Posts by Megan Berkobien

Translation Tuesday: from All that Died Among the Bicycles that Day by Llucia Ramis

We’ve been looking at black and white photos of places that no longer exist and of children who are no longer children.

This isn’t autobiography.

All the World’s Men

Every Thursday, my father has lunch with la abuela at her house in Palma.

We bought a roast chicken and la abuela explained that they’d been feeding them fishmeal for a while now. That’s why they tasted that way, and why the eggs tasted fishy, too. And years before that they would deliver live chickens straight from the farm, from Felanitx.

Once, one of her children told la abuela about another animal in the basket, but she didn’t pay it any mind. She left the large crate in the walkway for two days until the stench became unbearable. Only then did she go look, and sure enough, there alongside the chicken was a dead rabbit swarmed by flies. They delivered them dead like that because if not, they’d piss all over. The household maintained a certain aversion to rabbits from that day on.

“Not only that, but you also had to boil it to make sure it was still good. Back then you boiled everything just in case,” my father said.

“In those days, entonses, they said it wasn’t good to eat the chicken skin, it’d give you some kind of sickness, a terrible stomachache or something like that,” la abuela explained.

And my father says: “They’d say you’d turn into a maricón.” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Port” by Llucia Ramis Laloux

Flies, crashes, and playing house: growing up is a disturbing process in Llucia Ramis's new Catalan-language story

One

I remember a hedgehog devoured by ants; we found it near the house and wanted to feed it milk from the tetra-brik carton. It was dead by morning. I remember my brother wanted to taste an ant because the Chinese eat them, so he put it in his mouth while it was still alive and spit it out because it stung. I remember my cousin pulled out a dock tire at the pier and that a crab jumped out, she got scared and let go and it crushed the crab, it pushed the guts right out through its mouth, sprtz. Afterward we hurled the body into the water and it floated. I remember the time I picked up a log and pinched a lizard hiding underneath; I could swear it cried out. We spent some time observing that detached tail, my cousin, brother, and I.

I don’t come here often and these memories have nothing to do with nostalgia.

READ MORE…