“Waving at the Sky”—a story by Nahla Karam
Two women on the mend in the hospital, one a wife and mother, the other pining for a lover, both dream of a better life.
Nahla Karam
Nahla Karam is an Egyptian writer. Her published works include the short story collection An Takun Mo’Alaqan bil Hawa [To Hang in the Air] (Cairo: Dar Al-Tanweer, 2013) and the novel, ’Ala Firash Freud [On Freud’s Couch] (Cairo: Dar Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadidah, 2015), which was shortlisted for the Sawiris Prize. Karam wrote the 2019 documentary film Karakib (Clutter), directed by Ahmed Nadar. Al-Maqa’id al-Khalfiyya [Back Seats] (Cairo: Al-Dar Al-Masriah Al-Lubnaniah, 2018 is a collection of short stories. Her short story, “The Other Balcony,” translated by Andrew Leber, was included in the anthology, The Book of Cairo: A City in Short Fiction, edited by Raph Cormack (Comma Press, 2019).
Nada Faris is a writer and literary translator from Kuwait. She is the author of Fountain of Youth (Athens, Greece: Vine Leaves Press, 2016), a semi-finalist in the 2016 Vine Leaves Vignette Collection Award, and Mischief Diary (Doha, Qatar: HBKU, 2018), a young adult short story collection. She collaborated with Maha Al-Asaker on Women of Kuwait (Hillsboro, North Carolina: Daylight Books 2019), which became a finalist in the Lucie Photobook Award. And recently, Nada translated Bothayna Al-Essa’s Arabic novel Lost in Mecca, which was shortlisted for the 2024 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and named a “Notable Translation” by World Literature Today.