Our Collection – Page 13 – The Short Story Project

Israel

“Did he talk to you?” “Not a word till Bilu Junction.” “And then?” “And then he slowed down and showed me the ugly shopping center they’re building there.” “Well, it all came as a surprise to...

Thorns

Sharon Horodi

13 min

Greece

It was one of those nights when our Athens was stewing in its own juice, a mixture of exhaust fumes, burnt plastic, teargas, despair. We struggled to seal off all the cracks; the air slipped through...

Dead Dog at Midnight

Kostas Katsoularis

33 min

Israel

Light snow fell on Bilbao. We sat there beneath the Guggenheim Museum and waited for it to open. A few meters away stood the famous architect Frank Gehry, carefully examining the extravagant structure whose planning had...

Titanium

Dror Burstein

8 min

Israel

Francesca, a leggy young woman with a blue streak running through her thick mane of hair, crossed the park quickly. The dry leaves on the path crackled pleasantly beneath her feet. The scent of roasted chestnuts...

The Enemy of the Love Story

Alma Ganihar

17 min

Turkey

Day had broken long ago. The mountains on whose peaks black clouds settled sparkled under a cold blue as though reporting that the pause given during the night by the snow that had snowed thus for...

The Snow Traveller

Ayfer Tunç

24 min

USA

He had always believed that his immortality would take the form of the Aerojet. The two-stage, solid-fuel boost rocket had been, in its time, one of the crowning achievements of human technology — the first apparatus to...

The Northeast Kingdom

Nathaniel Rich

41 min

Argentina

This wasn’t a pair of women’s shoes with perfectly formed heels dug out from the back of a wardrobe. Or a box containing letters from the war written lovingly to an eleven-year-old boy. Discoveries like that...

Kasos

Nicolás Mavrakis

12 min

Spain

I should begin by apologizing for sending this letter out of the blue. At first, I thought I’d call on you at home so we could talk about all this face to face, but then I...

The Lego Idol

Jon Bilbao

13 min

The Sad and Ambitious Girls of the Province

Israel

Bella loved it, to drive through the sleepy burnt out city, nothing but a few lit windows; and outside the darkness, thin and tangible. This time she was completely guilt free, despite leaving her two babies...

The Sad and Ambitious Girls of the Province

Nurit Zarchi

18 min

Israel

There by the long, plain, flour-dusty carts, which usually stood idly in the middle of the spacious empty square, beside the pot-bellied road which sprawled somewhat in the spring sun, with the scrawny little horses which...

Uproar

Uri Nissan Gnessin

17 min

Israel

The stain could not be allowed to spread any further across the wall. My desk stood against that wall and my eyes, which looked at the stain, were too close to it. I couldn’t tell if...

Ksantini, The Last Child of the Century

Sami Berdugo

20 min

Israel

The architect came one day to stroll round the garden he had created in the square next to the theatre. He was wearing a yellow cap and a yellow linen jacket, strewn with yellow squares that...

Architect in the Square

Adi Sorek

5 min

Israel

Paul Nimoro was Japanese. He was many things; but above all, he was Japanese and he valued the qualities he knew he had inherited‒ precision, self-discipline and along with them, perhaps less visible but still present...

Dune

Dorit Peleg

13 min

Israel

The day the Chinese army invaded, my brother moved in with us. He came straight after they had laid down their arms and surrendered Jerusalem. It was only a formal act of surrender as our army...

The Chinese

Uri Orlev

15 min

USA

Rory knew before he came to New York what sort of life he would have. He’d read about it in novels by hip young authors who lived there. He saw the apartment, small but high-ceilinged, a...

Emerald City

Jennifer Egan

14 min

Israel

Boaz called out to Chicko: “I saw those in the Golan, waiting for hot air to come so they can fly, be birds.” He was stretched out on the couch, watching a TV show about animal...

Saragossa in Berlin

Iftach Alony

8 min

Israel

In 1999, my father moved into a studio apartment with sea views in the Colony Beach Apartment Motel, Bat Yam promenade. He did this to get away from the distractions in his Ramat Aviv neighbourhood and dedicate himself...

Notes from the Municipal Archives

Yonathan Raz Portugali

16 min

Israel

I’m standing in front of the gate leading into the yard of the retirement home. I was standing there two hours ago but I didn’t go in. I found a café on a nearby street and...

