Diasporas of the Modern Middle East: Contextualising Community 9780748686117

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Diasporas of the Modern Middle East

Diasporas of the Modern Middle East Contextualising Community

Edited by Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarian

© editorial matter and organisation Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarian, 2015 © the chapters their several authors, 2015 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f ) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 8610 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 8611 7 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 8613 1 (epub) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

List of Tables and Figures Introduction: Diasporas of the Modern Middle East – Contextualising Community Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarian

I 

vii 1

Post-­Ottoman Reconfigurations

  1 Model Citizens or a Fifth Column? Greek Orthodox (Rum) Communities in Syria and Turkey between Secularism and Multiculturalism31 Haris Theodorelis-­Rigas   2 Muhammad Farid: Between Nationalism and the Egyptian-­ Ottoman Diaspora Ehud R. Toledano   3 Evolution of a North Caucasian Community in Late Ottoman and Republican Turkey: The Case of Anatolian Ossetians Georgy Chochiev   4 The Italians of Egypt: Return to Diaspora Anthony Gorman

70

103 138

vi  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t

II  Exile, ‘Return’ and Resistance   5 Diaspora Tourism and Identity: Subversion and Consolation in Armenian Pilgrimages to Eastern Turkey Zeynep Turan and Anny Bakalian

173

  6 Stories of Identity and Resistance: Palestinian Women outside the Homeland Maria Holt

212

III Community in Host States – Establishing New Homes   7 The ‘Others’ Within: The Armenian Community in Cyprus Sossie Kasbarian

241

  8 Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon: Worthy Lives in Unworthy Conditions274 May Farah

IV  New Diasporas   9 Malayalee Migrants and Translocal Kerala Politics in the Gulf: Re-­conceptualising the ‘Political’ M. H. Ilias

303

10 Diaspora, Immobility and the Experience of Waiting: Young Iraqi Refugees in Cairo Elisa Pascucci

338

11 Home in Lebanese Diaspora Literature Jumana Bayeh

370

Notes on the Contributors 401 Index405

Tables and Figures

Table 3.1 List of known Ossetian villages in Anatolia, 1859–2014

125

Figures 3.1 An Ossetian family, Selim village, Kars, 1971 3.2 Women’s folk dancing, Bozat village, Kars, 1940s 4.1 Shop of Mr Sestino Rugians, Alexandria, Egypt, 1928 5.1 Posing in the colours of the Armenian flag 5.2 Two participants reclaiming the Armenian name of the city Ani by putting the dot back on the Turkish letter ‘ı’ 7.1 and 7.2  Blessing ceremony of artesian well at Surp Magar Monastery, near Halevga, Kyrenia Mountains, 1948 7.3 Armenian women at Pedhoulas, Marathassa, Troodos Mountains, 1941, where they took shelter with their families during the war

116 118 149 188 189 245

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Introduction Diasporas of the Modern Middle East – Contextualising Community Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarian

A Diasporic Middle East

M

ovement, migration and diasporisation lie at the heart of the Middle East, in the past and in the present day. Historically, the region has been a heterogeneous site where distinct communities, differentiated by origin and orientation, have coexisted through many periods of conflict and longer times of peace. Some of these displaced communities have been threatened and persecuted; others have kept their difference discreet and maintained low profiles in order to blend in. At different points, some communities rose to positions of prominence and power, while, for others, their very existence was precarious. From the late nineteenth century, dynamic political changes meant that many of these groups have struggled to claim and negotiate a space for themselves, and, increasingly, to protect and sustain it. Although there has been substantial interest in Middle Eastern immigrant communities in the West,1 diasporic and minority communities within the Middle East have been relatively neglected in recent academic scholarship.2 As an ancient concept, diaspora has proven remarkably durable, resonating with both old and new communities created through war and displacement, shaped by the forces of repressive politics and global capitalism, yet allowing for creative and dynamic articulations and mobilisations within. The Middle East provides fertile ground in which to explore the concept and lived reality 1

2  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t of diaspora. Rich in communities of religious belief and ethnic identity, affiliations to territory, and human societies that have bound empires and nations but also identified outsiders, the Middle East can be regarded as central to the concept and configuration of diasporic communities. This collection brings together eleven case studies that look at how diasporic groups have been organised and sustained, balancing an attachment to a ‘homeland’ – real or imagined – and living in the diasporic space, or settled in ‘host states’, that are, in practice, their homes. They offer collectively a sustained engagement and exploration of how diasporic communities are vital, even volatile, sites of political, social and cultural expression that must be understood within their specific context. Regardless of their varying circumstances, we posit that these communities are nevertheless embedded in the region, and, therefore, entangled in the politics of the wider Middle East, sometimes being at the very centre of conflicts, sometimes its peripheral victims. This book is the result of a symposium that we convened at the University of Edinburgh in October 2011, entitled ‘Contextualising Community – Diasporas of the Modern Middle East’. We wish to gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Language-­Based Area Studies (LBAS) initiative of Research Councils UK led by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), under the auspices of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW), to thank all of the participants, and to express our appreciation to Sophie Lowry for her role in the organisation of this event. The workshop assembled a critical mass of international scholars working on a number of diasporic groups of the Middle East with a range of different, yet interrelated, concerns. In bringing together the contributions of many who attended, this volume seeks to marry the two fields of Diaspora Studies and Middle East Studies, drawing on the theoretical and conceptual developments of the former with the specificity, empirical richness and dynamism of the latter. Through a series of in-­depth studies, the contributors address how different groups have struggled to claim a space for themselves in their particular contexts, and how these efforts have been aided and hampered by the legal, historical, social, political, economic, colonial and postcolonial peculiarities of each host state. Taken as a coherent collection, this exploration of how old and new communities are established, consolidated and maintained

i ntroducti on | 3 in a diaspora, rooted in their host states but oriented toward a transnational nation, vision or homeland, in practice challenges, revives or reconfigures the established triadic diasporic framework. The volume also reflects more widely on how communities are built and maintained in a diasporic space, examining issues of identity, citizenship, inclusion/exclusion and belonging in the modern Middle East. Most importantly, we seek to situate the particular communities within their own narratives – of conflict, resistance, war, genocide, persecution, displacement, migration – and to analyse how these intersect with the wider historiography of the region that has neglected, dismissed or essentialised them. In so doing, we seek to reconceptualise the Middle East from the perspective of the Other/the minority, while arguing that the historical legacies and developments of the region have made and continue to make its cultural and social pluralism distinctive. In conceptualising the Middle East through the prism of diasporic communities, we wish to unveil and articulate a counter-­history to the prevailing state narratives. Together these communities embody and represent the depth and range of historical experience of the region, most often as casualties rather than enforcers of political projects, be it as victims of colonialism, remnants associated with imperial rule, survivors of genocide or the jetsam of nation-­building. Viewed in this way, a diasporic Middle East provides a multilayered and dynamic framework for understanding the colonial and postcolonial, the processes of state formation and state building, and nationalist and transnationalist projects at play in the region and beyond. The diasporic experience in the Middle East yields a rich history from below, and from the margins of mainstream political developments, which provides insightful counter-­narratives to hegemonic discourse and essentialist politics. While certain emancipatory epistemological projects have unearthed and articulated silenced and sidelined voices in the region, most notably in the case of women,3 there has been hitherto little attempt to marry the marginalised experiences represented by minority communities of the region with the theoretical concerns of Diaspora Studies. Taken together, these groups challenge our understandings of time, place and space: some date back to bygone empires or to colonial times; some are the results of new global trends like neoliberalism and military interventions. Approaching the Middle

4  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t East as a series of communities, networks, webs, migratory paths and trajectories allows us not just to subvert state boundaries and national projects but to emancipate diverse and rich histories that challenge, undermine and complement reigning narratives, as well as shedding unfamiliar light on these very political projects, their legacies and their continuing impact. Diasporas in the Middle East A region of great religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity, the Middle East has a long record of demographic movement, displacement and forced migration. Since ancient times the elements of the archetypal Jewish diaspora – ­dispersion, loss and desire to return – have been repeated in many variations and configurations. Some cases have been the result of dramatic and often violent rupture, most notably the massacres and dispersion of Armenians during the late Ottoman period. Others have been prompted by changing economic and social circumstances, where demand for labour and commercial opportunities has encouraged relocation and community transplantation. In the pre-­modern era religious affiliation, as the primary marker of identity, determined both dominant and minority communities. In a region dominated by Islam for centuries these displacements often involved non-­ Muslim minorities, such as the Armenians transplanted to Isfahan in the early seventeenth century, or the scattered resettlement of Jewish communities throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond following their expulsion from Spain in 1492. However, especially on the margins of empire, Muslim groups were not immune to such pressures. As the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire shrank so Muslim communities were displaced – during the nineteenth century Caucasians moving south to Anatolia, or Turks from the Balkans seeking security in the Ottoman heartland – and would themselves constitute diasporas. During this period, new ideas of nationalism fuelled by aspirations for liberation from imperial rule began to challenge the primacy of religious identity. Perhaps most obvious and successful in Greece and the Balkans, where culture, faith and territory closely lined up together, the influence of such ideas would spread across the region and be taken up by others. Intersecting with these communities defining themselves by religious and ethnic identity were other transnational actors. Anarchist, mercantile and masonic networks, Sufi brotherhoods and cultural elites, sustained by

i ntroducti on | 5 the pluralist milieu of multiethnic society and cosmopolitan circles, variously reinforced, countered or were eroded by these developments. At the end of the First World War, the defeat of the Ottoman Empire offered an opportunity for the nationalist ambitions of ethnic groups such as Arabs, Jews and Turks to be realised. The subsequent creation of new states, although largely determined by the imperial interest of the victorious powers of Britain and France rather than the peoples of the region, set in train a process of nation-­building that presided over the ideological and sometimes brutal construction of new national societies that created diaspora groups. Many were the direct or indirect by-­product of war, and resulted in the expulsion or relocation of religious and ethnic groups. The 1922 exchange of populations between Greece and the emerging Turkish Republic, made notionally on the basis of religious identity but determined by the nationalist ambition of two states, serves as a prime example of this reordering of people and territory. In Mandate Palestine the failure of the British to reconcile conflicting nationalist claims set the stage for the events of 1948, a seminal event in the record of dispossession in the Middle East. The establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of about 750,000 Palestinians outside of the borders of the new state created a diaspora not only in the neighbouring Arab states but, in time beyond, in Europe, North America and Australia. Subsequent armed conflicts in the Middle East have presided over the expulsion and resettlement of communities, at first notionally temporary but often becoming more permanent. The civil wars of Algeria (1953–62) and the departure of the French Algerians (Pieds-­Noirs), the mass exodus from Lebanon during the civil war (1975–90), the ongoing conflict between Turkish and Kurdish forces, and more recently Sudanese refugees fleeing the conflict between north and south are but a few examples. The apparent logic of this nation-­building process, engendered both by the colonial context of these new states and the way that ethnic identity has been invoked as a means to legitimate them, has guaranteed that the presence of non-­national groups, such as the Kurds, has been seen often as a threat and at least an anomaly in the development of nation-­states. Yet, with the reinvigoration of religious identity as a political marker since the 1970s, religious differences not only between Muslims and non-­Muslims but also within Islam itself,

6  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t such as between Sunni and Shi’a populations, have arguably revived a sense of ­scattered but connected communities. The relocation of communities in the Middle East has not only been represented in terms of expulsion or dispersal. Some of these movements were ideological ‘returns’ to rhetorical homelands: the transfer of Greeks from Asia Minor to the state of Greece in 1922; the response of Armenians to the call to ‘return’ to the Soviet Republic of Armenia in the late 1940s and 1960s; of Jews to Palestine and Israel; and Greeks and Italians from Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s to their putative motherlands. The irony of such migrations has been twofold: first, many of those concerned had very tenuous connections to the homeland and second, the return of one diaspora led to the creation of new diasporic communities. The Zionist policy of the ‘Ingathering of the Exiles’ of Jews from the Yemen, Morocco, Iraq and Ethiopia has generated a number of separate diasporas built on cultural affinity and historical experience.4 The dispersion of Egyptian Jewry in a number of directions after 1948, not only to Israel but also to France and to the United States,5 created another diaspora within an already diverse community. Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Maltese and Cypriots who left Egypt during the same period resettled not only in their titular homelands but also in communities in new lands where they were often sustained by a sense of loss of community and nostalgia for their former homes. In diaspora, displaced and dispossessed communities were reconstituted or constituted themselves in refugee camps or other marginal, usually urban localities. Often coalescing around religious institutions, such as a church, mosque or synagogue, or other ethnic associations, these communities established their own schools to promote their culture and language and took up residence in distinctive urban quarters. Some established formal institutional communities, others relied on cultural clubs, sporting bodies, commercial chambers and political organisations, often affiliated to transnational networks, to provide a community framework, contested but constitutive. Yet others were sustained by more informal personalised links. In time, these communities established the social and economic relation with both the host state and society and the lost homeland. By such means these diasporic ­communities forged a local identity and sense of belonging that provided the means by which to represent the specific interests of the community, engage

i ntroducti on | 7 with host governments and society, and maintain links either real or notional with homeland governments. Transnational organisations such as the World Zionist Organisation, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) played their role in coordinating social and political programmes. War, conflict and the often ruthless logic of nation-­building have not been the only impetus to the creation of diasporas. While the entrepreneurial trade networks nurtured international links within extended mercantile families even before 1800, the growing forces of globalisation during the nineteenth century, and with increased momentum and vitality in the twentieth and twenty-­first, generated a mass movement and flow of labour and diasporic communities. The nineteenth century was characterised by the mass migration of skilled and unskilled labour of European nationals and Mediterranean peoples, such as Greeks, Italians, Maltese, Cypriots and Dalmatians, to settle in North Africa and Egypt and establish local resident communities. Often prospering under the colonial order, some of these groups had a historical lineage that preceded its imposition and, in any case, were far from being simple creatures of foreign patronage. Nevertheless, the political changes after 1945 saw the departure of many of these communities in the face of increasingly strident narrow nationalism and unfavourable economic policies. Despite the political impetus behind the forging of new, homogeneous national societies, there persisted a wide range of the ‘old’ diasporic and transnational communities across the Middle East at the beginning of the twenty-­first century. Significant if dwindling Jewish communities remained in Turkey, Iran, Tunisia and Morocco; various Christian populations and denominations maintained themselves across the region, even as they established bridgehead presences elsewhere beyond. Meanwhile, economic opportunity and the desire to improve living standards continue to drive the movement of peoples from, to and within the Middle East. The possibility of relatively well-­paid work in the Gulf attracted many Arabs, particularly Egyptians and Palestinians, from the 1970s on. More recently, Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Filipinos have filled different sectors of the Gulf job market. White-­collar European workers have become significant resident communities (most often termed expatriates) where their expertise has been

8  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t utilised in the hypermodernisation of oil-­rich Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Elsewhere, the desire for a cheap or quiescent workforce in a region chronically underemployed has generated other diasporic movements: Syrian labourers to Lebanon; Egyptians to the Gulf and Libya; and Thai workers, encouraged to replace Palestinian labour after 1993, to Israel. Yet these economic forces have often been overtaken, disrupted or rerouted by political circumstances. In the lead-­up to the Gulf War of 1991 many Egyptian workers were expelled from Iraq, and then Palestinians from Kuwait after the ejection of Iraqi forces. Beyond the region, Middle Eastern populations continued to establish, maintain and reorder themselves: the Lebanese diaspora globally, the Turkish and Kurdish populations in Germany, Palestinians and other Arabs in Western Europe and beyond. The Terrain of Diaspora Studies In the age of globalisation, diaspora as a concept has attracted unprecedented academic interest. Alongside an apparent proliferation of ‘new diasporas’, Khachig Tölölyan identified this as being partly due to ‘the move towards re-­naming as diasporas the more recent communities of dispersion . . . which were known by other names until the late 1960s as exile groups, overseas communities, ethnic and racial minorities, and so forth’.6 The revitalisation of diaspora and the birth of Diaspora Studies may be traced to the founding in 1991 of the journal Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies, edited by Tölölyan himself, and the opening up of the field of transnationalism with influential scholars like Avtar Brah, Nina Glick Schiller, Pnina Werbner, Stuart Hall, James Clifford, Arjun Appadurai, Paul Gilroy, Robin Cohen, Gabriel Sheffer, William Safran and others working across disciplines. The increased currency of the term ‘diaspora’ suggests that it enjoys a wide resonance as a way of formulating identities and loyalties of diverse groups of people who cultivate a sense of common origin and a meaningful connection with one another. Originating from the Greek ‘diasperein’, meaning ‘to disperse, scatter and spread’, ‘diaspora’ was associated with a sense of tragedy in its identification with the Jewish experience. The archetype of the Jewish case continues to serve as a reference point, but increasingly scholars have called, implicitly

i ntroducti on | 9 or explicitly, for the need to transcend this template. Some scholars have cautioned against the danger of reifying the Jewish model of diaspora as a normative one,7 or have rejected Israel as homeland and hence challenge notions of centres and peripheries,8 while others have defended the centrality of the Jewish diaspora in the new wave of diaspora study.9 ‘Old’ diasporas, such as the historical experiences of the Armenians and the Greeks, owe their theoretical conception to the ‘classical’ diaspora of the Jews, but the term has been extended so that the galuyot of the Jews and spiurk of the Armenians has had to accommodate the more recent phenomena of the mass migration of Italians and the shatat of the Palestinians. The 1960s and the advent of African Studies led to the term being applied to a diaspora born out of the trauma of slavery. The intricacies of definition, dynamics and direction of diaspora continue to be debated,10 ranging from the idea that diaspora is ‘any ethnic collectivity which lacks a territorial base within a given polity’,11 to the narrowest characterisation that true diasporas result from forced dispersion, have a distinct collective cultural memory and resist assimilation to the dominant host culture.12 Here we propose that a working definition of diaspora is one that respects its historical and etymological roots but is open to new creative uses, within the broad triadic (homeland–diaspora–host state) parameters. Historical studies of diasporas emphasised their exile, their bond to a (real or imagined) homeland, and a creed of displacement and return. In the modern era, the hegemonic nation-­state framework meant that diasporas were seen as something of an anomaly, a temporary misfortune on the way to another ‘normal’ stage, principally assimilation into a host state or return to the homeland. With the postmodern turn in scholarship, Diaspora was brought out of the wilderness where it had drifted along as an ambiguous anachronistic ‘Other of the nation state’ to promotion as ‘exemplary communities of the transnational moment’.13 The concept was appropriated by Cultural Studies in the 1990s, decapitalised (‘diaspora’) and given a new lease of life as the paradigm of dislocated and deterritorialised existence where identities are fluid, evolving and changeable, ‘out of place’,14 ‘hybrid’,15 exhibiting ‘double consciousness’,16 or indeed ‘multiple consciousness’,17 to name but a few. This wave of study produced a counter-­narrative of diaspora, arguing that alongside exile, whose ‘essential sadness can never be surmounted’,18

10  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t living in diaspora can be a liberating, exciting and meaningful way of life rather than a tragic aberration. In the decentred postmodern world where boundaries are ever-­challenged, diaspora is potentially the ‘new catchword in the global theorization of diversity’19 and the embodiment of the marginalised Outsider who maintains a critical distance and insight into the society of which she or he is a part. The latter role has popularised diaspora as a useful theoretical position from which to study the nation-­state, and the success (or failure) of its policies like multiculturalism or assimilation/integration. In Critical Studies, diaspora identity is seen as pluralistic, shifting, flexible and heterogeneous. Living in an in-­between space and feeling comfortable (enough) in multiple sites can be a privileged position where one is free to construct an identity that is hybrid, fluid and multilayered. Clifford considers this the ‘empowering paradox of diaspora’.20 Despite ‘diaspora’ being a concept that the humanities and social sciences have embraced enthusiastically, there are significant differences in approach and emphasis, as Knott and McLoughlin stress, particularly when it comes to the state and identity theory.21 They argue for an ‘inclusive approach’ to the ‘broad church’ that Diaspora Studies has become. Despite the countercultural potential of diasporas, there is no reason to consider them as being intrinsically counter-­or post-­national. Many diasporas function as nationalist projects, with conservative or reactionary aims and ethos. The embodied tension of the diaspora as concept and practice challenges nationalism and the hegemony of the nation-­state, and offers diasporans the opportunity to be creatively transgressive. Yet many diaspora communities are far from being emancipatory projects and depend on their patriarchal and elite leaderships and the associated internal struggles to shape and represent their interests. Accordingly, it is perhaps most useful to view diasporas as being complex and multilayered, with competing internal voices and trends. In reviewing Diaspora Studies from a social science perspective, there are several clear themes around which the literature coalesces. These include: the politics of belonging in the host state, whether framed around citizenship and state policies like integration and assimilation or framed around feelings and perceptions of belonging (identity issues); diasporic communities as challenging to the home state as political dissidents and representatives of an

i ntroducti on | 11 a­ lternative form of political authority and vision; and diasporic communities as a latent threat to the host state by virtue of having transnational allegiances and loyalties that may be contrary to the principles and values of the host state.22 In the latter two cases, diasporas are viewed as entities that need to be managed, negotiated and controlled by the state. In the case of the United States especially, diasporic groups are accused of hijacking foreign policy, particularly in the example of the powerful Zionist lobby; in more positive portrayals diasporic emigrants are considered potential agents of change (democratising and liberalising) in the homeland.23 The latest development in this literature concerns the spreading of more policy-­defined and institutionally shaped new diasporas, which has shifted the focus to the role played by the homeland state. This particular kind of diaspora is distinct and unmistakably neo-­liberal in its foundation. Its construction emanates from the homeland state that seeks to reconfigure its emigrants and expatriates as a new constituency that it is connected to, and lays claims on institutionally. In the past few years there has been a huge upsurge in the number of states, from India to Turkey to Mexico, reimagining their co-­ethnics abroad as a diaspora, and developing policies and institutions to harness their economic and political potential in particular. Latha Varadarajan24 and others have rightly cast this development as a tentacle of neo-­liberalism with policies and initiatives designed to maximise states benefiting from their emigrants. This has been the subject of much debate, especially where it concerns citizenship and voting rights. States viewing their nationals abroad as a potential resource rely on constructing a neo-­diasporic instrumentalist discourse that emanates from the (historic) homeland and is supported by relevant initiatives. This new trend of states, widening their nationalist project and remit to recast the relationship between states and their nationals abroad, is the latest development in the apparently ever-­ expanding appeal of diaspora as a concept and its versatility and applicability in informing and enabling policy. This collection approaches the Middle East through the lens of Diaspora Studies, through the experiences of transnational communities in the region. The rootedness of diasporas in their respective host states, which are, in practice, their homes, has been relatively ignored in recent academic literature more enamoured of their mobility. Indeed the terminology of Diaspora

12  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Studies has been slow at recognising that, for second and third generations, the ‘host’ has effectively become the home. Tölölyan’s distinction between home and homeland (ancestral place of origin) is a useful intervention here and applies to many of the cases in this collection, whether the community explicitly acknowledges it or not.25 In recognition of the ‘settled’ nature of many diasporas, we situate our work in the agenda laid out by Tölölyan, Kokot and Alfonso: [E]thnographic studies of diaspora must also not neglect the realities of sedentary diasporic life. They must critically take into account the ideological status of the celebratory anti-­national rhetoric of mobility characterizing many theoretical texts on diaspora, as well as the political discourse of uprootedness and dispersal among diaspora elites. This ‘official’ model of a ‘pure’ diasporic identity, permanently endangered by threats of assimilation, must be contrasted with studies of the day-­to-­day experience of individual actors, balancing the various claims brought to them by diasporic elites, society of residence and personal situation alike.26

The chapters of this volume testify to the range and depth of diasporic life in the Middle East and explore its changing conceptions and practice in the context of the modern Middle East, while making a theoretical contribution to Diaspora Studies. In doing so, the authors seek to revitalise the use and validity of the concept of diaspora, and apply it to a region that is home to some of the world’s oldest diasporas. The connection between the Middle East and diaspora is in fact inextricably linked. The quintessential Jewish diaspora and other ‘historic’ diasporas, such as the Armenians and Greeks, are closely associated with the region and central to any historical understanding of the term and the phenomenon. Upon these models of diaspora a substantial Western scholarship developed that relied heavily on the troika of community, host state and homeland. As some of our contributors explicitly acknowledge, the Jewish paradigm remains a potent point of reference in the study of diaspora, but a central argument of this volume is that contemporary notions of diaspora have expanded beyond traditional frameworks conceptualised through a triadic relationship to an accommodation of a multiplicity of fluid, decentred experiences and identities. We situate our approach with Stuart Hall’s influential

i ntroducti on | 13 essay, which argues against the Zionist paradigm of diaspora, as ‘the old, the imperialising, the hegemonising form of ethnicity’,27 and urges for diaspora to be defined ‘not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of identity which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity’. While recognising the three sites represented in the triadic approach, this volume considers that the idea of fluidity as central to diasporic identity best captures the richness of the different diasporas in the region. Accordingly, the chapters demonstrate that central concepts to diaspora like ‘homeland’, ‘host state’, ‘exile’, ‘longing’, ‘memory’, ‘home’ and ‘return’ have been deconstructed and reinstated with meaning through each particular diasporic experience and through political and social projects. Guiding Questions and Core Themes The chapters of this book speak to and across one another along a number of overarching themes and concerns. The place of origin, the Homeland, is central to the classical conception of diaspora, from which it is considered to be tragically exiled. The Homeland lies at the heart of the displacement that is diaspora but maintains a continuing relation to it. Brah suggests that diasporas have a ‘homing desire’; the desire for ‘return’ is one that ‘returns’ the diasporic subjects to the way they were or to an imagined past created in memory.28 The chapters here all centralise the importance of a homeland, real or imagined, experienced or constructed through memories passed down from generation to generation. In studies of diasporas formed by forced dispersion, the homeland where it exists is sometimes relegated to the status of nostalgia. This is especially the case when there is a historical diasporic tradition independent of the homeland, or where there is a troubled or problematic relationship with the homeland. We consider that there are many different kinds of homelands – imagined, historic, virtual, constructed, lost, occupied and so on – and a range of relationships that a community may maintain at any given point, through, for example, political mobilisation (Ilias), exilic consciousness (Holt and Farah) or subversive tourism (Turan and Bakalian). We also consider how the ‘homeland’ and its evocation functions as a tool to build group cohesion and identity. In many cases like the Armenian,

14  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Homeland is an orientation that gives the heterogeneous and multilayered diaspora coherence and meaning, and helps construct their identity as diasporans (Kasbarian). For the Palestinians in Lebanon, the recollection and narration of the homeland keeps the younger generation of refugees grounded in their identities and perpetuates the sense of loss and displacement. Here the concept of diaspora may be seen as central to the construction of Palestinian identity (Farah) or rejected in being applied to the temporary condition of refugee status (Holt). We also recognise that the distinction between the terms ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ can be very fluid. Homeland is a place of origin, often abstract or ideal, which represents a place that is fixed and unchanging even if attitudes towards it may alter over time. In contrast, Home is contemporary and adaptable, shifting and elusive, multiple and movable. As demonstrated in this volume, our notions of home and belonging are challenged by the lived realities of diasporic communities, revealing a life that is vibrant and multi-­locale even when an acute sense of loss lies at its core. These case studies grapple with the tension represented by the lived everyday locality of home on the one hand and an ideal, symbolic Home on the other. Each of these chapters engages implicitly or explicitly with the way that home is represented through diaspora mediators and its cultural production. Our distinction between home and homeland does not detract from diasporic narratives of displacement and loss, which highlight the centrality of memory. The importance of the collective narrative whether grounded in an idiom of nostalgia or resistance and exile functions as a way of identity-­ making, and creating community and cohesion (Holt, Gorman). As bearers of the nation, biologically and through their articulation of the nation, women can play a critical role in remembering the lost homes and Homeland, and transmitting those memories to the younger generations that is key to the construction of a national narrative and identity (Holt). Many of the chapters speak more widely of the generational dimension – the importance of grandparents and parents in passing down a sense of loss and displacement, through stories, memories and cultural production, which mould a diasporic identity among the younger generations who have not experienced it at first hand. But what happens when diasporans actually encounter the ancestral

i ntroducti on | 15 homeland in its current manifestation? For Turkish Ossetians visiting the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, rediscovering the Caucasian homeland can be a fracturing and painful experience, resulting in, ‘a rapid destruction of its long-­standing idealised representations and an acquaintance with its real problems’ (Chochiev). Indeed, for some it may be preferable to retain the mythologised memory of the Homeland rather than face the disappointing realities of a formal state. This, however, is not the case for the North American Armenians who visit their ancestral lands in Turkey, where the phenomenon of Armenian diaspora tourism to eastern Turkey has become a kind of pilgrimage that transgresses the state’s metaframe that denies the truth of their history in these very lands. Return in this form can provide a counter to the official Turkish and Armenian diaspora narratives, a therapeutic journey and personal closure, as well as function as subversive social and political acts in and of themselves (Turan and Bakalian). In contrast to the Homeland, the ‘host state’ is neither ambivalent nor ideal. Its realities and policies are arguably the most crucial factors in the development of minority communities. Several of the chapters look at how identity is constantly negotiated in different and changing state contexts (Farah, Gorman), looking at how state policies and mainstream social attitudes have defined, set apart or integrated diasporic communities. Other chapters highlight the way that the state is almost bypassed through t­ ransnational political activity (Ilias, Holt, Kasbarian). The significance of citizenship and belonging in the modern Middle East is one key aspect of understanding diasporic reality as nuanced and changeable. In certain contexts foreign nationality could convey privilege and protection, as in nineteenth-­century Egypt (Gorman), but the denial of citizenship in the more contemporary world of nation-­states and, particularly the status of the refugee, represents one of the most precarious and alienating points on the diaspora map. While the young Iraqi refugees in Egypt are living ‘in limbo’, marking time and waiting for their (real) lives to begin (Pascucci), the Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, denied local citizenship by the Lebanese state and excluded from Palestine, are even more marginalised, displaced and insecure (Holt, Farah). Just as states are evolving, they contribute to shaping these communities’ self-­perception, identity and orientation. The contingency of diasporic

16  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t and minority identity is taken up by a number of contributors, whether the fluidity of Rum identity in Turkey and Syria who move between ‘being’ Ottomans, Christians, Arabs, Syrians and nationalists (Theodorelis-­Rigas), or the Ossetians in Turkey who can draw on ‘multiple identities of Ossetian, Caucasian, Turkish, or Muslim’ (Chochiev). This diasporic fluidity is not generally viewed as a positive attribute by the state, however, and can arouse suspicions of diaspora groups as fifth columnists or a threat to the nationalist vision of the state. A historical community, whether the Rum or Armenians in modern Turkey, are by their very existence a subversive element that challenges nationalist discourses and deconstructs the idea of the nation. The underlying task for our authors was to explore the enduring concept and understanding of ‘community’ in the Middle East. The postcolonial legacy has meant that many of these communities, and hence their related diasporic identities, are inscribed by the state (Theodorelis-­Rigas, Kasbarian). In some cases community institutions, formal and informal, are well developed (Farah), and in others burgeoning or dying (Toledano, Chochiev, Gorman). Distinct cultural practices are also central to maintaining a sense of community, whether embodied in the press (Gorman), literature (Bayeh) or distinct language and customs (Toledano). Several chapters reveal the hierarchies and competing discourses within communities (Kasbarian, Turan and Bakalian, Gorman), or deconstruct the internal community dynamics and struggles to represent and speak for the group (Kasbarian, Theodorelis-­Rigas, Gorman). These sites of conflict and contestation allow for new and creative articulations of diaspora, unbound from the triadic framework but nevertheless acknowledging its enduring legacy. In contextualising each community within its own narratives, struggles and wider environment, the chapters deconstruct the multilayeredness and complexities of being a minority or diasporic group in the Middle East. We centralise the community as being at the heart of this exercise, positioning ourselves in line with James Clifford’s view that diaspora is simultaneously ‘rooted and routed’, and that the ‘term diaspora is a signifier not simply of transnationality and movement but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive community, in historical contexts of displacement’.29 Furthermore, this collection maintains that although movement is central to the definition of diaspora, many of the communities in the region

i ntroducti on | 17 have a core that is stationary, settled and permanent. Several of the chapters deal explicitly with sedentary diasporic communities (Kasbarian, Farah, Theodorelis-­Rigas); others explore different kinds of diasporic movement – ‘limbo’ and ‘waiting’ (Pascucci), resistance (Holt), travel and (subversive) tourism (Turan and Bakalian). This conceptualisation of diaspora departs from many traditional studies that approach diasporas as successful or unsuccessful – assimilated, integrated or preserved, empowered or disempowered. The potent effects of recent globalisation and continued political instability, itself a legacy in part of the imposition of state boundaries in the post-­ Ottoman past, have led to a proliferation of refugees, migrants and scattered communities, and the resurrection and extension of the term ‘diaspora’ to include many of these new groups. Two chapters in this volume focus on examples of these ‘new’ diasporic communities: Malayalee migrant workers in the Arabian Gulf (Ilias), and Iraqi refugees in Egypt (Pascucci), where the urban environment is a key factor and actively contributes to their marginalisation in the case of the former, and strandedness in the latter case. And, yet, despite this, both groups manage to be transgressive in their practices, whether in social spaces (like the mall) or in religious solidarity and charity in the case of the Iraqis, or in their transnational political activity in the case of the Malayalees. The construction of novel interpretations of home and homeland is also evident in diaspora literature (Bayeh), where the writings of authors in exile articulate different configurations of identity and groundedness. It is this creative and subversive potential that diasporas hold that our volume celebrates. This Collection We have grouped the chapters of this volume into four parts that engage with different but overlapping themes. The first section, ‘Post-­Ottoman Reconfigurations’, presents a number of case studies of diaspora communities constituted before the end of the Ottoman period and follows their trajectory and reconfiguration in the period after the dissolution of the empire. The second section, ‘Exile, “Return” and Resistance’, focuses on the response of two diaspora communities, North American Armenians and Palestinians in Lebanon, to the condition of exile and the resistance strategies employed to sustain notions of return. The third

18  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t section, ‘Community in Host States – Establishing New Homes’, examines two case studies, that of the Armenians of Cyprus and of the Palestinians of Lebanon, and how these communities have engaged with their diasporic environment, interacting with the local conditions of their home while maintaining their distinctive sense of homeland. The final section, ‘New Diasporas’, looks at two more recent cases, the Keralites of India in the Gulf and Iraqis in Egypt, displaced following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and demonstrate that displacement, whether for primarily economic or political reasons, ­continues to provide new articulations of diaspora. Part 1: Post-­Ottoman Reconfigurations In his discussion of the genealogy of the appellation ‘Rum’ (Greek Orthodox) Haris Theodorelis-­ Rigas explores its diverging configurations in post-­ Ottoman Syria and Turkey. In tracing the historical trajectory of the term and its appropriation by a series of communities, from the classical dhimmi of the Greek-­speaking community of Ottoman times to the more recent Arabic-­ speaking Rums from the Turkish province of Hatay who have migrated to Istanbul, he both highlights the fluidity of the term that has been used for self-­identification and emphasises the importance of the larger political context of the modernist-­secularist projects of Kemalism and Ba‘thism (and their successors) and their distinct strategies in coopting and constituting the national community. While diasporas are often thought of as weakened, discriminated and marginalised groups in society, Ehud Toledano examines a diaspora group of a different order, namely the Turko-­Circassian elite whose position was threatened and subsequently provoked a response to avert their exclusion from the newly established states of the post-­Ottoman Middle East. Situating this in a process of localisation and Ottomanisation that began taking place throughout the Ottoman Empire from the seventeenth century, Toledano focuses on the career of Egyptian nationalist leader, Muhammad Farid, as a representative of the Ottoman Turcophone diaspora elite in the newly emerging nation-­states of the Middle East and North Africa. The dual sociopolitical and sociocultural processes that challenged the position of these elites in the second half of the nineteenth century with the advent of nationalism saw these elites struggling to keep their privileged status by joining

i ntroducti on | 19 forces with the local middle classes to lead national liberation movements. In this process, and even more so with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, these Ottoman-­Local elites found themselves in the position of diaspora ­communities in their own countries. Georgy Chochiev discusses the case of the Ossetians who migrated from their homeland in the Caucasus in the 1850s and 1860s to settle in the interior of Anatolia. In exploring the subsequent trajectory of the community, itself part of a wider process of movement of the North Caucasian mountaineering peoples after their defeat in the Russo-­Caucasian War, Chochiev examines the establishment of the Ossetians in their initial rural settlements in Anatolia where they maintained close contact with neighbouring North Caucasian immigrant peoples and constituted an integral part of the Middle Eastern Circassian supra-­ethnic community. In time, with the growing impact of the statewide modernisation and nationalistic tendencies of the republican period, the community underwent gradual changes in demographic structure and the nature of its collective identity. He shows that by the end of the twentieth century Turkish Ossetians had been transformed into an urbanised community concentrated largely in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir with a high level of integration within mainstream society. Anthony Gorman examines the Italian community of Egypt, part of the global movement of Italians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and one of the notable resident foreign communities of that country. Encouraged if not constituted as a result of the modernising programme of Muhammad ‘Ali and his successor rulers of Egypt, the Italian population grew steadily beyond the end of the century and into the 1930s. Contested, conflictual, yet coherent, it established a familiar presence across wider Egyptian society, founded on a rich and diverse community and commercial life that maintained strong connections with the Italian state. With the departure of much of the community in the period after the Second World War, the Italians of Egypt would disperse, some to return to the homeland but others to other countries where they would constitute a new diaspora of Egyptian Italians not nurturing dreams of permanent return to Egypt but maintaining the social connections and the memory of their life there.

20  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Part II: Exile, ‘Return’ and Resistance The second section of the volume engages with themes of exile, ‘return’ and resistance, examining the case of two notable diasporas, that is, Armenians and Palestinians, and explores the way in which these two groups have ­experienced exile and seek to invigorate the concept of return. Zeynep Turan and Anny Bakalian explore the phenomenon of diaspora tourism to ancestral homelands in Eastern Turkey, which was first taken up by Armenian-­Americans during the 1990s. Through organised tours conducted by specialised guides, these groups visit ancestral villages and significant sites of Armenian history and experience a journey that is ultimately one of healing, personally and collectively. Participants gain first-­hand knowledge of landscape and contemporary conditions and generate new experiences, memories and perspectives on the genocide and deportations. Upon their return home, travellers disseminate their reflections and photos/films at community venues and online in a way that often challenges nationalist narratives and establishes alternative histories. Thus, Armenian-­Americans engage in ‘subversive tourism’ through their very presence in these lands, and their transgressing of official narratives and state structures. Based on participant observations of two such tours, email surveys and interviews with the operator who has guided more than 1,200 Armenian-­Americans to villages and towns in Turkey, this study explores the evolving dynamics between Armenians, Kurds and Turks as it speaks to the complex relationship between the physical landscape, national and personal narratives, identity, memory and representations of traumatic histories in diasporic communities. The dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinians during the events of 1948 serves as one of the potent examples of a modern diaspora in the Middle East. Focusing on one particular element within this group, Maria Holt examines the plight of Palestinian refugee women living in the camps of Lebanon as a community that faces deteriorating living conditions and few prospects of peace or security. She examines how women refugees, as both victims and active participants, have adopted various modes of resistance to protect themselves and their families and how they have sought to confront attempts to negate their identity through the construction and articulation of a national narrative, a ‘story of unfulfilled desire’. These women’s narratives,

i ntroducti on | 21 which are both personal and communal, take many forms and are used to preserve the memory of 1948, as well as to remind the world that the Israeli– Palestinian conflict remains unresolved. Part III: Community in Host States – Establishing New Homes While maintaining their relationship with a homeland and the past, diasporic communities have, by necessity, engaged and developed their organic life in host states that have, in time, evolved into permanent new homes. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Sossie Kasbarian approaches the Armenians in Cyprus as a minority community situated between two mutually dependent nationalisms of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot. She charts the history of the Armenian community in Cyprus, discussing how the Ottoman and British colonial legacies in particular continue to impact their political status and identity. The chapter situates the community’s position in light of the developments emanating from the Republic’s full membership in the European Union (EU) since 2004, and the wider effect of supranational entities like the EU and the Council of Europe in reconfiguring and empowering diasporic groups. The chapter weaves together the picture of a contemporary diasporic community increasingly rooted to its ‘host state’ through policies, measures, the passage of time, and political realities, and increasingly confident as Cypriot citizens. The Armenian community is a reminder that ‘Others’ can also lay claim to a long and constant attachment to a modern state. Their continued presence acts as a confrontation to nationalist narratives, issuing a challenge to rethink Cypriot history and offers hope for a more inclusive, diverse society. May Farah examines how the Palestinians in Lebanon, bureaucratically and legally excluded from mainstream Lebanese life, have negotiated the transition from a physically (spatially) rooted national identity to an imagined national affiliation, contingent on the circumstances of their exile. Having been torn loose from their nation, refugees nevertheless remain connected to their homelands, to their national identity, through certain practices: constant recollections of the past, the passing down of stories and, increasingly, through media. By such actions they have sought to reinforce the temporality of their refugee status, remind themselves of their common origin and ­imagine that they are part of a national community.

22  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Part IV: New Diasporas While the break-­up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War and the establishment of its successor states in the postcolonial era prompted demographic change and movement, in recent decades new Middle Eastern diasporas have been created by the force of globalisation and the political disruption of the region. Here two examples of such recent phenomena are addressed. M. H. Ilias addresses the case of the Malayalee migrant workers of Kerala established in the Gulf and examines how their presence has generated various forms of translocal politics within the restrictions of the host Gulf monarchies. In exploring the creative political agency shown in response to this very controlled political environment he demonstrates that rather than a simple extension of Kerala-­centric or India-­centric politics pursued beyond the boundaries of homeland, the specific circumstances of the Malayalee workers in the Gulf has allowed the opening up of new avenues of expression for the otherwise politically constrained population. The active Islamisation of political life among Kerala Muslim migrants to the Gulf, not in tune with the global trend but with the Kerala-­specific sociopolitical developments, is also discussed. Elisa Pascucci examines an even more recent displacement, that of Iraqis following the invasion of 2003. Until the recent crisis in Syria, this was considered to be the most significant refugee flow within the Middle East since 1948. She discusses the community settled in the upscale residential areas of Cairo, such as Madinet Nasr, Masr El Gadida and 6th of October City. This is a state-­employed urban bourgeoisie dispossessed by war and targeted by sectarian violence, representing a remarkable case of middle-­class refugees. Based on extensive ethnographic research carried out among young (unmarried) women and men, her chapter explores both their narratives and the material and embodied performances that constitute their struggle for local and global inclusion. It shows how, while institutional discrimination, limited access to economic rights in Egypt and the deterioration of social and family ties in Iraq often make their future uncertain, the spaces of consumption and leisure that mark Cairo’s postmodern urbanism offer them what can be defined as a ‘simulacrum of inclusion’ in emerging global modernity.

i ntroducti on | 23 In exploring the potential of the literary text as a medium through which to sustain a diasporic consciousness, Jumana Bayeh engages with another aspect of diaspora experience. Her discussion of Lebanese diaspora literature addresses the centrality of home in the work of a number of authors writing in English but redolent with Lebanese identity, and examines how the concept of home is configured and specifically how it engages with origins, movement and the relation between these roots and routes that are ­negotiated with each other with different political implications. Concluding Thoughts The contributions presented in this volume are testimony to the range and variety of diaspora experience in the Middle East over the last hundred years and more from the late Ottoman to the postcolonial period. The precarious state of political affairs in the Middle East has continued to produce the movement of peoples under threat. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent political instability has seen the displacement and the departure of significant numbers of Iraqi Christians and Muslims. The outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011 has seen yet another variation on the same theme where Syrian refugee communities have set up home across the border in Turkey and Jordan, or gone further afield to Egypt, Dubai, Armenia and beyond. While the recent and ongoing nature of these displacements has not yet allowed for the foundation of some of the classical features of a diaspora, these groups are in the process of settling themselves into a long-­term, perhaps permanent, exile. At the time of writing, the Middle East appears to be in an even more turbulent state than ever, with Gaza still under seige by Israel, Syria in a state of civil war, Iraq a failing state, and Egypt back full circle to military rule after an abortive revolution. Amidst these volatile situations and competing uncompromising forces, it is the minority ethnic and religious communities that are the most vulnerable, as example after example shows. In the north-­west of Iraq, ancient Yazidi communities have been driven out of their towns, as Islamist militants ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) mount a genocidal campaign against them while Kurdish communities seek to defend themselves. Iraq’s ancient Christian communities are under similar attack, with wider fears for the future of Christians throughout the region now a common refrain.

24  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t As they have done before, these latest events will generate displaced communities, new diasporas, the reconstitution of societies, the reconfiguration of social structures and the creation of new narratives of dispersal and ­imaginings of homes and returns. Notes   1. For example, Laurie A. Brand, Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Aminah McCloud, Transnational Muslims in American Society (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006); Anny Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond (Stanford, CA: University of California Press, 2009).  2. Exceptions include Dawn Chatty, Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Nils A.  Butenschon, Uri Davis and Manuel Hassassian (eds), Citizenship and the State in the Middle East (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000); and the new electronic journal founded in 2013, Mashriq & Mahjar – Journal of Middle East Migration Studies, http://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/akhater/Mashriq/currentissue.html (accessed 7 October 2014).   3. For example, Valentine M. Moghadam, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003); Elizabeth F. Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000); Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Lila Abu-­Lughod (ed.) Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Suad Joseph (ed.), Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (New York, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000).   4. Alex Weingrod and André Levy, ‘Social Thought and Commentary, Paradoxes of Homecoming: The Jews and Their Diaspora’, Anthropological Quarterly 79: 4 (autumn 2006), pp. 691–716.  5. Joel Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998).   6. Khachig Tölölyan, ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 5: 1 (1996), p. 3.   7. James Clifford, ‘Diasporas – Further Inflections: Toward Ethnographies of the Future’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 3 (1994), p. 324.

i ntroducti on | 25   8. Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora (New York, NY and London: New York University Press, 2005).  9. Jonathan and Daniel Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), p.  13; William Safran, ‘Comparing Diasporas: A Review Essay’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 8: 3 (winter 1999), pp. 255–91. 10. See, for example, Richard Marienstras, ‘On the Notion of Diaspora’, in Gerard Chaliand (ed.), Minority People in the Age of Nation-­State (London: Pluto, 1989), pp. 119–25; Floya Anthias, ‘Evaluating Diaspora: Beyond Ethnicity?’, Sociology 32: 3 (August 1998), pp. 557–80; Dominique Schnapper, ‘From the Nation-­State to the Transnational World: On the Meaning and Usefulness of Diaspora as a Concept’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 8: 3 (1999), pp.  225–54; William Safran, ‘Deconstructing and Comparing Diasporas’, in Khachig Tölölyan, Waltraud Kokot and Carolin Alfonso (eds), Diaspora, Identity and Religion (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 9–29. 11. John A. Armstrong, ‘Mobilized and Proletarian Diasporas’, American Political Science Review 70: 2 (June 1976), p. 393. 12. Gerard Chaliand, Minority People in the Age of Nation-­State (London: Pluto, 1989), pp. xiv–xvii. 13. Khachig Tölölyan, ‘The Nation-­State and its Others’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (spring 1991), p. 5. 14. Edward W. Said, Out of Place (London: Granta Books, 1999). 15. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1994). 16. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York, NY: Bantam, 1989); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 17. Tölölyan, ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s)’, p. 28. 18. Edward W. Said, Reflections on Exile and other Literary and Cultural Essays (London: Granta Books, 2000), p. 173. 19. Boyarin and Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora, p. 7. 20. Clifford, ‘Diasporas – Further Inflections’, p. 322. 21. Kim Knott and Seán McLoughlin, Diasporas – Concepts, Intersections, Identities (London and New York, NY: Zed Books, 2010), pp. 1–23. 22. Terrence Lyons and Peter Mandaville, ‘Introduction: Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas’, in Politics from Afar – Transnational Diasporas and Networks (London: Hurst, 2012), pp. 1–24.

26  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 23. Yossi Shain, Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the US and their Homelands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 24. Latha Varadarajan, The Domestic Abroad – Diasporas in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 25. Khachig Tölölyan, ‘The Contemporary Discourse of Diaspora Studies’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27: 3 (2007), p. 649. 26. Khachig Tölölyan, Waltraud Kokot and Carolin Alfonso (eds), Diaspora, Identity and Religion (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 5. 27. Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-­Colonial Theory: A Reader (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 392–403. 28. Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1997), p. 179. 29. Clifford, ‘Diasporas – Further Inflections’, p. 308.

Bibliography Abu-­Lughod, Lila (ed.), Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). Anthias, Floya, ‘Evaluating Diaspora: Beyond Ethnicity?’, Sociology 32: 3 (August 1998), pp. 557–80. Armstrong, John A. ‘Mobilized and Proletarian Diasporas’, The American Political Science Review 70: 2 (June 1976), pp. 393–408. Aviv, Caryn and David Shneer, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora (New York, NY and London: New York University Press, 2005). Bakalian, Anny and Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond (Stanford, CA: University of California Press, 2009). Beinin, Joel, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998). Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1994). Boyarin, Jonathan and Daniel Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). Brah, Avtar, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1997). Brand, Laurie A., Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

i ntroducti on | 27 Butenschon, Nils A., Uri Davis and Manuel Hassassian (eds), Citizenship and the State in the Middle East (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000). Chaliand, Gerard, Minority People in the Age of Nation-­State (London: Pluto, 1989). Chatty, Dawn, Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Clifford, James, ‘Diasporas – Further Inflections: Toward Ethnographies of the Future’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 3 (1994), pp. 302–38. Du Bois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk (New York, NY: Bantam, 1989). Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). Hall, Stuart, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-­Colonial Theory: A Reader (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 392–403. Joseph, Suad (ed.), Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (New York, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000). Knott, Kim and Seán McLoughlin, Diasporas – Concepts, Intersections, Identities (London and New York, NY: Zed Books, 2010). Lyons, Terrence and Peter Mandaville, ‘Introduction: Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas’, in Politics from Afar – Transnational Diasporas and Networks (London: Hurst, 2012), pp. 1–24. McCloud, Aminah, Transnational Muslims in American Society (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006). Mahmood, Saba, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Marienstras, Richard, ‘On the Notion of Diaspora’, in Gerard Chaliand (ed.), Minority People in the Age of Nation-­State (London: Pluto, 1989), pp. 119–25. Moghadam, Valentine M., Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003). Safran, William, ‘Comparing Diasporas: A Review Essay’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 8: 3 (winter 1999), pp. 255–91. Safran, William, ‘Deconstructing and Comparing Diasporas’ in Khachig Tölölyan, Waltraud Kokot and Carolin Alfonso (eds) Diaspora, Identity and Religion (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 9–29. Said, Edward W., Out of Place (London: Granta Books, 1999). Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays (London: Granta Books, 2000). Schnapper, Dominique, ‘From the Nation-­State to the Transnational World: On

28  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t the Meaning and Usefulness of Diaspora as a Concept’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 8: 3 (1999), pp. 225–54. Shain, Yossi, Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the US and their Homelands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Thompson, Elizabeth F., Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000). Tölölyan, Khachig, ‘The Nation-­State and its Others’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (spring 1991), pp. 3–7. Tölölyan, Khachig, ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment’, Diaspora 5: 1 (1996), pp. 3–36. Tölölyan, Khachig, ‘The Contemporary Discourse of Diaspora Studies’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27: 3 (2007), pp. 647–51. Tölölyan, Khachig, Waltraud Kokot and Carolin Alfonso (eds), Diaspora, Identity and Religion (London: Routledge, 2004). Varadarajan, Latha, The Domestic Abroad – Diasporas in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Weingrod, Alex and André Levy, ‘Social Thought and Commentary, Paradoxes of Homecoming: The Jews and their Diaspora’, Anthropological Quarterly 79: 4 (autumn 2006), pp. 691–716.

1 Model Citizens or a Fifth Column? Greek Orthodox (Rum) Communities in Syria and Turkey between Secularism and Multiculturalism Haris Theodorelis-­Rigas

T

he idea of dispersion has been central in conceptualising diaspora since its inception as a distinct field in the 1990s. Early focus on etymology and the ‘classical’ diasporas of Jewish, Armenian and Greek exilic communities led to a strict understanding of this dispersion as displacement from an imagined homeland.1 As Diaspora Studies extended beyond the limited scope of displaced communities to include various kinds of transnational ­categories, two important suggestions appear to have gained resonance. First, reference to a homeland or – in Safran’s words – an ‘original centre’2, is not a prerequisite for the conceptualisation of a group as a diaspora; in this light, diasporas may be viewed as ‘the result from the migration of borders over people and not simply from that of people over borders’, leading to the creation of what Brubaker has dubbed ‘accidental diasporas’.3 Second, it has been increasingly suggested that moving beyond an essentialist understanding of diasporas as categories of being may grant us access to a more profound understanding of diaspora as a ‘category of practice’. When studied as ‘an idiom, a stance, a claim’4 and a resource, diasporas may tell us a different story, that of loyalties, expectations and sentiments of inclusion/exclusion into political programmes as they are experienced by minority ­communities in the Middle East. This chapter discusses the reception of state secularisation policies by 31

32  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t three minority communities that bear the same ethnonyme: the Greek-­ speaking Romioi of Istanbul, the Arabic-­speaking Rum of Syria and the Arabic-­speaking Rum of Antakya (Antioch). Since the 1970s, following their migration from their native Antakya to Istanbul, members of this last group have found themselves in a position of mediation between the first two groups. As ‘accidental diasporas’, the Rum of Istanbul, Antakya and Syria may trace their history back to a common Hellenistic, Byzantine and Ottoman past, while maintaining an emphasis on their indigenousness and organic bonds to their respective homelands. The first part of this chapter sets forth a brief, historical overview of the appellation ‘Rum’ and its diverging connotations in Ottoman and post-­ Ottoman vocabularies of power as an imperial, confessional, ethno-­ ­ religious and national category. I then move to a comparative ­assessment of minority policies that have affected the Rum in Turkey and Syria in the context of the modernising, secularist projects of Kemalism and Ba‘thism, ­respectively. I argue that while in Syria Rums have been much more included in the political process than has been the case for their co-­religionists in Turkey, minority regimes in both countries can be viewed as different trajectories of the millet principle of societal organisation, this time under a secularist outlook. The third part of the chapter focuses on the Antiochian Rum community of Istanbul. It is argued that the group is currently undergoing a distinct process of diasporisation, as a minority within a minority. Four possible outcomes of this process are explored: Arabisation, Turkification, Hellenisation, and creolisation. The work presented in the final section of the chapter reflects select findings of research carried out in Istanbul from September 2007 to June 2011 as part of doctoral research at the politics department of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. Methodology was based on day-­to-­day participatory observation complemented by a total of forty-­two unstructured, in-­depth interviews conducted in Greek and Turkish with community members of both sexes and of various age groups in Istanbul from September 2006 to October 2011. This, in turn, was complemented by a total of fourteen interviews in Turkish and English in Antakya and Aleppo that followed the same methodology over the course of a four-­week period in December 2007. Having preceded the Syrian crisis by four years, the findings capture Rum attitudes

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 33 and sentiments prior to the violence commencing in 2011. All interviewees opted for limited anonymity (first name and surname initial). ‘Rum’, ‘Greek’ and ‘Arab Orthodox’ Comparative studies on Syrian and Turkish minorities are remarkably rare.5 Leaving aside the practical impediments caused by Syria’s oppressive regime, the scarcity of reliable statistics and the specialised linguistic training required posit significant obstacles to potential researchers. On top of that, systematic research on minorities in Turkey has been a relatively recent development, while studies of the Rum have been constrained by the methodological nationalism of Greek, Turkish and Syrian historiographies, respectively. This chapter suggests that a comparative look at the Eastern Orthodox Christians of Istanbul, Syria and Antakya in a shared, post-­Ottoman context may offer ways out of this impasse. The discussion starts from the hypothesis that both in Istanbul and Syria Rum Orthodox communities constitute, in one way or another, the institutional descendants of the Ottoman millet-­i Rum.6 In terms of historiography, however, both the terms ‘Rum’ and ‘millet’ seem to carry additional complexities of their own. The oldest occurrence in Islamic literature of the term ‘Rum’ appears to be the Surat al-­Rum (30:1), the Quranic prophesy of the defeat of the polytheist Sassanids at the hands of the Byzantines and the call of the Faithful to rejoice at the forthcoming victory of the Byzantines as people of the Book (ahl al-­kitab).7 Rum here corresponds to the Latin Romanus or the Greek Romaios, literally ‘Roman’, the standard self-­appellation of the Orthodox Christian subjects of the Byzantine Empire.8 In the centuries that followed, the Surat al-­Rum, the ‘Constitution of Medina’ and the ‘Pact of Umar’ would function as theological precedents for any kind of accomodationist, institutional arrangements drafted by Muslim overlords in order to define the status of Christians as dhimmis (protected).9 As for the term ‘Rum’ it assumed different meanings in the Balkans and the Middle East. With the shrinking of the Byzantine Empire into a predominately Greek-­speaking geographical area – especially during Ottoman expansion – the term ‘Romios-­Rum’ came to denote the Greek-­speaking Christians of the Balkans, as distinct from their Slav-­, Albanian-­or Romanian-­speaking co-­religionists. In Anatolia the situation was slightly different as the vast majority of the Orthodox Christians

34  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t of the hinterland had started adopting Turkish as a mother tongue from the fifteenth century, without abandoning the term ‘Rum’ as a form of self-­ ascription.10 In Antioch and the Levant the term retained its meaning as a synonym for ‘Melkite’ (Syriac malkaya, Arabic malakiyyun), a term still used for Catholics of the Eastern Rite (Arabic Rum Kathulik), originally meaning ‘of the king’, that is, the Roman Emperor of Constantinople.11 Throughout the Ottoman period both ‘Melkite’ and ‘Rum’ denoted the historical and organic relation of the Arab Orthodox with Constantinople, as opposed to the ‘ethnic’ non-­Chalcedonian Churches of the Armenians, Syriacs and Copts, which had long adopted their individual liturgical languages. In order to understand how this semantic of loyalty was replaced by the ‘neutral’, descriptive, confessional meaning ‘of the Greek’ or ‘Eastern Rite’ one has to look into the history of the millet system. Few terms have been repeated and abused in the historiographies of the Balkans and the Middle East as much as ‘millet’. Often described as ‘the classical Ottoman system of government’, the term has lately featured in the work of a leading advocate of multicultural citizenship, followed by its definition as ‘a federation of theocracies’.12 Most references to the millet system fall between two essentialist narratives. On the one hand, there is a nostalgic narrative of tolerance starting with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II and the formal recognition and famous privileges that the conqueror allegedly bestowed upon the heads of the three main, non-­ Muslim communities of his vast empire: the Greek Orthodox, the Armenians and the Jews.13 According to this interpretation, the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Patriarchs and the Jewish Hahambaşı acted as milletbaşı, that is, formal, administrative heads of their respective communities, who in turn enjoyed significant autonomy in issues of tax collection, as well as family and inheritance law. The resulting social arrangement, typically compared to a mosaic, was one of tolerance and generally peaceful coexistence. The nationalist narrative, on the other hand, emphasises continuity, and the roles of the millets as largely homogenous, proto-­national moulds, or ethnies in captivity, out of which future, full-­fledged nations were bound to ensue.14 Both narratives share some ground in assuming the uninterrupted existence of the millets, rather than trying to account for their creation and eventual institutionalisation.

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 35 Regarding the millet-­i Rum, both the nostalgic and nationalist narratives have come under intense scholarly scrutiny since the 1980s. Through pioneering work, Benjamin Braude and Paraskevas Konortas have argued separately that much of the literature on millet privileges involved a great deal of tampering with the past and generous ‘inventions of tradition’.15 This was based on the discourse employed by nineteenth-­century Orthodox elites, in an effort to negotiate a firm institutionalisation of the millet system in the context of the Tanzimat Reforms, the sweeping 1839–76 period of reorganisation, driven by eagerness to modernise the Ottoman Empire.16 In fact, during the classical Ottoman period, far from an overarching, institutional architecture that could constitute a ‘system’, privileges were granted periodically in the form of a berat, a title of privileges awarded on behalf of the Ottoman state to the person of the Patriarch rather than to the community as a legal entity.17 Similar evidence from the Syrian context suggests that as late as the 1730s a ‘fully articulated millet system was not yet in place’.18 In the eighteenth century a gradual shift in Ottoman nomenclature from Patriarch of the taife kâfirlerin (community of non-­believers) to ‘Patriarch of the Rum’, coincided with the concentration of jurisdiction over all Eastern Orthodox Christians in Ottoman territories, regardless of language or ethnicity, in the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In time, this was followed by the abolition of the Serbian and Bulgarian Archdioceses in Peć and Ohrid in 1766 and 1767, respectively, and the gradual demotion of the powers of the Patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria. Thus, the Patriarch of Constantinople became the undisputed administrative head of all Rum Orthodox in the empire (Greek, Albanian, Vlach, Serb, Bulgarian, Turk and Arab), assisted by a multi-­ethnic, Greek-­educated, bureaucratic elite known as the Phanariots.19 This was ‘Byzantium after Byzantium’,20 with Greek enjoying a hegemonic position as a liturgical, administrative and commercial lingua franca, this time fostered by the Ottoman administration as a rallying point against the threat of Russian expansionism. It should be noted, however, that Rumness was neither an ethnic nor proto-­nationalist identity. It was an imperial, or rather sub-­imperial, identity, often employed by Orthodox elites as a source of legitimacy, political ascendancy and socio-­ economic mobility.21 To complicate things further, the Ottoman elite occasionally employed the term ‘Rum’ as a form of self-­ascription, a practice

36  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t reflected in Kurdish and Syrian Arabic, where depending on the context Rum could mean ‘Byzantine’, ‘Anatolian’, ‘Ottoman’, ‘Turkish’ or ‘Eastern Orthodox’.22 The millet set of arrangements appeared to be collapsing in the nineteenth century under the shadow of that complex international political game known as ‘the Eastern Question’. The new economic conditions fostered by the Capitulations, contributed to the rise of the ‘conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant’23 as the prototype of a sturdy and vociferous middle class. This coincided with a belated engagement of the Ottoman Empire with Enlightenment and modernity, primarily through Western missionary teaching. These complex dynamics would eventually introduce Balkan particularisms into the everyday of the late Ottoman political agenda. The ensuing chain reaction of nationalist movements, from the Serbian Revolution of 1804 to the Arab Revolt of 1916, would lead to the empire’s final collapse.24 The Tanzimat version of Ottomanism was a significant intermission, momentarily instilling some degree of loyalty to Ottoman subjects, regardless of faith and language. Critically, however, the Reforms appeared to be suffering from a self-­defeating dualism: on the one hand, they insisted on equality before the law but, on the other, founded this equality on the formal institutionalisation of clearly defined millets along increasingly ethno-­religious lines.25 Failing to prevent Bulgarian separatism and Balkan expansion, the Reforms were soon followed by Abdülhamid’s Pan-­Islamic centralisation and the Pan-­Turkism of the Young Turks.26 The influx of destitute refugees from the lost territories and the ensuing mass atrocities against Ottoman Christians further alienated non-­Muslim populations and accelerated the process of separatism in the western and eastern provinces alike. The Istanbul Patriarchate still desperately tried to cling to the mantle of ecumenicity in a last effort to uphold its privileged political position. But already in the 1910s ecumenicity meant little more than indoctrination into the ‘historical rights of Hellenism’, whereby ‘Rum’ and ‘Hellen’ (Greek) were used interchangeably, to denote a maximalist understanding of the Greek nation.27 The fact that in most Western languages the term ‘Rum’ translated as ‘Greek’ contributed to the hijacking of Rumness by Greek irredentism.28 In a different corner of the empire things were not all that different. The

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 37 same factors that led to the ascendancy of a dynamic Greek-­speaking middle class in Constantinople had created an economic and intellectual avant garde of Christians in Syria. This nouveau riche class profited from their role as middleman minorities, attended the missionary schools, studied in Europe, enjoyed the protection of foreign consulates and came to constitute a rising, comprador capitalist class.29 Despite the occasional massacres, there was an impressive demographic boost.30 After Muhammad Ali’s occupation of Syria they regained their economic privileges and actively participated in the Nahda, the Arab literary awakening centred in nineteenth-­century Beirut. What is more, in the period 1872–99, they managed, with significant Russian support, to elect an Arab Patriarch in Antioch.31 Students of Balkan nationalisms are familiar with the significance that autocephalous churches carry for processes of national awakening.32 In this light, Bruce Masters aptly places the creation of the Rum Catholic or Melkite Church in the context of what he calls ‘the millet wars’ of the eighteenth century, which followed intensive missionary activity in Aleppo and the Lebanese port cities.33 Athanasios Dabbas, the clandestine Rum Catholic Metropolitan of Aleppo, was the first to introduce an Arabic printing press in 1706, only to be forcefully moved to Lebanon in 1720 under pressure from the Orthodox Rum of the city.34 While negotiating their way to full recognition as a millet (in 1848) the Melkites were the first Middle Eastern Church to emphasise localism and Arabic as a liturgical language. And yet, in their correspondence with the Porte, they went to great lengths in order to establish themselves as the ‘“authentic” Rum in Syria’.35 In resisting Greek hegemony the Syrian Rum were not only following the Bulgarian and Romanian examples but also making the most of the administrative mixed councils and general thrust toward secularism, implicit in the Tanzimat Reforms. This transition was not automatic or obvious to the participants. While undermining the ecumenical claims of Constantinople, or propagating liberalism and constitutionalism, Syrian Rum were not negating their Rum (confessional) or Ottoman (imperial) identity nor were they necessarily espousing a full-­fledged, Arab nationalist breach with tradition. Arab subjectivity at the turn of the century seemed to work at different, overlapping layers of loyalties. As late as 1913 ‘Abd al-­Hamid al-­Zahrawi, a leading Arab nationalist from Syria, would proclaim: ‘We have a g­ eneral ­solidarity

38  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t bond (jami‘a) of Ottomanism, a particular solidarity bond of Arabism, and yet a more particular solidarity bond of Syrianism.’36 Interestingly enough, these same ‘bonds’ were largely pertinent for Syrian Christians: ‘In a movement away from defining community solely by religious faith, the non-­Muslim elites in the Arab provinces increasingly chose the option of a secular political identity, whether Ottomanism or Arabism, as the empire stumbled into the twentieth century.’37 While there is evidence of Christian support for Muhammad Ali’s occupation of Syria, the Christians of Aleppo readily welcomed the Tanzimat Reforms, being among the first to adopt the wearing of the fez as a visible mark of Ottoman citizenship. Apart from ‘feeling’ Ottoman increasingly from the eighteenth century onwards, Christian elites came to perceive themselves confessionally as ‘Christians’, culturally as ‘Arab’ and nationally as ‘Syrians’. By 1918 ‘the Rum Orthodox of Syria could be counted, more than any other Christian community, firmly in the ranks of the nationalists’.38 Minority Policies Pertaining to the Rum in Syria and Turkey The disproportionately high contribution of Arab Christians to Arab secularist and nationalist political movements, ranging from Ba‘thism to communism and National Socialism,39 has been well documented. The seminal narrative on the subject, penned by George Antonius in 1938, The Arab Awakening, has presented a genealogy of Arab nationalism that emphasised the role of Christians as pioneers of its development.40 Still, what concerns us here is not whether or not ‘Arab Nationalism was the creation of Lebanese Christian Arabs spreading European doctrines’,41 but rather that such a statement is credible, possible even, within the value system and ideological framework of the different variants of Arab nationalist thought. In other words, the mere presence of Rums, such as Jurji Zaydan, Constantine Zurayq and Michel Aflaq, in the literary and political pantheon of Arab nationalism poses powerful contrasts with the various forms of Turkish nationalism, which have consistently excluded non-­Muslims.42 Similarly, the argument that Arab Christians’ privileged, mediating role with the West, their urban profile and their minority status within the Caliphate urged them to abandon Ottomanism for the sake of a secular, horizontal political order heralded by nationalism, does not concern us here as a his-

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 39 torical ‘fact’ but rather as a discursive resource available to the Syrian Rum to this day. Before assessing the space for negotiation allotted to Rum communities in Ba‘thist Syria and Republican Turkey, one has to justify the comparison between Ba‘thism and Kemalism.43 Although neither should be viewed as monolithic movements, a common ground may be delineated through themes and practices adopted by both ideologies, in response to their institutional and ideological predecessors. In other words, while professing to be revolutionary, both movements have in fact been in constant dialogue with the failures of the Tanzimat, Hamidian and Young Turk regimes.44 Both movements professed to be ousting corrupt, inefficient and entrenched elites (the Young Turks in Turkey, the National Bloc in Syria) and emphasised secularism as a breach from outdated, conservative and hierarchical bonds of loyalty. In line with the Young Turk tradition, both ideologies have historically relied on the party and the military as potential vehicles of modernisation and real equality, which would contribute to a ‘revolution despite, and for the people’,45 announcing a pattern of military coups in both Syrian and Turkish politics throughout the greater part of the twentieth century.46 Ba‘thism, just as Kemalism did before it, reserved a privileged position in its ideological core for a maximalist understanding of nationalism, sharing theoretical assumptions with other pan-­nationalisms of the late nineteenth ­century: Russian Pan-­Slavism, Hamidian Pan-­Islamism and the Pan-­Turanism of the Young Turks.47 Resistance to colonialism, or the threat of it, constituted a guiding principle for Ba‘thist ideology, while the short-­ lived occupation of Anatolia by British, French and Greek forces and the ensuing war of liberation (Kurtuluş Savaşı) has been the formative, traumatic experience of the Kemalist version of Turkish nationalism. In Ba‘thist terms statism took the form of markaziyya shadida (strong centralism) while in Turkey devletçilik (statism) has been one of the six fundamental principles of contemporary Kemalism.48 Similarities also extend to the methods of establishing control over state and society, such as the relative reliance on heterodox communities as a power-­base (Alevis in Turkey and Alawis, Druze and Ismailis in Syria),49 one party rule, the personality cult of the leader,50 and the employment of sport clubs and youth clubs, schools and newspapers in the service of nationalist indoctrination.51 In fact Keith Watenpaugh has

40  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t suggested that much of this overlap of i­deology and method may be traced back to the formative years of Arabism. As an example, Watenpaugh reminds us that Zaki al-Arsuzi, a leading figure of Arab nationalism, and an Alawi from Antakya, was directly engaged against Kemalist propaganda in the late 1930s during the Alexandretta affair and may well have been influenced by the ideological apparatus deployed by Turkish nationalists in their struggle for Hatay.52 Despite this long list of similarities, minority policy frameworks in Turkey and Syria have been impressively disparate. While Arab nationalism (al-­qawmiyya al-­‘arabiyya) has capitalised on linguistic homogeneity, Turkish nationalism (milliyetçilik) has been of a decisively different flavour. Like all nationalist projects it involved a great deal of ‘reinvention’, demographic engineering and homogenising policies in order to produce what Arjun Appadurai has called the ‘national ethnos’.53 As an example of late nationalism, Turkish nationalism had to work with the ethnological materials it had at its disposal. Following the forced population exchange on a confessional basis with Greece, Turkey in the 1920s was a country with an overwhelming Muslim majority but remained heterogeneous in terms of language and ethnicity. Historically, this had a mitigating effect on Turkish secularism (laiklik), as Islam was from the start an important building block of Turkish identity despite the abrogation of the Caliphate in 1924 and the heavy-­handed oppression of conservative religious circles suspected of Ottomanism.54 This ambiguity extends to contemporary Turkish politics. In Bruce Masters’ words, ‘Turkey’s ruling elite stubbornly clings to Atatürk’s secular vision, but does not find that at odds with the fact that the liberator is given the honorific title of Gazi (warrior of the faith)’.55 As a result, ‘non-­Muslims were categorically excluded from the circle of full citizenship rights, as they were deemed unfit for full integration into the Turkish Polity’.56 Political exclusion of non-­Muslims was furthered during the 1980s military coup and the emergence of the ideology of Turkish-­Islamic Synthesis (Türk-­İslam sentezi). Despite their indigenousness and formal citizenship, Christians in the Turkish Republic have been consistently treated as unwelcome guests, as yerli yabancılar (resident aliens), an unconstitutional term recurring in many Turkish court decisions throughout the twentieth century.57 Istanbul Rums, in particular, have been caught in a vicious circle of

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 41 negative reciprocity vis-­à-­vis the Turkish minority of Greek Western Thrace. Historically, both minorities have fallen victims to the periodic impasses of Greek–Turkish relations, serving as bargaining chips and points of pressure at the hands of foreign policymakers in both countries.58 Turkey’s geographical proximity with Greece and, especially, the ‘Cyprus Issue’, have had deleterious effects on the Rum community. In the very recent past, Turkish nationalists and mainstream media have portrayed the Rum as a ‘fifth-­column’ and the Patriarchate as a ‘Vatican inside Turkey’.59 Imagining a Syrian nation required a reverse type of emphasis. Looking back at Antonius’s narrative, constructing the new national demos as a linguistically and culturally homogenous population, partly relied on the admission of local Orthodox Christians into the history of the Arab people. As founding members of the Syrian state and, in contrast to Lebanon, a numerical minority everywhere in the country, Arab Christians posed no separatist threat to Syria.60 The difference with the Rum of Istanbul and the Ecumenical Patriarchate was stark, since in Kemalist minds the latter was the symbolic reminder of the so-­called ‘Sèvres Syndrome’, the 1920s scenario of Turkish partition and the closest Anatolia ever came to colonial rule. As a result, non-­ Muslims were barred from the civil service throughout the twentieth century with a small intermission during the government of the Democratic Party in the 1950s, which coincided with the election of Rum MPs in the parliament of the Turkish Republic. Once again there is a telling contrast with Syria, where, with the one exception of the post of president (Article 3 of the Syrian Constitution), Christians may occupy any position in the civil service, including membership to the Ba‘th and ministerial offices. Rum participation in Syrian political life is therefore relatively high.61 With respect to education and the Church, Kemalist and Ba‘athist policies have applied contrasting policy frameworks, even though both of them can be construed as neo-­millet sets of arrangements. In the Turkish case, schools and churches have been subjected to a series of restrictions through an interchanging application of the, otherwise contrasting, secularist and millet principles. Viewed both as ‘minority’ (azınlık) and ‘private foreign schools’ (özel ), Rum schools are only allowed to accept pupils of ‘Greek extraction’ (Rum asıllı) (law 625/1965, article 25). Through this ethnic rendering of the term ‘Rum’, Turkish administrators have disallowed the

42  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t admission of Albanian or Serbian Orthodox students. At the same time, a neo-­millet legal reading of the term ‘Rum’ as Turkish citizen of the Eastern Orthodox confession has barred Greek Catholics or Greeks without Turkish citizenship from attending minority schools, bringing down the number of students to a historical low. As of 2012 there was a total of 220 students at all levels of Rum minority schools. Furthermore, 2013 was the first time in its 128 year-­long history that the Zoğrafyon Rum High School had no intakes for its middle school and consequently no graduates for 2021.62 In addition, the academic curriculum is strictly monitored by the Ministry of Education, limiting the weekly hours of Greek language classes to an absolute minimum (four to seven hours). Currently, the most obvious form of pressure on the Patriarchate has been the persistent refusal of the Turkish state to grant it legal personality. Once again the contrast with Syria is telling. Christian Churches have been formally recognised as integral parts of Syrian society, with official Christian holidays, mass-­processions in open spaces and broadcasts on state television. In a different neo-­millet fashion, confessional groups (tawa’if  ) have been incorporated into the state and become a mechanism of control and indoctrination into official state ideology. Christian youth clubs are also sponsored by the state as long as they refrain from activities that may be construed as political and/or subversive. Christian schools in Syria have traditionally enjoyed more freedom than in Turkey, accepting even Muslim students, although in ever smaller numbers, as the quality of education has deteriorated rapidly due to the rigidness of the state curriculum.63 In stark contrast to the cosy relationship between Syrian Rum elites and the Asad regime, the major Kemalist force in Turkish politics, the Republican People’s Party (Turkish: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – CHP), formerly People’s Party (HP), has alienated all minorities but for the Alevis through its exclusivist discourse and policies throughout the twentieth century.64 Tragic events, such as the 1942 Property Tax (Varlık Vergisi), which fell heavily on minorities and drove many Rum to labour camps, the September 1955 pogrom (Septemvriana), which destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of Christians and the 1965 extraditions of Greek passport holders, have been formative for Rum political attitudes and ­behaviours ever since.65 Whether perceived as a sectarian alliance in order to capture and maintain

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 43 control over the state or an exercise in image management, the theoretically equal citizenship of Christian and Muslim Syrians is often compromised in practical terms by the brutality of a clearly oppressive regime, relying increasingly on an omnipresent secret service (mukhabarat). This generates high levels of self-­censorship and self-­contradictions in Rum public discourse that become instantly clear to the researcher. While resenting the term ‘minority’ as disrespectful to their historical role as founding members of Arabism, several of my Rum informants in Syria repeated the maxim that ‘it is not the place of minority citizens to have opinions on inter-­confessional relations’.66 An additional criticism of the manner in which the Syrian Rum are integrated into the Syrian political system is expressed by McCallum, who argues that the inclusion of Syrian Rum in government and administrative positions may function as ‘window dressing’ and as masking a situation where Christians are unable to contribute to their own society without significant assistance from those in authority’.67 Constitutionally equal and ostensibly indistinguishable from their Muslim co-­citizens, Christian officials are carefully chosen for their loyalty to the regime, qua Christians, so as to provide a secular pedigree to what is otherwise a neo-­millet understanding of the Syrian nation. This tension between equal citizenship and the reification of religious identities is further manifested in the existence of separate personal status law courts for each denomination. As of 2010 the jurisdiction of such courts has been widened to include cases of inheritance.68 In Istanbul, Rum expectations were high in the early 2000s. With much of the groundwork done in the formative years of Turgut Özal’s government (1983–93), the carrot of EU accession since the Helsinki and Copenhagen Summits (1999, 2002) and the rise to power of the AKP (Justice and Development Party), seemed to signpost a new era for Turkey’s Rum population. For once the negotiation forum on issues pertaining to the Rum appeared to be moving away from the Athens–Ankara axis and closer to Ankara–Brussels, with minority rights featuring prominently in the EU annual progress reports on Turkey.69 At the same time, public discourse on Christian minorities seemed to be moving away from the ethnic minority model (azınlık) – until recently a dirty world in Turkish politics – toward a neo-­Ottoman revival of the term ‘cemaat’, denoting a confessional community.70 Through a series of reforms (revisions of laws on minority f­ oundations,

44  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t plans for a new constitution, liberalisation of the teaching of minority languages and return of minority properties formerly confiscated by the state) the ruling AKP has arguably transformed Christian communities into a loyal and symbolically significant constituency, by means of evoking a ‘mild, Anglo-­Saxon’, rather than a ‘French, type of secularism’.71 Still, Rum communities have witnessed stark discrepancies between official AKP discourse and actual policy measures. In practice, as of May 2013, none of the major impediments to Rum communal life have been removed. This is how Mihail V., an Istanbul informant, laments the lack of concrete steps on behalf of the Turkish Government in the direction of democratisation: Illegally confiscated communal property is being returned ‘on conditions’, the Halki Seminary remains closed, the Patriarchate has no legal personality, our schools are emptying, our cemeteries are filling. Neo-­fascism is on the rise. Look at the parliament. There are more Rum living outside Turkey than in Istanbul, and despite the government’s ‘warm invitations’ for them to return, there is no positive discrimination scheme in place, no real motives offered for their repatriation.72

How is one to account for the much higher degree of integration experienced by Syrian Rum compared to the Rum of Turkey? We have already seen how the historical contribution of Syrian Rum to Syrian Arab cultural production and to national independence, from Ottomans and French alike, opened the path for their inclusion into the Syrian body politic. To this one should add the important factors of indigeneity and size, which rendered the Rum a ‘natural’ part of the Syrian nation, a reminder of a common, pre-­Islamic Syrian past, as envisaged by Butrus al-­Bustani, and, above all, a loyal population. For the Rum of Turkey such a conceptualisation was rendered impossible by Turkish nationalism’s early preoccupation with both language and religion. As Turkish nationalists increasingly emphasised the distant Turkic past over the near Anatolian heritage (Anadoloculuk), the Rum, with their alien language and religion, became an anomaly, a negative reminder of a fragmented Anatolia, untouched by the unifying effect of modernity and nationalism. A comparison with Syria’s Armenians further elucidates these differences. Just like the Rum of Istanbul, the Armenians of Aleppo consisted of an autochthonous and a heterochthonous sub-­group: the historical Aleppine

