The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

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As my daughter Sulfia was explaining that she was pregnant but that she didn’t know by whom, I paid extra attention to my posture. I sat with my back perfectly straight and folded my hands elegantly in my lap.

Sulfia was sitting on a kitchen stool. Her shoulders were scrunched up and her eyes were red; instead of simply letting her tears flow she insisted on rubbing them into her face with the backs of her hands. This despite the fact that when she was still a child I had taught her how to cry without making herself look ugly, and how to smile without promising too much.

But Sulfia wasn’t very gifted. In fact, to be honest, I’d say she was rather stupid. And yet somehow she was my daughter — worse still, my only daughter. As I looked at her — her nose running, perched there on the stool with her back hunched like a parrot in a cage — I had mixed feelings. I desperately wanted to shout at her, “Sit up straight! Stop sniffling! Wipe that pathetic look off your face! Don’t scrunch your eyes like that!”

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