Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

the foreign daughter

of one language into another, I will never succeed, there will always be differences. Though translation is a pleasant diversion, and at least a palpable way to attempt to bring our realities closer together, and one I’ve found useful ever since we came here. Of course, I was thinking about that to avoid thinking about her, my mother, or staring at her for one last time and revealing what my intentions were, in case she saw I was saying goodbye. I’m surprised she doesn’t have an inkling about my plans, because she’s a woman who knows everything, who dreams about who will be sick and who will die, and the sex of the babes who are yet to be born. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye as I put the sugar in my coffee. She’d not

said her prayers yet, her face is wet and her head bare. I tried to remember her tiny curls that still linger on even though she’d tamed her hair with her narrow, tortoiseshell comb and the usual olive oil. The parting down the middle of her head allows her hair to display her broad, regal forehead. The forehead of a woman from the Rif, the face of a true Tamazight from head to toe, a fine lady if ever there was one. Always admirable and admired, inside and out. Her integrity is known to every woman in the city, to every Moroccan woman, that is. The others couldn’t care less about a headscarf-wearing immigrant. A reputation that crosses continents, renown that crosses continents when one of those gossipers mentions her to their family in a Sunday phone-call. I’m

129