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 45 community that had settled there in the Middle Ages (Arman al Qadim), joined by the destitute refugees, who fled the 1915 massacres in Anatolia.73 From a Syrian Arab point of view Armenians were ‘latecomers’ set apart by their language and confessional affiliation. As such, the Armenians of Syria were occasionally treated as scapegoats in the hands of Syrian nationalists both during the Franco-Syrian crisis and the Nasserist period.74 Henceforth, in close resemblance to the Istanbul Rum, among other forms of repression, Armenian schools have been subject to heavy-­handed state control with a detrimental effect on the teaching of the Armenian language. Four years before the eruption of the Syrian crisis in 2011, Simon Payaslian had argued that Syria’s Armenians have prioritised cultural survival over integration and have not experienced ‘a deep sense of belonging’ to Syrian society, finding themselves in a dilemma between assimilation and exit. They have thus become a closed community deprived of creative power and confidence in itself. Being in a state of constant subalternisation the community has resorted to endogamy, ‘ethnic nepotism’ and political ‘autism’ as a means of preserving its cultural characteristics. The resulting claustrophobia has led an increasing number of Armenians to opt for an ‘exit’ in the form of migration.75 Due to nearly identical pressures from within and outside of the community, the Rum of Turkey have also chosen to depart. As a result, both Istanbul and Syrian Rum present a large diaspora, consisting of migrant communities in Europe and North America allegedly bringing down their pre-­2011 numbers to 500,000–­800,000 in Syria and to 3,000–4,000 in Istanbul, although no formal statistical source exists on the topic.76 Beyond feelings of insecurity, kinship networks and international connections have also played a role in their migratory patterns. Payaslian’s words come to mind: ‘For the diasporan community, however, emigration by its members represents a loss of sorts in human and material resources (as a “brain drain” does for any state and social formation) and to its vitality and viability.’77 Low demographics remain the most immediate threat for Istanbul’s Rum community. A Man of Three Names: An Antiochian Rum in Istanbul Hannah-­Can-­Yannis is a man of three names. He was baptised Hannah in his village of Tokaçlı in the district of Altınözü, near Antakya. Locals still refer to the village by its old name: Cneydo (from the Arabic janna, meaning

46  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t ‘paradise’). A native speaker of Syrian Arabic, he learned Turkish at a state school in the 1970s where he also acquired the Turkified version of his name, Can (pronounced as ‘Jan’ in Turkish). He moved to Istanbul in the 1980s, but despite being a trained engineer could only find employment as a church attendant in a Rum church in the district of Balat, overlooking the Golden Horn. The church is very popular with tourists and pilgrims from Greece and the Balkans, so he also felt he had to become Yanis and learn Greek. He has family in Antakya, Athens and Germany. Married to Rakhel, also from Tokaçlı, he has two children both of whom attend Greek Orthodox schools and are trilingual in Arabic, Turkish and Greek. I met with him in 2010 in the courtyard of the church where he had prepared an impressive meal on the occasion of his daughter Irene’s fifth birthday party. On the telephone prior to my visit he announced that he had prepared a surprise for me, specially organised for his daughter’s birthday party. After a fifteen-­minute bus ride I was at the church. Dinner was progressing pleasantly when suddenly a barrage of fireworks covered the sky a few hundred metres away from us. ‘I arranged this for Irene,’ Can said, with a cheeky smile on his face. It took me a while to make a logical connection between the nearby fireworks and the date of Irene’s birthday. Irene (whose name means ‘peace’ in Greek) was born on 29 May, Fetih Day, the day of official commemoration of the conquest of Constantinople. The municipality was organising the annual festivities, traditionally involving dramatised re-­enactments of the Ottoman attack on the gates of the Byzantine walls facing the Golden Horn. However, this year the celebrations were different. They started with the customary Mehter, the Ottoman army band garbed in full Janissary costume, performed amidst the enthusiastic crowds of religious conservative, rural immigrants who now inhabit the area. The megaphones then echoed with a rather unusual announcement: ‘The message of the Conquest is one of world peace. The Conquest of Istanbul signalled a new era for world civilization (medeniyet).’ We resumed our eating and drinking, joking about the absurdity of a commemoration of a conquest even though only fifteen years ago the same occasion would have caused Rums to shut themselves indoors in fear of a violent outbreak by the crowd. Hannah-­Can-­Yanis is in many ways a typical Arabic-­speaking, Rum Orthodox from the province of Hatay who has migrated to Istanbul in search

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 47 of better employment opportunities. Many of the Antiochian Rum are eager to participate actively in Greek community affairs but after two decades of mingling with the local Rum they still complain that they are often treated as ‘second-­clas Rums’ or – even worse – as foreigners. Such perceptions of otherness are reflected by the ambiguity of everyday discourse: while the more Greek-­sounding ‘Antiochians’ tends to be employed on formal occasions, the term ‘Arabophones’ is often used disparagingly, as in the standard phrase ‘yemisan ta skholia aravofonous’ (‘Our schools have been filled by Arabophones’) or with all the racist derogatory connotations that the word ‘Araplar’ can have in colloquial Turkish.78 And yet, Antiochian Rums ended up being Turkish rather than Greek citizens by historical happenstance. Formally part of the flock of the Patriarch of Antioch – that had relocated to Damascus after 1342 – these Orthodox Christians were not included in the 1922 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, since their native Alexandretta remained a French protectorate until 1939. During the Alexandretta dispute most Arab Rums together with the local Armenians rallied around the Arab cause in the plebiscite that was duly organised by the French mandate and swiftly disregarded and ­gerrymandered by a Turkish military intervention.79 With the reconnection of the ex-­Ottoman province of Antakya, under the new name of ‘Hatay’ (Hittite), to the Republic of Turkey, this minority group found themselves cut off from their spiritual centre and at the same time deprived of any formal recognition in the Treaty of Lausanne (signed in July 1923). Concerned about the prospect of a sizeable Syrian minority in Antakya, the Turkish state readily identified them as ‘Rum Ortodoks’, and this indication on their IDs formally allows them to participate in all Greek Orthodox community structures, such as minority schools and hospitals. The demographic profile of the Arabic-­speaking Rum is particularly relevant to this discussion. Most of them are rural immigrants from the village of Tokaçlı, who tend to follow bonds of kinship and locality in their migration to the urban centre. None of them spoke Greek before arriving in Istanbul, while spoken usage of Arabic remains strong, despite the lack of any formal education in Arabic. It is not surprising that the educational level of first-­generation immigrants is generally quite low, compared to the old guard of Greek-­speaking urbanites. In Istanbul their biggest concentration

48  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t is in the areas of Aksaray and Fener, surrounded by conditions of poverty, ameliorated primarily by the employment opportunities and welfare benefits offered in the Rum community (cemaat) context and very rarely by the Greek Consulate. Antiochians still remain hugely underrepresented in the current Rum administration of communal property (vakıf  ). Senior posts, such as those of director of a foundation, committee member and teacher, are monopolised by Greek-­speaking Rums, while the posts typically occupied by ‘Arabophones’, such as church-­attendant and driver, are situated considerably lower on the scales of pay and social status that is conferred. Together with a difference in class and position in the urban–rural divide, Antiochians also present different voting patterns and party affiliations in relation to the Istanbul Rum. Since they were less affected by the Turkish anti-­minority policies of the twentieth century, partly because of the relative pluralism and tolerance that Antakya still prides itself in, they have not been alienated by the Republican Party. Following the secular outlook of their Syrian co-­religionists and the Alawis in both Syria and Antakya, traditionally they tend to support centre-­left and social democratic forces.80 The Antiochians constitute a formally recognised part of the Istanbul Rum community but linguistic, regional and socio-­economic characteristics set them apart. The reaction of Greek speakers to the arrival of Antiochians has been characterised by mistrust and a sense of educational, cultural and economic superiority, coupled with a desire to assimilate the latecomers as speedily as possible. The resemblance to the lukewarm reception of the 1915 Armenian refugees by the ‘Old Armenians’ of Aleppo, as discussed by Payaslian, is striking.81 In demographic terms, Antiochians present a healthier picture than the ageing Greek-­speaking population. Even though they constitute only about one-­fifth (roughly 800 people) of the Istanbul Rum population, the future will see an increase in their relative number on the basis of current fertility rates (most have three children or more). While accepting the Antiochians as the only discernible hope for the deplorable demographic situation, self-­styled defenders of the ‘Greekness’ of the community are worried that further enfranchisement of the Antiochians will eventually lead to the ‘Arabisation’ of the Patriarchate, following the example of Antioch.82 Ironically, Greek discourse on the Antiochians ranges from statements of the type ‘they have nothing to do with Rumness (Romiosini)’83 to ‘they are the

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 49 oldest Christians of them all’. In other words, they are perceived both as a solution and a problem by many influential members of the Rum community. In sending their children to Greek Orthodox schools most Antiochians are aware of the possibility of assimilation into the Greek-­speaking group and, in fact, many of them welcome it. Nevertheless, linguistic assimilation is a painful experience. Minority schools are spaces where two opposing nationalisms (Greek and Turkish) collide with immense force in an effort to capture the hearts and minds of minority children. Rum children cross the school corridor, decorated with crude symbols of Turkish nationalism (flags, busts of Atatürk, pictures of medieval sultans and legendary Turkic khans) typically required by public inspectors, and enter the classroom only to read polemical narratives in their Turkish history books, coupled by the verbal reaffirmation from some of their Greek teachers of their Hellenistic origin; a teacher of a Rum school is reported to have said to his young Antiochian students, ‘You are descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great.’84 Among the reasons offered for attending minority schools are the benefits of a free and Christian education and safety from racism and/or bullying. But that is only one side of the story. Inclusion in the Greek Orthodox community may place Antiochians in the prestigious fold of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the international connections it commands as a spiritual centre of international Orthodoxy. At the same time for an Antiochian, attending a Greek school increases the chances of studying in Greece and opens up the ­possibility of acquiring Greek, that is, EU, citizenship.85 Antiochians are clearly going through a process of diasporisation: a) they are becoming a dispersed ethnic group, with communities in Turkey, Greece, Germany, the Americas and so on; b) they maintain a collective memory of their native Antakya, as a ‘centre’, endowed with a rich mythology as a world capital in Hellenistic, proto-­Christian and medieval times; c) they have experienced double alienation from their host location, seen as ‘Arabs’ by the Greek-­Rum, and ‘non-­Muslim’ (gayri müslim) by the Muslim majority; d) practices of idealisation of the homeland are common, with an emphasis on the history of Antioch as an alternative Greek Orthodox centre to Athens and Istanbul; and f) they maintain relations with the homeland, through regular visits at least once a year on the festival day of their village church. To these we should add the ‘primordial’ characteristics of a common mother

50  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t tongue (spoken Arabic) and religion together with the bonds of kinship and locality, which are recreated in compatriotic associations, as well as settlement and marriage patterns among the Antiochians living in Istanbul. Moving beyond identities of ‘being’, diasporas are now widely acknowledged to involve a process of ‘becoming’ as collective memories of the past are combined with the personal experience of the dispersal, and are, in turn, transmitted to the next generation.86 Diasporas are, therefore, understood as ‘multi-­generational’ identities.87 Having already resided in Istanbul for two generations, the Antiochians are a diasporic community in the making, currently undergoing a process of ‘reconfiguration of ethnicity’.88 What is more, they partake in this process as a subaltern community within a community, a minority within a minority. They are forced to negotiate their integration into ‘Rumness’ through simultaneous reference to three, not two, distinct cultural codes: Arabic, Greek and Turkish. As each generation is exposed to these codes to a different degree, one wonders how successful their entry into the Istanbul Rum micro-­polity may prove. Confronted by the classic diaspora dilemma Antiochians are required to choose between assimilation into the dominant Greek-­speaking group at the cost of their own cultural traits, or a complete marginalisation within Turkish society. Four distinct trajectories make themselves apparent to the Antiochians: Arabisation, Hellenisation, Turkification and creolisation. Arabisation constitutes a commonplace phobia for the Greek Church in the Middle East and is perceived as a direct threat to its historical rights in the region. The Patriarchate of Antioch has served as a precedent, while a similar process has been unravelling in Palestine for several decades now.89 Semi-­racist preconceptions about ‘Arab fertility rates’ often frame these discussions.90 Nevertheless, Arabisation appears highly unlikely in the Istanbul context. While deprived of any form of language education in Arabic, Antiochians are exposed to what Payaslian calls ‘asymmetrical hybridisation’91 vis-­à-­vis the Greek-­speaking Rum and Turkish-­speaking societal majority. Linguistic Turkification for both Greek-­speaking and Arabic-­speaking Rum is also probable, given the language shift toward Turkish attested in recent studies on the Rum of Istanbul.92 However, the trend may be mitigated by the high symbolic value ascribed to Greek by community members and through improvements in the current educational system.93 A final and perhaps most probable

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 51 scenario relates to the gradual ‘creolisation’ of the community, as that term is used in postcolonial theory, that is as a creative and productive process of negotiation and synthesis rather than a random mixture of cultural inputs.94 Antiochians already appear to be taking the path to assimilation, in order to increase their participation in community structures and improve their children’s opportunities for a better future. There have been developments in the past few years that suggest that the trend will continue along the lines of a linguistic Hellenisation of Antiochians rather than an Arabisation of the Greek-­speaking Rum. First, there is a steady increase in the participation of Antiochians in secondary education, suggesting that Antiochian children may eventually become trilingual in Arabic, Turkish and Greek.95 In 2006 the first Antiochian teacher who obtained his university degree in Greece was appointed to teach at the Great School of the Nation (Fener Rum Erkek Lisesi), an institution that, unlike other Rum high schools, follows the standard Patriarchal position of non-­discrimination, in applying no quotas on Antiochian intakes. More impressively, in the elections for community officials, which took place in 2007, Antiochian Rum participated as voters and were elected as committee members. For many of the local Rum this was something scandalous. When an article in the Rum minority press96 referred to Arabophones voting as ‘highly irregular’, a police inquiry targeting Antiochians was ordered, so as to examine whether all voters could provide the necessary IDs (Nüfus) as proof of their being ‘Rum Ortodoks’ and therefore eligible to vote. In being suspicious of their Antiochian co-­religionists Istanbul Rums appear to be reverting to an ethnic understanding of their community (azınlık), demonstrating once again the constructive ambiguity of the term ‘Rum’. Apart from language and ethnicity their mistrust of the latecomers is further engendered by notions of indigenousness, of belonging to Istanbul, of being Polites (Istanbulites) apart from Romioi, an appellation often employed vis-­à-­vis Elladites, that is, Greeks from Greece.97 The Antiochian phenomenon posits a direct challenge to traditional self-­ imagining of the Istanbul Rum community in terms of religion, language and indigenousness. Still, Antiochians continue to negotiate their admission into the community as equal members. In the words of Hannah-­Can-­Yanis, ‘I am a Turkish citizen of the Rum Orthodox religion (iman). My mother tongue is Arabic but I am a polyglot. I am not the first one and surely won’t be the last.’

52  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Conclusions This chapter has examined the Rum in Turkey and Syria as an ‘accidental diaspora’. Their dispersion is seen as the by-­product of the rearrangement of national borders over what used to be the converging geography of Byzantine and Ottoman space, rather than a kind of displacement from a single, original homeland. Our look into the longue durée of Rum identity formation revealed a significant continuity in the delicate balance between Rumness as an ethnocultural and a confessional category. While the first draws on references to a common Byzantine past, the latter emphasises a profound bond of indigenousness to the particular homelands of Istanbul, Antakya and Syria. I have suggested that this ambiguity can be traced back to the millet tradition of the Tanzimat period and that it largely conditioned the position of Rum populations in Turkey and Syria throughout the twentieth century. While acknowledging continuities our discussion has recognised the need to address diasporas as dynamic phenomena. Drawing on Brubaker’s conceptualisation of diasporas as categories of practice rather than entities, allows us to examine Rum attitudes as responses to the wider, modernising programmes of Kemalism and Ba‘thism. Seen in this light the ambiguities of Rum diasporic identity work as discursive resources that ‘articulate projects’, ‘form expectations’, ‘mobilise energies’ and ‘appeal to loyalties’.98 This helps us understand why the neo-­millet sets of arrangements adopted in modern Syria and Turkey present such striking dissimilarities, with contrasting effects on Rum demographics. The Rum of Syria negotiated their way into the Syrian body politic with relative success, whereas the Rum of Istanbul were faced with an a priori exclusion from the Turkish nation. Much like the Armenians of Syria, Istanbul Rums have been occasionally targeted as a population of dubious loyalties and systematically excluded from political power sharing. Although a decade of AKP politics has promised greater inclusion of non-­Muslims into Turkish society, the Rum of Istanbul still appear concerned about their community’s survival. The Antiochian Rum living in Istanbul offer a symbolic bridge between these two distinct trajectories of Rumness. Their ambivalent position within the Istanbul Rum community places them in the peculiar position of being an émigré community and a minority within the minority at the same time.

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 53 While ties with the imagined homeland of Antakya remain strong they are currently undergoing a process of diasporisation. As issues pertaining to confession, citizenship, language and indigenousness frame the agenda in their efforts for inclusion into the Istanbul community, the option of ethnocultural creolisation is likely to gain ground. Notes  1. William Safran, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (spring 1991), pp. 83–4; James Clifford, ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 3 (spring 1991), p. 305.   2. Safran, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies’, p 83.  3. Rogers Brubaker, ‘The “Diaspora” Diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 28: 1 (January 2005), p. 3. See also Rogers Brubaker, ‘Accidental Diasporas and “External Homelands” in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present’, Institute of Advanced Studies (Vienna: Political Science Series No. 71, 2000), pp. 1–19.   4. Brubaker, ‘The “Diaspora” Diaspora’, p. 12.  5. For notable exceptions see Keith David Watenpaugh, ‘Creating Phantoms: Zaki al-­Arsuzi, The Alexandretta Crisis and the Formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in Syria’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 28: 3 (1996), pp. 363–89; Seda Altuğ, ‘From Christian Refugees to Minorities: Sectarianism in Syrian-­Jazira under the French Mandate (1921–1946)’, in M. Weiss and T.  Jones (eds), Sectarianism in the Middle East (tentative title) (Stanford University Press, forthcoming); and Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).   6. All my interviewees in Istanbul seemed aware of the fact that their family origins could be traced to the Ottoman periphery, especially from places such as Epirus, Macedonia, Cappadocia and the island of Chios. Yet all of them emphasised a claim to cultural and institutional continuity with the Ottoman and Byzantine past of the city.  7. See Nadia Maria El Cheikh, ‘Sūrat al Rūm: A Study of the Exegetical Literature’,  Journal of the American Oriental Society 118: 3 (July–September 1998), pp. 356–64. For the scholarly reception of the Quran by early Syrian Christians see Barbara Roggema, ‘A Christian Reading of the Qur’an: The Legend of Sergius-­Bahira and Its Use of Qur’an and Sīra’, in David Thomas (ed.), Syrian

54  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Christians under Islam: The First Thousand Years (Leiden, Boston, MA and Köln: Brill, 2001), pp. 57–74.   8. Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (New York, NY: Scribner’s, 1980), pp. 1–2.   9. For the so-­called ‘Pact of Umar’ (‘ahd ‘Umar) attributed to the Caliph Umar or Umar II (seventh century ad and eighth century ad), see Bernard Lewis, Islam, vol. 2 (New York, NY: Walker and Co., 1974), pp. 217–23. The ‘Constitution of Medina’ was intended to regulate the relations between the faithful and the Jewish tribes of that city. It was attributed to the prophet Muhammad; see Robert Bertram Serjeant, ‘The “Constitution of Medina”’, Islamic Quarterly 8 (1964), pp. 3–16. 10. Richard Clogg, ‘A Millet within a Millet: The Karamanlides’, in Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (eds), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the 19th Century (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1999), pp. 115–42. 11. On the history of the term ‘Melkite’ see Sidney Griffith, ‘“Melkites”, “Jacobites” and the Christological Controversies in Arabic in Third/Ninth-­Century Syria’, in D. Thomas (ed.), Syrian Christians under Islam: The First Thousand Years (Leiden and Boston, MA and Köln: Brill, 2001), pp. 9–56 and Volker L. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, The Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 12. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 15. 13. For Mehmed II’s treatment of the Rum shortly after the conquest see Halil İnalcik, ‘The Policy of Mehmed II toward the Greek Population of Istanbul and the Byzantine Buildings of the City’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23/24 (1969/70), pp. 229–49. 14. Sophisticated expressions of the nationalist narrative on the millets tend to draw heavily on Anthony Smith’s understanding of ethnies as proto-­nations; see Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986). For an articulate, recent analysis of the millet system along nostalgic lines, see Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 15. Benjamin Braude, ‘Foundation Myths of the Millet System’, in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (Teaneck: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), pp. 69–88; Paraskevas Konortas, ‘From Tâ’ife to Millet: Ottoman Terms for

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 55 the Ottoman Greek Orthodox Community’, in Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (eds), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the 19th Century (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1999), pp. 169–80. 16. Selim Deringil, ‘The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808 to 1908’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 35: 1 (January 1993), pp. 3–29; for two classic studies of the Tanzimat Reforms see İlber Ortaylı, İmparatorluğun en uzun yüzyılı [The Empire’s Longest Century], twenty-­first edn (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2008) and Roderic Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963). 17. Dimitris Stamatopoulos, ‘From Millets to Minorities in the 19th-­ Century Ottoman Empire: An Ambiguous Modernization’, S. G. Ellis, G. Halfdanarson and A. K. Isaacs (eds), Citizenship in Historical Perspective (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2006), pp. 253–73. 18. Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World, p. 64. 19. A similar pattern affected the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, which increasingly gained importance vis-­à-­vis the Catholicos of Echmiadzin and administratively absorbed other oriental Orthodox Churches in the Ottoman lands, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Chaldean Churches. 20. I borrow the phrase from the title of Nicolae Iorga’s classic Byzances après Byzances (Bucarest: L’ institut d’ètudes byzantines, 1935), an account of the profound mark left by the Phanariots on Romanian culture and nation-­building. 21. See Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ‘“Imagined Communities” and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans’, European History Quarterly 19 (April 1989), p. 152; Nikos Sigalas, ‘Ellēnismos kai Exellēnismos: o Schēmatismos tēs Neoellēnikēs Ennoias Ellēnismos’ [Hellenism and Hellenisation: The Formation of the Modern Greek Concept of Hellenism], Ta Istorika 34 (June 2001), pp. 3–9; Sia Anagnostopoulou, ‘The Terms “Millet”, “Genos”, “Ethnos”, “Ecumenicity”, “Alytrotismos” in Greek Historiography’, in S. Anagnostopoulou (ed.), The Passage from the Ottoman Empire to the Nation-­States. A Long and Difficult Process: The Greek Case (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2004). 22. Feride Aslı Ergul, ‘The Ottoman Identity: Turkish, Muslim or Rum?’, Middle Eastern Studies 48: 4 (July 2012), pp. 629–45. 23. Traian Stoianovich, ‘The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant’, The Journal of Economic History 20: 2 (June 1960), p. 1. 24. Kitromilides, ‘“Imagined Communities” and the Origins’, p. 152. 25. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876, p. 56.

56  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 26. For a comprehensive assessment of the Hamidian period see Selim Deringil, The Well-­Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London and New York, NY: I. B. Tauris, 1998). For the uneasy reception of Pan-­Turkism by the Greek Orthodox that had endorsed the ideology of Ottomanism see Vangelis Kechriotis, ‘Greek-­ Orthodox, Ottoman-­Greeks or just Greeks? Theories of Coexistence in the Aftermath of the Young Turks Revolution’, in Études Balkaniques 1 (2005), pp. 52–4, and ‘On the Margins of National Historiography: The Greek İttihatçı Emmanouil Emmanouilidis – Opportunist or Ottoman patriot?’ in Amy Singer, Ch. Neumann and S. A. Somel (eds), Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 124–42. 27. Anagnostopoulou, ‘The Terms “Millet”, “Genos”, “Ethnos”’, pp. 39–42. 28. Even Evliya Çelebi, visiting Lebanon in the seventeenth century, was surprised to discover that the local Rum spoke Arabic rather than Rumca (Greek). Mehmed Zillioğlu (ed.), Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi [The Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi], vol. 9 (Istanbul, 1984). 29. See Walter Zenner, ‘Middleman Minorities in the Syrian Mosaic: Trade, Conflict, and Image Management’, Sociological Perspectives 30: 4, The Ethnic Economy (October 1987): 401; Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World, pp. 71–80; cf. Haris Exertzoglou, ‘The Development of a Greek Ottoman Bourgeoisie: Investment Patterns in the Ottoman Empire, 1850–1914’, in Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (eds), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the 19th Century (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1999), pp. 89–114 as well as Roderic H. Davison, ‘The Millets as Agents of Change in the Nineteenth-­Century Ottoman Empire’, in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (Teaneck: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), pp. 319–37. On the formative role of Western missionaries in Syrian proto-­ nationalism see Fruma Zachs, ‘Toward a Proto-­Nationalist Concept of Syria? Revisiting the American Presbyterian Missionaries in the Nineteenth-­Century Levant’, Die Welt des Islams, n.s. 41: 2 (July 2001), pp. 145–73. 30. Philippe Fargues, ‘The Arab Christians in the Middle East: A Demographic Perspective’, in Andrea Pacini (ed.), Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenge of the Future (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 42. 31. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (Simon Pubs, [1938] 2001), pp. 47–54, 92–6; Derek Hopwood, The Russian

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 57 Presence in Syria and Palestine, 1843–1914: Church and Politics in the Near East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 160. 32. See Dimitrije Djordjevic and Stephen Fischer-­Galati, The Balkan Revolutionary Tradition (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1981); Kitromilides, ‘“Imagined Communities” and the Origins’, pp. 151–9. 33. Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World, p. 90. 34. Ibid., p. 112. 35. Ibid., p. 108. 36. Cited in Mahmoud Haddad, ‘The Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 26: 2 (May 1994), p. 217. 37. Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World, p. 9. 38. Ibid., pp. 136, 173, 192. 39. Antun Saadeh (1904–49), founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Al-­ Hizb al-­Suri al-­Qawmi al-­Ijtima‘i), was a Rum from the Lebanese town of Dhour El Choueir. 40. Antonius’s emphasis on the role of Christian Arabs has long been revised by historians of Arab nationalism. For a succinct review of that body of literature see Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 7–13. 41. Haddad, ‘The Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered’, p. 201. 42. The story of the Turkish Orthodox Church, and its cosy relationship with early Turkish nationalism, constitutes the exception that verifies the rule. On the Turkish Orthodox Church see Foti Benlisoy, ‘Papa Eftim and the Foundation of the Turkish Orthodox Church’ (MA dissertation, History Department, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, 2002). 43. Parallels between the two have been drawn before by Roger Owen, in ‘Modernizing Projects in Middle Eastern Perspective’, in Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 245–51. 44. Martin Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1996), p. 174. 45. Although not officially espoused by the Republican People’s Party, this Jacobin motto has been levelled against contemporary Kemalism by the Turkish left as a criticism of its heavy-­handed, ideological paternalism. For an analysis see Fikret Başkaya, Paradigma’nın İflası: Resmi İdeolojinin eleştirisine Giriş [The Bankrupt

58  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Paradigm: An Introduction to Criticizing Official Ideology], 12th edn (Özgür Üniverşite Yayınları, 2012), p. 188. 46. On minority involvement in the Syrian Army, see Eyal Zisser, ‘The Syrian Army: Between the Domestic and the External Fronts’, Middle East Review of International Affairs 5: 1 (March 2001), p. 5, and ‘Appearance and Reality: Syria’s Decisionmaking Structure’, Middle East Review of International Affairs 2: 2 (May 1998), p. 86. 47. For the intellectual influence of Pan-­Islamism on Pan-­Arabism see Deringil, The Well-­Protected Domains, pp. 44–67. 48. On Ba‘thist statism see Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival, p. 190. 49. On the Alevi minority as a historical powerbase of the People’s Party see Erik J.  Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd edn (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), p. 178, and Tord Olsson, E. Ozdalga and C. Raudvere (eds), Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social Perspectives (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1998), pp. 73–9. On the high levels of political representation of religious minorities in Ba‘thist Syria see Nikolaos van Dam, ‘Sectarian and Religious Factionalism in the Syrian Politicsl Elite’, Middle East Journal 32: 2 (spring 1978), pp. 201–10. 50. For more on the cult of the leader in Turkey see Joel S. Migdal, ‘Finding the Meeting Ground of Fact and Fiction: Some Reflections on Turkish Modernization’, in S. Bozdoğan and R. Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 258; Michael Meeker, ‘Once There Was, Once There Wasn’t: National Monuments and Interpersonal Exchange’, in Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 157–91. For Asad’s personality cult see Simon Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities: The Armenian Community in Syria’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 16: 1/2 (spring/fall 2007), p. 114. 51. In the Turkish case, a major tool of dissemination of nationalist ideals has been the People’s Houses (Halk Evleri) that spread with incredible speed after 1932 throughout the Republic of Turkey; see Kemal Karpat, ‘The People’s Houses in Turkey: Establishment and Growth’, Middle East Journal 17: 1/2 (winter– spring 1963), pp. 55–67. 52. Watenpaugh, ‘Creating Phantoms’, pp. 376–9. 53. Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 4. 54. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p. 167.

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 59 55. Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World, p. 198. 56. Kerem Öktem, Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989 (London: Zed Books, 2011), p. 26. 57. Meropi Anastassiadou and Paul Dumont, Oi Romioi tis Polis, Travmata kai Prosdokies [The Rum of Istanbul, Traumas and Expectations] (Athens: Estia, 2007), p. 15. See also Soner Çağaptay, ‘Race, Assimilation and Kemalism: Turkish Nationalism and the Minorities in the 1930s’, Middle Eastern Studies 40: 3 (2004), pp. 86–110; Ayşe Kadıoğlu, ‘Milletini Arayan Devlet: Türk Milliyetçiliğinin Açmazları’ [A State in Search of its Nation: The Impasses of Turkish Nationalism],  Türkiye Günlüğü 33: 91–111; Dilek Kurban, ‘Unravelling a Trade-­Off: Reconciling Minority Rights and Full Citizenship in Turkey’, European Yearbook of Minority  Issues, vol. 4 (The European Centre for Minority Issues, 2006), pp. 341–71; Baskın Oran, Türkiye’deki Azınlıklar: Kavramlar, Lozan, İç Mevzuat, İçtihat, Uygulama [Minorities in Turkey: Legal Concepts, Lausanne, Self-­regulation, Precedents and Implementation] (Istanbul: TESEV, 2004). 58. On the systematic abuse of the principle of reciprocity by Greece and Turkey with respect to their minorities see Samim Akgönül (ed.), Reciprocity: Greek and Turkish Minorities, Law, Religion and Politics (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2008). 59. The Turkish nationalist obsession with the Istanbul Patriarchate as an alleged centre of international conspiracy is vividly discribed by journalist Mehmet A. Birand in his article entitled ‘Türkiye’nin, Patrikhane yaklaşımı bir devrimdir . . .’ [Turkey’s approach to the Patriarchate amounts to a revolution . . .] Milliyet 9 (December 2010). See also Anastassiadou and Dumont, Romioi tis Polis, pp. 214–22. 60. Fiona McCallum, ‘Christian Political Representation in the Arab World’, Islam and Christian-­Muslim Relations 23: 1 (January 2012), p. 11. 61. Ibid. 62. I am grateful to the ex-­headmaster of the Zoğrafyon High School, Dimitris Frangopoulos, and the Coordinator of Minority Education at the Istanbul Greek consulate, Stavros Yoltzoglou, who provided me with this information. 63. Panagiotis Geros, ‘When Christianity Matters: The Production and Manipulation of Communalism in Damascus’ (PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, School of African and Oriental Studies, London, 2007), pp. 35–6. 64. Author’s interview with Mihail V., journalist, age seventy-­ three, Istanbul, 17 April 2011.

60  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 65. For Turkish anti-­minority policies see Alexis Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-­ Turkish Relations 1918–1974 (Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992), pp. 207–29, 252–307; also Samim Akgonul, Türkiye Rumları: Ulus-­Devlet Çağından küreselleşme Çağına bir Azınlığın Yok Oluş Süreci [The Greeks of Turkey: The Process of Eliminating a Minority, from the Era of Nation-­states to a Global Era], trans. from French Ceylan Gürman (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınevi, 2007), pp. 99–332. For the 1942 Property Tax in particular see Ayhan Aktar, Varlık Vergisi ve Türkleştirme Polıtıkaları [The Property Tax and Turkification Policies] (Istanbul: İletişim, 2000). 66. Author’s interview with Butros S., businessman, age thirty-­ four, Haleb, 15 December 2007 and Marie A., university student, age twenty-­four, Haleb, 19 December 2007. For Christian resentment to the term aqalliyya (minority) see Annika Rabo, ‘“We are Christians and We are Equal Citizens”: Perspectives on Particularity and Pluralism in Contemporary Syria’, Islam and Christian-­ Muslim Relations 23: 1 (January 2012), p, 79. For a parallel phenomenon among the Turkish Alevi see Rusen Çakır, ‘Political Alevism versus Political Sunnism: Convergences and Divergences’, in Olsson, Ozdalga and Raudvere (eds), Alevi Identity, pp. 74–9. 67. McCallum, ‘Christian Political Participation in the Arab World’, p. 3. 68. Rabo, ‘“We are Christians and We are Equal Citizens”’, pp. 83–8. 69. See, for example, Commission to the European Parliament, Turkey 2012 Progress Report, Commission Staff Working Document (Brussels 2012), article 2.2, p. 18. 70. In Türkiye Rumları, pp. 37–44, Akgönül briefly discusses the history of the Turkish terms employed to describe the Rum community. The earliest term taife (religious community) was gradually replaced by the term ‘millet’ (religious community, but also people in general), which was increasingly used by the Ottomans in order to translate the Western term ‘nation’, while the term ‘cemâat’ came to denote a confessional community. Finally, Young Turk and Kemalist sensitivities opted for the term ‘eklaliyet’ (minority), which was in turn replaced by the more Turkish-­sounding azınlık. Still the term ‘cemaat’ seems to dominate the official discourse of the ruling AKP. 71. Semiha Topal, ‘Everybody Wants Secularism But Which One? Contesting Definitions of Secularism in Contemporary Turkey’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society (online version) (15 December 2011), p. 1. For AKP’s minority policies and their positive reception by Istanbul’s Rum and

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 61 Armenians see Ali Soner, ‘The Justice and Development Party’s Policies towards non-­Muslim Minorities in Turkey’, Journal of Balkan and Middle Eastern Studies 12: 1 (March 2010), pp. 27–40. 72. Author’s interview with Mihail V., journalist, age seventy-­ three, Istanbul, 17  April 2011. The Halki Seminary had functioned as a higher theological school for Rum bishops and Patriarchs from 1843 until it was shut down by decision of Turkey’s Constitutional Court in 1971. 73. See Nicola Migliorino, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria: Ethno-­ cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis: (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008). 74. Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities’, pp. 103–4, 112. 75. Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities’, pp. 114, 122–3, 127. 76. For demographic evidence on the Rum of Istanbul see Victor Kotzamanis, ‘The Demographic Profile of the Rums of Istanbul and of Related Groups’. Paper presented at Meeting in Istanbul: The Present and the Future Conference, Istanbul, 30 June–2 July 2006; on the Syrian Rum see Geros, ‘When Christianity Matters’, p. 45. 77. Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities’, p. 100. 78. On the literature on hate-­speech (nefret söylemi) in Turkey, growing since the assassination of Armenian journalist and activist Hrant Dink in 2007, see Yasemi İnceoğlu, Nefret Söylemi ve/veya Nefret Süçları [Hate-­Speech and /or Hate-­Crimes], and Altuğ Akın et al., Yeni Medyada Nefret Söylemi [Hate-­speech in New Media] (İstanul: Kalkedon, 2010). 79. ‘“Are you for Syria or Turkey?” was the question put to Rizqallah ‘Ayranji by the local registrar in the village of Suwaydiyya [today’s Samandağ] when he signed up as an “Arab” rather than a “Greek Orthodox” in order to vote in the election’. Watenpaugh, ‘Creating Phantoms’, p. 373. 80. Author’s interviews with Hannah A., church attendant, age thirty-­nine, Istanbul, 28 April 2011, Semir Y., teacher, age thirty-­nine, Istanbul, 14 April 2011 and Ibrahim A., retired tailor, age forty-­seven, Antakya, 19 December 2007. 81. Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities’, p. 103. 82. Markos Komondouros and Lisa McEntee-­Atalianis, ‘Language Attitudes, Shift and the Ethnolinguistic Vitality of the Greek Orthodox Community of Istanbul’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 28: 5 (2007), p. 382. For the framing of an economic dispute as a conflict between Arabism and Hellenism in the context of the Jerusalem Patriarchate see Itamar Katz and Ruth Kark, ‘The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and its Congregation:

62  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Dissent over Real Estate’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 37: 4 (2005), pp. 509–34. 83. Meeting in Istanbul: The Present and the Future Conference, 30 June–2 July 2006, organised by the Zoğrafyon Alumni Association at Istanbul Hilton. 84. Author’s interview with Mihail K., university student, age nineteen, Istanbul, 30 May 2011. 85. Author’s interview with Maria Y., church attendant, age forty-­three, Istanbul, 28 April 2011. 86. Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), p. 225; Khachig Tölölyan, ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment’, Diaspora 5: 1 (1996), pp. 15–19. 87. Kim Butler, ‘Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10: 2 (fall 2001), p. 192; Brubaker, ‘The “Diaspora” Diasporas’, p. 7. 88. Tölölyan, ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s)’, p. 3. 89. Katz and Kark, ‘The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem’, pp. 509–34. 90. Author’s interview with Semir Y., teacher, age thirty-­nine, Istanbul, 14 April 2011. 91. Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities’, p. 122. 92. Komondouros and McEntee-­ Atalianis, ‘Language Attitudes, Shift and the Ethnolinguistic Vitality’, pp. 377–8, 382. 93. Ibid., p. 382. 94. Robin Cohen, ‘Creolization and Cultural Production: The Softs Sounds of Fugitive Power’, Globalizations 4: 3 (September 2007), pp 369–84. 95. Anastassiadou and Dumont, Oi Romioi tis Polis, p. 129. 96 ‘Theseis’ [Theses] Apoyevmatini, 10 December 2007. 97. İlay Örs, ‘Beyond the Greek and Turkish Dichotomy: The Rum Polites of Istanbul and Athens’, South European Society and Politics 11: 1 (March 2006), pp. 79–94. 98. Brubaker, ‘The “Diaspora” Diaspora’, p. 12.

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m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 63 Akgönül, Samim (ed.), Reciprocity: Greek and Turkish Minorities, Law, Religion and Politics (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2008). Akın, Altuğ (ed.), Yeni Medyada Nefret Söylemi [Hate-­ speech in New Media] (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2010). Aktar, Ayhan, Varlık Vergisi ve Türkleştirme Polıtıkaları [The Property Tax and Turkification Policies] (Istanbul: İletişim, 2000). Alexandris, Alexis, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek–Turkish Relations 1918–1974 (Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992). Altuğ, Seda, ‘From Christian Refugees to Minorities: Sectarianism in Syrian-­Jazira under the French Mandate (1921–1946)’, in M. Weiss and T. Jones (eds), Sectarianism in the Middle East (tentative title) (California: Stanford University Press, forthcoming). Anagnostopoulou, Athanasia, ‘The Terms “Millet”, “Genos”, “Ethnos”, “Ecumenicity”, “Alytrotismos” in Greek Historiography’, in A. Anagnostopoulou (ed.), The Passage from the Ottoman Empire to the Nation-­States. A Long and Difficult Process: The Greek Case (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2004), pp. 37–55. Anastassiadou, Meropi and Paul Dumont, Oi Rōmioi tēs Polēs, Travmata kai Prosdokies [The Rum of Istanbul, Traumas and Expectations] (Athens: Estia, 2007). Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (Safety Harbor, FL: Simon Publications, [1938] 2001). Appadurai, Arjun, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2006). Başkaya, Fikret, Paradigma’nın İflası: Resmi İdeolojinin eleştirisine Giriş [The Bankrupt Paradigm: An Introduction to Criticising Official Ideology], 12th edn (Istanbul: Özgür Üniversite Yayınları, 2012). Benlisoy, Foti, ‘Papa Eftim and the Foundation of the Turkish Orthodox Church’ (MA dissertation, History Department, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, 2002). Bhabha, Homi, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). Birand, Mehmet A., ‘Türkiye’nin, Patrikhane yaklaşımı bir devrimdir . . .’ [Turkey’s approach to the Patriarchate amounts to a revolution . . .], Milliyet 9 (December 2010). Braude, Benjamin, ‘Foundation Myths of the Millet System’, in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (Teaneck: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), pp. 69–88. Brubaker, Rogers, ‘Accidental Diasporas and “External Homelands”’, in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present, Political Science Series No. 71, working paper (Vienna: Institute of Advanced Studies, 2000), pp. 1–19.

64  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Brubaker, Rogers, ‘The “Diaspora” Diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 28: 1 (January 2005), pp. 1–19. Butler, Kim D., ‘Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10: 2 (fall 2001), pp. 189–219. Çağaptay, Soner, ‘Race, Assimilation and Kemalism: Turkish Nationalism and the Minorities in the 1930s’, Middle Eastern Studies 40: 3 (2004), pp. 86–110. Çakır, Rusen, ‘Political Alevism versus Political Sunnism: Convergences and Divergences’, in Tord Olsson, E. Ozdalga and C. Raudvere (eds), Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social Perspectives (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1998), pp. 73–9. Clifford, James, ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 3 (spring 1991), pp. 302–38. Clogg, Richard, ‘A Millet within a Millet: The Karamanlides’, in Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (eds), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the 19th Century (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1999), pp. 115–42. Cohen, Robin, ‘Creolization and Cultural Production: The Softs Sounds of Fugitive Power’, Globalizations 4: 3 (September 2007), pp. 369–84. Commission to the European Parliament, Turkey 2012 Progress Report, Commission Staff Working Document (Brussels 2012). Commission to the European Parliament, Turkey 2012 Progress Report, Commission Staff Working Document (Brussels 2012). Davison, Roderic H., Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963). Davison, Roderic H., ‘The Millets as Agents of Change in the Nineteenth-­Century Ottoman Empire’, in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (Teaneck, NJ: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), pp. 319–37. Deringil, Selim, ‘The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808 to 1908’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 35: 1 (January 1993): 3–29. Deringil, Selim, The Well-­Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London and New York, NY: I. B. Tauris, 1998). Dimitrije Djordjevic and Stephen Fischer-­Galati, The Balkan Revolutionary Tradition (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1981). El Cheikh, Nadia M., ‘Sūrat al Rūm, A Study of the Exegetical Literature’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 118: 3 (July–September 1998), pp. 356–64.

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 65 Ergul, Feride Aslı, ‘The Ottoman Identity: Turkish, Muslim or Rum?’, Middle Eastern Studies 48: 4 (July 2012), pp. 629–45. Exertzoglou, Haris, ‘The Development of a Greek Ottoman Bourgeoisie: Investment Patterns in the Ottoman Empire, 1850–1914’, in Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (eds), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the 19th Century (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1999), pp. 89–114. Fargues, Philippe, ‘The Arab Christians in the Middle East: A Demographic Perspective’, in Andrea Pacini (ed.), Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenge of the Future (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 48–66. Geros, Panagiotis, ‘When Christianity Matters: The Production and Manipulation of Communalism in Damascus’ (PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, 2007). Griffith, Sidney, ‘“Melkites”, “Jacobites” and the Christological Controversies in Arabic in Third/Ninth-­Century Syria’, in D. Thomas (ed.), Syrian Christians under Islam: The First Thousand Years (Leiden and Boston, MA and Köln: Brill, 2001), pp. 9–56. Haddad, Mahmoud, ‘The Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 26: 2 (May 1994), pp. 201–22. Hall, Stuart, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990) Hopwood, Derek, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine, 1843–1914: Church and Politics in the Near East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). İnalcik, Halil, ‘The Policy of Mehmed II toward the Greek Population of Istanbul and the Byzantine Buildings of the City’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23/24 (1969/70), pp. 229–49. Iorga, Nicolae, Byzances après Byzances (Bucarest: L’institut d’études byzantines, 1935). İnceoğlu, Yasemi, Nefret Söylemi ve/veya Nefret Süçları [Hate-­speech and/or Hate-­ crimes] (Istanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları, 2012). Kadıoğlu, Ayşe, ‘Milletini Arayan Devlet: Türk Milliyetçiliğinin Açmazları’ [A State in Search of its Nation: The Dilemmas of Turkish Nationalism], Türkiye Günlüğü 33 (March–April 1995), pp. 91–111. Karpat, Kemal H., ‘The People’s Houses in Turkey: Establishment and Growth’, Middle East Journal 17: 1/2 (winter–spring, 1963), pp. 55–67. Katz, Itamar and Ruth Kark, ‘The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and its Congregation: Dissent over Real Estate’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 37: 4 (2005), pp. 509–34.

66  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Kayalı, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 1997). Kechriotis, Vangelis, ‘Greek-­Orthodox, Ottoman-­Greeks or just Greeks? Theories of Coexistence in the Aftermath of the Young Turks Revolution’, Études Balkaniques 1 (2005), pp. 51–72. Kechriotis, Vangelis, ‘On the Margins of National Historiography: The Greek İttihatçı Emmanouil Emmanouilidis – Opportunist or Ottoman Patriot?’, in Amy Singer, Ch. Neumann and S. A. Somel (eds), Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 124–42. Kitromilides, Paschalis M., ‘“Imagined Communities” and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans’, European History Quarterly 19 (April 1989), pp. 149–92. Komondouros, Markos and Lisa McEntee-­Atalianis, ‘Language Attitudes, Shift and the Ethnolinguistic Vitality of the Greek Orthodox Community of Istanbul’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 28: 5 (2007), pp. 365–84. Konortas, Paraskevas, ‘From Tâ’ife to Millet: Ottoman Terms for the Ottoman Greek Orthodox Community’, in Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (eds), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the 19th Century (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1999), pp. 169–80. Kotzamanis, Victor, ‘The Demographic Profile of the Rums of Istanbul and of Related Groups’. Paper presented at Meeting in Istanbul: The Present and the Future Conference, Istanbul, 30 June–2 July 2006. Kramer, Martin, ‘Ambition, Arabism, and George Antonius’, in Martin Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1996), pp. 11–23. Kramer, Martin, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1996). Kurban, Dilek, ‘Unravelling a Trade-­Off: Reconciling Minority Rights and Full Citizenship in Turkey’, in European Yearbook of Minority Issues, vol. 4 (Leiden: The European Centre for Minority Issues, 2006), pp. 341–71. Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Lewis, Bernard, Islam, vol. 2 (New York, NY: Walker and Co., 1974). Lord Kinross, Atatürk: The Rebirth of a Nation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964).

m od e l ci ti zens or a f i f th c o l umn ?  | 67 Ma’oz, Moshe, Middle Eastern Minorities: Between Integration and Conflict (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1999). McCallum, Fiona, ‘Christian Political Representation in the Arab World’, Islam and Christian-­Muslim Relations 23: 1 (January 2012), pp. 3–18. Mango, Cyril, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (New York, NY: Scribner’s, 1980). Masters, Bruce, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Meeker, Michael E., ‘Once There Was, Once There Wasn’t: National Monuments and Interpersonal Exchange’, in Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 157–91. Menze, Volker L., Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, The Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Migdal, Joel S., ‘Finding the Meeting Ground of Fact and Fiction: Some Reflections on Turkish Modernization’, in S. Bozdoğan and R. Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 252–60. Migliorino, Nicola, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria: Ethno-­cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008). Oran, Baskin, Türkiye’deki Azınlıklar: Kavramlar, Lozan, İç Mevzuat, İçtihat, Uygulama [Minorities in Turkey: Legal Concepts, Lausanne, Self-­regulation, Precedents and Implementation] (Istanbul: TESEV, 2004). Ortaylı, İlber, İmparatorluğun en uzun yüzyılı [The Empire’s Longest Century], twenty-­first edn (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2008). Owen, Roger, ‘Modernizing Projects in Middle Eastern Perspective’, in Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 245–51. Öktem, Kerem, Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989 (London: Zed Books, 2011). Örs, R. İlay, ‘Beyond the Greek and Turkish Dichotomy: The Rum Polites of Istanbul and Athens’, South European Society and Politics 11: 1 (March 2006), pp. 79–94. Payaslian, Simon, ‘Diasporan Subalternities: The Armenian Community in Syria’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 16: 1/2 (spring/fall 2007), pp. 92–132.

68  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Rabo, Annika, ‘“We are Christians and We are Equal Citizens”: Perspectives on Particularity and Pluralism in Contemporary Syria’, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 23: 1 (January 2012), pp. 79–93. Reid, Donald. M., ‘The Syrian Christians and Early Socialism in the Arab World’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 5: 2 (April 1974), pp. 177–93. Roggema, Barbara, ‘A Christian Reading of the Qur’an: The Legend of Sergius-­ Bahira and Its Use of Qur’an and Sīra’, in David Thomas (ed.), Syrian Christians under Islam: The First Thousand Years (Leiden and Boston, MA and Köln: Brill, 2001), pp. 57–74. Safran, William, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (spring 1991), pp. 83–99. Serjeant, Robert Bertram, ‘The “Constitution of Medina”’, Islamic Quarterly 8 (1964), pp. 3–16. Sigalas, Nikos, ‘Ellēnismos kai Exellēnismos: o Schēmatismos tēs Neoellēnikēs Ennoias Ellēnismos’ [Hellenism and Hellenisation: The Formation of the Modern Greek Concept of Hellenism], Ta Istorika 34 (June 2001), pp. 3–70. Smith, Anthony, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986). Soner, B. Ali, ‘The Justice and Development Party’s Policies towards Non-­Muslim Minorities in Turkey’, Journal of Balkan and Middle Eastern Studies 12: 1 (March 2010), pp. 27–40. Stamatopoulos, Dimitris, ‘From Millets to Minorities in the 19th-­Century Ottoman Empire: An Ambiguous Modernization’, in S. G. Ellis, G. Halfdanarson and A. K. Isaacs (eds), Citizenship in Historical Perspective (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2006), pp. 253–73. Stoianovich, Traian, ‘The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant’, The Journal of Economic History 20: 2 (June 1960), pp. 234–313. ‘Theseis’ [Theses] Apoyevmatini, 10 December 2007. Topal, Semiha, ‘Everybody Wants Secularism But Which One? Contesting Definitions of Secularism in Contemporary Turkey’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society (online version) (15 December 2011), http:// link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10767-­011-­9114-­z (accessed 26 October 2014). Tölölyan, Khachig, ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 5: 1 (1996), pp. 3–36. van Dam, Nikolaos, ‘Sectarian and Religious Factionalism in the Syrian Politicsl Elite’, Middle East Journal 32: 2 (spring 1978), pp. 201–10. Watenpaugh, Keith David, ‘Creating Phantoms: Zaki al-­Arsuzi, The Alexandretta

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2 Muhammad Farid: Between Nationalism and the Egyptian-­Ottoman Diaspora Ehud R. Toledano

Introduction

M

uhammad Farid was born in Cairo in 1878 as the scion of a distinguished Ottoman-­Egyptian elite family; he died in Berlin in 1919, as the leader in exile of the Egyptian Nationalist Party (al-­Hizb al-­Watani).1 His life journey from an Ottoman-­Egyptian gentleman to one of the leading figures in Egypt’s struggle for national independence is also the story of how the Ottoman-­Egyptian elite dropped its Ottomanness in a successful bid to gain acceptance as full-­fledged Egyptian. Although quite a number of scholars have been attracted to the transition ‘from Ottomanism to Arabism’ in the first decades of the twentieth century,2 few have looked into the fascinating sociocultural contest that took place among competing identities in the emerging post-­Ottoman, colonial Middle East.3 Farid’s political leadership has received a fair amount of attention in Egypt and outside,4 so there seems to be little that can be added here to that perspective. Hence, this chapter will attempt to offer an interpretation of the formative process that repositioned an entire social group – the Ottoman-­Egyptian elite – vis-­à-­vis and within the Egyptian nation. The almost intuitive methods to use in such an interpretative essay are the tools provided by sub-­fields such as memory and identity studies. In a previous work, I have attempted both, first with regard to Ottoman Egypt,5 70

muha mma d f a ri d | 71 and then, more recently, with a focus on African diaspora communities in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean worlds.6 Here, however, I propose to examine the processes that will be reviewed in the following pages as a special case within Diaspora Studies. That is, we shall define the Ottoman-­Egyptian elite, formed between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, as a diasporic community of Ottoman military-­administrative officers and their families, who settled in Egypt. That community was transformed in the late nineteenth century first into Egyptian-­Ottoman, and then to an Egyptian elite, which shed in the process the Ottoman sociocultural ingredients of its collective identity. The core of the argument is that these processes ‘re-­diasporised’ the ruling Ottoman-­Egyptian elite and re-­opened a kind of diasporic discursive space between their ‘host-­home’ country, that is, Egypt, and the ‘old homeland’, that is, the Ottoman capital Istanbul, the empire’s cultural and social epicentre, and its imperial governing elite. This was an intriguing reversal of the usual process in which diasporas are created, how they interact with the host country, make it their new home, and then how they come to relate to the old country, their historic homeland. In a way, this could demonstrate that such categories are malleable, constantly subject to changing circumstances that can reproduce the dynamics of the triad – host, diaspora community, homeland – and create new equilibria among its elements. Ottoman and Egyptian diasporic identities proved to be fluid and the hybridities they begot were capable of mutating and morphing, perhaps more than other types of identities. How those identities were being negotiated will be tracked through the life story of Muhammad Farid, who embodied the experience of the social group from which he hailed – the Ottoman-­Egyptian elite. There has been sufficient and fairly adequate coverage of Farid’s life, mainly from the political-­nationalist angle, but I have not seen much, if any, interest in examining his sociopolitical predicament or placing his story in the context of his sociocultural group. The closest we get in this regard is, for example, Gershoni’s observation that Farid represented ‘the national identity and the system of political and cultural loyalties’, which ‘fluctuated between an affinity for Egypt and Egyptianism and for Islam and Ottomanism’.7 Such a candid recognition of how complex that group identity was is almost totally

72  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t absent in nationalist depictions of Farid, and the standard biographies by al-­Rafici and the nationalists8 are rich in detail and affection, but ignore anything that may not reinforce the image of the man as ‘the symbol of devotion and self-­sacrifice’ (ramz al-­ikhlas wa al-­tadhiyya). The source material for a close sociocultural reading of Farid’s life has always been there, begging a ‘thicker’ interpretation, in Geertzian terms, which we hope to enable in this chapter. Thus, for clues to his identity as an Ottoman-­Egyptian, rather than exclusively an Arab-­Egyptian, one needs to read between the lines and extract hidden nuances. For that, I have here relied mostly on Farid’s own testimony as reflected in his Memoirs and Diaries,9 both in the original Arabic and the excellent annotated translation thereof by Arthur Goldschmidt.10 Within these accounts, it is perhaps most useful and most revealing to examine the period of Farid’s self-­imposed exile (1912–19), more specifically his extended stays in Istanbul during the war years. After all, it was then and there that he came into contact with the ‘homeland’, in diasporic parlance, touching base with the Ottoman language and culture that he had known so well. Muhammad Farid’s diaries are meticulous, detailed, critically observant, brutally honest and disarmingly candid and engaging. Written by a perceptive, keenly political and – understandably – very suspicious individual, they bring forth a totally committed nationalist leader, who was ready to pay a heavy price for his convictions.11 As I will argue henceforward, the diaries reveal an Ottoman-­Egyptian gentleman who had chosen to be an Egyptian patriot and devoted his life and career to promoting Egyptian nationalism and liberation. Like many members of his sociocultural group, Muhammad Farid evolved into an Egyptian political leader by shirking his Ottoman-­ Egyptian elite identity, a price he and his peers paid willingly in order to secure a place in the new Egypt, which was to be for the Egyptians only, and bereft of its Ottoman culture and history.12 Before we explore some of the diary notes – compiled mostly in the Ottoman imperial capital but also in Europe – a few words will be shared on where we need to position that rich historical corpus of first-­hand evidence. The discourse on identities will enable us to contextualise the experience of Muhammad Farid and Ottoman-­Egyptians at the turn of the twentieth century. Their story will also be placed within the work done in recent years on

muha mma d f a ri d | 73 the emergence of Ottoman-­Local elites in the Middle East and North Africa. The bulk of this chapter, however, will be devoted to Muhammad Farid’s sociocultural journey from an Ottoman-­Egyptian gentleman to a prominent Egyptian nationalist leader. Morphing Identities: Rise of the Ottoman-­Egyptian elite Ottoman-­ imperial, Egyptian-­ Arab and Ottoman-­ Egyptian were complex forms of sociocultural identities that were historically embraced by several elite and non-­elite groups in Egypt during the period from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. These categories were malleable and dynamic, but at their core they were well-­defined.13 Their features – speech, lifestyle, dress, taste in food, habitat, decor or manners and decorum – were easily recognisable by in-­group and out-­group members. Whereas one would normally be born and socialised into one of these groups, it was not uncommon for individuals to adopt such identities, wholly or in part, or to abandon certain constitutive elements associated with them. Some of the processes involved in formulating one’s identity were conscious and willed; others were not. When they were conscious, choice and agency14 were part of the process. As is argued elsewhere,15 the Ottoman-­ Egyptian elite consciously and willingly abandoned the Ottoman component of its core sociocultural identity in order to be accepted by the emerging Egyptian nationalist elite in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this chapter, I shall attempt to demonstrate the nuanced complexity of this process as it unfolded in the life of Muhammad Farid. Social anthropologists define collective identities as ‘representations containing normative appeals to potential respondents and providing them with the means of understanding themselves, or being understood, as members of a larger category or assemblage of persons’.16 Responses by actors to such appeals are called processes of identification, weaving together structure and function, culture and meaning, practice and power, agency and choice. Identification consists of processes of socialisation and enculturation; these endow individuals with means to relate to one another, to orient themselves to the world and to define their own self. Identifications are multiple and variable, carry specificity of time and space and enable interaction within complex sociocultural networks.

74  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Ottoman-­Egyptian elite culture was, by definition, a hybrid form, the result of merging Ottoman imperial and Egyptian local cultures into a creolised mould. The emergence of ‘creole cultures’ implies a certain measure of assimilation, integration and acceptance of the dominant culture,17 which indeed was the case with Ottoman-­Egyptianness. It has been argued that creoles can form diasporas, and that ‘people thrive not by getting stuck in fixed quasi-­racial identities, but at the nodes and connection points, where new ideas and original inventiveness are developed’.18 Cultural retentions are instrumental and integration-­oriented, and cultural preservation does not necessarily result in ethnic isolation.19 As we hope to show, Ottoman retentions and constant replenishment from the imperial ‘homeland’ enabled the emergence of a dominant ruling elite that was a diaspora integrated ‘upward’ with the imperial elite and open to incorporation of Egyptian elites from ‘downward’. This dynamic and gradual process occurred in Egypt, as in the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries;20 it revolved around the formation of the Ottoman-­Local elite pronged prohousehold.21 Households served as focal points for a two-­ cess: the Localisation of the imperial, military-­administrative elite and the Ottomanisation of the provincial elites, producing Ottoman-­Local elites, in our case the Ottoman-­Egyptian one. At the same time, the Ottoman imperial elite became less mobile, with posts being assigned within limited regions, so that specialisation according to the needs of specific provincial clusters was built up within the military and the bureaucracy.22 By aligning themselves with Egyptian guilds and merchants, and marrying into local families, imperial elite members developed strong ties to the local economy, society and culture, linking their own and their children’s future to Egypt. Meanwhile, Egyptian elites – urban and rural notables, ulema and ­merchants – sought to become part of the imperial administration by obtaining government offices and being Ottomanised in the process. Ottomanisation meant the piecemeal political, economic, social and cultural integration of the Egyptian urban and rural elites into the Ottoman state and its ruling elite. A diverse and complex process, Ottomanisation was not uniform, nor did it occur everywhere simultaneously. In some regions, such as southern Iraq, it was more economic than sociopolitical; in others, such as North

muha mma d f a ri d | 75 Africa and Yemen, it was more political than sociocultural; and yet in others, most notably in Egypt and the Levant, it was both sociocultural and political. The acquisition of Ottoman Turkish was critical to entering the military-­ administrative establishment, as to the selective adoption of elements of the canon of elite culture. Precisely because of this, Ottomanisation in the Arabic-­speaking provinces was a slow process and took hold only in about the middle of the eighteenth century, that is, relatively late in ­comparison to the Anatolian and even the Balkan provinces. Throughout the Sultans’ domains, the Localising imperial elite and the Ottomanising local elites gradually merged into Ottoman-­Local elites, which better served the interests of both sides and facilitated the emergence of new modalities of rule. Imperial office holders gradually developed economic interests in Egypt, mixed socially, learned Egyptian Arabic, acquired Egyptian cultural tastes and, most significantly, married into Egyptian families. The Ottoman-­Egyptian Kazdağlı and Mehmet Ali’s households provide good examples of this process. Concomitantly, Egyptian urban and rural notables, merchants and ulema strove to place their members into the Ottoman office-­holding elite, and thereby gain access to the power, prestige and wealth that those offices afforded. The struggle that developed among such households enabled the imperial elite and its representatives in Egypt to weave the Egyptian elites into its empire-­wide networks. This intricate and multilayered process enabled Ottoman power to be wielded effectively in the period of growing military and financial challenges. When the state performed its duty to protect and nurture the Sultan’s subjects – more often than not the case in Ottoman history – the countryside prospered, and the quality of life was higher than in contemporary empires in Europe and Asia. The Ottoman Empire provided for the Middle East and North Africa an effective system of government and a political culture that survived its rule and shaped the modern history of these regions. Beyond their visual imprint on architecture and landscape, the Ottomans’ impact upon communal traditions was profound. As Albert Hourani observed, modern travellers in the region must notice ‘how deep the Ottoman impress went and how lasting is the unity it has imposed on many different countries and peoples’. With special emphasis on their political culture, Hourani characterised the old Ottoman-­Arab elites as ‘patient, cautious, carefully balancing one

76  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t force against another in order to neutralise them all, giving your enemy time and scope to ruin himself, seeing how far you can go but always leaving a way of escape if you have gone too far’.23 The Ottoman style of government endured because it was embedded in flexible structures and pragmatic practices, relatively non-­invasive methods of rule and a remarkable capacity to fuse Islamic orthodoxy, popular Sufism and components of local belief systems into a viable ethos that successfully glued together society and government. The empire certainly had its up and down turns, an historical inevitability for such a vast and long-­lived political and economic entity. In certain regions at certain times, tensions developed that turned one group against another, with the government having to restore order. Central to its longevity and relative stability was the household (Turkish, kapı; Arabic, bayt), which served as the social, economic, political and even cultural unit that promoted Ottoman-­Local integration. Households emerged within military formations, such as garrison regiments in the provinces, within the provincial administration, among the ulema and in merchant and notable circles. The model for emulation remained the Sultan’s household in Istanbul, with Ottoman-­Local grandees attempting to copy its features and style as far as their financial resources permitted. The Ottoman-­Local household and patronage networks were different from systems of political and social patronage in Europe, Asia and Africa. Open and inclusive by definition and nature, the Ottoman system sought to bring local elites and their protégé, dependent groups into the imperial fold and deliberately grant them a stake in the well-­being of the empire. Recruiting locals into the army and bureaucracy, and socially integrating them through marriage and concubinage, cemented their sense of belonging to the Ottoman Empire and enhanced their loyalty to the ruling Ottoman dynasty. The main offices of state, hence also access to and appropriation of the main income-­generating assets, were distributed to household members. The intense political, inter-­and intra-­household struggles that lasted into the first quarter of the eighteenth century reflect the active involvement of the imperial elite in provincial affairs. The emergence of hegemonic rule in the following period attests to the maturing of Localisation and Ottomanisation processes, and to the consolidation of Ottoman-­Local elite households. Among the most famous of these

muha mma d f a ri d | 77 households were the Kazdağlıs in Egypt, the Eyübizades in Iraq (mainly in Baghdad and Basra), the Jalilis in Mosul, the cAzms in Syria, the Husaynis in Tunis and the Karamanlıs in Libya. In Egypt, the House of Mehmet Ali Paşa (1805–49) turned its hegemony into dynastic rule from the middle of the nineteenth century, a position it managed to keep until the 1952 Revolution, well beyond the end of the Ottoman era. As it served the Kazdağlıs before, so did the loyal Ottoman-­Egyptian elite serve the reigning dynasty, although its members still retained a measure of their commitment to the empire. Their sense of having been part of the Ottoman governing elite was tested during the First World War.24 The Farid family was at the core of that governing elite, and it experienced the full force of the identity re-­formulation process that that group went through. Some social anthropologists stress the importance of ‘commitment to markers of identity’ by members of diasporic communities.25 That is, the degree of attachment by such communities to the core values and practices that are seen by them and other groups in society as emblematic. In addition to expressed loyalties that reflect their sense of identification, such markers may also include common experience (personal or collective history), speech, religion, class, lifestyle, age, gender, ‘race’, geographical origin and kinship. The salience and commitment to such markers measures, in that view, the stability and endurance of any historicised and contextualised collective identity.26 As already indicated above, Egyptians clearly recognised the identity markers of the Ottoman-­Egyptian elite and learned how to position themselves vis-­à-­vis that group. The rise of the Egyptian nationalist movement challenged the stability of that collective identity, which was consequently tested by the converging processes of British colonialism, Ottoman ambivalent distancing and the regional and global constraints caused by the World War. As Günter Schlee notes,27 identities are perpetuated by inertia and are renegotiated only when circumstances force such a change. The capacity of identities for change, and the pace of such transformation, differs according to time, place and circumstance. If we assume the presence of self-­awareness, choice and agency in identity formation and transformation, then the decision by diaspora communities would depend on how they perceive the costs and benefits, and how they view the incentives and disincentives offered by

78  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t each and every situation. In our case, the intense conflicts and changes in Egypt from the turn of the twentieth century onward forced the Ottoman-­ Egyptian elite to re-­formulate and re-­orient its identity. Conscious that it could be marginalised and ostracised in the new, emerging nationalist Egypt, most of its members, like Muhammad Farid, chose to divest themselves of Ottoman identity components in favour of enhancing their Egyptianism, both socioculturally and politically. The rest of this chapter will be devoted to the transformation that, I wish to argue, occurred in the life of Muhammad Farid during the first and second decades of the twentieth century. The evolving rejection of his Ottoman sociocultural identity, the weakening of his commitment to Ottoman-­Egyptian identity markers and his absolute devotion to Egyptian nationalism unfold in the pages of the Memoirs and Diaries Farid compiled so punctually, so ­passionately and in such detail, before and during the First World War. Muhammad Farid’s Sociocultural Journey The forefather of the Farid family, Osman Efendi, was said to have arrived in Egypt in the early years after its occupation by the Ottoman armies of Sultan Selim I in 1517.28 He held high office in the financial administration of the province, which passed from father to son, reaching Muhammad Farid’s grandfather. Ahmad (Ahmet) Farid Paşa, Muhammad’s father was born in 1836 and was trained during the middle years of the nineteenth century29 in the state school system that provided military and administrative personnel to the Ottoman-­Egyptian Government. Beginning in 1863, he held several positions in both Cairo and the provinces, attaining the top of his career in 1886, when appointed Director of the Khedival Domains (al-­Daira al-­ Saniyya), one of the most senior jobs in the Egyptian administration. Muhammad Farid’s mother – Bamba (Pembe) Hanım – hailed from a leading Egyptian merchant household, which traced its origins to the Abbasid dynasty and to Husayn Ibn cAli. Her father served as the superintendent of the spice trade in Cairo, which was a quasi-­official position with administrative and judicial powers.30 Theirs was a marriage made in the hybrid zone that, since the eighteenth century, combined Ottoman and Egyptian families into Ottoman-­Egyptian households. Joining in matrimony a prominent office holder and the daughter of a prominent merchant

muha mma d f a ri d | 79 was typical among members of Ottoman-­Local elites across the Middle East and North Africa.31 That conjugal pattern would be duplicated in the 1888 marriage of Muhammad Farid himself to cA’isha (Ayşe) Hanım, his first cousin on both sides. Their marriage was celebrated in grand style, with two weeks of festivities and visitation by high officials from across the country, who came to pay their respect to the family patriarch. A detailed announcement was published in the official gazette, al-­Waqa’ic al-­Misriyya, an honour reserved only to events involving members of the reigning household.32 The couple had two sons and four daughters, but, tragically, only one of the sons survived both parents, two of the daughters survived their father and only one survived her mother, too. The son, cAbd al-­Khaliq Farid, kept his father’s diaries, which were finally published in 1978, after having gone through a saga of their own.33 The ethnic mixture within Ottoman-­Egyptian elite households was typical of similar social groups across the empire. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the core of most such households no longer consisted of enslaved office holders (kul ) and their harem-­housed families.34 Kul, ex-­kul and kul-­ recruited and trained office holders were still present in elite circles, while enslaved and free Circassian, Georgian and Slavic women remained desirable wives to elite men. Farid certainly displayed awareness of that, as the following story demonstrates.35 On 25 July 1914, a young Egyptian student attempted to assassinate Khedive Abbas Hilmi in Istanbul. Allegedly mentally ill, the nineteen-­year-­old Mahmud Efendi Muzhir was the son of Ahmad Bey Muzhir, Head of the District Court in Bani Suwayf, about 80 kilometres south of Cairo. Farid, who recounts the story in his diary, deemed it important enough to mention that the student’s mother was ‘of Circassian extraction’, again a trait of Ottoman-­Egyptian elite markers. To Farid, who had met the student many times when visiting Istanbul, this was significant, as he was only too familiar with it from his own family background. In another instance, which is also indicative of the vital nexus between Cairo and Istanbul, Farid writes about the well-­known cAziz Bey al-­Misri (Mısırlı Aziz Bey).36 Born in Egypt as cAbd al-­cAziz cAli, his parents were Circassian, and he went through the Ottoman-­Egyptian education system, ending up in the Egyptian Law School. For a reason unknown to Farid, he

80  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t suddenly left for Istanbul, enrolled in the military academy, and subsequently distinguished himself in the Ottoman Army in Albania, Yemen and Libya. Although he was a committed member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), cAziz Bey was an Arab nationalist and underground activist for an Arab alternative to the ‘Turkish race’, which, he believed, lost its capacity to lead the Muslims out of their current crisis. This was another case of an Ottoman-­Egyptian elite member, who melted into the imperial system, yet rejected Ottomanism in favour of Arab and Egyptian nationalism. The Farid family was well-­off and managed to amass large agricultural land and urban properties as a result of both viceregal grants and highly paid government offices. The estate of Muhammad Farid’s father included 1,100 feddans (about the same in acres) of land, of which the son received 300, half of it private (mulk), half endowment (waqf  ).37 In addition, he inherited a mansion on Shubra Road in north Cairo, located on five feddans that were designated for housing, and that Farid later parcelled and sold for a considerable profit. Together with other real-­estate properties he owned in Cairo, and the income he received as an elite lawyer, Farid was a wealthy person, who chose to spend much of his money on the nationalist struggle, consequently reaching at times severe lack of means for dignified subsistence when in exile abroad. Given his Ottoman-­Egyptian sociocultural background, it is somewhat surprising that Muhammad Farid’s first visit to the imperial capital occurred fairly late in his life. He set foot in Istanbul on 12 April 1909, and left early in May of the same year.38 Coincidentally, on the following day, the CUP took over the government and ousted Sultan Abdülhamit II (reigned 1876–1909), and Farid began to send detailed reports on events to the nationalist newspaper Al-­Liwa’. His coverage was so thorough, he wrote, that rumours linked the coup to his arrival, alleging some sort of involvement, which was unfounded. From our perspective, it is important to note how quickly and smoothly Farid ‘melted’ into the political scene in the Ottoman capital. He was in contact with the CUP top leaders, attended social and political events there, and felt at home in elite circles. Farid’s command of Turkish and close familiarity with Ottoman culture had greatly facilitated his easy integration into the rhythm of imperial politics. In future visits and frequent contacts with Ottoman officialdom,

muha mma d f a ri d | 81 he would at times translate for his Turcophone interlocutors Arabic texts and conversations. Thus, for example, when the Khedive drafted his proclamation to the Egyptian people ahead of the intended Ottoman invasion in November 1914, Enver Paşa asked Farid to translate the text for him into Turkish, which he presented to Enver’s aide-­de-­camp two days later.39 This close consultation with the Ottoman Minister of War included frank discussion of sensitive issues, such as whether the Khedive should lead the Ottoman forces in that campaign, and given Enver’s and the CUP’s objection, whether he should even be allowed to join the army before victory would be achieved. This first foray into core Ottoman politics opened the way for a series of similar visits, during which Farid would become involved in contacts with many leading office holders and other influential persons in the imperial capital. He formed long-­term relationships with senior officials in Istanbul, for example, the Şehülislâm,40 and outside, for example, the Governor General of Edirne.41 Not surprisingly, Istanbul is mentioned in the diaries not less than 120 times. To cement the relationship between the CUP and the Nationalist Party, it was decided that a delegation would proceed from Egypt to Istanbul soon after Farid’s return. The party delegation travelled to Istanbul in mid-­ July 1909, where they also met with Egyptians residing in the city, as with ‘Turks and Iranians’. The list of people they saw covered the leading political figures, and Farid proudly describes the honourable reception extended to them by all, including in palace events and the public celebrations associated with Constitution Day (23 July).42 At that point, one can safely say that Farid was reconnecting with his diasporic homeland and origin culture, although this was a complex process: whereas the decision was political and strategic – to align the nationalists with the empire against the British occupation of Egypt – the bond was facilitated in Farid’s case by his Ottoman cultural affinity. In this context, it is interesting to note that, in his re-­enculturation and re-­bonding with his Ottoman heritage – Farid used administrative terms and place names in their Turkish form, not the Arabic equivalent. Thus, for example,43 the city district authority that hosted the delegation was referred to as Şehr Emaneti; the docking station of Beşiktaş is recorded as Beşiktaş İskelesi; the Khedive’s representative-­agent in Istanbul is called Kapı Kâhya; aide-­de-­camp is yaver;

82  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t the Ottoman Army is ordu, and the Ottoman Navy donanma; and the castle in the city of Algiers is Sultaniye Kalesi. Ottoman-­Egyptian elite members were frequent visitors to Istanbul, but they came not only for summer vacations in the houses they maintained there, or to visit with extended-­family members who lived in the capital on a temporary or permanent basis.44 Not a few of them owned agricultural estates in Anatolia and elsewhere, as did, for example, Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, who would occasionally travel to inspect his estates there, as he did in September 1913.45 In many ways, these men were part of the imperial military-­administrative elite and fully acquainted with Ottoman Government modes of operation and bureaucratic procedures. Indeed, not infrequently they were offered and accepted positions within the central – and less often also the provincial – administration of the empire. It is not surprising, for instance, to see Said Halim Paşa, a prominent member of the Egyptian vice regal house, as Grand Vezir from 1913 to 1917.46 Nor was it unusual that rumours had it that on one of his sojourns in the imperial capital, the Ottoman Government offered Muhammad Farid the position of Dean of the Law School at Istanbul University, but he turned it down, wishing to retain his political independence.47 Farid sought Ottoman Government education for Egyptian students, supported them, met with them regularly in Istanbul and interceded on their behalf when necessary. On 22 October 1914, Farid wrote in his diary, he had a meeting in Istanbul with the War Minister Enver Paşa and accompanied him to visit the Khedive. After the political part of the conversation, Farid handed to Enver five applications of Egyptian students seeking to enter the military schools in the imperial capital.48 We may assume that Farid hoped that these students would return to Egypt and join its military or administrative service but, as in the case of cAziz al-­Misri, they could well choose to serve in the imperial government instead. Movement of officials in the opposite direction was also not uncommon. Ottomans from the imperial centre would be appointed to serve in Egypt. Farid notes that the Chief Justice of Cairo (Qadi Misr) was a ‘Turk’; he later questioned the political wisdom of two appointments that the Khedive made in 1914.49 The first was that of an opponent of the CUP, Hasan Bey Khalid (Halit) to Director of the Turkish Section in the bureaucracy, which

muha mma d f a ri d | 83 dealt with official correspondence in Turkish. The man was the son of a shaykh from Aleppo, who had been appointed advisor to Sultan Abdülhamit II and was known for his anti-­reformist stance. Yet another case of Ottoman-­ Local networking with the imperial centre, this appointment by the Khedive incurred the wrath of the Sublime Porte and the CUP Government. A similar mistake, according to Farid, was the appointment of the ‘Turk’ Mehmet Ârif Bey to head the Protocol Department (Ser Teşrifatçı) with the rank of Paşa and a large annual salary. That man had been the telegraph operator and alleged spy for the same Sultan, another poke in the eye of the CUP Government in Istanbul. Sensing that he was soon to be arrested in Egypt, Farid left the country and arrived in Istanbul on 31 March 1912.50 He was well received by the Ottoman Government, expecting to be treated as a political exile and not extradited to British-­controlled Egypt. Farid rented a house in the north-­ western suburb of Sarıyer on the northern European side not far from the Black Sea, brought his wife and children to the capital, and insinuated himself into Ottoman elite life. His house became a meeting place for visiting Egyptians, who came to summer in the imperial capital. He moved by boat from his Bosphorus home to see the Khedive, who alternated between the palace of his mother in Bebek (Bebek Sarayı, now the Egyptian Consulate-­ General), also on the European side, and the Khedivial Palace (Hıdıv Kasrı) in Çubuklu, on the northern part of the Asian side. Farid would also occasionally go into the city to meet ranking officials in their offices or mansions, or visit ambassadors, especially the German one. He would sit in cafes, at Yeni Köy and other quarters by the Bosphorus, think, talk, write, and publish opinion pieces in Egyptian papers and Istanbul ones, mainly Jeune turc in French and the Ottoman Hilal, on political issues of the day. However, all that was to change in July when the Ahmet Muhtar Paşa cabinet assumed power, and the spectre of cooperation between the Ottomans and the British against the Egyptian nationalist opposition was growing. Fearing extradition to Egypt, Muhammad Farid decided to leave Istanbul for Paris in August 1912, and then headed to Geneva, to attend the peace conference the following month.51 After the fall of the pro-­British Kâmil Paşa ministry, and as Mahmut Şevket Paşa’s cabinet took office in late January 1913, Muhammad Farid

84  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t returned to Istanbul in late February 1913.52 He remained in the imperial capital until early in May that year, when he again moved to Geneva. A significant part of Egyptian politics was actually unfolding in Istanbul, as the Khedive was there much of the time in the years leading to and during the First World War. At the earlier stage, Farid and the Nationalists were strongly anti-­Khedive, owing to his willingness to work with the British, but this changed after the two sides broke up. So, in August 1914, following the declaration of war between Britain and Germany, ‘Abbas Hilmi and Muhammad Farid reconciled in Istanbul, as both realised they may well be now on the same side, opposing British rule in Egypt.53 The Khedive agreed to grant a constitution, while Farid accepted the monarchy in a nationalist post-­British Egypt. That created the opportunity to bring into that dyad the CUP leadership – allied to the Germans in the war – in an effort to launch an Ottoman military campaign to oust the British from Egypt. It was then and there that the ambivalence of the imperial government revealed itself: the Unionists were keen on securing the support of both the Khedive and the Nationalists for Egypt’s return to Ottoman sovereignty, but the newly appointed Grand Vezir, Said Halim Paşa, a leading claimant to the Egyptian viceroyalty, sought to reinstate Egypt as an Ottoman province with himself as its Khedive. In itself, that situation revealed yet again how closely knit and integrated were the imperial and the Ottoman-­Egyptian elites, from the ruling household down. Whereas Enver Paşa went along with the aspirations of the Abbas-­Farid camp, Talât and Cemal Paşas sided with the Grand Vezir, although outwardly befriending the Khedive and the Nationalists. Despite his support for the Ottomans in the war, Farid insisted that this was a tactical position – to use the empire to liberate Egypt from the British – and that it categorically did not mean returning Egypt to the status of an Ottoman province.54 On that issue, he stood on nuances, as when he changed the wording regarding Egypt’s status in the draft Proclamation of the Khedive in November 1914.55 In the text proposed by Shaykh Jawish, the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Egypt was that of proprietary possession (mulk), but Farid preferred to define the empire as having sovereign rights (sahibat al-­siyada) over Egypt. All along, he refused to budge on the formula ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’, even when threatened by Grand Vezir Said Halim Paşa, who was furious with Farid for saying that, following

muha mma d f a ri d | 85 the liberation of Egypt by the Ottoman Army, the imperial forces would not remain in the country beyond twenty-­four hours.56 Halim promised that if that formula was not rescinded, Farid and the Nationalist leaders would be arrested and sent to a deportation camp. Having chosen Egyptian nationalism over Ottomanism, Farid experienced cognitive and emotional ambivalence towards the ‘old country’. This did not rise to the level of conflicted loyalties, but having chosen to differentiate itself from its Ottoman heritage, the Ottoman-­Egyptian elite was struggling not to be relegated to a diasporic predicament within an increasingly and exclusively nationalistic Egypt. Farid’s language and conduct vis-­ à-­vis the Ottomans is indicative of that process of self-­imposed alienation; it begins with accepting and reinforcing the distinction between ‘Ottomans’ and ‘Turks’ (cOthmaniyyun versus Atrak), as the latter is set in apposition to ‘Egyptians’. Whereas ‘Ottomans’ is inclusive and admits the option of ‘Egyptian-­Ottomanness’, or of Egyptians being part of an imperial Ottoman identity, ‘Turks’ is exclusive and sets up a ‘wall’ between ‘Egyptians’ and ‘Turks’. Thus, throughout his Memoirs and Diaries, Farid refers to the Ottomans as Turks, and to himself and his compatriots as Egyptians. When he talks about organs of state, however, he uses Ottoman, as in ‘the Ottoman Empire’ (al-­Dawla al-­ ‘Uthmaniyya), or ‘the Ottoman Army’ (al-­Jaysh al-­ ‘Uthmani) and ‘the Ottoman Navy’ (al-­Ustul al ‘Uthmani). He rarely uses ‘Ottoman’ when talking about imperial government officials, who are usually ‘Turks’, but at least on one occasion, Farid mentions having lunch in Brussels with a top CUP man, Cavid Bey, ‘the Ottoman’ (al-­ ‘Uthmani)’, not the ‘Turk’.57 This may have reflected an affinity to that person, who was one of his closest contacts in official Istanbul, whereas the use of ‘Turk’ clearly had a distancing effect, as in the following example. When Farid returned to Istanbul from February to April 1916, he was summoned for an interrogation by the Director of Internal Security regarding his activities in support of an Egypt independent from Ottoman rule.58 Angered by the new measures taken against him, Farid objected to being followed by security officers and to being interrogated. When the director apologised and denied any hostile intentions, Farid mockingly commented that the director responded in ‘their [typical] “Turkish” style, based on hypocrisy

86  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t and ­duplicity: Estafrullah, Efendim (may God forgive me, Sir), we are brothers, and [it is] inconceivable [for us] to accuse you [of anything]’. On another occasion, he voiced his criticism of Ottoman etiquette, as in kissing the hand of a superior official, which he deemed unacceptable for the new generation of young, educated Egyptian bureaucrats.59 Thus, the elaborate manners of the imperial elite, which were bequeathed to Ottoman-­Local officialdom throughout the Middle East,60 and that were part and parcel of Farid’s own upbringing and enculturation, became the target of his bitter criticism and rebuke. When his conflict with the CUP neared its peak, Farid’s emotional attitude toward the Ottomans underwent another twist. In May 1916, back in Switzerland, he met with a friend who naturally addressed him in Turkish. A British diplomat reported to London that Farid reacted to that angrily, saying: ‘Don’t talk to me in that damn language. I am sick of the Young Turks.’61 My reading of his mood here is not necessarily of alienation from all Ottomans and rejection of their/his language, but rather his ability to make a measured differentiation, even when extremely angry. After all, Farid could have said that he was sick of the empire (Devlet), or the Ottoman Empire (Devlet-­i Âliye), or the Turks (Türkler), the latter being the most common in his parlance when setting ‘bad’ Turks apart from ‘good’ Egyptians. Instead, he singled out the ‘CUP’, with whom he was at odds, not targeting all ‘Ottomans’, toward whom he still harboured vestiges of affinity that, admittedly, were fading away into the distance. Muhammad Farid’s choice to side with Egyptian nationalism and gradually divorce himself from his Ottomanness was not the only position taken by Ottoman-­Egyptian elite circles. The intricate web of relationships within that group is manifested in the obituary Farid wrote in his diary for Princess Nâzli Hanım, Khedive Ismail’s niece, who died in Tunis in January 1914. Deeply hostile to the Nationalists, she hated Mustafa Kamil and wished him dead, but had a cordial and professional lawyer–client relationship with Farid.62 Her highly derogatory views of Egyptians were an anathema to people like Muhammad Farid, but not uncommon among a smaller group of Ottoman-­ Egyptian elite members, especially those within the Khedivial family and inner circle. Grand Vezir Said Halim Paşa, for example, asserted in 1914 that Egypt belonged to the Ottomans, and that the Egyptians were just

muha mma d f a ri d | 87 ‘like cattle’ (ka-­l-­baha’im).63 Infuriated by these words and Halim’s stance on Egypt, Farid asserted that the Grand Vezir spoke out of ‘total stupidity’ (kull hamaqa). At the time, and in order to stem the Nationalists’ campaign under the banner of ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’, Said Halim Paşa sent one of his senior associates to deliver a strong message to Farid.64 If the insistence on elevating Egypt above its status as an Ottoman province (Vilayet) continued, the messenger told Farid at Café Tokatıyan in Istanbul, the government would crack down on the entire Nationalist leadership. The relevant point for us here goes beyond Farid’s defiant response; it is the amazement he expressed to his interlocutor that, being an Egyptian, the Grand Vezir could utter such words (wa-­inni astagrib sudur hadha al-­kalam [minhu] wa-­huwwa Misri) [my emphasis]. Indeed, not less surprising is Farid’s expectation that an Ottoman-­ Egyptian Grand Vezir would see himself first as an Egyptian and lend his support to the separatist view in Ottoman-­Egyptian politics. This is, perhaps more than anything else, an indication of how detached Farid came to be by then from the likes of Nazli, Halim and their ilk. At the same time, one cannot escape the sense that, at least in part, Farid – and like-­minded Ottoman-­Egyptians – still retained a measure of identification with the empire and cared about the image of the Ottomans. When the Grand Vezir Talât Paşa arrived in Berlin in April 1917, Farid was happy he had left the city a few days earlier and would not have to meet that man, whom he considered an enemy to a free Egypt and, hence, to himself.65 It gave him an opportunity to castigate the Ottomans for their lack of dignity vis-­à-­vis the Germans, ‘throwing themselves under the feet’ of their war-­time allies (al-­tarami taht aqdam Almanya). Ottoman ministers flock to Berlin to seek appointments with the emperor, Farid snapped, while their German counterparts never bother to go to Istanbul, nor to request meetings with the sultan. Not only was this grovelling, in his eyes, a politically unwise practice, it was humiliating. Farid expected the Ottomans to conduct themselves with dignity as a great Islamic empire, but he was also willing to defend their honour before the Europeans. In February 1915, he met in Geneva with an associate of the Khedive, who was on his way to Berlin to launch a complaint with the German foreign minister against the Ottoman Government for neglecting

88  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t to mention the Khedive in the sultan’s address to the Egyptian people. On the eve of the Ottoman invasion of Egypt, the Germans were helping the Egyptians to encourage the Ottomans to move ahead, and they were also involved in the proclamations issued by the sultan and the Khedive.66 Farid tried to convince the emissary that it was ‘irreverent and frivolous’ to always think ill of the Ottomans and doubt the sincerity of their intentions; he clearly wanted him to avoid bad-­mouthing the Ottomans on this, and in general, especially to non-­Ottomans. In another conversation later that month, with the chairman of the Foreign and Colonial Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly, Farid reacted strongly to the assertion of his interlocutor that Germany controls the Ottomans and commands their armies.67 He said to the Frenchman: ‘You, the people of Europe, are very wrong in thinking that. For the Ottomans are [too] proud and arrogant to tolerate any foreign intervention.’ He further told the député that recently, the Speaker of the Ottoman Parliament, Halil Bey, raised his voice in an angry exchange with the German ambassador in Istanbul, saying, ‘You do not give orders here, we are equal allies.’ Farid explained also that the Germans did not command Ottoman troops on the ground, and that they only offered tactical advice at the General Staff Headquarters. On 21 May 1915, Farid had a long discussion in Berlin with the same Halil Bey.68 It revolved around the rumoured changes in the German-­Austrian-­ Ottoman war pact and the possible implication of those to the status of Egypt. Halil told Farid that at that point in the war, the Ottoman position within the trio appeared to have been enhanced, and the new pact gave the empire advantages that ‘it had not dreamed of obtaining before’. In these circumstances, Germany was reluctant to alienate Istanbul on any issue, certainly not on the future of Egypt. The Speaker sounded very confident, saying that the Ottomans did not ask the other two partners to guarantee the empire’s territorial integrity, and that such a clause would have been ‘humiliating and offensive’ to the Ottomans. The status of Egypt was not mentioned, he added, because there was no dispute that Egypt was an integral part of the Ottoman domain. For our purposes here, these passages in which Farid reports and discusses the image and standing of the Ottoman Empire are indicative in their tone and mood. To him, Ottoman honour and shame were not distanced

muha mma d f a ri d | 89 notions, but a live, personal concern. It is true that he chose the Ottomans as allies to the Nationalists because he would not deal with the British as long as he had any hope that the Ottoman and the Central Powers could drive them out of Egypt. However, Farid’s diaries reveal a deeper, intuitive connection to his Ottoman roots, which led him to defend the Ottomans’ honour and to counter shaming them; this went, it seems, beyond mere lip service to an ally in time of war and want. In this regard, Farid’s personal view of the ‘Turks’, his Ottoman kin and kith, was split and conflicted. Al-­Rafici correctly observed that Farid regarded ‘Turkey and its officials’ (Turkiyya wa rijaluha) with a blend of ‘disdain and respect’ (al-­iba’ wa al-­karama),69 attributing his ambivalence toward the Ottoman Government to a mixture of strategic calculations and a personal attitude. Farid, he wrote, believed that the empire, which had a legitimate claim to Egypt, could deny Britain the right under international law to continue its occupation. In October 1909, Farid had an open exchange in the Parisian press with Grand Vezir Hüseyin Hilmi Paşa over a comment the latter had made about Ottoman indifference toward Egypt. He wrote that his impression from talks conducted in Istanbul with the Ottoman leadership was that they did not accept the British occupation and awaited an opportunity to turn things around. ‘Ottoman neglect of the Egyptian question’, he stressed, ‘is suicidal [to the empire]’. Only about a year earlier, Farid had made another related choice when offered an opportunity to join budding, subversive efforts against the Ottoman Empire. The idea was to promote an Arab and Muslim alternative, also known as the Arab Caliphate cause, in which Khedive Abbas Hilmi was keenly interested.70 This was during a visit to Cairo in 1908 by cAziz Bey al-­Misri,71 the celebrated Ottoman war hero and top CUP member mentioned earlier, who was secretly promoting the establishment of Arab nationalist societies that would offer an Arab-­Muslim alternative to the struggling Ottoman Empire.72 After lengthy deliberations, Farid moved his national party leadership to reject the proposal to create such a society in Egypt, arguing that spreading divisions among the various ethnicities making up the empire (al-­Dawla) would be harmful, presumably to the Egyptian cause. At that point, we may assume, he was still able to retain a modicum of his Ottoman loyalty alongside his Egyptian commitment.

