“Shards of Reality and Glass” by Hassan Khader
I was tricked! This wasn’t a short story at all, but rather an essay about the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 2002. I’m interested in why Khader chose to write an essay over a short story. Adhaf Soueif explains:
The essay is often subtitled a “fragment,” for it is a fragmented literary response to events that Arab writers feel the need to speak to immediately without waiting for the desired transfiguration into fiction or poetry.
Is it too difficult to immediately address a trauma through fiction? I don’t think I remember fiction addressing September 11th until at least a year had passed.
