The Garden Spy is from Aamer Hussein's anthology, Restless. The book is a collage of fugitive fictions, reminiscences of friends, and personal essays which, when read in sequence, offer an unofficial picture of one writer's private and public lives.

The moonlight shined on your brown hair, wet and wavy from the sandy river’s flow. My toes clung to the bark underneath my feet, and..

A thin line sometimes is all that separates genius from insanity.  A person with a gift for music is called a prodigy, while the person..

Sarah giggled as Ian breathed on her neck. “I forgot about how passionate you are. It’s like we’re teenagers all over again.” “We shouldn’t have..

A bustling, well-tarred road divides the educational potential of Kasipatti town by gender. On one side lies the Kasipatti Boys’ Senior Secondary School. On the..

Five glasses of lemon squash are placed in front of us. Mummy has taught me to never be the first one to reach out for..

“I’m coming in a minute. Hold the door for me, won’t you, Robi!” Madhura yelled from somewhere deep inside the house. Robi, her son, was..

Looking back, no-one could remember when the clown first appeared on the corner by the park. Everyone agreed that it was sometime last spring and,..

A lean man of average height with intelligent eyes set far apart, a narrow chin, and a mouth that sloped downward at its corners, August..

Every evening, she set up the altar afresh, because she couldn’t leave it out overnight. Even if it didn’t rain, the dew at dawn was..

“There’s not supposed to be a test,” I said. The man behind the table gave me a skewed look, his mouth turned in a malignant..

Alan finds a glade with no overhead branches that might come crashing down if winds blow up. But hard ground, rough with exposed pebbles, frustrates..

Jordan chewed on her pinky nail until it started to bleed.  “Shit!”  She reached over Avery’s lap, opened the glove box, and pulled out a..