Mikra Namani

I am not sure why I get sad when I see some people eating. And that’s how I first saw Chuck Haywood at Boe’s: alone in a booth, devouring a Philly cheesesteak, dabbing at his mouth with his pocket square. Even when I later met with him for a tense interview in his office, where my job was on the line, I kept feeling sad for him.

In January 2015 my mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Despite surgery and months of chemo, by June her cancer had spread and there was a sense among the family that she didn’t have much time left. I took a couple of weeks off from my job in Boston and flew to Montenegro to be with her, Dad, and my sister. “My cervix has become polluted beyond repair,” she said, after we sat down in our family home in the coastal town of Budva.

By Mikra Namani. Alone in this criminal and rural solitude of the Balkans, this heart-stiffening, blood-congealing, cock-squeezing loneliness. It’s been weeks since I laid down my pen. Now I must pick up where I left. Where was I? Ah, yes leaving Novi Sad. Thirteen years since I turned my back to that city of retired killers, walked out that early dawn, my feet bloody, acid dissolving my lower innards.