Short stories

Oh, Jonah, the One of the Whale, forgive my tardiness! I tried to dispatch my case swiftly and now I lie condemned. Now that my number is up, I am counting the hours I have left. Eventually, I figured it out: your journey, its import. I burst out laughing, I regretted it, I felt like crying. I didn’t hold high hopes for the future. I had managed my expectations and commended my soul to God. My muscles twitched to the beat of the clock. I had shut my eyes to the truth year after year, until the truth decided to settle the score. I don’t care whether it’s Monday or Saturday, day or night. You, my boy, acquainted yourself with miracles throughout your life until the ground under your feet drew level with the sky. Now, you are about to be reunited with your mother. You’ll have to introduce me to Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary. May God bless you both. Over a hundred thousand men were sent to Nineveh. They had been tasked with mending ...Read more →

I was sitting in the Red Rose Café when I heard the news. Saint Guevara had fallen into one of the many holes on Green March Boulevard. There are two things I have to clarify before I continue telling this story: one pertains to the name of the café and the other to the name of our hero.

The Red Rose is one of the newer cafés in our town, which until the ’80s ranked as one of the smallest towns in the country, boasting less than ten townsfolk. It’s also closely related to Saint Guevara, the hero of our story, although it’s his son Omar al-Mahdi who runs and funds the place now. Al-Mahdi Omar—the old man had found it amusing to give his two sons the same name but in reverse order—is Saint Guevara’s firstborn and lives overseas, in Belgium to be precise. His name carries special meaning for the Saint. It reminds him of days of yore, when people stood up for their rights heroically and didn’t recoil at the thought of getting their hands dirty.

When Omar al-Mahdi ...Read more →

Everything happened posthaste. He had been standing less than half a meter away from the catastrophe. The city was still looking for survivors. Hospitals were swamped with the injured and would probably need to start rejecting new patients soon. The building residents had just held the so-called inauguration ceremony that took place every time a new cemetery was opened to the public in any city in the Arab World. Every man to his taste, but he held the series of performances to be rather macabre, as if intended to show how belly dancers can teach the bereaved to shake off their grieve. Meanwhile, the only mosque in the neighborhood, sited across the road and hemmed in by little stores of all shapes and colors, had shown a stoic endurance.

Mourad Didouche Street, which is doomed to be remembered by the name les R4—the one the French usurpers gave it—wakes up to life at dawn with the sound of the adhan. With deliberate indolence, it creeps out of the dark blanket that had ...Read more →

“Good morning, viewers from all over the nation! I hope you’re having a wonderful day!

“Before I start today’s show, I would like to take some time to go over the score and probe into how the havoc wreaked last night has taken its toll on us, in order to allow what makes us feel like going to pieces as we collect the dismembered corpses of our loved ones to henceforth rest in the past.

“First, we will dig a mass grave, a grave that we won’t be able to dig big enough to hold them all. We’ll bury them, pray, and chant. But our loved ones won’t stay buried for long. Instead, they’ll want to stick around and will stalk us, baying for blood.

“Coming to work this morning, out of respect for the deceased, I had to toe walk in order to avoid treading on a patch of pavement where the body of a child might have been scooped up a moment before. I lowered my head and tried to avoid meeting the carnage with my ...Read more →

At eight o’clock in the evening I climbed briskly up the ladder to the plane at Istanbul’s airport that was going to take me back to Kuwait. A stewardess smiled at me and I smiled back while checking the boarding pass to see what seat I had been assigned. The number—E 11—remains etched in my memory. I reached my row and saw a young girl sitting next to the window. She was curled up in a ball and had her coat pulled up over her head. To be fair, the temperature inside the plane was rather low. By the way she was dressed, one would be justified in saying that she could not afford to have a sense of style. She had African traits.