90  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Farid and other Egyptian leaders were encouraged by their European friends, such as Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, to maintain good relations with Istanbul. For Egyptians of non-­Ottoman-­Egyptian elite background, this was mostly a question of strategic and tactical interest, although their attitude to the empire was always mediated by the fact that it was the greatest remaining Islamic power. If religiously inclined, such people would also be favourably disposed toward the empire due to the sultan’s assumed role as Caliph, which the Khedive and the Ottomans used in order to mobilise Egyptian support for their intended invasion of the country in 1914.73 But for the likes of Muhammad Farid, nurtured on an old, deeply entrenched imperial tradition, this was a loaded and more complex issue. It involved self-­denial of a deeply ingrained sociocultural sentiment. In August 1916, when it became clear that the Ottoman attempts to invade Egypt for the second time had been unsuccessful, Farid was beginning to consider dealing with the British. It has been argued that this was a clear indication that his ‘Ottomanist orientation’ was merely instrumental.74 This shift was final proof, it has been further asserted, that Farid was concerned with the post-­war future of Egypt, not with ‘the fate of the Ottoman Empire or its Sultan-­Caliph’. However, I would suggest that a more nuanced reading, which takes into account the sociocultural aspect discussed in this chapter, may provide a fuller explanation of Farid’s feelings at the time. Here I would draw a distinction between his attitude toward Germany and Austria on the one hand, and toward the Ottoman Empire, on the other. His policy vis-­à- vis the two Central Powers was indeed just instrumental, but his feelings and sentiments – and I use these words here deliberately – toward the Ottomans were much more complex. Certain elements of Farid’s attachment to the Ottomans are revealed in his massive compilation, Tarikh al-­Dawla al-­‘Aliyya al-­‘Uthmaniyya [History of the Ottoman Empire], the last version of which he completed in 1912, three years into CUP rule. The book is well within the tradition of ‘Islamic history’, which begins with a survey of earlier Muslim dynasties until the emergence of the Ottomans. For our purposes, what needs to be noted here is that Farid is highly reverent toward both the imperial government and the Khedives of Egypt, dedicating the work in flattering style to both the Sultan-­Caliph Abdülhamit II and Khedive ‘Abbas Hilmi II.75 He published

muha mma d f a ri d | 91 the  two editions during the reigns of these two men, in 1881 and 1896, which explains, at least partly, the attitude exhibited with regard to the history of his and their time. In any event, there is very little criticism of their actions, which was to change in the 1912 edition with regard to the sultan after his deposition in 1909. The last ten pages of Muhammad Farid’s Tarikh adopt a rather critical tone of the struggle between the Young Ottomans and other reformers and the sultan, voicing strong support for the Young Turk revolutionaries.76 It seems obvious that the author never went back to what he had written before about Abdülhamit to change his earlier coverage of that period. At the same time, the hatred of the CUP attributed to him above was not in evidence when, in 1912 before he became hostile to them, they are praised for their successful reforms and great achievements for the empire.77 But, perhaps most significantly for our attempt to assess Farid’s feelings toward the Ottomans is the statement that appears in his discussion of Mehmet Ali’s attempts, as he saw them, to take Egypt out of the Ottoman Empire. Favourably comparing the Paşa’s reformist zeal with that of Sultan Mahmut II, Farid inserts a revealing sentence to the effect that ‘Egypt is part of the Ottoman realm, and God willing, it will never stop being that way’.78 It is quite possible that this reflected Farid’s earlier view and that it changed later without him ever revisiting or reviewing the original statement. But taken together and in context, his positive account of contemporary Ottoman imperial history, Ottoman-­Egyptian history, the support for CUP constitutional, administrative and military reforms, and this last quote all indicate that he was conflicted and ambivalent about the empire. This, I submit, goes well beyond instrumentalism. To Farid, the Ottomans were socially and culturally ‘his people’, and the fact that the empire also held the title to the Caliphate was not a small matter in his mind. Hence, a deep sense of disappointment permeated his reaction to the Ottomans’ failure to deliver Egypt out of British hands. He did have hopes and expectations of them, like those that one would have of a close friend, or a family member; to him, the Ottomans were ‘family’, in the broad sense of the word. Yet, by the end of 1916, he had already realised and internalised the prospect that after the war the Ottoman Empire would be Turkey (Turkiyya), and Egypt would not be Ottoman. Consequently, the Ottoman-­Egyptian

92  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t ­ iaspora would have vanished, and he believed that he would steer the d Nationalists toward Egyptian independence. Even if there was political instrumentality in Farid’s Ottomanist orientation, there was neither cynicism nor joyful gloating in his feelings. It seems reasonable to imagine that he did not celebrate Ottoman defeat when it came, but, as an astute political leader, he learned how to deal with the repercussions. Conclusion Although socialised into the Ottoman elite and being part and parcel of it, observes Rifaat Abou-­El-­Haj, Arab elites in the Middle East had betrayed the Ottoman Empire by switching loyalty first to the European powers and then to the nationalist cause.79 ‘By negating the Ottoman identity with which it could not afford to be [politically] associated,’ he writes, ‘the elite had to abandon, reject, and deny its actual history.’ The process was not a coerced, state-­enforced deletion,80 but a voluntary and willing submission by Ottoman-­Egyptians of their Ottoman heritage in order to achieve a place in the Egyptian nationalist movement and the new Egypt that was forcefully emerging from under and against British rule. By ‘Othering’ the Ottomans, now referred to as ‘Turks’ (Atrak), and lumped together with the ‘foreign’ Mamluks – who were, of course, part of the Ottoman-­Egyptian kul/harem elite – the nationalist narrative, as designed by al-­Rafici and his colleagues, recognised only the ‘Egyptian People’ (al-­Shacb al-­Misri) and the ‘Others’, that is, those rejected ‘outsiders’.81 The Ottoman-­Egyptian elite, in which Muhammad Farid was firmly entrenched, had undergone gradual transformation toward the latter part of the nineteenth century and the demise of the empire.82 The growing number of Egyptian-­Arab office holders within the governing elite, and the increased inclusion of Egyptian-­Arab elements in elite culture, turned that sociocultural group into Egyptian-­Ottoman and finally into Egyptian with a receding Ottoman heritage. Egyptian identity components became dominant and the use of Arabic within the bureaucracy increased dramatically, displacing Ottoman-­Turkish almost completely during the last decades of the century. Incidentally, Farid’s own written Arabic contained numerous mistakes and was not considered terribly elegant.83 Concomitantly with the displacement of Turkish, Istanbul gradually lost its position as a focus of sociocultural

muha mma d f a ri d | 93 orientation and political patronage, while European capitals, especially Paris, gained ascendancy. Thus, in the 1920s and 1930s, a process of de-­Ottomanisation was in full swing, led by the monarchy, once the centrepiece of Ottoman-­Egyptianness.84 King Fuad, the dynasty, and their governing elite divorced themselves from one of the main elements that had constituted their identity, namely their being socioculturally and historically Ottoman. Struggling to remain at the top of a rapidly emerging Egyptian nationalist movement that was strongly Arabophone, the monarchy moved to actively split the Ottoman from the Egyptian components that had constituted who they were until the end of the empire. The use of Ottoman Turkish was relegated to the discursive margins, and all Ottoman administrative terms were Arabicised and ‘naturalised’. Thereby, even if the nature of the transformation that had taken place within the Ottoman-­Egyptian elite during the nineteenth century was effectively masked from historical view, the very memory of the Ottoman past was overwritten by an Egyptian-­Arab one. But, significantly, the process also enabled the monarchy to transition from an Ottoman-­Egyptian dynasty to an Egyptian royal house, leading and defending Egypt’s independence from the struggling Ottoman Empire and the occupying British power. By making Mehmet Ali Paşa into Muhammad Ali Basha, the ‘Founder of Modern Egypt’, and by detaching him from what he actually was – an Ottoman Vâli (governor-­general) – and recasting his reign instead as the usher to the nationalist era in Egyptian history, the monarchy recreated itself as a leading force in the emerging new Egypt. The nationalist historiography has thereby also redrawn the periodisation map of Egyptian history: the nineteenth century was detached from the Ottoman era, which was artificially ended with Bonaparte’s occupation in 1798, and then it was attached to the twentieth century as the bedrock of Egyptian nationalism and the stepping stone to the creation of Egypt as a modern nation-­state. Notes   1. For the detailed, laudatory, classical biography of Muhammad Farid, see ‘Abd al-­Rahman al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid: Ramz al-­Ikhlas wa al-­Tadhiya, 3rd edn (Cairo: Maktabat al-­Nahda al-­Misriyya, 1948). About al-­Rafi‘i and his role as one

94  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t of the leading moulders of the Egyptian national narrative, see my ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’, in Jayne L. Warner (ed.), Cultural Horizons: A Festschrift in Honor of Talat S. Halman, vol. I (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001), pp. 154–6, and the sources cited therein.  2. C. Ernest Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism; Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1973); for more recent  studies, see Rashid I. Khalidi, British Policy towards Syria & Palestine, 1906–1914 (London: Ithaca Press, 1980), and Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).   3. See, for example, Toledano, ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’, pp. 150–67, and Toledano, ‘Social and Economic Change in the “Long Nineteenth Century”’, in Martin Daly (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 252–84.   4. See, for example: Sabri Abu’l-­Majd al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid: Dhikriyyat wa Mudhakkirat (Cairo: Dar al-­Hilal, 1969); Arthur Goldschmidt Jr (ed., annot. and trans.), Muhammad Farid: The Memoirs and Diaries of Muhammad Farid, an Egyptian Nationalist Leader (1868–1919) (San Francisco, CA: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992); idem., ‘The Egyptian Nationalist Party, 1892–1919’, in P. M. Holt (ed.), Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 308–33; Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987).   5. Toledano, ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’, pp. 153–9, 164–7.  6. Ehud R. Toledano, ‘Introduction’, in Ehud R. Toledano (ed.), African Communities in Asia and the Mediterranean: Identities between Integration and Conflict (Halle: Max Planck Institute and Trenton and Asmara: Africa World Press, 2011), pp. 3–14.  7. Israel Gershoni, ‘The Egyptian Nationalist Movement – A Self-­ Portrait, ­1904–1919’, Asian and African Studies 27: 3 (1993), pp. 313–41; quote on p. 320.   8. For national history writing in Egypt, see Anthony Gorman, Historians, State, and Politics in Twentieth Century Egypt: Contesting the Nation (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2003); Yoav Di-­Capua, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-­Century Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009).   9. Muhammad Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1: Mudhakirrati ba‘da al-­ Hijra (1904–1919) (Cairo: Markaz watha’iq wa tarikh Misr al-­mu‘asir, 1978).

muha mma d f a ri d | 95 10. Arthur Goldschmidt Jr (ed., annot. and trans.), Muhammad Farid: The Memoirs and Diaries of Muhammad Farid, an Egyptian Nationalist Leader (1868–1919) (San Francisco: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992). For a thorough review of this work, see Gershoni, ‘The Egyptian Nationalist Movement’, pp. 313–41. 11. His posthumous success is attested by the public commemoration of his life and contribution (see Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation: Collective Memory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity in Twentieth-­Century Egypt (Chicago, IL: Middle East Documentation Center, 2004), pp. 161–73; the book also discusses how Farid was remembered, then forgotten, and finally re-­remembered). 12. Erasing Egypt’s Ottoman past is discussed in Toledano, ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’. 13. Ehud R. Toledano, State and Society in Mid-­ Nineteenth-­ Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 151–80. 14. For a critical discussion of the concept, see Walter Johnson, ‘On Agency’, Journal of Social History 37: 1 (fall 2003), pp. 113–23. 15. For a detailed account of these processes, see Toledano, ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’. 16. Brian Donahoe et al., The Formation and Mobilization of Collective Identities in Situations of Conflict and Integration, Working Paper No. 116 (Halle/Saale: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 2009, p. 1); Günther Schlee, How Enemies Are Made: Towards a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflicts, vol. 3 (New York, NY and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), p. 103 (Part I: Introduction, and Part II: Theoretical Frame). 17. For a succinct treatment of the terms ‘creole’ and ‘creolisation’, see Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Identifying Enslaved Africans in the African Diaspora’, in Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.), Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (London: Continuum, 2000), especially pp. 13–19. For the basic concept of creolisation used here (with which Lovejoy disagrees), see Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-­American Past: A Caribbean Perspective (Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976). The quotation from Lovejoy is in Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.), Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2004), p. 8. 18. Robin Cohen, ‘Creolization and Diaspora – The Cultural Politics of Divergence and Some Convergence’, in Gloria Totoricaguena (ed.), Opportunity Structures in Diaspora Relations: Comparisons in Contemporary Multi-­ Level Politics of Diaspora and Transnational Identity (Reno, NV: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2007), pp. 85–114 (the quote is on p. 110).

96  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 19. See, for example, Herbert J. Gans, ‘Toward a Reconciliation of “Assimilation” and “Pluralism”: The Interplay of Acculturation and Ethnic Retention’, International Migration Review 31: 4 (winter 1997), pp. 875–92; and Rakefet Sela-­ Sheffy, ‘Integration through Distinction: German-­ Jewish Immigrants, the Legal Profession and Patterns of Bourgeois Culture in British-­ruled Jewish Palestine’, Journal of Historical Sociology 19: 1 (March 2006), pp. 34–59. 20. The following analysis draws, in conjunction with other works, on my recently published article, ‘The Arabic-­Speaking World in the Ottoman Period: A Socio-­ Political Analysis’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), pp. 453–66. 21. For household and the processes discussed in this segment, see Metin Kunt, ‘Royal and Other Households’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), pp.  103–15; Ariel Salzmann, ‘The Old Regime and the Ottoman Middle East’, in ibid., pp. ­409–22; Tal Shuval, ‘The Peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian Elite’, in ibid., pp. 264–75; Ali Yayıcıoğlu, ‘Provincial Power-­Holders and the Empire in the Late Ottoman World: Conflict or Partnership?’, in ibid., pp. 436–52; and Ehud R. Toledano, ‘The Emergence of Ottoman-­Local Elites (1700–1800): A Framework for Research’, in Ilan Pappé and Moshe Ma’oz (eds), Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from Within (London and New York, NY: Tauris Academic Studies, 1997), pp. 145–62. 22. Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdaglis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 32–51. 23. Albert Hourani, ‘The Ottoman Background of the Modern Middle East’, in The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (London: Macmillan Press and St Antony’s College, Oxford, 1981), p. 2. 24. On the transition from imperial rule to Arab nationalism, still relevant are the works by Dawn, Khalidi, and Kayalı, cited in Note 2. 25. Schlee, Günther, ‘Introduction – Integration and Conflict’, in Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Report 2004–2005 (Halle/Salle, Department I: Integration and Conflict, Director: Günther Schlee), p. 78. www.eth.mpg.de/ cms/en/publications/reports/pdf/jb-­04-­05/2005_Report_IntegrationConflict. pdf (accessed 25 October 2014). 26. This is also referred to as measuring the ‘thickness’ or ‘thinness’ of such identities (Stephen E. Cornell and Douglas Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (New York City, NY: Pine Forge Press A Sage Publication Company, 1998).

muha mma d f a ri d | 97 27. Schlee, ‘Introduction – Integration and Conflict’, pp. 79–80. 28. The following biographical data are based on al-­ Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid, pp. 16–21. 29. For a discussion of that period in Egyptian history, see my State and Society in Mid-­Nineteenth-­Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 30. al-­Rafici, p. 22. 31. For a discussion of Ottoman-­Arab elites, see Toledano, ‘The Arabic-­Speaking World’, and ‘The Emergence of Ottoman-­Local Elites’. 32. al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid, pp. 23–5, which also includes the full text of the gazette report. 33. Goldschmidt, Memoirs and Diaries, pp. 14–17. 34. On this, see my Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1998), pp. 20–53. 35. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, pp. 158–9. 36. Ibid., p. 100. 37. al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid, p. 540. 38. Ibid., p. 63. 39. Ibid., p. 175. The actual Arabic text is on pp. 176–7. Consultations with Enver Paşa are found on p. 178. 40. Ibid., p. 185. 41. Ibid., p. 193. 42. Ibid., p. 64. 43. The following examples are scattered throughout Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, and his Tarikh al-­Dawla al-­‘Aliyya al-­‘Uthmaniyya [History of the Ottoman Empire], 5th edn, ed. Ihsan Haqqi (Beirut: Dar al-­Nafa’is, 1986). 44. A wealth of information on these connections and visits can be found in Emine Foat Tugay, Three Centuries: Family Chronicles of Turkey and Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963). 45. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, p. 109. 46. Goldschmidt, Memoirs and Diaries, p. 13. 47. al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid, p. 539. 48. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, p. 173. 49. Ibid., p. 194. (The post, Qadi Misr, was abolished at the start of war.) See p. 135 for the other two. 50. al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid, pp. 331–2. 51. Ibid., pp. 332–3. 52. Ibid., p. 366.

98  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 53. Ibid., p. 412. 54. Ibid., p. 422. 55. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, p. 178. 56. Ibid., pp. 180–1. On their sour relationship, see also p. 190. 57. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, p. 147. 58. al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid, pp. 424–5. 59. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, p. 106. 60. As Albert Hourani keenly observed (cited in Toledano, ‘The Emergence of Ottoman-­Local Elites’, p. 153). 61. Grant Duff (Berne) to Grey, 24 May 1916, TNA FO 141/648, 232/78, as quoted by Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs, p. 281 (n. 38). 62. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, pp. 133–5. 63. Ibid., pp. 172–3. The Unionists Talât and Enver tried to mitigate these extreme views when talking to Farid, and the vision they proclaimed to him was of ‘the Sultan being to Turkey and Egypt like the Emperor is to Austria and Hungary’ (ibid., pp. 170, 173). 64. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, p. 180. 65. Ibid., p. 257 (and also al-­Rafi‘i, p. 426). 66. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, p. 204. 67. Ibid., p. 206. 68. Ibid., pp. 229–30. 69. al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid, pp. 535–6. 70. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, p. 202. ‘Abbas wanted also an Arab Empire, not just a Caliphate. On Egyptian attitudes toward the Ottoman Empire in the first two decades of the twentieth century, see the perceptive analysis in Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs, pp. 4–10, 23–8. 71. See above, p. XX [insert p.X the paragraph around n. 36]. 72. Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, pp. 100–1. 73. Among other pleas, it contained a call for display of devotion to His Majesty the Exalted Caliph (‘. . . wa al-­ikhlas li-­Jalalat al-­Khalifa al-­Mucazzam’, al-­Rafi‘i, Muhammad Farid, p. 414). 74. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs, p. 28. 75. Farid, Tarikh, p. 23. 76. Ibid., pp. 703–13. 77. Ibid., pp. 711–13. 78. Ibid., p. 447 (‘. . . Misr la tazal wa-­lan tazal, inshallah, juz’an minha [that is, min mamlakat as-­Sultan]’).

muha mma d f a ri d | 99 79. Rifaat Ali Abou-­El-­Haj, ‘The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab Historiography of Ottoman Rule’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 14:2 (1982), pp. 185–201; quote on p. 186. 80. For the view of theorists such as John R. Gillis and Paul Connerton, who stress the aggressively imposed ‘collective amnesia’ and ‘organized forgetting’, see Toledano, ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’, pp. 164–7. 81. See, for example, al-­Rafi‘i, Misr al-­Mujahida, pp. 9–11. This process is discussed in Toledano, ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’. 82. On this last phase of transformation, see Toledano, ‘The Emergence of Ottoman-­ Local Elites’, pp. 159–61. 83. See, for example, comments by the publishers and editors of both Farid, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1, and Farid, Tarikh. 84. On this, see Toledano, ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’, pp. 153–4.

Bibliography Abou-­El-­Haj, Rifaat Ali, ‘The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab Historiography of Ottoman Rule’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 14: 2 (1982), pp. 185–201. Cohen, Robin, ‘Creolization and Diaspora – The Cultural Politics of Divergence and Some Convergence’, in Gloria Totoricaguena (ed.), Opportunity Structures in Diaspora Relations: Comparisons in Contemporary Multi-­Level Politics of Diaspora and Transnational Identity (Reno, NV: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2007), pp. 85–114. Cornell, Stephen E. and Douglas Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (New York City, NY: Pine Forge Press A Sage Publication Company, 1998). Di-­Capua, Yoav, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-­Century Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009). Donahoe, Brian et al., The Formation and Mobilization of Collective Identities in Situations of Conflict and Integration, Working Paper No. 116 (Halle/Saale: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 2009). Ernest, C. Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism; Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1973). Farid, Muhammad, Awraq Muhammad Farid, Vol. 1: Mudhakirrati ba‘da al-­Hijra (1904–1919) (Cairo: Markaz watha’iq wa tarikh Misr al-­mu‘asir, 1978). Farid, Muhammad, Tarikh al-­Dawla al-­‘Aliyya al-­‘Uthmaniyya [History of the Ottoman Empire], 5th edn, ed. Ihsan Haqqi (Beirut: Dar al-­Nafa’is, 1986).

100  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Gans, Herbert J., ‘Toward a Reconciliation of “Assimilation” and “Pluralism”: The Interplay of Acculturation and Ethnic Retention’, International Migration Review 31: 4 (winter 1997), pp. 875–92. Gershoni, Israel, ‘The Egyptian Nationalist Movement – A Self-­Portrait, 1­ 904–1919’, Asian and African Studies 27: 3 (1993), pp. 313–41. Gershoni, Israel and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987). Gershoni, Israel and James P. Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation: Collective Memory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity in Twentieth-­Century Egypt (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2004). Goldschmidt, Arthur, Jr, ‘The Egyptian Nationalist Party, 1892–1919’, in P. M. Holt (ed.), Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 308–33. Goldschmidt, Arthur, Jr (ed., annot. and trans.), Muhammad Farid: The Memoirs and Diaries of Muhammad Farid, an Egyptian Nationalist Leader (1868–1919) (San Francisco, CA: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992). Gorman, Anthony, Historians, State, and Politics in Twentieth Century Egypt: Contesting the Nation (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2003). Hathaway, Jane, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdaglis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Hourani, Albert, ‘The Ottoman Background of the Modern Middle East’, in The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (London: Macmillan Press and St Antony’s College, Oxford, 1981), pp. 1–18. Johnson, Walter, ‘On Agency’, Journal of Social History 37:1 (fall 2003), pp. 113–23. Kayalı, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997). Khalidi, Rashid I., British Policy towards Syria & Palestine, 1906–1914 (London: Ithaca Press, 1980). Kunt, Metin, ‘Royal and Other Households’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), pp. 103–15. Lovejoy, Paul E., ‘Identifying Enslaved Africans in the African Diaspora’, in Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.), Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (London: Continuum, 2000), pp. 1–29. Lovejoy, Paul E. (ed.), Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2004).

muha mma d f a ri d | 101 Mintz, Sidney W. and Richard Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-­ American Past: A Caribbean Perspective (Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976). al-­Rafi‘i, ‘Abd al-­Rahman, Muhammad Farid: Ramz al-­Ikhlas wa al-­Tadhiya, 3rd edn (Cairo: Maktabat al-­Nahda al-­Misriyya, 1948). al-­Rafi‘i, cAbd al-­Rahman, Misr al-­Mujahida fi al-­‘Asr al-­Hadith (Cairo: Dar al-­ Hilal, 1989). al-­Rafi‘i, Sabri Abu‘l-­Majd, Muhammad Farid: Dhikriyyat wa Mudhakkirat (Cairo: Dar al-­Hilal, 1969). Salzmann, Ariel, ‘The Old Regime and the Ottoman Middle East’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Abingdon and New York,NY: Routledge, 2012), pp. 409–22. Schlee, Günther, ‘Introduction – Integration and Conflict’, in Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Report 2004–2005 (Halle/Salle, Department I: Integration and Conflict, Director Günther Schlee), pp. 77–86. www.eth.mpg.de/cms/en/publications/reports/pdf/jb-­0 4-­0 5/2005_Report_ IntegrationConflict.pdf (accessed 24 October 2014). Schlee, Günther, How Enemies Are Made: Towards a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflicts, vol. 3 (New York, NY and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008). Sela-­Sheffy, Rakefet, ‘Integration through Distinction: German-­Jewish Immigrants, the Legal Profession and Patterns of Bourgeois Culture in British-­ruled Jewish Palestine’, Journal of Historical Sociology 19: 1 (March 2006), pp. 34–59. Shuval, Tal, ‘The Peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian Elite’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), pp. 264–75. Toledano, Ehud R., State and Society in Mid-­Nineteenth-­Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Toledano, Ehud R., ‘The Emergence of Ottoman-­Local Elites (1700–1800): A Framework for Research’, in Ilan Pappé and Moshe Ma’oz (eds), Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from Within (London and New York, NY: Tauris Academic Studies, 1997), pp. 145–62. Toledano, Ehud R., Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1998). Toledano, Ehud R., ‘Social and Economic Change in the “Long Nineteenth Century”’, in Martin Daly (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 252–84. Toledano, Ehud R., ‘Forgetting Egypt’s Ottoman Past’, in Jayne L. Warner (ed.),

102  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Cultural Horizons: A Festschrift in Honor of Talat S. Halman, vol. I (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001), pp. 150–67. Toledano, Ehud R. ‘Introduction’, in Ehud R. Toledano (ed.), African Communities in Asia and the Mediterranean: Identities between Integration and Conflict (Halle: Max Planck Institute and Trenton and Asmara: Africa World Press, 2011), pp. 3–14. Toledano, Ehud R. (ed.), African Communities in Asia and the Mediterranean: Identities between Integration and Conflict (Halle: Max Planck Institute and Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 2011). Toledano, Ehud R., ‘The Arabic-­Speaking World in the Ottoman Period: A Socio-­ Political Analysis’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), pp. 453–66. Tugay, Emine Foat, Three Centuries: Family Chronicles of Turkey and Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963). Yayıcıoğlu, Ali, ‘Provincial Power-­Holders and the Empire in the Late Ottoman World: Conflict or Partnership?’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), pp. 436–52.

3 Evolution of a North Caucasian Community in Late Ottoman and Republican Turkey: The Case of Anatolian Ossetians Georgy Chochiev

T

his chapter is an attempt to retrace the main trends of the ethnic development of Anatolian Ossetians, a small community that has received little attention from scholars of either the Middle East or the Caucasus and is usually treated in travelogues and scholarly literature as an element of the much wider entity of the North Caucasian, or Circassian diaspora.1 The homeland of the Ossetian people (self-­appellations: Iron, Digoron) is located on the northern and southern slopes of the central part of the Greater Caucasus Range, or what is now the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, a federal subject of Russia, and the former South Ossetian Autonomous Region of Georgia (independence unilaterally proclaimed in 1990). The Ossetian language belongs to the north-­eastern division of the Iranian branch of the Indo-­European family, being the only descendant of the dialects of ancient and early medieval inhabitants of the Ponto-­Caspian steppes, that is, the Scythians, Sarmatians and particularly the Alans. The vast majority of Ossetians in the Caucasus are followers of Orthodox Christianity, which was introduced among Alans in the tenth century from Byzantium, while a minority (all traditional nobility and some rural communities) adopted Sunni Islam from Kabarda in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, pre-­Christian and pre-­Islamic beliefs have always played a significant role in their spiritual life. In terms of both material and non-­material traditional culture (such as social organisation, customs, law, morality, ethical values, 103

104  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t mythology, architecture, costume and weaponry), Ossetians have a great deal in common with their Caucasian and Turkic-­speaking neighbours and generally fit well within the framework of the North Caucasian mountain civilisations, maintaining at the same time some appreciable marks of affinity with the old Indo-­Iranian world. Here I examine the dynamics of migratory movements of Ossetian groups from the Caucasus to Anatolia and particularly in Anatolia itself, the mechanisms of adaptation and self-­organisation developed by them in their adopted country, their place in the local and regional ethno-­social structure and the nature of changes in their cultural profile and collective identity over time. The study is based chiefly on the data from accessible written sources2 supplemented by the information gathered during personal interviews with the representatives of various groups of the Ossetian diaspora in Turkey during the 1990s and 2000s.3 It should also be borne in mind that despite a number of specific features, which will be discussed below, the path traversed by Anatolian Ossetians is in many ways typical for the majority of other groups of North Caucasian origin in Turkey. The experience of a century and a half of the Ossetian presence in Anatolia can be clearly divided into two principal stages, namely the Ottoman phase (from the mid-­nineteenth century to the early 1920s) and the Republican (from the 1920s until the present). As will be shown below, the former, taken as a whole, was a period of quite difficult and painful, though to a considerable degree successful, making of a new homeland in the diaspora, while the latter has been characterised by gradual but steady weakening and dissolution of the ethno-­protective mechanisms developed earlier. Immigration and Settlement The migration of the Ossetians to the Middle East took place as part of a much larger phenomenon, namely the mass exodus/expulsion of the Caucasus mountain peoples to the Ottoman Empire in the final phase of the Russo-­Caucasian War, the so-­called muhajir movement (Russian mukhadzhirstvo, Turkish muhaceret, from Arabic ‫‘ هجر‬to emigrate’).4 The resettlement of Ossetians, generally occurring in common with the other north central Caucasian peoples (the eastern Adiges (Kabardians), Chechens and Ingushis), started immediately after the defeat of Imam Shamil’s resist-

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 105 ance movement in 1859 and continued in small waves up to 1862.5 A small number of Ossetians also moved to Anatolia in 1865, after which time there was only sporadic migration.6 Unlike the Northwest Caucasus and specifically Circassia and Abkhazia, in Ossetia the relocation was not a result of an official policy aimed at expelling the indigenous population. Although in the historical memory of more recent diaspora generations reasons such as the ‘desire to preserve the Muslim faith’ and ‘unwillingness to live under the Russian rule’ habitually appear as the dominant motives of their ancestors’ decision to leave the Caucasus,7 the actual causes of the displacement were more complex. The muhajir movement emerged in Ossetia rather as a reaction on the part of some segments of local traditional society to the strengthening of the military-­colonial regime, and the imposition, within the framework of Russian agrarian reforms, of an imperial model of social modernisation. It is no coincidence that the main advocates and organisers of the resettlement were members of the Islamised feudal-­patriarchal elite faced with a real prospect of losing their lands, privileges and control over dependent classes.8 Their agitation was heeded by a part of the Muslim Ossetian peasants alarmed by exaggerated rumours of enforced Christianisation, conscription to the Russian Army and Cossack colonisation in Ossetia.9 However, since Islam was not dominant among the peasantry, the total number of migrants proved comparatively low, with no more than 5,000 persons10 or approximately 5 per cent of the Ossetian population of the time, which contrasted sharply with Circassian and Abkhazian lands devastated by forced migration to the Ottoman Empire. The social composition of the Ossetian muhajirs also showed a specific social and class character. A disproportionately large percentage of them, perhaps up to a quarter, belonged to the hereditary nobility, including several dozens of Russian army officers who had resigned in order to relocate to Turkey, as well as some former fellow-­soldiers of Imam Shamil.11 The bulk of migrating free peasants were apparently dominated by the wealthier and active elements, anxious about the infringement on their positions by the Tsarist administration.12 A small minority of the emigrants was made up of serfs and slaves who had forcibly or voluntarily followed their masters. It should be noted that not the least of the incentives for relocation seems to be the Muslim mountaineers’ greatly idealised representation of the

106  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Ottoman Empire (‘the country of Istanbul’) as a powerful and prosperous state under the just and merciful sultan-­caliph ready to bestow benefits on his co-­religionists, a view reflected, inter alia, in the contemporary folk songs.13 With those naive expectations were linked, on the other hand, the hopes of the Ottoman victory in the next war against Russia and subsequent return of the muhajirs to their liberated homes.14 As distinct from the disastrous Circassian and Abkhazian deportations,15 the Ossetian migrations were carried out for the most part not by sea but overland in a fairly orderly manner, allowing them to minimise human losses and with relative safety transport the livestock and other property to Ottoman territory, where the immigrants were provided with certain material assistance by the Porte. According to the oral tradition, the leaders of Ossetian muhajirs were favourably received in Istanbul by the sultan’s officials who invited them to choose the place of settlement themselves.16 After crossing much of Anatolia they finally chose the locality of Sarıkamış in the sanjak (district) of Kars, which appeared attractive to them due to the similarity of its wooded mountain landscape with the Caucasus, geographic isolation and sparse population, as well as its proximity to the Russian border.17 The last consideration was of particular importance since a significant number of the migrants, disenchanted with the socio-­economic and environmental realities discovered in the Ottoman domains, had intended to return home, and only the closure of the border by the Russians in 1861 (after some ninety Ossetian families had crossed it in the opposite direction) forced the discontented to abandon the idea of ​return migration.18 Thus, by the 1860s nearly all Ossetian muhajirs had settled in the area,19 creating about thirty separate villages. In subsequent years in Sarıkamış, which was reorganised into a separate kaza (township) after this influx of population, several colonies of other migrants from the Caucasus (Kabardians, Chechens and Dagestanis) emerged.20 According to Captain Fred Burnaby, who visited Sarıkamış in 1876, the area was populated by 1,005 North Caucasian (‘Circassian’) families,21 that is, in the region of 5,000–7,000 people, the bulk of them obviously Ossetian. This dense settlement cluster was, however, essentially destroyed after less than two decades as a result of the annexation of the Kars region by Russia following the Russo-­Turkish War of 1877–8. After this, the overwhelming majority of Sarıkamış Ossetians preferred to migrate to

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 107 the Ottoman interior, dividing in the course of this movement into several factions. As a consequence of the move southwards of one such group from Kars, a significant Ossetian community emerged in the early 1880s in the central part of the East Anatolian Plateau. In the sanjaks of Muş, Bitlis and Siirt at least ten Ossetian villages were established but in a more dispersed fashion than formerly in Sarıkamış. According to the evidence of Russian intelligence officer Aleksandr Kolyubakin, no less than 1,500 Ossetians were residing within the sanjak of Muş alone by the late 1880s.22 As before, Ossetian villages here neighboured Dagestani, Chechen and Adige settlements.23 Another group migrated westward from the Kars region to Central Anatolia, settling there in a still more dispersed way, although against the background of a quite numerous array of the older Adige and Abaza ­colonies.24 From the 1880s about a dozen settlements of Ossetians were established in the sanjaks of Sivas, Tokat, Yozgat, Kayseri, Niğde and Maraş, some jointly with other Caucasian peoples.25 Finally, in the same period a small party of Ossetians reached Ottoman Syria, founding no less than two villages in the vicinity of Quneitra.26 As for the Ossetians who remained in the Kars region, a certain number of them moved back to Ossetia during the period of Russian rule while maintaining their Ottoman citizenship. Yet, after the restoration of Kars to Turkey in 1921, nearly all of them or their descendants, fearing Bolshevik repression, once again resettled in their old villages in Sarıkamış.27 Later on the Turkish Government also relocated some Ossetian families from Muş and Bitlis to the area.28 These reverse migrations partly reinvigorated the Sarıkamış community, although the number of Ossetian settlements there never exceeded five thereafter. In addition, in the early 1920s several dozen anti-­Soviet Ossetian émigrés and refugees of different political and ideological backgrounds (former members of the Russian ‘White Army’, advocates of independence of the North Caucasus and so on) arrived in Turkey. A significant number of them also settled in the Sarıkamış region, while many preferred to head for various Turkish cities.29

108  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Socio-­economic and Ethno-­political Adaptation The above description of a period of more than sixty years of migrations and wanderings of the Ossetian muhajirs, culminated in the formation of their final settlement in the Ottoman countryside and coincided with the process of their adaptation to the new circumstances. As in the Caucasus, the economy of Anatolian Ossetian communities was based largely on farming. Yet, the significantly lower soil fertility and relative scarcity of water in most of the settlement areas, especially in the eastern parts of the country, restricted opportunities for effective agriculture. Thus, in Sarıkamış only wheat, barley, potatoes and some vegetables were grown, yielding a harvest barely sufficient for the settlers’ own needs. Somewhat preferable were the natural conditions of the Muş valley but there, too, the colonists, lacking the specific agricultural skills of the local Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish peasants, were distinctly inferior to them in agrarian production. Such a situation urged the settlers to consider alternative forms of economic livelihood. For instance, an important source of income for the Sarıkamış Ossetians from the early weeks of their settlement was the harvesting of timber for sale in Kars and Erzurum, which maintained its significance until the local forests had been nearly exhausted by the beginning of the twentieth century.30 In Muş and Bitlis rather profitable, if risky, tobacco smuggling went on.31 Animal-­drawn cartage of people and goods also gained some ground among Ossetians. In many instances, in addition to the land provided to them by the government, settlers were able to purchase vast tracts of arable fields with funds they had brought from the homeland that were subsequently rented to members of the local population. Thus, the majority of residents of the ‘aristocratic’ Ossetian village of Hulik in Bitlis sanjak never actually directly worked the soil but hired landless Kurdish and Turkmen peasants for the purpose.32 The major source of wealth of the muhajirs was founded, nonetheless, on livestock breeding, facilitated by their traditional skills of mountain and sub-­ mountain pastoralism and the abundance of quality pastures in Eastern and Central Anatolia. In terms of cattle numbers per person the settlers competed with nomadic Kurds, while in horse-­breeding they surpassed all neighbouring native groups. Horses and livestock were also the primary export of the

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 109 Ossetian colonies. During the first decades of their settlement, Ossetians in close cooperation with other North Caucasians managed to establish several routes of cattle and horse trade between Kars-­Sivas and Damascus, with some of the animals being brought from the Russian Caucasus.33 In the Ottoman era this greatly contributed to the growth of a prosperous class among Ossetians. At the same time, a small but significant percentage of the settlers appear to have been involved in cattle and horse stealing, also organised on ethnic lines.34 Soon after settlement the Ossetians began to demonstrate aspirations to enter the military and, less frequently, civilian state service, to which they were generally encouraged by the authorities. Most immigrant commissioned officers were immediately enrolled in the Ottoman Army preserving the ranks they held in Russia, while the most renowned of them, Musa Paşa (Kundukhov), was given the rank of mirliva (brigadier general).35 Further, dozens of young people from the noble classes were accepted by prestigious military and administrative schools in Istanbul. Simultaneously, quite a number of Ossetians of different social backgrounds saw service in military garrisons, the gendarmerie and in government bodies in their local areas. Thus, as early as 1860, about 500 newly arrived Caucasian muhajirs were recruited to guard frontier posts along the Russian border in the Kars sanjak,36 while during the war of 1877–8 the Ossetians of Sarıkamış, the epicentre of hostilities, fought against the Russians within the ‘Circassian’ and ‘Dagestani’ irregular cavalry units under the command of Musa Paşa and Gazi Muhammed Paşa, the son of Imam Shamil.37 On the other hand, as late as 1904 the government formed a special mobile gendarme force from Circassian (predominantly Ossetian) immigrants residing in the Bulanık kaza of the Muş sanjak of the vilayet of Bitlis ‘as a check on the turbulence of the Kurds’.38 The relationships between Ossetians and indigenous communities varied significantly across Anatolia. The areas of least conflict were in the provinces of Central Anatolia, where the immigrants were settled in areas with a relatively high level of socio-­economic and cultural development and a comparatively homogeneous Turkish Muslim sedentary population. In the Kars region, by contrast, Ossetians were directly adjacent to newly settled or semi-­nomadic Muslim groups who were themselves recent migrants from

110  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t the Russian Transcaucasus (Karapapaks and other Turkmen) or the interior of Anatolia (Kurds and some Turks). Yet, the fact that these groups had no traditional or legal rights to lands allotted to the North Caucasians essentially minimised reciprocal friction. Although on arrival in the district Ossetians in several cases had to resort to a display of armed force in order to bolster their right to the allocated lands,39 before long their relations with the Muslim neighbours, partly through official mediation, assumed a generally peaceful character. However, during the Russian rule in Kars recurring small-­ scale conflicts broke out between Ossetians, who were rather pro-­Ottoman in attitude, and local Armenians and Greeks who usually enjoyed Russian protection.40 The Ossetian situation was far more complicated on the East Anatolian Plateau, where the central authority was extremely weak and the centuries-­ old system of oppression and exploitation (in the form of feudal-­patriarchal ‘patronage’) of some groups by others was still prevalent.41 The chiefs of Kurdish nomadic tribes, who controlled most of the region’s countryside, initially regarded the immigrants as a natural object for asserting their ‘sovereign’ claims, especially as the settlers frequently were installed in villages, only recently abandoned by Armenians previously subject to Kurdish feudal lords. Nonetheless, due to the effective mutual resistance organised by the Caucasians, their better military qualifications and equipment as well as occasional support from the provincial administrations, the newcomers soon managed to gain a foothold in the local hierarchy at a senior level that provided full autonomy in their internal affairs and respect for their personal freedom and dignity,42 albeit sometimes combined with a nominal ‘vassalage’ to the most powerful tribes.43 However, there is considerable evidence that the immigrants pursued a quite independent local policy even if it ran counter to the interests of their formal ‘overlords’. A dispute occurring in 1893 between the Ossetians settled in the Simo village of Muş and the Kurdish Sipkan tribe provides one example of the type of relations that existed among North Caucasian settlers and the local communities. The dispute arose when the Ossetians accepted an offer by Armenians living in the neighbouring village of Lapbudak to act as a paid escort to an Armenian convoy intent on migrating to Russia, despite the presence of Kurds along the route. When the latter raided the convoy with the intention of looting, the Ossetians

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 111 fulfilled their promise, stopping the assault by killing a number of attackers and escorting the convoy safely to the Russian border. The Sipkans later carried out a revenge attack against the village of Simo, in which more than twenty people, mostly Kurdish tribesmen, were killed in a conflict that lasted several days.44 While it is true that the Ossetians were paid for these efforts, the opportunity for them to expand their rather limited living space into the lands newly abandoned by the Armenians was likely to have provided greater motivation than any monetary compensation – a fact confirmed when Lapbudak village was settled by Ossetians. Construction of a Diasporic Homeland As a rule, Ossetian colonies presented rather isolated and to a certain degree exclusive communities, usually demonstrating a relatively low level of interaction with the world outside, mainly as a result of the substantial differences in the cultural composition of the settlers and the indigenous populations. The immigrants often considered the standards of hygiene, health care, nutrition and housing that prevailed among the rural population to be reprehensible, especially in eastern areas of Anatolia, as well as viewing as unacceptable the existing rules of social, domestic and interpersonal etiquette, which contradicted the patriarchal morals of Caucasian mountaineers largely based on a martial code of honour. Particularly censured and criticised were, among other things, the natives’ submissiveness, their obsequiousness, lack of respect for the elders and women, and ‘rude manners’. These attitudes, along with a firm sense of their own superiority, largely contributed to the establishing of a somewhat supercilious view of the local populace among Ossetians, further reinforced by the provincial administrations’ clearly preferential treatment of the immigrants as a ‘stabilising and civilising’ factor vis-­à-­vis the natives.45 For their part, the Ossetian adaptation strategies from the beginning presupposed a maximum close contact and cooperation with the local civil, military and religious officials. Generally, the neighbouring groups also recognised the higher social and cultural status of the Caucasian settlers, regarding them with a marked deference mixed at times with misgiving.46 In essence, the Ossetian colonies formed islets, where the settlers in a nearly complete separation from their cultural ‘metropolis’ (that is, Ossetia or, more broadly, the Caucasus) sought to construct a diasporic model of the

112  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t world abandoned in the homeland. From the outset villages were planned in accordance with the traditional principles of clan and caste-­based settlement, while domestic architecture and organisation of the living and farming space reproduced the Caucasian patterns as far as the environmental conditions permitted. The weakening of the power of the nobility, already underway in Russia, continued at a rapid pace after the migration through the special efforts of the Porte to destroy the feudal structure of the Caucasian groups, by enabling, for example, their privileged members to settle separately from their subjects in the capital and other major cities. Therefore, the internal life of the communities was regulated chiefly by more democratic institutions, namely the elected councils of elders, which also acted as mediatory courts to deal with internal conflicts on the basis of customary law.47 The muhajirs were particularly scrupulous in observing the traditional norms and etiquette of behavioural and ceremonial culture (integrally named in Ossetic Iron æghdau; literally ‘Ossetian order’) that performed the function of consolidating communities and maintaining their collective identity. Ossetic remained the major or sole language of communication within the settlements. Another obvious marker of identity was also the regular practice both within and beyond their settlements of wearing the Caucasian mountaineer costume (with the indispensable long dagger), all of its elements, including the cloth, being manufactured manually by the village women.48 However, the religious sphere underwent a striking transformation, being placed under special supervision of the Ottoman authorities, who ensured the construction of mosques in the immigrant villages and the appointment of imams, usually not from among the settlers themselves. Under the influence of the intense confessional ‘enlightenment’, non-­Islamic elements were completely expelled from the public and spiritual life of Anatolian Ossetians. This included the early elimination of ritual feasts associated with the use of traditional beer and grain spirits, the residual reverence of Christian and pre-­Christian saints and some other features of syncretic religious culture of their declaredly Muslim compatriots in the Caucasus. At the same time, despite their effective Islamisation, manifestations of bigotry (taassub) and sectarianism (tarikatçilik) or such outward signs of religious piety as veiling of women (tesettür) and other forms of gender segregation never took any noticeable hold among the settlers, at times giving rise to the perception

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 113 of them as ‘doubtful Muslims’ by their local co-­religionists. Moreover, in certain conservative areas, for example in the vicinity of the Yozgat district, characteristic features of Ossetian social culture, such as collective dancing of men and women on ceremonial occasions was also the object of condemnation on the part of outsiders. Generally, the impact of Islamic tenets on the Ossetian traditional institutions appears to have been more profound in the predominantly orthodox Sunni Turkish regions of Central Anatolia compared to the confessionally and ethnically heterogeneous eastern provinces where the official religious ideology was relatively weak. Cultural factors accounted for the quite rigid observance by Anatolian Ossetians of intra-­ethnic endogamy as well. Moreover, because of the small number of groups, the normally strict bans on marriages between members of clans of different traditional status (that is, noble, free and unfree), as well as between members of related clans were gradually lifted in order to expand the range of potential conjugal partners.49 On the other hand, even between geographically remote Ossetian communities there was some degree of intermarriage, which, along with the cooperation in the livestock trade, constituted an important means and at the same time a purpose for maintaining relationships among them. Of a completely special nature were the Ossetian relationships with the other North Caucasian groups, with whom they shared similar social, cultural and ethical norms and attitudes and a common historic experience. The Caucasian immigrants of different ethnic affiliation were considered by Ossetians as acceptable and, when compared with the indigenous population, preferable as business or marital partners. In some cases strong allied relations emerged between adjacent Ossetian and non-­Ossetian muhajir settlements, as, for example, between the Ossetian village of Poyrazlı and the Abaza village of Osmaniye in Yozgat.50 In the Muş-­Bitlis region an informal confederacy bringing together more than twenty Chechen, Dagestani, Ossetian and Adige villages under a common leader was recorded by the end of the nineteenth century.51 There is no doubt that even at the initial stage of Ossetian immigration, there took shape an overarching North-­Caucasian supra-­ethnic identity, partly stimulated by the undifferentiated Ottoman perception of all Caucasian mountaineers as a single people, namely Circassians. This manifested itself in the spread of the custom among Anatolian Ossetians, while speaking in

114  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Turkish, of referring to themselves as Circassians (Çerkez), to their native tongue as Circassian (Çerkezce), and to their country of origin and outcome as the Caucasus (Kafkas) rather than Ossetia. As a narrower self-­identification in Turkish, Ossetians shortly after the resettlement embraced their customary name in Adigean Kuşha, along with the aural form of their Russian ethnonym Asetin (the correct form being Osetin) also imported from the Caucasus by the polyglot muhajir masses, even if in Ossetian they were consistent in using their above mentioned original ethnonyms. Furthermore, it was not uncommon for Ossetians in Anatolia to be proficient in one or more Caucasian languages, as well as for their neighbouring Caucasians to speak Ossetian. Cases of cultural and linguistic assimilation of minor Ossetian communities by more numerous groups of the Circassians proper, that is, Adiges, are known also: thus, the Ossetians of the villages of Fındık and Batmantaş in Maraş and Tokat sanjaks, respectively, took up the Kabardian dialect of the Adige language at a fairly early stage, while continuing to preserve an awareness of their Ossetian descent. The Beginning of the End for ‘Ossetia in Anatolia’ In the evolution of Anatolian Ossetians during the Republican era it is possible to clearly distinguish three phases that could be tentatively termed: rural (1920s to 1960s); urbanisation (1960s to 1990s); and urban (1990s to present). During the Turkish War of Independence (1919–23) many members of the Ossetian communities showed themselves to be active and steadfast advocates of the nationalist cause, contributing in the organisation of the guerrilla resistance against the Entente forces and their local collaborationists especially in the Kars and Maraş regions. On the other hand, one of the closest associates of Mustafa Kemal Paşa in 1919–21 and his first foreign minister was an ethnic Ossetian Bekir Sami Bey (Kunduk) (the son of aforesaid Musa Paşa), who enjoyed considerable authority among his people and the North Caucasian diaspora as a whole.52 However, the Kemalist leadership’s hard-­ line policies of the 1920s–1940s, which aimed at accelerating assimilation of all Muslim minorities into the Turkish ‘melting pot’ and in addition manifested some deliberate anti-­Circassian aspects (related primarily to the episode of the Circassian guerrilla commander Çerkez Ethem’s alleged ‘betrayal’

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 115 in 1921, as well as to Bekir Sami’s opposition to Mustafa Kemal after 1923)53 could not but affect the Ossetian population as well. The impact of this official course upon muhajir descendants manifested itself, for the most part, in the impossibility of public ethnic self-­identification or the open use of the mother tongue; the exposure to the Turco-­centric historical and cultural stereotypes forceably cultivated through educational institutions, mass media, state-­sponsored People’s Houses (Halkevleri) and other channels;54 arbitrary registration under artificially created Turkish surnames instead of patrimonial Caucasian family names; and the prohibition to wear national costume. All these transformations inevitably led to a dramatic decline in the prestige of Circassianness in the eyes of both Turkish society and the members of the minority themselves compared to the Ottoman period. Yet, in the early Kemalist period the real effects of the state’s Turkification policies on most of the rural Ossetian enclaves were to certain extent softened by the relative weakness of their contacts with the outside, while in the east they were also neutralised by the actual sparsity of the ethnic Turkish population there. Moreover, in the Muş-­Bitlis region, Ossetian communities evidently benefited from the radical measures of the young republican government aimed at undermining the position of Kurdish feudal lords with the local North Caucasians being energetically involved in the activities against some tribes.55 It should be also noted that the influx of not numerous but generally respectable (both for their civic and traditional status) anti-­Bolshevik émigrés from Ossetia to Turkey in the early 1920s and their amalgamation with the older groups of diaspora to some extent breathed new life into the cultural identity of the latter. In general, it appears from the fieldwork of Turkish anthropologists such as Süleyman Kazmaz and Yaşar Kalafat,56 that right up to the third quarter of the twentieth century Ossetians in the Anatolian countryside still retained the major sociocultural features of their traditional ethnos and, despite the unfriendly political and ideological background, were able to maintain their individuality and identity. Thus, Ossetian continued to be spoken in everyday life within the mono-­ethnic villages57 and folk traditions, including some archaic customs like intra-­family etiquette avoidance, were observed often in much more rigorous and primordial

116  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t

Figure 3.1  An Ossetian family, Selim village, Kars, 1971. (Published with kind permission of Özkan Timurlenk, Ankara)

forms than was the case by then in Ossetia itself. However, at the same time the influence of the councils of elders and the prestige of the customary law were suffering a gradual decline alongside the increasing authority of official administrative and judicial bodies.58 Meanwhile, the historic homeland, Kafkas, situated on the other side of the ‘Iron Curtain’ and practically unknown even to the older generations of Turkish Ossetians, was increasingly acquiring the features of an inaccessible social, cultural, moral and environmental ideal in their collective consciousness, a ‘perfect land’, voluntarily or involuntarily contrasted with the country of actual residence.59 It was indubitably the striving to fulfil this ideal of Ossetianness/ Caucasianness that underlay the somewhat sluggish and covert opposition on the part of diaspora communities to the state-­backed pressure of the dominant culture, while formally complying with all legal prescriptions. For example, Ossetians never explicitly rejected the officially imposed Turkish ethno-­national identity and generally avoided public use of their native tongue, but at the same time they persisted in using the traditional rules of interpersonal etiquette as a kind of informal ethnic demarcator. The familiarity with these rules served as evidence of belonging to the community, as well as a boundary with the culturally alien majority. Indicative

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 117 also is the fact that during the introduction of surnames in Turkey in 1934, quite a few Ossetians sought, and some managed, to preserve their clan names, although in Turkicised form. At the same time, the first republican decades witnessed the increasing tendency of young Ossetians to move away from the villages, generally with a view to entering military or public service still regarded as the most prestigious occupations. This process in part was probably stimulated also by the relative deterioration in the economic situation of many villages owing to the rapid decline of the cattle and horse trade and the growing land shortage. According to the evidence of the early 1940s, among the natives of the village of Bozat of Sarıkamış kaza that contained no more than forty households, there were eleven commissioned army officers alone, while seventeen other young people were studying at lycées mostly with a view to entering military school.60 A number of Ossetian military men later rose to considerably high rank, one of them, General of the Army Muzaffer Alankuş, occupying the post of commander-­in-­chief of the Land Forces in 1960–1 and defence minister in 1961, while another, Major General Musa Öğün, served as a military attaché to Moscow throughout the 1960s and as president of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) during the military government of 1971–3. The attraction of a military-­bureaucratic career was directly connected with the earnest concern of the villagers to secure modern secular education opportunities for their younger generations. As has been recorded by various observers, the great majority of the Ossetian villages possessed, in contrast to many neighbouring communities, primary schools, often built with the residents’ own means, with nearly all local children, including girls, attending educational institutions of various levels.61 In general, however, during the Republican era the Ossetian villages have encountered some new risks, as the steady increase in their economic, social and cultural interaction with the surrounding non-­Caucasian population has inevitably facilitated erosion of traditional institutions and ways of life. In some cases the opening of Ossetian communities to external influences and trends proved to be so intense as to cause severe internal conflicts. An example of such confrontation was between the ‘Islamists’ and ‘nationalists’ in the village of Poyrazlı, which dragged on for two decades. In the mid-­1940s a group

118  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t

Figure 3.2  Women’s folk dancing, Bozat village, Kars, 1940s. (Published with kind permission of the Alan Foundation, Istanbul)

of influential inhabitants of the village, consisting mainly of the middle-­aged and elderly, achieved with the encouragement of outsiders, the banning by the village council of all customs considered ‘incompatible with Islam’ and therefore supposedly displeasing to neighbourhood Turks, such as traditional mass dancing with the participation of both sexes and the non-­wearing of the veil by women. These demands, however, faced opposition from a considerable number of villagers, mostly representing the younger generations, who regarded folk dance meetings as not only an extremely important social and cultural activity, but also one of the few available ways of reaffirming their ethnic distinctiveness. Nevertheless, the ‘Islamist’ party succeeded by exerting moral pressure on fellow villagers to break this resistance, on which occasion the traditional musical instruments (especially the Caucasus-­style accordions) found in the homes of the residents were seized and destroyed under the supervision of the village headman and imam as a symbol of religious impiety. In the following years the advocates of ethno-­national identity, who in fact constituted an overwhelming majority among the villagers, managed to find a way to circumvent the ban by attending dance parties in nearby Circassian settlements. Not until the late 1960s were the folk dances finally exonerated in Poyrazlı.62

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 119 The Move to the Cities Under the influence of the statewide processes of urbanisation and internal migration, more substantial structural shifts in the condition of the Ossetian, as well as more or less the entire Circassian population, have taken shape since the 1960s. From that time all Ossetian rural enclaves began to undergo an accelerated erosion as a result of the increasing movement of their economically and socially active members to Turkey’s major commercial and cultural centres, accompanied usually by an influx of ethnic Turks and Kurds from adjacent or remote regions to the deserted Ossetian villages.63 Concurrently, in addition to the invariably prestigious military and bureaucratic careers the types of urban employment preferred by Ossetians were steadily increasing and before long embraced the areas of private enterprise, trade, industry, education, and the liberal professions. During this phase an additional impetus was given to the regular departure of small contingents of Ossetians to Western Europe in line with the general process of outward labour migration from the country. Destruction of the primary settlement structure of the Ossetian communities took on a particularly intense and irreversible character in the last quarter of the twentieth century, marked by the complete exodus of the Ossetian population from rural areas in Eastern and North-­eastern Anatolia and substantially from Central Anatolia. For instance, while by the beginning of the 1970s more than 4,000 Ossetians were still living in the Kars province,64 by the end of the century no more than several dozen remained there. At present the only Ossetian islet on Turkish territory is formed by two villages in the Yozgat province, namely Poyrazlı and Boyalık, which largely preserve their monoethnic character along with the population of several hundred people, although the tendency toward steady ‘aging’ of their permanent residents is quite apparent.65 Thus, in a short time Turkey’s Ossetians, whose number by the beginning of the twenty-­first century was estimated at approximately 20,000,66 have transformed from a predominantly agricultural and considerably patriarchal community to an almost totally urbanised one. As a consequence, the overwhelming majority of its members are currently concentrated in rapidly developing cities at a distance from the areas of their former settlement, especially in the Istanbul megalopolis, Ankara and Izmir,

120  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t while some live in Anatolian provincial towns (such as Erzurum, Yozgat, Sivas, Kayseri, Bursa and Antalya), and only a small fraction still remain in the villages. In view of this situation, one can confidently assert that the urbanisation rates of the Ossetian population during the last half century have by far outpaced not only the average nationwide performance but also that of other North Caucasian groups. Before the Final Choice The move to the big cities, where Ossetians settled in a highly dispersed fashion, meant the definitive collapse of their pastoral diasporic world, constructed during the Ottoman era, and gave strong momentum to their cultural and linguistic de-­ethnicisation. For example, today the young and middle-­aged, born and raised outside of the villages, are rarely able to speak Ossetic fluently, with the process of alienation of the urban youth from the traditional culture continuing at an ever-­growing pace, and mixed marriages with non-­Caucasians becoming more and more common. It is obvious, therefore, that, despite the remarkably rapid and successful social and occupational adaptation of Ossetians in Turkish cities, the impossibility of maintaining the minimum conditions for following everyday customary communal traditions there (identified with the notion of Ossetianness/Caucasianness and considered as the uppermost moral legacy and value) seems to have been, especially for the first-­generation migrants from the villages, the source of sizeable ­cultural frustration, comparable, perhaps, to the loss of the Caucasian homeland by their ancestors in the nineteenth century.67 On the other hand, inclusion into the modern urban environment accelerated the formation of an ethnic intellectual elite, some segment of which – in parallel with the process of gradual political liberalisation in the country in the late twentieth century and early twenty-­first – became actively involved first in the general Circassian cultural and social movement, and then in the narrower Ossetian one that arose from the former. For instance, the Alan Culture and Assistance Foundation (Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı) established by members of this stratum in 1989 in Istanbul, has declared as its primary aim ‘to secure social solidarity among the Ossetians living in Turkey and . . . to protect and develop their cultural values’. The organisation has further defined its mission under the present circumstances as ‘to contribute to the

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 121 creation of necessary foundations and relationships to ensure experiencing and maintenance of Ossetian culture and identity and continuation of existence of our society at the level of the modern educated nations’.68 The foundation conducts charitable, cultural and educational activities, namely, the creation of courses for teaching Ossetian language and traditional music and dance, sponsorship of translation into Turkish and publication of the literature on Ossetia and the Caucasus, and the organisation of regular meetings of the townspeople originating from the Ossetian villages in Turkey. In Ankara similar work of the Ossetian activists was carried out prior to 2000 within the local branch of the Foundation but following its self-­dissolution the activities were transferred under the auspices of the Caucasian Cultural Association of Ankara (Ankara Kafkas Kültür Derneği) having a predominantly Adige-­Abaza composition. Unsuccessful attempts to create an Ossetian cultural centre are occasionally reported also from Izmir. Meanwhile a separate association of the natives of Poyrazlı village (Poyrazlılar Derneği) emerged in Istanbul by the end of the 1990s, hoping to maintain their ties with the still persisting rural ethno-­cultural milieu.69 These efforts have led to the strengthening of ethnic identity and the general revival of interest in the national culture, history and language among certain urban Ossetians, including young people, being further spurred on during the recent decades by the rapid discrediting in the public eye of the doctrines alleging Turkic origins of all Caucasians, which for long had been imposed by official Kemalist historiography. On the other hand, during the last ten or fifteen years a growing tendency has also been observed in this milieu to prefer ethnic self-­identification options lying beyond not only the Turkish/Turkic, but also Circassian entity, the latter being now more and more frequently interpreted, just as is the case in the Caucasus, as referring exclusively to the Adiges (or, as an amplified variant, Adiges and Abazas) but not to the entire North Caucasian population of Turkey and the Middle East. With this process of rethinking and redefining their identity and the very meaning of Circassianness is connected the adoption by the Turkish Ossetians of such ethnic self-­designations, previously unfamiliar to them, as Oset (that is ‘Ossetian’ in present-­day literary Turkish) and especially Alan (a revived ethnonym, popular in Ossetia since the first half of the twentieth century, emphasising the Ossetians’ descent from ancient and medieval Alans),

122  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t which are noticeably superseding increasingly less prestigious variants like the aforementioned Kuşha and Asetin. The ongoing process of disintegration of the old general Circassian umbrella identity has affected, along with Ossetians, other non-­Adige North Caucasian groups (Chechens, Dagestanis, Karachais and, to an extent, Abazas), entailing a significant demarcation and rearrangement along the ethnic and ideological-­political lines within the previously single Caucasian movement in Turkey by the late 1990s and early 2000s. Currently the Ossetian activists are clearly inclined to cooperate closely with the Adige-­Abaza mainstream associations, and primarily with the country’s largest Federation of Caucasian Societies of Turkey (Türkiye Kafkas Dernekleri Federasyonu (Kaf-­Fed )) and its numerous affiliates that advocate a pragmatic dialogue with the official and public circles of Turkey and Russia in order to secure, on the one hand, ethnic minority status for diasporan North Caucasians in their countries of residence and the gradual expansion of their ties with the Russian Caucasus, including organised state-­backed repatriation, on the other. The existence and strengthening of this alliance, defined by some Circassian analysts as the ‘Adige-­Abaza-­Ossetian bloc’,70 largely contribute, along with common historic and cultural experience and collective memories, to the current harmonious relationships between the three peoples in the Caucasus.71 It should be noted that these associations are at the same time a part of the emerging transnational Circassian movement, oriented toward closer coordination between the Adige-­Abaza organisations around the world. Equally evident at this time is the desire of the Ossetian diasporic elite to distance itself from the circles that emphasise the idea of ‘the free and united Caucasus’, usually bearing strong anti-­Russian, Islamist and sometimes Turanist messages. This has been chiefly advocated by the less mass supported Chechen, Dagestani and Karachai-­ dominated associations (the most important of which are the Federation of United Caucasian Societies (Birleşik Kafkas Dernekleri Federasyonu)), although the presence in this wing of some numbers of ethnic Ossetians, Adiges and Abazas is an undeniable fact.72 An extremely important factor stimulating all of these changes in the Ossetian diaspora’s self-­consciousness is the possibility of establishing and maintaining direct contacts with the ‘land of the ancestors’ that emerged as a result of the geopolitical shifts subsequent to the collapse of the Soviet

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 123 Union in the early 1990s. Over the past two decades hundreds of Turkish Ossetians were able to visit the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, a federal subject of Russia (and a few also South Ossetia), finding there their kindred and in quite a number of cases marriage partners. At times this process of rediscovering the Caucasian homeland developed painfully, being accompanied by a rapid destruction of its long-­standing idealised representations and an acquaintance with its real problems. Specifically, the fact that so far only single instances of successful repatriation of the Ossetians from Turkey are attested, and the number of business people from among them ready to invest in Ossetia amounts to no more than a few, is explained primarily by the lack of economic and political stability and security in the Russian North Caucasus, along with the high scale of bureaucracy and corruption in its administration. In addition, unlike the Circassian and Abkhazian regions of the Western Caucasus, in Ossetia the historic fact of resettlement of some fraction of the fellow-­countrymen to Ottoman Turkey in the nineteenth century has left a relatively small mark in the collective memory, with the hypothetical repatriation of the muhajir descendants also never being, at least from the standpoint of local elites, of any utilitarian demographic or political value. It is to a considerable extent due to these circumstances that, in contrast to some West Caucasian areas, the governmental and public bodies in Ossetia have up to the present moment failed to develop policies aimed to provide the diaspora in Turkey with any cultural patronage or to offer potential repatriates an effective resettlement and adaptation programme.73 Nonetheless, an obvious tendency of recent years, largely due to the widespread use of modern communication tools and especially the Internet, is the diaspora’s growing informational awareness of and virtual involvement in various spheres of the actual life of the ancestral homeland. This readiness to manifest unity has taken practical forms, whether, for example, organising protest rallies of many thousands in the streets of Istanbul and Ankara in relation to the August 2008 ‘Five Day War’ in South Ossetia under the direction of the ad hoc Caucasian Committee for Solidarity and Humanitarian Aid to Ossetia (Kafkas Osetya Dayanışma ve İnsani Yardım Komitesi),74 or the creation of fan clubs to support sport teams coming from Ossetia against their local rivals. Meanwhile, an invariable feature of all arrangements of this sort is the mass ‘solidarity’ participation of the Adige and Abaza activists in them.

