My love was bound in red silk,/ Thrust out forcefully to claim long-forgotten aristocratic titles/ When the ships of old have/ Taken on the air for water/ And it is blood they inhabit, not the/ Sweat falling
To those of us who lived in Europe at the time, photos of Independence Square were immediately recognizable. They represented shared wounds and terrifying possibilities for the near future.
Summer in the Bronx lasts forever, and it is like this: naked bodies that are at once child-skinny and child-swollen sprinting through spray-capped fire hydrants, stained popsicle sticks in neat piles on the sidewalk, asphalt that remembers the warm smell of rain long after it storms.
How can you reconcile your identity as a liberating force while using the language of your oppressor and benefiting from physical freedom that many of those in your homeland do not possess? Assia Djebar wrestles with these questions in "Fantasia."
One day, I phoned my grandparents’ house just to have a talk. My grandmother picked up the phone and told me that my grandfather was taking a nap upstairs. Soon enough, we were talking as relaxed as ever. At some …