Middleground - Issue 7

ISSUE 7 | WINTER 2024

Meet the team

Editorial PAULINE JEREMIE Founder and Chief Editor

SUMAYA KASSIM Prose Editor

SEAN WAI KEUNG Poetry Editor

CAITLIN CLANCY Art Editor

Design PHOEBE BROADFOOT Illustrator

Community NATALIE CHARLES

Editors’ Note Dear Reader, It may seem futile, almost insensitive, in times like these, to spend time writing, drawing or reading. While our team were reviewing and editing the pieces we received for this issue, wars and genocides were being inflicted on innocent people — particularly in Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo — and the chasm between what we are all witnessing and the work we are doing could have discouraged us from publishing this issue and any subsequent ones. For what, really, can art do in the face of such ongoing horrors?

There is no easy answer to this. But, as our team pored over the pieces within these pages, we were reminded of the power of artistic expression, for a free world is a world full of art. We were struck by how full of hope writing can make us feel, how images can soothe the soul, how stories can revive the softness within ourselves and each other. Art is one of our reminders to be resilient, to belong, to be at peace, and it can be a means of getting there.

So, with this full heart in mind, the whole Middleground team thanks you for being here, and wishes you a year of gentleness and hope, both fictional and real.

Content Manager

Happy reading, The Middleground Team

Contents I SCRUB LOOSELY Amii Griffith “ABUELITA” & “UNCLE MIKE” Jessy DeSantis HALO HALO Lori Arden Snow MEMORIES OF LEE ON Lauren Cory MY MOTHER’S CHILD Nnadi Samuel LEARN TO BE SOFT Sacha Celine Verheij NAANI? Ruqayyah Moynihan ORACLE XM Tran

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PLASTIC VS. PATIENCE

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SECOND CHANCE

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SOMEWHERE I KNOW

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‫ ملوخيه‬MEETS ‫مطر‬

11 13 15 16

Rishaad Aït El Moudden

Rigo

Natasha Virli

19 22 27

Mary Barghout

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CONTRIBUTORS

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I Scrub Loosely

AMII GRIFFITH

I scrub loosely Trying not to stretch, smear, smudge Further But it’s not working They told me this would work A little harder A little longer A little deeper Circular motions Back and forth dab — dab — dab No That’s not working Soak Warm hugs turn cold Prune, brittle, frail Return to life with aplomb But still there Cold turns soft hugs Wrapped up tight This was the embrace I was told about In storybooks of people who don’t look like me With families not like mine Houses I’d never know And I melt into that soft hug Melt into myself Realise I didn’t need to scrub Circles Back and forth dab — dab — dab Dry Home dry Where I belong

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“Abuelita” & “Uncle Mike” JESSY DESANTIS

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Halo Halo LORI ARDEN SNOW

In a bowl or glass, combine shaved ice, condensed milk, the cool slip of coconut jelly.

Layer tapioca and jackfruit, pinipig and bean.

Sugar palm, gulaman.

Recall childhood, summer, the fast version: avalanche of crushed ice like rock crystals dispensing from the freezer, while outside sprinkler water vaulted for sky, daubed sidewalk below — patterns on concrete a benediction of endless time.

Remember kakigōri, snow-soft piled high: bounty from weekend pilgrimages outside the military base, when the sea breeze called us outward and away — beyond the boonies, beyond the seawall and the soba shacks.

Remember Okinawa: when we were sixteen and had time for zenzai, hot on ice, sticky lahars of black sugar and salt melting down our hands, down our throats, while the ocean murmured beyond the hills.

Children of nowhere, we borrow culture: pluck places like berries off the bush and tuck them, precious, in the waiting pocket of our memory.

Is home airports and highways?

Or a sandy pathway to the sea instead?

As foamy wave curls into the distance, the tang of salt on tongue and the long barrel of life compressing to freeze us here, in time, like a photograph.

My first trip to Maui I learn a story: in the markets of Quiapo, outside Manila, Japanese migrants once hawked sweetened beans on ice

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to the people of my mother’s homeland.

The ice is supplied by the Insular Ice and Cold Storage Plant of Ermita, built by Americans to provide comfort to their troops stationed in the Philippines.

Confluence brings occupation and dessert, cool and sweating on busy hands.

On a Hawaiian beach they tell me I look local; like brown almond eyes and the kink of half-Asian hair can make me a home.

I linger long in the notion as I burrow toes into sand, watch the edges of the island for sea turtles and think of distant shores that once felt like mine.

Halo-halo, or: mix-mix.

Belonging is a dream but it can also be this: A cold glass on the counter filled with good things— a return to the purple of yam and the small sweet oceans of melted ice on milk; texture and taste boundaryless and infinite.

Home can be us, can’t it— just you and me here, and all the places we’ve ever been, standing in the kitchen together inside this one moment existing.

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Memories of Lee On LAUREN CORY

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My Mother’s Child NNADI SAMUEL

Beside the utensils that groomed us amiss— Ma forks my braid to a cornrow, wear kitchen salt on my hormones to sugar the temper. being comely here demands rebellion. so, we choose instead to be fed fat for marriage.

I charcoal Ma's slender shape with hurting hands. her image, unspooling in shaded pigment. in place of loving my loin, I invest in knowing how this body would turn out. a girl ago, I witness Ma zip & unzip her breath: a deathless exercise towards wearing a sari, while tucking in parts of her loin eaten by henna.

