Meditations

« Penser fut toujours pour moi une occupation pénible et sans charme.
Quelquesfois mes rèveries finissent par la méditation, mais plus souvent

mes méditations finissent par la rèverie, et durant ces égarements
mon àme erre et plane dans l’univers sur les ailes de l’imagination
dans des extases qui passent toute autre jouissance."
J-J-Rousseau.
Les Reveries d’un Promoneur Solitaire
“I need a pencil for that”, the old man said. “My head is not clear
But i think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.
I had no bone spurs. But the hands and the back hurt truly."
I wonder what a bone spur is, he thought. Maybe we have
them without knowing of it."
Ernest Hemingway.
The Old Man and the Sea.
Chokri Omri | Meditations 1

“ If you are generous enough and have the goodness to excuse me for what I am
going to say in the same way as I said to many fellows of mine before you, I am to
immediately and most forcibly say that I would like to be called a beast, not a monster.
Don’t laugh. This is settled and agreed upon; A beast is much better than an hypocritical
man.There is but this difference between me and a beast: that while the beast is trying to
behave like me, i am not at all trying to be like the beast. There is absolutely no reason
why I should try to do that. A beast is always seen as a beast and this is sufficient to
render it necessary for it as a beast to try to be like a man. As for my part, I think I do
not need to explain why I am saying this, because otherwise, I would be forced to explain
my explanation once again. Many and strange are the things that I do not want to
explain. After all, who are those who want to know me? I really advise them to stop it at
once. I do not deserve to be known simply because I am a man who is ready all the time
to show that he is not ready at all. I can always pretend to be what I have failed to be. I
can even pretend to do what I have not done before, to say what I have not said before
and what is more, to pretend to have not pretended before. I am a man. I cannot help
being a man. I am not a beast. I cannot be a beast. It is extremely difficult for me to be a
beast. Can I be compared to a beast? Is it really true that I can be a beast after all that I
said? Does a beast pretend like me to avoid being seen in an act of pretending? Does it
want to be hypocritical like me? Hell no. If the beast had known what I was like, it
would not at all have tried to be like me. Since I know what a beast is like, I will never be
like it. I like it but I will never be like it. These are of course the basic reasons why I
aspire to be called a beast. A real beast; this is probably the only thing that is not among
the playthings of time. If one allows ten minutes of sleeping to be lost for the sake of
reading some papers related to prehistory or say the glacial age, it will definitely prove
that a beast is always a beast and never changes. A man, however, is always changing not
for the best but for the worst. Was it VICTOR HUGO who once said that never
among animals does the creature which is born to be a dove change into an osprey? That
is seen only among men. Deceivers, liars, cheaters, swindlers, go getters, whores, evil
keepers, and wrong preachers. What a pertinent race to which we belong ! Traitors,
weaklings, brigands, cowards, enviers, gluttons, sycophants, drunkards, misers, butchers,
and what have you. Slanderers, fanatics, debauchees, hypocrits and fools."
Bilel said this and cast a brief glance at the three men around him to see the awaited
effect that would be upon them after his utterance. Ramzi was, as it was his custom, the
first one to react. He stroked the shoulders of Bilel and squeezed them after awhile
preparing himself to retort.
“Bilel. Tell me no more than this; Have you really said all that to them? If so, Why
are you saying it to us? Do you think you will profit by this nonsense? Indeed it is
nonsense and here I am to say to you why. After what you have said, you blatantly
deserve to be awarded by just being shot on your forehead. Nobody said the like of this
and came to know another good day afterward. Things like these do not only need to be
hidden but rather forbidden. You are a fellow who does not appear to be able to
understand something like that. Do you have enough time to stay with me in order to
decipher the ambushes and complexities of this very simple standpoint?”
Bilel stood up and said: “I am afraid I have sufficient time but no mind to pursue
your reasoning if ever it is one.”
At this very moment, Merai found it necessary to interpolate so as to save this long
delayed but always expected clash of thought from fading away:
“Oh boys ! what is this that I hear from you? I can only say that I am sitting with such
fools that could not be met with anywhere but in this place. From now onwards, I will
always protest against the very idea of being with you. No sooner do I find my self
among you then I become placed under the very impression that the world is still fine.
It is because I have often used to deem that stupid people have taken an eternal trip from
which there is no return. Now I am dead sure I was mistaken in that outlook. With
whom am I just in time to sit if it is not with them? No matter how hard I see you are
straining to feign to be clever, a brief space of time spent with you will definitely be
adequate, as it does for the very time being, to make every one be propelled to live with
the conviction that you cannot be of intellectual dimensions. Pray do not think that just
because I have brought my self to waste a whole evening with you that you will start
portraying this nonsensical conversation out of which I will inevitably reap nothing but
weariness. If by next time I find that you are still wrestling with this chaotic heap of
portioned and fragmented intellectual images, I will immediately and inevitably deduce
that you are born to be hanged not with a noose but with a little halter. In fact, there is
also this to be said about you: you are certainly what this country of ours does not need.
You should have told me from the start that this evening was going to be devoted to
triviality so that I would have refrained from coming.”

Having finished talking and leaving Bilel and Ramzi astounded, Merai lit a cigarette
and went on clearly stating:
“Do not look at me like that as if I were talking nonsense like you. My father; I insist
upon saying my father and not my mother; never permitted such sense of absurdity to
sprout in my temperament. I am emanating from a stock that knows very well what to do
and what to say when it comes to deal with life. Most of all, it is a stock that praises
what is supported by reality and ridicules what is not. Abstract and lofty things are of no
avail in our age. They are simply out of context or, as it must be made clear, trampled
upon in a way that nothing of importance could ever come out of them. Accordingly,
you do not really mean to say that you are till this moment relying upon them in the
flicker of hope that you will manage to settle the things that concern your lives.”
No sooner did Merai finish, then I laughingly interposed in an attempt to sooth and
dissuade them not to do what they were planning to do in their minds.
“Indeed, every one of you has undoubtedly striven not to be misunderstood by the
rest. I really find this interesting upon palpably one single ground; that each one of you
has openly reflected what is inside himself without any shame or fear. In the mean time, I
would like to ask you one question and I hope you will answer me while paying close
attention to that common sense that brought you here to sit together around this table. I
am well aware of the fact that this is not going to be easy but still we need to give it a
try.”
All of them were obviously waiting for me to raise the question except Bilel. He
seemed to be moving through a fantasy that was intensified with the fact of his being a
man of religious parameters. Never has he tried to decode something without referring to
religion. If you do not find him talking about God; then he is presumably talking about
his creatures. What is artificial does not mean anything to him when it does not
contribute to the lift up of the kinship between man and God. What is even more
important about this man is that he never allows himself to be deluded by wrong
preachers. He is a man of spirit. Un homme appelé à faire de grandes choses,
STENDHAL a écrit. L’idée du devoir paraissait trop dans sa maniére, et allait
quelquefois jusqu’à lui donner une physionomie anglaise. C’est un homme fort spirituel
et très remarquable plutôt qu’aimable ; il plaisait surtout aux hommes tristes. On sentait
en lui une singuliére absence de sympathie pour tout ce qui nous intéresse ; ce jeune
homme avait un avenir à part. On devinait en lui quelque chose de profondément perfide
pour tout ce qui existe. He never takes something for granted until it is vindicated and
proved by means of circumstantialities and verisimilitude. He is, in short, some one with
whom you can simply feel safe and well. At one moment, I felt that Bilel was not ready
enough to listen to any more words. Where upon, I lost the desire of asking the question
and told them to come the following day so that may be things would be better and
therefore become propitious for such an inquiry.

Upon our arriving to the coffee as it was planned the previous day, Bilel was still
of a pale face and in a state of wonder that heralded the very fact that he was not at all all
right. He looked as though he were carrying the whole burden of the world upon his
shoulders. But What struck me most about him is that he was not as his usual; taking the
initiative of choosing the subject of our discussion or seizing the opportunity of
correcting something fallacious in our heads. He seemed to be past everything. He
seemed to have been profoundly affected by Merai’s humiliating words last evening.
Merai, upon the other hand, appeared to have forgotten all about what he had said. He is
a man who never gave himself the chance to consider or reconsider what he came to say.
This is probably the very reason why you cannot see him for example brooding over his
problems or so to speak, you cannot expect him to feel sorry for something erroneous he
happened to do. He was just over preoccupied with the fact of his being a man of affairs.
Whatever he laid his hands upon; it did not turn to ashes but rather to gold. He had
spent four years in the United States of America and came back with plenty of dollars to
last him till the rest of his life. But what is more and more significant concerning this
man is the very antagonistic attitude he always adopted against rich people. In spite of
the fact that he was extremely affluent, he never saw himself superior or anything of that
kind. He was just a little bit cold in dealing with people. Ever since he was a kid with us
in school, he has always been cruel with the friends he loved most. Friendship in
accordance with him does not at all consist in flattering and saying amusing things but
rather in not caring to give pain to the closest people he lives among. To him, what is the
use of friendship when it does not allow one to say exactly what one means? Sometimes,
it is perilous to say it just like that without prevarication but this does not at all seem to
function with Merai. He never says anything behind your back; rather, he prefers it to be
said rightly but at the same time plainly in front of your eyes without any fear from
anything except fear itself. As for Ramzi, things do really need to take a totally different
track. He is an intelligent man but in a peculiarly different way. A man, un homme
intelligent, dont l’àme brusque, Guy de Maupassant a élaboré, se jetait dans les idées avec
impétuosité. Cédant à toutes ses impulsions, ne sachant ni se maitriser, ni se diriger, ni
combattre une sensation par un résonnement, ni gouverner sa vie avec une methode faite
de convictions méditées, il obéissait à ses entrainements, excellents ou détestables, dés qu’
un désir, dés qu’ une pensée, dés qu’ une émotion quelconque troublait sa nature exaltée.
Any way, after having asked the servant to bring four cups of coffee and a bottle of
mineral water, I saw it the proper way to avoid mentioning anything that may be related

to the previous day. I simply did not want to add another brick to the wall of
misunderstanding that might grow sharper between Bilel and Merai. I, accordingly, said
to them what I had seen to be very meaningful as far as Human nature is concerned.
“As we are sitting now for the second time in the same place, I would prefer you to
follow me in my meditations regarding the way Humanity is presenting itself in this
universe.”
As soon as I said this, Ramzi cried out of astonishment :
“ Oh no please, don’t do that. We are here to have a rest and not to give thought its
best.”
“ Why Ramzi? Let him say what he wants. As long as there still is a room for such a
type of talk, you don’t really intend to deprive us of its beautiful gist.”
Merai responded with such vehemence that we had not experienced before.
“ What about the lovely Bilel? Does he want to listen to us with regard to this topic
of mankind?” I turned to face Bilel inquiringly.
“ Yes I do; but I may not be able to follow it to its end. I don’t feel well today. I am
always degenerating under the inkling that things do have a way of turning out so badly.”
“ What do you mean?” muttered Merai.
Bilel kept silent for a brief period of time and added with an air of certainty:
“ I am afraid I don’t mean anything of serious significance. I only wanted to say that it
is just a calamity to be found living among people whom I can’t change for the benefit of
their own selves. By the way Majdi, didn’t you say that you had a question to ask?”
“ Yes indeed.” I retorted. “ This is what I meant by this topic. Before beginning to ask
any questions, I’d rather tell you a short story that will almost certainly contextualize
what I want to inquire about.”
“ Ok fine. Go ahead; we all lend you our ears” Merai said.
“ Once upon a time, there lived a poor peasant who worked day and night so as to put
some slices of bread into the mouths of his wife and his seven kids. One day, as birds
were warbling and butterflies flying into a bright bleu sky that seemed to invite all the
creatures to behold the beauty of nature, the peasant dawdled aimlessly in the forest not
wanting to cut any more woods. He thought that he was nearly the only one who was
spoiling nature and preventing its beauty from spreading and throwing its lights and
aspects upon the earth. He often pondered why he did not choose another occupation
just to get rid of the idea that he was marring everything beautiful and significant about
life in general. He deemed that his life would not come to an end if he did not end the
life of somebody else. After all, why could he not move to the village and try to have a
small trade with which to face the fardels of a life that added life to so many fardels? The
forest is dark and what is dark will never be of any service to anything except to itself.
Darkness is quite borne when arms are worn but not when a poor man is torn. The
village is better than the forest, the peasant pondered. Nothing is to be found in the
forest that has not already been caught or exhibited in the yards of the village. The forest
is normally made for animals and not for humans. Many peasants found it out and
moved away to the village and forgot about it out of rationality. Why was he still trying
to beat a dead horse?
In order to get out of the forest, the peasant needed to make it possible that the
village could be compensational after all. If he knew what the future held for him, he
would soon abandon the very idea at once.”
“Great. Wonderful, indeed. But tell Majdi; what are you talking about? Is this a story
about mankind and Human nature?” Ramzi asked me while putting his left hand over
his mouth in an act of yawning.
“Yes it is. But I think you will have to stop interrupting me Ramzi. Or else, I will
leave it like that. You don’t really know how to be patient. I am striving to get this story
simplified. For if not, you will never be able to stand up against my question.” I pointed
out firmly and cast a furtive glance at Bilel who seemed to be deeply interested in
resuming the peasant’s story.
“ Pray carry on Majdi and give him no heed. Ramzi cannot find pleasure anywhere
but in relative clauses. He never concerns himself with the main ones.”Merai said
laughingly.
“ On his way back to his cottage, the poor man tried to make everything possible that
his family would not see the great change in him. Besides, he was not ready to face any
protest from any one other than his own self. He felt that the way he was running his
domestic life was definitely wrong.
For some reason or another and as he entered his hartel, he told his wife to come near
him and listen to a quite lengthy talk that did not accept any deferral.
“Oh my loyal and darling wife, what is this life of ours? Just answer my question but
not now. For I am not in a position to listen to any one for the present moment. I have

listened to many people for quite a long time and now I really want them to listen to me.
It is on the plea of the paucity of listening that people are not in proportion with one
another. Thus, you are going to listen to me my dear. I want to tell you something that
kept nagging me years and years ago. It is absolutely out of clumsiness that I did not tell
you about it before. But any how, I am no longer capable of hiding it from you. You are
my wife and I should not conceal anything from you. My dear, I have resisted many and
many hurdles. I spent every effort I used to have got in my self so as to grant and vouch a
life in a state of normality to you and to our kids. I have endeavoured to improve the
conditions under which we are living. I have attempted to give my self as an example to
our kids without any shame. My parents were poor and it seems that I am going to be
fated to be poor as well. I have never allowed any stupid idea to come to my mind. The
jungle was my field and so it is now and I don’t know whether it will be so or not. I have
strained to deal with life under the sheer manipulation of a reasonable frame of mind.
Woods and trees are my tools to confront the coldness and harshness of life. I have, so
to speak, clung to several principles in which I strongly believe. Poverty and destitution
are to me better than stealing and prostitution. I have made my self a slave to my toil. I
have never retained any energy out of meanness or egocentricity. My kids are still young
and they have to be the way I am really planning them to be. They are my kids and upon
this very ground, I will try very hard to bring them up the best way I see it for them. I
have no desire to give my self the floor of being weak or frail. I am rather sustained by a
never ending lust for being strong and tough. My sweet, life is only difficult for those
who have made it difficult for themselves after all. I believe that if first I don’t succeed, I
had better try reading the directions.
Now, as I don’t appear to be reaping any harvest except weariness and boredom and
that the forest has long stopped promising me what it did before, I have come to the
conviction that it is no longer to be seen as the field of my wild and bitter struggle for
existence. I simply don’t aspire to be looked down upon by my children when they grow
up. Poverty is not a doom from which there is no escape. It is just a good lesson waiting
to be understood and hence learnt from life. I can certainly admit the very fact that every
now and then, life gives us the test before we have had the chance to study the lesson
carefully, but still, we are profoundly invited to try. Dora let it be plainly known to you
that this forest does not refrain from presenting itself as becoming dull from day to day
in such a way that I am starting to feel that the village has to be inspected in its stead. It
must be, as I expect you to know, far better than nothing (better than nothing ! Is it
possible?). Consequently, I see it clearly before my eyes that we are by every possible
means under the obligation of forsaking it. It is not supposed to be for the like of us. But
if it should come to realise that we have no alternative but to perish, let us just perish

while striving not to perish. It is extremely important for us to know that all the laws
have been broken up. So, can you just tell me from whom should we fear? People, these
days, do not fear from the idea of breaking the laws. Rather, they fear from being caught
while breaking them. We should definitely move away out of it to the village and then to
the city if possible.”
Again, Ramzi couldn’t help reacting in a seemingly protesting and admonishing tone:
“ Come on Majdi. I do not think we should know all these prosaic details in order to
arrive at satisfying your trivial question. But please, who cares about this stupid man for
whom you have just been exhausting your self? I my self cannot bear to think of the idea
of giving such a damn to him. Let alone, to waste this whole evening for the sake of
listening to his story. Oh boys, has any body told you that time is money nowadays?”
There was a moment of silence. As far as I was concerned, I said nothing at first.
Afterwards, I studied their faces solemnly. Then, I stood up and told Bilel and Merai to
withdraw and leave Ramzi profit by his pertinent time. I was really angry at that moment
in a way that I hastened to pay the servant and then parted without a word.

