Love is Make-Believe
Riham Adly
Clarendon House, 2021​

The Ekphrastic Review was pleased to connect with Riham Adly about her recent book, Love is Make Believe, a collection of flash fiction that includes a few ekphrastic stories. We will chat with her first about her work, and then you can read the stories below.
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The Ekphrastic Review: Is it correct to say that your flash fiction collection, Love is Make-Believe, is the first English flash book by an Egyptian woman? 

Riham Adly: Love is Make-Believe is the first flash fiction collection in English written by an Arab/ African (Egyptian)/ Middle-Eastern woman. 
 
Is flash fiction widespread in North Africa or the Middle East, in languages other than English? Is there a tradition of shorter story telling that resonates, or is the form quite rare? 

Flash fiction is an emerging art in the Middle-East. I first discovered it in 2018 by few Egyptian authors writing in Arabic. It's been an honour to have been asked to translate flash for the debut issue of Arab-Lit magazine.
 
Tell us about your experience writing these stories. What was your process like?  Where did you take inspiration from? In what ways did the creation of this collection transform you? Were there surprises along the way? 

I've always had the poet part of me more articulate than the short story writer part. When I discovered flash fiction I was able to utilize both aspects in my writing as flash itself is a mix between poetry and  narrative writing. I started out writing stories without really thinking far ahead about a collection. Stories just came to me, some visited and were pleasant, some demanded to be written even when I didn't want to at times.

I've always felt like a conduit vessel where ancestral voices and voices of the collective subconscious sought me out in particular. I would listen to voices urging me to tell a story, sometime stories too difficult to write, like stories about honour killings in "Why my Mother Loves the Color Black"  or stories about female genital mutilation still carried in Africa  in "The Brief Chronicled History of The Girl as told by the Realist but yet Optimistic African Fortuneteller" or stories about mental illness in "Josephine" or those about gender in "Mona Decides to Die but let's the Weather Decide" and so forth. By the time I'd written over 60 pieces of flash, I realized they all followed a theme and had come out as a collective voice in a single work and hence the collection.

A couple of your flashes in Love is Make-Believe are inspired by art. How did this happen? Do you see yourself moving in an ekphrastic direction in the future?

Yes, three of my stories are inspired by art.  My first ever flash was " The Scream" inspired by Edvard Munch's The Scream and it first appeared in the The Ekphrastic Review.  Art as in paintings is also another potent form of story-telling. Everytime I'd explore a painting or a work of art I feel the need to find out its story or message. 

I came across The Rehearsal of the Ballet, one Edgar Degas' ballerina paintings and somehow started seeing the words flow with movement in my head. My protagonist from "Prettier than a Ballerina" was then born.  The same happened when I came across the work of a more contemporary artist , Nicolay Reznichenko with his painting of a women holding a key to operate a gentleman looking toy or puppet, from there I was inspired to write my own story "It's All About the Right Key."

All three stories are about Egyptian women and their struggles with having their voices heard at all. 

I would love to produce more work inspired from art.
 
I’m wondering about the tradition or contemporary practice of literature about art, in Egyptian culture. Does this have a long history or is it something that new?

I believe it is relatively new.
 
Tell us about some of your favourite artists. Whose work do you find inspiring to teach or write about?

I find Van Gogh's work to be quite stimulating. I also appreciate the works of the likes of Renoir and Monet to an extent, but I am incredibly moved by Salvador Dali's surreal paintings. I've always wanted to create stories inspired from his art. 

On a more local front. Artist and caricaturist Mohamed Abla is one of my favourite Egyptian contemporary artists. 
 
What kind of barriers or challenges have you found both at home and in the  world as an Egyptian Muslim woman writer? How important are any of these aspects of identity to your fiction?

It is deeply ingrained in our culture that a woman is an inferior creature. Our voices, opinions, and presence, are constantly ridiculed and suppressed.  We are expected to pleasantly and voluntarily succumb to what society deems appropriate. We are ridiculed when driving cars, when organizing marches  or demonstrations, molested when taking on public transportation, judged and constantly criticized for what we wear and how we show up in the market and business world.

Emerging women writers will always have to face such challenges when writing in their mother tongue. I've always found expressing in my mother tongue a scary affair for I'm always told to shut up. I decided to adopt the English language as my primary language of expression and creativity for when I speak it, I am safe, I am capable, I am creative and no one tries to shut me up. 
 
What’s next for Riham?

Riham has been battling chronic illness and depression but one can only see the brightest of stars in the darkest of nights. After successfully launching my collection Love is Make-Believe I feel more empowered now to speak my truth and heal through writing.

