We Are Here

““We Are Here” — Short story by Ayşegül Savaş, included in her new(ish) collection. I read this story out loud with my boyfriend, unsure of where it would carry us. In classic Savaş style, we were lulled into a casual sense of knowingness, as though the world of the story could reveal nothing new to us. In the end, it was the very casualness of the cruelty in the story’s crescendo that stole our breath. I cried, but what’s new.”