Freeman's: Arrival

The Best New Writing on Arrival

John Freeman, John Freeman

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780802190840
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

A new literary journal arrives on the scene with unpublished works from such superstars as Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Haruki Murakami, and others. In this inaugural edition of Freeman's, a new biannual of unpublished writing, former Granta editor and NBCC president John Freeman brings together the best new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry about that electrifying moment when we arrive. Strange encounters abound. David Mitchell meets a ghost in Hiroshima Prefecture; Lydia Davis recounts her travels in the exotic territory of the Norwegian language; and in a Dave Eggers story, an elderly gentleman cannot remember why he brought a fork to a wedding. End points often turn out to be new beginnings. Louise Erdrich visits a Native American cemetery that celebrates the next journey, and in a Haruki Murakami story, an aging actor arrives back in his true self after performing a role, discovering he has changed, becoming a new person. Featuring startling new fiction by Laura van den Berg, Helen Simpson, and Tahmima Anam, as well as stirring essays by Aleksandar Hemon, Barry Lopez, and Garnette Cadogan, who relearned how to walk while being black upon arriving in NYC, Freeman's announces the arrival of an essential map to the best new writing in the world. "A terrific anthology... Haruki Murakami, David Mitchell and a host of other lively writers let loose their imaginations in editor John Freeman's first outing with a new literary journal that is sure to become a classic in years to come." — San Francisco Chronicle

On a Morning

Fatin Abbas

Dina picked up the camera bag, lifted the tripod under her arm, and, in the courtyard, stopped to look up. The light was mellow, caressing surfaces: the thatched roof of the gazebo that stood at the back of the compound, the clay walls of the storage room, the pale canvas of the tent set up by the office. Light like this was rare—it was only because of a haze of morning clouds, which might melt away at any moment—and so she hurried across the yard to the kitchen, where she found the boy Mustafa sweeping.

He glanced at her and smiled and then his eyes returned to the work. There were few formalities between them now. She didn’t have to ask, as she used to, whether she could switch on the camera. He knew why she was there, that her work was watching him, and he’d accepted it, though not without some lingering bewilderment.

She unpacked her things—headphones, a piece of paper to check for white balance, batteries—then turned on the camera and framed the boy sweeping dirt. Sweat trickled into the crease of her one shut eye and through the other she watched his arms move, the cloudy sunlight hitting them just so, reflecting the smooth skin just so against the brown mud of the kitchen wall behind. At his feet the dust swirled up luminous from the uneven ground, rising, then unfurling out in a shadowy motion, the cloud thinning then dissipating in the morning air.

‘Look,’ he said, shading his eyes. Dina watched him through the lens. ‘There’ll be rain later.’ His hand remained above his brow for an instant, and then he reached for the broom again.

In the background, echoing through her headphones as though from a faraway place, she could hear a salsa tune pulsating on the radio, and behind that the sound of water splashing in the street. The scent of baking bricks and dung came and went, carried by the river breeze, and still she looked, drifting between the face, the hands, the dust, the moving broom, so lost in looking that the pulse in her aching arm no longer felt like pain but only rhythm.

In the office Alex sat on a stool too low for the makeshift desk, a map spread out in front of him. The room was the only one built out of concrete in the compound. It was cramped, barely big enough for the table, chair, and two metal filing units set against the left-hand wall. A poster was pinned above them, showing the logo of the organization: a white globe floating above two green palms raised upward as though in prayer.

He’d spent the morning reading an agricultural report, but, bored, had pulled open one of the maps lying on the desk. He never got tired of looking at maps. He leaned forward on his elbows, eyes tracing the northern border, a line bolting straight across the Sahara. His gaze drifted down, following the river to its source as it meandered through the thick yellow belt of desert to the capital, where it split in two, a branch curving up toward the Ethiopian highlands in one direction and the other continuing south toward Lake Victoria. He stopped at a dot marking the town he was in now—Saraaya, at the boundary between north and south. Here the desert merged into grasslands, swaths of pale green that became darker and denser toward the tropical south of the country.

