Languages

A routine day turns suddenly violent in this excerpt from Rania Mamoun’s novel Son of the Sun.   Words Without Borders · Rania Mamoun Reads "في المقهى" ("At the Coffee Shop") Listen to Rania Mamoun read "At the Coffee Shop" in the original Arabic.   The frenzied football fan banged on the table with a force that knocked the tea over. One glass shattered as it hit the ground. He shot up, angrily screaming at...

Ann El Safi presents a bird’s-eye view of violence and unrequited love.   Words Without Borders · Ann El Safi reads "حرية الطيران" ("Freedom of Flight") Listen to Ann El Safi read "Freedom of Flight" in the original Arabic.   Your days are swallowed by the road, your feet yearn for freedom. The smell of absence seeps into the carnage around me. She has left her bedroom window open. The wall...

The residents of Al-Nar Street coexist with demons and djinns from a nearby swamp in this excerpt from Zeinab Belail’s novel The Cactus Plant.   Words Without Borders · Zeinab Belail reads "شارع النار" ("Al-Nar Street") Listen to Zeinab Belail read "Al-Nar Street" in the original Arabic.   Al-Nar Street is one of the longest streets that any of the city’s residents has ever set foot in. Long and...

Spending the night at a women’s prison where she is covering a conference, a journalist wakes from an inexplicable dream in this excerpt from Amna al-Fadl’s novel Some of What Happened Between Us. Basma switched off the tape recorder and fell into a deep sleep. But she soon awoke, terrified, and drew the curtains back from the window overlooking the prison courtyard. She could discern nothing in the pitch dark but the whistling of the winter winds and the trembling of her hands...

A young woman is captivated by a mysterious book about the history of the Nile as she searches for a disappeared friend in this excerpt from Sarah Al-Jack’s novel The Mites.  I flipped through a small booklet with a worn-out cover. The title was covered in the white marks of a corrector pen. Beneath it was a drawing of the Nile, from its source to where it drains into the Mediterranean. The first page was torn out; there was no author name, no mention of a publishing house or...

A young woman defies societal expectations to become Gaza’s first fisherwoman in this excerpt from Taghreed Najjar’s YA novel Against the Tide. The Secret Yusra’s father still didn’t know anything about her plans. She wanted to surprise him, so she kept them a secret and told Jameel not to say anything either. It wasn’t easy for Jameel to keep a secret for so long. He kept asking Yusra, “When’s the surprise gonna be?” and sometimes he...

An orphan named Noor receives a mysterious gift from her grandmother in this excerpt from Sonia Nimr’s YA novel Thunderbird. Umm ‘Arab looked carefully into the coffee cup, wordlessly tipping it right and left. She allowed only a few grunts to escape each time she turned it in a new direction. “Hmm. Hmmmm.” “What do you see in the cup, Umm ‘Arab? Is it good?” As Widad asked, she shifted her huge body toward the ashtray that sat on the table in...

A girl named Nardeen barely escapes a fatal attack on her family in this excerpt from Djamila Morani’s YA novel The Djinn’s Apple. My siblings’ screams still pierce my ears; no matter how hard I squeeze my head between my hands, their screams persist, filling my head until it almost bursts. I couldn’t see anything in the dark, the moon hidden behind the clouds, embarrassed by what it might see or hear. I felt my way through the willow trees, my father’s face...

A dragon gives a boy the courage to face a life-and-death situation in this children’s story by Hooda El Shuwa. Khidr’s heart was pounding as he stepped into the house. It was almost sunset, and his mom wasn’t usually this late. Was she on an emergency visit to the hospital to see his dad? Then a buzzing sound sliced through the sky above the camp. It was a familiar sound—the continuous whirring of a drone, the sound of the monster that harassed the camp...

Content warning: this piece contains descriptions of female circumcision that may be upsetting. Writer Ishraga Mustafa recounts her experience of genital mutilation in this excerpt from her autobiography. Things didn’t stay as the toy boats of my childhood would have wished; unrestrained and free, I used to play with the boys in the street . . . the skies would open and pour down, and we would amuse ourselves to the hilt. The taming began the day I heard them, the women,...

In this excerpt from her autobiography, novelist Sahar Khalifeh describes how she and two of her friends became the first middle-aged university students in Palestine. Birzeit University offered me a place, and I grew wings, feeling that the world was finally opening up to me. I forgot about my novel completely and cast it aside. It felt too small, too frail, to be a real source of support, one that could restore the balance I had lost because of my ignorance, my dependence on...

Writer Rasha Abbas spans countries and decades in these interconnected musings on the relationship between food and political upheaval. “He who kills the ovenbird or breaks his house draws the storm upon himself.”1 —Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire, translated by Cedric Belfrage   Damascus, 1949—Announcement #4 “We were obliged to temporarily cede the reins of power.” The first Syrian revolutionary coup d’état was announced by...

