Release of the play (Three Women and a Qayrawana) in Arabic and English
Yemen
Yemenite
Mohammed Al–Mekhlafi | Writer and translator
The play (Three Women and a Qayrawana) was recently published in Arabic and English. This is the fifth work that I have translated into English by the Yemeni writer, author and director living in France, Hamid Oqabi.
This first edition was published by Fikra Com Publishing and Distribution in Ouargla, Algeria, with the support of Professor Hamza Qarira, professor of contemporary Arab stories at the University of Ouargla and advisor to the publishing house.
The book spans 115 pages and presents the text in both languages, allowing readers to engage directly with the emotional depth and human dimensions of the work.
The piece is rooted in a clear human experience, emerging from a simple setting, the courtyard of a rural house. Only a few items appear on stage, including clotheslines, clothes, empty containers and scattered children’s toys.
These familiar everyday objects are not just decorative. These are the remains of disappeared lives, traces of disappeared people, carrying the memory of the war in Yemen, of absence and waiting. Space becomes a silent witness to the loss and emptiness left behind.
The story centers on three women. Maryam is in her forties, Sarah is in her thirties and Laila is in her twenties. Each is from a different generation, but they share the same sense of pain and loss.
Their different ages do not lessen the unity of their experience, nor lighten the weight of the question that haunts them all: what remains after the others have gone?
In this piece, Hamid Oqabi emphasizes the image before the action. Quiet objects, including the Qayrawana that dries laundry, are more than just accessories. They become active presences that accompany the characters and reveal what is inside them.
The Qayrawana is not a passing detail but a part of daily memory and accumulated fatigue, as if listening and remembering both what is said and what is not said.
The language evolves harmoniously between poetry and prose, moving from clear dialogues to moments bordering on delirium, from sharp irony to heartbreaking confessions.
The play does not follow conventional dramatic structures or familiar climaxes. Instead, it focuses on the psychological states of the characters, the experience of absence and the woman’s exhausting daily work, the burden of memory and the wait for time that seems interminable.
(Three Women and a Qayrawana) captures the weight of daily life and the profound impact of loss on the human spirit. My translation strives to faithfully convey this emotional resonance, preserving its quiet intensity and weariness without embellishment or embellishment.
Yemen