The Clothesline Swing

‘We used to play a drinking game,’ the protagonist explains, recalling his former life in Syria: ‘‘‘We drink a shot every time we hear an explosion […a]nd we make out to the sounds of bullets.’…I sat there among half a dozen lesbians and three gay men, and we made out, and we drank, and we touched and sensually played with each other’s bodies, to the rhythm of war” (p. 185). In this snapshot of one of the complex tales that make up The Clothesline Swing, the protagonist tells us about the final house in which he lived in Syria. A house that was a small haven for queer Syrians, a house in which their humanity began to break down, a house that was eventually destroyed in the war.