Ghassan Zaqtan

He is compelled to return and close the window, confused about whether he should. Things are less clear since he lost her— a hole has opened inside him. Filling the hole exhausts him, as does straightening fences, wiping window-glass, clean [...]

Suspended in memory, only her fingers do not sleep, riding their own dreams beneath a dim light —while— a single bell rang, audible all the way to her house, a sound rising from the hills nearby, where the convent and the ruined buildi [...]

He doesn’t mean to replace everything, just to add a few things to the moment when she passed by. Move a few chairs or a curtain, amplify a sound. A tweak of the imagination— things of that sort, nothing more. So smaller things don’t [...]

There is a downtrodden woman in his dream, an introverted woman whose mind is occupied with simple thoughts and needless virtues. A woman who enters his room every time he falls asleep, and stares at his heart, directly at his heart, then tak [...]