Author/Uploaded by Fatin Abbas
Contents Cover Title Contents Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Epilogue Acknowledgments Copyright Guide Cover Title Contents Page List ii iv v vi vii 1 2 3 4
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Contents Cover Title Contents Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Epilogue Acknowledgments Copyright Guide Cover Title Contents Page List ii iv v vi vii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 iii GHOST SEASON A NOVEL Fatin Abbas To my mother, Afaf, and my father, Ali— with all my love and gratitude. GHOST SEASON CONTENTS Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Epilogue Acknowledgments I DENA PICKED UP THE CAMERA BAG, LIFTED THE TRIPOD under her arm, and, in the courtyard, stopped to look up. The light was mellow, caressing surfaces: the thatched roof of the gazebo that stood at the back of the compound, the clay walls of the storage room, the pale canvas of the tent set up by the office. Light like this was rare—it was only because of a haze of morning clouds, which might melt away at any moment—and so she hurried across the yard to the kitchen, where she found the boy Mustafa sweeping. He glanced at her and smiled and then his eyes returned to the work. There were few formalities between them now. She didn’t have to ask, as she used to, whether she could switch on the camera. He knew why she was there, that her work was watching him, and he’d accepted it, though not without some lingering bewilderment. She unpacked her things—headphones, a piece of paper to check for white balance, batteries—then turned on the camera and framed the boy sweeping dirt. Sweat trickled into the crease of her one shut eye, and through the other she watched his arms move, the cloudy sunlight hitting them just-so, reflecting the smooth skin just-so against the brown mud of the kitchen wall behind. At his feet the dust swirled up luminous from the uneven ground, rising, then unfurling out in a shadowy motion, the cloud thinning then dissipating in the morning air. “Look,” he said, shading his eyes. Dena watched him through the lens. “There’ll be rain later.” His hand remained above his brow for an instant, and then he reached for the broom again. In the background, echoing through her headphones as though from a faraway place, she could hear a tune pulsating on the radio, and behind that the sound of water splashing in the street. The scent of baking bricks and dung came and went, carried by the river breeze, and still she looked, drifting between the face, the hands, the dust, the moving broom, so lost in looking that the pulse in her aching arm no longer felt like pain but only rhythm. IN THE OFFICE Alex sat on a stool too low for the makeshift desk, a map spread out in front of him. The room was the only one built out of concrete in the compound. It was cramped, barely big enough for the table, chair, and a metal filing unit set against the left-hand wall. A poster was pinned above it, showing the logo of the organization: a white globe floating above two green palms raised upward as though in prayer. He’d spent the morning reading an agricultural report, but, bored, had pulled open one of the maps lying on the desk. He never got tired of looking at maps. He leaned forward on his elbows, eyes tracing the northern border, a line bolting straight across the Sahara. His gaze drifted down, following the river to its source as it meandered through the thick yellow belt of desert to the capital, where it split in two, a branch curving up toward the Ethiopian highlands in one direction and the other continuing south toward Lake Victoria. He stopped at a dot marking the town he was in now—Saraaya, at the boundary between North and South. Here the desert merged into grasslands, swaths of pale green that became darker and denser toward the tropical south of the country. He’d come to this town to make a map, sent by his organization to chart
Author: Sundquist, Aric; Kiste, Gwendolyn; Cohen, Michael Harris; Barb, Patrick; Jayne, Serena; Milder, Scotty; Ketterer, Ryan Marie; Meriläinen, Ville; Tang, Michelle; MacLean, Lynne M.; Nasir, Jaye
Year: 2023
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