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Meeting the UnknownSoldier:
Guenther Orth, 'Die Farbe des Regens'-Entstehung und Entwicklung der modernen jemenitischen Kurzgeschichte- Muhammad Abdalwali, Zaid Muti' Dammag und Ahmad Mahfuz Umar. Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, Band 209. Berlin: Klaus SchwarzeVerlag, 1997. 248pp. ISBN 3-87997-261-3
With the romantic title 'The Colour of theRain', Guenther Orth's dissertation introduces us to Yemen's 'UnknownSoldiers', as an Egyptian critic calls them: They write, print,publish, and in the end they find few people who care about them.Well, now they have found someone who with his book might attractmany more.
Guenther Orth follows the struggle of Yemenishort story writers right from the beginning, which was rather latecompared to other Arab countries. This is quite understandableconsidering the necessity for certain preconditions such as theexistence of magazines and people who are able to read them. In orderto understand these details, Orth gives an elaborate account ofYemeni history and general circumstances -- including, of course, Qatconsumption-- in the first part of his work, always alluding totheir impact on intellectual life and stories or novels writtenduring certain periods. With this account of literary development, heis creating the framework for his further analysis of three greatYemeni authors.
He chose Muhammad Abdalwali, who has grownup abroad and lived in both parts of Yemen, Zaid Muti' Dammag fromNorth Yemen and Ahmad Mahfoudh 'Umar from the South. All three namesare well-known and established in literary circles in Yemen and inthe Arab world, and are now for the first time examined in a Westernlanguage. Maybe significantly, they have one thing in common: allthree are important personalities, having held high political postsor been members of the diplomatic corps and not dedicated artists living in a world apart. By thus covering authors from all Yemen,with very different approaches, topics and techniques, the idea offinding a 'typical' Yemeni short story is eliminated from the start.The aim is, on the contrary, to show the variety Yemeni narrativeliterature has developed. That is why Guenther Orth concentrates oncareful analysis of each author separately rather than on a placementof Yemeni short stories in a general literary framework (apart from asmall excursion in the conclusion). He presents us with well-writtensummaries and translated extracts of a number of short stories byeach author, corresponding to a main topic or aspect he has singledout.
It is maybe Muhammad 'Abdulwali who hasdistanced himself the least from the very roots of Yemeni writing,characterised by a finger pointed at moral shortcomings. Most of hisstories revolve, not surprisingly in the light of his own experience,around emigration, the alienation in a strange country, the hardshipof the wives left at home in some mountain village (the wives who area mountain village?) and the difficulties of return. His work isdistinguished from other 'literature of exile', as e.g. thePalestinian, by the fact that Yemeni emigration is not forced butvoluntary, and that he does not deal with a conflict between East andWest, as the country of emigration is mostly Ethiopia. This makes hima 'pioneer' of literary exploration of the African-Arab relationship.Nevertheless, emigration itself is harshly criticized and theatmosphere in his writings is utterly depressive.
Not so Zaid Muti' Dammag, some of whosestories remind one of tragic comedies on the hard times under thereign of the Imam. He portrays the ruler as a (ridiculously) poor andbackward traitor who takes advantage of the even poorer and morebackward condition of his subjects, and relates some amusinganecdotes: a victory celebration with the Imam majestically sittingon his throne made of cardboard, his bare-footed elite troops beingunable to suppress the 'revolution' of a mule going wild, the Imamstealing an ox from a poor butcher by confirming that it is anenchanted human being and so on. His stories, set in a typicalYemeni setting, among the Imam's hostages or in the contemporary oldcity of Sanaa, and dealing with typically Yemeni social and tribalproblems, are full of social criticism, but also, though simple instyle and language, very entertaining.
The most interesting case is Ahmad Mahfoudh'Umar. He uses a completely innovative technique of narration withsometimes extreme epic distance and metaphors of 'classical'surrealism (the title of one of his stories is: 'the eyes that arethrown at with mud'), often in order to elaborate on the process ofchewing qat and its effects. This makes him, as well, apioneer, but one of the 'literature of intoxication'. Guenther Ortheven alludes to the 'beat generation' in the fifties and sixties thatboasted this feature in Western tradition. His protagonists areschizophrenic and isolated from society, because they live in a sortof dream, and are the only ones who recognize the deplorable state ofaffairs. When they utter social criticism, they are forced to noticethat they have only imagined themselves to have said something, buthave not in fact opened their mouths. Also the classical conflictbetween East and West surfaces ironically, ever again there are shortcomments -- apparently without context -- during Qat chews: 'Why isAmerica being hostile towards us?', or a school teacher startshumming a Western tune during break and dances rock'n'roll to theamazement of the assistent and himself.
'Umar in his development has taken the stepfrom 'accusing, politically functionalised national literature tomore indirect, deep and complex contents'. 'He reaches an abstract,complicated, pensive and often ironic style which instead of offeringready-made solutions encourages further reflections'.
Further reflections and research representwhat Guenther Orth wants to encourage with his book. Hiscomprehensive study on the Yemeni short story includes a bibliographyof Yemeni literature from 1940 to 1994, but remains "vague andhypothetical", as he himself puts it, in his short comments about a'New Sensibility' and the theories of the Egyptian literary critical-Kharrat in the conclusion. There can not be a conclusion, as muchcan be expected from future works of Yemeni authors, provided thatthe hard economic conditions are not too high an obstacle forpublishing.
Orth, with his brilliant summaries,translations and general overview really puts his reader in the moodfor further exploration. He has made a big contribution towardsmaking known the unknown also in the West- unfortunately only to theGerman speaking public so far. He has, however, translated extractsof his work into Arabic and published them in magazines likeMa'rifa. It remains to hope that at least some of the primarytexts will be translated into English one day. The few existingtranslations are noted in G. Orth's bibliography.