The day after that, as I was crossing the street meaning to reach the next side of
our beautiful city Tunis, I, by chance, bumped into an old friend whom I had not seen
for a long time. He was Sobhi, the man who had once defied the whole world for the
sake of his freedom. I still remember it as if it came about yesterday. Yes, je me rappelle
cela comme d’hier. He was really splendid when he fought the battle alone and so he
won. I could still see when he was put in jail just because he called us, the students, to
boycott the foreign programmes of education and try to prevent them from serving their
objectives. He warned us from falling victims to a system that was imposed upon our
ministry of education to alter all the old programmes and supersede them by
purposefully wrong and tedious ones. He pointed out fearlessly that this new system is
meant to divide students and drive them to forget about their legacy and blind them of
their real identity. It is aimed at making them learn only the weak points of our culture
and glorify the strong ones of an absolutely different one that has no aim but to
strengthen our frailty and make sure we would never find again the right means with
which to rise. Sobhi was unbelievably straight forward when he delivered his speech. He
never prepared for it. On the contrary, he just extemporised and stated that we didn’t
need to lose our values and principles in order to gain ephemeral and short lasting
moments of pleasure that would reveal to be very detrimental in the long term of time. I
could even remember when he asked us to think about the way our old educational
system used to be rich and effective as far as the lecture of History is concerned. Now, it
is simply a combination of echoing things that pushes the students to connect nothing
with nothing and then realize the truth when it is too late. Que va t-on faire quand la
vérité sera enfin connue? Et par ailleurs, la vérité n’est pas une entreprise aisée. What if it
is found out? Shall we refrain from it because some people are hiding it? Then, he moved
on to explain to what depth human thought has sunk under this new system that does
not seem to concern itself only with arranging night clubs and parties for students. It is a
system, he insisted, that has from the start shown its readiness to neglect what is dynamic
and appealing and adopt what is static and monotonous. More over, Sobhi felt the need
of giving some examples that would illustrate the standpoint he elaborately construed.
He started by telling students the purpose behind the exam of aptitude which deprived a
huge number of candidates of having access to be employed. It is a way of examination
that does not take their ages into account but rather selects them with reference to
whether or not they are prepared to step down on their expectations. In other terms, it is
an examination that asks undergraduate students to prepare a tremendous amount of
lectures that surpasses a line of time of four and five years of exhausting day to day
education. It is simply carried out in such a way that students would find it necessary to
sell their grades for the sake of a stupid amount of money and eventually forget once and
for all about sixteen or seventeen years of studying. As for those who insist upon
retaining their grades, as time would undoubtedly elapse, failure after failure in the
passing of the aptitude exam, they would, by way of consequence, lose interest and end
up by being either out dated or more simply driven to madness
like many cultivated men whom we never cease to find trampling around in
the streets saying and doing things we will never be able to understand.
I could not forget that day when Sobhi made it and succeeded in becoming one of the
prominent figures in our Tunisian university. But at the same time, Sobhi became
pointed out to by suspecting fingers albeit the fact that he never ever belonged to any
antagonistic or conspirating organisation. His fault was that he raised his voice against a
system that did not accept any castigation or denigration. His fault was that he tried to
be decent and put things in their proper places. His fault was that he stood up against a
foreign system that invaded us in our own home preventing us from speaking or crying
out of shame. His fault was that he showed his contempt and disenchantment towards a
system that expects every one to be happy and delighted over the progress and
advancement we have made in being victimized. His fault was that he said what he meant
and did what he said.
Sobhi, few days later, was arrested and accused of having impeded the flowing of
courses in the university (And what a flow!?). From that day on, we never saw him again.
Sobhi sacrificed himself for the sake of all Tunisian students. The result was that nobody
came to his assistance in his ordeal which was supposed to be that of every student in
Tunisia. He was not against the system but rather against foreign dictations. He never
permitted students, neither by words nor by deeds, to break down their university. He
only wanted them to show to the ministry that they are not the product of consuming
cultures but rather the product of a flawless one that resists the very idea of being tainted
or contaminated by projected but never detected viruses. Sobhi, if one may so express it
in few words, is the absolute embodiment of human resistance against all evils. He chose
to be lonely and fought a whole battle by himself only in the hope of being at last termed
and dubbed a real man. Indeed, he is a real man with all the meaning that we can ascribe
to the word. No matter how hard they strove to have him stripped off of his rights, he
continues to be a perfect man that will one day be remembered and therefore be blessed.
The moment I saw him, I felt motionless and kept scrutinizing his face in an effort to
make sure that I was not mistaken in somebody else. Never can I forget his bright blue

eyes that had once been full of ambitions. Never can I forget his ambidextrous hands that
had once tried to rise above but fell silenced. Never can I even be oblivious to the
perfume he always used over his simple but nice garments.
“Sobhi wait. My God. I can’t give such credit to what I’m seeing. Where have you
been all these years? “
Sobhi looked at me hesitatingly as if he didn’t recognize me. Then he said with a cold
voice:
“Who are you sir? Have I had the honour of knowing you before?”
“What? Please don’t say that you haven’t known me. Sobhi, I am your friend Majdi.
Have you forgotten those days we spent together in studying at the university of arts?”
“I am awfully sorry. I don’t remember any one by the name of Majdi. You know. Life
is hectic and what you blame at night, you praise at morning and think the last
impression is always right. Have you said your name is Majdi?”
I gazed at him wonderingly and felt disappointed at the way he responded to me. He
was not the man I had known before. He was completely changed. He did not seem to
be playing any trick upon me.
“All right. I will have to bring my self to believe that you don’t remember me. Do you
know Merai or Ramzi at least?” I asked him ironically.
“Merai or Ramzi. Yes I do. Oh no sorry. I must be under some mistake. I know only
Ramzi. He spent one year with me in prison. He was very kind that man. I love him.
He used to tell me many stories about various seamen like Sindibad. He told me once
that Sindibad had decided not to risk his life in those constant voyages but each time he
resolves not to go, he finds himself at the bottom of a ship flowing against the current. I
love Sindibad. I always feel that he will one day arrive here by mistake and ask me to go
along with him to the Treasure Island. By the way, do you want to go with us when he
comes?”
“Yes, I certainly want to go with you and Sindibad. But tell me first, why have you
been jailed?” I inquired without willing to miss the chance that he came to mention the
prison.
“I have been jailed because I had been jailed.” He replied quickly and turned around
ready to leave as though something injurious gave him unbearable pain.

“Oh no, please, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean any harm. Sobhi wait. You surely
misunderstood me. I never meant that. I only wanted to know and that is all.”
He stopped and stared at me and said angrily:
“Pray learn what to ask and how to ask. As for when to ask or where to ask, that’s a
matter that is deeply associated with whom to ask.”
“Ok, I will. I am always blaming my self for not having learnt these things. But are we
to remain here in the street without drinking a cup of coffee?” I asked him hoping that
he wouldn’t refuse.
“A cup of coffee. What a happy finding? It must sound a pretty good idea. But is
there any cup of coffee here in the street?” He said interrogatingly.
It was really until that moment that I became certain that Sobhi was not mentally
sane. Something painful must have happened to him. The man does not even know
where to drink a cup of coffee. Let alone to remember his friends whom he hadn’t met
for nearly ten years.
“Well Sobhi, we can find two cups of coffee but not here in the street. It is only in a
coffee that we can have them. Let us just go to that one over there.”
“Yes, I understood. It is only in a coffee that we can have them. An other yet happy if
not jovial finding. It is only in a coffee that we can have them.”
On our way, Merai phoned and told me to come to our place of usual. I, however,
imparted my meeting with Sobhi to him and asked him accordingly to come immediately
to La marsa in company with the rest. Sobhi was far better than a short story about a
poor peasant. Wasn’t he?

Merai had palpably been astounded by the news, for if not, he wouldn’t have
arrived so quickly like that accompanied by Bilel and Ramzi. Had I told him that one of
his factories had collapsed, he wouldn’t at all have arrived in the same way as he did
when he had heard the name of Sobhi. He could by no means forget his friends. They
are to him what water is to a fish. Seeing Sobhi, Merai jumped upon him and started to
weep out of surprise. He had often been overwhelmed with a feeling that he would never
cast sight upon him again. As for Ramzi and Bilel, they just looked at him with their eyes
full of tears. They thought that Sobhi would never come back from his journey. They
thought so because this journey had never been planned. It had just been plotted.
Sobhi, startled by the way he was being welcomed, regarded them and tried to sedate
them by patting upon their hands and then he cleared his throat saying:
“Oh guys, calm down. I have no right to hope that I deserve this nice welcome. But
tell me first: Are you sure that you are not under some illusion. These days, people are so
excessively kind. I can’t go anywhere without meeting them. They never cease to make
me feel ashamed of my own opinion about them. See for example, when I find my self in
trouble, I always find them ready to assist me to the very extent that sometimes I prefer
to be left alone. They just urge me to reconsider my own outlook towards life. It is a pity
that they always insist on standing for what they appear to be. I have been told sometime
before that what sustains humanity through life is the immense justice on which it is
working and the immense morality to which it is aspiring. Even Ramzi has once said to
me that it is very well to remember from time to time that people are about as
despondent as when they make up their minds to be. That is why they never fail to give
free reign to their hearts to rule their lives. It is really a deplorable thing to believe that
Plato is a philosopher. Never have I trusted a word he wrote in his Republic. I always
cast doubt upon that Republic. It should have been called a kingdom, a province, say
even so much so that people might arrive at understanding his view point. Oh yes, I
forgot to thank you for your wonderful and fantastic way of introducing your selves to
me. I will keep reminding my self of it. Never fret, never fret. How can I just manage to
introduce my self to you?”
The three men looked at one another with profound anxiety. Then they turned to me
inquiringly.
“Well how can I say it?” I stated. “Sobhi finds it difficult for him to remember you.
He seems to have undergone a bad experience on the cess of which he must have
witnessed some unpleasant things. Thus, I advocate you to be patient in order to come
up with a remedy to his psychological problem. Ever since I met him, the more I talk to
him about the past, the farther he has revealed to be moving from it. He does seem to be
only aware of his present and maybe his recent past. How things must have been difficult
for him ! This is, of course, to tell you that it is high time we did something for him.
One cannot turn a blind eye to a friend who chanced to be assaulted. Accordingly, what
is elaborately left for us to do now is basically to try to provide him with a propitious
ground on which to settle. Sobhi, as we all have to know, needs to be taken care of. He
needs to go back to his senses. He needs to spring back and get what he lost.”
Merai was taken aback by what I said. As for Bilel and Ramzi, the news proved to be
unbearable for them. They never believed what they heard. Was it really possible that
Sobhi had lost his memory? What has he done to have been chattered like that? Life
could not be fair when it displays such things. We live in an age of shames. Do we have
to pretend to be ignorant and stupid so as to live? Oscar Wilde was perfectly right in his
dictum ; “ Actors are so fortunate indeed. They can choose whether they will appear in
tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in
real life, it is awfully different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for
which they have no qualifications”.
It seems that we have to covet actors. They have really come across one of the many
secrets of life. But how about their real lives? Do they still continue to act albeit the fact
that they have no impact? What is even more and more vexing and boring in human life
is the sad truth that people either had been in trouble, were in trouble or expected to be
in trouble. Otherwise, they wouldn’t simply have generated all this chaotic and prosaic
dispensation. Arthur Miller once maintained that “ the real task of the intellectual in our
age is to analyse all the illusions in order to discover their causes.” For what on earth
then was Sobhi calling when he was a young student? Do they want us to know the truth
and forget about it? To tell the truth, these people from whom we fear (they fear I must
say) have never cared for our dignity. They have not even cared for our identity. They
have just cared for our vulnerability and frailty. Not only have they cared but equally
catered for it. The real problem with which we are always confronted is the fact that we
are always hurting our selves without our being aware of that. We have never learnt how
to learn from our defects. In war, they make slave of us. We fight and die for them being
fallaciously and blindly convinced that we do it for the benefit of our own selves. In
peace, they make slave of us the poor. We toil for them day and night. They have never
toiled for us. They just exhaust themselves by collecting the money out of our work. We
sow the corn, as Wilde transparently expressed it somewhere, and our board is empty.
We have chains though no eyes behold them. Through our sunless lanes creeps poverty
with her hungry eyes. Misery wakes us in the morning and shame sits with us at night.
What an excellent community we have come to form! We never abstain from portraying
our selves as being deluded and deviated from the right path. We only know that we are
getting weak and consequently driven to a weaponless position. We only know the truth
but never profit from it. We are forced to listen to the same song. One day, they will tell
us to leave our lands and cause no more scandals. No wonder we will have to be made to
believe that it is the proper thing to do. For this reason and this reason alone, let us just
start to learn how to moan for the harvest we will certainly be reaping later. Our children
will doubtless be proud of us. We are offering and bestowing on them the fortunate the
perfect circumstances under which they will certainly rise to see them children eye to eye
and then find the right tools to protect and fortify themselves. What an excellent
community we have come to form!
Sobhi, as we all have probably come to know, had been caught up and imprisoned by
his own brothers. Could anybody deny that? The first thing then to notice about our
brothers is the way in which they were never permitted to know why they just did it.
They knew that Sobhi was a troublemaker. They never knew why he was so. They knew
that he was dissatisfied. They never knew why he was so. They knew that he was an
intimidator. They never knew why he was so. And, of course, they knew that he was
found guilty. They never knew why he was so. I really must insist upon that statement
that Sobhi had been imprisoned by his own brothers. Besides, they were never to blame.
They had been made to believe that Sobhi was just a dangerous antagonist. How could
they avoid having him jailed? In so doing, they thought everything was over. The scuffle
was fought and won from the first round. They were really to be awarded, why aren’t we
applauding enough?, and then have a rest while waiting for another brother to open his
mouth in order to have it muffled and shut. Sobhi got just what he deserved. He had to
move through every single degradation. Nobody told him to poke his nose and meddle
into others’ business. For if not, he wouldn’t have been left alone crying bitterly for pain.
Mind then, How can i say it ? je suis, comme dit STENDHAL, loin d’adopter certains
sentiments politiques qui semble melés à cette narration; Voilà ce que j’avais besoin de
dire au lecteur, mon frère, mon semblable.
We do appreciate what he did but only inside ourselves. We always praise at the end
what we blame at the beginning. They are born to sweet delights. We, of course, to
endless nights.

Am I to be offered the very opportunity of getting the scene depicted, I will
definitely stress the point that the infuriation of Bilel was pretty noticeable over the low
position to which Sobhi had been reduced. As a matter of fact, Bilel made an attempt to
restrain himself from clenching his hands upon his forehead but failed. Then, He sat
slowly and bitterly did begin to cry. His eyes were completely smothered with tears. His
whole body was trembling from top to toe. But alas, men killed the thing they loved and
so they had to die. Nobody was in a position to do anything for Sobhi save shedding
foolish tears and heaving windy sighs. What had been done could not be undone.
In so long as I came to find my self involved, I was just overwhelmed by the

conviction that there was absolutely no need to be so negatively affected like that. We
should have been stronger than that. More importantly, we should have at least made
Sobhi feel relieved by either stimulating words or even ambidextrous gestures of
maturity. Paradoxically enough, we were so weak to the very extent that Sobhi was clearly
and surely bewildered. It must, however, be rapidly admitted in this respect that people
are all apt to make mistakes. Sobhi, being but a perfect instance, had definitely made a
mistake by being right in an age of shame and unbelief such as ours. He should have been
fully aware that people were not simply what they had used to be. Accordingly, one
could only say that Sobhi had once had a dream that reality had only rejected and
baffled.
Sobhi, it must be confessed, didn’t help being moved with pity towards them. He
couldn’t bear to see them in such an awful situation and found only these words to utter:
“I am pleading you Majdi to tell me what is going wrong with these people. Why are
they so sensitive? Have they not been familiar with the idea that men are not made to
cry? Men are made to be killed, destroyed, vaporized and annihilated but never defeated
or made to cry. To cry is possibly something to be encouraged in women but not in men.
Just allow me to know why they are so sad and despondent. Do they know me? Even if it
is so, this is not to propel them into moving through it. Let us go. Let us just part from
this place. I thought I was to have a cup of coffee. It would rather have been preferable if
I had tried to have it out of another place. It is not in the coffee that we can arrive at
having a cup of coffee. It is only in the street of life that we can get it. This is indeed a
happy finding. Let me no more see these things again. I have had enough of them. Do
you make any sense of what I am saying? I have really had enough of these things.”

“Are you sure you don’t know any one of them?” I eventually asked him without
managing to get out from that air of hopelessness but at the same time an air of
helplessness.
Sobhi looked at me then tried to study their faces more carefully than ever before.
After few moments, he shook his head leaving no room for doubt that he was not what I
had thought and taken him to be.
The few next days held what often seemed to me to be the most unpleasant things I
have ever witnessed in my entire life. We heard, by way of chance, that Sobhi moved
abroad leaving behind him a mother who was so broken heartedly. She, the poor, told me
that her son took a diabolic oath not to come back again. She also told me that he had
left a letter for me and asked her not to let me know about it until after his departure. I,
therefore, found it in essence to try to calm her down and make her believe that he would
one day be unable to withstand the separation and feel the sole need of coming back to
her and to his mother country.
After awhile, and no sooner did I lay my hands upon his letter, I found that it was
quite lengthy. What a tremendously poor fellow then Sobhi must have made himself and
been made as well ! I never thought that he would allow such a precarious idea to dawn
upon his mind. I never believed that he would leave us without even a word of farewell.
We really have no right to be happy while our brothers are persistently suffering. For
indeed, as it has once been said, no colours can represent the place to the life, nor any
soul conceive aright of it but those who have been sufferers there. But then, are we
sensitive, as we might make people believe we are, to the sufferings of others? Are we
sensitive to their tribulations? Are they sensitive to ours?
Il y a certainement une honte à etre heureux en presence de tant de misères. Il y a du

mal sur cette terre, més frères. Mais N’est-ce pas ?
Sobhi was obviously fed up and tired of those who happened to live among. This was
the main reason why he had chosen to move very far away from us. He must, if one can
possibly guess, have been cultivating another dream that would resist being struck down
by the cold reality. A dream that was totally different from the first one. A dream that
radiated a stepping down on his expectations.
Sobhi had chosen to forsake so as not to miss the opportunity of having a rather
normal way of life devoid of stoicism. He was very intelligent in that he soon found out
the impossibility of living normally in such a lousy combination of circumstances.
Having been swayed under that dream, he only did what was blatantly right. He was

something of an intellectual by the way. Right is right even if nobody does it. Wrong is
wrong even if everybody does it. This is, of course, not to mention the fact that if right is
not might, it inevitably turns out to be evil.
Had they left him say what he wanted, he wouldn’t at all have thought of what he did.
Why do we still continue to make fools of our selves?
We are what they have made us to be. Can anybody cast little doubt upon this?
They have really forced us to know what they neglect and of course neglect what they
know. They have just succeeded in playing the trick upon us. We, on the other hand, if
we have ever succeeded in our lives, we have only succeeded in making our selves
ridiculous. We have never failed to produce the same effect in the whole course of our
existence. We always celebrate being shown how to live, how to give and accordingly
what to receive. We have always been led to believe their motto: “ Do or die”.
We are to them no more than flippant objects of experimentations. Once the

experience is done, whether it is successful or futile, we are to be disposed of to be
discarded to be thrown off to be made fun of or if we are so fortunate enough to be
deployed again when we are needed and in the end to be let to deduce the truth when it
is awfully late.
They send their social, economic, cultural, educational and political programmes to be
taught and set up and installed in our homes, lands, and schools in addition to our
deeply erected society after they have made us duped by their appealingly perfect and
useful ways of advertising. We ceaselessly convince them to convince us to sell our souls
and brains for some crusts left upon their tables.
We constantly remind our selves to remain silent for only a brief space of time just
to be unconsciously silent for only a brief space of ever and a day. They never gave us the
truth that has the appearance of illusion. On the exact reverse, they over subsidized us
with the illusion that has the appearance of the truth. Wouldn’t really be out of kindness
from their part to hang every one of us while making us come to stand upside down just
in the hope of seeing the earth a sky and the sky an earth? Hope!? Que La mort eut été
agréable dans ses instants! Que la mort eut été agréable dans ses instants !
After depriving us of our homes and lands, they are to invite us kindly to clean their
streets and wash their dishes (we will be singing at that time; Oh our eyes see clearly at
our nights).

