“Bubbles, Mermaids and Broccoli” by Riham Adly - Published Today on The Reading Life

Click here read this story and others in The Vestal Review


Riham Adly on The Reading Life. Includes Links to other of her stories

Today I am very pleased and honoured to publish a short story by the multi-award winning writer Riham Adly.  

I have posted so far on four Short Stories by Adly (there are  links to these stories in my posts).  I would never read let alone post on four stories by a writer if I did not find their work intriquing, interesting, insightful and of lasting value.  I hope to follow her work for many years and I thank her for allowing me to share this story with my readers.

 This story is protected Under international Copyright laws and is the exclusive property of Riham Adly.  It cannot be published in any format without her permission.

Bubbles, Mermaids and Broccoli by Riham Adly 

Rainbow colored bubbles don’t like me very much. They fly away when I blow and never come back. Some just POP and kill themselves. Teddy bear said we should always use sunscreen because the sun screams at us; lots of sunshine screams can hurt us. Did they hurt my bubbles? Mom’s hurt too.  Mom once said, Bubbles are all soap, they drown in the air. I think, sometimes, you drown even if you’re all dry, like when you cry? But that’s water too.  Mom also said that even mermaids can drown, if they get feet and sit in bathtubs. I don’t believe it, but Mom never said anything wrong.  Mom’s prettier than mermaids and rainbow bubbles. She’s gone now, just like the bubbles.  I wish she’d come back, but she’s far away, deep down, like roots of that sad tree called Willow.

We are Twins, Teddy bear said. I’m the wee one and he’s the stronger one, like Batman, he said. Twins look the same. I have long hair, like Goldilocks. Teddy bear’s all fuzzy brown with black button eyes.

Teddy bear has a mama. No one can hurt his mama, he said, not even Uncle Jimmy. Uncle Jimmy likes to tickle me hard where I pee. I never ever laugh when he tickles. He calls me bad girl. I’m not bad. I’m all good, all good except when he tickles. Teddy bear said I’m not bad, I’m just the wee one, and that I should be like Batman. I just like bubbles but I hate it when they POP.

Teddy bear eats bad people who make his mama sad. I wish I could eat Uncle Jimmy even if he tastes like broccoli. Maybe when I become a grownup I’ll eat bad people, even if they taste like broccoli.

Riham Adly is a creative writing instructor from Gizah, Egypt.  Several of her short stories appeared in online literary magazines such as Page&Spine,  The 10 minutes Novelist,  Paragraph Planet, Visual Verse,  Fictional café, For The Sonourous and The HFC Journal. Her short story “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the Makan Award in Egypt and was published in an anthology with the same name. Riham started h

“The Green Sock is Good”. - A Short Story by Riham Adly - 2017

You can read “The Green Sock is Good” here






Riham Adlay on The Reading Life - Includes Links to More of her Stories

“The Green Sock is Good” is the third delightful story by Riham Adly upon which I have had the pleasure of posting upon.  The darkly comic tone of “The Green Sock is Good” let us see the versitile talent of Adly  

Here is how the narrator’s day starts:

“How can you possibly go to work wearing these?”

I looked down at my feet and smiled.

“What’s wrong with them?” I pretended not to notice.

“You’re wearing mismatched socks and one of them is green for Heaven’s sake! That’s bad luck,” Bob, my all-knowing husband, hollered, before pointing his index finger at my feet. Must admit though, the look on his face was priceless.

“I don’t have to be a neat-freak like you, and besides they’re both clean. No holes in the soles, and contrary to your belief, green brings good luck.”

His frown deepened as I started laughing. I wasn’t making any sense believing mismatched socks brought good luck, but they did—this pair at least.”

Our narrator is on the way to give an important presentation, if it goes well it make bring her a promotion at work.  Rushing out of the apartment house where they lives, she forgets her car keys and, in a rush, takes a cab.  The driver has been drinking and looks like a zombie.  When she steps out of the cab, she is slighly hit by a passing car but luckily her laptop is not damaged.  When she gets to her office for the presentation, the guard tells her she looks like she needs to go to the hospital.  She says she has a big presentation this morning, the guard says “What do you mean this is Sunday, no one is here.”

When she tells her next cab driver her address he tells her that the building at that address burnt down just a bit ago.  I will leave the rest of the plot untold, I loved finding out what happened to missing green sock and I bet most readers  will.

I look Forward to following the work of Riham Adlay for a long time.

Riham Adly is a creative writing instructor and an emerging writer from Egypt with several short stories published in online lit magazines such as Page and Spine literary magazine, the 10 minutes novelist magazine, The Alexandrian, Paragraph Planet, Visual Verse and the HFC journal of arts and literature. Her short story “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the MAKAN  AWARD in Egypt. She’s not someone who lets rejections discourage her; the more the merrier. Riham currently hosts her own book club “Rose’s Cairo book club” in the American University in Cairo, Egypt to provide refuge for those few–but existing–bibliophiles.

Mel u

“I Wish”. - A Short Story by Riham Adlay - November, 2015

This is the second  of a series of posts I’m planning on the wonderful short stories of Riham Adly

Click here to resd “The Darker Side of The Moon” by Riham Adly

Riham Adly known as Rose among friends is a published author  and a creative writing instructor from Gizah, Egypt. Several of her short stories were published in international online literary journals and websites.

 Riham is also first reader/ marketing coordinator in "Vestal Review" literary magazine.

 Riham moderates "Roses's Cairo Book Club" in the American University in Cairo Tahrir Campus each month for those few yet growing avid bibliophiles.

Riham has also started her own writing group on FB "Rose's Fiction Writing Club" to motivate her students to keep on writing and sharing their work with emerging and aspiring writers from around the world. . Data from Author

This is the second story by Riham Adly upon which I have posted.  Previously I talked about her wonderful MAKAN award winning story about conflicts of loyalty “The Darker Side of the Moon”.

Today I will be posting on another of her stories, “I Wish”, very different from “The Darker Side of the Moon”.  “I Wish” begins when the narrator, a young woman, wishes upon a seeing star.  As she does so the world around her seems to dissolve into a new reality, she wonders why the end of her world has to be in darkness.  Suddenly a light spreads.  She then casually wishes, not meaning it to come true, that she had some water.  A cup of cool water appears in her hand.  Intrigued, she tests her powers by wishing for and then getting a big juicy hamburger.  Her mind wanders and soon she is on a beach, an unreal from her old world scene filled with all sorts of luscious gastronomic delights.  Now she is convinced she has been given special powers.  Her wishes expand, including even a man to satisfy all her sexual fantasies.

Now the story takes a fascinating turn.  She says all these things are not real and wishes for the return of her old reality.  

I will not talk about the very creative close of the story only to say their are numerous ways to understand the close.  You will not, I for sure didn’t, see the ending coming.

Her prose is beautiful, drawing you deeply into the story.

You may read this story and other works of Dr. Adly at the link above.  I will be featuring several more of her works soon.

Mel u

A very interesting wide ranging interview with Dr. Riham Adly

Click here to read “I Wish” by Riham Adly