The Complete Short Stories

From the silence of a woman to her protest leading to her freedom and personal choice, we are transported through the realms of Badrya El-Bishr’s narratives in her stories, Habbat al Hal (Cardamom), Masaa Al Arbiaa (Wednesday Night) and Nihayat al Loaba (The End Game). She introduces the reader to a fragment of what happens behind closed doors and beating hearts under the black veils. How does a girl discover herself, her family and her social predicament, and thus constitute her identity? How does she live in constant fear and paranoia from what’s around? ‘But the fear of Thursday hasn’t left yet, because it was a fear sitting as a member of the family drinking tea with milk, blowing smoke on the living room sofas, playing ball with the children and sleeping between the man and his wife. Fear became the color of clothes and a plastic rose in a vase sharing its lifelessness with dust that hasn’t been dusted yet.’