Heroes of Baghdad

The drizzle of the night raised outside a pleasant smell of raw herbs and sand. From the window I look under the trees, the flapping wings of the gulls, the sea stretching to the horizon. At the Hotel Clark, in the newspaper I saw your photo. That’s why I come to you today. From what I see, you have not changed much. In a strange emotion, images into sequences slowly come running in my mind. Your silhouette ingénue, your big brown eyes looking at me, smiled at me: a dream, distant feelings at this moment, the more I think about that baffle me.

You’re here, in the room designed by the bookseller for your event, at the end of the line, Relaxed and happy. Surrounded by people from everywhere, piles of novels in which a smile, a kind word, you put your signature.

For a long time you do not know anything about me. But I guess you have not forgotten. Like all your readers, quietly, deep in my thoughts, I wait my turn. You do not see me, but the strange evidence is now clear. In your freedom fabulous, you made your most thousandth dream.

As an underground spring, the ephemeral emotion most secret, strangely, has left its mark … A sun waiting to surprise me illuminate, awaken its palpitation, what I thought until now totally unrecoverable. Yet the germ of buried years ago, suddenly reappears. So am I the golden thread unsuspected lead to detours, and get carried away farthest from its enchantment.

We got lost a spring in our eyes, our smiles … We walked together on the wet sand where I liked to tell you the history of the Phoenicians, the New World treasures buried in the wreckage … Offer you share my dreams, my expectations of life, especially your listening silence. Do you remember?

The Millennium range is no different from what it was then. Always deserted, abandoned, between the dunes, the sand rose decorated with alluvium, of polished pebble. On the mirror of the surf undulating, the sun still shines in its sublime glow. But the streets, with high walls, decrepit balconies have lost their soul. From the top of the hill, like a cemetery, slumber still immutable foundation stones. The bars of the main street now become inundated with crazy machines changed hands. More experienced person, no returns. All have largely cast off to other oceans unknown. The first submarine in the world is always in the same place. However, surrounding the fountain dried up, and high old trees to the place, were substituted for street lights to illuminate the main avenue.

I think back to the reefs, the silhouette of the rock above the water. In your long hair windswept, the cries of gulls over our heads. Legs, arms bare to the air, small, you seem so fragile. In the wind the smell of sea, I lift you up in my arms. You’re so light. The weather that day was foggy, and the sound of the waves covers all the words I’m trying to confess. The snub nose, the teeth removed, with your candor, a strong wave projects your body under your dress wet cotton against my chest. The blood accelerates more and more in my veins. In a dizzy, I lose my speech. You pronounce the words without looking at me inaudible. What did you say? Nothing, you answer me. Me too, I have time to whisper to me talking to myself. But the swell takes away my voice.

The images of the fair also come back to me. I can still hear the sound of our footsteps in the fishing village, echoes the lament recalling the night time of the Moorish kings. Your joyous cries of success at the shooting range, crisp apple honey ice. My intense desire to cover you with kisses, and finally take me. In my bewilderment to admire you, quite simply, later on the road, I hit the bumper … And to think that you were barely twenty years old!

Another day of rough tides, the boat rocks on the high seas I feel your fear of me suddenly disappear beneath the waves, with bottles and palms. All this at a time when I came back gray salt water, to offer you the fragments stuck in the sand covered with algae, of antiquity.

The line at the bookstore and I shortened growing closer to you. The blood beat in my temples. And in his pockets, my fingers shaking, as a teenager. I turn from one side to the other, no one seems to notice my presence. I’m too old maybe. Other young people I have already replaced. My time has just passed me. Today I have reached the age of maturity!

You, with your ten years younger, I also find radiant. Your travels in the infinite imagination had to preserve the shine on your face. You smile to the reader dazzled by you, and I’m excited. There is still time to leave, to go, I’m thinking spirit. You will not know that I had come. But, like a magnet, my pulse seems to increase further up to you, waking up more in the maze of shadows: a dazzling career in the days of conflict in the Sahara desert … Finally, all wars. My sleepless nights thinking about you. See you in a particularly giddy remove your clothes over his head … Your voice so sweet in memory take me away. Beyond the banks of the slope, overlooking the valley covered with colorful flowers.

