The Great Unpacking Of Love
Part 18

Day 12

— How are you, Mrs. Ying?

— I feel slightly better, Doctor Yang. I feel like the medication is starting to work.

— Very good thing.

— Nevertheless, I realize that I love too much.

– How so ? Do you like it too much?

— I like everything so much.

– All ?

— I like cream puffs of tenderness, I like to drink from the chalice of humor, I like to do crazy things with my heart, I like the cozy silence and the beauty of nature in the autumn of my life, I like to marvel at my little butterflies which emerge from their chrysalis under the warmth of Love, I love the skin-deep sensitivity of Eric-Emmanuel, Soprano, Loïc Nottet, Slimane… I love, love, love TOO much…

— Is this a problem for you?

— Yes, it’s exhausting.

— Isn’t it rather a force, a driving force that allows you to advance in your personal journey by radiating all around you?

— Yes, you are absolutely right. However, you forget the wolves that surround us, huddled deep in their dens, ready to pounce on the worthy representatives of empathy of which they are totally devoid.

— Madame Ying, your current fragile state perhaps does not make you completely objective on the subject.

— I wonder if I should go on a diet.

– Diet ? Certainly not ! We can never have enough Love. It is the very essence of life, the spare wheel for the casualties of existence. No medicine, however powerful, can replace Love and its extraordinary powers over broken human beings.

Above all, Adèle, don’t change! Just learn to protect yourself from the envious, the grumpy, the negative, the killjoys who are driving on the wrong lane of the highway of their history.

Day 25

— Mantinko, I’m going for a walk, will you accompany me?

– Gladly. Can you just wait for me for fifteen minutes?

– For what ? Are you going to dress like a prince to go out with me?

— Sorry, not really. I have an appointment with Allah.

— If I understand correctly, your God seems more important to you than your devoted Adèle.

— God like you Adèle, are the pillars that prevent me from collapsing into the darkness of my sinister and painful existence.

— Thank you, Mantinko, you touch me deeply. Come on, I’ll wait for you.

— What do you think of my walk?

— The landscape is truly exceptional, I feel at peace in the face of the beauty of nature, this inner peace which has left me since my stay in the Libyan Fezzan. There, I lost all innocence, all lightness and all self-respect.

— Each time I got stuck in the ruts of my life, only nature managed to soothe me. The song of a bird, the rolling of a river, the orange-ochre color of the autumn leaves, the hedgehog that moves faster than its shadow, the dazzling red ladybugs… Follow me Mantinko, we are

going go and lay our wounds under this big oak. We will be able to admire Mother Nature at our ease.

— I follow you, Lady Adèle.

— Listen to the sound of the wind in the leaves like a whisper venturing into our ears. As a teenager, I loved going into nature, alone. I lay down under a very sturdy tree, I admired its tender green leaves which formed real umbrellas between them through which the sun’s rays filtered.

This peaceful spectacle had the gift of disconnecting me from the outside world. I also felt an incredible feeling of freedom. However, there is only one thing I don’t like much about Mother Nature and that is the beaten path. I rather like the side roads, the wild grass, the golf course of existence.

Mantinko, let yourself be overwhelmed by the calm, the fullness of the place and the moment.

— How nice we are, Adèle. Finally, a little calm within me after the destructive hurricane of my life. A tiny drop of happiness in my ocean of horrors.

Adèle, I have to confess to you. I haven’t told you the whole truth about my story. I did not flee my country alone.

— I suspect it a little. You should not have been the only one to flee Guinea on the path to hope, freedom and democracy.

— I’m not talking about other migrants, Adèle. I brought my fourteen-year-old little sister, Ama. I dreamed of giving him a country filled with happiness. I only succeeded in sending him to oblivion, to the bottom of the hole of human barbarity, in the bowels of the Earth.

– Why do you say that ?

— In our journey to Libya, we believed we were moving towards Mediterranean freedom. Except that we had an appointment with the most abominable barbarity of which men are capable. Torture of all kinds, extreme violence and rape were commonplace.

— Obviously, Ama was also raped…

— You understood everything. But they didn’t stop there. The soldiers felt real pleasure in seeing Ama descend into Hell, but even more in seeing me suffer from not being able to do anything to help her.

As I watched, having tied my arms behind my back, they shot him in the head.

— Your story is horrible, Mantinko. How to recover from such trauma?

— By faith, Adèle.

– The faith ?

— You understand that I am Muslim. Prayer allows me to seek comfort from God, the peace and love I feel from Allah and the serenity of believing in His existence.

— He’s like your spiritual therapist!

— We can see it like that.

— I’m having a little trouble following you, Mantinko. Your torturers also called themselves disciples of Islam. How can we understand that in the name of the same religion, some rise up, others torture?

— Adèle, true Islam is only love and sharing. These barbarians hijack the original and profound meaning of the Koran to justify their abominable acts.

— Are you a believer, Adèle?

– No.

– No ? Do you not honor any God?

– None.

— Adèle, it’s not possible not to believe in God. Aren’t you afraid of ending up in Hell after you die?

— But I’m already in Hell, Mantinko. How do you expect me to believe it if I don’t believe? It is totally impossible to have faith on command! I was raised by a Catholic mother and an atheist father. So I was able to taste the diversity.

— Why didn’t you head towards the spiritual path?

— As a child, I loved going to mass on Sunday mornings with my mother. Not out of devotion to God, but because there was a lot of singing there. I loved the soft murmur of voices in unison, so beautiful, so soothing. An extremely pious friend confided to me the other day: “In the past, there were masses and prayers to soothe human pain. Now there are the psychologists.”