Memories of a young refugee

 

 

I am 15 years old; I am leaving Tunisia with my father on a refugee boat…

Big difference with my travels before when with the entire family we were going to Paris to spend 3- or 4-weeks’ vacation in the summer and visiting family.…

This time we are on the deck, spending the night on a folding chair, my dear papa asks me every 5 minutes if I need something… I do not need anything  I just do not understand what we are doing, and he answers:

-We are going to try to make a new life in France, we had to leave Tunisia…

-In France ? Where ? 

-You are going to Montpellier, to Lycée Joffre , it is a public boarding school, a free school, you will spend the year there, I will go to Paris and try to start a new life for all of us,

-What about my mother and my brother?

-They are staying in Tunis for the moment, they will come to us later

-So what will I do in that school?

-Study, be the best,  and think about your life, imagine what you want to be, to do, tell yourself what life will be for you.

-But papa, I do not know really, the only thing I know is that I want to be somebody else.

-Yes you do know, you are special, you had so many years to be yourself, just be you, be demanding, listen to people, learn from everyone, be special.

-But papa, what can I do in this school? I do not know anybody , I am not French, I do not know what I really am, a Tunisian Jew? Is that a possible French?

- You are not a French citizen, but you are French, you were raised as a French boy, at home we were French, we love France, we love French people.   Remember You are special, you finish the French school before anybody, you are ready for everything, you are strong, you are a great boy, you know more about everything than anybody we know.

-But papa, I do not know the French boys, how will they see me? Do you think they will accept me?

-Do not worry, just be yourself, you will win, like you always did.

-Ok Papa, I will try, and I will make you proud of me, I have always desired to make you proud…

- I am proud of you, you are an incredible learner and arrived at the last year of school before anybody, next year you already be at the university.

- Yes papa, next year is the university, I will be 16… It is time… And you papa, what will you do in Paris, alone, and nowhere to go, and no money at all….

- Do not worry about me, I am staying in a small hotel Rue Champollion, the room is paid by your uncle, and I will start a new business, I know a lot of people in Paris, and many trust me.

- Ok papa, be sure to give me news…from time to time…I be very alone there… and when will we have news from my brother and my mother?

- They will write to you, I am sure…

 

 

We arrived in Marseille after a very difficult night on the deck of the boat, and we took a train to Montpellier, the city where I will spend the year in the Public Boarding school….

Lycée Joffre was beautiful, in the center of the city… We walked for more than an hour, my valise was heavy, full of my memories as a child, soon I will have to throw all of it…                                                                     To arrive at the entrance gate we had to go through a plaza called PLACE DE L’OEUF, on one side of the plaza a little café called YA BON meaning IT IS GOOD and on the other side of the plaza another café called YA MIEUX meaning IT IS BETTER… That was a great start in my year in France, in Montpellier….

I will pass on my introduction to the gentleman in charge of meeting me, I said goodbye to my father, he left with tears all over his face and said: “ I am not worried about you, I know you will be fine.” I will always remember these words , he repeated the same words five years later when he died in a hospital in Paris, heart broken by the death of my brother in a car accident, he was 59 years old….

 

The superintendent showed me the school. The classrooms and the refectory, we were walking in the hallways and in the courts, walking in the middle of young guys running, laughing,  talking fast… They all looked ok… I asked myself: Will I make some friends? Will I be accepted, will they like me, what should I say to them.  In my class they will be older than me, I wonder if they will make fun of me!!!!!!

Then the superintendent brought me to the dormitory…. He showed me a closet and said: “ This is yours for your stuff, here is the key… Then he showed me a bunk bed …

- Your bed is in the top, you have another student on the bottom bed, always go first on the top…

- Who is in the bottom bed?

-I do not remember his name, but he is also in your class…

 

I had never slept in bunk bed, images of my bedroom from Tunis were invading me, with a balcony, a very large room , where I had all my toys, my memories and more recently all my books.. All this was gone, was taken away from me, now I had a small bed and a metal closet, and I was alone in a foreign country, yes the country of my culture, but still foreign… I started to tremble, while emptying my valise, wondering about life, wondering about my lost family, wondering about my next step of survival, I was 15 years old…. But I had survived many difficult times before, I will do it again, I will….

