300 short stories:: story 117

story: The Country Boy
author: Yusuf al-Sibai
year:  ? (early 20th century) 
where: home, kitchen table (again!) 
note: translated by the great Denys Johnson-Davis, who was the first, really, to recognize the explosion of Arabic short story writing following WWII 
a line: “Though he looked silent and quiet, it was a case of still waters running deep. With closed eyes and lowered head, all shyness and diffidence, he would sit beside his father, oozing innocence, when all the time there wasn’t a brothel or hashish den in Tanta he hadn’t patronized.”




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