Ma allows me this sight. yet, does not grant answers to the stain stewing from my lap, to my reason for being domesticated, while our males roam freely—without a price tag sizing them up for purchase. all these to say, I am still my mother's child, aware of only what Ma approves.

I go headfirst into a hijab, in the full glare of a long line of suitors, skin soggy in satin that reeks of camwood. jettison my place, at the fireside to grow a new name.

Pa, manifesting from the backyard to greet my lack of surprise.

I've lived his name to a grudge. my palm itch in the loathing.

I wish for the warm embrace of the males sharing my bloodline.

I say this with a conviction beyond gender, & I would be remembered as an asset. the dollar rates, inflating my worth.

I imagine a time when the word woman would be less transactional, & a sizeable male, in the shape of fiancé—yanks the thought off like a dress. in our leaving, a thumb press against my chest, in search of teenage temper.

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I own this bile for the crime that keeps a moustache. this heart, incapable of words. this is how we memorize to say ‘speak', before being spoken to.

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Learn To Be Soft SACHA CELINE VERHEIJ

My mother hardly ever tells me about her childhood. Sometimes I think it’s because she never got to be a child. When she was growing up, she would avoid going home by staying at friends’ places. It taught her what a normal family looks like. How dinner is eaten together at the table. How to use cutlery. How clothes are washed and ironed. How birthdays are celebrated by putting up decorations and blowing out candles. How people comfort each other with a hug. Mundane and self-evident things for most, but not for my mother. Not for our family.

My aunt told me that her father, Pappie, was always working two doors away at number 6. As a Surinamese man in The Netherlands he stood out because of his dark complexion. The only white thing about his appearance was his doctor’s coat, but secretly also his behaviour. He adapted as much as possible, so as not to look out of place.

“Doctor Wekker’s practice, how may I help you?”

My mother would answer through the Bakelite telephone. She was already an accomplished assistant. All of the kids were.

Number 2, 4 and 6: the first three houses of the street were the backdrop of the Wekker family's past. Her mother, Mammie, was rarely at home.

She was busy keeping up appearances, as she was navigating the cold white streets of The Netherlands. The outside matters the most to her.

In Indonesia, her motherland, she was known as the Rose of Ambon. Being the most beautiful girl of the island of Ambon granted her this nickname. Here, in The Netherlands, she had become a tough businesswoman, teaching her children to never rely on anyone. She bought houses and flats with Pappie’s doctor's money, refurbished the complexes and then rented them out. She became so successful that she even started doing this abroad.

You could say that was admirable for a woman in those days. But it meant that my mother became independent from day one. Neither her father nor her mother were present, as they were always at work. Being the ninth of eleven children, she also quickly figured out that she had to fight for attention. Rarer still was the warmth of parental love. Harsh hands, granite. jaws and angry tones marked her family home.

So she would always go to friends’ houses after school and compare. She saw that people ate tomato soup, stew with mashed potatoes and sausages seasoned with only salt and pepper.

She liked the simplicity.

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She found her way to fit into Dutch society. To fit in meant to speak without an accent, to be individualistic, to focus on a doctor’s career, to learn about Dutch food and to forget about her roots. That’s what she did.

But now she has a daughter. And this daughter wants to know more about her roots. A daughter who wants to understand why her mother behaves like a white Dutch person.

But we only talk about work, we don’t talk about topics such as identity and family history.

When I ask my mother a question about the past, she says she knows nothing. She says she can't tell me anything, that I have to go to my uncles and aunts for my questions. It frustrates me because my mother is the closest to me and I want to know her perspective on and experience with our roots.

I want to ask her tongue why it has lived in silence for so long. I want to ask her eyes why they have looked away for so long. I want to ask her heart why it has hidden pain for so long. I want to ask her skin why it has avoided the warmth of the sun for so long. I’m answered with no answers.

I can feel the toll it's taken on her. Her tone is always razor-sharp. Her breathing dwells in her chest. Her frown lines grow deeper by the day.

Sometimes I wonder why she hasn't started biting her nails. She is always stressed, always irritated. She gives the kind of hug that doesn’t feel like a hug. One where your bodies barely touch with an uncomfortable pat on the back.

But how can I blame her for not knowing how to embrace with a body that has never been held?

I want her to learn to be soft. I want her to pick up her parents’ dictionaries in Sranan and Bahasa in the lonely corners of the bookshelves, to discover the richness of her parents’ cultures and to learn more about where she comes from.

How people in Indonesia always eat together in a circle, how in Suriname you are always part of a larger community. The hug is embedded in the way they interact.

When we talk about the third and fourth generation, I wonder how far a generation can claim a cultural identity when so much is already lost in one generation like my mother. I can say

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that I am mixed, that I know how to cook rice and speak a few Indonesian words. Beyond that, I am not met with questioning looks from white Dutch people. Unlike my mother and most of my family, I am perceived as fully white. All my uncles, aunts, cousins and even my sister are blessed with more melanin than me. Not that I want to reduce the conversation to skin colour, but I move differently in the world than someone who is obviously mixed. As a person of colour, you are more often faced with questions about your roots, you are forced to move through the world in a certain way.

I am Dutch-Surinamese-Indonesian, but I normally say that I am Dutch with Surinamese and Indonesian roots. I struggle to claim a certain cultural identity when I did not grow up with those cultures. It makes me wonder, when can one claim a cultural identity?

