Homos can’t play soccer. You hear me? You understand? It’s against the rules. They laughed at me, hard, all of them. But I was used to it by now. It didn’t affect me at all anymore, their teasing, their insults and their rules.  They were more or less the same age as me, around 15 years old, and their spiteful, stupid words no longer roused fear in me. I will not tremble before them anymore, I had made up my mind almost two years before. I will not hide myself anymore. I will go out like them in the street. I will go like them to the vacant lot, on the road to the Rabat-Salé airport, which we use as a soccer field. And I will speak, too. I will tease them, too. And if they all want to hit me and humiliate me and spit at me, I will fight back and if necessary I will accept my fate and go back home. Alone. But without crying. No more tears.

Who remembers you and who still cares for you, Abdallah? Who? They forgot you. They buried you. They committed your suicide. From the wire, you fell.  They are disappointed, you fell. They look away. Such cruelty. They move on. Will they return to you one day, all those who surround him, him the great genius, the small and highly impressive man, Jean Genet? Will they return one day? Will he return one day, the man who raised you so high, so high, up where he told you to fly? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. In the small Parisian studio he rented for you, you are alone, so alone. He almost never comes anymore. You are abandoned, wounded, disabled, at the end of your rope, at the end, what will you do? Which of yesterday’s friends have called? You do nothing. You lie there. You stare at the ceiling. You listen to the sounds of the building. You hope. He is on his way, Jean Genet. He will knock. Who’s there? Jean, is that you?

You’ll grow up and you’ll forget, they all said, all of them. They were wrong, obviously. I know that now. I’m 50 years old. Forgetting doesn’t exist. Forgiveness doesn’t exist. And reconciling with the past seems to be the most difficult thing to do. We stop running sometimes. We dare to look back. A bygone time still alive in us, in me, reveals itself. An old film starts to play again. Back then. Before. Life. Years. Losses. Regrets. Graves. Some flowers. Some bursts of laughter. And already the tears are falling. There’s nothing else to do. Let the dead images of childhood and adolescence return, resurge, relive. A resurrection. A miracle. Really? I can’t resist.