"Bangkok at my table" first novel by Samia Farah , excerpt in english

 Bangkok at my Table

 first novel by 

Samia Farah 

Iam looking for a publisher in English Language

Contact here in the comment section if you are interested.

Regards

Samia Farah, a multifaceted artist, she here delights us with her vision of travel ,in this funny, insightful and at times surreal novel!

The first instalment in a trilogy whose central theme is the world's capital cities... First with Bangkok in ‘Bangkok at my table’

then Paris, with ‘The Paris of Gorillas’... finishing with

‘Kyoto, radio station’

SAMIA FARAH 

excerpt in English

My room was above a restaurant run
by ‘Mama’...
a Thai woman in her seventies who looked fifty .
She had her own sense of hygiene but
managed to attract the few Farangs who hung around there.
The grime didn't put them off, and some even came back for more, returning very often to eat
at any time of the day or evening.
Mama stood out with her long black locks and wore only beach dresses.
Reggae music played in the background most of the time. At my hotel, I got to know all sorts of people from different backgrounds. Men,
women, losers, winners who, for the most part, no longer wanted to be ‘winners’, prostitutes,
Katoeys, Japanese gangsters, blacks, whites, the whole world was here and in the surrounding area.
Bangkok was at my table, and I watched this world
spin before me as if in a ‘Kaizenzushi’.

Bangkok at my table 2021 Samia Farah

EXCERPT 2

The Farangs

Antoine Foutrac, Alfred Mackormack and the others.

My neighbour on the same floor at the Hanafuda Hotel was a Frenchman whom I tried to avoid at all costs.

He would come home at all hours of the day and night, often with a girl on his arm. Sometimes I wondered where he found these girls with bow legs and flat arses.

Almost all of the Farangs seemed pathetic to me. I don't know why Thailand attracted all these lost, filthy, drug-addicted, desperate, horny men from all over the world. Like flies, they stuck around.

To top it all off, he only seemed to be attracted to Thai prostitutes under the age of 25.

My neighbour on the same floor and in the same type of room ,was called 

Antoine Foutrac. As soon as he found out I was French, he talked to me and looked at me as if we had known each other for ages. This promiscuity and closeness only served to infuriate me, as I have always hated inappropriate familiarity.

The only thing that kept him from spreading himself around like jam was that he had trouble figuring out where I was from.

The French here ,like to know this kind of thing, to pigeonhole you into a category they have created in order to feed their subconscious and stimulate their good conscience.

They feel small or big depending on the person they have in front of them. Weak with the strong and strong with the weak.

That's how they positioned themselves in my eyes.

They imagined themselves to be important figures, invented themselves as great Kakou, all because they had met some ‘prostitute’ who made them believe they were exceptional beings. It was her job to make Mr. Everyman believe he was a big shot,

‘Spend the money,’ thought the hustler, that was all she cared about.

The worst thing in my eyes was that they believed the lies that were thrown at their rotten egos, shaved down to nothing, not to say festering losers with delusions of grandeur.

They were fools...

I often ran into them on the streets of Bangkok, in those bars with faded neon lights where all the world's paupers had gathered. They spouted almost word for word the same stories. They had the same experiences and firmly believed that they were the only heroes in a new commercial series. But the film had been playing in prime time for a long time under our disillusioned gaze. Only the actors changed, but the story was always the same, repetitive, as fascinating as a supermarket at 8 p.m. in a sleepy, out-of-stock suburb.

They wanted me to stupidly swallow their lies.

It was as if trainloads of Chinese people were rushing to Strasbourg Saint-Denis in Paris, France, and falling in love with Parisian prostitutes.

Declaring that all French women were whores, but let's love them all, eh?

It sounds absurd, but the comparison is valid. Thai men themselves did not understand the dystopian attitude of most Farangs.

The dream of Thai men was not to marry a prostitute, but rather the opposite, I can assure you...

Antoine wanted to ease his pain that evening; he had a pressing need to confide, to get things off his chest, as they say. He imposed his presence while I was having a one-on-one with Mr Irezumi. It wasn't that he and I had a lot to say to each other, but we liked to look at each other, eat and drink without even exchanging a single word, like two old lone wolves.

Excerpt 3

I learned that Mr. Antoine had been coming back and forth for four years to live what he called ‘a love story’ with an ex-future girlfriend. He had fallen in love with a Thai prostitute whom he wanted to change and set on the right path.

