Untitled – Sawsan
We live in a society governed by customs and traditions. You can’t possibly escape them. It is the law that families impose on some of their members. This is what happened with Maryam, who was bound to follow the tradition that says cousins must marry each other. Maryam’s cousin got married without telling his family, […]
Searching for Hope
It was a Monday afternoon. My sister-in-law called to tell me she was going out of town to visit her family the next day. She was extremely excited to finally reunite with her family after so long. On the next day, while we were waiting to hear that she arrived there safely, the phone rings. […]
Coming Back To The Sun
December 1, 2019 – The Central Europe Trip It’s Christmas time, the most beautiful time of the year. Yasmine has finally defended her thesis and officially closed the chapter of graduate school in her life. It was the time to fulfill a promise she gave to Lynn, her wanderlust cousin, who had been desperately waiting […]
Untitled – Talah
StuckI’m sitting in my room and it is five years ago. I’m sitting in the middle, looking straight ahead. If this were a picture, I’d be staring into the camera. Around me is light, cosy, bright. Plants and lace curtains that the sun filters through. Things I put up, trying to make it home. Things […]
Untitled – Marguerita
I push the swinging door to the bathroom open. There’s only one woman in there and I watch her take her wedding band off to wash her hands over the pink sink. She smiles at me through the mirror and I try to do the same but I end up eyeing her ring for too […]
Untitled – Lee
The city is busy. This space is busy too. Not so much in the same sense. City streets are filled with noise; that is busy. Here though, it sounds like your own voice. You speak but you do not hear every word you say, or, at least, it does not feel external. We hear our […]
Storyteller Bloodline
I woke up at 7 am in Al Abadeyyeh, to a bunch of loud women sitting on my teta’s balcony. It smelled like my teta’s basic chocolate cake that was left in the oven 10 minutes longer than it should have, mixed with the smell of fried onions from the next door neighbors who have […]
Indefinite Hiatus
I’m not sure how or when I started to feel like I was suffocating, and why this feeling kept at tightening its grip on my throat.I open my eyes and I lie in bed a little longer. I don’t need an alarm to wake me up. Sometimes I oversleep, but it doesn’t matter. I sit […]