Breaking point
ONE DAY THE CHILDREN AND I came home to see Hamad sitting in front of the TV. ‘Why’re you home early?’ Haris asked. ‘To spend time with you,’ Hamad said, patting his lap so Haris could go and sit with him. He only had to look at me in silence and I understood what had...
from A Change in the Air
In Jane Clarke’s third poetry collection A Change in the Air, voices of the past and present reverberate with courage and resilience in the face of poverty, prejudice, war and exile and the everyday losses of living. Across six sequences, these intimate poems accrue power and resonance in what is essentially a book of love...
The painting
Lotta’s husband, Vik, was good at presents, and this year he had excelled himself. This year, he had commissioned a painting for his wife’s birthday. It would be a family portrait. Vik and Lotta both had curly hair – his dark, hers fair. Their children had curly hair too. They would make a wonderful composition,...
Strays and loners
The temple garden was beautiful, bright flowering trees and shrubs hidden from the noise of the traffic. We stood holding hands by a Buddhist statue while a local government official read something from a piece of paper. We promised to love one another, to live in harmony until death, caring for one another in times...
