Contemporary Authors

• Fullblood Arabian ( short stories; translated by C. J. Collins, with the author; preface by Lydia Davis) New Directions (New York, NY), 2014
• The Teeth of the Comb & Other Stories ( translated by C. J. Collins, with the author) New Directions (New York, NY), 2017

1.  Fullblood Arabian LCCN 2013030594 Type of material Book Personal name Alomar, Osama, 1968- author. Uniform title Short stories. Selections. English Main title Fullblood Arabian / Osama Alomar ; translated from the Arabic by C. J. Collins, with the author ; preface by Lydia Davis. Published/Produced New York : New Directions, [2014] Description 63 pages ; 23 cm. ISBN 9780811221764 (paperback : alk. paper) CALL NUMBER PJ7914.L586 A2 2013 Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms Shelf Location FLM2016 009744 CALL NUMBER PJ7914.L586 A2 2013 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 2.  The teeth of the comb & other stories LCCN 2016039664 Type of material Book Personal name Alomar, Osama, 1968- author translator. Uniform title Short stories. Selections. English Main title The teeth of the comb & other stories / Osama Alomar ; translated from the Arabic by C.J. Collins with the author. Published/Produced New York : New Directions Books, 2017. Description 102 pages ; 21 cm ISBN 9780811226073 (alk. paper) CALL NUMBER PJ7914.L586 A2 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/books/osama-alomar-pursues-his-literary-ambitions-in-exile.html?mcubz=1

  Taking Fares, and Writing in Between
  Osama Alomar Pursues His Literary Ambitions in Exile
  By LARRY ROHTERMAY 2, 2014
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  CHICAGO — In the Arab world, the Syrian writer Osama Alomar has a growing reputation as the author of short, clever parables that comment obliquely on political and social issues. But here, where he has lived in exile since 2008, he spends most of his time as the driver of Car 45 at the Horizon Taxi Cab company.
  Up to a dozen hours a day, six days a week, Mr. Alomar cruises the northwest suburbs around O’Hare Airport in his bright blue cab, dictionaries and a volume of Khalil Gibran piled beside him. When parked in line waiting for a fare to appear, he pulls out a notebook and tries to write.
  “Driving a cab is hard work and very hard psychologically, because it takes me away from writing,” Mr. Alomar, who turns 46 on Saturday, said in an interview here recently at a coffee shop and in his cab. “It is a kind of spiritual exile to go with my physical exile. But I have to be strong. I have to be patient.”
  On Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Alomar, whose first book to be translated into English, “Fullblood Arabian,” was recently published by New Directions, will take a brief respite from that grueling routine to attend the PEN World Voices literary festival in New York. He is scheduled to take part in two panels: “Creativity and Craft in Asylum,” on Saturday, and a Sunday afternoon conversation with the American writer Lydia Davis, who has emerged as his biggest champion, and the Icelandic writer Sjon.
  Photo

  The Syrian writer Osama Alomar in his cab in the Chicago suburbs.
  Credit
  Nathan Weber for The New York Times
  Mr. Alomar’s super-short stories “are very imaginative and vivid and exhilarating,” said Ms. Davis, whose own work often occupies a terrain similar to Mr. Alomar’s in terms of length and tone. “Some are dark and angry, while others are funny. They are compact stylistically, wasting no words, and they go quickly from one moment to the next and on to the end. So they have density, but also are sort of explosive, with an aftershock, because they seem to tell one story at the same time they are telling another.”
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  Mr. Alomar sees himself as an heir of a literary form, now called al-qissa al-qasira jiddan, or very short story, that in the Arab world dates back more than a millennium and contains elements of poetry, philosophy, folk tale and allegory. “Fullblood Arabian” was, in fact, issued as part of a poetry series that includes work by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Hilda Doolittle, and the stories in the book run no longer than three pages, with the shortest being only one sentence.
  Muhsin al-Musawi, a Columbia University professor and literary critic who is also the editor of The Journal of Arabic Literature, described the genre Mr. Alomar has embraced as “similar to the riddle or puzzle,” but requiring “a high level of prose.” As such, he added, “it offers a way out of many restrictions and constraints without being very explicit.”
  Certainly, many of Mr. Alomar’s stories make use of ambiguities, especially in relation to the political scene. Here, in its entirety, is “Tongue-Tie,” the title piece of one of his three collections published in Arabic: “Before leaving for work I tied my tongue into a great tie. My colleagues congratulated me on my elegance. They praised me to our boss, who expressed admiration and ordered all employees to follow my example.”
  C. J. Collins, Mr. Alomar’s translator, remembers meeting the writer for the first time in Damascus in 2007. Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, had eased some restrictions on private gatherings, and Mr. Alomar was a regular at salons that had then sprung up, where invited speakers would address political, cultural and social topics, but steer clear of directly criticizing the dictatorship.
  Photo

  Mr. Alomar works long days as a cabdriver in the Chicago area.
  Credit
  Nathan Weber for The New York Times
  “In the discussions that would come afterward, Osama’s stories would come up spontaneously as a way of driving home an intellectual point in a poetic fashion,” Mr. Collins recalled, adding, “In the States, it is putting literature down to call it utilitarian, but for me it was quite striking to see his work put to this really concrete use.”
  Mr. Alomar was born in 1968 in Damascus, where his father was a philosophy professor and his mother an elementary school teacher. He read widely from his parents’ library, studied Arabic literature in college and sang and played guitar in a pop band. When the BBC’s Arabic service broadcast a poem he had submitted, he became convinced that he had a future as a writer.
  Thanks in part to that upbringing, “I’m very interested in social and political movements,” he said. “Especially in my own country, but in the Middle East in general. As a secular person, I believe in democracy and individual freedom. There is a lot of persecution and oppression.”
  Asked about his literary influences, Mr. Alomar, who speaks accented but nearly fluent English, produced a diverse list. Gibran, the Lebanese poet who wrote “The Prophet” and lived for many years in the United States, is at the top, but Mr. Alomar also cited Aesop, Hemingway (not surprising for a writer who values terseness and brevity), the British novelist and philosopher Colin Wilson and Kafka.
  Emulating Gibran, Mr. Alomar came to the United States in 2008 to join his mother and an older brother. From an apartment near O’Hare, he has watched on CNN and Al-Jazeera over the last three years as his country has disintegrated into civil war, and he finds it agonizing.
  Photo

