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

I'm Debra Triesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Hermat Cosme read their story Selection

Week from the August 16th, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Cosme, a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, is a writer from Karachi, Pakistan, who lives

and teaches in Iowa City.

Now here's Hermat Cosme.

Selection Week.

In the beginning, it was him and the gecko.

I was probably the only one in the room who saw it.

My eyes secretly, partially open.

The 14 other boys in the room stood obediently, bent over.

Their underpants at their ankles, bottoms hoisted in the air like mine, eyes shut.

That was the only difference between me and them, them and me.

The gecko was directly above him, dull and textured like a pebble.

It hung upside down in the crack between the two walls, and I thought it might fall.

At any moment, into the crack of his raised ass, out of one crack into another.

I continued to stare at his body despite the looming reptilian danger, but I was scared

that if I stared too long, my dick might become hard, so I closed my eyes.

The silence in the room was interrupted by the drone of the doctor's voice.

All right now, eyes firmly shut.

No looking here and there.

...