The story of Antigone

Antigone used to take her blind father for a walk in the dilapidated park a few hundred meters from his building. They both lived in the area of Colone on the outskirts of Athens. The park of the theater, like the whole city, had been left abandoned after the gigantic fire that had engulfed almost the entire northern part of the city from hell a few summers before. Her father was a survivor, rising from the flames, his eyes bleeding, howling with sadness as he discovered that he too was responsible for what was happening, that we were all responsible, that we all knew that misfortune was going to befall our people through our fault and that we did nothing.

Antigone, an upright, stubborn young woman with a strong character, did odd jobs to survive. She and her brother shared their income with their father to support him. Antigone loved her father. She loved him, she said, "in spite of everything". She had the fortitude to forgive the unforgivable, for love. Not a narrow love, of blood, of family, but a universal love, for what lives, what has been given without return. Love is gravity. Love is difficult.

Sitting on a bench in the park, father and daughter enjoyed the deadly silence of the place. No passers-by, no children playing, no birds, no squirrels, no wind. The air was dull and heavy. It seemed like nightfall, the end of the world, yet it was almost noon. Her father nodded his head, as if he was lost inside himself. Antigone's gaze was lost in the distance, beyond the dead trees, beyond the garbage that littered the road, beyond the ruins of the abandoned theater, beyond the ceiling of grey clouds that had covered the city since the fire.

Suddenly she straightened up. She looked further, and further. A voice inside her tells her : don't look beyond ! But she persists, her face lights up, she touches her father's thigh, reaches out and points to a horizon only she can see, and says to her father, with the deep conviction that he will be able to do so, "See, daddy ! Look ! Look at this !"

<- Previous Story                                      -                                      Next Story ->