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Tell Me, Please

November 1, 2016 Fiction, Issue 12, Issue 12 Fiction

By EMILY CHAMMAH
I wouldn’t say that Omar is my best friend, because I like to think we are closer than that, that there is something bringing us together more than any friendship could. While it is true that he is my cousin, I never feel as connected to the others—to Muhammad or Nour or Ahmed or Anais—or even to my older sister, Sousan. They don’t know, for example, that I prefer to drink my orange juice without sugar, that I’d rather eat falafels straight out of a paper cone than smashed inside a pocket of bread.

The Drop

November 1, 2016 Fiction, Issue 12, Issue 12 Fiction

By CLARE BEAMS

The church ladies were having coffee in the living room of the Baker house when Martin Williams delivered his parachute to Lily Baker, his bride. Only some of the church ladies could really have been there, but in retellings they all claimed seats. They allowed one another this. A natural desire, to be part of the story.

Mowing

November 1, 2016 Fiction, Issue 12, Issue 12 Fiction

By ELIZABETH POLINER
That summer, even before she took up mowing, Suzanne was doubting herself, an uncertainty that set in when her husband began to notice the Mandlebrauns’ oldest daughter, Alison, soon to finish college. Alison, who lived in the only other house on their riverside lane, was home in Middle Haddam for the summer and came by to play tennis on their court with their daughter, Michelle, also soon to finish college. The girls, never close friends to begin with, had drifted further apart during their time away at school. It was surprising, then, to see them suddenly pair up, even if only for tennis.

The Next Thief of Magadan

November 1, 2016 Fiction, Issue 12, Issue 12 Fiction

By VLADISLAVA KOLOSOVA

The luxe door had cost them everything. Oak, with wooden lace. It gave the impression there was more behind it than:

one bed,

one couch,

one cupboard,

one telephone,

one twenty-year-old TV set at full volume, and

two eighty-three-year-old women.

He was the seventh thief in the last two years. They came as reliably as seasons.

The Village Idiot

April 30, 2016 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By MAJIDAH AL-OUTOUM

Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE

We awoke one morning to news of a death. The person we had lost was the one we used to call the Village Idiot—that buffoon who used to make us laugh and cry at the same time, that leaping, dancing ball of energy who would hurl himself around, wild with enthusiasm, stomping on our toes and crashing into us as he went gesticulating by.

A Space for Dreaming

April 5, 2016 Arabic Fiction, Essays, Issue 11, Issue 11 Essays

By M. LYNX QUALEY

Scholars of Arabic literature were, for a time, obsessed with naming a “first” Arabic novel to stand at the head of an apparently new literary tradition. Was it M. H. Haykal’s 1914 Zaynab? Was it one of the many novels that were serialized in popular magazines that sprouted up in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon in the late 1800s and early 1900s? Or perhaps Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s peripatetic, language-glorifying Leg Over Leg (1855)? Never mind that al-Shidyaq mocked the obsessions of European writing.

Four Very Short Stories

April 5, 2016 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 11, Issue 11 Fiction, Translation

By KHALED SAMEH

The Guard of Darkness

In the dark depths of this pit, I try to touch the light seeping in through the cracks. My hands clasp nothing but dust, while the silence carries its nightly promise of my everlasting confinement.

On the very first night, one thousand years ago, or… wait, why do we always begin our stories with the first night? There is absolutely no difference between what happened in that distant time and what is happening now. The same columns of men march beneath the sun’s rays in the afternoon’s scorching heat, the same tear-soaked supplications and hymns: “O God, make his grave a green pasture in the gardens of Paradise—don’t cast him into a burning pit of hell.” “O God, grant him a better spouse than the one he has, a better home, and better children.” “O God, forgive his sins and those of your faithful worshippers.”

Haphazardia

April 5, 2016 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 11, Issue 11 Fiction, Translation

By MONA MERHI

Translated by NARIMAN YOUSSEF

The sign outside the shop reads, in big dusty letters, Abu Ramy The Lebanese. In a bid for some familiarity amidst the chaos of this neighborhood, I insist we go in.

“Are you Abu Ramy, the Lebanese?”

“At your service.”

Burdens

April 5, 2016 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 11, Issue 11 Fiction, Translation

By MOHAMMAD RABIE

Translated by MOHAMED EL-SAWI HASSAN

It was the first of February 1957, and in the entrance of Prince Abdul Munem’s palace, a young officer stood facing the prince. With the usual sternness, the officer told the prince that he must leave the palace immediately.¹ Without saying a word, the prince went back inside and came out carrying a suitcase. He smiled at the officer and walked toward the southern wall of the palace.

At first the officer was astounded by this, as there was only one entrance to the palace and it was located in the northern wall. His amazement only grew as he watched the prince open the door of a room built against the southern wall and step inside it. Thinking he must have been duped and that his assignment had not been successfully completed, the officer went into the room and yelled furiously at the prince, threatening to use force to get him out of the palace. But the prince claimed that because the room was not part of the palace and he did not actually own it, he was still allowed to stay and live in it. He told the officer that his father had given the little room away a long time ago. He also informed him that Sheikh Abu Annoor was buried inside. He pointed to a structure in the middle of the room covered with a thin rug. “Don’t you see the tomb?” he asked. He then whirled his forefinger around in the air, pointing around the room, and asked the officer: “Would you really nationalize a shrine?”

A Thousand and One Pebbles

April 5, 2016 Arabic Fiction, Essays, Issue 11, Issue 11 Essays

By YOUSSEF RAKHA

April 5, 2016

On his last visit to Cairo, the German translator Hartmut Fähndrich was despondent about the lack of interest in contemporary Arabic writing, and he offered this interesting explanation of Western reluctance to engage with Arabic literature: “I think [readers] fear that it will destroy The Thousand and One Nights image they have in their minds.” One might argue about the number of potential German book buyers who have the timeless classic lodged in their minds, but even those who do need not worry. No one writing today could possibly live up to the lack of sophistication, unadorned sensuality, and aimless fantasizing found in The Thousand and One Nights.