Author(s): Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

Fiction

Each year the storyteller Hassan gathers listeners to the city square to share their recollections of a young foreign couple who mysteriously disappeared some time ago. As various witnesses describe their encounters with the couple - their tales overlapping, confirming and contradicting each other - Hassan hopes to light upon details that will explain what happened to them, and to absolve his own brother, who is in prison for their disappearance. As testimonies circle an elusive truth, the couple take on an air as enigmatic as their fate. But is this annual storytelling ritual a genuine attempt to uncover the truth, or is it intended instead to weave an ambiguous mythology around a crime?