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He motioned to me to help him get up, and we walked step by step to the table, his hand resting heavily on my arm. Again, I took in how frail he’d become, and I couldn’t quite believe it, as if his old self were concealed within this approximation of my grandfather. I had the irrational feeling tha…

I would walk silently through the door of my mother’s room, pausing a moment for my eyes to adjust to the shadowy shapes. My mother would be lying in bed, and she’d turn her head to look, her stare at first distant, before she recognized me and began pulling herself out of the thick, impenetrable f…

“That’s not what I meant,” Nehla said. “I’m just glad I won’t have to get into too many arguments with my family.” She added, “Most of them support the government, you know.”

I was startled. I couldn’t understand why she had kept this information from me, and told her as much.

“I thought you …

The last time I talked to her was on a New Year’s Eve, not long before her death.

“Happy New Year!” I shouted. “I hope you’re having a glass of cognac!”

“Remember, Masha, when you and I celebrated?”

“Of course, it was wonderful.”

“You were the last. They said I shouldn’t host anymore.”
…

She thinks that in time, she will write here. But there is no rush, unlike for her friends, who always talk of another life, brighter and more established than their own. They are impatient to be rid of the modest jobs they consider embarrassments, even humiliations.

Recently, barely fifteen min…