A Curated List of 20 Palestinian Short Stories, in Translation, Online

Compiled by ArabLit Staff

Below, we share twenty (plus) Palestinian short stories that are available in translation online, from across historic Palestine and beyond, by young writers such as Ameer Hammad to contemporary award-winners like Adania Shibli and Mazen Maarouf, to titans of the twentieth century: Ghassan Kanafani, Emile Habibi, and Samira Azzam.

“Oh, My Nana” by Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud, translated by Nashwa Gowanlock (The Common)

The story opens:

It was raining nonstop, and the flowing stream of rainwater collected anything it met along the dirt track. As if this apocalyptic scene weren’t savage enough for God, the rain brought with it thunderstorms and gales that threatened to uproot the streetlamp and thin cypress trees dotting the neighborhood.

“Red Lights,” by Talal Abu Shawish, translated by Alice Guthrie (YouTube, from Comma Press)

Actress Grazyna Monvid reads ‘Red Lights’ a short story by the Gazan author Talal Abu Shawish (translated by Alice Guthrie), from The Book of Gaza: A City in Short Fiction (Comma, June 2014), edited by Gazan author Atef Abu Saif.

“Badia’s Magic Water,” by Maya Abu Al-Hayat, translated by Yasmine Seale (Morning Star Online)

The story opens:

BADIA walks into Ramallah Hospital like she owns the place, unhurried, greeting everyone and taking in their greetings. Stories fly to meet her in a brew of caution, curiosity and fear. From Samira the receptionist (recently married, keen to please), she wants to know if the tranquillisers had their effect on her husband, who makes love to her like a bull.

It appears in the collection The Book of Ramallah from Comma Press.

“Your Baby” by Asmaa Alghoul, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid (Words Without Borders)

It opens:

She felt like laughing. How could she laugh in that position, what would they say about her?

“The Roc Flew Over Shahraban” by Samira Azzam, translated by Ranya Abdelrahman (The Common)

The story opens:

Slowly, we raised our heads as hellish cries echoed in our ears, and we looked up in awe and fear. The sky was a summery blue with no trace of a cloud, and the sun had spread out, occupying every corner. We lowered our gazes, licking our bluish lips as we exchanged panicked glances. Our cracked feet were rooted to the furrowed mud, as if our slightest movement might stir up the screeching. We chewed over our terror for a few minutes, our parted lips emitting silence. Our mounts were as terrified as we were, and they scattered around the courtyard at the inn, fear spurring them to shake off the torpor of the midday heat.

You can get a collection of selected short works by Samira Azzam in Ranya Abdelrahman’s translation, Out of Time, from ArabLit Books.

“Letters from the Sea,” by Liana Badr, translated by Omnia Amin and Aida Bamia (World Literature Today)

The story opens:

This small light-emitting machine is currently still decoding the letters I extracted from the bottle I found floating in the sea a short while ago.

“A Knockout Punch,” by Eyad Barguthy, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid (Words Without Borders)

It opens:

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.

“Day Trip,” by Izzat al-Ghazzawi, translated by Nariman Youssef (The Common)

The story opens:

The village had many corners, of which the far western side, leading to the bus terminal, was the bleakest. Om Saber sat on the clean plastic bench installed by the village’s youth committee and waited for the first microbus to take her to the city. With an anxious movement, she reached into her bra to check on the piece of paper she had placed there. Abu Hosny, the old taxi driver, had written down for her all the instructions that she needed to get to her destination: Shatta Prison, where the sweetest part of her now resided, which made distance and time nothing but an illusion. A large cat rubbed its dewy fur on the hem of her black dress. Om Saber smiled and tried to stay still so as not to disturb the cat. She smiled again when she found the paper in its fold.

It appears in Issue 23 of The Common.

“Mandelbaum Gate,” by Emile Habibi, translated by Stacy Beckwith

The story opens:

“Well then tell her that she intends to get out of here, mister,” the Israeli policeman called out. He was standing, arms folded, at one entrance to Mandelbaum Gate when I explained to him that we had come with my mother who intended to go through after being allowed to pass. I pointed over the Jordanian side of the gate.

“All That’s Left to Him,” by Ameer Hamad, translated by Osama Hammad (ArabLit).

The story opens:

His father told him that the building committee had held a meeting, and that they’d decided to forbid the children from playing in front of the building. The boy was afraid of his father. If his mother had given him the news, he would have screamed until morning. But now, he acted as if the matter didn’t concern him.

You can also read Hamad’s “The Wooden Castle” in translation online.

“Who Drew the Curtains?” by Sheikha Hussein Helawy, translated by Nariman Youssef (The Common).

The story opens:

The pores of life are clogged in this room. Making it difficult to breathe. There’s a hanging smell of death that’s impossible to miss. Visitors are unnerved by it. Except those visitors whose nerves have been hardened by the tedium of their dutiful weekly visits to the woman at the far end of the room: boredom and emptiness compressed into no more than half an hour.

It appears in Issue 23 of The Common. You can also read more stories by Sheikha Hussein Helawy, in Nancy Roberts’ translation, in the collection They Fell Like Stars from the Sky.

“The Shoes,” by Nassar Ibrahim, translated by Taline Voskeritchian (Words Without Borders).

It opens:

Perhaps it is merely a clever joke, but it has become a story, everybody’s story.

