I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

‘True, but I’ll know what you think, you’ll know what I think, and perhaps that will spark off a new idea, and then we’ll feel as if we’re behaving like human beings rather than robots.’

‘Being beautiful, was that for the men?’ I was almost sure it was, but I sometimes heard the women say otherwise. ‘Yes. Some women say that it is for ourselves. What on earth can we do with it? I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.’

‘Me too’, ‘Me too’. Rebellion was stirring,

It is impossible to predict what might happen in a world where you don’t know the rules.

And what does it matter if I’ve become mute in a world where there is no one to talk to?

‘You are the only one of us who belongs to this country.’ ‘No, this country belongs to me. I will be its sole owner and everything here will be mine.’

The bunker I didn’t enter might have been the one, or the next one, or another one to the west that time I went east.

what does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?