My far off lighthouse

by Anna Aulanier (France)

I didn't expect to find Israel

I am reopening my eyes as the strong sun is beating on my tshirt. My skin is too pale for this sensation not to be singular. As always, I turned left when I should have turn right. Fuck Google Maps. How could I have been stupid enough to forget taking sunscreen and a bottle of water? And here I am. It is Shabbat’s day and everything is closed. I would like to seat back on that lonely bench facing the translucent water of Tel-Aviv beach. But the shadow is missing and the sun is tiring me. Everything is heavy despite the transparency of the sky. Two dark-haired girls are laughing on the other side of the pavement. For a moment, I feel alone. I would like to laugh of this absurd situation with someone else. Maybe is it only a solitude of comparison. Every feeling I guess, is a simile’s feeling. If I close my eyes again, I will not be alone. The entire world is sitting next to me. I can see stonewalls far off. I am still searching for a shop, or some place where I could freshen myself up. Florence is focused on her assignment when she hears her name. Her classmate is giving her pen back to her. She blushes. « I haven’t seen it falling ». She looks down and the english questionnary is getting blurry. Terry’s beautiful purple eyes rested on her once again. Florence lives in Rochefort. For such a long time. She would like to go somewhere else. She thinks about Terry. How many francs would she need to invite him to the movie? Is this thought too modern for a spring of 1984? I arrive in an alleyway that the sun cannot reach. Blue ornaments are covering the doors and I am trying to take a picture. A man in his fifties steps in the small street and my only photograph is spoiled. He is apologizing. I recognize his french accent. He agrees to take a picture of me. I am forgetting my shadow track. He introduces himself « I have been living here for twelve years now ». I am smiling. I cannot remember what we talked about but the conversation ended by an invitation. At his place, with his sons and his wife. As we are eating, I am asking him where is he is coming from in France. He grew up in Charente-Maritime, just as my mum did. And then he realizes. He knows why he had that strange feeling of having seen me before. He was my mum’s purple eyes classmate. We’re talking about her. How clever she used to be. He laughs. « Except in math ». That teenage girl I never met. I did not expect to find parts of my own past through somebody else’s eyes. My mother has been a lighthouse during my entire life. I could always see her and I never went inside. She was a girl like I am. She was young and naive, tired and hopefull. Perhaps can we not really know our mother. Perhaps are we becoming an adult on the day we will get to meet our mother like someone we would meet on the streets. Meeting her friends as they were mine too. Maybe the travel I am looking for to live for so long is not about finding a future. But about being able to live in the present. That is how traveling is linked to writing: they are both ways to travel in the time. And perhaps the only true ways to live deeply. Right now. Without filter, sunburns or tiredness. Terry’s eight years old son says something in hebrew. Something quick I cannot understand. Not more than Florence could understand the fifth question of her last math test of the year when she was 18. She knows that after the summer holidays, Terry will go abroad. Today he is not here. She does not really notice her absence, but cannot remplace her presence. Perhaps she regrets not having said once : « come with me to the movie theather. Come. Let’s discover another world. Other than this stoical sea decorating this motionless dailylife. »