In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot now translated into Spanish – En Tanger Matamos Al Loro Azul

 

 

Baphala Ediciones – We specialize in postcolonial LGTBIQ+ literature

 

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature: 2019

“Freedom through this strange kind of love”: Impersonal be(com)ing and Barbara Adair’s In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot

Yuan-Chih Yen

Y Yen – JCL article Tangier

 

Recently re-published by Modjaji Books In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot is now being translated into Spanish AND has been the subject of numerous academic articles and studies

COVER In Tangier to print lo-res

At first there was mud, and the sound of breathing,

and no one was sure where we were.

When we found out, it was much too late.

Now nothing can happen save as it has to happen.

And then I was alone, and it did not matter,

Only because by that time nothing could matter ….

We thought there were other ways.

The darkness would stay outside.

We are not it, we said. It is not in us …

There was a time when life went along brighter lines.

We still drank the water from the lake,

and the bucket came up cold

and sweet with the smell of deep water.’”

The song was everywhere that year, an absurd refrain:

It’s only that it seems so long, and isn’t.

It’s only that it seems so many years,

and perhaps it’s one.

When the trees were there I cared that they were there,

and now they are gone.

On our way out we used the path that goes around the swamp.

When we started back the tide had risen.

There was another way, but it was far above and hard to get to.

So we waited here, and everything is still the same.

There were many things I wanted to say to you

before you left, and now I shall never say them.

Though the light spills onto the balcony

making the same shadows in the same places,

only I can see it, only I can hear the wind

and it is much too loud.

The world seethes with words. Forgive me …

Modjaji Books 

Summery

A man, Volker, is travelling from Germany to Namibia, along the way he spends time in Charles de Gaulle airport. This is the story of his experiences there, the people he meets along the way and how life, and people, do not contain merely one story but are  made up of many stories. And so these stories enter your life  and then quickly move out of it.

The First Few Pages

Volker walks slowly, and sometimes he walks fast, across the airport concourse, his speed, and the way he moves, depends upon the speed of the other people who also walk there, some walk fast, they almost run, as if they have somewhere to be, others meander, wander, as if they have no purpose, no reason, do we all have no reason, I am born and I die and the reason for being in this airport is that I am alive, I am alive so I may as well be in this airport, walking. Volker has just arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport after a short flight, the journey from Frankfurt to Paris takes one hour and fifteen minutes. Now he walks, sometimes as if he has a purpose, other times as if he does not. He remembers. (continue reading…)