  When Mr. Alomar is parked in a taxi line waiting for a fare, he pulls out his notebook and tries to write.
  Credit
  Nathan Weber for The New York Times
  “At the beginning, I was optimistic, because the Syrian people had an awareness about their freedom,” he said. “Now I’m not, because we have a lot of obscurants, even in the opposition. To see this suffering, it breaks my heart every day.”
  If his exile started voluntarily, it would be difficult to return to Damascus now, Mr. Alomar said, and not just because he is so publicly identified with opposition to the Assad dictatorship. This year, he said, an apartment he owns there was destroyed in a bombing, and he lost not only his library and Fender guitar and amp, but also many manuscripts, including a novel.
  “I lost everything, but I have to be wise about this,” he said. “I have to live with it. I have anger, but I keep it inside me. You can take it two ways, and I want that this can be a positive experience.”
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  Like Gibran, Mr. Alomar now aspires to write in both Arabic and English: “My goal, my aim, is to become an American writer,” he said. Inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Nausea,” he has begun a novel that he said will be written in the form of a journal kept by a fetus, even as he continues to write his short stories.
  Yet the long hours behind the wheel trying to make his weekly nut limit his opportunities to write and to meet people other than passengers who know nothing of his story and aren’t necessarily interested in Syria’s conflagration.
  “I feel isolated in my cab,” he said. “I like my life here, but to be honest with you, I am homesick, too. I have a lot of memories of every corner, of every stone in Damascus. But this is my new country, and I want to penetrate it.”

• Wikipedia -

  Osama Alomar
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  This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
  Osama Alomar (Arabic: اسامة الحويج العمر) born Damascus, Syria, 1968, is a Syrian short story writer poet and essayist. He is especially recognized for his work in the "very short story" medium. He has published three fiction collections in Arabic: أيها الانسان (O Man), ربطة لسان (Tongue Tie), and جميع الحقوق غير محفوظة (All Rights Not Reserved), as well as one volume of poetry, قال إنسان العصر الحديث (Man Said the Modern World). The 2007 winner of Egypt's Najlaa Muharam Short Story Contest, his work has been heard on the BBC Arabic Service and he is a regular contributor to various newspapers and journals in Syria and the Arab community, including Tishrin, an-Nur, Spot Light, al-Halil, Adab wa Naqd, and al-Ghad. His work has appeared in English translation in Noon (Literary Annual), Gigantic (magazine), Coffin Factory, and The Literary Review, as well as the online journals Conjunctions and The Outlet. Alomar is currently based in Chicago.

  Contents  [hide] 
  1
  Bibliography
  1.1
  Works in Arabic
  1.2
  Publications in English
  2
  External links

  Bibliography[edit]
  Works in Arabic[edit]
  أيها الانسان (O Man). Beirut, 1999. Short Stories.
  قال إنسان العصر الحديث (Man Said the Modern World). Damascus, 2000. Poetry.
  ربطة لسان (Tongue Tie). Damascus, 2003. Short Stories and Meditations.
  جميع الحقوق غير محفوظة (All Rights Not Reserved), 2008. Short Stories.
  Publications in English[edit]
  "Seven Very Short Stories" in Noon 2010.
  "Eleven Stories" in Web Conjunctions, May 3, 2011.
  "Two Stories by Osama Alomar" in The Outlet, March 18, 2011.
  "Breaking News" (10 stories) in "Coffin Factory" vol. 1, #2, February 2012.
  "Selections from All Rights Not Reserved, Tongue Tie, and O Man." in "The Literary Review" vol.55, no. 2 (Spring 2012).
  "Fullblood Arabian Horse" translated by C. J. Collins with the author, a New Directions Poetry Pamphlet
  "Four Very Short Stories" in "Gigantic" issue 6, October 2014.
  The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories translated by C. J. Collins with the author. New Directions, 2017.

• New Yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/no-longer-driving-a-cab-a-syrian-writer-in-america-focusses-on-his-fiction

  No Longer Driving a Cab, a Syrian Writer in America Focusses on His Fiction
  By Mythili G. Rao
  May 8, 2017

  Osama Alomar drove a cab for years after leaving Syria for the U.S. But for now, at least, he's writing full time.PHOTOGRAPH BY NATHAN WEBER / NYT / REDUX

