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    The Sun InterviewBy Judith HertogTo RemainRaja Shehadeh on Living through Destruction in Palestine

    I have been thinking that people all over the world these days are feeling a sense of despair because, like me, they are seeing the destruction of the world as they knew it. But it has occurred to me that the real destruction of my world happened in 1948, when the Palestinians lost Palestine.

    Distractions
    Readers WriteBy Our ReadersDistractions

    Reading at work, listening to music during labor, swatting gnats while meditating

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Matthew M. Quick

Matthew M. Quick does all of his writing in a basement nook his mother-in-law calls the “Matt Cave.” His work has appeared in Black Warrior Review and Portland Review, and he is currently finishing a novel, for which he is seeking representation. He lives with his wife and a greyhound in Holden, Massachusetts.

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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

The Whiskey Robe

On the screened-in porch of my in-laws’ house in central Massachusetts, I am reading a book. Sipping from the tumbler in my hand helps fight the unseasonable chill in the June air. The ice cubes are shrinking, diluting the alcohol, and clinking every time I raise the glass to my lips.

December 2007
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

One Cigarette A Day

We are bouncing over a rough ocean, on a boat packed with twenty or so fishermen, and I am breathing the smoke from my grandfather’s cigarettes. In the darkness of early morning the captain collects money for a gambling pool. “First and heaviest, thirty-seventy split,” he yells, and when he gets to us, my grandfather hands over a fistful of bills. As the captain moves on, my grandfather winks at me and says, “You will win.”

December 2006
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