Sooner or later, we shall have to congregate (why not here?) to praise the existence and being of Laure Collins Zukani.  I’ve spent almost two years now pleading with people to get over their scruples and their hurt feelings and come out of the privacy of their cupboards and share.  The results are now in: if you’re not complacent with people, telling them how systematically wonderful they are, and how insignificant their shortcomings, they simply shut up and shut out, secure in the knowledge that there are so many more profitable things to do than sharing experience without limits and without clear goals with much cost and no payback.  Laure, or Amina, as she sometimes calls herself, on the other hand, whose deafness may have protected her from this savage regression, was asked by her father on Monday 21 December to tell the story of the birth of her daughter Aude Yasmina, now known as Yasmina, or Yas for those of us who laugh at the proximity between young Yas and old wizzened Zas.  What follows is her answer, and it comes along with permission to put it up on the family blog.  To say that I am grateful is to say nothing that even asymtotically touches the immensity of my emotion, and the huge founts of conflicted feelings that just may well end up resolved thanks to this initiative.  Laure Amina has the floor:  April 30th and 31st, 2000, in Marseille.

All right Dad, let’s give it a try.  I understand your need to know all about Yasmina’s birth, since you weren’t there.  Worse yet, my Karim wasn’t there either, and I can imagine how much he must have suffered to have been so far away, struggling to get papers so they he could be with us.  This was difficult to deal with emotionally.  But at the same time, I have to say that there were other stronger emotions cropping up at the very idea that our daughter was soon to be born.  Her hair was jet black, and she looked like a princess, with a perfect little face without any of the wrinkles you see on newly born kids. 

So let me begin the story now.  I started to feel pain (contractions) on March 30th, 2000, around midnight.  I was staying with my Mom in Marseille, waiting for my things to return from my flat in Paris.  I had lied down, hoping to sleep, but the pain was too much to bear.  I got up, went to the rest room, and lost the amiotic fluid.  I didn’t understand what was happening to me.  My Mom called the midwife, and we learned that the birth process had already begun, and that it was high time to be off to the hospital!  I was surprised, because the baby was expected end of April, but that must have been a mistake in calculation.  I got dressed in a hurry and luckily Mom was at my side, because the pains were muchd closer to one another now (5 minutes apart) and she was there to hold my hand.  I couldn’t sleep, and I was stressed out!  In the morning the doctor and midwife listened to my daughter’s heart, and mine too, and I began to push and push and push some more!  Yasmina’s head was too large and couldn’t get out, and I panicked, wondering whether her heart would stop.  The doctor calmed me down, saying that everything was fine, and finally out popped her head, then her body, and lo and behold, there she was, and she cried out, and the doctor picked her up and placed her on my breast, and I started to cry too.  Lots of emotion!  You can’t even begin to imagine that.  It was marvelous, magic perhaps.  It must have been painful for you and my brothers to have been absent for such an event, I know that.  But for Karim it was even worse!  He suffered more than anybody!  And so did I.  I had to do everything alone, during all the time leading up to the birth, and afterwards too.  It was horrible, but at the same time I was so happy to see this little girl already starting to grow, day to day, month after month.  I am so lucky.

One day I’ll have to show you a film of the day’s events.  We’ll need a camera of course.  So there you are.  I’m sure you’re a wreck now with all this emotion welling up!  I love you, Dad.

Your darling daughter

As my sister Mona always says: lot’s to ponder here.  All of this happened during what I called in my Christmas card home my “days of darkness.”  There were years of darkness, for which the price now appears dear indeed.  Perhaps there’s time to make amends.  I’ll do my best.  My heartfelt thanks to my daughter for the willingness and gentleness with which she has shared these precious memories, in the form of a story.  Of course, as time goes by, I’ll get over the effects of what Sue calls the Collins emotional roller-coaster, and then I’ll wax critical and bitchy, but for the moment I wish only to bask in a memory not mine: that is the miracle, to have implanted in you memories that don’t belong to you.  Memories that require more than a camera, and more than any new year’s resolutions: memories that require a shuttle.