Short stories

The clock struck 10:30 p.m. Desire was surrounded by his bags, standing alone in the dark alley. Some inscrutable force had dragged him to where he was now, in front of a building whose familiar-looking and serenity-radiating façade veneered its incandescent core. He poked his head through the door.

He gained access to the interior and then hauled himself up the staircase to where Life dwelt. He was all in a stew, a boiling one, showering sparks that were eager to weld together into lightning. Immediately after opening the door, they fell into each other’s arms. She swayed on her feet, and he allowed her to rock him to sleep so that he could fish for his dreams in her bosom and emblazon them on reality.

She had known he would return to her one day, for she had fed the meek side of his personality for years. She was positive that he was unable to resist her charms and thus was as happy as a clam. He pressed an ardent kiss on her lips, and after all the time ...Read more →

On the morning of the Sham Ennisim holiday, peace reigned in our town, save for our house, which had been set in motion at the crack of dawn. I had been the first to jump out of bed and had then scurried from room to room to wake up my parents, my sister, and my brothers.

“Hurry up, it’s time to go!”

I packed a whole rucksack with sandwiches and put Pepsi and water bottles in plastic bags while waiting for the rest of my family to fully dress and primp themselves. Finally, my father finished using the john and we stepped out of the house, closing the door behind us.

At noon, we arrived at a bustling city. We left the car close to a long bridge whose piers lay underwater. I looked at my dad and asked him, “Are these the Benevolent Bridges?” He replied in the affirmative.

We stopped to contemplate the clear waters of the river and the bridge’s arches, which looked like doorposts with water flowing through ...Read more →

This is the story of two individuals who despite sharing 25% of their genome lived in times that seem eons apart. She is standing in the biggest and most famous city square, which has received different names over the centuries. It is bordered by historic buildings. One of them is notable for tracing its history back to the pre-Islamic era, while another one, the red one, flaunts a plate noting that its construction dates back to the era before Christ—veritably before history itself started to be recorded.

While history runs its course, Sara must wait. She is meeting a man who has promised to get her a joint. Over here, hash is a definite no-no for women. So are cigarettes in general. Smoking is strictly forbidden. Forty years ago, she used to hang out with friends and smoke in this same square. It was allowed back then. Furthermore, in front of where she is positioned right now, there used to be a pub called OEA, like the beer brand. However, that’s also gone. ...Read more →

Sami was lolling in the garden of the Nile’s island that lays in front of the Egyptian Opera House. He was surrounded by tall buildings and big boats that threw a blue glow on the calm waters of the river, lighting it up at night. In the background, he could hear the deafening music that was always blaring out of the speakers installed inside the boats, which took not only tourists but also locals for a brief trip along the Nile; they gave all those racked with pain a short break from their everyday lives. For almost half an hour, they could lose the crosses they had to bear onshore. Sami, however, was not paying heed to the music of the boats. He had his headphones on and was listening to music he had downloaded from the Internet, which acted as a magical world of sorts. It stood in stark contrast to the real world where one was forced to comply with the allotted default setting when listening to music, when ...Read more →

One day, the elder, the town’s sheikh, announced:

“The day after tomorrow a high-ranking government delegation will be visiting our town in order to send word of our trials and tribulations to the decision-making centers. We will host a large reception in their honor, larger than any event this town has ever staged. For the occasion we will slaughter a cow ‘bright in color and pleasing to the eye’.”

In response to the sheikh’s notification, the town’s fool asked, “And where do we find such a cow, venerable sheikh?”

“What an excellent question! I see you are smarter than most wretched scoundrels from around this neck of the woods,” the sheikh remarked.

After a moment’s thought, he spotted the hoary old widow. She was toiling up the cliff path with the donkey her sterile late husband had bequeathed to her.

As if he were Archimedes and had just puzzled out a conundrum in the bathtub, the sheikh suddenly squawked, “Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!”

