Category: Short Fiction
A
A Living Otherness
Her deliberate pulling back of her spinning out-of-control thoughts, by latitudes and then by degrees, that bump into her present-day life. Of her stacking and re-stacking of newspapers by date. Of her pushing their edges into alignment. Perhaps, in a bid to guarantee to her life a shape of order...
O
One Family
His aunt stayed angry until another American came to visit, a tall lady with yellow hair and lime green glasses. She took Sami back to the ruined home, snapped pictures of him in front of it. The tall lady paid his aunt a lot of money, enough to move to the mountain camp, where everything was better.
A
After Life
What about unconditional faith? Isn’t it golden? Thoughts ricochet inside Hasan’s mind as he recollects the moments when he felt heavy in his heart because of believing in Allah. The moments of humiliation, confusion, anger, of being called backward, an antique, an old-fashioned fool by people half his age.
C
Carnivorous Bird, Such as the Eagle
Words and water are life-giving: strictly essential. Like Noah’s flooded earth, words inundate, superfluously powerful. “The waters of the flood were upon the face of the earth…all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”
D
Day’s Work
You find a spot a few feet away from the pool. As you stomp on the shovel you are surprised at how sad you feel, but a momentary lapse causes you to consider rushing the burial so you can get back to the pool and go home, which only replaces the original sadness with an agonizing guilt.
A
A Person is a Vine that grows on the Ground
She didn’t like how he kept calling her Myna. She had told him as much, but he persisted. It made her feel small and invalidated, like a gregarious little bird of her namesake, which always needed protection. She had resisted calling herself Myna, it seemed to lend her insignificance.
S
Surplus Value
We do not know what subject Naveed Bhai studied in university, but when he got out, he asked his father to wire him a small amount of money, which he invested in a shop in a strip mall in Alief. Actually, a friend of his father suggested the business to him, accompanied him to the site and negotiated the purchase of the shop.