Tag: Short Story
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Adnan Unredacted: I Became the Boring Guy at the Beach
I adore people-watching at the beach. They are completely free – shouting with excitement, jumping into the water, talking with their mouths full, careless and light. I, however, don’t like myself at the beach. I’m grumpy. I run away from the sun like it has a personal issue with me. I apply endless layers of…
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Maybe You Aren’t A Curse After All
The door creaks open, and Haleem appears – his plaid shirt flung open, belt barely done, sweat pooling over the wrinkles of his forehead; sweat that he could easily wipe away with the edge of his sleeve but chooses to ignore instead, sweat that Thuraya hates to see although they’ve been married for decades, and…
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Adnan Unredacted: What If I Don’t Want to Count My Macros?
Today, I am a new person. Meet the new Adnan. Adnan, who wakes up at 7:59 a.m.- one minute before the alarm. Not because he wants to, but because his body has apparently accepted that sleeping past eight is personal failure. Adnan, who doesn’t check his phone first thing in the morning, but instead gets…
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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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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…
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The Client
What does it mean when a woman sells the most precious thing she owns? I’ve seen it happen countless times, particularly in 2019, after the country plunged into the most catastrophic financial crisis of modern history. I’ve seen hungry women sitting on the side of the street approach me with what little charm they had…