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The Mediterranean
is a pair of chapped lips,

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whose top lip speaks in Latin,

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and whose bottom lip speaks in Arabic.

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And when it tries to swallow,

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when it closes its lips,

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it hurts and it stings.

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It suffers because
there are all these borders,

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barbed wire, sentries and checkpoints

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around the Mediterranean,

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which prevent it from speaking.

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

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and it felt like there were
free individuals there

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who were speaking out again,

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

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

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

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was to go and listen to them.

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Meaning,

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

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that do not talk to each other,

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

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

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a communal database, copyright free,

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

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in every Mediterranean language.

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In 2013, I proposed this in Marseille,

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which was then Cultural Capital.

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So, from December 2011,

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I embarked on my little speaking tour.

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I started in Barcelona,

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

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so I went to see people on benches,

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and little by little,

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

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You can collect true stories,

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

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It's possible to do this together here.

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

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We can have candlelight vigils,

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we can make discussion tables, etc.

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There are so many ways to collect them.

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

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All of the arts obviously
can retell these stories.

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So I began like this in Spain.

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Next I was in Morocco in January of 2012.

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Then in Algeria,
and there, the project took off

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

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

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and then I met tons of people.

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

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Then I was in Tunisia,

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and there as well,
there were really amazing meetings.

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

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and so I went to Egypt.

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I arrived in Lebanon
and continued to collect stories.

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I was in Beirut a lot.

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At one point, I was invited to Hammana,

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

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

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I arrived there
and the people were waiting for me.

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Everyone was in the library,

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

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And there, we all took turns speaking.

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I told a story,

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and the people, the eldest, the youngest,

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

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

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

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"What would be the story
that you want to share

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with the rest of the world?

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

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

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And with that, I had tons of stories,

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and then we met for drinks at the end.

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

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

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It takes place in 1976.

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It was the first year
of the Lebanese civil war,

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

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Especially in Hammana,
they set up channels

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to bombard Beirut,
and waited for the counterattack.

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When Samira and her husband saw this,

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they decided to get the children to safety

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in the Beqaa Valley, next to Zahlé,

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while they stayed in Hammana

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

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So there were three homes,

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and they stayed,

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they had a grandmother
in one of the other houses,

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and the other was 
requisitioned by Syrian officers,

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so they lived in one of their houses.

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They were neighbors,

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

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And they always argue over the same thing:

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the poplars.

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They have four poplars
that are next to the garden,

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

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but the poplars make
little cotton balls, buds,

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and those balls get all over the gardens,

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and every Spring, it's the same thing,

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

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

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I'm going to chop down the poplars."

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

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

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

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

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


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She is so upset after her husband,

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

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She looks at the officer like this

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

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

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The Syrian officer there and hears this,

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

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

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and there he says,

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

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

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Mariage is sacred!

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

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You are a very good wife, etc."

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

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

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

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Listen, it's your personal history.

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

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

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You see these poplars,
Mister Syrian Officer,

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you see these four poplars,

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well they make those little cotton balls.

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They fall and get all over his garden.

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He was to cut down the poplars,

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

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

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

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That's your problem?"

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So he goes back and calls his soldiers.

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He calls them like animals,

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

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Gather around Mrs.Fakhouri's garden."

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All the soldiers gather.

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

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

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"Well soldiers,

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

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And then Samira says to me,

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

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

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and delicately pick
the buds from these poplars,

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then climb down and put them in bags.

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

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He was scared for my marriage."

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

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And then I continue my trek.

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

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In Greece, in Athens.

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In Sicily, I only did Sicily in Italy.

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I finished with Israel,

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

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in Haifa, in Nazareth.

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And then in Palestine,

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

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then Ramallah,
then Nablus, then Bethlehem.

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And then I spent some time writing

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from all these stories
that had been collected,

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in two different forms:

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

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In book form, "The Moon in the Well"

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which is the collection of true stories,

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where I give the example,

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

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each time we tell each other
a true story,

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I don't know if you've done it

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

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

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on our own true stories.

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

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I am also telling my own true stories,

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from birth up until now.

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I did it,

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I made sound creations for ARTE Radio,

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and then a few months ago,

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with a group of people
who all have different competences,

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

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and I initiated that,

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so far, there are 1,500 true stories

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that are in this library,
in this database,

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

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

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researchers to the four
corners of the Mediterranean,

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

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to listen to people,

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because this is what is really
necessary today.

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It starts from the individual.

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I think the Mediterranean
is a good scale,

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from the moment we don't consider it

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on the Nation-State level,

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or consider it apart from,
or beyond its borders.

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And it's on the individual level

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where it seems like
we can rebuild something,

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

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

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

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and then perhaps, the Mediterranean
can finally be made.

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(Applause)