Our Collection - The Short Story Project

A Short Story Writer Who doesn’t Obey Army Orders

Palestine

As I was sitting in a taxi stuck in a queue of cars at the Atara Israeli army checkpoint, heading to Nablus to meet a beautiful widow I’d got to know on Facebook, it struck me...

A Short Story Writer Who doesn’t Obey Army Orders

Ziad Khadash

3 min

Palestine

Ever since I was a child, I dreamt of learning to play the guitar. With time, this passion turned into a weevil, a gluttonous one that nested in my brain, grew up as I grew and...

A Weevil

Khalil Nasif

1 min

Palestine

Here, people are only observed by the eyes of the night watch. The walls of Acre have not yet been completely built. Nor its lighthouse that looks over the sea to the west. The stones are...

Spume on the Sands of Acre

Wisam Gibran

3 min

Palestine

“It was a pitched battle…” – a description he had often read out to his classmates from history textbooks but never thought he would one day use as he had just done, speaking to his friend,...

The Battle of Tel el-Hawa

Asmaa al-Ghoul

8 min

Palestine

“Well then tell her that she intends to get out of here, mister,” the Israeli policeman called out. He was standing, arms folded, at one entrance to Mandelbaum Gate when I explained to him that we...

Mandelbaum Gate

Emile Habiby

8 min

Palestine

As she waited for the train, she grabbed an orange ribbon out of the hand of a settler who had a blond beard and a white kippa. Then she sat down again in the shade. The...

The Orange Ribbon

Iyad Barghouti

7 min

Palestine

I could smell the stench of death. From the first shades of darkness, I smelt the stench of death. A stench above me, a stench below me. Wherever I turned, I smelt the same stench. A...

Nightly Lament

Naji Daher

5 min

Palestine

“I’m a romantic, you brutes, and I adore Nizar Qabbani!” This was Karim’s only reply to people’s accusations and taunts. And it was on the basis of this reply that the camp residents had added the...

Karim the Romantic, Bather of the Dead

Ziad Khadash

4 min

Palestine

We didn’t stay long at the bar. After we got Melanie’s text, I had the feeling that each of us wanted the other to finish their drink so we could take off for one of our...

Scenario (A Chapter from a Novel)

Saleem Albeik

7 min

Palestine

Although I was only ten years old, I could understand that something important had happened. Every time our bedroom door opened, my mother shut it again so we wouldn’t hear the frantic whispering in the living...

Scandal

Alaa Hlehel

4 min

Palestine

When Suzanne came back from Switzerland, she’d left three-quarters of her body weight behind. That wasn’t her only loss, however, or the most significant. And I don’t think she’d object if I told you that losing...

Lucerne Tunnel

Khalil Nasif

3 min

Palestine

I’d only been married six years when I started feeling tired and out of breath, especially when I was going up stairs. At first I thought it was a passing problem that would just go away....

Globalization

Suheil Kiwan

6 min

Palestine

My Husband is a bus driver. He has been for thirty years or more. I met him when he was 24 and he had just finished driving school in the city. On his ID card they...

My Husband the Bus Driver

Alaa Hlehel

12 min

Palestine

The death of my grandfather, Abu Kamel, God rest his soul, felt like the end of an era. I used to see him as my link to the past, that distance that stretches all the way...

The Photographer

Muhammad Hamad

1 min

Palestine

Every night my father took the path from the cemetery to our house. I could hear his footsteps in the garden. I pretended to be asleep while he looked for the stick that he used to...

A Night Visit

Sheikha Hussein Helawy

2 min

Palestine

The three men headed out to Tel Aviv on the rough road. Two Palestinians and a Jordanian—or rather a Palestinian with a Jordanian passport, to be precise. “50 shekels.” “At least.” “If one of them wants...

Fifty Shekels

Raji Bathish

6 min

Palestine

(From Letters to the Editor) We chose this letter amongst hundreds of letters that the newspaper receives. The reader preferred to sign his letter with R.A.; he asked for it to be published in the...

R.A. Looks for his Eyes

Sheikha Hussein Helawy

3 min

Palestine

Kadhim Ali paid no attention to the difficulties he was exposed to on account of his enthusiasm for the Brazilian football player Ronaldo. Kadhim Ali loved football but the people of his neighbourhood did not; they...

Ronaldo’s Seat

Mahmoud Shukair

6 min