I can’t change my mother’s childhood. I can’t change the ingrained colourism within my family and the stored epigenetic traumas of war.

I can’t change my mother’s harsh coping mechanisms to forestall racism. I can’t make her question why she acts like a Dutch white person.

But I can change the circle of silence, the blank papers and the hardened bodies.

I want my family, including my mother, to be proud of our Surinamese-Indonesian heritage.

Though we are literally a colonial product, that does not mean our roots are meaningless in the coloniser’s land, The Netherlands. Yes, the suffering inflicted upon colonised peoples, like my family, has impoverished the connection to the richness of our culture. Yet I and with me, people from my generation, are now standing up to break the silence.

I hope for my mother and my family to be soft, be fully seen and be themselves down to their roots. I do so by asking questions to my family, listening to stories ready to be told, writing it down so it doesn’t get lost and by replacing anger with compassion, with softness. And though I know that I will never find all the answers, I hope to have asked all my questions within my lifetime.

Naani?

RUQAYYAH MOYNIHAN

That last strand of chaunsa flesh my teeth tear off the guthli, reshaping our mouth, trickling charge through a body to a brain, into synaesthesia.

I don’t remember rubbing your feet to distract you from braiding my jungli hair.

I said, ‘I miss you’; I meant it, but it’s changing shape. You can’t be seen, surely?

‘Mi’ tumbles off our tongue and not ‘Mum’, that kind, predictable, inward smile– are they your lips, too?

Amla-glazed hands slicking our choti back– the charge held together in indoles, is it wandering aimlessly into our nostrils?

I don’t recall you beckoning me to eat andaa and badaam.

I thought I missed you– I did mean it, but you can’t be sensed? Can you?

Charge along a choti in our back, passing on electrons to heave our chest and throat, to spread frisson, when something moves the vocal folds in Asha Bhosle’s body, trilling out pressure waves– those first few notes of Dil Cheez Kya Hai, pulsed– no; they pulse on the bones in our ear. it was playing– no; it’s playing while a maami flipped– no; is flipping a roti on the tava.

I meant it, but are you missing from me? Can you be heard?

Are you in the rests after the notes?

I don’t remember being devastated –nauseated– by Devdas when we went the cinema– not a synchronous nor a sorry tale of what was to come, no.

Charge ran– no; runs– in a body we called– no; call yours– no; mine– no; ours?

You’re beaming hyperphantasmically out of the magnolia, giggling in a gloop of atta in the webs of my– no; your hand. If you were, are you still? Are you answering me?

Five months of Mum buried within you in Hyderabad– did you feel half my eye –half my brother’s, my sister’s– buried even deeper?

Where are you buried now? Inertia? Wilting plants, sad strangers, lonely friends?

In what turns us from a sand spec to this? The scars on my arm?

I see you bow when you pray; you’re out of time. I’m moving– am I bowing?

Are you what’s between the shapes of these letters, written with our hands?

Many of us say we have 99 names as we move, elate, grieve, through here.

One of us, we called –call– Wahdani. Is Oneness hard both to release and to hold?

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Oracle XM TRAN

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Plastic Vs. Patience RISHAAD AÏT EL MOUDDEN

I have never felt more Moroccan, and less Moroccan, than I do as I write this.

I recently became a Moroccan citizen at 33 years old. It took three round trips from Glasgow to London, an Atlas Mountain worth of bureaucratic paperwork to surmount, and convincing my dad to come with me so he could finally renew his ten year out-of-date documents too, but I did it. I have a Moroccan National Identity Card and a Moroccan passport. They’re Moroccan documents with a Moroccan name on them and they’re mine! Legally, I could not be more Moroccan. So why do I feel Moroccan*, with a classification always needed?

Aside from saving a whopping 30 Dirhams (roughly £2.40, ker-ching) on a ticket to visit Le Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, what has this accomplished? This milestone has not made me feel more Moroccan. It has only enlightened me to how fragile and contracting the connection is to my Moroccan roots. * I didn’t think that this juxtaposition could be topped from a moment last summer during a holiday with my family in Marrakech.

“Kidayr?” I asked my cousin, who was studying abroad, on a video call.

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I had spent much of the holiday, and the preceding weeks, learning and rehearsing new vocabulary in Darija (Moroccan Arabic). When I say new, I mean more than the dozen or so words and phrases I had accumulated since first visiting in 2007. I was fed up with my thoughts, opinions and personality being lost in translation due to a lack of common words, or my inability to work out what to say quickly enough before the conversation had moved on.

Taken by surprise, my cousin inhaled, his mouth slightly agape. I too am taken by surprise.

That wasn’t the reaction I expected. Did I say it wrong? Had I used it in the wrong context? Was the website I was using all an elaborate trick to embarrass tourists in Morocco? Why would me asking my cousin how he is in Darija, rather than French or English, elicit this reaction?

“Yeah, I’ve been learning some Darija!” I laughed it off, suddenly apprehensive of uttering any more of the new phases in my back pocket.

Of course, this was a pleasant surprise for my cousin. Rishaad was finally speaking like us! Yay! Yet his response felt more like an indictment.

Was I that much of an outsider that using basic small talk in our native language was something to congratulate?

Here I was in my aunt’s house in Morocco, surrounded by Moroccans at every angle, country as us?

including myself in self-view of the video call.