124  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Yet, despite the above manifestations of ethnic activities, at the present time only a small minority of Turkey’s Ossetians are active on a regular basis and the issue of building a new, urban Ossetian diasporic world instead of the rural one that has almost disappeared into oblivion has so far no real prospect. It is obvious that for the most part Ossetians in Turkey today are bearing concurrently, although in varying combinations and proportions, far more than one identity, the most significant of them being: the ethnic Ossetian, the supra-­ethnic North Caucasian diasporic (Circassian in the traditional extended sense), the civic-­national Turkish and the confessional Islamic. Although these identities are not in any pronounced conflict with one another, in the near future the members of this community may be faced with the necessity of making a clearer choice among several alternatives, such as, for example, definitive Turkification, Circassianisation in the narrow sense through becoming an element of the Adige(-­Abaza) diaspora or complete re-­Ossetianisation via repatriation. It seems that each of these options has some potential to attract an appreciable constituency. However, the intensity, pace and direction of these potential transformations will undoubtedly be considerably influenced by external circumstances, such as the nature of the domestic social and political developments in Turkey and her relations with Russia, the level and the quality of the diaspora’s contacts with the Caucasus, the extent of the success of the emerging transnational Circassian movement, as well as by the broader regional and international context. Conclusion Migrations from Ossetia to the Ottoman Empire occurred chiefly from 1859 to 1865, in line with the broader process of relocation of the North Caucasus mountaineers following the final subjugation of the region by Russia. Gradually, several clusters of O ​ ssetian colonies took shape on Ottoman soil located mainly in Eastern and Central Anatolia, and Syria. In all these areas Ossetians neighboured and closely cooperated with fellow North Caucasian immigrant peoples and thus formed an integral part of the Middle Eastern Circassian supra-­ethnic entity. By contrast, they were generally involved in a relatively limited social and cultural interaction with the indigenous population, maintaining working contacts principally with local administrations. For this reason, in the Ottoman period Anatolian Ossetians formed a rather

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 125 Table 3.1  List of known Ossetian villages in Anatolia, 1859–2014. (Sources: Aydemir, ‘Türkiye Çerkesleri’; Andrews, Ethnic Groups; Atılgan, ‘Muş, Bitlis ve Bingöl’; Totoev, ‘K voprosu’; Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta; Interviews) Province (Ottoman sanjak / modern il )

Village (the new names officially adopted in the Republican era are given in parenthesis)

Foundation and/or settlement

Termination Co-­resident ethnic groups (if in any and/or considerable vacation proportion)

Kars

Bozat Hamamlı Selim Yukarısarıkamış, or Eskisarıkamış Ağcalar Göceharman Hançerli, or Hancalı Karakurt Oluklu Alisofu

1859–62 ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’

late 20th c. ‘ – – – – ’ Dagestanis (Lak) ‘––––’ ‘––––’

‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’

1877–8 ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’

1920s

1960s

Ağcaviran (Akçaören) Hulik (Otluyazı) Gövendik Karaali (Karaağıl) Mescitli (Kızılmescit) Sarıdavut Simo (Kurganlı) Yaramış Lapbudak Hamzaşeyh (Sarıpınar) Irun (Kayahisar) Dikilitaş Kahvepınar Kapaklıkaya Konaközü Yeniçubuk Yeniköy Batmantaş Çengibağı (Gürpınar) Kuşoturağı

after 1877–8 ‘––––’ after 1877–8 ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ after 1893 ‘––––’ after 1877–8 after 1877–8 ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ 1866–7 after 1877–8 ‘––––’

Taşlık Sıvgın Boyalık Poyrazlı Karabacak Kayapınar Orhaniye Fındık

‘––––’ after 1877–8 after 1877–8 ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ after 1877–8 after 1877–8

Bitlis Muş

Siirt Sivas

Tokat

Kayseri Yozgat

Niğde Maraş

Adiges

Turkmens (Karapapak) late 20th c. Adiges ‘––––’ late 20th c. ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ late 20th c. late 20th c. ‘ – – – – ’ Chechens ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ ‘––––’ late 20th c. Adiges ‘––––’ ‘ – – – – ’ Kumiks, Nogays, Adiges ‘ – – – – ’ Adiges mid-­20th c. Turkmens (Afşar) still existent ‘––––’ late 20th c. ‘––––’ mid-­20th c. late 20th c. Adiges

126  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t exclusive community, persistently tending to reproduce in diaspora a micro-­ model of the customary traditional milieu of their homeland. During the Republican era all rural Ossetian settlements became subject to the growing impact of state-­wide modernisation and nationalist tendencies in a much more definite manner, undergoing steady erosion of their demographic structure and collective identity. By the end of the twentieth century Turkey’s Ossetians had finally transformed into an urbanised community, largely concentrated in Istanbul and Ankara, with a high level of integration into the dominant society. The tendency towards complete cultural assimilation seems at present to be prevailing among them. However, the fundamental social and geopolitical changes of recent decades in Turkey, Russia and the Caucasus on the one hand, and the rise of the Circassian diasporic ethno-­national movement on the other, offer several alternative options of further evolution of this group, ranging from renewal of Ossetian identity in the increasingly more liberal Turkish urban milieu to reintegration in some form with the ancestral homeland. In any case, in the foreseeable future the fate of the Ossetian diaspora will remain closely connected with the major trends of development of other North Caucasian (especially Adige-­Abaza) communities in Turkey. Notes   1. The only scholarly work specially devoted to Anatolian Ossetians is the article by eminent linguist ​Fridrik Thordarson based on the material of his fieldwork in the Sivas province in July 1966. See Fridrik Thordarson, ‘Some Notes on Anatolian Ossetic’, Acta Orientalia 33 (1971), pp. 145–67.   2. Extensive use in Turkish and European sources of the nineteenth century and also partly the twentieth of the term ‘Circassian’ with regard to all migrants from the North Caucasus (in contrast to the strict scholarly usage of this ethnonym to the Adige people of the Northwest Caucasus) essentially complicates for a researcher the task of identifying individual Caucasian peoples. Thus, among the documents of the Republic of Turkey’s Prime Ministry’s Ottoman Archives (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (henceforth BOA)) I met no more than a dozen r­eferences to the ‘tribes’ Tegi/Tegâi (‫تكى‬/‫ )تكاى‬and Digor (‫( )دغور‬see, for instance, the following entries: BOA, A.MKT.MHM, nos 193/46, 194/10, 326/89; A.MKT.UM, nos 425/5, 425/8, 484/71; A.MKT.NZD, no. 398/7),

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 127 the two major original Ossetian subgroups represented in Anatolia, although there is no doubt that Ossetians (just as Abazins, Ubikhs, Chechens, Karachais and others) are much more frequently ‘hidden’ in the documents under the umbrella name Çerkes(-­z) (Circassian). In some cases, however, cultural, linguistic and toponymic details given in the sources allow the ethnic affiliation of populations under description to be determined with relative certainty.   3. Non-­formalised interviews were conducted with the members of various territorial and age groups of the Ossetian diaspora during the years 1995–7 and 2008. A total of sixteen people were interviewed. At the time of interviewing two persons were aged less than thirty years, eight were in the range of thirty to sixty and six were more than sixty. The male-­to-­female ratio was fourteen to two. One respondent was born in a city (Ankara), while the rest were born in various Ossetian villages (five in Yozgat, four in Kars, two in Muş, one in each of Bitlis, Sivas and Maraş provinces, and one in Syria). However, at the time of the interviews only one still lived in his native village in the Yozgat province, whereas, of the others, seven resided in Istanbul, six in Ankara and two were repatriates in Vladikavkaz (Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia). Questions were focused on migration and settlement memories, rural and urban experiences in Anatolia, notions of homeland, views on the ethnic future and so on. Some of the interviews relating to 2008 were carried out together with Dr Ruslan Bzarov (North Ossetian State University), to whom I am grateful for providing these data and consenting to their publication.   4. The term ‘muhajir’, which goes back to the days of the Quranic hijra, in the late Ottoman Empire referred to all Muslim immigrants and refugees from the countries under Christian rule (usually former Ottoman provinces or areas of influence). In the Russian tradition from the mid-­nineteenth century it indicated only the members of Caucasian mountain peoples migrating to the sultan’s dominions. Until the end of the twentieth century the term was in wide use also in the Russian and Turkish historical literature. However, during the recent decades Circassian organisations in both countries are demanding rejection of the terms ‘muhajirs’ and ‘muhajir movement’ in favour of ‘exiles’, ‘deportation’ and the like, considering them to more accurately reflect the coercive nature of the process.   5. Imam or Sheikh Shamil (1797–1871) was from 1834 to 1859 a military, political and religious leader of Dagestan and Chechnya, which were united by him into the Caucasian Imamate to fight against Russian expansion under the banner of gazavat. A significant number of other mountain Muslim peoples,

128  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t including  Ossetians, also were always present in his inner circle and forces. Shamil’s surrender in 1859 signified the actual end of the armed resistance in the Northeast Caucasus and exerted a considerable demoralising effect on the advocates of North Caucasian independence. See John F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (New York, NY: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908); Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan (London: Frank Cass, 1994).   6. Mikhail Totoev, ‘K voprosu o pereselenii osetin v Turtsiyu’, Izvestiya Severo-­ Osetinskogo nauchno-­issledovatel’ckogo instituta 13: 1 (Dzaudzhikau: Gosizdat SO ASSR, 1948), pp. 28–30, 38; Georgiĭ Dzagurov (ed.), Pereselenie gortsev v Turtsiyu. Materialy- po istorii gorskikh narodov (Rostov-­na-­Donu: Sevkavkniga, 1925), pp. 137–9.   7 Süleyman Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta Köy Gezileri: Halk Kültürü Alanında Araştırma ve İncelemeler (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür, Dil ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu, 1995), p. 35; ‘Interviews with the members of the Ossetian diaspora, conducted 1995–7 and 2008 in Istanbul, Ankara, Poyrazlı village (Yozgat province) and Vladikavkaz (Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia)’ (Mutlu Hosonti, Istanbul, 2008).   8. Inal Kanukov, ‘Ot Aleksandropolya do Erzeruma’, Kavkaz 267 (26 November 1878).  9. Inal Kanukov, ‘Gortsȳ-­pereselentsȳ’, in Sbornik svedeniy- o kavkazskikh gortsakh, vol. 9 (Tiflis: Kavkazskoe Gorskoe upravlenie, 1876), pp. 85–6; Mussa Kundukhov, ‘Memuarȳ generala Mussa-­pashi Kundukhova’, Dar’yal 2 (1995), pp. 133–7; 3 (1995), p. 198. 10. Totoev, ‘K voprosu’, pp. 30, 38, 39. 11. Albina Khamitsaeva (ed.), Osetiya v kavkazskoĭ politike Rossiĭskoĭ imperii (XIX vek). Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Vladikavkaz: IPO SOIGSI im. V. I. Abaeva, 2008), pp. 185–8. 12. Kundukhov, ‘Memuarȳ’, 3 (1995), p. 198. 13. See Kanukov, ‘Gortsȳ-­pereselentsȳ’, pp. 84–5, 90–1. 14. Kundukhov, ‘Memuarȳ’, 2 (1995), pp.  123, 126, 129, 131; Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, p. 284. 15. For the English-­language literature on Circassian resettlement from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire and its effects see, for example, Walter Richmond, The Northwest Caucasus: Past, Present, Future (London: Routledge, 2008); Üner Turgay, ‘Circassian Immigration into the Ottoman Empire, 1856–78’, in W. B. Hallaq and D. P. Little (eds), Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams (Leiden: Brill, 1991), pp. 193–217; Kemal Karpat, ‘The Status of the Muslims

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 129 under European Rule: The Eviction and Settlement of the Çerkes’, Journal of the Institute of Minority Affairs 1–2 (1979–80), pp. 7–27; Stephen Shenfield, ‘The Circassians: A Forgotten Genocide?’, in M. Levene, and P. Roberts (eds), The Massacre in History (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 1999), pp. 149–62; Charles King, The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 16. In the late 1850s and early 1860s the Istanbul authorities generally sympathised with the North Caucasians’ desire to immigrate to the Ottoman Empire and to some extent encouraged this process. Along with the officially declared goal of giving refuge to oppressed co-­religionists, the Sublime Porte pursued some practical interests with regard to their colonisation, expecting in this way to reclaim uncultivated lands, change demographic balance in certain regions in favour of Muslims, counterpoise nomadic tribes and other disorderly and disloyal elements, strengthen the army and so on. As a rule, these early muhajirs were allowed to choose the areas of settlement and enjoyed considerable tax benefits. It was only following the mass Circassian migrations of 1863–4 with their ruinous effects on the state’s finances that the Ottomans began to more or less consistently regulate the inflow of Caucasian and other immigrants and to gradually reduce the scope of assistance provided to them. See Turgay, ‘Circassian Immigration’. 17. Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, pp. 28, 33–4; Interviews (Hamdi Hosonti, Ankara, 2008). 18. Interviews (Hamdi Hosonti, Ankara, 2008); Kanukov, ‘Gortsȳ-­pereselentsȳ’, pp. 100–1. 19. The only exception appears to be a small settlement in the Tokat district of Central Anatolia established by an element of the 1865 immigrations. 20. Interviews (Hamdi Hosonti, Ankara, 2008). 21. Fred Burnaby, On Horseback through Asia Minor, vol. 2 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1877), p. 269. 22. Aleksandr Kolyubakin, Materialy- dlya voenno-­statisticheskogo obozreniya Aziatskoĭ Turtsii, vol. 1, part 1 (Tiflis: General’nȳĭ Shtab Kavkazskogo Voennogo Okruga, 1888), p. 69. It is noteworthy that these villages were planted in the region inhabited by the most significant portion of the Christian population in the empire. Thus, in Bulanık and Malazgirt kazas of Muş and Ahlat kaza of Bitlis, where the bulk of the new Ossetian settlements were concentrated, the proportion of Armenians was more than 70 per cent. See ‘Report on the Population of Asia Minor and the Turkish Provinces to the Eastward, comp. by Col. William Everett, C.M.G., Asst. Adj.-­Gen., Intel. Div., War Office,

130  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t f­ormerly Her Majesty’s Consul for Kurdistan’, in K. Bourne and D. C. Watt (gen. eds), British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, vol. 19, part 1, series B (n.p.: University Publications of America, 1985), pp. 108, 116. At the same time, by establishing North Caucasian colonies, the state certainly aimed to promote settlement in a region with a high degree of unexploited agricultural potential. 23. Interviews (Seyfil Doğan, Vladikavkaz, 1995; Halis Asetey, Istanbul, 2008); Zeki Atılgan, ‘Muş, Bitlis ve Bingöl İllerindeki Kuzey Kafkasyalı Muhacirler’, Birleşik Kafkasya 5 (1965), p. 51; Peter Alford Andrews (ed.), Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1989), pp. 354–5, vol. 2 (2002), p. 142; İzzet Aydemir, ‘Türkiye Çerkesleri’, Kafkasya 39–42 (1973), pp. 233–4. 24. Abaza – a common designation in Turkish of two closely related peoples of the West Caucasus, Abkhazians and Abazins, both being, along with Ubikhs, akin to much more numerous Adiges, which I prefer here because of the difficulty of distinguishing them in the diasporic settlements and written sources. 25. Interviews (Mesut Zorlu, Ankara, 1996; Recep Oğuz, Ankara, 1997; Muammer Tekin, Istanbul, 2008; Rauf Bozkurt, Ankara, 1995); Aydemir, ‘Türkiye Çerkesleri’ (1973), p. 219; Andrews, Ethnic Groups, vol. 1, pp. 354–5, vol. 2, p. 142. 26 Anzor Kushkhabiev, Cherkesy- v Sirii (Nal’chik: Vozrozhdenie, 1993), pp. 79–80; Interviews (Nazir Albeg, Vladikavkaz, 1995). 27. Khamitsaeva, Osetiya, pp. 295–300; Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, p. 30; Temirbolat Kubat, Muhacirin Hicrandır Ömrünün Yarısı (Ankara: Kaf-­Dav Yayıncılık, 2005), pp. 303–6; Interviews (Mutlu Öğün, Istanbul, 2008; Özkan Timurlenk, Ankara, 2008). 28. Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, pp. 22, 24, 28. 29. Kubat, Muhacirin, pp. 303–18; Interviews (Aytek Kubat, Ankara, 2008). 30. BOA, A.MKT.NZD, no. 398/7; Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, p. 30. 31. Kolyubakin, Materialy-, p. 164. 32. Interviews (Halis Asetey, Istanbul, 2008). 33. Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, pp. 26, 36; Kolyubakin, Materialy-, p. 164; Interviews (Hanafi Marşan, Poyrazlı, 2008; Muammer Tekin, Istanbul, 2008; Halis Asetey, Istanbul, 2008). 34. Pëtr Khelmitskiĭ, Karsskaya oblast’: voenno-­statisticheskiĭ i geograficheskiĭ obzor, part 2, fascicles 2–3 (Tiflis: Kantselyariya glavnonachal’stvuyushchego grazhdanskoy chast’yu na Kavkaze, 1893), pp. 36–7.

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 131 35. BOA, İ.MM, no. 1,398. 36. BOA, A.MKT.MVL, no. 113/75. 37. Kanukov, ‘Ot Aleksandropolya’ 275 (6 December 1878); Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Paşa, Anılar, vol. 2 (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996), pp. 42–3, 49, 64, 166. In 1876 Captain Burnaby recorded that in the event of war the inhabitants of Sarıkamış were able to offer the Ottoman army up to 2,000 mounted volunteers. See Burnaby, On Horseback, p. 269. 38. Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 206. 39. For example, a fifteen family strong party who founded the first Ossetian village in the Sarıkamış area, Bozat, had first to come into collision with a semi-­nomadic Kurdish group that had already chosen that locality as a place of settlement. After one of these Kurds wounded a muhajir elder with a pointed missile during an argument, the latter considered it a matter of honour to avenge the insult on their rivals ‘in an unforgettable way’. However, the Kurds, on learning about the impending requital, decamped the same night and subsequently settled in ten kilometres away from Bozat. No conflicts between the two groups were noted afterwards. Interviews (Hamdi Hosonti, Ankara, 2008). In contrast, the Ossetians, directed by the officials to the village of Yukarısarıkamış (‘Upper Sarıkamış’), managed to persuade the Kurdish clan that had already settled there to move to another place, through peaceful means not excluding some monetary reward. See Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, p. 28. 40. Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, pp. 30, 33, 35, 269. 41. At the top of this hierarchical system, which has been described by the numerous contemporary observers, were situated nomadic Kurdish tribes followed by sedentary and non-­tribal Kurds and other Muslim communities, while Armenians and other Christians occupied the lowest position. See ‘Report on the Population’; Kolyubakin, Materialy-. 42. Kolyubakin, Materialy-, pp. 80–1, 162; Interviews (Nevzat Kusati, Istanbul, 2008; Halis Aseti, Istanbul, 2008). 43. Mehmet Şerif Fırat, Doğu İlleri ve Varto Tarihi (Ankara: Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü, 1981), pp. 81–2. 44. Great Britain, Foreign Office, Turkey, No. 6: Correspondence Relating to the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey, 1894–95 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1896), p. 12. 45. Until recently, among the residents of Ossetian villages of Anatolia and their non-­Caucasian neighbours memories were still alive that it was the muhajirs that had first introduced into the areas of their settlement technically more

132  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t s­ ophisticated large four-­wheel carts borrowed from the Russians in the Caucasus, as well as such signs of a ‘more civilised’ mode of life as the use of tables and chairs, spoons and forks in domesticity, women needlework skills, and so on. Interviews (Halis Aseti, Istanbul, 2008; Remzi Kanukati, Istanbul, 2008). 46. According to the testimonies of the Ossetians of Hulik village of Bitlis, in former times, when their fellow-­villagers appeared in the streets of nearby towns, the locals used to stand up to them saying, ‘Çerkes beyi gelir’ (‘Circassian princes are coming’), although such behaviour was not a norm with regard to the ordinary members of indigenous groups. Interviews (Halis Aseti, Istanbul, 2008). 47. Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, pp. 36, 448. 48. Interviews (Hamdi Hosonti, Ankara, 2008; Halis Aseti, Istanbul, 2008); Kolyubakin, Materialy-, pp. 162–4. 49. Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, pp. 36–7, 449. 50. Interviews (Mesut Daguyti, Ankara, 1996; Recep Tsarikati, Ankara, 1997). 51. H. F. B. Lynch, Armenia: Travels and Studies, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901), p. 340. 52. Muhittin Ünal, Kurtuluş Savaşında Çerkeslerin Rolü (İstanbul: Cem Yayınevi, 1996), pp. 62–3, 81–2, 89–90. 53. See, for details, ibid., pp. 63–4, 169 ff. 54. See the specimens of Ossetian villagers’ self-­identification as ‘Caucasian Turks’ (Kafkas Türkleri) before an outsider, a Turkish officer, in Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, p. 285. 55. Fırat, Doğu İlleri, p. 82. 56. See Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta (chapters ‘Yukarısarıkamış – 13.10.1940’, ‘Eskisarıkamış – 18.5.1941’, ‘Hamamlı Köyü – 1.6.1941’, ‘Bozat Köyü  – 8.6.1941’, ‘Bozat Köyü – 24.8.1941’, ‘Alisofu Köyü – 31.8.1941’, ‘Bozat Köyü – 31.8.1941’, ‘Bozat Köyü – 1.9.1941’, ‘Bozat Köyü – 13.9.1941’, ‘Alisofu Köyü – 27.9.1941’, ‘Bozat Köyü – 28.9.1941’, and ‘Bozat Köyü – 29.9.1941’); Yaşar Kalafat, ‘Sarıkamış’ta Kafkas Halk İnanışları’, Birleşik Kafkasya 13 (1998), pp. 16–19. 57. According to the abundant evidence, in the 1930s and 1940s and later the ignorance of Turkish was rather widespread among the pre-­school children in Ossetian villages. At the same time, there already was a tendency for the parents to forbid their school-­age children to speak Ossetic even at home in order to hasten acquisition by them of Turkish and thus avoid problems in their studies and subsequent professional careers. 58. Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, passim.

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 133 59. Ibid., pp. 267–8, 270. 60. Ibid., pp. 33, 459. 61. Kazmaz, Sarıkamış’ta, pp. 24, 30, 459–60. For example, the natives of Hulik village maintain that the school has been built there on the residents’ initiative earlier than in the nearest town. Interviews (Halis Aseti, Istanbul, 2008). 62. Interviews (Recep Tsarikati, 1997). 63. While initially the main incentive for the Ossetians to move to the cities seems to be the shortage of land and work in the rural areas, subsequently, as the numbers of the permanent residents in the villages decreased, the motives of ethno-­ cultural and ethno-­psychological nature also began to play, especially in the east, an ever greater role. Thus, according to one of the natives of Muş, spoken in their terms, ‘when the Kurds became too many all round and they no longer considered us that much, our elders got together and resolved: today they do not feel shy before us and do not fear us as before, and tomorrow they will start to ask our girls in marriage; it is time to move away from here. And we listened to the elders and resettled to the big cities to live there’. Interviews (Nevzat Kusati, Istanbul, 2008). 64. Aydemir, ‘Türkiye Çerkesleri’, 47 (1975), p. 42; Andrews, Ethnic Groups, vol. 1, pp. 126, 201. 65. In 2008 there were eighty-­seven Ossetian families (households) in Poyrazlı and twenty-­five in Boyalık. About half of the residents were persons over the middle age. At the same time, a much larger number of people born in those villages were living outside them: thus, 113 families originating from Poyrazlı were residing in Istanbul, 52 in Kayseri, 49 in Ankara, 43 in Yozgat, 12 in Bursa, 6 in Adana, 6 in Antalya, 10 in other Turkish towns, and 54 in Western Europe. See Mesut Zorlu, ‘Poyrazlı Köyü’, Nart 5 (1998), p. 51. It should be noted, however, that since 1999 each summer in Poyrazlı are held the multi-­day gatherings of people of local birth accompanied with various festival activities, folk dancing, children’s contests for the best knowledge of Ossetic and so on, collecting up to 2,000 participants yearly. See Poyrazlı Köyü, ‘Köy Buluşma Günleri’, www. poyrazli.com/iframe.php?file=sayfa/poyrazli.html (accessed 19 May 2012). 66. Remzi Yıldırım, ‘Biz Olduğumuz, Bir Olduğumuz Müddetçe Güçlüyüz: Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı’, Jıneps Gazetesi 14 (1 January 2010). 67. One acknowledgement of this ‘cultural drama’ by a typical representative of this generation sounds as follows: ‘There are customs that must be discarded when their time has passed. As for us, even after having moved to the cities we

134  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t tried not to abandon our traditions, held tight onto them, held . . . until they abandoned us themselves. And now, when the ancestral traditions are gone, we do not know what to do further’. Interviews (Rasim Bzarti, Istanbul, 2008). 68. Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı Bülteni (İstanbul: Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı, 1989), pp. 2–3; Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı, ‘Misyonumuz’, www.alanvakfi. org.tr/misyonumuz.html (accessed 12 April 2012). 69. Interviews (Mesut Daguyti, Ankara, 2008). 70. See, for instance, Ömer Kurmel, ‘Adıge Yolu ve Dikkat Edilmesi Gerekenler’, Nart 52 (2006), p. 27. 71. Despite the comparative paucity of Ossetians in Turkey, the Kaf-­Fed and its related organisations are rather consistent and scrupulous about demonstrating this de facto tripartite status by indispensable display of the Adige, Abaza and Ossetian national flags (along with Turkish) at the congresses and forums held under their aegis. 72. Kurmel, ‘Adıge Yolu’, pp. 26–8; Interviews (Remzi Kanukati, Istanbul, 2008; Halis Aseti, Istanbul, 2008). 73. The repatriation of the diaspora Circassians started in the early 1990s at the initiative of the emerging ethno-­national movement in the Adigean republics of the North Caucasus. At present it is carried out on the basis of the federal ‘Law on Compatriots’, which permits but does not encourage the immigration to Russia of the descendants of former Russian/Soviet citizens belonging to the country’s autochthonous peoples. However, representatives of the North Caucasian diasporas in the Middle East formally do not fall unequivocally under the category of ‘compatriots’, since their ancestors usually were not Russian subjects at the time of emigration. Under the current practice, the federal government sets annual quotas on the number of returnees for the individual republics, while the latter provide for their settlement and adaptation. To date the total number of repatriates in the republics of Kabardino-­Balkaria, Karachai-­Cherkessia and Adigea does not exceed 3,000. It is clear that in the present conditions the official Moscow position is not inclined to allow any significant influx of North Caucasians from abroad, although in some special instances it demonstrates a readiness to provide full-­fledged state backing for those who wish to repatriate, as was the case with some 200 Circassians from Kosovo resettled to Adigea in 1998–9. On the other hand, in the 2000s a considerable decrease occurred in the number of applications for repatriation submitted by the members of diaspora to the Russian authorities, due to the general social, economic and political situation in the North Caucasus.

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 135 74. Kafkas Osetya Dayanışma ve İnsani Yardım Komitesi, www.osetyakomitesi.com (accessed 18 February 2009). See also Turkish daily newspapers for the period from 10 to 20 August 2008.

Bibliography Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul (Republic of Turkey’s Prime Ministry’s Ottoman Archives) (BOA). Interviews with the members of the Ossetian diaspora, conducted 1995–7 and 2008 in Istanbul, Ankara, Poyrazlı village (Yozgat province) and Vladikavkaz (Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia). Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı, ‘Misyonumuz’, www.alanvakfi.org.tr/misyonumuz. html (accessed 12 April 2012). Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı Bülteni (İstanbul: Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı, 1989). Andrews, Peter Alford (ed.), Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey, 2 vols (Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1989, 2002). Atılgan, Zeki, ‘Muş, Bitlis ve Bingöl İllerindeki Kuzey Kafkasyalı Muhacirler’, Birleşik Kafkasya 5 (1965), pp. 51–2. Aydemir, İzzet, ‘Türkiye Çerkesleri’, Kafkasya 47 (1975), pp. 39–48. Aydemir, İzzet, ‘Türkiye Çerkesleri’ 39–42 (1973), pp. 215–39, 47 (1975), pp. 39–48. Baddeley, John F., The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (New York, NY: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908). Burnaby, Fred, On Horseback through Asia Minor, vol. 2 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1877). Dzagurov, Georgiĭ (ed.), Pereselenie gortsev v Turtsiyu. Materialy- po istorii gorskikh narodov (Rostov-­na-­Donu: Sevkavkniga, 1925). Fırat, Mehmet Şerif, Doğu İlleri ve Varto Tarihi (Ankara: Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü, 1981). Gammer, Moshe, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan (London: Frank Cass, 1994). Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Paşa, Anılar, vol. 2 (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996). Great Britain, Foreign Office, Turkey, No. 6: Correspondence Relating to the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey, 1894–95 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1896). Kafkas Osetya Dayanışma ve İnsani Yardım Komitesi, www.osetyakomitesi.com (accessed 18 February 2009). Kalafat, Yaşar, ‘Sarıkamış’ta Kafkas Halk İnanışları’, Birleşik Kafkasya 13 (1998), pp. 16–19.

136  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Kanukov, Inal, ‘Gortsȳ-­pereselentsȳ’, in Sbornik svedeniĭ o kavkazskikh gortsakh, vol. 9 (Tiflis: Kavkazskoe Gorskoe upravlenie, 1876), pp. 84–112. Kanukov, Inal, ‘Ot Aleksandropolya do Erzeruma’, Kavkaz 267 (26 November 1878), 275 (6 December 1878). Karpat, Kemal, ‘The Status of the Muslims under European Rule: The Eviction and Settlement of the Çerkes’, Journal of the Institute of Minority Affairs 1–2 (1979–80), pp. 7–27. Kazmaz, Süleyman, Sarıkamış’ta Köy Gezileri: Halk Kültürü Alanında Araştırma ve İncelemeler (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür, Dil ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu, 1995). Khamitsaeva, Albina (ed.), Osetiya v kavkazskoĭ politike Rossiĭskoĭ imperii (XIX vek). Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Vladikavkaz: IPO SOIGSI im. V. I. Abaeva, 2008). Khelmitskiĭ, Pëtr, Karsskaya oblast’: voenno-­statisticheskiĭ i geograficheskiĭ obzor, part 2, fascicles 2–3 (Tiflis: Kantselyariya glavnonachal’stvuyushchego grazhdanskoy chast’yu na Kavkaze, 1893). King, Charles, The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Klein, Janet, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). Kolyubakin, Aleksandr, Materialy- dlya voenno-­statisticheskogo obozreniya Aziatskoĭ Turtsii, vol. 1, part 1 (Tiflis: General’nĭȳ Shtab Kavkazskogo Voennogo Okruga, 1888). Kubat, Temirbolat, Muhacirin Hicrandır Ömrünün Yarısı (Ankara: Kaf-­ Dav Yayıncılık, 2005). Kundukhov, Mussa, ‘Memuarȳ generala Mussa-­ pashi Kundukhova’, Dar’yal 4 (1994), pp. 138–64; 1 (1995), pp. 152–68; 2 (1995), pp. 118–45; 3 (1995), pp. 183–201. Kurmel, Ömer, ‘Adıge Yolu ve Dikkat Edilmesi Gerekenler’, Nart 52 (2006), pp. 26–30. Kushkhabiev, Anzor, Cherkesy- v Sirii (Nal’chik: Vozrozhdenie, 1993). Lynch, H. F. B., Armenia: Travels and Studies, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901). Poyrazlı Köyü, ‘Köy Buluşma Günleri’, www.poyrazli.com/iframe.php?file=sayfa/ poyrazli.html (accessed 19 May 2012). ‘Report on the Population of Asia Minor and the Turkish Provinces to the Eastward, comp. by Col. William Everett, C.M.G., Asst. Adj.-­Gen., Intel. Div., War

t h e ca se of a na toli an ossetia ns  | 137 Office, formerly Her Majesty’s Consul for Kurdistan’, in K. Bourne and D. C. Watt (gen. eds), British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, vol. 19, part 1, series B (n.p.: University Publications of America, 1985), pp. 80–116. Richmond, Walter, The Northwest Caucasus: Past, Present, Future (London: Routledge, 2008). Shenfield, Stephen, ‘The Circassians: A Forgotten Genocide?’, in M. Levene and P. Roberts (eds), The Massacre in History (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 1999), pp. 149–62. Thordarson, Fridrik, ‘Some Notes on Anatolian Ossetic’, Acta Orientalia 33 (1971), pp. 145–67. Totoev, Mikhail, ‘K voprosu o pereselenii osetin v Turtsiyu’, Izvestiya Severo-­ Osetinskogo nauchno-­issledovatel’ckogo instituta 13: 1 (Dzaudzhikau: Gosizdat SO ASSR, 1948), pp. 24–46. Turgay, Üner, ‘Circassian Immigration into the Ottoman Empire, 1856–78’, in W. B. Hallaq and D. P. Little (eds), Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams (Leiden: Brill, 1991), pp. 193–217. Ünal, Muhittin, Kurtuluş Savaşında Çerkeslerin Rolü (İstanbul: Cem Yayınevi, 1996). Yıldırım, Remzi, ‘Biz Olduğumuz, Bir Olduğumuz Müddetçe Güçlüyüz: Alan Kültür ve Yardım Vakfı’, Jıneps Gazetesi 14 (1 January 2010). Zorlu, Mesut, ‘Poyrazlı Köyü’, Nart 5 (1998), pp. 50–1.

4 The Italians of Egypt: Return to Diaspora Anthony Gorman

F

rom the beginning of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century Italians constituted one of the prominent resident foreign communities of Egypt. Attracted by the economic opportunities and the political safe haven that the country offered, their presence was part of a broader movement of migration that included other Mediterranean peoples, Greeks, Maltese, Cypriots, Jews and Levantines, facilitated by the modernising policies of Egyptian rulers and the expansion of European influence in the Middle East. Over time the Italians of Egypt would become a well-­established if heterogeneous community, the nationals of a European state but sustained by a rich local associational life that developed its own particular identity. Often cast as a colony, and therefore implicitly an extension of Italian state power and influence, this chapter argues that the Italians of Egypt are better conceived within a diasporic framework that recognises both their attachment to an Italian homeland but also their locally rooted character that was framed by local community associations, institutions and informal practices. In the period after 1945 under the impact of significant political and economic changes in Egypt much of this community departed, some to ‘return’ to their titular homeland, others to resettle elsewhere in the world. In this reconfiguration, what had been an element of the Italian diaspora in Egypt now became a new diaspora of Egyptian Italians scattered globally that sought to maintain its collective sense of identity and keep alive the memories of life in Egypt.1 138

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 139 The Italian Diaspora The long record of movement of Italians that stretches back to the medieval period and beyond guarantees them a well-­established place in the literature of migration. This is particularly so in respect of the last century and a half when Italians migrated in large numbers to New World countries, such as the United States, Argentina and Australia, as well as within Europe where labour needs particularly after the Second World War encouraged migration. The character of this international movement, however, has been much contested in the scholarly literature. In his typology of diasporas, Cohen classified the Italians as forming a labour diaspora, prompted by the need to seek economic prosperity beyond the limited opportunities of the Italian homeland.2 Stressing the complexity of the factors that prompted the waves of Italian migration in the modern period, Gabaccia’s more extended discussion proposed not one but a plurality of Italian diasporas, although with significant qualification, given the local or regional character of attachment to the homeland and the widespread Italian contempt held for the Italian state.3 Indeed, ultimately she suggests it was ‘a diaspora that never was’.4 Luconi goes further and rejects the notion of diaspora, arguing that the term is not justified because the broad pattern of Italian migration has been motivated by many different reasons, has not been routinely characterised by trauma and has nurtured more regional, localistic and family oriented communities than national ones.5 By contrast, Mark Choate’s study employs the concept of ‘emigrant nation’ and focuses on the relationship of the Italian state with Italians abroad. Noting that the term ‘diaspora’ was not itself embraced by Italian governments, since it had connotations of ‘defeat and decline’, he explores how Italian administrations have sought to cultivate their nationals abroad as an ‘expatriate network’ and nurtured the idea of the ‘global nation’.6 In the more specific scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa, the Italians have most often been cast in a colonial framework, although this has been presented in different ways. Early works highlighted the contributions of individual Italians in public service, economic life and cultural production in Egypt and presented accounts of their considerable achievements, usually cast in the idiom of the civilising mission.7 Another related trend,

140  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t of which Angelo Sammarco was a prime early exponent, is characterised by its focus on diplomatic history and statecraft as practised by Egyptian and European politicians and rulers, stressing the involvement of Italy and other European states in the modernisation process that Egypt underwent during the nineteenth century.8 Others examined the fortunes of the Italians of Egypt through the changing bilateral relations between Italy and Egypt, particularly the case after the coming to power of the Fascists in 1922, the subsequent Italian imperial adventures in Libya and Ethiopia, and the momentum leading towards the Second World War.9 By contrast, yet other scholars, and particularly Egyptians, have focused less on the specific role of the Italians and stressed the part played by resident foreigners more generally as a comprador bourgeoisie and instrument of the economic domination of Egypt presided over by the British occupation.10 Whether couched in positive or negative terms, in much of this scholarship the Italian communities have principally been regarded as colonisers, most obviously in the territory of the future Libya, or the beneficiaries of colonial rule, as in the French territories of Tunisia and Algeria, and under British rule in Egypt. Yet, while these works offer important insights into the dynamics of Egyptian Italian life, they rest on a fixed, limited and deterministic notion of the Italian community and its relationship with the state that overlooks the long history of Italian communities in the Middle East that predates the colonial period and makes broad assumptions about their particular character and dynamics. In this respect, the more recent work of Marta Petricioli, Oltre il Mito, L’Egitto degli Italiani (1917–1947), is a welcome addition to the literature.11 While limited notionally to only three decades of the life of a community active in Egypt for well over a century, Petricioli nevertheless seeks to map the Italian community across a number of fields, such as society, the economy, cultural and political life. In this way, while certainly recognising the important role played by the Italian state, she provides a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the Italian presence more rooted in its Egyptian context. This chapter seeks to marry the different strands of this literature, bringing together the relationship of the community to the Italian homeland, the role of the Italian state, the composition and dynamics of local community life and its attachment to Egypt, made even more apparent in some ways after the departure from it. Viewing Italians neither simply as a foreign colony

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 141 sustained by the protection of the imperial order nor a wholly integrated part of Egyptian society, it contends that the Italians of Egypt are best conceptualised as a diasporic community influenced and at times directly subject to the authority of the Italian state but also one with its own internal dynamics and complexities that expressed a genuine rootedness to the Egyptian context. Historical Background A notable historical presence in the Mediterranean, Italians became a significant local community in Egypt only from the beginning of the nineteenth century. This was the result of two separate, although not mutually exclusive, factors. First, Egypt served as an important safe haven for Italian political exiles and fugitives, created by the campaigns for Italian unification and the subsequent domestic struggle after independence over the nature of the new Italian state and society. This was particularly so in the years after 1815, in the wake of the upheavals of 1848 and during the repression of political radicalism after 1871 when Egypt offered a convenient place of refuge for fleeing militants.12 The other more significant factor was economic opportunity. The economic policies of Muhammad ‘Ali, ruler of Egypt (r. 1805–48), and of his successors, particularly Isma‘il (r. 1863–79), required great numbers of skilled and unskilled workers from both home and abroad to work on large infrastructure projects, such as the expansion of the irrigation system, the construction of a new rail network and most famously the construction of the Suez Canal. Given the poor economic prospects of Italy, Egypt offered an obvious opportunity to underemployed Italian labour. In time, Italian artisans and craftsmen would earn a particular reputation for their skills in masonry and were key players in the extensive building programme of both public and private works in Egyptian cities. Under the impetus of these factors, the Italian population of Egypt grew steadily during the nineteenth century from an estimated 6,000 in 1820 to almost 35,000 in 1907.13 Numbers continued to increase, reaching a peak in the early 1930s of just over 50,000.14 Probably already in decline by the outbreak of the Second World War, the Italian population would fall in the immediate post-­war years as Egypt experienced a period of political and economic instability. By 1947 it stood at just under 30,000 before the mass departures of the 1950s and 1960s.15

142  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Predominantly an urban population, with more than 80 per cent of the total population living in the two main cities of Cairo and Alexandria, Egyptian Italians were not the majority in any particular neighbourhood – there was never a ‘Little Italy’ in Cairo or Alexandria – but they did tend to coalesce around a limited number of urban areas. In Cairo they favoured Bab al-­Shari‘a, Bulaq, Shubra, ‘Abdin and Azbakiyya; in Alexandria, they populated Attarin, Muharram Bey and al-­ Labban in considerable numbers. These were relatively stable neighbourhoods, and although there were some itinerant Italian workers, generally speaking this was a community that settled rather than sojourned in Egypt. Already in 1907 almost half of Italian nationals in Egypt were born outside of Italy, which suggests that an increasing proportion were born in Egypt and the local community was effectively reproducing itself. 16 Outside of the two main cities, Italians also lived in the Suez Canal zone with much smaller communities found in the Delta and fewer communities of even smaller numbers in Upper Egypt. The Italian Diaspora of Egypt The record of the Italian presence in Egypt poses various questions as to how that presence should best be defined and characterised. In the dominant national narrative Italians have usually been conceived in terms of their legal status, that is, as foreign nationals, something that formally only began with the establishment of the Italian state in 1861 even if the earlier states of the Italian peninsula afforded them similar standing. As such they enjoyed the legal privileges of the Capitulations, which meant that they were subject to Italian and not Egyptian law, and in particular cases, the authority of the Mixed Courts, as well as being exempt from certain local taxes and customs duties. In this sense, the local Italian consulate and its officers occupied an important place in the regulation of the affairs of the community, particularly in matters of personal status and in negotiating and implementing the agreements made between the Egyptian and Italian states. However, such a legal perspective captures only a limited aspect of the Egyptian Italian experience and in some sense is misleading. The advantages offered by the Capitulations and the trajectory of late Italian imperialism meant that not all Italian nationals were ethnic Italians, nor were all ethnic Italians holders

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 143 of Italian n ­ ationality.17 Conversely, Italian nationality was held by some who were not ethnic Italians.18 A more genuine and contextual understanding of the Egyptian Italian community is better reflected in examining the wide spectrum of its diverse associational life. There was no single institutional Italian body that claimed to represent the whole of the local community (unlike the rhetorical claims of the Egyptian Greek Koinotites),19 but rather a large number of associations, clubs and other organisations in Cairo, Alexandria and the Canal that manifested different aspects of Italian social, economic, cultural and political life in Egypt. By virtue of their claims to being Italian (usually reflected in the title), their use of Italian language and terms of reference, these bodies nurtured a sense of community identity and sought to project a collective activity even if at times they could be sites of contestation within the broader Egyptian Italian community itself. These associations coalesced around different interests and configurations within Egyptian Italian society, reflecting its diverse political, cultural and social dimensions. Occupational status provided one important axis of orientation. The substantial presence of Italian workers in Egypt was evident in the early establishment of the Italian Workers Society (Società Operaia Italiana) in Alexandria during the 1860s, the first in a series of workers’ organisations, among which were later the Fratellanza Artigiana Italiana in Alexandria (est. 1881) and the Circolo Operaio Italiano in Cairo (active in 1896). In addition to being a place for working men to meet, such bodies no doubt served a number of other purposes: venues for social meetings, cultural performances and, on occasion, political activities. By contrast, Italian businessmen and merchants established the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Alexandria in 1884, the oldest of a number of foreign Chambers of Commerce in Egypt (a similar body would later be set up in Cairo in 1928), that provided a framework for discussing, negotiating and promoting commercial interest and no doubt facilitating helpful social and business contacts.20 Social welfare concerns served another important focus of communal activities. A series of mutual aid societies (Associazione italiane di mutuo soccorso) were established in Alexandria, Cairo and the Canal cities, as well as various other benevolent societies, such as the Società italiana del Risorgimento in Alexandria (est. 1905), which provided social support and

144  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t a framework for social activities.21 An extensive network of Italian masonic lodges, operating principally in Alexandria but also in Cairo, Suez and the Delta, provided social connections for members to support one another within local communities and offer a ready means of liaising with other Italian lodges in Egypt and elsewhere.22 Other associations were dedicated to aspects of Italian arts and culture, such as promoting the Italian language, literary and musical activities.23 While these associations emphasised social aspects of the local community or were expressions of the vitality of Italian culture, other organisations were founded on an explicit commitment of service to the Italian state. The Italian Society of the Veterans of the Patriotic Campaigns (Società italiana dei reduci dalle patrie battaglie) established in Cairo at the end of the nineteenth century testified to the contribution of those who had served the homeland during wartime. Another body, the Association for the Injured and Disabled War Veterans (Associazione mutilati e invalidi di guerra) set up in Cairo and Alexandria after the First World War was similarly dedicated to the interests of those who had served their country during that conflict.24 Other associations, clubs and especially scouting bodies, provided an environment where youth were inculcated with the values of Italian civilisation (italianità) and where duty to country could be propagated and nurtured. During the 1920s the Giovani esploratori italiani, the Associazione scout cattolici italiani for boys and the Associazione guide italiane for girls played a similar role. With the coming to power of Mussolini, the Italian state sought much more explicitly and with greater energy to project its influence over the Italian communities of Egypt. Fascist organisations became engines to promote this new sense of Italian identity while the masonic lodges were abolished or withered.25 Education provided another important arena where community identity could be shaped and Italian national values and cultural traditions inculcated. The first Italian schools were actually established by religious orders and the first secular school was set up by the masonic lodges in 1858. It was not until 1889 that the first Italian state schools were established by the Crispi government but these would in time form part of a substantial network of elementary, secondary, evening and technical schools, numbering sixty-­four in all by the mid-­1930s.26 The prominence of the school system, whether private or state, was testimony to the value given to Italian education within

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 145 the community. Indeed, Egyptian Italians were a notably literate population even when compared to other foreign resident communities in Egypt. In the 1917 census just over two-­thirds of Italians were accounted as being able to read and write. By 1927 this had increased to more than 80 per cent and thereafter in the period up to 1952 Italian literacy compared favourably and was at times superior to rates for British and French nationals, particularly notable given the wider socio-­economic range of the Italian community.27 This educational network operated as a forum in which the Italian language and culture, or more broadly italianità, was constructed, promoted and disseminated.28 The Dante Alighieri societies, located in Italian consulates and vice-­consulates, served a similar purpose.29 When required, and this was particularly the case during the 1920s and 1930s, the Italian Government could use these channels to propagandise their policies and ideological inclinations, although not always with great success. Italian identity and sense of community was also nurtured by the local Italian language press, which enjoyed a long and vibrant history in Egypt. First launched in Alexandria in 1845 with the appearance of Lo Spettatore Egiziano, over the course of the next century a significant number of newspapers and periodicals were published and made available for the consumption of an Italian-­reading public.30 During the nineteenth century this profusion in print was assisted by the status that Italian enjoyed as the language of international diplomacy and business, and indeed as a lingua franca in Egypt and beyond. As one observer noted in 1863, ‘The Italian language is, after Arabic, the most generalised in Egypt. All Levantines and Greeks speak it well enough and the Arabs that deal frequently or trade with Europeans speak broken Italian by necessity.’31 The prestige of the language was also reinforced by the educational choices of some of the Egyptian social elites, not least members of the ruling dynasty, such as the young Ahmed Fu’ad (later King Fu’ad), who received some of his education in Italy. Over the last quarter of the nineteenth century Italian would cede ground increasingly to French and later to English, but nevertheless mainstream Italian language newspapers, such as il Messagero Egiziano (est. 1876), L’Imparziale (est. 1892) and, following the merger of these two in 1930, il Giornale d’Oriente, served as important sources of local and international news and comment, and a common point of orientation for the affairs of the Egyptian Italian community. The

146  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t importance of the role played by the local Italian press was well recognised by Italian governments, which provided regular subventions to favoured titles to carry official notices as well as serve as an instrument of influence when necessary to promote a particular political line.32 Alternatively, the Italian authorities might request the deportation by the Egyptian authorities of a troublesome editor or journalist, as happened with Max de Collalto.33 This aggregation of elements – nationality, associational life, a separate education system, a vibrant Italian language press and other informal practices besides – served as basic supports for the Italians of Egypt, boundary markers that sustained a distinctive sense of local community and shared language, interests and culture. They also provided a means by which connections were maintained not only with the Italian homeland but also the Italian diaspora elsewhere. Yet this should not convey a picture of an Italian community of Egypt at one with itself or uniform in its attitudes toward the Italian state. While many associations invoked the name Italian they did not always engender a common community purpose but could instead serve as a forum for internal conflicts that reflected class visions, different social networks and varying commitments of loyalty to the formal Italian state within the broader community. Nor was the community insulated from the rest of society. There were other links of sociability and organisational purpose, not mediated through an Italian idiom and sometimes contrary to it, such as anarchist groups, labour unions, business connections and religious associations, which challenged the concept of a single Italian community. Differences, clashes and conflicts were a feature of community life and a manifestation of both the heterogeneous character of the Italian population of Egypt and the different impact that economic and social factors had on social classes in the country. These differences within the community were perhaps at their most acrimonious in politics, a phenomenon itself not surprising given that some Italians had settled in Egypt to escape state repression in Italy. Italian consular reports and correspondence from the 1860s onwards show that local officers spent considerable energy monitoring the activities of the local community and running surveillance operations on anyone who might be deemed potentially subversive. One such report in 1870 classified the Italian population as composed in part of a large patriotic element made up of merchants,

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 147 i­ndustrialists, workers from Northern Italy and discharged soldiers as well as another element of ‘adventurers . . . evildoers of all grades and qualities’.34 Thirty years later the Italian consul in Cairo bewailed the fact that respectable Italian society was now outnumbered by idlers, transients and the criminal element.35 Such categorisations were clearly phrased in prejudicial language, but they point to considerable social, political and economic differences within the Italian community. Along with reliable members of the established order – industrialists, merchants and bankers or the more modest bourgeoisie – were radical critics of the capitalist system and bourgeois democracy. This was particularly the case before the First World War when Italians were very active in the local anarchist movement, industrial militancy and labour associations as well as in anti-­clerical and secularist circles.36 In the widespread protest against continued British occupation of Egypt, known as the 1919 Revolution, various responses came from Italians across the community. Some sought the prolongation of the colonial order guaranteed by the British Government while others embraced syndicalism and communism as the new radical force by which to tackle exploitation of the working class.37 Despite or perhaps because of these significant political differences, the Italian state exercised considerable authority, patronage and censure within the local community. Favoured individuals secured concessions and support; others deemed undesirable were harassed or expelled. This determination of the Italian Government to exercise its influence over the community was a function of the continuing links between home and homeland just as it revealed its limitations. By 1926 local fascist organisations had begun to dominate community affairs and the Italian Government pursued its political programme through the education system.38 The contrast between metropolitan and local Italian interest was particularly acute with the passing of the anti-­Semitic Italian race laws by the Mussolini government in 1938. These measures directly targeted the prosperous Italian Jewish community in Egypt who were the backbone of local Italian society and many of the community welfare societies.39 The adverse impact of Italian foreign policies on the local community in Egypt was also evident. Although not initially a colonial power, Italy first demonstrated its own imperial pretensions with its invasion of Libya in 1911, an adventure that continued and was extended to Abyssinia

148  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t in the 1930s. The internment of all Italian men as enemy aliens in camps in Egypt during the Second World War showed that whatever political differences there were within the local Italian community, the logic of international politics collapsed complex identities into a single national category. The conflict and tension between homeland and community in Egypt was not restricted to politics but was also at work in the social and cultural spheres. The attempts of the Italian state to exercise its influence through the education system brought mixed results. When Rome sought to promote its fascist programme through the schools it provoked some local protest. There were also further deleterious consequences here, too, with the promulgation of the anti-­Semitic laws.40 Similarly, while the Italian press of Egypt served as an important community space that nurtured a sense of national identity, some publications, less mainstream and more specific in their interests and orientation, projected other political or social values. A series of anarchist newspapers, for example, sought explicitly to challenge the values and priority of Italian national identity and promoted an internationalist discourse in the decade and a half before the First World War.41 Yet other newspapers reflected their cosmopolitan context and sought to attract a broader audience beyond the Italophone by appearing in more than one language, such as La Fama (Italian, Greek, Arabic), Il Convito (Italian and Arabic) (1904) and La Tribuna Libera (French and Italian) (1901). The Italians of Egypt also expressed their individuality in the range of relationships they enjoyed with the wider Egyptian host society. This varied considerably, usually according to social status. At the level of the upper bourgeoisie, Italian magnates and industrialists enjoyed close relations with their counterparts in other communities. Some Italians worked in government, notably in the police and education systems, and interacted in such capacities with others in society. At a more everyday level of society, Italians, like Greeks, Armenians and Maltese, generally lived in popular quarters and interacted with Egyptians and other local foreigners in leisure, shared entertainment space, employment and in matters of food and drink. This familiarity and interaction manifested itself in positive and negative ways: cooperation and collaboration between workers in the labour movement occurred alongside cases of violent incidents in drinking establishments.

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 149

Figure 4.1  Shop of Mr Sestino Rugians, Alexandria, Egypt, 1928. (Published with kind permission of the AAHA)

Nevertheless, the links of the Egyptian Italian community with the Italian state were sustained by its legal status and the implications arising from that formal attachment were further nurtured by a broad array of associational and informal networks that maintained social, cultural and personal links with the homeland. Yet, at the same time, these different aspects of community life were expressed in ways that engaged with pluralist, cosmopolitan society in Egypt, which was not only a general characteristic of Egyptian society of the time but also a distinctive feature of the Italian community itself. Italian Departure, Egyptian Diaspora In the decade and a half after the end of the Second World War, Egypt experienced a period of great political, social and economic change. The calls of Egyptian nationalists for the evacuation of British forces, stymied by the British Government during the interwar period, then put on hold because of the exigencies of the Second World War, were now renewed with greater force after the cessation of hostilities. The increasingly serious economic problems of the country demanded urgent solutions from the Egyptian Government. The defeat in Palestine in 1948 further exacerbated an atmosphere of instability and political impotence of the governing class. With the coming to power

150  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t of the military in July 1952 a revolutionary rhetoric seemed to offer solutions to chronic national problems. In this atmosphere of national turbulence, the question of the future of the resident foreign communities, not only Italians but Greeks, Armenians, Jews and others, already the subject of public discussion and community anxiety, came to the fore. Over the next decade many members of these communities would leave Egypt. Some, such as those who held British and French nationality, were dramatically expelled from the country in 1956, when the Suez crisis branded them overnight as enemy aliens. Italians were never expelled from Egypt en masse but, like the Greeks and Armenians, left in a more gradual process over an extended period for a variety of reasons. Changes in Egyptian economic policy, particularly the wave of nationalisations in the late 1950s, were inimical to private business, which was the basis of the livelihood for many. In addition, the rising rhetoric and fortunes of Arab nationalism had created an atmosphere perceived by some as unsympathetic, even threatening, in a formerly tolerant cosmopolitan society while the hostilities, real and potential, with Israel seemed to presage continuing instability in the region. However this departure may be explained, during these years the great majority of the Italian population dispersed in different directions: some ‘repatriated’ to Italy; others migrated to the United States, Australia and elsewhere. 42 Remembering Egypt as Home: The Personal and the Collective This mass departure of Italians from Egypt, characterised by some of its participants as a ‘flight’ (esodo), was for many an event that provoked feelings of loss, even trauma, certainly dislocation. In this sense it represents the generation of a new, Egyptian diaspora, which for those who resettled in Italy was made even more difficult by feelings of alienation in their homeland. Among many so displaced it has generated a strong wish not to return to Egypt but to maintain a collective sense of identity through social connections, the preservation of the historical memory of time in Egypt and, for some, diaspora tourism. The manifestation of this diaspora community has involved individuals, the formation of organisations, and the interests of government. On an individual level the representation of this lost Egyptian Italian life has been expressed in memoirs, biographies and historical novels.43 Among

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 151 many, the autobiography of Enrico Pea, celebrated writer and anarchist, provides a fascinating insight into the period before the First World War.44 Biography has served a similar purpose. The story of Bruno Buccetti, a young Italian growing up in Cairo during the 1940s and 1950s, relates his personal experiences and engagement with the culture, traditions and customs of Egypt before he departed the country.45 The works of Fausta Cialente, who lived in Alexandria during the interwar period, particularly in the novel Ballata Levantina (English translation, The Levantines) offers another vivid representation of the Italian community of Egypt.46 The establishment of Egyptian Italian associations after the departure from Egypt offers a more significant collective manifestation of diasporic identity. First formed during the 1950s in a number of Italian cities, these organisations were set up in various measure to represent the interests of those who had left Egypt, to provide a social and cultural network for its members informed by the common experience of life there and to serve as a vehicle through which to maintain the memory of that shared past. Some of these bodies defined their membership explicitly in terms of their Italian character, while others framed them around a particular locality, such as former residents of a city, most notably Alexandria, but each sought in some way to maintain the memory of a lost home. Although notionally based in one place, these organisations often have locally based sections located around the world. Information, newsletters and bulletins were originally distributed in hard copy but more recently much material has been made available on official websites, which sustains the sense of diasporic community in both real and virtual space. Prominent among these bodies is the Associazione nazionale pro italiani Egitto (ANPIE) (The National Association for Italians of Egypt) located in Rome. Established in 1970, following the union of a number of earlier associations set up in the 1950s, ANPIE sought a membership of Italians born or long resident in Egypt ‘who have left the country in the wake of political and military events that occurred there in the last century’.47 The allusion to a forced departure, with its undertone of trauma, is captured in the original name of the body, Associazione nazionale profughi italiani d’Egitto (National Association of Italian Refugees of Egypt), which makes more explicit a sense of expulsion and dispersion. Since 1971 ANPIE has published a monthly bulletin, Bollettino degli italiani d’Egitto, which provides news and i­nformation

152  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t to its readership, and currently runs an extensive website set up in 2006 that publicises its activities and provides access to various books and publications relating to the history of Italian life in Egypt. The Associazione italiani d’Egitto (AIDE) is another more recently formed society founded in Rome in 2001 that has also been notable for its commitment to perpetuating the historical memory of Italian life in Egypt.48 As its constitution states, the main purpose of AIDE is the promotion of culture and art in general and, in particular, the collection, treatment and valorisation of activities carried out by the Italians of Egypt [. . .] fostering all action intended to promote and disseminate the historical, cultural and artistic patrimony of the Italian community accumulated over the years in the cosmopolitan reality of Egypt.49

In pursuit of this, AIDE organised a series of conferences soon after its formation that celebrated aspects of Italian life in Egypt. The first of these, titled ‘L’eredità culturale della presenza degli Italiani in Egitto’ (‘The cultural inheritance of the presence of the Italians in Egypt’), was held in Rome in December 2003 at the Accademia d’Egitto, an institution long associated with fostering cultural relations between Egypt and Italy. The programme featured contributions by scholars, who presented academic papers on the theme of the conference, and by individual Egyptian Italians, who spoke of their personal memories of life in Egypt. Two themes were emphasised: the friendly relations between the two countries and the historical memory of Egyptian Italian life. Dr Roberto Ruberti, the son of Italian teachers, concluded proceedings with his own personal recollections of being a teenager growing up in Egypt. Following the success of this inaugural event, AIDE staged two further conferences in successive years. The 2004 conference was dedicated to the subject of Italian painters in Egypt and the fascination that Egypt has exercised on them, particularly the deep bond that they have been able to create and maintain with students and painters from the whole of the cosmopolitan Community of Egypt from that time and to bring to mind the many other Italian artists who have experienced the charm of that bright land of the East.50

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 153 A third conference, ‘Italian architects of Egypt – A multicultural dialogue’ (‘Architetti Italiani d’Egitto – Un dialogo multiculturale’), continued in the same vein. The Italian Community has been able to contribute to the development of modern Egypt in a unique climate of peaceful coexistence [that] persisted for more than a hundred years. The wonderful results have been achieved and maintained in a multicultural cosmopolitan milieu, particularly effervescent and charming. To the charm and hospitality of the Egyptians, Italians responded with values, behaviours and talents, polite and refined. 51

The theme of Italian architecture in Egypt, and the contribution of noted Italian architects, such as Pietro Avoscani, architect of the Cairo Opera House, would become a favoured theme among scholars.52 Supported by a photographic exhibition, the Italian architectural heritage in Egypt had the advantage of being a physical manifestation of the past still significantly present in contemporary Egypt even if most Italians had left the country.53 To underline the long Italian–Egyptian relationship, the conference concluded with a performance on piano of the triumphal march from Verdi’s Aida, famously commissioned although not performed for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The AIDE conferences attracted audiences composed of many Italians and their families who had lived in Egypt for whom the experience was not only an educational one but one that offered the potential of engaging with their own personal memories, feelings of identity and family traditions. However, there were other interests present as well. The programme was sponsored by the Ministry for Italians in the World (Ministero per gli italiani nel mondo) and the Egyptian Embassy in Rome and included a formal role for its officers.54 The Minister, Mirko Tremaglia, opened the proceedings and the Egyptian ambassador to Italy, Dr Hilmi Budayr, attended each of the three occasions. The dominant tone was one of harmony and friendly ­relations between the two countries. As the report noted, His Excellency Ambassador Hilmi Budayr emphasised the friendship and the close ties between the two countries, established and maintained over time and anchored in common interests but also in values ​and deep roots in addition to cooperation in mutual respect supported by culture and human relations.55

154  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t The Association itself stressed this positive relationship and the advantages that official sponsorship offered. The close ties of the past between the two communities and the two countries continue today in different forms. The prestigious subject matter of the conference and the organised photographic exhibition have enabled our association to obtain two substantial sponsorships of significant relevance to our objectives by the Ministry of Italians in the World (Minister Tremaglia) and the Ambassador of the Republic of Egypt to Italy, His Excellency Hilmi Budayr.56

In one of the presentations at the first AIDE conference the themes of harmonious relations between Italy and Egypt and the personal dimension of Italian life in Egypt came happily together when General of the Air Force Dante Ruis related to the audience how he had returned to Egypt, the country of his birth, as a military attaché in Cairo in 1974 and proudly recalled his meeting with another pilot, Husni Mubarak, a future president of Egypt.57 Given the political and financial backing of these conferences, it is not surprising that Italian life in Egypt and its notable personalities, whether architects, painters, bankers, captains of industry or industrious artisans, were cast in a positive light.58 There is little trace here of the record of the oppositional political activities, the anarchist and labour agitation, bitter intercommunal struggles and indeed criminal life that was also a significant element of Italian life in Egypt and featured in the sensationalist local press and anxious consular reports. The divisions created by the fascist policies of the Italian state during the second half of the 1930s between Jewish and non-­Jewish elements of the community, or the strong opposition in Egypt provoked by Italian imperial adventures, are given little acknowledgement. This is a closely managed picture of a benign Italian state. While the official involvement of the Italian and Egyptian governments no doubt played a role in determining the tone of the conferences, another aspect of AIDE’s activities had the potential, at least in part, to complement if not challenge an overrosy view of Egyptian Italian life. In pursuit of its aim to preserve a historical record of life in Egypt, AIDE had issued an appeal to Egyptian Italians to record personal memories. The Association made clear that the task called for some urgency: ‘It is vital that such information be

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 155 collected without further delay, more than forty years since the mass exodus from a country, in which the tyranny of time threatens the total loss of ­historical memory.’59 Accordingly, those who had departed and even those still living in Egypt were invited to submit text concerning their life in Egypt and their experiences after having left the country that would be posted on the organisation’s website. The appeal has attracted a significant number of contributions that have produced a fascinating and arguably more nuanced reading of Italian Egyptian life than that presented in the conference reports. The material posted ranges from sober historical data relating to the late nineteenth century to recent testimonials, some simply detailing a record of individual achievement post-­departure and others offering more complex personal memories, experiences and feelings. The latter especially have provided some fascinating accounts of the discomforting experience regarding their ‘return’ to Italy and the sentiments of disorientation and loss and the feelings of belonging that they continue to feel towards Egypt. Bianca Esposito, who left Egypt as a child of eight years, writes of her experience living in Italy. I wanted to find (friends of AIDE, etc) [that is, Egyptian Italians] in the years when I kept asking myself why do I, an Italian in Italy, feel like a fish out of water? What’s wrong with me? [. . . ] I feel perfectly at ease everywhere abroad, and yet every time the plane lands and I see the uniforms of our police officers and the first signs in Italian, invariably I get a sinking heart: this is my country. I am proud to be Italian but I would not have wanted to be born in a place other than in Egypt.60

Marilse Cardullo writes movingly of her father, Nicola, who had been born in Alexandria in 1910 and who left Egypt very reluctantly with his family in 1957 to settle in Italy. Of his later years she notes: Sunday morning was a return to the past (a good part of his life), with his friends and memories, a little playful conversation in Arabic that dispelled the heaviness of life in Milan, for him, more than anything else to work, the novelty of the children growing up, their studies, someone getting married, the Italians of Egypt in Rome who made their voice heard and also used to write for the bulletin . . .61

156  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t The account of Joe Carbone offers a more complex picture of feelings towards Egypt. Born in Alexandria in 1946 to Italian parents who had themselves been born in the city, Carbone spent his early years in the Sidi Gabir neighbourhood. As Italians began to leave Egypt after the Second World War, his own parents made the decision to move in 1951. While his father’s family had departed to Italy some time before, his own family chose to follow his mother’s family and migrated to Australia. Since that time, apart from a month visiting relatives in 1966, Carbone did not return to Egypt until 2005. Of this latter experience, he writes: For me, returning to Alexandria was an emotional journey of loss and longing but also one of putting the past to rest and gaining new experiences and memories. One major motivation to travel to Egypt was to see what I had not experienced previously, that being the city of Cairo and the antiquities along the Nile. Sadly, I devoted only two nights and the best of three days to Alexandria in order to revisit my birthplace and search out my family history, yet it will remain a highlight for as long as I have the capacity for memory. These new, fresh memories are of the smells, sights and sounds of the city where I spent my first five years of life. I have seen the altar where my parents stood trembling as they were pronounced man and wife and the font where they later held me as I was baptized. I have seen the gravesite of the Aunt and Uncle who loved me as a son and my grandparents came alive again in the archival record of their marriage. I have walked happily down narrow lanes and streets where my parents and relatives once strolled as children and teenagers and later were too afraid to walk due to fear of delinquent Arabs. I have seen the Mediterranean lap against the skirt of the city, watched the sun set behind tall minarets and eaten the best falafel ever tasted at Mohamed Ahmed’s restaurant. I left Alexandria feeling complete and thinking it would not matter if I never returned. Three years later I am once again longing to return.62

Another former Italian resident of Egypt who settled in Rome, Ruggero Ruggeri, stressed both the common experience that the Italians of Egypt shared with one another but also the link, ‘the umbilical cord’ they had with Egypt itself:

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 157 With this brief and schematic exposure I intend to express a desire to keep alive the link with other Italians of Egypt who, like me, feel the umbilical cord with that land alive. I feel mysteriously drawn to that country and to the infinite thirst of knowledge of facts and events, spiced with humour, sadness, nostalgia, joy, but also of small stories like what happened at school and at work. The activities carried out by those who preceded me in that country, their management of the economy, coexistence and social organisation, as well as everyday life, are of prime importance and a source of pride for all those who have lived in that great country. [. . .]   I will always jealously guard in my mind and in my heart the moments of life that I did not know but guessed, knowing that I will never live as then, with the scent of the sea, the noise of people in the streets, with a smile of the Egyptians, with their way of expressing themselves, with the scents of the market of fruit, spices and fish, with the starry sky of night, with the sun’s heat. This is part of my being an Italian in Egypt ‘after exodus (esodo)’. 63

These accounts offer very personalised insights and provide fascinating testimonies into Italian life in Egypt, less mediated by the often celebratory discourse of harmonious relations between Italy and Egypt intoned by politicians and diplomats. Rather they convey a more individual expression of the character of a lost cultural milieu and the associated feelings of bereavement in being separated from it. While ANPIE and AIDE term themselves explicitly as associations for Egyptian Italians other organisations of former residents of Egypt have sought to construct their sense of historical communal identity around a sense of more specific locality. One body, the Associazione portsaidini nel mondo, brought together former inhabitants of Port Said with the publication of a quarterly newsletter, Noi di Port-­Said (We of Port Said), during the 1990s. Based in Rome it maintained a network of members living in Italy, Switzerland, France, the United States and Australia.64 More active and even more dispersed is the Amicale Alexandrie Hier et Aujourd’hui (AAHA) formed in 1993 by former inhabitants of Alexandria. Describing itself as a ‘cultural and recreational society’ and employing the motto ‘Dispersés, mais unis; unis, mais divers’ (‘Scattered but united; united but diverse’), the AAHA aims to propagate knowledge of the history of the city and draw

158  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t on its multicultural character to pursue a broader theme of international community. As its website notes, ‘By creating bridges between its members spread over all continents, it encourages the meeting and sharing of diverse cultures and traditions.’ Local sections of the AAHA have been formed internationally and operate as social networks in various cities of Western Europe (including Italy), the United States, Canada, Brazil, Israel and Australia.65 Its multi-­ethnic membership, which currently numbers more than 700 newsletter subscribers and a historical database of more than 5,000, is drawn from an even wider net of more than thirty countries in Europe, Africa, the Americas, Oceania and the Middle East itself.66 Employing three languages on its website (French, English and Italian), the AAHA actively nurtures a sense of collective identity among a widely dispersed group through its programme of social and cultural activities, the organisation of trips back to Egypt, and the celebration and reporting of meetings of association members. As well as these social activities, the AAHA has pursued an active commitment to publication. Since the mid-­1990s it has produced a biannual bulletin, Alexandrie Info, which carries regular features, such as reports on meetings of sections of the association internationally, often a historical article, a letters to the editor column, personal updates, obituaries and death notices, as well as a listing of publications on Alexandria that may have recently appeared. It also publishes a regular series of cahiers, with more than seventy having been issued (most recently in June 2014), which are usually short scholarly monographs and occasionally republications of older works originally published in Egypt.67 The association also maintains an active diaspora tourist programme with the organisation of regular group trips to Egypt, with pictures posted on its website, as well as reports on trips made by individual members.68 Such Egyptian Italian organisations, as ANPIE and AIDE, and those of former residents of Alexandria and Port Said are only part of a broader phenomenon of association and the maintenance of collective identity by former inhabitants of Egypt. Among the Greeks of Egypt, the Sindesmos Aiguptioton Ellinon (Association of Egyptian Greeks), established in Athens in the 1930s and itself an umbrella group for a number of smaller Egyptian Greek associations, stands out as the most prominent example.69 Similar bodies include the Association of Maltese Communities of Egypt, which was set up in England following the expulsion of British nationals in London in

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 159 1956,70 and at least two associations of Egyptian Jews. One of the latter, the International Association of Jews from Egypt, is based in Israel and highlights the ‘paradox of homecoming’, where the return to the homeland of one diaspora (namely the Jewish return to Palestine), has created another diaspora of former Egyptian residents.71 In different ways these organisations have sought to engage with social, cultural and historical programmes that mark an ongoing and enduring sense of diasporic community and connection with Egypt, and yet in a qualified sense. Indeed, with the exception of the AAHA, there is a certain irony that these bodies are framed around separate ethnic identities. Even as they celebrate a cosmopolitan past and the multiplicity of social interaction offered by a pluralist society and lament the loss of it, Italian identity (or Greek, Maltese and so on) is maintained as being central to the experience. In this sense, the internal social boundaries of cosmopolitan ­society continue to be reflected in the diasporised configuration of it. Bridging Diasporas Although the numbers of Italians still living in Egypt has drastically declined and even those of the diaspora with first-­hand experience of living in Egypt grows ever less, the interest in Italian life in Egypt history has recently been demonstrated with the appearance of a documentary. Released in 2011 ‘The Italians of Egypt’ (Italian title: Gli Italiani d’Egitto; Arabic title: Tulyan Misr) was produced and directed by Egyptian Sherif Fathy Salem and written by Salem and his wife, Ramona Di Marco. An eighty-­minute work produced in Italian and Arabic, it represents a celebration of the Italian presence in Egypt by bringing together the experience of individual Italians who left Egypt and those who continue to live there.72 The film opens with a historical overview of the Italian community of Egypt and its role in the development of Egypt during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the part played by individual Italians, such as architect Mario Rossi and cinematographer Alvise Orfanelli, as well as the pivotal role of education such as that provided at Don Bosco School in Alexandria. But more than this, it seeks to complement this with an important personal dimension by covering the lives of seven Italian individuals, some that had once lived in Egypt and others who continue to reside there. The sense of belonging to Egypt expressed by those interviewed and the connection and affection felt towards the country is evident but

160  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t so also is the strong sentiment of being Italian. Here the diasporic subject asserts attachment to home and homeland without sense of contradiction. As Francesco Monaco, a former Alexandrian, states, ‘When our mom passed away ten years ago in Rome, we thought it was natural to take her back home [the Catholic cemetery in Alexandria].’73 Since its release three years ago, the documentary has been screened publicly both in Egypt and Italy and most recently to an audience in Turin in May 2014.74 These occasions have attracted considerable audiences significantly (but not only) drawn from the Egyptian Italian diaspora itself. Its broadcast on the Al Jazeera documentary channel in its Arabic version in December 2013 extended the potential audience considerably and served as a virtual space in which to celebrate the memory of this diasporic community. Another documentary, ‘That Alexandria’, recently produced by the same production company, explores more broadly the cosmopolitan character of the city. 75 Conclusion The case of the Italians of Egypt presents two contrasting but connected examples of diasporic trajectories that straddle the colonial and postcolonial eras. In the first, the Italian community of Egypt, part of a larger global movement of Italians, maintained itself for over a century by affirming its Italian character in its social, cultural and political life. Neither a disciplined colony obedient to the will of the Italian state nor a fully integrated element of Egyptian society, this Italian presence mediated its national affiliation and its complex local engagement in diverse and creative ways that reflected its specific heterogeneous character. The second dispersal, the departure of much of this community from Egypt in the volatile atmosphere of the post-­war period, presents a different dynamic. Now resettled in many places around the world, this Egyptian diaspora has sustained its sense of collective identity forged in Egypt through the formation of associations, the maintenance of social links and a commitment to keeping alive the special historical legacy of Egyptian Italian life. While not symmetrical these two diasporas both engage with important elements of the diasporic state: the experience of displacement, changing notions of home and homeland, feelings of belonging and loss, underwritten by the complex even at times contradictory configuration of home, national

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 161 community and putative homeland. As John Judd (Giovanni Guidice), long departed from Egypt and now resident in Australia, explains in his statement on the AIDE website: At heart I am still an Italian from Egypt, a breed apart, we all stand out and in a very indefinable way we are unique.   When people wonder about my accent and ask me what I am, tongue in cheek I tend to say ‘In Egypt I was an “Italian Effranghi”, in Italy “an Arab”, in Belgium “un Italien . . .” and in Australia a “Bloody wog”.’ So what am I? I am a very proud Italian from Egypt!!!76

Notes   1. I use the term ‘Egyptian Italian’ here as an English variation of ‘Italiani d’Egitto’ (Italians of Egypt) with no implication of formal nationality.   2. Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas, An Introduction, 2nd edn (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), pp. 18, 61–2.  3. Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London and New York, NY: Routledge, [2000] 2003).  4. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, p. 13.  5. Stefano Luconi, ‘Italian Migrations and Diasporic Approaches: Historical Phenomenon and Scholarly Interpretations’, in Graziela Parati and Anthony Julian Tamburri (eds), The Cultures of Italian Migration, Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives (Madison, WI and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011), pp. 153–68.   6. Mark I. Choate, Emigrant Nation, The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 1–20, esp. pp. 5–6.   7. See, for example, Luigi A. Balboni, Gli italiani nella civiltà egiziana del secolo XIX, 3 vols (Alexandria: Società Dante Alighieri, 1906) and Edoardo Bigiavi, Noi e l’Egitto (Livorno: Arti Grafiche S. Belforte, 1911). Among notable individual Italians were cultural bureaucrats such as Onofrio Abbate (1824–1915), scholars such as Carlo Nallino (1872–1938); other intellectuals and men of literature, including Filippo Marinetti (1876–1944), founder of the Futurism movement, poet Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970); and industrialists such as Raphael Suarès (1846–1909).   8. See, for example, Angelo Sammarco, Il contributo degl’ italiani ai progressi scientifici e practici della medicina in Egitto sotto il regno di Mohammed Ali (Cairo:

162  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Lencioni, 1928); Gli Italiani in Egitto: Il contribuo italiano nella formazione dell’Egitto moderno (Alexandria: Angelo Procaccia, 1937); La Marina egiziana sotto Mohammed Ali, Il contributo italiano (Cairo: l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire pour la Société royale de géographie d’Égypte, 1931). Sammarco also wrote a number of other books on modern Egyptian history.   9. Giovanni Wian, Il Nuovo Egitto e l’Italia (Pescara: Arte della Stampa, 1956), and Romain H. Raniero and Luigi Serra, L’Italia e l’Egitto, dalla rivolta di Arabi pascià all’avento del fascismo (1882–1922) (Milan: Marzorati, 1991). 10. See, for example, Marius Deeb, ‘The Socioeconomic Role of the Local Foreign Minorities in Modern Egypt, 1805–1961’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 9: 1 (1978), pp. 11–22. 11. Marta Petricioli, Oltre il mito, L’Egitto degli italiani (1917–1947) (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2007). 12. Ersilio Michel, Esuli Italiani in Egitto (1815–1861) (Pisa: Domus Mazziniana, 1958). This is one of a number of works on Italian political exiles by Michel, among which are Esuli italiani in Algeria (1815–1861) (Bologna, 1935) and Esuli italiani in Tunisia (1815–1861) (Milano, 1941). 13. Ettore Rossi, ‘Gl’italiani in Egitto’, in Ettore Rossi et al. (eds), Egitto moderno (Roma: Edizioni Roma, 1939), p. 84 for the 1820 figure. The 1907 census figure is from Robert L. Tignor, State, Private Enterprise and Economic Change in Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), Table A.2. 14. The 1927 Egyptian census lists 52,462 Italian nationals (Tignor, State, Private Enterprise, Table A.2), although other sources claim that the population reached about 70,000 just before the Second World War; see Marta Petricioli, Oltre il mito, L’Egitto degli italiani (1917–1947) (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2007), p. 7. 15. Tignor, State, Private Enterprise, Table A.2. 16. Ministry of Finance, Egypt, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1907 (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1909), pp. 38–9. 17. See the comment of the Italian consul in Marta Petricioli, ‘Italian Schools in Egypt’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24: 2 (1997), p. 187. 18. The 1917 census described about 20 per cent of all Italian nationals as not of Italian race, principally made up of Egyptians (the largest group, 2,438), Greeks, Jews, Tripolitans, Erythreans and others; see Ministry of Finance, Egyptian Government, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1917, vol. II (Cairo: Government Press, 1921), p. 515. 19. See quote from Wian, Il Nuovo Egitto, p. 123. The Greek Communities (or Koinotites) were legal entities established and run by the local Greek plutocracy.

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 163 20. Petricioli, Oltre il mito, pp. 120, 123. 21. Ibid., pp. 47–54. 22. In the period 1861–1914, 32 such Italian lodges were established; see Petricioli, Oltre il mito, pp. 98–9, ns 16–17. 23. These included the Associazione italiana per la diffusioni della lingua (est. 1889), the Società filodrammatica italiana (est. 1894) and the quirkily named Società italiana del Risotto (est. 1893) in Cairo; and the Unione artistico musicale (est. 1921) and the Società artistico letteraria italiana in Alexandria (fl. 1917). For further see Petricioli, Oltre il mito, pp. 260–2. 24. Petricioli, Oltre il mito, pp. 45–6. 25. Ibid., pp. 321–57. 26. Ibid., pp. 215, 223. 27. See Tables A.1–5 in Tignor, State, Private Enterprise. 28. See Anouchka Lazarev, ‘Italians, Italianity and Fascism’, in Robert Ilbert and Ilios Yannakakis with Jacques Hassoun (eds), Alexandria 1860–1960: The Brief Life of a Cosmopolitan Community (Alexandria: Harpocrates, 1997), pp. 72–84. 29. Petricioli, Oltre il mito, p. 260. 30. The main sources on the Italian language press of Egypt are Umberto Rizzitano, ‘Un Secolo di giornalismo italiano in Egitto (1845–1945)’, Cahiers d’histoire égyptienne 8: 2/3 (avril 1956), pp. 129–54; Alessandra Marchi, ‘La presse d’expression italienne en Égypte. De 1845 à 1950’, RiMe 5 (dicembre 2010), pp. 91–125. 31. Corrado Masi, Italia e italiani nell’oriente vicino e lontano (1800–1935) (Bologna: Licinio Cappelli, 1936), p. 64. 32. See, for example, the correspondence relating to the daily L’Imparziale, Archivio Storico Ministero degli Affari Esteri (ASMAE), Ambasciata d’Italia in Egitto, b. 74, 1897–1902. 33. National Archives, FO 407/185, Further Correspondence resp. Egypt and Soudan, July–Dec 1919, no. 171, Sir M. Cheetham to Earl Curzon, 8 September 1919. 34. ASMAE, Moscati VI b. 1296, Cairo to Florence, 13 March 1870. 35. Marta Petricioli, ‘The Italians in Egypt (1936–1940)’, in Marta Petricioli and Antonio Varsori (eds), The Seas as Europe’s External Borders and Their Role in  Shaping a European Identity (London: Lothian Foundation Press, 1999), p. 123. 36. Anthony Gorman, ‘“Diverse in Race, Religion and Nationality . . . But

164  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t United in Aspirations of Civil Progress”, Anarchism in Egypt before the First World War’, in Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt (eds), Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Post-­Colonial World, 1880–1940 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 3–31. 37. For the former see ‘Italian Colony in Egypt’, The Times (29 July 1921), where petitioners called for formation of an international armed force to maintain the colonial order. 38. Petricioli, ‘The Italians in Egypt’, p. 125. 39. See Anouchka Lazarev, ‘Italians, Italianity and Fascism’, pp. 79–84; and the report of the Italian consul, pp. 86–8. 40. For a fuller discussion of this see Marta Petricioli, ‘Italian Schools in Egypt’, pp. 179–91. 41. Anthony Gorman, ‘The Anarchist Press in Egypt before the First World War’, in Anthony Gorman and Didier Monciaud (eds), Between Politics, Society and Culture: The Press in the Middle East before Independence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). 42. This sense of being refugees is also taken up in readers’ responses to Laura Cugusi, ‘New Documentary Explores Who’s Left of “The Italians of Egypt”’, Egypt Independent, www.egyptindependent.com/news/new-­documentary-­ explores-­who-­s-­left-­italians-­egypt (accessed 7 August 2014). 43. Mario Rispoli and Jean-­Charles Depaule, Italien du Caire, une autobiographie (Marseille: Parenthèses/MMSH, 2010). 44. Enrico Pea, Vita in Egitto (Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie, 1995). For another example, see Mario Rispoli and Jean-­Charles Depaule, Italien du Caire, une autobiographie (Marseille: Parenthèses/MMSH, 2010). 45. Fabio Guastamacchio, Il profugo italiano. La storia di un italiano d’Egitto, dalla nascita fino alla costituzione del comitato di quartiere (Editore Guastamacchio Fabio, 2012). 46. Fausta Cialente, The Levantines (Ballata Levantina), trans. Isabel Quigley (London: 1963). 47. Associazione nazionale pro italiani dall’Egitto (L’ANPIE), www.anpie.info/ online (accessed 6 August 2014). 48. Associazione italiani d’Egitto (AIDE onlus), www.aideinternational.it (accessed 6 August 2014). 49. See Scopo Sociale Art. 2 dello Statuto, AIDE onlus. 50. Conferenze, AIDE onlus. 51. Ibid.

