Everything you need to understand or teach A Conversation from the Third Floor by Mohamed El-Bisatie.
Mohamed El-Bisatie's "A Conversation from the Third Floor," like most of his writing, is more like a painting than a typical short story. He creates a scene, then populates it with only essential and simple characters whose gestures speak almost as loudly as their few words. Denys Johnson-Davies, in the translator's introduction to A Last Glass of Tea and Other Stories, in which this short story was published, states: "While there is drama...