Bitter Orange Tree

by Jokha Alharthi

In the end everyone does what they want to do, and they always find ways to justify it. Their words of excuse come into existence along with the acts they validate—and it’s an easy birth these excuses have.

Her fist had never once closed around such a sum of money.

My spirit was burning, consumed by my human helplessness, the impossibility of regaining or restoring just one moment from the past.

“Perfume is for women. Men have the sweat of horses, and the smell of gunpowder.”