Toulouse: “Exile as a legacy” by Marie-Louise Roubaud
With her book “Exile as a legacy”, Marie-Louise Roubaud, former journalist at La Dépêche du Midi, tells all about a daughter’s love for her mother.
On the cover photo of “L’exil en patrimoine”, it is indeed her, in the company of her mother. Marie-Louise Roubaud was then two years old and her mother, 26 years old. We are in 1939-1940. They are in Spain on the eve of a separation that will last 10 years. “We are going to get lost, no longer speak the same language and this photo seals our brief encounter across borders, and our solidarity in the face of a hostile world”, announces the author, in the first pages of her book.
Shortly after this photo, her mother will entrust her to her aunt, from the top of the train, at Cerbère station “where Franco’s bombs fell”. Marie-Louise Roubaud will then be raised by her aunt instead of her mother “from whom I was separated by the Pyrenees which seemed to me as mythical as the Chinese wall”. Price between two wars, that of Spain and that of France, the little girl completes herself as best she can, “between two mothers and three languages, French, Spanish and Catalan”. Marie-Louise Roubaud will find her mother, the being she admires the most in the world, the year of her 12 years. “To join me, she had crossed the Pyrenees on foot, at night with a smuggler, and, arriving in Perpignan, took the train to Toulouse”. It will be the happiest day of the girl’s life. “From the moment I saw her in the flesh, I knew it was worth living for.”
Journalist then columnist at the Dépêche du Midi, Marie-Louise Roubaud wrote this book “Like a poetic tomb for my mother, whose memory I believe should be perpetuated. I also wrote it as an exercise in consolation and remorse for being a pretty impossible girl”. This way of reclaiming her story is also a way for her to find out where she is going. “Right now, I feel like I’ve reclaimed my past without knowing what my present is. In fact, this does not solve anything, but allows us to see more clearly on the path taken”.
Through her personal story, Marie-Louise also evokes that of all these sons of Spanish emigrants who have taken root in Toulouse and who are in the same situation. “I cite my example because it is the one I know best. Through him, I would like to pay tribute to all those whom my friend Vida calls the miraculous mothers, ”she finds herself.