The Teeth of the Comb & Other Stories

by Osama Alomar, C.J. Collins (Translator)

Wonderful short stories that sharpen awareness, from a brilliantly gifted Syrian refugee Personified animals (snakes, wolves, sheep), natural things (a swamp, a lake, a rainbow, trees), mankind’s creations (trucks, swords, zeroes) are all characters in  The Teeth of the Comb . They aspire, they plot, they hope, they destroy, they fail, they love. These wonderful small stories animate new realities and make us see our reality anew. Reading Alomar’s sly moral fables and sharp political allegories, the reader always sits up a little straighter, and a little wiser. Here is the title 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.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Poetry, Middle East, Literature, Magical Realism, School

105 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2017

Reviews

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teeth of the Comb is a collection of the Syrian writer Osama Alomar's (very) short stories, fables, poems, or wisdom tales. He writes in Arabic, although assists his translator, a good friend, in translating them into English. He cannot publish in Arabic in the US – and cannot publish in Syria or Lebanon at this time.

Alomar is in a writing residency nearby, and I had the pleasure of hearing him speak earlier this week.

Alomar's stories are very short, between one sentence and two to three pages long. All of the stories quoted here are presented in their entirety, thus his shorter stories. In his stories animals, inanimate objects, and physical or spiritual parts of the body speak and consider philosophical and political issues.

The current of the river spoke to the salmon who wouldn’t stop going against him, saying, “Your stubbornness won’t help you!” But the fish answered him in one voice, “We won’t surrender!” (Loc. 1114-1116)

Often the protagonists of his story show the absurdity of life.

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. (Loc. 186-187)

And another:

The dancer shook her waist, and showers of money rained down on her, which her fans and followers gathered up and put in her golden purse.

The great thinker shook his head, and jewels of ideas fell from it, which the people crushed underfoot without even feeling them. (Loc. 224-226)

Sometimes, however, nature shows a path that we've missed:

Seeing the trees growing straight and vertical on the slope of the mountain, I realized that it is completely natural to remain standing upright even when we grow out of deeply sloping circumstances.(Loc. 195-196)

My friends and I talked about his visit several days later. One of us is a native Arabic speaker, who read one of Alomar's stories in Arabic. In English, they don't sound very poetic – my friends argued that English is not a language that lends itself to poetry. In Arabic, rhythm and rhyme play more important roles.

I started with Alomar's last story, but am ending with his dedication:

Because a mother is a universe in which creatures don’t get lost, I dedicate this book to my universe

لأن الأمّ هي كونٌ لا يضيع فيه مخلوق .. أهدي هذا الكتاب الى كوني

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feeling at once modern and ancient, in this collection of stories—most of them very, very short—the spectre of Syria' troubled history is unshakable.

Longer review here: https://roughghosts.com/2018/03/09/an...

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

osama alomar is a syrian-born poet, essayist, and short story writer. based in chicago for eight years (where he drove a cab), alomar has recently moved to pittsburgh. the teeth of the comb & other stories collects over 160 of alomar's remarkably brief stories. better described as parables, many of the entries in this impressive collection span no more than a sentence or two. heavy on the personification, alomar re-imagines the lives of animals, plants, weather, and inanimate objects, breathing in to them a life of their very own. dealing with the folly of man, tyranny, politics, the passing of time, and the overlooked nature of the world around us, alomar's parabolic pieces delight, bewitch, amuse, startle, elate, sadden, and compel a reconsidering of our everyday realm. the teeth of the comb & other stories is a lovely, wonderful collection — one which calls to mind the personified domains of both pablo neruda and eduardo galeano. like so many quiet joys, best savored slowly.

free elections

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.


handicap

when i saw the suffering of the tortoise who had accidentally turned over on her back in my neighbor's garden, i knew that protection is a form of disability.


humility and arrogance

when i was humble i thought i was a river flowing towards the sea. becoming arrogant, i grew strongly convinced that the opposite was true.


love letter (excerpt)

but little by little the revolution against tyranny and oppression became something else... the tyrant who had been sleeping in the depths of the ordinary citizen began to wake up, baring his fangs. the country entered the hell of sectarian and civil war through the widest gate. the nation's severed limbs were mixed up with the severed limbs and heads of its humans. i watched the events, not believing what was happening. when the situation had gone so far down the road of destructive chaos and insanity, i came to understand that the enslavement of humans to deadly and destructive notions and ideas is far more dangerous than the enslavement of humans to other humans, and the road to the paradise of freedom and human dignity is spread with tongues of hell.

