Summer 2008

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Fiction

Pale
Zdravka Evtimova – Belgium

"Mole’s blood can cure sick people," she whispered. "You only have to drink three drops of it."

Masks
Ahmed A. Khan – Canada

My name is Kashmira. Of course, it is not my real name. None of the names recounted here are real.

Nonfiction

Tolstoy in Riyadh
Chris Cryer – United States

I’m just wishing he were still here to explain … what everybody’s doing in the Arab world that keeps them wobbling like Sterno in a sea of long, uneasy flame.

 

Poetry

This Poem Is Free
Alfaro – United States

This poem is not imprisoned
It has no basic needs

Two Poems
Iman El Ashmawi – United Arab Emirates

Liberation is the after-dinner mint of chaos …

The Damascene Dancer
Oliver Duillier – Syria

I saw her under the flicker
of a damaged street lamp.

The Cuckoo and the Author
Iftekhar Sayeed – Bangladesh

the muezzin calls
between
the thin light
of night
and dawn