‘The Book of Sana’a’: A Short-story Collection of Farce, Tricks, Myths, and More

‘The Book of Sana’a’: A Short-story Collection of Farce, Tricks, Myths, and More

By Fifi Bat-hef

Gender-swapping tricksters, farcical hiring practices, detachable heads, and the serious science of speedbumpology populate the newly released Book of Sana’a: A City in Short Fiction, edited by Laura Kasinof and part of Comma Press’s Reading the City series.

The series curates short fiction from a vibrant array of global cities, celebrating their cultural richness and distinct voice. The latest offering journeys to one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world—Sana’a—providing English speaking readers rare access to intimate Yemeni perspectives. The Book of Sana’a showcases Sana’a’s joys, struggles, and contradictions.

Kasinof’s introduction describes the UNESCO-listed Old City’s gingerbread-like mud-brick houses and lively souks, yet also a battleground scarred by civil war and regional conflict. Kasinof grounds the anthology in Sana’a’s recent history – from Ali Abdullah Saleh’s long regime and the Houthi takeover to the Saudi blockade and recent Israeli aggression. This introduces readers to Yemen’s socio-political context while preparing the ground for the authors’ stories.

The Book of Sana’a leans heavily on surrealism and absurdism, genres through which the authors examine their city’s distorted reality. A selection of Sana’a’s more established novelists like Badr Ahmed and Wajdi al-Ahdal—both of whom have books available in English translation—join lesser-known writers like Gehad Garallah and Jamal al-Shaari. The anthology also features several Yemeni women writers, such as Rim Mugahed, whose narrator reflects, “We were very average people – distinguished neither by heroism nor misfortune – colorless, voiceless”—and yet these narratives defiantly reject invisibility.

The anthology’s opens with Mugahed’s powerful creative tribute to the ancient city. Her “The Ruse of Sana’a” casts Sana’a as a living character – part sentinel, part trickster. A young girl masquerades as a boy to provide for her family after her father’s presumed state-driven disappearance, mirroring the city’s mythical duplicity. “Sana’a, she knows… She will do nothing to me, just as she did nothing to the millions… who believed in Sana’a until she crushed them completely,” the narrator says, lamenting the city’s indifference to suffering.

Relying on Sana’a to shield her disguise, the girl discovers Sana’a has been hiding far more from her: “I have known only Sana’a, but Sana’a denies she knows me.” Her ruse echoes the city’s deceit, culminating in a revelation that reshapes the girl’s reality. Talei Lakeland’s translation maintains a poetic cadence, blending personal and urban trickery to elevate the story into an exploration of trust, identity, and the fragile illusions that tether us to hope.

If Rim Mugahed unveils a city that betrays through hidden truths, Hayel al-Mathabi’s “The General Secretariat of Speed Bumps” exposes Sana’a’s farcical governance under Ali Abdullah Saleh’s nepotistic regime. Saleh, who ruled Yemen from 1978 to 2012, was notorious for, among other things, filling key posts with unqualified family members. A prime example was the appointment of his son-in-law Abdul Khaleq Saleh al-Qadi as chairman of Yemenia Airways.

In this story, Mayor Amin Sa’dan, praised for his “unyielding integrity and exacting moral rectitude,” concocts a comically rigged job advert for an engineering position requiring a literature degree, a neck mole, and a tonsillectomy from January 4, 1996. “It is an indisputable fact,” the narrator declares, that Sa’dan’s commitment to “equal opportunity” produces an advert only his brother-in-law, Sami Sarhan, could match.

This razor-sharp satire turns municipal corruption into an absurd circus. Sami, a history graduate, becomes a “Historical Engineer” and a pioneer of “Speedbumpology.” Al-Mathabi’s wit sparkles as bureaucracy veers into the bizarre, with speed bumps hailed as a  “national and archaeological treasure.” Christiaan James’s translation brings out Al-Mathabi’s dry irony, which lays bare corruption’s lunacy, revealing Sana’a’s with a biting humor that slices through the madness of a broken system.

