By/ Chadia Gedeon

Thirty-year old Darius is dead. He died in his room behind his computer, editing his last film. He was found three days after he died. His mother called to let me know that he had passed away. As she passed on the details she also said, ‘Your name was among the few names in his telephone list.’

Darius was suddenly gone.  He had photographed my first films. He was a gentle person, and I believe it was this gentle nature that cut his life short, he has never found another gentle soul to share his life with. He died alone. The light in his bedroom shone day and night for three days – the only indication that something was amiss. The last sight of him was when he knocked on his Irish neighbour’s door to ask for sleeping pills, he was suffering from insomnia. They say, that perhaps the sleeping tablets caused a cardiac arrest.

His neighbour said that he was suffering from grief and depression following the death of his grandmother whom he loved dearly. Darius has left, but his light remained in my memory. Lonely and somewhat of a hermit, I had given him a bicycle to make it easier for him to move around – he lived in a remote rural suburb. Very little changed after Darius’s passing. His death was not disregarded, but life was business as usual. His neighbour continued to be an alcoholic. His neighbours continued their Saturday shopping, continued their arguing as to whose turn it was to cut the lawns, whose turn it was to move out the garbage bins, and bickered about the television being too loud.

Gentle and shy, he found it difficult to socialise with others. People often saw him as a timid and generally odd person, or somebody who preferred to avoid those he didn’t know well. But I know he had the transparency to see through hypocrisy and social glitter. He preferred to detach himself from a noisy society which chased materialistic gains at the expense of honesty and human ethics. Poor Darius, a friend and a colleague.

His main concern was to be an average person, free of hollow people whom he described as ‘Cardboard boxes ready for dispatch’ . His deep voice and his sarcastic laugh still brings to mind memories of warm and genuine moments of laughter and between us. He was not a wealthy person nor successful person by societies standards. But he was a contented. He would enjoy a cup of coffee with utmost pleasure and when he put on a shirt and a pair of trousers, he always looked handsome and smart.

When he wanted to come out of his solitude, the camera was his refuge for weeks and months. During his last period with us he was busy producing his dream movie about the tragic war and the sufferings of the innocent and average people. He spoke of these people, strangers to him, with sincere feelings of sorrow.

This was Darius.  His absence did not change anything. He was a simple man of luminous nature, and so was his funeral.