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Short Stories
The Carfare
Every time the car went over a damned bump or pothole, it went seesawing, and the glove compartment latch creaked. Suddenly it opened and everything flew out before my eyes: a yellow screwdriver, some folded paper, an insurance document, a Bic pen, and a handful of rusty bolts and screws …
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Personal Essays
I Saw Jim Jarmusch Yesterday
I saw Jim Jarmusch yesterday. The same American director who made Paterson, Dead Man, Broken Flowers, and many other movies. It was an afternoon in the middle of the week. Grand Central was as crowded as ever. I was on my way to Metro Line 5 for a writing review session downtown. Suddenly, in the middle of the crowd, I saw him approaching from ten or twenty feet away …
Uncle Samad
It was at a Chicago airport eight or nine years ago that I found my place in America for the first time. It was like walking into a cinema town. The airport was full of men and women wearing red, blue, green, white, and purple. I had never seen so many people of different color in one place. The exhaustion of my long journey combined with the calm tranquility and the pleasant ecstasy of seeing new people like a midday nap after a heavy lunch …
This text is not about Andy Warhol
After more than a decade of living in America, if someone were to ask me what exactly America is like, I wouldn’t have an answer except to pause and say, "Wow, that's a tough question."
When you distance yourself from something, you get a chance to see it better. Being close blinds you. You become its servant. You become just like it. Repetition, repetition, and repetition. That’s exactly what the United States does …
My Name is Alex
During the first months I set foot in America, I became confounded. The Starbucks cafe near the university had become my regular hangout … every time the barista would pick up a blue or black marker, put it on the cup, and stare at me.
"Your name?" he’d ask.
"Ali," I replied every time and waited for him to take notes.
But he’d pause and then ask, “What?” …
Swimming Class
I would grab the rusty pipe of the pool fountain. Or the rope hanging on the edge of the small basin. Or even the plastic slippers or the tube that was left beside the water. I hated water, hated its acrid taste in my throat and nose. Hated the bursting coughs. Hated swimming class …
My Passport Photo
The airport officer opened my passport on his desk and looked at my photo. He put the boarding pass on top of it and held his pen. But he didn’t mark it right away. Instead, he stared at my eyes. I tried to act normal, just being myself. Four and a half seconds passed, and I started to worry. Had I doubted myself? …
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Reviews
Luigi Ghirrii
Luigi Ghirri is a spectator of simplicity. This simplicity is not a result of negligence but the result of him crossing the border of seeing correctly. His simple photographs have repeatedly crossed the borders of thought and are now framed before our eyes. To truly understand his work, we need to answer the question of how to see simplicity more frequently, better, and more precisely. The same thing that William Eggleston or Martin Per do to us. Behind every simplicity is a complexity, and behind every nested thought a simple frame manifests …
Embracing Heisenberg
"Breaking Bad" starts where "Walter White" meets "Heisenberg”. Walter, a quiet, family man and a low-income teacher ... Heisenberg, mastermind, producer of the purest methamphetamine in America and a dangerous trafficker. And these two characters, although they are absolutely different, continue to live in parallel and in the same body.
By the middle of the story, I was jealous of Walter. He got cancer and he is going to die soon …