The trip of cedar trees to Armenians' island in Venice lagoon is an internal journey, inside unknown interior places, going in exile. These three little cedars -and one of them a double plant like twins- traveled during winter in a bag from Lebanon, my country, to Italy (from Beirut to Budapest and finally to Venice) by plane: they are 2000 years-old symbols of eternity, challengers against times. Phoenicians used to build ships with these trees; they lived in a country with the sea in front and the mountains behind. They ventured out to difficulties of the sea: touching between trees and sea is a poetic state of mind. The roots of cedars had dreamt for ages to touch water, and they did it, living in Khadisha sacred valley, in the North of Lebanon, where run Khadisha river, in the mountains, where you can breathe the purity of snow and see always the sun rising from East.
And now, during winter, on 5th January, the cedars are dreaming again to emigrate with me: why not flying with the plane like a normal person?
The world welcomed you, with arms open wide, it saw your first smile, your first look to the sky which threw you into the world like a seed, like a bunch of incense.
I remember my first poetic work, where the terrestrial body of a bird, before abandoning this world, would have taken in a suitcase all the nature it had loved during life: his trees, his flowers,...
So the cedars arrived in Venice, they stayed in the hall of residence, hidden behind a column, foreign in this obsessed city speeding toward contemporaneity, with the extreme desire to see behind the mountains and with the passion to meet again something on the island.

Finally, for the first time three little cedars meet the sea. I call back them to recreate a small country wherever I will go, with joyful shouts, with my heart skipping a beat on sunrise. I plant them in a foreign country, where the sun don't shout and the snow don't sing anymore. A hug to the sky, an exile, for who fall in love with pureness and for who is orphan.

How long have cedars had wings to fly? They take inside roots the blood of pure rivers and now, where they are living, they find salt in the sea water, in an age-old island rich of history: lazaret, persecutions, monastery,...

The day when I planted them was foggy, in a mystic atmosphere: the island was a surface over an anonymous sea full of mystery that will give to these frail trees the power to grow, near an olive tree coming from Jerusalem, in front of Armenian monastery, admiring thousands of sunsets.
Tomorrow they will begin to dream for ages...

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