¤ In your semi-fictional, Kafkaesque story “Hallucination!!!” — republished here last week — a Yemeni woman’s waking hours are terrorized by a hostile mantis the size of a kitchen. The creature ultimately chains himself to her after she leaps from a third-floor window to escape his clutches. “Whatever the physicians and the others say, for me it’s real, perfectly real,” you first wrote in 2006, inhabiting the real-life woman’s hallucinatory hell. “To them, it’s an illusion, but I can see it, hear it, and feel it. This creature exists in my life, and I can’t ignore him. I spend the entire time thinking about when he will appear, and where. In the bedroom, in the kitchen, or in the bathroom? Maybe while I’m talking to my sister, walking on the street, or trying to sleep. He follows me everywhere I go and will not leave me in peace.”
When you handpicked this specific narrative for Above the War — from your 2013 collection Women Moan in Silence — you noted that while the woman upon whom it is based was “fortunate to receive help from a psychologist, Yemeni society still views seeking psychological support and acknowledging mental health issues as shameful or sinful.” Over two decades later, at a time when patriarchal oppression is only exacerbated by endless war, why does this story call out to you now? ¤
ELHAM: Because this piece reflects my purpose in writing: to reveal the truth, to uncover the hidden realities behind societal norms and dogmas, and to say what often remains unspoken behind locked doors and separation walls — in all their abstract and concrete forms. “Hallucination!!!” not only reads what is behind the doors and walls of houses, but also what lies behind suppressed thoughts and feelings.
This storyline, like others in Women Moan in Silence and the lives of Yemeni women, frankly expresses thoughts and feelings that weigh on our minds — but this time in regard to psychological issues that both state and society fail to address adequately. Such issues are often considered taboo for women and men, though the burden is typically heavier on us.
Society often views a “typical” woman as inferior to men, believing she lacks the ability to handle things logically rather than emotionally. They believe that women who escape their psychological issues are still “defective” and cannot be trusted in their actions or reactions. Many also believe that women have “half the mind” of men; suffering from mental health conditions only makes things harder for them across the society. Social norms and laws that already put many barriers before us only make society more violent and less tolerant of women with psychological struggles.
I hope our readers can look through this story’s lens of suffering — a window that has been locked for a long time. I hope they can see and sense not what I sense and see, but what these women endure, and all the details and complexities of their pain due to a lack of compassion and support needed to overcome injustice. Women need the same attention and support that men receive, if not more. The reality is that they get next to nothing, while those who should be their supporters often become opponents who only put more burdens on them.
¤ Do you think the daily “mantis-in-the-room” hell is a symbol for the invisible wars that women — and society in general — endure and resist, whether it’s the mind-body toll of life under airstrikes or the mental health minefields spread across ever-violated communities? Building on this theme of invisibility, you’ve previously described your collection’s title, Women Moan in Silence, as a protest against how “our suffering is taken as something usual, normal, accepted, admissible, and guaranteed.” How, then, does your storytelling further answer the moans of the thousands of Yemeni civilian victims of war who still await justice, left to rebuild a Yemen they did not destroy? ¤
ELHAM: This invisible creature symbolizes the heavy burden that women and innocent individuals bear as a result of war. It symbolizes the constant struggle they, we, must take on every moment to return life to any sense of normalcy. The mantis in the story is a really large and heavy creature, but what is heavier is the woman’s awareness that people can’t see or understand that. How to convince them that her problem is as big as life itself — that this problem is taking her life away, piece by piece?
Many people, and even the world at large, fail to see suffering as significant, often viewing it as a natural part of life. This pain, which may seem trivial or commonplace, is, in reality, filled with complexities and mountains of obstacles that prevent individuals from living fulfilling lives, ultimately destroying daily life and crushing them.
Like the woman and the mantis in this story, women and innocent individuals are often viewed as the cause of their own problems, with the belief that they can resolve their issues through hard work and subservience to power. Yet, in reality, they have nothing in their hands to change their circumstances. Their inner strength is barely enough to help them in trying to adapt and survive repeated mantis attacks while in chains and behind locks.
Some say that I magnify the issue of women’s suffering in a country already crushed by every kind of hardship, labeling me a feminist in a place where that word is viewed negatively. I am not sure how organized feminists act other than as human beings caring for humanity. I only know that I am hyperaware of women’s issues and can sense the intricacies of our pain. But this explanation does not satisfy my critics.
After 11 years of war, what I know for sure is that injustice is injustice: there is no such thing as a “minor” injustice. If you still insist that the injustices faced by women are trivial and acceptable, don’t just take my word for it. Listen to the women experiencing it — including yourselves, Yemeni men, who have experienced injustices in a country where the wheel circles and crushes us all by the end. See how your world has collapsed over you due to that very same injustice.
¤ Where has this invisibility narrative, through battlefields known and unknown, teleported you — and what is the deeper, hidden message? ¤
ELHAM: Every piece of writing shared with me by other women becomes an exposing lens — a window that shows me the life experience of others, revealing the hardship they endure, the hopes they look for, the pain they suffer, and the happiness they try to reach. Through them, we realize that despite what we can call our own fortune — escaping from mental health issues, living in a city rather than a village, having an understanding family, or being lucky to reside in certain regions — we should not neglect others’ challenges and suffering. We are all connected, and I feel that we could be in their place.
War has shown us that clearly. There is no need for the “in another life” theory. War can change circumstances in an instant, leaving you uncertain about your whole existence — you don’t know what your life will be turned into, or what it will turn you into. Some people use the phrase “in another life” believing there will be a second chance or a different reality. But war has really shown us that there is no need for reincarnation. In an instant, your life, your hopes, and your dreams vanished and are replaced with “another life” with almost no hope, no dreams, and no needs.
The hidden message of “Hallucination!!!”, along with the other stories I wrote for Women Moan in Silence, is a question I hope to ignite: How much longer will “addressing” women’s issues mean chaining them, isolating them in darkness, and silencing their voices? How much longer will women's suffering from a lack of dignity be ignored, overlooked, and unacknowledged, instead of being visible, felt, and addressed?
The short story “Hallucination!!!” by Elham Al-Oqabi was originally published in 2006 with the Sana’a-based Yemen Observer newspaper, and again as part of her 2013 collection Women Moan in Silence. Visit Amira Al-Sharif’s “Fragile Peace Archives” for more intimate visual investigations into the 2015 war and the decade preceding it.
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