Natasha Burge | The Smart Set

Walking Autistic with Skoliogeography

Natasha Burge — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 11:30:00 +0000

I am going to the corniche because I am always going to the corniche, but then diversion: in the butcher’s window, the gloss of a goat’s gelatinous eye and the reflection of electricity fizzing from streetlights that should have gone dead at dawn. From the shop next door mannequins jamble the doorway, their faces piously […]

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Drifting In and Out

Natasha Burge — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 20:36:32 +0000

Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia 2018 There is boomtown energy on the pavement tonight. Bodies crowd the curb, sand-scoured vehicles fly past, and the electric clatter of neon is always in the eye. There is a honk from a taxi behind me and the sizzle of meat on a spit. In this part of town, they sell […]

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On the Road to the Khaleej

Natasha Burge — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 11:30:29 +0000

We were driving through Al Hasa and I had in my hands a battered copy of Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. The cover was bright yellow, like I was holding a piece of sunlight. As we sped through the oasis and its dense rows of palm trees and crisscrossing irrigation troughs, I read. I was in middle-school and more interested in science fiction than anything else, but the prose of this book tumbled like poetry and I was […]

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Living on the Margins

Natasha Burge — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 12:01:06 +0000

Salat al-Maghrib has just begun and the courtyard in front of the mosque is full of men performing their ablutions at the communal fountain. Beneath them, a mottled shadow of wetness gathers on the pavement like a cloud. A curbside censer burning oud on the street corner billows smoke into the faces of passersby. The […]

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Pearls of Wisdom & Fear

Natasha Burge — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 11:36:11 +0000

I’m sitting next to a wall covered in photos of Umm Kulthoum. From behind her omnipresent sunglasses, she looks down sternly on the crowded teashop, sharing wall space with dozens of other notable personalities from the Middle East. Along the ceiling hang WWI-era rifles, dusty phonographs, and lank flags discolored by years of cigarette smoke. […]

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Khobar Drift

Natasha Burge — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 11:30:19 +0000

I stumble out of the car, my eyes a ruin of strobing lights that fizzle and pop every time I blink. At the last intersection we’d been stopped behind an SUV flashing its hazard lights, a habit among drivers in Saudi Arabia as soon as a few raindrops begin to fall, and I have to […]

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