About me
At a very young age, I decided that I wanted to describe events that affect people. The people we don’t hear enough from during an armed attack, a coup, a catastrophe. To become an intermediary, a storyteller.
I wanted to see, listen, hear, verify, report, investigate, seek out scientific sources, work on knowledge, pass on details, show with words. Choose the human approach, let the victims speak, interview the experts. Giving a voice to those who are taking action by re-inventing the world.
I studied economics, political science and international relations and went to Afghanistan being a student to report during the conflict in 1986, combining theory and fieldwork. I sold my articles upon my return to France.
My articles and my photographs were published in French and Spanish newspapers (Médiapart, Géo, ça m’intéresse, Libération, Nouvel Economiste, Rue89-NouvelObs, L’Autre Journal, Tribune de Genève, VSD, Télérama, Análisis, El Mundo, Revista del Domingo, Proceso, RFI, France Culture, Thalassa, Vu du ciel…).
Freelance journalists know that freedom comes at a high price. The job doesn’t always pay, and you have to take on other jobs to survive.
I’ve worked for many newspapers, radio stations and TV channels. I’ve also done translations, joined Unesco publications and Reporters Without Borders, where I was in charge of reporting on Latin American over a year.
Above all, I’ve been writing and co-authoring books for several years now.
However diverse the subjects I have investigated and written about, they all speak of human contradictions, choices, nature, transmission and forgetting, revolts and injustices, passions and hatreds, violence, suffering and resilience.
The streets empty. Little grey men, wearing guns and helmets, take over the space. On television, a man hides under a bench to film. He is killed and his camera still works. You see his fall. You don’t understand why. Helicopters fly over your town, men in strange clothes own the public space, you can’t play in the street or see your friends. It’s the Pinochet putsch. Most of your friends and neighbors are terrified. Most try to flee to be safe.
You’re leaving. Leaving is traumatic. You’re told that leaving is staying alive. But for you, leaving means leaving one existence and entering another. You don’t always know how to speak or communicate your anxiety, your loss of landmarks, of identity. One day, you’d like to be able to say it all. You think that becoming a journalist is the answer. To tell what you’ve felt others don’t know. For you, for those who follow, for all those who want to know.
We are refugees, and therefore foreigners. A foreigner is someone who is considered by others to have no history, no culture, no knowledge of even the smallest everyday things. This cliché is so ingrained in people’s minds that one day, in the market, a man points to a fish and asks my mother if she knows what it is. My mother, who handles humor with dexterity, replies:
– Yes, it’s a precious plant, we have a lot of them at home, we plant them in April and at the end of the summer.
Just before boarding the plane, the taekwondo master handed me a closed briefcase staring at me. Here, as soon as you get to France, give it to me.
The case was locked. I took it on board without asking any questions and handed it over to him on the day of my arrival. He opened it in front of me. There was nothing in it. He smiled.
Sometimes you have to know how to carry emptiness.”
I was crossing a dirt road when I saw a point of light, motionless, a few yards away. It is commonly said that fear makes your hair stand on end… well, it’s true. I ducked behind a shrub and waited, thinking it was a soldier smoking a cigarette. Eventually I realized it was a luminescent insect.
A copper bowl called tasset al-rou’beh, the bowl of fear. We often used it when someone showed signs of anxiety. In the evening, I would fill it with water, then leave it to stand all night by the window. All the liquid had to be drunk before sunrise for the fears to disappear.
I am a refugee, a man whose existence has been confiscated. An invalid man. My only consolation is to know that the disabled man has the power to meditate on the beauty of the moon.
All the inhabitants had fled to sleep in a safe place. The trick was to make it look as if the village had inhabitants ready to do anything to defend it, when in fact it was virtually empty: every morning, the men lit fires in every home, hung out the washing, laughed and talked loudly, turned on the radio, went out to graze the animals, lit candles at night… the enemy forces never thought of attacking the village.