There was a time when the earth beneath our feet was enough to explain everything. We walked barefoot on the ‘tany mena’ (red earth). We knew the way home with our eyes closed. Sitting by a river, doing nothing, was enough to feel whole. The smell of cooking rice announced the evening, and radio announcements timed the schoolchildren better than any clock. Doors remained open at night. The family radio told us about the world without the need to verify. A shared meal was just a meal, not a negotiation of trust. We greeted a stranger on the road without wondering what they wanted. Children came home at dusk, not before, not after, and no one worried. The silence of the evening was not frightening. We inhabited it like an old house we knew by heart, even in the dark.
I don’t know exactly when it all started to crumble. Perhaps with the crises, piled one on top of the other, until we no longer knew which one to mourn first. Perhaps with my own fatigue. Those two years when I stopped writing because life weighed too heavily for words to stand. The country has aged along with me, I think. We stopped leaving doors open. We started verifying every rumor. Every unknown face. Every gesture that was a little too different, before trusting it. We traded simplicity for caution. And caution, in the long run, tires as much as it protects. Even the silences have changed their meaning. Before, they meant we were fine. Now, they often mean we are suspicious. Laughter remains, mind you, but we had to learn to choose in front of whom to let it out. I no longer know who, the country or me, has aged the fastest. Perhaps we aged together, each on our own side, without telling each other.
There must exist, somewhere, a place that only we know. You and I. Or this country and I. A place where the earth still smelled good under our feet. Where no one had yet learned to be afraid of their neighbor. Where we could grow old without armor. I don’t know if this place still exists. I don’t know if I would have the courage to return to it if I found it. Nor what I would find there, apart from the memory of who I was before I learned to be suspicious. Perhaps it is better, sometimes, not to check. But this morning, I just want to ask, one last time, without really expecting an answer: simple thing, where have you gone?
Captured & Published at: 2026-08-12 05:39:21 (Madagascar Local Time EAT)
Original Source: https://www.lexpress.mg/2026/08/chose-simple-ou-es-tu-allee.html