I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

And now, racked with sobs, I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.

Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering?

If the only thing that differentiates us from animals is the fact that we hide to defecate, then being human rests on very little, I thought.

But human beings need to speak, otherwise they lose their humanity, as I’ve realised these past few years.

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.’

‘Then they’d be acknowledging my existence. 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.’

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

We had survived the prison, the plain and the loss of all hope, but the women had discovered that survival is no more than putting off the moment of death.

I felt a surge of grief, I, who had never known men, as I stood in front of this man who had wanted to overcome fear and despair to enter eternity upright and furious.

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