Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Leta SemaDeni

companions’ rough tongues. The wind runs riot through the fresh snow, the world looks transformed. Everything inside is different, too.

In the morning, when the child woke with reddened eyes to the smell of snow, Grandmother made a motion with her right hand as if she could command each and every danger and said: When you’re no longer afraid of loneliness, then you’re truly free. The child spends all day trying to understand the word ‘loneliness’. Grandmother says that loneliness has something to do with the fist that constantly strikes the child in the stomach and sometimes keeps her up at night. While the child hovers in the doorway to the living room, waiting with the bag of groceries in her hand until Grandmother returns to her face and speaks, a jackdaw lands on the window ledge and starts pecking at the sill. Grandmother raps with her knuckles and the jackdaw flies away. Grandmother turns to the child and is completely Grandmother again. Funny how cows moo, she says, the mooing comes out

86