‘What a joke, isn't it?’

He told me about his fantasised past as a ‘human rights activist’.

‘But how can I help her?’ he said, putting on his Jesus Christ Superstar face.

The Chinese had chosen a name for guys like Antoine: ‘Baizuo’. A rather sarcastic and pejorative neologism invented in the 1990s to describe pseudo “educated” left-wing white people, i.e. naive or hypocritical Westerners, full of love for their ‘neighbours’, in Thailand I would even say more... for their ‘neighbours women ’, who campaign for ‘equality’ in order to satisfy and cloak themselves in a sense of moral superiority.

They are only interested in topics such as LGBT rights and the environment, and are above all boringly obsessed with political correctness.

The Chinese found them arrogant and ignorant, and I have to say, so did I. They were the lice of good intentions.

‘I've done everything for her,’ he told me tearfully. "I've tried everything, but every time she goes back to that terrible condition.

At first glance, he didn't know what “karma” meant...

“I even gave her money to stop, but nothing works. She goes back every time.

She must like it...”, I thought to myself!

These ‘Gwers’ never bought you a coffee or a beer, counted their pennies, but wanted to save the world.

The Thais, for their part, had a strange relationship with money, but they were no less generous.

I listened to him, stunned by so much nonsense, but my heart remained cold.

In my head, jazz tunes were playing from I don't know where, while his mouth was forming o's, i's and z's. At that precise moment, John Coltrane started playing ‘My Favourite Things’. Who knows why that particular tune.

My mind went into pause mode, or shut down, as soon as I heard the lamentations of the appalling french Farang.

Texte from her first novel

Bangkok at my table.2021

 

Samia Farah artiste protéiforme nous delecte de sa vision du voyage avec ce roman drole , perspicace et de temps a autre surréaliste!!

Premier opus d'une trilogie ou le coeur nevralgique : des Capitales du monde .. Tout d'abord avec Bangkok pour  " Bangkok a ma table "

puis Paris, avec" le Paris des Gorilles"..  pour finir avec 

 " Kyoto ,radio station"

Une voyageuse s’installe à Bangkok, en Thaïlande, et nous livre des histoires de personnes rencontrées, des collisions entre elle et une ville bipolaire, des voyageurs déconnectés de la réalité, des autochtones monomaniaques, sur fond de jazz, de recettes de cuisines, de rire et de drames.

Extrait 1/

Bangkok a ma table 

Ma chambre était au-dessus d’un restaurant tenu

par « Mama »…

une Thaïlandaise de soixante-dix ans mais qui enparaissait cinquante .

Elle avait un sens de l’hygiène propre à elle mais

réussissait à attirer les quelques Farangs qui traînaient par là.

La crasse ne les repoussait pas et certains même en redemandaient, ils revenaient très souvent manger

à n’importe quelle heure de la journée comme du soir.

Mama se distinguait par de longues locks noires et portait uniquement des robes de plage.

Du reggae en musique de fond jouait la plupart du temps.Dans mon hôtel, j’allais sympathiser avec toute sorte de gens venus d’horizons divers. Des hommes,

des femmes, des loosers, des winners qui ne voulaient plus, pour la plupart d’entre eux, « winner », des putes,

des Katoeys, des Japonais de la pègre, des noirs, des blancs, le monde entier se trouvait ici et les environs.

Bangkok se trouvait à ma table et je regardais ce monde

tourner devant moi comme dans un « Kaizenzushi »

Bangkok à ma table 2021 Samia Farah

EXTRAIT2

Les Farangs

Antoine Foutrac, Alfred mackormack et les autres.

Mon voisin d’étage à l’hôtel « Hanafuda » était un Français que j’essayais d’éviter à tout prix.

Il rentrait à n’importe quelle heure du jour ou de la nuit, accompagnée régulièrement d’une fille à son bras. Parfois, je me demandais où il les trouvait ces filles aux jambes arquées et aux culs bas.

Les Farangs me semblaient quasi tous pathétiques. Je ne sais pas pourquoi la Thailand attirait tous ces perdus, crasseux, drogués, désespérés, tous ces mecs en chaleur de la planète entière. Comme des mouches, ils s’engluaient chez eux.

Cerise sur le gâteau, il ne semblait être attiré que par les prostituées Thaïlandaises de moins de 25 ans.

