In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Story of a Silence While her husband thumbed through Plato, spending the dialogues like a pension, in whispers, his inheritance lost, his house taken away, my grandmother worked hard, harder than a man to earn her salary from the government and deserve her heirloom of prayer from God. When he slept, she leafed through his dreams: she wasn't in any of them and he was just lying on the river's warm glass, thousands of him moving under him. He was nothing when he woke, 11 only his own duplicates in her arms. Years later she went into the night, in one hand the Koran, in the other a minaret of fire. She found him sleeping, his torn Plato, his pillow, the fire's light a cold quilt on him. She held him as only a shadow must be held. But then the darkness cracked, and he was gone. 12 ...

Share