Fiction
Mourning for my women
Turning my back on all my books, I focused on rearranging my amulets, and then handed all of them over to my wife, saying, "Go forth, go forth and sell these charms, sell them in the port of Farashdanga."
My wife, she inserted slips of papers with scribbles in Persian, excerpts from scriptures in Arabic, Chakma, Hawaiian, and what not, into these amulets, these amulets of silver and bronze, amulets polished or gilded – she inserted these notes with God's and seventy thousand other deities' names on them into the amulets, for she did not know more names, and sealed the openings with wax. And then, yet again, more notes, more wax, more notes, ad infinitum, or to be more precise, seven times.