In this memoir/biography hybrid, writer and filmmaker Nadia Kamel describes her mother’s experience as a member of an Egyptian communist cell in the 1940s. As the French communists left the country, they handed me over to an Egyptian cell. The guy in charge of this Egyptian cell—and by extension, me—was someone called Abdelssetar Ettawila. He was a member of the organization’s central committee, not by election and not because he’d earned it, but by rising...

A mother sheep tries to protect her lambs from a devious wolf in this Qatari folktale, translated by Rana Elmaghraby.   In the name of God the Merciful: Pray to the Prophet, peace be upon him. Majana1 ela kheer lafana w lafakom w shar ta’adana w ta’adakum: May nothing affect us but goodness for us and you, and may evil stay away from us and you. ~~~ There once was a small sheep with children. The innocent sheep would take care of her lambs. She woke up every...

A magical fish helps a young woman escape the clutches of her evil stepmother in this folktale from the Qatari oral tradition, translated by Kholoud Saleh.  Translator’s Note: The fish in this story—a two-banded porgy that lives in the Arabian Gulf—is known as Al Fisaikra in Qatari dialect (and Fusijaira, Fusikaira, and Bint Al-Nowakhtha in standard Arabic). In Gulf Region folklore, Fusijaira is a supernatural being who helps deserving people in need.  In...

A pious merchant confronts a difficult business decision and an untrustworthy friend in this Qatari folktale, translated by Tariq Ahmed. Once upon a time, a Sunni man in Qatar had an ungodly friend who was a seasoned merchant. The Sunni was just an ordinary person. One day, the Sunni inherited a large estate with which he bought a large ship named Saphar. Saphar was built for long voyages, and had sailed to Oman and Aden, then from Aden to Mombasa, and from there to as far as India. One...

In this short story by Najwa bin Shatwan, a Daesh attack forces George to flee the Christian cemetery and take refuge among the Muslim dead of Benghazi. It was customary for the dead of Benghazi to visit their families whenever they pleased, sticking their noses into every affair—big or small—and, if a revolution were to break out, they would join its ranks, having no qualms about dying twice over. Such was, without fail, the habit of all the dead in Benghazi: those whose...

A side hustle among a group of quarry laborers balloons into a bureaucracy of shocking proportions in this short story by Muhammad Mustajab. Whatever else the case, we wish ill on no man, not even those who give us orders, and I would like to begin here by saluting, enthusiastically, any person who is given the chance to do good and takes it. Good being, in its fullest sense, much like these far-flung red wastes studded with rocks and stones and camel thorn, in drifts of which lie...

This witty, irreverent poem by Ahmed Fouad Negm takes aim at the corruption and hypocrisy of people in power. Upsidedownistan here.  Your oldies but goodies station. Coming to you from Cairo and Kordofan From every Arab country and Japan From Venezuela and even Iran And any country open to the rule Of tourism à l’américaine.   Tumblestan here.  Your good ole radio station. We present to you, in every language Plays and movies and all the arts And press...

In an excerpt from his twelfth-century taxonomy of morons, Ibn al-Jawzi proves that idiocy is always a current event. The terms “stupidity” and “nitwittedness” refer to miscalculation in the means and ways to a goal, although with good intentions, as opposed to “insanity,” which refers to a fault in both the means and in the intentions. For the stupid person has good intentions, but the manner he goes about achieving them is rotten, and his plans to...

Despite her family’s disapproval, a young woman pursues her career ambitions and resists monogamy in this piece by Sahar Mandour.   I was twenty-two and my husband, Yussef, was five years older than me. I always liked his first name but not his last, Bazaza, which made me Mrs. Bazaza. Me? Mrs. Bazaza? His house on the waterfront used to overlook the Raouche rock before someone stuck a building right in the middle of the view. He also had a ton of money before inflation turned...

In this short play by Wajdi al-Ahdal, the colonel’s wedding night is hijacked by an assassination attempt and a case—or two—of mistaken identity.   Translator’s Note: Wajdi al-Ahdal’s The Colonel's Wedding won first prize for scriptwriting at the Ninth Arab Youth Theatre Festival in Alexandria in 1997. At that time, its central trope—the struggle to consummate, or to avoid consummating, a marriage between two characters who are...

After her father’s sudden death, the poet tirelessly seeks to reckon with what is gone.   1 Like any Messiah taken unaware by death I saw my father                he was nodding to the palms, surrendered To his sweet sad songs, was greeting Happily the doves which settled on his shoulder Alone     no shadow to soften his loneliness  Alone the clouds    were praying to him And I was calling  ...

In this poem, the speaker meditates on the soul's journey through eternity after death.    The soul departing from trees of speech Does not want to ascend  Nor to be buried;   It wants to finish reading.  .. My heart is a stone that stumbled in the dirt and broke apart  .. O the mud of the storm,  heavy, it drags my soul  From one tavern to another     My hand is a cage that forgot to lock its door So speech flew away .. I am made...

