He had been there yesterday too, and I had to look away again and again because it disgusted me to watch him eat cake, but then I had to look again, fascinated, until the disgust made it impossible again. Today, he had ordered two éclairs with lots of cream and candied orange zest, along with two coffees and two sets of cutlery. He had been standing next to me at the cash register after I had already paid and was waiting for my cappuccino. The staff seemed to know him. I then watched from my seat, curious to see if another person would join him. He began to carefully arrange the éclairs and cutlery in an obviously well-rehearsed sequence in which he ate one piece of cake after another, very slowly, cutting it with a knife and fork, putting it in his mouth, chewing, a napkin tucked into his shirt collar, gradually smearing half his face with cream and dough, smiling, indulging in his little excess. Today, too, I was ashamed to have to watch him, to be a witness to his lust, on the verge of going to another table. Then his visitor arrived after all. Now he lies there with cream around his mouth, I´m leaving quickly before the emergency doctor arrives, I can already hear the siren. Petra Sitta, German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG); IPPF Freiburg They all came rushing as word spread through the villages—news of a capsized boat. A boat, or rather a nutshell, crammed with refugees. A survivor from Somalia, speaking fragments of English, had said there had been 324 souls on board—over a hundred of them women and children. She was shaken to the core, struggling to shake off the paralysis. I am the mayor. I must coordinate the rescue, she told herself. This is what I do best: organizing, keeping a cool head when others lose theirs. She had done it since childhood, when she had cared for her younger siblings. “Sergio, call the coast guard!” she shouted to her secretary. “Tell them we have 324 people in the water!” “Carlos, how many boats can you send out? Go always in twos, and make sure you don’t let too many people cling to you at once, or you’ll be pulled under yourselves. Throw life jackets first!” “Filippo, take a megaphone, calm them down! If panic breaks out, it will be deadly for you as well!”
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