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80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
Your scent opens channels of memory, it invades me without warning, like armies of ants stinging me fiercely, chaotically: on my eyes, my skin, in my pores, my blood, even my ears, as they pick up the vibrations of your voice drawing closer. I’m flooded with memories: I feel the warmth of your embrace; the warmth of the bed where as a child I slept beside you instead of Mother; you coming home from your errands, me sticking to you like glue. Mother tried to separate me from you, but I didn’t listen. ‘He’s going on a trip tomorrow,’ she’d tell me, and I’d say: ‘But he’ll come back.’
He mispronounced my name for the first few days, calling me ‘Raina’ instead of ‘Rania,’ half-swallowing the ‘R’, while I called him ‘Kidane’.
Back home, Kidane is a woman’s name, he told me, ‘Call me Kidana.’
‘For us, Kidana is a woman’s name,’ I told him, ‘because it ends in an “a”.’