“Haven’t you heard about Rochdi who moved abroad to work as a baby sitter? He
had learnt midwifery in that prestigious institute of tourism? He is certainly to be envied.
I just want to be like him. I will definitely ask him to pave the way for me to join him
there”.
This is one of our fewer unemployed men accosting his friend with an air of pride.
“Haven’t you heard about jack who brought himself to go to the east to work as a
PDG in the company of bosh and bosh? He is certainly to be pitied. I just don’t want to
think about the idea of being like him. I will definitely ask him to be proud of himself
and then prepare the ground for me to join him in mocking himself here”.
This is one of their numerous unemployed men addressing his friend with an air of
irony.
Sobhi. Why have you just moved from your own nest? Move, Move, Move, keep
moving my dear brother. You have every reason to move. It is far better than to be
moved.
I have somewhere said that if Right is not might, it inevitably turns out to be evil.
This is to be understood in the very sense that we are all invited to take its side. Or else,
we will never be able to know it. It is perfectly true that sometimes we find it at stake to
practise the components of righteousness. How about practicing and limping the things
with which we have never been familiar? Life is becoming to go so fast that accepting
would take the place of knowing and believing. This is simplistic and must never then be
allowed to be accepted without knowing and believing.
Sobhi, on his part, must have followed it to its end without hesitation. He has always
had that peculiar kind of principles’ retention. They mean everything beautiful and
significant for him regarding his life. They are a plethora of things outside which he has
never been capable of living.
His letter was the following:
Dear Majdi,
After having deeply thought about my alternative, I only saw no other way to
do better than to push this most forcibly to come about. I have come across many kinds
of people. I never found the right way to get along with them. Some were moving to the
right, some to the left. I moved neither to this nor to that. I just stood in between. I
vainly strove to analyse many illusive things about my surrounding. I only came to find
many and many others. I saw it the best way to warn against them. I was warned into
being kicked out of existence. I realised that people were not ready to care about me. Let
alone for me. I found out that they needed to be left on their own selves whenever they
were in a rust. I tried not to applause with the audience over the farcical play they arrived
at doing. They continued to applause even after I have been tried. I kept my self
untamed. I never had the slightest intention of going back on my principles. They are the
reason why I am here in life. I sustained my own self by constantly learning, earning, and
yearning. I never entered into the realms of chicanery. I never wanted to be dishonest.
Not even with my self. I took the very initiative of living under the umbrella of dignity.
As I wanted, I soon became unwanted. I never asked them to show me how to live. They
never asked me to obey them. They only made me do so. I never accepted. I never gave
my consent to the things that I hate the most. C’ est ainsi que la droiture et la franchise
en toute chose sont des crimes affreux dans le monde, et je paraitrais à eux (mes
contemporains méchant et féroce) quand je n’ aurais à leurs yeux d’ autre crime que de n’
etre pas faux et perfide comme eux. The fascination of the abomination was behind me
all the time like my shadow. I raised my voice against what seemed to me to have unfairly
and persistently been unfair and corrupted. They kept an evil eye on me. I was arrested. I
was imprisoned. I only saw what endorsed my never ending satisfaction. I never cried
asking or begging for mercy. They were excessively kind with me. I never cried. I never
cried. I never cried. You understand? I never found trouble in explaining my view point. I
did not have a stand point. I was not even made an object of ridicule. I feigned, acted,
pretended and succeeded.
Majdi, tell Merai, Bilel and Ramzi that I never meant to consign them into oblivion. I
will not forget to remember them. You are still ingrained in my heart. I just wanted to
wreak revenge upon the whole world but failed. I wanted to feign and found no sign
except that of water when it becomes wine. They did let me walk back home when I was
on the brink of insanity. I am better than Winston smith. They are worse than O’briens.
Notwithstanding my deep and lofty feelings of pity and anxiety, I arrived at making
three possible resolutions. I decided either to live for my own self, for people or for both.
I had to work up my mind to choose between them. The first one was soon demolished
by the second. I turned my entire attention to the third. It proved to be incredibly
difficult to attain. I wanted to die. I didn’t try. I knew it would come without trying.
Nothing is to be done without trying except lying down and dying. Nobody’s enemy but
his own.
I studied the possibility of changing my setting. I couldn’t manage to fulfil it
thoroughly. I did only its first half. The second had to be left undone. It couldn’t be
done save by moving unwillingly to the next world. I could only change the place. I
couldn’t change the time.
Majdi, I must say what you have to hear.
To change my place is according to me far better than to change my face.
To go back means to me to go back and nothing else.
I will never go back. There is but this case in the accordance of which I will probably
go back. And that is exactly the moment when it starts snowing in hell.
I am extensively aware of the fact that my mother will certainly admonish what I did.
But at the same time, I am certain she will pray for me. She will definitely be sent for one
day.
True love does not care for distance or separation. Maybe we will meet in a place
where there is no disgrace. We will live. We shall not grieve. Shall we?
You are a man. You will have to watch over your self first of all and then over your
friends. Never make them feel disappointed. And that’s it.
As for my sweet mother, there is this to be said about her; she is my only way of
seeing things. She bore me. She raised me. She brought me up according to what she was
and not to what she had. I never saw my father. He died when I was only two years old.
My mother was so nice to me, so kind indeed. She never put her hand meaning to beat
me. She never hesitated in giving me what she had. She gave me everything she possessed.
She spent sleepless nights waiting for me. When I was cold, she was the only one to have
warmed me. When I was sick, she was the only one to have never relinquished my side.
When I was worried, she was the only one to have soothed me. When I was lonely, she
was the one to have been with me. She was the one to have led me to know the world.
She was the only one to have taught me to give not to get, to serve not to be served, to
love and not to be loved. She was the one to have pushed me to hate what is evil and
state what is right. She was the only one to have taken from herself in order to satisfy me.
She was the one to have quenched my thirst. Elle est, mon Dieu, la seule qui a étanchée
ma soif. C’est celle qui m’a donnée des nouvelles raisons pour pouvoir continuer à vivre.
She was the only one to have heard humiliating words because of me. She was the one to
have made me see life as it would have been, to see things as they would have been and to
see people as they should have been. So much have I asked from her, she never protested
or even complained. So much have I remonstrated, she never left me.
Tell me Majdi; how can I return all that she has offered to me? Is it by being jailed or
followed all the time? Is it by being put into trouble wherever I go? Is it by being
crumbled into the mould and dust whenever I cried? Just tell me; is it by being
impoverished in my own nest?
Just let me know Majdi; by what means could I meet her needs?
I know this is my fate but, please, let us never ever doubt what everybody is sure
about. But then, and at the very same time, I seem to be bound to tell you one more
thing; of all the people upon whom the sun shines, they are only the plucky who can go
very far. They are the only ones who are ready at any moment to change their views over
their destinies. God never wants the cowards. Only those who keep up on helping
themselves who are to wait for being helped. If we don’t come to the assistance of our
own selves, who will? If we are not our own selves, who will?
Majdi, tell my mother that I really couldn’t help being like what I will always be. Tell
her she is the only one who made me learn how to stand upon my own feet regardless to
anyone whomsoever. Tell her I will not change anything about my self except for the
best. Tell her I will not put her into shame. I will never make her cry once again. Most of
all, tell her I will not become like what they want me to become. I will come back one
day only to take her with me.
See you by that time.

Your friend whose papers
needed one day to be read.
Sobhi

Fundamentally, one does not really need to be smart in order to come to an
understanding regarding the attitude Sobhi adopted towards people and life in general.
The American novelist William Faulkner, in his turn, once stated: “I realized that if I
find someone in a rust, the best thing that I can do to him is to let him stay there.”
We cannot really hope to be in proportion with one another or to be, at best and at
least, peacefully coexisting while everybody is paying close attention to himself and
feeling cold towards the others. We cannot even claim that we belong to the same stock
while everyone is pretending not to know his brothers. What is funny but shameful
nevertheless, is the fact that when it comes to approach one’s interest from any possible
perspective, the outrage presents itself in the form of a jungle in which the weak are to be
sent to hell and the strong are to survive at their expense. How can the one of us permit
his lungs to push the air into the vocal cords so as to say that life is fair when there is
really almost nothing in it in a state of order save chaos and anarchy?
To be longing for something noble and virtuous has now become quite useless in this
age of deformity when what is essential is made ridiculous and what is not is vital.They
have said it without shame: La vertu ne serait donc que de la làcheté. They have even
moved as far as to say without shame: Here only the evil can afford to be good. It is
possibly fair in this respect to say that one has at least to keep his jaw muscles in the
closed position against this triviality that people never stop exhibiting. For otherwise,
things would be worse than ever before. There is indeed something worse than injustice
and that is justice itself when not only does it not have its arms in its hands but also it
has its hands in its pockets. Do we really need to be like this in order to live? Of course
not. We can be fair with one another and life will venerate this and never frown at us. It
is tremendously significant for us to keep in mind that every now and then we should
make mistakes. It is extremely important for us to make mistakes. It is because at that
moment we can learn and profit. Voltaire, the most unfriendly french philosopher once
stated:
“ Believe me my friend, even the mistake has its own significance.”
Experience, in its essence, is definitely what we get when we are expecting something
else. L’experience, as they in French, est toujours couteuse. We are all apt to make those
faults and defects in order to see what is right and what is wrong without delusion and
most of all without the need of anyone whomsoever to show us the directions. It is really

farcical to accept the flimsy point that we can know what is right without having to take
the wrong side or at least to have an idea about it. How on earth should I vindicate the
fact that this man is not acting and moving through every possible disgrace so as to
display himself as being good and decent in front of me? Qui pourrait m’assurer? If I
don’t have the ability to give and take with him, how am I to know his real personality?
It is perfectly righteous to say that the value of man resides in what he is and not in
what he has. But what about the attitude we never cease to have towards poor people? Do
they really have to be bad in order to be appreciated? Do they have to forget about their
principles and immediately address themselves to the act of wearing those several painted
faces so as to meet all occasions? Do they really have to reduce themselves and sink to the
most profound degrees of hypocrisy in order to rise up to the level of seeing rich people
eye to eye? Still, if it is to be put in a clear way, do they have to undergo and move
through those realms of faked appearance and dirty pride in order to go on living till
tomorrow?
If we can just see the beggar who gets his face and rugs crumbled into the dust as the
rich man’s car goes by, we can understand many and many things about life. When you
don’t feel any respect for the servant who serves or the villager who sows, but only for
those from whom you hope to get something, try, please, to help yourself by keeping
quiet and silent, for nobody will allow himself to appreciate your nice behaviour.
One day, devoid of bribery or exceptions, every one of us will face the trouble of
providing an answer to the one single question: Why have you lived like that? We will
certainly be called upon to give an accountability for all that has taken place on this earth
whose safety and maintaining had long been recommended by God. Various answers are
to be produced upon this very simple question. To attempt to categorize them can bring
us to two possible perspectives: The oppressors and the oppressed.
The former will of course find it pretty manageable to meet this question. There go
the oppressors of the poor. They will say that they chose to live like that because of
those who are oppressed. They assaulted, wounded, lied, stole, led and killed for the
simple and obvious reason that the oppressed were ready to concede and accept that kind
of business and did nothing to cope with it. They never tried to make themselves at once
useful and effective to confront these oppressors and reduce them to their own trivial
boundaries. Let us just try to find out the secrecy behind their incredible power and
authority over every one of us. It is very simple to get it out without the need of making
any effort. It is because the secret is that there is no secret at all. The oppressors were too
much powerful because the oppressed were too much weak. How could they acquire all
that metamorphosed influence if the weak were not weak? I, myself, do not seem to
know only the very thing which stipulates that it is from the weakness that we can hope
to derive power. How can I deprive or prevent my self from having that power if you
don’t stop me from doing so? Au surplus, ce sera mon affaire de mettre les forts dans
mes interets, en partageant avec eux les dépouilles des faibles; Cela vaudra mieux que la
justice pour mon aventage et pour ma sureté. Rien ne m’est également plus cher que moi.
Il ne s’agit pas de m’apprendre ce que c’est que justice; il s’agit de me montrer quel intéret
j’ai d’etre juste. Et puis après, ou’ est l’homme qui puisse ainsi se séparer de lui-même ?
Mais ou’ est cet accord aimable de la justice et du bonheur en un temps comme le notre
ou’ le malheur de l’un fait le bonheur de l’autre ? You will say there is justice that governs
every state of being. You will say that this justice is placed in the hands of our
representatives and that it is intensified with our continuous and never interrupted
consent. It is perfect. Who said something different from this? They are, indeed, our
representatives. They are, by all standards and means, our representatives. But in what?
Let us wonder and ask rather than wait and lose. They will not even make the mistake of
listening to us. It is so settled and there is according to them no disputing of the fact that
we are asking dolting questions if not absurd ones. It is so settled and he who is ignorant
will never cater for his ignorance except by receiving ready made answers (most of them
are bad ones because we do not know who undertook the task of making them for us
and upon what grounds and with reference to what questions. We are not allowed to ask
questions because we are ignorant and if we are not we are to be exposed to a
questionnaire because our questions are dolting and may give enough room to disorder
and impediment). These representatives, in short, were they true representatives, and
most of all free from external force or private bribery, nothing could pass here but what
we and they (they are the instruments of power not those who content themselves with
asking questions out of fatigue) think is for the public advantage. You will also say, to
move on to a matter of more worth and value, that we are all asked to abide ourselves by
this justice. Can you please tell me where can I find this justice in order to pull my self
together and get my self swayed under its instructions? Daniel Defoe, in this respect,
would quickly come to my rescue against this extremely painful speculation and say in A
Hymn to the Pillory (1703):
But Justice is inverted when

Those Engines of the law
Instead of pinching Vicious Men,
Keep Honest ones in awe;
Thy business is, as all Men know,
To punish villains, not to make Men so.

Where is justice? I can’t possibly see it, let alone when I think about my dear brother
Sobhi. He is not a villan. He is an honest man. Justice ! my very blood chills even at the
mention of its name. Is it true that we will bump into it like that without making any
effort? Why on earth have we not bumped into it before? Why am I still wrestling with
its exact reverse? That is injustice. Mais écoutons ceci: Quand je vois la misère et
l’injustice, je mets la main à la pauche gauche et j’aide mon prochain. Quand je vois la
paresse et l’indolence, je mets la main à la pauche droite et je constate que je n’ai rien à
donner. De cette façon, j’arrive à mettre en équilibre le monde materiel et le monde
spirituel. Am I to wait for it (this justice) till I become completely old and paralysed? I
really don’t want to see it when I am on the brink of going to my grave. I simply don’t
need it at that time. There is another real justice which I never distrust. But I need this
justice now and very badly. When I grow old and become aware of that, I really want to
be deprived of this justice. But as we are all waiting eagerly or contemptuously for that
time to come, I prefer to have it now. Can you just guide me to come across it?
leaving a space of time for you to think deeply about whether to help me or to help
yourself, tell me first, who are you?
If I find out that you are able to answer this question, I will certainly refer to you as
being the perfect example of that real man who never knows that he is one. But again, I
can also feel the need of asking you another yet important question: Are you with me or
with them? If you are on my side, I am afraid I am on theirs. I can always celebrate what
they are doing to us. I will never lament over my weakness. Am I clumsy and stupid to
bewail for the loss of something? I will rather praise and glorify its opposite. Emily
Bronte, on her part, once made it clear for us that “There would be more sense in
endeavouring to repair some of the erroneous things in the world than to shed tears over
them”. For this reason and this reason alone, I will never be ready to show that I am sad
or sorry for something. I never want to become a scapegoat to be laughed at in the end. I
will never say that I am weak or poor. I will rather say I am not strong or rich. Maybe I
will succeed in bringing my self to say that I am waiting to be strong or rich but never to
repent or feel sorry for something. The difficulties of life are really intended to make us
better not bitter. They are just some stepping stones to be confronted and then
remembered after a little time. The only thing I must by every means insist upon is this
one; I will make it without being made or exposed to injustice.
I am completely aware of the fact that my weakness has something to do with my own
temperament. If I have a strong personality, I will never be prepared to admit that I am
weak. I prefer to die than to live and say I am weak. I will never keep, this is something I
confer upon my own self, my head down. I will never keep it in an inferior position as

long as i live. I will never keep it down as many people have done out of fear and
submission. No one can make us feel inferior without our consent. No one can even
make us feel humiliated without our consent. Il ne faut point songer, mes frères, à donner
du courage aux làches ni de la résolution aux faibles. Muapassant would interestingly take
it into his head and remind us.
I don’t really see the point of insisting on the fact that we are human beings abiding
by several principles the absence of which will be the presence of trouble and nuisance.
Speaking about principles, I, however, see much point in saying this; there is absolutely
no room for compromises. There should be no room at all for the like of them.
Compromises are out of question in this respect. Has anybody seen principles going side
by side with compromises? I am dead sure they do not go together neither in good nor in
bleak times. There is no need then to ask such a question: “Is it better to risk defeat in
defence of a principle or hang on with compromises”?
When one is defending something, one is fighting against something else. This means
that that something else is also being defended itself with a view of defeating that which
it is fighting against. To defend a principle is simply to defend one’s dignity. So, there is
no defeat in defending one’s dignity whether it be loss or gain. To live in an unprincipled
way is to live without spirit. To have no spirit is better than to have a compromising
spirit. But what is vital and of extreme importance is to have an uncompromising spirit.
Many people will surely have that kind of tendency to protect themselves in the same
way as the tortures do whenever they find themselves in trouble. These people, I am
clearly stating, will tend to protect themselves by trying to be out of danger’s way. I really
congratulate them for this extraordinarily effective way of defence or self-defence but at
the same time, I can assure them that if they don’t work very hard upon illuminating and
exterminating that danger and trying to kick it out of being, one day, and I am not
prevaricating, they will definitely be in danger.
Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher and thinker, once attempted to inquire about
several things regarding life. He quickly found himself, by way of premises and
reasoning, asking a set of extremely simple but deep questions: Why is it that most of us
are rather sloppy in our dress, in our manners, in our thoughts and in the way we do
things? Why are we unpunctual and so inconsiderate of others? And what is that brings
about order in everything, order in our dress, in our thoughts, in our speech, in the way
we walk, in the way we treat those who are less fortunate than ourselves?
These questions, to render it as a fact, cannot be easily answered. These are questions,
Dickens said, that no sagacity could have solved or could still resolve. We are merely

speaking about them. Indeed, nobody has ever had the courage or the fortitude to ask
them even. Were it not for the fact that Krishnamurti asked them, nobody of us would
find the time to pay them his attention.
“Haven’t you heard that time is money nowadays?”
“Yes I have. And what is to come next?”
Nobody appears to be making the content of this question into practice. When you
chance to hear them arguing and talking about time, it is very probable that you will say
that these people have at last come to know from where the wind is blowing. According
to the way they talk, you will even find your self moving through that kind of self-
abasement for not having been like them. To cast a swift glance at the way they are
leading their lives, you would give a wish you had not known them at all. It is simply
because they always and this time stand for what they never seem to be. It is really a pity
that each time one knows people, one immediately gets tired of them. And why shouldn’t
one get tired of them since talking to them is like talking to the walls if I may deploy the
words of Coetizee when accosting the poor Friday?
To start out with and to say it right from the beginning, unless we do something
about ourselves and push it to materialize while radiating that kind of heedlessness to
those who never know why they are in life, we are all Fridays and if our tongues are not
still cut, they will be cut sooner or later. We come to them and kneel down to them, and
take hold of their legs and of their feet, and lay our heads upon the ground ; and sob and
cry, like children who were corrected, could not speak for their lives. I cannot, of course,
recant that I have said somewhere that we are what they have made us to be, but this
never works when we discover that we are rather what we have made ourselves to be.
How can we blame them for what they have done to us when we begin to arrive at
knowing that we are the first ones to blame? How are we to answer that question? Why
have we lived like that? How are we to account for the kind of dispensation we are
adopting or forced by human beings never superior to us save by malice and knowledge
which is power to adopt? There are many and many people of whom we have often
known that they never wept nor prayed, they just cursed and defied. They are to me far
and far better than those who not only refused to weep or pray, but also refused to curse
or defy. I always wonder what on earth is the use of them or the use of sending their sons
to schools when all that they seem to be capable of doing is nothing or no more than to
see, witness and then let things happen. The winners make it happen; the losers, however,
let it happen. In this way, we are the losers.