*translated from the arabic by c.j. collins (alomar's fullblood arabian)

[Nausheen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The candle was astounded to see the widow weep for her recently deceased husband. 'How is it,' she asked herself, 'that her tears are pouring down but she has no flame on her head?'"

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

When it comes to short stories, I'd usually say that I favor those on the longer side and that flash fiction has never really appealed to me, but I decided to test my own preferences with this collection where the longest stories are barely three pages and others simply a sentence. The stories range from the funny to the poignant and are sometimes deeply sad especially when Alomar is clearly writing about his birth country of Syria and the civil war that has been going on for the past ten plus years.

There is lots of personification and anthropomorphosis of animals and birds, stars, furniture, trees, and so on and they are often seem used in an almost fable like way to make a specific point and to show that our human perspective or even our individual perspective is not the only one. Some are more philosophical or cryptic, some political featuring prison and violence, some are like riddles, others simply elicit a smile.

In a collection of well over 100 stories-although stories is a reach for most of these -it's difficult to pick favorites but the political ones seemed to pack the biggest punch as did the longer stories understandably, but it was surprising how many times a few sentences could make me pause and mull over what I'd just read. Overall, I was surprised how much I enjoyed this collection and will remember it the next time I'm sure I won't like a particular style or genre.

Flag of Surrender
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.

Human Malice
Boasting to the nuclear bomb, the grenade said, "You can't even imagine all the malice I have inside!"
"What is your malice compared to mine?" the bomb replied.
But human malice heard them and admonished them, saying, "I made you both, you fools!"

[Denver Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

​I’m sure there’s a fancy way of putting this, but this is a glorious book of short stories that read (or maybe feel is a better word?) like poetry. It’s one of those books that while small, took me a really long time to read because I had to savor Alomar’s turn of phrase or lovely absurd idea. These stories are by turns quiet and insightful and sometimes heartbreaking and then funny. Sometimes, all at once. This is the expensive beverage of books, to be sipped slowly so you can roll the flavor in your mouth.

Alomar is a Syrian living in Pittsburgh who writes in Arabic. This book is a translation.