Mon voisin d’étage et de chambre s’appelait Antoine Foutrac, dès qu’il sut que j’étais Française , me parlait et me regardait comme si nous nous connaissions depuis belle lurette. Une promiscuité, proximité qui ne pouvait que me mettre hors de moi, ayant toujours détesté la familiarité mal placée.

Seule chose qui le retenait de s’étaler en confiture de long en large était qu’il avait du mal à savoir d’où je venais.

Mes ori-gi-nes…

Les Français ici ,aiment savoir ce genre de chose, vous coincer dans une case qu’ils avaient créée afin d’irriguer leur inconscient et stimuler leur bonne conscience.

Se sentir petit ou grand suivant la personne qu’ils avaient en face d’eux.Faibles avec les forts et forts avec les faibles.

Voilà comment ils se positionnaient à mes yeux.

Ils s’imaginaient être des personnages importants, s’inventaient grand Kakou, tout ça par ce qu’ils avaient rencontré une quelconque « prostituée » qui leur faisaient croire qu’ils étaient des êtres d’exceptions. C’était son métier à elle que de faire croire à monsieur tout le monde qu’il était un cador,

« aboulle le fric » pensait la michetonneuse c’était tout ce qui l’intéressait.

Le pire à mes yeux était qu’ils croyaient à ces bobards qu’on leur balançait en travers de leur ego moisis, ratiboisés pour ne pas dire croupissant de perdants illusionnés.

Ils étaient dupes…

Je les croisais souvent dans les rues de Bangkok, dans ces bars aux néons atrophiés où tous les miséreux de la planète s’étaient donné rendez-vous. Ils déblatéraient quasiment tous mot pour mot les mêmes histoires. Vivaient les mêmes expériences, pensaient dur comme fer qu’ils étaient les uniques héros d’une série commerciale inédite. Mais le film se jouait en prime time depuis longtemps sous nos regards désabusés. On changeait juste les acteurs mais l’histoire était toujours la même, répétitive, aussi fascinante qu’un supermarché à 20 h dans une banlieue endormie et en rupture de stock.

Ils désiraient me voir ingurgiter stupidement les couleuvres.

C’était comme si des wagons de Chinois se ruaient sur Strasbourg Saint-Denis à Paris France et tombaient amoureux de prostituées Parisiennes.

Décrétant que toutes les Françaises étaient des putes, mais aimons-les toutes hein ?

Ça sonne absurde mais cette comparaison se vaut. Les hommes Thaïes, eux-mêmes ne comprenaient pas l’attitude dystopique venant de la plupart des Farangs.

Le rêve de l’homme Thaïlandais n’était pas d’épouser une prostituée mais plutôt le contraire je tiens à vous l’assurer…

Antoine ce soir la désirait soulager sa peine il avait un besoin pressant de se confier, de vider son sac comme on dit. Il imposa sa présence alors que j’étais en tête à tête avec monsieur Irezumi, c’est pas que lui et moi avions des tas de choses à nous dire mais nous aimions nous regarder, manger, boire sans même échanger un seul mot, comme deux vieux loups solitaires. 

Extrait 3

J’appris que le sieur Antoine faisait des allées retour depuis 4 ans pour vivre ce qu’il appelait « une histoire d’amour » avec une ex-future petite amie. Il s’était épris d’une prostituée Thaïe qu’il avait souhaité changer et faire rentrer dans le droit chemin.

— Quelle bonne blague, n’est-ce pas ?

Il m’avait sorti son passé fantasmé de « droit de l’hommiste »

« Mais comment l’aider ? » me dit-il en faisant sa tête de Jésus Christ Super Starlette.

Les Chinois avaient choisi un nom pour les gars comme Antoine : les « Baizuo ». Néologisme plutôt sarcastique et péjoratif inventé dans les années quatre-vingt-dix pour décrire les blancs de gauche pseudo « éduqués », soit naïfs, ou hypocrites occidentaux, pleins d’amour pour leurs « prochains », en Thaïlande je dirais même plus… pour leurs « prochaines », qui militent pour « l’égalité » afin de satisfaire et se draper d’un sentiment de supériorité morale.

Ils ne s’intéressent qu’a des sujets comme les droits des LGBT,  l’environnement et sont surtout ennuyeusement obnubilés par le politiquement correct.

Les Chinois les trouvaient arrogants et ignorants, autant vous dire que moi aussi. Ils étaient les poux des bons sentiments.

