From Malta to Japan, we continue our island-hopping this week with a new translation from Cyprus. This week’s Translation Tuesday of “Cellophane” by Maria A. Ioannou tells a heartbreaking story of a child dealing with the loss of a father. The young voice filled with both hope and pain comes through beautifully in Despina Pirketti’s translation.
Dad and I chat away at night; he wrapped in cellophane.
When mum goes to bed I open the closet in the guest room. I show him my new toys, the big remote control tractor and my teddy bear—and he fogs up the cellophane with his breath, grooving hearts for me with his nose. I try to come closer and kiss him in the Eskimo way, but I can’t reach him, and before too long the sketches on the cellophane will fade, there’s no room for more. He stands there still, like Tutankhamun’s mummy enclosed in wood. This reminds me of the boxes that keep the dead locked in. “The living can’t stand the dead,” grandma used to say. The living are afraid of the dead, that’s why they shut them in a box, to keep them from waking up and seeking revenge like vampires do! My words.