Get The Teeth of the Comb & Other Stories from the Denver Public Library

- extra medium

[Shireen Rummana · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in this collection are powerful, gut-wrenching, and dark. They reflect a brief passing hope of the start of the Arab Spring and Syrian Revolution followed by a long fall into counter-revolution that has turned the author into a seemingly permanent cynic, ridiculing humankind and where we have come as humans on this planet. Throughout these pages, Osama Alomar uses personification and magical realism to describe fear and mistrust, imprisonment and torture, exile, hope and devastation--in short, the Syrian experience over the past 6 years--with such power it leaves the reader speechless, and shaken. There is bitterness, anger, and resentment in these stories, and a great level of sarcasm. They are in a way far too dark, but so beautiful and powerful at the same time that the author cannot be faulted. In his stories, Alomar ridicules the lack of basic fundamental freedoms in societies today (see "Freedom of Expression"), and the turn to neoliberalism and fundamentalism that go hand-in-hand and lead us down an even darker path (see "The Temple"). In many ways, however, this work is an examination of how, in times of counter-revolution and under dictatorship in general, the tyranny of the dictatorship becomes inescapable, becomes a part of everyone. He pinpoints that it comes from the top and oozes down (see "On Top of the Pyramid"), but often unfairly implies that we have all become a part of the problem, and each other's enemies. In a way this is particular to Syria -- in "Wolves and Sheep," a story of wolves pretending to be sheep and preparing to pounce, and suddenly being devoured by the sheep who were also wolves pretending, we are reminded of the police state in Syria where desperation and neoliberalism combined with deep repression created an enormous security apparatus, a culture of fear and a "kingdom of silence," turning Syrians against each other and creating mistrust throughout the country. (Still, this made the initial revolution all the more incredible, and Alomar's stories in this collection do not remark on that!) In several stories Alomar jabs at Syrians', or a conservative society's, hypocrisy (see "Closing the Blinds"), in a manner that reminds me of the brilliant Syrian writer Mohamad al Maghout, who wrote of the deprivation in society under dictatorship that turns people who could potentially be agents of political change into warped creatures and nasty debased men who prey on women. Still, Alomar's distancing from conservatism and from aspects of Syrian society can be read as leaning towards an atheism that is unhelpful and alienating.
Other stories point to corruption within neoliberal state systems like Syria's in ways that are comic and lighthearted. In "Flowers of Different Classes," a flower outside the house "looked spitefully at another flower inside the house" and asked her friend why that flower was welcomed inside. Her fellow rejected flower says "She must have known an important flower!" This lighthearted interjection still manages to mock the Syrian state, class and corruption, and their permeation throughout our societies.
In "War," Alomar centers the Syrian situation as emblematic of today's age and our major crises. This story can be read as an acknowledgement of the devastation and destruction of the ruling class's war against populations across the globe. He writes that aliens landing on earth immediately found "nuclear explosions and millions of refugees pouring out in all directions and severed human limbs piled up everywhere. Everything they photographed was killing, destruction, desolation, tongues of fire. The leader of the space fleet sent a short message to his planet saying, "We are unable to land on Earth because it is utterly consumed by a crushing civil war." This highlights the Syrian catastrophe, which has affected the entire world, and also serves as a reminder that it is in so many ways a heightened example of what we are seeing all over the globe. This past week, as Hurricane Harvey exploded plants in Texas, thousands were displaced in South Asia and parts of Africa from flooding, and the death count of refugees left to drown in the Mediterranean continues to rise, we can feel the horrors of the world shaped by the elite threatening to destroy this planet in its entirety.
Though all of his short stories resonate deeply, one of them speaks sharply of neoliberalism as the cause for the Syrian Revolution and the Arab Spring: "The Earthquake". Alomar writes:
"The unemployed young man suffered a psychological earthquake with a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale. It almost completely destroyed the city in which he lived. The loss of human life was horrifying.
The authorities were astounded at this unprecedented disaster. They undertook to rebuild the structures of the city in a different form, reinforcing them with materials resistant to human earthquakes. Unemployed young men began to be regarded with utmost seriousness and caution. Unemployment was eradicated within a short time."
Indeed, the astounding rates of unemployment among educated youth was one of the main causes for the Arab Revolutions of 2011. And the underlying causes of the Arab Spring and Occupy remain, even as counter-revolutionary governments work harder to build up their security states, destroy ("eradicate") their revolutionary populations, and incarcerate their young and unemployed en masse.

[Rambling Raconteur · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://youtu.be/Nd3zmm8lCWc

[rara ➶]

beautiful writing. i love ~literary~ books like this! made me feel, made me reflect.

[Yahia Lababidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 blood-red 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 can’t help but wonder, reading
this richly imaginative collection, to what extent such circumstances might
contribute to the author’s facility with metaphor and gift for symbolism.

After immigrating to the United Sates, Alomar drove a cab for a living
as he struggled 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 fluid perspectives, the
author tells the truth, indirectly, 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 light-hearted, 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 short to several pages long) are brief political, psychological, philosophical and moral meditations to ruminate over, carefully—sometimes with a smile, sometimes, a sigh and, sometimes, both.

[Hello · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Humans must be result if marriage between heaven and hell".

I am not normally a poetic girlie. But it was the shortest book by a Syrian writer I could find for storygraph reads the world challenge and there's no pain in trying I guess.

I was not prepared by how relatable it's gonna be. I don't know anything about the author or their beliefs for that matter.

I suppose inserting all the quotes I highlighted and screaming LOOK HOW SMART IS THIS! wouldn't help anyone but I am tempted to do it nonetheless.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

creative animism from a Syrian refugee in a hostile world

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outside of the title poem, it’s not the best. The title poem is beautiful.

[Emily Goenner Munson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read "flash fiction" in the past but these short (very short!) stories blew me away--the power and impact of a few words is amazing.

