My father comes into my room. “Look,” he says. He carefully opens his hands: a luminous, gold-colored butterfly sits in the bowl of his palms, like a light he has carried into the dark room.

 A man rents two bears. One of the bears wears a little blue fez; on his vest is his name: ‘Bruno.’ The other bear wears a red fez. His vest says ‘Hugo.’ The man takes the bears home with him.

I have the last pack of cigarettes in the world; but no matches. I am in the bedroom, which has an enormous window, so I have to keep my body between the cigarettes and the window. Everybody is in the other room with the matches. I try to think of some disguised way of asking for matches without giving away my secret.

Barry Yourgrau’s story “Sand” appeared in our Spring 1985 issue. It appears (in slightly different form) in his collection Wearing Dad’s Head, reissued this month by Arcade Publishing along with another of his books, Haunted Traveller. My father c…

Taksim Square and Gezi Park had been triumphantly peaceful since the weekend. But there’d been heavy action overnight in the nearby Beşiktaş and Dolmabahçe neighborhoods. Monday morning I left our apartment on the slope just below Taksim and wal…

A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It’s mainly an older, cultured ex-Soviet crowd. Lots of vodka, lots of overeating zakuski (appetizers to accompany vodka)—…

This is the second installment of Yourgrau’s culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR 11:00 A.M. To the Privoz, Odessa’s signature sprawling bazaar market, alas now overly spruced up. Anya and her mom want to talk to the babushkas. Mos…

DAY ONE 7:15 A.M. Istanbul. A bleary departure from the Pera Palace Hotel after three nights of its punctiliously restored Orient Express–era fineries. We own a sixth-floor walk-up nearby in Cihangir (an arty neighborhood dear to Orhan Pamuk), but…