Ms. Cheryl Toman, Professor of French and Chair, Modern Languages and Classics at The University of Alabama has been one biggest supporters and advocates for the publishing of the English version of The Man of Middling Height. She has been with me from the start, pointing out that Syracuse University Press rebooted their Middle East Literature in Translation Series, sharing with me the form to submit my manuscript, offering a generous subvention from The University of Alabama, and writing me this awesome Afterword for the book. She humbles me with her love and generosity. Thank you Cheryl, I will always be grateful for this.

The first time I met Cheryl in person, in Paris 2021 during L’Epouse D’Amman launch event.

A F T E R W O R D: Cheryl Toman

For some North American readers, The Man of Middling Height might be a first look into the literary universe of gender rights advocate Fadi Zaghmout, but in fact, this author’s novels and blogs have been recognized and celebrated in the Arab world and in Europe for more than a decade. Not only is Zaghmout arguably the most important Jordanian writer today, but he has allowed a new generation of Jordanian voices to be heard in transnational and transcultural discussions about gender and sexuality. The author of five novels originally written in Arabic with some already available in translation in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy, Zaghmout infuses into his texts characters, settings, and contexts specific to the Arab world but at the same time, he is speaking about universal issues and the struggle to overcome patriarchy and threats to one’s freedom and existence due to rigid written and unwritten rules governing gender and how and whom one can love. The Man of Middling Height proves that Middle Eastern writers can and do convey messages to which all readers can relate. 

Zaghmout is not the first novelist that Jordan has ever produced, but in a sense he stands alone.

Of course, Zaghmout is not the first novelist that Jordan has ever produced, but in a sense he stands alone. As in other national literatures of the Middle East, the majority of Jordanian authors have placed war and conflict at the core of their writings. It was through creating and writing blogs that Zaghmout came to the realization that young Jordanians—like youth in other Arab countries—were desperately seeking out platforms and literature that spoke to them about the issues that were most important to them and Zaghmout finally gave them what they had been looking for. While threats of war and conflict do weigh upon all of those living in the Middle East, a younger generation of Arabs have grown weary of the expectation that they are destined to carry their parents’ historical baggage. Zaghmout arrived on the scene and fulfilled the need of a generation; he placed gender and sexuality at the center of his work and in doing so, he singlehandedly changed the face of Jordanian literature both within the country and beyond its borders. Zaghmout’s novels and his media presence have at times forced a necessary conversation about taboos and oppressive elements of Jordanian society and the Arab world—a conversation that many were ready to have. Although his writings at times create heated debate in Jordan, Zaghmout has indeed opened a dialogue that will eventually lead to undoing the dehumanization of non-conforming and / or gender-fluid citizens of the Arab world.  

With Cheryl, Safa Elnaili, Fil Inocencio Jr. at The University of Alabama Campus – April 2025

Experts of Middle Eastern literature are well aware that in recent years, Lebanese authors have been some of the first to expose taboos pertaining to sexuality and gender. Female protagonists in cosmopolitan Beirut dominate novels like Sahar Mandour’s 32 (2010, 2016) and Alexandra Chreiteh’s Always Coca-Cola (2009, 2012), to cite just two prime examples. A bit earlier in 2005, Saudi writer Rajaa Alsanea also earned worldwide acclaim for touching upon similar issues in her novel, Girls of Riyadh. All of these works are available in English translation. In 2012, however, Zaghmout’s The Bride of Amman complemented these works, showing readers that Jordanians, too, had much to say on this topic. But Zaghmout went a step further. Not only did he highlight female protagonists in his debut novel, but readers also empathized with gay characters who, despite the obstacles they face in their society, were presented in a positive light. Alexandra Chreiteh’s second novel, Ali and his Russian Mother (2010, 2015) also introduced a positive portrait of a gay character, Ali, into contemporary Middle Eastern, but her portrayal was much more subtle and nuanced. Zaghmout’s characters in The Bride of Amman brought issues clearly into the spotlight, and furthermore, all were navigating Jordanian society from the inside and not from the margins. Chreiteh’s Ali realized he could not live in Lebanon and thus he becomes a visitor and an outsider in his own country. Although Zaghmout’s characters do not always feel free in their society, there is no other “home” to which they can escape so they are determined to create their own local safe spaces. 

