Jalil couldn’t get the scene out of his head—the elderly woman sitting in the middle of the busy sidewalk: she was crying, screaming at the top of her lungs, pulling at her hair.

Ink is like blood, Nazr thought; it spills into the world by means of the same sensation: pain. Write, his family would implore, write! They didn’t know what they asked of him—they didn’t know the dark, perilous recesses of his mind that he’d have to wander through in search of words.

The pen is mightier than the sword…the pen is mightier than the sword….Eman had never really registered the expression’s meaning, on a deeper level, beyond the obvious at least...

There once lived a man—not far from the troubles of the present—who decided to no longer feel the pain of others.

Tariq gazed out onto the rocky shores of the Pacific Ocean...his father would always say—the seas of change ebb and flow, and sweep away your troubles so.