Category: Fiction
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The Hair Heartthrob
All the girls were obsessed with his perfect hair. It was his signature trait, yet, for some unknown reason, it was forbidden for anyone but him to touch it. It’s that hair that made him the neighborhood heartthrob; the one who ended things with girls before they even saw the light of day. One time,…
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بقعة
.شردت في البقعة على حائط غرفة النوم وأنا أفرغ أغراضي من شنطة السفر. ها هو ذا، أخي كلما ذهبتُ خارج البلاد وعُدتُ، أجده في مكانه، ولكن ليس في مكانه. فالبقعة التي تتخذ شكل إنسان، شكله هو، لا تزال في موقعها. لكن هيئتها تختلف مع كل رحلة. السنة الماضية كانت البقعة ترسم على الحائط شكل جسده…
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Two funerals and a love interest
“Love will find you when you least expect it.” That’s what her grandmother always told her. Today was her granny’s funeral. In her black dress, among the white flowers, she cried -a lot – until her eyes caught something they liked… a real gentleman who had left early without a name or number. She kept…
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Adnan, Unredacted: Just Wanted to Say Happy Birthday
I love birthdays. Every year around December, I buy one of those giant paper calendars they sell on the street, the ones that take up half the wall and come with holidays already printed in red on them with a special quote behind the back each day. Then I dedicate an entire evening to updating…
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Adnan, Unredacted: Somebody Should’ve Seen Me in the Kitchen
At 2:15 PM, I removed the extra “haha” that I had written on the work group chat. Earlier that morning, at around 10:00 AM, I had found out that Khaled got promoted. Khaled. My coworker who does, more or less, the exact same job I do. Apparently, he “needed the opportunity more.” Which, translated loosely…
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Background Noise
The sound of war planes and foreign drones has become the background noise to her life. Sometimes, she doesn’t need to turn on the TV in the living room nor the small, wooden radio she has in her kitchen when she’s doing chores; the hum of that white, six-legged alien in the sky is enough.…
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Lest I Forget
A shiver pulses through the ground, and the mighty oaks that line this clearing quake in response, shrugging a sudden chill that took an evening to arrive. The breeze passes through crossed legs and arms, flaying my loose collar as it makes its way downhill to a coast. Looking back, I find the moon reduced…
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Day of Resurrection
It was far too late to sell himself. He sat on the sidewalk, empty of thought and emotion. At first, in an attempt to escape, he tried to market himself as a Middle Easterner. But they had already filled the quota. He then tried to market himself as a special kind of Middle Easterner, a…
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Adnan, Unredacted: Please Ignore the Background Noise
I woke up to the sound of my window glass rattling. Not shaking, not the kind of sound you can flip to the other side and ignore. I opened my eyes and stayed there for a second, looking at the ceiling as if it might have anything new to offer. Then I reached for my…
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45 Minutes
‘I can’t find Stanley anywhere. I’ve looked in all his usual hiding places.’ Her voice breaks. She’s not speaking in a haste, as one would expect her to in such a situation; there’s a subtle melancholy in her voice, almost as if she’s already anticipating the worst possible scenario. Before she noticed that Stanley was…