All posts tagged: Damascus

Damascene Dream

Damascene Dream

September 10, 2025

By AYA LABANIEH

Anaheim, California, dreaming of Damascus, Syria — a place I have not been able to visit since the war began in 2011.

I had a dizzying dream last night. I picked up the phone, and called my grandma—my mom’s mom, the woman who raised me. She was laughing—I told her something about what I had been going through, I don’t remember what. I was being candid in a way that would be unthinkable in the real world; maybe I even told her about the ugly breakup with R. The warm acceptance on the other line astounded me. “Why don’t I call you more often?” I asked her. 

“Wallah tayteh, I miss you, you should tell me everything.”

Damascene Dream
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Rabbit’s Foot

Rabbit’s Foot

February 19, 2016

By SAGE CRUSER

 

My dad’s black mutt slunk up to the front porch, looking slowly back and forth and crouching down low to the ground. I knew that body language: she was unsure of how a gift she had for us would be received. Her mouth was full of something. “Spit it out, girl,” I commanded. She gently separated her jaws and rolled a small brown ball of fur off her tongue. It was a wild baby rabbit, so small that at first I thought it was a mouse. But then I saw its ears and pink nose, and, as any nine-year-old girl would, I jumped and let out a squeak. Then I composed myself by taking a deep breath and patted my dog on the head. “Good girl, Macy. I’ve got it from here.”

Rabbit’s Foot
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Abu Musa

Abu Musa

October 4, 2012

By TRICIA KHLEIF

I last spoke to Abu Musa in March 2003, the week the Iraq war began. It was late afternoon, Syria time, when I called from my apartment in Washington, DC. I waited several minutes while the shopkeeper across the hall—the only resident in Abu Musa’s building with a telephone—summoned my former music teacher from his apartment.

I might have caught Abu Musa in the midst of a nap; he made me repeat my name three times.

At last, he laughed. “It can’t be,” he said. His voice, low-pitched, buoyant, was thick with cigarettes and fatigue. “Where are you? Are you still in America?”

When I said I was, I felt him smiling in disbelief. “You could be next door,” he said. “You could be down the street.”

Abu Musa
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