Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 170: The Art of Resilience - Spring 2024 i The New Quarterly

I’M SILENT ON PALESTINE, AT FIRST. THERE’S NO SHORTAGE OF GUILT OR SHAME in that. Everyone who’s been involved in solidarity work knows that there are consequences for advocating publicly for the cause. People lose their jobs and get blacklisted. Others have doors slammed shut in their faces. That’s never stopped me before but, for the first time in my life, I’ve got something professionally significant to lose: my gig at a big, public museum in Toronto that’s given me a cushy, comfortable life. Those fears are quickly vindicated. My good friend, a celebrated Sudanese anti-racism educator who breaks the silence earlier than most, is fired for her public advocacy for Palestine. A few weeks later, an award-winning Indigenous curator at a major art gallery in Ontario quietly disappears from…

I’M A JOURNALIST. I USE WORDS TO CONVEY THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN VERIFIED AS true, observable, and rooted in reality. A requirement of journalism is that language be stripped of emotion, of opinions, of ‘bias.’ There should be no flowery language or poetry. Just the facts. Under these guidelines, since October, 2023, I have been pushing through fear, and a deeply engrained self-censorship, to say yes to press interviews in which I use my journalism, my language, to tell the story of what’s happening in Gaza. And to also tell the story of how journalists’ language is sterilized, muted, and in many cases, outright censored when we talk about Palestine and Palestinians. I’ve been talking about how, especially in the absence of foreign journalists in Gaza, we must listen to…

“Today the headlines clot in my blood.” —Naomi Shihab Nye THE FIRST REQUEST TO WRITE ABOUT THE WAR LANDS IN MY INBOX ON OCTOBER 8th, 2023. That day, my daughter and I run up and down three flights of stairs to the bomb shelter in my Tel Aviv building. In the south of Israel, some kibbutzim are still terrorized by Hamas, the dead yet to be counted. I am stunned by the magnitude and cruelty of the attack, by the incomprehensible images, the accumulating losses. As the day unfolds, I find out about more people I know who lost family and friends, their homes. I send a noncommittal reply, feeling a hint of resistance. How could they even think I have words? Am I expected to offer hope when I…

THREE MONTHS AFTER HER BABY BROTHER WAS BORN, AREZOO SAW HER FATHER with the neighbour lady. It was a weekend morning, and Maman had tasked her with getting juice from the kitchen. Nima had cried the whole night, was still fussing, and Maman was too tired to care that Arezoo was always spilling juice whenever she had to pour it by herself. Arezoo saw them through the window that led to their balcony, the cup pressed tight on her mouth while she drank. Baba and the lady stood across from each other, separated by the balcony railing, their hands clutched between them and foreheads pressed together. Neither of them were speaking. Arezoo watched for as long as she could before Nima’s squeal tore her away. She left the juice on…

TINY BUGS SETTLE ON OUR BARE ARMS, THIN STICKS OF BLACK WITH TRANS-parent wings. It is still early in the spring, and they are dull and drowsy and stupid and haven’t learned the quickness required for survival. We press them into nothingness with the tips of our fingers, though as the day goes on, and our bodies become sluggish too, we let them be, just another thing to carry as Ms P leads us deeper into the forest. Branches snap as they hit our arms or scrape against our cheeks. We stifle our cries, our tears easily mistaken for drops of rain or sweat. No one speaks. Except Ms P, who mumbles to herself. Each of us carries in our pocket, out of sight, a talisman. For some, it’s something…

Like Instruments When I was a childwhatever I saw stirred me:pinecone, seashell, duck, caterpillar,the sable-tipped russet hairs of a foxits golden eyesfull of wilderness,the wilderness.Everything was tuned to the same vibrationlike instruments to concert A,despite the momentary dissonanceof red innards by the roadside,a squirrel’s corpse,grandparents dying one by oneyounger than I am nowthough they seemed so old.Younger than I am nowgrandparents dying one by one,a squirrel’s corpseof red innards by the roadside.Despite the momentary dissonance,like instruments to concert Aeverything was tuned to the same vibration—the wildernessfull of wilderness,its golden eyes;the sable-tipped russet hairs of a fox,pinecone, seashell, duck, caterpillar.Whatever I saw stirred mewhen I was a child. The Greenwood “I kan noght parfitly my Paternoster as the preest itsyngeth, But I kan rymes of Robyn Hood.”—William Langland, The Vision of…

