothing.
My cheek once morest the cheek of the stone. We don’t even dance. We don’t even whisper, we don’t kiss. An odious union. A merger. I didn’t choose you. I don’t love you. Don’t impose your presence on me. Despot. Insidious. Covering. Stubborn. Implacable. Degaaaaage!
An iron axis rages far away. I prefer the cold rigidity of concrete to the cutting edge of aluminum or iron. I prefer the smooth, black wall of the stone to the carbon beams and their swarms. I prefer this wall that encloses me to any indirect light charged with words. No hope in indirect lights. The exit door does not come from where it is believed to come. I don’t know in which direction the sky is.
Am I standing, sitting, lying down, on my back, on my stomach? How to know ? I don’t know where the center of the earth is, and how much lower do I gravitate under the world of the living?
And how far from me is the world of the dead? But I dread and almost enjoy finding correspondence between the world of the dead and that of the living. I will be their interface, their hyphen, their airlock. Gateway to shadows: there is me. Get comfortable. Unexpected wait. I am the counterfeit token of the counterfeit money that was sent into the belly of the earth.
What am I useful for ?
The air is unbreathable. And yet I breathe. My breath hydrates my cheeks. A new form of sweetness. Self-generated. An ecosystem is born beyond the grave. I settle in my camp.
No hunger yet. No thirst. A few tremors. A desire to anchor further. Moreover. I wet. I strip. My body is working wonderfully. Further still, I fall asleep.
How many nights ? How many hours, of sleep, of fainting, how much more separates me the vacuum, the caesura? How many nights away from you my life? How many lives away from me? Exhausted. Trembling, passed out.
I panicked but it was useless. I shit. But it fucks my ecosystem. I get used to the smells, to the noises. Gusts of wind, feints of breath. Fake sneers. I’m waiting, I’m bored. I despair. I play Sudoku in my head. In the flat country of extreme confinement, I am flattened. All I have left are my thoughts. My God they are beautiful. May the breath carry me away, twirl me around like the wind far from the grave, far from man in a new country, in cleaner lands. With the wind, may my soul depart Seraphina. In a basic landscape. Sky, earth, sea. No man. Barely a gull. This is where I want to live. Expect. Die. In a lost corner of sky and sea on a basic rock.
I would prefer this kind of confinement to the one I live out of spite. Spite of man. And his stupid bravery. Cries, exclamations, strikes, waving flags are of no use to me. Neither do the claims. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is worth living for if you’re going to end up six feet underground alive.
I cling to the shadows of the mountains growing in my head. My country is a continent. My body is a part of it. The sea is drifting away from us. I am ready to die.
Hallucinations approach and lap up the salt of my tears, a salty continent sprayed with wind. Hope is reborn from this relief, I believe in the stars. A mystical moment. I soar, dark energies lift my chest, infinitesimal spins lacerate my chest, golden waves frame my remains. My head is the size of a planet. A paradise is collapsing on me. That’s wonderful. I’m all lit. By a grace that found me a thousand leagues from me. I despair of finding myself. This must be the corridor of death. An in-between with the devil of beasts, the sufferings that cry.
I’m daydreaming. Hours and hours of lost paradise.
I don’t even want to be found anymore, let me float like this, indirect. Far from your gossip, your insults, reproaches. Leave me free underground. Under influence, out of you. You who point the finger at men’s shit. Don’t you know that everything falls apart in an instant and words are darts?
The silence here suits me more than the residue of all the screams, I synthesize in my head, I sift everything before the end. Your screams will be useless. We are only rock, sand at the end, and everything crumbles and passes. Everything disappears. Humility is my most tender companion, she becomes engaged, I marry her. I hang out with her. I de-stress with her. The ego leaves, only the sand remains. My body took on gigantic dimensions. Everything hurts me. My lower back is so far from my toe. My body is fragmented. Shattered, it breaks up even more and we form several continents. The different aspects of me. With customs, passes, communicating infiltrations between my kidney and my liver, my hip and my toe, the brain travels through all these lands miraculously by underground routes. He visits the organs. He plants his flag on my dunes. Several encampments on my body. Fraternization of plots. The union comes from within, I am myself and my evils responsible for my word. Together, we support my body anchored to my head. Tremendous cooperation of the beings who train me. My organs hold hands. Together we are not alone.
What was my last meal? Will they look for me? Save me ?
Subscribe to my pain? Will they tear me down when they come to save me? Do they even know how to save? Do they remember me?
Do they care regarding me? Are they alive? Did they ever think I was dead? Have they thus given up?
How many of them are persistent? What are their resources?
What is their faith? When they hold out their hand to me, would I hold theirs? What will they say when they find me? One more body in the mass grave of the morgues? Will they withdraw me whole? In spare parts ?
Will they crush me? To give to the animals, to feed the animals which in these days do not have enough to eat.
The vermin will eat me before they get to me. Those who knock up there, I hear their noises. They are busy above the scene of the crime. But I am drifting, towards the port, towards the silo, the dunes, towards the salty wet waters. From Achrafieh, I join in thought all the bodies drifting underground, motionless yet connected, a sieve of bodies drifting towards the site of the explosion, and which together will join the sea to forget everything, cover everything, renounce everything, everything give to the sea, like a bottle thrown into it.
I’m exactly under where I live, but I’m not there anymore. No matter how hard they knock, they won’t find me. I tell you and repeat, I drift with my cat, with my plants, everything that is alive and that I have watered, fed, I take away all the organs and cells, and I leave the stone empty in its confinement, it no longer crushes anything or anyone. The earth lost its words trying to twist me. I slipped whole through the back door, the sands bog me down and drag me towards the sea. It’s a delicious journey. The wet sand has refined its particles to transfer me alive to the nearest oblivion, the sea welcomes me and this is how I die.
“Aama kif hadda hayda? (My God how did he hold that one?)
“My tsawerr! (Don’t film!) Voices bring me back to myself, they save me, they look for me. No I’m not here anymore. Leave me. But if ! They bother me, they challenge me. “Sakker ouyounak” (Close your eyes). “Ya aayné” (My dear). No, not seeing you, not seeing you once more, I don’t want to, I give up, I obey the stone’s will, its clear message. They clear, they fidget, bend over, grab me, their spades and their cranes levitate me. I come out of there, brown, earthy with my beard, without glasses, blind and alive. From stretcher to stretcher, they save me. I don’t want to talk, eat, take care of myself. I don’t want to see anyone. Hear no words, read no pages. Leave me. Let me die. I won’t know how to live following this. It won’t be the same life. My testimony will not resolve it. I won’t know what to say to journalists. I will not return to my ills. You won’t find me at my address. At night the dogs bark. At night I remember the long night. Forgive me if I can no longer… live with you.
Texts published in the Courier section engage only their authors. In this space, L’Orient-Le Jour offers its readers the opportunity to express their ideas, their comments and their reflections on various subjects, provided that the remarks are neither defamatory nor offensive or racist.
The character of this story – written a few days following the explosion at the port – being purely fictitious, any resemblance to existing or having existed people can only be fortuitous. I am the buried man. I hear all this water rustling. Others like me no doubt are set in stone. Can I communicate with them? Send them waves…
