Author: Rita Tapia Oregui

Time stopped. My heartbeat started racing and I gasped for air. I felt like I was buried under debris.

It was as if I had just come across another layer of the human soul, which revealed itself wider than the sky and deeper than the sea standing in front of me. I never thought I would deliberately seek to face my worst nightmare!

The Seagull Shore is a beautiful beach on the Mediterranean coast which has yet to be discovered by outsiders. Only a few boats chug out to sea from the docks that can be found nearby. The women of the courageous sailors stay ashore, waiting anxiously for their safe return home. The shore is also frequented by youngsters, who go there to get high and stare at the horizon.

That beach is, in my eyes, the country’s crowning glory. It brings me hope for the future. From there, one can discern Europe’s coastline on a clear day. Europe, that promised land whose siren song has led so many to drown in sea. ...Read more →

She was grateful.

A big mountain rose above her, and behind it, one settled by good God-fearing people. The road leading there had been a rather bumpy one; it was infested by apostates. The lights of the city stretching between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim shone, at times, like the bling on a bedazzled wedding dress and, at others, like the will-o’-the-wisp winking in graveyards at night. The clouds were the color of tears and blood, like the ones that had been shed by the people on the ground in their fight to preserve their country and cultural identity. She had been feeling lost and alone for a long time, but now, she had finally managed to return back home.

She was grateful.

The day was lit up with hope, the sort that made her eyes all watery. She was a senior at university and appreciated all academia had done to expand her horizons without keeping her from staying true to her roots, but she had missed that red city where she had taken her first steps into the big topsy-turvy world. ...Read more →

For the life of me, I can’t remember when I first fell in love with the Oum Er-Rbia River, which winds its way through Khenifra, my city. Was it on one of those afternoons I spent by it with my family? Was it when I first tried out one of the delicious-tasting fish it carries? I can’t say. All I know is that I can rely on it to wash away my sorrows.

I have made a habit of standing on one of the five bridges in the city that stretch over it to just spend time reveling in the sight of it, and that’s how I met her, for she seemed to share my passion for contemplating the river. One day, I decided to approach her and struck up conversation with her. Her name was Nisreen, she was a high school student and she lived close to the river.

One tempestuous winter night, the river bursted its banks, the water level soared until reaching the houses’ ground level and the owners of the over-flooded residences ...Read more →

The events depicted in this story are fictitious, although inspired by those that, according to the news I have watched an hour ago, occurred in Mabujah, a village in Syria to whose beauty I can attest firsthand, because it was one of the places in which I stayed during my visit to the country.

I had my recently turned three-year-old on my lap and was lulling her to sleep. After crying uncontrollably for hours, she had finally calmed down, unlike the people whose voices could be heard coming from the street. Another explosion made the house tremble, waking my little angel up and prompting her to start crying again. Hence, I resumed singing, while stroking her silky hair. At some point, she stopped crying, fixed her gaze on me and pressed my hand with hers. It was her way of asking me to keep her safe.

Most of the strikes took place at night. The blasts always made me jump out of bed to make sure my baby girl had come to no harm. It broke my heart to hear her cry. ...Read more →

She swept the streets with the tail of her coat as she wended her way across the city. While trying to haul herself from the noxious hole she had fallen into the day she was born, she had unwittingly wound up dragging a token of her misery along.

The thought of ending her life had crossed her mind more than once. At nights, she beseeched God to guard her from all the evil surrounding her, and more specifically, from her flatmate Ruhiya. She was a weird woman who spent a third of her nights mumbling gibberish while staring at the stars. Any sensible God-fearing person would have been wary of her behavior. The townswomen, however, seemed to trust her and often turned to her for help. As payment, she demanded a jar of corn, a fist of wheat—a rare commodity around these parts—, or a few cubic feet of gas for lighting. Ruhiya had moved out of her old house because her entire family had died there from an obscure disease, which her current flatmate wouldn’t have ...Read more →

On a night that, despite the full moon, seemed darker than nights are per se, all the most powerful necromancers of this world gathered in a secret location at the bottom of the valley known as the Wadi el Kuf. They had been eagerly awaiting that night’s arrival, because, according to their codices, that was the night the gates of hell were supposed to be unlatched, which only happened once every thousand years. They were certain that night was the night in question because all signs pointed to it. People had lost their sense of common humanity and nobody cared to distinguish between good and evil any longer.