Why did I feel like the odd one out when my cousin wasn’t even in the same country as us? * Last year, before my Summer trip to Morocco, I lost my mum suddenly to cancer. With that loss, I felt that same fragile and contracting connection but to my Scottish roots. She could no longer tell me her childhood stories while flicking through photo albums. She could no longer take me to her hometown in the Scottish Highlands and show me where she grew up. She could no longer explain who this person in our family tree was and share anecdotes about them. She could no longer influence how I could carry forward our shared heritage.

My mum would often ask me why I was less interested in doing these things with her and instead seemed to be more attached to the Moroccan half in me. She could look at photos of me on Agadir beach in the 35-degree sunshine or eating copious tagines lovingly prepared by one of my aunts and come to an educated conclusion.

My mum’s insecurity probably began during the Men’s Football World Cup in 1998. Scotland and Morocco were drawn together in Group A. Picking sides was almost like picking a favourite parent as a nine-year-old. I opted for Morocco as my second team behind England because Morocco are the Atlas Lions and England have three lions on their shirt (you know the song, right?). Scotland only has one lion on their badge. I guess I really liked lions back then. My choice was vindicated with a 3-0 win for Morocco against Scotland. Did that mean that I shouldn’t have visited my mum’s hometown — two and a half hours away from my house — for the first time until after she died?

No, it wasn’t heat or food or football that drew me towards Moroccan citizenship. I’ve always been more attracted to claiming this side of me because it was unknown. * I’ve lived in Scotland for 20 years. My parents separated when I was a teenager and I moved up with my mum from Yorkshire, where I was day.

up with my mum from Yorkshire, where I was born. Scottish culture, colloquialisms, accents, humour and landscapes surround me every day.

I have Scottish family, best friends, co-workers and a fiancée. Ah ken that I belong tae Scotland.

In contrast, growing up I knew almost nothing about what being Moroccan meant. I learned my first Arabic word (As-salaam Alaykum, a greeting meaning ‘Peace be with you’) not from my dad or a family member, but from Youssef, a Moroccan man who lived down the street from us.

Being half-Moroccan therefore felt special for a kid in a suburban UK town. I could be the boy with a Muslim parent in RE class. I could be the tanned boy with hairy legs in PE class. I could be the boy who ate dates as a snack. I could be the boy whose surname didn’t fit into the box in forms — something that’s exasperating now but was oh so droll back then.

It felt good to be the odd one out at home in the UK. I had this other alluring, yet peripheral, world that I technically belonged to but couldn’t fully fathom.

The first of my Moroccan relatives I spoke to was my uncle Hicham on the phone when I was 11. The broken English and awkward silences reflected the state of my relationship with Morocco. The first time I met one of my Moroccan relatives was when my aunt Khadija visited Yorkshire when I was 15. Playing the perfect teenager, I moped through the entire interaction. I showed none of the innate fascination or pride I had in our common culture. The first time I was able to visit Morocco wasn’t until I was 18. I got sun stroke in Tafraoute, my family’s home Berber town in the Anti-Atlas region of the Atlas Mountains. Even an American student I bumped into could speak the Tachelhit language of my ancestors. The guilt of discovering this has remained with me.

It didn't feel good to be the odd one out in my other home, Morocco. * Since losing my mum, and losing what comes with her passing, I’ve leaned into my Moroccanness like a crutch for my grief.

How could I preserve and enhance my Moroccan self, whatever that was? I needed to better appreciate and embrace my heritage with my 19

self, whatever that was? I needed to better appreciate and embrace my heritage with my dad, while I still could. My love for two parents and two cultures became funnelled into one.

Becoming a Moroccan citizen was never the destination. But a dual nationality seemed like a decent, if a little desperate, first step to not being the odd one out. Although, it's not until you start to pursue something that you realise how little you actually know about it.

I now have a right to reside in Morocco but no ability to speak the language of my fellow citizens. I have a right to work but no real concept of what I am skilled to do there. I now have a right to vote but no understanding of the history or political trends of the country. I have a right to citizenship but no licence to bypass my route to cultural integration. I’m still an outlier, even if the law says otherwise.

As mixed-race people, we need to have more self-forgiveness for our imposed ignorances. It's not our fault if we have been deprived of one half of ourselves, if we have been raised with fragmented identities, if we feel imposter syndrome. Our identity is a personal, fluid, lifelong narrative of self-discovery. We all get there at a different pace and by different methods. There’s no shortcut or shame to be found here.

I didn't need a piece of plastic to become Moroccan because I already was Moroccan. I may not know enough about the customs, the culture, the traditions, the values, the religion, the languages, the country’s history, our ancestry. But I haven’t needed to for my family in Morocco to show me unconditional love and acceptance.

They take me into their homes and treat me like a son or a brother. They share Arabic memes with me that I don’t understand but it makes me feel included. They invite me to the mosque for prayers that I don’t believe in but I want to appreciate. They make sure I don’t get ripped off in the souk. They buy me rice cakes because I (tearfully) can’t eat wheat and thus can’t eat the staple foods of Moroccan cuisine like khobz, Msemmen and couscous. They want me to ask them how they are, whatever the language.

They think of me as Moroccan, documents or not, and I’m learning that it’s fine for me to do the same.

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the same.

