WEBVTT

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It was April 8, 2003.

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I was in Baghdad,
covering the war in Iraq.

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That day, Americans tanks
started arriving in Baghdad.

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We were just a few journalists
in the Palestine Hotel,

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and, as happens in war,

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the fighting began to approach
outside our windows.

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Baghdad was covered
in black smoke and oil.

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It smelled awful.

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We couldn't see a thing,
but we knew what was happening.

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Of course, I was supposed
to be writing an article,

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but that's how it always goes --

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you're supposed to be writing
and something big happens.

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So I was in my room on the 16th floor,

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writing and looking out the window
every now and then

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to see what was happening.

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Suddenly, there was a huge explosion.

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During the previous three weeks,

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there had been shelling
with half-ton missiles,

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but this time, the shock --

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I felt it inside of me,

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and I thought, "It's very close.

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It's very, very close."

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So I went down to see what was happening.

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I went down to the 15th floor

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to take a look.

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And I saw people, journalists,
screaming in the hallways.

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I walked into a room

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and realized that it had
been hit by a missile.

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Someone had been wounded.

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There was a man near the window,

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a cameraman named Taras Protsyuk,

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lying face-down.

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Having worked in a hospital before,
I wanted to help out.

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So I turned him over.

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And when I turned him over,

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I noticed that he was open
from sternum to pubis,

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but I couldn't see anything,
nothing at all.

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All I saw was a white, pearly,
shiny spot that blinded me,

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and I didn't understand what was going on.

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Once the spot disappeared
and I could see his wound,

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which was very serious,

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my buddies and I put a sheet
underneath him,

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and we carried him onto an elevator
that stopped at each of the 15 floors.

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We put him in a car
that took him to the hospital.

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He died on the way to the hospital.

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The Spanish cameraman José Couso,
who was on the 14th floor and also hit --

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because the shell had exploded
between the two floors --

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died on the operating table.

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As soon as the car left, I went back.

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There was that article
I was supposed to write --

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which I had to write.

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And so --

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I returned to the hotel lobby
with my arms covered in blood,

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when one of the hotel gofers stopped me

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and asked me to pay the tax
I hadn't paid for 10 days.

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I told him to get lost.

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And I said to myself:
"Clear your head, put it all aside.

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If you want to write,
you need to put it all aside."

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And that's what I did.

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I went upstairs, wrote
my article and sent it off.

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Later, aside from the feeling
of having lost my colleagues,

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something else was bothering me.

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I kept seeing that shiny, pearly spot,

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and I couldn't understand what it meant.

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And then, the war was over.

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Later, I thought: "That's not possible.
I can't just not know what happened."

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Because it wasn't the first time,
and it didn't only happen to me.

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I have seen things like that
happen to others

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in my 20 to 35 years of reporting.

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I have seen things
that had an effect on me too.

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For example, there was this man
I knew in Lebanon,

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a 25-year-old veteran
who had been fighting for five years --

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a real veteran -- who we would
follow everywhere.

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He would crawl in the dark
with confidence --

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he was a great soldier, a true soldier --

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so we would follow him,
knowing that we would be safe with him.

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And one day, as I was told --

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and I've seen him again since --

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he was back in the camp, playing cards,

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when someone came in next door,

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and discharged their weapon.

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As the gun went off,

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that blast, that one shot,
made him duck quickly under the table,

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like a child.

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He was shaking, panicking.

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And since then, he has never
been able to get up and fight.

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He ended up working as a croupier

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in a Beirut casino
where I later found him,

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because he couldn't sleep,
so it was quite a suitable job.

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So I thought to myself,

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"What is this thing that can kill you

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without leaving
any visible scars?

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How does that happen?

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What is this unknown thing?

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It was too common to be coincidental.

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So I started to investigate --

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that's all I know how to do.

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I started to investigate

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by looking through books,

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reaching out to psychiatrists,

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going to museums, libraries, etc.

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Finally, I discovered
that some people knew about this --

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often military psychiatrists --

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and that what we were dealing with
was called trauma.

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Americans call it PTSD
or traumatic neurosis.

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It was something

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that existed,

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but that we never spoke about.

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So, this trauma --

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what is it?

