TRAVELS…

 

In the early sixties, living in Paris, just arriving from Tunis, I decided that it was time to grow and to travel all over the world… I was at the time a student in Literature at the university of Nanterre, but not obliged to follow all the courses, just to go to exams from time to time and give to the professors some research about famous authors… I was already very knowledgeable (sorry for the bragging) and had read for more than 10 years (yes since the age of 10) all the giants of literature (French, Italian, English, German, American etc.…).                                    

I must have read thousands of novels, philosophical essays, poems, plays …for example Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, Sartre, Camus, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Faulkner, Hemingway, Malaparte, Malraux, Arrabal, Chekov, Rainer Maria Rilke, Berthold Brecht, Schiller, Goethe, Dante, Moravia. 

So, I thought that it was time to close the books and to see the real world to try to understand the purpose of life, what I really wanted to be, to do, to experiment…Since I had no financial possibilities, I decided to do all my travelling hitchhiking (yes at the time it was possible, today I will not go hitchhiking to Newark from NY city) …                                                                                                                                  

 I spent years doing it for many months a year. I discover most countries of Africa, Madagascar, and the islands in the Indian ocean, most of the countries of Europe including Eastern Europe, many countries in Asia (Nepal, Afghanistan, India, Mongolia, and others…), and the middle east (Egypt, Israel, Jordan, etc.).

I kept incredible memories of these travels and many, many adventures…I will write a blog about my 2 months spent in the SHEY GOMPA monastery in Nepal…

But today I would like to relate 3 experiences, fulfilling and full of last-minute surprises…

Berlin…

 -Bernard! do you want to come to East Berlin with me?

 -Bruno! Of course, you know I love to travel, when?  

 -We could leave next Monday in the morning, take a train, and arrive in East Berlin at the end of the day, do you have a valid passport?                                           

-Yes, I do but you know that I cannot afford to pay for a train and even less for a voyage.                                                                                                                                

-Do not worry I will take care of the expenses.

We were at the university of Nanterre in 1964, and a short adventure would be welcome to forget all the difficult times of my life…

The following Monday we are in the train and the idea of being in Berlin already seems so attractive and full of possible discoveries… We arrived and the crossing from West berlin to East Berlin was easy, we are now walking in the streets when Bruno says:                                                                                                                          

-Bernard, let us stop in this bar and have a drink, ok?

 - Yes sure….

After drinking a German beer, Bruno asks me to wait for him for one hour, he wants to meet somebody not too far from where we are.                                                

 -Yes sure, I will talk to other people...                                                                                

He leaves the bar and I start to talk in French (since I do not speak German) to another man who must be now at his beer number 12…. FUN!!!!!! 

About 2 hours later, I hear screaming in the street and I believe I am hearing the voice of Bruno!!! I go out of the bar, and I see him running like a madman, screaming my name…

-Bernard!!! Bernard!!!! Run, run, follow me we must go back to West Berlin…        

 -Why? Why?

 -Just run with me!

At this moment, I see running behind him, 3 men, and suddenly they are surrounding us and have a knife in their hands…                                                         

 - Bruno, what the F…is happening! I am scared!!!!                                                       

 - Do not worry, I will take care of it…

I see him approaching one man after the other and very fast disarming them with a Karate move, I had no idea he was that type of creature….                                          

-Now Bernard, run with me...  

-I am, I am ….

We start running, but one of the men, catches my coat, holding it, and stab me on the side of my chest (I still have a scar), Bruno runs to him and with a karate move throws him on the floor…

-Bernard run, run, we are not too far from the west side of Berlin… have your passport in your hand, I will see you there.

I did run and run, hiding the blood on my shirt, arrive at the gate of West berlin with my French passport in my hand, and finally sit on a bench on the west side, waiting for him…He arrives an hour later, smiling, looking like he had accomplished something important.

- Bruno, what happened, who were these people, look I have a cut....                           

-Bernard, the cut will be a memory of how much you help the world.                           

- What do you mean...                                                                                                         

 -Ok, here it is, I have been working for the government for a few years and I was sent to East Berlin to give some papers and some instruction to a few men working for us there… I needed somebody to come with me, to look like two students wanting to visit East Berlin… And I asked you...                                                             

- Are you telling me that you are a spy?                                                                             

- A spy is a big word, but…. You have now a great story to tell…

After this adventure with Bruno, I did not hear about him for many years, and then I discovered that he had become the head of the French team working for the United Nations in NY city…I tried to reach him, without success… I went back to Berlin 35 years later for an opera and could not believe what I had lived there…

Argoun Hackman…

One time I decided to go to Turkey, after all I was told that my ancestors were Turkish Jews who went to Tunisia during the Ottoman Empire… And I saw sometimes in the news the name of Uzan In Istanbul.

