Exclusive Extract: Borrowing a Head by Abdoo Taj
In this surrealist short story set in Yemen's capital city, playfully satirising an oppressive society – written by Abdoo Taj and translated by Andrew Leber – men, quite literally, lose their heads. This story is part of The Book of Sana'a, the first major collection of Yemeni fiction in translation.
When my head fell off, there on the street, I wasn’t going to bother picking it up. But people were shouting – ‘Your head! Your head!’ – so I told myself maybe it wasn’t appropriate to leave my head in front of them like that. My hands felt around until I gently picked it up.
I set it back down on my neck – longest in the family! – and went on walking briskly towards the junction. There, the bus would take me right to where I had promised Reyhana I would meet her.
‘Baaaab al-Yemen?’ I yelled at the bus driver. He nodded in agreement, so I stepped aboard.
The bus was playing the song ‘Alam Siri’1 as it crept along. The driver moved slowly out of fear of hitting one of the many potholes on Sha’ub Street — the bus would bang around, and heads would fall. Still, the driver got carried away with the rhythm of the song. As it sped up – Alam Siri, Alam Siri … Ala Bismillah Al-Rahman – he sped up too, until one of the passengers shouted out, ‘There are women on this bus!’
Of course, the driver immediately slowed down. It would be deeply shameful for a woman’s head to fall off. (Even though every time I’ve seen a women’s head fall off, it stayed covered up — nothing to be seen.) Much as I didn’t care about any of this – really, not at all! – I still yell for the bus to slow down whenever I happen to be in a bus with women on it, as I personally feel uncomfortable when the bus rattles its way over an especially large pothole.
The bus suddenly stopped right next to an old man and his wife. The grey-haired man sat down next to me, while the old lady headed towards the other women. What if I swapped heads with this old fellow? I wondered. I felt a deep thirst to peek into this life I knew nothing about, the curiosity almost overpowering. He looks to be at least 70 — his life must be interesting! My appetite for borrowing heads knows no limits.
A month ago, I agreed (under duress) to lend my head to my cousin, Bashir. He had returned from Shar’ab2 without a head, and one evening he clenched his hands into fists, beseeching me for my head. I flatly refused. I hate spending gloomy evenings without thinking or chatting, just like I hate sleeping the days away. (Still, I recently gave up my bad habit of sleeping with my body on the bed and my head on the windowsill, Bluetooth headphones in place.) But having said all this, I did feel sorry for Bashir — nothing more boring than spending all day long in his condition!
Ever since he started borrowing my head, our memories have started to mix. Yesterday he went to the mosque to pray the maghrib prayer.3 My head knows it was difficult for him, but he still forced himself to go through with it. Even now, I hear the imam in my head, reciting ‘Surah Ad-Duhaa’ during the first raka’ah.4 Of course, my cousin struggled to follow along, just as you would if your limbs all felt at odds with your mind.
He also went to the grocery store, bought some of those cheap cigarettes, and sat smoking and relaxing while he watched passersby. There are no secrets between us anymore, as sometimes his body retains some exciting memory that he unwittingly empties into my head.
What draws me to start pilfering his memories is one particularly warm recollection — details from an Eid celebration, it seems. Up on a grey cement roof, among family, with plenty of stewed and slow-cooked meat, steaming hot, in clay pots. Lots of women bring dishes to the gathering. The smell of fireworks in the air. Children wearing new clothes, the fabric giving off that unique scent that always captivates me when I inhale it. The smell of meat roasting on the coals inside its tinfoil. A mother’s hand wreathed in henna picking up empty pots from the spread. All intimate moments that I look at as if through my own eyes, a memory of when he felt he could never be happier.
I couldn’t resist my fascination with this memory, and one day I decided to ask him where it came from. He’d never lived a day in a village like the one in this memory! Could he have gained it from somebody else ... ? But to answer any of my questions, we’d need a spare head for him.
I snapped out of my daydream as I noticed the driver turn right. As the bus plodded along, I read the sign for ‘Al-Biruni Clinic’ — the only one I recognised on a road filled with hard-to-memorise shop names. The bus kept moving, heedless of the thoughts boiling over in my head. Every so often passengers called out stops, until the bus finally escaped the afternoon traffic, arrived at Bab al-Yemen, and I got off.
My head fell off for the second time. It rolled along down the road, like an empty can blown by the wind, as I kept running after it. A passerby finally stopped it and gave it back to me. (I meant to say ‘thank you’ but didn’t finish putting the head back on in time.)
