2018 - Page 12 of 21 - Rusted Radishes

Don’t Go Back To Sleep

I sit cross-legged on my grandparents’ balcony. My dark, scarred knees are warm against the hot stone ground. My little brother, Fajr, lies on his stomach beside me, trying to figure out what his playing cards mean. My grandmother always said that we should pretend to let him play with us, even if he’s too young and too restless to learn the rules. She sits before me in a long floral gown, her wrinkled face like a map of the country, pride etched into her skin in valleys and mountains. The valley between her eyebrows sinks deeper as she stares

Fiction

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As Refugee As Refugee Gets

Rumooz is a 68-year-old Syrian woman. Her husband was just 46 when he passed away, leaving her to raise one daughter and two sons on her own. She was a teacher at a public school in Talkalakh, a small village that is to the west of Homs, in northern Syria. Rumooz is very close to her children, and the four of them have always been a tight-knit family. In 2012, her eldest daughter, Talah, graduated from university in Homs. Dubbed "the capital of the revolution," Homs was under siege by government forces from May 2011 to May 2014. Despite the war,

Non-Fiction

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Faces, Serkal House Exhibit

In Beirut, we live surrounded by dead people looking at us. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige In Arabic, we say hay fina, they live within us. First, there is the terrible silence, then the sacrament: a visible sign of invisible grace, St Augustine said. A way to discover the unknown when the pain is too much, when it burns the air around us. Or, there will be

Poetry

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Mondiale

June 2014 Athens, Georgia, USA A suicide car bomber shook Beirut on Monday During the World Cup match; The explosion wounded five people gathered

Poetry

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Spring and The Swallow

Even on the saddest nightin times of servitudethere is always someone who resiststhere is always someone who says no Manuel Alegre, 1965 With every gust of wind blowing from the Atlantic and the Tagus, I could smell grilled Bacalhau((Portuguese codfish)) and sardines as I walked around downtown. The city’s hilly, tortuous, and narrow streets put every muscle in my body on trial. I enjoyed this every day for hours, until my feet couldn’t take it anymore. Everywhere, people carefully watched as fish roasted over hot coal on the sidewalks. There were bakeries around every corner that made the air smell distinctly sweet and

Non-Fiction

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The Other Cave

by Zakaria Tamer, translated from the arabic by Marilyn Hacker My father, my mother, and my brother wasted the whole evening talking about what profession would be best for my brother. . Papa admired lawyers and their ability to transform innocence into guilt, and guilt to innocence. Mama sang the praises of doctors and how quickly they earned vast sums of money. My brother wanted only to become an engineer. As for me, I’d like him to be a boxer, and hit the strongest men and knock them down and make them cry. But no one paid any attention to my opinion. Finally, they

Fiction, Translations

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There’s So Much Dust

by Zakaria Tamer, translated from the arabic by Marilyn Hacker I saw an airplane in the sky. It stayed there for a few seconds, and then it disappeared. I said to my father, “One day I’ll learn how to fly an airplane!” . My father laughed, and he said, “Since you make our spirits fly every day, I wouldn’t find it strange if you could fly an airplane without lessons!” I said to my father, “The airplane is so small. How do they make it bigger so that the pilot can go in?” My father said, “The airplane is as big as a house, and

Fiction, Translations

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Discourse

I would like to be part of a life-changing moment that takes me back thirty years, when my grandfather told mother that she should leave. I would like to go back to when mother told me to stay away from three specific things: boys, tattoos, and this country. I would again like to hear my twelve-year-old self say: I love this city too much to ever leave. I want to go back to when I had no future plans to stand in between my Beirut and I. I want to go back to 3 a.m. on a school night in

Poetry

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