There was a time when the earth beneath our feet explained everything. We walked barefoot on the tany mena. We knew the way home with our eyes closed. Sitting by a river, doing nothing, was enough to feel whole. The smell of cooking rice announced the evening, radio announcements gave schoolchildren better timing than any clock. Doors stayed open in the evening. The family radio told us about the world without needing to verify anything. A shared meal was just a meal, not a negotiation of trust. We greeted strangers on the road without wondering what they wanted. Children came home at nightfall, not before, not after, and nobody worried. The evening silence didn't frighten us. We inhabited it, like an old house we knew by heart, even in the dark.
I don't know exactly when it all started to crumble. Maybe with crises, piled one on top of another, until we didn't know which one to mourn first. Maybe with my own exhaustion. Those two years when I stopped writing, because life was too heavy for words to stand upright. The country aged at the same time as me, I think. We stopped leaving doors open. We started verifying every rumor. Every unfamiliar face. Every gesture a little too different, before trusting it. We traded simplicity for caution. And caution, in the long run, tires as much as it protects. Even silences changed meaning. Before, they meant we were fine. Now, they often mean we're suspicious. Laughter remained, mind you, but we had to learn to choose who we'd laugh in front of. I no longer know which aged faster, the country or me. Maybe we aged together, each on our own, without saying so.
There must be, somewhere, a place that only we know. You and me. Or this country and me. A place where the earth still smelled good beneath our feet. Where nobody had yet learned to fear their neighbor. Where you could grow old without armor. I don't know if that place still exists. I don't know if I'd have the courage to return to it, if I found it. Or what I'd find there, except the memory of who I was before learning to be suspicious. Maybe it's better sometimes not to verify. But this morning, I just want to ask, one last time, without really expecting an answer: simple thing, where have you gone?
Text inspired by the song Somewhere Only We Know, by Keane, written by Tim Rice-Oxley, Richard Hughes and Tom Chaplin.
Mbolatiana Raveloarimisa