Bittersweet

By Jen Minkman

Antakya, 1980. Djinns and humans live together in the sprawling city once called Antioch. Seventeen-year-old Selma is struggling with feelings of emptiness and depression and secretly visits the djinns to buy one of their magic potions called Mirages. Mirages can show you your wildest dreams, but come at a price.

 

When Selma visits the king of the djinns together with her friend Aisha, she is starting to suspect he knows more about her than he is letting on. Is there something she has lost? And is it possible for the king to help her find it?

 

A short story with a message of love and hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dutch Venture Publishing
• Release date: Apr 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201277635

Jen Minkman

Jen Minkman (1978) was born in the Netherlands and lived in Austria, Belgium and the UK during her studies. She learned how to read at the age of three and has never stopped reading since. Her favourite books to read are (YA) paranormal/fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian and romance, and this is reflected in the stories she writes. In her home country, she is a trade-published author of paranormal romance and chicklit. Across the border, she is a self-published author of poetry, paranormal romance and dystopian fiction. So far, her books are available in English, Dutch, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Afrikaans. She currently resides in The Hague where she works and lives with her husband and two noisy zebra finches.

Book preview

1.

Wind. In our city the wind is never absent – it is warm and sultry and heavy with exotic perfumes. The smell of dates, nutmeg, honey and sun-scorched earth – scents from the desert and the soukh .

This wind is not a breath of fresh air. Nothing can blow away the June heat from the city of Antakya, no matter how strong the breeze. And June is a month with days that seem endless when Ramadan takes place in it, as it did this year.

It is not a breeze that cools my head, nor my mind.

Read the Qur'an, Selma, my grandmother used to say when I felt restless as a young girl. For then, you will feel God close.

Reading a book has never made me feel like God was close. I‘ve never told my grandmother or my parents, though. I don't want to hurt their feelings. I used to feel God closer to me than my jugular vein at times when I was one with nature, but I haven’t felt that way for a long time. For almost a year now, I've been feeling so.... empty. Since I turned seventeen, actually.

I close my eyes and breathe in the air that rises up to me from our street, while I sit here on the balcony. In the distance, I can hear the fishermen shouting, selling their fresh catch from the banks of the Orontes River. Two cars drive past our front door, honking. On the corner of the street is a bakery that sells the best künefe in the region and the smells from the bakery make my mouth water. Tomorrow I can eat and drink whenever I want. Tomorrow is Şeker Bayramı: the end of our fast. But that holiday is not what I’m looking forward to most.

Tomorrow, after twenty-five days of fasting, I can once again visit the hidden streets of the soukh. The place which only attracts thieves and swindlers, according to my father. He never permits me go there at all. He doesn't know I frequent the soukh.

He doesn't know that I have been visiting the djinns regularly for the past year.

I open my eyes when the müezzin at the nearby mosque begins the call to prayer. The sun has almost set and is touching the horizon with its red-gold glow. After prayer time, we go to the table for the last iftar of the month: the evening meal we can eat