Arabic | Page 6 | The Common

The Memoirs of Cinderella’s Slipper

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

The uniformed conscript led the way, bearing aloft, on a small pink velvet cushion, a shabby-looking woman’s shoe. The leather was faded, stretched, and torn. Part of the sole had come off, and the heel had been roughly hammered back on with protruding nails. None of the repairs that had obviously been carried out in an attempt to restore the shoe’s former glory had succeeded. Behind the conscript came the cavalry, weaving their way through the houses of the city, searching for a woman’s foot to fit the shoe.

و

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By COLETTE BAHNA

Translated by ROBIN MOGER

Once I’d been stripped and forced to stand naked before the gaze of the military medical examination board, for the purposes of identifying any defects that might prevent me receiving the honor of being conscripted, the examiner seated on the right-hand end of the bench rose, approached me, and circled me three times, inspecting every inch of the body before him, then turned back to his fellow board members and, stroking my ear with a disconcerting delicacy, said, “Sound. Big ears.”

Frozen: Three Stories

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By IBRAHIM SAMUEL

Translated by MAIA TABET

The Long Winter

“They’re here—” she was about to scream, bolting upright, her heart pounding in her chest. It was as if a snake had brushed against her bare skin under the comforter. He snatched his arms away from where they lay against her neck and her cleavage. They were both naked: beads of sweat quivered on the hairs of his broad chest, and her breasts trembled over the volcano that had erupted in her heart.

Border Strip: Three Stories

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By LUQMAN DERKI

Translated by JONATHAN WRIGHT

A Trip to Ain Diwar

We woke up at five o’clock in the morning and ran to the Hophop bus that was waiting at the school gate. It was colored and beautiful and had the words Scania speaks and the Volvo hurts written on it. The children stood in line in an orderly fashion as they boarded the bus. Teacher was carrying a stick made from a pomegranate branch given to him by the son of a local official, who is lazy but who always comes first in class. Sheikh Khadir, the driver, was washing the bus, and as they boarded, the children splashed the children behind them with water.

Excerpt from The Occasional Virgin

July 12, 2018 Fiction, Translation

By HANAN AL-SHAYKH

Translated by CATHERINE COBHAM

The sea had depressed Huda ever since she was a schoolgirl, bent eagerly over a drawing of a Phoenician princess walking with her prince beside the sea, while their dog played with a shell. The creature that lived in the shell had dyed the dog’s mouth a purple color that clashed with the blue sea. She had written below the picture, ‘The color purple was discovered in the city of Tyre. Tyre is a Phoenician city situated on the Mediterranean Sea, like Beirut.’ Then she took her crayons and gave the prince and princess the most beautiful clothes, and colored the world around them like rainbows mingling with the blue of the sea, but instead of being happy that she had finished her homework, she felt a pain, different from when she had a toothache or grazed her knee: it began in her throat and descended into her belly, because the world and the colors she had drawn on the sheet of paper were what she longed for, unlike her house, empty of color and pictures and music. The pain attacked her throat and she felt as if she was suffocating because she would never walk by the sea like this prince and princess and their dog, never set eyes on its blueness or the lovely colors of the prince and princess’s clothes except in her dreams, and only then if she dreamt in color and not in black and white as usual.

Guests with A Heavy Presence

April 30, 2018 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By JA’FAR AL-OQUAILI

Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE

Regardless of how it turned out, the situation certainly demanded a courageous decision. I could no longer bear the chaos that had spread to all areas of my life—a life that I was constantly striving to keep in the best possible state of order.

A Man I Don’t Know

April 30, 2018 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By ELIAS FARKOUH

Translated by MAIA TABET

As soon as he elbowed me in the ribs, whipping my averted face toward the pitch-black corner, I thought I heard him saying, “Frightened, eh?”

Truly, I was frightened.

The Slaves

April 30, 2018 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By GHALIB HALASA
Translated by THORAYA EL-RAYYES

At the borderland between the desert and the plains, Emirate of Transjordan, early twentieth century

Two men sat near the round threshing floor in the western fields. Each with his rifle on his lap. “What a goddamn year,” Tafish said. He had a skull-like face. Small, sunken, deep-set eyes. Emaciated cheeks with protruding cheekbones. A broad forehead with dark blue veins at the sides. Skin like an aged tortoise. His hair and lower jaw were hidden behind a white keffiyeh, held in place by a black fleece cord around his head. His frame was tall, straight, lithe. He rubbed his nose with his hand, letting a low whistle out of his nostrils. By the time he lowered his hand, a pensive expression of disgust had formed on his face. Staring straight ahead, he spoke, as if to himself: “What a goddamn year.”

After Creation, Before The Fall

April 30, 2018 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By MUFLEH AL-ODWAN

Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE

Adam

As broken as a venial sin,

and as weary as the last to be created (or the first),

he looked to the sky, now become his ground.

Once he’d learned about naming and questioning, and saw what he saw of the blue corridors of space, he asked himself:

I wonder what the Throne is?

Did the Throne of the Almighty exist before water, or arise after water? And what is water, anyway?

Despairing, he smacked the trunk of the tree he was sitting under.

It Happens

April 30, 2018 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By JAMILA AMAIREH
Translated by THORAYA EL-RAYYES

I sit on my old chair, scatter my multicolored toys around me, and start watching evening cartoons on TV. Cool Pancho shoots off through the streets in his car, feeling awesome. He’d bought the car back from the old lady living next door. Never mind that he’d paid too much, more than two thousand pounds. No problem. He slows down, speeds up, and finally stops at the green fields to go for a stroll. The episode ends, but I stay glued to the television, waiting for my truly favorite cartoon: The Adventures of Zaina the Bee. Zaina is a menacing creature; she has no other business but instigating pranks on her friend Nahhul. Nahhul, for his part, has no choice but to come crawling back to his bully-of-a-buddy every time.

All posts tagged: Arabic

The Memoirs of Cinderella’s Slipper

و

Frozen: Three Stories

Border Strip: Three Stories

Excerpt from The Occasional Virgin

Guests with A Heavy Presence

A Man I Don’t Know

The Slaves

After Creation, Before The Fall

It Happens

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.