Wistfulness meets indignation in Abdulaziz al-Omairi’s poetic meditation on abandonment and forgiveness.   You did not know that every time Fairuz sings to the dawn         on my way toward hurt  you emerge from the melody to reset sorrow ablaze only to depart like the years gone by taking my joy with you.   I waved my hand like a child whose mother vanished out of sight his feet rooted beneath the...

In this excerpt from 2019 Man Booker International winner Jokha Alharthi's novel Bitter Orange, an Omani student dredges up her grandmother’s troubled past and grows entangled in the personal dilemmas of her fellow international students.   Fingers I open my eyes suddenly and see her fingers. One by one I see them, fleshy, wrinkled, the nails rough. A single silver ring; her thumb with its thick, tough black nail, preserving the traces of a bad injury that all but...

Badriya al-Badri’s protagonist, Suad, struggles to make a definitive gender transition, but tragedy ultimately strikes at another character’s doorstep.  

Translator’s Note: Hoda Barakat’s slim novel The Night Post is composed of the texts of six letters interrupted midway through by short, fragmentary pieces of narrative prose. The following excerpt is taken from the beginning of the third letter. A young man, apparently pursued by the authorities, is at the airport when he sees a woman rip up and throw away a sheaf of papers (the novel’s second letter). He reassembles the torn pages and, prompted by their...

At an armed checkpoint, sectarian tensions come to bear on one man's suspect identity in this excerpt from Jabbour Douaihy's novel Chased Away​. Nizam went with Olga to Jounieh Saturday morning in her red and white Mini Cooper. She’d barely finished introducing him when her mother launched her assault. “You just can’t get your fill of handsome young men, can you, Olga?” she shouted, having grown very hard of hearing.  Olga...

Presented here for the first time in English, the cult writer Charles Chahwan—"Lebanon's answer to Charles Bukowski"—tells a tale of rival militiamen euphoric with violence.   Under the gentle afternoon sunlight, Serge’s body appeared limp and more slouched than usual as he rested against the back seat of the shared taxi, a Morris Princess. He was the sole passenger in the service as it made its way down the coastal highway, as if other potential...

In this story of sexual desire by Mortada Gzar, an Iraqi student at a gay bar hooks up with an American soldier who drives home the side effects of war.   It’s got to be the tenth time this has happened to me. I go out into the back alley of this bar to smoke and he approaches me with a greeting. “Cheers!” he says, clinking his glass against mine. Then he laughs, utters a few words in ammiya, says he was a soldier at Nasiriyah or Baqubah or Ramadi....

In this excerpt from Sahar Mandour's novel Mina, a Lebanese actress is blindsided when she's outed by the press.    Mina comes out of the bathroom in her short white bathrobe, hurries toward her bedroom, darts in, shuts the door behind her. Her room brims with soft warmth from the electric heater, in stark contrast to the weather, to the rest of the house; her lips lift in a smile as she sits on the edge of the bed, getting ready, getting in, full of love. Her...

Ordered to shoot a protester, a Tunisian policeman struggles with his conscience in this taut short story by Emna Rmili.   The boy’s chest is mouthwatering, it’s luscious, that boy’s chest, provocative, in fact, under his simple striped shirt—damn! What’s making me focus on his chest? Since yesterday the orders have been absolutely clear: we will shoot. I look down at the weapon at my side, and feel like I’m standing on the edge of an abyss. But...

Two poems by Tunisian poet and translator Ines Abassi explore language, selfhood, and emotional intimacy.   Song of Clay Night unfolds around my image in the mirror while I gather up corpses of letters  that have died from excessive speech. I choose a few letters and greet them with spectrums of color and the heavy breath of desire until language’s gate opens before me. And I see the aleph full of pride: the dance of a sacrificial gazelle. The nūn with its wailing:...

Two men in a devout Muslim community face drastic consequences when they publicize their relationship in this excerpt from a novel by Egyptian writer Ezzedine Fishere. Shareef can’t believe how much he loves Bahaa and how little he cares about the consequences. This love was maybe his last chance to get a good grip on his emotional security and self-confidence. But to do that, Shareef knew he had to do something else—he had to come out of the closet. The problem was that Bahaa...

Reckoning with the loss of his grandmother, a young man inquires into the nature of memory and cultural identity in this excerpt from a novel by Palestinian writer Ibtisam Azem.   Listen to Ibtisam Azem reading from "The Book of Disappearance".   It is close to midnight now and I feel so tired I cannot fall asleep. Do you remember that evening when I slept at your place in Jaffa, a month before you moved to live with my parents? I was tossing and turning and I had gone to...

