This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Trisman, 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.

Cosmi, a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, is a writer from Karachi, Pakistan,

who lives and teaches in Iowa City.

Now here's Hermat Kazmi.

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 bebble.

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.

I want you all to grab your buttocks with your hands and stretch them as far apart as possible.

And when I tap your shoulders one by one, I want you to cough three times. your buttocks with your hands and stretch them as far apart as possible.

...