— J’ai tout fait pour elle, me disait-il larmoyant – Tout essayer, à chaque fois elle retourne à cette terrible condition.

À première vue, il ne savait pas ce que voulait dire le « karma »…

— Je lui ai même donné de l’argent pour qu’elle arrête mais rien n’y fait. Elle y retourne à chaque fois.

Elle aime certainement ça…, me dis-je !

Ces « Gwers » ne vous payaient jamais un café ou une bière, comptaient leurs sous au centime près, mais voulaient sauver le monde.

Les Thaïlandais quant à eux avaient une drôle de relation avec l’argent certes ils n’en étaient pas moins généreux.

Je l’écoutais sidérée par tant d’âneries cependant mon cœur demeurait froid.

Dans ma tête se jouait alors des titres de jazz sortis de je ne sais où en même temps que sa bouche formulait des à des o, des I et des Z, à cet instant précis John Coltrane se mit à jouer « my favorite things » allez savoir pourquoi ce titre-là.

Mon esprit se positionnait alors en mode pause, ou se mettait en panne dès que j’entendais les lamentations du Farang effarant.

 

Premier Roman de Samia Farah

Bangkok at my table

My room was above a restaurant run

by ‘Mama’...

a Thai woman in her seventies who looked fifty .

She had her own sense of hygiene but

managed to attract the few Farangs who hung around there.

The grime didn't put them off, and some even came back for more, returning very often to eat

at any time of the day or evening.

Mama stood out with her long black locks and wore only beach dresses.

Reggae music played in the background most of the time. At my hotel, I got to know all sorts of people from different backgrounds. Men,

women, losers, winners who, for the most part, no longer wanted to be ‘winners’, prostitutes,

Katoeys, Japanese gangsters, blacks, whites, the whole world was here and in the surrounding area.

Bangkok was at my table, and I watched this world

spin before me as if in a ‘Kaizenzushi’.

Bangkok at my table 2021 Samia Farah

Bangkok at my table

My room was above a restaurant run

by ‘Mama’...

a Thai woman in her seventies who looked fifty .

She had her own sense of hygiene but

managed to attract the few Farangs who hung around there.

The grime didn't put them off, and some even came back for more, returning very often to eat

at any time of the day or evening.

Mama stood out with her long black locks and wore only beach dresses.

Reggae music played in the background most of the time. At my hotel, I got to know all sorts of people from different backgrounds. Men,

women, losers, winners who, for the most part, no longer wanted to be ‘winners’, prostitutes,

Katoeys, Japanese gangsters, blacks, whites, the whole world was here and in the surrounding area.

Bangkok was at my table, and I watched this world

spin before me as if in a ‘Kaizenzushi’.

Bangkok at my table 2021 Samia Farah

EXCERPT 2

The Farangs

Antoine Foutrac, Alfred Mackormack and the others.

My neighbour on the same floor at the Hanafuda Hotel was a Frenchman whom I tried to avoid at all costs.

He would come home at all hours of the day and night, often with a girl on his arm. Sometimes I wondered where he found these girls with bow legs and flat arses.

Almost all of the Farangs seemed pathetic to me. I don't know why Thailand attracted all these lost, filthy, drug-addicted, desperate, horny men from all over the world. Like flies, they stuck around.

To top it all off, he only seemed to be attracted to Thai prostitutes under the age of 25.

My neighbour on the same floor and in the same room was called Antoine Foutrac. As soon as he found out I was French, he talked to me and looked at me as if we had known each other for ages. This promiscuity and closeness only served to infuriate me, as I have always hated inappropriate familiarity.

The only thing that kept him from spreading himself around like jam was that he had trouble figuring out where I was from.

The French here like to know this kind of thing, to pigeonhole you into a category they have created in order to feed their subconscious and stimulate their good conscience.

They feel small or big depending on the person they have in front of them. Weak with the strong and strong with the weak.

That's how they positioned themselves in my eyes.

They imagined themselves to be important figures, invented themselves as great Kakou, all because they had met some ‘prostitute’ who made them believe they were exceptional beings. It was her job to make Mr. Everyman believe he was a big shot,

‘Spend the money,’ thought the hustler, that was all she cared about.

The worst thing in my eyes was that they believed the lies that were thrown at their rotten egos, shaved down to nothing, not to say festering losers with delusions of grandeur.

They were fools...

