By HOODA SHAWA QADDUMI
Translated from the Arabic by NARIMAN YOUSSEF
They say that, sometime at the end of the nineteenth century, a woman came on a wooden ship from Najd, married a wealthy man from the island, and, when she didn’t conceive, had a maqam built on the ruins of a pagan temple near the cliffs of the shore. Having had a dream where a man holding a staff spoke to her, the woman then named the maqam after the mystic Al-Khidr.
By BOTHAYNA AL-ESSA
Translated from the Arabic by SAWAD HUSSAIN
(1)
In those days, everyone had the right to have feelings.
It was natural to feel things, and the right thing to do about your feelings was to make them known. Feelings were plenty, but broadly they were segregated into two groups: Love and Fear.
In those days, there was only one way you could sin: by faking your feelings.
By BASIMA AL-ENEZI
Translated from the Arabic by SAWAD HUSSAIN
Even not-happily-ever-after endings are preceded by a certain amount of speculation about what is to come. As a matter of course, all the important changes in organizational structure and relevant administrative decisions take place on the last Thursday of each month, ushered in by a few days heavy with anticipation and flare-ups among the employees.
Sabah sits in front of the computer screen, Americano in hand, trying to concisely respond to customer queries.
By JASSIM AL-SHAMMARIE
Translated from the Arabic by MAIA TABET
I feel the wall with my bare hands, the peeling paint, the cracks along its surface…. They’re just superficial and haven’t impacted the solid masonry. There’s no light coming through.
The soaring, towering wall is solid; it is two lights and one darkness long. This is how I measure the passage of time in the endless enclosure of this space, either as glaring light or as pitch darkness…. Once, to figure out how long it was, I hugged the wall, reaching its farthest edge after two lights and one darkness. Truth be told, this exhausted me, and I may have slept one or two lights without knowing it.
By HOMOUD ALSHAIYJE
Translated from the Arabic by NARIMAN YOUSSEF
We were happy children. Fear didn’t stop us from doing what we wanted whenever we wanted. The clock had no place in our daily lives, as long as we were armed by play and by the secret weapon of Allah y-saʿdak, that Iraqi phrase that we used as a password to keep the soldiers at bay.
But when it came to rescuing me from the claws of a heart sickness that sent me to the hospital, twenty-nine years after the invasion, the password didn’t work. In truth, I don’t know what struck me. It seemed that my heart could no longer contain the force of all the memories of the days of the invasion, when I was a nine-year-old who spent most of his time playing football or riding a bicycle. The stream of images pushed my heart rate to over 160 irregular beats per minute. As doctors struggled to figure out the reason, I myself was certain of it.
By FAISAL ALHEBAINY
Translated from the Arabic by NASHWA NASRELDIN
The cold stings your skin as you walk out of the hotel. It’s your first visit to Europe. You’re with a cultured friend who knows these countries well and, most importantly, is an art enthusiast. He immediately suggests, with a friendly and zealous shake of the head: “How about a museum?” And you think it’s a great idea. Restaurants, cafés, streets, tourists, crowded squares… they’re the same everywhere. But if you go to a museum, you’ll be able to show off about it to your co-workers. And it’ll be a conversation starter with Sarah, the woman you can’t stop staring at, who has an odd-looking painting in her office and who once told you that it was by someone called Dalí, although you’ve already forgotten the rest of the name.
By MONA KAREEM
Translated by SARA ELKAMEL
Farwaniya, Kuwait
“Darkness alone is in my voice.” — Jean Sénac
I am of darkness.
My nation is an aging butterfly,
the desert my prayer.
I wash in rain’s saliva.
In my supplications, the sun dances
on the tips of her toes.
By AHMED NAJI
Translated from the Arabic by BEN KOERBER
1
Antar Harami’s kingdom stretches from the iron bridge to the gristmills in the east, and from the El Gaz drainage canal southward all the way to the police checkpoint at the International Hospital.
Excerpted from the novel by SHADY LEWIS
Translated from the Arabic by KATHARINE HALLS
Excerpt appears below in English. To read the original Arabic, click here.
Translator’s note
One of the things I like about Shady Lewis’s writing—and the reason I’m so glad it’s appearing in The Common of all journals—is that it’s global in its imagination, and yet deeply rooted in specific places and experiences. The place is Cairo, and the experiences are those of Coptic Christians and young people on the left. From this vantage point, Lewis offers a biting critique of Egyptian society, but one that’s filled with affection for its people. But Lewis has also lived in the UK for a long time, and in the novel excerpted here, On the Greenwich Line, he turns the same critical yet compassionate gaze on its capital city. His setting is a run-down East London borough, and his characters an unlikely cast of desperate migrants and frustrated local government employees. The premise is simple: as a favor to his friend, the protagonist finds himself roped into organizing the funeral of a young Syrian refugee named Ghiyath. The protagonist himself is an Egyptian immigrant who’s lived in London for many years and works as a housing officer for the local council, so he knows all about the absurdities of racism, austerity, and bureaucracy in the UK; he just doesn’t think they concern him, until the fateful day his life collides with Ghiyath’s, and he’s forced to acknowledge just how much he has in common with those who’ve fallen through the cracks. The result is a painful interrogation of how a decade of Conservative austerity has hollowed British society out from the inside, and a devastating portrayal of the migrants and outcasts who are forced to live permanently on the brink of destitution. It’s also a profoundly human story about London and its many lost souls, and for a reader like me who loves the city, Lewis’s writing about London, in Arabic, feels both familiar and arresting. Translating it into English, I hope both to honor its intimate, quotidian London-ness, and to preserve the outsider gaze which enables it to offer up such striking observations as the protagonist’s musing on the “Mosque of the White Chapel”—his Arabic rendition of Whitechapel Mosque. It does us good to return to old sights with fresh eyes.
—Katharine Halls
Translated by AMIKA FENDI
Well-Lit Garden
I was leaving El Rafidayn supermarket in Ramallah. I had bought coffee, wet wipes, and two cans of tuna. One of the Israeli occupation’s patrols was parked at El Rafidayn roundabout. I was alone in the area, and the hour was approaching midnight. The patrol blew its impudent horn. I ignored it and kept my course due home. But a soldier opened the window and called out, “Come over here, monkey.”
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