The day the last qawwal was killed, my childhood city, already known for its lethal silence, for its censorship of words, for its refusal to listen, went into a deep deep quiet.
Another apocalyptic was out by Gert's truck, stuffing pamphlets under the wiper blades. "End's coming," he said as she approached, his voice a frail whinny.
That smirking girl staring back with her cigarette, that ugly short hair, the shapeless dress with its silly fringes and its shameless show of calf, frivolous before the great dark mass of Flamel Hall. Girls these days, says Edith. What they wear.
As if belief, whether ingrained or hard-won, was not deeply personal. As if it could be easily discussed in a loud pub filled with circumstantial acquaintances; acquaintances who were, in this case, Alia’s boyfriend’s drunken co-workers.
The convoy appeared in a cloud of dust against the Martian dawn atop the eastern hills...Were they bringing food, or were they bringing more war into the chapel?