The girl briefly turned her face toward me, allowing me to catch a glimpse of her eyes. They looked red. It had to be either stress or exhaustion. I sat down in the seat next to hers. My heart was pounding quickly. With bated breath I asked myself, “What’s ...Read more →

After my stay abroad, I returned to my hometown, which I had missed sorely, and everything seemed even more splendorous than prior to my departure. The trees were tall and their flowers had bloomed. The birds warbled beautifully. The air was pure to such an indescribable extent that it served as a cure to several respiratory diseases. I had spent the better part of my halcyon youth and probably the best days of my life in this small town. While away, I had hankered to go back so strongly that I ended up having to bust a gut just to enjoy my stay abroad after a fashion. On top of that, one day I learned that my mother had fallen ill. There is nothing like knowing your doting mother is suffering while you are far away from her to make you feel less than enthusiastic about embarking on new adventures. I had just been offered a position as a physician in my hometown, and my new priority was to make certain that every resident received the ...Read more →

Mustafa was in his twenties. He had gone to university, where he had met Hayam as a freshman. She had been a classmate of his. He proposed as soon as he graduated and went to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Hayam’s father was a prominent civil servant and didn’t welcome the idea of Mustafa marrying his daughter since he didn’t have a job. However, at his daughter’s insistent bidding, he finally consented to their engagement.

Months passed, but the situation remained the same. Mustafa had been looking for a job but hadn’t gotten lucky so far.

One rainy night, his fiancée called him on the phone and told him that her father was intent on breaking their engagement. She also told him that she had no choice but to accept her father’s decision, because he had tried to strangle her.

Mustafa hung up, frothing at the mouth and feeling desperate. His fiancée was the only one who cared for him and supported him. He knew that she couldn’t just run away, because then she’d have to spend the rest of her life looking over ...Read more →

My steps falter as I amble along the riverbank. The house I grew up in lies close to the well belonging to the town of Quaà Asserasse. I feel a bit wobbly on my legs, unable to brave the wind, which I fear may mistake me for a leaf and send me flying away any minute. Getting high on an empty stomach does that to you. I have been mulling over the possibility of returning for a while now. However, I wonder whether by any chance there is a way of returning to something slightly different from what first brought me into being—whether there is something that will embrace the person I have become. Go figure. The only thing I know for certain is that regardless of how grown-up I consider myself to be now, I feel a little bit more like the child I used to be with every step I take toward home.

Minutes later, I arrive at the front door. The curtains on the door are drawn. I can hear jbala music and smell the sweet scent of fish ...Read more →

After the service was over at al-Hamd Mosque, I headed out into the street. I couldn’t bring myself to recall the subject the sermon had touched on. It had not only been long and repetitive, but also atrociously rendered to boot. However, it had at least allowed me time to psych myself up for my upcoming appointment.

I crossed the paved road that ran parallel to the Mahmoudiyah Canal and arrived at the beginning of Mercy Street. In 500 meters, I would have to overcome what had kept me away from him for 35 years. He used to glare daggers at me, to the point where I began dreading the very idea of stumbling across him. It was only natural that all these years later I cringed at the thought of seeing him again, especially after estimating the amount of rage that must have welled up inside him over time. I walked gingerly, minding the gap between the train and the platform. After all, time does not ...Read more →

We were being held captive inside the Great Mosque’s courtyard. The sky above us was an eerie pitch-black. We had been locked up by a one-eyed ogre that seemed to have sprung up from a squalid dungeon in hell. It beggared belief how much terror he had spread. He had decapitated innocents, and as the fine necromancer he had proven to be, he had managed to sow corruption in the Levantine territories. He had driven dozens of people to the brink, but not us, because we knew that we had God on our side. We had begged Him to send us one of His warriors to gouge out the demon’s only eye and free us from him.

We knew our prayers had been answered when we saw a knight descend from the sky enveloped in a halo of light and riding a creature that looked like an angel. The knight placed his hands over the angel’s wings to bring it to a halt. The crowd inside the mosque had never ...Read more →