On the death of Pateh Sabally on January 22, 2017, in the middle of the boats which sailed on the Grand Canal of Venice at 3:30 p.m., many images circulated. We remember the cries of fright, panic and helplessness of onlookers when the young man from Gambia jumped into the freezing water. Then this word repeated several times: “Africa”. Buoys were thrown; the man did not cling to any. There were teasing and insults. No one dived to rescue him.
After a few long minutes, Pateh Sabally sank. Rescuers arrived to retrieve the body. Later, there was a ceremony on the banks of the Grand Canal, in which a wreath of flowers in the colors of Gambia was thrown. In the media, his death is erected as a symbol. “But a symbol of what? asks the narrator of Evocation of a memorial in Venice. A young writer, haunted by this death, he wonders if he would have jumped into the water to save the man from drowning. Years later, he decides to go to Venice.
“The Waters”, “The Cries”, “The Words”
Why did the death of Pateh, as he calls her in the book and whom he addresses as “you”, particularly hurt him? This is what the brief novel by the Moroccan writer Khalid Lyamlahy sheds light on, at the same time as the narrator seeks the fairest form to give meaning to the tragic destiny of the Gambian. For this, he must “empty”; “freeing up the tiny space of the funeral oration. Write quickly, in one spurt, to resist any feelings of helplessness”; and finally “taming the hypothesis to restore dignity”.
Much of Pateh Sabally’s life remains unknown to him. Never mind, poetry is invested with the power to fill the voids, failing to be able to repair our shortcomings. “I discover that the word oration carries in its hollow the water that engulfed you and the reason that failed to explain your gesture. Water-Reason. The unfathomable reason of the waters that carried you away. »
The fragmented text is divided into three chapters – “The Waters”, “The Cries”, “The Words”. The character’s quest, based on articles, photos and comments about Pateh Sabally and the migration crisis more broadly, alternates with a reconstruction of the “migrant’s” youth in The Gambia until his last journey by train. Milan to Venice. The ghostly figure of Pateh appears in various places between the station and the Grand Canal.
Our dreams, our cowardice
“You might be pacing in front of the sandwich shop.” You count the clouds on the roofs of the city. You observe the hands, the bodies, the swaying, the calls, the smiles, the steps of each other, the imperceptible movements of the water which watches you, taunts you, gives you signals that you are the only one to perceive and to decipher. You may be clearing your head. You evacuate the memories of the crossing and the arrival. »
Khalid Lyamlahy’s book bets that the story of this young man, who left the village of Wellingara, 20 kilometers south-west of Banjul, to arrive in Pozzallo, Sicily, in 2015 before joining Milan, acts as a mirror. His death Pateh speaks of our world. Of our dreams and our cowardice. What is human dignity. This is why the author inscribes the trajectory of the Gambian alongside the thousands of deaths on the migratory routes between Africa and Europe. While building this memorial, he revisits the symbol and the myth of Venice.
La Serenissima is observed through the prism of Canaletto’s paintings and the narrator’s readings, which range from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice to the writings on Venice of the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni, passing through tourist guides. What if Pateh had been drawn to Venice because it is historically a city of refuge, celebrated for its party art? What if the young Gambian had decided to take the plunge after realizing that Venice was actually “a cardboard city”? Number of questions that the narrator leaves unanswered. Not so much out of an aesthetic taste for the unfinished, it seems, as to emphasize that this drama is still in progress.