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Presumed dead, a man returns from war to find that his wife and daughter have moved on with their lives in this short story by Batool Heydari.   He called, but nobody answered. He tried the number again and again. He then kept calling the whole day, but all he could hear was the sound of the phone ringing. He could not remember the last time she stayed out of the house for this long. He speculated. Maybe Khurshid is ill. Maybe something has caused her to stop her answering the...

A young man makes his way to work in Kabul, preoccupied with the thought of his own death, in this story by Maryam Mahjube.  Sir, please turn the air conditioner on. If he says this out loud, everyone around him will scold him. Or they will ridicule him about how cold the weather is at this time of year, happy that space is tight in the car and they have to sit close to one another. As the number of vehicles grows and traffic gets worse, his sweat increases and a warmth spreads from...

Boom . . . m . . . m . . . The terrible sound of something exploding and collapsing . . . The awe of explosion and dynamite . . . A huge amount of explosives had been used. The devastating explosion, accompanied by the loud cries of god-is-greater that made the throats of the Talibs quiver, set the earth atremble; a dense, impenetrable cloud of dust billowed up into the sky. The explosion tore the Buddha from the embrace of the mountain and flung it into the valley. The Buddha had...

When you get off the airplane, it will not be like Kabul airport, or like other cities of Afghanistan for that matter, where they drive stairs up and attach them to the door and then take down the passengers one by one. These days, there have been improvements everywhere, old man. But we, we are lagging behind, and war has taken us further and further back. The only thing we think of is devastation, and not creation . . . they will drive the bridge up and attach it to the airplane door,...

After the doors were shut, the tomblike cargo container had become dark. With our hands and feet bound with the fabric of our own turbans, we had fallen on top of each other and the only thing we could see was the glitter of each others’ eyes. Outside, the sun was shining, which made the air inside the container hot and close. * They had given us nothing to eat or drink all day. Before, the soldiers in camouflage uniforms, some of whom were constantly riding around us on...

A man is not a bird that he might make his home on any shore he flies to. A man has the destiny of a leaf. A leaf, when separated from the heights of its branch, is trampled underfoot by passersby in the streets. Qom, Iran, 28 June 1999

Take a ticket, the prescription, and a handful of torn money, stand at the end of the queue on Saturdays, take a number. Tayyebah’s unwell again—you’ve got to make a phone call and negotiate a day off from the office. No matter what she sees in her random way, be patient: pull the moon or a star out of her sleeve. Shopping isn’t bad, all the colors make her happy; buy her some clothes, bangles, shoes, and earrings. Don’t let your focus stray from the...

The sewing machine’s quiet hum was my mother’s sad song. At my father’s stall it was her peasant trousers that could send me to school answer the landlord and buy medicine. My sister Marzieh, whose illness nobody understands, and cannot be cured even in the shrine, coughs continuously like the sewing machine’s needle and the softness of her bones only feeds the earth’s lust. Mother is the needle’s thread: with Marzieh’s every cough,...