By Nahid Rachlin

A flut­ter of anx­i­ety shook Mina as she heard her hus­band Majid and their son-in-law Don­ald in the back­yard, talk­ing in not quite agree­able tones. “Stop, stop, she can fall and hurt her­self,” Majid, who rarely raised his voice, shout­ed. Mina went to the win­dow and looked into the back­yard where Don­ald was throw­ing Leila, her three-year-old grand­daugh­ter, into the air and catch­ing her. Leila was squeal­ing with laugh­ter, her face all red. Don­ald con­tin­ued to play, throw­ing her into the air, catch­ing her. Don­ald was a hefty, broad-shoul­dered man with long, blond hair and a strong, square face. Just the way he looked unset­tled Mina. Was this going to devel­op into some­thing more volatile? But to her relief, Don­ald stopped and, hold­ing the baby in his arms, moved back inside the house.

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By Nahid Rachlin

Bijan woke to the voice of the muezzin call­ing peo­ple to prayers, fell asleep again, and then woke to his mother’s qui­et voice in the liv­ing room. So often he had heard her in his dreams. But this was real. He was in Tehran, in his mother’s house, with her just a room away. It had tak­en so many years and so much search­ing to track down his moth­er whom he had not seen since he was eight years old.

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Amer­i­can writer Teju Cole reads from his nov­el, Open City (2011) at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. In this award-win­ning first-per­son nar­ra­tive, Cole recounts the sto­ry of a Niger­ian-Ger­man psy­chi­a­trist in New York who – in best flâneur fash­ion – strolls the streets of Man­hat­tan. In the course of his walk­ing med­i­ta­tions, his pro­tag­o­nist reveals both his own sense of loss and the strug­gles of a nation try­ing to regain a sense of direc­tion after the trau­ma of 9/11.
Open City is Teju Cole’s sec­ond nov­el; his first, Every Day Is for the Thief, was until now avail­able only in Nige­ria, where it was pub­lished in 2007. Teju Cole will be a res­i­dent at the “Lit­er­arisches Col­lo­qui­um Berlin” (LCB) this spring and give sev­er­al read­ings through­out Gemany. Dates will be pub­lished on the Amer­i­can Stud­ies Jour­nal Face­book site soon.

By Nina Eliasson Sejrsen

Last Sat­ur­day, I stood in a long line to buy apples. Bored as I was, I looked at the apples on dis­play: Graven­stein, Elstar, Brae­burn, Pink Lady, Hol­stein­er Cox, Cox Orange, Jon­agold. “They sound like straight out of a Jane Austen nov­el,” I thought. And sud­den­ly I saw the apples arriv­ing at an old, yet strange­ly mod­est cas­tle in their finest clothes, dressed up for a ball host­ed by Lord and Lady Gravenstein.

The Graven­stein Ball was the event of the sea­son which all the invit­ed had looked for­ward to for months. Gowns had been ordered from famous hous­es in Paris, and all the fam­i­ly jew­els appeared on the ladies’ bosoms.

Lord Graven­stein was a tall, stout man. Look­ing into his eyes, the echo of the hard­ships and sor­rows he had expe­ri­enced in his life­time appeared. So did all the joy and hap­pi­ness when he smiled. Secret­ly, he hat­ed the ball, but as his father would have said: ”Tra­di­tion is tra­di­tion.” Lady Graven­stein was a del­i­cate woman. Being in the autumn of her life, her past beau­ty had not fad­ed. Every­one would agree that Lord and Lady Graven­stein were still a very hand­some couple.

It was the young Lord Graven­stein who greet­ed the guests. He was ever so hand­some-look­ing in his red uni­form. The young lord was a tall gen­tle­man with ten­der and atten­tive blue eyes. He had a friend­ly, yet sad appear­ance that made every heart go out to him.

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Allow TCK, jour­nal­ist, and fic­tion writer Brit­tani Son­nen­berg take you on a transna­tion­al adven­ture in her debut nov­el, Home Leave. Lis­ten to the read­ing that took place at the Eng­lish The­atre in Berlin on Decem­ber 1, 2014.

By Friederike Fischer

I wrote the short sto­ry “Lone­ly” in one of my uni­ver­si­ty sem­i­nars. It was meant to be an assign­ment. Just an assign­ment. But my pro­fes­sor con­vinced me to enter the Dani­il Pashkoff Prize for Cre­ative Writ­ing and sub­mit my sto­ry. So I did. Even though my text didn’t win, I’m always grate­ful for new expe­ri­ences, and for peo­ple believ­ing in me.

“Lone­ly” is a sto­ry about a woman’s despair and obses­sion. She strug­gles with inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships and tries to keep every­thing around her in per­fect order. When her boyfriend doesn’t appear for din­ner on Valentine’s Day, she starts to ques­tion his feelings…

Lonely

Tick. Tick. Tick. The clock’s steady rhythm fills the air. It is dark. Only now and then, when a car dri­ves by, a flash of light hits the room. Some­one is sit­ting at the kitchen table, frozen. Every­thing seems to be pre­pared for a din­ner, but the meal on both plates is cold and the can­dles already burnt down. In the mid­dle of the table a lone vase is await­ing a bou­quet of ros­es. Wait­ing. Still waiting.

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