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 165 52. See, for example, Cristina Pallini, ‘Italian Architects and Modern Egypt’, AKPIA@MIT, Studies in Architecture, History and Culture, pp. 1–12. web.mit. edu/akpia/www/articlepallini.pdf. 53. An exhibition was also held at the Italian Cultural Institute in Cairo. 54. The first Berlusconi government created the Ministry for Italians in the World (Ministero per gli italiani nel mondo) in 1994 to cultivate relations with and the interests of Italian citizens living abroad. Abolished by the succeeding Dini government in January 1995 it was subsequently reconstituted under the second and third Berlusconi governments (2001–6). During this second period its head Mirko Tremaglia, a member of the right-­wing Nationalist Alliance, successfully sponsored the right of Italian expatriates to vote in domestic elections; see ‘Mirko Tremaglia: Fiercely Nationalist Italian Politician’, The Independent, 7 January 2012, www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/ mirko-­tremaglia-­fiercely-­nationalist-­italian-­politician-­6286259.html (accessed 6 August 2014). 55. Conferenze, AIDE onlus. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. UNAR, Associazioni, www.associazioniregionaliunar.it/aide.htm# (accessed 12August 2014). 59. La Presenza Italiana in Egitto, AIDE onlus. 60. Bianca Esposito, ‘Noi bambini del ’57, Dopo la partenza dall’Egitto’, AIDE onlus, www.aideinternational.it [original in Italian] (accessed 6 August 2014). 61. Marilse Cardullo, ‘Dopo la partenza dall’Egitto’, AIDE onlus, www.aideinternational.it [original in Italian] (accessed 10 August 2014). 62. Joe Carbone, ‘Gli italiani che hanno operato in Egitto’, AIDE onlus, www. aideinternational.it [original in English] (accessed 10 August 2014). 63. Ruggero Ruggeri, ‘Il mio Egitto, Dopo la partenza dall’Egitto’, AIDE onlus, www.aideinternational.it [original in Italian] (accessed 6 August 2014). 64. Noi di Port-­Said no. 8 (1st trimester 1996). 65. Sections et Agenda, www.aaha.ch/sections/sommaire.htm. Emphasis in original. The cities included Geneva, Lausanne, Paris, Milan, Brussels, London, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Melbourne, Sao Paulo, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Florida, Montreal and Toronto. 66. Email communication, Sandro Manzoni, 22 August 2014. 67. Les Cahiers de l’AAHA, www.aaha.ch/cahiers/sommaire.htm (accessed 10 August 2014).

166  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 68. Voyages Alexandrie à et en Égypte, www.aaha.ch/voyages/sommaire.htm (accessed 12 August 2014). 69. Other Egyptian Greek associations have been established elsewhere. In Australia, Estia, an Egyptian Greek club, operated in the Sydney suburb of Alexandria (personal observation, author). Another association, the League of Greeks from Asia and the Middle East, was formed in Melbourne in 1950; see League of Greeks from Asia and the Middle East, www.eeama.org.au (accessed 12 August 2014). 70. Association of Maltese Communities of Egypt, www.maltamigration.com/ settlement/associations/uk/amce.shtml (accessed 6 August 2014). 71. Association des Juifs Originaires d’Égypte (Paris) www.ajoe.org (accessed 6  August 2014); International Association of Jews from Egypt (Israel), www. egyptian-­ jews.info/en (accessed 6 August 2014). The phrase is from Alex Weingrod and André Levy, ‘Social Thought and Commentary, Paradoxes of Homecoming: The Jews and Their Diaspora’, Anthropological Quarterly 79: 4 (autumn 2006), pp. 691–716. 72. ‘The Italians of Egypt’, dir. Sherif Fathy Salem, Spot1, spot1.tv/english/ CMSproductions/?article.21 (accessed 12 August 2014); ‘The Italians of Egypt’, Facebook, www.facebook.com/Italians.of.Egypt.thatAlexandria.docs. 73. Cugusi, ‘New Documentary Explores’; emphasis added. 74. ‘The Italians of Egypt’, Facebook, www.facebook.com/notes/the-­italians-­of-­egypt-­ documentary/the-­italian-­of-­egypt_-­synopsis-­specs_english/153636581428132, www.facebook.com/Italians.of.Egypt.thatAlexandria.docs. Among the venues of these screenings have been, in Cairo, the Italian Cultural Institute (October 2012), the Don Bosco Institute (November 2012) and Cairo Opera House (December 2013), in Alexandria at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (October 2012) and the Alexandria Hurriya Centre (March 2013), and, in Rome, at the Accademia d’Egitto (24 January 2013). 75. Spot1 TV, www.spot1.tv/english/CMSproductions/index.php. A documentary on the Greeks of Egypt – ‘Egypt: The Other Homeland’, dir. Yorgos Avgeropoulos, Small Planet – Al Jazeera (2011), is in a similar genre; see www. aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeraworld/2012/04/20124212646347121. html. 76. John Judd, AIDE onlus.

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 167 Bibliography Amicale Alexandrie Hier et Aujourd’hui (AAHA), www.aaha.ch/voyages/sommaire. htm (accessed 10 August 2014). Association des Juifs Originaires d’Egypte (Paris), www.ajoe.org (accessed 6 August 2014). Association of Maltese Communities of Egypt, www.maltamigration.com/settle ment/associations/uk/amce.shtml (accessed 6 August 2014). Associazione italiani d’Egitto (AIDE onlus), www.aideinternational.it (accessed 6 August 2014). Associazione nazionale pro italiani dall’Egitto (L’ANPIE), www.anpie.info/online (accessed 6 August 2014). Balboni, Luigi A., Gli italiani nella civiltà egiziana del secolo XIX, 3 vols (Alexandria: Società Dante Alighieri, 1906). Bigiavi, Edoardo, Noi e l’Egitto (Livorno: Arti Grafiche S. Belforte, 1911). Les Cahiers de l’AAHA, www.aaha.ch/cahiers/sommaire.htm (accessed 10 August 2014). Carbone, Joe, ‘Gli italiani che hanno operato in Egitto’, AIDE onlus, www.aideinternational.it (accessed 10 August 2014). Cardullo, Marilse, ‘Dopo la partenza dall’Egitto’, AIDE onlus, www.aideinternational.it (accessed 10 August 2014). Choate, Mark I., Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2008). Cohen, Robin, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, 2nd edn (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2008). Cugusi, Laura, ‘New Documentary Explores Who’s Left of “The Italians of Egypt”’, Egypt Independent, 24 October 2012, www.egyptindependent.com/ news/new-­documentary-­explores-­who-­s-­left-­italians-­egypt (accessed 7 August 2014). Deeb, Marius, ‘The Socioeconomic Role of the Local Foreign Minorities in Modern Egypt, 1805–1961’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 9: 1 (1978), pp. 11–22. ‘Egypt: The Other Homeland’, dir. Yorgos Avgeropoulos, Small Planet, www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeraworld/2012/04/20124212646347121.html (accessed 6 August 2014). Egyptian Government, Ministry of Finance, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1917, vol. II (Cairo: Government Press, 1921).

168  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Esposito, Bianca, ‘Noi bambini del ’57, Dopo la partenza dall’Egitto’, AIDE onlus, www.aideinternational.it (accessed 6 August 2014). Gabaccia, Donna R., Italy’s Many Diasporas (London and New York, NY: Routledge, [2000] 2003). Gorman, Anthony, ‘“Diverse in Race, Religion and Nationality . . . But United in Aspirations of Civil Progress”, Anarchism in Egypt before the First World War’, in Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt (eds), Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Post-­Colonial World, 1880–1940 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp 3–31. Gorman, Anthony, ‘The Anarchist Press in Egypt before the First World War’, in Anthony Gorman and Didier Monciaud (eds), Between Politics, Society and Culture: The Press in the Middle East before Independence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). Guastamacchio, Fabio, Il profugo italiano. La storia di un italiano d’Egitto, dalla nascita fino alla costituzione del comitato di quartiere (n.p.: Editore Guastamacchio Fabio, 2012), www.webster.it/libri-­ profugo_italiano_storia_italiano_egitto­9788890761300.htm (accessed 6 August 2014). International Association of Jews from Egypt (Israel), www.egyptian-­jews.info/en (accessed 6 August 2014). ‘Italian Colony in Egypt’, The Times (29 July 1921). ‘The Italians of Egypt’, dir. Sherif Fathy Salem, Spot1, spot1.tv/english/ CMSproductions/?article.21 (accessed 12 August 2014). ‘The Italians of Egypt’, Facebook, www.facebook.com/notes/the-­italians-­of-­egypt­documentary/the-­italian-­of-­egypt_-­synopsis-­specs_english/153636581428132, www.facebook.com/Italians.of.Egypt.thatAlexandria.docs Judd, John, AIDE onlus, www.aideinternational.it (accessed 6 August 2014). Lazarev, Anouchka, ‘Italians, Italianity and Fascism’, in Robert Ilbert and Ilios Yannakakis with Jacques Hassoun (eds), Alexandria 1860–1960: The Brief Life of a Cosmopolitan Community (Alexandria: Harpocrates, 1997), pp. 72–84. League of Greeks from Asia and the Middle East, www.eeama.org.au (accessed 12 August 2014). Luconi, Stefano, ‘Italian Migrations and Diasporic Approaches: Historical Phenomenon and Scholarly Interpretations’, in Graziela Parati and Anthony Julian Tamburri (eds), The Cultures of Italian Migration, Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives (Madison, WI and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011), pp. 153–68.

the i tali ans of eg ypt  | 169 Manzoni, Sandro, email communication, 22 August 2014. Marchi, Alessandra, ‘La presse d’expression italienne en Égypte. De 1845 à 1950’, RiMe 5 (dicembre 2010), pp. 91–125. Masi, Corrado, Italia e italiani nell’oriente vicino e lontano (1800–1935) (Bologna: Licinio Cappelli, 1936). Michel, Ersilio, Esuli italiani in Algeria (1815–1861) (Bologna, 1935). Michel, Ersilio, Esuli italiani in Tunisia (1815–1861) (Milano, 1941). Michel, Ersilio, Esuli Italiani in Egitto (1815–1861) (Pisa: Domus Mazziniana, 1958). Ministry of Finance, Egypt, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1907 (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1909). ‘Mirko Tremaglia: Fiercely Nationalist Italian Politician’, The Independent, 7 January 2012, www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/mirko-­tremaglia-­fiercely-­nation alist-­italian-­politician-­6286259.html (accessed 6 August 2014). Noi di Port-­Said no. 8 (1st trimester 1996). Pallini, Cristina, ‘Italian Architects and Modern Egypt’, AKPIA@MIT, Studies in Architecture, History and Culture, pp. 1–12, web.mit.edu/akpia/www/articlepal lini.pdf Pea, Enrico, Vita in Egitto (Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie, 1995). Petricioli, Marta, ‘Italian Schools in Egypt’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24: 2 (1997), pp. 179–91. Petricioli, Marta, ‘The Italians in Egypt (1936–1940)’, in Marta Petricioli and Antonio Varsori (eds), The Seas as Europe’s External Borders and Their Role in Shaping a European Identity (London: Lothian Foundation Press, 1999), pp. 123–33. Petricioli, Marta, Oltre il mito, L’Egitto degli italiani (1917–1947) (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2007). Rainero, Romain H. and Luigi Serra, L’Italia e l’Egitto, dalla rivolta di Arabi pascià all’avvento del fascismo (1882–1922) (Milan: Marzorati, 1991). Rispoli, Mario and Jean-­ Charles Depaule, Italien du Caire, une autobiographie (Marseille: Parenthèses/MMSH, 2010). Rizzitano, Umberto, ‘Un secolo di giornalismo italiano in Egitto (1845–1945)’, Cahiers d’histoire égyptienne 8: 2/3 (avril 1956), pp. 129–54. Rossi, Ettore, ‘Gl’italiani in Egitto’, in Angelo Sammarco et al. (eds), Egitto moderno (Roma: Edizioni Roma, 1939), pp. 79–88. Ruggeri, Ruggero, ‘Il mio Egitto, Dopo la partenza dall’Egitto’, AIDE onlus, www. aideinternational.it (accessed 6 August 2014). Sammarco, Angelo, Il contributo degl’ italiani ai progressi scientifici e practici della

170  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t medicina in Egitto sotto il regno di Mohammed Ali (Cairo: Lencioni, 1928). Sammarco, Angelo, La Marina egiziana sotto Mohammed Ali, Il contributo italiano (Cairo: l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire pour la Société royale de géographie d’Égypte, 1931). Sammarco, Angelo, Gli Italiani in Egitto: Il contribuo italiano nella formazione dell’Egitto moderno (Alexandria: Angelo Procaccia, 1937). Sections et Agenda, www.aaha.ch/sections/sommaire.htm (accessed 6 August 2014). Spot1 TV, www.spot1.tv/english/CMSproductions/index.php (accessed 6 August 2014). Tignor, Robert L., State, Private Enterprise and Economic Change in Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). UNAR, Associazioni, www.associazioniregionaliunar.it/aide.htm# (accessed 12 August 2014). Voyages Alexandrie à et en Égypte, www.aaha.ch/voyages/sommaire.htm (accessed 12 August 2014). Weingrod, Alex and André Levy, ‘Social Thought and Commentary, Paradoxes of Homecoming: The Jews and Their Diaspora’, Anthropological Quarterly 79: 4 (autumn 2006), pp. 691–716. Wian, Giovanni, Il Nuovo Egitto e l’Italia (Pescara: Arte della Stampa, 1956).

5 Diaspora Tourism and Identity: Subversion and Consolation in Armenian Pilgrimages to Eastern Turkey Zeynep Turan and Anny Bakalian1

D

iasporas regard memory and place as the principal means of forming and sustaining identity. Consequently, diaspora tourism – journeys to ancestral homelands – plays a vital role in nurturing connections to historic sites and kindling potent memories. Given the complexities of this intricate process, the study of diaspora tourism invokes interdisciplinary questions that traverse anthropology, history, politics, psychology and sociology. This chapter examines the case of diaspora Armenians visiting Historic Armenia, much of which is situated in present-­day Eastern Turkey. It explores how narratives and identity are affected by unresolved historical grievances stemming from the 1915 genocide and mass deportations that nearly depopulated the entire Armenian population from Anatolia, and how these tours reshape participants’ views of what they have lost and their feelings towards contemporary Turkey. We focus on personal, political and practical aspects of diaspora tourism and suggest that such journeys make two contributions. First, the pilgrimage to ancestral lands undermines entrenched Armenian perspectives that have hindered psychological and social change, and second, the pilgrimage nurtures the Armenian diaspora by preserving and reimagining its identity. Diasporas see themselves as keeping alive an endangered ethnic, religious and national identity. In particular, the Armenian diaspora has carried the responsibility for the survival of the nation since the early modern era, 173

174  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t e­ specially in periods when there was no official state. After the 1915 deportations and genocide, the diaspora communities further felt the burden of protecting and nourishing Armenian identity and culture. Armenians in diaspora hardened their attitudes towards Turks and the Turkish state after the 1970s, as we explain below, some going so far as to condemn travel to Turkey and calling for a boycott of Turkish products. Moreover, in the United States, there were very few opportunities for Turks and Armenians to interact because immigration from Turkey was very limited until the 1990s.2 In tracing Armenian footprints in Eastern Turkey, there are no real maps or guidebooks. Even when travellers reach the village or town of their parents or grandparents, they do not know where to look or how to make sense of what is or was there – names of villages, streets and other place-­markers have been changed by the Turkish Government over the last century to cement their claims and control over the region. However, guided tours that identify and locate significant and unmarked sites have been organised for diaspora Armenians since the early 1990s. These diaspora tours have become the most popular form of travel to Eastern Turkey for Armenian-­Americans due to travel logistics as well as the sense of safety and communitas it engenders among pilgrims. In this chapter we make two arguments regarding the power of place in the narratives that undergird identity: First, given that these tours allow diaspora Armenians to reclaim their past by challenging official Turkish historiography, and symbolically reframe, rename and liberate their patrimony, they can be considered subversive. Additionally, they are subversive in that they diverge from the conventional Armenian diaspora narrative and its portrayal of Turks as the enemy. Second, as participants bear witness to Armenian vestiges in Turkey, travellers find consolation in the tragedy that befell their people. We also observe the influence of these trips long after the tour itself is over. Although diaspora expeditions may instil fear, anger, anxiety, sadness and other intense emotions – or because they inflict stress – the experience of visiting one’s ancestral homeland is a rite of passage. The tours are profoundly educational and defining; these travellers begin their journey as students but the trip transforms them into teachers. Once they are back home, diaspora tourists disseminate their newly acquired knowledge to their family, friends

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 175 and community. In the process they increase the chances of articulating a new narrative and reshaping identity. The empirical evidence in this chapter is drawn from a number of sources, including participant observation, surveys and popular media. Co-­author Anny Bakalian participated in two diaspora tours.3 The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research organised the first tour, which in May 2009 travelled to Cilicia, including Gasseria (Kayseri), Adana, Musa Ler (Dağı), Antioch (Antakya), Antep (Gaziantep), Marash (Kahramanmaraş) and Harput (Elâzığ) among other towns and villages. The second tour, which took place in June 2011, visited Dikranagerd (Diyarbakir) to witness the restoration of Surp (Saint) Giragos4 (an Armenian church that was abandoned for much of the twentieth century), and then Historic Armenia, stopping at almost every major landmark that is accessible, such as Old Van, Van Fort, Aght’amar (Akdamar Island), Kars, Ani and Mount Ararat. Surveys were sent to all members of both tours with questions about their impressions before and after the trip. Participants’ responses and phone interviews with the tour operator make up the bulk of the data. We also used testimonials and chronicles by travellers in Armenian-­American publications, newspapers and Internet sources. We begin our study by describing the historical background that gave rise to current Armenian–Turkish relations. Then we provide the theoretical foundations that inform our analysis of diaspora tourism. Next, we apply the empirical evidence from two Armenian-­American trips to Eastern Turkey to illustrate our conceptual framework. Lastly, we conclude with a summary of our findings and highlight our contributions, especially the subversive power of diaspora tourism vis-­à-­vis Turkish genocide denial, as well as changing diaspora Armenian perspectives. Contextualising Armenian–Turkish Relations Armenian life in Anatolia was violently ruptured in 1915 after six centuries of Ottoman rule. Razmik Panossian maintains that the memory of the Aghet (the Armenian term for the 1915 genocide) and the territory of Historic Armenia (presently Eastern Turkey and the Republic of Armenia) are among the most significant pillars of Armenian identity. 5 In her survey of Armenian-­ Americans in metropolitan New York in 1984, Bakalian also found that

176  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t genocide denial ‘is central to such an extent, and the burden of its proof weighs so heavily on the collective consciousness of the survivors and their descendants, that the richness of the Armenian culture and experience have a tendency to be reduced to the genocide, to martyrdom’.6 Borrowing Berger and Luckmann’s concepts, we argue that diaspora Armenians from Western countries ‘objectivised’ and ‘externalised’ Turks as ‘the other’ – ­converting them to objects outside of their original borders and depriving them of human attributes.7 Thus, the dominant Armenian diaspora narrative does not distinguish between the Turkish state and the Turkish people. For about half a century after the genocide, Armenians were focused more on survival than on documentation and closure. They remembered the victims of 1915 through requiems and other ceremonies within their communities; they were confident that the truth was evident. When the second generation of the Armenian diaspora came of age in the 1970s, a new wave of scholarship, based on systematic archival research, began to emerge; prominent among these were the works of Vahakn N. Dadrian and Richard G. Hovannisian.8 In her analysis of the early republican period, sociologist Fatma Müge Göçek argues that Turkish scholarship was generally mute with respect to the events of 1915. She explains the condition at the time as follows: In building the Turkish nation, the Republican leaders made a conscious decision to concentrate on the nation’s future, on progress, and on catching up with the contemporary civilization signified by the West. In doing so, they consciously omitted and repressed the past. As they officially defined this future focus as the second aim of Turkish nationalism, past incidents of violence and trauma became even more marginalized.9

With the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the leaders of the Turkish Republic focused on creating a homogenous nation and identity. According to Göl, this new nationalism held that a Turk was theoretically a Turk ‘as long as he or she spoke Turkish, shared Turkish values and called himself or herself a Turk within the boundaries of the sovereign Turkish state’.10 Armenians that remained in Turkey adopted Turkish surnames and spoke Turkish only in public and they adamantly resisted ‘Turkification’ within their homes, churches and educational institutions. They preserved

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 177 their customs and traditions, kept alive their mother tongue and ­encouraged in-­group marriages. Ekmekcioglu argues that these Armenians felt like a diaspora. Even though they had not physically left their country, they were treated as outsiders socially and politically. They did not belong, and they were seen as suspect subjects. To sustain a distinct sense of collective identity Armenians came to rely on memory.11 The Armenian population of Turkey that once numbered roughly 300,000 at about the time of the birth of the Republic today is only 50,000 to 60,000 persons; moreover, their insular existence continues.12 In the 1970s mutual animosities between Armenians and Turks were reinforced. From 1975 until the mid-­1980s, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA) (formerly an offshoot of the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG)) assassinated Turkish diplomats and attacked other representatives of Turkish interests,13 which ignited public rage against Armenians throughout Turkey. According to Kurz and Merari, ASALA and ARA demanded that the Turkish state take responsibility for the 1915 genocide and provide reparations for survivors.14 Given the amnesia regarding the 1915 genocide maintained since the birth of the Republic, the claims of the Armenian militants seemed preposterous. Accordingly, Göçek elucidates that ‘the Turkish state and society [were] totally unprepared, unaware, and uninformed’ of their past.15 The Turkish Government fought back by funding research aimed at discrediting the Armenian narrative and cause (for example, the Institute of Turkish Studies was established at Georgetown University in Washington, DC in 1983) and by launching a public relations campaign.16 To that end, starting in the 1970s new publications established Turkey’s official narrative, among them being the works of American scholars Heath Lowry, Stanford Shaw and Justin McCarthy.17 In addition to these American scholars, a number of Turkish historians were ‘denialists’ on the events regarding Armenians in Anatolia during and after 1915.18 Their historiography refuted the claim that the Ottoman government had planned to exterminate the Armenian population. While they accepted that large numbers of Armenians died during the period, they alleged that many Muslims had also lost their lives because of conflicts during First World War. A cursory analysis of the

178  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t publications of Turkish historians indicates that most focused their research on other historical periods and subjects, avoiding the Armenians in the twentieth century. The official narrative of the Turkish state continues to attribute the Armenian deaths and exodus from Anatolia during the First World War to mutual civil unrest between the two ethno-­religious groups. However, since the beginning of the twenty-­first century, a number of Kurdish and Turkish grassroots organisations, intellectuals, artists and activists have emerged, acknowledging publicly the crimes of the past as well as implicating the Turkish state in perpetrating and covering the facts. The struggle over history continues. Mid-­decade, Turkish writers whose analysis of 1915 deviated from the Turkish official narrative were indicted for ‘insulting Turkishness’ under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Among them were Hrant Dink, a Turkish Armenian journalist who was assassinated in 2007, literature Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and novelist Elif Shafak. Outside Turkey, historian Taner Akçam was among the first Turkish-­born scholars to acknowledge the genocide.19 In the last few years, some sections of the Turkish public sphere have begun to shift from rejecting to conceding to the genocide narrative. However, there are no statistics on what percentage of Turks acknowledge the genocide. On 24 April 2013, a number of European and Turkish civil society organisations commemorated the ninety-­eighth anniversary of the day when Armenian notables were rounded up and deported – most never to be seen again.20 Among the activities, one group gathered in front of the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul where Armenian intellectuals were detained in 1895.21 They carried signs that said, ‘Your pain is our pain’.22 In effect, the genocide of 1915 remains an open political wound, both for Armenians who continue to demand recognition, and also for a divided Turkish society that has just begun to confront its past and is paralysed in accepting its responsibility. Lastly, it is important to note that some locals in Eastern Turkey remain suspicious of Armenians. In fact, many of them believe that Armenian diaspora tourists are returning to retrieve ‘the gold’ they had buried more than a hundred years ago. After the departure of the visitors, the current residents apparently routinely dig around the houses, barns and fields in search of hidden treasures.23

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 179 Problematising Diaspora Tourism Diaspora tourism is quite different from most sightseeing vacations. This area of scholarly investigation is new; much of the writing on diaspora tourism tends to be descriptive, not theoretical. Examples of this emergent literature include Basu’s study of heritage tourism to the Scottish Highlands, Cohen’s investigation of Jewish diaspora youth visiting Israel and Kelner’s analysis of the birthright programme in Israel that offers free trips to young diaspora Jews.24 The purpose of these tours (of ten days’ or so duration) are revealed by the Hebrew word for discover, taglit. While having fun with their peers, they discover their roots and reconnect with ‘their heritage’ in Israel. The organisers’ hope is that this attachment becomes a lifelong one.25 Coles and Timothy consider the dynamics of consumption of tourism in a comparative perspective; however, this book does not address the issues pertaining to our case.26 Therefore, we propose a definition for the type of diaspora tourism applicable to Armenian pilgrims in Eastern Turkey. While religious pilgrimages share many common traits, each site evokes specific revered connotations for a given group: such as Jerusalem for the Abrahamic faiths, the Vatican for Catholics, Mecca for Muslims, and Armenian diaspora tourism to Anatolia. Beyond the administrative logistics to serve and protect the multitude of pilgrims, the host state imposes its official narrative on the tour. Bajc explains that the Israeli-­Jewish guides provide a ‘meta-­frame’ to every pilgrimage. Their narrative is ‘the official founding story of Israel, an account which sees the establishment of the contemporary state and its political capital in Jerusalem as a logical culmination of over three thousand years of linear history of the Jewish people on this land’.27 Furthermore, Bajc argues that Christian pilgrimages to Jerusalem are highly staged by their pastors and tour operators. The itinerary, encounters, rituals and narratives depend on the denomination of the group. For example, the aesthetics of some sites, such as the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of Gethsemane, tend to be aberrant to Evangelical Protestants, whose tours thus avoid these places. Instead, they have invented new destinations, including the Valley of Elah where they enact the battle between David and Goliath, so the sites they visit are in harmony with their theological principles.28 It is important to note that Armenian diaspora tours are also framed.

180  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t They are framed to exclude the Turkish Government and its narrative from infiltrating the group. Thus, a scholar specialising in Armenian history is brought from the diaspora to ensure that the Armenian perspective (frame) is presented daily on the excursion. In an interview in June 2011 with journalists from Agos, an Armenian newspaper published in Istanbul, Bakalian learned that tourist guides in Turkey are required to take special training on how to respond to questions regarding the Armenian genocide before they are granted a licence to practice. Thus, avoiding the official Turkish narrative is the ultimate act of subversion and travelling under the radar likely heightens the sense of danger among the pilgrims. Likewise, Armenian diaspora trips are highly orchestrated. The performances and rituals that punctuate the journey and the tour operator’s insistence that each participant visit the village and town of at least one parent or grandparent are examples of the staging necessary to achieve the goals of the group. Hrag Varjabedian argues that Armenian-­Americans travel to Anatolia not ‘to claim their ancestral homes, but to reconnect with their history and genealogy, creating a sense of wholeness within their familial history and identity’.29 The denial of the genocide by the Turkish state has played a large role in keeping narratives current because there has been a rupture not only in the genealogy and historiography of Armenians but also in their attachment to their ancestral land. Thus, the objective for the travellers is to link to history through rituals and other performative acts. Varjabedian explains: The historicisation takes place on many levels. Ultimately, they become rites of passages as the descendants connect with their ancestors. There is an element of sacredness that manifests through various acts and rituals become cathartic and therapeutic. The pilgrims always thank the members of the group for being present and helping them out. The pilgrimages that the children and grandchildren undertake are not only for personal reasons. These journeys are also in homage to their ancestors.30

Varjabedian argues that there are two types of remembering for Armenians: the first is individual memory and the second is collective memory or the national saga. For many Armenians, the gap in memory is at both levels. In the United States, while writers, filmmakers and artists of Armenian descent produce novels, memoirs, movies and artwork that builds identity through

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 181 cultural production, other Armenian-­Americans can construct identity by engaging in ‘historicization through performance’ as they visit their ancestral homeland in Turkey.31 Dwelling on memories of genocide is an act of power, of naming and representation. The tourists (or pilgrims or travellers or whichever label by which they prefer to define themselves) fill in the gaps of history, personal and collective. This is the starting point of subverting existing narratives and finding consolation. The exilic character of diaspora, the pain of separation (an inherent element of diaspora) makes diaspora tourism more exceptional on an emotional level. Tour destinations are places of cultural significance and where forebears lived. Armenian diaspora tourism can be festive, even joyful, whether visiting the Republic of Armenia, Beirut, Buenos Aires and Los Angeles where vibrant communities exist, or historical sites, such as San Lazzaro degli Armeni, a small island in the Venetian Lagoon where the Armenian Catholic monks established a monastery in the eighteenth century, or New Julfa, a renowned Armenian neighbourhood in Isfahan (Iran) since the early sixteenth century. In contrast, visiting Turkey is a serious endeavour for Armenians. No one embarks on such a tour without considerable soul-­searching. Physical safety may be an issue in specific locales and at certain times, but more frightening is the knowledge that the Turkish authorities can harass or even arrest the travellers at any time.32 Therefore, complications of history and politics produce intense emotions, such as sadness, fear, humiliation, anger and bitterness, as well as happiness, gratification and pride. These features are by no means unique to Armenians visiting Turkey. The same could be said of other diasporas who are the product of forced displacement, such as Iranian, Burmese or Palestinian Americans returning to Iran, Myanmar or Israel, respectively, where travel to the homeland may be emotionally taxing and even physically threatening. Diaspora tourism to ancestral lands consists of the following components: the exilic nature of diaspora is associated with pain and sorrow. There is often at least one rupture that gave birth to the diaspora. The objective of the tour is to evoke primordial sentiments in the traveller and reconnect a personal genealogy and history. The experience preserves memory and strengthens identity. However, when the ancestral lands are in the hands of a state that denies the past and develops an oppositional historiography,

182  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t then the journey becomes dangerous, emotionally and physically, because diaspora travellers have to circumvent the state’s meta-­frame. This last point distinguishes the two types of diaspora tourism, celebratory and subversive, and makes destination a key element in the experience. In the remainder of this chapter, we focus on the journeys in Turkey. Three concepts are central to our approach: place attachment, rite of passage, and communitas. Place attachment is a concept used in environmental psychology regarding the complex mechanics of a person’s bonding to a place. Setha Low defines ‘place attachment’ as culturally shared meanings and activities associated with places that derive from historical and sociopolitical sources.33 In this vein, religious pilgrimages, secular journeys, and participation in community-­wide celebrations have been instrumental in the development of place attachment. Moreover, direct contact and psychological connections with physical settings builds a deeper, more visceral form of place attachment than one founded purely on social networks. Such wholehearted bonds can be characterised as topophilia, the affective relationship between humans and their environment or love of place.34 As we will explain, diaspora tourism confirms the centrality of cultural and biological place attachment. Whereas the idea of place attachment lends insight into the motivation for diaspora tourism, rite of passage speaks to the social outcome of these tours. Rite of passage, as framed by Barbara Myerhoff, encompasses the symbolic celebrations of an individual or a group transitioning from one culturally defined stage to another. The rituals transform traumatic experiences into commemorations that mark change. Myerhoff points out that rites of passage occur at moments of great anxiety: They are dramatic occasions, naturally or socially provided crises, when the person is most teachable. Tension is heightened by rites, and resolution is eagerly sought. The society is then most urgently pressing itself upon the subject of the ceremony, making him or her into its own creature.35

Rites of passage are also critical times of self-­awareness; they simultaneously announce separation and individuation from the group and from one’s collective identity. Diaspora tourism is fundamentally a rite of passage because it enables individuals to transit from an unceasing cycle of sadness, anger, fear and frustration, to a state of mind that allows the possibility of comfort,

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 183 closure and normalisation – a significant goal in personal development. This effect is likely to be more pronounced for participants on their first tour. Through the course of the tour, participants confront their pent up emotions and concerns, and enact rituals to commemorate losses. Moreover, the journey opens opportunities for participants to ‘take their own lives into their own hands’ and make themselves authors of their own stories.36 Diaspora tourism, therefore, empowers individuals to create their own life narratives, as well as empowering them to transcend the daunting obstacles of psychological turmoil and find agency in overcoming them. A third concept that explains diaspora tourism is communitas. While communitas is a component of rites of passage, the focus here is on the fellowship initiated during this period of change. Victor Turner first developed the concept during his study of religious rituals of the Ndembu tribe in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the 1960s, referring to intense feelings of solidarity and belongingness. This customarily arises when people experience a metamorphosis (what he termed ‘liminality’) as they are at the threshold between two different states. In interpreting Turner in his later work, Stausberg highlights the role of communitas in pilgrimages (spiritual journeys) and tourism (leisure travels), both taken voluntarily.37 Turner contended that tourists, like pilgrims, embark on their journey to find communitas – one that is almost sacred, often symbolic – that they miss in their daily lives. Furthermore, Victor Turner and Edith Turner argue that liminality ‘develops outside the central economic and political processes, along their margins, on their interfaces, in their tacit dimensions’.38 Therefore, communitas fosters a sense of community and healing – especially for those who undertake such a journey for the first time. In summary, Armenian diaspora tourism to Turkey is a rite of passage geared towards place attachment and building communitas. The tour challenges and rewrites both the official Turkish narrative and Armenian diaspora perspectives in two ways. First, participants are able to critically examine the context in which their community left their homeland and add the viewpoints of those who departed. It has been said that victors alone write history; however, diaspora tourism adds a subaltern epilogue to this history.39 As the descendants of the deportees return to their ancestral land, they share their experiences with a wide audience by blogging or posting excerpts on

184  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t YouTube. To a lesser extent, encounters between Armenians, Turks and Kurds are likely to question conventional Armenian diaspora views that portray Turkish society intent on eradicating Armenians and their history. Therefore, we argue that diaspora tourism can be politically subversive to a state that maintains a rigorous monopoly on its history as well as a diaspora community that has sustained an ideology that characterises Turks and Turkey with hostility. In short, diaspora tourism cultivates and writes a new edition of history that incorporates other interpretations, and, in effect, subverts social and political taboos. Second, diaspora tourism may help heal the psychological wounds of displacement. Psychologist Shaké Topalian posits that diaspora Armenians grow up hearing family and friends recount Turkish atrocities – thus ‘their psyche and identity are organised around these stories’.40 The children and grandchildren of the survivors grow up with vivid descriptions and stories of the ancestral land, its geographical elements, climate and even its flora and fauna. As such, they feel the pain of the fissure that severed personal and communal genealogy. The generations that were born in diaspora have ­confounding relations to the land. On the one hand, they feel the loss deeply tragic; on the other, they realise the promise of closure. In other words, diaspora tourism makes the first-­hand experience of the landscape possible along with a ­reconnecting with one’s ancestors; as a result, the outcome is therapeutic. In the next section we apply the concepts of place attachment, rites of passage and communitas to the case of Armenian diaspora tourism in Eastern Turkey. We elaborate on how these journeys establish bonds to their ancestral homeland while engaging in subversive behaviour toward the official Turkish state and conventional Armenian diaspora narratives. Ultimately, the traveller’s reward is consolation through an emotional release and the instilling of a sense of closure. Diaspora Armenians Touring Anatolia There are accounts of Armenians travelling to Eastern Turkey several decades after the genocide. In addition to travelogues, they provide photo documentation of Armenian landmarks in Eastern Turkey over the decades.41 In 1967 the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) organised the first known diaspora tour from the United States to Anatolia.42

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 185 NAASR, founded in 1955, is a national non-­profit organisation dedicated to the advancement of Armenian Studies through education, research and cultural programmes. From the 1970s until the 1990s, there was a steep decline in diaspora tours to Eastern Turkey due to two main factors. As noted already, ASALA and ARA actions made Armenian travel to Turkey untenable and armed conflict between the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) deterred travel of all kinds to Eastern Turkey, especially in the 1980s. As political and security conditions have improved in the last twenty years, Eastern Turkey has again become accessible to tourists. Tour Organisation There are very few tour operators that specialise in Western Armenian diaspora tourism to Turkey because it takes years of experience and research to locate Armenian ruins and relics in contemporary Turkey.43 Armen Aroyan is perhaps the most knowledgeable operator. Since 1991, Aroyan has been the leading figure in organising heritage tours for diaspora Armenians, notably Americans. By 2012, he had guided well over seventy tours. As noted above, a historian joins most of these tours in order to provide lectures on Armenian history that contradict the Turkish meta-­frame. As mentioned above, Anny Bakalian travelled with Aroyan to Cilicia (the coastal province along the Mediterranean Sea) and Historic Armenia (Eastern provinces) in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Professor Richard Hovannisian, first holder of the chair of Armenian History at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), an expert on the genocide and its aftermath, guided the tour in 2009. Dr Razmik Panossian, author of The Armenians, accompanied the second tour. These tours cost about US$5,000 per person depending on the length of the tour and the quality of the accommodation. Although we have depicted these tours as being subversive, they are completely legal. Armenians enter Turkey with US or other passports, purchase a visa at the airport, stay in hotels that register their passports and travel throughout the country with local drivers. Tour operator Armen Aroyan was born in Egypt of Armenian descent and settled in California in the 1960s.44 While working in Germany in 1983, Aroyan writes in his unpublished memoirs, How it All Began, he went on a package tour to Turkey where he met Armenian friends who showed him Armenian life in Istanbul and Armenian cultural and religious landmarks.

186  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Over the following decade, he visited Turkey five times searching for his grandmother’s hometown, Jibin (Cibin, not far from the city of Antep/ Gaziantep). Through extensive travel and research and accompanying genocide survivors to their ancestral homes, Aroyan has built an encyclopedic knowledge of remnants of Armenian culture in Turkey. He knows both the Armenian and Turkish names of all the Armenian settlements. As one tour participant observed: ‘Nobody else can find these villages the way he does. When he retires, I can’t think of anyone who could do a similar job.’45 Aroyan’s standard practice is to take participants to their ancestral homes, not simply to historic Armenian sites, such as Mount Ararat (a significant symbolic landmark in Armenian nationalism), Ani (a medieval Armenian city on the Silk Road), Aght’amar (a tenth-­century Armenian church on an island in Lake Van) or Vakıflı (the only Armenian village remaining in Turkey). Before each excursion, Aroyan contacts each participant before he designs the itinerary. Given the huge distances across Anatolia, he strives to have each participant visit and witness at least one ancestor’s village or town on the tour, especially for first-­time diaspora tourists. Aroyan also takes participants to tourist destinations or archeological sites that are not tied to Armenian heritage, such as Cappadocia, Ephesus, and the Neolithic excavation site Göbekli Tepe. Aroyan works with a father-­and-­son team of drivers, who are local Kurds from Antep.46 They are an essential part of these tours, helping to communicate with locals, suggesting places to stay and eat and finding and navigating undefined roads. Whenever the group passes through Antep, the drivers’ wives and children attend the communal dinners with the participants. Other than hotel and restaurant staff, guests and shopkeepers, these families are among the very few locals with whom Armenian tourists spend any time. Tour Participants The groups tend to be similar in terms of ancestry and socio-­economic status, but participants differ by generation, direct experience of genocide and deportations, birthplace, proficiency in the Armenian language and knowledge of Armenian history, and involvement in Armenian-­American communal activities. Unsurprisingly, the majority of participants are of Armenian descent, however, odar (foreign/other) spouses and specialists in Armenian

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 187 history and culture also partake in these tours. Participants are generally in their fifties, sixties and seventies. At this stage in their lives, people have more time and resources to devote to travel and leisure. The participants are mostly upper middle class. The majority of travellers have attended college, and a significant number have also completed graduate or professional school. In the 1990s, genocide survivors and their families were prominent in Aroyan’s tours, but, by 2010, the tours were composed of survivors’ children and grandchildren. Using the 2005–7 American Community Survey,47 Douglas and Bakalian found that 45 per cent of Armenians in the United States were foreign-­ born. They also found that before 1980, 47 per cent of the immigrants came from the Middle East, while, after that time, 42 per cent originated from the Republic of Armenia.48 The characteristics of tour participants reflect this data. American-­born Armenians tend to form the majority of the participants, followed by those who were born in the Middle East. The newest immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and possibly the most financially challenged, are significantly absent.49 Often, prospective participants encourage family and friends to join their tour. Consequently, it is not surprising to find Armenians living in Australia, Lebanon or Argentina on the tour. Finally, the greatest source of diversity among the participants is in language, historical knowledge and experiences. Oftentimes, there are only one or two that speak Turkish – they are usually the children of the survivors who were born in the Middle East. The majority of US-­born Armenians are not proficient in Armenian in contrast to those from the Middle East.50 Destinations and Activities Armenians who engage in diaspora tourism imagine the lives of their predecessors steeped in tradition, rooted in the land and the change of seasons, and belonging to the nation. In contrast, they find their own lives missing a sense of community and deeper meaning. Tours to Turkey offer diaspora Armenians about two weeks of liminality. The daily routine of the trip takes on ritualistic qualities as quotidian preoccupations are suspended, and the pace of the day centres on visiting Armenian sites, communal meals and long bus rides. Everyone makes an effort to share and mix, friendships are developed and, as one of the participants remarked, ‘Much laughter and tears are

188  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t

Figure 5.1  Posing in the colours of the Armenian flag (l to r: red, blue, orange). (Source: Anny Bakalian)

exchanged among the pilgrims’ (Lily, age seventy-­two). In sum, the practices and places visited by Armenian diaspora tourists produce communitas. A participant from the 2011 tour posted over a dozen clips on YouTube.51 In a video, a man is burying the photo of a Dikranagerd (Diyarbakir) native inside the cracks of Surp Giragos Church at the behest of a fellow participant who was too ill to perform the ritual himself. The rite brings closure to the son even though he had delegated the activity. The father was symbolically back home. In another YouTube clip, a group of Armenians are chanting Hayr Mer (the Lord’s Prayer in Armenian) in the Church of Holy Cross on Aght’amar Island in Van during renovations.52 On both tours, Anny Bakalian observed participants singing liturgical chants in former Armenian churches. In one case, the church had been converted to a mosque. Although there was some discomfort among the participants about singing Hayr Mer there, the singing still proceeded. It must be noted that this mosque was empty except for the old caretaker who had opened the door for the group. It had been a big and important Armenian church, and for a few minutes the participants reclaimed it. Another instance of subversion and consolation is seen in three participants posing for a snapshot wearing red, blue and orange T-­ shirts (see Figure 5.1) with Mount Ararat in the background. Both the colours and Mount Ararat are highly symbolic for diaspora Armenians. Red, blue and

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 189

Figure 5.2  Two participants reclaiming the Armenian name of the city Ani by putting the dot back on the Turkish letter ‘ı’. (Source: Anny Bakalian)

orange were the colours of the flag of the first Armenian republic (1918–20), as well as the present Republic of Armenia (since 1991). For a people whose ancestral lands were occupied by foreign rulers for centuries, independence in 1918 was liberating – but short-­lived as Armenia fell under the Soviet Union. Thus, the tricolour denotes autonomy and pride. According to the Bible, Noah’s Ark landed on Ararat, and Armenian mythology posits that Mount Ararat was the home of Hayk/Haig, the legendary patriarch who founded the Armenian nation.53 Since the turn of the twentieth century, Ararat has been within Turkish borders, although its snowcapped summit is clearly visible from Yerevan.54 It connotes the nation’s losses and yearning to become whole. A photo or painting of Mount Ararat is displayed in many Armenian homes in the diaspora, symbolising that it is theirs.55 Thus, the participants from the 2011 tour are transforming a mundane occasion into a heroic feat of salvaging Armenian heritage, as significant as if they repossessed the mountain itself. A third illustration of subversion and consolation is demonstrated in two participants playing on the Armenian and Turkish spelling of the capital of the medieval Armenian Bagratuni dynasty (see Figure 5.2). According to Panossian, Ani was a thriving metropolis along the Silk Road until it fell to

190  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t the Byzantines, Turks, and Mongols, respectively.56 However, the remaining population abandoned the city after several earthquakes. Ani’s fate today is similar to Ararat’s. It is located within the borders of Turkey, literally separated from the Republic of Armenia by the width of a small river. The Turkish name Anı Örenyeri (‘Anı ruins’ in Turkish) is switched to the original Armenian Ani. Incidentally, ‘anı’ in Turkish means ‘memory’ or ‘recollection’. This simple, yet significant, political act is achieved using a couple of bandaids and a pen. Other subversive acts on Armenian diaspora tours in Turkey include planting flower seeds in memory of people who were killed, leaving burning candles at Ani to maintain that 1915 is not forgotten and leaving shoes or socks in front of the door of the participant’s family home in their ancestral village to suggest that the family still lives there. Collecting soil and rocks is another significant ritual on diaspora tours.57 A participant who returned with a plastic bag filled with earth from his father’s village, felt comfort and tranquility when he spread its contents on his father’s tomb in California. Sprinkling soil from the ancestral homeland on the grave of a loved one who was tragically torn from one’s native territory metaphorically completes a circle.58 Through such acts, participants create genealogical and historical continuity based on the land.59 The Significance of Diaspora Tours for Participants So far in our analysis of Armenian diaspora tourism to Turkey we have discussed the adversarial relations between Armenians and Turks. However, Armenian attachment to their ancestral land was not severed with the genocide and the passing of generations. They mourned and venerated their villages and towns – the birds and farm animals, the fruits and vegetables, the harsh winters and hot summers, Lake Van, the mighty Euphrates and Tigris, and so on. Through oral tales, songs and poems as well as publications,60 and, later, websites,61 diaspora communities kept the memory of their home alive. Even children and grandchildren of survivors were familiar with the ­geography and topography of Anatolia without setting foot in Turkey. Throughout the twentieth century, while Armenians memorialised their lost patrimony, the Turkish Government, as mentioned above, developed counter-­narratives, ‘engaged in creative forgetting’, renamed villages and

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 191 towns and trivialised and neglected Armenian architecture and archeological evidence.62 Nonetheless, efforts to purge Anatolia of Armenian culture and history were not totally successful. In this section we examine the encounter of Armenian pilgrims with the physical territory and its present inhabitants. We have identified four outcomes: honouring ancestors and challenging dominant narratives; connecting with place and finding companionship; connecting with locals and making peace with the past; and testing t­raditional ideologies and forging a new legacy. Honouring Ancestors and Challenging Dominant Narratives The bond of diaspora Armenians to the land is not just through history or family, but also loss and destruction. Often, however, these imagined landscapes do not match with reality. A number of participants were astonished, even fascinated, by how much Armenian material culture remains in Turkey. Some participants were gratified that Armenian culture and existence have not been entirely erased. In Istanbul63 and Vakıflı village near Antioch (Antakya) visitors are likely to find Armenian communities, although in appreciably smaller numbers. While few family members reside in Vakıflı permanently, large numbers of expatriates return to Vakıflı annually on 14 September for the Feast of the Cross. The crowds assemble in and around the Armenian Church of the Holy Mother of God for Badarak (Mass). Afterwards, everyone is invited to enjoy madagh, a lamb stew with bulgur served on flatbread, followed by dancing.64 A survey respondent wrote: ‘The most surprising aspect of the trip was the fact that so many Armenian structures remain standing to this day.’ Others grieved the extensive destruction. These contrasting views depend on the pilgrims’ prior knowledge of history. For example, Professor Hovannisian, who guided the 2009 trip to Harput (Elazığ), pointed to a barren mountain opposite the fort and dourly observed, ‘Before 1915, there were about sixty villages over there.’65 For most participants, however, the site visits felt like a homecoming. A male participant in his seventies conveyed his reaction: It was very emotional knowing that they have lived within these walls, walked the same streets, past the same buildings and prayed in the same

192  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t church . . . For the first time, I could see through their eyes and I imagined what they had witnessed and only reluctantly spoke about. I think what I gained was being able to put all of what I had ever heard or read, or seen in photographs together into a current image.

Certain reactions are recognised as expressions of topophilia. As an online statement of a diaspora tourist in Ani stated: That afternoon I was sitting in the window of one of the ruins overlooking the vast area below. Never have I seen a sight more beautiful. In front and above us were the mountains of Armenia. Below flowed the peaceful Akhurian River which separates Ani from the rest of Armenia. It was a place I did not want to leave. The words of a song my father used to sing came back to me, Ani kaghak nusder goolam . . . I am in the city of Ani sitting and weeping.66

Topophilia is also evident in Turkey: A Family Erased (PBS 2008) directed by George Kachadorian.67 The film follows the journey of George’s father and his two aunts from the United States to Turkey to find their grandparents’ home in the village of Huseynig (Ulukent) based on maps that their grandparents drew from memory. When the Kachadorians arrive in Huseynig, they find that the village has ‘not changed much in one hundred years [and it] looks just like in the pictures in the old books’. The father summarises his experience, ‘When Armenians go to Turkey everything looks familiar. They know what the food is, they like the food, they know what the music is, they like the music. People look like relatives of ours. It is not an unfamiliar place.’ His aunt chimes in: The most moving thing were the children. Again, very familiar. They look like our kids, they really do. Beautiful brown faces, beautiful eyes. Kids were bringing us flowers, holding our hands. You do feel very connected to not only the place but to the people even. And that is also a little confusing.

The aunt’s puzzlement is not uncommon when we analyse the post-­trip impressions of survey respondents. Their connection with the territory and the Turkish people challenges the narrative that underpins Armenian diaspora identity. The attachment is not something they could have foreseen

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 193 before their trip, but why? They had previously painted Turks in broadbrush strokes, not distinguishing the people from the government. Unlike diaspora Armenians, those who stayed behind in Turkey and weathered the tensions following 1915 continued to interact with Turkish people on a daily basis. Eventually, they found kind and honest neighbours, made close friends in school or at work, and even fell in love with and married Turks. Connecting with Place and Finding Companionship The second outcome of the significance of diaspora tours is the complicated nature of place attachment to Eastern Turkey. Armenian diaspora travellers are perplexed that Anatolia is very familiar. Their first-­hand experience of the terrain, the people, the food and the music all open up new possibilities for these individuals to form a healthier place attachment, based not just on the narrative of loss and destruction. This has developmental significance in redefining an individual’s narrative in a more positive light because the process normalises the new experiences. Here we use ‘normalisation’ in a psychological sense; in other words, the new learning relieves and replaces the burdens of the past. While the memories of the trauma of the Aghet remain, they are no longer debilitating; the individual is able to move forward, although this does not mean forgetting. While second-­and third-­ generation diaspora Armenians have some knowledge about their families’ towns and villages, it is often sketchy and inaccurate. Anny Bakalian was stunned that her grandmother had talked frequently about the orchards, vineyards and produce but she had never mentioned the fact that the snowcapped Mount Erciyes, the highest mountain in Central Anatolia, shadowed her native Kayseri.68 Furthermore, Bakalian did not realise that the city was perched at a high altitude (1,054 m). Along the long journey in Anatolia, participants in diaspora tours generate communitas. Many survey respondents called their fellow travellers soulmates and described forming ‘a bond unlike any they had experienced before’. For example, in Homecoming, a film of a tour to Eastern Anatolia produced by the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church in autumn 2012, a woman speaking to the camera remarks that the journey was like a family reunion, even though the participants had not known one another previously.69

194  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Connecting with Locals and Making Peace with the Past Our survey indicates that the search for communitas was not limited to members of the tour. Several participants noted that meeting Turkish nationals of Armenian descent was one of the highlights of their trip. These Turkish-­ speaking Armenians, mostly Muslim, were the ‘lost members of the tribe’. For example, they remembered the couple employed as custodians at the Armenian Church Surp Kevork (Saint George) in Derik (south of Diyarbakır), the public school teacher in Elazığ and the gas station attendant also in Elazığ. These individuals are the children of Armenian girls who were adopted by Turks and Kurds during the deportations and eventually grew up Muslim. However, many of these women maintained their Armenian identity secretly, and at the end of their lives a few revealed it to their grandchildren.70 Similarly, participants also enjoyed becoming acquainted with the Hemshin people of the Black Sea region near Rize because their language, traditions and rituals resembled those of Armenians. While some Hemshin acknowledge Armenian roots, today they are a Muslim ethnic group that is not considered part of the Armenian nation.71 Still, Armenian diaspora tourists in June 2011 felt an affinity with them after communicating with them in Armenian. Food is a significant source of communitas for the participants. Turkish and diaspora Armenian cultures share common recipes, including lahmacun (thin dough topped with minced beef and spices), kavurma (stir-­fried meat) with eggs, dolma (vegetables stuffed with lamb and rice), börek (pastry filled with cheese/vegetables/meat), Imam Bayildi (aubergine dish) and dondurma (Sahlep ice cream made with orchid bulb powder). Many respondents reported that they purchased biber (pepper-­flakes) from Marash (Kahramanmaraş) to enjoy in their homes back in the United States. Testing Traditional Ideologies and Forging a New Legacy Occasionally along the trip, a participant encounters a life-­changing experience, such as Julia (age fifty-­seven), who wrote in the survey: I met a female doctor from Izmir at breakfast. I only said to her I am Armenian and my father came from Kayseri. Just when I was about to leave, the doctor came up to me and said, ‘I am sorry,’ repeating it twice. ‘I am

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 195 sorry for everything. My father was a shoemaker in Kayseri and he learned his skills from Armenians.’

Julia declared that this was one of the most meaningful moments of her life, not just of the trip. This doctor’s remorse – direct person-­to-­person contrition – was more important to her than any official apology by the Turkish state. Another Armenian tourist in Turkey posted the following commentary online, reflecting an experience similar to Julia’s: As we were leaving the gates of Ani, I struck up a conversation with one of the Turkish soldiers who knew some English. I asked him where he was from and whether he was a Turk or Kurd. He said he was a Kurd from Malatia. Learning that he was a Kurd, I became braver in my conversation with him. When I told him that I was Armenian, he became very excited, telling me that his wife was half Armenian. He called another soldier who was standing nearby and told him I was Armenian. The second soldier, also a Kurd from Malatia, told me that his grandfather had saved a young Armenian boy’s life during the genocide. What they said next made my blood curdle. They did not believe what their government told them about the Armenians, nor the history that they were taught in their schools. These young soldiers said that they knew the true history and stated that nothing worse could have happened to any group of people.72

These two quotes illustrate how some diaspora Armenians who meet Turkish people in Anatolia who acknowledge the 1915 genocide consider it a highlight of their tour. Although one Turk does not represent the nation, participants were nonetheless pleased to receive a symbolic apology. Survey respondents also demonstrate that meeting Turks and witnessing the geography of Anatolia made them more curious about their own family’s history as well as Armenian culture and history. Upon returning from their trips, some initiated projects such as chronicling their journey and developing a family tree to pass down to their grandchildren. One odar participant (married to an Armenian) started taking Armenian language lessons. More commonly, the pilgrims shared photographs and videos with family and friends. Several offered illustrated lectures at Armenian community centres.

196  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t A few wrote articles for Armenian-­American newspapers. The participants’ favourite method of sharing their experiences was on the Internet, posting testimonials on YouTube, blogging or producing DVDs of the trip. They also started e-­mail groups to circulate relevant news on Armenian–Turkish relations. Myerhoff explains how diaspora tourists interpret their experiences through dissemination. Sometimes conditions conspire to make a generational cohort acutely self-­ conscious and then they become active participants in their own history and provide their own sharp, insistent definitions of themselves and explanations for their destiny, past, and future. They are then knowing actors in a historical drama they script, rather than subjects in someone else’s study. They ‘make’ themselves, sometimes even ‘make themselves up,’ an activity which is not inevitable or automatic but reserved for special people and special circumstances. It is an artificial and exhilarating undertaking, this self-­construction.73

In their post-­trip life, Armenian travellers revise their life narrative by integrating new understanding that has been gained on the journey. The words that Tom (age seventy) wrote in the questionnaire illustrate the voice he gained from witnessing his father’s birthplace: Unfortunately, I knew nothing about where my parents lived, the street or anything. My mother was sent at fourteen with two other girls on a caravan (thirty days) and arrived at Aleppo to relatives; my father was orphaned at fourteen, lived with an odar family, and ran away in the middle of the night when he overheard their plan to turn him in. He scrubbed pots and lived in the streets (I believe it was quite common), until he saved enough to come to America at seventeen. They left nothing. My maternal great grandfather, I was told, owned huge acreages of vineyards just outside the Diyarbekir [sic] wall all the way to the river, but I know nothing except the family name. I wondered what I would be doing if we had stayed, shoe repairing as my uncles and grandfather did. Maybe fate did me a favour.

Tom justifies his family’s deportation by visualising the bleak scenario of what would have happened if they had stayed in Turkey. That is to say that

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 197 the journey inspires participants to make self-­conscious attempts to move forward by rewriting their own family’s narrative for future generations and, in doing that, they undermine traditional Armenian beliefs. It would seem that diaspora tourism is subversive not only of the Turkish denial but also of the hard-­line Armenian political platform that does not allow for dialogue and reconciliation. This does not suggest that diaspora Armenians who travel to Turkey stop demanding genocide recognition. On the contrary, almost all of the participants who completed our survey insisted on an acknowledgement, if not an apology, from the Republic of Turkey. They wrote that they felt ‘anger’, ‘hostility’, ‘fear’, ‘frustration’ and ‘bitterness’ towards the Turkish Government before and after the trip. A participant even said that they felt ‘more aggravated seeing the level of destruction’. In contrast, most respondents had decidedly softened their perspective regarding the Turkish people. Nonetheless, as the centennial anniversary of the genocide approaches, the deadlock of competing narratives and entrenched animus at the level of the state is likely to endure. While diaspora tourism builds cultural bridges between Armenians and local Turks, unlocking the door to political r­ econciliation requires state actors. Contributions of Armenian Diaspora Tourism Although the physical act of travel is essential to diaspora tourism, the psychological and sociopolitical implications render it particularly meaningful. In this chapter, we have argued that Armenian diaspora tourism to ancestral lands in Eastern Turkey is a special type of pilgrimage because it is subversive of the Republic of Turkey’s meta-­frame. Diaspora Armenian tours in Anatolia take the 1915 survivors’ descendants to their ancestral village or town. The tour operator carefully stages this encounter. When a pilgrim has a cathartic experience, such as breaking down and sobbing upon witnessing the physical site, touching the buildings, collecting stones and soil to take home, and talking to the present inhabitants, the trip has been successful. Participants talk about coming home, feeling relief and achieving closure. For first-­time pilgrims, everything is intense, emotional and frightening. The rite of passage transforms novices to competent travellers, even experts, on this type of tourism. Along the way, the

198  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t group engages in rituals such as singing Hayr Mer in buildings that were once Armenian churches, lodging the photograph of a pilgrim’s father in the walls of Surp Giragos, the church in Diyarbakir that was refurbished and returned to the Armenians in 2011, and changing the spelling of a signpost to its original Ani. These performances are subversive of the Turkish narrative. Communitas emerges among the pilgrims because they share the purpose of the trip as well as their perspective on their history. Participants speak of finding soulmates and the group being like a family. On the tours, topophilia towards the countryside emerges as well as empathy towards the present inhabitants of Anatolia. Participants find affinity with ordinary Kurds and Turks; they recognise that their cultures are similar – the cuisine, music, norms of hospitality and the warmth of the children. They meet Muslims who were the children of Armenian mothers and claim them as ‘lost members of the tribe’. A few participants even receive an apology for the genocide from a Turk. Indeed, post-­trip participants speak of Turks with more nuances. However, attitudes towards the state are unchanged. Upon returning to their everyday lives in the United States or elsewhere, the participants spread the new memories and learning to their families, friends and community. More significantly, diaspora tourism generates new meaning and narratives critical of diasporic (political) ideologies and traditional identities based on the hatred of the Turks. In other words, pilgrims have the opportunity to liberate themselves from the constraints of the anti-­ Turk paradigm and create their own life narrative or counter-­narratives in order to reinvent themselves. Lest we are blamed for being naive, gullible or simplistic, we must acknowledge that the number of diaspora Armenians who embark on a trip to Anatolia is very limited. Therefore, we should be careful in generalising our results. Furthermore, in most Armenian diaspora communities, there is a segment that maintains strong hatred of the Turks and refuses to set foot in Turkey. Again, we should be cautious in projecting the benefits of diaspora tourism for reconciliation between Armenians and Turks. This study makes two significant contributions. The first is to the literature on diasporas and travel, by analysing how ethno-­religious pilgrimages to ancestors’ lands play a role in defining identities and shaping perspectives. We focus on cases where the destination is problematic; to achieve their

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 199 objectives, the tour has to circumvent the host state’s narrative. Our empirical evidence applies to diaspora Armenians travelling in Turkey; however, our conceptual framework is applicable to other diaspora populations that are the result of forced displacement and who after years, perhaps generations, visit their native lands. Second, an unexpected finding of our research is that Armenian diaspora tourism to Anatolia is subversive of traditional Armenian ideologies regarding the Turkish state’s genocide denial. Some diaspora tourists are inspired to develop and expound a new Armenian diaspora narrative that blames the Turkish state but does not harbour anger toward Turks. While it is far too soon to speak of reconciliation between Armenians and Turks, diaspora tourism is creating opportunities at the personal level for a powerful change in narratives that may one day reverberate across the community. Finally, we acknowledge that diaspora tourism, while not a panacea, has the exciting potential to break the impasse between peoples. Notes   1. The authors would like to express their gratitude to Armen Aroyan and the tour participants for their contribution to this project, and thanks to Razmik Panossian for incisive comments on the manuscript. Zeynep Turan would also like to thank Clark McCauley (The Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania) for reading earlier drafts and providing helpful comments.   2. See B. Bilgé, ‘Turkish-­American Patterns of Intermarriage’, in B. C. Aswad and B. Bilgé (eds), Family and Gender among American Muslims: Issues Facing Middle Eastern Immigrants and Their Descendants (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1996), pp. 59–106.   3. Bakalian’s participation in these two tours yielded vivid experiences of the land, the heritage and the local residents, and it also provided access to the tour operator, the tour bus drivers and the participants.   4. In October 2011, Surp Giragos was consecrated and returned to the Armenian Patriarchy in Istanbul, an unprecedented feat in modern Turkish history. Shortly after its consecration the church hosted a baptism ceremony for a group of Armenians who were raised as Sunni Muslims; see V. Ziflioğlu, ‘Armenians Claim Roots in Diyarbakir’, Hürriyet Daily News (11 October 2011); www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=armenians­claim-­roots-­in-­diyarbakir-­2011-­10-­23.

200  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t   5. R. Panossian, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 228.  6. A. Bakalian, Armenian-­ Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, [1993] 2011), p. 360.   7. P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966).   8. For Dadrian see ‘The Anticipation and Prevention of Genocide in International Conflicts: Some Lessons from History’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5: 2 (1988), pp. 129–43 and Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-­Armenian Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1999) and for Hovannisian see The Republic of Armenia, vol. 1, The First Year, 1918–1919 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971), The Republic of Armenia, vol. 2, From Versailles to London (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982), The Armenian Genocide in Perspective (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1986), The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1992), and Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999).  9. F. M. Göçek, ‘Reading Genocide: Turkish Historiography on 1915’, in R. G. Suny, F. M. Göçek and N. M. Naimark (eds), A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 42. 10. A. Göl, ‘Imagining the Turkish Nation through “Othering” Armenians’, Nations and Nationalism 11: 1 (2005), p. 134. 11. See Lerna Ekmekcioglu, ‘Improvising Turkishness: Being Armenian in Post-­ Ottoman Istanbul (1915–1933)’ (PhD dissertation, New York University, 2010). 12. An interview with Hrant Dink. Duzel, N., ‘Ermeni Mallarini Kimler Aldi?’, Radical, 23 May 2005, www.radikal.com.tr/haber.php?haberno=153515 (accessed 22 August 2013). 13. The Turkish Ambassador in Vienna was killed in October 1975. In 1979, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) orchestrated thirteen attacks; in 1980, they increased to thirty-­four; in 1981 they orchestrated forty-­nine; and in 1982 they orchestrated twenty-­four. These included the occupation of the Turkish Embassy in Paris in 1981, the Esenboğa Airport in Ankara in 1982 and Orly Airport (Paris) in 1983; see Kurz, A. and A. Merari, ASALA-­Irrational Terror or Political Tool (Boulder, CO: Westview Press and Tel Aviv University, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 1985), pp. 24–9.

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 201 14. Kurz and Merari, ASALA-­Irrational Terror or Political Tool; see also Bakalian, Armenian-­Americans, p. 99. 15. Göçek, ‘Reading Genocide’, p. 43. 16. For example, a half-­page advertisement sponsored by Assembly of Turkish American Associations appeared in The New York Times and the Washington Post on Sunday, 19 May 1985 addressed to the US House of Representatives asking them not to adopt the resolution on the genocide. The advert was signed by sixty-­nine American historians specialising on the Middle East. 17. See H. W. Lowry, The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 1990); Stanford J. Shaw and E. K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and Justin McCarthy, The End of Ottoman Anatolia, in Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1983). For publications in the 2000s, see G. Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2005); and Justin McCarthy, The Armenian Rebellion at Van (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2006), and The Turk in America: The Creation of an Enduring Prejudice (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2010). 18. The following English publications are a sample of Turkish scholars who deny the Armenian genocide: Y. Halaçoğlu, The Story of 1915: What Happened to the Ottoman Armenians? (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2008), and Facts on the Relocation of Armenians (1914–1918) (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society Printing House, 2002); H. Selvi, Armenian Question: From the First World War to the Treaty of Lausanne (Sakarya: Sakarya University, 2007); Y. H. Bayur, K. Çiçek and P. Eray, ‘Armenians’, in Atatürk Kültür, Dil, ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society Press, 2010); K. Çiçek, The Great War and the Forced Migration of Armenians (Belfast: Athol Books, 2011). 19. See Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: The Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2004). 20. Armenian historiography establishes that the genocide began on the evening of 24 April 1915 when Minister of Interior Talât Pasha issued an order to arrest all the Armenian scholars, writers, artists and leaders in Constantinople. Then they were deported to Anatolia. Of the approximately 250 notables, Grioris Balakian  – a priest, later a bishop and esteemed intellectual, was among the few who survived. Balakian’s memoir, Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the

202  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Armenian Genocide, 1915–1918, trans Peter Balakian and Aris Sevag (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2011) (volume I first published in 1922 and volume II in 1956) is a testimony of the horrors he witnessed. In Chapters 7 to 16 of Armenian Golgotha, Balakian describes in detail what happened to the intelligentsia who were rounded up on 24 April 1915. 21. These commemorations have been taking place since 2011. www.al-­monitor. com/pulse/originals/2013/04/pkk-­withdrawal-­armenian-­genocide-­day.html 22 See V. Ziflioğlu, ‘Armenian Organizations Mark 1915 at Ceremonies in Istanbul’, Hürriyet Daily News (24 April 2013). 23. Anny Bakalian’s field notes from summer 2011; conversation with Agos staff journalists in Istanbul. 24. See P. Basu, Highland Homecomings: Genealogy and Heritage Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), E. Cohen, Youth Tourism to Israel: Educational Experiences of the Diaspora (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2008), and S. Kelner, Tours that Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2010). 25. There are birthright programmes to Hungary, Greece and Armenia. Birthright Armenia, Depi Hayk (return to Hayk, the mythic Armenian ancestor) offers volunteer internship for twenty year-­olds and above with the purpose to establish a strong attachment to the Republic of Armenia; see http://birthrightarmenia.org 26. See T. E. Coles and D. J. Timothy (eds), Tourism, Diasporas, and Space (London: Routledge, 2004). 27. V. Bajc, ‘Christian Pilgrimage Groups in Jerusalem: Framing the Experience through Linear Meta-­Narrative’, Journeys 7: 2 (2006), p. 106. 28. V. Bajc, ‘Creating Ritual through Narrative, Place and Performance in Evangelical Protestant Pilgrimage in the Holy Land’, Mobilities (3 November 2007), pp. 402–5. 29. H. Varjabedian, ‘The Poetics of History and Memory: The Mutual Instrumental of Armenian Genocide Narratives’ (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2009), p. 511. 30. Varjabedian, ‘Poetics of History’, pp. 537–8. 31. Ibid., p. 511. 32. In November 2007, Professors Richard Hovannisian and Fatma Müge Göçek presented their experiences of travelling throughout Eastern Turkey the previous summer at Surp Hagop Armenian Apostolic Church in Montreal (the scholars were in Canada for the Middle East Studies Association annual meetings). A car tailed them most of the time perhaps because it was Hovannisian’s first tour in

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 203 the East. Göçek surmised that the men were security officers (Bakalian’s notes of the illustrated lecture). 33. S. Low, ‘Place Attachment in the Plaza’, in I. Altman and S. Low (eds), Place Attachment (New York, NY: Plenum Press, 1992), pp. 165–85. 34. Y. Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990). 35. B. Myerhoff, ‘Rites of Passage: Process and Paradox’, in V. Turner (ed.), Celebrations: Studies in Festivity and Ritual (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), p. 113. 36. Myerhoff, ‘Rites of Passage’, p. 132. 37. M. Stausberg, Religion and Tourism: Crossroads, Destinations, and Encounters (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011), p. 20. 38. V. W. Turner and E. L. B. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 253. 39. Payaslian adapts the concept of subaltern to the Armenians. Here we also borrow the term to denote minority voices, those in the margins. See Simon Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities: The Armenian Community in Syria’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 16: 1/2 (2007), pp. 92–132. 40. S. Topalian, ‘Daughters and Granddaughters of Survivors: From Horror to Finding Our Own Voices’, in M. A. Mamigonian (ed.), The Armenians of New England: Celebrating a Culture and Preserving a Heritage (Belmont: Armenian Heritage Press, 2004), p. 227. 41. For example, Svajian, A Trip through Historic Armenia (New York, NY: Greenhill Publishers, 1977), and G. D. Yeghiayan, Conversations in Silence (La Verne: University of La Verne, 1989), published memoirs. In 1988, Theodore Bogosian accompanied and filmed Mariam Davis, a survivor (and her daughter) on her first visit to her native towns in Eastern Turkey (produced by WGBH (public broadcasting service TV), Boston). However, they did not disclose their Armenian identity (see Bakalian, Armenian-­Americans, p. 344). There were also others who did not publish their memoirs, but used their photographs in theirlectures and classes (such as Professor Dickran Kouymjian who taught Anny Bakalian Armenian History and Art History at American University of Beirut in 1971–3). The Institute of Humanistic Subjects of the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic of Milan, a group of Armenian and Italian architects and historians under Director Adriano Alpago-­Novello, published a series of monographs on Armenian churches (total nine volumes) in Soviet Armenia. However, they

204  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t also included the church on Aght’amar island on the lake of Van, Eastern Turkey (see Alpago-­Novello, Aght’amar, Documents of Armenian Architecture, vol. 8 eds A. and A. Manoukian and H. Vahramian (Milano: Institute of Humanistic Subjects of the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic, 1974)). 42. Although this chapter primarily focuses on diaspora Armenians, mostly from the United States, during the same period, Armenians who had relocated in Syria and Lebanon were more likely to travel to Turkey because of their proximity. It is hard to determine their numbers at this time. However, some Armenian-­ Americans also visited their ancestral villages in Anatolia, such as the Melkonian family from Fresno. M. Melkonian, in My Brother’s Road: An American’s Fateful Journey to Armenia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), pp. 10–17, describes that they reached his maternal grandparents’ town Merzifon (formerly Marsovan) in 1969. 43. Our study does not include travellers from the Republic of Armenia to Turkey nor Turkish Armenians engaging in internal tourism because our work is on the diaspora. We are aware that a small number of Turkish Armenians in Istanbul guide their community members to their ancestral villages and towns in Anatolia. Language and social/cultural differences have prevented Armenian Americans from joining Turkish Armenian tours and vice versa. There are also tours from Yerevan to Historic Armenia and a booming business in Mediterranean vacations such as Antalya. 44. Many minority populations, including Armenians, left Egypt in the late 1950s to the early 1960s as a result of Abdel Nasr’s Arab nationalist and socialist policies (see Bakalian, Armenian-­Americans, p. 11). 45. Vartabedian, ‘Poetics of History’, p. 7. 46. Aroyan met Cemal, the father, in October 1991 when he came to pick him up in Adana Airport. Cenal was recommended by a journalist that Aroyan had met in Antep on a previous visit. Eventually, Cemal recruited his eldest son Selçuk. 47. See D. Douglas and Anny Bakalian, ‘Sub-­ethnic Diversity: Armenians in the United States’, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 18 (December 2009), pp. 37–51. Since 2001, the American Community Survey has replaced the long form of the Census that accounted for ethnicity and immigration. 48. These numbers reflect the different waves of immigrants. The Armenian pioneers who settled in America came from the Ottoman Empire in large numbers starting in the 1880s. The survivors of the genocide and deportations arrived in the early decades of the twentieth century. Then in the 1960s and early 1970s, Armenians from socialist countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Egypt and Syria

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 205 were granted visas to enter the United States. A civil war began in Lebanon in 1975, and a revolution in Iran in 1978 increasing immigration from these countries. In the 1990s, after the demise of the Soviet Union and consequent economic hardships, another wave of immigrants came from Armenia and other parts of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 49. Bakalian in personal conversation with M. K. (US-­born Armenian whose parents immigrated to Los Angeles in the 1980s from Yerevan) learned that her mother went to Historic Armenia in summer 2012. As the Armenian–Turkish border is closed, bus groups use the Georgian border. It is probable that these tours are cheaper, and the participants find them more congenial (speak Eastern Armenian and culturally compatible). 50. See Bakalian, Armenian-­Americans. 51. www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUgpdv_ a9I 52. www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH6FBUIOHzg&feature=related 53. Armenians call themselves Hye/Hay while they are known by outsiders by another mythical ancestor, Arman/Armen. 54. Mount Ararat consists of two mountains – Greater and Lesser/Little – in the heartland of Historic Armenia. Presently, both massifs are in Turkey, at the border of the Republic of Armenia. 55. Panossian, The Armenians, pp. 51–2, 335, 362. 56. Panossian, The Armenians, p. 60. He writes: ‘By medieval standards Ani was truly a magnificent metropolis, of 100,000 people at its peak – a city of “1001 churches”, of trade, commerce and wealth, as well as of impenetrable fortifications at the height of its power . . . Sacked by the Mongols in 1236 it declined to the status of a village, especially after it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1319. By the seventeenth century it was completely abandoned, and remains so to this day, but Ani, in its splendour, never left Armenian popular imagination. Today the ruins of the city, like Ararat, can be seen from Armenia, but are located in Turkey, across the Akhurian river (i.e. the border of the two countries). This symbolic “insult” to the national pride of Armenians is augmented by the ancient city’s Armenian past being denied by Turkey in its official historiography. Not only is Ani one of the most visible and “tangible” symbols of past Armenian greatness (hence a source of pride), it is a “forbidden” territory (hence simultaneously a source of frustration).’ 57. Bringing dirt from an ancestors’ land in plastic bags is not unique to Armenians. In Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), and the movie of the same name (dir. Liev Schreiber,

206  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 2005), a young American Jewish man is the main character who travels to Ukraine in search for the woman who saved his grandfather in Second World War. He collects soil samples in plastic bags throughout his journey. 58. Armenian-­American author Peter Balakian (2008) describes a surreal experience on his pilgrimage to Der Zor (Syria), symbolically ‘the epicentre of death’ for Armenians in 1915. This is how he explains returning home with plastic bags, ‘without thinking, picking up handfuls of dirt, sifting the bones and stuffing them in my pockets. I felt the porous chalky, dirt-­saturated, hard, infrangible stuff in my hands. A piece of hip socket, a part of a skull. Nine decades later.’ At John F. Kennedy Airport, Balakian hesitates for a moment: Were the bones and soil in the plastic bags in his briefcase organic matter? Is he bringing them illegally to the US? He marks no on the customs form. 59. Varjabedian, ‘Poetics of History’, pp. 528–9. 60. There are survivor accounts, such as J. Yervant, Needle, Thread and Button (Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute, 1988), and M. A. Ahnert, The Knock at the Door: A Mother’s Survival of the Armenian Genocide (New York, NY: Beaufort Books, 2012) as well as oral history, such as D. E. Miller and L. T. Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). There was also research on pre-­1915 Armenian society, as in the work of S. Hoogasian Villa and M. K. Matossian, Armenian Life before 1914 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1982). 61. Houshamadyan is a web archive established in 2010 ‘to reconstruct and preserve the memory of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire through research’; see www.houshamadyan.org 62. See Zeynep Turan, ‘Objects of Legacy: Material Objects of Displaced People’ (PhD dissertation, The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, 2008). 63. Istanbul Armenians averted deportation due to the presence of diplomatic corps. However, more than 200 notables were arrested on 24 April 1915 and sent to the interior where most died. 64. See: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRon_tEzkUc 65. Bakalian’s field notes from summer 2009. 66. Archdeacon Charles Hardy, Bittersweet Journey, www.bvahan.com/armenianpilgrimages/hardy2.htm, accessed 15 April 2013. 67. Turkey: A Family Erased, documentary film directed by George Kachadorian, USA: PBS, 2008, www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/watch/player. html?pkg=rc74turkey&seg=1&mod=0

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 207 68. The summit Erciyes reaches 3,916 metres (12,848 ft). 69. The Armenian Church of America, Eastern Diocese organised a tour of Historic Armenia under the guidance of Primate, Archbishop Khajag Barsamian in autumn 2012. During two weeks, more than 40 people visited Ani, Van and Dikranagerd, as well as other cities and villages. A photographer filmed the journey and ‘Homecoming’ was published by the Diocese on 6 January 2013. The 13-­minute trailer is on YouTube: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=GVIqYxzjDc0&list=UUtLR8-­fmASuGwoYxN0FEJkw. 70. See Fethiye Çetin, My Grandmother: An Armenian-­ Turkish Memoir, trans. Maureen Freely (London: Verso, 2008). 71. See H. Simonian (ed.), The Hemshin: History, Society and Identity in the Highlands of Northeast Turkey (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2007). 72. Hardy, Bittersweet Journey. 73. B. Myerhoff, ‘Life History among the Elderly: Performance, Visibility, and Remembering’, in J. Ruby (ed.), A Crack in Mirror (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), p. 100.

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208  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Bakalian, Anny, field notes (2009). Bakalian, Anny, field notes (summer 2011). Bakalian, Anny, notes of illustrated lecture. Balakian, Grigoris, Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915– 1918, trans Peter Balakian and Aris Sevag (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2011). Balakian, Peter, ‘Bones’, The New York Times Magazine (7 December 2008). Basu, P., Highland Homecomings: Genealogy and Heritage Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007). Berger, Peter L. and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966). Bilgé, B., ‘Turkish-­American Patterns of Intermarriage’, in B. C. Aswad and B. Bilgé (eds), Family and Gender among American Muslims: Issues Facing Middle Eastern Immigrants and Their Descendants (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1996), pp. 59–106. Çetin, Fethiye, My Grandmother: An Armenian-­Turkish Memoir, trans. Maureen Freely (London: Verso, 2008). Çiçek, K., The Great War and the Forced Migration of Armenians (Belfast: Athol Books, 2011). Cohen, E., Youth Tourism to Israel: Educational Experiences of the Diaspora (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2008). Coles, T. E. and D. J. Timothy (eds), Tourism, Diasporas, and Space (London: Routledge, 2004). Dadrian, Vahakn N., ‘A Typology of Genocide’, International Review of Modern Sociology 2 (autumn 1975), pp. 201–12. Dadrian, Vahakn N., ‘The Anticipation and Prevention of Genocide in International Conflicts: Some Lessons from History’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5: 2 (1988), pp. 129–43. Dadrian, Vahakn N., Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-­Armenian Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1999). Dadrian, Vahakn N. and T. Akçam, Judgement in Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials (New York, NY: Berghahn, 2011). Dink, Hrant, interview. Duzel, N., ‘Ermeni Mallarini Kimler Aldi?’, Radikal, 23 May 2005, www.radikal. com.tr/haber.php?haberno=153515 (accessed 22 August 2013). Douglas, D. and Anny Bakalian, ‘Sub-­ethnic Diversity: Armenians in the United States’, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 18 (December 2009), pp. 33–54.