Syrian writer and poet Osama Alomar conjures the transformative powers of imagination in these seven works of microfiction. Thieves of Youth A strange thing began to happen in the country. One morning, some young people woke up and found they had become old men in their eighties and nineties. Day after day, the number of those losing their youth increased, and the entire population was struck with an awful terror. People were afraid that the country would turn into an old age home. In...

Mohamed Abdelnabi's narrator revisits his childhood and his grandfather's path from childhood poverty to a love affair that became the stuff of family lore. My name is Hany Mahfouz. I was a spoiled only child. My mother was the sun and my father was the moon. The one who doted on me most was my grandfather, Khawaga Mida. At the age of six, I thought I had killed him. I had a dream in which he woke me, kissed me, and stroked my hair, then opened the window and floated upward...

In this short play, Mansour Bushnaf turns his sharp eye and his searing critical mind to the vexed question of the interplay of the secular and the religious.  First. An Arab nightclub with male and female customers. The men are wearing black suits with red neckties, which look like official uniforms. The women are wearing tight pants. A waiter in a white suit and bow tie is handing out drinks. A woman is singing—or rather lip-synching—the song Salimah ya...

In this excerpt from writer Nadia Al-Kokabany's Ali Muhsin Market, a silver-tongued young man lives to regret convincing his brother of a scheme to earn a few extra bucks in the midst of the Yemeni Revolution of 2011–12.    18 March 2011 With all his smooth talk about making money, Mehdi Al-Rimy convinced his younger brother to work Fridays in the bustling revolutionary square, which throbbed with visitors and men going to prayer. On those days, it was easy...

In this excerpt from A Crime in Ramallah, Abbad Yahya's narrator Noor remembers his adolescence in Palestine, marked by the second intifada.  At its peak, the intifada took over my parents’ lives. They weren’t explicitly affiliated with any one faction, but they tended to support anything Islamic, and the intifada fueled the continued rise of Hamas. My older brother's wife was an activist, a leader in fact, and our family was very proud of...

When her high-ranking husband disappears and is presumed murdered, a widow protects the life of her vulnerable only son, Tha'ir.   There was nothing unexpected about it. It wasn’t a coincidence, or something that just ended up happening in that haphazard way things sometimes can in life. Nor was it something done on a whim by a young man who suddenly decided to start living in the dark for some capricious reason of his own. No, this was a plan carefully thought out and...

Darling, tell me that when we love, we’re not awaiting a reward or reciprocity. And that love is greatest when it’s fruitless, when feelings are more powerful, more real. What’s the point of love without suffering? Every time I contend with love, a new life is born in the fight. The anxiety I endure makes me feel my pulse, makes me feel I’m alive. I’m only happy when I’m seeking these things, not when I find them, because isn’t the footpath through...

An Epitaph for all our Friends Denied a Tomb and especially for my Cousin, whose Body was Dumped in a Mass Grave They found my cousin’s body in a mass grave.  Our truck wasn't the only one turned away by this prison because it was overcrowded. Actually, many trucks, which were so crowded with men they swayed, were rejected by this prison. The guard repeated respectfully to each driver, “If I could, I would make room for your load.” Then the...

When the rose perceived the distance between itself and the earth, it brought forth its thorns. When the rose realized that a single leg couldn’t take it anywhere, that it was voiceless and mostly had no echo, it thought of fragrance. The blooming petals: a navel. The stem: a rope that binds it to the earth’s deep womb. That rose will be born someday in a lover’s hand or between the shores of a book. © Soukaina Habiballah. By arrangement with the...

How I adore the café  door             there’s a newspaper             and a seat and, you know, I mean, that means I know             all the latest news. In and out flapping about             Waiter! one Lipton tea and my number . . . I dialed it on my...

He left the house cursing everything at the top of his voice—from the two elderly people who had brought him into this rotten world in the first place to his sister who had married a French man, gone off with him to his country, and hadn’t kept her promise. He remembered what she’d said in the airport: “I only married this Christian for your sakes. One month, and you’ll have all the papers you need to all catch me up over there. Don’t worry!” He...

Document No. 3 Examinations Conducted, Visible Symptoms, and Preliminary Diagnosis The patient is conscious, alert, and aware of his surroundings; blood pressure and pulse are normal; visible symptoms include: signs of choking and irritation to the nerves, blood surrounding entry and exit wounds caused by a [word crossed out], sign of recent abrasions and bruising on the back, pelvis, and forearm regions, [word crossed out; “injury” written above it] penetrating the pelvic...

“So does this mean I’ll leave this world without lying down on the dewy grass even once?” “There are more important things than that to think about, actually, but if that’s what’s on your mind, you could still do it. You’ve got at least three weeks left.” “But there’d be no point now. I’m not going to.” I didn’t let him say anything else, and I left before he could start with the trite words of consolation. In...

