Marseille | Fiction | Souad Zakarani

 

 

Marseille

He drives along the narrow riverbed and gradually the littered landscape reveals itself: overturned buckets at the bend in the river, a broken pram covered in weeds, a petrol drum with a dry tongue of rust sticking out, the carcass of a fridge in the brambles. It didn't look like this before, Blaise realized, and his gaze on the landscape became more alert and worried than it had been an hour before. The pine trees were as green as ever, interspersed with oversized chunks of white limestone. But the idyllic picture is disturbed by leftovers, by rusty things, by squadrons of rubbish cutting swaths through the landscape. This rubbish is old, Blaise thinks, confused again.

Even before he has rounded the next bend and seen the misty blue sea and Marseille in the distance, a queasy feeling has spread through his body. What lies ahead no longer looks like the city he left the day before yesterday.

Thin plumes of smoke rise from the Old Port into the cloudy sky, and a grey shimmer hovers over the metropolis like a fat jellyfish. It takes him a moment to realize that something is very wrong. Where La Bonne Mère, clad in brown and white stripes, should tower over the city, there is a terrible gap, as if someone had taken out a giant eraser. Not only is the church nowhere to be seen, but a large part of the hill is missing. Instead of braking, he hits the accelerator; his car lurching slightly until it finally comes to a halt on the verge. It took a long moment for Blaise to catch his breath again.

This time, the Marseille that greeted him at dawn was different. One he has never seen before. On a whim, he presses the radio button, but no matter which station he tunes in to, all he hears is meaningless static. He turns his phone back on, and instead of the signal bar, he reads the words "No reception".

Blaise presses the accelerator a little too hard again, misfires, and has to start again to get back into town. It's a silent drive, his anxiety growing with every bend in the serpentine road. Through Vaufrèges, he passes crumbling houses. Shutters hang crooked on their hinges, windows are smashed. Mazargues is no different, except that more and more cars are parked across the road, some doors still wide open, as if they had been left in a hurry. He weaves his way through them in his old Peugeot and drives down Boulevard Michelet.

But something doesn't quite fit the image of a city that seems to have just succumbed to a destructive force. As he slowly rolls along, he takes a closer look at the cars. He realizes that what happened here could not have happened two days ago. All the rust, the dusty dryness, the concrete roadway bulging and torn in places as if it were spitting out its guts. It looks like the destruction happened months ago. Impossible.

Blaise slowly comes to a halt. He gets out, lets out a "hello" that echoes down the wide boulevard and is greeted only by dull silence. Blaise stands there, small, and suddenly feels truly alone.

Finally, a thought flashes through his mind, so unreal, so unbelievable, that he can barely finish it. He cannot fight the involuntary shudder of disbelief that runs through his body. He thinks of the manuscript on his laptop, the words that finally bubbled out of it yesterday. Of an Earth doomed to destruction, finally surrendering to the irresponsible actions of humankind and finally ridding itself of them. He sees himself sitting at his sun-drenched desk, writing word by word.

OK, I'm dreaming, Blaise thinks, pinching his thigh hard and giving a short yelp when it hurts. He stumbles back to the car, fishes for his laptop in the back seat and opens it with trembling fingers.

I've completely lost it, he thinks. It takes endless minutes for the damning words to flash across the screen. There they are, black on white. He has described a doom he now sees before him. A world without people, without living things, reclaimed by nature. Even the wind seems to have calmed down.

What if I am completely mad, a second thought crosses the first. If I have written it, can I take it back? A mad laugh slowly gurgles through his throat and erupts in a wild fit of laughter. A pounding 'ha-ha' that bounces between the empty walls of the buildings. The almost animalistic sounds slowly fade to a soft chuckle until he falls silent.

His hands hover over the keys, a hesitation spreading through him, the fear of simply erasing the best words he has written in ages. He casts another uncertain glance through the windscreen, and then his finger finally falls on the crucial key. The black line races across the pages, erasing all the paragraphs of the past few days.

With a deep breath, Blaise opens his eyes to see the line blinking impatiently. He drove off and did not look up for hours, until darkness slowly crept into the car.

I think this is what it feels like to lose your mind. Blaise nods at this thought and falls into a dreamless sleep. His laptop rests on his lap, a bright rectangle in the twilight that flickers away after a while.

A knocking startles him. It's loud and forceful, and between his sleep-deprived eyelids, a hook-nosed, stern face, slightly flushed with irritation, stares back at him. Still half-asleep, he rolls down the window, only to be greeted by a tirade from the uniformed officer that makes him jump: "Are you completely insane? Sleeping on the hard shoulder?"

Suddenly, Blaise realizes that life is going on all around him. Cars whiz by on the boulevard, crossed by rampaging scooters and followed by angry curses. People push past his bonnet, impatient for the day and their tasks. The sun is shining brightly and Marseille is as dirty, smelly and vibrant as he left it.

"Oh my God," he cries. But all he gets is an angry growl: "I won't warn you again! Get out of here!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm already gone," he mumbles, awkwardly starting the engine.

Who am I? Blaise wonders, his mind shaking as he slowly rolls out onto the busy street. He does not hear the indignant honking that immediately surrounds him.

Souad Zakarani,

Moroccan Poetess & Translator

Her first publication by BRENTANO GESELLSCHAFT was quite the experience that improved her writing process.

She writes in Four Languages, develops a style that aims to blend traditional form aesthetics with contemporary sensibilities, always striving to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Anthologies in Austria, Germany & Spain:

'Whispers across Languages' by Barcelona Adabia.

- Frühlings Anthologie 2025' beim Thomas Opfermann

- 'Im Fadenkreuz der Archetypen, Märchen, Sex &Gender' beim Wiener Verlag.

-Lyrischer Lorbeer’24,"Regenbogeninsel"Anthology.

- Four times successful publication of contemporary poetry in the Brentano Gesellschaft

Frankfurter Bibliothek.