SWALLOWS’ NEST • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
Raheel’s mother Parveen was unmatched for stubbornness but even she crumbled before fate. Yes, she said — the words like a scorpion on her tongue — find a Masood girl for my son. Her sisters had...
View ArticleA DAY BEFORE ALL OF THOSE NIGHTS • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
I’d tell it this way: In that place, at a parallel moment, a troop of His Royal Vileness’s cavalry reached a village, poor but beautiful, looking for girls with the same attributes. His Wretchedness...
View ArticleLYING IN THE LITTLE BEAR’S BED • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
“…a story, Mommy!” “In a house in the woods, far far away, three bears were living. “The father bear was big and tall with a big booming voice and big hard hands.” “Bears don’t have hands! They have...
View ArticleTOMMY, THROUGH A GLASS • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
More than forty years, now, and if I knew how to draw I could draw you every detail of the scene. Maybe it was that look he had about him of the young James Coburn, and his perfect timing. Must have...
View ArticleDOES BEST IN ORDINARY GARDEN SOIL • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
The brambles? Kept pigs out of the gardens. The story? Got my parents out of a jam. “My gosh,” I said to my aunt, “haven’t they bollocksed it up now!” She gave that ginger-and-lemon laugh of hers....
View ArticleFIRE AND LIGHT • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
No moon, no star was visible. Darkness laughed to itself. Mahguli scattered sharp-scented leaves on the fire. Sparks leapt like comets transversing a secret universe. Something saw Mahguli that hadn’t...
View ArticleUNCLE FIDA’S EID • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
Uncle Fida had reached that grim age where food is the chief pleasure but most of one’s teeth are gone. He’d been a fiery young man; his reputation as a terrifying old one had been vanquished by his...
View ArticleSELL YOURSELF SHORT • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
I hated my options. Wouldn’t sell my jewelry. Agathe said, “You can’t take it with you,” but we can’t take anything with us. My husband had turned into a toad and hopped away; my kids were just...
View ArticleSET THEORY • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
They’re like cats, I’d said. But who listens to kids? This was Phase Two — where hardship perks gave worker bee families like us houses we couldn’t have dreamed of back home. Ours was on a gloriously...
View ArticleTHE WELL-TEMPERED SUBORDINATE • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
I still remember that awful moment, in school, when I realized mathematics is the language of the universe and I could barely speak one coherent word of it. I sensed its beauty, but could never commune...
View ArticleSWALLOWS’ NEST • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
Raheel’s mother Parveen was unmatched for stubbornness but even she crumbled before fate. Yes, she said — the words like a scorpion on her tongue — find a Masood girl for my son. Her sisters had...
View ArticleA DAY BEFORE ALL OF THOSE NIGHTS • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
I’d tell it this way: In that place, at a parallel moment, a troop of His Royal Vileness’s cavalry reached a village, poor but beautiful, looking for girls with the same attributes. His Wretchedness...
View ArticleLYING IN THE LITTLE BEAR’S BED • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
“…a story, Mommy!” “In a house in the woods, far far away, three bears were living. “The father bear was big and tall with a big booming voice and big hard hands.” “Bears don’t have hands! They have...
View ArticleSINGULARITY OF ATTACHMENT • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
Raythene was a stunner, her mother was a glory — lustrous, the pair of them. The grandfather — people called him Beautiful Joe, and you know what that means. Scare the shit out of Satan. If you...
View ArticleFOLLOWING THE COW’S PATH • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
He split her like a bloodwurst and left her like butcher’s ware — cold dead meat drawing flies. But Friedegunde my sister was more — not a surrenderer and not silenced. I held my scream, knowing she...
View ArticleSTÖBERHUND • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
He seized me up like a carrion bird and like a dead thing I let him. Then I came alive again. “Oh no,” Reinhardt purred — defaming the language of cats — “oh no, my girl. Under Heaven you swore to...
View ArticleTHE QUICKENING TREE • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
Straight to the heart of the wood she brought me, where oak and beech grow thick — but it was under a rowan tree she set the basket down. “Mushrooms enough for the king’s army, if you stir yourself to...
View Article…WITH A NEW AFTERWARD • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
Gendelman kept refusing every offer for the shop. A peculiarity of the lease rendered him untouchable, though the landlord’s heirs hoped Gendelman’s bereftness after Dina might end their misery. But he...
View ArticleNEW SONG • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
“Stop screaming,” said Old Ma. “The baby is gone. Make another one when your milk dries up.” Suddenly I hated Old Ma. I wanted to smash her. But I was clever even in that moment. I stopped my hand and...
View ArticleBACK TO EGYPT • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
“I went back to Egypt last night,” said my sister, with horrible cheer, “to my real family.” Mom and Dad had already left for work. The best I could manage to news like this over breakfast was a feeble...
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