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Well, it's an encounter with death.

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I don't know if you've ever had
an experience with death --

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I'm not talking about dead bodies,

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or someone's grandfather
lying in a hospital bed,

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or someone who got hit by a car.

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I'm talking about facing
the void of death.

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And that is something
no one is supposed to see.

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People used to say,

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"Neither the sun, nor death
can be looked at with a steady eye."

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A human being should not
have to face the void of death.

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But when that happens,

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it can remain invisible for a while --

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days, weeks, months, sometimes years.

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And then, at some point,

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it explodes,

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because it's something
that has entered your brain --

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a sort of window between an image
and your mind --

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that has penetrated your brain,

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staying there and taking up
all the space inside.

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And there are people --
men, women,

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who suddenly no longer sleep.

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And they experience
horrible anxiety attacks --

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panic attacks, not just minor fears.

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They suddenly don't want to sleep,

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because when they do, they have
the same nightmare every night.

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They see the same image every night.

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What type of image?

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For example, a soldier
who enters a building

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and comes face to face
with another soldier aiming at him.

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He looks at the gun,
straight down the barrel.

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And this barrel suddenly
becomes enormous, deformed.

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It becomes fluffy, swallowing everything.

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And he says --

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later he will say, "I saw death.

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I saw myself dead, therefore I'm dead."

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And from then on, he knows he is dead.

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It is not a perception --
he is convinced that he is dead.

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In reality, someone came in,
the guy left or didn't shoot, whatever,

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and he didn't actually get shot --

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but to him, he died in that moment.

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Or it can be the smell
of a mass grave --

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I saw a lot of that in Rwanda.

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It can be the voice of a friend calling,

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and they're being slaughtered
and there's nothing you can do.

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You hear that voice,

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and you wake up every night --
for weeks, months --

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in a trance-like state,
anxious and terrified,

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like a child.

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I have seen men cry --

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just like children --

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from seeing the same image.

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So having that image
of horror in your brain,

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seeing the void of death --

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also called a "nanologo,"
an image that is hiding something --

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will completely take over.

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You cannot do anything, anything at all.

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You cannot work anymore,

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you cannot love anymore.

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You go home and don't recognize anyone.

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You don't even recognize yourself.

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You hide and don't leave the house,
you lock yourself in, you become ill.

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I know people who placed small cans
outside their house with coins inside,

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in case someone tried to get in.

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All of a sudden, you feel
like you want to die or kill

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or hide or run away.

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You want to be loved,
but you hate everyone.

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It's a feeling that seizes you entirely

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day in and day out,

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and you suffer tremendously.

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And no one understands.

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They say, "There's nothing wrong with you.
You seem fine, you have no injuries.

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You went to war, came back; you're fine."

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These people suffer tremendously.

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Some commit suicide.

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After all, suicide is like updating
your daily planner --

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I'm already dead,
I might as well commit suicide.

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Plus, there is no more pain.

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Some commit suicide,
others end up under the bridge, drinking.

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Everyone remembers
that grandfather or uncle or neighbor

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who used to drink, never said a word,

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always in a bad mood, beat his wife

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and who would end up either sinking
into alcoholism or dying.

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And why do we not talk about this?

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We don't talk about it because it's taboo.

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It's not like we don't have the words
to express the void of death.

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But others don't want hear it.

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The first time I returned
from an assignment,

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They said, "Oh! He's back."

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There was a fancy dinner --
white tablecloth, candles, guests.

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"Tell us everything!"

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Which I did.

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After 20 minutes, people
were giving me dirty looks,

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the hostess had her nose in the ashtray.

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It was horrible and I realized
I ruined the whole evening.

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So I don't talk about it anymore.

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We're just not ready to listen.

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People say outright: "Please, stop."

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Is that a rare occurrence?

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No, it's extremely common.

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One third of the soldiers
who died in Iraq --

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well, not "died," let me re-phrase that --

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one third of the US soldiers
who went to Iraq

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suffer from PTSD.

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In 1939, there were still 200,000 soldiers
from the First World War

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that were being treated
in British psychiatric hospitals.

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In Vietnam, 54,000 people died --

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Americans.