I don’t know what it will feel like to be as Moroccan as I am Scottish or English. Having my first full conversation in Darija? Inshallah, one day. Not getting charged the tourist price for a taxi in Marrakech? No ID card or passport will convince one of those men to offer me a discount. Maybe it’s okay to simply sip on a mint tea every evening from the mug that my aunt Latifa gave me.

I've come to realise patience is more important than any piece of plastic. Just keep putting one babouche in front of the other.

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Second Chance RIGO

Luna sits in the back corner on the second floor of the busy coffee shop near a window that looks out at the Golden Gate Bridge. Her nose burns from the perfume of the women at the table next to her. She lowers her chin into her tall mug, breathing in the nutty, caramel aroma of her Americano, and focuses on her laptop screen.

Run through the presentation one more time, then you can turn to updating your website.

And you still need to finish your speech for the Green Energy Summit.

She checks her email for her consulting company and finds an email from a city in the Midwest that’s interested in wind and solar.

Nice. It’s like your friends keep saying, Luna.

Striking out on your own was the best career decision you ever made.

PowerPoint loaded, Luna taps the mouse pad, clicking through the pictures that explain how much energy the solar fields will produce. Then she clicks through options for how the auto company that hired her can market its greener factories and proposed hybrid plug-in truck to a pool of customers not typically interested in the American company’s offerings.

They’re in the tough spot of not wanting to entirely rebrand. They can’t alienate their base of cowboys and patriotic consumers who don’t identify with environmentalists.

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identify with environmentalists.

Luna bites her lower lip.

I keep coming back to wanting to revive the old World War II patriotism of thrift and conservation for the good of the country. But that’s too much to try to sell in a soundbite or a set of photo ads.

Sitting back in her chair, Luna takes her coffee mug in both hands and sips, closing her eyes as the bittersweet flavor rolls over her tongue.

Keep it simple, Luna. Baby steps. It’s a big deal that this company is going green at all.

Opening her eyes, Luna spots a light-skinned black man in an open-collar blue shirt, navy suit, and walnut brown shoes. He sits on a long bench seat that occupies most of the back wall with half a dozen little square tables in a row in front of it.

He looks so familiar.

Chin lowered but eyes raised, watching, she takes in his sculpted mustache, close-cut hair, and blue-framed glasses. The man places his coffee on the table, sits down, then pulls a laptop and legal pad from his messenger bag.

He’s quite handsome. She looks at his brown belt, flat against his stomach. And fit.

She closes the PowerPoint presentation, opens Google Domains to update her website, and holds her breath as the perfumed women rise to leave. Thank goodness. Exhaling, Luna glances

leave. Thank goodness. Exhaling, Luna glances back at the man as she waits for the page to load.

Chadwick? No. Couldn’t be. You’re in San Francisco, Luna. * Chadwick opens his laptop and checks the spreadsheet of submissions for the special issue of EcoFrames Magazine on drought. He pulls up the next short story submission in the queue, titled ‘Thirst,’ and begins reading a story on avocado farms in the California Central Valley.

After three pages, he jots a couple notes on his legal pad. ‘No intrigue. Shows the wrong things, tells the wrong things. Firm rejection.’

Next, he dives into a story called ‘Somali Summers’ about a Peace Corps volunteer who witnesses the effects of climate change on a cluster of agricultural villages. It’s not a bad story, he thinks as he replays the plot. And it’s well-written. But it’s a story I’ve heard a hundred times. On his legal pad he writes, ‘Reject with invite for future submissions.”

Stretching his back then taking a sip of his black coffee, Chadwick spots a middle-aged, light-skinned woman with curly black hair held up with a large clip. She wears eyeliner and mascara, is thick in the legs and hips, filling out her black suit and grey blouse. Her dark, oval eyes reflect the computer screen.

Recognition dawns on him. Luna? Holy shit. Is that Luna?

His mind floods with images, settling on one.

The high school cafeteria. A long white table with his theater friends. The smell of fried food and the raucous chatter of his classmates. There, at a big round table with the other members of the Science Club, enshrined in a halo, her long black hair falling around the sides of her face — Luna.

Note in hand, Chadwick stood and looked at the young woman he’d had a crush on since the fourth grade. Luna. Smooth skin, freckled cheeks, thick eyebrows that angled at the edges.

Numb, feet dragging as though walking through a swimming pool, he’d somehow managed to cross the cafeteria to her table.

Breathing short through his nose, becoming dizzy, his heart stopped as the members of the

dizzy, his heart stopped as the members of the Science Club all turned to look at him.

“Hey Chadwick,” Luna’s best friend Darlene said, smirking.

“Hey.” “Why’s another theater kid coming to the science dorks’ table?” Darlene asked, elbowing Luna.

Head cocked, Luna blinked at Chadwick as he handed her the note then turned and hurried away as she unfolded it.

In what felt like slow-motion, he sat back at the table where his theater friends grinned and his best friend, Julio, gave him a fist bump.

“Phew,” Chadwick told Julio, who pointed at Luna walking toward them in her denim jacket and torn jean shorts.

His throat caught as she smiled, handed him the note, then returned to her table. Her friends laughed as she sat and Darlene bumped shoulders with her.

Chadwick looked down at the folded-up note knowing that he’d never again experience the same excitement he was experiencing right then, asking someone out for the first time. He opened the note and held it under the table.

Will you go with me to junior prom?

No

Yes

If my parents will let me. Ill ask tonight.

Chadwick smiled.

