The white minaret of a neighbouring mosque pierced the lazy blue sky. Warmth caressed my skin. Unbelievably though, it did not come from a radiator, heater or sunlamp, but the sun itself. The cords of the string bed made their presence felt by imprinting themselves on my back. If proof were needed, there it was: I was finally back in India, where time had a tendency to flow at its own leisurely rhythm.

Sounds and smells of the street came wafting up on a warm breeze and if I was still not convinced, then India had conjured up a pair of inquisitive black eyes to confirm the fact that this was indeed an Indian kotha - the flat top of the roof which most Indian homes are endowed with, in order to make the most of the cool breeze during summer evenings, and the sun during winter.

I was lazing around, half-reading a book, avoiding the moment when I would have to put on my uniform. It would be accurate to say that no other uniform in the world was shinier than mine, for it was not brass, but real gold. Like all good, even mildly prosperous Indian housewives, I had to adorn myself with jewellery everyday.

Most women slept with the armour on, so they didn’t have to go through the daily ritual of putting it on and taking it off. I had lost the habit, due to time spent away from barracks. In any case, I had never been a good recruit because I used to quietly take off the metal, heavy or otherwise, every night, even as a new bride. (more…)

One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything - Occam’s Razor*

The problem is he’s never had any insight. Perhaps being a microbiologist is overcompensating somewhat. Looking at traces of things as opposed to the things themselves is far too easy to be consumed in. All those billions of atoms comprising millions of molecules that constitute just one strand of any helix. And that helix could be anything from the minutest strand of hair or what helps make dust.

Occam’s Razor never cut as sharp as it does here, he thought, to dissuade a remark about his lack of insight, turning away from the microscope, which isn’t all that small, and yawned.

Pieces of him in the air now. From the sound he made, the long heavy breath he exuded, the energy that took, which he was responsible for, to the thought he had; all now in and a part of the air of the laboratory around him. Interconnected. One. And individual. Separate. All so easily forgotten. Or not thought of at all. (more…)

Sinking into oblivion or holding on for a good while is a vital decision when you find yourself passing through the quick sands. The latter is preferable, but in doing so, you have to keep in mind that it’s all about taste.

If you see someone tossing about in the quick sands, you should stifle your desire to advise him what to do. Whoever he might be, he has his own right to set a liking for the final upturn in his fortune. What seems a wise advice for one could be an ill turn of fate for another.

I moved through the quick sands. The dunes stretched before me like a white immensity as far as my eyes could see. I consoled myself that the quick sands didn’t intend to swallow me yet. Undoubtedly they had existed all the time, so I couldn’t gloss over their unpleasant deserted essence with my appearance and - what bothered me even more - it didn’t deign to respond to my presence anyway. Perhaps I had to pass across the quick sands without a set destination like an accidentally woken fool or a deliberately deceived sage. I hoped that it would become clear in the upshot. But it would not be my whim.

There were white quick sands and nothing else. I had thought that there might be someone’s visible footprints before me pointing in right and wrong directions. They would prompt me how to suit the quick sands so I would not sink, but I was disappointed in my supposition. There were no signs indicating that someone had gone before me. There were no signs that could take me back to the time of beginning and that could help me to get at the tangibility of the end. (more…)

She bathed in the bay of bitterness. An islet of granite rock, covered with barnacles, sea snails, sea-eggs and tiny crabs that scurried all over it, stood at the entrance of the bay, indifferent to the wind, indifferent to the waves that prostrated themselves at its feet and the clouds that wept copious tears of remorse. She compared the rock to her father. Silent all these years, unyielding, unforgiving. But he was dying now, of cancer, and before he died she hoped to transform this rock into flesh, free its soul from the hardness of its core, and give it voice to sing her name once again.

All these years her mother had stood by her. Her mother was her rock against the onslaught of the wave of scandal and the wind of shame. After the birth of her son, her mother took her and the child down to the bay and baptized them under the breaking waves in the shadow of an albatross that soared overhead on extended wings. It was a secular baptism, a rite of passage to a different idea of herself. She was a mother now, a woman now, innocent no more; she was no longer an adolescent girl, green and tantalizing. Her spirit had risen and become one with the albatross. She soared like a song, like a seagull. (more…)

Fisherman Reuven (2)
The following is a sequel to the story “Fisherman Reuven” written by Joe Jaffe and published on Szirine in 2004. Read them separately for a literary delight, together for literary theater!

Beneath my house in the ancient Port of Jaffa, there is a great barrel-vaulted room in which Reuven the fisherman lived and worked. He was a colorful character, wise and knowledgeable, though I doubt if he could read. We were neighbors for more than twenty years, and during that time we developed a tangled love-hate relationship.

I supplied him with electricity from an outlet on my balcony. He needed it, so he said, to provide a small light for mending his nets at night. But he abused my generosity and connected up a refrigerator, heater and a cooker, thereby overloading the circuit. There were endless arguments over the electricity, and there were periods during which I took punitive action and disconnected it altogether.

In hindsight I know that this was unfair, because Reuven provided me with a regular supply of fresh fish and seafood. (more…)

Detention-life was tasteless and all detainees felt lonely in this small world, especially once there was no handwork to do. The materials we normally used for our work hadn’t arrived and no one knew how to kill their time. So it was that one morning in March 2002, some of us were playing cards, while others read some outdated newspapers and magazines.

