Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

the foreign daughter

afternoon prayers, tidied the kitchen a bit and ordered me to finish the job, my mother would go to bed, stretching out on her side, knees bent, with one hand under the pillow supporting her head. She shut her eyes, and was off, was asleep, now breathing in peaceful, measured fashion. When the bell rang, I imagined her leaping up and making that first gesture, the most important of all, putting her hands to her head to see what had happened to her headscarf in the free-for- all she imagined sleep must have been. Quick and deft, I was certain she would rapidly undo the knot on the nape of her neck and place the piece of cloth back over her hair, leaving only a couple of inches exposed, a reminder of her body’s prized jewel. Before opening the door she

told me to put the water on to boil, and, stretched out on the mtarbath in the dining- room, deep into my reading of Ramona, adéu, 2 I poked out my feet to track down slippers that had the strange habit of pointing their toes in opposite directions all of their own accord when I was on those warm, foamy seats. I wasn’t worried about my headscarf - that was never a move I made. I arranged the large cushions tidily along the wall, with their velvety shapes and such Moroccan scenes that looked straight from a Chinese plate. I had filled the pan with water to boil and grabbed the mint and was now sorting it stem 2 Ramona, adéu, a novel by Montserrat Roig, from 1972, that portrays three generations in the life of a family living in Barcelona from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s, mainly from the perspective of the women.

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