Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

tahar ben jalloun

they say. This isn’t the first time that I’ve been put under. I fear waking up with that unquenchable thirst that accompanies anesthesia. A few hours later, I wake up calmly. I drink a few drops of water. My lips are hard and dry. My tongue is heavy, but overall, I feel fine. I just want to sleep. When they bring me back to the room, I discover that I am connected to a bunch of tubes: a catheter is pushed into my penis and I have two drains, one on each side of the 7– to 8-centimeter-long scar located in the middle of my pubis. An IV is in the fold of my elbow; another tube supplies oxygen to my nose. It’s tough to move. As soon as I move, I pull all of the tubes and hoses. They put a button in my hand that I can push if I want a dose of morphine. I

am well taken care of. Nurses and nurse’s assistants check on me. Two of them wash me without moving me from my bed and without the slightest fake humility. I am simply a body. I feel comfortable in the care of their tender hands. I desire to kiss them, to give them a gift, to thank them. How do these women do their job for such bad pay? At night, the nurses on duty stop by and wake me up to give me my medicine every three hours. In the morning, their replacements come to see if I slept well or if I am feeling better… It isn’t until the next day that I felt something was missing. They speak generally about “ablation” as something that escapes, an exterior limb. The prostate is interior. I imagine Professor J.F.’s hands detaching it, then removing

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