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najat el hachmi
surface next to the sink.
The fridge just beyond that,
also yellowed by time. That
is the colour of the kitchen,
the colour of the house, the
colour of my life here, a bland,
soulless yellow, not a single
delicate shade, a dull yellow.
I stared at everything and
felt a bit like Evelyn in
The
Dubliners
, except that nobody
is mistreating me. I put the
heavy Italian metal coffeepot
down, the item Mumna
bought one day in the market
when it was on special offer
and gave to mother knowing
she needed one so badly. For
a few seconds I told myself
I’m not abandoning her as
much as I think I am, that,
although there’s only me and
her, she in fact knows a lot
of people who appreciate her
and will sympathise with her
as they have done before. I
started to heat the milk when I
heard mother performing her
ablutions in the bathroom. I
imagined her wiping water on
her arms, up to her elbows,
repeating gestures she’d
rehearsed so often from
childhood that they no longer
seemed like a skill she’d
honed but something innate,
that belonged to her, that was
embedded in her character.
When the milk began to rise
I removed it from the burner
and replaced it with the small
metal jug of water for the
bread. I let it cool slightly as
I poured the usual flour into
the bowl, at a glance, making
a heap and starting to control
the amount like mother does,
or almost. Of course, I will
never bake bread like hers,
but she has stopped moaning
so much about my lack of
knowhow. I make a hole in
the middle of the mound of
flour and throw in salt and the