IN POLAND IN THE MID-1980S, EVERY LITTLE GIRL COVETED A BARBIE DOLL, OR rather, the Barbie-doll equivalent available behind the Iron Curtain—the Dutch Sindy Doll called Fleur. Fleur was a fashion doll like Barbie, with bendable legs and flexible rubber arms, but her breasts were shaped like pyramids, and her disproportionately large head had Japanese anime-like eyes bordered with “real” stiff lashes. For us, both dolls, like jeans and chewing gum, represented one thing: the West, synonymous with freedom from censorship, poverty, and Soviet oppression. Paradoxically, since we all wanted Fleur, the common desire for the doll made us equal, and those who had them, shared them with friends letting others play with it and even lending it to take home for a week, in a truly socialist way. At…

I MUST HAVE TELEPHONED HIM. IT HAD BEEN WELL OVER TWO YEARS SINCE I’D SEEN him, but he didn’t say no to my visit when we talked, despite Kate. I hadn’t known about her, I hadn’t known until decades later, reading his bio online, that he had just returned from North Africa, and that was why he’d even risked my visiting. I must not have given him a chance to tell me. I must have telephoned him and heard a muffled yes from between his bearded lips. Kate must have had a day or two to prepare. Were they just living together? When I arrived, she stood behind him—loomed is what comes to mind—while he took his pipe out of his mouth and smiled at the boy who had wriggled…

SOMEWHERE IN THE PROCESS OF EDITING THIS ISSUE I HAD AN EMAIL EXCHANGE with Heather Debling about the title of her short story, eventually settling on “Resilience.” This is what I kept thinking about when reading the story of children lost on the forest with their eco-anxious teacher, how much resilience they’d need if they were to get out alive. No spoilers—read the story! As I continued to go through the issue, I saw that resilience was required on most pages, a word that had joined the cluster of descriptors such as “unprecedented” or “new normal” that have risen to the surface of our vocabulary these past years. I was hoping that we’d have reached the “post-resilience” era, when this trait was no longer needed in such super-size quantities, where,…

MY GRANDPARENTS ESCAPED RISING ANTISEMITISM IN PRE-WWII LITHUANIA though most of the rest of their family were killed during the Holocaust. As a writer, I have thought about this a lot, wondering what this means for me, particularly as it took emigration to politically troubled South Africa and Northern Ireland and then finally to Canada before my family found a place of security and safety. Exploring these issues of identity, migration, and persecution in my work, both in novels and in essays, I have come to the understanding that it means I have not only a moral and ethical responsibility to address issues of persecution and genocide, but that I also have a particular obligation to be vigilant. In my last novel, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted, I consider this…

THERE WAS A PERIOD IN OCTOBER 2023, DURING ISRAEL’S LATEST ASSAULT against Gaza, when I went through what I now think of as my Take Me stage. At the time, we had for several weeks been witnessing the creation of a new category of children. These children shared certain characteristics: a gunpowder-gray layer of soot covering their small bodies from head to toe, only interrupted by streaks of burn or blood; missing or mangled limbs; sudden orphanhood; the concurrent extinction of immediate and extended family; and, most of all: a look of utter bewilderment at the world into which they have re-emerged. Looking back, the shock and grief of observing this physical dehumanization of children had taken me to an unfamiliar psychic place. I was bargaining, mentally, with the perpetrator,…

In the Medical Building Lobby Café She is looking at himout of her old facewith her young eyes.Eyes that still appreciatea tall young man with a nice face,a strong frame, a young man’sloose-limbed, purposeful stride—this young man, striding her way.When she looks out of heryoung eyes, she forgets her faceis no longer young, she forgetsher face. She expects—whatdoes she expect?—her glanceto be met, that’s all. That flashconnection in passing, split-second signal exchanged betweenstrangers, fellow humans—subliminal salutation,no more than that! But he, easy of motion, at ease in his skin,glides on by. Registers her looka bit absently; files it as requiringno response. His eyes don’t evenseem to know they’ve done that.(His eyes, that saw onlyan old face. Hers.) Shadows in Springtime May 2020 (for Roman Wolfe) Little boy, grandchild I waitedso…

OUR PLANE ARRIVES AT THE WESTERN CITY. SOMEWHERE OUT THESE OVAL windows are the forest fires which have painted the country grey. People in Toronto kept saying the west is on fire like it was a regular turn of phrase, sending my imagination into overdrive with scenes of ash falling like flurries, refugees drifting the streets, and plumes of smoke engulfing my childhood home. I came to witness it for myself. But my childhood home is idyllic as ever and the city is unaffected by the fires, aside from a dull grey tinge to everything and a lingering odour of campfire. No one here seems to want to talk about it. I bait people with vague complaints about thwarted summit views or waking up with a parched mouth, hoping to…

IT’S AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE THAT I TELL PAULINA WE’RE MOVING TO AMERICA. An April morning, a school day, sleet slapping hard at the window pane like thoughts at the edge of my mind. At first she is too stunned to reply then her lips begin to quiver. “No,” she says, as if it couldn’t be true. As if we’d never do that to her again. She pushes her plate of toast away, goes upstairs to brush her teeth, and a few minutes later comes back down with her brown mutt, Georgia, trailing at her heels. I hold her lunch while she snaps up her raincoat, stroke her long hair before she opens the door. “We’ll talk about it later,” I promise from the porch as she jumps off the…