We are the losers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We are
the losers who know who are to be the losers and who are to be the winners and who are
to be the sinners. To be a loser and a sinner at the very same time is really becoming
more than one can bear. How are we to answer that question? Why have we lived like
that?
But before moving to have it met with an answer, we need to make sure that we know
to what side we do belong. Is it to the oppressed that we really belong or to the
oppressors? I feel that we go with the latter and never with the former. As a matter of
fact, there is no such thing as an oppressed. An oppressed is the cruellest oppressor ever
existed in this round earth. An oppressor cannot be an oppressed. Thus, as I have come
to say, there is no such thing as an oppressed and what is more; there is nothing further
that really needs to be said about this.

To say that Sobhi’s outstandingly telling letter did not make me go crazy and
become one who never finds pleasure but in laughing at himself, to state that his mother
Fadhila, after having been told so, did not turn numb and tongue tied for over two
months and a half refusing to see people let alone to talk to them including me, to claim
that Bilel got back to his senses and found the capacity for getting out of his home to see
people, happy as they are, doing their works in the most serious and rewarding manner
ever done by Humans, to feel that Ramzi was at least cosy and did not at all raise any
finger to avow and seduce despondency to make the best use of itself upon him, and to
point out that Merai was not caught more than once weeping and ramming his head
against what ever wall he chanced to be under, would not only rise up to level of a fallacy
but also to the level of a bad joke when told to someone who was just dismissed from his
post on the plea of not having applauded when his boss, out of stupidity, had said that
he was to keep on saying things,whether right or wrong, and expect nobody to try to do
away with applauding.
“We are all in a theatre where nobody is in a position to walk out and every body is
forced to applause”. If it was a theatre, so much would be the better. The most painful
thing is that we are not in a theatre but rather in a dungeon. Accordingly, it is the proper
thing to say that we are all in a dungeon where every candle is fading out and every one is
going about as blindly as a but trying to look for a way of looking for a vent from which
to escape. We are all in a mall that has no wall where we are selling what will never be
bought and buying what will never be sold.
Never have they scoffed at a fall that can be similar to ours. A fall that resulted from
the unexpected laxness and indolence from the part of the only community whose
ignorance the other communities are making fun of. And why on earth shouldn’t they
make fun of our community since we are clumsily accepting them as they are and at the
same time refusing our selves? Then, it is always safer to say, as I said before, what an
excellent community we have come to form !
Each time I permit my self to think deeply and see how one is fading away before his
age and dying day after day, I always hasten to prevent my self from dying without
thought . I always keep on being grateful to Emerson for having proclaimed in the best
of all plain ways: “ So far as Man thinks, he is free.”
One has to think before any allowance for feelings to be spoken out. Il serait superflu
ainsi. Toutes les émotions doivent etre soingneusement évitées avant la pensée. Nobody

seems to be paying enough attention to the fact that to be hospitable and host what
should be rejected at any cost is a terrible mistake if we conceive of mistakes as being
mistakes. As a matter of fact, it is, one is bound to say after Hamlet, respect that makes
calamity of so long a life. We must be brave enough to know that we are running to our
own destruction by respecting those who never respected the very idea of respecting us in
return. There is really no acute need to bring our selves to say that respect is in itself a
virtue that has to be respected. This is basically why, Aristotle tells us, some thinkers
define the virtues as states of impassivity or tranquility. I really cannot ascribe any
meaning to respect when it does not generate another compatible one from their part. I
will therefore say with all my kindness:
To hell with respect if it brings about nothing but humiliation.
What ground do we still pretend to have for saying that this is the right way in which
we should live? We have to learn how to root out everything that does not go in
conformity with logic and reason. If first, we do not succeed, we need to try reading the
directions. The poor peasant Tom said. We should not live as they want us to live . We
should live as we want them to believe. Indeed, we should live and wait for no one of us
to be ready to show that he can be manipulated by those who never knew how to
manipulate themselves except towards darkness and destruction.
Each one of us has in himself the capacity for making all of this into practice. What
stops us?
Of course, it is respect that stops us. We belong to a certain order of things. In fact,
we have been told that we belong to that specific order of things? The order of being
weak and in need of civilization.
One has to respect every day as irrespectively of anything else as possible. One has to
respect and show his greatfulness to the many and many philanthropist men of our age.
“ If malice and vanity “ Emerson said “ wear the coat of philanthropy, Shall that pass?”
To respect them is one’s duty in life as a matter of fact. It is basically because one has to
be civilized. Civilization is not as easy as we might seem to think. We have been told that
it does not come like that as naturally as the leaves to a tree. It is on those philanthropists
that it highly depends.
One cannot help wondering how they have come to be civilized if civilization does
not come as the product of ancient people. Nowadays, it has become highly problematic
for people to behave in a simple way. Most of all, it has become very difficult for them
to enter modern civilization without losing whatever is civilized in them. En présence de
cette civilisation si avancée qui pour chaque action, si indifférente qu’elle soit, se charge
de vous fournir un modèle qu’il faut suivre, ou du moins auquel il faut faire son procés,
ce sentiment de dévouement sincère et sans bornes est bien prés de donner le bonheur
parfait. STENDHAL had rightly put it.
Sobhi, to our greatest disappointment, did not tell us where he had gone. Whether
this was on purpose or not, nobody knew. What was evident was that we would never
have the opportunity to perform some kind of correspondance with him. I never
understood why he did that to us or even to his mother. He left us without any
knowledge of anything except of being helpless and hopeless at the same time. No sign
did he give us according to which we would at once start searching for him especially
when Merai was fully prepared to follow him wherever he went. Where upon that, we
found no other way than to wait for a knock upon the door or a letter to be sent from
him so as to know from where it would come. Nothing could be done at the present
moment.
Any attempt at dwelling upon these melancholic events with regard to Sobhi would
certainly amount to something like a pity not only to himself but equally to all of us. A
pity that shakes everything about us. One that breaks all that we did in our lives. In other
terms, Sobhis’ departure cannot but stand for a warning against us not to move through
life and suffer while we do have everything in our hands in order to escape and flee from
passing away as unnoticed people who will be remembered by posterity with nothing but
shame and abasement. Sobhi was warning each one of us not to waste his life doing
nothing and looking for a reason behind that. We all need to become aware of the fact
that we have not been aware at all. It is only when we lose something that we start
thinking seriously about our selves. They say that only those who know what sadness
means can feel happy. They even say that only those who know what death means can
give life. How on earth is that? I would like to know what the whole thing is really about.
Is it by feeling sad all the time that we will manage to feel happy in the end? Is it by
dying every day that we will start to give life? I am sick with this film of familiarity that
never knows an end. It seems to be an endless film which collapses everything. Are we to
live a second life in this world? “ One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people exist. That is all”. One should live and forget about being sad and grope his
way and follow it to its end without any inferiority complexes. One should live and hear
of no stupidity to come around him. One should live and learn how to unlearn that
which does not lead any where.
History has never ceased to provide us with numbers without number of instances
that reveal and tell how great people managed to handle the torch of humanity and how
they were always determined to show the colour of the inside of the one who would

think about standing up against them. ‘If you come near the boat, I will shoot you right
through the head. For I am resolved to have my freedom’. But in so far as we are all of us
concerned, no matter how barren and sterile we are being presented to the world and
seen by others as such, we have to prove them wrong. Most of all, we have to be ashamed
of nothing but of being ashamed. It is merely on account of the fact that, so to speak, we
do have something like a duty to perform in this life of ours. Our duty is to be without
any duty save that of our Lord.
As for earthly constraints, they are just imposed upon us and can certainly be evaded
with hard work. Our duty is to live as we are told to live and do as we are told to do not
by humans but by our creator. No sooner did Man take the life of his brother and the
sad film began to be shown. But again, we all need to go on. Life is a gift in one way or
another. Therefore, we need to profit from it and avoid hurting one another. Why
should we bear grudgy things against each other when there is really no need for that? Is
it owing to an external force that we are saying things while doing other ones? La feintise,
mon dieu, à quoi bon avoir la feintise? Pour quelle raison ? En feignant de faire une chose
on en fasse en réalité une autre. But how about those who are doing exactly what they are
saying? Do we really belong to them? A question asked which is never answered. Life is a
journey in which we are asked to take one way . To try to take more than one way will
not be of any service to us. One way is enough. So let it be the right one.The right way is
one in which we will never feel that we are selfish. Stagnation and inertia are to be given
no mind. They can only drive to stupidity and procrastination. Life is not a tale told by
an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing . Life is a novella in which many idiots
are to be found with no other ground than that of standing for nothing but inertia and
stagnation. Life is not a play of passion. Day unto day, Life wastes and wanes like a
candle burning its oils away till nought but charred wick remains. Indeed, with no need
to be startled at all, very numerous are those who are idiots in this life that we take to be
ours. They are idiots in the very sense that their lives are palpably donned with nothing
but imbecility and inefficiency. Still, what makes things even worse is the fact that they
do not really seem to recognize this. However, their idiocies are persistently imbedded in
them in such a way that they are beginning to feel the sole need of judging things
according to their own short sighted perspectives. They are even oblivious to the fact
that things are not really meant to be judged but rather used and deployed according to
our own needs. Things are meant to be saved, kept, consumed, transformed or simply
discarded or at once thrown away But never judged. It is not really for us living beings or
up to us to judge things without enough knowledge and experience.
People, these days, do not come across any difficulty in pretending to be right
while they are anything but that. After all, as it must be stated, we are all tasked to stop
allowing our selves to judge things and see whether they are right or wrong. We are to
live and stop making things come to their ends before thay have really started. Fourvoyer
les choses pour rien et pour ainsi faire mal à nous même. We are to learn how to live and
nothing else. More importantly, we are to accommodate our selves to the changes of life
while having that special kind of principles’s retention which takes a great deal from
itself in order to imbue this life of ours with meaning and significance. It is a kind of
resisting and withstanding to the cold and harsh reality, a way of accepting life not as it is
but rather as it really aught to be. Besides, it is undeniably true that any attempt, whether
serious or ridiculous, at platonizing life is bound to be a great failure. But at the same
time, it will not deprive us of that feeling of confort and safety in a world that has really
started to be a little bit absurd and futile. Our hope, then, is to be sustained and
intensified on the cess of those constant attempts to live as all real men would have
chosen to live. We are really in need to handle a life of our own. A life that does not
sound like death. A life that accepts no such thing as stoicism or human suffering.
Hamlet
A lonely ghost loomed out of the unknown mystery,

Bringing a halt to darkness and showing life in misery.
Hamlet was told but there was no reason at all to be cold,
This is a confession that is old, what is gilded cannot be gold.
For what are seen as heroes in the tarnished human history,
They are nothing but condemned on the cess of lofty mastery.
* * * *
Hamlet was mad, truth is a man whose head is bald,
Hamlet was sad, illusion is a woman that nods to be sold.
It is respect that generates respect, Humans are in February;
No wonder the proper study of Mankind lies in January.
Being their tamed slaves, what should we do but scold ?
So cold is the heat, so dry is the feast, no fire is to hold.
* * * *
Birds are crying, freedom is dying, life is in boundary;

Flowers are fading, trees are shambling, O devine mastery.

It is raining now, i really can’t help gathering. Let it be since there is no clear
reason as to how and not why it should be otherwise. Let it even pour and not only drop
over these nice hills and orchards so that when it is done, i suppose it will not demand
any mending. I strongly believe this is very helpful in the sense that it aptly makes one
feel at least at ease. This is extremely amazing in the sense that everything is presented as
something that is, how about for my brothers?, next to nothing. It is, indeed, viewed in
my eyes as something similar to this especially when it sounds like a possible source of
contrition. He has got some rightness this Samuel Langhorne Clemens by the way when
he ended up by saying these words: ‘Let the cold world do its worst; One thing I know _
There is a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as it has always done, and
take everything from me _ loved ones, property, everything _ but it cannot take that.
Some day, I will lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.’
I have an impression telling me that what i am stating is not without its own
motivations. But at the same time, i feel that my impression should come to me as no
surprise if not as no new deal because in both cases, it really makes no difference.
Whether one feels or does not feel, this is quite ridiculous if it is to be felt for its own
sake. I can also move and say that there is no such thing as something to be felt and then
be undertaken for its own sake. It is always disheartening and saddening when one comes
into close contact with those who never know what to do with themselves. Take me as
no exception, i do not know why is it that i, more often than not, am pretending to be
someone else when what is needed is no more than my own self. Mais pourquoi me
montrerais-je autre que je ne suis? I do not say that i am acting as somebody else or
acting some part as many would probably like to do. For this is to tell no truth as a
matter of form and fact alike. It has not reached my mind save by the negative. But i say
that my pretention is focused on someone who might not even be like everybody else. I
also say that my pretention is trying to make me believe that it is what i need. It would
have been more useful if it had opted for somebody else and not me. I am an expert in
disappointing. That’s what i am in fact. An expert in doing something and leaving it
then, undone. And what of it? It is just like what everybody else is doing or undoing. I
am a human thrown into being and this is my fate. So, so what? It is a question and i
can’t tell whether it is important or not. It is a question to be asked and then answered
but the exact rendering of it is nothing. There have been many years now since i stopped
believing in my answers to their questions. My questions are never answered. Why

should i waste my time in answering their questions? They have not listened to my
questions. So much the best which is the worst.
It is raining now and i have just said it previously because it is important for me to
say
it and then say that it has been said. Therefore, i must say that it is raining and when
it is raining, it will follow that to say it is not like not to say it. It is raining now and i
think
i have recently come to mention something like this. Of course, to say is better than
not to say. I have learnt this for a long time. To say is far better than to remain uncertain
because uncertainty can also be said to be what it does not stand for. I need to say many
things because i want to survive. This is it. Just a few words which when said, it will be
all right. These words which i am about to disclose are to offer me some sort of
consolation. I hope against hoping and there is no hope for escaping from this fact.
What is hope without strenousness? To hope is nothing to me when it is not compacted
with hard work. There is nothing i know of that is the outcome of no work except what
is negative and to be accordingly drained of any prerogative. I want to say and keep on
doing so until i am finished. It is finished before i start saying my words. They are then
to be about my being finished. What have i said? Finished? I think it is the right word to
be used in here in this respect. Finished? Yes, indeed, it is the proper word to be used in
here. Finished? It must be nearly at an end. So, it is my beginning when it is finished. It is
my beginning when it is finished and also it is raining. It must be interesting then and
then again i am interested. I am interested only and solely in that which is interesting.

Sobhi is my brother and i am saying this for many reasons. He knows that all of
them are poor and this, i will say, is for sure. He knows this because this is clear for every
one who wants to know. There is no need at all to be saying that quite aside from the
fact that the vacuity in which we are wanted to live in is at one point what has led Sobhi
to react. Where it has really come from and where it is really going to, this is no
question. The question is to know whether we are reacting against this vacuity or not.
My answer would be such that we are not. It is not clear that there is an other possible
answer. There can hardly be any rational human being who lives in this place and
remains so. They have said that to be rational is in a way to find the proper set of terms
into which all contributions should be translated if agreement is to become possible.
Here, there are no terms. There are some contributions but there is no agreement. So, so
what? I really wait for no answers to my questions because i am fed up and tired of those
ready made answers which we receive day after day. My questions, I think they think, are
not good ones. It is difficult to ask good questions. It is also difficult to provide good
answers to bad questions.
I am being betrayed by this silence. Everything seems to be dead and this is what is
really haunting and tormenting. I am sure this is not the way for living. This is not the
way for living at all. So, why are we pretending against our selves? This is not the way for
living. Any one who might allow himself to look with a little depth into the past might
accordingly end up by saying what i have just said before. This is not the way for living.
The past will never be cast away into oblivion once and for all. It is for ever surging and
imposing its good days and those which were erratic. It is to be constantly read and
understood by our present. It will never escape being read by our present. There seems to
be that we are for ever reading what has always been read. The past is a legacy and a curse
for all people. Aren’t we sometimes feeling ashamed with our past? We are and this is a
mistake we need to discard and avoid each time it appears to us. But mistakes never
appear until we make them do so. Many mistakes were held to be always what we wanted
them to be. It is quite clear that any mistake is a mere wrong effort brought about by the
circumstances under which it came about. We need to live without mistakes. This is
next to impossible if not utterly impossible because our reasoning itself is under the
necessity of some reasoning. Mistakes are forcing themselves upon us no matter how
militated we are against them. Take silence. It is a mistake to believe in silence. It does
not generate any positive thing. Have we not been silent all these years? I think we have
been silent for a long time and now it is time to recognize that it was a mistake to have

been silent. What do we really take our selves for? What do we think we are? We are
silent and, as we see, we are miserable. We are constantly silent. Does is take some effort
to be silent? Seuls les làches se cachent derrière le silence. Friedrish Nietzsche once had it;
“Those who keep silent almost always lack subtlety and politeness of the heart; Silence is
an objection, swallowing down necessarily produces a bad character _ it even ruins the
stomach. All those given to silence are dyspeptic”. I have no time to stop and have his
words more closely considered but I think he had some reason into saying them. And
this is perhaps why he was even capable of saying that it seemed to him that the rudest
word, the rudest letter were more good-natured, more honest than silence. For it yields
nothing, I suppose rather than assume, but laxness and recalcitrance. Can anything be
made, my brothers, out of indolence? It is time. For what? It is time for some effort to be
made and invested after we are completely done for. It is time for clenching our hands
for work. There is really no time to spare for silence. It is time to spare no time for
silence. It is invariably maddening to see that we are wasting so much time for no good
thing. It is invariably maddening to see that our past left nothing for us except its own
belonging. I can’t bear it up any more. I really find no excuse for my self to remain
moving through this process of degeneration. I see it plainly and this is really what pains
me a lot. We are all moving through a process of break down. What is the use of our
being silent? We have at least our selves to blame for this unpardonable and unforgiven
mistake.
We need to avoid it by every possible means. Silence is not to be seen as something

positive when it is rendered for its own sake. We need to be silent for something and not
for silence itself. Seuls les làches se cachent derrière le silence.

