If I stood on the edge of a cliff and shouted out over into the canyons, would my voice roll like thunder and crack their Magnificence?  If I whispered mantras, repeated them endlessly, mouthing them against the wind, would it carry them over the crag…

He said: “My Kuwaiti wife and I divorced so that our children could get Kuwaiti citizenship. Now after the kids have become Kuwaiti, I want to remarry my wife but she won’t have me! She says she is happier without me. Now what do I do? Who …

As I walked down the street in the freezing cold, I heard the sweet voices of a little choir of four blind people.  It wasn’t raining yet, but it felt like the weather was about to change its mind. The wind chill dropped the temperature of the stree…

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Raghad had read about the woman in the local paper. She was a mother of four children. When the  father came home, the children told him that their mother had left them and gone to live in a flat in Salmiya which she had rented on her own. The husband…

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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

My companion and I walked down to the beach and sat on the plastic chairs. It was night. The sound of the waves breaking was loud. It was poetry. It was night but it was not totally dark. We were silhouetted by a big beam of light shining behind us fro…

I wrote this draft back in November 2010. I welcome any additions to this raw piece.   They were in for a shock. All of them. Not just the Kuwaitis with the starched white qutras that crowned their male heads. Not just the Kuwaiti ladies with thei…

I still have my sandals on in the house. This is  unusual. I always take off my footwear before entering our living quarters unless I don’t mean to stay for very long. Actually, sometimes I leave my shoes on because I am too lazy. I also think i…

Lockdown, protests. Even I have started to drink coffee in the morning instead of chai. I spread crunchy peanut butter deep into a hot, toasted piece of pita bread and the ooozing sweetness sickens me. Immediately I think of thick-sliced, soft American…

When I first read this article, I scoffed and was mildly amused at the idea of two people jammed in an airplane bathroom for 20 minutes and then kept thinking: “Why was a third person also handcuffed and taken away?” Here is the article sin…

He’s upset. I was to understand soon the reason why. He wore a hat and the radio was blaring in the front part of the cab. On and off though. He seemed to be on the phone some. And then he’d turn the radio up again. I looked out at the stre…

I don’t remember what kind of top she wore. I only concentrated on her black leggings that molded the shape of her full thighs as she walked along before me on the busy London pavement. I was drawn to the sheer quality of her leggings and that fa…

Sleep takes me into strange dark places. It’s difficult to define my state of being. A part of me is left behind as I wake up, and continue to feel disoriented. It makes me not want to go back to sleep, to that dark place once more. When I am ful…

At first, I braved the heat. I went out at all times of the day and was oblivious to the way it scorched my skin. The cherry tomato I bite into popped all over my fingers. After a while, I started to manipulate the situation. I no longer woke up at fir…

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The sun appeared again like a burst of yellow in the bright blue sky. We smiled at each other. I squinted. The sun was too bright. When we had started out, it was pouring rain and I had  brought an umbrella but not sunglasses. We sat across each other…

We both stood on the balcony. I reached towards the bird’s cage and started to lift the top slightly to remove the newspaper on the bottom. It was a swift movement. The cage top was raised too high. The bird flew out and up into the sky, far, far…

Shama’s eyes welled up with tears and then literally splashed down her face and onto the front of her top. I was sympathetic of course, actively playing the role of nurturer and guide, but the process of crying fascinated me. We were discussing h…

Another May. You are about to depart again. It was like that: until May do we part. My month of many endings. I keep thinking what if I lose my sight? What if I lose sight of that point in time? A collection of memories not in a box; not in letters wit…

It was a short distance to my car. Under the white fluorescent light, the walls of our house looked even paler than usual. My eyes were drawn by brownish specks on the wall. I approached to take a close look wondering what insects were now in season. T…

Have some caramel cookies and think about the sorry state of the world. I keep writing down haphazard words. Thoughts dart in and out of my conscience. But I am lame. A horse that is lame limps. And that is me. Limping around. Is there a difference bet…

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When Ahmad proposed to Abeer, she accepted his conditions despite the protests of her parents and family. Ahmad asked Abeer not only to wear the hijab but also to wear an abaya at all times when she went out. He was not overly religious and neither did…

The women all talk at once in the oblong room. Each one raises her voice in a shrill crescendo, and the words reverberate, bouncing off the vanilla colored walls. I quietly press the remote control, to silence the blaring Television, a monster sitting …

We were talking about older women marrying younger men and how it could really serve to revivify a woman. Roqaya laughed and said: Have I told you about  the woman in her fifties who married a man in his late thirties?  She was a widow with grown chi…

“How are you?! Oh, and I thought you had gone to Lebanon for the holidays?” exclaimed Jamila with a big smile. Farah rolled her eyes upwards and pouted: “No, it’s only Mahmoud. He’s gone with friends for the New Year.&#822…

Half of me here. Parts of me roaming. In dreams, my right ear has some dark soil. And I struggle to remove it. I am all here. Back in my body. And I awaken. Looking at the ceiling, I realize it is my bed. And I think about being buried deep in the sand…

Onions. We sat cross-legged on the floor, knees touching, eating hamburgers out of brown paper bags. You were worried. You were too serious, thinking of what was to come. The glow of the single lamp is warm and yellow. And I smell the onions on our fin…