Sublime

To stumble and then correct oneself, this was a necessary and exquisite thing.

haphazard

running because

Ça a toujours été ainsi, me répétais-je pour me défiler : lorsqu’on ne trouve pas un sens à son malheur, on lui cherche un coupable, et il n’y avait pas meilleur bouc émissaire ce matin-là sur la place du drame que Jelloul. Jelloul fut arrêté, menotté et conduit au poste.

To a certain cross section of clerks in that city of rubber stamps, carbon paper, and spindles, he had become a familiar figure, a slender, tall twenty-year-old with nice manners and a rumpled suit, appearing in the middle of a stifling afternoon, looking painfully cheerful. He would doff his hat. The clerk or secretary—a woman, more often than not

Bolbol saw Hussein coming back, escorted by an agent waving his gun and gesturing to the rest of the family to get out of the van. Hussein stood next to Bolbol and whispered, “They’re going to arrest the body.” Bolbol assumed there must have been some mistake, but no, when the agent led them to a tiled, windowless room, opened the door, and pushed

paunch

new language