Trafika Europe 4 - Armenian Rhapsody

Once again, I’m living a regular life, going to work, coming back and reading a book. My mother has brought the clean curtains and hung them. I’ve picked green curtains this month. I have a pretty box. Inside, there are curtains selected and sewn based on my mood. Curtains are very important to me, in general. They are protective depending on their color, transparency, and the flowers or black and white spots on them. There are other things in my box as well – shawls, the socks from my childhood that my grandmother had knitted, my silver rings, and in the box there is a smaller box with a hookah. My cello is next to it. True, I never learned how to play it, but it’s beautiful, so I’ve put it in a corner and admire it. The thin feminine neck, the brown body of a Negress, its tight strings – it’s beautiful, in a word, and I like it, so I keep it. My mother sometimes roughly cleans the dust off it. I’ve left a spot for a lamp in the room. I’ve seen one and I will buy it – big and beautiful, with brown fringes. I gather the green curtains in my hands now and look – there is a blurry light in the woman’s place in the opposite building. I pull back the curtains, put my chair right up against the window and sit. Makurik purrs her way into my lap and curls up. I pat her as my fingers caress her thrumming body. She’s purring, I’m thinking. They say that thinking is essential to writing, but then I’m not really thinking, I’m observing my old lady. She’s coming and going slowly in her house. She has no curtains. Her windows are not that clean. The dirt has left a white film on

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