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In 1987, the US government
identified 102,000 --

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twice as many --

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102,000 veterans who died
from committing suicide.

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Twice as many deaths by suicide
than by combat in Vietnam.

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So you see, this relates to everything,

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not just modern warfare,
but also ancient wars --

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you can read about it,
the evidence is there.

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So why do we not talk about it?

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Why have we not talked about it?

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The problem is that
if you don't talk about it,

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you're heading for disaster.

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The only way to heal --

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and the good news here
is that this is treatable --

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think Munch's The Scream, Goya, etc. --

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it's indeed treatable.

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The only way to heal from this trauma,

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from this encounter with death
that overwhelms, petrifies and kills you

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is to find a way to express it.

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People used to say,

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"Language is the only thing
that holds all of us together."

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Without language, we're nothing.

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It's the thing that makes us human.

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In the face of such a horrible image --

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a wordless image of oblivion
that obsesses us --

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the only way to cope with it

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is to put human words to it.

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Because these people
feel excluded from humanity.

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No one wants to see them anymore
and they don't want to see anyone.

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They feel dirty, defiled, ashamed.

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Someone said, "Doctor,
I don't use the subway anymore

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because I'm afraid people
will see the horror in my eyes."

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Another guy thought he had
a terrible skin disease

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and spent six months with dermatologists,
going from doctor to doctor.

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And then one day, they sent him
to a psychiatrist.

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During his second session,
he told the psychiatrist

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he had a terrible skin disease
from head to toe.

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The psychiatrist asked,
"Why are you in this state?"

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And the man said, "Well, because
I'm dead, so I must be rotting away."

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So you see this is something
that has a profound effect on people.

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In order to heal,
we need to talk about it.

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The horror needs to be put into words --

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human words, so we can organize it
and talk about it again.

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We have to look death in the face.

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And if we can do that,
if we can talk about these things,

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then step by step,
by working it out verbally,

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we can reclaim our place in humanity.

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And it is important.

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Silence kills us.

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So what does this mean?

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It means that after a trauma,

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without question, we lose
our "unbearable lightness of being,"

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that sense of immortality
that keeps us here --

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meaning, if we're here, we almost feel
like we're immortal, which we're not,

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but if we didn't believe that,
we'd say, "What's the point of it all?"

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But trauma survivors have lost
that feeling of immortality.

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They've lost their lightness.

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But they have found something else.

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So this means that if we manage
to look death in the face,

00:14:09.546 --> 00:14:14.448
and actually confront it,
rather than keep quiet and hide,

00:14:14.472 --> 00:14:16.951
like some of the men or women I know did,

00:14:16.975 --> 00:14:23.629
such as Michael from Rwanda,
Carole from Iraq, Philippe from the Congo

00:14:23.653 --> 00:14:24.879
and other people I know,

00:14:24.903 --> 00:14:27.001
like Sorj Chalandon, now a great writer,

00:14:27.025 --> 00:14:29.316
who gave up field assignments
after a trauma.

00:14:29.340 --> 00:14:31.558
Five friends of mine committed suicide,

00:14:31.582 --> 00:14:34.158
they're the ones
who did not survive the trauma.

00:14:34.182 --> 00:14:39.728
So if we can look death in the face,

00:14:39.752 --> 00:14:42.530
if we, mortal humans, human mortals,

00:14:42.554 --> 00:14:45.395
understand that we are human
and mortal, mortal and human,

00:14:45.419 --> 00:14:51.666
if we can confront death
and identify it once again

00:14:51.690 --> 00:14:54.753
as the most mysterious place
of all mysterious places,

00:14:55.570 --> 00:14:58.126
since no one has ever seen it --

00:14:58.150 --> 00:15:00.813
if we can give it back this meaning,

00:15:00.837 --> 00:15:03.678
yes, we may die,

00:15:05.686 --> 00:15:07.281
survive

00:15:08.011 --> 00:15:09.438
and come back to life,

00:15:09.462 --> 00:15:12.555
but we'll come back stronger than before.

00:15:12.579 --> 00:15:13.889
Much stronger.

00:15:13.913 --> 00:15:15.067
Thank you.

00:15:15.091 --> 00:15:16.858
(Applause)