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have obtained the good in this life since there is no more make up. It is
you who is talking, it is the real self, it is not somebody else. No need
of masks. The other self who tries to be conformist is not the one you
are learning to be at this moment. The other self, it is the one who
somebody tries to create, the one who was created by education, by
the bias of prejudices, by the means of the culture. We do not let
ourselves go to our feelings because our society somehow drives us
and somewhere controls us.”
Akemi sent him a picture of her wedding dress. She is petite,
gracious, energetic with her smooth skin and her long nose. She
resembles a Chinese lady. Her dark silken hair surrounds a face round
like the base of a moon in the middle of sheaf of lotus and ribbons
shaped like hearts.
And then Ibrâhim received the last letter of Akemi showing a golden
reproduction of the Triumphal Arch, in Paris, a little letter as if she
was herself lessened. In that very letter she wrote: “I don’t get along
well with life in a marriage,” and: “I am looking forward to hearing
from you.”
Ibrâhim did not write back because he is a lover of the instant and
other moments had already faded away before he could answer. He
forgot this missive and today he somewhat regrets the time never
recaptured: “If I had properly read this letter, I would have answered
it,” he affirmed.
The fact is that more than 60% of the Japanese men meet into the
bars after work. There, European girls are waiting for them, making
them drunk. It is like a drug. The gueshas are called more and more
rarely; they accompany but people belonging to the past. Ibrâhim
confides in me:
"The Japanese woman who accompanies, the Japanese woman
the feeling of whom we do not understand, from whom the courtesy is
either cultural or wished, it is this same Japanese woman of all times
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whose husband has the habit of beating her. I find this very sad. A
woman should be what she is intended to be: a companion, not an
enemy."
Ibrâhim spread before me a series of pictures showing streets
all provided with slot machines where the modern Japanese is seeking
forgetfulness. He is glad that Islam has made gambling unlawful.
When he watches these shots, he can perfectly imagine the sorrow of
this woman who declares in a letter to a stranger: “I’ve had a quarrel
with my husband every day. So I like single woman.”
"At the same time there is another type of woman in Japan, it is
the artist woman, the woman whose hands are possessed by the
SHIN-NYU, the Japanese word to describe “the entry into the
Divine.”"
The Shin-Nyu, this extraordinary dexterity acquired by our hands due
to a long practice, Ibrâhim met one of its representative in the person
of Madam Sakkai.
Mister Sakkai had purchased a wine from Bordeaux, France, a
fortune in Japan for the sake of his visitor, but in the joy of the wine
he forgot everything and he lost himself in a daydream as soon as
Ibrâhim reminded him he was not allowed to drink alcohol. They were
dining. Therefore Ibrâhim turned himself towards Sakkai’s wife for
entertainment, the woman who did not utter a word he wanted to
understand her silent secrets. That intrigued him. At the very
beginning they spoke about the household decoration and later he
noticed a Chinese calligraphy hanging against the wall, on a blue-grey
backdrop.
2000-2001 www.arttoday.com
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