We Are More: Istanbul
“Don’t ask her what happened,” Abu Mali says. We do anyways, in Arabic so he can’t understand, but she ignores us.
Posts by author
Eman Quotah
3 posts
Eman Quotah’s debut novel, Bride of the Sea, won the Arab American Book Award for fiction. Her second book, a horror novel, is forthcoming in October 2025. Her writing has appeared in The Markaz Review, Kweli, Literary Hub and other publications. When she’s not writing fiction or essays, Eman is a communications consultant and freelance writer-editor. She’s also a board member of RAWI, an organization that supports and nurtures writers of Southwest Asian and North African heritage.
Rumpus Original Fiction: Only Humans
Hearing old people’s memories is like watching a once-in-three-generations downpour. In the past, they lived in abundance and air conditioning. So many details go over Salwa’s head. She doesn’t know how to transcribe all the words.
The Last Poem I Loved: “The Cinnamon Peeler” by Michael Ondaatje
How different the world of the poem was from Saudi culture, which draped me in black and insisted, it often seemed, on One Truth.