Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome Irish writer Neil Brosnan with “Out of Bounds,” a hopeful story about an immigrant finding unexpected work in a small town in the UK. Asif is doing his best to stay on the margins and out of the way, but he has to survive, and that means taking other people’s leavings and engaging in petty theft.
“The first world is nothing like Asif had been led to believe. His brothers, whose footsteps he followed here nine months ago, never mentioned the chill of frost and snow, the vagaries of wind and rain, and—worst of all—the phenomenon of padlocked garbage bins. Though he hasn’t yet managed to locate his brothers, he has seen photos of them—in newspapers on stands outside city shops—just after fleeing from the truck on which he had stolen into the country. But there had also been police in those photos: pairs of uniformed officers flanking both brothers. Police are never good news: police mean trouble, police are always the enemy—wherever you are.”
Asif is efficient, he has a system, but he is barely scraping by and their is always a threat of being arrested or attacked for behavior that keeps him alive. He can’t stay in one place too long. Today he notices a group of boys and girls in uniforms near the hotel. Curious, he gets close and is mistaken for one of them. Will he find a way to belong and a better way to survive?
A masterful storyteller, Neil paints an honest, completely believable picture of Asif. There are countless like him in countries all over the world, fleeing hunger, oppression, war. We admire this young man, scarcely more than a boy, for his resourcefulness, intelligence and his surprising sense of wonder. We want better for him than a life on the street, sleeping on cardboard in a building under construction and poorly secured. Just like poet Charlie Brice’s elephants in “They Were Tiny Once,” he has experienced a perilous journey and no one celebrates his survival. But opportunity and kindness, so often the exception and seldom the rule, bloom for him.
Read “Out of Bounds” in Synkroniciti’s “Belonging” issue, available for pre-order here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. Asif won my heart and I feel confident he will win yours.
After thirty years as singer/guitarist with traditional Irish music groups, Neil Brosnan grew weary of the road and decided to try his hand at fiction writing. His first publication was in Ireland’s Own magazine in 2004. Soon afterwards, he won his first short story competition and since then over one hundred of his stories have appeared in print and digital anthologies and magazines in Ireland, Britain, Europe, Australia, India, the USA and Canada.
A Pushcart nominee, he is a winner of The Bryan MacMahon, The Maurice Walsh, (five times) and The Ireland’s Own, (twice) short story awards. He has published two short story collections: ‘Fresh Water & other stories’ (Original Writing, 2010) and ‘Neap Tide & other stories’ (New Binary Press, 2013).