A Short Story About One Thing

A blog?!! What a great concept! Might be the best invention since writing...

And what a great opportunity to sit and look back! But not only that. It is also a chance to practice what I've been taught in class: productivity, rationalization, optimization... Indeed, a written piece gets written ONCE, and saves time as it can later be read over and over by different people, unlike a speech, that gets lost in the moment and needs be refined and rehearsed. Thus when it comes to origins, I guess I'm better off writing.

So to the everlasting "Where' you from?" question that I've been asked countless times since fall 2004, when I first got here in the U.S., in North Carolina to be precise, I usually reply that I'm an exchange student from France... But, as much as this might be true on paper (that I come from France) -Paris' paved streets being the last ones I walked before landing here, and the first I'll walk down when I leave this country; my actual background goes slightly further south...

Way south in fact...

I was born in Dakar, Senegal during a warm dark night of July 1983; and I guess I immediately adored Africa and what it contained of discoveries and travels because seven months later, I found myself in Morocco, with my mom and dad… And a bookshop!

After having actually prospected for diamonds in Sierra Leone and sold fabrics in Senegal, my dad decided it was time to sell books... Hey, why not?! I am myself only 21 and have already been in the laundry detergent business, the mobile phone business, the TV business (yes, yes), the chewing gum business, the automotive industry and a few other things that are not worth mentioning... Ah, and I also ironed and taught languages to get housing. So yes, my father moved on from the fabrics to the bookselling business.

As for my mother, she didn't really need to be more than she already was, i.e. the daughter of Mustapha Ezzedine. This by itself was already a big deal: her youth, her two brothers, her two sisters and her numerous stories were all fascinating; and this, thanks to one man: once again, Mustapha Ezzedine, my maternal grandfather. He had been part of the second wave of Lebanese immigrants to Senegal and is literally a legend there… He is 103 years old now...

Every time I go back to Dakar and people talk about him, I am blown off in whirls of big American cars, trips to salvage lands, stays at the edge of Pink Lakes ;-) , crossings towards mysterious islands, two-meter long barracudas, crates of fruits in profusion, talking parrots, colourful boubous, tasty spices,... And bed bases!!!

When put in the proper context, bed bases can be just as exotic as Pink Lakes... Indeed when my grandfather arrived in Senegal at the age of fourteen, he had only his shoulders and his will; neither parents (he was orphan), nor diploma, nor money… He started from nothing, nothing, and nothing… Only wind. And building it from scratch, he created one of the greatest metal bed factories of Senegal at that time…

He fulfilled all his wills, got six children, one of which (the half-sister of my mother) he got with a pretty (yes yes, I saw the pics) Portuguese from the Cape Verde. He strived to help as many people as he could and, more than seventy years after he emigrated, went back to Lebanon to end his days there. By the way, I only know my aunt since I went to live in Marseille – where she lives too– to study international business. And now I am here, in Wilmington, NC. Richer than ever, although further than I could have imagined... From home, I mean... A home I more and more often catch myself thinking about without really being sure anymore where exactly it happens to be now.

In fact, I always wonder about how one thing leads to the other and brings together people, big ideas and great projects... I will probably never find an honest answer as to what brought me here and not elsewhere, but there is one thing I seem to know for sure: if I am where I happen to be, it is my duty to share my piece of experience with those I am privileged to meet and work with them to make the world a better place...

This doesn't keep me though from sometimes getting this feeling that "making the world a better place" is such a silly Ms World-like aim and that I'd rather keep a low profile and mind my own little insignificant business. And then, more often than never, I am reminded by Mother Nature, when she makes sure we're all just identical in front of adversity, that we'll all end up under the same mortal blue sky; and so we need to seize the moment, every moment, so as to get closer to this fleeting state of love and trust that I so value.

Human beings looking for their little share of Life on Earth...

I thus thank God for the chances I'm granted to use a brief burst of wisdom and share a piece of humanity. Whatever the age though, it remains scary but it seems that the world will remain too complex to understand, the heart too weak to love all and the mind too narrow to fully open. 1, 11, 21 or 61 years are not and will most likely not be enough to find truth and integrity.

Yet, I like to think of our future as belonging to us and nobody else. Me, You, Him, Her... All united for a better tomorrow, fuller of empathy and emptier of antipathy. So when I notice the high misunderstanding currently raging in the free world, I see it all the more crucial for our common future that difference be understood and accepted.

If it's true that, as the song says, all we need is love and if it's also true that love is at the corner of knowledge, then I have to value it over everything else, I have to search for it, share it, spill it all over and start all over again.

Finally, to come back to my grandfather... He's an exemplary man, he has been all his life long. Getting to know people beyond their social or cultural origin, helping whoever he knew, sharing whatever he could... He's my hero, a true hero... My example, my dream.

So I often think that if I struggle enough to accomplish just a tenth of all he is and my relatives find a piece -no matter how small- of him in me, I really could find some meaning in all this and be at last worthy of such a beautiful gift he gave us:

- diversity -

H.H.H.H.H