Name it

Illustration by Stephanie F. Scholz (The New Yorker, 2018)

Six men and one woman sit around a large mahogany table at the Colombian Embassy in Brussels. At the head of the table, the Ambassador, a man in his early thirties, smoking and smiling with the other men. The woman looks down at her large belly, she will soon deliver a child. The men’s laughter continues. She looks down again, at the floor, and then out into the garden through the window. She wants to get away. From what? She can’t name it. The smoke, for sure. She’s…