He then turned to the town’s fool and said, “Listen, this is what we’re going to do. The hoary ...Read more →

My city earned a place in the history books when the first strike from a pickax was delivered to dig the Suez Canal. The city became famous not only among Egyptians, but also among foreigners, who started to arrive at it, wound up living in it, and eventually died in it. On the western side of the city, close to where the “beautiful” beach begins to stretch, one may bump into the fence of the old cemetery of Port Said. It is divided into different sections: one for the deceased who hailed from the Commonwealth, another for those who were Catholic, and yet another for those who were Orthodox Christians. Besides that, there are five sections for deceased Muslims. It has recently been expanded to include five new sections in the suburban slums of Abu Auf.

Upon accessing the foreigners section of the cemetery, I saw a heart-rending epitaph written on one of the tombstones. It read: “Dear son, rest in peace in this foreign land, which lies so far away from your loved ones who grieve ...Read more →

Roughly thirty years ago, on an otherwise seemingly ordinary afternoon, he looked different. His narrow chest, gruff voice, and steely eyes struck me that day as belonging to someone else, someone one would have expected to find at the Mansoura Corniche of the ’80s. Even as the schoolboy I was back then, I was able to tell he had quite suddenly become barely recognizable. I felt a sense of distance from him. As I sauntered alongside my father, I suddenly felt that he was no longer the man he used to be. From time to time, we stopped walking and our eyes drifted over to the opposite shore.

A foreign-sounding voice cut through the silence. “That is the al-Banna mosque.”

I looked to the place where his eyes were lingering. The mosque’s dome shimmered in the fading sunlight. It glowed green and majestic, standing in stark contrast to the darkness that had already descended over Talkha, the neighborhood where it was located. His voice was soft, much softer than what I knew it to ...Read more →

Like any other employee at the buffet, I obey the orders of my plump boss, whose rotundity I am sure more than one or two people must have mistakenly ascribed at some point or another to some fatal disease. He shadows me relentlessly, watching my every move. He is probably more thorough at said task than an actual shadow would be, for even shadows, I am sure, must get tired of being gummmed to a person’s ass and wind up cutting their enslaved owners some slack. As soon as the diners lay down their cutlery, I clear all the empty plates from the tables in the hall and head toward the rudimentarily furnished kitchen, which nobody has bothered to equip with the implements needed to get the dishes properly scraped clean.

“Screw them!” I think to myself and then carry on heaping “praise” of that ilk on them, while fetching dish after dish with my work-roughened hands. For the life of me, I can’t say why I keep putting up with ...Read more →

The diaspora of my people began in 1948. The story of the ordeal I was subjected to when forced to abandon my home dates back to the same year. I was sitting with my children around the hearth while sipping tea to warm up when someone banged on the door so fiercely that for a moment I thought they were intent on busting it down. My wife and children hid further inside the house and I opened the door. In front of me stood a group of Israeli soldiers. Even before I could ask what I owed the pleasure of their visit to, one of the soldiers instructed me in Arabic to evacuate the house. My heart skipped a beat. What would I tell my kids? Where were we supposed to go?

I apprised my wife of what had happened and she started crying. So I did the only thing I could at the moment. I patted her on the shoulder and comforted her. “Have faith in God and be patient, for one day we will return.”

We weren’t given ...Read more →

“In our town everything is organized. Everything is where it should be: the river, the trees, the old rural houses . . . All the elements that assemble our reality complement one another and establish an ideal symbiosis that rounds out the ensemble. The goldfinches sing beautifully while jumping from branch to branch, the morning breeze caresses the basil fields and wafts their sweet fragrance all over the place, dewdrops shine on the leaves of the trees . . . I seriously doubt there has ever been an artist—or ever will be, for that matter—as dexterous as to be able to match the beauty of this scenery with a painting.

“Everything is as peaceful as peace itself. I dare say even the notion of peace has more noise to it than the one reigning over this Paradise on earth. Even the trees observe the peace, for their sake and for the sake of the villagers. It is only the children who break the overall peace, snapping off twigs from the ...Read more →