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Then, I said yesterday that after having seen the movie
where Michel-Angel was disguised as an American actor, I ran quickly to
seek sheets and pencils to draw.
I still remember these pink sheets (color which found use later in my
work) which somebody had collected in the street. It was, I think, forms
tablets for an certain ministry, perhaps that of public works, since I
remember that there was at the end of the blank documents a box for the
signature of the responsible engineer.
In fact, I am not certain any more if it is me or one of my parents who
had brought these sheets to the house, but I think that it was rather me.
I still have the memory of these sheets on the street somewhere in
Tripoli, perhaps at a place where I played with my comrades and my cousin.
They were of a slightly bluish pink, with thin and precise dark blue
writing.
I drew on the back of these sheets or rather I bitterly endeavored to do
it. I was already 15 or 16 years and I haven't learnt do draw properly
yet, but what I knew for sure was that in two years I will present myself
at the entry examination to the Fine arts, at the university.
The drawings which I made were copies of photographs chosen by me in old
reviews which my mother still kept. They were mostly portraits of women,
faces which even now I still remember the features with high precision. Of
course I had no training whatsoever to the art of drawing and I gave
myself a lot of trouble to bring about these faces.
Later, a friend of mine lent me a book with drawing exercises and I saw
myself very quickly striving to make all the exercises the best I could.
It was one of these commercial handbooks with which one realizes quickly
that it leads to nowhere, but nevertheless it made me make a certain
progress. Thanks to this relative progress, I remember to have been able
to offer a drawing representing the head of Christ to a German Jesuit
brother at the school where I used to study. It was a pious man, good,
humble and terribly serious. We all called him brother Hermann. I made the
drawing only to please this man.
This drawing was one of my first successes. I owed this man more than the
schooling fees which he paid for me during that session. My father was
very sick and was going to be soon operated for a cancer of the bladder.
This man advised me about happiness and form. Besides he gave many
photographs representing the Virgin Mary. On the question of form, he
showed me the virtue of always keeping this "beautiful smile". I never
forgot this advice. Today, I think of the memory of this man, who left in
peace this troubled world .
Another of my successes of the time was a head of Baudelaire, and in
charcoal this time. What was not half bad, especially that it was only few
month away of the entry examination to the Lebanese University.
Quebec, August 29, 2005.
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