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Volume 6, Number 2 - Spring 2008

Literature Forges Bonds of Trust in French Prison
by Araceli Ortiz de Urbina

Three years ago Katia [Salomon, a coordinator of People & Stories in France] talked to me about her experience with “Gens et Récits” at the prison of Fleury-Mérogis. I was both curious and full of admiration, but I was far from realizing that in a not so remote future, I too would become a coordinator of a group at Fleury. Katia encouraged me, explained the method, and generously shared the list of the short stories that she had already used and that had proved successful. But more than any theoretical explanations it was the actual participation in one of her sessions that helped me overcome any reticence.

I decided enthusiastically to commit myself to this weekly adventure. My remaining doubts had to do mostly with myself: would I be able to coordinate those sessions, to be as efficient as the other coordinators, to share with the prisoners my love of literature, to create ties of trust with men of such different cultural and educational backgrounds, to interest them? But soon, I would discover that all of this would take place not so much due to my own mediation as to the texts, short stories and poems that we would discover together.

First meeting with the prisoners: an anonymous group of a dozen men of different ages, silent, somewhat sullen – a typographer, a nurse, a rasta (reggae) musician, an ex-Legionnaire, an elected municipal official, a Chinese who hardly knew French. After a few sessions those men would become for me real, well defined individuals. Soon, I would get to know their way of reading, of distorting certain words, their timid or arrogant way to ask questions, their tendency to remain silent or to joke to hide an emotion. After some weeks, I even became able to anticipate their reactions and yet I would often be so astonished by the sharpness of their judgment and the sensitivity of their comments.

The reading aloud: the text opens itself gradually, everyone concentrates. A participant follows the lines with his finger, another one reads, his eyebrows knitted by the effort. We stop, a few questions, we go back to try to understand better. Someone proposes an explanation, recounts a personal experience, someone interrupts to voice his own opinion. We continue to read. The text opens a path, we follow its twists and turns, its pitfalls, its stops.

Towards the end, faces light up, still more questions, the conversation becomes more general. Someone notes phrases or images that especially touched him. And then, they forget the text, they talk of themselves. “I too once have felt…When I was small, my mother…I always wished I could travel, but…”

As I leave, I feel sad but also hopeful that I left something that might help them to spend the week, to overcome the monotony of their daily life. It’s not sure. But at least during these two hours they have been men able to communicate, to express their thoughts, their feelings and to listen to those of others. On that day, some of them have experienced the vibrations of a word, of an image, the trembling of an emotion, as if a minuscule fragment of ice shattered in their breast. “I did not know that one could read in that way…I’ll certainly continue to read, it’s just sure… Thank you for bringing those moments of peace.”

Sometimes things do not turn out so well; I leave feeling that I failed. I did not choose the right story, or I did not ask the right questions, or I have not underlined sufficiently certain aspects of the story. “They did not like it, they did not like it.” That little phrase will haunt me all week and will incite me to look for a better short story, to prepare it better. And the next time, both the communication and the sharing will take place and I will feel proud of them, proud of us.

Observing them, I’ll ask myself whether any other miracle besides the complicity created through reading could have brought about that two human beings such as the elected municipal official and the little hoodlum from the outlying parts of town, who outside would have never spoken to each other, could now exchange points of view, discuss, joke together.  

It is summer now and I am at Belle Île (an island off the coast of Brittany). It rained all day. Intermingled smells—wet earth, gorse in bloom, algae. I walk towards the sea, I can only hear my own steps as they crease the grasses of the road. A frightened pheasant takes off, beating its wings with the sound of wet sheets in the wind. The path rises toward the clouds still full of rain. I reach the crest and now I can view the whole landscape: the bright metallic line of the sea, the jagged profile of the cliffs and, closer in, the little circles of white and playful foam around the rocks, the ferns, the moor yellow and purple. A seagull frolics with the wind, lets itself be carried and then flies off. I follow its flight; it flies away, further and further.

I think of the walls of the prison, of the confinement, of the library at Fleury where I shall soon be again. When I heard for the first time the name “Fleury”  (“in bloom”), this word brought to mind flowers, the forest, nature. But Fleury is a mineral world full of stench: grey concrete, gates, metal doors, smell of cats’ urine, of badly washed feet, of kitchen fumes. Even in nice weather, the light is bleak and the air is heavy, humid.

What can the prisoners see through their windows?  Other walls, still other windows, cement, stones and—the lucky ones—a football ground without grass, with plastic bags and empty bottles all over the place. That’s where they live for months and sometimes for years They do not live, they wait: for the common room, the walk, the shower, the lawyer, a package, a convocation by a the judge, the date of the judgment, a pass to go out, the letter of a family member.

“Observing them, I’ll ask myself whether any other miracle besides the complicity created through reading could have brought about that two human beings … could now exchange points of view, discuss, joke together.

Sometimes, something comes, like this postcard that, every Monday, Farid takes out of his shirt pocket as if he were taking it out of his heart and that he invariably places on the table in front of him. A postcard so handled that it is hard to decipher the child’s scrawny writing: “My dear little papa, I hope that you are well…”

In a fortnight or so, I will start again the reading sessions. There will be faces that I know and there will be newcomers. I have begun to select the short stories that we will read together and I have made a few discoveries in the works of the Irish writer Colum McCann and of the Uruguayan Carlos Liscano. A new adventure is about to begin, where people and stories will again meet each other.

Translated from French by Sarah Hirschman.

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