Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

najat el hachmi

the concierge’s shutter, a hand and an arm inside a reddish sleeve that supplied us with the thin pastry full of the holes left by the hosts. At first I never wondered why that woman didn’t leave her hiding-place, or what lay behind those doors that were so firmly shut. However, at some point, perhaps in a religious class or from a comment someone made, I learned of the existence of this kind of nunnery. Women who lived inside a building that they never left, or almost never. It still intrigues me, for a long time I’ve been unable to walk past the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament without feeling the need to step inside and ask them a thousand questions about the kind of life they lead. I never have. Just like this very minute when I come to a halt on the

uneven flagstones and stare at the small, simple notice with its typed message: concierge here from… Silently I also bid those cloistered strangers farewell. I thought for a moment about the Order, what I’d read on the subject when I discovered them, and about their founder, and these reminiscences helped me to stop thinking about my mother. And what if she left home early and finds me at a standstill here, and asks me to show her my bag and discovers that, although it is the one I always take to school, today I’m not carrying books but clothes to last good long time, my toothbrush, passpor t and residence permit, and the hard-backed notebook where I jot down whatever comes to mind? In my short-lived fantasy, mother also rummaged in

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