When I was
little, my father used to travel a lot with work.
When
friends asked me what he did, I always would answer “export engineer” with the
most pretentious tone I could muster and be so proud I knew this word. My
sister and I would get a souvenir each when he came home and over the years we
exhibited it in a tall glass cupboard in our common room; an exhibition of twin
pairs of useless tackiness. In its glory days the cupboard would contain asian
paperfigurines with slanted eyes, Singaporean Barbie dolls in silk kimonos,
Spanish fans with flowery motives, Canadian teddy bears in tin cans (canned
beaver and canned moose). There was always two of each, but with small
differences, so we could determine which was mine, and which my sisters. Mine
would without exception be the ugliest. So, two porcelain houses in blue and
white from Amsterdam, two Mexican woven belts in neon colors, two Muslim prayer
bead chains that should have hung from the rearview mirror of an air-conditioned
taxicab. Now I think back, where did all this incense smelling beauty go? The
exhibition kept expanding taking up more and more shelves in the cupboard; I
think it was my mother who eventually got tired of my fathers symmetrically arranged absence and placed it all in a cardboard box in the garage.
