I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

Talking is existing.

‘You have so little idea what it meant to have a destiny that you can’t understand what it means to be deprived as we are.

If you do something that is forbidden, it is the action that is the target. If you do something that isn’t forbidden, and they intervene, then it’s not the activity that’s attracting attention, it’s you yourself.’

‘Something that everybody does becomes meaningless. It’s just a habit, a custom, nobody knows when it started, they just repeat it mechanically.

in our absurd existence, I’ve invented something unexpected.’

Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness.

must be lacking in certain experiences that make a person fully human.

Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence.

my ignorance of human feelings is so vast that they might have hated me without my being aware of

Perhaps you never have time when you are alone? You only acquire it by watching it go by in others,

The briefest conversation creates time.

It is strange that I am dying from a diseased womb, I who have never had periods and who have never known men.