Emily Drumsta has translated two stories by Egyptian writer Radwa Ashour (1946-2014), from her 1990 collection Ra’ayt al-Nakhl: Qisas (I Saw the Date Palms: Stories).
He was sitting, motionless, his face frozen as though sculpted from stone, staring into nothingness as though he had lost his hearing or his sight.
The second is “He Wants to Be Reassured,” where on its surface an old man comes to be reassured about the progress — at university — of his granddaughter. Then, in the middle of the story, students burst in with the announcement of a trip to Port Said:
The free city opens its ocean to you
Port Said: an ocean of commodities
Come with us to swim and buy!
Read the whole of both stories on Jadaliyya.