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When in late 1991 I received a chain letter calling for nuclear disarmament in the world...

When in late 1991 I received a chain letter calling for nuclear disarmament in the world, my pen friend Mimouni Benaouda in Algeria was the first to my mind as the next link in the chain. I had not written to Ben for two years and, surprisingly, neither had he written. Surprising, because in the four years of our pen-friendship till 1989, his letters had arrived with unwavering regularity.

A few days later, I found a letter from Algeria waiting for me. But the handwriting was unfamiliar. With a sense of foreboding, I opened the letter. It was in French. Two years before this, while I was still corresponding with Ben, I would have had no trouble in understanding the letter, as his English and my French had improved considerably in the seven years of our communication. That day in December 1991, however, I could understand nothing. Or maybe I just did not want to believe.

Next day, I took the letter to one of my French-speaking colleagues for translation. The letter was from Ben’s sister Kheira and it conveyed to me the news of Ben’s death. Kheira was surprised I had never replied to her letter, written in November 1989, telling me about Ben’s murder. But yes, she would continue the chain of letters for nuclear disarmament, not only because the thought had always been so close to her brother’s heart, but because she believed in it herself.

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It was in 1985 while I was studying French at the Alliance Francaise that I had come across an unusual advertisement in a French magazine. “Can I hope to find one person in this world so full of hatred and violence who believes in peace and friendship? I am looking for a sincere friend.”

I had responded immediately that there were still many peace-loving people in this violence-infested world. Ben’s reply came promptly. All his letters began with a small prayer in Arabic to Allah. The rest was in French and some broken English. Carefully pressed between the sheets, invariably, was a pressed flower.

My chain of thoughts was rocked by a sudden guffaw from the adjoining room occupied by my insensitive translator friend. The same way, I thought cynically, as our paper chain for nuclear disarmament would be broken by the next explosion. Then I cursed myself for getting unreasonably annoyed by someone’s happiness.

And as for the poetic severing of nuclear disarmament chains, what is the strength of paper chains in a world of constantly exploding bombs, dying people and power-hungry minds anyway?

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