I'm working on a memoir centered around food-related trauma and also putting together my "Writing from the Subconscious" flash fiction workshop where I delve into the inner workings of the psyche, discovering what drives us and what limits us and what separates us from the Other. 

I explore concepts of polarity and the shadow, attachment patterns during childhood and their effect on our current relationships and also dip a little in dream symbology, all through the medium of flash fiction, crafting specific lessons and prompts that could help shape better characters, setting and metaphoric language.

Visit Riham's website to learn more about her stories and work. www.rihamadly.com

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Click here to read Riham's story, "The Scream," published by The Ekphrastic Review in 2018.

The following story was inspired by a painting by Nicolay Reznichenko . Click here to view it.

It’s Really All About the Right Key

The congregation of metal clanked with her every move in an inconsolable jingle. Farrah got used to the sound of her burden as the keychain, toiling above the hill of her breasts, got heavier every day. Everything and everyone in Farrah’s life had a key.  The key to her husband’s heart was his stomach. The key to his generosity was her obedience, the key to his pleasure was her vagina. Her kids had keys too: hugs, praise, and that firm voice of hers. Her parents, her friends, and even her employer had their own set of keys. One day while Farrah counted her keys, she realized, that one, very important key, went missing.

Farrah looked for it everywhere, under her bed pillows, in the wardrobe closet, in the drawers of her desk. She even looked inside her fridge, in the kitchen cupboards and in the belly of her stove. 

Where could it have gone?  Farah looked down at her left breast behind which her heart lay shielded in its ribcage, unreachable, indestructible.  She remembered a time when her heart was a room without any trapdoors or contraptions--- a time when it could skip and sing before reaching the outskirts of childhood and growing into the curse of womanhood.  She tried to quiet and shush her heart, but it pushed and punched its every beat a cry, a plea. 

There was only was place left where she dared not look. The chest of drawers high up in the storage room where her most painful memories sat, neatly folded and pushed away.

My key, her heart demanded, find my key.  

When she reached the top shelf she found her book of secrets, and inside the book she found a map.  The map led to a cottage nestled in the depth of pocketed time. She walked the length of her shadows, traversing the recollection river. Aubergine- hued  Lily thickets lining the path with their black devil’s tongue stood like infantrymen ready to shoot.  When she last saw them a lifetime ago they had had soft petals of white and pink.  Her skin pricked and she felt a fever burn inside when she stood in front of the unlocked gate.  Inside the cottage she glimpsed the keeper of her heart’s key. Not much had changed except for the silver that adorned his beard.  His eyes still held the saddest shade of purple. Time lay curled in his lap like a cat. She watched the man that was not her husband cradle his pain and play with his own key chain. 

Grief spilled in torrents when their eyes met.

“Did you come back for me?” The keeper asked, “I still have your key.”

She remembered their deep passion, how he filled the dead space of loneliness in her heart, how he watered the dead flowers once blooming with her youth. She remembered the hushed calls, the secret letters, and the cloying sweetness of roses.

“Adultress,” they had called her. “A sinner.”

She remembered the whiplashes, the cries, the pointing fingers, the accusing eyes, and the weeping of her children pulled from her grasp. If only their love hadn’t been a sin.  She held the keeper’s eyes and let him see all she could not speak. 

“I’ll sit here and wait then, till you’re free,” her keeper said. “You still have my keys. You will always have my keys.”  

So she left the cottage and abandoned her key, letting her heart sit in its prison, but was her heart really imprisoned? Did it need a key?  

The inconsolable jingle of her chain guided her back to the sound of her children playing hide and seek. Time with its lancinating edges walked her back to the high shelf in the storage room.  

“Hi Honey.” Her husband chimed, his fingers wrapping her waist in a tight grip. She stood taller, her head held high. He must be proud, she thought. For people bless him even when he’s hit her/ cursed her/ belittled her, even when has sinned.

She smiled at him, letting him hear the metallic tinkle of her key chain.

His grip of steel tightened.

“Darling, what would you like to have for lunch today? Would you like the lamb and lentil soup with  rice pilaf and some Tztziki?” She reached out and kissed him full on the mouth, “Try to come home early today, I’ll be wearing your favourite dress.”  His grip relaxed. She smiled again. 

She smiled more and more every day, enjoying the sound of her keys’ clanking jingle. 

Riham Adly
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​Epistemology of a Photograph
 
A small boy sprints into foam on Galway Bay.
A splash leaps from his planted foot;
his heel settles toward Earth’s mantle;
wet sand worms upward through his toes. 
His leading leg is stilled above a swell, 
toes curled and poised, shortly to try 
the easy surf in a paroxysm of play.
 
