The Arsonists' City

by Hala Alyan

Theater is the same. It’s heartbreaking because it will end, because people will become a part of the story and then be abandoned by it.

“The Europeans,” she cries out. Everyone turns to her. She remembers the pastel-colored maps in school, those harsh black borders. They’d reminded her of a woman’s hairstyle, easily changed to match the current fashion.

The biggest war criminals are always offstage. They’re continents away.”

Merry reminds the family of themselves. Of their privilege. Of what they have. In America they are considered brown. You become attached to that. You are given a name and you respond to it. They are brown in America. There is something self-righteous that lives alongside that marginalization, the mispronounced names, the Your English is so . . . , the sideways glances in department stores. But there are browner bodies out there.

“You leave every room I enter, you’re June when I’m in winter, you leave every decade I enter.”