I remember as a young girl when it was possible to behold a million stars at night, now I’m lucky if I observe only six at any given time. But that was then, when I lived far away by the sea and the stars burst throughout the cosmos as far as the eye could see. Now I live the city dweller’s lot, with artificial light impairing my view of the universe. Excessive use of manufactured luster with polluting glare, skyglow, trespass and clutter shifts my attention is shifted towards a neighbor when lights are on and shadows are no longer cast. I see them roving about and I wonder what goes on behind their walls where I cannot hear their words or sense their thoughts.
For instance, the family next door in the apartment facing my kitchen window.…
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Rita reminded Irving of the female leads in the after-school movies he had watched fifteen years before at his babysitter’s house (Rebecca: she was on the high school track team, her mother owned a travel agency, and her father lived in Montana). However, unlike most of those characters, Rita showed no interest in remaking herself—Irving had the satisfied sense that she would not be exchanging her thick glasses for contacts, amplifying her straight, shoulder-length hair into unnatural heights, throwing out her jeans and T-shirts and replacing them with mini-skirts and an inconsistent array of jackets and halter-tops, not in any scenario he could predict, at any rate.
They met in their last semester at college, in a seminar class about autobiography. He was taking the class because it was the last English literature seminar that was available, and he needed one to fulfill his graduation requirements.…
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It was long after school ended and most people had gone home. Only the volleyball players were left running drills in the gym and a few of us sitting around campus waiting for our rides to come. I dozed on a stone bench by the pickup curb listening to whatever came out of the gym door. the squeaks of sneaker. The smacks of serves, saves, spikes and returns. And, of course, the thuds of defeat.
Then, as if manifesting herself from an amalgamation of these sounds, she startled me from my sleep.
“Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”
At first, I ignored her, thinking her words were meant for someone else. Even though I recognized her voice, we had hardly spoken to each other.
We were in the same grade in high school and had gone to the same schools since elementary.…
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I’m scared. Baba has me pinned to the ground. I can feel his knee pressing on my spine just below my neck. The bristly mat upon the floor scratches my cheek. Sobs shudder through my body, yet the sounds I release are muffled by the gag in my mouth. Ama and Nana’s hands are busy banging on the ceremonial drums. The sound quakes through the floor, vibrating through my body, until I am not even sure if my heart has stopped or not.
Mama stands to one side. I can barely see her. But I know that as always, her head is hung. “It is time, Izma. You are seventeen, now. We are going to carve your oath upon your back,” she whispers. “It is for your eizzat.”…
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When I first met the elderly man, he was sitting on the supermarket floor, leaning back against the laundry detergents in the cleaning supplies aisle. Thinking he had passed out, I bent down to shake him into consciousness. But then I noticed something strange. He was snoring.
“Should I call the manager?” asked an acne-faced stock boy who appeared out of nowhere, a look of innocent inexperience in his eyes. “Or an ambulance?”
“Wait a minute. Let me see if I can wake him up.”
The man on the floor opened his right eye, and his left eye followed. A smile formed on his lips. “Sorry about that,” he apologized.
“I thought you had fainted!”
“Oh, no, I don’t faint,” he replied. “I just fall asleep.…
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Major Tom Briggs liked the jungle of the Philippines. He was comfortable in his sweat-soaked uniform. The earthliness of the jungle’s petrichor and the sounds of its exotic creatures enchanted him. Briggs liked the Filipinos who tolerated his high school-level Spanish and taught him local dialects. He felt at home among them and in the jungle of the American-owned archipelago. So, when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded, the tall, blonde-haired lanky army officer and several of his men escaped into the torrid jungle rather than participate in the Bataan Death March.
They met with a small contingent of Filipino soldiers of like mind, and Major Briggs combined the forces into a guerrilla unit. Briggs had read every army manual in his local National Guard office. Believing the navy had nothing to do with him, Tom Briggs ignored the naval manual on the shelf with all the rest.…
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Car, I don’t think we’re Ankara anymore.
These are the very first words I say to my sister, as we walk through airport security, breathing in fresh air, after a five hour flight in a metal bird. Unlike the easygoing, small airport with overenthusiastic staff we’re used to back in Ankara, Istanbul Airport is massive, crowded and strictly professional. No random airport employee coming to help us here. They don’t even want to tell us which bus to take to get to our dormitory near some place called Hirka-i-Serif in Fatih. The one personnel we do manage to stop, glares at us, muttering, yabanci, as he walks off.
We’re not used to the cold shoulder in Turkey. Still, after much effort, and a quick stop at a cafe at the Airport to attend a work meeting, we manage to flag a cab.…
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