I’M STUCK IN TRAFFIC, JUST A BLOCK AWAY FROM WORK. EVERY MORNING THE roads in Kabul are a sea of Toyotas and yellow painted station wagons. I wonder if I should get out and walk the rest of the way? The cars are gridlocked but the drivers still tap on their horns, nudging each other to move, even if it means only inches. Through the heart decal stickers littering the rear windshield of my taxi, I see merchants carrying large Styrofoam boards of sunglasses weaving through the vehicles with unbothered expressions. A few women in blue burqas move like floating ghosts and others, like me, in head scarfs of lighter material with loose fitting clothes move gracefully in heels of practical height. They’re making their way on foot and I…

CALVIN DOVER WAS WONDERFUL. I LOVED CALVIN DOVER. HE WAS ABSURD AND gruff and brilliant and responsible for a large part of my adult brain. I was one of the writers on his sketch comedy series, The Calvin Dover Show, which ran for one under-the-radar season on a Canadian cable network. A year after the show was cancelled, and six months after stints at Letterman and SNL, Calvin went to Los Angeles for pilot season, got a starring role on a sitcom called Oodles and Smidge and vanished into all things Hollywood. Communications since have been fitful. I hadn’t heard from him in a year when out of the blue an email arrived. “Eekcm! Ima get on a plane and fly to da Big Smoke. See u Friday? Lub-blub. Nivlac.”…

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN ENAMOURED BY TINY MENTAL SEEDS THAT BLOOM INTO LABY-rinthine worlds; this is my life’s fortune and maybe its curse. Consider, for instance, one of the world’s most difficult high school contests, the annual International Mathematics Olympiad. Its problems (six questions, nine hours to solve them) are so challenging that they would stump legions of collegiate professors. Examine its past catalogue online, and you will be struck by the deceptive compactness of its demands. A handful of words (“prove that there exists no consecutive primes p and q such that…”) for which the correct solution may span pages of carefully formulated logic. Olympiad puzzles formed a nontrivial bulk of my pubescent obsessions, though arriving at a resolution–when the god of numbers favoured me–often took much longer than a…

TNQ (SAY IT THREE TIMES QUICKLY...) The New Quarterly is grateful to the institutions and individuals who support our work: to St. Jerome’s University which houses us; to the University of Waterloo in conjunction with the Ontario Student Assistance Program for paying our student interns; to St. Jacob’s Printery for services various; to our Board of Directors and our many volunteers extraordinaire, both in the editorial ranks and in the office; to Carolyn & Bill Pegg for countless hours spent organizing and running charity bingo sessions on our behalf; to the funders of our contest prizes—the late Edna Staebler, the family of Nick Blatchford, and the English Department at St. Jerome’s University; to our funders at the national, provincial, and municipal level (listed on our masthead); and to the many…

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A WRITER IN TIMES OF POLITICAL AND MORAL crisis? In the bleakest of times, writers help us make sense of our relationship to what’s happening in the world. Beyond the changing headlines or political discourse, the writer’s reflections get us to a deeper insight of human experience. When it seems that language buckles under the unbearable weight of mass violence—via headlines and soundbites repeated over and again so that we become stupefied by the endless breaking news—it is still writers that we turn to. We need them as both witness and chronicler, and to remind us that above all, it is the telling of human stories that matter. In the final poem before his death in an Israeli airstrike, Palestinian writer Refaat Alareer emphasizes…

THE WRITERS’ HOUSE WAS A NICE PLACE WHERE WRITERS WERE ACCORDED the freedom of a simple literary life. It was a place to work without worry, where one could enter the contemplative space of literature, enjoying the bright warmth of unfettered creativity. The outside world was barely noticeable inside the House. News arrived by smart phone or computer but these reports were easily muted. Political discussion occurred in the corridors but never too much talk and not the wrong talk, nothing that might be defined as tonally ‘less hopeful.’ It was possible to hear about a crisis occurring in the streets or in another country and say, “I do not know” or “I cannot imagine” and remain comfortable in that not knowing and not imagining. Of course, there were ruptures—moments…

IN THE SUMMER OF 2016, I WAS INVITED BY MICHAEL CHABON AND AYELET Waldman to spend time in Israel-Palestine. They, alongside the Israeli NGO, Breaking the Silence, would assist me with logistics and meetings, but I would otherwise be entirely free to write what I wished. That summer, I saw a great deal in Tel Aviv and Akko, also called Akka, and in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, and Yatta. In Jerusalem and elsewhere, I met scholars, historians, former soldiers, shepherds, teachers, refugees, peace activists, and writers. I took notes from morning until night and had myriad conversations. I stayed in the homes of beloved Israeli and Palestinian friends, and tried to listen with every part of my being. In 2017, I published a long essay about…

