Last night was Russian 101 night at BTL. The Russian students taught us about the long history of suffering Russian writers, like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Mayakovsky, and of course, Pushkin. We watched Russian cartoons, we learned how to count to ten. Later this evening Artyom, one of the more romantic Russian men here, recited his poetry in the original. We swooned. At lights out I knocked on one of the girls' rooms, and it opened to reveal twelve of them seated in a circle on the floor, including several Arabs un-hijabed. They are bonding inter-culturally, and it warms me.
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"elevate your fingers, motion makes it hard to write"
About Me
- ZenZoon
- I'm a Palestinian-American writer living in Iowa City. I'm currently working on two books and teaching creative writing at The University of Iowa. My work has appeared in Granta, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, BuzzFeed, and NPR. I have an MFA from Iowa and an MA international affairs from Columbia.
