"To'borni, to'borni, to'borni"... infinitely, this chilling word: "Bury me," so bizarre, so full of love when you think about it. The little child who sucks on his pacifier, all drowsy with sleep, passed from arm to arm as they disembark from the plane, doesn’t understand that his grandfather, at that very moment, is entrusting him with the most terrible mission there is: to lay him to rest when the time comes. The opposite is, of course, unthinkable, but the repetition of to'borni, even detached from its meaning, even repeated for that inaudible sound that breaks the word in its middle to reach, in a spasm of the trachea, a depth of the heart at the soul's threshold, speaks volumes about our family stories.
Our small territory, a chip of the world's map, never kept its own long enough to make a life. Even before its creation, it presented them only with dilemmas: war or the sea, hunger or the sea, monotony or the sea, frustration or the sea, abstinence or the sea. The irresistible call of the sea. When it seems like you are going in circles on a rock, it shows you the vastness of the world. So many left. They wanted to see America. It was there, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, that the first fires of the future were lit. The ships cast them at random, some in southern Africa, some in New Zealand, others in South America, not quite the America they hoped for: look, there’s America. Without knowing a bit of a foreign language, they carried trinkets that they sold to buy other trinkets and a miracle, from beads to brushes, some managed to make a fortune. When a woman left, it was because she was widowed or abandoned and responsible for lives. Far away, she had the freedom to practice the world's oldest profession or do sewing, another very old profession, as long as she could provide. Without her nurturing role, what kind of mother was she? Few returned. Those who stayed aged alone and sometimes died without any of their relatives by their bedside. The village took it upon itself to bury them.
A funeral, in our good land, is almost the crowning of a life. As elsewhere, it is the arms that carry the casket, the officiant who carries the soul, the friends who unravel childhood, the children who discover, through stories, new facets of a too-moody father or an overly modest mother. It's the mayor who honors with his presence a faithful voter, the grateful family that pushes a little from the neck. And then the condolences. An institutional masterpiece perched on high heels, brand-name bags, and Wimbledon head movements. To'borni is also that. It is, beyond the farewell, being part of that noise that slightly dilutes the grief, each taking their share, and consoling those who came to console you, and placing the deceased in the middle of the village, grander than themselves, more present in their absence than they ever were in life.
One must have grown up here to understand that love is sometimes expressed with words of mourning. That tenderness passes through images of earth, coffins and family vaults for which we never have the key, and that sometimes must be forced open when too much time has passed since the last burial. To'borni is the reminder of the bond that death weaves between generations and an injunction to respect the natural order of things: Make sure I leave before you. Death is so familiar under our skies. It is normal for it to have its place in the extravagance of feelings.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