  In 2014, Osama Alomar was working as a cab driver in Chicago when he learned that the suburb of Zamalka, just outside the heart of Syria’s capital, Damascus, had been destroyed by the fighting that continues to ravage his country. The apartment house that Alomar had lived in for five years before leaving for the United States, and everything in it—his furniture, clothing, guitar, and, most painfully, his library of old and rare books, including volumes he’d inherited from his father and grandfather—had been reduced to rubble. “I’m homesick, but I cannot go back,” he told me recently. “I would be homeless.”
  Before he left Syria, in 2008, Alomar’s fiction and poetry had been published in four collections; he’d won literary prizes and had his work broadcast on the BBC. Now his entire personal archive was lost. “All my published poems, stories, interviews I had done in journals and magazines. Everything. I was completely shocked to learn that it was all gone,” he said. Also lost were the manuscripts of several writing projects in progress, including a completed autobiographical novel, called “The Jagged Years.”
  The plan had been to establish himself as a writer in the United States, but it took Alomar six years to get a collection of his stories published in translation. “From the outside looking in—from a country like Syria—America looks like Heaven,” Alomar said. After he arrived, the relentless economic pressure startled him. He had not expected to encounter so much poverty and homelessness. “People have to work almost day and night to make their living,” he said. “It’s not easy at all. Everybody has to wake up early, too early, to work all day long.”
  He saw them every morning, clutching their coffee, waiting for the El before dawn at the Rosemont station, the busiest transit station outside Chicago city limits. Alomar spent nine- and ten-hour days driving his cab; he typically arrived at the station by 5 or 6 A.M. to receive passengers. In the car, he kept an English-Arabic dictionary, a thesaurus, a few reference books, some American fiction, and a favorite edition of the work of Kahlil Gibran. Sometimes, his translator, C. J. Collins, rode around with him, too. While they waited for the next fare, they’d work on translating Alomar’s work into English. Line by line, they discussed grammar, idioms, tone, style. The result of their efforts, a collection titled “Fullblood Arabian,” was published by New Directions, in 2014. Lydia Davis wrote a preface. Alomar sold about eighty-five copies directly to passengers in his cab.
  In April, New Directions published a second collection, “The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories.” Like “Fullblood Arabian,” it features a selection of stories that Collins translated from Alomar’s three Arabic collections. These are very short stories—they might be called flash fiction in the U.S., but in the Middle East they are known as _al-_qissa al-qasira jiddan. There, the genre has a rich, ancient history, and, in recent decades, repression and unrest have brought the style back into fashion. Very short stories can be published and circulated quickly; their political critique is often sharp but also oblique enough to evade censorship. Collins told me that there’s a “kind of Arabic literature that wins international prizes and gets translated quickly into English but that doesn’t reflect the popular literature.” By contrast, he said, “Osama’s work comes from the popular tradition. Even though his stuff gets billed as experimental over here, it was designed to have a popular appeal in the Arab world.”
  Collins first encountered Alomar’s writing in 2006, while on a Fulbright in Syria. “I heard his stories spoken out loud before I actually read them,” he said. “These things were going viral in the age before viral videos.” Collins was supposed to be doing doctoral research on the history of French influence in the Middle East, but he discovered that Damascus’s literary scene interested him more than his dissertation topic did. He began attending a monthly literary salon held in the home of the feminist activist and writer Sahar Abu Harb. That’s where he met and befriended Alomar.
  The short story is a “critical genre in Syrian literature,” Hanadi Al-Samman, a professor of modern Arabic literature at the University of Virginia, told me. In “Literature from the ‘Axis of Evil,’ ” an anthology compiled by Words Without Borders, Al-Samman explains that “Syria’s literary tradition has been greatly intertwined with its political background.” After the rise of the Baathist Party, in 1963, newspapers, books, media, and film became heavily censored. “In the face of threats of persecution or imprisonment,” according to Al-Samman, Syrian writers “had to make a choice between living a life of artistic freedom in exile . . . or resorting to subversive modes of expression that seemingly comply with the authoritarian police state while undermining and questioning the legitimacy of its rule through subtle literary techniques.”
  Alomar, in a sense, chose both. Though he never mentions specific countries or heads of state by name—more than one of his Syrian writer friends who dared to do so were tortured or went missing—many of his stories are overtly political. One titled “Free Elections” is, in English, just more than thirty words long: “When the slaves reelected their executioner entirely of their own accord and without any pressure from anyone, I understood that it was still very early to be talking about democracy and human dignity.” Another, titled “A Handkerchief of Freedom,” reads even more like a fable: “The dictator sneezed. He pulled Freedom from his pants pocket and blew his nose. Then he threw her away in the wastebasket.”
  Other stories are more opaque. Animals—dogs, horses, and wolves—take on leading roles, as do all manner of inanimate objects. Clocks shout slogans, lightning taunts thunder, flutes envy cannons, days of the week bicker. A story titled “A Flag of Surrender” could be about many things, both political and personal: “A thorn daringly pierced a jasmine petal and felt proud. She didn’t realize that in so doing she had become a flag of surrender.”
  On the phone, Alomar quickly rattled off his topics of choice to me: “human dignity, human rights, happiness, success, failure, equality, inequality, tolerance.” Given how essential both brevity and ambiguity are to his style, translation can be particularly difficult. “There’s not a lot of room to get a single word wrong,” Collins said. Despite their punchiness and precision, the stories can make for challenging reading as well. “You can’t tune out for a moment,” Collins told me. “You have to catch every word.”
  Alomar lives in Pittsburgh now, through a yearlong residency funded by the Pittsburgh City of Asylum program. (After abandoning his doctoral studies, Collins became a librarian and settled in Canada.) He finally has time to rest, to think, and, of course, to write—on his own terms. “I’m not like an employee at my desk,” he said. “I write where I want. In my bed. Outside. In the park. In a café.”
  But the freedom and peace of mind that he thought he might find in the U.S. when he left Syria, all those years ago, still eludes him. “When I woke up on the morning of November 9th and found out the results of the election, I felt like I had traveled backwards hundreds of years,” Alomar wrote in a short essay published in Sampsonia Way magazine, a publication of the City of Asylum program, shortly after the election. “Is the future walking with firm footsteps towards the dark corridors of the past, holding high the banner of intolerance and hate?”
  After nearly a decade in the U.S., Alomar has yet to write fiction set in this country. “I couldn’t write a word about my experience as a cab driver,” he told me. “Maybe because I hated it so much, I couldn’t get any inspiration.” After his year in Pittsburgh, his plans aren’t certain. For now, he’s working on a novel about the Syrian War.
  Collins, for his part, does not romanticize Alomar’s time as a cab driver, but he does think back on the long hours they spent in the car with a certain fondness. “It’s kind of an amazing thing and an exciting thing, to be able to take the work of an author you admire and sit with the author and ask him, ‘What did you mean here, what’s that word about?’ He’s so clearly, totally dedicated to his craft. I haven’t been around many people like that.” Still, watching Alomar’s career up close has been sobering. “It’s been an eye-opener, seeing just how few people make a living as writers,” Collins said. “I hope he’ll find something more nourishing and valorizing than driving a taxicab.”