They await you: The new poem They await your downpour through my soul My hands shaping your features I stand with my heart agape To observe this desolate world As it falls into ruin Blood covers everything Prayers no longer know Where to go I await you I listen for your cautious footfall Yes The world has become a graveyard But the sun rises The breeze caresses a girl’s cheek The sea does not forsake its blue The swallows tell me of my childhood Hidden beneath their wings And...

One day I’ll tear off my lips and eat them like candy. One day I’ll rip out my chest because I’m not an orphanage for gathering angels. One day I’ll remove the door and stand in its stead to stop myself from leaving for the hole in the world.

She felt like laughing. How could she laugh in that position, what would they say about her? It was the first time she’d ever felt the effects of local anesthesia. She’d heard dozens of stories about it, but she hadn’t expected it to be so ticklish, especially at the base of her spine. She wanted to search the faces of the doctors looming over her for a trace of forgotten laughter—perhaps the lines around their mouths would reveal some comedy, an excuse if she...

When Adib saw the delegations of athletes waving to the applauding fans in the Moscow stadium, he sighed, I should have been there. He had promised himself a gold medal, and they had all expected one of him. He didn’t watch the rest of the opening ceremony on the TV. He went out into the alleyways of the Abeed district and disappeared in their shadows, walking. When he was thirteen years old, he thought he was a soccer player. He was considered the top young player in both the old...

Though I’m right beside it, I can’t call out to the sea: neighbor, come join me for coffee. Instead, my other neighbor Carmel visits me through the window without my permission and never even once  tries to enter through the door (anyway, it owns the place). Sometimes church bells reach me from the depths of Wadi Nisnas, other times the morning call to prayer comes quietly from the Istiqlal Mosque (that the old breeze carries from Wadi Salib), the Baha’is keep...

That evening, I was sitting on my bed. Tala was jumping up and down on her bed next to mine, making it squeak annoyingly. She was jabbering away but I wasn’t following what she was saying because I was busy building my own world inside my head. Tala kept running in and out of the room. I didn’t notice how long she was gone. I just sat there, lost in thought. That is, until the time the sound of Salim sobbing came into the room before Tala did. As soon as I saw him, I hurried...

To the poets of the Lebanese Journal Shi‘r   I know I’m about to write myself into another maze and I’m going to get lost in it. In my infancy there was my father, there was my mother, there was also the shaykh of the nearby mosque, there was the shaykh of the Qur’ân school.  In my childhood there was my father, there was my mother, and there was our president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.  In my adolescence there were the Egyptian romantic...

In this short work by Zaher Omareen, a mother tells her children a bedtime story about the atrocities that took place in Hama, Syria during the 1980s.   Translator’s note: Zaher Omareen’s tale takes us on a journey back to 1980s Hama, zooming in on some of the individual victims of the massacres and disappearances committed by the regime there, as told by a mother to her son. Between 10,000 and 40,000 people perished at the hands of Hafez al-Assad’s forces in a...

My apologies, Sir, That I come to you As a refugee. Accept me as a human being and not As a slave. Do not look down on me; Do not look me up and down. I am a poet; My testimonies plaster the walls, And people far and wide recite my poems. Will you accept me among you As a refugee? They destroyed my poems, along with the walls they hung upon; When they torched the verses, I burned with them. They broke my mind; They robbed my thoughts; They stripped our insides. Will you accept me among...

But where’s the skill in loading a gun with just one round of ammunition and pointing it at your head, trying your luck at deliverance? The ingenious thing would be to fill all six chambers and let every bullet kill you, one after the other. Bullet 1 Even though the voice ringing out from the stereo in your bedroom belongs to a singer who didn’t die at twenty-seven like those other musical geniuses—Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, that bunch—you still listen to him every...

Oh, my love, while you are in my breath, I am a statue of snow at the entrance to Damascus, with eyes closed, nose breathing anger, ears tuned to the noise of death, mouth speechless, trying to say: when blood is exiled, nothing binds it to the race. With you in my breath, my every moment is absurd. Uselessness rehearses images in my mind. On the screens I watch Metal snow falling. Ink is a dimming light. Eyes do not see yet fill with images. Oh, eyes, you are also covered by the snow of...

“Two kinds of people live in this city: The ones who were born here, and those who came here, fleeing something. Me, I wasn’t born here!” When his fever peaked and he started to sweat, at night, the truck driver’s assistant brought him to the closest clinic along the road. The doctor received him and asked him his place of birth. He didn’t answer,but simply exposed his right shoulder to show him his tuberculosis vaccination scar. Mary, the tall Italian girl....

The great Iraqi writer Mahmoud Saeed was imprisoned in Iraq six times between 1959 and 1980. He left Iraq in 1985 and has lived in Chicago since 1999. He wrote this essay on the eve of his departure to spend a semester as the first writer-in-residence at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani.—The Editors Chicago awarded me its love, the way beauties do, because she is a playful, mercurial, liberated, enchanting maiden. From icy weather of twenty degrees below zero to heat...

