Shahrazad - Stories for life

Shahrazad asked a group of European and non-European writers to compose open letters addressed to ’their Europe’. The results were published in Letters to Europe, a book highlighting how this continent means different things to different people.

 

Peter Vermeersch (1972) is a Belgian political scientist, poet and essayist.

 

Dear Europe,

By Peter Vermeersch

 

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes I see you from the window in the plane. Far below you lie, stretched out and quiet, as though you were my slumbering beloved. I see a web of fields and oval towns, with hair-fine roads, mountains like white fists, long rivers glinting in the morning sun. And then I wonder what it would be like to really long for you. How it would be if I couldn't just take you for granted, having to do my best for you because you were still not mine. I try to look through the eyes of an outsider. Perhaps the mist and rarefied air up there make me dream: that you're still young and smooth and naive so that you can still become whatever you like and that your inhabitants in their ant-sized cars and houses like pebbles, cherish you like a newborn child. Shall I hide away in this machine so that I can be with you? Freeze myself permanently to the wheels? Later, when the plane has landed, I walk towards you through long, clean halls, between businessmen with laptops and tourists in shorts and loose shirts. I see the others there, too: large families with children, with all their possessions, men with crumpled documents. Those are the ones I have to leave behind because you won't keep me waiting. Even if your reception is somewhat cool and the man behind the counter doesn't return your smile, he nods at me and just lets me through. Sometime I wonder what it must be like realize fully what cruel privilege lies concealed in the nod of that official.

 

It doesn't happen often but sometimes I stand on your frontiers. I wander aimlessly along the quayside and look at the smooth water, like oil. I see a ship and the bustle of activity in the docks, the cranes under a steely sky and the supply of goods brought to you, a constant stream of gifts in the shape of containers. Do you deserve them? Do I deserve them? And what do we do with them? I know they leave storms of poverty and injustice in their wake. I also know how stubborn poverty and injustice are still here. Are you aware of that, too? Those demarcations, those concrete wharves: those are your damaged borders. Where do you end and where does the area start which you may no longer claim as your own? Do you also consider the nonchalant randomness of the division equally confusing? Sometimes, on sunny days, I compare us - you and me - with Escher's lithography: we are two hands which each mark the other's character. Together we will redefine our contours. Everything is still in the process of development. Everything is still possible. New space will open up, and suddenly the unknown will no longer be different. But on less sunny days I say an irreconcilable chasm. Just like a few years ago when I was sheltering in the high doorway of the Hotel Des Bains on the Venice Lido. Fighter jets flew past on their way to the Balkans.

 

Now I'm at home in Brussels, it's April and in the park across the street, the sun is shining. I'm listening to a tape of my great-grandfather's voice, Léon Van Houcke, born in 1893, in a different century, in a different Europe. The recording was made a few years before his death, during the eighties. I hear his short sentences for the umpteenth time, his dry West-Flanders description of those couple of months of war which he experienced in the trenches in Schoorbakke and Pervijze. Throughout his life he had spoken very little about it, only at the end, in those final years, then he had: he would sit by the stove with his cap on his pale head as if time had ceased to mean anything to him - and he could no longer speak of anything else. He saw it all once more, right before his eyes: the bullets and the mud and the insanity. To me he seemed like a time traveller someone who came to report on a lost world. Not that he
had a message because - even after all those years - he seemed not to have entirely grasped what had actually happened there in 1914.Only that it had marked his life. If I see a report about you on the television then I always find myself thinking of Léon, and when I read something about your perpetual official murmuring on a website.

Shahrazad asked a group of European and non-European writers to compose open letters addressed to ’their Europe’. The results were published in Letters to Europe, a book highlighting how this continent means different things to different people.

 

Dejan Anastasijevic (1962) is a Serbian journalist and publicist.

 

 

Dear Princess,

By Dejan Anastasijevic

 

I hope this letter reaches you, because I couldn’t. It’s been such a long time since you disappeared from our part of the world, taken away, they said, by a ferocious horned beast. But as of recently, I started hearing rumours of your reappearance: travellers told that you settled somewhere in the West, and became a queen of sorts, or princess, or somesuch; their stories varied and contradicted. They also said that your land is rich and wonderful, and that all your people are free of persecution and misery.

 

So I set out westwards to find you. First I came upon a land of many rolling hills rich with grapes, and a long coastline with hundreds of islands like emeralds in the blue shimmering sea, and I asked about you. “Yes”, the natives told me, “this is the land of Europe, and we are her guardians. For centuries we’ve been protecting her from barbarians from the East.” But then I saw the burned villages of their next-door neighbours, and noticed malice hidden in their eyes, and I knew they were lying, and I went further on.