• From Publisher -

  Osama Alomar
  Syrian-American poet and short story writer
  Born in Damascus, Syria in 1968 and now living in Pittsburgh, Osama Alomar is the author of three collections of short stories and a volume of poetry. He is a regular contributor to various newspapers and journals within the Arab world.

• Los Angeles Review of Books - https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/stories-like-bullet-interview-osama-alomar/

  Stories Like a Bullet: An Interview with Osama Alomar
  April 28, 2017 LARB Blog Leave a comment
  By Sam Jaffe Goldstein                                                         
  Who among us is not spending most of her time trying to understand the complexities of the times? How can we even begin to grapple with it all? Is comprehension even possible? Osama Alomar’s very short stories (or in Arabic, “al-qisa al-qasira jiddan”) do not offer answers. What they do provide is a necessary reminder of the importance of protecting the human spirit — a worthy touchstone, when confronting darkness.
  In his allegorical stories, sometimes just a sentence long, Alomar anthropomorphizes concepts, objects, animals, and nature, animating them to create parables about the trials of daily life. Alomar began his career in Damascus, Syria, where he lived before immigrating to Chicago almost 10 years ago. New Directions published Alomar’s first work in English, Fullblood Arabian, in 2014, and recently released his collection The Teeth of the Comb & Other Stories. Both are translated by C. J. Collins. Alomar and I spoke about his recent move to Pittsburgh for the City of Asylum program, the power of the imagination, and how to bypass censorship.

