IS IT A form of suicide or an act of war? The idea of accepting death in order to kill the greatest number of the enemy. People here have lost sight of that simple but efficient method. The body as a weapon of war. That distance from death is impressive. Guys who announce their death and don’t hide from it. Meanwhile, in the West, we’re always looking for a back alley to escape into. We’re ready to throw ourselves at death’s feet just to be spared. The idea of a last chance is written into our Western genes, and it drives Hollywood screenwriters to unlikely acrobatics in order to get James Bond out of every unbelievable impasse. We’re sure that James Bond will never die, and that’s what gives him such importance in our inner landscape. Over there, heroes are the ones who lust after death. The will to die. I discovered that wonderment around the age of twelve as every night I devoured stories of the Second World War. The kamikazes never tried to leap from the plane at the last minute, like James Bond and his kind. It was the first time I’d learned that death could be that way. Except in voodoo. But in voodoo, death often has a sexual aspect. But here was heroic death. Pure death. The modern being is the one who is killed. Who wants to take his place? That’s been the problem lately between East and West. The conflict between two visions of death. One wants to get as close to death as possible, yet without dying. The other blindly follows the straight line that leads right to the explosion. But he doesn’t intend to go up in flames alone. His death will be used to create more death. The surprise effect is strong. Boom! The shattered body. Ecce homo. The dead body in the West was sacred even before Mary, with exemplary gentleness, received the body of her beloved son. The body is reclaimed, embalmed and perfumed, then placed in a box and buried in the ground. Every precaution is taken to forestall its decomposition. The cemetery too is protected. Inflicting indignities upon a body is on a par with incest: a major taboo. The dead body occupies a quarter of our minds. And death itself fills up the rest. There is so little space left for life. The shattered body, unrecognizable. No further chance for farewells. Everything happens at the moment of the explosion. When we die of a heart attack, the heart carries off the rest of the body with its death. In an explosion, everything goes at once. The entire body dies at the moment of death. But with the stupefying progress of medical science, the brain can die while certain parts of the body remain in perfect shape. If it weren’t for that little short in the brain, some corpses would walk to the cemetery under their own power.