With a few of the more intellectual inmates, I talked about an incident that had happened at Linshui airport in Hainan province one year ago. A Chinese warplane and an American plane had crashed into each other. One of the inmates had worked at the airport as an air force mechanic two decades ago.

Suddenly people started shouting. They’d seen a mouse and immediately began trying to seize it. A few minutes later the mouse was caught and then was hung downward by a string on the steel line, which we ordinarily used to hang our damp clothing to dry. It still struggled, squeaking floundering tones, “ji, ji, ji.”
“I’ll beat you dead! Beat you dead! The police beat me as brutally as I’ll beat you,” one young man yelled waving a short plastic stick in his distorted hand.

Others started yelling and the mouse soon died from the savage beating by detainees, who found revenge in their rage at the way they had been treated themselves. The inmates began talking noisily about police torture previously undergone by them. (more…)

About Love and Race

“The Lord knows how to give generously, but He has no idea how to distribute things evenly among His children.” Maman often mumbled these words beneath her breath as she struggled to braid my hair.

I understood her remark perfectly, though I sometimes wished I didn’t have ears to listen, or eyes to see her disappointment. She said very often that my short, black hair was too stubborn, that my skin shade was too deep, that I was too tall, that I was too thin. The Creator must have run out of supplies when He was designing me. She didn’t mean to be hurtful, I knew. But she couldn’t help comparing me to my next door neighbor whose hair fell on her slender back, whose tender skin was the color of amber, whose eyes shone like the moon.

Maman never said it aloud, but I could imagine her thinking that the Creator must indeed have been in a delightful mood when he sketched Belle.

Belle was the envy of every young girl who lived in Lagune. Including me. She was the pride of every mother in town, though she didn’t belong to them. As they often said with a dreamy look in their eyes, Belle was the closest thing to an angel in Lagune. There were times when I wished that Belle didn’t have such a big heart. Besides dazzling beauty, Belle had a gentle, considerate nature, and a gift for drawing. (more…)

A bevy of dancers known as Ishiololo belted out, song after song, and left the audience in a trance craving for more. In line with the theme of the day, they mimicked drawing battle lines, unsheathed wooden swords and sang war songs to the crowd that had thronged the local stadium, which had seen many bulls lock horns.

This was Chemasisi, the village known more for non-performance than achievement. It was sandwiched between Ukololo hills, the home of the great god of thunder Umeme, and the habitation of Eshakala, the great god of wrath. It was well served with the great river Olmoloti, which served as the lifeline to the people: water to drink, bathing, swimming and watering points for the animals.

Chemasisi was also a battlefield and the river Olmoloti was a bone of contention between the two antagonistic gods, Umeme and Eshakala. Thunder always struck and wrath would follow in their battle for supremacy. Even the people at times would go for one another’s jugulars. (more…)

It was Monday morning, maybe that’s what started the fight over all the pies. Like always, everybody was sitting around the diner having a cup of coffee or a couple of eggs, getting ready for work. And, like always, nobody looked very happy about it.

Rosie was grumbling that her old man, who was out back fixing something, hadn’t cleaned the grill right. She said she wasn’t getting squat for tips that morning and it wasn’t her fault if the eggs were coming out smoky. Joann, who was sitting next to me, was agreeing with that, saying her ex-boyfriend was always a bastard about his eggs. Me, who was throwing my good eye on Joann, was agreeing with her, saying that smoky eggs could be tasty. A couple of truckers who were passing through were sitting up front bitching about the cops on I-95. Harry was hunched over his baseball scores with nothing to say, as the Reds had lost. Down the far end, Big Rick was quiet too, looking thorough his receipts book, scowling and scratching his goatee. Down the other end, as far away from Big Rick as you could sit, Dom, huge and hairy as a buffalo, was plunked down on his stool. Sitting next to Dom was his son, Eddie. The kid’s about 16, and skinny as a beanpole standing sideways. He doesn’t say much, but when he does it’s usually something goofy.

Now, the standard story is that Big Rick and Dom hate each other’s guts on purely business grounds: each guy says the other is a stinking bastard that scrounged him out of customers and so he wants to kill him. Fair enough. Other folks claim that milk had nothing to do with it, and that the bad blood between them is because both were boinking that hot number Sarah Jennings. I mean, why else would she need two milkmen, right? Well, however it was, each guy thought the other guy was plowing his tomato patch, and so finally they locked horns. It was down to ‘world famous’ Charlie-O’s one night, and legend is that sexy Sarah was waitressing. Folks that saw it said it was like a hurricane that started in the bar, flew out onto the sidewalk, then went ripping down Main Street. I suppose that one’s a stretcher, but even the next day’s newspaper said how those two put a whole shift of cops in the hospital. (more…)

Translated from Bulgarian by: Ivailo Dagnev

“And what happened in the end?”
No reply.

Silence froze again over their heads like a crystal chandelier, threatening to fall down any second. He had noticed, on evenings like this one, that questions like shark fins surface unexpectedly.

There is something mystic in the hours before the New Year. It is as if we listen for the first time to the whispers of time. We even realize that it robs us, if we perceive it as sand in an hourglass, trickling away incessantly. But time does not move, it has been frozen for quite a while; we are the ones who keep changing. Yet, we donít want to admit it. We are crucified on its frozen face.

Evenings like this one are lustfully predisposed to foul silence. You just sit and watch how questions take you by surprise. In order to answer them you have to turn your pockets inside out, look into every corner of every moment. Actually, are answers possible at all? Spiridon sighed. Arenít they just the other side of questions? (more…)