RR
Home2018September (Page 6)

September 2018

by Zakaria Tamer, translated from the arabic by Marilyn Hacker My father, my mother, and my brother wasted the whole evening talking about what profession would be best for my brother. . Papa admired lawyers and their ability to transform innocence into guilt, and guilt to innocence. Mama sang the praises of doctors and how quickly they earned vast sums of money. My brother wanted only to become an engineer. As for me, I’d like him to be a boxer, and hit the strongest men and knock them down and make them cry. But no one paid any attention to my opinion. Finally, they

Read More

by Zakaria Tamer, translated from the arabic by Marilyn Hacker I saw an airplane in the sky. It stayed there for a few seconds, and then it disappeared. I said to my father, “One day I’ll learn how to fly an airplane!” . My father laughed, and he said, “Since you make our spirits fly every day, I wouldn’t find it strange if you could fly an airplane without lessons!”   I said to my father, “The airplane is so small. How do they make it bigger so that the pilot can go in?”   My father said, “The airplane is as big as a house, and

Read More

I would like to be part of a life-changing moment that takes me back thirty years, when my grandfather told mother that she should leave. I would like to go back to when mother told me to stay away from three specific things: boys, tattoos, and this country. I would again like to hear my twelve-year-old self say: I love this city too much to ever leave. I want to go back to when I had no future plans to stand in between my Beirut and I. I want to go back to 3 a.m. on a school night in

Read More