"There's a part where the dog spends some time in a city, and I have this moment where he looks across a river and sees many people in a shantytown. But the dog's path doesn't end up there, not for long; yet I kept thinking of who those people were on the riverbank, and that was how this story, and the brothers, came to me."
"But I also think that this is the moment the younger brother understands that they have, in some ways, been living separate lives in the city. It's as if they've become their own islands, with their own stories and timelines and collections of experiences and memories, and it makes one wonder, I hope, whether they were always a bit this way, each on their own path, even if they were always together, surviving together, before they came to the city."
A country recovers from war as two brothers move into a shantytown in a small city undergoing gradual rebuilding. The younger brother narrates their life in the settlement while the older brother takes on work akin to a census, surveying the city's population. The narrator overhears his brother calling out names in sleep and senses that the older brother shields him from difficult knowledge. The younger comes to understand that they have been living increasingly separate lives, like islands with distinct stories, timelines, and memories. An older neighbor, Mrs. S, helps them settle and offers a measure of stability.
Read at The New Yorker
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