Liars' League

After That, We Are Ignorant by Bilal Tanweer

 

After that we are ignorant

Read by Rhik Samadder

--
 

 

the full text of this story may be found here at Granta where Bilal is featured as one of their New Voices

After That, We Are Ignorant by Bilal Tanweer was read by Rhik Samadder at the Liars' League Fact & Fiction event on Tuesday 8 March 2011 at the Phoenix, Cavendish Sq., London

 

*From The Author*

After That, We Are Ignorant is set on a bus in Karachi, Pakistan.  It is the first of a collection of interconnected stories that are linked by the event which occurs at the end of the story.

Bilal Tanweer is a writer and translator. He has an MFA in Writing (fiction) from Columbia University for which he received the Fulbright Scholarship. He was one of the eleven recipients of the 2010 PEN Translation Fund Grant for his forthcoming book of translation and was selected as one of Granta’s New Voices in January 2011. He is working on a novel. 

Rhik Samadder's first job was the title role in The Indian Boy (Royal Shakespeare Company). Recent credits include Romeo in Romeo and Juliet Unzipped (Salisbury Playhouse). Film work includes Chemical Wedding (Warner Bros, Cannes '08), and radio includes Urban Scrawl for Theatre 503. Rhik is also a writer and works at the Guardian. 

Dial A For Action by James Smyth

 Dial A for Action MP3 

Read by Max Berendt

Chris pulled the semi-automatic weapon from its holster and thrust it into the terrorist’s face. The eyes that looked back at him were full of hate. Bloodthirsty, terrorist hate. He tightened his finger on the trigger. Above his head he could hear the whirr of the helicopter, with its cargo of reinforcements. But there was no time for that now. There was only time for action. He pressed the muzzle of the weapon against the terrorist’s forehead.

 

Ironwork by Malachi King

Click to play IRONWORK

Read by Ben Crystal

The risk of falling for an ironworker is part of the job I guess; not totally unexpected. Ironworkers as a rule may fall off the steel at any time and everyone knows the risks and does it anyway.  We were like meth junkies getting high off the thrill of staring Death in his cold, bony face.  As I hung there, I thought about my life as an ironworker, suspended seven stories over newly hardened pavement, and I waited for someone to rescue me.  I felt vulnerable, scared, and alone.

 

 

 

The Miller's Tale by Richard Smyth

 

Mar 11 The Miller's Tale

Read by Paul Clarke

 

It is difficult to say or write the words.

Ignaz Brno-Hálavyí is dead.

Perhaps only those of you who are fortunate enough to be Hungarian will know him. Perhaps, even, only those of you who have seen the black chimneys of Eöstvöt and breathed the city’s bitter air. Perhaps only those who have visited the terraced grey-brick house on Mogyoró Street in which Brno-Hálavyí was born and died.

 

The Cold Blue Morning of Gidley Jones by Brindley Hallam Dennis

 

Mar 11 Gidley Jones

Read by Lin Sagovsky

Even someone who was not an aficionado of the hobby could see that the model railway had been beautifully constructed. It depicted a small marshalling yard, somewhere out in a bleak countryside, set into a low depression between banks of grass, fringed with hedgerow trees and separated from all that lay beyond by a barbed wire fence. Four sidings fanned out from a loop of track off a single-track line. There were no buildings, save for the representation of a single box-like structure of the terrapin type, beside which the neat model of a British Rail van stood parked. Gidley had cleverly damaged the nearside wheel arch of this, which he had then painted in a dull rusty colour.

 

Icosi Bladed Scissors by Alex Smith

Mar 11 Icosi Bladed Scissors

Read by Elizabeth Bower

“Such a hot afternoon,” Baochi said, “Are you sure you want to die?” Although she was a lazy assassin, Baochi had outlived the fool and the plagiarist by several centuries, insisting a daily bowl of raw beetroot Borscht was the cause of her ungodly longevity, (however, it must be noted that over time a good many who hankered after immortality had tried to emulate Baochi and subsist on borscht alone, but these aspirants merely suffered years of indigestion, pink-stained teeth and ruby-coloured urine, before a younger than average Death spared them from swallowing down any further bowls of Borscht). 

Basil, the man with aching ankles, sighed and his sigh was fat like a leopard’s purr.  “I’m so tired of my ankles aching,” he said, to which Baochi replied: “And I so weary from the heat.” She cooled herself with what appeared to be a giant fan, but closer inspection revealed the slats were blades, twenty of them, capable of simultaneous shredding; it was no fan then, rather a score of icosi-bladed scissors.