Late Afternoon Walk I had a life before I knew you.What could that have been?A life of words and waiting.I watch the dark horsesin the neighbour’s field.They turn their heads, expectant,or maybe they are speakingin their trembling long legged way,the way a girl will tremble,not yet knowing that her bodyis leading her to pleasure.The horses turn their gazetowards the gate. Their lashes catch the lightbefore it fades. Sick to death There’s a photograph of you on my desk:your knowing smile a month before you died.You in your soft black coat, standingjust inside the doorat your friend’s house. The last time you were there.I talk to that picture all the time, I did just now.Kenny D, I say, (I used to call you by your rap namefor the laughs) I’m sick…

Arboretum The afternoon is ours. The countlesskilometres of sky our blue pasturewhich we allow the clouds to grazeand a kid’s kite to mow,his delighted shrieks our reservejoy in childish translation. We won’tadopt kids; Sunday afternoonswill always be ours, the fat hoursrich with cheddar and cheap olives,and torn rounds of supermarket baguettefor scooping baba ghanoush left overfrom last night’s party. Who do we thinkwe are? Parisians? Someday, we likely won’town a house, but the afternoon is ours,and the park, and this bend in the OttawaRiver. I invented dappled sunlightand gave it freely to the white ashwhile boys from the university, half-naked, bronze beyond the trees, tossa football between towel turns. We takethem, too, and the bemused expressionsof passer-by who seem to say, “How nicefor them, that we’ve allowed their loveto bloom…

IN TWENTY-SIX YEARS, THREE MONTHS, AND TWENTY-ONE DAYS, ROGER PHILLIPS’ lunch order has never changed. Three thickly cut pieces of roasted ham, a lean shave of pastrami, two slices of pumpernickel, lightly toasted, one hard-boiled egg, finely chopped, glued to the bread with the thinnest smear of butter, and a quarter teaspoon of house sauce. On the side, a small pile of home fries, no more than a cup, lightly salted—on account of hypertension—two generous wedges of tomato, and one dill pickle, sliced in trim horizontal strips. The sandwich is then wrapped in wax paper, neatly folded at each corner, and the seam pressed down against the bottom of the container. Six years, three weeks, and four days ago, when the deli switched from Styrofoam to biodegradable material in a…

My Father’s Shovel The manure pile in the drivewaysteaming at its core. Slicing themetal blade into baked crust, thelong wooden handle a lever totransfer the load from shoulderto earth. Sweat on his brow, as he hoisted thewheelbarrow handles up. Bicepsthick as my legs. I used to hangfrom his flexed arm like amonkey bar. Memories nestedwithin objects like the bulbs we’dplant each fall, sleeping in their paperytunics. Hard to separate the toolfrom the man, the blade anextension of his ambition. Afterthirty years of building up thesoil, he sold his garden with the house. Content to feedsquirrels and mice on the patio,while I mix manure into newbeds, dig holes for fruit trees.Lean on his shovel and thankevery yellow-throated crocus forshowing up. Load Upon Load There comes a pointwhen the losses stackup and…

BRUNO AND I STEERED A SMALL SAILBOAT THROUGH ISLANDS SCATTERED UNDER Mount Baker, heeling and leaning out in the spray, daggerboard keel not much larger than a doctor’s tongue depressor. A rental. We beat around Belltown bars a few days, making deals, ingesting fried oyster sandwiches and peyote buttons under the Monorail. In the Hood Canal nuclear submarines slip out under the bridges, hide under hulls of freighters and stinkpot pleasure boats, nuclear submarines deliberately hiding beneath ships in the Juan de Fuca strait as the subs aim for the Pacific, enter the bigger map. Maybe Russian and Chinese satellites are watching, or maybe the subs simply get a kick out of being stealthy. I couldn’t serve on a sub, all the bodies crammed in tiny chambers and bulkheads and…

Irfan Ali is a poet, essayist, and educator. His first full-length collection Accretion (Brick Books, 2020) was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. His writing has appeared in filling Station, Open Book, and The Ex-Puritan. Vincent Anioke is a Nigerian Canadian software engineer and author. His short stories have appeared in The Ex-Puritan, The Rumpus, The Masters Review, Carve, and Passages North, among others. He won the 2021 Austin Clarke Fiction Prize and has been shortlisted for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Fiction Award and the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He reads literary submissions for SmokeLong Quarterly and Split Lip Magazine. In 2024, his debut short story collection, Perfect Little Angels, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press. Find him on Twitter at @AniokeVincent. Gary Barwin’s most…