The nation lies in ruins,
but the mountains and rivers remain. –Tu Fu

CHAPTER ONE

New York City, June 4, 2001

Ming Chen, devout believer in very little, had gone to church every June fourth for the last seven years. At first Allison went with him, in fact the whole thing had been her idea. But for the past few years, Ming Chen had come to keep his vigil alone. [Read more →]

Baraki, Algeria, 1991

When Farid Belkadi woke up, the winter sun sliced through the building’s alleyway and lay on the street in diagonal shapes.

Outside his apartment building, a taxi waited for his grandmother and Aunt Leila. His mother loaded the last suitcase, an oversized blue cardboard case with brass locks, into the trunk.

Farid placed his white skullcap haphazardly over his uncombed hair and pulled a matching robe over his head. The robe was a flowing sea of white over his twelve-year-old frame. [Read more →]

Queen Eva-Marie always did say every good-bye ain’t gone and every shut-eye ain’t sleep. Nightfall brings a hush over even the nosiest places and that includes the Quarters. A late spring breeze circulates air already too warm and kicks up limerock dust on the edges of Palmer Road. A slice of silver moon illuminates the sky and the spirit of the family’s matriarch looks over the inhabitants of 26 Palmer. There is a young married woman not even twenty-five yet sleeping in a twin bed with her four-year-old daughter, intertwined tightly as if the warm breeze is threatening their embrace. Their sleep is secure and deep, unlike the sleep of the six-year-old on the sofa in the front room. He is fitful. Twisting, turning, fighting the sheet and others, seen and unseen. [Read more →]

They’ve been waiting for months now, like patients on an organ donor list. Two large icons—one of Christ, the Life Giver, and another, The Mother of God, Directress—sit unfinished in my studio. A few well-meaning students have offered encouragements like, “Oh, they’re almost finished,” and “I love the blue highlights on Christ’s inner garment.” But the images are suspended… like embryos stuck in the birth canal. Their faces are expressionless masks; their lips, a ghoulish, green sankir, thirsty for a wash of vermillion red. Their eyes, empty and pale, waiting for the life-giving lights and distinctive black lines which are the trademarks of this ancient Byzantine art form. [Read more →]

Animals come after my father dies. Dogs. Cats. Ducks. Geese. A goat. A peacock. They wander to our home several years into his absence, appearing on our doorstep, or catching our eye from feed store cages. Always, we take them in. We line our laundry room floor with bath towels, bed sheets and spare blankets, filling cereal bowls with tap water, and mending cut skin, matted fur, and broken feathers. Then we flick off the light to watch them sleep.

Strays make the best pets, my mother tells us kids. They won’t leave. [Read more →]