He’d come to this town to make a map, sent by his organization to chart farmlands, villages, grazing routes, water wells, district lines as part of an information-gathering mission. The maps that existed were outdated, drawn up by the British more than fifty years ago and still used by the local authorities; a good map was needed to give direction to the organization’s aid efforts in the area.

He wanted to begin, but two weeks into his stay he was still waiting for official permission from the authorities. And his surveying equipment, which should have arrived a week ago from Khartoum, had been shipped to the wrong town, a hundred kilometers away, and was only now on its way over.

A shadow blocked the light coming through the window opposite him and when he looked up he saw William, the translator, looming in the frame.

Teeth flashed in a smile beneath glinting eyes. ‘Good morning,’ said William.

Even from a few feet away Alex could smell William’s cologne. He had begun to wear it recently, and Alex thought it had something to do with the pretty new cook who had started working in the compound.

He raised his nose in the air and sniffed. ‘What’s this?’ He paused, sniffed again. ‘Has my translator turned into a lemon tree?’

William grinned, his long, handsome face bashful. ‘It’s a new cologne,’ he said in a lilting accent, drawing out the vowels. ‘Maybe you could do with some yourself.’

It occurred to Alex that he didn’t make a very pretty picture. Framed in the window, he sat shirtless, his chin overgrown with stubble, his dark hair dangling in wet tendrils around his ears. Sunburnt skin was peeling off his nose. In contrast, William was a picture of elegance: His shirt glowed crisply white against the dull clay walls of the houses behind him. His hair was buzz-cut close to his scalp so that the line between it and the broad, dark forehead was almost impossible to discern.

‘Any news?’ asked Alex. ‘About the authorization?’

‘Not yet,’ said William. ‘But soon. Any day now.’

It was the same answer that William always gave him.

‘It’s been two weeks. How much longer am I supposed to wait?’

He was suddenly irritated by the neatness of William’s white shirt.

‘I’ll talk to them again tomorrow,’ said William. ‘But I can’t rush the authorities. They will slow things down even more if I push them.’ He leaned back from the window. ‘I’ll be inside. Call me if you need me.’

He stepped away and disappeared around the corner, before Alex had a chance to say anything more.

William unlocked the gate to the compound and entered, walked past the plants and the old tires and the sacks of sand piled by the door. He saw Dina and Mustafa by the storage room, heard the rhythmic swoosh of Mustafa’s broom like an accompaniment to the tempo of the Spanish music coming from the radio under the gazebo.

His heart clattered in his rib cage. He had tossed and turned all night in bed thinking of Layla—there, now, in the cool darkness of the kitchen. He had plotted and considered what he was about to do: walk into the kitchen and, under the pretense of seeking a glass of water, linger to make conversation about the weather, the crops, the seasonal arrival of the nomads. Then he might venture into more intimate questions: ask her where she lived, ...

Table of contents

• Freeman's Arrival
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Six Shorts
• Haruki Murakami
• Drive My Car
• Aleksandar Hemon
• In Search of Space Lost
• Ghassan Zaqtan
• When This Happens
• Etgar Keret
• Mellow
• Anne Carson
• SAPPHO DRIVES UPSTATE (FR. 2)
• Tahmima Anam
• Garments
• Helen Simpson
• Arizona
• Ishion Hutchinson
• Windfall
• Garnette Cadogan
• Black and Blue
• Laura van den Berg
• The Dog
• Introduction[to Ben Huff's The Last Road North]
• The Last Road North
• Fatin Abbas
• On a Morning
• Michael Salu
• The Nod
• Honor Moore
• The Mogul Gardens Near Mah, 1962
• Dave Eggers
• The Fork
• Lydia Davis
• On Learning Norwegian
• Contributor Notes
• About the Editor