I took the big bag that I had inherited from my grandfather down from the attic. It was brightly colored like a storm of rainbows. I hoisted it onto my back and went out into the street. I closed my eyes and began to choose samples at random from everything that was inside: humans and stones and dust and flowers and wind and the past and the present and the future. I carried the heavy bag on my back and set off on a far-ranging journey around the world, proudly carrying the overflowing...

One evening I called a taxi to go to the gas depot near the central market to change an empty cylinder. One of the streets in Jabriya was severely congested. Jabriya is always crowded, but congestion like this, with cars hardly able to move, could only happen if there was an accident or a checkpoint. As I expected, at the end of the street there were police cars with lights flashing blue and red. The police were standing by the side of the road checking driving licenses and registration...

Ranjini I’m frightened. Why are the people I’m to work for late? When will they come for me? My heart is pounding. Will they send me back to my country? I see that it’s dark outside the hall. What will I do in this large airport all by myself? I don’t want to remember that evening. It was hot and humid. We sat, my cross-eyed neighbor and I, amid the racket made by the children, thinking despondently about our many problems. Without any preamble, she suddenly asked,...

Men plan wars And women survive in the rubble One day there will be no men And a woman will pursue another In search of the scent of the last man Who touched his lips to her neck. © Manal Al-Sheikh. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Angham A. Abdullah. All rights reserved. 

A body that is the one I borrowed the first night with you . . .  I watch it every night running toward a waveless sea where the sand of age rests in its veins . . . The wearied ships land in its eyes and summon it to sleep . . . © Manal Al-Sheikh. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Angham A. Abdullah. All rights reserved.

When we die the words we haven’t said yet turn to bubbles to inflate the body and smuggle it from the grave while the cemetery keeper sleeps. But we run up against the stone slab over our bodies, which refuses to budge. So we turn to the insects for help though we’re not very fond of them; a worm here, another there,
 and each one gnaws at one of these words and leaves nothing behind— 
 nothing but erasers piling up to form a skeleton that comes home from...

My share of sleep: four hours eleven minutes.
 I roll my pierced heart across the bedcover: it slams into the door, leaving
 a line of mud behind. I believe a tree
 will come one night and stop
 beside the line.
 Another tree
 will follow,
 and a third,
 a fourth, a ninth, etc.
 One night the line will grow
 and become a street. One night while I’m sleeping friends will stream out of my head
 and into the street to...

After crossing the living room, the library, the corridor and the photo that brings us together on a trip to Nahr al-Kalb, and after passing by the washer and my mother (exhausted in spite of the washer), a stray bullet veered slightly off course— by the force of gravity— and finally settled in my head to kill you there. © Mazen Maarouf. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Nathalie Handal. All rights reserved.

It's hot, hot enough to suffocate. There is nothing except this table upon which I sleep, a rectangular hall with four doors and twelve windows. On each side a door. On the shorter sides, two windows, each with a door between them, and on the longer sides, two windows to the left of the door and two to the right. The town is absolutely empty but for the sound of my thoughts straying from me to the point of anger. Alone I am in this hall, alone on the table, alone in the town, I, alone,...

You’re certain that nothing will dissuade you now. Nothing. Not your neighbors’ invitation to the luncheon to celebrate their boys’ circumcision. Not the kind old lady’s pleading to help her write a letter to her faraway son who never visits. Not the laughter of your three-year-old boy (whose laughter—you would say—sounds like a gurgling stomach). Not the mischievous way he clung to the collar of your jallebeya when you saw him outside just a few moments...

Doves! Doves flying on a horizon of signs and metaphors. I can never hear the word “doves,” nor think of it unexpectedly, without picturing them flying as if they were the horizon's capricious whim, their movements vexing me every time I approached from a distance. Their exact number did not live long in my memory. I used to count the doves hovering in pairs, like married couples, over the playground that I cut across on my way home from school. I only felt the...

Luis Carvalho was the “sad Portuguese”—that is what they called him, or at least what we called him, we the children in the neighborhoods of Sif, Mahallat al-Pasha, Nadhran, and Bllush, even when we were grown boys and then teenagers, but before we became men, because the war came upon us and did not allow us to complete our years together—it took most of the group to the graveyard before they had lived out even a quarter of their lives.  It was the same war...

The Casablanca night doesn’t really begin until after midnight, but after midnight, anything goes. Nezha was wondering where Hammadi would want to finish off the evening. They left La Falaise at one in the morning and got in the car. Nezha tried to be even more seductive, stroking the side of his head  and tickling his crotch. “Where you taking me, Daddy?” she asked flirtatiously, blowing cigarette smoke at him. He looked over at her with a lewd, conniving smile and...

We really needed to talk. This was a difficult situation that we needed to find a way out of. He absolutely refused to share me with anyone else, and he wasn't prepared to lead a life with me where he was in the shadows, constantly in second place after my family. And he certainly didn't want to be my secret lover or be complicit in deceiving someone else, an innocent person. But I do want to get married and to have a family, both of which would be impossible with him. I...

