Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Iraqi Fiction Today

A Note on Language and Spelling

Muhammad Khodayyir

Yusuf’s Tales

The Turtle Grandmother

Friday Bounties

Lutfiyya al-Dulaimi

Hayaat’s Garden

Shahrazad and Her Narrators

Lighter Than Angels

Mahdi Isa al-Saqr

Waiting

The Returnee

Breaking Away

Morning Exercises

A Dreamer in Dark Times

Mayselun Hadi

Her Realm of the Real

Calendars

Outage

Abdul Rahman Majeed al-Rubaie

The Tattoo

A Man and a Woman

Samira Al-Mana

The Soul

That Thing We Call Age

A Dormant Alphabet

Sexual Complacency

Abdul Sattar Nasir

Good-bye, Hippopotamus

Jalil al-Qaisi

Zulaikha

Samir Naqqash

Tantal

Salima Salih

Those Boys

Samuel Shimon

The Street Vendor and the Movies

Mahmoud Saeed

Bitter Morning

A Figure in Repose

Nasrat Mardan

Bar of Sweet Dreams

Sufi Blessings

Ibtisam Abdullah

The Nursery

The Other in the Mirror

Ibrahim Ahmed

The Arctic Refugee

Shmuel Moreh

A Belly Dancer from Baghdad