Under option in: Sweden
WILD
“Theres’ always the same light, when I look out of my window, way beyond the car park, way beyond the Grango family’s house, way beyond the cables from the pylons. There’s always the same light over Baïnem Forest which looks as if it’s catching fire because the sun’s going down and I wonder where it’s going to fall. I don’t know anything about how planets work and I don’t want to know because I’m also included in that whole cycle, even when I’m lying in bed, even when I’m writing in my school book. Everything gets used up, nothing lasts, since the world’s very first day. Away in the background, I can hear my mother in the kitchen, my father on the balcony, my sister in her bedroom constantly singing Sheila’s latest song, Spacer, into her Grundig microphone. Each of them is where they should be, or they think they’re where they should be, but that’s an illusion, we’re all carried along by the stars and their orbits, and when I think about it, it makes me see white stars in the air swirling like the millions of molecules that make up space, the ones we’re all part of. Everything comes undone, everything gets separated and I don’t know if we ever find the things we’ve lost.”
It’s difficult for me to know who I am but it’s easy to understand why I write. It happened in 1979. On those Algerian nights when my dreams were no longer the dreams of a child. It happened while I was waiting for a love who would never come back. It happened as I hoped I would become someone who would find their place in the world. It happened every evening, when I watched the sun drop behind the Mitidja plains. I told myself every time that it was taking a part of me with it.
Wild is an account of that year.
Nina Bouraoui
Nina Bouraoui was born in Rennes in 1967. She is the author of La Voyeuse interdite, which was awarded the 1991 Prix du Livre Inter, Le jour du séisme, Garçon manqué, La vie heureuse, Mes mauvaise pensées (Prix Renaudot, 2005), Poupée Bella, Avant les hommes, Appelez-moi par mon prénom and Nos baisers sont des adieux, all published by Stock.
« À la fin des années 1970, Sami, un jeune garçon, disparaît au centre de la campagne algéroise. Pour ne jamais l’oublier, Alya, son amie d’enfance, écrit chaque jour son histoire, leur histoire, réinventant le passé, fixant le présent, temps de l’attente et de l’imagination.
Il m’est difficile de savoir la personne que je suis mais il m’est facile de savoir pourquoi j’écris. C’est arrivé en 1979. Dans les nuits algériennes où mes rêves n’étaient plus des rêves d’enfant. C’est arrivé dans l’attente d’un amour qui ne reviendrait pas. C’est arrivé dans l’espoir de devenir une personne qui trouverait sa place dans le monde. C’est arrivé tous les soirs, quand je regardais le soleil tomber derrière les plaines de la Mitidja. Chaque fois je me disais qu’il emportait une part de moi-même. Tout tourne, tout s’efface et tout recommence et je ne sais pas si l’on retrouve un jour ce que l’on a perdu.
Sauvage est le récit de cette année-là. »
Nina Bouraoui
L'auteur
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