A girl executes her escape plan, with one unexpected twist at the end.
She walks through the house. It’s quiet now; everyone’s sleeping. Behind the bedroom door she can hear her father’s d…
Fiction
Photo by Ivy Yung on Unsplash Written in the early stages of the pandemic, this fairytale-like story finds a man looking to shape his environment to reflect the fragility of life—one scre…
Photo by Greg Rakozy & Alfons Morales on Unsplash In this short story from Japan, the narrator—who is disappearing organ by organ—dissolves into a library as encompassing as the cosmo…
In a dimly lit crypt, a woman loses her way and finds her thoughts toggling between a mysterious man in the dark tunnel and a childhood friend. The sun was setting when she got off the bus…
Artwork from Lwapula Province / Courtesy of Dr. Christine Saidi, Kutztown University The Aushi are an ethnolinguistic group located in the Lwapula Province of the Republic of Zambia and i…
A woman’s writing, and routine, are disrupted when she meets a man on a bicycle. The signorina Maddalena Rubí has a passion for poetry. She writes a little after dinner each night, before…
Each Saturday evening, they would meet, braiding and unbraiding their hair in a synchronized rhythm. But then one night, everything changed. On Saturday nights, they braided. They all wore…
Jerusalem is ultimately a city of eternal strangers. The connection to the city is not a connection to place, but rather a connection to time. Here, on the watershed of the winds, between…
Why would a girl of fourteen choose a minor key? Let Chopin carry you away, just as he does Nina, who brings the revolution to the keys of a prewar Steinway. “Nina, you’re next,” the…
Photo by Shahin Khalaji on Unsplash Narrated by a chorus of male voices, this story recounts the details of an incident that occurred in a company of only male employees, triggered by the…
Rimini, Italy / Photo by Letizia Agosta / Unsplash Find a spot near some water and let yourself be transported to the Italian seaside in this story of two teens who meet on the beach and…
Photo © by Yousef Khanfar In her debut novel, You Exist Too Much, newly released in paperback, Zaina Arafat’s narrator portrays the fantasies and desires of a young woman caught…
Sliman Mansour, The Village Awakens – Sahwit Al Kareh / Courtesy of the artist Author’s note: Over the last two decades, whenever I have returned to Palestine, there has been considerable…
Manal Deeb / Courtesy of the artist A trip to the doctor leaves an unnecessary burden on a young girl. I inherited the dark skin of the slim body I inhabit from my mother. Together…
Dana Barqawi, Woman Digging Thorns out of Field / Courtesy of the Artist In the following voyage of self-discovery and reflection on humanity—excerpted from a forthcomi…
Hiba Yassine / Courtesy of the artist In the following parable, a young boy discovers that he is a king. 1 I never thought I’d become a king at the age of thirteen…
Reem Khader, and she prevails / Courtesy of the artist (Everything here is reported by the young man who found the bottle.) This small light-emitting machine is currently s…
Manal Deeb / Courtesy of the artist A salt swing, and its story, connects a young woman to her grandmother—and more. The salt that lay on Grandmother’s lips, and the grief of the st…
Asma Ghanem / Courtesy of the artist A girl, “seduced by the city of Haifa,” loses her braid in a barbershop. My mom and I crossed the road from the bus station to the only barbersh…
Nadine Toukan, Al Aqsa / Courtesy of the artist When a mysterious teacher and his eighth-grade students disappear, the subject of transformation appears along the investigative t…
Sliman Mansour, Rituals Under Occupation / Courtesy of the Artist Respect the gods, Achilles, and show mercy towards me. –King Priam, Book XXIV, The Iliad When th…
“Anatomy of the mouth” by liverpoolhls is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 In the dentist’s chair with mouth wide open, a patient contemplates her tongue’s relationships to B6 or B7, how shade…
Photo by Joseph Rushmore In the following story, the narrator imagines what role her family might have played in a race massacre—and the generations of silence that followed.…
Photo by Serj Tyaglovsky / Unsplash With two weeks of food and the outside world covered in cellophane, apartment dwellers under a stay-at-home order get to know their neighbors as things…
Photo by Olga Serjantu / Unsplash Whatever happened in the neighborhood, ‘Ubayd was said to be behind it. Disappearing water pumps and gas cylinders, broken streetlights, and fires in the fa…
