Translation: Tom Abi Samra Today is the day to say my goodbyes. I packed my bag with the gift Saja, my wife, had given me. It was a print of my drawing dry mounted on board. A creature half water buffalo half human. I called it “Gud,” it was neither Good nor God… It was […]
Refrigerator
An excerpt from the novel Sweetmeats, or: Who Killed Issam Sukkar? by Alexandra Chreiteh A Note on the Text: In the following excerpt, Nafiseh steps into her sister’s basement in a small Lebanese town on the Syrian border and discovers a body hidden in the fridge. Who is this person, and who put him […]
through their mouths came their lasting virtue
still concave movement sunken tens no less burdened threefold deliverance unless convergence and then nightly grit and suffused in sand until it glistened laid bare for us to witness beheld, no objection in the desire line a reflex is a green crescendo and it exerts its movement felled again inside circular logic spun at the […]
S/he Said
Click here (PDF) for an optimal view. She Said There was this beautiful, beautiful riverA very dangerous riverWith swift currentsA very dangerous placeVery deep water They were very politically awareThey felt they were living under a repressive regimeThey were all part of an underground movementThey were very optimisticIt was wonderfulThe hope and the promiseAnd then […]
The Place Is Not the Place
This text emerged from a conversation that started informally nearly ten years ago over many days and nights in Beirut, but that took place formally in May of 2022 from outside Beirut, between myself in Berlin, Germany, and Beza Girma in Hawassa, Ethiopia. Inspired by the theme of ‘b-sh-r’,[1] we discussed Beirut’s multiple cities and […]
“Villainy” Excerpts for The Derivative
You fuck me with your entire hand in a room full of the dead. The dead are inside boxes behind glass. You fuck me so we can feel for one second that our friends are not dead. That they are living inside of us. A security guard approaches & you stop. I pull you up […]