Articles tagged "Murder"
Poor Grandpa!
I never wanted to remember at all, let alone write about, what transpired when I took a walk with Grandpa to the sprawling Kariobangi slum area, that part of the slum known as Korogocho. I didn’t…...
Confession
I admit it: I once killed a journalist. I’ve tried to forget it, to keep quiet, to pretend, but it doesn’t make sense to continue deceiving myself. No one can escape their memories. The recollection…...
Beyond this Darkness and this Silence
The world has become aware of its invisible citizen. But no one knows you are here. —H. G. Wells I warned her in one of our first conversations, though she didn’t take me seriously:…...
Diary
At eight in the morning I looked at my watch and it was eight o’clock. At nine-thirty I looked at my watch and it was nine-thirty. At eleven in the morning I looked at my watch and it was ten to…...
Requiem
That day—I remember it clearly, I had decided while I was waiting for the bus into town: I would steal a book. When it finally came, I sat next to a woman who was coming from the hot springs; so…...
The Well
When Rafa‘a died, the last human desires in the bosoms of the people of Huzum village were extinguished, most of all in the bosoms of its women. The burning desire for Rafa'as comeuppance…...
To Arrive
When you get off the airplane, it will not be like Kabul airport, or like other cities of Afghanistan for that matter, where they drive stairs up and attach them to the door and then take down the passengers…...
Dos Manzanas
You have to see him there on the streets of an old neighborhood in Madrid; you have to look for him, young and tanned, with an open white shirt, specked with some paltry design, a style out of fashion,…...
A Stitch in Time
The mossos came this morning. I’d been expecting them for days. When I opened the door, they were still out of breath. That’s not unusual. Visitors get to my seventh-floor attic apartment on…...
from “Broken Glass Park”
I hate men. Anna says good men do exist. Nice, friendly men who cook and help clean up and who earn money. Men who want to have children and give gifts and book vacations. Who wear clean clothes, don’t…...
from “Proud Beggars”
Albert Cossery and Golo slouch through a seedy Cairo
Albert Cossery's 1955 masterpiece, Proud Beggars, takes place in the squalid slums of Cairo. While some residents struggle with oppression, poverty, and corruption, others renounce the hypocrisy of society…...
Head Weight
In all honesty, Ruben was at a loss to explain what was happening to him. He told his friends and family a story about feeling tired and drained, while he in himself saw a different sort of picture: somebody,…...
From “You Do Understand?”
A Day I Loved You I lay there with my eyes closed, waiting for my husband to vacate his half of the bed. To go to work, of course. He’ll get a sandwich on the corner. He’ll have a coffee during…...
Professional
Normal people fantasize a lot about our work, which is really pretty routine and not at all like what you see in the movies. Our first jobs are perhaps the most memorable. Contrary to popular…...
Reflections
Penetrate it and you'll better understand: life is revealed to us in a painted reflection. Last night I killed my son Mauro. OK, it wasn't exactly me who did it. All I did was give the VIP…...
from “Corridor of Dreams”
For the past two months, I've been dreaming the same dream over and over. It only dawned on me recently. We forget most dreams, so why should I dream this again and again? It begins in the Osaka alley…...
From “Suit in the Soil”
The cab driver was in the mood for conversation, but his passenger wasn't. So the tape deck came on and Angela Dimitriou started work at seven-thirty in the morning. Side by side in a silver twin frame…...
Maybe Not Yem
"Can you believe it? One of my friends threw her boss's baby into a washing machine, just before going back to her village," the woman beside me said in a flat voice. I turned my gaze to the darkness…...
Da Ma’s Way of Talking
In the summer of 1989, I was assigned to work in an electrical engineering company in Nanjing. My train pulled in at one in the afternoon, and as I walked out of the station—two big bags slung over…...
A Tongue of Lead
There are nights when dreams run stories one into another, preventing the sleeper from making a clean break between scenes that strange actors link together in his head, and so it seems that the night…...
The Soul Mate
My only son has a soul mate I'm not fond of. But what can I do? They bonded in the army, and although they've been out for a while now, the ties have only grown stronger. Is such a friendship like…...
Reading Rutka Laskier
From to time to time, a Dutch publisher will ask me to write a preface or an afterword to a book he plans to publish. I have written prefaces for authors as different as Machiavelli, Stendhal and Boris…...
Free Aung San Suu Kyi!
As the feeding frenzy that is Frankfurt Book Fair gets into full swing, a more mindful energy is fuelling the monks leading the people power revolution against the Military Junta in Burma. Last Saturday,…...
Sign of These Times
The couple stopped in the middle of the way to rest. They were both tired of fleeing and took shelter in a cowshed near an empty road. Soon the woman felt the first warnings. It was a providential stop;…...
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