#Babak Lakghomi | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

musingsofmonica · 1 year

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September 2023 Diverse Reads

September 2023 Diverse Reads:

•”Coleman Hill” by Kim Coleman Foote, September 05, Sjp Lit, Literary/Historical/Saga/African American/Own Voice

•”Land of Milk and Honey” by C. Pam Zhang, September 26, Riverhead Books, Literary Dystopian/Asian American

•”The Museum of Failures” by Thrity Umrigar, September 26, Algonquin Books, Contemporary/Women/Family Life/Asian American/Cultural Heritage

•”This Is Salvaged: Stories” by Vauhini Vara, September 26, W. W. Norton & Company, Short Stories, Literary/Women/Family Life

•”Evil Eye” by Etaf Rum, September 05, Harper, Contemporary/Women/Family Life/Cultural Heritage

•The Fraud” by Zadie Smith, September 05, Penguin Press, Literary/Sagas/Historical/Biograpical/Britain/Janaica

•”Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation” by Tiya Miles, September 19, W. W. Norton & Company, History/Women's Studies/Human Geography/19th Century/20th Century

•”The Devil of the Provinces” by Juan Cárdenas, Davis (Translator), September 12, Coffee House Press, Literary/Noir/Crime/World Literature/Colombia

•”And Then She Fell” by Alicia Elliott, September 26, Dutton, Literary/Horror/Native American & Aboriginal

•”Wednesday's Child: Stories” by Yiyun Li, September 05, Farrar Straus and Giroux/ Literary/Short Stories/Asian American

•Three Holidays and a Wedding” by Uzma Jalaluddin & Marissa Stapley, September 26, G.P. Putnam's Sons, Romance

•”What Start Bad a Mornin'” by Carol Mitchell, September 19, Central Avenue Publishing, Contemporary/Immigration/Women/African American/ United States/Trinidad/Jamaica

•”The Book of (More) Delights: Essays” by Ross Gay, September 19, Algonquin Books, Personal Memoir in Essays/Cultural, Ethnic & Regional/African American & Black

•”What You Are Looking for Is in the Library” by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts, September 05, Hanover Square Press. Literary/Coming of Age/Friendship/World Literature/Japan

•”Thank You for Sharing” by Rachel Runya Katz, September 12, St. Martin's Griffin/Romance/Jewish/POC/Multicultural

•”The Name Drop” by Susan Lee, September 12, Inkyard Press, Romance/Family/Parents/Social Themes/Class Differences/Diversity & Multicultural

•”The Golden Gate” by Amy Chua, September 19, Minotaur Books, Historical/Thrillers/Suspense/Mystery/Detective

•”South” by Babak Lakghomi, September 12, Rare Machines, Political/Dystopian

•”The Death I Gave Him” by Em X. Liu, September 12, Solaris, Science Fiction/Crime/Mystery/Thrillers/Technological

“A lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a locked-room thriller.”

•”Others Were Emeralds” by Lang Leav, September 05, Harper Perennial, Literary/Coming of Age/Family Life/Siblings/Friendship/Cultural Heritage/World Literature - Australia

Happy reading, Mo✌️

#bibliophile #bookworm #bookish #books #book lover #bookaddict #reading #book #booklr #bookaholic #reading list #to read #reader #book rec #book reccs #book reading #book release #book recommendations

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creativitytoexplore · 4 years

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The North https://ift.tt/3cRAKXO

My uncle was driving us north, where the enemy planes hadn’t yet attacked. He took turns drinking from a bottle with the man sitting up front.

My parents and I were squeezed in the back. My mother closed her eyes and held me close. My father kept biting his lips.

“Drink up,” my uncle said, passing the bottle to my father. My father returned the bottle untouched.

Everybody else we knew had already left the city. My uncle was the only person still in town with a car. I didn’t know why we hadn’t seen my uncle for so long. He wasn’t wearing his cologne, the one he had let me use before. He looked different from how I remembered him, with the moustache he had grown and his big beard with white strands showing through. His forehead had more wrinkles. He hadn’t brought me a bag of chocolate as he used to.

