Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

najat el hachmi

Right there, on the bridge where no more than two trains can cross at once, my head went into one of those endless spirals that assail me from time to time. A single thought, repeating, repeating, repeating itself like a restless hammer, each repetition bringing an element that makes it ever more painful. These spirals are paralysing but rush me to the brink. The fact I can see them eddy and am perfectly aware how they work and observe them as if from the outside, doesn’t mean I am able to do anything to stop them. That makes them even more distressing. In this instance, while on the bridge I became obsessed by the stupid idea that in all my plans to leave home, my mother’s home, I’d made one huge, unforgivable mistake: I’d used the usual amount of yeast for the bread, I hadn’t

reduced it bearing in mind I would never be going back. When we are likely to be away from home for longer, we use less so the dough ferments more slowly, but that morning I’d acted routinely, as if I was returning at midday. My thoughts spiralled and I kept blaming myself for this slip, a silly slip that meant that when my mother got home she’d find the dough had spilt over the sides of the bowl. With each loop in my thoughts, a single idea thumped away: if I had to explain all the bread- baking process in this Catalan language in which I think, I wouldn’t be able to, I’d lack the words, because when I do that for my own benefit the description is packed with words from my mother’s language that nobody else can understand. Only a person like me, who’d had a mother like mine and learned this

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