¹¹A note from the the Diary of dreams. Date might be 2012 or 2013.
I was walking up the hill, slightly panting. It was winter and everything was covered in fresh snow. On the summit, a soldier was executing a group of ennemies next to an old bus. The men were falling with docility, without any resistance. I continued along the road. I was wearing an old coat that was in bad need of repair and was much too light for this time of the year. My ribs were sticking out and I was thin and sick.
After having walked a bit further, I arrived to the camp. There was barbed wire, barracks and everything else. And gutters, also, on the side of the alleys. I told myself: Venice.
At the latrines, an unknown person gave me bread. Another promised to sow my coat. A third one saluted me. They knew I had been a poet before the war.
It may sound pretentious, but I was touched by the respect that surrounded me. Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t touched by the fact that they called me a poet. It would have been a fatuous though and for nothing in the world would I have been able to write in such a place. No — it was simply that such an address established a dignity between us. Our former lives could never be taken. If I tell you that I felt the same emotion when calling my companions “Professor”, “My Doctor” or “Dear Carpenter”, I hope I will be better understood. This respect was the most immediate, the most concrete form of survival for us. To tell ourselves: we are men among men. There are no prisoners.