 

Next was a country with snow-peaked mountains, and at their foothills was a great city with splendid palaces and a marvellous cathedral in the centre. “This is where the land of Europe begins”, they said, “right at the Southern train station in our city.” But they were uptight and selfish and filled with hatred for all those around them, and I didn’t believe a word they said.

 

Westwards was a larger country almost completely surrounded by the sea, basking in the sun, full of magnificent buildings and monuments, and it looked a lot like a land from the travellers’ tales. And the people there were nice and friendly, and their language sounded like music to my ears, and they talked of you constantly. But then I saw them rounding up the dark- skinned people among them and burning their camps and sending them to a cruel place across the sea, and I knew I had to move on. Next was a land equally beautiful, but the people were arrogant and they ignored me and anyone who couldn’t speak their language flawlessly.

 

Finally I came to a small country, somewhat flat and wet, but rich and green, and in its midst was a city where everyone said your new home is. And indeed there was a great shiny tower there, made of glass and steel. The guards didn’t believe we were related and they refused to let me in, so I sneaked in through the basement window late one night. I checked every room all the way to the top, but all I found were air-conditioned offices, and I knew that you couldn’t possibly live in such a cold and empty place.

 

So here I am standing on the sandy beach, and all I see before me is a vast sea, which looks like it’s made of lead, and the dark grey sky above it. I’ve heard stories that you moved further westwards, across the water, but I’m weary and my feet hurt and I no longer believe in these tales. So when I finish this letter, I’ll just put it in a bottle and throw it into the sea, before I start my journey back home. You should do the same, cousin. Who knows where that vile beast took you, but if you’re still somewhere out there, and this letter finds you, I have only one thing to say: Come back home. We really, really, miss you.

Shahrazad asked a group of European and non-European writers to compose
open letters addressed to ’their Europe’. The results were published in Letters to Europe, a book highlighting how this continent means different things to different people. 

 

Salem Zenia (1962) is an Algerian poet, novelist and journalist who currently lives and works in Spain.

 

Letter to my lady

By Salem Zenia

 

I have so many things to tell you that I don‘t know where to begin, and I‘m afraid of getting confused. My letter might be, for you, like a bottle thrown into the sea. Maybe it will be intercepted, like all those curiosities that the waves carry to the shore. Perhaps it will even be read. But, I am convinced that it will soon be consigned, like dozens of others, to oblivion. For my bottle contains no treasure map.

 

My letter is not cheerful either, I know, and is even disagreeable. Because with this letter I would like to make you part of my deep pain, even if it troubles your bliss. Ah well. You will note that my letter is written with my blood, because for some time now blood has replaced ink over there, on the other side of your world. By which I mean over here, in my world. You well know that many of my people have already died for you, so today you can amuse yourself by playing with our heads. You have become like that lantern burning in a dense darkness with a wick that is overly soaked with oil (which comes from my world). You are the lantern that gives off a blinding light, the only light in the night attracting all sorts of bugs to feed and die, dazzled with illusions.

 

So many continue to die and to drown out of hope for you. I don‘t know, maybe you have noticed their burned bodies, or the bodies buried in communal graves under the x right in front of you. No! Yes! Doesn‘t this bother you? You know, for us, to burn a body is to die twice, it‘s death after death. But why not bury them, then? It‘s just as easy, don‘t you think? Oh, I see, even dead people take up space in your cemeteries. You must turn them back for good, even the dead. Don‘t you know at least who they were? Of course not! They were just the bodies of immigrants, similar to those birds that suddenly find their usual watering place dried up. Poor creatures. They die of thirst and fatigue because the subsidized farmers decided to plant transgenic corn for producing gasoline, just over their only watering hole.

 

If I knock on your door so often, it‘s also to tell you that I am not content in my own home. It‘s because certain men there, crazy with God, reproach me for not loving their God enough. I don‘t understand, because God and I are good friends. I insult him, he takes it; I implore him, he listens; I mope, he sulks; I judge him, he lends an ear. He and I never have problems, we complement each other. It‘s not God I have problems with, but with men. I am a peaceful man, I just want to flee the violence and live.

 

I have always believed that the land belongs to men, animals and even the insects. I think I was mistaken. How naive I am! Horizons are always blocked, and so are spirits. One man opens a horizon, another closes it behind him. So, he continues to open other horizons, building his world at the same time as he builds a wall.

