This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Trisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this week's episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Aishigul Savash read her story, Marseille, from the April 7, 2025 issue of the writer's voice will hear Aishigel Savash read her story Marseille from the April 7th

2025 issue of the magazine. Savash is the author of three novels, Walking on the Sealing,

White on White and The Anthropologists. A collection of stories, long distance, will come out later this

year. Now here's Aishigal Savage. Marseille.

Marseille.

Marseille.

For her birthday, Amina asked to go on a trip.

Her husband had traveled for work the previous month, and, although that wasn't exactly for pleasure,

it was now understood that anything which freed them from child care could be considered

some type of holiday. Besides, they were trying to allow each other leisurely activities,

evenings out, morning runs, a movie from time to time, and recently, nights away, they wanted to find ways of

easing back into their life, which had been on hold since the baby was born. It was so simple to

slip into that old self, free of obligations. The exchange happened so naturally. Amina was already bored in the half hour she had to wait at the train station in Lyon,

even though such time was hard to come by.

She bought a coffee and a pack of biscuits, then sat on a bench, scrolling restlessly on her phone.

Though this was her first trip away from the baby, who had recently turned one, it didn't

really feel momentous. It felt rather as if she were putting on a coat she hadn't worn in a long

time, whose shape and texture she remembered immediately. She was going to Marseilles to meet

her university friends Alba and Lisa, with whom she had studied in England.

They were traveling from Madrid and Zurich and would arrive at the rental apartment at around the same time as Amina.

...