“What’d she say?” Julio asked.

“She has to ask her parents.”

“Yeah, man. That’s a ‘yes.’”

A horn beeps somewhere on Masonic Avenue below. Chadwick snaps back to the present. He shakes his head at his computer.

Here she is, twenty-five years later. * Luna tries to focus on her work but can’t.

Should I go over and talk to him? What would I say?

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Luna was back in the 11th grade, having dinner with her parents. Distracted, mulling how best to broach the topic. She’d never gone on a date and she wondered if it might prompt a weird talk about premarital sex from her super Catholic parents.

She took a bite of roasted chicken and rice and glanced at her father. He was droning on about the big project he was leading at Exxon-Mobile to establish new offshore oil drilling sites near New Orleans.

“You okay?” her mother asked, startling Luna.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Um.” She glanced at the china cabinet set against the dining room wall, filled with her mother’s collection of ceramic and silver knickknacks.

Her father set down his knife and fork. They clinked as they slid toward the middle of the plate.

“Someone asked me to the junior prom.” She clenched her fists under the table. Her parents looked at each other.

“What’s his name?” her mother asked.

“Chad Garcia.”

“Hmm,” her father nodded, then so did her mother, a twinkle in her eye.

“Anything serious?” her father asked.

“No.” I’ve only had a crush on Chadwick since… forever.

“Have we met him?” her mother asked.

“No. He’s just a kid I’ve been classmates with since elementary school.”

Her father rubbed his chin. “Will some of your friends be going? And some of his friends?”

“Yeah, yeah. I was planning to go with my Science Club friends. I’d just have someone to dance with.”

Her father nodded. “Okay. You will be home by midnight.”

Luna smiled. “Thanks.”

After dinner, Luna worked on homework at the little desk in her room. Gloria Estefan’s music played softly on her stereo system on the shelves on the wall across from her bed among her collection of books. In her pink and black pajamas, she tapped her slipper to the rhythm and finished reading a chapter from her history book.

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She startled at the sound of her father’s raised voice from the kitchen. Getting up, she walked to the door, opened it, and peeked down the hall. Her parents sat side by side at the dinner table, a book in front of them.

“Calm down,” her mother said.

“Calm down?” her father replied as Luna walked down the hall to the living room.

As she neared, she saw that they held. Her 10th grade yearbook. What the hell?

Her father glared at her, shaking his head. “We cannot allow you to go with this boy.”

“What?” She lowered her eyebrows. “Why?” “Go with someone who isn’t his kind.”

Her mother frowned.

“His kind?” Luna asked, voice rising.

“I assumed he was one of us.”

“He’s half Black, half Latino. So what?”

“He’s a Black boy,” her father replied. “Un negro.”

“Tranquilo,” her mother said, putting her hand on his arm.

“No.” Her father stood from the table. “No, no, no.”

Luna’s mouth went dry. Is this really happening right now? “He’s a good kid.”

Her father raised his hand and made a slicing motion in front of his neck. “I have spoken. No Junior Prom.”

Luna burst into tears and hurried back to her bedroom. * Another short story loaded on his computer, his pencil raised over his legal pad, Chadwick reads, glances at Luna, then shakes his head. The story is called ‘Death in the River Valley.’ It’s about the Phalgu River that runs through Gaya in the Indian state of Bihar. The river is said to be cursed to run dry every year, and the farmers in the river rely on wells that must be deepened each year. The story follows a family’s efforts to drill deep enough to find water for their rice paddy field. In the end, the family sends two sons to Banaras to work at restaurants to raise money for the petrol-powered pumps the family needs to dig deep enough.

Chadwick jots on his notepad, ‘Strong plot.

Accept with line edits.’

He leans back against the bench and spots Luna still working at her laptop. He frowns,

Luna still working at her laptop. He frowns, replaying the turn of events that transpired between them…

He was back in the theater dressing room with its long counters, chairs in front of mirrors set beneath their little cubbies.

Chadwick and Julio were changing into their costumes for their rehearsal of Westside Story.

“What did the note say, vato?” Julio asked.

Chadwick shook his head.

“You’ve been quiet since she gave it to you at lunch.”

Chadwick secured a clip-on tie for his part as Bernardo. “She said she can’t go. That’s all. I guess her parents said ‘no.’”

Julio clapped him on the back. “Sorry, holmes.

That really sucks.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like me.”

Luna’s best friend Darlene listened nearby, adjusting her short wig for the part of Anita. She sighed and then strode over. “She’s had a crush on you since elementary school, stupid.”

Chadwick and Julio turned to look.

“Huh?” Chadwick asked.

“Her parents won’t let her go with a black guy.”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

“Are you serious?” Chadwick clenched his teeth and his stomach tightened.

“Damn,” Julio said. “What’s with racist Latinos?”

“Fuck her,” Chadwick said and turned around to look at himself in the mirror.

Julio and Darlene exchanged a look. Julio shrugged but Darlene frowned out of one side of her mouth.

“It’s not her fault,” Darlene said.

“Whatever,” Chadwick said. * Luna types ‘Chadwick Garcia’ in the search bar at the top of her Facebook page. Just like after my divorce when I looked him up on MySpace, she thinks, remembering the excitement she felt seeing that he still lived in Austin… and the disappointment when she clicked through his profile and photos and realized he was married.