  SAM JAFFE GOLDSTEIN: What was the journey to getting The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories published?
  OSAMA ALOMAR: It was through my agent Denise Shannon, who was trying to publish my first book in English. She sent my manuscript everywhere, and finally New Directions accepted it. They published my first book, the pamphlet Fullblood Arabian, in January 2014. That was my first English publication, and The Teeth of the Comb is my first book-length work in English.
  How does it feel to see your books translated and out in the U.S.?
  I am really happy, because this was my goal. That’s why I decided to immigrate to the U.S. — to establish my name as writer in English, here in the United States, and to be free.
  Do you feel that you have been able to establish your freedom?
  There are no absolutes in life; there’s no absolute freedom, but it is much better than the freedom of the Middle East. Here, I can talk. There is a lot of tolerance. I have met really nice people, and my best friend and translator is American — C. J. Collins. I first met him in Damascus in 2006, then he became my best friend.
  How has the translation process changed for you? Your first book was translated by C. J. Collins, while the second was translated by both of you. 
  Both of those books were translated by C. J. and me. We translated in the front of my cab in Chicago. As people say, necessity is the mother of invention. I had to work seven days a week, and I could not stay home and translate because I would lose money. We had no choice, I had to work and at the same time translate, so my cab is where most of these translations happened.
  Some customers were surprised when they noticed my dictionaries and books. Some of them asked, “what are you doing?” I told them, “translating stories,” and  it was surprising for them. C. J. and I tried our best to be honest to the original text. It was very hard work, and it took us a very long time. We revised the whole text many, many times.
  What is it like to write a parable? Do you find it easier to find freedom in parables?
  A parable means that you can get wisdom out the story. In the Middle East, I do find it easier to find freedom in parables, because it can take more than one interpretation.
  I understand that your short stories come out of a specific Middle Eastern literary tradition. How do different audiences respond to your work? 
  In Syria, people told me that my stories were very strange, but they also liked them. American audiences encourage me a lot, even more than my Syrian audiences. I don’t know why, but Americans respond well. Especially at events, I notice their reaction right away. They like the black comedy of them — that these stories can make you think and laugh at the same time.
  Can you talk about your use of humor?
  I wrote most of these stories when I was in Syria, and because of the dictatorship most of my stories are political and social. However, there was also very strict censorship, and I used humor in my stories to allow for more than one interpretation, to avoid being censored. It also allows you to realize the difference between one reader and another, how their experience changes their interpretation of the story. There is also something in my nature; since I was a teeenager I have loved these kinds of stories. I read Aesop’s fables and Franz Kafka. Kafka was not only a writer, he was a philosopher. Many people think that he was gloomy, a cynic, but he predicted what’s going on right now. Especially Metamorphosis — I love this story. It is a very strange story, but it is also a projection on our present life, and our future life, too.
  What are the benefits of writing stories that can have multiple interpretations? 
  Some might understand it as a social story, others as a political story, others can understand it as a story about nature and animals. I write a lot of stories about animals, and people who love animals tell me: “I love your stories, because you talk about animals and nature.” There are many differences between people. 
  Is it difficult to bring animals to life?
   No, it’s easy for me, I love this style. From the beginning I have written this type of story. Because I love animals, I love nature, and I also love anthropomorphism and personification. There is always projection on humans in these kinds of stories, with animals, nature, and even with objects.
  How do you decide to bring something to life? In one of your stories, human dignity is a character — what are the steps you take to turn human dignity to life?
  I cannot control the idea, it comes all of a sudden like a shooting star in the sky. It comes, for instance, from thinking about a tree, a blade of grass, a hedgehog, a wall, from anything. Then I start to work on the idea, sometimes it takes a few days, sometimes a few weeks, sometimes months. But the idea imposes itself on me. I get ideas from everywhere, because my mind is always working on something. Especially when I start reading books or creative works, I can get inspiration from my reading. If I feel that I need to get more ideas, I start reading. I read short stories, novels, and philosophy, I love philosophy.
  What philosophers do you read? How do they influence your work?  
  I love philosophy; my father was a philosophy teacher and he influenced me a lot. When I was a teenager, I wanted to read these books but could not, because they are very difficult. As a teenager, it is better for you to read literature. Later I started to read the philosophers who discuss human rights. Especially the French philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu. They influenced me a lot.
  How do you hope literature helps human rights?
  In my first book in English, Fullblood Arabian, there is a story entitled “Human Rights.” I imagine human rights as a beautiful woman. People rape her, kill her, crush her, and take very nice perfume from her body. Literature can make us more aware; people like to read stories and novels much more than they like to read philosophy. With my stories we can talk about literature and human rights and dignity in a pointed and artistic way. Then people can go read about human rights and dignity.
  Who are your stories written for?
   I always try and write my stories to all people, not to any specific group or people. I’m always trying to write about love, about fate, about human dignity, about human rights, about equality. Especially now, because there is so much hatred. Our world is very small and there are no barriers between hate and love. We need to get rid of all this hatred. However, it looks like the opposite is happening right now.
  Something that comes up in your stories is that ideas are dangerous. How do your stories confront dangerous ideas?
  I hope that my stories can make more awareness about what’s going on in Syria, and wherever people are under persecution. Whether they are facing a regime, or getting tortured by their government.
  A word that you use often in your stories is “tyranny.” Do you feel that American readers need to be more aware of this word and this concept?
  In my stories, my goal is to create awareness about tyranny in the Middle East and Syria. Now everyone knows Syria because of the war, and this is based on the tyrannical regime. Now the Syrian issue is number one in the whole world. So, through mine and others’ writing, we can be aware of tyranny in general and especially in the Middle East. We live in a very small world, some people think of Syria as a very far place, even as another planet. What goes on Syria now affects the whole world. There are Syrian refugees everywhere now.
  Your stories are very imaginative. Do you find that people need more imagination?  
  No. People have very good imaginations. I always write stories for everybody, because everyone has a smart mind. I want all my readers to be creatives readers and to think about my stories. That’s why I do not go directly to the political, I want my reader to use their mind to get the idea, to work on the idea.
  Are you ever a character in your stories? The story Journey To Me feels so personal, like I’m hearing about your life.  
  I wrote this story in Syria and it was published in Syria. I was not talking about myself, but about humans in general, about human psychology and human spirit. I think the human spirit in a psychological way is much bigger than humans, and much more complicated than our universe. I was also influenced by Freud and Jung in this story.
  As a writer that investigates the human spirit, how do you think we should understand it? What are some of the tools we can use?
  I think it is very difficult to understand it. Even with the most genius psychologists, it is almost impossible. The main tool is imagination. Not only in writing but in all kinds of creative works, even in science. Imagination is the most effective tool for everything.
  Has your writing changed since moving to America?
  Because I feel free, the novel I am writing now is much more direct than my fables and very short stories. The novel is about the Syrian war; I’m going directly to the point, there is an immediacy. I don’t want to be symbolic in this novel. It goes directly to the Syrian disaster. Because there’s no chance to avoid it, or try and take more than one interpretation. There is something urgent.
  I lost an unpublished novel in Syria, which was ready to be published in Arabic. When I left, I thought I would be able to go back-and-forth between here and Syria every two or three years. I left manuscripts, short stories, and poems, which were all ready to publish. It breaks my heart.
  How does it feel to write after losing so much?
  It feels very sad; I lost my apartment, I lost everything there. However, I always say to myself, “I am still alive, I’m still writing, I’m still thinking. I am very lucky in comparison to other people.” Look what’s happening with Syrian refugees. So, despite my loss, I’m so lucky. It is still unbelievable for me. Syria looks like hell now. I feel sorry for the people, the civilians, women, and children.
  I find your stories easily sharable, do you ever think about how your stories could spread while you write them?  
  Maybe because they are quite short, many people have told me they are just like tweets. People can share them easily, and I like that. Many people ask me: “Why keep writing very short stories? Why don’t you write longer stories?” And I always say that to me these short stories are like a bullet. A very fast bullet. Give me your idea — and that’s it. I don’t want to keep on talking and talking for nothing. In my novel I keep talking.
  Have you continued to write these stories in America? Or have you been mostly working on your novel? 
  Now I am working on the novel. It takes up almost all of my time. I’m not in a hurry with it. At the same time, I want to keep writing short stories, besides the novel.
  You’re living in Pittsburgh now. How is that? 
  It is a great city, a wonderful place, with wonderful people. Finally I have peace of mind, because I was driving a cab in Chicago for over eight years. That was a serious hardship. I’m writing now; I’m a full-time writer, working on my new novel.
  Do you go on a lot of walks?
  When I was in Syria I was a very good walker. When I started driving cab in Chicago I forgot everything about walking, because I was driving seven days a week, sometimes 10 hours a day. Now in Pittsburgh I am walking everyday. In Pittsburgh now I am going back to my soul to myself. In Chicago, where I was driving a cab, I felt as if I lost myself. Now I am going back to Osama the writer. Writing is my blood, it’s my blood and my soul.

• Pittsburgh City Paper - https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/a-conversation-with-osama-alomar/Content?oid=4320853

  A Conversation with Osama Alomar 
  The City of Asylum writer-in-residence from Syria on style, substance and not being understood
  By Stuart Sheppard

