Ghosts by Daylight

Author:Janine di Giovanni
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-06-06T21:00:00+00:00

Then, and later, I felt nothing. I never talked about what happened in those places, but I wrote about them. I disagreed that reporters suffered from trauma; after all, I argued, we were the ones who got out. It was the people we left behind that suffered, that died. I did not suffer the syndromes, I did not have the shakes. I did not have psychotic tendencies. I was not an alcoholic or drug addict who needed to blot out memories. I was, I thought, perfectly fine and functioning.

Much later I met another trauma specialist in a café in London, who told me that PTSD can also appear later, long after the events. He asked me to describe all I had seen, in detail, but nothing was as painful as Luca’s birth: the helplessness, my inability to protect him, and the sense that anything could and would happen. He listened carefully, wrote everything in a notebook, and recorded my words, which he later sent to me in transcript form. ‘There are people who live in extremes,’ he said, ‘and you are one of them. You cannot think that will not affect you in some way. It has. It always will.’

The birth awakened fears that had been buried. It started when I hoarded water in our kitchen: plastic packs of more than fifty bottles, which I calculated would last us twenty days. Every time I went to Monoprix to buy food, I bought more and had them delivered. I hoarded tinned food, rice, pasta – food that I remembered stored well in Sarajevo during the siege – and things that might be hard to get – medicine, vast supplies of Ciprofloxacin and codeine – which I got my confused doctor to give me prescriptions for. I hoarded bandages, gauzes, even the brown-packeted field dressings that I had saved from Chechnya which were meant to be pressed against bullet holes to staunch the blood, and I read first aid guides of how to remove bullets and shrapnel, set broken bones and survive chemical attacks. Bruno would watch, concerned but non-judgemental.

‘We’re in Paris,’ he would say, ‘not Grozny. Not Abidjan. We’re safe.’

‘But how do you know? That’s what people said about Yugoslavia. One day they went to the cash machines and there was no money.’

I began to hide cash around the house and took copies of our passports. I made lists of what I would grab if we had to flee, and I made Bruno make an exit plan if we had to leave Paris in an instant. Where would we meet? How would we get out? I read books about people escaping from Paris after the Germans arrived, and discovered the route was through Porte d’Orleans.

Bruno finally said, ‘Maybe you should talk to someone about this?’

But it was all about the baby. If I was alone and caught in a terrorist attack, or a flood, or a disaster, I could manage. But I was terrified of being alone with my son if something major hit and I had to protect him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.