Retirement Home for War Heroes, Warsaw

Itamar Orlev

10 min

UK

“Good-bye, darling.” “Good-bye, sweetheart.” Alix Martin stood leaning over the small rustic gate, watching the retreating figure of her husband, as he walked down the road in the direction of the village. Presently he turned a...

Philomel Cottage

Agatha Christie

31 min

Israel

The heart, had it been able to think, would stop beating, I thought as I entered that dark club. People leaning against the walls, people being dragged down to the light only to resume their fixed...

Richard Nixon, My Mother

Tahel Frosh

4 min

Israel

It’s done, I got the final punishment. It seems that way. I can see and hear; there’s no need to prove it. Surely that must mean something. I’ll soon report what I see and hear. There:...

The Monkey

Boaz Izraeli

10 min

Israel

When you look at things from outside, everything seems like a sort of colorful jigsaw. A mosaic of price stickers covers the products in the supermarket: the oldest are white, the two-week-old ones are yellow, and...

Twice

Bella Shaier

13 min

Israel

It was Detective Chief Superintendent Fassaro’s last case, but he did not know that yet. He lingered by the closed door for a moment, and then strode quickly into the room, trying to hide the turmoil...

Reflections in the Lake

Dror A. Mishani

12 min

Israel

I live in the dread of silence. But am I not the soundless of all? Grey, humped, rat-like monsters with reddened eyes shadow my life. I detect them. Recognize them. Catch their scent as they come...

An old story

Iftach Alony

1 min

Israel

The stuff remakers of dreams are made of Joel would always cherish the day he met Morris Sadovski. Sitting in a living room whose walls were covered to the brim with colorful oil paintings, Morris looked...

Beit Hakerem. Jerusalem, 1985

Nir Baram

21 min

Israel

She was so glad the wedding was over. The unadorned car stopped in front of the hotel at the far end of the esplanade. They stepped out, he and the driver, his best friend, hugged before...

Honey

Liat Elkayam

12 min

UK

The object is a pillar of resin, 10 feet in height, four feet in diameter. It is glossy enough that if the light is at your back, you can see your reflection, but also translucent enough...

Light and Space

Ned Beauman

12 min

USA

It was a day of holocausts, cataclysms, tornadoes, earthquakes, blackouts, mass murders, eruptions, and miscellaneous dooms, at the peak of which the sun swallowed the earth and the stars vanished. But to put it simply, the...

No News, or What Killed the Dog?

Ray Bradbury

9 min

Hungary

We’re sat at a long table on a stage: a German actor, a middle-aged Bosnian writer, a Croatian author in her thirties, a Croatian interpreter, a Serbian historian, a young Serbian writer, me, and the German...

The Book Fair: The Assassin’s Grandson

György Spiró

7 min

Iraq

Everyone staying in the refugee reception centre has two stories – the real one and the one for the record. The stories for the record are the ones the new refugees tell to obtain the right...

The Reality and the Record

Hassan Blasim

16 min

Germany

Let’s see if the forests catch fire again. Let’s see if intense heat rushes toward us. Let’s see if smoke drives animals whose names we don’t know out of the bushes. Let’s see if that leaves...

The Onlookers

Kathrin Röggla

19 min

Israel

He placed his notepad on his knee and wrote: Cloudy. The smell of gasoline and garbage bins. Then he looked out the window again to verify that there was nothing he had failed to note. The bus...

To Jaffa

Ayman Sikseck

7 min

Prenzlauer Berg by Night (Nothing Doing)

Germany

That night I ran into the fox again at the corner of my road, just after one. And like the last time, he stopped and turned his head towards me and we stared at each other...

Prenzlauer Berg by Night (Nothing Doing)

Annett Gröschner

17 min

Egypt

The last thing I decided I would do before going away was to say farewell to my grandma. By noon I was watching Ghasreen, a small town located at the heart of a small valley. It...

The Open Door

Abd al Rahman Munif

26 min

USA

THE GRANDMOTHERS — dozens of them — find themselves at sea. They do not know how they got there. It seems to be afternoon, the glare from the sun keeps them squinting. They wander carefully, canes...

Safe Passage

Ramona Ausubel

15 min

USA

Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie...