After blessing the ground under their feet and muttering some incantations, the necromancers sat to wait for the gates of hell to swing open. Seeing that no fireworks ensued, they fixed their gaze on the three highest-ranking necromancers—the Buddhist, the Jew and the ISIL acolyte—by way of asking for guidance.

In an attempt to talk the devil into opening the gates of hell, the Buddhist said, “We have slaughtered the Muslim ...Read more →

White clouds scud across the sky. Peace and quiet reign supreme. The sun is shining. It’s a beautiful fall morning and Khaled is wearing a happy smile on his face as he wends his way through the old city. He has gone out to buy antiquities and look at the old houses of the neighborhood. That’s the only thing that keeps him distracted from the unbearable sorrow of having lost his dear friend. He has only recently found the strength to leave the house again. His friend’s demise has hit him hard, perhaps because of how unexpected it has been.

As he strolls down the Street of the World, he starts to mull over what it is that makes something deserve a certain name. “Take this street, for instance,” he says to himself. “It’s a pretty narrow street, but still, it seems to contain everything that makes the world a miserable place: beggars, thieves, mercenaries, traitors, tourists, neets, …” It is his all-time favorite street to peek on the bright side of life, ...Read more →

I saw him enter the school through a side door and head toward the classroom. I heard one of my students whisper from behind, “It’s Ziad’s dad!”

He was rather short, but strongly-built, and must have been about 50. In the solemn tone of voice his son adopted to answer questions in class, he greeted me and asked where he could find the principal’s office. I asked him why he needed to speak to the principal and he told me he had to take his son out of school. I immediately thought that he would need some kind of divine intervention to get the principal to agree to that, but I wasn’t going to be the one to dash his hopes—it wasn’t my place—so I chose instead to remain silent, smile at him and point him toward the principal’s office. People have the right to entertain hope. He, however, must have read the skepticism in my face, because he proceeded to offer me the context needed to understand his decision.

“The rose fields ...Read more →

Sulma’s face crumples the moment she sees the pothole we call Al-Wazany, after the mayor. I can’t bear to see her upset. Enough is enough, I say to myself: One day, I am going to do something about it.

I have known Sulma my whole life. We were classmates and then dated for eight years. After graduation, I went to look for a job that would allow me to marry her. Unfortunately, I was not very successful at finding one, even though I had attained excellent grades in school. It was probably around that time when Al-Wazany was appointed mayor. The first thing he did was order the construction of a mosque that would carry his name. During the time he was in charge, some public baths and a soccer field were built. The roads, however, remained in poor conditions.

All his friends and family members secured positions of authority. Corruption and nepotism ran wild. Most of the people that ended up being chosen for qualified positions didn’t even have to bother ...Read more →

I woke up late and sweaty. The beast I had spent the whole night running from in my dreams had eventually caught up with me. I rubbed my joints and wetted my lips with my tongue. “Today is no ordinary day” I said to myself. I was meeting Louisa in the afternoon. She had promised herself to me. I was to unwrap and savor a woman for the very first time. My body was quivering with anticipation! I had welcomed her suggestion to meet at Le Bungalow with unbridled enthusiasm. I had hit twenty, an age at which men must put their manhood to the test. I couldn’t afford to stay behind in the race to become someone, especially in such an effervescent city like Fouka, and I didn’t want to wind up falling into the category of those Colin Wilson branded as mediocre.

I descended the rusting stairs of the derelict building while staring out over the city stretching before me. The big clock at the square said it was already two o’clock in the afternoon. It was September and at that hour the ...Read more →