honor

Author's name: Sana Allah Ibrahim

Sharaf rested his head on the foreigner’s broad chest. The moment of confession had arrived. English proved to be resistant to the truth, so he returned to the language of his homeland: Arabic (the hostile one): how he was lying, that he would never be able to buy anything, that he still hadn’t been able to enter university, and that the scent of jasmine he mentioned when he spoke about his house was the constant scent of… that gathers in a well in front of the house and is taken away by a truck once a week. The climax of the confession sounded like a passage from a song by Umm Kulthum, i.e. completely melodramatic: I’ve wasted my life and I want to leave the country… I wish you would take me far away with you… The foreigner didn’t speak and contented himself with placing the chain around the young man’s neck, then reaching for his leg and feeling his thigh