The Middle Field

On a rainy day in the Scottish suburbs, a daughter visits her mother in a care home. The two sit together, conversing over tea and a Turkish dessert. As their conversation unfolds, the older woman’s fading memory turns the daughter into a stranger for her. The mother slips into her native tongue and introduces her daughter to her former self. The daughter witnesses her mother’s shifting reality in the way she assumes the old identity she once shed to assimilate into her new country.

Written by Aya Douglas, and originally published in Hotazel Review, “The Middle Field” touches on the themes of migration and its reverberations in