Before a trip to India, I read about a Swiss research expedition that took place in 1969, traveling to India and Pakistan with the aim of capturing two blind river dolphins and bringing them to Switzerland for study purposes.

A few years later, I learned that this expedition was financed by a Swiss foundation that had its origins in the cotton trade with the Indian subcontinent. In rural-industrial regions such as the Zurich Oberland, thousands of textile workers like my grandmother processed Indian cotton into cozy pajamas. My grandmother gave me a new pair of pajamas for every celebration.

When all the spinning machines were running at the same time, they produced an enormous howling noise. The noise shook the spinning mill and drowned out all the conversations of the textile workers. Lucia and Maria tell me in November in Wetzikon that in their spinning mill, Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese were spoken alongside Italian, but hardly any Swiss German, as was still the case in my grandmother's day. The howling is still deeply ingrained in their bones, they tell me.

I imagine the howling penetrating my bones. I walk around with my eyes closed until the sound can continue physically. I imagine how the ear canal of river dolphins fills completely with water and becomes an excellent conductor of sound. River dolphins use small movements of the hyoid bone to echolocate, enabling them to move around and communicate with each other. I feel my hyoid bone and repeat individual movements on it. But as I wander through the labyrinths of my body, I encounter nothing but contradictions. As much as I want to give the howling space, I try to stop its spreading sound. The howling haunts me. I run into the landscape. Not a desert, but a widely ramified river landscape. I take off my pyjamas, come into contact with the water, listen, my hyoid bone trembles.