Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

the foreign daughter

so. Tonight was like that, on occasion, very occasionally. At times they seemed eternal, unbearable, and suffocatingly claustrophobic; more than once I almost got up and fled on the spot. I can’t stand anymore, I told myself, blindly touching the Formica bedside table. A cold, gleaming antiquated Formica, engrained as if it were wood from a real tree. Where have you ever seen a grey tree? I’ve always thought it was a pretentious little table with those rusty legs. Formica that’s not engrained, that’s all smooth and synthetic, seems more real and worthier. These thoughts struck me early this morning as I put my fingers on the cold surface and curbed the impulse to run away immediately. Behind the wall separating me from her, my mother was breathing deeply

and loudly, and it soothed me to think she was asleep, that the turmoil she’d suffer in the course of the day would be less painful if she’d been able to rest. Perhaps this will be the one last night before many when she will no longer sleep, and will no longer live the way she has lived till now. When the alarm went off I did what I always do. I washed my face and put the coffeepot on to boil. I glanced round the kitchen and realised that in the future it would be heartening to remember every detail, that after a time I will start wondering: what were the cupboard doors like?; what material were the handles?; what was the colour of the floor-tiles? I scrutinised everything so as to remember that long, narrow kitchen forever. Its yellow furniture, the cheap, tacky compound

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