She finds him right away and clicks on his profile. Probably still happily married with a pair of cute kids, she thinks as she scrolls through his photos.

Huh. She’s gone from his photo feed. She clicks on the ‘About’ tab and finds that he’s single. He’s the lead editor at EcoFrames. Holy shit. I placed an ad for my agency there. * With his Facebook account loaded, Chadwick does a search for ‘Luna Fernandez’ and gets a long list of hits. I’m such a loser, he thinks as he scrolls through. This is just like how I looked her up on MySpace when I had cold feet before my wedding. She was married with a kid. That kid would be grown by now. But I don’t see a ring on her finger, he thinks, glancing at her left hand.

He finds her profile and scans through her pictures, finding a bunch of her with her daughter and none with her husband. He clicks her ‘About’ tab and it doesn’t have any relationship info.

“Oh wow,” he whispers, noting that she owns a green energy consulting company.

Renewable Energy Solutions. Where have I heard that name? He clicks open a pdf of the last issue of EcoFrames Magazine and clicks the advertisements section. Yep. Wow. She placed an ad with us. Small world, he thinks, then frowns, remembering their time in high school. * Quit acting like a schoolgirl and start acting like a successful, confident, middle-aged curvaceous bombshell, Luna thinks to herself. She smiles as she updates her relationship status on Facebook to ‘Single.’ She finishes her coffee and shakes her head.

Just go talk to him. Sheesh. It’s meant to be.

You both work on environmental issues. You’re both divorced. You both relocated to San Francisco from Austin. What are the odds?

She takes a deep breath and glances at Chadwick again.

God, he’s even hotter than he was in high school. * She’s even prettier now than she was in high school, he thinks and shakes his head as he 25

school, he thinks and shakes his head as he navigates back to Luna’s ‘About’ page, finding that her relationship status now says ‘Single.’

“Huh,” he says out loud, closing his computer and scooping up his legal pad, placing them in his messenger bag. He downs the last of his coffee. Quit acting like you’re in junior high, he thinks as he stands up with his bag. Come on, man. You don’t want to get involved with a woman with a racist-ass family. Enough, Chadwick. You’ve got work to do.

He looks at her and their eyes lock.

She already hurt you once. She didn’t even have the decency to tell you the truth, he thinks. * Oh my God. He’s coming to talk with me. Okay, Luna. Hold it together, she thinks and crosses her legs.

He lifts and lowers his chin at her, his face showing no emotion. Then he turns and heads down the stairs.

Luna’s lips part as she watches him disappear.

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Somewhere I Know NATASHA VIRLI

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‫ مطر‬Meets ‫ملوخيه‬

MARY BARGHOUT

Rain like molokhiyya (But you don’t remember how to make it) Rain like The sea with my name To the planet with your name From an old song The voice from the rain says “Bid Farewell to your love” Bid Farewell The texture and color of molokhiyya Like algae in a slow river Slow Slow But all growth (Stars?)

Growth (Stars) All growth Is slow Like molokhiyya And like stars Now, I dance And in the rain I put on a pocket And find there Faith At the same time The rain puts on a pocket

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‫مطر زاي‬ ‫)ملوخيه)بس ال تتذكر كيف عمله‬ ‫مطر من‬ ‫البحر مع اسمي‬ ‫اىل كوكب مع اسمك‬ ‫من اغنيه قديمه‬ ‫الصوت من المطر قل‬: ”‫“ودع هواك‬ ‫ودع‬ ‫هواك‬ ‫الملمس و اللون ملخيه‬ ‫زاي الطحلب في نهر َبطيء‬ ‫َبطيء‬ ‫َبطيء‬ ‫بس كل نمو‬ (‫)نجوم؟‬ ‫نمو‬ (‫)نجوم‬ ‫كل نمو َبطيء‬ ‫زاي‬ ‫ملخيه‬ ‫و زاي نجوم‬

‫ انا ارقص‬،‫دلوقتي‬ ‫و في المطر البس جيب‬ ‫و اوجد هناك‬ ‫عقيده‬ ‫في نفس الوقت‬ ‫المطر يلبس جيب و يوجد‬

And finds Me Remember a heart is a small place Where it’s possible to live Live And Home country bread And molokhiyya And rain And live And And Finished Finished And We begin.

‫انا‬ ‫تتذكر‬ ‫قلبك مكان صغير‬ ‫ممكن العيش فيه‬ ‫تعيش‬ ‫و‬ ‫عيش بالدي‬ ‫و‬ ‫ملوخيه و‬ ‫مطر و‬ ‫عيش‬ ‫و‬ ‫و‬ ‫خالص‬ ‫خالص‬ ‫و‬ ‫نبدا‬

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Contributors Rishaad Aït El Moudden (he/him) is a BritishMoroccan fundraiser in the arts and education sectors. He was born in Leeds but has lived in Scotland for 20 years. When he’s not writing funding applications, he writes about fundraising on his Substack, Rishtricted Reserves. He loves films, bouldering and Leeds United. Rishaad holds a PgCert in Arts, Festival and Cultural Management from Queen Margaret University and a BA (Hons) in Acting for Stage & Screen from Edinburgh Napier University. He currently works for a university in Scotland and is a charity Trustee.

A half-Filipino Third-Culture Kid, Lori Arden Snow spent her childhood moving from place to place, living for short spans of time in the Philippines, Japan, Turkey, Germany, New Mexico, New York, and Okinawa. Currently she lives in Berkeley, California, where she works as a video editor and writes when she can, after work and in between edits.

