Samar Seraqui de Buttafoco. Photo Sonia Sieff
“My mother’s murder, via a gunshot wound to the head, on September 11, 2004, in Lebanon, is an intimate pain,” starts Samar Seraqui de Buttafoco. Best known by the acronym Ulap – Une Libanaise à Paris (a Lebanese in Paris), the title of her blog, which she maintained over 13 years – Seraqui de Buttafoco has now written the story of her mother’s assassination in her debut book, Vivre sans bruit (Live Quietly). Her friends and her followers will be stupefied to read of her startling history – especially considering that the author herself has always maintained an exterior appearance that emanates joy and insouciance. Her curly locks bounce around her petite features. Her face, void of makeup, is always painted with an enthusiastic grin. Yet, it’s not a mask, as readers will learn through the book. Seraqui de Buttafoco observes life with wide-eyed curiosity, and then makes her own decisions.
The author shares that the seed to pen her story was planted on August 4 in 2020, when the Beirut port exploded. She was soon after contacted by a French publishing house to offer a text on Beirut. “I was flattered. My name would appear in print alongside people I considered to be great writers and personalities,” she recalls. She declined the offer. As the year went by, she came to the decision to put pen to paper but to write her own story, which, while it was irretrievably transformed in Beirut, is also connected with the Ivory Coast, where she was born and raised; and Paris, where she chooses to live today. The author expresses that she has “chosen” to live. And has organized her existence duly – eating, dancing, sleeping, crying, they are everyday joys that she strives to maintain.
Seraqui de Buttafoco savored the quietness of her writing process. “We are alone when we write. Literature doesn’t allow us to say the unspeakable. But with it, we can put each word in its rightful place,” she says. “Writing is a test. To be confronted by one’s own intimate voice demands discipline.”
Writer and literary critic Sarah Chiche writes that “the novel tells of our intimate wars with an incredible sense of grace. Poignant, funny, and profound.” Critic Madame Bovarysme likens the novel to a ticking bomb, “and when it explodes, we are turned on our heads […]” She continues that the book is intense in emotions, “a powerful game of duality, a mix of hard and delicate, innocence and fierce determination, which impregnates the length of the novel’s spirit.” Seraqui de Buttafoco’s pen brings readers on a geographical but also cultural journey weaving feminism, patriarchy, and religion.
The author says that when introducing her memory of her late mother to the reader, she was careful to not place her on a pedestal and position her as a heroine. “Her name is my mom,” she states, adding that she chose to write about her humanity. With the experience, the author also debated her own multicultural and faceted identity. “How do we build ourselves when we are buried by so many different – even contradictory – legacies and injunctions? I do not know. I will say that it has made me extremely attentive. These distances forced me to question myself.” She considers it a privileged position. “I often tell myself that I am French – philosophically speaking – in its founding value, freedom.” She says today she thinks beyond her Arabian heritage and the French nation that has welcomed her. “Understanding of the world is institutionalized. Belonging is of societal nature. My identity belongs elsewhere,” she says, elusively.
Despite living with the trauma of her mother’s abrupt death, the author has both feet rooted in the present. In her past life, Seraqui de Buttafoco critiqued fashion and interviewed the likes of Karl Lagerfeld on her blog, which has now transformed into her over-100k Instagram page, and counts followers like models Ines de la Fressange and Farida Khelfa, CNN reporter Arwa Damon, and Vogue France head of editorial content Eugénie Trochu. The author worked for French television, producing shows on ecology and the environment, and later contributing as a commentator to a literary show.
She has since launched a printed T-shirt and sweatshirt brand “Das Mot,” which features words like “Immigrant,” “Habibi,” and “Mauvaise fille”; and most recently, a plant-based haircare brand “Philia.” She remains stoic of others’ judgments. “Everyone has an opinion on everything, and everyone feels obliged to express it,” she smiles. “I learned to think on my own, independent of others. I will not be one who has an opinion on others. In this noisy world, I’ve learned to keep my mouth closed and to live quietly.” She shares that the experience of writing has allowed her to make one with what she considers the essentials. “Everything in life passes. The writing remains. In literature, it is the writer – not reality – that has the last word. I articulate and decide the story’s end.” ☐
Excerpts republished with permissions from Vivre sans bruit, by Samar Seraqui de Buttafoco, Charleston
Originally published in the September 2022 issue of Vogue Arabia
