8 - 14 February 2001
Issue No.520
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 8 - 14 February 2001 Issue No.520 |
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Plain Talk
There is nothing more painful than reading what parents write about a son or daughter who has departed. It is heartbreaking and, however much they may try to cloak their writing with an affected humour or a religious acceptance, one can always detect an underlying note of grief, a grief that is there to stay. It is something which to me can never heal.
I was deeply moved by an article by Frederic Raphael in The Sunday Times News Review of 21 January with the title "A fragile beauty". In the article he mourns his daughter Sarah, a talented artist who, according to the paper "died tragically young last week".
Though I know very little of Frederic Raphael, and have not read any of his "many novels, short stories and screen plays", I felt at once with him.
Sarah, the writer's daughter, was a painter, whose talent grew and who "was to wear herself out painting and repainting all night, often in agony from the migraines which increasingly and more intensely beat upon her." The father goes on, reminiscing about Los, a depopulated Greek island where they lived in a peasant's two bedroom cottage and slept on straw mattresses. In 1962 they spent six or seven weeks on Los, living in a hut near the beach which had "11 olive and two fig trees and many cacti and three terraces of ground overlooking the Aegean." His daughter used to call it "that place."
"We are going to take her ashes to that place and scatter them among the cacti below the terrace where she loved to paint and sun herself." writes Raphael.
The father goes on to remember how they bought a grey donkey which Sarah said "was better than a Ferrari. According to him she loved to look at people. "Love," he says "was something so pervasive, so unalloyed, in her life that she rarely cared to feel any other emotion except indignation." She hated injustice and cruelty. She winced when her father swatted flies "Don't kill it" was her regular cry.
Memories of his lost daughter, like my own memories of my son, are full of laughter. How she loved jokes. "What fun she was." I always say that when we think of the dear ones we have lost, we must think of them with a smile. Grief does not mean just frowning. Grief is the other side of remembering and remembrance does not always have to be of the tragedy of parting. It can be of the lovely times we shared, of the anecdotes and quips and escapades. We live with them all the time.
Raphael remembers his daughter at six making a clay sculpture at school. When she was nine her art master thought she had talent. He also remembers the self portrait she gave him which faces him in his work room. "It looks me straight in the eye and is inscribed 'To Fred, perhaps you'd better stick to writing after all. Love Sarah."
Memories, they elbow each other, trying to find room on the page. What can we remember, the intense sense of loss, of desolation, the loyalty and love that bound us with them. It was that loyalty that made them never forgive anyone "who spoke ill of us."
When I read such stories, I feel that it is such a waste to have these people go. One can think of the contribution to culture and life they would have made if they were alive. And what makes such a loss more keenly felt is that there are few, if any, who can replace them.
I know it is uncommon to enjoy reading what sounds like an obituary, but Frederic Raphael has managed to draw tears from my eyes.
His last paragraph is worth quoting: "There were at least 200 people, united in shock and love for our daughter: All of those present seemed transformed and united in her light. Suspicion, envy, malice, all the shall be consolations of society in love with vanity, were burned away. Thanks to Sarah."
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