When it is my turn to look for a way out of this silence, i am to come down
heavily upon the fact that i am not going to bring anything new with my self. I want to
say a few words regarding life because i am too young to start receiving things without
questioning their validity. I want to breathe some fresh air and live the way i intend for
my self. It is my life that occupys me and i refuse to meddle into other people’s business.
Many things informing my life require from me some proper attention and this is why i
always insist that to live is not to let things happen but rather to make them happen
without fear. That’s how i take it to be. Life is not a mere game which is measured by
loss and gain. This is very simplistic and suggests some vital awareness from my part. I
want to take my life beyond this mistake and think of it as something much deeper and
with a view of searching for my very raison d’etre. I want to give some meaning to my
life. For the time being, my life has absolutely no meaning whatever. But then, for the
time to come, it will be completely different if not convergent from the way it has been
before and this is dependent upon what i am going to do rather than what is going to be
done to me. What is done to me has already been done and it is but a mistake from my
part for having allowed them to take advantage of my ignorance.
Now, it is time we ceased to think simplistically about life because life is, after all,
too complex to be taken with laxness. We are called upon to open our eyes the maximum
of time for everything seems to be taking its course and turning to its reverse. We are
going to stop making it difficult for our selves to deal with our living. Let us juggle with
it instead and learn each time that we are responsible for every mistake we are going to
make. Let us take responsibility for our selves at this very juncture of history for there
seems to be no other way for us except fighting and fighting and fighting and then
realising the difference we are going to make possible. Nobody will ever start
admonishing us for the choices we have until we start harming others. We have no
intention whatever to harm anyone. We are only trying to escape death for some time
and most of all oblivion. Nobody wants to die and be consigned into oblivion. There is
really more enterprise in fighting because, to our minds, existence is ,indeed, a very wild
and bitter struggle and not an easy exercise to be met and solved the first time we are
alive.
I am attempting to be clear for this is really no place for impalpability. This is not a
story for entertainment as many would have it. By the way, the exertion of it (this story I
mean) will outweigh any possible pleasure I am supposed to derive from it. It is far from
being my goal. Pleasure is not a goal. It can be a result but not a goal. This story is
something which i call a predicament for those who find a glamour of hope in sincerity
and righteousness. Hard work and patience when combined will make a solid safeguard
for our motives. We are to understand this from the start and then start.
Take freedom as a motive if you don’t feel it for the time being. Take it then as a
motive and work very hard upon obtaining it for there is really nothing so much precious
and exorbitant as freedom. It is, as i have come to dwell upon this in another respect,
freedom that will make us aware of life. It is that which must belong to us sooner or later
and i don’t think it will come without ardueousness. Freedom is not a luxury nor is it to
be seen as restricted to some lucky ones whom we constantly refer to as being “the happy
few”. They are, I think, to be held responsible for “the despondant many”. It is our
nature that teaches us this extremely important lesson. We are free by nature but the
second man took the life of his brother and the sad film of slavery began to be shown.
Look at the trees, c’est une loi écrit dans la nature! Look at the flowers, look then at the
birds, look at the sun, look at the moon, look at the stars. Look at your self now.
Freedom is so much needed. There is no escape from it except in it if ever life to some
meaning is wanting. Take it back if it has been taken away. Nobody will think very ill of
you but more importantly it is time to look beyond appearances. Come on, it is freedom.
It is to be sought for even if everything else will start looking very badly.
Sobhi has moved to Algeria and then to France. I was expecting something like this
to happen as a matter of fact. We knew it all of a sudden thanks to a friend of his who
got back and told us that, after all, it was planned.
“ He was always dreaming of studying in France”. His mother Fadhila said this with a
deep sigh.
“ Thank God. I will join him shortly. I missed him so much. He should have told
me”. Merai said this and lit a cigarette impatiently.
“ All right then,” i said “ Sobhi is in France and there is no need to worry about him.
He knows what he is doing. I think it is time to go out for a cup of coffee Ramzi, isn’t
it?”
“ yes, indeed. It has always been time. Were Sobhi in my place, he would add that it
was a happy finding by all standards to go for a cup of coffee and leave what is of
importance inoperating”.
Tata Fadhila protested and said:

“ No. What am i doing then if i don’t prepare it for you now at home? No one is to
stir, right?”
“Yes, we do need some home made coffee. We need some home made coffee”.
Is it by possibility true that we are only prepared to see what is before us? Is it by
possibility true that we are only obliged not to see what is not before us? Just make it up
and try to help it out for nobody seems to be offering some very original things. Open
up the way for your self to live differently. Open up the way for your self to evaluate
differently. But most of all, open up the way for your self to think differently. It is my
conviction that each one of us has in himself the capacity for jarring with whatever is
imposed. Each one of us has in himself the capacity for standing against the trivial.
Nothing valuable has ever been forced to come into being without some proper
understandindg of life. Just figure it out. Nothing of importance is to come out of what
is trivial.
Many things, i firmly believe, are going so badly these days. What do we do when
they are affecting our lives so unnecessarily? What do we do when they are compelling us
to accept and never reject? Silence. Let us remain silent today for maybe things will
change in the future. They will change. I do assure you they will change.
I always say to my self that nothing further needs to be said when nobody is looking
for a way out of this sort of death in life. But then, one feels that to say is better than not
to say. To say things regardless to whether or not they are relevant is not a good idea.
Only when one starts to recognise the fact that judging things is not after all up to us we
who are in the midst of life. Nobody knows what is relevant or irrelevant since
everything appears indeed to be turning to its reverse. Let it be conceded then, that
nothing is to be obtained out of our atavistic ways of dealing with things. e.e.cummings,
a highly portencious and wonderful poet, brings it to the fore this way:
When man determined to destroy

Himself he picked the was
Of shall and finding only why
Smashed it into because.
Whoever wants to live differently must learn to think but also evaluate differently.
Life is bestowing a whole multitude of possibilities. To linger over the past will bring
nothing positive with it. Go and ask Historians what good is to come out of our
moralization of the past. Make sure to ask them also what good is to come out of our
trivialization of the past. The past is passed and it is there to remind us not to believe in

atavism. It is there to provide before us the glorious as well as the injurious deeds of our
ancestors. What about our selves? We have the present as well as the future. Only when
one starts to recognize the fact that our ancestors’s future is our present. They seem to
have never thought about it. This is why they seem to have never prepared for it. Was it
my grand father who got up at four in the icy morning to lead the sluice of water into
the garden? Atavism, atavism, let us rely on Atavism. It is all we need in order to think
about and prepare for the future.
Was it my grand father, one cannot but try to ask, who got up at four in the icy
morning to lead the sluice of water into the garden? This is the question that always
remains to be asked and to which my answer will be part of the question our posterity
will undoubtedly put. One ought never to blame our ancestors. One, rather, should
admonish himself for wanting to be something similar to them. It is accordingly essential
to us to open our eyes to the fact that we have to start anew without fear or submission.
It is now our turn to learn how to stand upon our own feet without being shown how to
live or what to feel or not to feel. This earth belongs to us. It belongs to us and i do not
think that it will be availed and do to simply wait and see whether things are going to
happen or not. Whoever wants to fight for his freedom must start out at once by setting
himself free from all the shackles he comes into close contact with. Let us make sure we
do not end up by becoming slaves of the past. We are to be free and then build up for
the future for it is the only thing that is elaborately set before us as a way out of oblivion.
It is, i must say, the struggle of life against death. It is the struggle of memory against
forgetting. It is the struggle of truth against illusion.

I believe that something is wanting in this life that we take to be ours. What is
wanting is our awareness of the future. We have to do everything our selves if we want to
know anything about this future. We have a lot to do for the sake of our future. There is
no need to give up the struggle from the start. We are too young to start giving up. We
are too young, i must say again, to start giving up. Since when, let us put it in simple
terms, do real people wait for the unknown to be known? Since when do they even wait
for their adversaries to demonstrate their superiority over them? Real people never allow
themselves to be inslaved no matter how hard this task appears to be. They never give up
or give in. They never make the mistake of believing that silence will do when they know
they are being threatened. They take life as a battle in which they are to prove their
existence. They have to fight for their dignity. They will fight for their integrity. They
never abstain from paving the way for a glorious future that will bring pride and
happiness. But does any one care for these things nowadays? Does any one think about
these things nowadays?
The worthy thing about me is that i can obey and it should be the same for you
as it is for me. This is what Kant proclaimed in the end. He wanted us to learn how to
spend a whole life of bending and servitude. Dickens, to make it even worse, would point
out to something utterly strange and out of sense but sentimental like himself when he
said that many of us had to hold at the back where we meditate on a misspent life. To
return to Kant, it is not clear that by following human beings one is to come across
worthy things. However, to obey our creator is certainly the most important thing one is
to grasp in this universe. Never, my goodness just listen to me this time and leave Kant
for later, NEVER THINK that just because they succeeded (which implies that they
failed) in making if not helping us look at spiritual things in a trivial way that we will be
extremely kind and believe in their empty words that will never go up to heaven but
rather descend very quickly to hell. NEVER THINK that just because they succeeded
(which again implies that they failed) in fooling us by their extreme seriousness and
accuracy (it is on the contrary) to the extent that they are telling us to stop dreaming and
yearning and asking God to show us the right path because for them God does not exist
and when they see their mistakes they tell us that after all no body told us to believe
them or follow them and adopt their ways of death not life. Oh people, the Godless are
the dull and the Dull are the damned. This is e.e.cummings attempting to give an answer
to this all. We will see shortly after cummings what Ronsard would say in French. Let us
be patient and set aside impatience patiently. The Godless, most fundamentally, are the

dull and the Dull are the damned. But how are we to explain this and account for it given
the fact that the very juncture of history at which we are living is one that can at best be
described by the Godless? What difference can there be between the Godless who are
dull and those who pretend to cleave to God who are the dullest after all? They are the
damned any way.
It would be negligent on my part if I did not attempt to clarify this statement

adopted by cummings and which, to do justice to him before anything else, he addresses
and restricts to the scientists only. These scientists think they are doing the best of jobs
for the sake of humanity by providing some solutions based on scientific scrutiny which
culminate only in dissolution. They care no more for the works of the heart and
accordingly they lost faith in God and they generate dull solutions just as empty as they
are. Had they conferred a studious attention on and catered much for the works of the
heart (love and faith), they would not have opted only for the works of the mind
(amorality and atheism) which lead only to destruction and devastation. Had they set up,
to be more precise, their minds and hearts on the same arena of expectation (the
preservation of earth and the well being of humanity), they would not have left vast
room for weapons of destruction to the extent that they are now in perfect position to
destroy six terrestrial globes of the same size of our own whose safety and retention had
long been recommended by God. After all, Faulkner said in light in August, there must
be some things for which God cannot be accused by man and held responsible.
The earth in which we are existing rather than living is running to its own demolition
and destruction thanks to these scientists who not only possessed science but also power
of influence and decision. They tell us accordingly that they do not believe in God
because we have science which will save us (by being lost of course). The works of the
mind are to be held responsible for division not unity. The mind, Gary lane rightly said,
sees difference not unity, it divides. The works of the heart, however, are perfectly
capable of unifying people into one group together living under the sun because they love
one another and take better care of one another. They will not remain in the shade or in
darkness no matter how blinding and obscurantist are the ways and ploys the godless will
follow and make use of like fiends who have got no friends except fiends like themselves
and they are not friends to one another. They are not even friends to one another. Ils se
surveillent mutuellement et n’ont pas trop confiance les uns dans les autres. Comment
peut-on compter sur eux par voie de conséquence? Comment peut-on faire confiance en
eux quand ils n’ont pas mème trop confiance les uns dans les autres? C’est pas à eux, je
veux que cela soit claire, que je dois ma taille. Ils sont comme des araignées à l’affut. Je
n’ai rien de commun avec eux. Nous n’avons rien de commun avec eux. Ils n’ont plus le
droit de sentir, de s’aimer et de penser aux autres. Et ce que nous voulons également;
Ceux-là n’ont pas le droit de le vouloir. Love, let us elucidate rather than obscure, Herein
is love, not that we love with our fleshly appetites and dumb instincts, for it is anything
but love. Herein is love, not that we love but because we derive it from God because God
loved us and sent us his signs from the skies to be seen and to be taken for wonder.
Heavenly love and devine justice will keep us, I merely say and feel deep in my heart,
alive and always up to confront those fiends who are dull and damned as cummings
maintained. Heavenly love, a blind man who saw things better than we did once
proclaimed, shall outdo hellish hate. As for our human love and justice, it is not difficult
to grasp the harm they have done not only to humanity but also to the other species and
mother nature. It is not love that which gives some people the right to kill their fellow
brothers who have been doing nothing but defending themselves against oppression. It is
not justice that which allows the rich to keep everything of value for themselves and leave
the poor starving and capable of no more than providing the food of their days in misery
and sometimes they gain them with shame. It is not love that which makes some people
take advantage of others while knowing but also feeling deep in the recesses of their
hearts that their power and authority over them is unjustified and without reason. It is
not justice that which tells them to wear masks and have their faces defaced and deceive
others with beautiful words which will prove empty in the end. This is perhaps why
cummings makes it clear that laws themselves are nothing but lies. Laws are nothing but
lies because not all people are abided by them and this is human justice. This is perhaps
also why cummings lays it bare the fact that science never did care for what is alive and
this is human love. Love will not save people until it is derived from God not this strange
thing people are very fond of calling love that which is triggered by fleshly appetites. It is
not love, for instance, to lose faith in God because of a man or a woman who is selfish
and refuses to share or even respect the feelings of others in return. Love is divine not to
be caught by empty words formulated by the devil or weak souls who think that the
truth will not see the light one day. Shall we refrain then from the truth because some
people are hiding it? This is also why cummings, a highly insightful poet, says that he
who is a seeker of truth must follow no path because all paths lead(s) where truth is here.
According to him, truth is not an absolute concept that does not change with the time. It
is rather a purely relative one that keeps altering all the time. Shall we then refrain from
investing the effort of seeking the truth and instead content our selves with accepting
misery and oppression as a fate or as what many wise people call Elmaktoub and become
in the end very sentimental about it with heated emotions and acting like those many
pure and rich priests? They will tell us it is the truth and we should therefore believe in it
and no longer believe in scientists. They are similar to one another and they will
necessarily share the same fate. Should we follow them then and then be affected by
them? No, one thousand noes. Kant, I do not really know from where he got it, is telling
us that the worthy thing about him is that he obeys his superiors (the king and the
Queen in his age not to mention ministers and princes and priests and criminals who just
got power over him and them we do not know let alone understand how) and that it
should be the same for us as it was for him. But why so long as questioning is still
permitted? Dickens was weary and tired from the very start. This is probably due to his
excessive sentimentality which prevents him from making the necessary effort in order to
rise up from below. He is telling us thus to hold at the back and start contemplating our
misspent lives. He is perhaps right in having said that but what is right for him is not
necessarily so for us. He is probably inviting us to be writers and leave the earth continue
its agony and be blemished and destroyed. He does not seem to know that no body then
would find time to read and concentrate on his sentimentality. L’homme n’est point fait
pour méditer, Rousseau would respond, il est fait pour agir. Hear ye ! The Godless are
the dull and the Dull are the damned. There are no real things only copied and faked
images of them on earth. Another yet insightful philosopher wants now to take a share in
this conversation. Should we allow him to enjoy it or close the doors in front of him? Let
us listen to him before closing the doors or believing his words but not now. If
cummings, by way of specificity required by his vrese, narrowed this statement down to
the scientists only, I am to open the way for it once again and extend it not only to
scientists but rather to those who are godless in general. Not all scientists are godless in
order to be fair. But where are they those scientists cleaving to God? So they are dull any
way if not damned even so as to let the earth this way and not only its inhabitants. Those
who are godless, in one word, are so because they have lost faith in God and therefore
have lost faith in themselves. Ils sont, pour cummings, des hommes stériles. C’est
pourquoi ils manquent de foi. Ils sont la réfutations ambulantes de la foi; indignes de
croire. Que peut notre simplicité contre leur complexité ? They are dull on account of
their superficiality and paucity of depth so as to restrict themselves to objects and
experiments in our empirical world claiming that what is out of sight is also out of mind.
They forgot about the universe and how it was created without their help or nagging. For
them, out of sight is out of mind. But wait, please, have they seen their minds in order to
believe in them? No, they will not hear of it. Out of sight is out of mind. Here only
science will matter. They hate empty talk. Have they finished exploring the whole
universe so as to decide for us we that we will never be poor when we stop following
them? What place does this earth occupy in the never ending Cosmos? Have they reached
the stars and succeeded in counting them? Have they reached the stars many simple
villagers still know how to walk in the desert at night being guided by them (the stars)?
Have they contemplated the skies with studious scrutiny as they say and then have come
to the happiest finding that God does not exist? Who am I to ask them? They will tell
me. I am not down to earth as they are thanks to their science. No wonder, before I
forget, they contributed with their science in building the seven skies and prevented them
with their science again from falling down upon their empty heads. They are constantly
asking us to mind our trivial business because they have their own of which we possess
no knowledge. This is perfect. We should not interfere in their business. We should
instead turn to Ronsard and listen to his French words (they are empty for scientists, I
mean the godless, God bless them). They should not then mind our business. We will
listen to his words and marvel at them despite their teeth. Here are the words:
… Alors que Vesper vient embrunir nos yeux,

