These are the opening pages to Akram Musallam’s powerful novella, A Girl from Shatila. In the aftermath of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, we walk through the memories of a survivor, the Mermaid, and follow her journey in Hamburg, Germany recollecting the pieces of her past. Continue Reading
“For him, Damascus is like a mirror, a sun between two clouds; there he feels eternal. Every time he visits, he feels like he has found a part of his soul.”Continue Reading
“It is said that blue is an antidote to sexual excitation—and I was a raging bull then. It is also said that blue calms the nerves—and I was on the edge of madness, bad temper was my inheritance, my father was known for it.”Continue Reading
It’s a fact—and I grow more certain of this as time goes by—that no matter how many folks we encounter as time goes by, some of their faces strike a chord deep within us. They somehow burrow into our souls, forever marking the course of our lives.Continue Reading
By Alhassan Bakri Translated by Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour We were all naughty and talkative as kids, except Idris: he was extremely quiet. He mastered an incredible range of abilities, including fishing, crafting bird traps, peeling acacia tree bark for swings, and blacksmithing trucks and trains out of empty powdered-milk tins.Continue Reading
“The truth is, we didn’t taste it, because the tray came back with nothing on it except the bones—even the sauce had vanished. Your father swore he took onlytwo bites while Sheikh al-Raddi finished the rest. May it give him stomach pain.”Continue Reading
There goes the bell. I’ve been waiting for so long! I quickly pull my hand from the tub of water where the empty bottles are piled up, ready to be washed and refilled with beer, then loaded up and taken to the city’s bars and nightclubs. There, they’re poured straight into mouths whose thirst will never be quenched. They soon come back to me, empty, waiting to be washed.Continue Reading
“Is this why you came to visit now?”Continue Reading
“There, an angel revealed itself, taking the shape of an image he’d seen in a storybook, when he was younger, back when his mother read him stories about angels.”Continue Reading
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