Fiction | Page 36 | The Common

A World of Wonder

April 1, 2014 Fiction, Issue 07, Issue 07 Fiction

In Copenhagen there is a street that on certain days looks, feels even, like Sarajevo. Kingosgade, or Kingo Street. The same sootiness, the frayed composure. Kingo was some white-ruffed Danish giant of piety and poetry centuries ago. Like everybody else’s in those days, his neckpiece looked like someone had smashed a platter over his head and he never got around to getting it off, and in his portrait he seems all the more sullen for it—angry with himself for going to the painter’s studio with the ridiculous crockery still around his neck. He wrote psalms and sermons, that kind of thing. But Sarajevo never was pious. It is a city of mischief and raillery, of street wisdom. At least that’s what it was before it became the city of siege and bombardment.

Chanel

April 1, 2014 Fiction, Issue 07, Issue 07 Fiction

By FRANCESCA MARCIANO

It was early September, the air still balmy, the perfect weather for a Venetian escapade. Caterina and Pascal were sitting in a café across a canal divining their future, in a quiet campo off the beaten track, away from the tourists and the film crowd who had invaded the city for the festival. They sipped their frothy iced cappuccinos, basking in the sun, their eyes fixed on its refractions dotting the greenish canal with specks of glitter. They felt that for once things were beginning to look promising for both of them.

Al-Karadib, Chapter 11, Part II

December 24, 2013 Fiction

By TURKI AL-HAMAD

This is Part II of a two-part series. To read Part I, and an introduction to the work by Pascal Menoret, please click here.

The Colonel’s words weighed on Hisham’s mind. He became confused and hesitant again. This Colonel… He either was sincere and didn’t want to hurt Hisham, or was an expert in psychology. Hisham didn’t know. Could it be possible that all the prisoners were wrong about the Colonel’s intentions? Or was Hisham the naïve one? The Colonel fell silent as ‘Awadh brought tea and coffee. The Colonel lit another cigarette and took an audible slurp from the hot tea, followed by a sigh of pleasure.

Al-Karadib, Chapter 11, Part I

December 23, 2013 Fiction

By TURKI AL-HAMAD

Introduction: On Karadib

Pascal Menoret

My first roommate in Riyadh was a French teacher who once tutored an ex-political prisoner. The man was a retired lawyer who had belonged to a Marxist-Leninist network in the sixties, and had been part of a coup attempt against King Faisal. He had been tipped off right before his arrest and had escaped to Paris, where he studied law before coming back to Riyadh much later. Others had less luck.Arrested on intelligence provided by U.S. agents to the Saudi secret police, many of them were tortured or summarily executed. Some were even flown above the Empty Quarter and thrown alive out of helicopters.

They Called It Shooting Then

November 19, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By TYLER SAGE

He wakes from dreams of killing. Heavy timber. Shaggy forms moving through the rocks, the alpine flowers. A plane passing overhead in his sleep, in his dreams, a silver spot against the sky. He raises the rifle. He wakes and is in the night. The animals fade, the air thickens. He is alone and paralyzed, and he wakes, and she is sleeping next to him.

Freefall in a Shattered Mirror

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction, Translation

By HISHAM BUSTANI

Lying suspended over a lake. She can see her entire self on the surface of the water. Every now and then circles appear and expand, distorting the image. At times she looks at her reflection with sadness, at times she chokes with bitterness and tries to escape, to turn over or stand in the air. But it’s no use, she is totally fixed—as if fastened with unseen ropes.

Thick fog passes underneath. When it shrouds the view below, she feels euphoric, she feels herself turn inside out, revealing attractive short hair and two ears with seven rings in each, revealing her perfectly feminine form. She is fragrant with the scent of lemon.

Meetings

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By HELEN HOOPER

Kirsten entered this particular Starbucks right after her interview at The Wilderness Foundation across the street. It had not gone well. She’d exited into the midmorning glare and crossed the street in the direction the traffic light permitted—she had to go one way or another—and continued through the glass revolving door to the counter, where she ordered a grande hot chocolate, yes on the whipped cream. Set down her bag, claimed a table. Two mothers worked their strollers around the table to her left like lawnmowers around a mailbox. A man dialing his cell phone took the table to her right.

Mischief

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By MEGAN STAFFEL

The call came in February. Chipper Hanson had found a lost goat and tied it to his porch, where it was kicking and butting and destroying things. He called the hardware, and the hardware called me, because if nobody got it off his porch soon, his wife was going to get the gun and take care of the problem herself, and whether that would involve just the goat or the goat and the husband, no one could say.

from Dust

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By YVONNE ADHIAMBO OWUOR

Prologue

He leaps over two fire-painted blossoms resting on the stark cracked city pavement. Roused, these unfurl into late-Christmas-season orange-and-black butterflies that flutter into the violet shade of a smog-encrusted roadside jacaranda tree. A thrum becomes a hum becomes thumping footsteps, and soon he is entangled in a thicket of jeers and tossed gray, black, and brown stones as he flees toward a still-distant night. It is said that in combat some soldiers shoot over their enemies’ heads in order to avoid killing them. Some don’t even fire at all. Moses Ebewesit Odidi Oganda’s fingers tremble on the trigger of an old, shiny AK-47. He hurls the gun away with an “Urgh!” The weapon spills across the road—a low-pitched, guttural noise.

Blue Mountains

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By JAMIE EDGECOMBE

Dr. Nakajima had a poem in his head. It went something like, however far I go, blue mountains.

‘Ah,’ the Doctor thought, ‘I like the style of Taneda Santka. He is modern, yes, but his poems are easy enough to remember in volume. They are neat and simple and great for these summer days when the mountains grow taller on the horizon with every step. What a joy life is, when someone else puts words around it.’