In the short story
Hazaran by Nobel Prize-winning author
J.-M. Le Clézio, the young girl named Alia and her elderly friend Martin are
neighbors in a French bidonville or
shanty town whose population is quite poor.
Martin is a bit of a mystery to Alia…
Alia
grew thoughtful.
What does that mean,
fast? She added, Is it like
traveling?
But Martin laughed. What a
strange idea! No, fasting is when you
don’t want to eat.
How could anyone not want to eat,
thought Alia. Nobody had ever said
anything so strange to her. In spite of
herself, she also thought about all the children in the Dike who spent their
days looking for something to eat, even the ones who weren’t hungry. She thought about the ones who went to steal
from the supermarkets near the airport, and the ones who went to pilfer fruit
and eggs from neighboring gardens.
Martin answered right away, as if he
had heard what Alia was thinking.
Have
you ever been very thirsty?
Yes, said Alia.
And
when you were thirsty, did you want to eat?
She shook her head.
You
didn’t, did you? You just wanted to
drink, you were so thirsty. You felt
like you could have drunk all the water at the pump, and if somebody had given
you a huge plate of food at that point, you would have refused because it was
water you needed.
Martin stopped talking for a
moment. He smiled.
And
the same goes for when you were very hungry.
You wouldn’t have wanted someone to give you a jug of water. You would have said, no, not now, I want to
eat first, eat as much as I can, and then afterward, if there’s room, I’ll
drink some water.
But
you don’t eat or drink! exclaimed Alia.
That’s
what I wanted to tell you, Little Moon, said Martin. When you
fast, you don’t feel like having food or water, because what you feel like is
something else, and it is more important than eating or drinking.
And
what is it you feel like having then? asked
Alia.
God,
said Martin.
J.-M. Le Clézio,
Hazaran, a short story
in the collection Mondo and Other Stories
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