From newspapers, textbooks, conversations, I had learned to speak of countries as if they were eternal, singular, naturally occurring things, but I wondered: to say that I came from a country suggested that the country was an absolute, some fixed point in place in time, a constant thing, but was it?
Des journaux, des livres scolaires, des conversations, j'avais appris à parler des pays comme s'ils étaient des choses éternelles, singulières et naturelles mais je me demandais : dire que je venais d'un pays suggérait que le pays soit un absolu, un point fixé dans le temps et l'espace, une chose constante, mais l'était-ce ?