Моя гениальная подруга

We lived in a world in which children and adults were often wounded, blood flowed from the wounds, they festered, and sometimes people died.

There were no written rules, everyone knew that was how it was.

Life was like that, that's all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us.

While men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end; women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end

Every one of her movements said that to harm her would be pointless because, whatever happened, she would find a way of doing worse to you."

Whatever you do, I do.

She left no trace of effort, you weren't aware of the artifice of the written word.

We were twelve years old, but we walked along the hot streets of the neighborhood, amid the dust and flies that the occasional old trucks stirred up as they passed, like two old ladies taking the measure of lives of disappointment, clinging tightly to each other. No one understood us, only we two—I thought—understood one another.