Before the egg appeared, I would read a book about law or religion every night before going to sleep. Like my rabbit, I would be most active in the hours around dawn and sunset. Salsal, on the other hand, would stay up late at night and wake up at midday. And before he even got out of bed he would open his laptop and log on to Facebook to check the latest comments on the previous night’s discussion, then eventually go and have a bath. After that he would go into the kitchen, turn on...

My acquaintance with Salman extends back to our military service, to the winter of 1984, I think. In that year I began to serve in a series of units that fought in the mountains, cities, and canebrakes of Kurdistan. Till then, before being ordered to serve in the logistics battalion in a suburb of the city of Sulaimaniya at the Dukan Dam, to be precise, I had served in the Division of Military Veterinary Affairs under the command of the Third Army Corps in Basra. The Iran-Iraq War was...

At the Ajeerda divide, the strip of land that separates the marshes on the eastern side, east of the city of Amarah, we were gathered into deeply dug-out positions. Thousands of soldiers, dressed in khaki uniforms, we were packed together, drenched by the rain, with our helmets and weapons. We placed ourselves in various positions, small sandbags above us, their exposed sides submerged in water and mud. The mud was so deep that we sank into it up to our thighs. The rain hadn’t...

The Friday bombardment started a little later than usual, at 8:30 a.m. The sound was loud and clear. Umm Anwar sighed, and her pain showed clearly in her expression. Furrowing her brow and ready to explode, she exclaimed to herself loud enough for the others to hear: “The downpour has begun, O Conqueror, O Provider.” Her son, Anwar, straightened up and rested his elbow on the sofa. He looked at his sister to check her reaction. Then he remarked calmly, “At the end of...

Just as the thirteenth year of my life started, the Iraqi-Iran war began. Before it was even a year old, my oldest brother was killed and one of my cousins was taken as a prisoner of war. That is when I began hearing my father curse “Mr. President” whenever he found himself alone with my mother in the orchard, kitchen, or bedroom, or as she milked our cows in the pen. I was irremediably confused as I sat torn between these obscene curses and those beautiful pictures and songs...

He is not a tightrope walker, a snake charmer, or a tiger tamer. His hands are empty no charm or sleight to them, and he does not have any puppets, hoops, pungis, or whips—his mere body is his only apparatus for a peculiar kind of entertainment, a unique sort of adventure that no one before has witnessed or experienced. If the acrobat walks lightly on his tightrope, the charmer blows into his pungi and tilts his head with the snake, and the tamer lashes his whip in the air in a...

No matter where you settle or wander That first melody is yours At every arrival and departure Its living face will meet you at the entrance that remains If you walk and the opposing wind is in your face and Death alone is the alternative To hear it departing between worlds, where you go and come. Did you not hear it one night As you were passing under a balcony? Your longing still anchors it in the heart of wandering A blind musician shaking it off From the nooks in his...

The river flows. Guides hide in the woods. I am a single day dragging an apocalypse of days. Wounded battalions smelling the burning air through the dried blood on the nose. Because the city of water is not far. It is there. The rose orchard is there and there is a golden cup of poison guarded by an angel’s hands. The river gestures from a distance with the shut eyes of an intoxicated concubine and so on until it reaches its end in its own dream.  But from the wall to the...

The last thing on our minds was celebrating our wedding, after we had waited so long, to the sound of air raid sirens and the reverberation of Dushka guns targeting the Iranian airplanes attacking Baghdad. Maryam had done everything she could to postpone the wedding, using arguments and excuses I found totally unconvincing. I was doing an MA in contemporary literature at the University of Baghdad. Once I was accepted there, Maryam volunteered to help me check sources and references for my...

My city—Mosul—was economical even in its delights. During its unhurried spring, which was fragrant with the scents of grass and wild flowers, there were only a few places for people to go on excursions. When they were unable to enjoy an outing, they would tell the following story. A young woman wished to leave her house for an outing, but her husband objected: “What can a person find outside that he doesn’t find at home?” The woman replied, “Grass....

I chased it so often in our Baghdad garden But it would always fly away Today Three decades later In another continent It perched on my shoulder Blue Like the sea’s thoughts Or the tears of a dying angel Its wings two leaves falling from heaven Why now? Does it know that I no longer run after butterflies? Just watch them in silence That I live Like a broken branch  © Sinan Antoon. From Lalyn Wahidun fi Kull al-Mudun (One Night in All Cities) (Baghdad...

Each time I’ve approached it, my personal effects have scattered. The smell of a journey clings to your body. Each time I’ve approached you, I’ve packed my personal effects. Your body becomes my carry-on bag. I enter it To keep from touching the earth. Your body— Keep your eyes fixed on mine— Doesn’t tire of tempting me To commit errors, And finally I quit the earth’s domain. From Hadiqa bi-‘Itr Rajul (Garden Perfumed by a...