[Kevin S · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much different than what I normally read, the stories are tiny, many are only a few sentences, and they're all parables. One was about Satan getting a Facebook page, which I liked. Some of the shortest ones were really great, and if I were rating them individually I'd give them five stars. This book is probably read better a little bit at a time, but I'm up to my ears in library books so I just read it over a weekend. One of my favorite stories in full:

Closed Society
I have lived in a closed society all my life. Once, it started to open up, but the smell was so bad that it closed right back in on itself again.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of depressing allegorical commentaries on the hopeless state of humanity.

At his feet was a pile of dead hopes, falling continuously from the human family tree.

[Mimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a little bit to get used to reading these aphorisms, some fantastical, some ironic, some sad, most very short, but in the end enjoyed them and will enjoy rereading them. A 3.7

[Howard Cruz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book different from the minute I opened it and read the dedication period I don't always make it a habit of reading the dedication but this one's put out a Sentimental and sweet - because of mother is a universe in which creatures don't get lost, I dedicate this book to my universe. That is rather sweet gesture.

This is going to get a middle rating for me. I found that there were a few exceptional insights in some of the entries and found a few of his personification to be absolutely brilliant. Others were lacking in quality but overall there were more of one than the other and I found it highly amusing as well as thought-provoking.

I had never heard of this author before but I was perusing the library and found this in the new books section. I opened it up and it seemed reasonable to me but because the author is new to me I have no comparison of this to his other works. Generally when I find an author I like I tend to read everything I can find in their catalog before moving on to someone new but he is a generally new author and I won't hold that against him. A very unique start but worth checking out

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tears Without a Flame

The candle was astounded to see the widow weep for her recently deceased husband. 'How is it,' she asked herself, 'that her tears are pouring down but she has no flame on her head?'

I have very little experience with flash fiction and I'm happy to report that I quite enjoyed this collection of it. It takes a lot of skill for a writer to be able to evoke such specificity in both meaning and sentiment with so few words. I'd be curious to know how many pieces were written that didn't make the cut and how the order of works was decided.

Alomar's outrage is the spine on which the entire collection stands. His anger and frustration are palpable, yet lead to some of the softest and most lovely passages. Others, of course, are barbed, but that is their intent—to prick you in a way that will leave behind a small mark you won't forget.

Man and the Law of Nature

Man arrested the Law of Nature and put her in a diamond cage. He caressed her with his genius and mocked her with the products of his reason. To celebrate the occasion, he drank dozens of glasses of wine and fell down drunk, pulses of happiness settling in his heart. The Law of Nature snuck her hand over to one of the glasses and emptied it into her stomach down to the last trace of its perfume so that she might forget her prison. She grabbed a second and a third and a fourth. She lost her balance and weaved from side to side. She laughed and cried and vomited and beat her head against the diamond bars. She fell down, her forehead covered in blood. She mustered the remnants of her eroded powers and finished off the rest of the wine. She fell into the lap of death, and death held her close, hugging her and man together.

This is my favorite of the entries. The sensory details are perfect and the syntax creates the physical sensation of a downward spiral. I'm also intrigued by the sparing use of capitalization—why capitalize Law of Nature and not "death" or "man"? Does that change the meaning? In this case, if death is not personified, the image changes. It's not a woman falling into a physical lap; it becomes a much more pathetic picture. In that version, I'd imagine her splayed on the ground, alone, not clung to by Death, but by death itself.

Thanks, Grant, for the recommendation :)

3.5 stars

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's of interest as an attempt to write proverbs and parables for the contemporary moment, and some of them worked and were really neat, but more, unfortunately, seemed heavy-handed and trite.

[Donald Quist · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new favorite. Review at Publishers Weekly:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-...

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the collection by the displaced Syrian writer whose work was praised significantly in the NYer, and I'm sure elsewhere. The book collects probably a couple hundred of Alomar's very short, borderline epigrammatic pieces, often four or so to a page, in about 95 pages and an index.

There are a couple different kinds of stories, but the basic engine of many of the best turn on radical shifts in point of view. So in one favorite, "The Flute," a flute wonders about the music played by this giant flute he can see, which turns out to be a cannon, and then the cannon plays and we see that music. It's a lot of that, almost fairytale-esque stories about embodied characteristics, where things aren't quite what they seem. These are not, often, stories for children, and many of the lessons/ morals that are presented are more abstract than children would likely enjoy. I can't quite think of an English language equivalent, though maybe something like Hawthorne's work would come closest, where a manuscript would veer from stories that approach realism to those that take place purely on the plane of ideals. I don't know what it says about Syrian literary culture that it's produced such a writer-- is it flourishing, then, or so repressed/ shocked/ strained it can only speak in these strains?-- but it is possible to ask why I can't come up with someone in this century who is doing something similar in English....