A Pair of Silk Stockings

Kate Chopin

5 min

USA

At the end of the third week of April, Anna looked to her calendar and felt nothing for the retriever who’d started off the month with such vivacity. It had excessive hair, as usual, billowing in...

The JPEG

Rachel B. Glaser

12 min

Brazil

That first time we had a marmoset in the house was around New Year’s. We had no running water and no maid, people were lining up to buy meat, the summer heat had exploded—and that was...

Monkeys

Clarice Lispector

3 min

France

I haven’t had any news. It’s been almost eight years. At first, I had high hopes. I couldn’t imagine that she’d disappeared forever. She would come back. One day, I would hear her voice in the...

Regina

Gilles Rozier

4 min

UK

That year I spent the best two months of the dry season on one of the estates – in fact, on the principal cattle estate of a famous meat-extract manufacturing company. B.O.S bos. You have seen the three magic letters on...

An Anarchist

Joseph Conrad

24 min

Finland

What is it that drives and compels people? I thought as I moved with the crowd of people toward the passport check. What gypsy blood moves me? I thought when I saw my bag x-rayed, and...

Hunger

Raija Siekkinen

6 min

Brazil

Garcia was standing, staring at his fingernails and cracking his knuckles from time to time; Fortunato, in a rocking chair, looked at the ceiling; Maria Luisa, near the window, was finishing off some needlework. For five...

The Hidden Cause

Machado de Assis

14 min

Denmark

It was the night Dirch Passer the comedian died. He collapsed onstage. His heart was sick and he was taken away by ambulance to the hospital, where they said he was dead on arrival. It was...

The Winter Garden

Dorthe Nors

4 min

USA

This dress I am wearing in this black-and-white photograph, taken when I was two years old, was a yellow dress made of cotton poplin (a fabric with a slightly unsmooth texture first manufactured in the French...

Biography of a Dress

Jamaica Kincaid

9 min

The Drone Eats with Me – Diaries from a City Under Fire

Gaza

Thursday 17th July The First Truce I wake to the news that Israel has declared a five-hour truce, beginning at 10am. The Palestinian Monetary Authority has also announced that, during these hours, the banks will open...

The Drone Eats with Me – Diaries from a City Under Fire

Atef Abu Saif

17 min

Israel

Also, I’m crazy about him and I don’t care what the neighbors say. I’ll even wear a leather skirt slit up to here if he wants. And with no underwear either. Nu, I’m a crazy old...

Gabriella (from Liebchen)

Yossi Waxman

13 min

Mexico

After walking for so many hours without coming upon even the shadow of a tree, not even the seed of a tree, not even a root of anything, you can hear dogs barking. You might sometimes...

They Have Given Us The Land

Juan Rulfo

6 min

Mexico

While he was still awake, Castor was able to appreciate how much he liked hospitals. He so enjoyed being there, bathed in the light of the operating theatre, that he even ventured to ask the nurse...

Siamese Carcinoma

Ignacio Padilla

9 min

Argentina

Lutan showed me into a bright room with white walls and high ceilings. She didn’t seem surprised to see me show up at her door after three years and in a country where we were both...

Still Lutan

María Martoccia

13 min

Uruguay

She’d spent the entire morning in the kitchen finishing the three cakes that had been ordered for that afternoon. Behind her, the TV replayed the images from the attack, the same ones over and over for...

Freezing Water

Vera Giaconi

6 min

France

Only after a few episodes did I notice him. He was trying to force the door to a rundown house at the corner of a derelict street. He was too far away to pick out his...

The Man in the Yellow Parka

Thierry Horguelin

16 min

Uruguay

One thing is certain: that every day he will be older, further away from the time when he used to be called Bob, with his fair hair hanging over one of his temples, his smile and...

Welcome, Bob

Juan Carlos Onetti

14 min

USA

1982. Without her, for years now, murmur at the defrosting refrigerator, “What?” “Huh?” “Shush now,” as it creaks, aches, groans until the final ice block drops from the ceiling of the freezer like something vanquished. Dream, and...

How to Talk to Your Mother (notes)

Lorrie Moore

11 min

Mexico

Why do I want a life without honor if I already bet everything I had? A. Esparza Oteo A highway can be like the high seas. The sun burning on your face, the fresh cleansing...

Outrage

Álvaro Enrigue

16 min