I often ran into them on the streets of Bangkok, in those bars with faded neon lights where all the world's paupers had gathered. They spouted almost word for word the same stories. They had the same experiences and firmly believed that they were the only heroes in a new commercial series. But the film had been playing in prime time for a long time under our disillusioned gaze. Only the actors changed, but the story was always the same, repetitive, as fascinating as a supermarket at 8 p.m. in a sleepy, out-of-stock suburb.

They wanted me to stupidly swallow their lies.

It was as if trainloads of Chinese people were rushing to Strasbourg Saint-Denis in Paris, France, and falling in love with Parisian prostitutes.

Declaring that all French women were whores, but let's love them all, eh?

It sounds absurd, but the comparison is valid. Thai men themselves did not understand the dystopian attitude of most Farangs.

The dream of Thai men was not to marry a prostitute, but rather the opposite, I can assure you...

Antoine wanted to ease his pain that evening; he had a pressing need to confide, to get things off his chest, as they say. He imposed his presence while I was having a one-on-one with Mr Irezumi. It wasn't that he and I had a lot to say to each other, but we liked to look at each other, eat and drink without even exchanging a single word, like two old lone wolves.

Excerpt 3

I learned that Mr. Antoine had been coming back and forth for four years to live what he called ‘a love story’ with an ex-future girlfriend. He had fallen in love with a Thai prostitute whom he wanted to change and set on the right path.

‘What a joke, isn't it?’

He told me about his fantasised past as a ‘human rights activist’.

‘But how can I help her?’ he said, putting on his Jesus Christ Superstar face.

The Chinese had chosen a name for guys like Antoine: ‘Baizuo’. A rather sarcastic and pejorative neologism invented in the 1990s to describe pseudo “educated” left-wing white people, i.e. naive or hypocritical Westerners, full of love for their ‘neighbours’, in Thailand I would even say more... for their ‘neighbours’, who campaign for ‘equality’ in order to satisfy and cloak themselves in a sense of moral superiority.

They are only interested in topics such as LGBT rights and the environment, and are above all boringly obsessed with political correctness.

The Chinese found them arrogant and ignorant, and I have to say, so did I. They were the lice of good intentions.

‘I've done everything for her,’ he told me tearfully. "I've tried everything, but every time she goes back to that terrible condition.

At first glance, he didn't know what “karma” meant...

“I even gave her money to stop, but nothing works. She goes back every time.

She must like it...”, I thought to myself!

These ‘Gwers’ never bought you a coffee or a beer, counted their pennies, but wanted to save the world.

The Thais, for their part, had a strange relationship with money, but they were no less generous.

I listened to him, stunned by so much nonsense, but my heart remained cold.

In my head, jazz tunes were playing from I don't know where, while his mouth was forming o's, i's and z's. At that precise moment, John Coltrane started playing ‘My Favourite Things’. Who knows why that particular tune.

My mind went into pause mode, or shut down, as soon as I heard the lamentations of the appalling Farang.

Texte from her first novel

Bangkok at my table.2021

 

Samia Farah artiste protéiforme nous delecte de sa vision du voyage avec ce roman drole , perspicace et de temps a autre surréaliste!!

Premier opus d'une trilogie ou le coeur nevralgique : des Capitales du monde .. Tout d'abord avec Bangkok pour  " Bangkok a ma table "

puis Paris, avec" le Paris des Gorilles"..  pour finir avec 

 " Kyoto ,radio station"

Une voyageuse s’installe à Bangkok, en Thaïlande, et nous livre des histoires de personnes rencontrées, des collisions entre elle et une ville bipolaire, des voyageurs déconnectés de la réalité, des autochtones monomaniaques, sur fond de jazz, de recettes de cuisines, de rire et de drames.

Extrait 1/

Bangkok a ma table 

Ma chambre était au-dessus d’un restaurant tenu

par « Mama »…

une Thaïlandaise de soixante-dix ans mais qui enparaissait cinquante .

Elle avait un sens de l’hygiène propre à elle mais

réussissait à attirer les quelques Farangs qui traînaient par là.

La crasse ne les repoussait pas et certains même en redemandaient, ils revenaient très souvent manger

à n’importe quelle heure de la journée comme du soir.

Mama se distinguait par de longues locks noires et portait uniquement des robes de plage.

