This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear

Jamil Jan Koccii read his story on the night of the Khhatan from the February 26,

2024 issue of the magazine. Kocai is the author of the magazine.

Kocai is the author of the novel 99 Nights in Logar,

and the story collection, The Haunting of Hadjahotak,

and other stories, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022 and won the

2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize. Now here's Jamil Jan Kocai. On the night of the chata, through no fault of our own, naturally, we were late. Our wives, you see, had decided to tag along.

And although in general we didn't bring our women to Khatams, Hajihutuk's wife had sent each of our wives a personal invitation on Facebook, which they

lowered it over us until, inevitably, we found ourselves waiting in empty living rooms or pacing back and forth on dreary porches.

Every few minutes shouting up the stairs or into the house or quietly muttering to ourselves that we were

late, God damn it, forever late,

forever late in waiting, our wrist watches ticking as if time had no meaning, as if we

weren't hurtling toward the oblivion we had seen in the gaping mouths of boys with guns,

but our clever wives, plucking and pruning and painting themselves, paid us no mind, or else

shouted back that when everyone is late, no one is late.

Which is true in a way, because if we had arrived at six in the evening,

as instructed by Hajjotak, our host would have been horrified to see us standing at his front door

an hour and a half before anyone else.

And so, oddly enough, out of courtesy, yes, courtesy we drove up late to

Hadjahotak's house in West Sacramento, double parking in his

cul-de-sac behind his mailbox or beneath the basketball hoop, almost pulling up onto his immaculately manicured lawn.

...