Tout épris d’avenir, je contemple les cieux,
En qui Dieu nous escrit, par notes non obscures,
Les sorts et les destins de toutes créatures.
Car lui, du fond des cieux regardant un humain,
Parfois mu’ de pitié, lui montre le chemin ;
Par les astres du ciel qui sont les caractères,
Les choses nous prédit et bonnes et contraires ;
Mais les hommes chargés de terre et de trépas,
Méprisent tel écrit, et ne le lisent pas.
They are down to earth and what is more they are speaking too much these days.
They never want to listen because they will not understand any way and this is quite
natural. They do not believe in words because language and composition is never
innocent. This is basically why folks are starting to lose faith in words let alone to take
the slightest interest in reading them. But no body is prompting them to read words.
Why shouldn’t they read the skies and wonder at their calm and stillness. They are so
still and calm and when they cry they provide us with fresh water. It must be neeeeeded
for regeneration and purification. The skies, let us look at them for once and forget one
minute about being down to earth. Why are they so calm and still? What makes them so
calm and still? Is it science? These skies, I will say in words which will not be understood,
are constantly sending signs to be taken for wonder to use the words of Homi Bhabha.
They are transmitting signs always to be taken for wonder why are we determined to be
so bad as not to lose a few minutes (it is our gain not loss) of sleeping and wake up late
at night in order to wonder at those signs? They are transmitting signs we should wake
up late at night (it does not matter if we wake up and feel disgruntled at having been
awakened this hour provided that we keep awake till the early morning and look then at
the sun and how it is rising from the orient never once from besides) and wake up and
forget about our endless nights because we have woken up and we will lead, without
waiting to be praised, the sluice of water into the garden in the icy morning and enjoy the
sweet songs of birds and nightingales they have woken up so early before us why are we
of the insatiable desire to catch them and have them imprisoned in cages they will
continue singing any way because it is not their mistakes to have been caught so unfairly
by humans who are sleeping all the time and even when they are awake many of them
will wonder like one of Beckett’s characters he wonders if he might not be still asleep)
and then say it is so cold at night why can’t we provide some woods (sacred woods) and
build our fire it will be so warm why should we allow our selves to perish in cold and
darkness? The skies are so still and calm and they are there to remind us of how is it and
how come that they are so calm and still and that the words of many men are so empty
we had better try not to understand them and direct up our eyes towards the skies and
say in the words of Friedrich Holderlin: We understand the stillness of the skies but
never the words of men. We understand the stillness of the skies but never the words of
men their words are no longer to be read because they are empty. Et lorsque la vie, pour
ainsi ajouter au surplus, et lorsque la vie n’est plus que peine et lorsque la vie n’est plus
que peine, tout le monde doit-t-il lever les yeux et de dire a haute voix pour une seule fois
dans cette vie: Dieu, tu es le patron et l’arbitre et le maitre à bord. Dieu, tu es le dieu de
rectangle, tu te penche sur nous les hommes et les femmes d’un air autoritaire. Dieu, tu te
trompes jamais. Mais image ou pas, photo ou pas, c’est toi le patron, l’arbitre. Dieu, nous
voulons également etre. Dieu, nous voulons également etre juste pour une seule fois dans
cette vie en ce présent hautement décevant et dans ces circonstances fort déplaisantes.
Dieu, nous voulons également etre. Nous ne voulons jamais tuer et tormenter les autres
après avoir trouvé un pretext portant ton nom. Dieu, nous voulons également etre et
nous croyons en toi, sauve nous car il y a assez mal sur cette terre ??? Dieu, tu es le
patron, ici il y a assez mal sur cette terre, y a-t-il une autre terre car ici on est privé de
tout ?? Dieu, nous ne voulons pas mourir de cette manière. Nous voulons vivre et faire la
vie pour pouvoir ainsi dire les mots et les choses. Nous ne voulons pas un dictionnaire
autre que le tien pour pouvoir parler entre nous. Nous faisons la vie, dieu, pour pouvoir
lever les yeux et dire des mots qui ne sont pas vides et insignifiants. Nous croyons en toi,
nous faisons la vie, nous levons nos yeux, nous disons les mots : Ici, sur la surface de cette
terre natale, on est privés de tout à cause de nous même pas à cause de toi car tu es le
patron et nous voulons que tu sois l’arbitre. Sans toi, dieu, nous sommes rien comme ça
sinon cendre et poussière. Dieu, the cycles of Heaven in twenty ( twenty one i must say)
centuries bring us farther from you God and nearer to the dust. The cycles of Heaven in
twenty one centuries bring us farther from you God and nearer to the dust. Many of
them have lost faith because of their shameful deeds (wars, massacres, murders,
kidnappings, oppressions, unbridled lusts, pragmatism,…) and by way of accordance and
logic have lost faith in Heaven.
So becoming never being. Human becomings rather than beings who do not know
what end they are coming to. Ce qui est vrai doit advenir un jour. On traine aux petits
bassins et ainsi on regresse. Ce qui est vrai doit advenir un jour, mais faudrait d’abord
arreter de croire qu’on peut tous vivre par la science non plus par la science et la foi en
mème temps. Ce qui est vrai doit advenir un jour. Nul de nous ne sait ce qui lui arrive
après avoir choisi la division et la séparation. Nul de nous ne sait ce qui lui arrive après
avoir perdu la foi à cause de la science qui n’a rien à voir avec la mort (cette region
inexplorée, d’où nul voyageur ne revient, ne troublait la volonté, et ne nous faisait
supporter les maux que nous avons par peur de nous lancer dans ceux que nous ne
connaissons pas.). La mort est une repture et pourtant ce qui est vrai doit advenir un
jour. Le temps est assez long mais le vrai advient. Le temps est long par l’ennui et le
chagrin. C’est le temps quotidien. Le temps des cimes doit etre long par essence. Nous
sommes victimes du temps quotidien qui reste fermé à tous ceux qui sont
malheureusement saisis par l’ennui et le chagrin et donc ne soupçonnent mème pas
combien ils sont eux-mèmes ennuyeux. Le temps des cimes est long par essence, car la
préparation du vrai qui doit advenir un jour ne se fait pas en une nuit, mais exige bien des
vies humaines et même des « générations ». Ce temps des cimes fait « un jour » advenir
le vrai et non pas le temps quotidien. La révélation de l’etre ( celle du Dieu qui n’est pas
mort pour ceux qui sont pas saisis par le temps quotidien mais par le temps des cimes).
What about their hearts? I continue to ask my self waiting for no ready made answers.
What about their hearts those scientists who say with no shame that what is out of sight
is also out of mind? Have they seen their minds? What is out of heart is what then if I
may be permitted to ask? They are, according to cummings, necessarily damned because
of their incapacity for redemption or even looking beyond their times. Redemption will
not come about from ex-nihilo. Redemption comes from God through his heavenly love.
Heavenly love, we go back to the Tiresian poet, shall outdo hellish hate, giving to death,
and dying to redeem, so dearly to redeem what hellish so easily destroyed, and still
destroys in those who, when they may, accept no grace. Redemption comes from the
heart just like courage. Since they were determined to make up their minds as they say
and shut the doors of their hearts, they have become in no position whatever to think
about love and faith let alone to feel them truly and then derive courage and temperance
out of them. The source of courage is locatable within the heart not within the mind if
they read their own selves before reading me or cummings. For this, cummings writes:
Hide, poor dishonored mind

Who thought your self so wise;
And much could understand
Concerning no and yes;
If they have become the same
It is time you unbecame.
But this, besides, must not be allowed to go, I suggest, and fade away in the air and
flow down the wind like their empty words never once charged with love only with
malice and pursuit of money. Hey you, haven’t you heard that time is money? No, I
haven’t yet and I think I am not ready to bring my self into hearing it so long as it is no
more than a succession of words put in a question never put into question. They never
fail to ask questions but always fail to make the value of them be kept and retained in
their minds not to speak of their hearts. They keep clinging to words and phrases and
clichés without taking one single step further. It is as though they were expecting
themselves to be praised and valorized for the mere uttering of them. They are to be told
to go to paradise if they can with their empty words. They will go down to the reverse of
it instead in case they keep contradicting themselves and then blame it for the destiny or
Elmaktoub as they say. It is so strange a thing that never once have I failed to notice that
they are so kind the poor. I had never asked my self why or tried to decipher the mystery
of it until I met the verse of e.e.cummings.
e.e.cummings is not an ordinary poet feeding upon the formation of language and
barren formalism. He is an original poet surrendering no jot of his conviction that
language, be it prose or poetic, is not just a game to be played following some rules we
do not really know who set them for us in order to be cheated and deceived. Language is
for cummings a man made product and it is not always necessary to go on believing that
it is a natural given gift bestowed on us by divine providence. And even if it so (and I my
self am in awful agreement with cummings in this respect) language should not be
trusted especially when we are told to use it in an innocent way. People never once knew
how to take better care of it and deploy it innocently. On receiving it, they started at
once prevaricating and telling lies about it and about themselves until they have become
professionals in such fields and desciplines as linguistics, literature and history. Having
reached this point, they changed their strategies and tactics and took to warning people
against using language innocently because for them language might after all be an
ideological tool. This is why, I believe, cummings felt sick and soon got tired of them
and their rules opting instead for a different language of his own. His verse, to prove this,
went in no comformity with the general standards of syntax and nevertheless content and
meaning continued to arise out of it more brightly than ever before. This is of course not
to reason upon it so strongly, cummings wanted to grow up to be just himself. He says:
… I feel that I cleverly am being altered that I slightly am becoming something a little
different, in fact my self.

This is not at all the kind of thing many men of letters and power because of letters
would set aside in impatience refusing to believe that cummings never asked for no more
than to stop believing in their dominions and rules and laws which only led to crimes
and human atrocities. Animals, because they are deprived of language, never caused
crimes to be committed for the sake of empty words never culled from the heart but only
from the mind which they do not have and they are safe and doing very well. Animals,
pet and wild, are not pretending to be humans though sometimes humans are pretending
to be anything but humans. Animals will very often react maliciously or not maliciously,
violently or not violently, savagely or not savagely when they see death coming around.
Humans, humans, God bless them, kill themselves by hundreds day after day and then
they return back very kind and pretend to be innocent and say after all they could not
have done better than that.
It is not highly problematic to accept neology and coinage so that then instead of
having our selves under the name of mankind let us have them with cummings under the
name of manunkind. It would, I feel and think, be better, wouldn’t it?
Seeker of truth
Follow no path
All paths leads where
Truth is here.
Just try to step out of the way if you want to go on living. They would tell you each
time you wanted to be involved in the process of life. Step out of the way. Clever people
are in accordance with them those who always keep out of the way. According to me,
clever people are those who never step out of the way. They are those who confront
things with a view of coping with them before it is too late. Clever people are those who
are never indifferent. They are those who take responsibility for their lives. They do not
blame it for the destiny. They constantly trust themselves without waiting to be told
what to do and what to avoid. The moment they step out of the way, they cease to be
clever. This is what i say.
When i think about the reasons behind this all embracing futility informing our
lives, i immediately find my self plunged into a kind of dwelling which is strange through
and through. This all encompassing aimlessness is, i am of a firm and strong belief, the
result of human sterility and incapacity for action. It is the outcome of human
stagnation and inertia. Each one fixed his eyes before his feet and no attention, no
awareness, no point of reference has been assigned to the future. Our lives are measured
by the material as well as the sensual but never by the spiritual. There is this painful
paucity of any guiding moral principles. There is this utterly disappointing absence from
our lives of any spiritual values. There is no need then, to doubt the fact that we are
living in an overwhelming desolation. People have become incessantly curious to know
everything except what is worth knowing. They know the price of everything but the
value of nothing. They are impatiently longing for possessing what is ephemeral. They
are ready to invest every effort for the sake of pleasure.
What if we take love? Do people love one another? Perhaps they were right in
putting love into books. Faulkner proclaimed somewhere. Perhaps it could not live
anywhere else. Do they believe in lofty and noble feelings? La vie se presse dans les
coeurs. C’est certain. L’amour fait oublier tout ce qui n’est pas divin comme lui, et l’on
vit plus en quelques instants que pendant de longues periods. Mais ou’ est, pour l’amour
de Dieu, ou’ est l’amour ? There are only some big words in their mouths. It is
increasingly clear that there is only futility and faked emotions. We live in an age of
futility when what is essential is made trivial and what is trivial is made essential. We are
living in an age, one of them made it this way for some reason, where all the unnecessary
things are our only necessities. Nothing seems to be in its place. Everything is at sea.
Everything seems to be going through the wrong way. Everything is going badly
everywhere. Then, this entire world will swim away from me in a mist.

Were anyone to ask me today my opinion about our age, i would take it to be the
age of the transience of experience and the aimlessness and senslessness of life.
Dust I am, to dust am bending,

From the final doom impending.
Je ne suis rien comme ça, sinon cendre et poussière.
Je ne suis rien comme ça, sinon cendre et poussière.
With these awkward ideas warring in my mind, with these strange impulses
struggling in my heart, i really find it extremely difficult for me not to remember
someone who, albeit his blindness, saw things invisible to mortal sight. I find it definitely
difficult for me not to remember him because the things he voiced and confessed are far
and far beyond the slutishness of forgetfulness and oblivion. The things he managed to
lay bare were not to emanate from scratch or ex nihilo. They were not going to accept
being gleaned out of nothing as many would take them to be. There is something then
truer and more real than what we can see with the eyes and touch with the finger to
deploy, in a way, some authoritarian Hawthornian words. Indeed, this man is absolutely
suggestive of many things we, modern men, find past comprehension and at the same
time past apprehension. To prove this, let us first have a first glance of perusal at what
kind of things he, the man of his age and all the ages that went and still to come, might
say:
Thus they in Heav’n, above the starry sphere,

Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent.
Meanwhile upon the firm opacous ° Globe
Of this round world, ° whose first convex ° divides
The luminous inferior Orbs, ° enclosed
From Chaos and th’inroad of Darkness old,
Satan alighted works: a Globe far off
It seem’d, now seems a boundless Continent
Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night
Starless expos’d, and ever-threat’ning storms
Of Chaos blust’ring round, inclement sky;
Save on that side which from the wall of Heav’n
Though distant far some small reflection gains
Of glimmering air less vext with tempest loud:
Here walk’d the Fiend at large in spacious field.
These lines, pour donner à César ce qui appartient à César, are remarkably evocative
of an outstanding and penetrating frame of mind this man seems to have kept and
cherished. It is not within the borders of possibility for us to read them without being
touched by their extreme profundity both in form and meaning. What is happening, one
should ask now, above the starry sphere? Here there is only the frown of night starless
exposed, and ever threatening storms of chaos blustering round the inclement sky. Here
walked the fiend (meaning a cruel or evil person) at large in spacious field up and down
bending on his preys and fearing from no one whomsoever. Is there nobody here to stand
against him? Is there no one to prevent him from doing the harm he has and still
continues to engender in the human race? Why isn’t there somebody here to stop him?
Where is every body? Don’t they try to stop him at all?
In order to be generous and provide an answer to the question I of recently have

come to mention above (What is happening above the starry sphere? As with regard to
the last set of questions, suffice it to point out that one had better have some sort of
dependency upon himself and never wait for others to mend the rip), I will say right
from the onset that this question is, at its best, badly formulated and posed. Where
upon, just by way of consequence, it should never be asked or even speculated upon. My
reason for that is the fact that we are Humans with so many ambitions and so few
conditions. It is not really up to us nor for us either to ask questions to which there are
no convincing answers, let alone practical ones. What is happening above the starry
sphere is beyond our knowledge (see the Koran, surat Elanbiae, Aya 22 but also Aya 23).
In so saying, I wish I would not be accused of being negativistic or pessimistic. For there
does not really seem to be much point in being or trying to be like that. I wish I would
not end up by falling in that kind of slippery slope fallacy which stands against things of
the future without satisfactory reasons. In the mean time, I have said that because I did
not want to dwell on abstract things whose applicability and expediency in our empirical
world is most of the time depressing and heartbreaking. Then, in attempting to back up
my stance and hence make up for the question I tried to exclude, I would rather have a
preference to come up with which is an other question serving the same purpose. What is
happening down this round earth?
Let us try to settle it and ask then whatever question we might ask.

In an answer to the latter question, again that man will be found of great service
and assistance to us not because he produced one but rather because he produced , and to
put it in a sophisticated way, none, and yet was very close to it. His poem is highly
descriptive of what is happening down this round earth. He had been aware of the fact
that, as I said in the beginning, the task of real intellectuals (not those who pretend, for
the examples are thick on the ground as a matter of fact.) consists chiefly and
paramountly in analyzing the illusions present in this world in order to discover their
causes. He, in this respect wrote:
So on this windy Sea of land, the fiend

Walked up and down alone bent on his prey,
Alone, for other creature in this place
Living or liveless to be found was none,
None yet, but store° hereafter from the earth
Up hither like Aerial vapours flew
Of all things transitory and vain, when sin
With vanity had fill’d the works of men:
Both all things vain, and all who in vain things
Built their fond hopes of Glory or lasting fame,
Or happiness in this or th’other life;
This is exactly what is happening down this round earth. The fiend is doing very
well in his job. He confirmed himself in evil and felt how awful goodness is, and then
started at once performing his task through the various exercises and drills he set forth
for himself and which he incessantly confers on the human race. He was determined to
take one way in life and so he opted for the wrong one and yet excelled in it. He excelled
in it because he was alone (not now to tell the truth !) and so he took advantage of the
entire land where both living and liveless creatures are past everything due to their
ignorance and from which most of them refuse and rebuff to escape. He succeeded in
playing his hoax and scam upon them when they invested their energies and efforts in
things which are transient, passing and worthless. The long series of trivial, clumsy vain
efforts born out of frustration and fumbling and dumb instinct. They are playing with
sin not in the secret house of shame but rather in public. (See the Koran; Sura 6; Aya
128). Not only sin but also vanity, these are the ideals they imbued their works with. But
the most dismal of all according to my perspective
( to analyse the illusions in order to detect their causes) is that they still do not know
how to prune themselves. Now, they expectingly want their works to be geared towards

Glory and lasting fame. They expectingly long for happiness. Mais la gloire et le
Bonheur, comme on le sait, ne s’achètent pas par la vanité. Their reward on Earth, John
Milton tells us, is the fruits of painful superstition and blind Zeal. They would find fit
retribution empty as their deeds.
They would find fit retribution just as empty as their deeds. For their works are
filled with sin and vanity. From this and as Milton expressed it later, what must be
worse; Of worse deeds sufferings must ensue with no regard or account whatever to what
Hypocrites austerely talk of purity and place and innocence. (See again the Koran; Sura
6; Aya 112 but equally Aya 113). There is no reason for hope in this respect. What is
hope in short? It is an unpatterned process of living in life while cleaving to a good
prospect of faith. It is the process of living along with an aim of achieving what one
thinks he deserves to achieve. There is no reason then at all for them to hope for Glory
and lasting fame because what is wrong is always wrong even if the world in its entirety is
defending it. (See again the Koran; Sura 6; Aya 116-117). Their final hope is, as Milton
had shown in Paradise Lost, nothing but flat despair. It is not easy to think of it
otherwise. There is actually no point, there is no good, there is no way of righteousness
to come out of things which are transitory and vain. This is perhaps why John Milton
takes this round earth to be no more than a windy sea of land dark, waste, and wild
under the frown of night starless exposed and ever threatening storms of chaos blustering
round the inclement sky.
Save on that side which from the wall of Heav’n

Though distant far some small reflection gains
Of glimmering air less vext with tempest loud.
Of this, one needs to talk at length because it seems that even Milton himself did
not find much to say about Heaven. “When we have offended against Heaven,” A
Chinese good man rightly said, “ there is nowhere we can turn to in our prayers”.(See for
instance the Koran ; Sura 6 ; aya 104). Milton did not find much to say about it. Only a
small reflection has escaped the ever threatening storms of chaos. A small reflection but
an extremely pertinent one without which there can really be no talk of anything worth
mentioning or dwelling upon. Milton, I must say again, found it at stake for himself to
talk about Heaven except perhaps when he, by way of need and desire alike, attempted to
strike a balance between the starry sphere and the firm opacous Globe of this round
world. But in truth, Milton desperately failed in so doing and this should come as no
surprise to us because Milton is in the midst of life and what is more than this, he did
not make a radical choice whether to take this way or the other. He could by no means

hope to give a full account of something in which he himself is immersed, plunged and
submerged. He must have been greatly affected by both ways which means that he is
incipiently victim of division. Milton in his “Paradise Lost” allowed the devil to have his
say. The devil, however, was trying to prevent Milton from having his say. Milton failed
as a consequence which means that he succeeded. The devil succeeded which means that
he failed. The very paradigm of success and failure is not a successful one for those who
are reading my paper without enough attention. I said above that I am a master of
disappointing and I care very little for that. My brothers and sisters will not be
disappointed. I am certain about it. It is as if then that Milton, to go back to him, were
saying in the words of Shelley in his essay (On Love): “Ask him who lives what is life;
ask him who adores what is God”.
Why does everything around us seem to be at sea except on that side which from
the wall of Heaven? What makes, let us ask out of curiosity and inquisitiveness, the
glimmering air less vext with tempest loud? So long as questioning is a key to knowledge,
we all need to inquire about things before accepting to refuse or refusing to accept them.
It is not difficult to ask questions but it is rather difficult to provide answers to them.
Everything seems to be at sea because almost everybody lost faith in goodness. But why?
It is because goodness is simple and badness manifold. Everything seems to be at sea, i
think, because no attention is rightly called to the dreadful deeds human beings are
doing. Everything seems to be at sea because instead of fighting against Fiends, we are
fighting against one another. Everything seems to be at sea because we are suffering from
the lack of direction and conduct and Kant is giving a pretty decent espousal of
obedience and its positive harvest. Everything seems to be at sea because we are
reprimanding external things quite oblivious to ourselves. What is happening above the
starry sphere is absolutely none of our business. What is happening down this round
earth, however, is our business. Everything seems to be at sea because instead of having
ourselves occupied with our business, we are wasting so much time in things that are far
from being our business. Take this earth. It is running to its own destruction, isn’t it? Let
us explore just for one moment along with John Milton the precious nature men’s
vicious hands have spoiled and sullied for no good reason. Thanks poor Tom, thanks
indeed. You have at least come to find out what has long been past finding out. Our lives
would not come to an end if we did not end the lives of others. Have we lost sight of
what is happening down this earth? Many are those who will say it is not any concern of
theirs. Many are those who will let things take place and then start asking: Why aren’t
they done the other way round? Many are those who will lose the battle of life from the
first encounter. They are those on whom it is said that the bravest men among them is
afraid of himself and from whom nothing is to be achieved axcept sheer disappointment.