So, I must go… I took my little bag and started my trip on the roads, two weeks later I took a boat in Brindisi to arrive in Igoumenitsa and then on my way to Istanbul.                                                                                                                             

  I was in Istanbul after a difficult trip (it will be another story), but I was there. Asking the French consulate for help, they were very accommodating to my needs, except for a real lodging...                                                                                               

 So, here I am in a park in Istanbul, and I decided to go have something to drink, found a place, sat, and had a tea... Next to me was a man in his forties, who immediately started to talk to me…He was speaking French and told me that he was teaching at the university in Istanbul. He invited me for lunch, and then told me that he would love to show me Istanbul and all the secret places… I was of course very cautious, but I did not have so many choices…                                      

After an afternoon of discoveries of the hidden Istanbul (another story to be told), he asked me where I was staying, I told him that I had no idea, he invited me to stay with him in his house in the suburbs, the suburb was called Florya…I accepted and here we are in his car driving to Florya…                                                                      

We arrived at his house, a beautiful house, and he showed me my room… I noticed that the walls of his house were all painted with landscapes, lakes, forests and sometimes paintings of himself, all with beautiful colors and details… I asked him who was the painter and he answered that his wife, now dead, did all this…His wife died the year before in an accident, and he was still under the shock of it… He went for hours into details about his life with his defunct wife and the children that he wanted to have but did not…

He added that now he was alone waiting for the next punishment… Late in the evening, he decided that it was time to go to sleep and shake my hands good night.    

I went to my room, and fell asleep almost immediately… I was suddenly awakened by very loud noises… I got up and went where the noises were… I had to walk through debris all over the floor, and I saw Argoun with a pickaxe destroying the walls of his house, choosing the walls with paintings of his wife...                                 

- Argoun what are you doing?                                                                                            

 - My wife betrayed me by dying, I do not want her paintings anymore, they mean death to me… I must destroy them…                                                                               

- But Argoun, you are destroying the entire house.                                                          

– I know what I am doing, leave me alone, I know I am right.

He went on and on, destroying all the walls of the house, I was even afraid that the house could crumble… He stopped after almost 2 hours and went back to his room, inviting me to smoke with him some Shisha … I declined, he looked at me with disdain and disappeared in his room.                                                                               

 It was now morning, I took my bag, and left…I never saw him again...  I stayed in Istanbul another week and learned a lot about different ways of living, but the experience with Argoun was present in my head and will be forever…

Hijo de Dios…Son of God

Spanish and English were the two languages I started to learn very early in my life, in school, university and for my pleasure… I always had an affection and still do for Spain and Spanish people…I decided to travel all over Spain and finally landed in Seville… After many hours of wandering, I stopped in front of a cabaret where they were dancing Flamenco... 

I entered and was immediately overwhelmed by the atmosphere, they were gypsies, dancing, playing guitar, and drinking Manzanilla and Cruzcampo… I sat at a table and watched the incredible dancers while a bunch of tourists was applauding every 10 seconds and clapping. A very old gypsy lady was sitting across the room and was looking at me intensely. I smiled at her, she did not react, and continued to look at me…

After a few minutes, a man brought me a glass of Manzanilla and asked me in French if I spoke Spanish, I answered yes, and he said that la Mama there wanted to talk to me… I went to her… With a gesture, she indicated that I should sit next to her…She asked for my name, my age, where I was from, and if it was my first time here… After 20 minutes of questioning, she got up and disappeared in the back of the room… 

The same guy, named Izan (I am not inventing that), told me that her son disappeared 3 weeks ago, and no news from him…He added that I looked like him so much that it was almost scary, and asked what I was doing in Seville, I answered that I was just travelling here... He said ok and went in the back of the room...

I returned to my table and watched the dancers; it was beautiful and captivating. Time went on, and most of the people were gone, I thought it was time for me to leave, when Izan came back and asked me to stay:

-Now we are going to play and dance for ourselves, not for tourists, la Mama would like you to stay.                                                                                  

 -Thank you, I will stay.

It became a whirlwind of dance and music, I felt so involved and touched …La Mama came back and asked me to sit next to her, she said:                                          

- I want to call you HIJO DE DIOS.                                                                                 

-Yes Mama, please, do as you wish.   

It was now very late in the night, Izan came back and asked me if I wanted to stay there, he said that they had places to sleep in the back, and I would be welcome.

-Hijo de Dios, stay… Added La Mama. 

-I will.

Actually, I stayed there more than a week, helping every night with the tourists, bringing drinks and food to tables, dressed as a gypsy like everybody, under the watch of La Mama, looking at me with affection…Everybody was calling me Hijo de Dios, I had found a new family…

Then one evening, everything stopped, La Mama stood up from her chair, and looked at the entrance door… There was my double, her son, looking incredibly like me or me like him, he ran to his mother and knelt in front of her, she took him in her arms and kissed him…Then she called me and told him:                                          

-This is Hijo de Dios…Hijo de Dios, this is my son, Manuel…

The following day in the morning early, when everybody was still asleep, I left, thinking it is time, all is good now for them…