He never considered himself an exiled politician. He abandoned his country out of a strange impulse that was forged in three stages. The first was when he was approached by four successive beggars on the Avenue. The second was when a minister said the word Peace on television and his right eyelid immediately started to tremble. The third was when he entered his neighborhood church and saw that a Christ (not the most divine one, crowded with candles, but another, crestfallen, on a side...

Dreams don't come to us without being provoked externally, which is what happened to me yesterday when I woke up at five in the morning, precisely the hour I had intended to get up. I found myself on someone's trail and soon I saw Kassem and said something as I approached him, even though I was astonished that I would be able to talk to him while he was no longer among the living; then I realized that it wasn't Kassem but my faithful servant Sha'aban and that I wanted him to...

In this 1995 story, Bun-nyo is an elderly superintendent at a reservoir in the countryside. She devotes much of her time and effort to taking care of a flourishing flower garden that she has planted in honor of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, who visited the reservoir once in her younger days. The story begins as she hears the devastating news of Kim's death. "Grandma, Grandma, get up." Bun-nyo heard voices, choking with tears, and felt small, desperate hands shaking her shoulders....

Two or three years after Partition, the governments of Pakistan and India decided to exchange lunatics in the same way that they had exchanged civilian prisoners. In other words, Muslim lunatics in Indian madhouses would be sent to Pakistan, while Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani madhouses would be handed over to India. I can't say whether this decision made sense or not. In any event, a date for the lunatic exchange was fixed after high level conferences on both sides of the...

The narrator, a manager at a factory in the city, is sent on an urgent business trip to his wife's hometown. As the hapless narrator sets out on his journey, his wife pressures him to visit his in-laws while he is there, to take care of various family matters including playing matchmaker to her younger sister. *** It makes me shudder just to look back on that day's journey. I had been walking for about half an hour when the fickle mountainside weather suddenly brought on rain....

31 Laxmi Mansions Hall Road, Lahore 15 March 1954 Dear Uncle, Greetings, I write this after a long break. The fact is that I was ill. According to our poetic tradition, the treatment for illness lies in what is called the elixir of joy served by a slender temptress straight out of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam from a long-necked crystal jug. However, I think that is all poetry. Not to speak of comely cupbearers, one can't even find an ugly servant boy with a mustache to play...

This story, written in 1960, is narrated by a middle-aged party committee chairman in the countryside who encounters a young woman on the train, on his way back from an important regional meeting. The narrator is quite taken by the maiden's vivacity and youthful beauty, and becomes interested in the tin pail that she has carried aboard the train, full of baby carp that she is transporting to her fish farm. The following excerpt begins right after the young woman, who got off the train...

"What a slimeball!" She pressed the glass against her cheek again. "And you go along with him. All this time you've been so stubborn. Then somebody like him comes along and . . . I just don't get it!" Robert spread his fingers. He wasn't sure he would even feel the wart if it didn't rub against his middle finger. At first it had felt like a scab, now it was more like a crumb of toast. "Four weeks at the most," he said, and glanced up briefly. She was still leaning...

This is a story about something that took place over ten years ago, during the 13th World Youth Festival. It is now Juche Year 88 (1999).1 Outside our window slogans on the street, visible everywhere, bear witness to the hardships we've suffered over the last ten years and the upheavals of today: "Let's make this year shine with a great transformation in building a strong and prosperous country!" "Let's continue the arduous march vigorously onward to paradise!" But why am I...

A father finds that a vacation cannot cure his anxiety in this short story by Premio Nadal winner Juan José Millás. Over the past year he had earned a lot of money, so he rented a house by the sea where they would spend their vacation. It was a big two-story house with a garden in the back where they could have an afternoon bite and admire the sunset. His wife and two children were overjoyed when they saw the old mansion and he felt proud of himself: life was hard but there...

For the last week it's been quiet in this side wing of what used to be a fashionable Jewish apartment block in Lehniner Strasse. We're the last two inhabitants, she and I. A wing full of gloomy Berlin rooms, shaped like squares with one corner chopped off, rooms with three outside walls, practically impossible to heat and the toilet's on the half-landing . . . It is highly improbable that this rundown building would simply be forgotten while all the others are gradually being...

Hadjar bore seven children. Aga Akbar was the youngest, and he was born deaf and mute. She knew it even in the first month. She saw that he didn't react. But she didn't want to believe it. She never left him alone, and no one else was allowed to stay with him for long. For six months she kept that up. Everyone knew the child was deaf, but no one was allowed to speak of it. Until, finally, Kazem Khan, Hadjar's eldest brother, felt it was time to get involved. Kazem Khan...

Golmohamad turns and makes for the cab. The driver nods and mumbles politely as he turns the key in the ignition. He's wearing a light gray suit and looks like a young Leonid Brezhnew. As they drive down Hafez Avenue, Golmohamad is struck by the fact that in Tehran, you're rarely more than twenty feet away from a pizzeria serving cheeseburgers in a setting of purple bathroom tiles, fake black marble, and pink neon, with syrupy Iranian soft-rock in the background. The driver...

The smell of breakfast and cigarettes permeated the street around the teahouse. On his way in, Bahman recognized the errand boy from the public bath who was coming out with a tray of breakfast. "Hello, Mr. Bahman." "Hello. It seems you're open?" "It was finally our turn to get heating oil last night. We were tanking up during the bombing." "Save a place for me. I'm coming." "There's no need. No one knows we're open yet." The snowbound heights of the Alborz...

As the mountain crested its slope steepened. I was already sweating. A church appeared at the top of the crest. I thought I should rest there a bit before deciding when to descend. The war had just ended. The church was deserted. The altar, tables, and chairs had long been removed. Only the holy statue remained—Christ’s face, covered with dust, revealed an extraordinary quality of steadfast perseverance. Half the keys of an old piano still made a kind of grating sound. If...

In the steppes of southern Russia, there once was a city whose inhabitants spoke only French in the summer and English in the fall.    Our first official German document, which we got at police headquarters on the Alexanderplatz in 1990, was an East German residence permit. We didn't get any closer to our old dream: the right to travel freely. Right on the first page of the document it said: On departure from the German Democratic Republic, this permit must be...

To my grandmother, and all other grandmothers whom we never treasured as much as they deserved. On that sunny autumn Thursday afternoon, between the hours of two and seven, three unusual incidents took place. From three to five, my friends and I went to Mahtab Cinema to see Hitchcock's Psycho. At six-thirty, Agha Baji came to our house to visit my grandmother. Fifteen seconds later, the tile floor in the bathroom collapsed and I almost fell through into the stone pit below. Apparently,...