The Round Table of the Morgue

Sumaya Abdulqader  |  The AFAC Novel Writing Program  |  2014  |  Yemen
In 2000, a horrible feeling of panic seized the capital of Yemen, Sanaa, as it was plagued by a monstrous act of murder in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sanaa. After two girls had mysteriously gone missing and months of search and investigation lead to nowhere, their bodies were found in the sewer of the Faculty of Medicine’s morgue. The Sudanese morgue technician, Adam Ali, became the suspected murderer and the shaky investigation proved him guilty of the two murders. He became a scapegoat and was publicly executed to quell the terrified people’s anger. Twelve years later, the file was opened again because it was related to a case about human organ trafficking. It then became clear that there’s actually a big network involved in the murder of the Faculty of Medicine’s morgue. The novel investigates this act of murder and analyses the events that preceded and followed it, shedding light on the reasons for human conflicts since the dawn of time, such as money, sex, power, murder and fear, and addressing the conflicts and internal lives of the protagonists who can be murderers, relatives and friends of the victims, authorities investigating the crime, reporters and the grey eminences behind the crime.