A bloody shaft of light shone under our door between their compass & the north star so the road passed through our house out toward the estuary. Its stones are our tears which silted in our chests until we spat them out. The road smashed the Janus-faced mirror & flasks of the perfumers and left us nothing but the clouds to dwell in with our mouths, as our pockets, stuffed with sand.  *** Rains taught him how he’d evaporate from the earth’s body. The cat...

My Invisible Friend My mother went to call on her neighbor Umm Baha’. She refused to take me with her, giving the excuse that women visit women and men visit men, and she left me at home alone, promising that she would only be gone for a few minutes. I told my cat that I was going to hang her, but she paid no attention to me, and kept on  grooming her fur with her tongue. I told the bitter orange tree in its tub of earth in the courtyard of our house that I was going to...

We who were killed in all wars. In the Basus war our corpses dangled from the Turks’ gallows In Troy’s war We were behind the walls Blood dried in our veins Those besieging us never went away We were outside the walls Our skins were lacerated The besieged never surrendered We were chasing Abu Jahl We got his head and were killed by his enemies Wars wore us out So we froze in museums In times of peace We who were killed In the June war October war The...

I stopped in the doorway of my friend’s house And my palm was glued to the doorbell But my finger trembled, too weak to arouse A desire to ring in its wires I wavered. The road to his house had been long And between the two of us and his morning cups Of coffee, more than ten years. His little brother: he finished copying out his lessons. Their neighbor: perhaps she hadn’t prolonged her visit After his sister May had finished Putting on her dress, and she had turned...

"Funeral for Walt Whitman" speaks for itself, but it might be worth knowing that the poet, like many Egyptian artists and writers, has provided a prominent voice to the national dialogue in post-Mubarak Egypt. Ramadan has spoken against the notion of the poet as a spokesperson for others and argued that the individual body is the most authentic reference of poetry. Nonetheless, “Funeral for Walt Whitman” establishes a dialogue with its own historical tradition. Beyond the...

She always recognized them by the  trembling behind their bravado. From his first “Hello” she was certain  he wasn’t one of them . . . that he had meant to call her, in particular. He was not one of those triflers, the junior bureaucrats, young clerks, and drunkards who amuse themselves by dialing just any number, for a thrill or perhaps the chance of something more.  She recognized their  attempts to disguise their impulsiveness: “Is Ahlam...

When Rafa‘a died, the last human desires in the bosoms of the people of Huzum village were extinguished, most of all in the bosoms of its women.  The burning desire for Rafa'as comeuppance sputtered out, for when a person dies, her memory grows flimsy and her human presence melts away…  She is no longer a threat to us because she is better and more beautiful than we are; instead, she becomes a weak creature because she dies insignificantly like every human...

Translator’s Note:  In Wajdi al-Ahdal’s novel Donkey in the Choir, Tha’ira, the rebellious wife of a Yemeni politician, has neglected work on her master’s degree since her marriage to Ali Jibran.  Morning excursions through Sanaa provide her some relief from the boredom of her sequestered life. Meanwhile a serial killer has moved into the Hulqum neighborhood of Sanaa. Once the killing spree begins, the subsequent police investigation quickly identifies a...

When my mother asked me to spend the summer in her brothers’ house in the south, I employed every sophistry of my sixteen years—an age when only a mother pays attention to your budding philosophy of life—to explain to her that life forces surge northward, that the south, from which she and my father came, was becoming obsolete, that Ibn Khaldun (who had inspired this claim) was a great man, that the money could be better spent on a vacation, and that her brothers were...

It’s August 2000, and I’m overwhelmed by this emotional leavetaking. It’s the first time you’ve ever dreaded visiting your grandfather al-Atawi, but it’s because you’re saying good-bye—before you depart for Baghdad. We never thought you would travel overseas and leave us. Sanaa is twenty-seven kilometers west of your grandfather’s village, Hisn Arfata. You have persuaded me that you can say good-bye to your grandfather without telling...

The State Security Building: The First Arrest of the Seagull It was maybe three or four o'clock, or maybe sometime in between. Why am I trying to establish an exact time? Curses on the clock that forces me to define my movements, my sleep, my mealtimes... The time was __________. I think it's better that way, isn't it? I jumped up, rubbing my eyes, at the sound of violent banging on the door of the house, and looked down at the courtyard from the window of my room. My...

Hannan didn’t realize how late it was or even that it was late. Today was different. It was an extraordinary moment in every respect. Her mother was no longer the woman she knew, and the neighborhood wasn’t the same one that she had always found outside her doorway. At dawn, before foot traffic picked up or the rusty metal barriers of the shops were raised, her mother had quit her bed, which was located to the left of the door. Hannan remembers that this was after the dawn...