Indeed, there is really nothing to be expected from those who expect nothing from
themselves. There is really nothing to come out of nothing. De rien, rient ne sort. Je vois
quelque chose de plus faux dans leur position, à eux et surtout à moi.
I have said let us explore along with Milton the precious nature, mother nature
men’s ferocious and brutal hands have blemished and tainted for no good reason.
All th’unaccomplisht works of Nature’s hand,

Abortive, ° monstrous, or unkindly° mixt,
Dissolv’d on earth, fleet hither, and in vain, °
Till final dissolution, wander here,
Not in the neighbouring Moon, as some have dream’d;
I can hardly have one single reason for hoping to express in prose what Milton have
done in verse but still, I want to express even this inexpressibility which grabs hold of me
each time I feel like expressing my self. My reason soon becomes shrivelled up in the fire
of emotion and I accordingly wonder why is it that our lives are handled this way and
not another way more promising and rewarding. Milton’s lines, to thrust back to our
context, depict the kind of conduct human beings are following in their tussle with
nature. It is a misconduct through and through. They unreasonably and at times
unconsciously destroy the elements of nature and hope then to see and live in a better
place in this world. Nature, as Defoe rightly said, appears to be stripped of all the
additional Glories, which it derives from religion. It is destroyed instead of being
preserved. They, by means of ignorance, fall preys to counterproductiveness because they
failed to make a simple distinction between the means and the end, the process and the
objective. All the unaccomplished works of Nature, human beings do not seem to know,
will melt and break up on this earth. They will dissolve in vain till final dissolution
becomes altogether apparent to everyone of them not in the neighbouring Moon as many
might have wished and dreamed but rather in this round earth. Human beings with all
their trumpery will come to terms with “Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires blown
up with high conceits engendering pride”.
Heaven, What is happening above the starry sphere? Is there no way out of this round
Earth towards Heaven? I am sure there is a way without disavowal and xenophobic
rejection. There is a way in which the fiend will flee along with his shades of night.( Sura
6 ; Aya 126). But who will take this way? Let us face it. Who will take this way? Those
who believe in Heaven and work on earth or those who neither believe in Heaven nor
work on earth. As with regard to those who believe in Heaven and do not work on earth
or those who do not believe in Heaven and work on earth, they are not at all to be taken
into account. The space of this paper allows no room for me to talk about them. We
have to do everything ourselves if we want to know anything about Heaven. We have to
do everything ourselves without waiting for others to show us the directions and
instructions. Nobody knows what sort of thing Heaven is. Nobody knows what kind of
things which might be found in Heaven. We have to do everything ourselves in order to
know real things. Haven’t we had enough of betrayals and things that are transitory and
vain. No matter how much pain being alive will necessitate, we have to be alive. No
matter how much trouble this will take. This is the whole point. It is better than being
dead to all things central and vital in our lives. Il n’y a pas de temps mort, pour ainsi dire,
dans cette vie. La vie, Aziza Lounis a dit, doit etre une chasse perpétuelle vers le Bonheur.
Mais quel bonheur ? Il faut également accepter et considèrer le caractère éphémère du
Bonheur et le pousuivre pour toujours. We have to be alive in everything around us
because life is devoid of meaning otherwise. Let us live with the spiritual because it is,
indeed, the spirit that matters most. The material and the sensual will bring nothing
constructive with them. For as Friedrich Holderlin articulated it somewhere, who cares
for things that will die the earth will have them? Who cares for things ephemeral and
passing?
“Nobody thinks, nobody cares, no beliefs, no convictions, and no enthusiasms”.

This is really more than one can bear. This is too much for humanity. We are living at a
juncture of history when things are starting to portend and bode with nothingness and
dissolution. What consolations are there for us mortals who saw and witnessed things
unbearable? We are living with so many fiends and so few friends. It is unreservedly
pitiable and disheartening to go on living this way without ruminating another way out
of this vision of Hell on earth. It is really painful to live in these bleak times when people
appear to have forgotten entirely about the reason behind their existence on this round
Earth. Work and life should be part of one existence. Most people have curtailed their
principles because of the pressures they incessantly exercise upon one another. A group
together, depending on each other, knowing what they want, knowing how to get it, this
is something like a dream never supported by reality. A unified group of people is all we
need in order to stand firmly against degeneration. Nous voulons un tout organisé
tendant vers un but unique. The individual toppling is the outcome of the social
toppling. It is tremendously important to have our minds completely made up to things
essential and fundamental in our lives rather than to get them worked up to and have
them set up upon things transitory and vain. Life is not as complex and problematic as
many have said and thought. It is not a play of passion. It is not to be arrested through a
few organized words heated with emotion after all. We live it and that is it.

To live life the way we set down for our selves without allowing any kind of
external imposition to be conferred upon us is the highest aspiration we have both at the
individual and social level. It is, in fact, of no use to keep on reiterating the fact that to
live is to make things happen and push them to come about. To live is to create and
invent. Il faut toujours, Guy de Maupassant a dit, chercher, trouver, inventer, tout
comprendre, tout prévoir, tout combiner, tous oser. The purport, in much simpler terms,
is to be awake, to be alive. “Arise, awake, or be forever fallen” John Milton would say.
We have everything in our hands in order to look for a way out of this extremely
desolating dispensation. One never can tell what will be from what is. Courage and
fortitude reside in our hearts. When we are confronted with what is right, to leave it
undone shows a lack of courage. A’ quoi bon avoir la lacheté? A’ quoi bon ? je voudrais
savoir. Seuls les làches, pour une fois pour toutes, se cachent derrière le silence. Courage
and fortitude represent then, certainly, fundamental attributes of humanity. Nothing
precious and valuable has ever been achieved without their intervention. They are of a
great reward to us upon one pertinent ground; They are things of the spirit. When the
spirit matters again in our lives, we know how much meaning they add up and generate
to us. We have got to settle it from the start in order to see and guess how far we are
going to move through life. These are not things we are waiting to be imbued with.
These are things of foundation and background. If we do not keep up with them, there
will be no use of them. Let us not forget that spiritual values once kept they are
inalterable. They never accept, God how repellent this word is to me !, compromises. It is
better to have no spirit, as I have argued in the beginning, than to have a compromising
one especially as far as moral and spiritual standards are concerned. He who has an
uncompromising spirit has the Earth and everything that is in it and what is more, he is a
man. The Chinese master said: “Look at the means a man employs, observe the path he
takes and examine where he feels at home. In what way is a man’s true character hidden
from view? In what way is a man’s character hidden from view?” A man’s character will
never be concealed from our sight. What we eat in private, so to speak, will be shown in
public. Let us, for God’s sake, face it without wearing masks or painted faces. Have we
not seen what kind of life hypocrites are handling? Have we not seen what kind of end
many of them have reached? In what way is a man’s character hidden from view?
Prostrated are those who prostrate without ever knowing what it means or what it
entails. One needs to be better equipped with knowledge before taking any move forward
or backward. But most important of all, we all need to stop looking backward. Can any
sense be made out of those who move through life while latching on to ignorance?
Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. There are many people who are not only ignorant but
also inflexible and egotistical. Can anything be made out of what they do or say?
Nothing, nothing, nothing. Au fond, comme dit STENDHAL, Vous et moi, nous ne
voulons certainement pas vivre avec ces gens-là; mais sur beaucoup de questionsn nous
pensons comme eux… Nous ne sommes de ce parti que pour en partager les malheurs.
The best thing we can do, I am more than obliged and bound to say it, in order to stop
catering for this, is to let them be what they are, stay where they are, have what they have
and go where they want to go. Not very far will they be able to go. Not very far will they
really be able to go. Why then? It is because they are not Jacks of all trades, Are they? Ils
savent tout, il font tout. Mais, as they say in French, c’est pas à eux que je dois ma taille.
They do not know how to change for the proper benefit of their own selves. They do
not know how to make themselves at once useful for themselves and then for others. Not
very far will they be able to go if they do not change. Only the fools will not change.
Only the dead will not change.

This is by no means the substance of my predicament. This is the very start of it
as a very long journey I want to take in this life that is mine and not theirs. For as the
bird flies away after flapping its wings, I, too, yearn and look towards a similar kind of
thing. To fly away high up and up and never go down. To fly away like the eagle whose
own flesh, read this, as well as space is still a cage. We do have time to look about things
and manage our plans. Do we need to forget that Carthage is our country of origin? Do
we need to forget that our task is to protect and fortify Carthage and that we are its
eagles? People abroad know Carthage better than we do and know as well that we are the
eagles. But again, if one seems to find it incumbent upon him to say it without
reservations, isn’t life too short to be wasted on things transitory and vain? Isn’t life too
short, my brothers? Day unto day, we see, life wastes and wanes like a candle burning its
oils away till nothing but charred wick remains. Isn’t it too short, my brothers? Let us
strive, dans un moment de répit, to figure it out. Life is a course and passage. It is unclear
for me to take it to mean something besides. From this it will surely ensue the fact that
we need to be very careful about it. One needs to be very careful about his life lest it
should turn out so unconstructively. And if of life we keep a care, let us shake off our
slumber and beware in order to voice it in the words of william Shakespeare.
Why is it that we are always held blameable for things we have not done ourselves?
Why is it that we are always admonished for others’ deeds and not ours? Il me semble
après tout que nous somme pas de ceux qui posent les questions jusqu’au bout. Let us
then flap our wings and fly away high up and up and never go down. Let us try to forget
this way of life and work very hard upon obtaining our freedom. Freedom is so much
needed and wanted if we are now to be very careful about our lives. More importantly,
let us set ourselves free from those habits that we are very fond of calling ours. Always
when anything gets to be a habit, it also manages to get a right good distance from truth
and fact. We have so many bad habits. If only we could get them out of our lives with a
view of living differently but also of evaluating differently. This is, as a matter of fact, to
be made and become possible only after learning how to think differently. Some drastic
and radical changes are more than important to be implemented. Our lives will never but
fall into tedium and monotony if we are to do and act otherwise. Impossible de prendre
ce chemin. Mais pourquoi? Is it not possible to change and reconstruct ? L’homme a
besoin de ce qu’il y a de pire en lui pour atteindre ce qu’il y a de meilleur en lui. Il y a
toujours, mon Dieu , quelque chose à faire. Alors, pourquoi rester dans les ténèbres ? Il y

a toujours quelque chose à faire sur cette terre. Soyons comme la revière qui déborde et
non pas comme (l’étang ??? what a shame !) qui contient toujours la même eau.

When I was a child, to say that memory believes before knowing remembers and
that it believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders, I used to rely
upon my heart in everything I feel like being into close contact with. Things were
perfectly at home. I did not understand. Dés l’ors, je veux pas comprendre. C’est tout à
fais bon pour moi pour dire la vérité. Moi je suis là pour autre chose que pour
comprendre. Je suis là pour dire non. C’est tout, et pour vivre avant de mourir. Je pense
qu’il n’y a rien de plus mauvais pour l’homme que de dire oui dépourvue de courage. I
used to play wherever I liked. I used to sleep wherever I liked. I even remember I used to
scream and shout whenever somebody makes the mistake of taking my toys away from
me. People were excessively kind with me. They were always there to come to my rescue
and bring my toys back to me. What is wrong with them now that I am still a child and
a man?
I used to scream and shout sometimes for no particular reason. Perhaps it was just for
the mere pleasure of it or say when I feel something must take its course or when I feel
something is missing. It is absolutely unheard of for me to remain silent. I hated silence
deep in my heart. There was no such thing as deception and dupery. But most of all,
there was no such thing as hatred. I do not say there was no devilment. This is really to
tell no truth. We were devilment in person. But there was no such thing as hatred or
mediocrity. Our hearts are not made for such feelings. Our hands are not made for
killings. « Dieu, tu ne nous as point donné des coeurs pour nous hair et des mains pour
nous égorger. Fais que nous nous aidons mutuellement à supporter ce fardeau pénible
d’une vie passagère ». VOLTAIRE, the most unfriendly of all philosophers, makes it in
this way. When I was a child, I used to dream of many things. I would dream for
instance of flying away high up and up in the sky so much so that I could join the birds
in their journey of immigration. I would dream for another instance of sailing in the sea
looking towards the treasure island where I could live alone for some time and search for
gold and then come back only to share it with others. I would dream of going to the
forest there where I could live with wild animals without being afraid of them.
Sometimes, I would be overtaken with fear from the unknown especially when I find my
self on my own in the forest. But then, inspite of it, I would go on and grope my way in
the forest and strengthen my self with hopes of finding huge creatures who, when seen, I
would never relinquish them that I become similar to them they were so dear to me. I
would go on and keep going on my way which I thought was endless because had I been
of the illusion that my way had an end I would have never tried and tired my self

following it to its end. I would go on till your shadows, all of a sudden, fell on me
without my knowing of them. So, I laughed and discovered that company was fruitless.
When I was a child, I used to fancy that the forest was to be approched with company
lest the wolves would arrange our fleshes for their food. The forest, I continued to fancy,
was to be explored with company lest the giants whose brightness would be blinding
would adopt us for their sons. Again, your shadows suddenly came upon me and
accordingly I screamed bitterly and protestingly; Leave me alone, leave me alone, please,
for hope I find the giants. I would not laugh any more. Leave me alone. Why do you
insist on hurting me? I will not be inferior or even similar to all of you. I would scream
and yell into causing you to leave me alone that I never wanted your company that it
would never guide me to see the giants whose brightness is blinding. Leave me on my
own that I want to approach the forest and care no more for my safety I want to be lost.
Leave me on my own because I have good hopes of meeting and even talking with those
whom you think had long departed. Leave me on my own I do not want your company it
would rather propel me to my loss that I want to be lost without your presence near or
close to me I want to be lost in the forest I do not want your words and premonitions.
Leave me alone I would not care if I got lost it is not you who would save me or guide
me to see the light of the day you have not seen your selves why do you want me to
believe you that you your selves you do not believe in your selves? I want to enter the
forest and be the less deceived. I understand the gliding of the forest and I do not
understand you. Je comprends, je vous assure, le bruissement de la foret et je n’arrive
jamais, guère à vous comprendre. Parfois, sous une immense rafale, toute la forèt
s’inclinait dans le même ses avec un grémissement de souffrance ; et le froid
m’envahissait, malgré mon pas rapide et mon lourd vètement. Mais mon dieu, je veux
entrer dans la forét et etre perdu. Je veux pas etre perdu devant vous, des hommes
incapables et de volonté faible. Let me grope my own way then that I hate your ways they
are to come to an end mine will never come to it. Leave me alone I abhor you if you keep
hurting me I never asked you for no more than to leave me alone. Leave me alone your
shadows will not cause me to clasp my hands and shreik and laugh in ecstasy they will
cause me rather to sigh that you are preventing me and depriving me of seeing the giants
whose brightnesss is blinding. Leave me alone I want to be told nothing of your words I
do not understand them you do not understand me. I am still a child and I will not
pretend to know as you do. Leave me alone who are you to make my way come to an
unexpected end you had expected it? I do not want you why do you want me to want you
that I do not want you? Go to the forest why do you insist on impoverishing the tree you
are not rich enough to leave the tree and help it grow naturally that it hates your ground
that it hates your drugs that it hates your science and chemistry? Leave me alone and go
and explore the forest it is better than getting the tree weakened it would not be capable
of yielding some fruits that it is not sterile like you. Leave me alone I do not love you let
alone to want you to show me the way out of the forest. Who told you that I wanted to
be shown the way that I want to know by my self that I want to get lost if I tried to enter
the forest and get lost without your company that I wanted to get lost in the forest and
no one to be lost with me that I want no one to be lost with me? Leave me alone and
instead of reading me read your selves I never want to read you that I want to read my
self instead of reading you. Leave me alone do you think I will keep reading you and
never try to read my self always reading never to be read? Leave me alone I care less for
gain as for loss it is my gain when I find you are not my company you are not to help me
to enter the forest you stand against me you paint water that I will never drink. Leave me
alone I have my heart and my mind set on it and if I get lost I would have been lost
without causing any one else to be lost with me that I want to enter the forest alone why
do you keep monitoring me? Let me be. Let me choose my own way and instead of
fooling me and your selves listen to Shelley (a man of insight but victim of time):
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine _ have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
In studious zeal or love’s delight
Outwatched with me the envious night _
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery
That thou _ O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whatever these words cannot express.
When I was a child, I had my own toys and I gave them to those children who
were around me and enjoyed it so much and hated it so much when those who thought
they were adults took them away from us but never kept them for their children. When I
was a child as I am now and still will be, I had had my own dreams that are now
shattered and torn and things do not fall apart. I had had my own programmes that are
now forgotten thanks to their obscurantist stratgies and ploys that they think are used
for enlightenment they want to enlighten us with their obscurantist strategies and ploys
they are never enlightened and those of them who serve as enlighteneres were never
enlightened because our reality is so dark, dark, dark, and they are insisting on themselves
to be believed and not only believed but also wanted and loved. Would it not be better,
my brothers, to protest like my brother Sobhi and say we are deceived we are the more
deceived and why not, my brothers, why not protest and be out of tune with their trivial
songs and sing our own? Would it not be more rewarding if we stop singing “ we don’t
want your education” and then find our selves hypocrites and liars because we sing those
real songs and never profit from them that we are still the more, do you want some
more? You will be beaten like Olivert twist and what of it my goodness? Olivert twist is
the hero because he was beaten because he asked for some more food because he had
been hungry because he knew he would go on being hungry if he did not ask for some
soup because he was intelligent he never wanted to die while being hungry so he asked so
he was beaten so no body came to his rescue so he is loved so he is the hero so he is not
my hero because my hero is Sobhi because sobhi is not a fictional character so I love him
because I cannot do otherwise so “Ich kann nicht anders”? Olivert twist is a character
devalorized by the dark reality and yet valorized by Charles Dickens who is so intense
and intelligent enough as to go beyond this dark reality and select a poor character
victimized without reason and depict it in its most heroic form. But Dickens was so
sentimental again in that he soon and quickly effaced the heroism of his character and
wanted to have it for himself so he failed.
I would even dream like my brother Sobhi of Sindibad of persia and wait for him all
day long untiresomly to take me with him in his ship without giving a damn to dangers
or premonitions. My world was so small and infinitesimal but my soul so big and
gigantic . When I was a child, I would do exactly what my heart told me to do to the
extent of going against others’ wills. Every now and then, I would rest in the sand
oblivious to the sun and imagine and imagine how things would really have been had we
kept listening to our hearts. What is happening these days? L’etre humain a
malheureusement substitué la peur à presque toutes ses émotions. There is always this
kind of retreat. On dit que mème les hommes les plus hardis peuvent avoir peur. Mais à
quoi bon rester toujours saisi par la peur. Besides, Guy de Maupassant has this to add :
Remarquez bien ceci, Messieurs. Chez les Orientaux, la vie ne compte pour rien ; On est
résigné tout de suite ; les nuits sont claires et vides de légendes, les àmes aussi vides des
inquiétudes sombrent qui hantent les cerveaux dans les pays froids. En Orient, on peut
connaitre la panique, on ignore la peur. Then Maupassant has got also this to clarify
about what people dubb fear : La peur, c’est quelque chose d’effroyable, une sensation
atroce, comme une décomposition de l’àme, un spasme affreux de la pensée et du cœur,
dont le souvenir seul donne des frissons d’angoisse. Mais cela n’a lieu, quand on est
brave, ni devant une attaque, ni devant la mort inévitable, ni devant toutes les formes
connues de péril.

