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��Owls have eyes that match the skies they hunt through. Amber-eyed owls hunt at dawn or dusk; golden-eyed owls hunt during the day; black-eyed owls hunt at night.��


Image: Owls (.)

This is a poignant bildungsroman about a Lebanese girl, living in Scotland. Her first encounter with an owl is scratched deep in her memories: horror, fear, and guilt. Nevertheless, she develops an affinity for a captive owl, and thence the Welsh myth of , ��a beautiful woman, made of flowers, who was turned into an owl��.

Straightforward realism?

"—sometimes—I feel like I'm just a collection of bits of things that someone brought together at random and called girl, and then Anisa, and then��" she shrugs. "Whatever."

You can read this prosaically, picking up facts about owls along the way. Anisa experienced bombing in Lebanon, bullying in Scotland, and sudden surges of anger in both. She finds peace and fascination at the Scottish Owl Centre. The story touches on identity (heritage, difference, assimilation, racism, and feminism) and growing up, but ever so lightly. It’s not an issue-based story; they’re just facets of Anisa’s life. The ending is perfect, and not quite what I expected.

Magical realism

The far better approach is to infer a sprinkling of the magic/alternative reality that is more explicit in the brilliant novel El-Mohtar co-wrote with Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War (see my review HERE), and her short story, Pockets (see my review HERE).

Anisa is drawn to a specific owl whose eyes match her own, and who is named after the mythical .

��The heart-shaped face is alien and eerie and beautiful and like when you can see the moon while the sun is setting, and that there should be a single word for the color of the wings that's like the sheen of a pearl but not the pearl itself.��


Image: “Blodeuwedd �� oak, broom and meadowsweet�� by Jenny Dolfen (.)

It drives Anisa to teach herself Welsh, so she can read the myth in its original language:
��She likes that there is a language that looks like English but sounds like Arabic; she likes that there is no one teaching it to her, or commenting on her accent, or asking her how to speak it for their amusement.��

But the connection goes beyond mere curiosity, fondness, and empathy. There is something mysterious, powerful, and transformative between Blodeuwedd and Anisa. You might even call it magical. I do.


Image: More owls (.)

Owls in culture

I’ve enjoyed owls in children’s books (Old Brown in The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, Wol in The House at Pooh Corner, the Owl Babies, and Hedwig in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone). Twenty years ago, we took our small child to an owl sanctuary much like the one in the story. Other than that, I’ve not really thought about them.

Then, a few months ago, I sought solace from pandemic, politics, and other stresses on Instagram. I am a passive presence, curating a feed of nothing but beauty (no politics, family, or friends). I follow artists, galleries, museums, heritage organisations, national parks and forests, art/nature photography, glassblowers, Chinese architecture, and�� owls. The owls have been the most unexpected and varied delight.

And then I read this story, and learnt a little of the mythology, symbolism, and superstitions around owls (see ). They’re often associated with fear and bad luck! I suppose that’s because they’re predators, mostly hunt at night, and they can rotate their heads 270 degrees, revealing or hiding their big eyes. But I’m a fan. Of owls and El-Mohtar.

Read it on Strange Horizons

You can read or listen to this story (11 pages or 37 minutes): .
It was written in 2014, five years before This Is How You Lose the Time War.

I class this as YA, suitable for children as young as ten or eleven, but it is also an enjoyable quick read for adults.

See also

For a very different take on humans and owls, see Claire Oshetsky's brilliant, raw, and disturbing novel, Chouette, which I reviewed HERE.