 

Oh, you will say, you‘re just being dramatic! I admit it. It‘s true that our situation is more dramatized than taken seriously. All of our situations are dramatized to the point of confusion. The barrier that separates the theater from reality has simply vanished. You‘ll remember the anecdote that I often told, the one about two men who drop dead in the same moment and the same place: one died from starvation and the other died of gluttony. The third, who arrives and looks at the upsetting spectacle, tells them: glutton, if you had shared, you would both be alive and well right now.

Shahrazad asked a group of European and non-European writers to compose open letters addressed to ’their Europe’. The results were published in Letters to Europe, a book highlighting how this continent means different things to different people.

 

Pegah Ahmadi (1974) is an Iranian poet, literary critic and translator of poetry.

 

Salam Europe!

By Pegah Ahmadi

 

Salam Europe!

 

The streets were bleeding when I came to you.

Rogues were dangling behind window panes.

The women of my country were crying when I came to you.

And a stone blocked each one’s respiratory tracts.

 

Europe!

 

You were our hope, when we fled the map, when we fled plans, with our news

To find refuge at your quiet shores.

I came to you in tears, to push my hands of time ahead, a little bit.

 

Hello, Europe!

 

I brought my deserts along, stoning and corpses and the death penalty.

Prisons and quarantine, to write, fearless, in you.

 

Fear I hated.

Hated the barred sky behind accused newspapers.

And given the constant choking fits on Teargas Square

My poems also gasped for air and a star burnt in my chest.

 

Salam Europe!

 

In your tall churches I lit many candles for the freedom and liberty of loved ones.

 

Salam Europe!

 

With you I am calm.

As you brought me to your people’s soothing smile.

As you brought me towards possibility.

You loved me – as I loved you.

 

Salam Europe!

 

I cried when first snow fell and at the second snow I laughed out loud.

At night, when streetlights shone on cobblestones, facing brightly lit, friendly cafés, I wrote

long poems.

When I turned the pages of my brand-new book, snow fell on my hands.

 

Salam Europe!

 

Day after day I look at the world from my window.

My window is my mouth.

And behind the tribune my choked voice echoes, always.

Shahrazad asked a group of European and non-European writers to compose open letters addressed to ’their Europe’. The results were published in Letters to Europe, a book highlighting how this continent means different things to different people.

 

Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Bogotá, 1973) is a novelist and essayist. He is the author of Los Informantes (The Informers) and Historia Secreta de Costaguana (The Secret History of Costaguana), as well as the story collection Los amantes de Todos los Santos (All the Saints’ Lovers). His books have been translated into some fifteen languages.

 

MY BELOVED E.

Written by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

 

You see, my beloved E., the problem is very simple: it‘s been some time, a long time, since you‘ve looked in the mirror. Forgive me if the metaphor seems inopportune, but I‘m not to blame for inventing it. "The Europe we live in no longer looks for its identity in the mirrors of its philosophy and its arts," Milan Kundera once wrote, and then he wondered: "But where then is the mirror? Where shall we go to find our face?" And this, my dear E., is what we are all wondering: where? Europe, instructions for use: that‘s the manual that we would all like to read. But this manual already exists, my dear E., and Kundera‘s lament means it has been forgotten, with subtlety and persistence, or with the open hostility you have borne against it. This manual, my dear E., is in the novel, la novela, der roman, il romanzo, le roman, a curious European invention responsible in turn, paradoxically, for having invented Europe. My beloved E., it seems to me that you have stopped looking at yourself in the novels—in the mirrors—that invented you: you have become deaf, yes, deaf to the claims they make on you, from the shadow of words, these histories that never happened. Yes, that‘s what it must have been, you must have become deaf to the crafted voice of consciousness that exists in great European fiction. Otherwise, how to understand the emergence of a Berlusconi in the same land that produced The Leopard? How to understand Sarkozy, not to mention Le Pen, in the land of Camus? How to understand that a Haider has existed in the land that produced (or maybe we should say caused) Broch and Musil? My beloved E.: I don‘t think it would be untruthful to say that some years ago we strayed from the path. The condition of man, my dear E., was a long time in the making. You‘ll see that I‘m speaking of the individual, that inviolable entity; the individual, who should be able to move with no more restrictions than his own will and the range of his needs, whose body should be sacrosanct and whose dignity should enjoy international protection. This freedom of movement and this desire to receive and welcome whoever comes from far away seeking a new life have disappeared in our world, or every day they endure the ceaseless pounding of our demagogues, our populists. I, my beloved E., have already been with you for fourteen years; I am a tenant, per the definition the English dictionaries give the word: an animal that lives in the nest of another species‘ animal. But besides that I am a novelist, and in this sense I belong to Europe, or at least to the Europe that, in a certain unknown moment of the sixteenth century, made possible the appearance of a new consciousness, a new way of exploring the world. Or, in other words, made possible a new world where man, it so happens, is more free than ever: this place we call the novel. We write novels, dear E., because we no longer rely on our gods, our old gods that ended up dead and scattered somewhere along the way. But we also write novels out of a suicidal confidence in this individual, in the marvelous content of his life and his stories, as the madness of Alonso Quijano, the cheek of Tristram Shandy, the dissatisfaction of Emma Bovary, the impotence of Joseph K. showed us. Beloved E., I propose that you look at yourself in this mirror again, that you seek your face there. Maybe you will recognize yourself in it, and maybe, recognizing yourself, you will feel the same nostalgia that so many of us feel: nostalgia for what you were and maybe, for the greater glory of the individual and the defense of his liberties, what you could be once again.

