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2

Adam left the table and went over to his suitcase to fetch a bulging, sky-blue folder he had brought with him from Paris. It was marked, in large black felt-tip letters, Letters from friends. He set it on the bed, lay down next to it, removed the elastic band, took out a pile of envelopes, and began to read.

It was not until an hour later that he got up, clutching a number of pages, in order to copy certain passages into his notebook.

In the country, rumour has it that you’ve left never to return …

Excerpt of a letter from Mourad, dated July 30, 1978, which reached me in Paris thanks to the diligence of a traveller.

Every time someone mentions your name, I pretend to be angry. Which spares me having to say anything. The thing is, between me and you, I no longer know what to say. Last year, we spent all summer waiting for you; you didn’t come. You were “working,” apparently. I thought people in France took holidays in the summer, in August or in July. Or even in September. Not you! You were working! I shouted at our friends: “You think he’s going to end up like the people over there, spending the whole year pretending to work but surreptitiously checking the holiday calendar? Oh, no, Adam hasn’t changed, he’ll never change! He is working like an emigrant, day and night, come rain, come shine, whatever the season …”

But, as the proverb says, the leash on a lie is a short one. That morning, your grandmother announced to everyone that you were taking a month’s leave and had rented a house in the Alps. She seemed proud, God forgive her, and she showed me the letter you had sent her. This was what made me decide to write to you at once.

I’m not trying to pressure you, but if it is true that you never want to set foot here again, at least tell me, you bastard, so I can stop making myself look stupid by defending you. If you prefer the Alps to the mountains here, at least have the guts to write and tell me.

Our mountain was being sung about in the Bible when those Alps of yours were no more than a geological accident, a common fault. The Alps first appear in history only when our ancestor Hannibal crossed them with his elephants in order to mount an assault on Rome. Which is what he should have done—headed straight for the city and occupied it, before Rome came and occupied us. But I suppose none of this interests you anymore, you probably don’t even remember who Hannibal was.

A house in the Alps? Traitor! There are so many houses waiting to welcome you here. Mine, first and foremost. You should be ashamed! […]

Tania says she sends her love. She might, but I don’t. I don’t know you anymore.

In the same envelope, there was a second letter. At first when I saw the pinkish, translucent sheet folded in four and recognized Tania’s elegant hand, I assumed she had slipped it in without Mourad’s knowledge. But I quickly realized that he had obviously agreed to allow his wife to add her voice to his. Because, to be honest, although she seemed to take a different tack, she was the one who was most bitterly critical.

My dearest Adam,

I’m sure you will recognize Mourad’s letter as a gesture of affection, disguised, out of masculine reserve, as a scolding.

Do I need to tell you that you left a void in the lives of your friends that nothing and no one can fill? That your absence is all the more painful in these terrible years? If you were here in front of me, you would pretend to be surprised, but I wouldn’t believe it. I have always seen your apparent modesty as the sign of good manners rather than a genuine humility. Behind that affable, courteous, timid exterior, you are the most arrogant person I know.

Don’t protest! You know that it’s true, and you know that I say it as a loving sister. Yes, you are the most arrogant person, and also—you will protest even more forcefully at this—the most intolerant. A friend lets you down? He’s no longer your friend. The country lets you down? It’s no longer your country. And since you are easily let down, you will end up with no friends, no country.

I profoundly wish that my words might have some effect on you. That they might persuade you to be more tolerant of the country, to accept it for what it is. It will always be a country of factions, of chaos, of unwarranted privilege, nepotism, and corruption. But it is also a country with a gentle way of life, a country of human warmth, of generosity. And the country of your truest friends.

Another virtue of our country is that here it is possible to create a carefree oasis. Even when every district of the city is in flames, our village, our old house, and its vast terrace are exactly as you knew them. A few friends still join us occasionally, as they did back then. Others no longer come; we will always miss them, and I like to think that they miss us a little, too.

Mourad keeps telling me that you are nothing to him now, which means exactly the opposite. He tells me that you’ve become a stranger, a foreigner, that, with time, you will become more so—and in this he is probably right. But I send my love to you all the same, all my love …

I carefully preserved these letters, but I cannot remember answering them.

