The Thing
For Jed Henchiri
By Zied Abdelkader
Translated by Ghada Emish
With thanks to Amin Chaaban
Evening of Saturday, March 30th, 2024.
al-Sa’aada building. 4th floor. Apartment 2. Sakiet Eddaïer. Sfax.
At home. Watching the funeral live.
Words well up inside me, but they don’t roll out. I stand up and leave the room, raising my fist. “I’m sick — it’s something I wouldn’t wish on an enemy.”
Words churn in my stomach like spoiled food. Nothing you could do, Zied. Each word you can’t eject on paper becomes a tumor. This is one of the rules of the game, and you signed up.
Words suffocate me as I pace. The coffin comes out, carried on shoulders, before the ambulance sets out along a route that’s lined with funeral-goers. I get a strange feeling as I watch the funeral chart its path alongside the railroad and move past our home, minutes after it started. It’s as if I’m looking at our home for the first time. Those people marching behind the coffin –– all villagers, including my father and siblings –– I get the strange feeling that I’m seeing them for the first time.
Something about the faces, the homes, about the train station, the stores whose owners died or went bankrupt; something about the gloomy sky, about the dust itself. This time, something seems starkly clear: it’s like powder sprinkled all over the village by the hand of God.
My mind is ejected into the sea of memory, taking me back to that distant evening when I saw Jed on TV. It was his first appearance, if I remember correctly. He was unusually handsome. There is an irresistible charm in his smile and his looks, which beamed with intelligence and strength. I was taken by this young man who I had last seen as a child and who had become an eloquent, brave man.
Instantly, it seemed as if I recognized in his smile, his movements, and his words that “thing” unseen to the naked eye. It was clearest around his person, so clear that it wouldn’t be hard to distinguish even if he were released among a mass of people as large as a forest.
I pace in circles in the middle of the room as I follow the course of the funeral. At the front, at the crossroads between the railroad and the station-street neighborhood, a child crosses the screen and quickly disappears. The sense of security emitted by his boyish face evokes twice the suffering. It hurts me that someone is born oblivious to that “thing” around him, making it all the easier for him to fall prey at a future moment.
A desire to howl suffocates me. That is how I’ve healed myself of the biggest of events. I feel even worse now, so I run into the wilderness and howl. Ahh-woooooooo . . . Howling until the severe pain lessens and, bit by bit, the storms of my soul start to calm.
The howling in my chest stirs, but it isn’t released. I sense it taking up space inside me like trapped steam in a boiling soup pot. Only words can pull off the lid and relieve me of all the wide world’s steam that is trapped in my chest. But this time, the damn words are out of service.
What was a source of help to me, and available, now disappears. Another medicine vanishes, letting the steam expand inside, invading what’s left of the spaces in both heart and mind. A saying occurs to me. It’s from William Styron’s captivating journal Darkness Visible: “I felt my heart pounding wildly, like that of a man facing a firing squad.” A strong desire to scream tears me apart: “Try to hold my heart for one hour, William!”
I am following the course of the funeral from a distance of more than 200 kilometers, yet I feel the effect of marching that way in my bones. Each step I take behind the coffin feels so real that my footsteps, as I pace in circles around the room, make a sound that’s like stepping on pebble-strewn ground. I recognize these pebbles. Actually, my feet know them well. I tripped over them 40 years ago while marching in my blossoming young sister’s funeral, and I have been tripping ever since.
The road slopes then ascends, revealing Wadi Gamal graveyard. Neither trees nor plants in sight. The Bou Ramli mountain chain seems, in the scorching heat, to be twinkling like a silver bracelet. I stop in the middle of the room. I stop to catch my breath, but a hand forces me to keep walking. I walk and walk, and I see myself pull my sister’s belongings to my chest with my small hands, getting shoved from all sides as I walk amid the marching crowd.
Jed Henchiri was a physician, political activist, and one of the founders of the Tunisian Foundation for Young Physicians. He advocated for public health and played a significant role in calling attention to public health issues in Tunisia. He died at 37 years old and was buried in Wadi Gamal graveyard in Oum Larais.
Zied Abdelkader is a Tunisian poet and writer with a Master’s degree in philosophy. He has published a collection of poetry entitled The Joy of Despair. He will soon publish a book, The Mill Without Corn. He has published texts in Tunisian and Arab newspapers, and his texts have been translated and published in numerous literary journals.