Mary Barghout is a mixed-heritage EgyptianAmerican writer and multidisciplinary artist whose work seeks to complicate linear linguistic notions in favor of creating libratory spaces that acknowledge colonial linguistic pasts while moving with a spirit of playfulness towards/creating multidimensional futures. Her work has appeared in Mizna, Azeema magazine, the Saint Paul Almanac and online at mixedmag.co and at therumpus.net and is forthcoming in the 2023 Cracked Walnut Poetry Anthology. You can catch her before she quits insta entirely @mghouti88.

Lauren Lee Cory (she/her) is a Scottish Cantonese illustrator based in the UK. She recently graduated from Kingston University’s BA Illustration Animation course, and was noted as one of ‘10 UK Illustration Graduates to Watch in 2023’ by the Association of Illustrators. Her work explores identity by looking at the changing urban and rural landscape and how this can reflect our sense of belonging. More of her work

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is available to view on Instagram, @lovelylawn.

Jessy DeSantis (they/them) is a product of Revolution. Their Nicaraguan Indigenousdescended Sandinista Mother meets a white American anti-imperialist engineer postNicaraguan civil war. With similar ideals, they fall in love and the rest is history. Jessy shares their complicated racial history through this twoportrait Family series, from one end as The colonized and the other as the colonizer. They connect the contrasting two through nature.

Jessy resides in Baltimore, MD, USA and is a mother of two young children.

Amii Griffith is a multidisciplinary writer with over a decade of experience in film and television.

She is a Soho Theatre Writers Lab alumni as well as a Film London short film fund recipient. Amii recently started developing her practice as a poet, performing on various occasions including a Noël Coward anniversary event at the Actors Church and for the Blue Plaque unveiling for Richard Price in Newington Green Meeting House. Amii has just completed an MA in Script Writing at Goldsmiths UoL and is currently working on a Heritage Lottery funded short film which she co-wrote and produced.

Like many Liverpudlians, Ruqayyah Moynihan’s dad is of Irish descent. Naani was Upite, Naana was Sindhi; they arrived in Liverpool in '63. Dad reverted to Islam to marry Ruqayyah’s mum.

Ruqayyah was named so partly as a peace offering. Ruqayyah coaches, writes, and educates on healing, particularly from intergenerational and systemic trauma.

Rigo lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his family. His creative writing has appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal, THEMA, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. Under the name Jason Rodriguez, his academic writing has appeared in such venues as Race Ethnicity and Education, Whiteness and Education, Review of Radical Political Economics, and City & Society. A multi-

instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, Rigo is querying a number of novel-length works, is a member of the rock band Black Door ’74 (https://blackdoor74band.com/), and also performs music solo (www.rigoartist.com).

Nnadi Samuel(he/him/his) holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. Author of 'Nature knows a little about Slave Trade' selected by Tate.N.Oquendo (Sundress Publication, 2023). His works have been previously published/forthcoming in Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, Common Wealth Writers, The Capilano Review, Arc Poetry, Poetry Ireland, New Orleans Review, Westerly, PRISM Magazine, The Spectacle Magazine & elsewhere.

A 3x Best of the Net, and 7x Pushcart Nominee.

He won the River Heron Editor's Prize 2022, Bronze prize for the Creative Future Writer's Award 2022, UK London, the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Annual Award, 2022(Texas Christian University), the Virginia Tech Center for Refugee, Migrants & Displacement Studies Annual Award, 2023 and the 2023 Stacy Doris Memorial Award(Fourteen Hills) San Francisco State University Review.

Midlands (UK). Born to English and Punjabi parents, she draws inspiration from the fusion of languages that shaped her upbringing. Recently graduating with a First-Class Degree with Honours in Fine Art, she is currently on the path to achieving a Master’s Degree in Contemporary Art Practice. She perceives language as a gateway to distinct worlds beyond communication. Her artistic expression involves working with a cryptic Punjabi and Englishinspired pseudo-language, crafting imagined realms through intricate collages. By deliberately combining displaced and mismatched elements, she provides a commentary on the convergence and fusion of diverse cultures and asks the audience to get lost with her. Her aesthetic, constructed from her own memories across the globe, is simultaneously disconcertingly familiar and inherently foreign, challenging notions of authenticity and tangibility, symbolising the precariousness of her invented worlds, poised on the verge of destruction.

As a queer person born in France from the Vietnamese diaspora, XM Tran’s artwork explores their mixed identity. They focus on the question of belonging and dreaming of better futures, and on creating new ways of expressing the multiplicity of the self. XM mainly uses linocut to express their art, a technique that has particularly been used in revolutionary circles for the advance of social struggles since the 1900s. This art allows the handmade creation of unique artworks in series.

Sacha Celine Verheij (she/her) is a photographer, editor and spoken word artist. As a queer creator with Surinamese-Indonesian roots, her work aims to break taboos and go beyond dominant perspectives. She is the editor-in-chief of the Skin Mutts (@skinmutts) magazine and started a nonprofit Bersama Collective (@bersamacollective) to open conversations around identity and colonialism. Right now she is working on a spoken word album, in which she explores her family history and the shared history between The Netherlands and Indonesia.

Natasha Virli (she/her) is a 24-year-old multidisciplinary artist based in the East 33

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