Eduardo Cyrene Concerto

Author's name: Najwa Bin Shatwan

We would sneak into her room to watch her sleep, with her teeth next to her on the nightstand, a towel draped over her feet to protect them from the invisible creatures that come at night to take the feet of the sleepers and walk with them, leaving nightmares and disturbing dreams in their place.
We memorized the shape of the towel so we wouldn't touch it after Teti Atria left for Susa. We also associated her sleep talking with her teeth being knocked out and her sleeping on her back, until all the descendants of the Greeks of Cyrene and Susa were influenced by the eternal dead with whom they shared the city half and half. But the dead don't snore, and Teti Atria's snoring reached Rome.
My brother Ayub used to tell us scary stories about Titi Atria's house and about the sea that had flooded part of the old town and would inevitably flood my grandfather's house after Titi Atria had gone to her Lord. Perhaps he was waiting for her departure to do so, for the sea was not far away, but it would not expand enough to drown a woman drowning in loneliness.

The 2023 Booker Prize Longlist