True stories from the Mediterranean | Francois Beaune | TEDxLyon

This presentation was done during a TEDx local event, produced independently from TED conferences.

In this talk, François reminds us of the importance of collecting stories the way people have lived them in order to construct and enrich our collective memoire. These stories must then be circulated, which is made possible thanks to digital technology.

The Mediterranean
is a pair of chapped lips,

whose top lip speaks in Latin,

and whose bottom lip speaks in Arabic.

And when it tries to swallow,

when it closes its lips,

it hurts and it stings.

It suffers because
there are all these borders,

barbed wire, sentries and checkpoints

around the Mediterranean,

which prevent it from speaking.

In 2011, I was in Marseille
at the time of the Arab Springs,

and it felt like there were
free individuals there

who were speaking out again,

who were refusing to be taken away
in these barbed wire sacks,

and were taking back their right to exist
and to say what they wanted to say.

In that moment, I thought
that the right thing to do

was to go and listen to them.

Meaning,

to no longer view the Mediterranean
as a group of Nation States

that do not talk to each other,

but as a community of inhabitants
that don't know each other very well,

and to go listen to them
and create a giant library,

a communal database, copyright free,

a library of true stories
from the inhabitants of the Mediterranean,

in every Mediterranean language.

In 2013, I proposed this in Marseille,

which was then Cultural Capital.

So, from December 2011,

I embarked on my little speaking tour.

I started in Barcelona,

I wasn't too sure how to do it at first,

so I went to see people on benches,

and little by little,

we came up with a number
of options to collect these stories.

You can collect true stories,

just by being face-to-face
with someone you've met.

It's possible to do this together here.

You'll all come up and tell a true story.

We can have candlelight vigils,

we can make discussion tables, etc.

There are so many ways to collect them.

There are so many ways
to reproduce these stories, too.

All of the arts obviously
can retell these stories.

So I began like this in Spain.

Next I was in Morocco in January of 2012.

Then in Algeria,
and there, the project took off

because there was a huge amount
of Algerian stories that came in

both in text-form on the website,
which gathered them,

and then I met tons of people.

So there, the collection really got going
in February 2012.

Then I was in Tunisia,

and there as well,
there were really amazing meetings.

Following that, I wasn't able to go
to Libya with what was going on,

and so I went to Egypt.

I arrived in Lebanon
and continued to collect stories.

I was in Beirut a lot.

At one point, I was invited to Hammana,

which is a little town
on the uplands of Mount Lebanon,

a little town with a Christian majority,
about 45 minutes from Beirut.

I arrived there
and the people were waiting for me.

Everyone was in the library,

it was like a candlelight vigil,
but in the middle of all these books.

And there, we all took turns speaking.

I told a story,

and the people, the eldest, the youngest,

in French, in Arabic,
told their stories to each other.

They chose - and this is what
I asked the people each time -

from the story of their lives,
from birth up until now,

"What would be the story
that you want to share

with the rest of the world?

What would be the incredible anecdote
you have in your heart, that's dear to you

and that you want to pool
in a large library?"

And with that, I had tons of stories,

and then we met for drinks at the end.

There was a woman named
Samira Fakhoury who was the library head,

who said to me, "There is one story
that I haven't told."

It takes place in 1976.

It was the first year
of the Lebanese civil war,

it was also the year when the Syrian army
came to occupy Lebanon.

Especially in Hammana,
they set up channels

to bombard Beirut,
and waited for the counterattack.

When Samira and her husband saw this,

they decided to get the children to safety

in the Beqaa Valley, next to Zahlé,

while they stayed in Hammana

to take care of the family houses
so that they wouldn't be pillaged.

So there were three homes,

and they stayed,

they had a grandmother
in one of the other houses,

and the other was
requisitioned by Syrian officers,

so they lived in one of their houses.

They were neighbors,

and in the Spring, like every year,
Samira and her husband argue.

And they always argue over the same thing:

the poplars.

They have four poplars
that are next to the garden,

and I don't know if you've seen,

but the poplars make
little cotton balls, buds,

and those balls get all over the gardens,

and every Spring, it's the same thing,

Samira's husband tells her,
"This is the last year,

'khalass', those poplars,
I'm going to get rid of them,

I'm going to chop down the poplars."

