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The smoke from the fire sat heavily in the cold winter air. Gathered around the spinning wheel, the two little girls coughed and wheezed, small tears running down their cheeks. The old woman took [...]

First your sister died, and then your brother during the second war, and later your other brother because there was not enough food. This morning, the plague took the baby away. You are the only [...]

  She tied it around my wrist, muttering a prayer under her breath to avoid calling the attention of demons. Then she said: “Look, don’t play with it. Your ancestress each spun one [...]

  The women sang while rinsing clothes and linens in the fountain. At last, they picked their washing in large baskets, and left, except for a mother and her daughter who were cleaning wool. They [...]

      Sitting on the threshold in the midday sun, they threw lentils in a bowl. The mother, alerted by their melody, picked out the pebbles, while she entertained her daughter with her tales: His [...]

click on drawings       They sat on a wall of dusty stone, their faces touched with pink by the rays of the rising sun. The mother pulled a dumpling out of her basket and handed it over to the [...]

   The second woman talked to her daughter to prepare her for life:My mother did not know tenderness. I would have liked a mother like the others, who cared for me, who caressed me. She said: [...]

The mother replied to her child: I never knew my mother. I am a foundling. Now you know, there is nothing more to say. She turned her back and lowered the bucket inside the well.

We were the only family who ate corn on the cob and celebrated Christmas on the 25th instead of the 24th. We didn’t know the simple explanation to these peculiarities: our mother was American. [...]