Jerusalem is empty. Pilgrims don't come anymore. It's quiet. The temples are full of pigeons. An old lady is on her knees washing the stone pavement with a cloth. Drops of sweat trickle down her forehead. She only stops to take a breath. No one can wash the blood hidden in these stones, I think with a sigh. The old lady continues her ritual, adding soap as well. I smile. A child appears from nowhere. A mother gets frightened. A soldier dies. A father desperately calls out to heaven. Nothing's changed, I tell myself. Tomorrow I'm going home again.
(Translated by Ioana Busuioc / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In May 2022, the group has 8,350 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
