Intimacies

Content Warning: Both the source material and this section of the guide contain descriptions of crimes against humanity, including a victim’s testimony detailing a genocide in her village.

After her father’s death and her mother’s return to their country of origin in Singapore, the unnamed narrator moves from New York to the Netherlands to become an interpreter at the World Court in The Hague. Her first few weeks in The Hague are clouded with grief and disorientation, but she soon makes a friend in Jana, who moved from London to become a museum curator at the Mauritshuis. Although the narrator notes that she and Jana have opposite personalities, the two women get along well, and the narrator enjoys having company in an unfamiliar city.

Jana invites the narrator to her apartment (which she owns) for dinner. Jana is Serbian Ethiopian; after attending a boarding school in France, she married and soon divorced. Now, Jana laments the fact that her job involves far less art curation than she expected. Instead, she spends most of her workdays performing menial administrative tasks. Jana urges the narrator to purchase a closer apartment to shorten her commute, but the narrator doesn’t know if her job at The Hague will last beyond the year.