I’ve been to Syria only once and what I discovered was this: no one talks. They move their lips and you hear about the latest fashions from Europe or the goings-on of the next-door neighbour. But try to engage someone in a conversation about politics, religion or sex, and the talking stops. They look around cautiously. Then: Great weather we’re having.

That’s the environment Zakaria Tamer draws from. Considered one of the most important writers in Arabic today, he has written numerous children’s books, two collections of satirical articles, and eleven collections of short stories. In Montreal this year for Blue Metropolis, he will be awarded the annual Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Prize during the festival.

In Breaking Knees, only the second of his collections to be translated into English, Tamer writes in short one- or two-page bursts, as if rushing to get it out before being caught. The stories, fables of discontent, hypocrisy and corruption, reveal a malaise at the core of Arab society. Sex runs rampant through Breaking Knees, but less as an expression of love and more as a fearful disorder. Sex manipulates, tarnishes and destroys. Men crumble and commit horrific acts for the want of it, while women lose their honour and perish for being associated with it.

And while the bedroom is no sanctuary, the street is even less of one. It vibrates with repressions that feed greedily upon each other. The man who beats his wife with impunity will find himself at the end of a policeman’s baton, who in turn will lose his job because of a malicious rumour begun by a rival officer, who himself will be condemned by a cleric for his lax piety. And the cleric will turn around and rape the woman he judges amoral.

Writing in a genre that he made popular, the “very, very short story” (al-qissa al-qissa jiddan) Tamer mixes satire, fantasy, humour and the occasional dash of searing realism. In one of the shorter and more pared-down stories, an old woman goes to a park to see the statue of the man responsible for killing her sons and husband. But the statue, “his right hand raised in a gesture that inspired awe and respect,” makes her feel small. She continues to shrink until she and everything around her also shrinks and disappears. Nothing is left but the statue, and the birds “whose pleasure it was to crap on it.”

An Arab critic once compared Tamer with Charles Darwin: one showed how monkeys developed into humans; the other showed how humans could be manipulated into becoming monkeys. Exiled in London since 1980, Zakaria Tamer is like the Arab world’s sad organ grinder. He plays his melancholy songs while the monkey stupidly dances, the crowd laughs, a man beats his wife, the police walk around collecting bribes, and a cleric breaks knees.

Leila Marshy has been published in a number of literary journals such as Descant, Grain, Fireweed, as well as anthologies including Best Canadian Stories (Oberon Press). She’s lived and travelled extensively in the Middle East and saw a few things she’d rather not have seen.

Zakaria Tamer will receive the annual Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Literary Prize at Blue Met on April 23 at 8 p.m. The ceremony will be followed by an on-stage interview hosted by writer and scholar Issa Boullata. Tamer will also participate in several other events during Blue Met. www.bluemetropolis.org.