Next door, a man often yelled, his shouts sometimes quickly followed by a soft thump. On our television, a movie played: a building being blown up, gunfire, and flames. We weren't supposed to watch things like that, but my brother and I were home alone. I was ten years old and he was eight.
Our parents had told us to keep the television loud so that it would sound as if there were an adult with us. They'd shown us the places we could hide together, if we felt scared. In the bathtub with the shower curtain drawn. In the closet beneath a pile of clothes. Under the kitchen sink with some pots and pans. When they were not at home, we weren't allowed to go outside. We couldn't ride our bikes or look for pretty marbles on the ground.
It was summer. There was no school to go to, and it cost too much to hire a babysitter to cover the time my parents worked, even just a teen-ager saving up for a prom dress. We didn't live near grandparents. There were no cousins next door, no aunts or uncles in the neighborhood to go to. So it was just the two of us.
"You hear that?" my brother asked me.
"What?" I said.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der July 10 - 17, 2023 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der July 10 - 17, 2023 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.