Life Form by Nothomb Amélie

Author:Nothomb, Amélie [Nothomb, Amélie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9781609451073
Goodreads: 17075205
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2010-08-18T07:00:00+00:00

Baghdad, May 4, 2009

Dear Amélie Nothomb,

Thank you for your encouraging words on April 30.

Scheherazade is fine, don’t worry. If I haven’t mentioned her, that’s because nothing has changed on that end.

We’ve had news from some soldiers who went home two months ago. Alarming news. Far from diminishing, the physical and psychological ailments they were suffering from here have gotten worse. The doctors looking after them talk about their reinsertion: the same word they’d use if we were getting out of prison. And apparently ex-prisoners do a better job at reinserting themselves. A prisoner is less of a stranger than one of us.

No one is crazy enough to want to come back to Iraq, but the guys say they have no life left in the US. The sad thing is they have nowhere else to go. And anyway, the problem is not the place. They say they don’t know what to make of their lives anymore, what to live for. Six years of war have erased everything that came before. I know what they mean.

I think I told you, more than once, that I wanted to go back to the States. Now I realize I wrote that as if it went without saying, but I’d never really thought it through. What will I find at home? Nothing and nobody, other than the army. My parents are ashamed of me. I’ve lost all trace of the people who used to be my friends, even supposing that shared misery constitutes friendship worthy of the name. And let’s not forget the detail of my weight. Do you really want to see people again when you’ve put on three hundred pounds? Three hundred pounds! If I weighed three hundred pounds, already that would be obese. Well I don’t weigh three hundred pounds, I’ve filled out by three hundred pounds! It’s as if I were three people.

I’ve started a family. Scheherazade and I have a child. It would all be perfectly charming if the family didn’t consist solely of me. Hey guys, let me introduce my wife and kid, they’re in here keeping nice and warm, that’s why you can’t get a good look at them, I prefer to keep them inside, it’s more intimate, it’s easier too, to protect them and feed them, what’s so surprising about that, there are women who breast-feed their children, I’ve decided to feed my family from the inside.

In short, for the first time, I am beginning to realize that I don’t feel like going home. I hate being here, but at least there is a framework to my life and my human relations. Above all, here in Iraq, people know who I am. I don’t want to see the expression on my parents’ faces when they see me again for the first time, I don’t want to hear what they’re going to say.

Once again, what is saving me is my artistic project. I can never thank you enough for that. It’s the only dignity I have left. Do you think my father and mother will understand? Right, maybe I shouldn’t ask myself that question.

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