But Zaghmout went a step further. Not only did he highlight female protagonists in his debut novel, but readers also empathized with gay characters who, despite the obstacles they face in their society, were presented in a positive light

In the Arab world especially, if not globally, social media has a potential to create a safe space for youth, an outlet for discussing taboos about sexuality and relationships that guarantees a certain anonymity in a virtual world where there are fewer rules and thus more freedom of expression. As technology advances at the speed of lightning, older generations have failed to keep up and to some extent, this reality has helped secure a space where Arab youth can express themselves far from the judgments and criticisms of their elders. 

Fadi Zaghmout was born in 1978 in Amman, Jordan and he has lived in the Arab world nearly his whole life but his graduate work in creative writing at Sussex University in the United Kingdom also groomed him to become the prominent novelist he is today. His most widely read novel, The Bride of Amman, was actually published before embarking on this formal journey in creative writing. After earning his degree in England, he returned home to the Middle East, first back to Amman, and then to the United Arab Emirates. Zaghmout is a self-described feminist sexual freedoms and body rights advocate[1] who has been greatly inspired by pioneers like American scholar and philosopher Judith Butler and Egyptian essayist and novelist, the late Nawal El Saadawi. But he is also internationally recognized for his work, contributing short stories to magazines and collections, receiving invitations to speak about his writing, and most recently, he is the recipient of the British Council’s 2024 Study UK Social Action Award in the UAE.  

It was after publishing The Bride of Amman that Zaghmout gravitated towards speculative fiction, and we see that his passion for this genre is evident in The Man of Middling Height.

It was after publishing The Bride of Amman that Zaghmout gravitated towards speculative fiction, and we see that his passion for this genre is evident in The Man of Middling Height. His first published science fiction novel from 2014, Janna Ala Al Ard, was translated by Sawad Hussein and published in English in 2017 as Heaven on Earth. This was followed by Laila wal Hamal in 2017, translated in 2020 by Hajer Almosleh into English as simply Laila. Zaghmout’s fourth novel, The Man of Middling Height first appeared in Arabic in late 2020 under the title Ebra Wa Kushtuban which literally translates as “a needle and a thimble.” The futuristic novel Amal Ala Al Ard (Hope on Earth) is his fifth novel, published in 2023. 

Readers of The Man of Middling Height can certainly understand the reference to the needle and the thimble pervasive in this novel—set in an alternate universe where people are discriminated against according to height and not gender. Zaghmout poignantly illustrates here the absurdity of one group in society dominating another and he mocks the arbitrary and non-sensical way in which we determine societal hierarchy. The image conveyed by a needle and a thimble is about complementarity, and when these two work together, as they do in sewing, something wonderful can result, as Zaghmout deftly explains in The Man of Middling Height: 

Zaghmout poignantly illustrates here the absurdity of one group in society dominating another and he mocks the arbitrary and non-sensical way in which we determine societal hierarchy.

What I learned in my younger years was that both the needle and the thimble are necessary; they complete each other’s work. One cannot succeed without the other and together they can create almost anything. In this, I felt it was exactly like our social fabric. It cannot exist or function without the cooperation of both talls and shorts. (40) 

Zaghmout’s characters navigate urban society and they are like hundreds of real people one can encounter in day-to-day interactions in cosmopolitan Middle Eastern cities such as Amman. But these protagonists are presented in a way that make them familiar to both Arab and non-Arab readers alike. Zaghmout achieves this through emphasizing the commonalities that all people have shared at some point in their lives when exploring questions pertaining to sexuality, feminisms, and masculinities, ideas which all contribute to shaping one’s own identity in today’s turbulent world. As relatable as Zaghmout’s characters are in a novel such as The Bride of Amman, they are still unmistakably Jordanian and Zaghmout has effectively brought these voices into a conversation in which they had seemed absent before. However, how does one explain Zaghmout’s fictional, parallel world in The Man of Middling Height? No country is ever identified outright in the novel even if certain nuances lead readers to believe that the setting was inspired by the Arab world. But this is exactly what makes The Man of Middling Height so original. Middle Eastern literature should not be confused with ethnography and yet, many Western readers read it as such and have done so for decades. Here more than in any other of his novels, Zaghmout does not let us forget that sexual rights and human rights are inextricably linked and the issues pertaining to these rights are of universal concern.      

