The old man called to me from the side of the road. “Sit for a while,” he said. “Talk to me.” It was getting late. Aside for a few streetlamps scattered between the rigid blue refugee tents there wasn’t much in the way of light. The earthquake had extinguished the neon and once gleaming signs […]
We walked through the empty rooms, Li Si, the student and I, squinting in the dark. The air was sticky and still, the way things are before the sky opens up with rain. It was somber in those bare rooms. Outside on the balcony we could see the splashes of light knifing through the building […]
I got a text message from a friend I thought lost forever to the missed connections of people you meet traveling, the impermanence of relationships forged in transit. “Brother Kong,” it read, using my Chinese name, “Where I live has been shaken by an earthquake; it’s frightening. Tonight it is shaking again, I will soon […]
“Mustafa is Mustafa. Mustafa will always be Mustafa. Mustafa can do good things, and he will still be Mustafa. Mustafa does not change. Mustafa can do bad things, and he will still be the same Mustafa.” Mustafa paused and looked at me. “I like doing bad things.”
He smiled. This he was relishing. Yes, there […]
I didn’t expect to see her lying dead there, so still, red scarf over her forehead and eyes like a cold compress against a fever. We aren’t trained to see a person truly inert and I could swear to so many things in that cold room – a flinch of her arm, a rise and […]
How do you describe tens of thousands of people simultaneously convulsing with the desperate hope of catching a train?
You could start small. Focus on the furious blue-jacketed Chinese policeman screaming bloody murder when someone peeks over his section of the fence, while two meters away a stream of migrant workers scramble over that same fence, […]
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The dead woman’s picture was on the mantle place beside the door. The frame was a simple, light wood, and it was topped with an elaborately tied black ribbon. I hadn’t noticed it when I first walked in and no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to the smiling face. Bright flowers stood […]