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

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Sadia Shepard read her story, Farron, returned, from the January 8th, 2018 issue of the magazine.

Shepard is a writer and documentary film producer.

Her first book, The Girl from Foreign, a memoir, was published in 2008.

Now here's Sadia Shepard.

Foreign returned.

In Connecticut, Hassan shared a desk with a woman, a girl really.

Later, this would be what he remembered most about the job,

long after the inconvenience of his morning commute, the banality of his days spent making

spreadsheets, and the mediocrity of the cafeteria had faded from memory. He would remember Hina

the way he saw her on her first day, the crunched focus expression on her small, sharp face, as she claimed her

half of the desk, a purse over one arm and a duffel bag over the other, a light sheen of perspiration

on her upper lip, a dark gray headscarf wound tightly around her head, and fixed above her right

ear with a long silver pin.

Hina nodded at Hussin in greeting and then took a brass-colored nameplate out of her purse,

placing it carefully on her side of the desk. It was the kind of thing you might order from a mall

kiosk that specialized in monogrammed gifts.

My name is Hinnabati, she said, pointing at the nameplate in case he hadn't noticed it.

Yes, I see that, Husson said.

Hassan had been at the bank eight weeks, long enough to know that there was a slow way he could

take from the men's room

...