Rida Altaf (she/her) is a writer based in Karachi, Pakistan, and a recently graduated Fulbright scholar with a master’s degree in comparative literature. She is very much interested in all kinds of weird natural and supernatural stuff, including djinn and black holes. She graduated from the Clarion West Workshop in 2025 and has short fiction published in Tasavvur and forthcoming in Tales & Feathers. In her free time, she likes to read obsessively, chug down huge mugs of chai, and watch random videos about unsettling physics theories. “Judar of the Island: A Story Told in Four Feasts” is her first appearance in Uncanny, a powerful story of magic, privilege, and vivid descriptions of food.

Uncanny Magazine: This is a poignant story of ethics and hypocrisy, structured around four feasts. What was the spark or inspiration for the story?

Rida Altaf: Well, several things inspired this story—and I think it has been in the works for many years, but only in my brain, and not necessarily consciously. Before I wrote this story, I was reading the unabridged Penguin Classics version of The Thousand and One Nights, which spans about 2000+ pages, as part of my degree, and all the characters from Shahrazad’s tales were living rent-free in my head. Judar’s character, however, stood out—not because he acquired a magical ring, but because immediately after he acquired one, he used it to conjure up a bag from which he could extract an endless amount of food. Eventually, he became like all the other heroes, using the ring to build a castle—but I couldn’t help but linger in the moment before the tale swerves into its typical shape. What if, I asked myself, someone acquired a magical ring and only used it for food? What kind of character would they be?

If Judar’s character came from an actual, fictional source, the sisters came from my observation of the world over the past few years, as things are increasingly becoming more violent, and we are increasingly becoming more desensitized. On my own feed, I scroll past videos of mutilated and malnourished children, begging for help, only to be met with videos of viral recipes in the same breath. What is this world we are living in, I keep asking myself, but at the same time, I acknowledge that I am in the same position as the sisters. Privileged enough that it doesn’t directly affect me. That I can ignore it on the pretext of helplessness. But at the same time: I fear that this “pretext of helplessness” is a selfish excuse. And so, I have been running in circles with these thoughts, and I think this story just really helped me put them all down.

Uncanny Magazine: What was your favorite part of writing this story? What was the most difficult thing?

Rida Altaf: I’ll start with the second question first—I think deciding how to tell the story was the most difficult part. I had the characters in mind but didn’t know what to do with the plot, and I had a deadline, because I wrote this story in week one of the Clarion West workshop. In the week leading up to it, I was exposed to the four-act structure by Henry Lien, and as we thought about non-conventional ways of telling stories, I bounced the idea at Kehkashan Khalid and Aishatu Ado, both of whom are my CW classmates (quick shoutout to all of them, by the way, for reading and workshopping the story with me). I remember being tentative, and saying, “I am bad at descriptions, but I think painstakingly describing food is really key to the story here” and after that, it all just flew out of me. I wrote it in one sitting.

My favorite part of writing any story is when a character’s thought comes to me unbidden, and surprises me for a second, because it feels so right. I think I felt that way when Somaiya is watching her sister burn and thinks to herself: Who was the burning man? I should have tried to save him. I think that moment just reveals a lot about Somaiya’s character in few words, but also a lot about human nature, how we don’t think of things deeply unless they affect us directly, and I think that is also part of the larger theme of the story.

Uncanny Magazine: The story has a powerful ending. Did you know that was where it was going all along, or did it come to you as you were writing? What do you hope readers will take away from the story?

Rida Altaf: I am not a big plotter, so I don’t usually arrive at endings, the endings arrive themselves, at my doorstep, if the writing is going well (sometimes, it isn’t and there is no ending and only a horrible draft). Most of the writing for this one was intuitive, but like I said in the first answer, the themes had already been in my head for so long, what came out of me that night just felt right. Which is why answering the second question is hard, because there is no “right” answer here. I think I just want readers to think and arrive at their own conclusions. I want readers to investigate their own helplessness. And I want readers to think about what all of us are complicit in, as a global audience to the suffering of all the oppressed people on the earth.

Uncanny Magazine: How did you choose the foods for the feasts?

Rida Altaf: I think it was pretty random for the most part—I had been eating a lot of different kinds of foods after moving to the US for my degree and all of that seeped into my writing, I suppose. You will notice that I purposefully messed up the English breakfast options though, because it felt like a fun little reverse appropriation to do, especially considering Judar had had a run-in with postcolonial theory as well. Actually it wasn’t a premediated fun thing, it just ended up happening, and then I gave it an explanation. But hey, I am not much of a plotter anyway.

Uncanny Magazine: Who are some of your literary influences? What’s something you read recently and loved?

Rida Altaf: The Thousand and One Nights is a big one, of course, but I already mentioned that. I think apart from that, I am really taken by Saad Z. Hossain’s work—he also writes about djinn and his writing has a comedic flair and a kind of cynicism that I think is reflected somewhat in my story, and I would highly recommend his titles Djinn City and Kundo Wakes Up. As for what I have read recently—well, I just finished It Lasts Forever Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken, and it’s more of a no plot, just vibes, sort of novella, but the prose is so beautiful, it aims straight for the heart. It plays on some zombie tropes and is an excellent meditation on grief.

Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?

Rida Altaf: I am working on a novel and it’s completely out of my wheelhouse because it’s Sci-Fi and I barely studied science as a kid, but I am enjoying reading a bunch of physics books, and learning more and more about black holes and quantum mechanics at the moment. But honestly, all of that is just an excuse to nerd out. At its very essence, this story too is about djinn and sisters, although its focus is less on revolution, and more on interpersonal relationships, the gaps in communication, our obsessions with things, people, the outside word, and the persistent and sometimes futile quest for meaning in an apocalyptic world. It’s still very much in vague blob-like form but hopefully, Insha Allah, once it has marinated enough in my head, it will come out unbidden, and startle me into a powerful ending.

Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!

© 2026 Caroline M. Yoachim

Caroline M. Yoachim is a four-time Hugo and seven-time Nebula Award finalist. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including four times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her short story collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories and the print chapbook of her novelette The Archronology of Love are available from Fairwood Press. For more, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.