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Maqam Bayati = Fortune I walk the hills of Kouravillage after village the winter rain directs me;I walk the remnants of hearts with balconies of scattered voiceslike a century wrinkled on shattered windowsI walk to ask you if you achedbetween two truths I walk to ask whatthese olive trees hid for you And when I reach Amiounyour feet become mine your lean body becomes mineyour vigor becomes mine The sky opens the seaand you tell me how to play this place for you À Fortune Nicolas Matouk Maqam Ajam = Josephine You told me, arrête de pleurerand for years I didn’t understand you were preparing

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I am found hidden, snug among the truffles                                                     Growing under the footsteps of Bedouins. I am found staring down At the Temple of Eshmun. I am found sitting on the oil spills, The rubble, The rotting fruit. Sometimes I have lived a thousand lives. Sometimes I have never breathed Outside of my mother’s suffocating belly. I have lived my mother’s life, My life, And my daughter’s life. I have heard about my mother In her white dress, Smile smeared red, The corners frowning, The bombs bouncing and bursting. I have heard

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He rolled the the tip of the cigarette between his lips, and started to cough as he lit it. It was the same cough she woke up to every night when he’d forget to breathe. She’d get a quiet moment in which she could sleep undisturbed. Deep in her heart, she wished it would last longer, but his calloused hand would sweep against her thighs once again. Now, he lit his cigarette and unwound on the sofa whispering to himself, nodding. Their sixth child sat on the floor by the sofa making planes out of old bills and letters and

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Something always felt foreign to me about the black asphalt streets, which sparkled in the summer sun as if encrusted with diamonds, of my hometown Palo Alto, California. Or maybe the foreign was me, with my black hair and dark brown eyes and skin that tanned easily. My family and I would take trips to Pakistan and Bangladesh so that my mother and stepfather could visit their respective families. Each trip was a two-week suspension of the sense that something was about to go wrong. The simple op-positions to Palo Alto – that car steering was on the right side,

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Kaleidoscope walls of melted mascara and pockmarked acne scars on breeze blocks a cultural cathedral a cant of the underground a nestle of invested bettors and becultured betters. St. Michael’s grime a dirty realism a wait-and-see optimism a lyric cynicism an aged athleticism a Babelic Phoenicianism a battle hardened stoicism a war battered orthodoxy a warm blooded equinox a severed phalange pointing at where may be stars in the smoggy woolen sky a divine desire flitting a stone’s throw to Varouj’s alleys a long shot to Abou Jamil’s wadi a squinty-eyed skeptic sitting surly and spitting out the seeds of

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by Hisham Bustani, Translated from the arabic by Maia Tabet To 'A'ed Nab'aa / The stone masonry wall is damp and covered in a musty film of mold. There is a faint, fetid smell. Colored lights rotate continuously, and there are faraway-but-close sounds of car tires, cheap music, and indistinguishable conversation. . They sit side by side on the sofa, his hand in hers. Skinny and bushy-haired, their drooping eyelids are swollen. They've been sitting here, in hibernation mode, for a very long time, covered by a thick coating of dust. In the crannies of their immobile bodies, spiders have woven webs that no breeze

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  Locate the spot in the parking lot and turn your back to the fish market. You will be faced with its mirror: another white tinted warehouse, the slaughterhouse. If you talk to one of the fishermen, you will realize it has been shut for over a year now by the Ministry of Health. You hear about the completed upgrade to meet the Ministry’s standards, but you do not notice them. The warehouse remains suspended from daily life. Get closer to it. As you do, you are getting closer to the only structure adjacent to the slaughterhouse — the animal waste shed, barely standing. Moldy steel sheets form its enclosure

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