I do not really know what is happening these days. People fear one another and no
longer trust one another because they are changing all the time. They no longer blieve in
what the future is holding for them if they can just awake and build up for it being aware
of it. People are starting to lose faith in themselves without reason. They think that
everything is going badly everywhere and that hope is the word we give to dreamers who
do not know that our reality is irreparable. The Urban Apocalypse is here to sustain their
fear and keep it so inextricable and lively a part in their hearts; that with the disjointed
rhythms of contemprary life, the lack of stability, THE SCREECHING OF BRAKES,
and sudden death we are no longer to keep rosy dreams, high aspirations and great
expectations change our outlook towards life. Are we to give in then and give up the
struggle for life and continue living this death in life? Are we to exclaim on death to take
us away out of this world? No wonder real people who have a strong will will never
accept defeat. We are not made for defeat and therefore we will never degenerate into
allowing others to profit from this and then take advantage of our futility. It is a
temporary state beyond which we must traverse and remember it when we are through.
Of course, not with laxness and indolence, not with vain hopes, not with performance of
things transitory and worthless, not with poor imitation of others, not with ignorance we
are likely to attain our aspirations. We work together as a unified group never shaken by
the oppressing wind. A group together knowing what to do and what to avoid so as to
make strides without conflicts arising from selfishness and exploitation. A group together
defending its identity and fighting for its integrety. A group together analysing all things
illusive and then deciphering their causes and no longer allowing them to meet their
effects upon us. An all embracing awareness that success and progress are never the
product of one or two or ten individuals. They are the offspring of a whole group living
in a strong society preparing the ground for agreement not deriving pleasure out of
opposition and antagonism which always cater for toppling. We need to be in harness
with one another and be back in harness. Success and progress take time but failure and
backwardness take no time. We need to take better hold of life.
All I know is that what is taking place for the time being is of no service to us
neither now nor in the future. There is this kind of desolation always already altogether
apparent to the one who looks around with a view of comprehending but also of
analysing what people are like. It is as though they are determined to remain stuck in this
social vicious circle which always consumes without yielding any rewarding results. There
is this utterly disappointing disposition to do everything except what is of importance.
No one seems to give an air of looking beyond these perpetual anachronistic ideas which
are leading nowhere. People have made it lucid and clear the fact that they are not at all
in a position to change or even make the effort of understanding one another. But then,

they seem to have never been aware except of spying on and making fun of one another
oblivious to such things as unity and coexistence in tune and harmony with one another.
They are exchanging insults and grotesques while not knowing that in so doing they are
moving backward and then they refuse to be told or given an account of it compared to
what other people are doing. Take Europeans. It does not take some competence to
notice that they have always had this will and desire to look for uptodateness despite the
great trouble which is being taken for that. They have a lively faith in themselves and in
everything they are doing no matter how different and sometimes strange are their ways
of dealing with one another. They are not simply at ease with grotesque and empty talk.
After all, gone is the age of trivial and empty talk. Gone is the age of acting and make
belief. Here only accuracy and veracity whose benefit is for every one so within reach and
belief. Europeans are people of spirit and correctness. They will not hear of humiliation
or inferiority when compared to Americans for instance. Even when they are found in an
inferior position, there is this pride which they never cease to take in themselves to the
extent of bewildering Americans themselves who think they have made it after all. This is
why cummings would say that France has happened more than it is happening and
America is happening more than it has happened. This is understandable given the fact
that Europeans never wittnessed colonization or foreign domination. What appears to
them to be outdated and inaccurate will often take an artistic dimension and then quickly
spring back and turn out to be something accurate because modernized. As for
Americans, nowhere can a restive place where comfort and consolation are to be enjoyed
outside Europe. Paris is one perfect example there where Americans would resort to at
times of alineation and disillusionment. Paris the beautiful, Paris in whom our souls live.
Cummings and many others would sometimes scoff at the huge difference between Paris
and Newyork despite everything. This is to say that propriety is so fundamental without
which no wealth no technlogy no empowerment are to be of credit and consideration.
Propriety is, in one word, freedom. A community whose propriety is effaced has no
further claim of freedom. Asians have their own features on which identity is kept intact.
It is propriety that always comes to the foreground in order to save people from
deterioration. It is a source of motivation providing people with a propitiuos ground on
which to start and move forward without inferiority complexes. As far as we are
concerned, were any one to take the very liberty of asking me about our own propriety, I
would say it is grotesque and empty talk. It is not clear that there is another thing beyond
grotesque and empty talk of which we are the masters. It is as if we were sort of living in
seclusion and isolation compared to what is happening abroad. But since things are never
trivial in themselves, our ways of looking at them are more often than not so. Our
propriety lies in having absolutely none which implies the lack of freedom from which
we are constanty suffering and the repercussions of which we are always wrestling with.
This is why I always insist upon freedom in its various shapes to be sought for no matter
how exorbitant the price to be paid and the effort to be invested will be for the sake of
obtaining it. If there is anything that is so damaging and crippling then it is this feeling
of not being free to do or even say things. When people are left to their own resources
without restrictions and limitations, success and progress will become thinkable and an
entreprise which is possible. Today, people are not at any rate allowed to be aware of
that. But who said that we are not free? Don’t we see how free we are in producing
grotesque and empty talk? Don’t we see even how free we are in not being free? We are
not even free to say that we are not free let alone to ask for freedom. But freedom is not
something people should ask for. It is their very raison d’etre and essence of being. The
Dasein of people is freedom. Il faut également et par voie de conséquence mettre et
placer le Dasein sur ses bases et devant ses abimes. But then, it is worth pointing out in
this respect of freedom the fact that le Dasein de l’ homme est en soi déjà inséré dans le
Dasein des autres. C’ est-à-dire qu’ il n’ est tel qu’ il est que dans un etre ensemble avec
les autres, pour et contre les autres. But then time and again, it is by no means to be
forgotten the fact that Freedom is within us and each one of us black, red, yellow, and
white is expressing it differently. It shall never cause any one any harm as long as no one
is hurting the other which normally should be and must be his brother. Dites la vérité,
aussi amère à dire soit-elle. Dis: Je crois en DIEU. Ensuite observe la droiture. Dites du
bien vous gagnerez et taisez le mal et vous en serez saufs. Nul ne prévaut sur quelqu’ un
d’ autre que par la foi et l’ œuvre pie. N’ a pas de fois qui n’ est pas digne de foi et n’ a
pas de piété qui ne respecte pas son pacte. Nul d’ entre vous ne peut prétendre à la foi
jusqu’ à ce qu’ il aime pour son frère ce qu’ il aime pour sa propre personne. Who do we
think said this and insited upon it to be translated into actions and deeds ? God knows
better than we do. It is our Prophet Mohammed peace and blessing be upon him.
We are living in the same universe and this universe is created by God the almighty.
If there is one single TRUTH, then it must be ALLAH. No one will give you freedom,
I do not know who said this, no one will give you anything. If you are a man, you take it.
This is what I will say.

I, sometimes, find my self overwhelmed with a feeling of pity towards ourselves
with no exception worth of mentioning. But why pity? Pity has and should have its
curiosity. A feeling of pity but also one of contrition I do not escape from except when I
start watching over my own self regarding what others are thinking of themselves and of
me. This is something, I believe, which can not easily be helped because there are some
people who keep on looking down on others without reason. Is it because they have
more money in their wormy wooden drawers? Is it because they know more than others
do? Or is it because they find pleasure while behaving that way? In whatever case, they
absolutely have no reason whatever to do so. We are human beings. This is quite enough
and sufficient. But is it enough to be human beings? We have to be free which is quite
contradictory. We want to be free to decide for our selves whether or not we will be free.
There it goes, life will not possibly stop in order to wait for us to wake up and do
something fundamental in it. It will not possibly stop like this and all of a sudden. Then,
it is very probable that time will not, in its turn, serve us to move through life
unproblematically. Time is not with us for the time being. But nevertheless, the scuffle
must be fought till the end given the fact that we are not made for defeat. A man can be
killed but never defeated. This is why I always insist and say that we should never accept
compromises. They are the name we give to our defeats and failures. Compromises are
the causes of the absence of freedom. We can possibly hang on a compromise of lunch
and dinner but never on one of life. There is still hope of a better way of life provided
that we take better care and take a studious responsibility for the conduct we choose in
it. There remains, I do not know where Faulkner gleaned this from, yet something of
honor and pride, of life.
All that any man can hope for nowadays is to be permitted to live the way he intends
for himself and then have the things he would like most to have. By way of inquiry then,
is it too much for a human being who has come to life with hope and honor to ask for
his life to be spared? Is it too much for him to long for a better kind of living rather than
existing? Isn’t it unfair, let us suppose, to cause people to live in misery and deprivation
where the possibility is most often there to save them? Haven’t we been deprived all
those years when our guests ( most of them do not like to think they are so) took
whatever they wanted to take from us? It is our fate and we can do nothing about it. This
is what they say. This is ELMEKTOUB from which there is no hope for escaping.
There is nothing to escape from except from oueselves. There is also nothing to escape
to except to ourselves. Let us grab hold of life once and for all because otherwise, it will
not grab hold of us. Let us try rather than wait and see whether or not life is to be
bestowed on and offered to us. Let us remind ourselves every now and then of the fact
that nothing is to be done without trying except lying down and dying. We are apt to
lose many things except real life. Everything would probably come and go except life and
death without taking, of course, into consideration commencement and finality. Once
life is gone, it will be the end of us. We have it for the time being and therefore, we must
not throw it away for no good thing. It is real life I am talking about not this present one
that sounds like death. Que la mort eu’t été préfèrable dans ses instants. These are not
the words one should say regarding his life. These are not the words to be said by real
human beings who know that, as I said, life is a wild and bitter struggle in the course of
which we are going to prove our existence before passing and fading away. Il fallait, à
présent, se montrer énergiques et prudents, et chercher les moyens de vivre et de s’aimer
toujours sans éveiller aucun soupçon. The alternative I must, we must come up with, is
the following: Que la vie eu’t été préfèrable dans ses instants.
It is our lives with which we are so much preoccupied and we do not intend to meddle
into others’ lives where meddling is not wanted. Let us take responsibility for our lives
before starting to tangle with what is besides. It is not an easy thing to do in so long as
the truth comes to be concerned. We have to do everything in order to make this and
propel it and drag it out even forcibly towards the light. For as things do have a strange
way of turning out so badly, they also have a good way of turning out so well. All is
required from us is to work hard and hope for a better perspective, a better horizon. We
have to struggle for better times on the cess of which we do not just coexist together
peacefully but more significantly we coexist together harmoniously. It is not, we know, so
easy a task to be undertaken but it is not within the province of impossibility.
The one who has in himself the capacity for saying it cannot be done must also have
the capacity for bearing the sight of the one who is doing it. To bear a grudge against
whoever is acting decently, this is to allow enough room for regret later on. To be
friendly towards the other while concealing one’s hostility is no better than being
otherwise. In both cases, as far as I can sense, there remains yet something of importance
wanting which is sincerity. As for frankness, let me say that I do not even want to
remember it. Many people would wonder and retort by stating that they know which
side their bread is to be buttered upon and that I have no reason then to go on saying
things against them. Certain d’eux furent surpris comme si on leur eu’t annoncé la fin du
monde. I wonder in return at their wonder and wonder why is it that they are not
wondering at their failures. For me, to say is better than not to say after all.

I am a failure if I go on saying things against people and society. Sometimes, I see it
exactly the other way round. I feel it truly, success, victory and trumph are the product of
failures provided that we recognise them and work henceforth to send them away. I
would rather be a failure which succeeds, F.S.Fitzgerald once confessed, rather than a
success which fails. Success like silence is not made for its own sake. Messieurs,
Maupassant had had it, nous entrons dans la question vive, celle du succès, qu’il nous
faut obtenir à tout prix. We suceed in order to change things not to take pride out of
them. Une vie vaniteuse porte toujours un océan de sensations améres et de malheurs
insupportables, des inquiétudes et de remords. This is what i have said. This is, i think,
what i still insist upon it to be said.
I am a failure if i keep on saying things against people. Que me fait le monde et ses
vains jugements? Armance would ask without waiting for an answer. For the answer does
already exist in the very asking of the question. Allons, allons, ça va bien. I am speaking
disrespectfully about society. It is too good to be true. If only I could do otherwise. And
after all, as Flaubert had held it in “SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION”, nous n’avons
pas besoin de dogmes pour faire balayer les rues ! On dira que je renverse la société ! ou’
serait le mal? Elle est propre, en effet, ta société. People added still more to its horror.
Society, Let this be said with regard to you. Oh ! Somebody, Victor Hugo would say,
ought to take society by the four corners of the sheet and toss it all into the air !
everything would be crushed, it is likely, but at least nobody would have anything, there
would be so much gained !

Maximillion Novak in Defoe and the nature of man, to make it short, will direct
our attention to Daniel Defoes’ The Review wherein one cannot possibly help sensing
some sort of bitterness but also and more significantly some sort of reacting set out
against recalcitrance and inaction.
“Dig, I cannot and to beg I am ashamed: what shall I do? An

English Gentelman would presently have said to himself, Do !
What should you do? Get a Horse, and a case of Pistols; Is not
The highway wide enough?”
I guess the Highway (of life and not that of death) is wide enough. This is it. Not, by
way of adding, that it is safe. This is to tell no truth. Still, the highway of life is wide
enough and those of them who think otherwise are themselves the very obstacles those
who think it is should never mind and give a cuss. For the time being, we are living in an
exile where there are many rips waiting for being mended by those who think the
highway of life is wide enough. It is so difficult and perilous a task but we need to move
through it anyway. These rips ( ces gouffres as they say in French) are worth the
mending and no room must be offered to those who are cloistered within the walls of
fear and pessimism. Oh! What ridiculous resolutions men take when they are possessed
with fear! It is up to us, a real teacher maintained, to mend the rips and walk through
them to the light or remain forever in the dark. The task presents an equation as simple
as it can be but the effort we must invest to cater for its success is to be so great indeed.
It is not a dolting task. It is never a dolting task to mend the rips and walk through them
to the light. It is an intelligent task for those who are brave and temperate. After all, how
many years of exile have we been forced to live in this happy life that, as I would like to
put it just for the fun of it, we take to be ours? How many years of exile? Do we think it
will do and be availed if we count them? Let us count them.
I like them to be counted as a matter of fact. One of my many friends who are but few
but real has taken it once into his head and started to count them. Let us see its
rendering which he proposes in a highly poetic form and then confer close attention on
the incredible degree of emotional involvement we are to be struck with as it is
emanating from his voice. The poem reads thus:

Resistance of memory
How many years of exile?

I counted with my fingers
Until I finished counting my fingers: ten.
I stopped counting then.
My exile can’t be counted,
Outdoes the power of numbers.
I have landed in my country,
I am home again.
But nothing means anything.
The place is no longer that place.
My name on the old elm vanished,
I remember having carved it well with a nail
Till the tree bled.
The often-noisy street is now calm,
No shouting, no yelling, no laughter,
No children, no passers-by, no beggar.
Where is the horse in the neighborhood stable?
He must have died.
Horses, good horses, don’t live long.
My mother’s stove is dead, too.
No more blowing at fire,
No more adding of wood.
My father’s grave in the cemetry
Is moss-infested.
It must have rained a lot this winter.
Everything is nothing today,
Only memory won’t die.
It must have rained a lot this winter. But what if the winter is over, Ernest hemingway
once asked, and the rain still keeps up? It won’t be fun up here. It is still raining and to
say it is never like no to say it as I said before. Winter, as far as I and my friend can
sense, turned off all the lights and then at once took to unpacking his wintery and cold
elements and have them spread one by one and sometimes they are spread without our
knowledge on the earth. Where is the sun? There are only clouds. It must be raining and

the streets of life, I am sorry to say, will slope very steeply because of the rain. They are
sloping for the time being and I am far from being sorry for that.
This poem, if it is to be more closely and deeply considered, seems to evoke and
ramify what it already attempts to hide and conceal. The mere reading of it, I confess
and why should I not confess?, makes me prefer silence…. Silence, silence, silence and
not indifference.
To be continued …

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« Penser fut toujours pour moi une occupation pénible et sans charme.

Quelquesfois mes rèveries finissent par la méditation, mais plus souvent

Chokri Omri | Meditations 1

Chokri Omri | Meditations 3

Chokri Omri | Meditations 5

Chokri Omri | Meditations 6

As soon as I said this, Ramzi cried out of astonishment :

“ What do you mean?” muttered Merai.

“ Ok fine. Go ahead; we all lend you our ears” Merai said.

Chokri Omri | Meditations 8

Chokri Omri | Meditations 9

Chokri Omri | Meditations 10

Chokri Omri | Meditations 12

Chokri Omri | Meditations 13

He stopped and stared at me and said angrily:

Chokri Omri | Meditations 14

Chokri Omri | Meditations 17

In so long as I came to find my self involved, I was just overwhelmed by the

Chokri Omri | Meditations 18

Il y a certainement une honte à etre heureux en presence de tant de misères. Il y a du

Chokri Omri | Meditations 19

Why do we still continue to make fools of our selves?

We are to them no more than flippant objects of experimentations. Once the

Chokri Omri | Meditations 20

His letter was the following:

Majdi, I must say what you have to hear.

To change my place is according to me far better than to change my face.

To go back means to me to go back and nothing else.

See you by that time.

Chokri Omri | Meditations 24

“ Believe me my friend, even the mistake has its own significance.”

Chokri Omri | Meditations 25

But Justice is inverted when

Chokri Omri | Meditations 27

Chokri Omri | Meditations 28

Chokri Omri | Meditations 29

“Haven’t you heard that time is money nowadays?”

“Yes I have. And what is to come next?”

Chokri Omri | Meditations 30

Chokri Omri | Meditations 31

Chokri Omri | Meditations 32

To hell with respect if it brings about nothing but humiliation.

Chokri Omri | Meditations 34

A lonely ghost loomed out of the unknown mystery,

Birds are crying, freedom is dying, life is in boundary;

Chokri Omri | Meditations 36

Chokri Omri | Meditations 37

Chokri Omri | Meditations 38

Chokri Omri | Meditations 39

We need to avoid it by every possible means. Silence is not to be seen as something

Chokri Omri | Meditations 40

Tata Fadhila protested and said:

Chokri Omri | Meditations 42

When man determined to destroy

Chokri Omri | Meditations 43

Chokri Omri | Meditations 44

Chokri Omri | Meditations 45

It would be negligent on my part if I did not attempt to clarify this statement

… Alors que Vesper vient embrunir nos yeux,

Hide, poor dishonored mind

Chokri Omri | Meditations 52

Chokri Omri | Meditations 54

Dust I am, to dust am bending,

Thus they in Heav’n, above the starry sphere,