Karosh Taha

Let me begin this story with a confession: I don’t know how to pronounce my own name. For as long as I can remember, I have felt uncomfortable introducing myself to anyone. The German people I grew up with tripped over my name’s melodic sounds, while my parents’ Vietnamese friends had trouble understanding my heavy accent. The Germans got around the problem by not addressing me by name at all.

My brother’s taking a nap in my bed. He likes to lie in the freshness of new sheets when mother’s changed them. Sometimes he’s like an old woman, and I let him sleep in my sheets because they’ll smell of him, they’ll take on the smell of an eight-year-old’s sweat; I spoon him, wrap my arm around him and hope he’ll be as strong as Younes one day. Baran’s the answer to mother’s prayers. After father left, she used to tell me, having no one to fight with, how much she hoped she was carrying a boy.

Karosh Taha, born in 1987 in Zaxo, Iraq, has lived in Germany since 1997. Her essays have appeared in various literary magazines. In the Belly of the Queen is her second novel and won her the Alfred Döblin Prize. Karosh Taha lives in Cologne.