Winter 2008

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Fiction

Prostration
Fatima Martin - United Kingdom

His black hair had gone grey and matted, his beard, reaching down to his chest, was uncared for, his face was swollen, his eyes were red. He looked sixty, not the forty he was, and he looked very ill. Jamila did not want to talk to him. Not now, not straight away, when he would notice the shock on her face. Charly, how could he have done this to himself?

Fruit
Phyllis Ring - United States

The banana peels never had a discarded look. Bejan Sabet's dark eyes followed their descent from the roof overhead to the dust of the roadside. They landed gently, custard-colored petals spreading open like lotus flowers, an unexpected bloom, soon to be devoured by a passing goat or cow.
 

The Bicycle Thief of Damascus
John-Paul Walti - United States

In the fall of 2007, twenty-four Sunnis fit into a single habitation of an unfinished apartment complex near the Al-Sayedah Zaynab shrine in Damascus. Any more and it became unbearable. Needless to say, this upset the landlord to no end. Each month roughly 30,000 people crossed the border into Syria and through the fabled gates of Damascus. What did he expect?

 

Essays

Sagar — The Ocean
Neha Simlai - India

Sagar. The Ocean. The personification of love, serenity. The tears of Gaia. Peace is a thin film over its surface, a film of oil that catches the slanting rays of the sun and paints rainbow hues on itself.

 

Poetry

Together...
Shakeel Abedi - Malaysia

Glance not
Over your shoulders...

Trying to Express Myself
Nasira S. Abdul-Aleem - United States

I receive water in cupped hands...

Underground
Benjamin Buchholz - United States

they set Ishmael on the ground, leaning back, into it,
for minutes it felt in process, the setting, closed in sky...

I Dream of a Place of Peace
Anjum Wasim Dar - Pakistan

But in vain,
Time and again there is pain;
I was brought to a Promised Land...

Fabric
Poupa Jenny Marashi - United States

I noticed your delicate pale cheeks again in the bright fluorescent light of Century 21.