« I have a strong attachment to Jasmine that goes back to my childhood and even further. In the mornings, during the summer holidays, I would go with my grandmother to ‘pick the flower’, an expression that referred to Jasmine. It was a place where men were absent. It was a peaceful, benevolent place, arranged in terraces where, while picking, the women chatted, laughed and seemed to enjoy being together, while the children played between the neat lines of Jasmine. The youngest picked with bare arms. Their skin, golden from the caress of the sun, seemed soft to me, drops of sweat running down their faces to the indentations in their white blouses, revealing the roundness of their breasts, especially when they stooped to pick the flowers at their feet. The baskets were filling up on the ground. I didn't dare look at them, or only distractedly on the fly. The musk of their sweat and the narcotic floweriness of the jasmine intermingled and confused me.»Jean-Claude Ellena