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Back The Wild Ones Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. PRAISE FOR The Wild Ones
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. The Beginning, or How Paheli Became the First Wild One; With a Cameo by Taraana, the Boy Made of Stars.
  7. An Introduction; Hold On to Your Hats.
  8. The Sweetness in the Sugarcane, or The Impractical Nature of Immortality
  9. Paheli: The Vagrant Experiences of a Mango Addict
  10. Cotton Candy Sugar Screams
  11. From the Book of MEMORIES
  12. “Will You Walk into My Parlor?” Said the Spider to the Fly.
  13. The Best Ice Cream in the World, Teddy Bears, and a Tree Creature.
  14. From the Book of MEMORIES
  15. I.
  16. The Reappearance of the Boy Made of Stars and the Plight of the Girl by the Oleander Lane.
  17. Paheli: An Interlude in Blue
  18. Besieged in the Between
  19. Tea, the City of Stairs, and the Story of a Boy
  20. From the Book of MEMORIES
  21. Heartbreak, Stone Buildings, and Tandoori
  22. Observations, Conversations, and Hot Parantha
  23. Paheli: The Spies Who Came In from the Between
  24. From the Book of MEMORIES
  25. The French Quarter, the Spanish Half, and Eulalie
  26. Paheli: The Eggplant Overture
  27. Sunny Jelly Beans, Po’Boys, and “Alouette”
  28. From the Book of MEMORIES
  29. The Keeper of the Green and the Mysteries of Magic
  30. Blood and the Between
  31. The Library of the Lost and the Stories of the Silenced
  32. Walking in Wicked Ways or The Importance of Balık Ekmek
  33. From the Book of MEMORIES
  34. Looking for the Needle in the Haystack
  35. Paheli: The Peculiar Crackle in the Electricity
  36. Ten Degrees Past Despair
  37. The Fault in the Stars
  38. The Blue City in the Mountains
  39. Paheli: Disharmony in the Attics
  40. From the Book of MEMORIES
  41. Paheli: Continued
  42. The Politics of a Body, the Politics of Pleasure
  43. The Medina, the Riad, and the Red City
  44. Paheli: The Atlas Mountains, the Cozy Rooftop, and the Confession, Possibly of Love
  45. From the Book of MEMORIES
  46. Souks, Spices, and Survival: A Guide into Chaos
  47. Jemaa el-Fna: The Mosque at the End of the World
  48. Paheli: A Moment in Chartreuse
  49. From the Book of MEMORIES
  50. Paheli: On the Frailties of the Heart
  51. Sonagi, or A Sudden Rain
  52. Paheli: The Cheese in the Trap
  53. Paheli: The Maze and the Minotaur
  54. A New Era, a New Dar; the River Sings
  55. The Burning Door, the Fallen City, and Taraana 2.0
  56. Paheli: The Beginning of Forever
  57. From the Book of MEMORIES
  58. Moving One Rock at a Time Will Eventually Move a Mountain, aka Goodbye
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. More from the Author
  61. About the Author

Once, we wrote suicide notes.

Dear World, we wrote in the dust, in any ink we could find, and, when we were desperate, in drops of our blood.

Dear World, I am angry and I am hurt. I cannot. Be. Am. Are. Exist any longer. Language has failed me. I am unwanted in all tenses.

Dear World, why do you not care?

Dear World, I can no longer hold this pain inside of me. I need to spill blood—yours, ideally, but mine will do just as well.

But before we could take the step that has no takebacks, Paheli found us.

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Have you ever noticed how, in an argument with a woman, a man, on the losing side, will start casting aspersions on a woman’s sexual behavior? He will call her a slut or a bitch or both, as if her intelligence is compromised either by the number of times she has sex or by the number of men she has sex with.

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Walking in Wicked Ways or The Importance of Balık Ekmek

Qasim leads Ferdinand away, leaving us to linger over the artifacts curated in the library. No one else in the library seems inclined to approach us, so we spend some time sitting in silence, gathering our thoughts, mulling over all we have learned.

Finally, Paheli stirs from the pensive silence she retreated into. Taraana is sore at her, but this has not stopped him from returning to her side. He just doesn’t talk to her.

All of a sudden Ligaya stands up and stomps her foot. We frown at her actions; we are still in the library. “I’m sorry!” She sits down and bounces in her seat. “I got too excited.”

“Why?” Valentina says.

“Because… THIS LIBRARY WAS CREATED BY A KEEPER OF THE BETWEEN!!!” Ligaya screams in a whisper, then coughs. We wait for her to regain the strands of her sanity.

“So?” Valentina again, with her one-word responses.

“So? What do you mean, ‘so’? Do I have to explain? Can you not figure it out yourself?!” Ligaya gesticulates.

“Well,” Valentina replies. Then smiles at Ligaya’s visible frustration.

“Fine. I’ll spell it out for you. To be able to create a library this huge and this complicated out of magic means”—Ligaya pauses for dramatic effect—“the Keeper of the Between. Is. Super. Duper. Powerful.”

“That’s after the keeper bonds with the Between, Ligaya,” Etsuko says, her voice cool like always. “Might I remind you, Taraana is currently powerless and vulnerable?”

Taraana flinches and we glare at Etsuko.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

“Let’s go look for a burning door. Maybe if Taraana bleeds on a burning door, the bonding will happen?” Areum asks with shining eyes.