Do you know how it feels to be taken away from the only surrounding you know and love? From the smell and the sounds that had embraced your childhood? Do you know of the need to recreate the way sunlight hits the ground? I was born in Morocco during the French protectorate. Most of us, French citizens, left in 1956 when the country became independent. I came back 30 years later, one September day of 1986. I stayed long enough to see again the cities I lived in, but most of all the city of Meknes. Oh Meknes! My first years on earth. No need to ask for help, it was as if I never left. Sure, a few changes here and there, but everything was waiting for me. My trip was a sweet and painful journey. On my last day, I wrote a poem that I sent to " Le Matin du Sahara" a French written Moroccan newspaper. It was my way to close on my past. I was returning to my American life in Philadelphia, the next morning. I remember thinking that I may never know if my writing would be published. One year passed when I received a letter from a woman living in Casablanca. She has read my published poem she said, and asked: "Are you the Monique Frugier from the Frugier family who lived 25 rue de Champagne in Meknes?" She was an 83 years old woman who had been my mother's neighbor and friend during the 1940's. We began to write, and I often thought that maybe I was helping her saying good bye to her past, as I had to let her know that my mother had long ago passed away. After a while, she called me by another name. Then she stopped writing. On my wall, there is a printed copy of a poem from "Le Matin du Sahara", a gift from my mother's old friend. |