Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

najat el hachmi

I combed my hair that was smooth, at last.Under control, at last. Anyone who’d met me then would never have known I used to have volumes of thick curly hair that framed my face like a bonfire. Not now, not anymore, after the chemical treatment s , sof tener s , creams, driers and irons; now I had straight hair that wasn’t unruly at all. Pleasant and placid. Just like mother always dreamed I would have and like I thought I’d dreamed of them too, our shared ideal, our common struggle against a frizzy inheritance. I turned away from the mirror and sat back on the toilet. I picked up the book, Thus Spake Zarathustra. I laughed at myself, spiritedly, look at what you’re reading, I said. Your situation is headline stuff: Moroccan (?) girl reads Nietzsche shut in the lavatory and does nothing to decide

her own path in life. I put down the book that always seems the work of a lunatic, an individual ’s pathological raving rather than any plausible way to understand human nature, and I review the line down the middle of my body yet again. As I always touch it on my chin and follow it down, I almost always end up triggering an orgasm. The idea is tempting, if it weren’t for the guests in our living-room. We heard the doorbell ring just before five o’clock and my mother leapt out of bed like an out-of-place spring. Her siesta is sacred. Whatever happens, in good times and foul, whether it’s hot or cold, whether we’re having all the luck in the world or feeling under siege. Happy or sad, exhausted or energetic, after lunch, once she’s washed for

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