The man beside my uncle had a sharp jaw. A tattoo on his neck was half hidden under his black hoodie. The car smelled of cigarettes.

“You know he robbed the biggest bank in the city,” my uncle said. “But that wasn’t why he was arrested.”

The man smirked. I’d never seen my father so quiet.

“All of my brothers and sisters. None of them were there for me,” my uncle said. “He was there for me.” His eyes pointed at the man.

My uncle sped past all the other cars. The narrow road twisted as we rose through the fog up to the mountains. The cypress trees in the valleys became denser the further north we went.

When my uncle tried to pass the car in front of us, an eighteen-wheeler coming from the other side honked its horn.

“For God’s sake,” my father said, “there’s a child in the car.” He pressed his hand against the window as if his hand could save him, save us.

“What? You don’t like my driving?” my uncle said.

The man up front closed his eyes, covered his head with his hoodie. Tears rolled down my mother’s cheeks, falling warmly on my neck.

“Don’t cry,” I said to my mother.

—

At a gas station, my father and uncle shouted at each other in the wind. We could hear little of what was being said.

Across the road, a boy was selling honey. “Mountain honey,” he shouted. I heard him well.

I wanted to taste the honey from the mountains, to see if it tasted any different from the honey I was used to.

The man with the hoodie smoked a cigarette, looking at my father and uncle from the corner of his eyes. He fidgeted in his seat.

After they got back in the car, we passed through rice fields and tea farms. Farmers were walking toward their houses as the sun set.

We turned onto a dirt road, drove up the hills through the vineyards and wild berry shrubs to a fenced garden. My uncle and the man didn’t leave the car while we unloaded our luggage. They stared at us quietly until everything was out of the trunk.

Behind the car, the dust rose up in the air as they drove away.

—

What I remember from the garden: An old, deserted mansion. Ivy crawling on the walls and pillars. Two small wooden huts with spring beds inside them.

We slept in one of the huts. When the cat pissed on the roof, the piss dribbled through the wooden planks.

Later on, we filled the hut with tin buckets to collect rainwater.

There was a greenhouse with kiwi and banana trees. Blood oranges.

Wild horses roamed in the hills around the garden.

We grilled lamb chops and eggplants on a charcoal barbecue. We made a fire on the wood stove. My mother read to me from the few books we had brought with us.

—

My uncle returned to the garden several weeks later. The man from the car was no longer with him.

He brought two skinned ducks, eggs, a bag of rice.

“I’ve brought some food,” he said, “and a radio.” He put them on the floor. He gave the car keys to my father.

“All yours,” he said.

My uncle took the other hut and didn’t leave it. My father visited my uncle’s hut several times a day, sometimes taking his food with him, sometimes staying there for hours.

“Don’t go there, your uncle is resting,” they told me.

I heard my uncle screaming and cursing from the other hut as my mother read to me.

During the day, my father drove us to the village. We bought eggs, bread, chicken meat, and fish from a small farmer’s market. Sometimes we hiked in the hills.

Once, I tried to enter the other hut when my parents were taking a nap, but the door was locked.

I looked through the gaps between the wooden planks and saw my uncle naked, his hands and legs tied to the bed. His head was hanging from the mattress into a bucket, his long beard crusted with vomit. He was shivering and twisting in the bed when his eyes met mine.

—

The next time I saw my uncle, the war was over. He’d moved back with my grandmother and gained a lot of weight. He sat silently in the corner of the room and didn’t talk to anybody. When we asked him questions, he just nodded.

Over the years, he gained more weight. He didn’t leave the house and barely talked. He watched movies or listened to music in his room all day.

But somehow, whenever I think of him, I don’t think of the ruins. Of shrapnel or shattered glass. I remember the north, the boy selling honey by the roadside, the sound of the rain falling into the tin buckets. The horses roaming in the hills.

Babak Lakghomi is the author of Floating Notes (Tyrant Books, 2018). His fiction has appeared in NOON, Ninth Letter, New York Tyrant, and Green Mountains Review, among other places. Babak was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.

#American Short Fiction

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