When it moves, I see that it is me. ‘You have to look at how normal people manage with such things in their pasts.’ ‘I think I’m losing track of normal.’ ‘Yes,’ she says, smiling, ‘I know it’s relative. We easterners have an advantage, perhaps, in that we can remember and compare two kinds of systems.’ Her mouth twists into a smile as she collects her cigarettes and lighter and puts them in her pocket. ‘But I don’t know if that’s an advantage. I mean you see the mistakes of one system—the surveillance—and the mistakes of the other—the inequality—but there’s nothing you could have done in the
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