February 1, 2013 Windows on the World Luljeta Lleshanaku, Kruja, Albania By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. I usually prefer to write in my bedroom at my childhood home in Kruja. Traces of the old living style are in the yard in the front of window: the sheets hung for drying; the terracotta jars, or magrips, sixty-year-old objects once used by my grandfather as olive oil containers and now cut at the throat, transformed as flower vases; the ruined walls which once fenced in the tomato garden; the alembic, or lambik, which served, in the absence of running water, for washing hands after work. But also present is the invisible, the unseen: the erased objects and the missing human beings; the cut plum tree where my sister and I used to climb up during those beautiful summer mornings; the loud voice of my mother when coming back exhausted from her work; the mulberry tree which brought the insects and the good odor of pegmez, the syrup of condensed fruit; the liming thresholds before holidays; my uncles, my cousins, all those portraits and gestures which once populated this yard. On this inescapable, familiar stage, I can focus on the pelagic depth of a single and bounded situation. In my case creative freedom doesn’t necessarily mean hunting for a new landscape. This environment leads me toward something unmistakable, which is a kind of freedom, too. —Luljeta Lleshanaku
January 4, 2013 Windows on the World Harris Khalique, Islamabad, Pakistan By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. In the afternoon when the sun is blazing and in early evening when its orange hue allows me to stare into the horizon, I look out of this window in my office that opens into a terrace but offers a wider view. I see the palatial houses and imagine the few who live there in luxury. Then I think of the many who serve them—who hurl rolls of newspapers onto their porches, bring groceries, drive cars, sweep floors, toil in the sizzling kitchens. They dwell in shanty settlements ensconced within the affluent neighborhoods or live in crammed quarters in the backyards of these houses. Before dusk I can look beyond the trees and catch a clear glimpse of the thin-looking white minarets of the Faisal Mosque, one elegant and expansive structure on the slopes of the Margalla Hills. These minarets remind me of the worst dictator we have had. He lies buried in the gardens of this mosque while we still struggle to rein in the beasts of ignorance and bigotry he unleashed. Last week when it stopped raining after several hours, I decided to go beyond the window and walk across the terrace to look over the street from above. I saw a young girl squatting by a small puddle and folding paper into boats. An odd mix of intense sorrow and great hope enveloped my heart. —Harris Khalique
December 7, 2012 Windows on the World Mike McCormack, Galway City, Ireland By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. I have lived in this house on the edge of Galway City for over five years now and for a couple of hours a day I sit with my feet up on the window sill and look out over this cul-de-sac. And no matter what time of day I sit here it always seems to be the middle of the afternoon. The place is constant, not given to mood swings or tantrums, just that tree and the sweep of tarmac which curves along by the green, nothing much to hold the eye or interest. Of course this is precisely the kind of stillness in which the mind’s eye gets lost—vista as vortex. From time to time the stillness is broken up by a car or a child or a stray dog crossing the green. Sometimes a ball rolls into view. These are all quietly interesting but sooner or later they meld into the stillness of the place. Today it’s raining—patient, steady rain which will keep falling into the night. That’s December rain, nothing new or unusual about it. Beyond the rooftops the sky has lowered down in heavy grey folds. Two years ago we had snow here for the first time, and for nearly a month the whole place was blanketed in soft whiteness. And while snow added little to the stillness of the place, for a short while it looked like it was elsewhere. —Mike McCormack
October 5, 2012 Windows on the World Etgar Keret, Tel Aviv, Israel By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. The nicest place I ever got to write in was in MacDowell. My studio there was surrounded by a beautiful snowy forest, and looking out of the windows I could often see deer. During my residency there a friend came to visit. After having a beer together he said, “There is so much beauty around you, yet I can see from the angle at which your computer is placed that when you write all you can see is the toilet. Why is that?” The answer was simple. When I write, what I see around me is the landscape of my story. I only get to enjoy the real one when I’m done. In the Keret family tradition my writing space is always one of the least desirable spots in our apartment, a place which only a person who is busy writing can bear. Currently it is a small metal table placed between the living room and the kitchen. The moment I stop writing I can notice on the other side of the road a beautiful grand tree allegedly planted sixty years ago by one of Israel’s finest children poets as well as the happy mess my son and I left on the balcony the day before, but this is just for a moment, most of the time I just see my stories which are usually much messier than the balcony floor. —Etgar Keret [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
September 7, 2012 Windows on the World Sheila Heti, Toronto, Canada By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. Can you see that beautiful shrub? It has no bald patch, right? That’s because the shy, moustached, Portuguese man, who seems to live in that house alone, has spent the last six years standing in front of the hedge, where there was, for so many years, a bald patch. He’d stand before that patch, staring down at it for hours every day, even in the wintertime. When I’d come home from my errands and lock my bike to the pole, he would be there. When I went outside to check my mail, or if I looked up over my laptop, he would still be there. At first I thought he was crazy. Then I began to think of him as more profound than other men. Why should we look at everything all around us? There is enough in a shrub. This summer, the patch filled itself in. I guess he knew all along that it was not lacking water or fertilizer or chemicals or conversation. All it wanted was his attention. Now he stands at another empty patch. I sit in a room lined with books, at a round, teak dining table, on the second (top) floor of a Victorian house. He stares at his shrub as I stare at my computer. His body faces me and mine faces him. Our bodies are opposite each other every day, and we stare at things, and wait for the emptiness to fill in. —Sheila Heti [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
July 6, 2012 Windows on the World Binyavanga Wainaina, Nairobi, Kenya By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. I have lived in this cramped little cottage near Ngong Forest in Nairobi for the past year. After many winters abroad, I find myself unable to work indoors. Nairobi gets very cold in June and July, but I like to work free of the prison of the house. I love the tingling pullover of night sounds and forest sounds and the bite of cold breeze and distant cars and stereos. Sometimes I close my eyes and sway my arms into patterns to move with the sensations of the strong bitpieces banging about in my temples. The bitpieces are almost always word-based moods. They live and die fast. When the bitpieces catch characters or a probable course of narrative action, my fingers start to keyboard peddle furiously. If I stop, the whole world crumbles. If the bitpiece world crumbles, I stop. Days, sometimes bad-mood weeks can go by before momentum is found again. Tennis helps. And fermented millet porridge. And my lover. —Binyavanga Wainaina [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]