Du reggae en musique de fond jouait la plupart du temps.Dans mon hôtel, j’allais sympathiser avec toute sorte de gens venus d’horizons divers. Des hommes,

des femmes, des loosers, des winners qui ne voulaient plus, pour la plupart d’entre eux, « winner », des putes,

des Katoeys, des Japonais de la pègre, des noirs, des blancs, le monde entier se trouvait ici et les environs.

Bangkok se trouvait à ma table et je regardais ce monde

tourner devant moi comme dans un « Kaizenzushi »

Bangkok à ma table 2021 Samia Farah

EXTRAIT2

Les Farangs

Antoine Foutrac, Alfred mackormack et les autres.

Mon voisin d’étage à l’hôtel « Hanafuda » était un Français que j’essayais d’éviter à tout prix.

Il rentrait à n’importe quelle heure du jour ou de la nuit, accompagnée régulièrement d’une fille à son bras. Parfois, je me demandais où il les trouvait ces filles aux jambes arquées et aux culs bas.

Les Farangs me semblaient quasi tous pathétiques. Je ne sais pas pourquoi la Thailand attirait tous ces perdus, crasseux, drogués, désespérés, tous ces mecs en chaleur de la planète entière. Comme des mouches, ils s’engluaient chez eux.

Cerise sur le gâteau, il ne semblait être attiré que par les prostituées Thaïlandaises de moins de 25 ans.

Mon voisin d’étage et de chambre s’appelait Antoine Foutrac, dès qu’il sut que j’étais Française , me parlait et me regardait comme si nous nous connaissions depuis belle lurette. Une promiscuité, proximité qui ne pouvait que me mettre hors de moi, ayant toujours détesté la familiarité mal placée.

Seule chose qui le retenait de s’étaler en confiture de long en large était qu’il avait du mal à savoir d’où je venais.

Mes ori-gi-nes…

Les Français ici ,aiment savoir ce genre de chose, vous coincer dans une case qu’ils avaient créée afin d’irriguer leur inconscient et stimuler leur bonne conscience.

Se sentir petit ou grand suivant la personne qu’ils avaient en face d’eux.Faibles avec les forts et forts avec les faibles.

Voilà comment ils se positionnaient à mes yeux.

Ils s’imaginaient être des personnages importants, s’inventaient grand Kakou, tout ça par ce qu’ils avaient rencontré une quelconque « prostituée » qui leur faisaient croire qu’ils étaient des êtres d’exceptions. C’était son métier à elle que de faire croire à monsieur tout le monde qu’il était un cador,

« aboulle le fric » pensait la michetonneuse c’était tout ce qui l’intéressait.

Le pire à mes yeux était qu’ils croyaient à ces bobards qu’on leur balançait en travers de leur ego moisis, ratiboisés pour ne pas dire croupissant de perdants illusionnés.

Ils étaient dupes…

Je les croisais souvent dans les rues de Bangkok, dans ces bars aux néons atrophiés où tous les miséreux de la planète s’étaient donné rendez-vous. Ils déblatéraient quasiment tous mot pour mot les mêmes histoires. Vivaient les mêmes expériences, pensaient dur comme fer qu’ils étaient les uniques héros d’une série commerciale inédite. Mais le film se jouait en prime time depuis longtemps sous nos regards désabusés. On changeait juste les acteurs mais l’histoire était toujours la même, répétitive, aussi fascinante qu’un supermarché à 20 h dans une banlieue endormie et en rupture de stock.

Ils désiraient me voir ingurgiter stupidement les couleuvres.

C’était comme si des wagons de Chinois se ruaient sur Strasbourg Saint-Denis à Paris France et tombaient amoureux de prostituées Parisiennes.

Décrétant que toutes les Françaises étaient des putes, mais aimons-les toutes hein ?

Ça sonne absurde mais cette comparaison se vaut. Les hommes Thaïes, eux-mêmes ne comprenaient pas l’attitude dystopique venant de la plupart des Farangs.

Le rêve de l’homme Thaïlandais n’était pas d’épouser une prostituée mais plutôt le contraire je tiens à vous l’assurer…

Antoine ce soir la désirait soulager sa peine il avait un besoin pressant de se confier, de vider son sac comme on dit. Il imposa sa présence alors que j’étais en tête à tête avec monsieur Irezumi, c’est pas que lui et moi avions des tas de choses à nous dire mais nous aimions nous regarder, manger, boire sans même échanger un seul mot, comme deux vieux loups solitaires. 

