EDITORIAL
​MENTORSHIP

​​NORTHEAST OHIO SPOTLIGHT

Mentorship Recipient
Erarrat's Apples

Recipient Reflection: 
Karim Ragab

On "Erarrat's Apples" by Karim Ragab

by ​​Laura Maylene Walter

When I came across “Erarrat’s Apples” in our submission queue, the story’s weirdness immediately won me over. Here, we have a character who confronts his own existential void by consuming everything he can get his hands on: from cake to kimchee, coins, keys, copper, and gemstones. He is ravenous and yet empty; he cannot solve the problem of this internal bottomless pit no matter what or how much he devours.
 
Part of the charm of this story is that Karim trusts the reader to intuit the meaning of Ibrahim Erarrat’s search for fulfillment. In the first draft, however, I had some questions about the driving metaphor and how the protagonist comes to feel “full.” By the end of the story, Ibrahim determines the emptiness is temporary, but I wasn’t sure how or why he came to this epiphany, and I suspected there might be more to explore. At the same time, I understood that this story walks a fine line. It is meant to be enigmatic, and Ibrahim’s journey clearly stands as a metaphor for something larger and more universal. How to tease out that metaphor a bit more without overexplaining it or becoming too didactic?
 
Fortunately, Karim is a writer with the vision and the light touch to tackle that challenge. After I shared my thoughts, he went to work reconsidering the ending while also streamlining the escalation in the beginning. Karim was wary of making the story’s themes too explicit, and he expressed that the story might work best if it remains a touch ambiguous, “like a Zen koan”—all of which I completely agree with, and I admire his confidence in his vision. (Fun fact: He also pointed out that Ibrahim’s last name, Erarrat, is an inversion of Tarrare, an 18th century French soldier with an appetite just as wild).
 
Through some subtle shifts and new details, Karim brought additional layers to light in the text—making this vivid, strange, and complex story even more of a delight to read. Just as Karim says in his mentorship essay, I’m glad that Ibrahim has that better ending—and I hope his story can offer sustenance to those who read it.

Laura Maylene Walter

Laura Maylene Walter is the editor in chief of Gordon Square Review. Her debut novel, Body of Stars, was published in 2021 by Dutton in the US and Hodder Studio in the UK. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Poets & Writers, The Sun, Slate, F(r)iction, The Masters Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She has been a Yaddo Fellow, a Tin House Writers’ Workshop Scholar, and the recipient of the Ohioana Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant. Laura teaches workshops for Literary Cleveland and is the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow at Cleveland Public Library.