No one knew why Nizar insisted on going to Ramallah. The situation is not encouraging—the military checkpoints, the humiliations, the grueling walk through the hills and over the barriers made of dirt. Nevertheless, with a laborer’s determination, Nizar insisted: There is a problem that must be resolved in Ramallah. He must go. “I will bear the burden of the road . . . we’ve grown accustomed to it . . . it has become normal for us. The Israelis don’t realize that they have managed to turn everything unnatural in our life into something natural . . . what else can we do? Sit until we die, wait for what?”

“The Crucified Sheep,” by Ghassan Kanafani, translated by Rachel Green (ArabLit)

The story opens:

The fiery summer sun blazed in all directions, extending before my eyes without end. Dust particles kept slapping the windows of the moving car. When I shifted my gaze to the faces of my travel companions, the harshness of our journey was clear; their hair was white from the dust, and even their eyelashes were awash in a bitter dusty milk. They panted as the sweat carved forking paths down their dusty faces and proceeded to drip down their necks.

You can read a collection of Kanafani’s short stories in Palestine’s Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories, translated by Barbara Harlow and Karen Riley.  As the publisher writes, “each story involves a child who is victimized by political events and circumstances, but who nevertheless participates in the struggle toward a better future.” We have collected more works by Kanafani here.

“The Classroom That Disappeared,” by Ziad Khaddash, translated by Yazan Ashqar (World Literature Today)

The story opens:

The center’s phone rang. A tense voice shouted: “An entire class’s students along with their art teacher at a city school have disappeared!” At first, we didn’t understand what that tensed voice meant by “the students disappeared.” We went to the school, and the astonished principal interrogated the remaining scared students and us, too. They all agreed; they saw that “weirdo teacher with his tree-patterned shirt, treelike hair, and treelike eyes” and his eighth-grade section C students enter the classroom at the start of the second class. They never saw the door open. They didn’t see any student taking a bathroom break or bringing chalk or papers or anything else.

You can also read Khaddash’s “A Well-Lit Garden,” tr. Amika Fendi, online, and he has a short story in translation in the collection, Book of Ramallah.

“The Stranger” by Abeer Khshiboon, translated by Nashwa Gowanlock (The Common)

It opens:

Farah was struggling to keep her balance in the heaving crowd near the locked gate. Despite how long she would have to wait to get into the hall at Amman University—where she’d already been standing for more than an hour—she remained both calm and cheerful. She was even humming a song—the last one she’d listened to on the way from the border crossing to a modest hotel in the Jordanian capital where she was sharing a room with the university friend joining her for the Fairouz concert.

It appears in Issue 23 of The Common.

“A Life Where Nothing Happens,” by Mazen Maarouf, translated by Mazen Maarouf and Laura Susjin (Granta)

The story opens:

During the war, my father was not afraid unless we were around him. If he was alone, he didn’t care. His fear was that we would die in front of him and so he thought of us all the time, which is not what he wanted. I heard him say this to my mum: I feel like I am one of those people born to stay alive while everyone around them dies. When the frequency of the clashes intensified, he raised the volume of the radio to disguise the sound of the bombing. This meant we always knew when he was afraid. He had a skill for finding a song we hadn’t heard before: pop, rock, folk, jazz or classical. We would ask him to explain the song lyrics, and he would say that it was about a person who lived a life where nothing happens. He told us it was the same song we listened to last time.

You can get a collection of Maarouf’s short stories from Granta: Jokes for the Gunmen, translated by Jonathan Wright. This fantastic, bizarre, surreal, and too-real collection of stories won the inaugural Multaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story and was longlisted for the International Booker.

“The Sea Cloak,” by Nayrouz Qarmout, translated by Charis Bredon (YouTube, from Comma Press)

This story appears in Qarmout’s The Sea Cloak and Other Stories, translated by Perween Richards (except for the story above, which was translated by Charis Bredin). The collection brings together 11 stories by author and journalist Nayrouz Qarmout; these women-centered tales are powerful, voice-driven narratives about daily life in Gaza.

“Isolated,” by Adania Shibli, translated by Katharine Halls (New Directions Books)

The story opens:

To get away from the dense city center, with its unhealthy and unsafe atmosphere, and in search for some calm and serenity, he moved to this distant, isolated house on the northernmost fringes of the city, near the river.

There is unfortunately no collection of Shibli’s short stories in translation, although of course you can read her award-winning novels, including her most recent, Minor Detail, translated to English by Elisabeth Jaquette.

“Mordechai’s Mustache and His Wife’s Cats,” by Mahmoud Shukair, translated by Michael K Scott (Words Without Borders)

It opens:

Mordechai is a simple person, like tens of thousands of others in Tel Aviv (though he would insist that there are few like him there). He enjoys living his easy and comfortable life, gives no one grief, and no one gives him grief. That’s why Mordechai’s neighbors like him: he doesn’t hassle them.

You can also get Mahmoud Shukair’s Jerusalem Stands Alone, translated by Nicole Fares. You can also read more short stories online by Shukair.

“She Who Birthed a Dream, She Who Birthed a Sorrow,” by Nibal Thawabteh, translated by Faten Hafez (ArabLit)

The story opens:

The villagers called her Alkarsa, or “the mute woman.” This was not just a label, but rather a description of her condition: she was indeed mute.