Atlas and Alice — Issue 19

Page 34

Atlas and Alice, Issue 19

Bassam Sidiki

Uninvited Guests Author’s note: The following personal essay is an example of the Indo-Persian mode of oral storytelling called dāstān or qiṣṣah. The essay adopts a very specific subgenre of this mode, the t̤irāz. According to Urdu scholar Pasha M. Khan, the t̤irāz was grouped into four chapters called “ḳhabars,” plus a conclusion (ḳhātimah), and the names of the khabars signaled the situations in which they were to be recited: razm, bazm, ḥusn o ‘ishq, and ‘ayyārī—battle, courtly gatherings, beauty and love, and trickery. The essay, in its homage to this oral tradition, takes the “telling” in “storytelling” seriously, defying that hackneyed commonplace of writing workshops in the West today: “show, don’t tell.” Esteemed listeners, invited, uninvited—or, if you were invited but worldly matters got in the way of your attendance at this mehfil, and you have only these pages to read from—let me preface this dāstān with a little glimpse into what you can expect. This is not a “content or trigger warning” of today’s literary circles, but it can be if you so wish. Accordingly, in this dāstān you shall find magic, sickness, demons, healing, empire, family ties, and even a little poetry. Join me. Bazm: Courtly Gathering My mother said that Saeen must have been about 110 years old when he died last year. I grew up in Karachi, but my family frequently visited my aunt when she lived in Hyderabad, the second-largest city in the Pakistani province of Sindh and the place where my parents were married (and not to be confused with its namesake town in southern India). Saeen lived there and he was an omnipresent, if not omnipotent, figure in our lives: my mother zealously believed in his mystical powers. As a child I sometimes accompanied my mother and aunts to the little shack Saeen called home on Sarfraz Road. I don’t recall what he looked like beyond the silvery shock of hair and the wrinkles on his face. Most of all, I recall that he was a woman. 34


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Contributor Notes

6min
pages 60-64

Michael Sasso ƒ Charlotte’s Quantum Ride

14min
pages 53-58

Call for Submissions

0
page 59

Kathryn Fitzpatrick ≈ Raggies: A Natural History

8min
pages 49-52

Subhravanu Das ƒ In a Kitchen

2min
pages 46-47

Kevin Brennan ƒ Eulogy

1min
page 48

Celeste Rose Wood † Excerpts from Disability Evaluation Under

0
pages 44-45

Bassam Sidiki ≈ Uninvited Guests

19min
pages 34-42

Douglas Cole † Re-entry

0
page 43

Amanda Dettmann † Self-Love in the Afterlife

0
page 31

Michelle Brooks † The Better Part of Yesterday

0
page 30

Abbie Barker ƒ Alice, Some of the Time

2min
pages 28-29

Laura Miller † Sonnet for the sleeping (utilitarian poem

0
page 27

Preeth Ganapathy ≈ Mornings

0
pages 32-33

Colette Cosner † Jesus Year

0
page 26

Carolyn Fagan ƒ Graveyard Girls

4min
pages 12-14

Jill Witty ƒ Glossary: An Enlightening

1min
page 6

John T. Leonard † Instability

1min
page 9

Chelsea Stickle ƒ Belly Full of Witch’s Stew

1min
page 8

Rhienna Renèe Guedry † Map, Quest

0
page 7

Margarita Serafimova † The Passing Holder

0
page 23

Deirdre Danklin ƒ Father Whatawaste

2min
pages 10-11

Mara Lee Grayson † The Veteran I Mett in Reparatory

1min
pages 24-25
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