I survived all year in this Lycée, doing the homework of others for a few francs. Writing sometimes 6 or 7 dissertations for the students around me , even if they were not in my class… My surname was: the useful guy……

Once a Saturday afternoon, one of the students said to me:

- Bernard you never go out from the Lycée, I am going this afternoon to a surprise- party, we will dance and meet girls, do you want to come, you will have a good time.

- Really you want me to join you ?

Nobody never had asked me to join a group for a good time.

-Yes, it is time for you to be a real French boy by meeting everybody in a dancing group.

-Ok, I will go with you, do I have to wear something special.

- Just wear what you think is fancy….

 

We arrived at the place of the surprise party, many people were dancing the TWIST, laughing and screaming and being young… I looked at all this and smiled, maybe I should also dance the twist and be happy for a few minutes… A girl came to me and said: You want to dance with me? I looked at her, she was so beautiful and smiling and happy…

-I never danced before, I will not know…

-Give me your hands , I will teach you…

She took my hands and guide me in the center of the room, first time for me to dance and be with young people….

She hold my hands, a girl holding my hands, I was so happy, I was almost smiling of joy…Then she said:

-What is your name

- Bernard

- Are you in the lycée?

- Yes , I am.

- Where are you from?

- I am from Tunis in Tunisia.-

- What?

-From Tunis.

-Ah, ok, have a good time.

She left.

I was in the middle of the room, with people dancing the Twist around me, I was alone, but I decided not to stop, and I continued dancing by myself, thinking, too bad for you…..

 

A lesson that I kept all my life: IN LIFE GO ON WITH YOUR DREAMS EVEN IF PEOPLE AROUND YOU DENY YOU ALL POSSIBILITIES….. YOU WILL WIN AT THE END, JUST BECAUSE YOU WENT ON, AND LEARNED SO MUCH FROM IT….

 

 

 Bernard, do you miss it????... YES I DO…

 

Four years ago, I retired from the opera world, and I stop directing operas… I had been a theater director since 1962, and then starting in 1981 to direct Opera… I have directed more than 100 plays ( Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Moliere, Racine, Marivaux, Ionesco, Arrabal, Corneille, Shakespeare, Chekhov, etc.….) and 463 operas all over the world… Sometimes an assistant director was on location, and I was going only for a few days...                                 

So, at the age of 74 , 4 years ago, I said goodbye to the passion of my life, and I decided to concentrate to my other passions , writing and acting…  So the past 4 years I have been writing libretti and I am finishing my next novel, also I have been acting in commercials and television series ( very small roles ).                                                                                                                            The passion of writing is very satisfactory , the passion of acting has highs and lows, sometimes the role given to me was simply ridiculous and unfortunately the experience has been VERY RARELY satisfactory… I must have appeared in a dozen of roles, and not once I have met the director who always talked to me through a mike, when he was finally talking to me….                                                                                                                 The only time I really met a director was for a commercial about Dementia and Alzheimer disease, I was an old man in a wheelchair, I could not really talk, and I had trembling hands…Suddenly the director appears on the set just in front of me and screamed: “Bernard do not act, be yourself, you are perfect for the role”…

And I thought that my ways of thinking were still impressive…A lesson of life and for life…ENFIN!!!!! IT IS WHAT IT IS!!!!!

During these four years I stayed in contact with many , many of my friends of the opera world…I have to thank them to have kept me in their thoughts, in their heart, and still showing for me a lot of affection…. Yes, friendship has now a new definition for me, and it is also a source of memories of the past times. We have to continue to have affection and to show support for the ones who now are not in the circles anymore…                                                 SO THANK YOU MY FRIENDS…..

Very often friends are asking me if I miss the theater and Opera as a director… My first immediate answer is no, absolutely not…   Why should I ?  How can I miss it ? Especially these days with the new rules , the new style, the new ways, and the strange obligations of approaching actors and singers…                               I have been trained by masters like Jean Louis Barrault, Tania Balachova, and with the reading and studying of Artaud, Jouvet , Stanislavski…                                                                                Today these ways of directing from the old generation of geniuses are not accepted, and sometimes actually considered as a crime… Yes life has changed, rules have changed, styles have changed, understanding of human behavior has changed.  