I fixed it back in place. Taking out a comb and mirror from my bag, I combed the hair smooth, dusted it off, and said to it, ‘There’s a good noggin,’ patting it as if it were my dog. I walked along the pavement until I turned right, heading towards Old Sana’a to wait for Reyhana, where she would arrive in a quarter of an hour.
The weather was hot as hell. I took shelter under a leafy tree, sitting and watching people walk by: gloomy faces; a dog’s rotting corpse that people trampled on carelessly; a person who put his head on a chair as though he were setting down a jacket, before leaving it to go buy ice cream. Not everyone is curious about what happens to heads. One thing I’ve learned since the war broke out is that people try to steer clear of their heads as though they were landmines. They flee painful memories that their heads tempt them to revisit.
Reyhana arrived, wearing her beautiful hat. We went wandering around Sana’a, intoxicated by the opportunity to be together after so much longing. ‘The weather’s too hot,’ I said to her. ‘Let’s follow the alleyways and stay in the shade.’ She was sweating too, so she agreed.
We walked and talked. Our eyes betrayed a wish that we could get away from all these other people — maybe duck behind a banana seller’s cart, or into a jewellery shop. Just leave everybody behind and kiss each other as we listened to songs. I imagined all of this as her scent wafted over me. I like the way Reyhana smells.
We went to the Burj al-Salam Hotel, an attraction for tourists who have no connection to Sana’a. At the top, though, there is a magical view of the old city as well as the new.
‘Hello! I’d like to go to the top of the building,’ I said as I entered.
‘Do you have ID?’ the reception responded. ‘Proof of marriage?’
‘No,’ I lied, ‘she’s my sister!’
Reyhana could have been my sister, with her wide eyes and wheat-gold complexion. But he would only be convinced by ID. We tried to negotiate with him but after a while he dismissed us rudely.
I felt bad. We made our way slowly back to Bab al-Yemen amid eyes that viewed us with suspicion, or tried to get us to buy things — children’s clothes, fake silver rings, things I’d never even thought of buying because they were so trivial. I suggested we go to the raisin-juice seller — it always tasted so good. But he said they had run out. ‘Do you want barley water instead?’ he suggested. To me, barley was also trivial. We headed back to the centre of the old town, right where we had started.
We meandered among the alleys. As Reyhana looked up at an exquisite Sana’a house, she seemed puzzled. ‘You know what’s so beautiful about old Sana’a? These are just ordinary houses.’ I told her that the architectural design was very old, and that the original design must have formed in someone’s head centuries ago and yet it survives to this day. Centuries seemed to me like eternity, something that called out for wonder and amazement. Yet she was not amazed.
Even though I’d eaten before I set out, I began to feel hungry. My energy levels sank (you know, that uncomfortable feeling that you’re about to collapse). I don’t get it, I thought. Maybe I didn’t eat lunch? But no, I had eaten. There was no reason for this. A person can go eight weeks without eating, I read recently, which is two months. It should take time for my energy to run low, or my blood sugar to drop, or for me to die (for example); nevertheless, I was starting to fade.
I told Reyhana, suggesting we take a break and get a sandwich. She preferred that I go pick them up, so I did. We were sitting under a tree eating them, when she asked me suddenly about happiness.
‘I don’t think I have a right to talk about happiness,’ I replied, ‘because I have never tasted it.’
Reyhana doesn’t know what I hide from everyone — that I feel extremely anxious whenever I’m in a space where I don’t feel comfortable. I feel like my heart is pounding and that I’m going to faint. Where does this come from? I’ve wondered many times.
Was it just irritable bowels, that I suffer from a lot, or an unknown mental illness? I had searched the internet but it didn’t help me. The condition struck me now while I was still sitting there with Reyhana, absent-minded. I felt the fear bubble up inside me, like a gentle stream. I felt a faint pounding in my ears. I got up, telling Reyhana that I was feeling anxious and couldn’t remain seated. But she thought that I was trying to avoid talking to her, and she didn’t believe me. What else for me to do but take off my head for her to make sure.
- A popular Yemeni song (the title translates as ‘If You Don’t Mind’ by Mohamed Morshed Naji, based on a poem by the Yemeni poet Ahmed el-Jabri (1937-2024), in turn inspired by 'Ala Imsiri’, a traditional song to accompany the bride on her way from her parents’ house to the groom’s house on the day of the wedding.
- Shar’ab is a region near the city of Taiz in western Yemen, about a 175 miles south of Sana’a.
- Prayer at sunset.
- One of a number of supplications performed during Muslim prayer.
'Borrowing a Head' features in The Book of Sana'a, the first major collection of Yemeni fiction in translation, edited by Laura Kasinof and published by Comma Press.
