In their new lives in this Eastern city the boy and his mother do not speak much. The other new arrivals seem to take immediately to the atmosphere, as if the bustle and shine of the streets was their own long-promised homeland, its secrets already memorized, recited nightly under thin, rough blankets in the desert. They speak faster now, their voices clipped, wise, glinting.
In those first days, the boy had filled his mouth with sweets, and now his tongue felt like it was pulling through swampy water. Continue reading “three”