As relatable as Zaghmout’s characters are in a novel such as The Bride of Amman, they are still unmistakably Jordanian and Zaghmout has effectively brought these voices into a conversation in which they had seemed absent before.

            In her book, Bad Girls of the Arab World (2017) Jordanian literary scholar Rula Quawas is critical of those individuals in Arab societies who are actually the “maintainers and keepers of traditional values which they fail to recognize as arbitrary” (27). Quawas’s observation is exactly what motivates Zaghmout to adopt the approach that he has in writing The Man of Middling Height. Zaghmout has found a most clever way to demonstrate the arbitrariness of traditional values in society and chooses to classify the population by height instead of gender. Is this idea absurd? In any case, Zaghmout convinces us that it is not any more ridiculous than the importance placed upon gender and gender roles in a system to which society has been clinging for centuries. It cannot be denied that half of the population has been assigned power based solely on the genitalia with which they were born.  

Zaghmout has found a most clever way to demonstrate the arbitrariness of traditional values in society and chooses to classify the population by height instead of gender.

Keeping in mind that The Man of Middling Height finds itself firmly rooted in the genre of speculative fiction, Zaghmout has imagined a parallel universe created to attack the rigid gendered worlds in which we all live. This is an especially helpful technique when analyzing more conservative societies which one might find in the Arab world, but it also allows anyone from any culture to view society through a more objective lens. Zaghmout is one of a few Arab artists and writers who have chosen such an approach to make a bold statement. In summer 2024, the exhibit ARABOFUTURES: Science Fiction and New Imaginaries[2] opened at the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris, France and it explores the notion of using genres such as speculative and science fictions in Arab art and literature precisely in the manner in which Zaghmout has done. An invitation into the “dreamed worlds of the new Arab imaginings,” the exhibit features artistic and literary means of “decolonizing the future.” Zaghmout’s use of speculative fiction in The Man of Middling Height becomes a tool to “subvert globalized codes and aesthetics,” allowing them “to question the ideologies they convey or to imagine off-center futures that break with hegemonic discourses” (2024). The IMA exhibit claims that from science fiction, numerous “hybrid, post-human imaginaries” have emerged and this has become a trend for artists and writers of the Arab world since the dawn of the millennium, “exploring ‘programmed’ futures germinating in our present.” This is certainly evident in The Man of Middling Height, but also in Zaghmout’s most recent futuristic novel, Hope on Earth, in which the protagonist is a non-binary person, born female, but not committed to either gender and thus choosing male pronouns for the lack of neutral pronouns in the Arabic language. Zaghmout’s novels imagine more inclusive futures and these are at the heart of ARABOFUTURS. Since the year 2000, artists from the Arab world and its diasporas have been using science fiction to explore the flaws in our immediate future and to dream the worlds of tomorrow. Through anticipation, they draw up a straightforward assessment of the evolution of our current societies, questioning the present and transgressing it. (2024)[3] 

With Cheryl and a group of students studying Arabic language at The University of Alabama

What is revolutionary about Zaghmout’s novel translated here is that it does not present a binary society. That is, “talls” and “shorts” in the novel are not just simply replacements for men and women. The presentation of his characters is much more complex and nuanced than this, which is what makes this novel so intriguing to read. Zaghmout has provided readers with an absolutely brilliant way of introducing gender fluidity in Middle Eastern literature; the protagonist Tallan, for example, is “neither tall nor short” (40): “He was not like a needle. Nor was he a thimble. Thus, he was not fit to play a role in the construction of our social fabric” (40). 

