“Ten-Armed Gods”—a short story by Odai Al Zoubi
In a stream of consciousness short story by Odai Al Zoubi, a minister under investigation in the Syrian government awaits his fate.
Ziad Dallal
Odai Al Zoubi is a Syrian short-story writer, essayist, and translator. He lives in Malmö, Sweden. He has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of East Anglia. His short story collections include Nisf ibtisma [A Half Smile] (Mamdouh Adwan Publishing House, 2022); Kitab alhikma wa alsathaja [The Book of Wisdom and Naïveté] (Mamdouh Adwan Publishing House, 2019), Nawafeth [Windows] (Al Mutawassit Publications, 2017), and Al-Samat [Silence] (Al Mutawassit Publications, 2015). He also published a collection of essays, Qindl om hashim almafqūd [Om Hashim’s Lost Lamp] (Syrian League for Citizenship, 2016). Al Zoubi was awarded a 2023 creative and critical writings grant from AFAC (Arab Fund for Arts and Culture) for Empty Heavens, a collection of stories about everyday Syrians in their countries of refuge. His essay in English, “Last Christmas,” can be read and listened to (with Bill Nighy reading): https://www.alxr.com/
Ziad Dallal is an academic, author, and translator. He teaches Arabic literature at Bard College, and has translated essays and short stories for several Arab authors. His areas of research include modern Arabic literature and intellectual history, critical theory, translation theory, political philosophy, philology, Marxism, and film theory. He has written about contemporary Arabic culture and served as lead translator and adviser on This Is Home: A Refugee Story, a 2017 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award winner for World Cinema Documentary. His writing has appeared in Bidayat, Assafir, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Review of Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Arabic Literature, and Beirut Art Center’s The Derivative.