Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

tahar ben jalloun

My friend, Professor J.F., called me every evening. He asked me regularly to eat at his place or to go see a play together. I knew he was worried, especially about my depression. One evening, he himself felt depressed. He wasn’t happy with his wife. He frequently told me about his desire to leave her. She treated him badly in public and yelled at him for the littlest things. He would box it up and lower his head. He confessed to me that he had had one of his patient ’s suicide pressing on his conscience. It was his wife’s cousin. After undergoing the same operation as me, he was unable to push through the dark moments that happen during recovery. He threw himself into the Seine. While telling me this, Professor J.F. was still emotional. He did not

understand why he was still feeling guilty, a real weight on his shoulders, he told me. To calm him down a bit, I told him I had never thought about suicide because I was persuaded that my potency would come back. It was just a matter of time and some patience. The opposite to what I was actually thinking in that moment. I would regularly pass my evenings seated in front of the mirror so I could interrogate myself about my current state of mind. Out of nowhere, it was all done. Never again would I be able to, as some people informally say, intimately know a woman. Ah, the scream of a woman in pleasure who begs for more! Some women shout, others unleash themselves, others cling with all of their might

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