Zaghmout has provided readers with an absolutely brilliant way of introducing gender fluidity in Middle Eastern literature

The Man of Middling Height might be Zaghmout’s most innovative work to date. For those who have no knowledge of the Arabic language, it is impossible to fully understand just how difficult it was for Zaghmout to essentially modify the gendered contexts in the Arabic language and still have the novel make sense. Likewise, it was no simple feat on the part of the translator, Wasan Abdelhaq, and text editor, Fil Inocencio Jr., to capture and fine tune all the nuances from the original Arabic since English has its own gendered patterns that are at times not even remotely comparable to Arabic. For those readers familiar with Arab societies, certain details are readily recognizable (the tendency to frown upon public displays of affection, the notion of marriage as essential to maintaining the fabric of society, the widespread unacceptability of assuming a gender that is not yours at birth, illustrated in the novel as the rejection of those who “feel tall” even if they are not, etc.). Yet, Zaghmout achieves his aim to make everyone at least somewhat uncomfortable with the way we classify people in society; we are all made to recognize our faults and the devastating consequences that they have.  

The Man of Middling Height might be Zaghmout’s most innovative work to date.

There is literally no other literary work quite like this particular novel – neither in the Arab world nor outside of it. Zaghmout’s novel not only allows us to meander around certain societal taboos in order to more openly discuss them, but it also shows us that the identities we have assigned to others are nonsensical. In the worst-case scenario, as is illustrated in The Man of Middling Height, this absurdity can provoke violence and claim many victims. With this novel, Fadi Zaghmout has once again demonstrated his brilliance and versatility as a writer, experimenting with literary genres and succeeding in conveying the message that has always been a hallmark of his work.  

Works Cited: 

— Alsanae, Rajaa. 2005. Banāt al-Riyāḍ. Dar al-Saqi.

—. 2007. Girls of Riyadh, trans. by Rajaa Alsanae and Marilyn Booth. Penguin Books.

— ARABOFUTURS: science-fiction et nouveaux imaginaires. April 23, 2024-Jan. 12, 2025, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris.

—  Chreiteh, Alexandra. 2010. ʻAlī wa-ummuhu al-Rūsīyah. Arab Scientific Publishers. 

—. 2015. Ali and His Russian Mother, trans. by Michelle Hartman. Interlink.

—. 2009. Dāʾiman Coca-Cola. Arab Scientific Publishers. 

—. 2012. Always Coca-Cola, trans. by Michelle Hartman. Interlink. 

—- Quawas, Rula. 2017. “Inciting Critique in the Feminist Classroom.” Bad Girls of the Arab World by Nadia Yaqub and Rula Quawas, eds. University of Texas Press, 21-36. 

— Mandour, Sarah. 2010. 32. Dar Al-Adab. 

—. 2016. 32, trans. by Nicole Fares. Syracuse University Press. 

Yaqub, Nadia and Rula Quawas, eds. 2017. Bad Girls of the Arab World. University of Texas Press. 

— Zaghmout, Fadi. 2012. Aroos Amman. Jabal Amman Publishers. 

—. 2012. The Bride of Amman, trans. by Ruth Kemp. Signal 8 Press. 

—. 2020. Ibra Wa Kushtuban. Al-Ahleyya. 

—. 2015. Janna Ala Al Ard. Dar Al Adab. 

—. 2017. Heaven on Earth, trans. by Sawad Hussain. Signal 8 Press. 

—. 2017. Laila wal Hamal. Kotob Khan Publishing. 

—. 2020. Laila, trans. by Hajer Almosleh. Signal 8 Press. 

—. 2023. Amal Ala Al Ard. Dar Al Ahleyya. 

[1] https://fadizaghmout.com

[2]  ARABOFUTURS: science-fiction et nouveaux imaginaires is a special exhibit featured at the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris from April 23 to January 12, 2025. The link to the exhibit can be found here: https://www.imarabe.org/fr/expositions/arabofuturs-science-fiction-et-nouveaux-imaginaires.

[3]  This quote is featured on the introductory wall panels of the exhibit Arabofuturs at the IMA in Paris. It mentions “science fiction” keeping in mind that futuristic genres and speculative fiction were once categorized under science fiction. We see the progression of those genres within the actual exhibit.