English translation below.
''Un bail. Un bail de vingt ans. Je venais d'avoir vingt ans. Et toute la vie devant soi disaient-ils. En ajoutant aussi que la vie était courte. Moi je trouvais ça long une vie. Tellement long. Interminable. Ca n'en finissait pas. Ca faisait vingt ans que j'en vivais une. Toujours la même. Vingt ans de vie ouvrière, vingt ans de parents et grands-parents ouvriers, travailleurs, artisans, qui travaillaient et retravaillaient jour après jour, année après année. Travailler. Ce mot que j'entendais sans cesse et qui ne laissait jamais aucune place pour un envol abstrait ou un plaisir concret. Une vie sans une note de musique, sans un livre, sans fantaisie, sans une phrase qui ne me ramenait au coin d'une virgule autre part que dans un réalisme quotidien. Ce réalisme prolétaire dans lequel je ne pouvais exprimer les rêves d'un autre monde sans être aussitôt renvoyé au leur. Renvoyé aussitôt aux congés payés, à la sécurité sociale, aux jours de repos, à la retraite, aux observations du patron, à la paye. Vingt ans. Vingt ans que j'étais un étranger, un sale arabe, un sale juif, un sale pédé. Chaque jour pendant vingt ans. Au coin d'une rue, à l'école, au lycée, en famille, toujours une âme qui me faisait remarquer à un instant ou à un autre la facticité de ces états, sans jamais en omettre un des quatre si on oubliait les trois autres.''
I had been all along an outsider. A bloody Arab, a dirty Jew, a fucking queer.
'' Twenty years. I just turned twenty. And life ahead of me so they said. And 'they' were used to say that life is short. To me a life time was a bloody long time. Such a long and endless time. It had been twenty years I was living one. Always the same one. Twenty years of a working-class surrounding, twenty years of workers and craftmen , parents and grand-parents working day after day, year after year. Working. This word I've heard so many times and that did not leave any room for an abstract flight or a concrete pleasure. One life without any music note, without a book, without any fantasy, without a single phrase that would bring me back elsewhere but into the realism of their every day lives. This proletarian realism in which I could not express the idea of some other dream world without being sent back to their own at once. Sent back to the paid holidays, social security, days off, retirement, the boss's remarks, pay day. Twenty years! I had been all along a foreigner. A bloody Arab, a dirty Jew, a fucking queer. Every day during twenty years. At the corner of the street, at school, at the college, in a family meeting. Always a soul that would always remind me at some point or an other one of the three components if they had forgotten the other two.''
I had been all along an outsider. A bloody Arab, a dirty Jew, a fucking queer.
'' Twenty years. I just turned twenty. And life ahead of me so they said. And 'they' were used to say that life is short. To me a life time was a bloody long time. Such a long and endless time. It had been twenty years I was living one. Always the same one. Twenty years of a working-class surrounding, twenty years of workers and craftmen , parents and grand-parents working day after day, year after year. Working. This word I've heard so many times and that did not leave any room for an abstract flight or a concrete pleasure. One life without any music note, without a book, without any fantasy, without a single phrase that would bring me back elsewhere but into the realism of their every day lives. This proletarian realism in which I could not express the idea of some other dream world without being sent back to their own at once. Sent back to the paid holidays, social security, days off, retirement, the boss's remarks, pay day. Twenty years! I had been all along a foreigner. A bloody Arab, a dirty Jew, a fucking queer. Every day during twenty years. At the corner of the street, at school, at the college, in a family meeting. Always a soul that would always remind me at some point or an other one of the three components if they had forgotten the other two.''
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