Abdoo Taj’s “Borrowing a Head,” winner of the 2022-23 al-Rabadi Award, builds on al-Mathabi’s surreal comedy to examine Sana’a’s fractured psyche. Set in a Sana’a where heads detach with unusual regularity, the story opens with the narrator’s nonchalant reaction to his head falling off, retrieving it only thanks to societal expectations. “When my head fell off… I wasn’t going to bother picking it up. But people were shouting—‘Your head! Your head!’” The head rolls again, “like an empty can blown by the wind.” Another trivial annoyance.

Taj’s absurd humor, delivered with precision, transforms this graphic image into an uncomfortable topic: mental health. The author makes trauma’s invisible weight darkly comedic. Heads are likened to “landmines,” as Sana’anis “flee painful memories that their heads tempt them to revisit.” In 2024, WHO estimated seven million Yemenis needed psychological support, with widespread PTSD from war, poverty, famine, Houthi detentions, and Saudi-led airstrikes. Borrowing heads—like the narrator’s urge to swap with an old man or lend his to a cousin—reveals a desperate bid to escape trauma-laden minds.

Andrew Leber’s translation captures this blend of absurdity and gravity. When asked about happiness, the narrator confesses, “I don’t think I have a right to talk about happiness because I have never tasted it,” underscoring Sana’a’s pervasive despair.  “Borrowing a Head” uses its bizarre premise to explore what it means to lose oneself – literally or figuratively—in a Sana’a where trauma persists, fueled by war and deprivation.

Gehad Garallah’s “Questions of Running and Trembling,” shifts from surrealism to a Sana’ani home’s tender rhythms, capturing women’s lived experiences in the city. Garallah’s standout debut centers on a young woman’s passion for running, set against her mother’s disapproval. Laura Kasinof’s translation captures Garallah’s deft juxtaposition of “trembling” —the mother’s suffocating anxiety—and “running” —the daughter’s way of breaking free. Everyday moments such as the mother’s trembling hands when combing her hair and her shaky grip of a broom vividly reveal a “broken” woman buckling under “the damage she carried around like baggage.”

The story’s heart lies in the mother-daughter bond, as the narrator grapples with either inheriting fear or forging her own path. “My mother is a fearful woman, and when you’re a daughter, you cannot help but hold your palms outstretched: you will either catch your mother’s fear and become another version of her trembling, or you will let it go, secretly, and claim that your new-found peace of mind is not something you intended. Then your life may be troubled, but you can still reach a state of burgeoning serenity, for all those bruises it’s left you with along the way – they weren’t all terrible.”

Set against Sana’a’s constraints — “in this city, women don’t run” —a shared race between mother and daughter in a walled yard marks a hard-won victory. “Questions of Running and Trembling” meditates on breaking generational cycles, offering quiet hope for young women and mothers everywhere.

While this review spotlights four arresting stories, others in the collection are just as profound. Tales of family djinn, midwives navigating moral dilemmas, and protesters facing brutal oppression deepen Sana’a’s vibrant narrative mosaic. They defy censorship and isolation to reflect Yemenis’ creative storytelling, biting wit, and bold resistance to societal and political constraints.”

Kasinof’s editorial role, as a non-Yemeni, is a delicate balancing act: her introduction provides an accessible entry point for readers unfamiliar with Yemen’s turbulent political history, while leaving space for Sanaani authors to unveil their city’s essence through their own lenses—be it surreal or satirical, mythical or intimate—so that the city’s “heart and soul, spills out onto the pages.” A deeper exploration of how the stories collectively shape Sana’a as a literary entity, perhaps by linking their themes to the city’s mythic, fractured identity, could further enrich her introduction’s framing.

In a city increasingly cut off from the world, both because of a severely restricted local press and reductive portrayal from international media, The Book of Sana’a amplifies Yemeni literary voices. Like Bab al-Yemen, the ancient gate gracing the book’s cover, Sana’a “watches over the tales of those who enter and leave,” guarding stories that demand to be heard. As Kasinof writes, “may we all have the ears to listen.”

Fifi Bat-hef is a literature enthusiast from Mombasa who revels in literary fiction and short stories, with a bias for postcolonial African and Arab narratives. Her reviews have appeared in Lolwe and Middle East Eye.