[Warning: Sentence structure chaotic, Frenchman speaking]
I had three years and half when I discovered in company, of my young sister
Rosette and my parents on board the boat which brought us of Marseilles,
the bay of Saint George.
I lived six years in Beirut - of 1954 to 1960. One morning of February 1956,
in the room which I divided with Rosette, I was awaked by my mother, who
had just discovered the inanimate body of my sister. I was 5 years old.
My parents also early led me in friends, they did not want that I attend his
funerals - Not besides than they never wanted me to say to me during all our
stay in Lebanon, where it was buried. Very recently, with death of my grand
parents I found in the files of my grand mother, three photographs of my
sister.
First was taken the year or my mother was hospitalized in a photographer
at the request of my grand parents during the carnival: I covered for the
circumstance a disguise of clown, ma sœur un costume d’Alsacienne.
Second was taken, in the street with the bottom of the building, of my grand
parents. I am in white Kabic in front of the pram of my sister.
Third was taken in Lebanon, on holiday with the mountain a few months be-
fore its death, - she smiles approximately in the middle of the umbrella pines
I can understand today that my parents wanted at the time me to avoid shar-
ing their sorrow but, by preventing me to do a necessary work of mourning,
they wove between Lebanon and me blood ties.
I often compare them with this red water and these petals of anemones which
come to colour in each spring in Lebanon: The fountain of Adonis to recall
that it is here that it was delivered by Diane in grazing ground to her dogs.
I learned the respect and the friendship there, the importance of a given word.
I learned the pleasure from a meal offered and shared, with saying hello and
marking time in front of the door of a house to ask water.
I learned how there to make me respect and to respect the others and I will
have left with nobody the care to prevent me from disputing with my buddies
of the shantytown who was next to the buildings of the Jesuits where we
lived part of “mouch mouch”
Like my comrades, I became myself also small “abadaye” – a street bully. It
is at that time the coming age of reason which I required to have as my bud-
dies - as in all the good families a weapon - my weapon.

My parents ended up yielding, but I did not have the chance to have one 22
as one made some then for the children. I inherited a Rifle with Souvenirs.
I remember Chtoura and Zahlé, farm of the Fathers in the beeka, of their
poplar plantation and their bitch Leica. Memories of Mr Germain who held
the field of the Turrets where we were going to supply itself out of wine. To
remember with these hands which pour a drop of arak on the palms and rub
them until it evaporates to measure quality - a gesture that I make still today,
when it sometimes happens to me to drink some. To remember finally the
Nathalie of Tripoli and the castle of Beaufort where I fell in love for the first
time with my life.
We went down of the castle when with the turning of a lane of the village
which was downwards, I crossed with a small girl of my age blonde like
corns with the blue eyes like an orange which me my sister recalled furi-
ously. We bound knowledge. I did not want to leave any more.
There was opposite the apartment in which we lived, a house overhung by a
terrace.
Every a little front evening, to lay down sun, an old man on a wheel chair
was made there go up by his sons, a Thomson machine-gun in the arms.
There it spent a long moment listening to the city, to wait the night as if its
presence on the terrace were enough to give it in the part.
I do not have to remember precise the date on which I understood where my
sister was buried. The only thing of which I remember, it is that it spent one
day when I went to the beach with my mother in the taxi service. While pass-
ing in front of the small cemetery which was boulevard of French today road
of Damas,( ?) I do not know why but I understood with the glance which it
threw which this it is there that my sister - it confirmed to me much later.
To forget Lebanon was to forget my sister.
So that it “still lives” every evening before deadening me - and do it still
sometimes today - I obliged to remake of memory of the circuits which were
familiar for me: To leave the buildings of the Jesuits, to cross the carpark
in front of the house, to return in the shanty town which had there opposite
on our premises, not far from the orthodoxe church, and to descend the way
which went down soft inclined towards the stage from Sheila who was going
to become my new lycee. To leave the residence, to take a taxi service, to
turn right, to catch up with the place of the hotel Dieu hospital, and to turn
always to skirt the racecourse still on the right, to find the airport on the left,
or to slip by towards the beaches.

To descend the steps from the beach of Simon Saint, to strip itself in a white
cottage, and to fix the rock which faces him as an island impossible to reach -
it is there that I learned how to swim…
I set out again with discovered of Beirut on Internet.. I discovered splendid
sites there posting the work of young artists. One day that I typed to see - on
Google – my father’s name + Beirut I fell on a site put on line by a former
pupil from my father or I discovered: Advertisement of the death of my sister
in the newspaper of the college a photograph of my father and me in excur-
sion with its pupils three essays which it had corrected.
“Allo? Cherie? Je viens de trouver quelqu’un qui est mon voisin!” (Hello?
Darling? I just found someone who is my neighbor!)
“Non, pas a Paris… la ou j’habitais a Beyrouth a cote du Jardin des Jesuites!
Je t’embrasse.” (No, not in Paris, where I used to live near the Jesuit garden.
I send you a kiss!)
“You know Tarek, there are only two cities in the world where the women are
so beautiful: Beirut and Toulon. Toulon, because it is a sailor’s city, and Bei-
rut, because it is cursed… You know Don Juan never loved women, he loved
risk. He loved the tipping point in seduction where everything could go either
way. Let’s go grab a drink at the Barometre this evening. But for now, we’ll
go to Kakab-ji. I’ll gladly have a “Kebbe Nayye” (Raw meat) there. Perhaps
even with raw chicken liver. Yes, I know this will kill me, and so will my
three packs of cigarettes a day. When the doctor told me I could not smoke, I
told her “rouhi ya charmouta!” (Go away bitch!). I said in Arabic, and I was
so happy I kept my accent. Bad words need to be said with an accent.”