Translation: 'the deposit', by Shafeeq Taha Al-Nobany

The Arab Review, 27th July 2012, translated by Yousef Hamdan and Sarah Irving

Shining ice was spread across the streets without a pattern or shape. The bus was creaking, like an old man whose last grey hair has fallen, along a winding road lined with frozen cypress trees. This year was not like others. The snow invaded from the beginning of September and the ice piled up until January. How long would the ordeal of the ice last? The question passed from mouth to mouth. To start with the whole country stopped moving, but then the governor ordered that we should not succumb to nature’s confusion.

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