And although in general we didn’t bring our women to khatams, Hajji Hotak’s wife had sent each of our wives a personal invitation on Facebook, which they lorded over us, until, inevitably, we found ourselves waiting in empty living rooms or pacing back and forth on dreary porches, every few minutes shouting up the stairs or into the house, or quietly muttering to ourselves that we were late, goddammit, forever late, forever late and waiting, our wristwatches ticking as if time had no meaning, as if we weren't hurtling toward the oblivion we had seen in the gaping mouths of boys with guns, but our clever wives—plucking and pruning and painting themselves—paid us no mind, or else shouted back that when everyone is late no one is late, which is true, in a way, because if we had arrived at six in the evening, as instructed by Haijji Hotak, our host would have been horrified to see us standing at his front door an hour and a half before anyone else. And so, oddly enough, out of courtesy, yes, courtesy, we drove up late to Hajji Hotak’s house, in West Sacramento, double-parking in his cul-de-sac, behind his mailbox or beneath the basketball hoop, almost pulling up onto his immaculately manicured lawn—Hajji Hotak having worked for years as a professional landscaper—most of us filtering into the house between seven-twenty-five and seven-forty, our wives flocking into the living room, already chirping about nothing.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 26, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 26, 2024-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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ART OF STONE
\"The Brutalist.\"
MOMMA MIA
Audra McDonald triumphs in \"Gypsy\" on Broadway.
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
\"Black Doves,\" on Netflix.
NATURE STUDIES
Kyle Abraham's “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful.”
WHAT GOOD IS MORALITY?
Ask not just where it came from but what it does for us
THE SPOTIFY SYNDROME
What is the world's largest music-streaming platform really costing us?
THE LEPER - LEE CHANGDONG
. . . to survive, to hang on, waiting for the new world to dawn, what can you do but become a leper nobody in the world would deign to touch? - From \"Windy Evening,\" by Kim Seong-dong.
YOU WON'T GET FREE OF IT
Alice Munro's partner sexually abused her daughter. The harm ran through the work and the family.
TALK SENSE
How much sway does our language have over our thinking?
TO THE DETECTIVE INVESTIGATING MY MURDER
Dear Detective, I'm not dead, but a lot of people can't stand me. What I mean is that breathing is not an activity they want me to keep doing. What I mean is, they want to knock me off. My days are numbered.