Excerpt / Abandonment (In the Heideggerian sense)

“How short do you want it?” Making a plane with her hand she showed the woman how short she wanted it. Enjoying the cold edges of the scissors on her nape she saw herself after the woman would finish with her hair. Success was two steps away. As always. Two cuts away, maybe less. Shy, because she had wanted to look at herself in the mirror longer. The folds under her shirt were visible. Gently undulating. Mrs. Lawny had asked them to learn the phrase by heart. They would be asked to match the phrases, in one column, to a set of words in another. She could feel her face growing red and asked how much she owed. “You can pay me fifteen.” Low voice. Co-conspiratorially. She thought the voice demand her face be scrunched up into a grateful smile. But who were they conspiring against? It was her shop. Perhaps, against her patrons? She paid.

Charlie Chaplin had once taken part in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest. He had come third. When asked about this he said that success was just two steps away. Or something like that.

She had always remembered this anecdote from the numerous that the quizmaster had expected them to know. Sometimes she doubted their truth. It was the way he recounted them, she thought. His cheeks whose firmness seemed to disappear when he told them these anecdotes and the viscous anticipation that clung to his arms, the anticipation of appreciative clapping that dulled the sharpness of truth.

Walking back home was always difficult for her. While working for Makhmalbaf she would recognize the chair as hers. It was the one she had always carried home. It had to be a chair. Somehow she was convinced of its functionality. But she couldn’t have thought that then. Then, it was just a misshapen bundle: the contents were hidden by a floral sheet. The chair would be recognized only a few years later. The edges of the seat that were polished by her back. She asked the actress if she could carry the chair so that the edges of the seat were resting on her back but was told that it would be extremely wearisome. Were they looking at her clothes that were so badly mismatched? Regret at having put on her father’s woolen cardigan crystallized into little red spots on her cheeks. Thank God her cheeks did not look like those of the kuccha children. They had always been described as rosy by her father's unnaturally gleeful students. The lines that seemed to run across the rosy patches and form a peculiar patchwork made her want to brush her fingers over them. Ruddy was what she'd wanted to call them. But they meant almost the same thing, didn’t they, asked her brother. Are you going to tell me you’re going to choose ruddy over rosy because ruddy has “rougher edges” around it?