The first time realisation dawned that I was my mother’s daughter was also the first time I heard her voice on the radio. It was late in th...
The first time realisation dawned that I was my mother’s daughter was also the first time I heard her voice on the radio. It was late in the evening. My father, sick of diversion tactics, hoped that he could keep working after getting his daughter to sleep. But I was a stubborn child who would do anything to keep awake until my mother returned from work.
When none of his methods worked, my father dived into his wardrobe, where he kept his SMENA cameras, brought from USSR after completing his PhD (and marrying my mother), and weathered technical dictionaries in Russian on geology and pulled out a small, brown leather encased box with a slender metal protrusion.
As he pulled it, its collapsible parts stretched up like a magic wand towards the ceiling. Then he started to fiddle with the large knob. Strange voices, amid static, wafted into the room, until, like magic, my mother’s silvery voice sailed into our dining room.
The voice, and each word she said, coursed from my ears to my head, gliding over my hair, my neck and spine and made my legs feel light. Was my mother playing tricks on me from this box? The way she let...