But the honest reality is YES I MISS IT A LOT… Directing was for me a way of living, directing saved my existence in France in the sixties, and directing showed me the ways to discover myself and to reinvent who I was during each production for the past fifty year. Yes, directing was for me a way  to know where I really was in the world and giving me possibilities to reinvent myself to continue to be….

YES I MISS DIRECTING… All the moments of it.

I miss the period of creativity when with the designers we create a new décor… The research of the times of the piece, and what it meant for me…. Becoming again a person of the 16, or 17, or 18 centuries, make some research and have images of the surroundings of these characters, trying to understand how they lived, where and with what needs…                                                   Yes, to be interested in only their love stories and their obsession with power was not enough…  Rediscovering the life of these heroes was the result of an intense research of their times, of their customs, of their ways in a specific country at a give I learned so much about history and society and religion of so many countries just by studying the period of the opera…

I miss the hours spent with the lighting designer in an empty theater, when we were creating incredible effects to show new situations , new locations, and recently the use of projections added so much to his creativity.

I miss the work with singers and conductors… I met during these years incredible and amazing personalities, talent for singing was most of the times linked to a real knowledge of life… I learned so much just by talking to them , by being with them in a rehearsal room , by becoming sometimes a real friend…

How can I not think about some of them , they brought so much to me as an artist but also as a man… How can I not keeping in my mind the memories of these great people, I became another Bernard just by going to rehearsals every day for 9 hours and be with these artists…                                                                        And very often, after rehearsals , we spend some time together talking about family, difficulties of travelling and being alone so often, each of us opening his heart to the new friends .                  Yes, again I learned so much about human behavior and what loneliness can do for all of us…                                                           I had so much admiration for them, enjoying incredibly the trust they had in me when I was directing, when I was bringing them new dimensions of life through the character they were personifying... 

So many times, I was telling them, you see what you tell me now has some relation with the character you are performing, do not hesitate when you sing the role to use these memories for being somebody else, use your memories, your own experiences for delivering the music of your character.    Use your life every time you can and bring it on stage… By doing it,  you will deal with your buried feelings and your character will be so real .                   I am proud to say that many singers and actors went to the next step of their career after our work together, and I have many assistant directors who now are important in the business and very successful.

Sorry if I am bragging, but I miss doing it again , I miss sharing whatever I know with others thru acting and using directing for that.                                                                                                     I do not miss to be important, to hear sudden silence when I entered a rehearsal room, when everybody stopped talking and looked at me whispering : HERE HE IS…AND THEN COMING TO ME TO SALUTE ME…No , I do not miss that !!!!                                  It is not true I miss it; it made me feel existing, it made me feel useful, and it made me feel like a roman emperor when I had been for so long lost in question land… Yes, I miss it…

I miss the relation you have to have with the administration of the producing company… I learned how to be open to other suggestions , to other ways to deal with problems, to different approach of everyday dilemmas… And also, I learned how to accept other ways of doing things, which for me was the most difficult, since unfortunately I had the wrong attitude to believe that my ways were the best and I knew more than anybody else…

I miss watching performances of my productions and realize with the public reaction what was good, what was a source of painful emotion or a total abandon of restraints or….                                   Bringing emotion to people, bringing joy, bringing ways of distance with everyday life, bringing knowledge, bringing…bringing… was for me an engine for the next show…

So yes, I miss it, but I have to believe it is a normal reaction ….Doing the same thing 55 years and suddenly stop it is not something easy… I just hope that the last years of my life will be filled again with a new passion… Obviously acting is not going to give me that and writing is wonderful but a very lonesome passion … But I am confident I will find another passion , and this new passion will be the most important of my entire life… All my life, I have been reinventing myself, and I have no doubt that I will do it again , I am still strong enough to do it, I am still full of ideas, still full of thoughts…So  be ready all of you for the new Bernard….             AU REVOIR ET A BIENTOT…