Short-a-Day: Hisham Matar's "Naima"
Originally published in The New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 85.The narrator of this story, Nuri, is writing mainly from an eight-year-old's perspective, talking about his Mother and Father, but the titled protagonist is actually the maid, Naima. Matar's moxie comes from the ways in which he hints at Naima's true role in the family: she was hired at the age of thirteen because Mother…