Hopscotch and Hellfire
“A red dot blossoms on the screen. Eric presses the trigger on the joystick and his hand tremors. The countdown begins.”
Weapons have been confirmed.
This is why we’re here, . To protect. Mehsud is bad news.
Sixteen seconds.
Six seconds.
Two seconds.
This must be it,
Copper tendrils
Astaghfar!
But it was only once. The first gaze is fair game.
Isn’t it?
It wasn’t a first gaze. How I wish it could have been
Sauleha Kamal is a fiction writer, essayist and academic researcher. Find her work in—or forthcoming in—Herald, the Oxford University Press Anthology I’ll Find My Way, The Missing Slate, The Express Tribune and Postcolonial Text, among others. She holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University, where she won the 2015 Axinn Foundation Anna Quindlen Prize for Writing. She wishes she had attended the latter back when Edward Said was still a professor there.
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As the dentist works, her giant belly touches my arm and my head, and I think the baby kicks me.
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Such intensity of emotion was rare for Calvin, but seagulls warranted it.
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The neighbors wanted the bird out. “Do something,” they said. It was all in the eyes, wide and accusatory and wild.