His reflection stains the thin retreating sea. 
His arms remain straight and stiff, and his hands
tightly fisted as if to hold for now anyway 
the water-addled kid-joy of running.
One arm points back toward boulders, taupe sand,
maybe sisters, I cannot say.                                                         
His eyes are down, but something is beyond.
I think he slips an outward look, glimpses Granny. 
 
Next, swells approach a shore not seen. Spray,
a still pool, withdrawing froth. A jetty tapers
and holds these well enunciated waves away                                      
from foreshortened waters, distant houses, 
clouds riding hills as grey and blue as the bay.
 
Outside the frame Granny watches, smiles praise,                             
surely thinking of how he is right now.                                    
The sea laps at her knees and, leaning toward the boy,
her eyes may let memory float to when she too leapt
into waters too wide for imagination
or when his father frolicked within
her ken in frigid waves, happy and safe.
                
Even farther out, almost where the sea is wild
and near to buoys that mark…something 
three old men swim across the bay, two miles
of reach and pull, challenge and conquest,                           
from promontory to promontory.
Their white heads switch and bob, profiled                           
against the sky. Like Granny                                        
they must be barrel-bellied. Unlike Granny                           
they’re implicated by the freely playing child                       
not at all.
 
H. G. Rogers

This poem was presented and read in 2020 at the Poetry Circle of the Yeats Center in Sligo, Ireland.
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H. G. Rogers earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Texas–Austin and, as to be expected, served a full military career. He later became a corporate trainer, a leadership consultant, and a financial advisor. He is currently seeking representation for a literary novel. He lives in Northwest Arkansas.
 

 
 

Dr. Gottfried M. Heuer, Jungian Training–psychoanalyst and –supervisor; Neo-Reichian body-psychotherapist: over 40 years of clinical practice in West-London; independent scholar with more than 70 published papers, translated into more than half a dozen languages. He recently initiated the International Association for Otto Gross Studies, https://ottogross.org). His books include 10 congress–proceedings for the International Otto Gross Society (which he co-founded. Sacral Revolutions (Routledge, 2010), Sexual Revolutions (Routledge, 2011, Russian edition 2017), and Freud's 'Outstanding' Colleague/Jung's 'Twin Brother': Otto Gross (Routledge, 2016; he discusses this boo on https://vimeo.com/196609212 and on https://youtu.be/zxEkj9SsAKw ). He is also a published graphic artist, photographer, sculptor and poet.

Click on the painting to view the selected responses for this ekphrastic writing challenge.

If you are new to this Review, we have bimonthly ekphrastic prompts. You can click on "Ekphrastic Writing Challenges" on the menu up top to find prompts, responses, and our challenge archives. It's great fun writing with others from around the world, and just as much fun to read the variety of inspirations from a single artwork.

​Our current prompt is Starry Night by Van Gogh. Click here for details. Deadline is one week today!
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​Claire’s Cosmography 
  
The pale blue ribbon  
creates the figure, pulls her out,  
 
a night-sky-blue silhouette  
against night-sky blue ground: 
 
a forehead and two outcurves, 
cheek, nose, then a chin-angle. 
 
She bears a cloud or nebula 
where the cheekbone might lift 
 
a wing. Another streamer parallels her, 
red-striped, wavy, a sugar-cane 
 
snake that makes another woman, 
ultramarine too. 
 
The maybe hair of first woman 
flies behind both, yellow orange 
 
gold.  Does the encaustic 
technique’s heat evoke fire-hair, 
 
unburnt, behind the blue  
forewoman? 
 
But there is no jury, no common 
law. Four yellow bubbles 
 
or worlds rise through her,  
and more squiggles in red  
 
and gold like vertical 
handwriting––maybe the lore 
 
this painting imagines, women 
made of women made 
 
of night sky, a cosmology 
which doesn’t care  
 
to make common 
sense.  Perhaps the origin 
 
fires blew them, arcs, 
streamers, snakes for company. 
 
The idea of order here?  
Confetti’s spray and fall,  
 
unruly colours like the legend  
of women’s unreason, 
 
or this discipline 
that may look like none. 

Mary B. Moore

Mary B. Moore’s poetry books include Dear If, (forthcoming, Orison Books); Flicker (Dogfish Head Prize, 2016); The Book Of Snow (Cleveland State UP, 1997).  Chapbooks, both prize winners, are Amanda and the Man Soul (Emrys 2017) and Eating the Light (Sable Books 2016). Recent poems also appear in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Birmingham Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, ekphrastic.net, Nelle, Terrain, Georgia Review, 32 Poems, The Nasty Woman Poet anthology, and more.  A retired professor, she lives in Huntington WV.