 

Illustration by Tom Schamp.

Shahrazad asked a group of European and non-European writers to compose open letters addressed to ’their Europe’. The results were published in Letters to Europe, a book highlighting how this continent means different things to different people.

 

Björn Larsson (1953) is a Swedish novelist, essayist and professor of French literature.

 

How Can One Be European?

Written by Björn Larsson

 

For having lived for many years in various European countries, for being able to speak four European languages, for having sailed down the whole length of Europe‘s Atlantic seaboard, for having read thousands of books and essays from every corner of Europe, for having had the good fortune to be able make many friends outside my own country which, because I‘ve travelled so widely, can no longer really be called my own: for all these reasons, it seems to me, I can legitimately lay claim to the status of citizen of Europe.

 

But I hesitate to do so. Not because I‘m against Europe; on the contrary, I am resolutely in favour of a Europe where people can move freely between countries to work, study, settle or fall in love; a space in which we can all derive benefit from the strengths of each member state in order to establish relations between men and woman from different horizons that are more peaceable, more tolerant and more humane; a Europe where national borders would be represented by nothing more tangible than dotted lines on a map; a Europe of justice for all, from which nepotism, corruption and fraud would be banished; a Europe in which tax havens would have been eliminated, in which inequalities between individuals‘ capital and income would be reduced to a decent level, in which publishing and the media would not be in the hands of a powerful few, in which politicians would no longer abuse their power, and a Europe in which those lucky enough to speak an international language - the British in particular - would out of respect for others learn, and master, at least two European languages; a Europe in which broadband connection would be free and public television and radio channels could be picked up everywhere; and – last but not least – a Europe in which the United Nations convention on human rights would serve as the morally-binding and legally-enforceable basis of a European secular constitution, with the addition of a human right that takes priority over all others but so far exists nowhere: the right of all citizens to decide when, how and for what cause they would be prepared to lay down their lives, in other words the right to refuse, without suffering any penalty, to take part in wars considered illegitimate by the individual concerned.

 

Everyone understands that such a Europe still remains largely to be built. But if I subscribe to the European project it is because I believe that with tenacity, with good will, and with an acceptance of the true value of compromise not as the abandonment of one‘s principles but as a basic principle of life in society, we can bring about a juster, more generous and more transparent Europe.

 

But even in an ideal Europe such as the one I dream of, I would still hesitate to label myself a "European". That is because one cannot know what a European is or ought to be, any more than one can say what really and truly a French person, a Swede, a Breton or a Parisian is. These labels are not only clichés, they are often invoked to exclude rather than include, to condemn rather than to absolve, to cast suspicion on people rather than to assume that they are innocent. What is more, the idea that the identity of an individual derives solely from the fact of being born in a particular country is erroneous. Let us not forget that no one is born a Muslim or a Catholic, a Swiss citizen or a French citizen, a native or a foreigner. In the same way as one is not born a woman but becomes one, an individual‘s identity does reside in the genes but is forged over a lifetime. A fisherman from Guilvinec in Brittany has more in common with a fisherman from Gilleleje in Denmark than he has with an inhabitant of Paris or Copenhagen. Moreover even typically Swedish or French people - that is to say the kind of man or woman one would not find anywhere else, if such a person still exists – represent really only a tiny minority in their own country. Speaking for myself, it would not bother me in the slightest if tomorrow I became French or Irish, Breton or Scottish. How would that change me? The only problem would be language, because one needs one or more languages in common to be able to communicate with one‘s peers and live in a civilised society. But languages can be learned.