In the meantime,

In the meantime,

Her name is Nour, which means « light ». She was fleeing the war to try and find a better life. When the people smugglers left with the motor, the ship capsized in deep sea. It was dark, confusion and terror prevailed, another refugee and her child grabbed onto her frail shoulders. Nour couldn’t swim up to breathe. In the morning her body, adrift, will wash up on a beach near Tripoli. Europe is just opposite, twelve pale stars withering in the dawn. 

In the meantime,

His name is Edmund. His back and pelvis are but a gaping wound, his bedsore getting even worse with the urine. He fouled himself early in the night, right after the nursing auxiliary's visit. He is waiting for dawn, which he can see through the bars of the bed. His last attack left him paralyzed, and this is the only trip he’s been able to take since: turn his head from the window to the door, through which only the nursing auxiliary gets in, from the door to the window of his retirement home’s bedroom and back again, from indignity to the destitution of an ending life.

In the meantime,

Her name is Marie-Jo and she has just finished her night shift. The night shift is hell, but during the day she can take better care of her son; she is a single mother. Her co-worker and herself had to use a torch to look after the sixty-six residents. Marie-Jo is exhausted, her legs feel heavy and her breath is short; while diving into the underground she thinks that she should have paid a last visit to the paralyzed man who can only move his head.  Early in the morning she will pick her son up in her suburban flat and take him to school, she will stifle her revolt against her working conditions; her empathy is at its lowest.

In the meantime,

His name is Halim, he works in a business bank in the City ; stuck with an important file he doesn’t go out of the office until late at night, and feels happy to break the Ramadan fast on this lovely spring evening. He goes for a coke in a bar at Borough Market, on the south bank of the Thames. But the djihadists do not care about spring; they stab him savagely, leaving his tears and his blood to soak the London asphalt.

In the meantime,

Her name is Katia, she has cried all night clutching her teddy bear. She refuses to go back to her primary school: the other children make fun of her  breasts, already as big as clementines. She knows that mom and dad are worried, they talk of early puberty, of environmental factors, of endocrine disruptors. Katia thought that the poison was only sprinkled on witches’ apples, that the kiss of a prince could save you from those spells. Katia’s parents have made an appointment with an endocrinologist, they know that the poison is everywhere and is insidiously and recklessly spread.

In the meantime,

His name is Donald. He is playing with our planet from the last floor of an ivory tower. Like a spoilt little brat he is sadistically busting that big toy that isn’t even his, and scolding the corrupt experts who advise him. Right now he has summoned the head of maintenance of the tower and the National Security Councillor. The air-conditioning of his suite isn’t working properly, it’s unbearable. The National Security Councillor has to exfiltrate a Ukrainian expert in air-conditioning. Right now the president cannot sleep, he is waiting for dawn, he is restless and suffocating, he is tweeting.

In the meantime,

Her name is Sue. She is watching the manatees at the Orlando Seaworld. The girls in her group at the Miami Dade College often compare her to that marine animal, that sea cow which symbolizes Florida. Sue is convinced that there are similarities between them, especially their weight and their nonchalance.  A Conservation Association is collecting funds because the species is threatened, maimed by speed  boards’ propellers, poisoned by the phosphate used in intensive agriculture. Sue takes out a five dollars note. When she hears that this animal can eat up to fifty kilos of vegetables a day she turns on her heels, squeezed into her tee-shirt, and goes to get a box of pop corn and a hot-dog.

In the meantime,

His name is Florent. This is the second time he’s woken up with a start that night. He absolutely has to sleep if he wants to be able to work tomorrow. He has the same recurring nightmare: he is drowning in a pool of blood. He gets up, his body aches with stiffness; he has a sleeping pill in a glass of water. Tomorrow morning he’ll be back at the slaughter house. Florent works at the beginning of the chain: he puts a finishing touch to the cutting of the bovines’ heads. One minute and fifteen seconds each. The post of second « knocker », who checked if the beasts were dead after their throats were cut, was removed. Florent sometimes sees live bovines arriving on the chain of cutting. But he knows that he mustn’t say anything if he wants to keep his job at the slaughter house and all the inherent advantages. So he tries to build an armor of insensitiveness and indifference, to forget the acrid and sticky odour of blood, and the deafening noise of the machines.

In the meantime,

His name is Ahmad, he is seven and he lives in a tent on the road going to the closed border of Hungary. Ahmad was at home in Idilb, Syria, when a bomb blasted his house at night. He survived, but his younger brothers were not as lucky. Ahmad’s parents had to leave with their only surviving child. They have been fleeing for sixteen days. Since then Ahmad has had trouble going to sleep, and he has a lot of nightmares. His mother has to build some kind of shelter with a blanket and pillows to make him feel safe. Still, Ahmad has lost the power to dream.

In the meantime,

His name is Bastien. He has spent the whole night watching the news. Shattered by the media leitmotiv: Brigitte’s (Macron) skirt, Manu’s (Macron) manly handshake and the much awaited drop in unemployment, he watches the arrival of dawn through the window.

There’s no more work in the valley, he has tried everything. His wife Leïla has left to work for a season on the Côte d’Azur. He hasn’t heard from her in three weeks. The winter truce is over, he’s going to be expelled. The social worker has told him that their children would be placed in foster care. He will not take them to school today: they are no longer accepted in the canteen because he could not pay. In front of his TV set that is still pouring the same crap Bastien is not even angry any longer,  he is out, his dignity is crushed. 

In the meantime,

Humanity lobotomized, humanity dehumanized

In the meantime,

Tears on my keyboard.

Written by Sophie Boussemart

Translated by Rebecca Schurtz