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 209 Ekmekcioglu, Lerna, ‘Improvising Turkishness: Being Armenian in Post-­Ottoman Istanbul (1915–1933)’ (PhD dissertation, New York University, 2010). Foer, Jonathan Safran, Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2002). Göçek, Fatma Müge, ‘Reading Genocide: Turkish Historiography on 1915’, in R. G. Suny, F. M. Göçek and N. M. Naimark (eds), A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 42–52. Göl, A., ‘Imagining the Turkish Nation through “Othering” Armenians’, Nations and Nationalism 11: 1 (2005), pp. 121–39. Halaçoğlu, Y., Facts on the Relocation of Armenians (1914–1918) (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society Printing House, 2002). Halaçoğlu, Y., The Story of 1915: What Happened to the Ottoman Armenians? (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2008). Hardy, Archdeacon Charles, Bittersweet Journey, www.bvahan.com/armenian pilgrimages/hardy2.htm, accessed 15 April 2013. Hoogasian Villa, Susie and Mary Kilbourne Matossian, Armenian Life before 1914 (Detroit, MA: Wayne State University Press, 1982). Hovannisian, Richard G., The Republic of Armenia, vol. 1, The First Year, 1918–1919 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971). Hovannisian, Richard G., The Republic of Armenia, vol. 2, From Versailles to London (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982). Hovannisian, Richard G. (ed.), The Armenian Genocide in Perspective (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1986). Hovannisian, Richard. G. (ed.), The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1992). Hovannisian, Richard G., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999). Kelner, S., Tours that Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2010). Kurz, Anat and Ariel Merari, ASALA-­Irrational Terror or Political Tool (Boulder, CO: Westview Press and Tel Aviv University, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 1985). Lewy, Guenter, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2005). Low, Seta, ‘Place Attachment in the Plaza’, in I. Altman and S. Low (eds), Place Attachment (New York, NY: Plenum Press, 1992), pp. 165–85.

210  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Lowry, Heath W., The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 1990). McCarthy, Justin, The End of Ottoman Anatolia, in Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1983). McCarthy, Justin, The Armenian Rebellion at Van (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2006). McCarthy, Justin, The Turk in America: The Creation of an Enduring Prejudice (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2010). Melkonian, M., My Brother’s Road: An American’s Fateful Journey to Armenia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008). Miller, Donald E. and Lerna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). Myerhoff, Barbara, ‘Life History among the Elderly: Performance, Visibility, and Remembering’, in J. Ruby (ed.), A Crack in Mirror (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), pp. 99–117. Myerhoff, Barbara, ‘Rites of Passage: Process and Paradox’, in V. Turner (ed.), Celebrations: Studies in Festivity and Ritual (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), pp. 109–35. Panossian, Razmik, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006). Payaslian, Simon, ‘Diasporan Subalternities: The Armenian Community in Syria’, Diaspora – A Journal of Transnational Studies 16: 1/2 (2007), pp. 92–132. Selvi, H., Armenian Question: From the First World War to the Treaty of Lausanne (Sakarya: Sakarya University, 2007). Shaw, Stanford J. and E. K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808– 1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Simonian, Hovann (ed.), The Hemshin: History, Society and Identity in the Highlands of Northeast Turkey (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2007). Stausberg, M., Religion and Tourism: Crossroads, Destinations, and Encounters (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011). Svajian, S. G., A Trip through Historic Armenia (New York, NY: Greenhill Publishers, 1977). Topalian, Shaké, ‘Daughters and Granddaughters of Survivors: From Horror to Finding Our Own Voices’, in M. A. Mamigonian (ed.), The Armenians of

d ias pora touri sm a nd i den tity  | 211 New England: Celebrating a Culture and Preserving a Heritage (Belmont, MA: Armenian Heritage Press, 2004), pp. 225–31. Tuan, Y., Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990). Turan, Zeynep, ‘Objects of Legacy: Material Objects of Displaced People’ (PhD dissertation, The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, 2008). Turner, Victor W. and E. L. B. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1978). Varjabedian, Hrag, ‘The Poetics of History and Memory: The Mutual Instrumental of Armenian Genocide Narratives’ (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2009). Vartabedian, T., ‘Tour Guide Looks Back at 20 Years of Globe-­Trotting’, The Armenian Mirror-­Spectator 82: 22, issue 4212 (10 December 2011). Yeghiayan, Garbis D., Conversations in Silence (La Verne, CA: University of La Verne, 1989). Yervant, John, Needle, Thread and Button (Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute, 1988). Ziflioğlu, V., ‘Armenians Claim Roots in Diyarbakir’, Hürriyet Daily News (11 October 2011). Ziflioğlu, V., ‘Armenian Organizations Mark 1915 at Ceremonies in Istanbul’, Hürriyet Daily News (24 April 2013).

6 Stories of Identity and Resistance: Palestinian Women outside the Homeland Maria Holt

M

anal1 is forty-­five years old. She lives in Bourj el-­Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut. Her parents were from northern Palestine but were forced to flee in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. Although she has lived in Lebanon all her life, she told me when I met her, in 2011, that Palestine ‘means everything’ to her – ‘self-­respect, yearning and hope for the future’, and although she knows she may never return, she would ‘never forget about Palestine’.2 Manal’s account has echoes of other stories, told by refugee women who remember the traumatic events of 1948, when Palestinians had no choice ‘but to stand by helplessly and watch in terrified silence’3 as their homes and land were stolen from them. Unlike Manal, Mariam witnessed these events first-­hand. A middle-­class widow now living in west Beirut, she was born in Jaffa in 1936; in 1948, at the age of twelve, Mariam fled from Palestine with her family. Her memories are of escalating violence and intense disruption. She recalled that her family left Jaffa by car but, on the way, there was an explosion and her father had to turn back; they saw many overturned and abandoned cars along the way. She said that buses were brought in and some armed men promised to protect them, so they started off again. ‘We believed,’ she said, ‘that the problem would be solved eventually and we would be able to return to our home in Jaffa’; they left most of their possessions behind.4 The memories, both real and inherited, that women such as 212

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 213 Manal and Mariam possess, give them a kind of power in the sense that they have not only survived but have come to embody the dream of return. This chapter explores the stories that refugee women tell about themselves, their community and their history, to make sense of an uncomfortable present and preserve the memories of what has happened to them. They are stories of identity and resistance, informed by past experiences, ‘memories’ of Palestine and a tradition of resistance; but these stories have been, in the main, ignored or trivialised. For Palestinians living outside their homeland, the situation is even more precarious as they struggle not only to survive the rigours of exile but also to preserve their sense of national identity. One method of doing this that has been consciously adopted by the refugees is to construct, through memories and stories, a compelling narrative of survival. To appreciate what ‘never feeling at home’ means, this chapter analyses narratives of home in terms of identity and resistance. It focuses on a fragment of the Palestinian exile community and reflects on the oral accounts of refugee women living in the camps of Lebanon, a community that faces deteriorating living conditions and few prospects of peace or security. Women refugees, as victims and active participants, confront efforts, by Israel and parts of the international community, to negate their identity through the articulation of a national narrative. Palestinian women’s stories, which are both personal and communal, take many forms and are used to preserve the memory of 1948 as well as to remind the world through speaking out that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict remains unresolved. Many of the women I interviewed had made a conscious choice to engage with visiting foreigners in the expectation that their words would reach a wider audience and, out of this encounter, would come some form of action. Theorists attribute power ‘to the house and dwelling, with its connotations of safety and security . . . and as a storehouse of memories’;5 but it is much more than that. Here I will consider Palestinian women’s stories of ‘home’ as a place ‘of safety and security’, but also as ‘a battleground coming under attack’,6 a site of danger and resistance. Home, as Manal and Mariam made clear, means ‘Palestine’, but it is also represented by the refugee camp as a resisting and moral community. My intention is to unravel the many complex strands of reality and imagination. I propose to interrogate the notion of a Palestinian ‘diaspora’ and to argue that, rather than identifying themselves

214  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t as a diasporic group, Palestinians in exile see themselves primarily as ‘active strugglers’, a unified community that is waiting to return. Women’s narratives of survival, far from being incidental, embody resistance and refusal. However, I will also argue that, while the creation of narrative is a source of strength, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the refugees to resist the insecurity of their marginalised and disregarded existence. This chapter contains three key elements: first, the practice of story-­telling as a way of bearing witness and, at the same time, of reiterating Palestinian loss and entitlement; second, the workings of memory and the ways in which the experience of exile is reconstituted through generations; and, finally, the fluid character of identity, which is linked to feelings of belonging and community, an attachment to the land of Palestine and a shared sentiment that took shape out of individual experience. Taken as a whole, this suggests that Palestinians outside of the homeland maintain a sense of themselves as ‘temporarily absent’ but, more immediately, have a sense that they are entitled to live lives of dignity while they wait to return. It raises questions of how a community is able to preserve its identity in exile and how an identity that depends for its meaning on a specific place is able to articulate itself in the absence of that place. In order to answer these questions, I will consider meanings of narrative and resistance for Palestinian women in exile by referring to the contested narrative of 1948. Next, I will focus on the reliability of memory and questions of truth. Third, I will reflect on the link between identity and place, in the sense of home and homeland, on the one hand, and the place of exile on the other. Finally, I will explore story-­telling related to the specific modes of resistance adopted by Palestinian refugee women, a ‘narrative of heroism’ that enables them to challenge adversity outside of the homeland, in order to create a more tolerable future for themselves and their families. Yet, it is also a ‘story of denial’ in the sense that Palestinian claims for justice have repeatedly been denied by a strong and triumphalist Israeli state and by a largely indifferent international community. My principal focus will be the role of women in constructing a complex national narrative to protect and celebrate their identity. My chapter is informed and given substance by the personal stories of the many women I met in Lebanon who perform the vital task of keeping alive the notion of ‘Palestine’ in the minds of successive generations, and do so against a

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 215 b­ ackdrop of alienation and exile that enhances ‘the need to reconstruct homeland’.7 By exploring ‘the thorny relationship between “individual” memory and that which has come to be called “collective” memory’,8 I will suggest that, through the dissemination of their ‘story of denial’, refugee women are broadening understandings and methods of articulating resistance. Methodology In 2006–79 and in 2011, I conducted research (partially funded by the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster) with Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon. The project focused primarily on memory, identity, home and violence. My objective, through a series of face-­to-­face interviews, was to ask women about their memories, real or inherited, of Palestine, their flight into exile in 1948, the years of violence and deprivation in Lebanon and their present lives, neither ‘at home’ nor secure outside the homeland. My interviewees included women from all backgrounds: students, professionals, non-­governmental organisation (NGO) workers, volunteers and unpaid homemakers. They varied in age from late teens to women in their seventies and eighties who had real memories of Palestine. While many were well-­educated, including some university graduates, a few – mainly the elderly – were unschooled. Their stories were often spell-­binding; many were poignant, sometimes humorous, occasionally heart-­breaking. In total, I interviewed 137 women and several men, in refugee camps all over Lebanon, and a few outside the camps (mainly in the unregistered Kasmiyye camp, near Tyre). The interviews were based on questionnaires but also permitted a more open, semi-­structured approach whereby individuals could, if they chose, provide more information about particular areas of their lives or experiences. My approach supports Gluck’s view that women’s oral history is a ‘feminist encounter’,10 in the sense that it privileges women’s stories and gives weight to their interpretation of events. Palestinians outside the Homeland During the violence that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from their land with approximately 100,000 taking refuge in Lebanon. Allan describes

216  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t the refugees as ‘out-­of-­place and between states’.11 They neither belong in Lebanon nor are permitted to return home. From the start, their presence has been problematic and their unresolved problem very quickly became bound up in Lebanon’s tragic history, linked partly to decisions taken by Palestinians and their leadership and partly to Lebanon’s complex politics. In the mid-­twentieth century, Lebanon was a demographically precarious state, balanced between conflicting sectarian communities. The unwritten National Pact of 1943 divided power between the main religious groups in an arrangement known as ‘confessionalism’, whereby the country’s president would always be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the national parliament a Shi’i Muslim. The arrival of a relatively large number of predominantly Sunni Palestinian refugees threatened to upset this delicate balance and it certainly contributed to the growing instability of the country. Through their activities in Lebanon – specifically the regular cross-­border attacks into Israel by Palestinian militant groups, which provoked a harsh response and, from the late 1960s, the construction of a Palestinian ‘state-­within-­a-­state’ in Lebanon after the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) took control of the refugee camps – it has been suggested that the Palestinians played a decisive role in the descent into violence and the ensuing civil war (1975–90).12 For Palestinians outside of the homeland, the ‘division between exile and nationalism’ is best understood as one ‘between loser and winner, between a mood of rejection and a mood of celebration’.13 While their existence as a national entity is constantly threatened, their determined and persistent presence over more than six decades is a powerful assertion of nationalism. In order to appreciate their story, as articulated by refugee women, I will situate it within a theoretical framework of nationalism, memory, narrative and contested notions of diaspora. Nationalism has been described as ‘a masterful effort of narrative construction’, and ‘narratives of nation’ propose ‘a grammar of the nation’ and ‘rhetoric of the nation’.14 While ‘the idea of the nation as a continuous narrative of national progress’15 is dubious, the dispersal and fragmentation ‘of the Arab population of Palestine have served as uniting factors behind a modern Palestinian national identity’.16 As Sara in Bourj el-­Barajneh camp said, ‘Wherever they are, Palestinians belong to one identity’.17 Many other women shared her sentiments.

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 217 They articulated an ‘idea of the nation’, which is located in a shared past, an attachment to the land of Palestine, a commitment to the right of return and a determination to resist any attempt to negate or fragment their identity. This ‘rhetoric of the nation’, as presented in the narratives of refugee women, attempts ‘to give the impression of coherence, of the legitimate authority of the narrator . . . [and] the truth-­value of the stories told’.18 Bhabha has written about the ‘ambivalent figure of the nation’ and its tendency to waver between vocabularies. What effect, he asks, is this likely to have ‘on narratives and discourses that signify a sense of “nationness”?’19 I suggest in this chapter that, for Palestinians, the nation is not experienced as an ‘ambivalent figure’ but, rather, as an unwavering reality that defines its ‘vocabulary’. The strongly articulated ‘rhetoric of the nation’ can be attributed to its threatened and fragmented nature. As the narratives of Sara and other women attest, Palestinians’ sense of ‘nationness’ informs and protects their shared memory of homeland and also their scattered individual memories. Each woman has her own story, often articulated around the initial traumatic flight from Palestine and the violent uncertainty of life in Lebanon as they wait to return, but a thread of steadfastness runs through all of them. At the same time, as a result of their experiences, memory for Palestinians has become a painful process, characterised by loss and violence. Their subjectivity has been undermined in various ways, ‘one of which was to define their plight as humanitarian and then to tie it inextricably to an overall resolution of the Arab-­Israeli conflict, with the hope and knowledge that such a resolution was not forthcoming’.20 Their memories have been denied or negated, which causes intense feelings of powerlessness and a lack of control over their own past; nationalist narratives, as Khalili argues, ‘are not stable’21 and therefore require a framework of commemoration. Schulz has spoken of the emergence of a ‘homeland discourse’ or ‘process of remembering what has been lost’22 and this takes a number of forms, both formal and informal. At the formal level, Palestinians memorialise what has been lost through ritual and rhetoric, while informal – or personal – remembering, often by women, attests to the local, the familiar and the domestic.

218  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t A Palestinian ‘Diaspora’ Palestinians in exile have been characterised as a ‘diaspora’, but this is contested by many of the refugee women interviewed for this project, who argue that their absence from Palestine is merely temporary. The term ‘diaspora’ has been described as ‘a scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and places’,23 but it also refers to a ‘political struggle to define the local . . . as a distinctive community’.24 Many of the displaced Palestinians I interviewed prefer to emphasise political struggle and the preservation of a ‘distinctive community’ over any advantage that ‘movement’ or mobility may present to them. Asma in Rashidiyya camp, for example, said, ‘I do not want to stay in Lebanon because I have no rights here. The Lebanese will always call us “refugees” and there are more restrictions than ever on our lives.’25 Amira in Bourj el-­Barajneh camp agreed that ‘in Lebanon, Palestinians have many problems. We have no rights and do not have a normal life . . . but we can do nothing; we are just sitting and waiting.’26 These views were repeated by many of the women interviewed for this project who insisted that they do not ‘belong’ in Lebanon; they are not welcome and have no desire to stay any longer than necessary. In light of these feelings of being ‘temporarily absent’, can we ‘assume’ a Palestinian diaspora? If we think of ‘diaspora’ as ‘a collective of people’ who share ‘a cultural and ethnic background that separates them from where they live and links them to where they come from’27 then this would seem to apply to Palestinians residing in Lebanon who have a strong sense of a shared background and continue to feel ‘separate’ from the host community, as Asma’s and Amira’s narratives illustrate. For them, identity is linked to spatial location.28 Brah has written of a ‘homing desire’ that, she argues, is not the same thing as desire for a ‘homeland’. This distinction, she adds, is significant ‘because not all diasporas sustain an ideology of “return”’.29 Most of the Palestinians interviewed possess a strong ‘homing desire’ and certainly sustain ‘an ideology of return’. Fatima, a forty-­four-year-­old midwife, observed, ‘Lebanon is only a country where I have to live, but I have my own land and nothing can ever replace it. We are grateful to the Lebanese for receiving us but, in the end, it is not our country.’30 Fatima’s words suggest that ‘Palestinians do not always fit easily into

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 219 contemporary theoretical frameworks’.31 Cohen describes them as a ‘victim diaspora’,32 which provides a partial explanation but fails to take into account their self-­identification. For Safran, they do not constitute a ‘genuine’ diaspora, as they continue to reside within the territory of the ‘Arab nation’ and, therefore, ‘have not had to make the kinds of cultural or linguistic sacrifices characteristic of other diasporas’.33 But, as Fatima and others make clear, it is unrealistic to talk about an ‘Arab nation’ while they continue to be stigmatised as ‘refugees’, a term of contempt in Lebanon. Palestinians in exile certainly have a desire to belong but most have little interest in belonging in Lebanon, which makes their identification as a diaspora problematic. They lack the power either to assert their ‘identity’ or to realise their desire to return. Based on the accounts of refugee women, I wish to dispute the conceptualisation of Palestinians as a ‘diaspora’; I do this for several reasons. First, they do not refer to themselves as a ‘diaspora’; instead, they prefer the term aydun (‘those who would return’), which implies a temporary presence. Second, memories of their original villages in Palestine continue to inform their sense of identity, even across generations;34 this suggests that their attachment to the homeland remains strong. Third, their continued residence in refugee camps that, by their very nature, are ‘temporary’, confirms an intention to return. The camps are not seen in terms of a transition from the homeland to a ‘new life’ but, rather, it is ‘as if Palestinians brought with them a piece of their land and deposited it in the camps, thus recreating a part of Palestine’.35 As Lila, a thirty-­eight-year-­old former nurse, commented: ‘Living in the camp, for me, is living in a temporary place, but it is important because I am living among Palestinians; we share a culture.’36 While Palestinians can perhaps be called a diaspora in the sense that they live outside the bounds of their ancestral home, in other respects, they ‘fit more accurately into the category of “non-­state actors” aiming to become a nation-­state’.37 While this term is broad and encompasses the notion of diaspora, I am using it here to express a quality of being unsettled in exile. My research suggests that resistance to exile and ‘resistance to the legal designation “refugees” are central motifs of Palestinian exile culture’.38 Asserting their identity as exiles and strugglers, they retain ‘complete loyalty to their homeland’,39 and therefore their sojourn in Lebanon, however long it lasts, continues to be ‘temporary’.

220  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Articulating the Narrative of 1948 Palestinian memory is rooted in the contested ‘narrative of 1948’. That year, familiar life was violently interrupted and effectively ended by the nakba (‘catastrophe’), when the majority of Palestinians were forced to flee from their homes and land. According to the recollections of survivors, local inhabitants were given no choice about whether to go or stay; the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestine was conducted with the use of brutal force.40 Khawla, who is forty-­seven years old and lives in Bourj el-­Barajneh camp in Beirut, learned about the nakba from her grandparents; her grandfather told her that they heard about the Deir Yassin massacre ‘and how the Zionists were raping and killing; they were scared’.41 Relations of power are constructed from the standpoint of the dominant, ‘the games of honour and war (fit for the display of masculinity)’.42 But ‘narrative’ has other connotations. Palestinians are aware that their narrative of injustice is constantly subordinated to the more powerful Zionist ‘narrative of 1948’; following their ‘war of independence’ in 1948, the victorious Israelis set about creating a muscular discourse of entitlement. The destruction of the Palestinian landscape has turned memory into an antagonistic process between competing versions of history and truth. Yet power also ‘engenders resistance’, and what is relevant here is the resistance that results from ‘various antagonistic interactions’.43 Palestinians exiled from their homeland, as the narratives of my interlocutors make abundantly clear, are not willing to internalise disempowerment or accept a permanent dislocation from their land. Their determination reinforces their status as ‘temporary migrants’. Many of the women I interviewed regard the nakba as ‘the end of history as “being”, and the beginning of another kind of history they named “tragedy” or “destiny” or “God’s will”’.44 Umm Fawzi, who is in her mid-­sixties and lives in Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, said that her early memories were ‘very sad’ but, although they are disturbing, she said, it is also important to keep remembering Palestine; ‘the thought of return helps us to forget the past’. She prefers not to think back and said very firmly, ‘What is in the past is in the past.’45 Dajani argues that the nakba represents ‘both the shattering of the Palestinian community in Palestine and the consolidation of a shared national consciousness’.46 Palestinians were deprived of their land and, as

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 221 a result, lack ‘control not only over their present and future circumstances but also over their past . . . and the attendant capacity to develop and propagate their own national narrative’.47 Despite this ‘lack of control’, Palestinian women like Umm Fawzi exhibit a remarkable ability to fashion the events of the past into a meaningful narrative in the present. Refugee women tell stories of transformation, of how their families were abruptly uprooted from their places of belonging and plunged into fearful uncertainty. For example, Umm Mansour is in her late fifties; she was born in Lebanon and spent her early life in the Bekaa Valley; she has three sons and works in her son’s shop in Bourj el-­Barajneh camp. Although she has never seen Palestine, she knows a lot about her village. She heard that, when the Israelis started to bomb the village, a local leader encouraged the people to leave, but her family became stuck on the border and were unable to enter Lebanon or return to Palestine; they managed to reach the Bekaa and eventually settled in the Ain el-­Hilweh refugee camp in Sidon.48 Umm Hamza, now in her eighties, was born in Kabri in Palestine, where she was married at an early age; before she left, she used to work in the fields and orchards. When they heard about the fighting, she said, they fled north, ‘from place to place’, until they reached the Lebanese border. Her child was only fifteen days old; once they crossed into Lebanon, her husband fell sick and so they took him to a hospital, where he later died. She never remarried and now lives in poverty in Bourj el-­Barajneh camp.49 However, despite her situation, she presented an optimistic outlook and took seriously her responsibility to tell the story of Palestine. While such memories reinforce a determination to prevail, they also reveal the gap between aspirations and the likelihood of a satisfactory resolution. Women’s narratives of a homeland taken from them by force are tinged with bitterness. But they also frequently reveal precisely the determination to resist described above by Umm Hamza and other women. The ‘Thorny Relationship’ between ‘Individual’ and ‘Collective’ Memory The narrative form has been deliberately adopted by Palestinians, who insist that ‘our past history is an important source of our conception of ourselves’,50 and it is here that women play a key role. There are two sorts of ‘narrative’; while men tend to narrate the formal ‘story of Palestine’, in terms of historical

222  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t ‘facts’, women are more likely to focus on ‘anecdote’, in the sense that they know what their village looked like or what happened to family members. Umm Mansour told me the story of her village; it was famous, she said, for its olive trees and also its holy sites. The inhabitants produced their own oil, wheat and hay and therefore did not need to import these items.51 She knew about these things not because she had been there – she is too young – but because her family had taken care to bequeath to her the precious memories they had brought from Palestine. They are the ‘facts’ that frame her life and they are narrated neither to contextualise the ensuing struggle nor to provide justification for subsequent action. Umm Hamza, too, recalled the abundance of the land; they used to grow grapes and olives, and pressed the olives to make oil. ‘Everything came from the land,’ she said. ‘We stored lentils, chickpeas and other foodstuffs for the winter.’52 Unlike Umm Mansour, who has spent her whole life in Lebanon, she is old enough to remember, but the similarity between their ‘memories’ and between the way they narrate their stories is striking. It is important, clearly, to understand how gender has ‘shaped the construction of historical’53 or ‘collective’ memory. While women’s voices ‘often differ significantly in form as well as content from dominant discourse’54 and the historical narrative tends ‘to exclude marginal groups such as women’, the majority of ‘village storytellers were women’.55 Even as men, the ones with authority ‘to speak and represent’,56 assume the responsibility of recounting the national story of Palestine, mothers and grandmothers, such as Umm Mansour and Umm Hamza, relate the ‘small’ details of how life used to be, through anecdotes. Palestinian women, both those who live in Palestine and those located outside the borders of their homeland, possess a rich store of memories, and these have become central ‘for the preservation of Palestinian identity’.57 This raises the question of memory itself and to what extent the articulation of memories has been politicised. Sangster argues that ‘women often remember the past in different ways’ to men.58 Refugee women recall the production and storage of foodstuffs, as Umm Mansour’s story illustrates, and the rituals of birth, marriage and death. The style and focus of their story-­telling are also different. Many are uncomfortable about touching upon the ‘political’ or ‘epic’ elements of Palestinian dispossession, although they

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 223 may venture opinions (‘we were let down by the leadership’, ‘they abandoned us’). Their narratives are more likely to be characterised by ‘understatements, avoidance of the first person point of view, rare mention of personal accomplishments and disguised statements of personal power’.59 This is partly because the majority of women who have memories of pre-­1948 Palestine are unschooled and therefore unused to articulating an ‘authoritative’ history; it is also because they are accustomed to deferring to men’s ‘knowledge’. However, with an increase in education and other opportunities, the women of subsequent generations tend to be more forthcoming, in the sense that they are willing and have the skills to articulate their concerns and to ask for change; most of the women I interviewed were eager to speak about their life experiences. Taken together and from different perspectives, these ‘narratives’ create a version of memory. Historical memory ‘is a collection of narratives transmitting what a people “knows” about its shared past. It is fluid and plural and, like a highway, constantly under construction and repair’. At the same time, ‘[n]arratives composing historical memory are partial and frequently contradictory’.60 It may be difficult to remember exactly what happened more than sixty years ago. Supposedly ‘factual’ accounts sometimes contradict one another and raise questions about ‘truth’; for example, many of my interlocutors were elderly and inevitably their memories of events that took place so long ago may be hazy. But whether something really happened or has been imagined is not the issue. Memory is shaped not only by formal historical accounts but also through an individual’s role in events, how she tried to make sense of them and how these events have been imbued with meaning. In their recollections of pre-­1948 Palestine, many refugee women adopt a subjective approach to ‘the truth’, which in no way detracts from their integrity as eye-­witnesses and tellers of history. What they choose to highlight or to include is as significant as what is omitted. Most of the elderly women interviewed for this project have only sketchy and generalised memories of the period before 1948 but, very often, they recall certain defining events and are able to articulate how they were affected by these events and how they felt. Their reactions are consolidated later through hindsight and the exchange of views. When it comes to issues of ‘truth’, there is a collective memory, based on men’s authoritative knowledge, but this is nuanced and mediated

224  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t by women’s subjective interventions. This observation is based on encounters that took place during my fieldwork. I noticed that women tended to defer to men in matters of formal historical recollection; yet many women were able to bring that history alive with the addition of personal anecdotes or responses. However, what remains constant is a picture of that time. I would argue that women’s recollections may provide a more accurate picture of the past since women are usually not trying to make a larger political point, as Umm Mansour’s and Umm Hamza’s accounts illustrate very well. ‘Memory’ suggests ‘that there was something real outside persons’ subjectivities to be “remembered” . . . and “re-­presented”’;61 but how should we make a balance between the personal and the commemorative? Oral historians alert us to the potential dangers of memory, as Thelen notes, ‘[i]n a study of memory the important question is not how accurately a recollection fitted some piece of a past reality, but why historical actors constructed their memories in a particular way at a particular time’.62 By focusing on detail, women are not forgetting or ignoring ‘past reality’ but, rather, making sense of it through an appreciation of exactly what has been lost. How do women differentiate between personal experience and shared public sorrow and loss? Many of the women I met were eager, or at least willing, to translate their memories into words. Women’s stories differed widely in their delivery, attention to detail, and sense that their words were part of a larger narrative. In other words, ‘the very conflict of narrative perspectives, “truths”, times, or spaces can undermine and perhaps even alter . . . the dominant order of the narrative itself’.63 Why do refugee women focus on the characteristics of the village, the tranquility and abundance of everyday life? I suggest that, in terms of making a case for injustice to an outside audience unfamiliar with the complexities of Palestinian history, these discourses of the personal may be more effective than political diatribe in which facts are subordinated to ‘the overriding importance of the “Cause”’.64 They are effective because they evoke what has been lost in a language that is immediate and accessible rather than the rhetoric of politics that has seen very few tangible results.

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 225 Home as a Place of Safety and Security How, therefore, do memories contribute to the formation of identity, both national and personal? How are they transmitted and internalised? During my fieldwork in the camps of Lebanon, what came across strongly were feelings of nostalgia, the sense of home as not ‘here’ but, rather, lost or postponed. ‘House, home, and woman’, as Slyomovics remarks, ‘form aspects of the Palestinian national identity, gendered categories that derive their power and specificity from the familiar image of the nation as a female body’.65 These linkages were reiterated and reconfigured constantly during interviews with refugee women. For example, Fatme, who is in her twenties and lives in Bourj el-­Shemali camp in southern Lebanon, said that her grandfather, who was originally from Jerusalem, kept all the family’s documents in a box, to prove that they still have land in Palestine; when he died, he passed them onto his son.66 Her narrative, which establishes an unbroken connection with ‘home’, echoes that of Manal and Mariam; whatever their present circumstances, there is a consistent thread of belonging to another place. This raises the question of place and identity, how they are linked, and how memories affect Palestinian identity today. Fatme explained that there is a group in the camp where older people talk about Palestine and share their memories. ‘Leaving was not a choice’, she added. ‘There was killing and raping.’ The ‘old people’, those who have memories of Palestine, are respected in the camps as the authentic voice of home but their stories are often overlooked in the rush to turn Palestinian memory into a weapon in the quest for justice. This was illustrated on several occasions during my fieldwork. I would be sitting in a family home, and, if it was a mixed gathering, one of the young men may start to talk, in broad terms, about how Palestinians have been mistreated or ignored. Yet, in the background, very often a silent elderly woman would be serving tea, her real memories subordinated to a more self-­conscious and superficial version of events. In Lebanon, the notion of ‘home’ is no longer regarded as a place of safety. Umm Ossama in Ain el-­Hilweh camp provided a vivid example. In 1982, she said, following their invasion, [T]he Israelis destroyed the shelters in the camp . . . If you can just imagine, a family of twenty-­five could be sitting in a room under a zinc or aluminium

226  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t roof. If a bomb hit your house, you and your family would be gone. Every raid, there were twenty or twenty-­five wounded or killed.67

Another example of never feeling safe or at home comes from Huda, a forty-­ six-year-­old nurse with one son. She has spent all her life in Lebanon and now lives in Bourj el-­Barajneh camp. When I interviewed her in June 2006, she told me that her parents were young in 1948, when they left Palestine. Like Mariam’s family and many others, they took the keys of their house and told their children the story of the happy life they had had in Palestine. Huda said that she regards Lebanon as a temporary home ‘while I wait to return to my own land’. A person without a homeland, she added, is exposed to suffering and poverty. Following the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, she visited the Lebanese–Israeli border; she told me how her son tried to reach through the fence to touch Palestinian land.68 This poignant image of continuing dispossession and longing fuels a grand narrative of suffering. These stories tend to emphasise the dislocation between an identity of attachment and the shattering or loss of identity. However, three key factors affect this relatively resilient picture. First, the women are situated outside of their homeland and most have no first-­hand experience of it, and the prospect of return is remote and, therefore, Palestine becomes a ‘mythologised’ land. Second, the Palestinian narrative of resilience in exile is growing increasingly insecure; their struggle has been dismissed as ‘terrorism’ by Israel and its supporters in North America and Europe, and their residence in Lebanon is beset by various forms of violence. Finally, the period of exile is now so protracted that many younger people are impatient to end the waiting and get on with their lives. In this sense, the practice of story-­telling gains fresh urgency and some refugees are anxious that, when the old people have all gone, the impetus to return will vanish with them. There is also the question of self-­image in terms of identity and future action. Refugees have been defined as ‘unwanted persons whose story has been an embarrassment for everyone . . . they are a burden on the community’.69 Palestinian refugees describe how, when they first arrived in Lebanon, they found themselves the objects of discrimination by some local Lebanese who mocked their accents, their poverty and their ‘otherness’. They ‘very commonly recall at least one incident where they were insulted, whether

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 227 intentionally or not, on the mere grounds of being a refugee’.70 For example, Samira, a thirty-­seven-year-­old woman in Bourj el-­Barajneh camp in Beirut, said, ‘[B]eing a refugee means being homeless, insecure, different from others; other people treat you with pity and fear.’71 Huda remarked that, if any hostilities break out, ‘we have to hide our Palestinian identity’. Their stories are by no means unusual and may provide an indication of why their situation is so intolerable. There are at present more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees living in the camps of Lebanon. Although several generations have been born there, they do not enjoy the rights and privileges of citizenship. Effectively excluded from peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, they see little prospect of ever returning to their homeland. Narratives of Suffering and Heroism Following the Palestinian flight and the creation of the state of Israel, many villages, estimated in the range of 290 to 472, were destroyed.72 In his discussion of the ‘vanished landscape’ of Palestine, Benvenisti writes that, in some places, ‘a few structures still remain – neglected mosques, school buildings, imposing houses renovated by Israelis’.73 In other words, Arab existence was physically erased from the land,74 and the Israeli policy of refusing to allow any of the refugees to return was intended ‘to eradicate Palestinian memory’75 as well. In this respect, the Israelis have not been successful and ‘memory’ remains very much alive. In the 1980s and 1990s, Palestinian exile communities started to produce ‘village memorial books’, which were based on information from the elderly people who could remember and also from United Nations archives. Through these books, the refugees map and describe the villages of pre-­1948 Palestine, most of which have been destroyed or resettled by Israeli immigrants. The books ‘can be understood as an attempt both to recreate and present the village as it existed prior to 1948 and to emphasise their historical claims not only to the past, but also to the present and future’.76 The village memorial books are ‘not simply about remembering a lost community – they are . . . nationalist narratives and their production is a conscious project of mapping the lost homeland – destroyed village by destroyed village’.77 The books can be understood ‘as an attempt both to recreate and present the village as it existed prior to 1948 and to emphasise [Palestinians’] historical claims not only to the past, but also to the present

228  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t and future’.78 Their existence challenges attempts by Israel to reconfigure the narrative of Palestine as ‘first and foremost, a story of erasure, denial, and active silencing’.79 This activity is an important element of resistance, the process by which Palestinian voices, including women’s voices, are able to emerge. However, beyond mourning and regret, there are other ways of commemorating loss. In response to exile, Palestinians felt ‘an urgent need to reconstitute their broken lives’.80 They constructed a narrative of heroism, which tended to glorify the image of the heroic male warrior.81 However, ‘the notion that it is the exclusive responsibility of men to protect the honour, the land and the lives of the Palestinians’82 is problematic. In reality, men have suffered the ‘shame and humiliation of being unable to protect their women’.83 Following the expulsion from Lebanon by the Israelis of the PLO in 1982, a counter-­narrative began to be articulated that, although it acknowledged Palestinian victimisation, also incorporated qualities of survival and ways of fighting back other than those linked to male heroism. In other words, many Palestinians, in Lebanon and elsewhere, had been forced to concede that conventional tactics, such as guerrilla warfare, were unlikely to defeat Israel; this opened a space for more subtle modes of struggle and here women were able to come to the fore. Counter-­narratives of the nation, as Bhabha observes, ‘disturb those ideological manoeuvres through which “imagined communities” are given essentialist identities’.84 It is through such ‘disturbances’ that we can begin to appreciate the more subtle contributions made by women. Anthropologist Rosemary Sayigh recalls visiting Shatila camp in Beirut shortly after the 1982 massacre; ‘I was struck by the energy’, she said, ‘with which people – mainly women – were rebuilding their homes before the winter’.85 These activities, I argue, also contribute to a ‘narrative of heroism’, but one that is more inclusive. It can be observed through the stories refugee women tell, which acknowledge the revolutionary tactics of the past, but also give weight to everyday acts, such as making their homes secure, educating their children and improving their own lives. Conclusion There is no doubt that refugee women’s life-­histories challenge a Middle Eastern scholarly literature that tends to ‘confine women’s roles to those of

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 229 the “preservers” of culture and reproducers of men who fight the political and military battles’.86 It is clear that, although traditional and patriarchal forms persist, the position of women has developed in significant ways since the exodus from Palestine in 1948. During my research into women’s memories, both personal stories and larger communal narratives emerged. Both are framed by the painful and unresolved loss of their homeland, the continuing trauma of forced migration in a violent and inhospitable environment and, according to them, the reluctance of the international community to heed their claims of justice. Refugee women have participated in the project of keeping alive Palestinian national identity and continue to do so, as the accounts of the women interviewed for this project vividly illustrate. In this chapter, I have discussed the use of narrative as a tool of self-­ preservation for Palestinian communities in exile. I have focused on the importance of narrative, of the stories told by women to make sense of their lives and to maintain self-­esteem. By exploring women’s lived experiences outside of the homeland, I have sought to assess their roles as guardians of a narrative of national survival. Their explanations of what they have done and what they hope for in the future provide a critique of the notion of diaspora, which is replaced by an intention to reassemble the national community. I have argued that women use their memories to counter the ‘story of denial’ and have recognised the need to speak louder in order to get their own story heard. The stories of Palestinian women evoke home, the homeland they have lost and the shattering of home as a place of safety and belonging. They have helped to create an identity of resistance, painstakingly constructed from the memories of pre-­1948 Palestine, the experience of survival in exile and the active striving of women and men against Israeli policies of dispossession and obliteration. Notes   1. Not her real name.   2. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 10 July 2011.   3. Fatma Kassem, Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory (London: Zed, 2011), p. 207.   4. Interview, Beirut, 6 June 2003.   5. Linda McDowell, Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies (Cambridge: Polity, 1999), p. 72.

230  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t  6. Kassem, Palestinian Women, p. 190.   7. Diana K. Allan, ‘The Politics of Witness: Remembering and Forgetting 1948 in Shatila Camp’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 255.   8. Lena Jayyusi, ‘Iterability, Cumulativity, and Presence: The Relational Figures of Palestinian Memory’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 108.   9. Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2006–7. 10. Sherna Berger Gluck, ‘What So Special about Women? Women’s Oral History’, in S. H. Armitage, with P. Hart and K. Weathermon (eds), Women’s Oral History (Lincoln, NE and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), p. 5. 11. Allan, ‘The Politics of Witness’, p. 253. 12. See, for example Khalaf (2012), Lebanon Adrift: From Battleground to Playground. 13. Timothy Brennan, ‘The National Longing for Form’, in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 61. 14. Mary Layoun, ‘A Guest at the Wedding: Honor, Memory and (National) Desire in Michel Khleife’s Wedding in Galilee’, in C. Kaplan, N. Alarcon and M. Moallem (eds), Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 93. 15. Homi K. Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 1. 16. Helena Lindholm Schulz with Juliane Hammer, The Palestinian Diaspora: Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2003), p. 2. 17. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 3 June 2006. 18. Layoun, ‘A Guest at the Wedding’, p. 94. 19. Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation’, p. 2. 20. Gabriel Piterberg, ‘Can the Subaltern Remember? A Pessimistic View of the Victims of Zionism’, in U. Makdisi and P. A. Silverstein (eds), Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 183. 21. Laleh Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 2.

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 231 22. Schulz, The Palestinian Diaspora, p. 2. 23. Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling, Home (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 199. 24. James Clifford, ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 3 (1994), p. 308. 25. Interview, Rashidiyya camp, Tyre, 31 January 2007. 26. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 2 June 2003. 27. Dibyesh Anand, ‘Diasporic Subjectivity as an Ethical Position’, South Asian Diaspora 1: 2 (2009), p. 104. 28. Laurence Grossberg, ‘Identity and Cultural Studies: Is That All there Is?’, in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), p. 92. 29. Avtar Brah, ‘Diaspora, Border and Transnational Identities’, in R. Lewis and S. Mills (eds), Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), p. 615. 30. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 2 June 2006. 31. Julie Peteet, ‘Problematizing a Palestinian Diaspora’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 39: 4 (November 2007), p. 631. 32. Robin Cohen, ‘Diasporas and the Nation-­state: From Victims to Challengers’, International Affairs 72: 3 (July 1999), p. 272. 33. William Safran, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (spring 1991), p. 368. 34. Blunt and Dowling, Home, p. 227. 35. Mohammed Kamel Dorai, ‘The Meaning of Homeland for the Palestinian Diaspora: Revival and Transformation’, in N. Al-­Ali and K. Koser (eds), New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 93. 36. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 7 February 2007. 37. Harik (1986), ‘The Palestinians in the Diaspora’, p. 316. 38. Julie Peteet, ‘Transforming Trust: Dispossession and Empowerment among Palestinian Refugees’, in E. V. Daniel and J. C. Knudsen (eds), Mistrusting Refugees (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 1995), p. 171. 39. Anand, ‘Diasporic Subjectivity as an Ethical Position’, p. 104. 40. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006). 41. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 10 July 2011. 42. Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, ‘Symbolic Violence’, in N. Scheper- Hughes and P. Bourgois (eds), Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 273.

232  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 43. Azza M. Karam, Women, Islamisms and the State: Contemporary Feminisms in Egypt (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998), p. 4. 44. Rosemary Sayigh, ‘Women’s Nakba Stories’, Middle East International (13 July 2001), p. 144. 45. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 1 February 2007. 46. Omar M. Dajani, Surviving Opportunities: Palestinian Negotiating Patterns in Peace Talks with Israel’, in T. Cofman Wittes (ed.), How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross-­Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2005), p. 42. 47. Ibid., p. 45. 48. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 4 February 2007. 49. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 7 February 2007. 50. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 22. 51. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 4 February 2007. 52. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 7 February 2007. 53. Joan Sangster, ‘Telling our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 88. 54. Susan Gal, ‘Between Speech and Silence’, in J. Vincent (ed.), The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. 215. 55. Rosemary Sayigh, ‘Women’s Nakba Stories: Between Being and Knowing’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 137. 56. Ibid., p. 137. 57. Muhammad Siddiq, ‘On Ropes of Memory: Narrating the Palestinian Refugees’, in E. V. Daniel and J. C. Knudsen (eds), Mistrusting Refugees (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 1995), p. 88. 58. Sangster, Telling our Stories, p. 89. 59. G. Etter-­Lewis, ‘Black Women’s Life Stories: Reclaiming Self in narrative texts’, in S. Berger Gluck and D. Patai (eds), Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York, NY: Routledge, 1991), p. 48. 60. Mary Ann Tetreault, ‘Divided Communities of Memory: Diasporas Come Home’, in H. Moghissi (ed.), Muslim Diaspora: Gender, Culture and Identity (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2006), p. 82. 61. Jayussi, ‘Iterability, Cumulativity, and Presence’, p. 107.

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 233 62. David Thelen, ‘Memory and American History’, The Journal of American History 75: 4 (March 1989), p. 75. 63. Layoun, ‘A Guest at the Wedding’, p. 413. 64. Rosemary Sayigh, The History of Palestinian Oral History: Individual Vitality and Institutional Paralysis (Beirut: Al-­Jana – The Harvest, 2002), p. 4. 65. Susan Slyomovics, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 200–1. 66. Interview, Bourj el-­Shemali camp, near Tyre, 14 July 2011. 67. Quoted in Staughton Lynd, Sam Bahour and Alice Lynd (eds), Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (New York, NY: Olive Branch Press, 1994), p. 105. 68. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 2 June 2006. 69. Trinh T. Minh-­ha, ‘Other than Myself/My Other Self’, in G. Robertson, M. Mash, L. Tickner, J. Bird, B. Curtis and T. Putnam (eds), Travellers’ Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1994), p. 12. 70. Bayan Nuwayhed Al-­Hout, Sabra and Shatila: September 1982 (London: Pluto Press, 2004), p. 23. 71. Interview, Bourj el-­Barajneh camp, Beirut, 1 June 2006. 72. Walid Khalidi, All that Remains (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1997), pp. xv–xvi. 73. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), p. 8. 74. Piterberg, ‘Can the Subaltern Remember?’, p. 182. 75. Ibid., p. 184. 76. Rochelle Davis, ‘Mapping the Past, Re-­creating the Homeland: Memories of Village Places in pre-­1948 Palestine’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 57. 77. R. Hammami, ‘Gender, Nakbe and Nation: Palestinian Women’s Presence and Absence in the Narration of 1948 Memories’, in Review of Women’s Studies 2 (Birzeit University: Institute of Women’s Studies, 2004), p. 35. 78. Davis, ‘Mapping the Past, Re-­creating the Homeland’, p. 57. 79. Haim Bresheeth, ‘The Continuity of Trauma and Struggle: Recent Cinematic Representations of the Nakba’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 179.

234  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 80. Edward Said, ‘Reflections on Exile’, in R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T. T. Minh-­ha and C. West (eds), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (New York, NY: The New York Museum of Contemporary Art, and Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990), p. 360. 81. Maria Holt, ‘The Wives and Mothers of Heroes: Evolving Identities of Palestinian Refugee Women in Lebanon’, Journal of Development Studies 43: 2 (February 2007), pp. 245–64. 82. Kassem, Palestinian Women, p. 165. 83. Ibid., p. 165. 84. Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation’, p. 300. 85. Sayigh, ‘Sabra and Shatila Revisited’, p. 24. 86. Randa Farah, ‘Out of the Shadows: Listening to Place-­Based Narratives of Palestinian Women’, in W. Harcourt and A. Escobar (eds), Women and the Politics of Place (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2005), p. 218.

Bibliography Al-­Hout, Bayan Nuwayhed, Sabra and Shatila: September 1982 (London: Pluto Press, 2004). Allan, Diana K., ‘The Politics of Witness: Remembering and Forgetting 1948 in Shatila Camp’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 253–82. Anand, Dibyesh, ‘Diasporic Subjectivity as an Ethical Position’, South Asian Diaspora 1: 2 (2009), pp. 103–11. Benvenisti, Meron, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000). Bhabha, Homi K., ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 291–322. Blunt, Alison and Robyn Dowling, Home (London: Routledge, 2006). Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant, ‘Symbolic Violence’, in N. Scheper-­Hughes and P. Bourgois (eds), Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 272–4. Brah, Avtar, ‘Diaspora, Border and Transnational Identities’, in R. Lewis and S. Mills (eds), Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), pp. 613–34. Brennan, Timothy, ‘The National Longing for Form’, in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 44–70.

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 235 Bresheeth, Haim, ‘The Continuity of Trauma and Struggle: Recent Cinematic Representations of the Nakba’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 161–87. Clifford, James, ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 3 (1994), pp. 302–38. Cohen, Robin, ‘Diasporas and the Nation-­state: From Victims to Challengers’, International Affairs 72: 3 (July 1999), pp. 507–20. Connerton, Paul, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Dajani, Omar M., ‘Surviving Opportunities: Palestinian Negotiating Patterns in Peace Talks with Israel’, in T. Cofman Wittes (ed.), How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross-­Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2005), pp. 39–80. Davis, Rochelle, ‘Mapping the Past, Re-­creating the Homeland: Memories of Village Places in pre-­1948 Palestine’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 53–75. Dorai, Mohammed Kamel, ‘The Meaning of Homeland for the Palestinian Diaspora: Revival and Transformation’, in N. Al-­Ali and K. Koser (eds), New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 87–95. Etter-­Lewis, G., ‘Black Women’s Life Stories: Reclaiming Self in narrative texts’, in S. Berger Gluck and D. Patai (eds), Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York, NY: Routledge, 1991), pp. 43–58. Farah, Randa, ‘Out of the Shadows: Listening to Place-­Based Narratives of Palestinian Women’, in W. Harcourt and A. Escobar (eds), Women and the Politics of Place (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2005), pp. 206–19. Gal, Susan, ‘Between Speech and Silence’, in J. Vincent (ed.), The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 213–21. Gluck, Sherna Berger, ‘What So Special about Women? Women’s Oral History’, in S. H. Armitage, with P. Hart and K. Weathermon (eds), Women’s Oral History (Lincoln, NE and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), pp. 3–20. Grossberg, Laurence, ‘Identity and Cultural Studies: Is That All There Is?’ in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 88–107. Hammami, R., ‘Gender, Nakbe and Nation: Palestinian Women’s Presence and

236  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Absence in the Narration of 1948 Memories’, in Review of Women’s Studies 2 (Birzeit University: Institute of Women’s Studies, 2004), pp. 26–41. Harik, Iliya, ‘The Palestinians in the Diaspora’, in G. Sheffer (ed.), Modern Diasporas in International Politics (London: Croom Helm, 1986). Holt, Maria, ‘The Wives and Mothers of Heroes: Evolving Identities of Palestinian Refugee Women in Lebanon’, Journal of Development Studies 43: 2 (February 2007), pp. 245–64. Jayyusi, Lena, ‘Iterability, Cumulativity, and Presence: The Relational Figures of Palestinian Memory’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 107–33. Karam, Azza M., Women, Islamisms and the State: Contemporary Feminisms in Egypt (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998). Kassem, Fatma, Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory (London: Zed, 2011). Khalaf, Lebanon Adrift: From Battleground to Playground (2012). Khalidi, Walid, All that Remains (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1997). Khalili, Laleh, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Layoun, Mary, ‘Telling Spaces: Palestinian Women and the Engendering of National Narratives’, in A. Parker, M. Russo, D. Sommer and P. Yaeger (eds), Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 407–23. Layoun, Mary, ‘A Guest at the Wedding: Honor, Memory and (National) Desire in Michel Khleife’s Wedding in Galilee’, in C. Kaplan, N. Alarcon and M. Moallem (eds), Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 92–107. Lynd, Staughton, Sam Bahour and Alice Lynd (eds), Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (New York, NY: Olive Branch Press, 1994). McDowell, Linda, Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies (Cambridge: Polity, 1999). Massey, Doreen, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge: Polity, 1994). Minh-­ha, Trinh T., ‘Other than Myself/My Other Self’, in G. Robertson, M. Mash, L. Tickner, J. Bird, B. Curtis and T. Putnam (eds), Travellers’ Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1994), pp. 8–26.

pal e st inian women outsi de the h o me l a n d  | 237 Pappe, Ilan, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006). Peteet, Julie, ‘Transforming Trust: Dispossession and Empowerment among Palestinian Refugees’, in E. V. Daniel and J. C. Knudsen (eds), Mistrusting Refugees (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 168–86. Peteet, Julie, ‘Problematizing a Palestinian Diaspora’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 39: 4 (November 2007), pp. 627–46. Piterberg, Gabriel, ‘Can the Subaltern Remember? A Pessimistic View of the Victims of Zionism’, in U. Makdisi and P. A. Silverstein (eds), Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomington, IN and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 177–200. Preston, Valerie and Madeleine Wong, ‘Geographies of Violence: Women and Conflict in Ghana’, in W. Giles and J. Hyndman (eds), Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 152–69. Roy, Sara, Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2007). Safran, William, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (spring 1991), pp. 83–99. Said, Edward, ‘Reflections on Exile’, in R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T. T. Minh-­ha and C. West (eds), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (New York, NY: The New York Museum of Contemporary Art, and Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990), pp. 357–66. Sangster, Joan, ‘Telling our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 87–100. Sayigh, Rosemary, ‘Sabra and Shatila Revisited’, Middle East International (13 July 2001). Sayigh, Rosemary, The History of Palestinian Oral History: Individual Vitality and Institutional Paralysis (Beirut: Al-­Jana – The Harvest, 2002). Sayigh, Rosemary, ‘Women’s Nakba Stories: Between Being and Knowing’, in A. H. Sa’di and L. Abu-­Lughod (eds), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 135–58. Schulz, Helena Lindholm, with Juliane Hammer, The Palestinian Diaspora: Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2003). Shehadeh, Raja, ‘Author, Author’, The Guardian, 24 April 2010.

238  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Siddiq, Muhammad, ‘On Ropes of Memory: Narrating the Palestinian Refugees’, in E. V. Daniel and J. C. Knudsen (eds), Mistrusting Refugees (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 87–101. Slyomovics, Susan, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). Tetreault, Mary Ann, ‘Divided Communities of Memory: Diasporas Come Home’, in H. Moghissi (ed.), Muslim Diaspora: Gender, Culture and Identity (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2006), pp. 81–98. Thelen, David, ‘Memory and American History’, The Journal of American History 75: 4 (March 1989), pp. 1,117–29.

7 The ‘Others’ Within: The Armenian Community in Cyprus 1

Sossie Kasbarian

Introduction

C

yprus has been an Armenian home since the sixth century,2 the history of Armenians and Cyprus intertwining on many occasions, including marriages between the ruling families in the Lusignan period.3 In 1375, Leo VI, last de facto king of Armenia died and the crown was passed to his cousin, James I de Lusignan, who ruled Cyprus, and henceforth became the king of Jerusalem, Cyprus and Armenia.4 Today, the Armenians are one of the three recognised national minorities of Cyprus, along with the Maronites and the Latins (Roman Catholics), identified in the 1960 constitution and considered part of the state fabric. Unlike the two official communities in Cyprus (Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot), the Armenians do not claim ‘ownership’ of the land and thus are in the unique position of being both Insiders (officially recognised and supported by the state) and Outsiders (originating elsewhere, possessing their own language, culture and particular brand of Christianity, and possibly oriented elsewhere). This position can act as a challenge to dominant discourses of nationalism and test the nuances and limits of citizenship and belonging. In the context of the deadlock of mutually constituted Greek and Turkish nationalisms, the Armenians theoretically represent an ‘other’ way of being Cypriot. For the Armenian diaspora, the Cypriot community is regarded as a kind of bridge between east and west, as well as being within 241

242  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t easy reach of Armenia. Cyprus has been the home of a core community, where there has been a steady Armenian presence for centuries, as well as much movement from east to west, with the island serving as a stopover of varying durations. Being part of an established and active diaspora also lends the Cypriot Armenian community another (wider) dimension of identity and consciousness, and provides a source of strength and validation. As a contribution to Diaspora Studies, the Cypriot Armenian case illustrates the evolution of a refugee community to a diasporic one. In the former case the main characteristic is displacement; in the latter it is sedentariness.5 In a seminal article, Simon Payaslian, writing before the Arab Uprisings, analyses the evolution of the Syrian Armenian community from an exilic community of refugees to diasporisation and subalternisation, and finally its decline and potential dissolution (a tragic but inevitable outcome of the ­current war in Syria). In analysing the case, he says, diasporisation cum subalternisation is predicated upon the logic of tenants: although legally citizens, Armenians in Syria are nevertheless psychologically, culturally, and economically transient . . . [A]s ‘tenants,’ Armenians for their part have not developed a deep sense of historical identification with the place and therefore have preferred to exit when possible.6

It could be argued that this ‘tenancy’ mentality has prevailed among Armenians in the Middle East, leading to their inevitable decline (and, usually, exit) and ‘permanent peripheralisation’7 with the possible exception of Lebanon, although even there the community has dwindled both numerically and in terms of potency.8 This chapter posits that the Armenians of Cyprus, partly due to their diasporic consciousness and agency, but also their permanence as a Cypriot community, have moved from ‘insecurity’ to ‘integration’,9 from being ‘cosmopolitan refugees’ to claiming Cyprus as a home with which they ‘identify’ fully,10 although this position is in continuous negotiation and needs constant affirmation. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cyprus over the period 2001–10, this chapter draws from more than 100 formal and informal interviews, as well as extensive participation-­observation. The contemporary Armenian diaspora is spread throughout the world, with its core composed of descendants of the survivors of the atrocities and genocide carried out by the Turkish authorities during the decline of the

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 243 Ottoman Empire (1881–1922). Until the 1980s the Armenian communities in the Middle East were regarded as the diasporic epicentre. These were predominantly composed of genocide survivors granted refuge by the Arab Levant states, who merged with pre-­existing Armenian communities throughout the region.11 The steady decline of the Middle East communities and the related ascendancy of communities in North America and Europe reflect global emigration and economic patterns. The transnational communities, through organised as well as informal activities, maintain active links with one another as facilitated through modern communications. Simultaneously, the independence of the Republic of Armenia in 1991 (to which most western diasporans12 have no historic roots) has contributed to an increasing rootedness of diasporans in their respective ‘host’ states and a more engaged civic participation, alongside a broader orientation toward Armenia13 as a symbol of the transnation.14 It is important to reflect on the importance of the Middle East region for the modern Armenian Diaspora. Keith Watenpaugh argues for the need to contextualise the genocide not as an Armenian issue, but as an event, the repercussions of which are inextricable to the whole region, and calls for ‘the need to integrate the genocide more thoroughly into the social and intellectual history of the Eastern Mediterranean’.15 The influx of the Armenian refugees had key implications for the emerging states of Syria and Lebanon in particular.16 Historiography has not always recognised the intertwined relationship between the Armenian genocide and the diaspora it gave rise to, and the Arab states where the devastated survivors slowly reclaimed and rebuilt their lives, such that in the mandate period it was possible to ‘(re) construct Armenia’ in Lebanon and Syria.17 The Middle East can in fact be said to have given birth to the organised Armenian diaspora. It was here that the survivors were slowly shaped into a coherent community and constructed a diasporic Armenian identity out of a multiplicity of difference, whether regional, c­ ultural, religious, linguistic or class.18 For the post-­genocide generations, Egypt and Syria became hubs of Armenian activity, with Lebanon eventually emerging as the undisputed seat of the diaspora, both due to the relative size of the community and its being recognised and strategically engaged with as an integral part of the burgeoning state in order to bolster Christian demographics. The Armenian identity

244  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t was thus protected by the state, safeguarding the distinctiveness of the community, while other factors encouraged integration into the wider society, sometimes making this a difficult position to negotiate.19 Throughout a long and continuous presence in the Middle East, the Armenians have retained their distinct communal identity. While a degree of assimilation would seem inevitable, regular waves of arrivals and a high level of organised community life has meant that a self-­consciously constructed core community has remained steady, centred on its churches, quasi-­political parties and accompanying infrastructure. The Arab states are considered by Armenian diaspora elites to have been conducive to and cooperative in the maintenance and thriving of traditional Armenian diasporic identity, by forcing the Armenians to be aware of their differences and to confront and negotiate life in a ‘foreign’ environment. It is clear that modern Armenian diasporic identity was constructed in the Middle East, and the subsequent community ‘model’ (based on church, schools, political parties and their offshoots) that emerged in those states was and continues to be the one that the modern western diaspora is founded upon. While the contemporary Armenian community in Cyprus may seem to lack the obvious political significance of that of Lebanon or Syria, it shares several important characteristics, such that it is useful to view the island as historically part of the Middle East (rather than Europe), with which it shares the experiences and legacies of both Ottoman and European rule. It is helpful also to view Cyprus as a postcolonial state where competing narratives and nationalisms collide (resulting in protracted conflict). In addition, the communities in Cyprus and in the Arab states are part of a well-­established and active transnational network – a dimension that has made their host states sometimes question their loyalties and priorities. The Armenian diasporic community of Cyprus from a position of being ‘others within’ represents a challenge to the reigning nationalisms of the state. The diasporan, as the quintessential Outsider, is uniquely positioned to illuminate the deep-­seated inequalities and inconsistencies of modern nations. This chapter is intellectually indebted to the work of Edward Said, who, while seeing exile as a ‘condition of terrible loss’, exiles as ‘eccentrics who feel their difference (even as they frequently exploit it) as a kind of orphanhood’20, also spoke of the creativity and insight that being an Outsider can bring, in

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 245

Figures 7.1 and 7.2  Blessing ceremony of artesian well at Surp Magar Monastery, near Halevga, Kyrenia Mountains, Sunday, 2 May 1948. (Published with kind permission of Bedros K. Kasbarian)

246  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t

Figure 7.3  Armenian women at Pedhoulas, Marathassa, Troodos Mountains, 1941, where they took shelter with their families during the war. (Published with kind permission of Bedros K. Kasbarian)

constructing ‘an alternative to the mass institutions that dominate modern life’21. Spencer stresses that rather than festishising exile as a material position, Said advocates it as ‘a technique of intellectual discovery and dissent’.22 Exile, therefore, is to take a radical position of dissent, which involves a willingness to step outside the province of ideological preconceptions, sectarian loyalties, and insentient theoretical and philosophical systems . . . enabl(ing) us to alert those inward-­looking dogmas to the reality they obscure and to the experiences and lives, which they routinely overlook, of the persecuted, the marginalised, and the dispossessed.23

Similarly, for Adorno, being in exile (whether actual or in mindset) is to take the moral position ‘not to be at home in one’s home’.24 The Impact of the Different Historical Legacies As Payaslian has pointed out in the Syrian Armenian case, ‘identifying a community’s “place” in the political-­cultural space of the host society goes a long way towards explaining the community’s durability and sustainability’,25 while also highlighting the factors that may influence its decline. For this

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 247 reason it is worth briefly looking at the modern history of Cyprus and the legacies that directly impact the Armenian community. There are two interrelated dimensions to the influence of the Ottoman legacy on the development of Armenian political identity in Cyprus: the communal unit and the religious identification. Identity in the empire was defined through the collective (the millet) as well as (to a much lesser extent) the individual. This communal system is still the foundation of the position of minorities in the Republic. An Armenian Cypriot is politically defined as a member of the Armenian ‘religious minority’ while simultaneously being a citizen of Cyprus. The demands, requirements and identity of the Armenian Cypriot are, therefore, theoretically twofold – the (communal) Armenian and the (national) Cypriot. Moreover, the concept of ‘community’ stemming directly from the millet experience has had a profound and lasting impact on many of the Ottoman inheritor states, and it is traditionally considered almost impossible to define Armenian identity without these organised ­community structures, or to ‘escape’ one’s state-­recognised Armenianness. The minorities system in Cyprus is a direct descendant of the millet arrangement in that the head of the national (Armenian Apostolic Orthodox) Church (that is, the bishop) is recognised as the (figure)head of the Armenian community in Cyprus, and a separate elected member of the community acts as its political representative in the state. The latter wields little power in practice (merely the potential to influence). Each minority group elects a representative every four years. His (all have been men so far) areas of concern are matters of religion, education, culture and personal status. He is allowed to attend meetings of the House of Representatives but cannot vote and is not permitted to speak or make suggestions unless invited to participate. The government consults with him on issues concerning the minority and as such the ­representative acts as a mediator and broker on behalf of his community. When assessing the colonial period, education policy was perhaps the most transformative of Cypriot society, solidifying two distinct national identities. As Said has eloquently discussed, sectarianism, partition, and obsessive ‘othering’ are direct legacies of imperialism.26 The British, during their rule (1878–1960), established two sets of schools and two school boards – one Greek, one Turkish – that brought over teachers from Greece and

248  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Turkey and ensured the growth of two national communal identifications. British colonial policy thereby translated the religious-­based identities of the Ottoman period to ethnic identities, leading to a rigid constitution (upon independence in 1960) that recognised only two national communities – the Greeks and Turks – erasing the centuries of multi-­ethnic, multi-­religious and multicultural life on the island, and the experiences of groups as diverse as the Linobambaki, the Jews and the Roma. At the time of independence, the three official minorities were given the ‘choice’ of attaching themselves to one or other community – the Greek or the Turkish – and all three opted for the Greek Cypriot.27 One of the most contentious issues for the minorities of Cyprus is that they are identified as ‘religious minorities’ and not as ethnic communities – legally they are part of the Greek Cypriot community. Thus, their ethnicity is ‘surplus’ to the vision of the Republic and effectively erased in the heightened nationalism of the postcolonial period, and the ‘construction of a bi-­ethnic rather than a multi-­ethnic republic’.28 Here we see tangible seeds of the sort of ‘inner exclusion’ that democratic states can end up promoting, through a rigid political system that recognises only one common identity at the expense of all (minority) others, and ‘imperiously demands the subordination of other aspects of citizens’ identities’.29 British colonial legacy left a residual British layer in the new state at many levels, most obviously in the use of English in official contexts. English had served as the common tongue in colonial times, with the elite educated in English language schools.30 The primacy of English as the language of the state served the Armenians well, as they were (and, for the most part, still are) educated in the private (English) schools.31 The policy of ‘hellenisation’ of the late 1980s to rectify this postcolonial condition alienated the Armenians. This trend promoted the Greek language within a wider framework of promoting Greek ethnic consciousness among Greek Cypriots, at the expense of a Cypriot identity.32 With hellenisation the Armenians found themselves unable to compete for state jobs and positions due to their relatively poor mastery of the Greek language. This has created a gap between the generations of those whose Greek language is not up to a professional standard and the younger generations who are increasingly fluent. My interviewees lamented the community’s poor standard of Greek, which had held them back at the state level and also resulted in frustration and complexes e­ nsuing from

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 249 ­ ersonal encounters with Greek Cypriots who are not reticent in ­criticising p this shortcoming. Mavratsas suggests that Greek Cypriots are caught in the uneasy dilemma between being Cypriot (and, therefore, like the ‘enemy’ – the Turkish Cypriots) and being Greek (like the mainland Greeks with whom there is a love–hate ‘brotherly’ relationship).33 This ‘ambivalence of Self’ is reflected in the Armenian Cypriot identity, where there is another conceivable (step)-­ homeland34 in the mix, the Republic of Armenia. There is a shifting, fluid quality to an identity that seems negotiable. Many individuals also drew parallels between needing to unpack their Armenian diasporic identities, the insecure status of the divided island and evolving Cypriot identity. Because the state is in the process of being ‘imagined’ and ‘created’, the identity issue is at the forefront of the individual’s thoughts, and especially the diasporan’s, who is that layer further ‘removed’. The hyper-­nationalism of mainstream discourse has undoubtedly contributed to an inward self-­analytical aspect to the Armenian community. When asked how he identifies himself, one interviewee said this: It all depends who is asking me and in what context. A lot of people ask, just to make themselves feel better with your answer . . . [Y]ou feel that they want you to take sides but they don’t want to take sides themselves. They don’t want to choose between Greek and Cypriot because maybe they haven’t decided in their own minds, so whenever it pleases them they might choose between the Greek and the Cypriot, depending on the circumstances and the circles . . . I don’t mind people asking me, we joke about it, I don’t mind saying I’m Cypriot, I don’t mind saying I’m Armenian, I don’t mind saying I’m Armenian Cypriot. (Hagop, male business consultant in his thirties)

As Greek and Turkish nationalisms came to dominate Cyprus politics the minorities were (further) distanced from the state. An alternative ideology, Cypriotism, defined by Calotychos as being ‘a full-­blown ideological and cultural bent that foregrounds citizenship of a Cypriot state over the ethnic demands of the respective motherland or metropolitan nations’35 has been controversial. One school of literature believes that Cypriotism is an artificial creation and an imposition from above. Another school suggests that away

250  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t from ‘high’ political discourse, at the grassroots level, everyday life is based on shared Cypriotism.36 There emerged in the 1990s various Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot groups that initiated bi-­communal activities with a view to reconciliation and the establishment of a bi-­communal, bi-­zonal republic, supported by external actors like the US, the EU and UN agencies. Many of these initiatives made the effort to include all Cypriot groups and reached out for participation by minorities. This civil society-­based movement gathered momentum in the run up to the surprise opening of the borders in April 2003. The relaxation of the borders was greeted with a brief euphoria that has since given way to a normalisation. There are still many Greek and Armenian Cypriots who are ambivalent about the prospect of a settlement and refuse to cross to the ‘other side’.37 Regardless, there are a number of genuinely bi-­communal non-­government organisations (NGOs) dedicated to bi-­communal activity, research and informed debate, the most successful of which include the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR),38 and PRIO Cyprus Centre,39 both of which have run projects focusing on the Cypriot minorities, recognising the potential role that they have to provide an alternative counter-­nationalist perspective. In the writing of the history of Cyprus, authors have remarked on the obsessive need to situate one narrative against the Other in a binary manner, and identity politics being employed to ‘define’ the Other.40 In this respect, ‘Others within’ like the Armenians, can potentially act as a third way. Many theorists have argued for the revival of living in diaspora as a complement to state nationalism, and the proliferation of diasporas and Diaspora Studies attests to the evolution of the concept from being the ‘Other of the nation state’ to ‘exemplary communities of the transnational moment’.41 The diaspora acts as a constant alternative to the hegemony of the nation-­state, exposing power relations and competing narratives. In the spirit of Camus’ Outsider and Said’s Exile, the Diasporan, and in this case, the diaspora minority community can be the embodiment of the marginalised Other who maintains a distance and provides critical insight into the society of which s/he is a part. The Expanding (Armenian) Cypriot Landscape Despite being small in size, the Armenian community in Cyprus has both longevity and historical and cultural significance, in and of itself, and as a

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 251 pivotal diaspora microcosm. At its peak in the early 1950s, there were as many as 7,000 Armenians in Cyprus but many left after the EOKA nationalist uprising and struggle for independence. At the end of 2008, there were 2,700 Armenians, making up 0.4 per cent of the Greek Cypriot community and 0.3 per cent of the total population.42 The Cyprus Press and Information Office (PIO) website states that there are ‘about 3500’ Armenians currently residing on the island but does not distinguish between Cypriot and other Armenians.43 The contemporary community is overwhelmingly composed of the descendants of the post-­genocide wave of arrivals who gradually merged with the pre-­existing local Armenian community, who tended to greet them with distance and distrust44 – a common dynamic among multilayered communities composed of distinct waves of arrivals. Arriving as refugees, they grew to be integrated into both the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities through social and business connections. Genocide survivors were largely Turkish speakers so it was easier for them to gravitate to Turkish neighbourhoods. Many Armenians and Turks have fond memories of these times45 and many friendships were renewed after the border opened in 2003. From their arrival as desperate and ravaged refugees, this disparate group was transformed into a cohesive and thriving community,46 which is generally middle class, although there is poverty on the edges. The community was affected by events on the island in the same way as other Cypriots, from the losses of 196347 and 1974, to the economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s and the current economic crisis in the (southern) Eurozone. The community has been strengthened by subsequent waves of arrivals. The 1970s and 1980s saw the influx of Lebanese and Iranian Armenians into the community, fleeing the troubles in their home countries. Despite differences, there was enough (cultural and social) resonance between the distinct groups such that they were integrated into the Cypriot community for periods ranging from a few weeks to many years before they continued their journeys either back to their originating countries or on to new destinations in the west; some of them ended up staying and settling in Cyprus. The latest additions to the community have been Armenians from Armenia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, as part of an emigration wave picking up momentum since 2000. The present-­day internal distinction drawn between Gyprahays (Armenian Cypriots) and Hayastansis (Armenians from Armenia)48

252  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t is the latest phase of the diasporan tradition of distinguishing and dividing amongst themselves.49 The ‘clash’ between them is the current version of encounters between resident and new arrival, and the different experiences and visions of the (trans)nation and community that they represent. For these reasons the Hayastansis either tend to stick to their own group, their extended group (the wider ex-­Soviet Russian-­speaking group of immigrants) or ultimately blend into an increasingly multicultural Cypriot society.50 The community’s earlier fears about assimilation and their ‘insecurity’ about their status and their future have mostly been replaced by an assurance about their continued presence in Cyprus and their right to be there. Many interviewees told stories of where they had experienced discrimination in the past, which they interpreted as a challenge to their own identity – how they presented and thought of themselves. It would seem that these challenges were being responded to with increasing confidence and self-­ assurance, despite these being fairly quotidian challenges. Interestingly, it was often individuals who were half Armenian (and half Greek Cypriot) who felt these slights most poignantly, perhaps as they are most conscious of their liminality; despite their being a sizeable subgroup many reported struggling to fit in or to feel fully accepted by either group.51 With the observable increasing rates of exogamy throughout Cypriot society this experience is likely to become less difficult and problematic as it is grows widespread. The biggest change to the Cypriot political and social reality promises to be the long-­term impact of growing numbers of foreigners to an island that has historically emphasised an exclusionary nationalism. Since 1974 the boom in the construction and tourist industries, particularly in the south, has led to a need for foreign workers, closely followed by the service and domestic sector. There are also significant numbers of non-­Cypriots who have made Cyprus their home, either for retirement, business or personal reasons. Cyprus is truly becoming a multicultural society from below, despite the persistent bi-­communal projections of the ethno-­nationalists of the two sides. At the end of 2011, more than 24 per cent of the residents of Cyprus had been born elsewhere.52 Susan Pattie suggests that the cosmopolitanism of the Cypriot Armenian is not necessarily an empowered position but ‘an openness to the world that comes from a diasporic people’s juggling of identities, seeking a rootedness

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 253 in a place alongside connections across time and space’.53 As Ruth Mandel has noted with respect to the Turkish diaspora in Germany there are ‘anxieties’ and insecurities attached to this status about how one is perceived by the mainstream society.54 For the more privileged, this latent or active cosmopolitanism enables a detachment from Cypriot society at large, although it could also be argued that this is also a position of subjugation, where the individual is so disempowered as to consider herself irrelevant and unrelated to her surroundings. There emerged in my fieldwork a group of individuals for whom Cyprus was an incidental base, which one did not (have to) engage with. All individuals in this category were either elderly or not Cypriot by origin (but perhaps through marriage): My kids sometimes say to me ‘do you live in Armenia or Cyprus?’ (I read) Armenian news, the newspapers etc, although I also pay a lot of attention to world news . . . but national issues, in all honesty, I am not integrated. In the wider western yes, in the Armenian yes, but not in the national . . . Also I am always travelling to the west . . . my links are more with the west and Armenian things. It does not really bother me. As long as I have a western/ world view alongside the Armenian. Now with all the other nationalities here – Russians, Eastern Europeans etc, it is easier to be this way. (Anahid, female in her late fifties, originally from Lebanon)

The Minorities of Cyprus: The Dynamics of ‘Inner Exclusion’55 To further illustrate the situation of the minorities in this evolving society, I will turn to a 2007 conference in which I participated in Nicosia. The first ever conference dedicated to the ‘Minorities of Cyprus’ was hosted by the European University Cyprus in November 2007.56 The conference, which brought together historians, anthropologists, linguists, social scientists, politicians, community activists and interested members of the public, was an important event in its own right. Special platform was also given to the political representatives of each community. The conference was a wide-­ranging and varied marriage of the academic and the political – at times contributions were theoretical; at others, they focused on the nitty-­gritty of quotidian negotiations. One of the most poignant moments occurred when the main organiser, in a moment’s lull in the

254  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t discussion, asked how many of the attendees who were unconnected with the conference organisation, were Greek Cypriot. In an auditorium of more than 100 people, not one hand went up. No one appeared unduly shocked by this, as this fact reinforced what was being said in different ways throughout – that Greek Cypriot society is indifferent to and ignorant of their minority fellow Cypriots, who are subjected to all kinds of ‘exclusion’ while being formally recognised as being part of the ‘inner’ state fabric. This ‘ignorance’ and ‘indifference’ of the Greek Cypriots was something that came up repeatedly in my interviews. Armenians felt that interest expressed about their non-­Greek names, for example, was often superficial and patronising. Worse still, in their own opinion, were personal anecdotes of having been mistaken for Turks, the Armenian language being foreign and therefore presumably Turkish-­sounding to Greek Cypriots.57 Most people connected this to the lack of ‘proper’ (as opposed to nationalistic) education, a theme that the conference also stressed. This is typical behaviour of a dominant group, leading in extreme cases to ‘parallel societies’ or ‘two solitudes’ regardless of state policies. Kymlicka says that often ‘increased fairness at the level of state institutions has not been matched by improvements at the level of the lived experience of inter-­group relations’.58 Other developments were also predictable. It was clear that during the Armenian or Maronite panels the audience was suddenly bolstered by either Armenians or Maronites, respectively. The Latin community is now too small for this trend to have been obvious during their panel. People were clearly interested in hearing the latest developments that related to their community and also in seeing how they were being represented to others. Also, as the conference went on, the audience became increasingly confident in putting forward their thoughts, questions, worries and hopes. Many people remarked during the breaks that they had been waiting for such a forum, and that no one before had paid such attention to them (that is, the community). Although there was of course the tendency of people only really being interested in ‘their’ panels, there was still considerable overlap between the interest areas for many people to learn more about the other communities. As the conference went on, there emerged a new sense of solidarity as minorities, as everyone, from the three representatives to ‘ordinary’ members of the communities, shared and compared experiences, in relation to the

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 255 state and to the dominant group – the Greek Cypriots. The lack of any real political power wielded by the community representatives was a common refrain and concern. It was clear that the communities for the most part did not really know much about one another beyond simplifications and basic facts. There was some wry acknowledgement of each community’s tunnel vision and lack of interest in the Others – although this did not extend to influencing many people to stay for the panel about the ‘other Others’, the Roma and the British. It appears that each community is so insecure in its own identity and position on the Cypriot map that the tendency for the most part is a defensive one, that is, it is an inclination to look inward and to try to protect their position vis-­à-­vis the mainstream nationalist narrative. This approach does not really make room for Others, but instead is situated in relation to the dominant Other – the Greek Cypriot – as each minority struggles to define itself and demand recognition (and respect) for its members, its particular history and trajectory in the Cyprus story. The tendency has been reinforced by the education system that does not encourage any real interest or engagement with other Cypriots. It either seeks to assimilate them or treats their ‘difference’ as something that should not be exaggerated, seeking to deflate the potential threat to the coherence of the Greek Cypriot nationalist narrative of being the majority and the original (only) Cypriots vis-­à-­vis the Turkish Cypriots. The minorities of Cyprus are assigned a few pages in a separate section in the current state history textbooks, ‘riddled with errors and anachronisms’, seemingly designed to show commonalities with the Greek Cypriots and bolster the nationalist perspective.59 The rapid social and demographic changes in Cypriot society since 2000 have led to talk of multiculturalism, albeit in an inconsistent and limited fashion. In the field of education the sudden reality of 7.7 per cent of pupils in primary schools being non-­Greek speaking has had to be urgently addressed.60 Although multiculturalism appears to be the policy line in Cyprus, there is clearly a gap between discourse and practice. The Minorities conference revealed that all Cypriots share the same space and despite divisions (physical and intangible) there is no obvious conflict. Yet minorities persist in feeling discriminated against and misunderstood and have to constantly work at claiming and negotiating a space for themselves, as Cypriots. The desire is to

256  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t simultaneously preserve their difference, and be Cypriots in their own right and in their own way. That this is not a contradictory position is one that does not seem to have had much impact on the Greek Cypriot nationalist tenets of the state or society. Additionally, in the words of Charles Taylor, minorities also ‘. . . reserve the right to alter the host society even as they assimilate to it’,61 although this appears to be some way off in the Cypriot case. The Impact of the Supranational on Internal Diaspora Community Dynamics Two recent interconnected political developments promise to have a significant and long-­term impact on the Armenian community. These are: Cyprus’s full membership in the European Union (EU) since 2004, and the wider effect of supranational entities like the EU and the Council of Europe in reconfiguring and empowering minority groups. Globalisation and the construction of a European political space have rendered supranational institutions a new political arena and source of rights and legitimacy for transnational nationalism. Although the state remains the principal actor in international relations, transnational or diasporan nationalism increasingly provides a point of reference for identification and mobilisation for many. This development has had particular impact on transnational communities – groups spanning state boundaries, united by a common identity and interest. Kastoryano describes how even at the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, transnational immigrant groups within the European space talked of themselves as the ‘thirteenth nation’ of Europe.62 Bauböck and Guiraudon describe the EU as a ‘laboratory for differentiated citizenship’.63 New forms of citizenship and claims of belonging have emerged in Europe, where there continues to be a lively debate about loyalties, identity and national integrity.64 Governments are concerned about the impact of diasporas as social, economic and cultural and, most importantly, political actors. Political identities and citizenship in the European space have become ‘increasingly overlapping, nested and blurred’.65 Supranational institutions and activities have hugely influenced the recasting of the concept of ‘diaspora’. Diasporas have been empowered by the human rights discourse that has emerged since 1948, and international bodies like the United Nations and the Council of Europe that have defined

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 257 ‘rights’, both individual and collective, as being basic. The result, is that ‘codified as a right, identities have become important organisational and symbolic tools for creating new group solidarities and mobilising resources’.66 These organisations above the state have taken an active interest in ethnic minorities by situating them within the human rights paradigm, thus contributing to the redefinition of their status and the expansion of their rights in host countries. This development is also responsible for the minority rights discourse from which diaspora communities, both in their host states and within the European borders, gain validation and legitimacy. Kymlicka identifies this change through the shift in thinking in terms of ‘privileges’ to talking of ‘rights’.67 Most of the older generation I interviewed spoke in terms of privileges and favours that the state granted the Armenians as a minority. This perception has the effect of keeping the minority distanced and separate from the state. The younger generations, in contrast, were more aware and assertive about their rights, framing them as legal entitlements and not something extraordinary. The goal of EU accession benefited minorities in Cyprus, as the respect of minority rights was one of the criteria that candidate countries had to meet.68 In the run up to membership, this was a priority for the government, and areas like minorities’ education provision and cultural expression and the protection of their language were bolstered by unprecedented initiatives. These overtures extended to the political realm. The 2001 elections were the first where political candidates (who were for the most part previously uninvolved with the community69) sought the support of the Armenian community in unparallelled ways: through personal appeals, presentations in community forums and sending mail shots of election letters written in Armenian. In response, Armenian leaders endorsed individuals from across the political parties as supporting one party was considered unwise given the small size of the community. By claiming both their Armenian and Cypriot identities with confidence, the community leadership sought to make Armenian matters and concerns part of the mainstream agenda.70 This ‘recognition’ of the community as a potential political force by the host state bolsters its own recent self-­awareness as an intrinsic part of the society.71 It is important to point out that a community, and certainly a diaspora, does not act as a united whole but is composed of many different,

258  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t often competing elements and interest groups. Many traditional as well as new organisations provide the transnational framework of the diaspora, with branches in different countries. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) (Hai Heghapokhagan Dashnaktsutiune),72 for example, has an extensive infrastructure throughout the diaspora. Local branches have some autonomy in relation to local matters but are linked and closely associated with the headquarters as well as with other branches through a tight web of communication. The Cyprus branch of the ARF’s youth wing, the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF), has been involved (through the Cypriot youth board) with pan-­European organisations since the mid-­1990s, frequently participating in Council of Europe seminars and conferences. This relationship has significantly empowered the way that young people think of themselves as citizens of Cyprus, but also as Europeans. The fact that the activity occurs through the channels of the diaspora organisation, also validates the diasporan identity. While a substantial amount has been written about how ethnic diasporas work to influence the policies of their ‘host states’ and developments in their ‘homeland’,73 scant attention has been paid to how they are being impacted by the supranational, regional or the global political level. The coming together of Europe as a social, political, economic and cultural project has affected how diaspora communities within its borders see themselves, and engage with their local communities, the state structures of the countries in which they reside, and with broader EU bodies, and how all these levels of engagement relate and reinforce each of the distinct relationships contained therein. This inevitably challenges the internal workings of a diaspora and the various communities, specifically to do with questions of representation and authority. As diaspora exists transnationally, and is heterogeneous and evolving, there is no clear leadership. Instead, there are several competing sources of power – church leaders, political parties and philanthropic institutions and others – that have historically created, forged and interpreted Armenian diasporic identity – each vying for dominance.74 The question of who speaks for the diaspora has become increasingly open to different influences, and supranational developments would suggest that it is the groups that are the best organised, most professional, best integrated into state systems and most experienced in lobbying, applying for funds and networking at the European and global levels that will prevail.