While it was complicated at the time to receive letters from my homeland, sending letters there was more precarious still. The postal system had ceased to function, one had to trust in a traveller to deliver it by hand. A mission that could prove dangerous. The courier sometimes had to enter battle zones; and if he did not wish to run such risks, and asked the addressee to come and pick up the letter, it was the latter who risked death.

For this reason, we did not write to those who had stayed behind. We telephoned. Or, at least, we tried. Nine times out of ten, without success, but from time to time, the call got through. And in the first few seconds, we rushed to say what was essential, because the line could go dead at any moment. So, we first asked after the health of those closest to us; we registered any urgent requests, primarily, any medications no longer available there; we briefly mentioned the letters that we had received or sent; there was talk of friends who had left or were preparing to leave. Only then, if the telephonic Fates were kind and the call was not cut off, did we allow ourselves the luxury of talking about other things.

Mourad claimed that, in one of our conversations, I responded to his reproaches by saying “I didn’t leave, it was the country that left.” It’s possible that I said it. It was something I said a lot at the time, I liked the expression. But it was only a joke. Of course, I was the one who left. I made the decision to leave just as I might have made the decision to stay.

Which does not mean that it was my fault, if there is a fault. Every man has the right to leave, it is for his country to persuade him to stay—despite the aphorism of pompous politicians: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Easy to say when you’re a millionaire, when you’ve just been elected president of the United States at the age of forty-three! But what exactly is John F. Kennedy’s maxim worth when you live in a country where you cannot find a job, a doctor, a place to live, cannot get an education, cannot vote freely, express an opinion, or even walk the streets? Precious little!

Your country must first honour certain commitments to you. You must be considered a full citizen, not be subjected to oppression, discrimination, or unwarranted privations. A country and its leaders have a duty to ensure these things; otherwise, you owe them nothing. Neither a commitment to the land, nor a salute of the flag. The country where you can live with your head held high is one to which you will give everything, sacrifice everything, even your life; the country where you must live with your head bowed is one to which you give nothing. Whether it is your country of refuge or your native country. Magnanimity breeds magnanimity, indifference breeds indifference, and contempt breeds contempt. This is the charter of free individuals and, for my part, I acknowledge no other.

So, I was the one to leave, of my own free will—or almost. But I was not wrong when I told Mourad that the country, too, had left, and had gone much farther than I did. After all, in Paris, I am a five-hour flight from the city where I was born. The journey I made two days ago is one I could have made on any day in recent years: I could have decided to go back to the country in the morning and been there by nightfall. My grandmother’s old apartment has long since been there for me to use, I could have moved back in and not left the following day, the following month, or even the following year.

Why did I never take the plunge? Because the country of my childhood had been transformed? No, that’s not it, not at all. It is in the nature of things that the world of yesteryear should fade. It is also in the nature of things that one should feel nostalgic. But the disappearance of the past is easy to get over; it is the disappearance of the future that one cannot overcome. The country whose absence saddens and fascinates me is not the country of my childhood, but the country I dreamed of, one that never saw the light of day.

People constantly tell me that this is how it goes in the Levant, that things will never change, that there will always be factions, privileges, corruption, blatant nepotism, that we have no choice but to make do. When I reject this, they call me arrogant, even intolerant. Is it arrogant to hope one’s country will become less antiquated, less corrupt, less violent? Is it arrogant or intolerant to refuse to be content with an approximation of democracy, a sporadic civil peace? If it is, then I confess my sinful pride and curse their virtuous resignation.

But this morning, at Sémi’s place, I am rediscovering the physical pleasure of being in my native land.

I write those last words as if I needed to relearn them. My native land. My country. My homeland. I know all its failings, but during these days of rediscovery, I have no desire to remind myself that I am only passing through, that, in my pocket, I already have a return ticket. I need to believe that I am living here for an indeterminate period, that the horizon is not cluttered with dates and commitments, that I will stay here in this room, in this little mountain hotel, for as long as I need to.

I know that there will come a moment—two days, two weeks, two months from now—when, once again, I feel compelled to leave; by the behaviour of others, or by my own impatience. For the moment, I refuse to think about it. I live, I breathe, I remember.