Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

the foreign daughter

concealing. Hey, look, this is what I have, what I am, what I’d like to be, what frightens me, what makes me happy, what makes me cry, what I long for, what I desire. It’s all in here, as you see it. And he, who wanted me, didn’t want me like that, so insufferably intense, and I sealed my skin back in place, as if nothing had happened. All I retain from that is a different image of my body: apart from the line scarred down the centre, I always saw myself now with a deep gash across the middle of my head. I sometimes touch it in case I find it soaked in thick blood. Obviously A. never knew anything about any of that, and the last time we met we said goodbye as we always did, after spending hours talking about the poetry of the troubadours. A. and I are experts on love, on the theoretical sort, of

course. That’s to say, I’m the theoretical one, he has his own life elsewhere, a happy, well organised life we never mention. When I wanted to hurt myself, I’d summon these thoughts. It wasn’t to feel self-pity, but to bring out the pain that served to punish me for everything I had done and not done. I would stand very still in front of the mirror and think about all that to justify my passivity in respect of everything happening around me, how I listened to what was being decided on my behalf and reacted as if they were talking about someone else. You’ll never be the courageous kind, I’d tell myself shut up like that in the bathroom, because he didn’t want you, and the mirror reflected the face of a starving stranger, with gaunt cheek-bones and darker lips.

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