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 259 Another aspect of the supranational level is that it can serve to highlight and validate local actors’ concerns about their community or state. Keck and Sikkink talk about the ‘boomerang’ manoeuvre of transnational advocacy groups.75 In this model, civic actors who are unable to have their demands met or their voices heard from their own government, bypass the level of the state and attempt to gain the support of inter-­governmental organisations or supranational entities in the hope that this outside support will lead to a boomerang effect and force their government to change. In the Armenian case, the main unifying issues around which diaspora organisations coalesce are that of genocide recognition, policies relating to Armenia and the plight of Armenian communities worldwide. In addition to these, however, oftentimes their concerns extend to their host (home) state. One trend to watch is where local Armenian communities seek support at the level of the supranational in order to put pressure on their host states and also, crucially, on their own diaspora institutions when they have let them down in some way. This occurred in Cyprus in 2005 when the closure of the Melkonian Educational Institute (MEI), the venerable diaspora institution and only boarding school in the diaspora, led to an intensive mobilisation of the local Armenian community, which extended through the diasporic networks and gained strength at the transnational level. The state responded supportively, and its subsequent policies were praised and reinforced by organisations like the Council of Europe that showed concern about the closure of the historic institution and its implications for the future of the Armenian community.76 The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages specifically draws attention to the MEI crisis, a fact that has validated ongoing campaigns within the community and the diaspora77 and continues to put pressure on both the state and the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), the diaspora institution responsible for the MEI. This was a ‘test’ case for Armenian Cypriots in the way they reconfigured their identities and claimed their Cypriot identities over their diasporan affiliations. This is an important development and has wide implications for diaspora organisations. It also illustrates the fluidity of identity, and the ease with which diasporans can negotiate their identities according to the context. Internally, the other area that is impacted by the supranational concerns values and norms. While the foundations of Armenian diasporic institutions

260  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t were not democratic or liberal in the modern sense, as diasporans become increasingly rooted in their (western) home states, they come to expect certain norms and values that are also reinforced by the supranational organisations. Thus, the prescriptive top-­down manner of operating that traditional institutions have enjoyed is being challenged either explicitly or implicitly. The discourse of liberal democracy, with its emphasis on fostering civil society as its foundation, has seeped into diaspora consciousness, thereby destabilising traditional gatekeepers of the diaspora. It would appear that the European project has had a significant impact on the Armenian community in Cyprus, whose multiple identities as citizens of their state, of Europe, but also, crucially, as Armenians and as diasporans has been validated and strengthened through European and national policy, and social, cultural and political activity. It would seem that engagement at the level of the supranational has led to both the increased rootedness of the Armenian community in Cyprus as well as their routedness, an orientation and anchoring to the idea of a diaspora, a shared national identity that transcends state boundaries, and to matters that unite them. From the supranational perspective, policies designed to integrate and protect ethnic groups as minorities can have the by-­product of strengthening, renewing and mobilising diaspora identity where it already exists. Concluding Remarks The case of the Armenians in Cyprus illustrates the intersection between the forces of nationalism and transnationalism. The community is subjected to the state nationalism of the Greek Cypriots, themselves challenged by an opposing and co-­dependent Turkish Cypriot nationalism. At the same time, the Armenian vision of the transnation is strengthened, both in the diasporan imagination and material reality, through the opportunities and possibilities presented by transnationalism. Validation from the European supranational sphere in particular simultaneously activates and reinforces the rootedness of the community in the Cypriot state and society. The Armenian Cypriot case can also act as a barometer of how a society that seeks homogeneity and claims exclusivity over its rival community can respond to the challenges presented by ‘Others’. The huge influx of foreigners in Greek Cypriot society over a very short period of time challenges the

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 261 nationalist tenets of the state, as does coexistence with the Turkish Cypriots. The Armenian community is a reminder that ‘Others’ can also lay claim to a long and constant attachment to the island. Their continued presence acts as a confrontation to nationalist narratives, issues a challenge to rewrite Cypriot history and represents the potential for a more inclusive diverse society. Notes   1. My thanks to Kerem Öktem and Dimitar Bechev for their feedback on sections of earlier drafts of this chapter.   2. Sir George Hill’s history of Cyprus contains many references to the Armenian presence starting from the end of the sixth century. See George Hill, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949).  3. Jacob G. Ghazarian, The Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia during the Crusades: The Integration of Cilician Armenians with the Latins 1080–1393 (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2000), pp. 131–55.   4. This was, however, only an honorary title, as there was in fact no independent Armenia until 1918.  5. Khachig Tölölyan, Waltraud Kokot and Carolin Alfonso (eds), Diaspora, Identity and Religion (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 5.  6. Simon Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities: The Armenian Community in Syria’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 16: 1/2 (spring/fall 2007), p. 113.   7. Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities’, p. 123.  8. Hratch Tchilingirian, ‘Minority within Minorities: Armenian Communities in the Middle East between Imposed Realities and Uncertain Future’, in Erica C. D. Hunter (ed.), Religious Minorities in the Middle East and North Africa: A Complete Survey of Non-­Muslim Communities (London: I. B. Tauris, forthcoming).   9. Sossie Kasbarian, ‘The Armenian Community in Cyprus at the Beginning of the 21st Century: From Insecurity to Integration’, in Andrekos Varnava, Nicholas Coureas and Marina Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-­Exclusion (Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 175–91. 10. Susan Paul Pattie, ‘Refugees and Citizens: The Armenians of Cyprus’, The Cyprus Review 25: 1 (2013), pp. 135–47. 11. See Avedis K. Sanjian, The Armenian Communities in Syria under Ottoman Dominion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965).

262  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 12. ‘Western diasporans’ refers specifically to the descendants of those Armenians who hail from present-­day Eastern Turkey. They are clearly distinguishable from the post-­Soviet wave of Armenians from the Republic and the former Soviet Union who constitute a distinct ‘new’ diaspora and are known as eastern diasporans. 13. Sossie Kasbarian, ‘Rooted and Routed: The Contemporary Armenian Community in Cyprus and Lebanon’ (PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2006). 14. Tölölyan uses the term ‘transnation’ to mean ‘all diasporic communities and the homeland; the nation-­state remains important, but the permanence of dispersion is fully acknowledged and the institutions of connectedness, of which the state is one, become paramount’. See Khachig Tölölyan, ‘Elites and Institutions in the Armenian Transnation’ Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 9: 1 (2000), pp. 107–35. 15. Keith Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 208. 16. See Nikola B. Schahgaldian, ‘The Political Integration of an Immigrant Community into a Composite Society: The Armenians in Lebanon, 1920– 1974’ (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1979); Nicola Migliorino, (Re) Constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria: Ethno-­Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2008) and Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East. 17. Migliorino, (Re)Constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria. 18. Panossian says, ‘Under the leadership of competing organisations, a heterogeneous group of people with fundamental differences in terms of regional identity, religion (Apostolic, Catholic, Protestant), language (Armenian, Turkish, dialects) occupation and class, social status (refugees, assimilated elites, intellectuals), political loyalties and cultural influences from host states, were moulded into a relatively coherent community with a collective consciousness as a diasporic nation. In short, Armenianness as the most important identity category was either created or reinforced in the diaspora, superseding the differences within and between the communities.’ See Razmik Panossian, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars (London: Hurst, 2006), p. 292. 19. Ara Sanjian, ‘Torn between the “Obligation” of Preserving a Distinct Identity and the “Advantages” of Assimilation: The Armenian Experience in the Modern Arab World’, Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-­Faith Studies 3: 1 (2001), pp. 149–79.

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 263 20. Edward Said, Reflections on Exile (London: Granta Books, 2000), p. 182. 21. Edward Said, Reflections on Exile, p. 184. 22. Robert Spencer, ‘“Contented Homeland Peace”, the Motif of Exile in Edward Said’, in Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom (eds), Edward Said – A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (California: University of California Press, 2010), pp. 389–413. Quote on page 389. 23. Ibid., p. 390. 24. Theodor W. Adorno, Min Minima Moralia: Reflections on Damaged Life (London: Verso Books, [1951] 2005). 25. Payaslian, ‘Diasporan Subalternities’, p. 98. 26. Said says, ‘Political separation is at best a makeshift measure. Partition is a legacy of imperialism, as the unhappy cases of Pakistan and India, Ireland, Cyprus and the Balkans testify . . . let us see these new partitions as the last-­ditch efforts of a dying ideology of separation, which has afflicted Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, both of whom have not surmounted the philosophical problem of the Other, of learning how to live with, as opposed to despite, the Other.’ See Edward Said, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (London: Granta Books, 2002), p. 330. 27. The Council of Europe has criticised this policy in both its Opinions on Cyprus (April 2001 and June 2007) and considers it a failure to comply with the Framework Convention on the Protestation of National Minorities. 28. Costas M. Constantinou, ‘Cyprus, Minority Politics and Surplus Ethnicity’, in Andrekos Varnava, Nicholas Coureas and Marina Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-­ Exclusion (Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 361–72. 29. Charles Taylor, ‘The Dynamics of Democratic Exclusion’, Journal of Democracy 9: 4 (1998): 147. 30. It should be noted that the English language has consolidated and extended its position in the educational system – from the establishment of nursery schools to most private and some public tertiary education establishments. 31. With the obvious exception of those who attended the Melkonian Educational Institute (1926–2005), although even there the majority of lessons were taught in English. Several of the older elite I interviewed had attended boarding schools in England, a similar proportion to the Greek Cypriots I spoke to of that generation. British university education continues to be a popular option for the elite, although increasing numbers also study in Greece. 32. See, for example, Caesar V. Mavratsas, ‘The Ideological Contest between

264  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t ­ reek-­ G Cypriot Nationalism and Cypriotism 1974–1995: Politics, Social Memory and Identity’, Ethnic & Racial Studies 20: 4 (1997), pp. 717–37. 33. Caesar V. Mavratsas, ‘The Ideological Contest’ and ‘National Identity and Consciousness in Everyday Life: Towards a Sociology of Knowledge of Greek-­ Cypriot Nationalism’, Nations and Nationalism 5: 1 (1999), pp. 91–104. 34. Due to the absence of a direct link to an ancestral homeland, the Republic of Armenia (Hayastan) with which the western diaspora has no historical physical connection serves as a substitute for a ‘homeland’. Diasporans, therefore, have to negotiate the gap between a mythical homeland and an actual ‘step-­homeland’ in the shape of the Armenian state. My concept of a ‘step-­homeland’ encapsulates a situation where two entities that are not related are forced into a familial relationship by external forces, that is, it is not a naturally occurring relationship but one that is forged through circumstance. The sense of ‘step’ ness also carries with it connotations of difficulty and a need for adjustment by both parties. See Sossie Kasbarian, ‘The Myth and Reality of “Return” – Diaspora in the Homeland’ (forthcoming). 35. Vangelis Calotychos (ed.) Cyprus and its People: Nation, Identity and Experience in an Unimaginable Community 1955–1997 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), p. 16. 36. Mavratsas, ‘National Identity and Consciousness in Everyday Life’. 37. Olga Demetriou, ‘To Cross or Not to Cross? Subjectivisation and the Absent State in Cyprus’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13: 4 (2007), pp. 987–1,006; Craig Webster and Dallen J. Timothy, ‘Travelling to the “Other Side”: The Occupied Zone and Greek Cypriot Views of Crossing the Green Line’, Tourism Geographies 8: 2 (2006), pp. 162–81. 38. In an extract on its website, AHDR’s vision is defined thus: ‘Since its foundation in 2003, the AHDR has enlisted members from various ethnic, linguistic, and professional backgrounds working at various educational levels in Cyprus, making the first steps towards a greater effort: an effort to maintain a continuous, open dialogue about enhanced pedagogic practices that could encourage the values of the discipline of history’ (www.ahdr.info/home.php). AHDR regularly organises events and projects that have a specific minority interest, for example, an evening dedicated to the Armenian Cypriot violinist Vahan Bedelian on 3 April 2014 (www.ahdr.info/viewevent.php?eid=78). 39. In an extract from its website, their mission is set out thus: ‘The PRIO Cyprus Centre is committed to research and dialogue. Its aim is to contribute to an informed public debate on key issues relevant to an eventual settlement of the

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 265 Cyprus problem. Its ambition is to achieve this through the establishment and dissemination of information and by offering new analysis, and through facilitating dialogue’ (http://cyprus.prio.org). 40. Costas M. Constantinou and Yiannis Papadakis, ‘The Cypriot State(s) in Situ: Cross-­ethnic Contact and the Discourse of Recognition’, Global Society 15: 2 (2001), p. 133. 41. Khachig Tölölyan, ‘The Nation-­State and Its Others’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (1991), p. 5. 42. At the end of 2008, the population of Cyprus is estimated at 885,600. The estimated composition of various communities was: Greek Cypriot community 668,700 or 75.5 per cent; Turkish Cypriot community 88,700 or 10.0 per cent, foreign residents 128,200 or 14.5 per cent. The religious groups ‘which belong to the Greek Cypriot community’ totalled: Armenians 2,700 or 0.4 per cent of the Greek Cypriot community and 0.3 per cent of the total population; Maronites 4,800 or 0.7 per cent of the Greek Cypriot community and 0.5 per cent of the total population; Latins 900 or 0.1 per cent of the Greek Cypriot community and less than 0.1 per cent of the total population (Republic of Cyprus, Demographic Report 2008, Population Statistics, Series II, Report No. 46). This figure does not include the significant number of recent Armenian arrivals from the former Soviet Union (see below) who may not have Cypriot nationality. Observations suggest that these may number at least another 1,250 people. 43. www.moi.gov.cy/moi/pio/pio.nsf/All/DBF419D7DF6CC18EC2256FCE003 31E37?OpenDocument 44. Susan Paul Pattie, Faith in History – Armenians Rebuilding Community (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997). 45. Ahmet An, ‘The Socio-­Cultural Relationship of the Armenian and Turkish Cypriots’, in Andrekos Varnava, Nicholas Coureas and Marina Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-­ Exclusion (Newcastle-­ upon-­ Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 282–98. 46. Susan Paul Pattie, ‘New Life in an Old Community’, in Andrekos Varnava, Nicholas Coureas and Marina Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-­ Exclusion (Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 160–74. 47. The troubles of 1963 disproportionately affected Armenians who have never been recognised or compensated for their losses. See Olga Demetriou, ‘“Struck

266  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t by the Turks”: Reflections on the Armenian Experience of Displacement in Cyprus’, Patterns of Prejudice 48: 2 (2014), pp. 167–81. 48. The initial wave of Hayastansis was actually Cypriot returnees who emigrated to Armenia in the 1960s. Subsequent waves are part of the substantial numbers of economic migrants from the former Soviet Union who have found their way to Cyprus in the hope of a better future. 49. Pattie, Faith in History, pp. 88–103 explores the tensions between deghatsis, the established Armenian community, and the kaghtagans (refugees) from the late nineteenth to the mid-­twentieth century, revealing that there was little mixing and very little intermarriage between the two groups for about twenty years. 50. Sossie Kasbarian, ‘The Armenian Community in Cyprus’, pp. 175–91. 51. Sossie Kasbarian, ‘Diasporic Voices from the Peripheries – Armenian Experiences on the Edges of Community in Cyprus and Lebanon’, The Cyprus Review 25: 1 (2013), pp. 81–110. 52. www.mof.gov.cy/mof/cystat/statistics.nsf/populationcondition_22main_en/po pulationcondition_22main_en?OpenForm&sub=2&sel=2, Statistical Service, Ministry of Finance, Cyprus. 53. Pattie, ‘Refugees and Citizens’, p. 143. 54. Ruth Mandel, Cosmopolitan Anxieties – Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2008). 55. This works on Charles Taylor’s concept of ‘democratic exclusion’ and ‘inner exclusion’ within democratic societies. 56. The resulting book is Varnava, Koureas and Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus. 57. One school teacher recounted his experience of this happening in an educational context. 58. Will Kymlicka, ‘Multiculturalism and Minority Rights: West and East’, Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 4 (2002). www.ecmi.de/fileadmin/ downloads/publications/JEMIE/2002/nr4/Focus4-­2002_Kymlicka.pdf 59. Andrekos Varnava, ‘The Minorities of Cyprus in the History of Cyprus Textbook for Lyceum Students: A Critique’, in Andrekos Varnava, Nicholas Coureas and Marina Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-­Exclusion (Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 299–313. Quotes is on page 302. 60. The 2008 annual report of the Ministry of Education includes a special section on Multicultural Education (2.1.4) (www.moec.gov.cy/etisia-­ekthesi/pdf/ annual_report_2008_en.pdf).

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 267 61. Taylor, ‘The Dynamics of Democratic Exclusion’, p. 149. 62. Rita Kastoryano, ‘Transnational Nationalism: Redefining Nation and Territory’, in Seyla Benhabib, Ian Shapiro and Danilo Petranovic (eds), Identities, Affiliations and Allegiances (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 159. 63. Rainer Bauböck and Virginie Guiraudon, ‘Introduction: Realignments of Citizenship: Reassessing Rights in the Age of Plural Membership and Multi-­ level Governance’, Citizenship Studies 13: 5 (2009), p. 440. 64. Whether this development is substantial and far-­reaching in individual European states is debatable, as there has been a simultaneous drive to control, contain and exclude, leading to even more repressive citizenship policies. However, the groups contained within the European space are potentially (and in many cases actually) empowered by the work of supranational organisations. 65. Bauböck and Guiraudon, ‘Introduction: Realignments of Citizenship’, p. 448. 66. Yasmin Nuhoğlu Soysal, ‘Citizenship and Identity: Living in Diasporas in Post-­ war Europe?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 23: 1 (January 2000), p. 5. 67. Kymlicka, ‘Multiculturalism and Minority Rights: West and East’. 68. Efforts have been made by various international organisations to formally codify a set of minority rights or practices. These include the 1992 Declaration of the UN, the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) Charter and the 1995 Framework Convention of the Council of Europe and various Recommendations of the OSCE’s High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) and so on. It should be mentioned that there is room for flexibility and ambiguity in most of these guidelines, as minority rights is an evolving field. 69. The recent exception was Marios Garoyian, who was the President of the House of Representatives from March 2008 to 2011, and the leader of the Democratic Party, the centre-­right party since 2006. Although Garoyian is of (partial) Armenian descent he has had limited connection to the Armenian community through his upbringing. Nevertheless, while in office he acted as a kind of broker with the community and the government and also was a key figure in relations between Cyprus and Armenia. 70. Interview with Cyprus Armenian National Committee (ANC) Chairman, 27 February 2001. The ANC is the political wing of the Dashnaktsutiune (see Note 70). The local ANC is linked to a network of counterparts throughout the diaspora and Armenia. 71. Kasbarian, ‘The Armenian Community in Cyprus’, pp. 175–91. 72. The Dashnaktsutiune, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), is

268  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t c­onsidered the most ‘successful’ of the original Armenian political parties founded in the Ottoman period with continuous endurance in the diaspora. Established in Tiflis in 1890, the ARF was instrumental in the establishment of the first Armenian Republic in 1918. Following the Sovietization of Armenia in 1920, the ARF was banned by the Communists and its leadership exiled, officially re-­emerging in Armenia only after the Soviet collapse and subsequent independence in 1990. Up until the thawing of the Cold War the fiercely anti-­ communist ARF was opposed to Soviet Armenia (unlike the other diaspora parties) and single-­minded in its devotion to diaspora life and the Armenian Cause. In fact, the ARF as an organisation developed into maturity in diaspora, helping with the adjustment to living in diaspora and increasing rootedness in host states. In diaspora the ARF has functioned as a transnational quasi-­political organisation, focusing on social and community matters; that is, it tended to the needs of the community it helped to structure. Historically, the ARF in diaspora has acted as the guardian of a staunch nationalism. See Ara Sanjian, ‘The ARF’s First 120 Years – A Brief Review of Available Sources and Historiography’, Armenian Review 52: 3–4 (2011), pp. 1–16. 73. See, for example, Samuel Huntington, ‘The Erosion of American National Interest’, Foreign Affairs 76: 5 (October 1997), pp. 28–49; Yossi Shain, Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the US and Their Homelands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Gabriel Sheffer, Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Eva Østergaard-­Nielson (ed.), International Migration and Sending Countries: Perceptions, Policies, and Transnational Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Maria Koinova, ‘Diaspora and Democratisation in the Post-­communist World’, Communist and Post-­Communist Studies 42: 1 (2009), pp. 41–64. 74. Tölölyan, ‘Elites and Institutions in the Armenian Transnation’. 75. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders – Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 12–13. 76. Sossie Kasbarian, ‘Whose Space, Whose Interests? Clashes within Armenian Diasporic Civil Society’, Armenian Review 51: 1–4 (2009), pp. 81–109. 77. For example, Point 94 of the Report of the Committee of Experts in respect of Cyprus, 27 September 2006 on the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, states: ‘The Committee of Experts is concerned that the closure of the MEI will constitute a danger to the existence of secondary education

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 269 in Armenian in Cyprus. It therefore hopes that the situation can be resolved soon. It is of vital importance that Armenian-­medium education will continue in Cyprus also on the level of secondary education.’ See https://wcd.coe.int/ ViewDoc.jsp?id=1018381&Site=COE&BackColorInternet=DBDCF2&Back ColorIntranet=FDC864&BackColorLogged=FDC864

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t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 271 and Cypriotism 1974–1995: Politics, Social Memory and Identity’, Ethnic & Racial Studies 20: 4 (1997), pp. 717–37. Mavratsas, Caesar V., ‘National Identity and Consciousness in Everyday Life: Towards a Sociology of Knowledge of Greek-­Cypriot Nationalism’, Nations and Nationalism 5: 1 (1999), pp. 91–104. Migliorino, Nicola, (Re)Constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria: Ethno-­Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2008). Østergaard-­ Nielson, Eva (ed.), International Migration and Sending Countries: Perceptions, Policies, and Transnational Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Panossian, Razmik, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars (London: Hurst, 2006). Papadakis, Yiannis, ‘Disclosure and Censorship in Divided Cyprus: Toward an Anthropology of Ethnic Autism’, in Y. Papadakis, N. Peristianis and G. Welz (eds), Divided Cyprus (Bloomington, IN and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 66–83 Papadakis, Yiannis, Nicos Peristianis and Gisela Welz (eds), Divided Cyprus – Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict (Bloomington, IN and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006). Pattie, Susan Paul, Faith in History – Armenians Rebuilding Community (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997). Pattie, Susan Paul, ‘New Life in an Old Community’, in Andrekos Varnava, Nicholas Coureas and Marina Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-­Exclusion (Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 160–74. Pattie, Susan Paul, ‘Refugees and Citizens: The Armenians of Cyprus’, The Cyprus Review 25: 1 (2013), pp. 135–47. Payaslian, Simon, ‘Diasporan Subalternities: The Armenian Community in Syria’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 16: 1–2 (spring/fall 2007), pp. 92–132. Said, Edward, Reflections on Exile (London: Granta Books, 2000). Said, Edward, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (London: Granta Books, 2002). Sanjian, Ara, ‘Torn between the “Obligation” of Preserving a Distinct Identity and the “Advantages” of Assimilation: The Armenian Experience in the Modern Arab World’, Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-­Faith Studies 3: 1 (2001), pp. 149–79.

272  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Sanjian, Ara, ‘The ARF’s First 120 Years – A Brief Review of Available Sources and Historiography’, Armenian Review 52: 3–4 (2011), pp. 1–16. Sanjian, Avedis K., The Armenian Communities in Syria under Ottoman Dominion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). Schahgaldian, Nikola B., ‘The Political Integration of an Immigrant Community into a Composite Society: The Armenians in Lebanon, 1920–1974’ (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1979). Shain, Yossi, Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the US and Their Homelands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Sheffer, Gabriel, Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Soysal, Yasmin Nuhoğlu, ‘Citizenship and Identity: Living in Diasporas in Post-­war Europe?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 23: 1 (January 2000), pp. 1–15. Spencer, Robert, ‘“Contented Homeland Peace”, the Motif of Exile in Edward Said’, in Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom (eds), Edward Said – A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (California: University of California Press, 2010), pp. 389–413. Taylor, Charles, ‘The Dynamics of Democratic Exclusion’, Journal of Democracy 9: 4 (1998), pp. 143–56. Tchilingirian, Hratch, ‘Minority within Minorities: Armenian Communities in the Middle East between Imposed Realities and Uncertain Future’, in Erica C. D. Hunter (ed.), Religious Minorities in the Middle East and North Africa: A Complete Survey of Non-­Muslim Communities (I. B. Tauris, forthcoming). Tölölyan, Khachig, ‘Elites and Institutions in the Armenian Transnation’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 9: 1 (2000), pp. 107–35. Tölölyan, Khachig, ‘The Nation-­ State and Its Others’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (1991), pp. 3–7. Tölölyan, Khachig, Waltraud Kokot and Carolin Alfonso (eds), Diaspora, Identity and Religion (London: Routledge, 2004). Varnava, Andrekos, ‘The Minorities of Cyprus in the History of Cyprus Textbook for Lyceum Students: A Critique’, in Andrekos Varnava, Nicholas Coureas and Marina Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-­Exclusion (Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 299–313. Varnava, Andrekos, Nicholas Coureas and Marina Elia (eds), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-­Exclusion (Newcastle-­upon-­ Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

t h e armeni an communi ty i n cy p r us  | 273 Watenpaugh, Keith, Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006). Webster, Craig and Dallen J. Timothy, ‘Travelling to the “Other Side”: The Occupied Zone and Greek Cypriot Views of Crossing the Green Line’, Tourism Geographies 8: 2 (2006), pp. 162–81.

8 Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon: Worthy Lives in Unworthy Conditions

1

May Farah

Introduction

E

very diasporic group negotiates the transition from a physically (spatially) rooted national identity to an imagined national affiliation differently, contingent on the circumstances of their exile. In focusing specifically on refugees, one type of diaspora, it becomes possible to recognise particular circumstances of exile, and how the ‘social, imaginative processes’ of constructing national identity are influenced by ‘local, everyday circumstances’.2 Those everyday circumstances for refugees, like diasporic populations everywhere, are marked by transnationalism, de-­territorialisation and re-­territorialisation, in a world where identity and culture are no longer rooted to a specific place, and where such populations often come to think of themselves as part of a national community via mediated and mediatised constructions and representations. In addition to the use of global media, one’s everyday experience and place in the world, and even within the same city, influences one’s imagination of a lost home and homeland, and experience of national identity. This chapter examines how the particular place called ‘home’ by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon informs their connection to and imagination of their homeland. Discussions with young adult Palestinian refugees, the third generation of refugees now living both in and outside refugee camps in Lebanon,3 over several visits revealed that the relationship between where these refugees 274

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 275 felt at home, and whether they believed in and hoped for a return to their homeland (Palestine) was largely influenced by their surroundings.4 While scholarly work on the Palestinians covers a range of multidisciplinary topics, no significant study has addressed how young adult refugees come to imagine and understand Palestine, and negotiate their national identity. This research attempts to fill that lacuna. With no apparent resolution in sight to this refugee problem, which is among the world’s largest and longest suffering refugee population, the present research is significant to an understanding of whether and how the homeland continues to be a focal point for a population that has never directly experienced that home. Refugee Studies provide the conceptual space to analytically demarcate the influence of the everyday experience of exile on refugees’ connection with their homeland. Although ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ are used interchangeably here, it must be highlighted that ‘home’ often refers to a place that is ‘temporary’ and ‘moveable; it can be built, rebuilt, and carried in memory and by acts of imagination’ while ‘homeland’ is more ‘abstract’ and ‘fought for’.5 It is the place of origin to which exiles cannot return. Having been torn loose from their nation, refugees nevertheless remain connected to their homes, and to their national identity through certain practices, such as a constant recollection of the past, passing down stories and accessing media. It is through such practices, and the determination on the part of refugees to identify with a national community, which allows for the challenging of Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’, of lives not worth living.6 As scholars such as Pratt and Raulff, who have elaborated Agamben’s work, point out, laws in modern society can be suspended to create what Agamben called states of exception. This was, he believed, the only way to explain the creation of camps – in his case it was the Nazi concentration camps but he extends his argument to incorporate all those places that could be considered states of exception, such as refugee camps. Agamben claimed that the camp is now widespread and, in fact, is ‘the hidden matrix of the politics in which we are . . . living’.7 Thus, the camp, notes Raulff, ‘is the space that opens up when the state of exception turns into a normality’: The state of exception signifies a temporary abrogation of the rule of law, and the camp gives a spatial expression to this state of exception, even if this

276  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t expression remains outside of the normal order. As the camp renders the state of exception steady, it creates the paradox of normality which is identical with the anomy: the camp brings about a new juridical-­political paradigm in which the norm becomes indistinguishable from the exception.8

In these states of exception, these camps contain lives that have been deemed unworthy of living. Agamben asks: ‘Are there human lives that have so lost the quality of legal good that their very existence no longer has any value, either for the person leading such a life or for society?’9 The answer is a categorical yes and Agamben calls such lives ‘bare life’. He relates their existence to the ancient juridical category of homo sacer. According to Roman law, homo sacer was a man who could be killed without the person who committed the act incurring charges of murder and without the death constituting a sacrifice. To deem that life lost as a sacrifice would be according it value. Thus, the life is not worth living, nor worth killing, for the latter act would mean its acknowledgement. Translating homo sacer into modern biopolitics, Agamben identifies ‘the camp’ as the quintessential manifestation of homo sacer logic. It is where individuals who are denied access to sovereignty are made vulnerable to the whims of sovereign power. These states of exception and suspensions of law allow for the elimination of ‘entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system’.10 The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, having been excluded from all political systems, exist in a state of exception. Such people, in Agamben’s view, have been legally abandoned; they are the equivalent of bare life. As the literature on refugees makes clear, the struggle for nationhood among those that have been deterritorialised is particularly discriminating because uprootedness is often associated with deficiency.11 There is an underlying assumption that the deterritorialised are discriminated against, that being ‘uprooted and removed from a national community is automatically to lose one’s identity, traditions, culture’.12 Or, finding oneself in a ‘strange, unpredictable predicament’ leads to questions of ‘threatened’ and ‘traumatised’ identities.13 Thus, in this world, which is ‘composed of mutually exclusive, territorially bound spaces, the refugee figures only as an aberration of the proper subjectivity of citizenship; lacking the posited qualities of the citizen,

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 277 she does not properly belong anywhere’.14 Refugees are seen as ‘dangerous’ because they blur national – seen as ‘natural’ – boundaries, and disturb the ‘categorical order of nations, which are not only seen as natural, but also, and consequently, as “inherently legitimate”’.15 The citizen is rooted and the refugee uprooted, displaced or forced out. Exclusion from the community of citizens becomes his or her official characteristic: ‘The refugee is one who lacks affinity with the national community.’16 Because culture and identity have been heretofore considered ‘territorialised’ concepts, refugees are assumed to be ‘torn loose from their culture’.17 However, what more recent literature on diasporas and refugees helps clarify is the deterritorialisation of culture and identity, which are no longer considered bound to a specific geographic place but are mobile and borderless.18 Thus, even for refugees who have experienced violent displacement, culture and identity can be reclaimed in exile; refugees have not lost connection with their culture or identity but can continue to remain connected and to foster these links in exile. It is precisely this characterisation of refugees (that is brought to the fore by refugee studies) that illuminates actions they can take to maintain links to their homeland. Agamben’s bleak description of camps as states of exception and his sweeping and unequivocal reduction of lives that exist in these spaces to ‘bare life’ deny any room for change, accommodation or resistance on the part of those living in the camps. However, this chapter will argue that by expanding Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’ to extend beyond bureaucratic and legal exclusions, young Palestinian refugees in Lebanon can be seen as leading lives worthy of living. While they are bureaucratically and legally excluded – they are denied the right to work, travel and engage in politics – they nevertheless have avoided cultural and ideated ‘bare life’ and ‘abstract nakedness’ through a determination to stay connected and by actively remembering their pasts, what unites them and their history. For refugees, like many diasporic communities, a constant (re)production of national identity is accomplished by an invariable reference to the lost homeland as unifier, to detailed and candid stories of the past, and therefore to keeping alive the past through such stories and gestures. Anne Buttimer sees ‘personal and cultural identity [as] intimately bound up with place identity. Loss of home or “losing one’s place” may often trigger an

278  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t i­ dentity crisis’.19 However, as this chapter will demonstrate, this may not always be the case; active recollection and invocation of the lost homeland by young adult Palestinian refugees has served to keep alive a national identity and a strong relationship to that which has been lost. This is particularly the case for those refugees who live in camps, which were mostly modelled by the first generation of refugees to resemble Palestinian villages and towns;20 they are surrounded by an environment that attempts to replicate the homeland. In visits to many of the homes in the camps, photographs of past homes, keys to those homes, maps of villages and other mementos the refugees had saved were proudly displayed to remind them of their connections and their attachment to what they had lost.21 A large number, particularly among the older generations, have never left the camps. These refugees have not suffered an ‘identity crisis’ precisely because they continue to locate their identity within Palestine, albeit a distant and imagined one, but/and replicated in the camps. In their new location, their feelings of nationalism have remained powerful. As researchers like Mohamed Dorai have documented, when asked of their origins, even children of the children of those who were exiled could name the village and its precise location. The answers they gave, he said, were remarkable, particularly given the fact that ‘most of the villages were completely destroyed long ago, and exist nowhere but in the memories of the refugees. In the camps photographs, and even small gardens, evoke memories of villages in Palestine.’22 Palestinian refugees’ shared history is actively recalled and communicated to the next generation, leading to the reinforcement of a resilient national identity. On my visits to refugees’ homes, I witnessed – and at times was asked to participate in – discussions of that history. The elder generation, in particular, would answer questions about what it was like growing up in Palestine. The answers would often be very detailed, and would initiate long meticulous accounts of daily life, of the land and its harvesting, of the close connections to neighbours and the community. Although many of the youth had no doubt heard many of these stories before, I sensed that they never tired of hearing them again, and they often encouraged their grandparents and other elders to continue by posing more questions. This young generation, then, has relied on stories of old lives in Palestine, of the flight from Palestine (or what the Palestinians have called the nakba, 23 the catastrophe)

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 279 and of their continued plight of statelessness to build a common identity. As the third generation of refugees now growing up in exile, the young adult refugees have relied on stories, inherited memories and their surroundings by which to imagine and remain connected to Palestine and negotiate their sense of being Palestinian. In addition, many of those interviewed revealed to me that the media they accessed allowed them to both remain aware of current events within Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs), and to imagine themselves as connected to and part of a Palestinian national ­community, albeit one they have never experienced first-­hand. Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, somewhere between 720,000 and 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in Mandate Palestine, becoming refugees.24 Within months, the Palestinian population had more than halved and the state of Israel – with a Jewish population of about 600,000 – went from holding 7 per cent to 77 per cent of the land.25 The great majority of Palestinians ended up in neighbouring Arab countries, mostly Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Across the Arab world, as the citizens of the former French and British mandates proceeded with consolidating their new states, Palestinians were facing the shock of dispersal and ‘lacking even the most basic element of political belonging or inclusion – a passport’.26 The Palestinians went from full citizenship of Mandate Palestine to being stateless, passport-­less and ‘subject to the political and economic vagaries of the countries that “hosted” them’.27 As I note below, in each of the major surrounding countries that received the refugees – Jordan, Lebanon and Syria – their treatment and status differed, which greatly impacted both their official status and their feelings toward their host country. In the immediate period following the establishment of Israel, however, the refugees were living in a state of not belonging, with its accompanied sense of alienation, danger and exposure. They had been stripped ‘of the protection that can come from belonging to an internationally recognised state’.28 Moreover, up until 1967, the Palestinians overwhelmingly relied on neighbouring Arab states, especially Egypt under President Nasser and his policy of pan-­Arabism, to lead the return of their homeland. However, when

280  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t the Arab armies were effortlessly defeated by Israel in 1967, Palestinians realised that they alone would have to assume responsibility for their national cause. The key political movements at that time – the PLO, Fatah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – ‘galvanised the refugees into a national movement’.29 Those factors that had bound Palestinians together since 1948, factors not shared by other Arabs – ‘the shared loss of homeland; the fact of having been unable to exercise the right to self-­determination; the struggle to preserve and assert traditions and history despite the disruption of scattered exile; and the desire to return’ – were now even more binding.30 These sentiments and conditions would play a role in fostering a strong connection to Palestine among refugees in the camps in Lebanon, sentiments that have been handed down to the next generations. And, while these same conditions were shared by the refugees who lived outside of the camps, living among populations who were not Palestinian, these refugees were equally if not more focused on surviving and building a life in the host country, Lebanon. As many scholars have established, Lebanon has been the host country that has been the most hostile to – and imposed the most restrictions on – the Palestinian refugees.31 Lebanon has not ratified ‘the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) or the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (1967) and extends no special treatment to the refugees’.32 Partly because of these restrictions, and partly because of the Palestinians’ active involvement in Lebanon’s civil war and frequent Israeli incursions, the refugees’ experience in Lebanon is unparalleled. That is, while Palestinian communities in dispersal struggled to survive and remain connected, their varied experiences in host countries impacted their efforts: in Syria Palestinians were granted civil and political rights; in Jordan the majority of Palestinian refugees were granted Jordanian citizenship and contributed to state building there. Lebanon, however, has ‘always refused to give the Palestinians even the most basic of rights’,33 let alone citizenship for fear of upsetting Lebanon’s already precarious sectarian balance.34 Even after six decades and several generations, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon continue to be regarded as foreigners, and, at times, particularly during the civil war – in which Palestinian fighters were heavily involved – and immediately after, as unwelcome guests. During the early years of the civil war, the Palestinians participated in

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 281 lengthy and intense violence, fighting alongside different factions at different times.35 Thousands were massacred and several camps, such as Tal al-­Zaatar and Sabra, were destroyed.36 Then, in 1982 the Israelis invaded Beirut precisely in order to eradicate the PLO’s presence because of a potential threat to the security of Israel and its close Lebanese ally, the Maronites.37 The city came under siege for an entire summer, causing numerous deaths and much destruction in Beirut, and destroying the many political and social institutions that the Palestinians had built as well. The PLO was ultimately forced to leave Beirut, taking with it scores of employment and income opportunities,38 and its government-­in-­exile. ‘Palestinian refugees in Lebanon found themselves – in the words of one refugee woman – “on the outside”.’39 When the Lebanese Civil War ended in 1990, Palestinians faced greater restrictions on housing, employment and health care than before. They were banned from working in at least seventy professions (including medicine, law, engineering, banking, and private business), had to rely almost exclusively on the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) for health care, and, since 2002, have had to ‘pay a substantial fee to attend Lebanese universities which were previously open to them with little or no restrictions’.40 The government denied or severely restricted any construction activity in the camps, or reconstruction of destroyed camps. The refugees found themselves once again with little security, and harsher Lebanese Government policies imposed on them were designed to encourage submission and emigration. For the Lebanese Government, containing the refugees was a means of preventing a return to the period before and during the civil war when many of the refugee camps were increasingly armed and home to a growing number of militants.41 As Peteet notes: ‘Overall, the period (1975–­1990) unleashed a series of events which resulted in reconfinement, disempowerment, and the infliction of particular forms of violence against Palestinians communally and individually.’42 Today, just over half of the estimated 350,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon reside in one of twelve refugee camps located across the country. Although the United Nations and international non-­governmental organisations strive to meet the essential needs of this community, at least in regard to education, health, and social services, the conditions of the camps remain dismal at best. As I will elaborate, the camps are overpopulated, with deficient sewage, water and electricity systems. Camp residents are denied permission

282  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t to vertically expand their houses, and the materials they are permitted are restricted so as to ‘reflect the temporary nature of their homes’.43 For refugees living outside the camps, living conditions vary, from the majority who live in poor, overcrowded and rundown neighbourhoods, to the very few who have managed to afford more middle-­income accommodations. The impoverished Palestinian refugees’ connection to the neighbourhoods and to the community where they live tends to be stronger, particularly since their economic status resembles those populations (mainly lower and working-­class Lebanese) among whom they reside. The average observer on the street would be hard-­pressed to discern any obvious differences between Palestinians and Lebanese who call these neighbourhoods home. However, besides the external living conditions, these refugees face the same discriminatory practices imposed on refugees who live in the camps. Refugees suffer extremely high rates of unemployment and little access to government education, health and social services, making them among the most disadvantaged in the Palestinian diaspora.44 They are required to go through a complex and lengthy process to obtain permits to work in a restricted number of positions that offer no social security or insurance benefits, are underpaid, denied the right to legally own or inherit property, cannot petition to gain Lebanese citizenship, have no access to social security, must apply for travel papers (laissez-­passer) and have little or no connection to the Lebanese Government, apart from the list of constraints and restrictions placed upon them specifically. In short, Lebanon has denied them even the most basic of civil rights.45 These restrictions and exclusions came up in many of the discussions I had with young refugees. I learned how this encouraged their recollections of the homeland and reinforced their determination to maintain connections with it, particularly among those living in the camps. As a result, the young refugees have a strong sense of who they are and where they came from, as well as a connection to their national identity. By remaining active in maintaining their (imagined) sense of community and in reinforcing their national identities, they have bolstered the (sometimes desired) temporality of their refugee status, and affirmed that they belong to some place, that they are part of a national community. Thus, the constraints of displacement are not entirely limiting; refugees can continue to mediate their existence and their histories in connection to what they imagine as home.

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 283 I interviewed people in the age group eighteen to twenty-­five because, as in most populations, it is the young adults who are at the point in their lives that they are most encouraged ‘to construct identities, to forge new social groupings, and to negotiate alternatives to given cultural meaning’.46 It is this generation that has lived with no first-­hand connection to or experience of Palestine, and no first-­hand memory of the experiences of being displaced. Displacement, like the accompanying collective memory of loss, has been handed down to them. Thus, many among this younger generation have an inherited and ‘de-­territorialised’ understanding of their homeland. Because the majority of refugees in Lebanon, and particularly the young generation, has never directly experienced Palestine, Palestine for them has become what Heidi Armbruster has called a ‘metaphorical space of personal attachment and identification’.47 The youth strongly identify with the Palestine that was/is their homeland, which they continue to believe in the (future) existence of. Whether those I interviewed lived in the camps or outside, and whether they felt that they would remain in Lebanon or one day return to Palestine, they all proudly proclaimed themselves to be Palestinian, even in the absence of a Palestinian state. These connections to national identity are mediated in various ways. Several of the refugees spoke of how watching television – news or Palestinian folkloric programmes – and listening to their families and neighbours helped them to learn of Palestinian customs and traditions, and even the Palestinian accent when speaking Arabic (although the majority of those outside the camps could comfortably and easily switch to a Lebanese dialect when they wanted). For people who are uprooted or living away from their homeland, such as the Palestinian refugees, media become even more significant in offering them a picture of potential lives that can be lived, as well as a continued sense of national belonging (in Palestine or Lebanon), fuelling the desire to return or the determination to remain home. Indeed, the growth and widespread availability of global media has significantly facilitated the imaginative act critical to the sustenance of nationalism (and maintenance of national connections) among diasporic groups. As a number of theorists have discussed, for many diasporic communities, home can be both the place of origin, where they sentimentally feel connected, and the place where they currently

284  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t and actually inhabit.48 This is the case of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who have lived most of their lives outside the camps, and who maintain strong feelings of association with their homeland, but who also feel that Lebanon has become home and it is in Lebanon that they belong. Before turning to that discussion, however, I first discuss how the refugees inside the camps continue to solely and often unwaveringly feel an attachment to their ­homeland and a desire to return to it. In the Camps: Maintaining Strong Connections to Home After the establishment of the state of Israel, among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were expelled approximately 100,000 came to Lebanon. Initially, they were scattered in camps and neighbourhoods across the country, so that there was no one specific area that could be called Palestinian. However, many families and people from the same villages or towns strove to live together or in close proximity to one another. Many of the camps, says Peteet, were organised to reflect villages in Palestine: ‘As recently as the early 1980s, one could find one’s way in the camps by asking for village areas.’49 In fact, many streets, businesses and schools were ‘named after cities and villages left behind in 1948’.50 In one of the earliest studies conducted among refugees, Sayigh demonstrated how village identification persevered in the camps. The village groupings and regular gatherings of family and clan members and neighbours whose conversations were about detailed aspects of every facet of life in Palestine were ‘two factors that helped reinforce group memory’.51 These representations of village life and conversations about Palestine have persisted and led to more vivid imaginations and a deeper understanding of, as well as stronger identification with, a Palestinian identity, and desire for return among these refugees. Although the camps differ in size, density, facilities and cleanliness, they all suffer from the same serious problems, including poor housing conditions, a lack of proper infrastructure, overcrowding, unemployment and poverty. The densely populated camps have very little natural light, are poorly ventilated and consist of buildings squeezed next to one another, with alleys so narrow that often two people cannot walk side by side. It was not until the late 1970s that the camps received electricity (the supply of which continues to be erratic),52 water and sewage systems, but still

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 285 about 60 per cent lack the necessary installations for drinking water.53 Yet the most serious problem concerns the population density inside the camp: 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the homes that were initially designed to hold a family of four or five are now shelter to several generations, so that often more than ten people share two or three rooms. The result of the government’s restrictions on construction in the camps has been that, by the year 2000, all of the refugee camps that had been intended to house about 50,000 refugees were now home to approximately 210,000 in total.54 Despite their dismal living conditions, for the young adults living in the camps, survival and hope have been connected to an identity based on being Palestinian and on being encircled by Palestinian surroundings. Their everyday experiences speak to them of Palestine, which has aided them in enduring the harsh circumstances of their daily lives in Lebanon, and allowed them to remain seemingly optimistic concerning their eventual right to return to an independent Palestinian state. As many of those interviewed inside the camps revealed to me, the media they accessed allowed them to both remain aware of current events within Israel and the OPTs, and to imagine themselves as connected to and part of a Palestinian national community. As such, these young refugees have resisted Agamben’s verdict of ‘bare life’. For example, Mohamad, a young deliveryman who lives in the Bourj el-­Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut says that, besides growing up in a wholly Palestinian environment, it is the stories and images he sees on television and via the Internet ‘that daily remind me I belong to a nation, [and] that I am and always will be Palestinian’. During the summer of 2007 when I visited Mohamad at his home on a Saturday afternoon, a day he didn’t have work, he was watching Al Jazeera, a station that he says he has on for practically twenty-­four hours each day when he’s not working so that he can watch anything and everything he can about Palestine and the Arab world. ‘If I didn’t listen or didn’t like being like this, I would lose my identity.’ Sitting in his living room, which doubles as a bedroom for two of his brothers, he said that it is news that allows him to remain connected to Palestine, and imagine what ‘my country is like today’. During our entire conversation, Mohamad kept one eye on the television that was in the corner of the room and tuned into Al Jazeera. When I noticed him glancing at the TV, he told me he just wanted to make sure he was not missing any news.

286  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t In addition to television, many of the refugees I interviewed told me that it was their grandparents and parents who spoke and continue to speak frequently of Palestine, explaining in vivid detail daily life there, the beauty of their lands and stories of the nakba. Mahmoud, who was born and raised in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, explains that besides speaking directly to a parent or grandparent about Palestine, the family (and often neighbours) ‘would sit around in large circles and the older generation would take turns sharing stories’. His friend Ahmad, twenty-­three years of age, who I met at his family’s bakery in the camp the next day shares a similar story: From the beginning, a child first learns the map of Palestine, and its flag and the right of return and so on. So the child wakes up and starts asking the older generation who actually lived in Palestine. We start asking questions about this town and that, what they’re famous for and where they got their names from and so on.

Another young refugee, also named Mohamed, who I met with in mid-­ December 2008 at the Mar Elias camp, where he was born and had lived all his life, says that being in a Palestinian environment and surrounded by other Palestinians reminds him that despite having lived all his life in Lebanon, he has ‘a home country’. He said, ‘Even though we live in Lebanon now, we have many traditions in common with Palestinians back home.’ Or, as simply put by many of the young Palestinians of the camps: ‘I am proud to be a Palestinian, and will always be, just like anyone else is proud of his or her nationality.’ Despite – or thanks to – being denied the most basic economic and political rights and enduring the harsh conditions of life in refugee camps, the Palestinian refugees continue to embrace and assert their identity as Palestinian, and reinforce their culture and traditions in their everyday lives in the camps where they are surrounded not just by Palestinians, but often by Palestinians from the same village or town of origin. This experience of ‘village life’ within the camps in Lebanon has allowed refugees to collectively reinforce their national identity. As some theorists have noted, the meanings that people attach to a place, such as a homeland, can be shaped by a number of circumstances, be they social, cultural or economic. Simple feelings of belonging and sharing the

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 287 same ‘maps of meaning’ can connect identities to places.55 Moreover, feelings of national identification, of belonging to a specific place, passed down from generation to generation, have been accompanied by a desire to recreate or reinvent traditions that diasporic groups associate with home. The first generation of Palestinian refugees in the camps maintained their feelings, ‘their assertions’, of belonging to Palestine by recreating the place of Palestine in the camps, and passing these sentiments, along with their language (specifically, the Palestinian dialect), culture and customs, down to the next generations, who continue to connect their identities to the place they feel they belong to, namely Palestine. As Laleh Khalili has noted, the stories, celebrations and commemorations of the nation are passed down ‘from one generation to the next, forming the essential core of the nation and its character’.56 The refugees in the camps, then, have remained connected to their homeland by recreating an environment that resembles home, and recollecting and reconstructing stories of the past so as to maintain and encourage an emotional and psychological relationship to the land in the absence of any physical connection. Through this ‘assertion of belonging’, they have managed to preserve and reinforce a Palestinian national identity. As one young refugee told me: Though my father did not live in Palestine, my grandfather did and delivered to my father the message that he has a country called Palestine that he has a right to return to. And my father has told my siblings and me the same thing. Every day we are reminded about Palestine and that we are Palestinian.

Outside the Camps: Being Palestinian and Lebanese Outside the camps in areas with a significant refugee population, living conditions are generally poor, overcrowded, rundown, and referred to as ‘gatherings’ (‘Al-­Tajammu’at’).57 The neighbourhoods where these ‘gatherings’ are located are overwhelmingly Muslim and lower class. Unlike the camps, where a population of more than 20,000 is densely crammed into an area originally built to accommodate less than half that size, where the pathways alongside people’s homes are strikingly narrow, and where garbage collection, the sewer system, running water and electricity is lacking and underdeveloped, the ‘gatherings’ consist of tattered apartment buildings all constructed in close

288  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t proximity to one another. The neighbourhoods where the ‘gatherings’ are located are also densely populated and overcrowded. There are several vacant lots (seemingly for future construction), some of which serve as temporary parking lots and also as makeshift playgrounds for children and young men who gather there to play football. Young girls use the crowded pavements to play hopscotch or other similar games. Because these ‘gatherings’ are in regular neighbourhoods (that is, they are not refugee camps), the city provides a number of services: refuse collection (although not as frequently as in other, wealthier neighbourhoods of Beirut, so that there are always piles of rubbish accumulated and left for days); a working sewage system (that floods during the heavy rains due to insufficient maintenance); running water (but not potable, which is the situation across much of the country); and more electricity than in the camps. Most homes have telephone lines because of easier accessibility, televisions with satellite hook-­ups and also home computers and Internet (because of the availability of a home telephone).58 While the refugees living outside of the camps have relocated their identities in the new places that they inhabit in Lebanon, the connections to their homeland and to their nationalist identity remain strong. They, too, have asserted their belonging to Palestine – and by extension, a Palestinian national identity – through an emphasis on a shared history, culture and traditions. Although theirs is not a wholly Palestinian environment, these young people nevertheless are made aware of their history, their traditions and the need to remember their rightful homeland. As one young Palestinian woman who lives in the Tariq el-­Jdeideh neighbourhood said, Even if I don’t live in Palestine, or in a strongly Palestinian environment, I continue to feel Palestinian, and always will. We speak the same language, share the same history and hardships, and no matter what happens in the future, or where we will live, we will remain Palestinian.

This young woman’s words demonstrate that feelings of belonging to a place and connection to a national identity are not affected by being de-­ territorialised. Even in dispersal they share the same ‘maps of meanings’ with other Palestinians, and, therefore, continue to cling to their Palestinian national identity.

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 289 But these young refugees also feel assimilated into Lebanese life. Having been born and raised in neighbourhoods or ‘gatherings’ outside of the camps, these young adults consider Lebanon as home, and their wish, if granted citizenship, is to remain in Lebanon. The refugees who reside in ‘gatherings’ are just as concerned with remaining connected to their homeland, and the history and traditions that they have inherited, but many view Lebanon, where they were born and brought up, and where they have experienced daily life, as being equally important in allowing them to function in their current lives. Their own specific history and traditions are connected to two places: the place of their homeland, Palestine, and the place they consider home, Lebanon. One early evening in the spring of 2009, I met up with Youssef in a coffee shop in Beirut. Youssef lives in the Ard Jalloul gathering of Beirut, but moves around Beirut easily and often. When I asked him about Palestine and his feeling of his homeland, he told me, ‘I am proud to be Palestinian, but this is the place where I was raised; Lebanon is like a home country for me, and I consider myself one of the Lebanese.’ Like their counterparts in the camps, the young refugees outside of the camps are exposed to stories of Palestine and hear about recent events, but not as regularly. They are, like Youssef above, equally exposed and accustomed to daily life in Lebanon. Malkki has discussed this intimate connection between identity and deterritorialisation in her study of Hutu refugees, suggesting that populations who are no longer living in places they have called home nevertheless ‘leave a trail of collective memory about another place and time’ and at the same time ‘create new maps of desire and of attachment’.59 For the refugees in the camps, their collective memory and desires are overwhelmingly connected to Palestine. Those refugees outside of the camps, however, demonstrated how they have maintained memories about and connections to Palestine while also forging new attachments in the place that they now call home, and where the majority see themselves living permanently. As many of them told me, they feel equally attached to their Palestinian identity. This does not prevent them, however, from also feeling at home in Lebanon, a reflection of their integration into the communities and neighbourhoods where they live, even though they lack the official papers and recognition by the Lebanese Government. In fact, the major obstacles separating these refugees from fully integrating are the official and s­ tructural

290  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t ­iscriminatory practices determined by the government. The Lebanese d Government continues to deny them citizenship or any civil rights, either of which these refugees would accept as a means of ameliorating their living conditions in Lebanon. That is, they will always be Palestinian, but becoming Lebanese as well or being granted civic rights would facilitate their day-­to-­ day existence, an existence of integration that the majority of these young refugees already experience. As such, what these refugees desire and hope for is recognition and validation at the level of government that reflects the level of their actual day-­to-­day experiences in society. The place that these young refugees have inhabited in Lebanon has aided their integration and ability to adopt an identity that is both Palestinian and Lebanese. They spend their days attending classes where often the population is both Lebanese and Palestinian, or working in offices or at service jobs in which they function in the same manner as Lebanese workers holding the same positions. Because of their regular interaction with Lebanese people of their own age, they have formed strong friendships, socialise together and visit one another’s homes (unlike the majority of refugees in the camps, whose friends are Palestinian refugees often from the same camp). Conclusions: Lives that are not ‘Bare’ Although existing outside of their ancestral territory and exiled from their homeland, in spaces of dispersal – the refugee camps and the ‘gatherings’ – Palestinian refugees have salvaged their ‘identity and unity as a people’.60 This has been achieved by asserting a connection to their nation, whose ­conception is no longer necessarily ‘bounded, singular and stable’.61 Both inside and outside of the camps, many of the refugees spoke of the details that their grandparents (and in some cases, parents) related that provided specific details of their homes, such as the number of floors and rooms, where the family would gather for meals, what types of gardens they planted and the close connections shared with neighbours. These accounts have formed part of their national consciousness, a consciousness rendered even more exacting because of their interstitial position. Having grown up officially belonging to neither Lebanon, which has refused to grant them citizenship or civil rights, nor to a Palestine (or OPTs) they cannot return to because of Israeli denial, has meant that the refugees, particularly those

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 291 in the camps, cling to these stories, and to the identity that they have inherited. Despite different feelings in terms of their relationship to home (that is, how each group defines where home is), and divergent views among Palestinians in general about what will constitute a Palestinian territory – some favour a more moderate Fatah-­led Palestinian Authority (PA) and others support a more pro-­Islamic Resistance Hamas vision for Palestine – all continue to embrace a Palestinian national identity.62 For those in the camps in particular, it is the only identity that they cling to. As noted earlier, they exist in an environment surrounded by Palestinian family and friends whose focus is also Palestine. They have not been reduced to ‘bare life’ or lives that are unworthy of living. Rather, they actively seek out ways to reflect their Palestinian national identity, to be identified in relation to the only country to which they belong, and keep alive the dream of return. Those outside of the camps have also avoided the despondency of ‘bare life’ by both maintaining their Palestinian national identity and by integrating into their Lebanese communities and surviving in their current surroundings. As a result, they feel at home in Lebanon, and are just as invested in learning about and experiencing Lebanon, where the majority of this group sees their present and future lives. A national Palestinian identity for these refugees is primarily an identity they have inherited from their parents and grandparents, but one they embrace even though they consider their future to be in Lebanon. Like many diasporic populations, the refugees outside of the camps have dual loyalties: they are connected both to the places where they currently reside, and to the homeland. For this group, then, remaining in Lebanon does not impact their national identity. That is, as many of them told me, they are and will remain Palestinian.63 Like other populations, for refugees, despite being physically separate from their homeland, nationalism, or a national identity, continues to be fundamental as it ‘is more than a feeling of identity; it is more than an interpretation, or theory, of the world; it is also a way of being within the world of nations’.64 Identity, and more specifically national identity, shapes how we communicate and understand our presence in the world, which is connected to an understanding of where we come from and our national association. Hall notes that people in the world are only able to function – act, create,

292  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t reflect, shed their marginality and speak – if ‘they come from some place, they come from some history, they inherit certain cultural traditions’.65 For these young refugees, Hall’s words about the guarantees that identity brings are particularly salient. For the individual, he notes, it serves as an assurance that the world around us is not falling apart. Identities can be considered as a ‘fixed point of thought and being, a ground of action, a still point in the turning world. That’s the kind of ultimate guarantee that identity seems to provide us with.’66 Being born and raised in exile – and with the prospect of an independent Palestinian state that continues to be improbable – has not resulted in the loss of nationalist identification for these young refugees. Rather, they have located their identities within the new places that they inhabit. This generation has maintained and reinforced – and, in the case of the refugees in the camps, even asserted – their nationalist identities despite the absence of an independent Palestinian state. Although the young refugees have inherited their Palestinian identity, it remains fluid and in process, precisely because they continue to negotiate and imagine what it means to be a Palestinian, and a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon. Their relationship to those around them, whether it is in the camps or outside of the camps, influences their views of the world that they inhabit. National identification, then, has been passed down, and is consequently reproduced ‘in myriad imperceptible ways, grounded in everydayness and mundane experience’.67 Being displaced and deterritorialised and occupying a ‘problematic, liminal position in the national order of things’,68 the young refugees have resisted ‘bare life’. A liminal existence may allow refugees to be constructed as the excluded, forgotten or abandoned, but Palestinian refugees’ lives continue to be worthy of living as they continue to mediate their existence and their histories in connection to Palestine (and Lebanon). As I have discussed in this chapter, in the face of abandonment or exclusion, the maintenance and reinforcement of national identity and a connection to Palestine or integration into Lebanese society has been essential. The refugees have continued to cling to their Palestinian national identity, and have remained active either in preserving a connection to and understanding of Palestine as they await the day of return or by trying to integrate and get on with their lives in Lebanon.

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 293

Notes  1. I am grateful for the funding that supported and helped make the research for this article possible. A generous grant from the Middle East Research Competition (MERC) allowed me to spend a year in Beirut conducting field research. Two smaller grants (from the Council for Media and Culture and the Dean’s Grant for Research, both at New York University (NYU)) allowed me to conduct preliminary and follow-­up research.   2. Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 3.   3. The camps chosen for this research, Bourj el-­Barajneh, Shatila and Mar Elias, are moderate in size and in living conditions, have a predominantly Palestinian population and are all located in Beirut.   4. The fieldwork was conducted from May to September 2007, June to August 2008 and December 2008 to August 2009.   5. These are Naficy’s terms. For a detailed discussion on the distinctions between home and homeland, see Hamid Naficy (ed.), Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 1999), p. 6.   6. For Agamben, bare life was a life deprived of any rights. It was a life that, if murdered, would have resulted in no consequences for the person who committed the act, as the life taken was unworthy of being in the first place. For a detailed discussion, see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-­Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).   7. Geraldine Pratt, ‘Abandoned Women and Spaces of the Exception’, Antipode 37: 5 (2005), p. 1055.   8. Ulrich Raulff, ‘Misery Knows no Law. Giorgio Agamben Thinks the State of Exception’, German Law Journal 5: 5 (2004), p. 615.   9. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-­Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 138. 10. Pratt, ‘Abandoned Women’, p. 1053. 11. See, for example, Michel Agier, ‘Between War and City: Towards an Urban Anthropology of Refugee Camps’, Ethnography 3 (2002), pp. 317–41; Malkki, Purity and Exile; Julie Peteet, ‘Transforming Trust: Dispossession and Empowerment among Palestinian Refugees’, in E. Daniel and J. Knudsen (eds), Mistrusting Refugees (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of

294  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t California Press, 1995), pp. 168–86; Nevzat Soguk, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacement of Statecraft (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 12. Liisa Malkki, ‘Refugees and Exile: From “Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995), p. 508. 13. Agier, ‘Between War and City’, p. 322. 14. Soguk, States and Strangers, p. 11. 15. Peteet, ‘Transforming Trust’, p. 170. 16. Soguk, States and Strangers, p. 10. 17. Malkki, Purity and Exile, p. 15. 18. See, for example, Stuart Hall, ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, in A. D. King (ed.), Culture, Globalization and the World-­System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 41–68; Gillian Rose, ‘Place and Identity: A Sense of Place’, in D. Massey and P. Jess (eds), A Place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalization (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. xx; David Morley and Kevin Robins, Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes  and Cultural Boundaries (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1995). 19. Anne Buttimer, ‘Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place’, in Anne Buttimer and David Seamon (eds), The Human Experience of Space and Place (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1980), p. 167. 20. Laleh Kahlili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 6; Peteet ‘Transforming Trust’, p. 174; Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London and New York, NY: Zed Books, 1979), p. 2. 21. While interviewing young adults in the camps, I frequently had the opportunity to speak to their parents before or after. In discussions of how their children’s lives were different, they gave, as one example, the fact that they had never left the camps, while some of their children have occasion to (for school or work). 22. Mohamed Kamel Dorai, ‘The Meaning of Homeland for the Palestinian Diaspora: Revival and Transformation’, in N. Al-­Ali and K. Koser (eds), New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 93. 23. A number of scholars (for example, Joseph Massad and Lila Abu-­Lughod) argue that the nakba did not end in 1948 but is ongoing.

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 295 24. Different sources – scholars, journalists and the UN – cite different figures; these are approximate and represent the range generally cited. For a detailed account of the creation of the Palestinian refugees problem, see Laurie Brand, Palestinians in the Arab World: Institution Building and the Search for State (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1988); Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs; Julie Peteet, Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (Philadelphia, PN: University of Philadelphia Press, 2005); Sayigh, The Palestinians. 25. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 12; Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs, p. 43. 26. Brand, Palestinians in the Arab World, p. 2. 27. Ibid., p. 8. 28. Peteet, ‘Transforming Trust’, p. 175. 29. Simon Haddad, The Palestinian Impasse in Lebanon: The Politics of Refugee Integration (Brighton and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2003), p. 134. 30. Brand, Palestinians in the Arab World, p. 10. 31. Brand, Palestinians in the Arab World; Haddad, Palestinian Impasse; Peteet, ‘Transforming Trust’; Sayigh, The Palestinians. 32. Michael Dumper, The Future for Palestinian Refugees. Toward Equity and Peace (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007), pp. 46–7. 33. Wadie Said, ‘The Obligations of Host Countries to Refugees Under International Law: The Case of Lebanon’, in N. Aruri (ed.), Palestinian Refugees. The Right of Return (London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2001), p. 126. 34. In the 1950s and 1960s, as many as 30,000 Palestinians – mostly Christians – were naturalised in Lebanon. The Christian community in Lebanon was strongly against granting other Palestinians – who were predominantly Sunni Muslim – citizenship for fear that their numbers would give Lebanon’s Sunnis majority population status, which would then affect the distribution of powers in Lebanon, which is based on sectarian division of power. 35. Throughout most of the civil war, Palestinian fighters were aligned with different Lebanese sects fighting one another. They were also criticised and censured for using their position on Lebanese territory in the south to fire rockets into Israel. 36. In 1976, at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, the refugee camp at Tal al-­Zaatar in the Karantina area of Beirut was destroyed and 2,000 to 3,000 Palestinians were massacred, in what came to be known as the Karantina Massacre. In 1982, the Sabra and Shatila camp and gathering were the scene of

296  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t a massacre of about 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children. For further discussion and more detailed examination of these massacres and Palestinian involvement in Lebanon’s civil war, see, for example, Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs; Peteet, Hope and Despair; Said, ‘The Obligations of Host Countries’; Rosemary Sayigh, Too Many Enemies (London and Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1994). 37. The Israelis entered Beirut with the blessings of Lebanon’s Maronite Phalangist Party. The Phalange Party had allied itself with Israel in an effort to expel the  PLO from Beirut and to weaken the growing stronghold of Palestinians  in  Beirut. It was the Phalangists and the Israelis – under then Defence Minister Ariel Sharon – who were found guilty of the atrocities at Sabra and Shatila. 38. Brand, Palestinians in the Arab World, p. 235; Sari Hanafi, ‘Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon: Laboratories of State-­ in-­ the-­ Making, Discipline and Islamist Radicalism’, in R. Lentin (ed.), Thinking Palestine (London and New York, NY: Zed Books, 2008), p. 86. 39. Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs, p. 53. 40. Ibid., p. 56. 41. Dumper, The Future, pp. 88–9. 42. Peteet, Hope and Despair, p. 11. 43. Said, ‘The Obligations of Host Countries’, p. 128. 44. Haddad, Palestinian Impasse, p. 130. 45. Haddad, Palestinian Impasse; Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs; Said, ‘Palestinians in Lebanon: The Rights of the Victims of the Palestinian-­Israeli Peace Process’, Columbia Human Rights Law Review 30: 2 (spring 1999), pp. 315–57; Sayigh, Too Many Enemies. 46. Sonia Livingstone, Young People and New Media: Childhood and the Changing Media Environment (London: Sage Publications, 2002), p. 4. 47. Heidi Armbruster, ‘Homes in Crisis: Syrian Orthodox Christians in Turkey and Germany’, in N. Al-­Ali and K. Koser (eds), New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), p. 20. 48. For further discussion of this ‘twin homing desire’ among diasporic groups, see Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1996) and Naficy (ed.), Home, Exile, Homeland. 49. Peteet, ‘Transforming Trust’, p. 174. 50. Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs, p. 6. 51. Sayigh, The Palestinians, p. 2.

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 297 52. In fact, most of Lebanon continues to experience electricity cuts, which vary from about three to twelve hours daily. 53. Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs, p. 45; Peteet, Hope and Despair, p. 13; Sayigh, The Palestinians, p. 112. 54. Robert Bowker, Palestinian Refugees: Mythology, Identity and the Search for Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), p. 75; Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs, p. 55. 55. Rose, ‘Place and Identity’, p. 89; Stuart Hall, ‘New Cultures for Old’, in D.  Massey and P. Jess (eds), A Place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalization (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 176. 56. Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs, pp. 1–2. 57. ‘Gatherings’ is the recognised name of areas outside of the camps where large numbers of Palestinian refugees reside. Although they are generally located close to refugee camps, their populations are mixed, and include Lebanese and other nationalities from a low socio-­economic background. 58. The telephone lines already reach the area because this is a recognised Lebanese neighbourhood. Owners and tenants have only to pay to activate the line. In the camps, there is the extra burden of paying (illegally) to have a telephone wire extended from a nearby neighbourhood 59. Liisa Malkki, ‘National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees’, Cultural Anthropology 7: 1 (1992), p. 38. 60. Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller and Cristina Szanton Blanc (eds), Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-­States (London and New York, NY: Routledge. 2003), p. 269. 61. Ibid. 62. These differences are found in the camps between different Palestinian factions that exert unofficial authority over the camps, and have often led to battles between them, and outside of the camps, where refugees only befriend refugees with similar political leanings, and often mock or censure supporters of the other side. 63. Besides the marked differences in living conditions, many refugees acknowledged distinctions as well in terms of connections between Palestinians. Several spoke of divisions between the two groups. Although that discussion is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to highlight that the place that each group occupies in Lebanon has resulted in mistrust, resentment and lack of understanding of the other, particularly refugees in the camps

298  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t who  view  those living outside as having abandoned the cause (the right of return). 64. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London and Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997), p. 65. 65. Stuart Hall, ‘Ethnicity: Identity and Difference’, Radical America 23: 4 (1989), p. 18. 66. Ibid., p. 10. 67. Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds), Becoming National. A Reader (New York NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 22. 68. Malkki, Purity and Exile, p. 12.

Bibliography Agamben, G., Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-­ Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). Agamben, G., State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). Agier, M., ‘Between War and City: Towards an Urban Anthropology of Refugee Camps’, Ethnography 3 (2002), pp. 317–41. Al-­Ali, N. and K. Koser, ‘Transnationalism, International Migration and Home’, in N. Al-­Ali and K. Koser (eds), New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), pp. 1–14. Armbruster, H., ‘Homes in Crisis: Syrian Orthodox Christians in Turkey and Germany’, in N. Al-­Ali and K. Koser (eds), New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), pp. 17–33. Basch, L. N. Schiller and C. Blanc (eds), Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-­States (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2003). Billig, M., Banal Nationalism (London and Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997). Bowker, R., Palestinian Refugees: Mythology, Identity and the Search for Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003). Brah, A., Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1996). Brand, L., Palestinians in the Arab World: Institution Building and the Search for State (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1988).

pal e sti ni a n ref ug ees i n leb a n o n | 299 Buttimer, A., ‘Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place’, in A. Buttimer and D. Seamon (eds), The Human Experience of Space and Place (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1980), pp. 166–87. Dorai, M. K., ‘The Meaning of Homeland for the Palestinian Diaspora: Revival and Transformation’, in N. Al-­Ali and K. Koser (eds), New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 87–95. Dumper, M., The Future for Palestinian Refugees. Toward Equity and Peace (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007). Eley, G. and R. G. Suny (eds), Becoming National. A Reader (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Haddad, S., The Palestinian Impasse in Lebanon: The Politics of Refugee Integration (Brighton and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2003). Hall, S., ‘New Cultures for Old’, in D. Massey and P. Jess (eds), A Place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalization (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 41–68. Hall, S., ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, in A. D. King (ed.), Culture, Globalization and the World-­System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 175–213. Hanafi, S., ‘Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon: Laboratories of State-­in-­the-­ Making, Discipline and Islamist Radicalism’, in R. Lentin (ed.), Thinking Palestine (London and New York, NY: Zed Books, 2008), pp. 82–100. Hussain, N., ‘Thresholds: Sovereignty and the Sacred’, Law & Society Review 34: 2 (2000), pp. 495–515. Khalidi, R., Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997). Khalili, L., Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Livingstone, S., Young People and New Media: Childhood and the Changing Media Environment (London: Sage Publications, 2002). Malkki, L., ‘National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity amongst Scholars and Refugees’, Cultural Anthropology 7: 1 (1991), pp. 22–44. Malkki, L., Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).

