Place and the anxious self

Omani writer Asma al Shamsi's debut short-story collection, 'The Man Sleeping Beside You', explores the anxieties, disappointments and emotional struggles of contemporary life. Published in 2024, the collection contains fourteen stories that examine questions of identity, love, home, work and belonging. Through ordinary lives, Al Shamsi reflects on the pressures of modern society, revealing characters caught between hope and disillusionment.
The title itself invites curiosity. Although it introduces 'the man sleeping beside you', it withholds almost everything about him. Who is he? Why is he sleeping? Beside whom? The title raises questions rather than offering answers. Interestingly, while the man occupies the title, women dominate the stories. Like Scheherazade in 'One Thousand and One Nights', who creates the stories while remaining outside their titles, the women here become the true driving force of the narrative despite their absence from the cover.
The cover artwork reinforces this impression. It depicts the indistinct faces of five women with closed eyes, each turned in a different direction. Their expressions suggest sorrow, dreams, or silent endurance. Cracks running across their faces symbolise emotional wounds and fractured lives. The contrast between the solitary man in the title and the collective presence of women on the cover hints at one of the collection's central tensions: absence versus presence.
The two dedications deepen this emotional atmosphere. The first is addressed to the author's late father, recalling the memory of his final departure in a scene that blends cinematic detail with personal grief. The second, dedicated to 'Maryam', revolves around love, victory and loss, suggesting that in matters of the heart everyone ultimately pays a price.
One of the collection's strongest themes is place. Rather than serving merely as a backdrop, places become active forces that shape the characters' emotions and choices. Homes, streets, cafés and cities are transformed into spaces that generate longing, anxiety and alienation.
This is particularly evident in the opening story, 'The Bronx of Oman'. The search for affordable housing becomes far more than a practical problem; it reflects wider concerns about social class, urban expansion and the growing gap between aspiration and reality. The concrete apartment blocks surrounding the characters symbolise a changing society in which financial pressures reshape everyday life.
In one striking passage, the narrator feels unexpectedly drawn to the affluent coastal district of Barr Al Jissah, despite having no personal connection to it. The attraction is not rooted in memory but in the desire for a cleaner, more comfortable life. Elsewhere, in Masoumah's Coffee, two taxi drivers compare their modest circumstances with the luxury surrounding Costa Coffee at Al Qurum Beach. Their homemade coffee becomes a quiet symbol of dignity in the face of social inequality.
Muscat itself emerges almost as a character in the collection. It is portrayed as a city of desires, where dreams of prosperity often remain out of reach. The city's luxury neighbourhoods, expensive lifestyles and endless aspirations fuel frustration rather than fulfilment. Place becomes inseparable from emotional experience.
The stories also move beyond Oman. In 'The Weariness of Stories', women escape to European cities hoping to leave behind failed marriages and emotional pain. Yet London, Rome and New York prove unable to heal wounds carried from home. One character compares Rome's ancient monuments with Muscat's familiar streets and concludes that changing cities does not necessarily change the self. The burden of memory travels with the traveller.
Alongside place runs another dominant theme: anxiety. Nearly every story centres on characters struggling with uncertainty and emotional instability. Their fears arise from unemployment, financial hardship, unhappy marriages, controlling parents, broken relationships, jealousy, betrayal and social expectations. Even silence becomes unsettling. One character remarks that the quiet itself feels suspicious because she has grown accustomed to conflict.
These characters rarely find complete harmony with either themselves or the world around them. Instead, they carry an inner restlessness that shapes every decision they make. Their lives become defined by disappointment, while moments of hope remain fragile and temporary.
Al Shamsi's achievement lies in her ability to transform ordinary experiences into profound psychological journeys. Through understated language and careful observation, she explores the hidden emotional costs of modern life. Homes become symbols of insecurity, cities become mirrors of identity, and relationships expose both personal vulnerability and wider social tensions.
Ultimately, 'The Man Sleeping Beside You is less concerned with external events than with the landscapes of the human mind. It examines how people search for belonging while carrying unresolved fears wherever they go. In Al Shamsi's world, changing one's location rarely changes one's inner life. The deepest journeys are not across cities or countries, but through memory, loss and the restless search for peace.
The writer is a novelist.
Translated and adapted by Badr al Dhafari from the Arabic article published in the print edition of the cultural supplement of the Oman Daily newspaper on September 26, 2024.