Thu 23 Jul, 6-8.30pm
Join Liverpool Arab Arts Festival for an evening of readings, translation and discussion celebrating storytelling from Damascus.
Damascus is a city of contradictions. Simultaneously the oldest city in the world, rich with Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic architecture, and one of the most modern and developed in the Middle East, it stands at a cross-roads between East and West, the past and the future, peace and war. The latest instalment in Comma’s ‘Reading the City’ series is filled with the perspectives of ordinary Syrians we never read about in the news - be they teenage boys scheming to raise funds for a longed-for Eid picnic; impoverished girls picking through rubbish dumps hoping to find gold, or more mystical characters like the mysterious guardians who watch over the seven planet-themed gates of the old town.
The event explores the lives of ordinary Syrians and the city’s complex history and identity, and will be chaired by Comma Press founder Ra Page and will feature Odai Al-Zoubi, a Syrian short story writer, essayist and translator, Zaher Omareen, a war correspondent, filmmaker and writer, and Majd Abu Shawish, a Gaza-born, Manchester-based translator, poet and writer.
Trigger warning: Contains references to war, conflict, and adult themes.
Part of Liverpool Arab Arts Festival.
Doors: 6pm
Running time: 2 hours
Age rating: 16+
£5 (booking required)
About the speakers
Odai Al-Zoubi is a Syrian short-story writer, essayist, and translator. Born in Damascus in 1981, he studied electrical engineering at Damascus University (1998-2004), followed by philosophy at Lebanese University (2003-2007). He has a PhD in Philosophy from University of East Anglia. He has published one travelogue - Moving Shadows (Khan Aljanub, Berlin, 2025), and five collections of short stories: Silence (Al-Mutawassit, 2015), Windows (Al-Mutawassit, 2017), The Book of Wisdom and Naivety (Mamdouh Adwan, 2019), Half-Smile (Mamdouh Adwan, 2022), and Shackled Hearts (Safsafa, 2024).
Zaher Omareen is a war correspondent, filmmaker, and writer whose creative work is inspired by the conflict zones in which he has worked: Afghanistan, Ukraine, Sudan, and Iraq. He often explores the intersection of documentary and fiction, and his writing has been featured on BBC Radio 4, and in the anthologies Banthology: Stories from Unwanted Nations (Comma Press and Deep Vellum, 2018) and the bilingual Danish-English collection Eksil (Screaming Books, 2019), as well as in the journals Words Without Borders, Massachusetts Review, The Common, M-Dash and Trafika Europe. He co-edited the seminal Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books/Dar Saqi, 2014) and is the editor of The Book of Damascus.
Majd Abu Shawish is a Gaza-born, Manchester-based translator, poet and writer. His translations from the Arabic have previous appeared in The Guardian and numerous Comma Press anthologies. He has an MA in International Studies from Sheffield University.