Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

the foreign daughter

me, I always ignore them. My reputation is spotless. My reputation is my mother’s. I imagined one of these frizzy- haired, moustachioed men seeingmewaiting for the train, and how that would reach my mother’s ears. However, by that time it won’t matter, by that time I’ll be faraway where I couldn’t care less about the nasty gossip or high repute I might enjoy with Moroccans. Or whoever. By that time I’ll be somebody else and in a place where I mean nothing to anyone. And I will be happy.

I don’t need to re-read The Fear of Freedom , I don’t need to analyse my behaviour. I boarded the train in determined fashion, albeit trembling, and sat down forcefully on the filthy seat. I coped with the stale stink of the unaired carriage for the lengthy trip and imagined I was Laura leaving the enclosed city 1 and kept telling myself that was that, the Plain of Vic was behindme now. If the train had moved more speedily, if it hadn’t slowed down on the bridge and I hadn’t seenmyself plunging into the depths of the wooded valley perhaps I wouldn’t have turned back. Laura is the protagonist of the classic Catalan novel from 1931, Laura in the City of the Saints , by Miquel Llort. She leaves Barcelona to marry a rich farmer and live in Comarquinal, a city based on Vic. Laura is unhappy in the stifling Catholic, rural atmosphere and eventually leaves her husband and the city. 1

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