Another day of branches in the square, the momentum of tenderness expressed in a move unusual, this unexpected touch on my cheek, when you arrive, is for me an unexpected gift. Once the beam of your gesture suddenly makes me stronger, more intelligent. Plus as existing . A warning, the wonderful once again, just penetrate me. This is where I understand that without you my life will never the same direction …

Yet the race of warlike land where I found most often the same faces, urges me not to stop. Observer inhuman horror, ten, fifteen, thirty years, the most dangerous places in the world attract me more. Thou, silent, confused, you say nothing. It’s stronger than me. Wherever the action is, I put on the must. Thus, the territories hardest, the steady rise of adrenaline, become addictive for me.

Under the rain of fire and lead, a bag on his back, I sink more and more compelled I think of my profession. Then comes the time not far from the Holocaust, I disappear into the jungle. Some old books save me against the unreasonable. Unaccounted for, believe me you went to the other world … You, exhausted, plagued by worry, my drafts, you let me end my only experience illusions. In the train that take you away from me, you go away without farewell. The sediment comes from burrowing so as not to be reborn … Me, more and more obstinate, thinking to wipe the slate clean, I turn the mirage around the globe, as a hero on the field of the most horrific battles. To tell the world, within a few breaths, just tell. Tell intolerance, remember or denounce injustice. Show images, a few bites, a thousand other places, finally greeted with horror a different perception! Only that, I do not yet understand.

I see the car, the window sealed, your last look. The train departs. Pinching the moment felt. How many years? I dare not count.

The guns, the shrapnel désarçonnent me, but I’m learning more and more to toughen up, and price of all the risks, I pass more and more my book of hope. I thought and change the world? The images, stories at least in my opinion, would do! Thus, under the deluge of fire, storms of steel, your voice, your wavy forms of Venus are often returned to me … What aberration of war! But I thought taking the right path … See the worst horrors of life, observe the behavior of humans so disappointing? Is this really live? In a move perhaps illusory, at least I accomplished my greatest dream: to which I thought!

All this is far from now! Over time, the years do not exist today. The man increasingly continue to protect its interests, and war will continue indefinitely. And others like me, in turn, lose their illusions in deadly showers, bacterial or fungal nuclear …

I am alone now. In memory with my memories, but mostly Horror indelible in the house without locks, admiring the most beautiful seas … A sudden mad desire to reinvent life, to get back to live, to live differently, overwhelms me. To forget the nightmare especially more than anything! Under the vast sky, bright, now is the time of the interrogation, but also the understanding that peace begins first in itself.

All these images of you have nothing real except in my memory. But like my aspirations, staged in my head, away from the empire of the wolves, now I want to offer you the house of my dreams, ten yards from the shore. Of you compose poems to remind you how much I love you. Repeat the brush to capture the colors of the sun dipping into the water. See you write more novels and I, for your sake that one day I met with you to try, to do the same. Teach you to observe the night sky and constellations with the naked eye. In the part of the mystery of the universe, I think I see eclipses, comets. Meteorites and shooting stars. Clusters, the Milky Way and the nebulae already carry me away. My enthusiasm at this time, seems suddenly away. But I still have much to tell you …

Write your movements slow slip on the first page of your libretto. I am here, in my turn, the last in the queue before you now. No longer able to offer you that the observation of reality … Instinctively, you reach out to receive the dark blue format, between my fingers I can not stand. On the other side of the thread of life where I go now, I see you dumbfounded, stunned, numb. In the thick fog, illuminated space one last look, yet you seem to see me. Your eyes, your smile told me everything. No, you did not forget anything. The time is gone. Suddenly the past becomes the present. Without words, in the cloud, we speak with the eyes. No need to say anything: in all the splendor of the spark silver when I crossed now, finally, you hear me! The ferment of the intense emotion in your soul is reborn. In an unexpected flash, watched amazing storm, the rain fatal, the doors of the other side where nobody ever returned, just opened for me in Baghdad, already implementing my energy also …

I hear the waves and seagulls. Deaf sounds of harps and flutes, appears to be from eternity. Then in the mist, pushing me to the passage of the other light in the tunnel, I get lost.

A street may bear my name down here. Like the others, in memory of the heroes of Baghdad. But I understand only now that voice, my voice, the more you will never hear him.