  Photo courtesy of Renee Rosensteel
  Author Osama Alomar
  Osama Alomar is the kind of person who speaks softly, but leans forward so you can hear him clearly. Raised in Syria by a book-loving family — his father taught philosophy and his mother, elementary school — he started writing when he was 13, inspired by the works of Kahlil Gibran, who “was the writer who made me decide to become a writer.” 
  Alomar wanted to come to America around the age of 18, but had to finish college first. After several years, he started writing full time, focusing on short stories, poetry and essays. Alomar’s early work was published in newspapers, and the BBC Arabic Service. At 30, he published his first book, O Human, in Arabic. [Editor’s note: While censorship is common in Syria, Alomar does not cite it as a major factor in his writing.]
  Eventually, Alomar moved to Chicago, where he drove a cab for eight years, as he couldn’t get any other job. He logged 11-hour shifts, seven days a week. This was a depressing period of his life. 
  He had little time to write, but still managed to collaborate with his translator, C.J. Collins, who sat next to him in the cab, translating, as he drove. Alomar’s works are mostly very short stories, some of them parable-like; his first full-length work to be translated into English was the collection Fullblood Arabian, in 2014. The book drew national media attention, and praise from admirers including the writer Lydia Davis.
  Alomar, now 49, applied to City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, and in Februrary was awarded a one-year residency, on the North Side. He loves to write at Starbucks, and composes with pen and paper, not a computer. His latest book is The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories (New Directions Press).
  The style of The Teeth of the Comb could be called aphoristic. Why this style?
  The style chose me. I don’t care about genre. The most important thing for me is to put my heart and soul on paper. To be honest with myself and with my readers. I always try to make my stories open texts. I want to make my readers think a lot about my texts because I respect my readers. I want them to use their minds.
  Do people ever misunderstand your stories?
  Sometimes they say, “What do you mean? Your writing is very mysterious.” I say, “I cannot explain it to you. You need to explain it to yourself.” My stories are not beach books.
  Which writers have influenced you?
  The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edgar Allan Poe was a genius in my opinion. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea influenced me a lot. Herman Melville was a great novelist. John Steinbeck. Several French writers: Rousseau, Sartre, Camus — especially The Stranger. And Nietzsche, Kafka.
  How about Arabic writers?
  We have a great poet, Muhammad al-Maghout, who passed away a few years ago. He was Syrian. Also, the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, who won the Nobel Prize. And the Syrian poet Adonis. [Editor’s note: “Adonis” is the pen name of Ali Ahmad Said Esber.]
  Did you leave Syria because of the war?
  I left before the war, in 2008. I came to the U.S. to establish my name as a writer, and to establish my freedom, too. As a writer, I can do nothing without freedom. Freedom is creativity. Creativity is freedom. That’s why I publish my books in Lebanon, because there’s no censorship there.
  Did coming here change the way you write?
  No.
  What are you working on now?
  A novel about the Syrian war. It’s taking a while. I’m in no rush because I want to make it a good story.
  You write in Arabic, then work with your collaborator to translate into English. Describe this process.
  If you want to translate a creative work, you need to be creative, too. When Baudelaire translated Poe into French, the translation was better than the original text. Why? Because Baudelaire himself was a great artist. C.J. and I spend many, many days on translating: revising, revising. It’s a very long process and not easy at all. But it’s very exciting.
  Are you better understood here, or in Arabic countries?
  Very good question. Many people told me, “Even in Syria, your style is very strange.” Whether in Syria, or here. I always hear that.
  So which audience is more understanding?
  Actually, young people. Young people like my writings a lot. I’m happy for that.
  What’s it like living in Pittsburgh?
  It’s a wonderful place. I’m happy here because it was a tipping point in my life. I went back to my soul. To my real life, writing, reading. It’s a quiet city and I’m a quiet person.
  Any final thoughts?
  In my writing, I want to create more awareness of the Syrian disaster. There are victims every day. Innocent people. Women and children. It’s hell. As you know there’s Syrian refugees everywhere now, maybe even in outer space.

Alomar, Osama: THE TEETH OF THE COMB & OTHER STORIES

(Feb. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Alomar, Osama THE TEETH OF THE COMB & OTHER STORIES New Directions (Adult Fiction) $13.95 4, 25 ISBN: 978-0-8112-2607-3
Elegant, often elegiac sketches by Syrian-born writer Alomar, now a resident of Chicago."He was born with a silver knife in his mouth. And he was its first victim." Thus, in its entirety, one of Alomar's short stories, this one with the simple title "The Knife." Others stretch out to a page, a few others a little more than that, but all are masterpieces of compression, presented with the generally unironic matter-of-factness of a fable that, no matter how improbable the circumstances, behaves perfectly well according to its own logic: that knife could be literal just as easily as metaphorical, considering the violence and mayhem of the world. The title story is a sly allegory about the human desire for--well, for better circumstances than most of us enjoy, anyway, the teeth of the comb standing for aspirations that, even when fulfilled, do not go unpunished. Occasionally Alomar goes full-tilt for the classical fable, letting animals and sometimes even plants stand in for human beings; when humans and the natural world meet, it is seldom to our credit, as when an ear of wheat beholds a throng of human ears on heads that "were bent before their tyrant leader" and mistakes their posture for a boon. No good deed goes unpunished, indeed; in one fable worthy of Kafka, a writer is made to sit on his pen in torture, and his blood turns blue in the bargain. "He became prominent...and slowly came to his senses," Alomar writes, leaving us to guess whether the writer became complicit in the regime that afflicted him or came to his senses in some other way, pleasant or horrific. Swamps and streams, lightning and dogs all play a part in these beguiling, suggestive fables. The stories are of perfect length, but one wishes the book went on for much longer.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
"Alomar, Osama: THE TEETH OF THE COMB & OTHER STORIES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921957&it=r&asid=20d34055b1f45ee5c8b0d31f174be072. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A480921957