Extrait 3

J’appris que le sieur Antoine faisait des allées retour depuis 4 ans pour vivre ce qu’il appelait « une histoire d’amour » avec une ex-future petite amie. Il s’était épris d’une prostituée Thaïe qu’il avait souhaité changer et faire rentrer dans le droit chemin.

— Quelle bonne blague, n’est-ce pas ?

Il m’avait sorti son passé fantasmé de « droit de l’hommiste »

« Mais comment l’aider ? » me dit-il en faisant sa tête de Jésus Christ Super Starlette.

Les Chinois avaient choisi un nom pour les gars comme Antoine : les « Baizuo ». Néologisme plutôt sarcastique et péjoratif inventé dans les années quatre-vingt-dix pour décrire les blancs de gauche pseudo « éduqués », soit naïfs, ou hypocrites occidentaux, pleins d’amour pour leurs « prochains », en Thaïlande je dirais même plus… pour leurs « prochaines », qui militent pour « l’égalité » afin de satisfaire et se draper d’un sentiment de supériorité morale.

Ils ne s’intéressent qu’a des sujets comme les droits des LGBT,  l’environnement et sont surtout ennuyeusement obnubilés par le politiquement correct.

Les Chinois les trouvaient arrogants et ignorants, autant vous dire que moi aussi. Ils étaient les poux des bons sentiments.

— J’ai tout fait pour elle, me disait-il larmoyant – Tout essayer, à chaque fois elle retourne à cette terrible condition.

À première vue, il ne savait pas ce que voulait dire le « karma »…

— Je lui ai même donné de l’argent pour qu’elle arrête mais rien n’y fait. Elle y retourne à chaque fois.

Elle aime certainement ça…, me dis-je !

Ces « Gwers » ne vous payaient jamais un café ou une bière, comptaient leurs sous au centime près, mais voulaient sauver le monde.

Les Thaïlandais quant à eux avaient une drôle de relation avec l’argent certes ils n’en étaient pas moins généreux.

Je l’écoutais sidérée par tant d’âneries cependant mon cœur demeurait froid.

Dans ma tête se jouait alors des titres de jazz sortis de je ne sais où en même temps que sa bouche formulait des à des o, des I et des Z, à cet instant précis John Coltrane se mit à jouer « my favorite things » allez savoir pourquoi ce titre-là.

Mon esprit se positionnait alors en mode pause, ou se mettait en panne dès que j’entendais les lamentations du Farang effarant.

 

Premier Roman de Samia Farah

Bangkok at my table

My room was above a restaurant run

by ‘Mama’...

a Thai woman in her seventies who looked fifty .

She had her own sense of hygiene but

managed to attract the few Farangs who hung around there.

The grime didn't put them off, and some even came back for more, returning very often to eat

at any time of the day or evening.

Mama stood out with her long black locks and wore only beach dresses.

Reggae music played in the background most of the time. At my hotel, I got to know all sorts of people from different backgrounds. Men,

women, losers, winners who, for the most part, no longer wanted to be ‘winners’, prostitutes,

Katoeys, Japanese gangsters, blacks, whites, the whole world was here and in the surrounding area.

Bangkok was at my table, and I watched this world

spin before me as if in a ‘Kaizenzushi’.

Bangkok at my table 2021 Samia Farah

Bangkok at my table

My room was above a restaurant run

by ‘Mama’...

a Thai woman in her seventies who looked fifty .

She had her own sense of hygiene but

managed to attract the few Farangs who hung around there.

The grime didn't put them off, and some even came back for more, returning very often to eat

at any time of the day or evening.

Mama stood out with her long black locks and wore only beach dresses.

Reggae music played in the background most of the time. At my hotel, I got to know all sorts of people from different backgrounds. Men,

women, losers, winners who, for the most part, no longer wanted to be ‘winners’, prostitutes,

Katoeys, Japanese gangsters, blacks, whites, the whole world was here and in the surrounding area.

Bangkok was at my table, and I watched this world

spin before me as if in a ‘Kaizenzushi’.

Bangkok at my table 2021 Samia Farah

EXCERPT 2

The Farangs

Antoine Foutrac, Alfred Mackormack and the others.

My neighbour on the same floor at the Hanafuda Hotel was a Frenchman whom I tried to avoid at all costs.

