“I am a bird that follows neither the seasons nor the direction of the wind. I have many things to do and many places to go. Though life is made up of more than books, writing, and a career, writing is my profession, and it is also my fate.”
—Oriana Fallaci
Yesterday, I logged into “My Library.” The moment I clicked “Log in,” the page that appeared gave me a shock: three of my borrowed books were overdue. Two were by Fallaci, A Man and Letter to a Child Never Born. My reading has been all over the place lately, switching between books halfway through, so I still haven’t finished A Man, and I’ve kept putting off returning the other two as well.
I first saw Fallaci’s name in Chai Jing’s book, Seeing. She was my idol’s idol. The second time was in Li Zichi’s War Correspondents: They Make War More Real, a book whose cover caught my eye as I wandered between the shelves at Beishuyuan, which I had stumbled into before my first year of college.
Only later did I gradually learn more about this woman. She was a well-known journalist, war correspondent, and writer. As others have said, she was a legendary figure. In her career as a journalist, she interviewed many internationally known politicians and public figures and wrote countless pieces. She never married and had no children (her only child died in the womb). Though a woman, she rarely focused on women’s own issues, yet her thinking was broader and more far-reaching than men’s, certainly no less than theirs…
There is a line in War Correspondents: They Make War More Real: in the cultural history of the twentieth century, three great women will surely be remembered—Beauvoir in philosophy, Plath in poetry, and Fallaci in journalism.
Being a journalist
Stands for honor;
Means truth;
And needs to be loved.
Compared with the title “the world’s number-one female journalist,” I think Fallaci would rather be remembered—not for herself, but for the words and images she produced, and the thoughts and ideas she conveyed as a person.
Letter to a Child Never Born has as its theme “an unprecedented, tender love affair between an unmarried mother and the child in her womb.”
When Fallaci struggled with why this unborn child should take away some of her rights as a free person, and when she tried to think from the child’s point of view about why a mother would bring a child into this world, I found that we seemed to be on the same side. On the one hand, we want to be free of ties; on the other, we want our wishes fulfilled. But with all the things in the world, how could everything go as we wish?
Reading your words is like seeing your face.
We miss the letter-writing traditions that have quietly slipped away.
We linger over the time held in those little sheets of paper and the hearts they carry.
The unborn child could never receive the letters Fallaci wrote. Instead, they reached us, from different parts of the world, different eras, and different ages, even though we have no connection to that child. I should thank her: she gave me new thoughts about giving life and abandoning life. What those thoughts are, I’ll keep to myself for now. At the same time, she gave me another urge: to be brave and write letters. Write to anyone, as long as you want to. It doesn’t matter if you never send them. Keep them safe and leaf through them when you have time someday. Think of it as saving up a few tears to wash your clouded eyes.
One picture to end this piece~