The Teeth of the Comb

264.7 (Feb. 13, 2017): p47.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Teeth of the Comb Osama Alomar, trans. from the Arabic by Osama Alomar and C.J. Collins. New Directions, $13.95 trade paper (96p) ISBN 978-0-8112-2607-3
There are no wasted words in Alomar's (Fullblood Arabian) beautiful collection of very short fictions. Philosophical and subversive, these tiny parables deconstruct human failings with a keen insight. The title story, an anecdote about the uneven teeth of a comb, reveals a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of social stratification. "Love Letter" tells the story of a couple separated by class, culture, and distance both metaphorical and physical. The nameless narrator emigrates during an era of oppression, mirroring Alomar's exile from Syria. The lovers continue a written correspondence, but, as revolution and civil war divide their homeland, chaos threatens to sever the pair forever. In "The Shining Idea," a cynical father debates with his optimistic son about the inherent darkness of humanity. "The world is a blank page," the boy explains. The collection delves into universal themes of aging--"Journey of Life"--and love and loss. These stories deliver the kind of stunning maxims that a cunning master might spout to an eagerly waiting acolyte. By working together with C.J. Collins on the translation, the author succeeds in highlighting the inherent poetics of his prose. This lyricism obfuscates some narratives, and there are instances in which Alomar seems to sacrifice clarity in favor of playfully testing the limits of style. However, gorgeous, paradoxical metaphors reveal more depth with further consideration, and the apparent contradictions often reflect incongruities prevalent in society: Alomar's work swims in the aspects of the modern world that do not make sense upon closer inspection, like the correlations between poverty and capitalism. These brief narratives are not nihilistic; they convey a plea for progress and improvement. Alomar's writing brims with hope, and this slim volume is full of compassion and depth. (Apr.)

Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Teeth of the Comb." Publishers Weekly, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 47. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA482198140&it=r&asid=4d72afbeaec2eb412b9578421daeac95. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A482198140

Osama Alomar. The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories

Yahia Lababidi
91.3-4 (May-August 2017): p95.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Osama Alomar. The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories . Trans. Osama Alomar & C. J. Collins. New York. New Directions. 2017. 96 pages.
At his very finest, Osama Alomar is heir to Kahlil Gibran, whom he greatly admires, by way of the surrealists. Despite their apparent playful wit, Alomar's deceptively slight short stories have teeth and bite. In spare, accessible prose, one encounters the painful and bitter poetry of exile running like a bloodred thread through this slim but dense collection of flash fiction--an allegorical literary form that, in the Arab world, dates back more than a millennium. This keening is to be expected, since Alomar is a Syrian refugee and author with a growing reputation in the world he left behind.
"Censorship is the mother of metaphor," Jorge Luis Borges shrewdly noted; and it is true that literature under restrictive regimes tends to develop a flair for allegory, confessing in code. One cant help but wonder, reading this richly imaginative collection, to what extent such circumstances might contribute to the authors facility with metaphor and gift for symbolism.
Having immigrated to the United States eight years ago, Alomar drives a cab for a living as he struggles to carve a creative space for his epic miniatures. In one of the touching fables found in The Teeth of the Comb , money talks, and the paper bills say to one another: "We are like nations that have been sold, imprinted with thousands of fingerprints and crammed into thousands of pockets until they are in tatters." In another poignant, two-line story: "The feather said to the wind in a slain voice: 'what's this tyranny?' The wind answered her: 'what's this weakness?"' Throughout Alomar's quietly stoic, hallucinatory fiction of ideas, everything communicates--animate and inanimate--in order to hold up a mirror to the human condition with all its self-deceptive, hypocritical, and, at times, destructive ways.
Amid these shape-shifting characters and their shifting perspectives, the author tells the truth slant about the pity of wars, the violence of oppression, privation, loss, longing, and societal ills common to Third World and First World alike. By making it strange, the fabulist delivers the news in disguise, in an attempt to awaken us to common sense. In the shock of recognition that follows, we are better able to examine our false assumptions and suffering world with more compassion and thought. Rarely sliding into bathos, at times grim and often lighthearted, these aphorisms, parables, and riddles are not, however, literary snacks to be consumed hastily.
Alomar is a writer worth knowing who gives voice to a wide scope of personal insight and a magnitude of public pain that we can hardly fathom by perusing newspapers, alone. The edifying tales this creative artist offers (ranging from one line to several pages) are brief political, psychological, philosophical, and moral meditations to ruminate over, carefully--sometimes with a smile, sometimes a sigh, and sometimes both.
Yahia Lababidi Washington, DC
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Lababidi, Yahia. "Osama Alomar. The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories." World Literature Today, vol. 91, no. 3-4, 2017, p. 95+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA491539742&it=r&asid=bebe8185425890918fd70cdb470cf741. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A491539742

"Alomar, Osama: THE TEETH OF THE COMB & OTHER STORIES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA480921957&asid=20d34055b1f45ee5c8b0d31f174be072. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017. "The Teeth of the Comb." Publishers Weekly, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 47. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA482198140&asid=4d72afbeaec2eb412b9578421daeac95. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017. Lababidi, Yahia. "Osama Alomar. The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories." World Literature Today, vol. 91, no. 3-4, 2017, p. 95+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA491539742&asid=bebe8185425890918fd70cdb470cf741. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017.

• Arts Fuse
  http://artsfuse.org/157600/book-review-the-teeth-of-the-comb-brusque-tales-of-rebellion/
  Word count: 1114

  Apr
  17
  2017
   
  These tales have an incendiary energy, but Osama Alomar handles his narrative explosives with restraint, wisdom, care, and precision.
  The Teeth of the Comb & Other Stories by Osama Alomar. New Directions, 96 pages, $13.95 (paperback).
  By Lucas Spiro

