It’s summer and out there bare vines are crucified along trellises contouring the hills in every direction. It used to be that in spring they leafed green and fruited and we harvested about now and the vineyard rang with Latin American voices, European voices, young laughter, diesel engines and birdsong.

Translated by Omid Tofighian.   I’m sitting on the plane, looking out of the window at the boundless blue of the sky. Curses are overflowing from inside me. I am surprised at the situation, surprised at my discontentment. I reason with myself that this is possibly just because I’m heading for something new, and I tell myself that I can handle that. After a short time I see a luscious, vibrant-green island: a beautiful green dot tucked away between the waves of the ocean. I smile. Its pristineness seems to be something to behold—something unparalleled. When I disembark from the […]

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He places his hand on her waist and now they’re dancing, a sped-up version of a waltz that’s completely at odds with the song blaring tinnily out of his phone speakers. Inspired, she takes his hand and spins into him then back away, a bastardised version of the classic ballroom move.

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The hostage sky
The days spent staring at the sky: in daylight and at night, winter through to autumn, outdoors and from the window, on foot, at the wheel, starry, starless, a half-formed prayer on his lips that he dares not speak.
When he first arrived, he was transfixed by the sky.

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He didn’t identify with anything or anyone but felt sure dragons would understand him. He cut out a map from a school history book—which he shouldn’t have done and which bothered his soul—that had pictures of monsters where the oceans spilt off the edge of the world. And then there was another map that a strange and distant ‘academic’ uncle had given him—a reproduction he stuck over his bed that had words written in Latin that went ‘hc svnt dracones’. On and in that map he found his future as an iconoclast—a defier if not a defiler of maps and […]