Short Story: ‘God is Love’ by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous
“I have no stake in this story outside of a desire to tell it.”
Fiction
From the FOLK Issue: ‘Death in Three Portraits’
Bakhit Al-Bashari lay in his sickbed, the same bed he once made with his bare hands from the stalks of palm fronds.
New: An Excerpt of Mohammed Said Hjiouij’s ‘Kafka in Tangier’
“Nevertheless, he knew that his fate would be no different from that of young Samsa: he would die in three months, no more and no less, just before his twenty-seventh birthday.”
Short Fiction: Belal Fadl’s ‘As Per Job Description’
Belal Fadl’s sharply funny “As Per Job Description,” in Mahmoud Younes’s translation, was shortlisted for the 2020 ArabLit Story Prize and appeared in the Winter 2020 DREAMS issue of ArabLit Quarterly.
New Fiction: Ameer Hamad’s ‘Captain Majid’
This story, by Palestinian author Ameer Hamad, first ran in our Fall 2021 FOOTBALL issue.
Review & Excerpt: ‘The Marooned Mirror,’ A Wonderland Revisited
Captured in the Twilight Wood, Faris and Farah go on a page-turning adventure while taking part in a long-awaited uprising against evil.
Fiction from Sudan: Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin’s ‘A Veteran Warrior’
“Will they shoot again?” the little girl asks her mother.
Award-winning Short Fiction: Raja Alem’s ‘The Boa’
” I spat out all the womb’s waters that were stagnant within my chest, and then waited for their despair.”
An Excerpt from Eman Assad’s ‘No Sun in the Closed Room’
“And oh, he was so ready to see the look on his uncle’s face once he realized his magic wand had betrayed him.”