  Osama Alomar writes with a kind of explosive but moderated rage. And who can blame him? Born in Damascus, living in exile since 1998, Alomar is now a citizen of the United States. But he is keenly aware of his homeland, and how horribly the lives of those he left behind have been decimated by a brutal war. Syria’s anguish and violence permeates Alomar’s new collection The Teeth of the Comb & Other Stories. These tales have an incendiary energy, but Alomar handles his narrative explosives with restraint, wisdom, care, and precision. His anger is filtered through an adroit use of distance; The Teeth of the Comb makes use of personification, biting allegories, and tightly wound parables to make their moral points, arrived at in the space between humanity’s lofty ideals and demoralizing cynicism.
  Western politics have made concepts of good and evil problematic: conservative dogma runs up against liberal relativity. The election of Trump, ushering in the “post truth age,” has accelerated this ethical confusion. But truth has never been more important if we are to cut through the current paralysis and act with justice to those who deserve it. Alomar’s stories are dedicated to inspiring correct moral action, calling on patience and anger to overcome complacency. The combatants in his moral battles are ambiguous, but their victims are not. The poor, the sick, the cold, the marginal, are condemned to suffer the self-serving befuddlement of the powerful.
  In the Arab world, Alomar is a highly regarded writer of fiction and poetry. (In the U.S. he has made a living as the driver of Car 45 for a Chicago taxi cab company.) He specializes in the al-qisa al-qisara jiddan (“the very short story”), a rich tradition that goes back at least as far as One Thousand and One Nights. The best known practitioner of the form — and Alomar’s biggest influence — is Kahlil Gibran. Alomar kept a copy of Gibran’s work in the passenger seat of Car 45 along with a notebook, where he jotted down his stories and prose poems in between fares. The very short story combines elements of folk tale, fable, allegory, parable, religion, and philosophy; the genre’s brusqueness illuminates the dark, internal conflicts of what it means to be human. Alomar’s tales inevitably take a political bent, dramatizing the crises of the global poor via the experiences of every kind of life — and object.
  In the world Alomar creates, wolves, snakes, daggers, rocks, waste, the stars, and the elements all act and think. Things such as watches and combs are given life; they think and hope, entertain beliefs and then have them crushed. Nothing that has ever come into existence is too small to command Alomar’s attention. No object is too minuscule to escape making a rebellious point. Here is the title story:
  Some of the teeth of the comb were envious of the class differences that exist between humans. They strived desperately to increase their height, and, when they succeeded, began to look with disdain on their colleagues below.
  After a little while the comb’s owner felt a desire to comb his hair. But when he found the comb in this state he threw it in the garbage.
  Would it be possible to find a more novel justification for “workers of the world unite”?

  Author Osama Alomar. Photo: City of Asylum
  One of Alomar’s targets is free market capitalism, particularly the devastating ways in which it has generated global poverty. In “Get on Before Me?” people from the first world and the third world are standing on a train platform. People from the third world are boarding trains to the past, while the first world passengers board trains to the future. Two men from the third world attempt to get on the train bound for the future, but they argue about which one should get on first. The ‘third worlders” miss their opportunity and the train speeds off. A violent fight breaks out for a spot on the train headed toward the past. In “On Top of the Pyramid,” an animated garbage bag climbs the “social pyramid shimmering in sunlight.” Once it reaches the top, the bag is pierced by the tip of the pyramid: “Soiled water mixed with garbage poured down the four sides until the whole structure was covered in a monstrous pile of refuse.” When waste rules, all becomes tainted, complicit in the general decay.
  Alomar makes ample use of Middle Eastern traditions in his work. But, given its focus on hunger around the world, his stories are  very much addressed to an international readership. His pieces not only draw on Gibran, but on Franz Kafka’s absurdity, Karl Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism,  Ernest Hemingway’s brevity, and William Blake’s lyrical anarchism. In terms of the latter, The Teeth of the Comb features a number of re-imaginings of the devilish aphorisms in the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Many of the volume’s parables would be apt entries in the “Proverbs of Hell.” In one story, Alomar writes that he is “convinced that humans must be the result of a marriage between heaven and hell.” The dialectical clash between good and evil, hope and despair, takes place in all of us. For Alomar, the crime is that this paradoxical give-and-take is contingent on the destruction of others, usually those who are lower on the food chain.
  Not every story/parable in the collection is effective. Alomar’s fables can be heavy handed; his didacticism is an outgrowth of his desire to spur readers to action. Also, keep in mind that he wrote most of The Teeth of the Comb in between trips to and from O’Hare airport. Is it surprising  that his tales would reflect his frustration with his day job? (Recently, Alomar has been granted a residency through the City of Asylum project in Pittsburgh, where he will be given the time and freedom he needs to practice his craft.) Judging by the stories in this superb collection, he deserves to enjoy the respect and success here he had in Syria.

  Lucas Spiro is a writer living outside Boston. He studied Irish literature at Trinity College Dublin and his fiction has appeared in the Watermark. Generally, he despairs. Occassionally, he is joyous.

• The American
  http://www.theamericanmag.com/article.php?article=4274
  Word count: 344

  BOOK REVIEW
  Fullblood Arabian
  By Osama Alomar, translated from the Arabic by C.J. Collins with the author (introduction by Lydia Davis)
  New Directions Poetry Pamphlets, 2014. 63 pages
  Very short stories are bite-sized messages in a bottle, and Syrian Osama Alomar excels in conjuring them up, this chapbook a sampling of his sad and witty Arabic-language parables. Exiled from his broken homeland, he is a rueful observer of a world in search of balance but well out of whack.
  Some of his stories are a paragraph, others a page, but with more or less dexterity all of them convey a raw combination of beauty and resignation, as if the two were created to reside under the same roof, hope and hurt at one. The inanimate acquires character. Delusion mingles with grief. Self is its own delusion.
  In "Expired Eyes," a man who sees his wife as loyal one instant and as a whore the next chooses to trade in his eyes for new ones, "specially ordered fresh from the factory," and from that day on "sees his wife exactly as he desired." In its entirety, "The Drunk" reads: "In the past, he was always repeating to others, 'I disdain people who drink.' And now that he has become a drunk friends ask him surprised, 'Didn't you always disdain people who drank? What changed your mind?' He answers them with an air of tragedy, 'I came to disdain myself.'" In "Human Rights," human rights embodied as a woman who decides to travel the world, where she is robbed, raped and finally murdered. From her body comes a perfume "purchased by young and old alike," and they grow drunk from its smell, "the smell of dignity." "Freedom" is a single (suggestive) sentence: "Freedom was imprisoned inside the walls of time. And time itself exploded."
  Alomar is a man of small but universally affecting insights. And one who continues paying Syria's hurt dues. For now, he drives a cab in Chicago.
  Reviewed by Book Staff

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