My daughter, Mosie, called me early to remind me about the dentist. She was feeding the dogs, and I could hear them whimper and moan as she gratified them. The old dentist had suddenly stopped taking my insurance. I stood watching the lake, its blind surface: here I was, a condo with a view and I’d never had any feelings for Lake Washington.
She had nothing else to say to me. Both of my children—Basho and Mosie—were first-time souls for whom the emotional was alien.
By KENAN ORHAN
In Ivan’s bedroom are forty-seven photographs of beaches, rectangles of sand and sun. I count them every time I visit my friend, and he kisses them like beautiful women each night. He passes me a bottle of vodka and opens his own, and I follow him out into the hallway, and we ride the elevator to his roof with a view of Siberia. We step out into the night so full of sun.
May 1958
A white woman, softly sobbing, was hoisted into the back of an ambulance. On direction from the state troopers, Harvell stood idly by. For the second time since he’d arrived, the woman said the girl’s parents were Claudine and Cordezar Brown of Greenwood, Indiana. By “the girl,” the white woman meant the body lying in the ditch, covered by a sheet. Harvell looked at the bus tracks; the skid marks a few yards away, left by the fugitive car; a pair of yellow shoes about a foot apart on the side of the road.
Maths 1 lesson, seated between girls — a school prefect and a sports champ. He liked both of them, but didn’t think they liked him much. In fact, he was pretty sure they thought he was a bit of a joke — not a real male and nothing to admire but okay at his schoolwork but so what. Those days his brother kept chooks that were being treated for stickfast fleas.
By MAX ROSS
1.
Among the snowy houses, a small woman in a white wool coat shoveled a path from the street to her front door. Meanwhile snow was falling, gathering slowly on the path being cleared, and on the small woman shoveling.
Each of the woman’s movements was like the second half of an echo: It seemed as if her gestures weren’t occurring now, but had been initiated some time ago. Faint, also fated. She emptied half a shovelful of snow onto a large bank, and then gathered more snow in her shovel.
We were unemployed and without a place to go, but we got up in the morning and pressed things under the iron anyhow. Our parents turned us out of their houses, telling us to Go get some fresh air!, then locked the doors they refused to give us keys to. We piled up in the streets like garbage, a dozen of us on every block, sitting open-legged on the curb in department-store suits. There was me, Mike, Paul, and all the rest of the guys we’d grown up with. We were a decade and a half past high school graduation, loaded down and barely breathing under stubble and spare tires and thick letters from Sallie Mae, but there we all were, out at the bus stop again.
The plan was to take the bus to my father’s farm, to see him in person for a change. My mother said, Your father is too busy for you, and you don’t know his wife. But I went anyway. I wanted to be able to say that my father was unavailable, firsthand account.
I packed only one large duffel bag, and my mother drove me to the bus station. She told me, Call me if you need anything. I said I’d call her every day.
I didn’t mind the nine-hour ride.
The Eunuch
In the courtyard were more of these men and women who—how should I describe them?—who still were. They didn’t do anything except exist. They sat, alone or in silent clusters. None would say yes to an interview. I circled the courtyard, asking. Most did not even say no.
By CALEB COY
Nanjing, the furnace of the Yangtse, is a city so big it swallows. I can stroll through the streets and brush by anyone, but a weight presses on me like a singular, enveloping fog that never leaves. Men gather outside my apartment building and smoke in the afternoon. On some days a neighbor calls the Chengguan—the Urban Management Enforcement. They arrive in their white van and white hats and chase the smokers off. The smokers flee like carrion birds shooed away.
From The Baghdad Eucharist
By SINAN ANTOON
Translated by MAIA TABET
1
“You’re just living in the past, Uncle!” Maha burst out as she ran from the living room after our argument. Luay, her husband, was upset and he called out after her, his face flushed.
“Hey, Maha, where are you going? Come back! Maha!” But she was already hurtling up the stairs that led to the second floor. He looked downcast as he apologized.
“Forgive her, Uncle. You know how much she loves and respects you.” In a voice speckled with shame, he added, “She’s a nervous wreck and can’t help herself.”
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