He would come home at all hours of the day and night, often with a girl on his arm. Sometimes I wondered where he found these girls with bow legs and flat arses.

Almost all of the Farangs seemed pathetic to me. I don't know why Thailand attracted all these lost, filthy, drug-addicted, desperate, horny men from all over the world. Like flies, they stuck around.

To top it all off, he only seemed to be attracted to Thai prostitutes under the age of 25.

My neighbour on the same floor and in the same room was called Antoine Foutrac. As soon as he found out I was French, he talked to me and looked at me as if we had known each other for ages. This promiscuity and closeness only served to infuriate me, as I have always hated inappropriate familiarity.

The only thing that kept him from spreading himself around like jam was that he had trouble figuring out where I was from.

The French here like to know this kind of thing, to pigeonhole you into a category they have created in order to feed their subconscious and stimulate their good conscience.

They feel small or big depending on the person they have in front of them. Weak with the strong and strong with the weak.

That's how they positioned themselves in my eyes.

They imagined themselves to be important figures, invented themselves as great Kakou, all because they had met some ‘prostitute’ who made them believe they were exceptional beings. It was her job to make Mr. Everyman believe he was a big shot,

‘Spend the money,’ thought the hustler, that was all she cared about.

The worst thing in my eyes was that they believed the lies that were thrown at their rotten egos, shaved down to nothing, not to say festering losers with delusions of grandeur.

They were fools...

I often ran into them on the streets of Bangkok, in those bars with faded neon lights where all the world's paupers had gathered. They spouted almost word for word the same stories. They had the same experiences and firmly believed that they were the only heroes in a new commercial series. But the film had been playing in prime time for a long time under our disillusioned gaze. Only the actors changed, but the story was always the same, repetitive, as fascinating as a supermarket at 8 p.m. in a sleepy, out-of-stock suburb.

They wanted me to stupidly swallow their lies.

It was as if trainloads of Chinese people were rushing to Strasbourg Saint-Denis in Paris, France, and falling in love with Parisian prostitutes.

Declaring that all French women were whores, but let's love them all, eh?

It sounds absurd, but the comparison is valid. Thai men themselves did not understand the dystopian attitude of most Farangs.

The dream of Thai men was not to marry a prostitute, but rather the opposite, I can assure you...

Antoine wanted to ease his pain that evening; he had a pressing need to confide, to get things off his chest, as they say. He imposed his presence while I was having a one-on-one with Mr Irezumi. It wasn't that he and I had a lot to say to each other, but we liked to look at each other, eat and drink without even exchanging a single word, like two old lone wolves.

Excerpt 3

I learned that Mr. Antoine had been coming back and forth for four years to live what he called ‘a love story’ with an ex-future girlfriend. He had fallen in love with a Thai prostitute whom he wanted to change and set on the right path.

‘What a joke, isn't it?’

He told me about his fantasised past as a ‘human rights activist’.

‘But how can I help her?’ he said, putting on his Jesus Christ Superstar face.

The Chinese had chosen a name for guys like Antoine: ‘Baizuo’. A rather sarcastic and pejorative neologism invented in the 1990s to describe pseudo “educated” left-wing white people, i.e. naive or hypocritical Westerners, full of love for their ‘neighbours’, in Thailand I would even say more... for their ‘neighbours’, who campaign for ‘equality’ in order to satisfy and cloak themselves in a sense of moral superiority.

They are only interested in topics such as LGBT rights and the environment, and are above all boringly obsessed with political correctness.

The Chinese found them arrogant and ignorant, and I have to say, so did I. They were the lice of good intentions.

‘I've done everything for her,’ he told me tearfully. "I've tried everything, but every time she goes back to that terrible condition.

At first glance, he didn't know what “karma” meant...

“I even gave her money to stop, but nothing works. She goes back every time.

She must like it...”, I thought to myself!

These ‘Gwers’ never bought you a coffee or a beer, counted their pennies, but wanted to save the world.

The Thais, for their part, had a strange relationship with money, but they were no less generous.

I listened to him, stunned by so much nonsense, but my heart remained cold.

In my head, jazz tunes were playing from I don't know where, while his mouth was forming o's, i's and z's. At that precise moment, John Coltrane started playing ‘My Favourite Things’. Who knows why that particular tune.

My mind went into pause mode, or shut down, as soon as I heard the lamentations of the appalling Farang.

Texte from her first novel

Bangkok at my table.2021