The old photo yellowed with age was Margherita’s idea. She wanted me to introduce you to my parents and grandparents. It was a nice present for your fifth birthday. And you played along. You went through the different characters one by one. I was not surprised when you said: ‘Papa, did you see? Your Mom is really short.’ Was that your first comment? Nothing else to point out as you stared at the old picture. D’accordo, as your fanciful mother would say, I must admit you’re not wrong about my mother’s height. When I was small, I had a problem with it. For years, I told myself I could have been tall and strong like a Viking… if only my mother had not been closer to a Pigmy than a Viking. Every evening, I would hop up and down for ten minutes before going to bed because Kassim, a tall oaf of nine on rue Paul-Fort, told me trees use this technique to befriend the skies. My jumping around like a jack rabbit had no result. As I grew up, I was obliged to swallow this humiliation along with many others. You’ll see, Béa, you’ll swallow some too, one day or another. That photo was only a first step. You wanted to know your ancestors, you were right. You nagged me day and night so I would talk about my parents.
I’m going to tell you about the land of my childhood. And you’ll get all the stories that marked my childhood years. I will tell you about my old parents. I will tell you about my past and I will answer your question. I’ll tell you about the shifting desert around Djibouti, my native city. I’ll tell you about the Red Sea. I’ll tell you about my neighbourhood and its little houses with corrugated aluminium roofs. You may find it poor and dirty and maybe you won’t dare admit it to me. The last time I went there, it really was very dirty. There weren’t as many of those damned pieces of plastic littering the alleys of my youth. 16
Who did you recognize right away in the picture? Zahra, my mother and your grandmother. I know you saw her first in a photo. Then you met her in the flesh at my younger brother’s Ossobleh’s place, your uncle in Bordeaux whom you adore. How old were you at the time? Two and a half? Was her mouth partially toothless then? That woman was my one and only goad for a long time, can you imagine? The centre of my attention. My love, and my terror, too.
Suddenly, you grabbed the picture out of my hands and brought it up close to your chubby face. And then, close to your eyes, as if you wanted to magnify every line and every grain of my parents’ skin. I think I saw a tear on your cheek. You were stroking my father’s face with your finger. Papa Beanpole, as I used to call him when I was a child, was standing up, tall and straight as an arrow. Dignified and handsome. About thirty years old. A thin moustache, typical at the time. He was wearing well-pressed khaki pants and a long-sleeved shirt. The absence of colour flattened the checkered motif of his buttoned-up shirt and emphasized the two folds of his pants, which went down to his shining black shoes, lit up by a few whitish spots. He held his head straight; his features looked relaxed and his eyes were staring at the camera. He had probably obeyed the local photographer, who was used to printing the great and small joys of everyday life on film. You noticed that he wasn’t really smiling. How could I explain that selfies and social networks didn’t exist in your grandfather’s time and people were as solemn as a child at his first communion before the bent-down photographer. If your grandfather ever had the wild idea of making faces in the photographer’s studio, he would have been dismissed on the spot and advised to go horse around at a rival photographer’s place. No bare chests, no bikini, no sandals. In hot countries, people dress from head to toe. Only Westerners strip naked as soon as they feel the slightest ray of sun warming up their skin.