Central Station

by Lavie Tidhar

that region called the Middle East (but east of what? middle of where?),

It is, perhaps, the prerogative of every man or woman to imagine, and thus force a shape, a meaning, onto that wild and meandering narrative of their lives, by choosing genre.

“Hello, hello, hello,” a policeman said. “What do we have here, then?”—or something to that effect, based on the obsolete protocols of long-dead narrative writers.

He wasn’t a bad man, she thought. He was just a man.

Her name disappeared, the way keys or socks do. Misplaced and, later, could not be found.