I wasn't blown away like I'd hoped-- I do have a more Western-tuned ear for character and particular detail-- but Alomar makes a good showing for the relevance of this kind of story, and he is a wizard of compression.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short volume of what I hesitate to call short stories. There are a few pieces that are what we would normally call short stories, but even they are brief - 1-2 pages at most. They don't really have a typical short story plot, characters, etc.
Some of these pieces might be called fables, in the classic Aesop sense of the world. A couple of characters, often (talking) animals or inanimate objects, with a moral lesson at the end. Some might be called parables, in that they involve humans instead of the anthropomorphized animals or objects.
All of the pieces are short - the longest, as I say, are 1-2 pages; the shortest are 1-2 sentences. Some basically consist of the author's musings on a certain subject. Some, while written in prose form, have a poetic feel to them.
Some are easily understood - usually the fables or parables, with their strong message. Some I didn't understand at all. That's not necessarily the author's fault; in some cases it felt like these were messages to himself, not necessarily meant to be understood by the reader.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't understand this trend in contemporary fiction. I noticed it a lot the other summer when I was doing my around the world in 80 books challenge. It seems just writing down some random words in the most abstract and vague manner and arranging them into a few sentences counts as a "story." This was supposed to be a collection of short stories but some of them are just a few sentences long, some are a a couple paragraphs but even those are just meandering thoughts. How something like this gets praised as an 'elegant masterpiece' or 'fables worthy of kafka' when what it really sounds like (and not just in this particular case but in a lot more recent contemporary attempts of short story collections) is the ramblings of a 20 something stoner who had some words enter his head and said 'whoa...that's deep.' Stories have characters and plots and meaning. This was just words.

[Hannah]

This was an interesting little collection of pieces that blur the line between a story, poem, fable, allegory, and at times even a joke (or an anti-joke)? Some stories were extremely short, no more than a sentence long, while the longest spanned just a few pages. On the surface, there wasn't much forward momentum connecting a story to the one that followed, but the thematic through lines and repeated symbols kept the pieces connected. The overarching pessimism about human nature and the state of the world really resonated with my current mindset (sorry!) so even when the morals of the stories were a little heavy-handed, I could tell it came from a place of sincere anger and it made them ring.

[Ana Paula González · Rating 5 out of 5]

MALDAD HUMANA

Jactándose ante la bomba nuclear, la granada dijo: "¡No puedes imaginar toda la maldad que tento adentro!".
"¿Qué es tu maldad comparada con la mía?", le respondió la bomba.
La maldad humana los escuchó y reprendió diciendo: "¡Idiotas, yo las fabriqué a ambas!".

PÉRDIDA DE SANGRE

Después de años de perder sangre cubierta por signos d einterrogación, descubrí que me había estado apoyando en el lado filoso de la vida.

***Malpaso ediciones tiene la traducción al español de esta maravillosa recopilación de flash fiction, o minificciones, por parte del autor sirio Osama Alomar, Los dientes del peine.

[Inoli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is very interesting; perceptive. A lot of the little vignettes were on the amazing side of interesting. They're short...observations - storyettes :) - blurbs (?); some single lines, a few 2 or maybe 3 pages; allegories, parodies, metaphors. I have no idea how to categorize this book. I want to own several copies of this so I can give them away as the opportunity arises. Everyone read this. It's a quick read.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 2 out of 5]

About 100 stories crammed in to fewer pages, some no longer than a sentence. The mode is usually fabulising, with anthropomorphic objects and body-parts passing judgement on the passing show. The backdrop is the modern Middle East and North Africa, a world of government officials and authoritarianism but also popular unrest. Some of the observations are trite, but I don't know what is gained or lost in translation.

[Amari · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the concept of microstories, but these were for the most part too baldly political for me and so short that many were more like aphorisms. Though some were wise and many were clever, I would have preferred more variation among them -- and for them to be interspersed with some fiction long enough to accommodate characterization. The story that came closest to fulfilling this for me was "The Shining Idea".