And Samira tells him,
"But you don't want to do that!

We've got to live with the trees,
they give us shade in the summer."

And at that moment, there's
a Syrian officer who's passing by

and hears this and it's the first time
he's heard them argue.

He says,
"Is there a problem, Mrs.Fakhouri?"

She is so upset after her husband,

and maybe it's the tension linked
to the occupation and the war as well.

She looks at the officer like this

and says, "It's my husband,
he's going to divorce me.

that's it. He wants to divorce me."

The Syrian officer there and hears this,

and we don't know what he has,
but it just so happens that he's moved,

maybe it's been months
since he's seen his wife too,

and there he says,

"But why? He can't do that...

He can't make this decision.
He has to reflect on it longer!

Mariage is sacred!

He can't divorce you like that,
Mrs.Fakhouri.

You are a very good wife, etc."

Samira says to him,
"He wants to divorce me,

and Mister Syrian Officer,
I'll tell you why."

The Syrian officer says, "No,
I don't want to know anything.

Listen, it's your personal history.

It's your private life,
I don't want to know anything."

She says to him, "Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I want to tell you why.

You see these poplars,
Mister Syrian Officer,

you see these four poplars,

well they make those little cotton balls.

They fall and get all over his garden.

He was to cut down the poplars,

and I don't want him to,
so he's going to divorce me."

The Syrian officer looks at her
like this, and says,

"That's your problem, Mrs.Fakhouri?"

That's your problem?"

So he goes back and calls his soldiers.

He calls them like animals,

he says, " 'Hayawan'! Come my soldiers.

Gather around Mrs.Fakhouri's garden."

All the soldiers gather.

The officer says, "You see these
four poplars?"

The soldiers, "Yes,
we see the four poplars."

"Well soldiers,

you're going to pick
all the buds from the poplars."

And then Samira says to me,

"I saw the Syrian army, climbing
three-by-three up into my poplars -

I wanted to take a photo,
but I didn't dare -

and delicately pick
the buds from these poplars,

then climb down and put them in bags.

And I thought, "Now,
this Syrian officer has a heart!

He was scared for my marriage."

She tells me this, and with that,
the evening was over.

And then I continue my trek.

I went to Turkey next,
a lot of time in Izmir.

In Greece, in Athens.

In Sicily, I only did Sicily in Italy.

I finished with Israel,

where I spent bit of time
in Tel-Aviv, in the Kibbutz,

in Haifa, in Nazareth.

And then in Palestine,

where I started in Hebron,
which was a real shock,

then Ramallah,
then Nablus, then Bethlehem.

And then I spent some time writing

from all these stories
that had been collected,

in two different forms:

the stories, to redistribute them,
to retell them to the people.

In book form, "The Moon in the Well"

which is the collection of true stories,

where I give the example,

and that's what I would like
us all to try together,

each time we tell each other
a true story,

I don't know if you've done it

when I told you this story
about the poplars in bloom,

but we'll end by reflecting
on ourselves in the mirror,

on our own true stories.

And so in this book,
"The Moon in the Well",

I am also telling my own true stories,

from birth up until now.

I did it,

I made sound creations for ARTE Radio,

and then a few months ago,

with a group of people
who all have different competences,

we created an association that is called
The Mediterranean's True Story,

and I initiated that,

so far, there are 1,500 true stories

that are in this library,
in this database,

and the idea is to have thousands and
thousands of them, and to move forward,

and so we will send
authors, artists of all kinds,

researchers to the four
corners of the Mediterranean,

so that they can get closer
to the inhabitants in their homes,

to listen to people,

because this is what is really
necessary today.

It starts from the individual.

I think the Mediterranean
is a good scale,

from the moment we don't consider it

on the Nation-State level,

or consider it apart from,
or beyond its borders.

And it's on the individual level

where it seems like
we can rebuild something,

that's why it's very important to me
to make this gesture,

to go and listen to people,
whoever they may be,

to initiate this conversation, these
narratives, these true stories together,

and then perhaps, the Mediterranean
can finally be made.

(Applause)