300  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Malkki, L., ‘Refugees and Exile: From “Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: (1995), pp. 495–523. Morley, D. and K. Robins, Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1995). Mortland, C., ‘Transforming Refugees in Refugee Camps’, Urban Anthropology 15: 3–4 (fall and winter 1987), pp. 375–405. Naficy, H., ‘Framing Exile: From Homeland to Homepage’, in H. Naficy (ed.), Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 1–13. Naficy, H. (ed.), Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 1999). Peteet, J., ‘Transforming Trust: Dispossession and Empowerment among Palestinian Refugees’, in E. Daniel and J. Knudsen (eds), Mistrusting Refugees (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 168–86. Peteet, J., Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press, 2005). Pratt, G., ‘Abandoned Women and Spaces of the Exception’, Antipode 37:5 (2005), pp. 1052–78. Raulff, U., ‘Misery Knows No Law. Giorgio Agamben Thinks The State of Exception’, German Law Journal 5: 5 (2004), online version, last accessed March 2011. Rose, G., ‘Place and Identity: A Sense of Place’, in D. Massey and P. Jess (eds), A Place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalization (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 87–132. Said, W., ‘Palestinians in Lebanon: The Rights of the Victims of the Palestinian-­ Israeli Peace Process’, Columbia Human Rights Law Review 30: 2 (spring 1999), pp. 315–57. Said, W., ‘The Obligations of Host Countries to Refugees Under International Law: The Case of Lebanon’, in N. Aruri (ed.), Palestinian Refugees. The Right of Return (London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2001), pp. 123–51. Sayigh, R., Too Many Enemies (London and Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1994). Sayigh, R., The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London and New York, NY: Zed Books, 1979). Soguk, N., States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacement of Statecraft (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

9 Malayalee Migrants and Translocal Kerala Politics in the Gulf: Re-­conceptualising the ‘Political’ M. H. Ilias

Introduction

F

or the last three decades we have been witnessing the emergence of a plethora of political and cultural practices that are collectively opening up the possibility of redefining ‘locality’ beyond local and national boundaries. In the context of debates on globalisation and transnational migration, Appadurai almost two decades ago put forward the argument that locality can no longer be considered as a given social reality placed in a bounded site. Rather, it should be seen as being in constant motion, and he suggests that one should ‘focus on the question of how locality is in fact produced and circulated in a distant place’.1 Translocal politics are a dimension of globalisation that expand beyond the borders of states but at the same time are being shaped by the political practices and institutions of a particular nation or region. They are translocal in the sense that they are impacted by even the minutest currents within the political intricacies and specificities of certain places, yet are increasingly felt, identified and consumed in other areas.2 Mandaville proposes the concept of ‘translocality’ as an increasingly important form of political space. He considers the ‘translocal’ as an abstract category denoting sociopolitical interactions that fall within bounded communities, that is, translocality in which people and culture flow through space rather than about how they exist in space.3 Translocality here is not 303

304  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t just about recognising forms of politics situated within the territorial spaces of sending or receiving countries but rather what is configured across and in between such spaces. Briefly put, translocality disrupts traditional notions of political space and gives rise to novel political and cultural spaces. Translocal political spaces therefore emerge as a result of new forms of political delimitation that reach beyond national boundaries. They become the new sources of identification and action within specific local and global reference systems. Examining multiple ties and interactions linking people and institutions across the borders of nation-­states, Vertovec uses the term ‘transnationalism’ to refer to the ways in which new and contemporary transnational practices of migrants are fundamentally transforming social, political and economic structures simultaneously within homelands and places of settlement.4 Baubock suggests the term ‘political translocalism’ and broadens the idea further by examining the encounter between different forms of translocal politics and the institutions in the receiving countries.5 Translocal politics is thus not only about direct or indirect participation of migrants in countries’ politics from outside their borders but also about the impact of migrants’ external political ties with the political institutions of the host country. Similarly, it differs from the transnational as the former does not reflect a global tendency with an effort to universalise ‘local’ experience. Translocal politics may, of course, be delinked from a particular territory with regard to the institutions but this does not mean that such politics generally focus on universal issues. The migration of Keralites to the Arab Gulf region has generated various forms of translocal political moorings in the host countries. This chapter is an attempt to analyse how Kerala-­centric politics or the politics oriented towards the issues and developments in Kerala popular among the Malayalee community6 in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as a ‘translocal’ entity is being perceived by the expatriate Keralites7 and their organisations within the boundaries and dynastic political sensibilities of the Gulf monarchies. Kerala’s Gulf connection can be traced back to the first century ad.8 The archeological excavations at Pattanam in Kerala have recently brought forth a variety of tangible evidence of Kerala’s trade linkages with the region. The northern part of Kerala, Malabar, from the ancient period, had a pivotal role in the wide network of Indian Ocean trade in terms of the high-­value goods it possessed and exchanged. Kerala’s fame in the Gulf region came from both

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 305 its strategic location on the trade routes as well as its production of pepper and other spices.9 There were frequent sailings of Arab traders from the Gulf region back and forth from that period. These journeys culminated in the diasporic communities of Arabs from the Gulf (mainly from Oman and Yemen) in various parts of Kerala, especially in Malabar, which was the hub of Arab trade in Kerala. By the twelfth century a system of interlinked trading networks had been established, with the Malabar Coast enjoying an all-­important role.10 The major reason for the development of trade in Malabar was the migration of substantial merchant communities from widely dispersed lands. This long-­distance trade also necessitated the presence of on-­site agents from the Gulf region to represent the interests of traders sending goods from faraway places in many Keralan port towns. The famous traveller Ibn Battuta was the first writer to give detailed descriptions of the settlements of Arabs from the Gulf region in various parts of Kerala. It is clear from his writings that the Qadi (judge) and Khatib (orator) in many of the coastal towns were from Oman.11 The Kēralōlpati Chronicles, dealing with the history of the evolution of Kerala, narrate an interesting story of two brothers from Muscat who were ­instrumental in the establishment of the city of Calicut.12 The trade linkages also laid the foundation for cultural and material commonalities across these regions in areas such as food, agriculture, clothing and a plethora of other things. The expansion of the Malayalee community in the Gulf is, however, a relatively new phenomenon recorded only from the middle of the twentieth century.13 Interestingly, the early Gulf migrants were mainly from the port towns of Kerala,14 which had been cosmopolitan for millennia with their social and religious fabric constructed out of the exchange of people, ideas and goods between Kerala and the Gulf. The first few waves of post-­oil migration, therefore, followed the traditional pattern of merchants who depended mainly on the sea routes. The first wave represents the migration of people who entered different parts of the Gulf without any travel documents like visas and passports, crossing the Arabian Sea through Bombay, Karachi and Gwadar ports in the 1940s and 1950s on Pakistani passports.15 Inspired by the rags-­to-­riches stories of these pioneers, another set of luck-­seekers set sail for the Gulf. They resorted mainly to dhows, ferrying goods between the port towns of

306  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t south-­west India and the Gulf. This wave of migration continued until the late 1960s when the visa rules became stricter and the search for ‘illegal migrants’ became more rigorous.16 The 1970s witnessed a massive exodus of Malayalees to the Gulf. The oil-­boom-­generated economic development in the Gulf and the slump in Kerala were the major pull-­and-­push factors that fostered the process during this period. The warm welcome that Malayalee migrants received in the Gulf was partly because of the region’s historical trade and cultural linkages with the Malabar Coast. Every family had at least one member who had made voyages to Malabar.17 The cultural linkages also resulted in marital ties with many families in the Gulf having members who had married folk from Malabar.18 The nuptial linkage was partly a push factor for the first wave of post-­oil migration from Malabar to the region. The sailors from Oman had maintained a practice of marrying women from major port towns of Malabar, in particular Calicut, which was the hub of maritime trade during the medieval and early modern periods.19 In 1976 the Omani administration regulated this practice in view of the increasing number of local women struggling to find partners from their own land.20 For the last one and half decades or so, the history of the Indian diaspora in the Gulf has been set on a distinct trajectory with different realities and social meanings. This trajectory is characterised mainly by a set of sociopolitical developments in India, such as post-­liberalisation economic development, the change in the profile of migrants, the development of media technology and the increased interconnectedness of Indian migrants on the Internet. The inflow of Gulf money in the form of migrant remittances has rapidly permeated all walks of Malayalee life and the standard of living of a sizeable section among Malayalees has risen.21 According to 2013 statistics, the Gulf countries contain a total Malayalee population of more than 2.5 million.22 In the Gulf states, the massive inflow of South Asian workers (including those from Kerala) has invited critical focus and triggered an ongoing dialogue on its sociocultural impact on their societies. Scholars like Longva, Kapiszewski and Dresch have widely discussed this issue.23 Longva’s work Wells Built on Sand: Migration, Exclusion and Society in Kuwait published in 1997, marks a discernible shift in the literature on immigration in the Gulf. Examining the social consequences of migration to Kuwait since independence in 1961, Longva explores how the presence

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 307 of foreign workers has influenced the way that Kuwaitis look at their own identity, leading to its renegotiation on the basis of their special rights and privileges as citizens as opposed to expatriates. Focus has been given to institutionalised practices like kafala (sponsorship) under which foreign workers (mainly South Asians) assume a subordinate position in the society ­vis-­à-­vis nationals. Kapiszewski’s book Nationals and Expatriates: Population and Labour Dilemmas of the Gulf Cooperation Council States broadly deals with the social and political dimensions of the national–expatriate divide and the strong ‘us’ and ‘them’ identification within each group. He spends a considerable amount of time sketching out a hierarchy on the basis of national and ethnic belonging in which South Asian unskilled and semi-­skilled labourers maintain a clear perception of their lower status. In his article entitled ‘Foreign Matter: The Place of Strangers in Gulf Society’ Dresch examines how the massive immigration of foreign workers (with a stress on South Asian workers) has impacted and modified the traditional social structure in the region. Gardner’s work explores the everyday experiences of the Indian community in Bahrain through an in-­depth ethnography.24 This work spells out the moral and practical pitfalls of the Gulf system, namely the creation of a huge underclass of men and women who have limited access to justice. Vora focuses on different modes of diasporic subjectivity, ethnic and class consciousness and the formation of informal networks that seem to offer an escape from the state of alienation among the Indian migrants in Dubai.25 However, there are not many studies adequately dealing with translocal politics among South Asian immigrants in the Gulf. Similarly, no major attempts have so far been made to study various uncertainties faced by indigenous Muslim migrants from South Asia vis-­à-­vis their counterparts in the Arab world, although the conflict between globalised Western values and Islamic norms has often been debated with reference to the Muslim diaspora in Europe and America. This is particularly significant in the context of a widely held trend that views the Muslim diaspora everywhere as the agents of creating a Muslim umma globally. Scholars like Malik have questioned this tendency to attribute to the global Muslim diaspora a collective Islamic identity and a single agenda of creating Islamic umma.26 Recurring ideas in this chapter have evolved out of a series of field observations undertaken from 2008 to 2010 in Kerala and in the different

308  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t c­ ountries of the Gulf (mainly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Saudi Arabia). Personal interactions with Malayalee expatriates who belong mainly to the lower and lower middle class and are active in social activities in the UAE and Qatar have also helped in developing the arguments presented here.27 The personal interviews conducted in the Malayalam language during the period from 2008 to 2010 revolved mainly around the topic of the affiliation of Malayalee expatriates with various social organisations. The methodology employed is principally based on informal discussions and ongoing interactions between the author who has spent a considerable amount of time in both the Gulf and in Kerala, and among the Malayalees who live in the Gulf. The arguments are developed on the basis of discussions with Malayalees in the Gulf on a regular basis to understand how they politically adjust to the hostile social and political conditions of the Gulf. Emphasis has been given to the opinion of ordinary labourers who are politically active and more receptive to the political changes in the homeland and in the host countries. The field study employs a qualitative interactive mode. Regular informal visits to labour camps in the UAE and Qatar and close personal interactions with the Indian labourers have helped in formulating arguments about the exclusions of a different sort. Ideas about the changing nature of social organisations among the Malayalees in the Gulf were built on the basis of open-­ended discussions with the leaders of such organisations. Mallu Enclaves: Re-­figuring ‘Political Space’? Without exception, foreign labourers in the Gulf are sojourners whose stay in the host countries normally lasts for a period specified in the labour contract. This sojourning nature of labour emigration along with annual or biennial trips to the ‘homeland’ helps expatriate labourers maintain links with their places of origin. Maintaining a constant relationship with the ‘homeland’, especially in the case of ordinary labourers, provides an escape from the harsh economic ambiguities and uncertainties of changing labour rules in the Gulf. Second, as outsiders, migrant labourers in the Gulf live in a state of legal and political ambiguity and the lack of involvement in the host country’s political and social processes drives them to seek shelter within the politics of their homeland. This lack of political involvement also contributes to the process of producing translocal political affinities among the expatriate

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 309 population in the GCC states. By extending the scope of application of Kerala-­centric (India-­centric in a broader sense) politics in the Gulf countries, Malayalee organisations attempt to subvert the conventional notion of territoriality associated with the ‘local’ politics. What seems to be happening is not simply the extension of political discourse beyond the boundaries but that this extension offers an avenue of subtle expression for the otherwise politically ‘silenced’ Malayalee expatriates in the Gulf. With novel political explorations and community practices, Malayalees are able to adjust to a certain extent to the not-­so-­open political system of the Gulf monarchies that do not entertain political participation of any sort by expatriate communities. With politics in the host communities being hostile to foreigner participation and confined to those with citizenship rights, the extension of Kerala-­centric politics becomes a gravitational force connecting and defining a large immigrant population the Gulf over. The extension of Kerala-­centric politics becomes a practice resorted to when the politics in the host community is determined only in terms of citizenship and foreigners need to find other ways of meaningfully connecting a large number of people to one another. By being connected politically to the issues of the homeland, a new political space is construed into which they clandestinely bring ideologies and political doctrines that are otherwise considered sensitive, challenging, subversive, or threatening to the local dynasties. Strangely enough, most of the political expressions, ranging from informal gatherings with political undertones on specific occasions to less open demonstrations, are not official or apparent and at the same time do not invite unfriendly and intolerant reactions from the host state. The labour unrest of 2006 in Dubai in which Malayalee networks had a greater role to play was the only exception, wherein the authorities noticed the content and assertiveness of expatriate politics. Massive open demonstrations raised many eyebrows and the UAE Government became concerned with their popularity. This was particularly significant as it happened in a country where all sorts of political organisations remain illegal and evidence of political associations of any sort can end up in imprisonment or immediate deportation for activists. Although situated mostly within an imagined setting, translocal Malayalee politics significantly touches upon the issue of identity. Expatriate Malayalees, for almost two decades, have looked to this refashioned politics

310  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t to give themselves a coherent identity and a ‘national’ narrative in order to compensate for the lack of space in the politics of the receiving countries. The increasingly observable collective identity formation and diasporic political consciousness primarily reflect a response to the inhospitable climate and the social discrimination faced by Malayalee labourers in the Gulf states. Several studies on the evolution of translocal political structures argue that their form generally takes root in the wider struggle for civil rights in the host land.28 The new media that allow diaspora communities to be involved in and influence the day-­to-­day political developments in their homeland play a significant role in maintaining this identity. Furthermore, translocal politics helps individuals and communities to find positive and revitalising sides to the experience of migration and gradually adjust to new conditions and circumstances. In the Malayalee expatriates’ case, this refashioned identity may not directly address alienation from the host states’ political process but it creates new forms of politics whose dynamics have, under translocality, brought forth a diverse set of innovative political practices in the Gulf and in Kerala as well. Expatriate workers in the GCC countries are at the flashpoint of a series of uncertainties that mediate between everyday life and its fast-­shifting sociopolitical backdrop. In addition, they are represented by multiple criss-­crossing divides and boundaries that give separate ethnicities their own national identification.29 The harsh experience of migration and relocation always shapes a new national awareness of self and this awareness, under favourable conditions, can be exciting and transformative. This national awareness, along with linkages with the home country’s politics, eventually metamorphoses into specialised polities within the host countries with the potential to create new forms of political space.30 With concern over the issues occurring in both the host countries and homeland, this kind of informal politics is deemed to be private, existing outside of the formal institutions, thus allowing one to create important forms of popular politics. They take many different forms in the Gulf, never fully containing the everyday experience of such spaces. The majority of their actions do not remain strictly inside the state; however, their ‘legally ambiguous’ position does not put pressure on the state to act against them. Operating from within the permissible legal boundaries, their activities also never pose any real threat to the state or exacerbate worries

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 311 about national political coherence. Their operative styles also are not such that would attract widespread tensions in the host society. Politics in the Arab Gulf states is dominated mainly by the political class comprising the royal families and the social and economic elites. The members of the ruling families are the principal political actors, and political parties are banned. Traditionally, the political legitimacy of the regime also comes, not through the participation of citizens in matters of state but through the religious rights, tribal ties and dynastic succession. Additionally, in the post-­oil era the monarchic regimes in the region secure legitimacy mainly by claiming to distribute wealth and provide incentives for the well-­being of the population. Although over the last two decades there has been much discussion about political reform, the scope of popular participation is limited to the creation of partially elected councils with the purpose of advising the unelected monarchy, and the power of the centralised state has remained unchanged. The expatriate communities in the Gulf are not provided with any access to political power. The sociopolitical divide between citizens and expatriates is very sharp as citizens, regardless of their background, assume a special social standing vis-­à-­vis expatriates and enjoy preferential treatment in public. Stripped of political rights in a state of expatriation, all non-­citizens in the Gulf are socially vulnerable. All expatriates are lawfully denied political rights and the asymmetry in the structural and human relations between the two populations – citizens and non-­citizens – leaves its imprint on the countries’ political regimes. Relations among nationals and expatriates are affected by specific laws and conditions that relegate most migrant groups to subordination. In an ‘ethnocratic’31 set up, citizens enjoy a certain level of privilege, and the distinctive identity of citizen is protected in sometimes unusual ways. ‘The exclusion of foreign workers’, according to Longva, ‘may entirely be in line with the widely accepted principle that political rights are a function of national citizenship.’32 Non-­citizens, especially South Asian expatriates, despite some having wealth and economic influence, find themselves at the bottom of the sociopolitical structure.33 No expatriate community in this sense is part of the political community in the Gulf. Not only their low social rank but also their visible alienation from the political process deprives foreigners of a voice in Gulf society. However, although migrant workers

312  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t have fewer legal rights and are politically powerless, it does not mean that they are ‘socially’ insignificant. The asymmetry in social relationship may be less visible in the case of certain diasporic groups. Expatriates from the West and South Asian elites try to overcome this issue by placing themselves in a ‘globalised free market economy’.34 Such diasporic elites tend to highlight their extra-­territorial nature and increased mobility, although they do not have formal access to citizenship and are the subjects of a complex sponsorship system.35 The social division is becoming more profound with the government’s effort to institutionalise the discrimination on the basis of nationality with complex sponsorship legislation, unequal compensation structure, nationalisation, and controlled access to opportunity for non-­nationals. The strict contractual and legal nature of Kafala (the sponsorship system) becomes an essential component for an asymmetrical relation between citizens and foreign labourers.36 Also worth mentioning is the issue of gross human rights violations. All six GCC countries have faced criticism from international human rights groups for discrimination against the expatriate labourers. Blue-­collar Asian labourers generally amount to an exploited underclass with limited rights and no unions.37 Low-­skilled employees are often provided with substandard living conditions, including overcrowded lodgings in unsafe and unhygienic ‘labour camps’, often lacking electricity, potable water and adequate bathing facilities.38 They live in labour camps usually facing near-­total neglect from the authorities and are often victims of various types of petty corruption and bribery. The GCC administrations sometimes turn a blind eye to their poor wage structure, non-­payment of salaries, lack of medical care and sub-­standard housing. In Saudi Arabia, a Human Rights Watch Report noted that many of the country’s more than one million South Asian labourers live in ‘conditions resembling slavery’.39 The problem of exclusion manifests itself in a variety of ways. Tantamount almost to a sort of ghettoisation, there has been a distinctive spatial segregation. Recent cases of labour unrest have brought into focus the hostile relationships inherent in new social structures and spatial segregation in accordance with ethnicity and nationality. Class, ethnicity and nationality determine the distribution of people in the city and overall the pattern is highly segregated with specially designated areas or exclusive enclaves for locals and each category

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 313 of expatriates.40 The poor labourers are increasingly being physically moved to peripheral areas of cities. In Dubai, for instance, there are areas labelled frankly on bus route maps as ‘labour camps’.41 The spatial segregation is very pertinent and accommodation is arranged in relation to status, which we can analyse in class terms or ethno-­national terms.42 South Asian labourers are required to stay in labour camps, which are in most cases found away from areas frequented by native Arabs. As Gardner observes, ‘[T]he Gulf States attempt to consign much of this unskilled population to enclaves, particular neighborhoods, planned “bachelor cities”, and peripheral industrial areas off the front stage of the Gulf cities.’43 This spatial segregation forces South Asian expatriates to live together in the same locality and to create sub-­cultural enclaves of each social group with less autonomy. This is more evident in UAE and Bahrain, where the housing pattern sometimes leads to the emergence of sub-­cultural enclaves of various immigrant groups. These enclaves are characterised by the collective living and sharing of space and informal networks leading to common benefits. Many lower-­middle-­class and lower-­class workers from Kerala come to share a house or even a room in such localities in spite of their overcrowded nature. Malayalee expatriates live in such shared accommodation either with relatives or friends from the same locality. As Khalaf and Al-­Kobaisi observe, ‘[T]he living pattern and intense sharing of space, time and food may at times cause irritation and petty quarrels, yet in general it generates among them intensified forms of sociability.’44 Batha in Riyadh, with crowded living space and intense sharing of accommodation among Malayalees and other South Asian migrants, is a typical example of such an ethnic enclave. As Khalaf and Al-­ Kobaisi point out, such residence-­related social forms help in the construction of in-­group identities among the migrants as identifiable ethnic and cultural groups.45 The massive presence of such housing spaces of Malayalee migrants, which are informally called ‘Mallu enclaves’,46 are made more familiar as they bear a resemblance to being in another part of India. In the peculiar social setting of the Gulf countries, Mallu enclaves create an in-­group identity among those who have identified themselves as Malayalees. Furthermore, there is an image among other South Asian migrants of such ‘Mallu enclaves’ very strongly and constantly separating themselves from other Indians by focusing on their ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘education’ and relatively high ‘social position’,

314  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t although the native and non-­native Arabs generally do not subscribe to the same image. Mallu enclaves quite often contribute to creating a vernacular politics based on informal community networks that remain connected to politics in Kerala. But the actual degree to which these political networks and their everyday activities have in fact transcended the political and geographical constraints of their Gulf locality remains questionable. Apart from these collective places of habitation, for various national communities there are numerous public spaces ranging from community clubs to churches. With their middle-­class content, community clubs, which are formed mainly on the basis of ethnic, religious and regional leanings, help connect middle-­class families. They occasionally arrange cultural activities with the purpose of bringing families hailing from the same community or village together. Creating a sense of togetherness, churches of South Indian Christians function as a space in which expatriate labourers of various strata bond and feel at home. This list also includes some informal spaces of gathering on the corners of buildings or squares.47 The recent urban reforms, city beautification drives and street redevelopment have collectively resulted in the dwindling of the number of such public spaces. However, by hosting a range of sociopolitical and cultural activities like informal meetings, interactions and close discussions on various issues related to Kerala politics, such spaces across the region remain the centre stage for political interaction for the South Asian communities. These public spaces are generally regarded as an urban theatre for the formation of political opinion and collective sentiments in a covert manner among the South Asian expatriates. As the chief locus of socialising for ordinary Malayalee expatriates, they represent the voices of those who are structurally absent from the hosting countries’ social and political processes. Pushing the Boundaries of Political Imagination A study of translocal Malayalee politics can be done in many ways. The most convenient way is through understanding various forms of informal Malayalee associations and networks that exist with minimum encounters with the political and social institutions of the host countries. As discussed earlier, this translocal politics is actually a product of a particular political situation, and its informal nature does not permit it to gather concrete ­institutional

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 315 form. As a complete departure from clear institutionally p ­ rotected relations, Malayalee politics in the Gulf often tend to remain either as covertly operated political associations or as formal social, cultural or community organisations with unrevealed and subtle political agendas. The perceptions of Malayalee expatriates in the Gulf states are generally influenced by a sense of alienation, which is deeply rooted in their relationships with the nationals. Malayalee organisations also stress this alienation that results ultimately in a form of ‘imagined politics’ that offers an escape from the political realities in the host country and drifts away from the political constraints of the state. The feeling of cultural suspicion is another issue faced by the Malayalee expatriates.48 Nationals in many of the Gulf states clearly have begun to view the large South Asian workforce as a threat to the cultural identity of their nation.49 The south Asian community’s pattern of huge earnings and low spending has become a major cause of displeasure for the GCC states.50 Although the debates on national identity in the GCC countries have generally revolved around prominent ‘others’ (mainly ethnic and religious minorities like Iranians and Shias51), the increasing cultural influence of expatriates has become a source of acute socio-­economic concerns.52 The image of national culture presented by various state heritage projects seldom even address the South Asian trading communities who have long been settled in the Gulf states.53 The new demographic composition, which previously was not seen as worrying, has generated a great deal of debate54 over the presence of South Asian workers, whose population outnumbers locals in some of the Gulf states. Making up 90 per cent of the total workforce,55 they constitute nearly four to one in every Gulf society, which has prompted a change in the way that the GCC authorities view the overwhelming presence of the Indian expatriates.56 In order to deal with this issue of the growing Indian presence, the governments in the GCC countries have taken some controlling measures and administrative regularisations. The UAE, for instance, fixed matriculation as the minimum required qualification for Indian labourers to migrate to the country, while Bahrain put in practice a quota system for Indians. The formation of a collective political identity and solidarity can, thus, be seen as a response to this cultural and demographic suspicion. The 2007 South Asian labour unrest in which Malayalee labourers took

316  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t a lead role is actually a pointer to a larger political assertion.57 Although the Kerala-­centric clandestine networks played no direct role in the labour strikes, the political consciousness they created has been instrumental in instilling confidence among the labourers from Kerala to go against their employers by demanding salary hikes and improvement in living conditions. What is more significant is the way that they were organised; it was previously unimaginable in a place where protests of any sort can end in termination and immediate deportation. There is an alternative view, which has been echoed in Indian dailies – that South Asian labour unrest is an indicator of the increased bargaining power that Indian labourers have gained.58 Much of the migration from India to the Middle East is now stimulated mainly by market considerations. Unlike the 1970s and 1980s when the majority of Indian labourers had little bargaining power, the present Indian migration of skilled and semi-­skilled labourers in the Gulf contributes significantly to the development of the receiving countries, simultaneously impacting the sending country. The movement of Indian labour in the Gulf is, therefore, to a large extent, influenced by the force of the global free market. When business firms search for a workforce that is affordable, competent, relatively inexpensive and efficient, Indian skilled workers are at an advantage. That is the reason why Indians are given priority in recruitment even when Gulf states like the UAE are cutting down on expatriates in order to overcome the pinch of recession and to bring down the unemployment rate among their own citizens.59 India is still the major supplier of labour and Malayalees constitute a large proportion of the skilled workforce, although there is a selective use of Malayalee labourers in certain categories. While unskilled labourers are replaced by inexpensive ones from other South Asian states like Nepal and Sri Lanka and are forced to return to Kerala, employers insist on the continued employment of semi-­skilled or skilled Malayalee labourers beyond their contract period despite massive nationalisation programmes.60 With the pressure from employers, the UAE Government has taken a soft stand regarding strikes, which could otherwise end in severe punishment of people who are involved. Moreover, the boom in the economy and the consequent infrastructural development spree have created an enormous number of job opportunities for semi-­skilled and skilled labourers in Kerala itself, and the

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 317 Malayalee labourers are therefore less enthusiastic to migrate.61 A flourishing economy in India has meant that many no longer see the need to travel to the Gulf. The labourers have started complaining bitterly that the money they earn in the Gulf fetches far less when sent to their families in India.62 Translocal Kerala politics may also be seen as an expression of political nostalgia that motivates ordinary workers to maintain their political party affiliations left behind in the homeland. Sometimes this nostalgia becomes a norm that is required to be reproductive for a group in order to survive in a political atmosphere of complete alienation.63 Malayalee organisations affiliated to the political parties in Kerala generate the nostalgia for those who left the state of Kerala in the 1970s and 1980s by way of celebrating foundation days of political parties, birthdays of leaders or observing the days of martyrdom of assassinated leaders. While the politics in the Gulf by and large remain alien to them, Malayalee expatriates find refuge in selective nostalgic events of the past in Kerala politics. With certain elements of emotional identification this nostalgia is used strategically by Malayalee organisations to mobilise the Gulf Malayalees. The reinvention of the past in the form of nostalgia becomes a tactic for using collective memory to selectively manipulate certain aspects of Kerala’s past. While organisations maintaining links with the communist movement in Kerala often take advantage of memories of a series of agitations launched by the movement against the landlords, Muslim organisations use the tradition of resistance raised by the community against European colonialism.64 A close look at the composition of Malayalee migrants in the Gulf reveals that the majority of the workers are overwhelmingly young males in their twenties or thirties coming from the economically backward but politically vibrant area of Malabar. This area, comprising six districts of north Kerala, has traditionally been a strong bastion of leftist movements and Muslim organisations that together had a tradition of resistance against the European colonial powers and their cronies – the local rulers who were supported by the colonial powers and coopted into the colonial regime. Having come from poor but politically active backgrounds, expatriates from Malabar generally carry forward the anti-­imperialist political legacies of the region with them and try to create a subtle replica of their political positions in a diasporic setting. The anti-­imperialist positions of these organisations are manifested mainly though their consistent but covert criticism of American

318  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t policies in the Gulf and support for the boycott called against American and Israeli products against the backdrop of events like the US invasion of Iraq. As a means of protest against US aggression in 2003, leftist organisations in Kerala (mainly CPI (M)) led a boycott-­American-­goods campaign. This call for a boycott received responses from the organisations in the Gulf attached to CPI (M) and other left-­wing parties.65 However, with a secret mode of operation alien to the host countries and limited reach outside of the Malayalee community, the extension of Kerala politics finds no substantial resonance among the nationals. Almost all political developments in Kerala make a ripple in the Gulf. This is evident from the popularity of new social movements among Malayalee expatriates. Single issue-­oriented movements revolving around particular social and political issues in Kerala have caught the popular imagination over the last decade. Kerala-­centric environmental and human rights groups are active in creating new forms of politics that hinge on signature campaigns, protest meetings and street plays in response to the sensitive issues taking place in Kerala, although the scope of such debates and campaigns are almost always limited to the four walls of ‘Mallu enclaves’ or labour camps. Except on certain occasions, governments in the GCC countries are unaware of the serious political content of these activities.66 The issues related to the Malayalee workers in the Gulf have also found a place in the agenda of Malayalee organisations recently. New informal social movements and networks have sprung up, dedicated to the issue of exploitation of Indian workers in the Gulf, an issue that the older movements are not able to take up. While the old movements provide an important venue for sharing information and participating in the diasporic culture without being a direct or indirect threat to the state, the new movements tend to clandestinely deal with highly sensitive issues like violation of human rights in labour camps. Currently there are more than 200 organisations of Malayalees in the GCC states. These include various interest groups in Kerala, ranging from regional to religious-­based bodies. While many of them remain politically neutral, some show a strong proclivity towards political organisations back in Kerala. This may be a unique development occurring mainly among Keralites in the Gulf as the social activities of other Indian communities revolve largely around community clubs, voluntary organisations, temples, mosques and

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 319 churches that principally serve the Indian elites and their families.67A large proportion of socially and politically active Malayalee expatriates work under the banner of various cultural organisations with the backing or patronage of major political parties in India like the Indian National Congress (INC), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI (M)) and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).68 Almost all of the political outfits in Kerala (including outlawed extremist groups like Maoists) maintain front organisations in the Gulf countries operating secretly with modes that are not completely official. The ‘politically neutral’ image of these organisations outside helps avoid capturing the attention of the administration. As translocal Kerala politics remains fundamentally about either local issues in Kerala or the issues of Malayalee expatriates in the Gulf, the regional parties with exclusive Kerala-­specific agendas enjoy more popularity than the national parties like the Indian National Congress. The Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC), a front organisation of the IUML, is the largest outfit with the highest number of members and local branches in the Gulf states. The INC operates mainly through two different organisations – the Overseas Indian Cultural Congress (OICC) and the Priyadarshini Cultural Centre. The Indian expatriates who are active in these organisations adhere to the ideology of the INC and are concerned with the social and economic welfare of Indians in the Gulf.69 They help Indian expatriates in distress and organise cultural activities to entertain Malayalees. Each one has different zonal committees to facilitate the easy governing of the organisations. There are district committees formed under each zone by the members belonging to each district. CPI (M) ensures its presence through more than six organisations.70 Each of these front organisations in the Gulf is treated by the CPI (M) as being on par with district committees in Kerala. In Saudi Arabia, there are three separate organisations allied to the CPI (M), and the increase in the number of front organisations reflects the factional feud within the parent organisation in Kerala. Interestingly, two warring factions within the CPI (M) led by two senior leaders, V. S. Achutanandan and Pinarayi Vijayan, find reflection in the Gulf politics with two separate outfits ­supporting each one.71 Looking at the history, one can see that it was in the late 1980s and

320  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t early 1990s that Gulf Malayalee politics began to move along a distinctive trajectory and underwent significant changes.72 Malayalee associations have evolved to accommodate more comprehensive political agendas since the 1990s. Before that, they were dominated by the high salaried class, rich businessmen and government employees. The cultural organisations generally represented the interests of elites and provided them a platform for routine family get-­togethers. Ordinary labourers who were either unmarried or had left their families back in Kerala did not have access to such organisations. Many organisations had concerns that did not go beyond community service, welfare activities and assistance provided by them at the Indian embassies. Indian diplomatic missions in the GCC states, for their part, sought the support of these organisations in their attempts to assist their activities like registration of expatriates and various kinds of surveys. Associations also provided the services of social clubs and were mostly sporting and cultural, organising tournaments and various programmes in connection with the celebration of festivals. Some were religious, regional or alumni associations of various educational institutions in Kerala with a gamut of specified functions.73 The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the emergence of new organisations in order to accommodate more politically oriented migrants who represented the second and third waves of migration from Kerala. The acute unemployment situation in Kerala in the late 1980s and 1990s led a considerable number of educated Malayalee youth to migrate to the Gulf states. This wave included a significant number of politically active youth belonging mainly to leftist groups. The 1990s also marked the reorientation of leftist politics in Kerala due to the process of economic liberalisation. During field research, the author observed that many in the communist parties who were disenchanted with the pro-­liberalisation policies covertly and tacitly supported by their parties, left active politics. Migration to the Gulf States offered them a refuge.74 By the end of the 1990s Malayalee organisations had become more politically oriented, although this did not become a source of anxiety for the rulers in the Gulf. They were most concerned with the Muslim expatriates from countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, Syria and Egypt. Particularly after 9/11, security concerns have had a strong influence on the selection of labourers. In the changed political-­religious context, expatriates from these countries are regarded as posing a potential threat to the stability and safety

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 321 of the Gulf states. Fearing the encirclement of ‘radical Islam’, many GCC countries are much concerned about the presence of other Arab nationals.75 The rulers, very keen to avoid the political challenges to their authority that the presence of expatriate workers from various Muslim countries posed, gave little attention to the changing political orientation among the Indian expatriates that remained largely unexpressed or relatively covert.76 The present situation clearly suggests a profound but tacit shift in the situation. Malayalee politics in the Gulf is now redefining itself in line with recent developments in Kerala politics, where politics is reoriented towards accommodating new issues related to caste, environment and human rights. Each community/caste organisation maintains its own front organisation in the Gulf.77 The caste-­based networks in the Gulf often become a rallying point  – especially for the newcomers – as affiliation to these organisations may help one to obtain a position in government offices or in prestigious private organisations. Some community/caste-­based networks (mostly informal in nature) have also successfully taken the same route in running partnership businesses as did the successful trade networks like Marwaris and Banya traders in the Gulf. The newfound dynamics in Mappila Muslim entrepreneurship in various lines of business is also reflective of such community-­based trading networks.78 These informal networks carry much needed multifaceted support for people to find jobs and businesspersons to garner financial capital.79 Another trend is the increasing popularity of Islamic political activism among a section of Malayalee Muslims in the Gulf.80 This development involves a newfound emphasis on Islam as a means of mobilisation. The shift to heightened Islamic identity does not represent increasing adherence to Islam as a religion but to Islam as an overarching ideology and as a platform that can offer a coherent identity in the host land. One may reasonably assume that the turn to religious symbols and practices by the second and third generations of migrants is the result of the experience of different forms of exclusion in the receiving country.81 The exclusion in the social sphere accentuates the need for community connections and support networks among Muslim communities sharing the same experience. These cross-­ cultural identifications always take place not between Malayalee Muslims in the Gulf and local Arab Muslims, but among different diasporic Muslim

322  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t groups like Muslim l­abourers from other South Asian and Southeast Asian countries living under similar conditions. Although ethnic differences have acted as a major stumbling block for Arab Islamist groups and Malayalee Muslims of similar orientation to draw closer, pro-­Western policies and the ‘weak and fragile’ positions of many of the Gulf monarchies vis-­à-­vis the United States have now become a rationale for these two groups to support each other. Except for special cases,82 Kerala Muslims in the diaspora play no significant part in religious affairs in the Gulf and only a few voices from them are heard publically. As pointed out earlier, ethnicity becomes the prime matter of divergence and the Malayalee Muslims are certainly unwelcome because of their attachments to non-­native versions of Islam. Despite the long tradition of religious exchanges between the Arabian Peninsula and many parts of India, Indian Islam is generally perceived by the local Arabs as something not fully refined.83 This division has been further complicated by the employer– employee nature of the relationship between the local Arabs and Malayalee Muslims. However, the newly attained ‘Islamic’ identity appears to be something that is meant to compensate for this alienation. Active Islamisation takes them to the wider ‘Islamic expanses’,84 where the differences among the Muslims around the world seem to be blurred. This situation remains conducive to the emergence of various forms of religious movements and expressions characterised mostly by reinvention or reaffirmation of religion in different fashions. As Gardner and Osella observe, religious practice and consumption tend to reflect this transformation.85 The ‘original’ Islamic practices and traditions imported from the Gulf often receive wide acceptance as they elevate the status and efficacy of an average Muslim in the community in Kerala. This is more visible among Malayalee Muslims returning from Saudi Arabia – the place that is considered to be the cradle of Islam. People start looking at Islam with a new perspective and the experience of living there becomes a validation of ‘original Islam’. Endorsing ‘original Islam’ often creates a different understanding of ‘Indian Islam’ and people begin to see the cross-­cultural mingling in the past as an aberration, not an asset. The experience of living in the Gulf, along with the adoption of Gulf practices and dress, becomes a means of establishing moral and religious superiority over fellow Muslims.86

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 323 Electronic media also play a key mediatory role in an expanding arena of popular Islamic argumentation and deliberation among the Muslims of Kerala in the Gulf.87 Parallel to this, there is the emergence of a new class of politically motivated preachers distinct from those of the classical ulema with target audiences (mostly the educated classes) in the Gulf. The traditional means of indoctrination centred mainly on Quran learning and moral studies classes lost its appeal with the more effective mode of preaching with topics related to contemporary religious-­political issues. Educated youth among the Muslim migrants from Kerala are the main audience of such preaching conducted privately with the screening of supporting video footage of major international Muslim issues.88 The rapid development of a market for inexpensive Islamic books and the easy availability of popular materials, tutor CDs and magazines also exemplified this heightened public interest in Islam. Perhaps more striking is the newfound popularity of social media among the Kerala-­centric Muslim organisations in the Gulf for a variety of purposes like religious mobilisation and opinion building.89 Back in Kerala, Gulf Malayalee politics also has a multiplicity of sites in which to act. The state’s major political parties increasingly seek the moral, financial and political support of their compatriots in the Gulf states. Politicians and politically motivated religious figures from Kerala are some of the frequent travellers who visit Malayalees abroad and motivate them to get involved in local and national politics. For their part, Gulf Malayalees have begun to use their power of collective bargaining in Kerala politics over the last two decades. The result is the emergence of a growing army of Gulf Malayalee-­turned politicians, who are less inclined to associate themselves permanently with any political parties. Manjalamkuzhi Ali (currently a minister in Kerala) and Thomas Chandy (known popularly as Kuwait Chandy), two Non-­Resident Indian (NRI)-­turned politicians, represent this new breed. Both depend less on state or party funds and gain an enormous amount of popularity and influence among the voters through a wide range of welfare packages implemented on their own initiative and financing.90 Chandy acts like a parallel local self-­government and spends a great deal on providing basic facilities to the people of his constituency while Ali seldom depends on the government funds allotted to Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for infrastructure development and sometimes uses his own

324  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t money for constructing roads and small bridges. Being the representatives of constituencies dominated by poor peasants, these incentives help them gain popularity among the voters. Their image as major employment providers in the Gulf adds to their appeal and thereby contributes to their electoral victory. The wealthier class among the Malayalees in diaspora is keener to establish links with the political parties in Kerala. Even though many of them have no direct involvement in politics, with their newly acquired economic status, Malayalee businesspersons try to keep politicians across the left–right continuum in their pockets in order to further their own business interests.91 The political connection also serves as a form of social assertion and popular acceptance for most of the NRI entrepreneurs.92 As ‘behind the scene Kingmakers’,93 Malayalee Gulf businessmen have great influence in Kerala politics and their political tactics have been brilliantly pragmatic, switching support between the CPI (M)-­led Left Democratic Front and the Congress-­ led United Democratic Front (UDF) at different times. All parties look to the NRI businesspersons for party funds, although it is the Muslim League that used to be the champion of their cause. The Muslim League leadership’s traditional upper class base along with its representation in Congress-­led UDF ministries with important portfolios like industries and education and their liberal position with regard to massive privatisation in these sectors have helped attract enormous support among the NRI entrepreneurs. However, the situation has changed drastically; even CPI (M), which has traditionally had a social constituency of labourers and agricultural workers, has a significant hold among the rich NRIs. The party’s effort to increase its base among the Gulf migrants can be traced back to the early 1990s, and more specifically to the Gulf War of 1991. Saddam Hussein was the CPI (M)’s poster boy in the District Council elections in Kerala that took place immediately after the US war on Iraq. The CPI (M) could successfully capitalise on the anti-­imperial feeling that the Gulf War unleashed, especially among Muslim migrants who were very concerned about the developments in the Middle East, and won the poll with the highest number of seats in Malabar, especially in the Muslim Gulf migrant pockets.94 Events like the US invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) along with Saddam’s execution (2006) were also presented in political campaigns of the CPI (M)

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 325 as yet another cycle of events leading to further expansion of imperialist interest in the Arab world.95 The party’s induction of wealthy Gulf Malayalees as the shareholders and promoters of Kairali TV, the CPI (M)-­owned television channel in the mid-­2000s, represented another attempt of the party to make itself more appealing to the rich among the Malayalee Gulf migrants.96 The CPI (M)’s political campaigns now emphasise the inhuman treatment faced by the Indian labourers in the Gulf and the lack of the formulation of comprehensive migration policy by the Congress-­led central government for protecting the rights of such groups.97 The party has floated an exclusive wing in its state committee to deal with the problems of Malayalee expatriates in the Gulf. In the wake of granting voting rights to NRIs, similar initiatives have been made by all the political parties in Kerala. Conclusion The Malayalee diaspora in the Gulf has its own dynamics, making more complex the old pattern of politics in sending and receiving countries in a subtle but distinct manner. The translocal Malayalee politics discussed here pay little attention to the formal politics in the Gulf and enter into complex interactions with homeland politics and the institutions. Reconceptualising the idea of home politics in the diasporic imagination is central to this translocal politics. Gulf Malayalees are, normally, not a part of the political community in the host states. Cut off from the Gulf population by language and cultural barriers, they are seldom employed in positions of authority. The sense of being unrepresented or underappreciated is at the core of r­eproducing ­conditions of the ‘local’ in translocal space. ‘The translocal’ here means connection across nation-­state boundaries but does not necessarily reflect a global tendency of universalising ‘local’ experience. Likewise, such translocal politics does not enjoy complete ­freedom from political constraints being raised by states, although it may be successful in making a complete departure from institutionally protected political relations. Although the receiving countries may ignore its political potential in the organisations with which it is associated, Gulf Malayalee politics maintains its informal nature that complies with the rules of the GCC states. The translocality here is a condition that cannot be fully comprehended as something that is completely free from the political c­ onstraints

326  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t of the state. This stands in contrast to the general conceptualisation envisioning translocal political space as a global characteristic related to the withering away of the state’s ability to maintain fixed boundaries in relation to its population. The present developments, in fact, indicate that translocal Malayalee politics in the Gulf has created several informal political networks and spaces. This is particularly significant when it happens in countries where political organisations are illegal and where political associations invariably result in imprisonment or deportation. The potential of such informal networks and spaces has already been recognised by the political parties in Kerala even if the reproduction of Kerala politics in the diasporic space seldom finds any substantial reverberation in the host societies. Notes  1. Appadurai is of the view that ‘the locality can no longer be perceived as a given social reality located in a bounded state. One should focus on the question how locality is in fact produced.’ For him: ‘[T]he local goes beyond the traditional boundaries of nation-­ ­ state and different social actors continuously engage in producing the conditions of locality outside the borders of nation-­state.’ See Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 195 and 213.  2. Peter Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Ummah (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 6 and 14.   3. Ibid., p. 6.   4. Steven Vertovec, Transnationalism (London: Taylor & Francis, 2009), pp. 3–4.   5. Rainer Baubock, ‘Towards a Political Theory of Transnationalism’, International Migration Review 37: 3 (2003), pp. 700–23.   6. The inhabitants of Kerala or Keralites, a South Indian state, are popularly called Malayalees. The term is derived from their language, Malayalam, which is not limited to Kerala but is also spoken widely in Lakshadweep, a group of islands and islets situated close to Kerala.   7. It is estimated that Kerala has the largest stock of Indian migrants in the Gulf and the state supplies nearly one-­third of almost six million Indian workers. A general profile reveals that Malayalees in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are divided broadly into three categories: ordinary labourers,

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 327 semi-­skilled technicians, and professionals. Additionally, a good number of Malayalees are involved in petty trading and in a variety of business activities. See K. C. Zacharia, E. T. Mathew and S. Irudayarajan, Dynamics of Migration in Kerala: Dimensions, Differentials and Consequences (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2003), pp. 1–3.   8. Seyd Mohideen Shah, The Islam in Kerala (Thrissur: The Muslim Educational Association, 1972), p. 8.   9. The importance of Malabar further increased as it was in the direct line between Arabia and China. Sinnapah Arasaratnam, Maritime India in the Seventeenth Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 39. 10. Ibid. 11. Cited in H. A. R. Gibb, Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa (London: Robert M. McBride and Co., 1929), p. 132. 12. Cited in M. G. S. Narayanan, Calicut: The City of Truth Revisited (Calicut: University of Calicut Publications, 2006), p. 66. 13. Modern outmigration of Malayalees starts with their journey to Burma, Ceylon and Singapore in the colonial period. Later on big cities like Bombay and Calcutta in India became the prime ports of call for the individual and collective migration. 14. Two medieval ports of Kerala, Calicut and Ponnani, were the two major ports of embarkation for migrants destined for Dubai and Muscat. 15. Manu Rahman, ‘Jῑvicirikke Maranāntara Cadanginoralōcana’ (Malayalam), Chandrika Weekly 4–11 (May 2012), p. 36. 16. Ibid., p. 37. 17. M. C. A. Nasser, ‘Pravāsatinte Ādima Mudra’ (Malayalam), Gulf Madhyamam (2012), p. 12. 18. Ibid. 19. Victor D’Souza, ‘Status Group among the Mappila Muslims on the South-­West Coast of India’, in Imtias Ahmed (ed.), Social Stratification among Muslims in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 21. 20. Shinoj K. Shamsuddin, ‘Kozhicodum Omānum Pankidunna Malayali Jῑvitam’, Gulf Madhyamam 3 (2012), p. 66. 21. Rolland Miller, Mappila Muslims of Kerala: A Study in Islamic Trends (Madras: Orient Longman, 1992), p. 322. 22. Report published by the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC), ‘Weak Rupee a Boon as Remittance Inflows to Kerala Top Rs. 75, 000 Crore’, The Hindustan Times, 15 September 2013.

328  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 23. Ang N. Longva, Wells Built on Sand: Migration, Exclusion and Society in Kuwait (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997); Andrei Kapiszewski, Nationals and Expatriates: Population and Labour Dilemmas of the Gulf Cooperation Council States (London: Ithaca Press 2001); Paul Dresch, ‘Foreign Matter: The Place of Strangers in Gulf Society’, in J. Fox et al. (eds), Globalization and the Gulf (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 200–23. 24. Andrew Gardner, City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain (New York, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). 25. Neha Vora, ‘Producing Diasporas and Globalization: Indian Middle-­ Class Migrants in Dubai’, Anthropological Quarterly 81 (2008), pp. 377–406. 26. Jamal Malik, ‘Muslims in the West – A Muslim “Diaspora”?’, 2004, www.zuercher-­ lehrhaus.ch/eaf/cms/upload/docs/12Malik.pdf, p. 1 (accessed 25 October 2014). 27. Although different groups were approached, emphasis has been given to the Malayalee labourers. 28. Jose Itzigson, ‘Immigration and the Boundaries of Citizenship: The Institutions of Immigrants’ Political Transnationalism’, International Migration Review 34: 4 (2000), pp. 1126–54. 29. Sulayman Khalaf, ‘The Evolution of City Type, Oil and Globalization’, in J. Fox et al. (eds), Globalization and the Gulf (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 244–66. 30. The distinction between ‘citizen’ and ‘immigrant’ is integral to these specialised polities. See Dresch, ‘Foreign Matter’, p. 201. 31. The privileged status of ‘national’ or muwatan is sometimes conceived in tribal or genealogical terms. Natives’ work is rewarded with disproportionately high compensation. The presence of non-­GCC workers and their inferior legal, social and political subjection to the GCC citizens leads to a sort of ‘ethnocracy’. See Ang N. Longva, ’Neither Autocracy or Democracy but Ethnocracy: Citizens, Expatriates and the Socio-­Political Systems in Kuwait’, in P. Dresch and J. Piscatori (eds), Monarchies and Nations: Globalization and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 114–36. 32. Longva, Wells Built on Sand, p. 118. 33. The situation may be slightly different in the UAE and Dubai in particular, where the elites among the immigrant population, are, to some extent, considered unofficial citizens. 34. Vora, ‘Producing Diasporas and Globalization’, pp. 402–6. 35. As per the sponsorship system prevailing in the GCC states, each expatriate employee working in the GCC countries must have a sponsor or kafeel in order

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 329 to assume full economic and legal responsibility for the employee during the contract period. 36. Gardner, City of Strangers, p. 83. 37. ‘The US Department Report on Human Rights in the Gulf Countries’ cited in Sarita Rai, ‘For Indian Diaspora, No Place Like Home’, International Herald Tribune (25 September 2005). See also ‘Saudi Arabia/GCC States: Ratify Migrant’s Treaty’, Human Rights Watch Report (22 September 2008). 38. ‘The US Department Report on Human Rights in the Gulf Countries’ cited in International Herald Tribune (25 September 2005). 39. ‘Exported and Exposed: Abuses against Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates’, Human Rights Watch Report (12 November 2007). 40. Gardner, City of Strangers, p. 11. 41. Dresch, ‘Foreign Matter’, p. 209. 42. Ibid. 43. Andrew Gardner, ‘Gulf Migration and the Family’, Journal of Arabian Studies 1: 1 (2001), pp. 3–27. 44. Sulayman Khalaf and Saad Al-­Kobaisi, ‘Migrants’ Strategies of Coping and Patterns of Accommodation in the Oil-­rich Gulf Societies: Evidence from the UAE’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26: 2 (1999), p. 293. 45. Ibid. 46. Since the majority of labourers are from South India and supposedly the majority of them speak Malayalam, they are referred to as ‘Malloos’. According to Vora this is an ethnically derogatory term deployed by many middle-­class Keralites to describe themselves. Vora, ‘Producing Diasporas and Globalization’, p. 383. 47. Sometimes, malls also become such multipurpose points for meeting and sharing political views for expatriate labourers. 48. Due to the particular nature of their work (domestic work, care giving, nursery and school teaching, babysitting and so on) and greater access to women and children in the Gulf societies, nationals see South Asians as a group with potential to alter the local culture. This view was expressed by many nationals during my field visits there from 2008 to 2010. 49. This worry was echoed in the GCC’s meeting held in Doha in 2008 in which participants openly shared their uneasiness and warned about the possible repercussions. See ‘Ministers to Focus on Security Issues Affecting Gulf States’, Gulf News (6 November 2008). 50. Most GCC states are now more concerned about the large amount of money

330  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t being sent out by the Indians. A substantial amount of hard currency earnings is sent to the home country as direct remittances. The data provided by the State Level Bankers Committee says that there is a phenomenal increase in the remittance inflow, which has crossed about $12.5 billion in 2013, against a figure of about $10 billion in 2012 and one in the region of $6.8 billion in 2008. This increase may be because of the low interest rates in the Gulf countries coupled with a high rate of conversion of Gulf currencies against the Indian rupee. See the report published by the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC), The Hindustan Times (15 September 2013). 51. The religious and political dimensions of Iran–GCC conflicts often leave a mark on the treatment of Shias in the GCC states, with the exception of the UAE, where Shias are an affluent group. The ill-­treatment of Shias has resulted in Shia uprisings in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. 52. Neil Patrick, Nationalism in the Gulf States, Kuwait Programme on Development and Globalization in the Gulf States, no. 5 (2009). 53. Ibid., p. 2. 54. In a ministerial meeting of GCC members held in 2005, Abdul Rahman Al-­ Attiya, the then Secretary General of the organisation, had openly shared his uneasiness and warned about the possible repercussions of the situation. He stressed ‘the need to look at the massive presence of expatriate workers basically as a national security issue and not merely as an economic matter’. This worry was also echoed in the Gulf Cooperation Council’s meeting held in Doha in 2008. Along with serious regional issues concerning security, common energy policies, a joint nuclear energy plant and currency union this issue topped the agenda of talks. See Habib Toumi, ‘Call for Prudent Labour Policy’, Gulf News (24 November 2005) and ‘Ministers to Focus on Security Issues Affecting Gulf States’, Gulf News (6 November 2008). 55. Roger Hardy, ‘Migrants Demand Labour Rights in Gulf’, www.news.bbc.uk/2/ hi/middle-­east/7266610.stm, accessed 24 September 2013. 56. As per the recent statistics published by The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, New Delhi, nearly 5.5 million Indians work in the Gulf. The new demographic composition has become a matter of serious concern for some of the Gulf States. For further details visit www.moia.gov.in/accessories.aspx?aid=10, accessed 12 March 2013. 57. The strike of South Asian expatriate labourers that began in Dubai in 2007 spread to neighbouring Bahrain with the predominantly Indian workers of a Saudi-­based dairy firm Almarai launching the longest-­ever strike in Bahrain’s

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 331 history. Although at the initial stage the main reasons were low wages in the context of inflation and the falling exchange rates of the Gulf countries, the focus of strikers later turned to the issues of poor living conditions, unequal compensation structure and lack of proper health care. See Atul Aneja, ‘Growing Assertions of Asian Workers in the Gulf’, The Hindu (22 November 2007). 58. Atul Aneja, ‘Growing Assertions of Asian Workers in the Gulf’, The Hindu (22 November 2007). 59. Ibid. 60. M. H. Ilias, ‘South Asian Labour Crisis in Dubai and the Prospects of Indian Policy in the Arab Gulf Region’, Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations 4: 1&2 (2010), pp. 83–4. 61. Ibid. 62. An average Indian worker in the UAE construction industry, for instance, makes about AED 1,000–1,500 per month, which, in the present economic regime, is not enough to meet his or her own expenses in the Gulf and support their family in India. 63. Politics in the homeland continues to be a primary generator of memory for the diasporic communities. See Homi K. Bhaba, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990). 64. During a field visit to Oman, the author personally witnessed a function commemorating Sayyid Fadl, a champion of the anti-­colonial (anti-­British) struggle in Malabar in the nineteenth century, organised by Edam, an organisation of Malayalees in Muscat dominated by Muslim migrants from north Kerala. 65. As a means of protest to the US aggression on Iraq in 2003, leftist organisations in Kerala (mainly the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (the CPI (M))) led a boycott-­American-­goods campaign. This call for boycott received responses from the organisations in the Gulf attached to CPI (M) and other left-­wing parties. Soft drinks like Coca-­Cola and Pepsi and the soaps made by Hindustan Lever were the major targets of this boycott. See ‘Coke, Pepsi Disappear from Kerala Shops’, The Hindu (Calicut Edition) (12 April 2003), p. 4. 66. In 1992, the play The Ants Feast on Corpses invited the wrath of the Sharjah administration for its allegedly blasphemous content. The court sentenced a six-­ year jail term to a Malayalee theatre group for staging this play. See ‘The Sacred and Profane’, India Today (15 November 1992). 67. Gardner, City of Strangers, p. 81. 68. Indian National Congress (INC), known popularly as the Congress, is one

332  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t of the major national political parties in India. The organisation, which was founded in 1885, is the leading party in the current ruling coalition called United Progressive Alliance. The Congress is considered to be on the centre-­left of the political spectrum in contrast to its rival Bhartiya Janata Paty (BJP) that represents a right-­wing ideology. Established in the 1980s with an orientation of Hindu nationalism, BJP came to power in India in 1998. The National Development Alliance (NDA), in which BJP is the major constituent party, has been the main opposition front since their defeat in the 2004 general elections. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), known popularly by its abbreviation CPI (M), is one among the major political parties in the states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. With leftist ideology, CPI (M) traditionally represents the social constituency of agricultural and industrial workers and petty traders. The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) is part of the current ruling coalition in Kerala with four berths in the ministry. IUML, which is one of the Muslim organisations with consistent presence in the Indian Parliament and State Legislative Assembly in Kerala, has a wide network of affiliated organisations all over the Gulf. 69. www.oiccabudhabi.com, accessed on 10 January 2014. 70. Kerala Samajam (Abu Dhabi), Dubai Art Lovers Association (Dubai) NavodayaSamskarikaVedi, Sangachetana and Keli (Saudi Arabia) and Sanskriti (in Qatar). 71. In Riyadh, apart from Keli, the official faction favouring the Party Secretary Vijayan, a splinter group Progressive has emerged in support of the faction led by Achuthanandan. 72. Nisha Mathew, ‘Between Malabar and the Gulf: History, Culture and Identity in the Making of the Transnational Malayalee Public Sphere’, 2011, unpublished paper. 73. For details on the nature of organisations of Indian migrants in the 1980s and 1990s, see Gardner, City of Strangers, pp. 96–117. 74. This aspect was also reflected in the popular Malayalam film Arabikkadha (An Arabian Story) that came out in the year 2005. 75. The Kuwaiti Ministry of Interior, for instance, restricted the entry of workers from Iraq, Iran and Syria in 2005 due to ‘security reservations’. See Arab Times (29 August 2005) and JohnWilloughby, ‘Ambivalent Anxieties of the South Asian-­Gulf Arab Labour Exchange’, in John W. Fox et al. (eds), Globalisation and the Gulf (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 238. 76. Ilias, ‘South Asian Labour Crisis in Dubai’, pp. 83–4 and Edmund O’Sullivan,

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 333 ‘Pakistan’s Trouble Could be India’s Opportunity’, MEED: Middle Eastern Business Intelligence, 1 November (2007), p. 1. 77. Of the caste-­ based organisations among Hindus in Kerala, Non-­ Resident Ezhava (NRE) is the most powerful one, followed by Nair Service Society (NSS). Nampoodiris, the upper caste Brahmins of Kerala, are represented by the Gulf Nampoodiri Sabha, which has the lowest membership. 78. Omar Khalidi, ‘The Merchants of Malabar in GCC States: Old Links, New Entrepreneurship’ (2010), unpublished manuscript. 79. Khalaf and AlKhobaisi, ‘Migrants’ Strategies in the Gulf Countries’, pp. 286–7. 80. The situation is conducive to the emergence of various forms of Islamic organisations that push their way mainly through the insecurity of Indian Muslims vis-­ à-­vis the rise of Hindu communalism. Issues like under-­representation of Kerala Muslims in government jobs, stereotyping of Muslim images in the media and violation of minority rights also serve as the raison d’être for organisations like the Popular Front of India (PFI) and Solidarity, two Islamic organisations with wide networks in Kerala and the Gulf to mobilise Muslim migrants from Kerala. See Mathew, ‘Between Malabar and the Gulf’, pp. 4–5 and Chiriyankandath, ‘Changing Muslim Politics in Kerala’, pp. 260–2. 81. Mathew, ‘Between Malabar and the Gulf’, p. 4. 82. Salafis from Kerala appears to be an exceptional case as they are seriously being considered on all religious affairs by their counterparts in Saudi Arabia. 83. Ilias, ‘South Asian Labour Crisis in Dubai’, pp. 84–6. 84. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, ‘Muslim Entrepreneurs in Public life between India and the Gulf’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15: 1 (May 2009), pp. 208–9. 85. Katy Gardner and Filippo Osella (eds), Migration, Modernity and Social Transformation in South Asia (New Delhi: Sage, 2004), pp. 12 and 14. 86. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, ‘Muslim Style in South India’, Fashion Theory 11: 2–3 (2007), p. 8. 87. M. H. Ilias, ‘Ulema and the Internet: A Case Study of Muslim Scholars’ Engagement with New Media in Kerala’, 2010, https://iaww.hu-­ berlin.de/ medialisieurng/ilias/file/view 88. The video footage varies from specific Indian issues like the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 and the anti-­Muslim carnage in Gujarat in 2002 to international issues like atrocities of the US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and human rights violations at the Guantanamo detention camp. Ibid. 89. Ibid.

334  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 90. Both Ali and Chandy maintain personal blogs and websites for giving publicity to the welfare activities and developmental initiatives undertaken using their own money. See manjalamkuzhiali.blgspot.in and www. thomaschandy.com. 91. Osella and Osella, ‘Muslim Entrepreneurs in Public Life between India and the Gulf’, pp. 8–9. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. ‘CPIMnnu Iraq Mukhya Vishayam’ (Iraq is the major poll issue for the CPIM) (Malayalam), Mathrubhumi Daily (30 January 1991). 95. In 2008, the CPI (M) used the context of the India–US Civil Nuclear Agreement to make a scathing attack on their rivals, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and the Indian National Congress (INC), the ruling party  in  India, for cosying up to the United States and thereby mobilising growing anti-­US sentiments among the Muslim migrants of Kerala. See Don Sebastian, ‘Saddam Hussein Lives on in Kerala’, DNA (31 December 2006) and Shaju Philip, ‘Why N-­Deal Worries the League’, Financial Express (12 July 2008). 96. One of the major means of fundraising for the party was collections from non-­ resident Keralites. NRI tycoon Abdul Wahab is one of the largest shareholders of Kairali. See Sreelatha Menon, ‘Don’t Look Now, Kerala’s Left is Changing’, Business Standard (29 April 2006). 97. ‘CPI(M) Seeks Comprehensive Migration Policy’, The Hindu (9 January 2006).

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t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 335 and Political Strategies’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 16: 2 (1996), pp. 257–79. Dresch, Paul, ‘Foreign Matter: The Place of Strangers in Gulf Society’, in J. Fox et al. (eds), Globalization and the Gulf (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 200–23. D’Souza, Victor, ‘Status Group among the Mappila Muslims on the South-­West Coast of India’, in Imtias Ahmed (ed.), Social Stratification among Muslims in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 21–48. Gardner, Andrew, ‘Gulf Migration and the Family’, Journal of Arabian Studies 1: 1 (2001), pp. 3–27. Gardner, Andrew, City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain (New York, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). Gardner, Katy and Filippo Osella (eds), Migration, Modernity and Social Transformation in South Asia (New Delhi: Sage, 2004). Gibb, H. A. R., Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa (London: Robert M. McBride and Co., 1929). Gulati, Leela, ‘Male Migrations to the Middle East and its Impact on the Family: Some Evidences from Kerala’, Economic and Political Weekly 18: 52–3 (1983), pp. 24–31. Hardy, Roger, ‘Migrants Demand Labour Rights in Gulf’, www.news.bbc.uk/2/hi/ middle-­east/7266610.stm, accessed 24 September 2013. Ilias, M. H., ‘South Asian Labour Crisis in Dubai and the Prospects of Indian Policy in the Arab Gulf Region’, Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations 4: 1&2 (2010), pp. 74–102. Ilias, M. H., ‘Ulema and the Internet: A Case Study of Muslim Scholars’ Engagement with New Media in Kerala’, 2010. https://iaww.hu-­berlin.de/medialisieurng/ ilias/file/view, accessed 24 September 2013. Itzigson, Jose, ‘Immigration and the Boundaries of Citizenship: The Institutions of Immigrants’ Political Transnationalism’, International Migration Review 34: 4 (2000), pp. 1126–54. Kapiszewski, Andrei, Nationals and Expatriates: Population and Labour Dilemmas of the Gulf Cooperation Council States (London: Ithaca Press 2001). Khalaf, Sulayman, ‘The Evolution of City Type, Oil and Globalization’, in J. Fox et al. (eds), Globalization and the Gulf (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 244–66. Khalaf, Sulayman and Saad Al-­Kobaisi, ‘Migrants’ Strategies of Coping and Patterns of Accommodation in the Oil-­rich Gulf Societies: Evidence from the UAE’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26: 2 (1999), pp. 271–98.

336  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Khalidi, Omar, ‘The Merchants of Malabar in GCC States: Old Links, New Entrepreneurship’ (2010), unpublished manuscript. Lindberg, Anna, ‘Islamisation, Modernization, or Globalization? Changed Gender Relations among South Indian Muslims’, Journal of South Asian Studies 32: 1 (2009), pp. 86–109. Longva, Ang N., Wells Built on Sand: Migration, Exclusion and Society in Kuwait (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). Longva, Ang N., ‘Neither Autocracy or Democracy but Ethnocracy: Citizens, Expatriates and the Socio-­ Political Systems in Kuwait’, in P. Dresch and J. Piscatori (eds), Monarchies and Nations: Globalization and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 114–36. Malik, Jamal, ‘Muslims in the West – A Muslim “Diaspora”?’, 2004. www.zuercher-­ lehrhaus.ch/eaf/cms/upload/docs/12Malik.pdf, accessed 10 January 2014. Mandaville, Peter, Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Ummah (London: Routledge, 2004). Mathew, Nisha, ‘Between Malabar and the Gulf: History, Culture and Identity in the Making of the Transnational Malayalee Public Sphere’, 2011, unpublished paper. Miller, Rolland E., Mappila Muslims of Kerala: A Study in Islamic Trends (Madras: Orient Longman, 1992). Narayanan, M. G. S., Calicut: The City of Truth Revisited (Calicut: University of Calicut Publications, 2006). Nasser, M. C. A., ‘Pravāsatinte Ādima Mudra’ (Malayalam), Gulf Madhyamam (2012), pp. 8–12. Osella, Filippo and Osella, Caroline, ‘Migration and Commoditization of Ritual: Sacrifice, Spectacle and Contestations in Kerala, India’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 37: 1–2 (2003), pp. 109–39. Osella, Filippo and Caroline Osella, ‘Muslim Style in South India’, Fashion Theory 11: 2–3 (2007), pp. 1–20. Osella, Filippo and Caroline Osella, ‘I am Gulf: The Production of Cosmopolitanism among the Koyas of Kozhikode’, in E. Simpson and K. Kresse (eds), Struggling with History (New York, NY: Columia University Press, 2008), pp. 170–98. Osella, Filippo and Caroline Osella, ‘Muslim Entrepreneurs in Public life between India and the Gulf’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15: 1 (May 2009), pp. 202–21. O’Sullivan, Edmund, ‘Pakistan’s Trouble Could be India’s Opportunity’, MEED: Middle Eastern Business Intelligence (1 November 2007).

t ransl o ca l k era la poli ti cs i n th e gul f  | 337 Patrick, Neil, Nationalism in the Gulf States, Kuwait Programme on Development and Globalization in the Gulf States, no. 5 (2009). Philip, Shaju, ‘Why N-­Deal Worries the League’, Financial Express (12 July 2008). Rahman, Manu, ‘Jeevichirikke Marananthara Chadanginoralochana’ (Malayalam), Chandrika Weekly 4–11 (May 2012), pp. 36–41. Rai, Sarita, ‘For Indian Diaspora, No Place Like Home’, International Herald Tribune (25 September 2005). Sebastian, Don, ‘Saddam Hussein Lives on in Kerala’, DNA (31 December 2006). Shah, Seyd Mohideen, The Islam in Kerala (Thrissur: The Muslim Educational Association, 1972). Shinoj K. Shamsuddin, ‘Kozhicodum Omānum Pankidunna Malayali Jῑvitam’, Gulf Madhyamam 3 (2012), pp. 66–9. Toumi, Habib, ‘Call for Prudent Labour Policy’, Gulf News (24 November 2005). Vertovec, Steven, Transnationalism (London: Taylor & Francis, 2009). Vora, Neha, ‘Producing Diasporas and Globalization: Indian Middle-­Class Migrants in Dubai’, Anthropological Quarterly 81 (2008), pp. 377–406. Willoughby, John, ‘Ambivalent Anxieties of the South Asian-­Gulf Arab Labour Exchange’, in John W. Fox et al. (eds), Globalisation and the Gulf (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 224–41. Zacharia, K. C., E. T. Mathew and S. Irudayarajan Dynamics of Migration in Kerala: Dimensions, Differentials and Consequences (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2003).

10 Diaspora, Immobility and the Experience of Waiting: Young Iraqi Refugees in Cairo Elisa Pascucci

Introduction

T

he post-­2003 flow of refugees from Iraq has been one of the largest forced displacements within the Middle East since the 1948 Palestinian Nakba.1 The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that at least two million people left Iraq from 2003, the year of the US-­led invasion, to 2006, when an unprecedented outbreak of violence targeting civilians redesigned the geographies of the country along sectarian lines.2 Although outward flows significantly decreased after 2008, migration from Iraq continues to the present day, associated with persistent, widespread political violence and lack of economic opportunities. At the time of writing, the number of Iraqis living outside of their country remains high, and durable solutions to displacement are still unavailable to many. Yet, in spite of the unprecedented proportions of the post-­2003 migration, Iraqis can hardly be considered a new diaspora. Outward migration flows have characterised the country since its independence, in particular as a consequence of the destabilising social effects of the campaign of economic liberalisation (infitah) implemented in the 1970s, the systematic political oppression under the Saddam Hussein regime, the UN-­imposed regime of sanctions3 and the 1991 Gulf War. Well-­established Iraqi communities can be found all over Europe, particularly in the UK, Germany and Sweden.4 338

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 339 However, Iraqi migration within the Middle East has received relatively scarce academic attention, and existing studies tend to be policy-­driven and sociopolitically and historically decontextualised.5 In her book Cartographies of Diaspora, Avtar Brah argues that it is only when embedded in the historical specificities that tie migrant groups to discourses, socio-­economic processes, state policies and subjective identities, that the concept of diaspora acquires its meaning.6 Following this approach, this chapter aims to re-­contextualise the study of Iraqi migration within analyses of social change in the contemporary Middle East. In doing so, it adopts a very specific perspective. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Egypt in 2011 among young Iraqis – both refugees and students – living in a suburb of Cairo, it focuses on the experiences of waiting that mark their daily lives and perceptions of the future. Over the last few years, the relation between migration, waiting and immobility has attracted growing academic attention.7 In this regard, Jean-­ François Bayart’s historical sociology of globalisation represents a particularly significant contribution.8 For Bayart, waiting and migration are the products of the proliferation of barriers to human circulation, and of the increase in social and economic inequalities under neoliberal regimes. Drawing on Bayart’s analysis, this chapter will show how, in the case of young Iraqis in Cairo, immobility and time-­suspension are the result of a complex interplay of dispossession and social stratification, restrictive international migration policies and shrinking public space in the Egyptian urban context. The chapter is based on ethnographic research, carried out in the context of a broader project for a period of eight months, which involved participant observation with twenty-­three Iraqi women and men aged from sixteen to thirty-­three, and three of their families. In addition to participant observation, I conducted in-­depth interviews with two women and four men in their mid-­twenties, and two couples with children. The interviews focused on the emotions and practices associated with prolonged immobility, and analysed their possible outcomes in terms of what Craig Jeffrey has called ‘the ­improvised politics’ of waiting.9 The chapter is organised as follows. The first section outlines the historical, political and social context of contemporary Iraqi migration to Egypt. In section two, I introduce Jean-­François Bayart’s10 theorisation of the social

340  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t production of waiting, and briefly discuss how this framework has been operationalised in this research through ethnographic analysis. Section three moves on to explore the experiences of waiting that mark the everyday life of young Iraqi refugees in Cairo, focusing in particular on two aspects: the waiting associated with being a young refugee and a student, and free time spent ‘hanging out’ in the shopping mall. Addressing the latter, I situate young Iraqi refugees’ everyday practices in a discussion of neoliberal urban development in Cairo. Finally, section four explores the potential social and political implications of waiting and immobility, considering their spatialities, as well as the experiences of leisure and solidarity through which young Iraqi refugees in Cairo negotiate their condition. Contextualising Iraqi Migration to Egypt Although the number of refugees it has received has been significantly smaller than Syria and Jordan, Egypt, the biggest Arab country in terms of population, has not been exempt from the consequences of the Iraqi displacement. Most Iraqi refugees arrived in the country after 2006. According to UN sources, in the region of 150,000 visas were issued to Iraqis from 2006 to 2008, when more restrictive regulations were enforced by the Egyptian Government for the first time since the start of the Iraq war.11 At the end of 2008, however, only about 10,000 Iraqis in Egypt were officially registered as refugees with the UNHCR, while by the end of 2009 the official number of refugees had dropped to 6,572, supposedly due to return and self-­repatriation.12 Discrepancies in figures are explicable by considering a number of different factors. Being able to rely on their savings and on the material support provided by networks of co-­nationals, and perceiving their residence in Egypt as temporary, many Iraqis initially chose to avoid or delay formal registration as refugees, primarily because of the lengthy and complicated procedures the latter entails. Nevertheless, many of the unregistered individuals and families were still gravitating around UNHCR and its non-­governmental organisation (NGO) partners for information, occasional financial support and help with visa procedures – the ‘aid industry’, as further detailed in the next section, remaining an important point of reference for most Iraqi migrants in Cairo. Contradictions in figures, however, reflect the fact that, for countries in

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 341 the region, the reception of Iraqi refugees has been a politically controversial issue. Policies have been marked by an oscillation between the rhetoric of pan-­Arab solidarity and more concrete concerns around security and refugees’ access to the already shrinking job markets.13 In this respect, Egypt is no exception. The war and the occupation of Iraq suddenly and rapidly inverted the migratory balance between the two countries. While millions of Egyptian workers had offered a relatively cheap labour force to the booming Iraqi oil economy of the 1970s and 1980s, the vast majority of the Iraqis who arrived in Egypt after the US-­led invasion belonged to the Iraqi state-­employed urban bourgeoisie, although small business owners and other categories of workers were also represented. Most Iraqis in Egypt – as well as all the people involved in this study, with the exception of one Christian family – are Sunni Muslim. In this chapter, the question of religion is addressed in the last section, through an ethnographic perspective that focuses primarily on everyday religiosity, and that aims at de-­essentialising the category of religious belonging. This choice is grounded in critical historical analyses of religious polarisation and sectarianism in contemporary Iraq. Ethnic, religious and tribal identities have been institutionalised in the territories corresponding to contemporary Iraq since Ottoman rule.14 Nevertheless, today’s sectarian violence is more a consequence of the policies implemented after the 2003 invasion than of the existence of deep-­rooted divisions within the Iraqi society. After 2003, state bureaucracy and other secular institutions were dismantled, and the imposition of sharply neoliberal economic policies left the provision of basic infrastructure and social services in the hands of religious organisations. This precipitated the rapid destruction of pre-­existing social arrangements in which secularised lifestyles and identities prevailed, particularly in urban contexts, and led to ethno-­religious segregation and allegiances to religious parties and militias becoming a constitutive element of the social fabric.15 Considering this, the analysis presented in this chapter adopts a historicised approach in which the social identity of Iraqis, also in the context of displacement, is given priority over religious identity, while both are considered primarily in their performative, everyday dimensions. Considering the socio-­ economic background of Iraqi migrants and refugees is indeed essential in making sense of their experience in Cairo. In

342  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t c­ ontemporary Egypt, where three decades of structural adjustment policies have sharpened inequalities and urban poverty,16 Iraqis constitute a particular case of middle-­class and upper-­middle-­class refugees who are generally better off than the majority of the local population. As such, they mostly settled in the residential areas of major cities like Cairo and Alexandria. In Cairo, they live predominantly in suburbs like Madinet Nasr and, more significantly, in 6th of October City. In both areas, perceptions and attitudes of locals toward Iraqi migrants are largely determined by social and financial status. Iraqis are usually described as wealthy new settlers whose financial assets are behind the rise in land and rent prices. While these narratives provide an over-­simplifed explanation for fast and complex changes in urban economies that have affected many locals, it is nonetheless accurate that some of the Iraqis who migrated to Egypt possessed good financial assets. After the war, a relatively significant number of Iraqi enterprises transferred their capital and production sites to Egypt, attracted by low wages and high levels of security. Similarly, many Iraqis whose reasons for migrating were primarily economic were able to invest their savings in Cairo, starting small businesses such as restaurants, bakeries and shopping centres. Moreover, a significant number of young people moved to Egypt, alone or accompanied by family members, to complete their higher education in private institutions. In most cases, however, political and other reasons to migrate are intertwined and hard to distinguish.17As a consequence of this, and faced with the need to simplify and shorten refugee status determination procedures while dealing with staff and budget constraints,18 UNHCR policies recognise all Iraqis in Egypt as prima facie refugees. This implies that all individuals who entered the country from 2006 to 2008 could register themselves with the UN office.19 As already remarked, the refugee regime and its agencies in Egypt are therefore an important point of reference for most Iraqis in the country.20 Refugee Regime, Dispossession and Production of Immobility Although a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Egypt has raised certain reservations regarding the social and economic rights of refugees, formally excluding this category of migrant from access to the job market. Moreover, the 1954 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the state and the UNHCR wholly ­delegates legal and social

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 343 protection to the United Nations and to the limited number of NGOs working as their implementing partners.21 However, the resources available for these organisations are limited, and the outcomes of their interventions often uneven and tokenistic. This is not just due to the downsizing of UN budgets and the scarcity of financial resources in the local NGO sector, but also to deeper changes in the policies of refugee assistance that occurred in the late 1990s.22 At that time, reducing refugees’ dependence on aid and enhancing their self-­reliance became the guiding principle of UNHCR policies targeting refugees living in urban areas. Direct assistance was thus significantly reduced and diverted toward the most vulnerable cases – such as victims of torture or illnesses, and single-­mother-­headed households.23 As a result, by the early 2000s most refugees in Cairo did not have access to any kind of social assistance,24 a situation that remains unchanged at the time of writing. Belonging mostly to the urban middle class, Iraqi refugees in Egypt thus support themselves through transnational networks of solidarity and through the management of properties in Iraq. These practices typically consist of letting a house to relatives and friends in Iraq in order to be able to pay rent in Egypt and, for former state-­employed professionals, receiving a pension through the local Iraqi embassy. Many such activities involve patterns of transnational mobility, often on the edge of legality. Despite international legal restrictions that prevent refugees from entering their home country, many heads of households travel periodically to Iraq to visit their family and engage in the buying and selling of properties. In general, families have to resort to these tactics two or three years after arriving in Cairo, when they begin to run out of savings. Attempts to support themselves in Egypt and preserve their middle-­class status are at the core of most of the problems that Iraqi households face. As will be shown, this has particularly remarkable consequences on young people’s educational trajectories. Restrictive international policies also affect the chances for further migration of Iraqis in Egypt. At an international level, the externalisation of asylum procedures by Western countries makes refugee status in the developing world an increasingly protracted condition.25 At the same time, the insecure environment and the deterioration of family and community ties in the home country preclude many Iraqis of the possibility of return. Finally, although many refugees choose Egypt as a destination because of the availability of

344  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t resettlement schemes managed by UNHCR and foreign embassies, resettlement quotas are subject to fluctuations, and only a few hundred individuals a year have access to such programmes.26 If we consider these facts, it is not surprising that, in a survey conducted in 2008, most Iraqis described themselves as ‘stuck’ in Egypt.27 As in several other cases of forced displacement within the Global South, their temporary situation is becoming permanent, and their waiting chronic. Understanding Waiting and Global Migration Elaborating her concept of ‘diaspora space’, Avtar Brah proposes that we consider the latter as ‘an interpretive frame for analysing the economic, political and cultural modalities of historically specific forms of migrancy’.28 In other words, she argues, diaspora should be conceived as ‘a site of immanence’ that ‘marks conceptual connections for historicised analyses of contemporary trans/national movements of people, information, cultures, commodities and capital’.29 In her view, diaspora is thus a conceptual space that allows for a historicised and politically sensitive study of displacement, migration and mobility. Considering the processes that determine the social production of waiting and immobility, I argue, is fundamental to this project. In a global neoliberal condition marked by increasingly restrictive migration regimes and growing economic inequalities, the study of diasporas cannot but take into account the proliferation of spaces of strandedness, physical and social immobility, and waiting,30 as well as the identities, cultures and political subjectivities associated with them. In his book Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalisation, ­Jean-­François Bayart31 situates waiting at the centre of his analysis of contemporary migratory movements, theorising it as consubstantial with the ‘proliferation of borders’ that characterises neoliberal globalisation. The mutually constitutive relation between diaspora and borders is widely explored in migration and cultural studies.32 As Brah remarks, through the modern era this relation has been inscribed in the practices and discourses of colonisation and de-­colonisation, and its study has mostly focused on issues such as the construction of national identity and postcolonial citizenship. However, ‘the twentieth century forms of transnational movements of people and capital’, Brah argues, have resulted ‘in the eruption of new

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 345 borders, while the old borders are subjected to processes of entrenchment or erosion’.33 The relation between diaspora and borders thus needs to be recast in order to account for these changes. In particular, it has been argued the study of diaspora needs to be attuned to new and emergent geographies and temporalities of borders:34 not only the spaces where people wait for a chance to move or migrate, but also the everyday practices through which ‘waiting’ for inclusion into global circuits of education, labour, capital and consumption materialise. These spaces are located not only in proximity of borderlands at the global periphery, but also, and increasingly so, at the heart of cosmopolitan and ‘world’ cities. As French postcolonial theorist Étienne Balibar remarks in fact, in the decades that have followed the end of the Cold War, borders have been ‘dispersed a little everywhere, wherever the movement of information, people, and things is happening and is controlled – for example, in cosmopolitan cities’.35 In a similar vein, Stephen Graham theorises cities as the spaces where new forms of borders are experimented, deeply affecting the daily lives of ordinary (non)-­citizens.36 For the young Iraqis that this chapter is concerned with, I argue, Cairo is one of these spaces of ‘strandedness’, where global borders are experienced through physical and social immobility and precarious educational opportunities, and everyday life is marked by a chronic lack of structured time, boredom and aimless ‘hanging out’. Jean-­François Bayart’s work also illuminates how, in the contemporary experience of what he names ‘new floating populations’,37 waiting is often the product of the intersection of different social and economic processes that are global in scale, but whose effects are highly materialised and localised. As processes of subjectivation – that is to say, in a broad Foucauldian sense, ‘the way individuals or communities constitute themselves as subjects’, and of which ‘youngsters have historically been the eminent focus’38 – ­colonialism and neoliberal globalisation work through embodied, material and affective experiences, such as movement, travel, consumption of goods, and ­sexualities.39 The impact of phenomena such as the opening-­up of financial markets, the expansion of globalised networks of consumption and ‘the coercive compartmentalisation of the international labour market’ can thus be observed in a variety of small-­scale processes affecting individuals’ subjective ­experiences. The proliferation of spaces and social conditions in which people

346  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t are kept waiting is one of them. In these processes, Bayart argues, different forms of waiting come to intersect ‘at the ticket windows of air companies, in the squalid hotels of people smugglers or in the temples of commercial consumption’.40 The city and the materialities of its landscapes are thus the privileged field of inquiry for ethnography of waiting and migration in postcolonial contexts.41 Shifting the focus from narrative constructions of the ‘elsewhere’ of migration projects, this approach allows for accounting for more subtle experiences of the present and the local, unveiling what Henri Lefebvre defines as the inescapable ‘opacity’ of urban experience.42 To better analyse the spatialised and localised nature of contemporary waiting, this chapter introduces the notion of ‘non-­places’.43 Although retaining Marc Augé’s idea of a fundamental disjunction between identity and place as characteristic of spaces of late capitalist modernity, such as shopping malls, I do not consider the suburban spaces where young Iraqis in Cairo ‘wait’ as pacified sites where cultural identification and sense of belonging melt into performances of globalised consumerism. On the contrary, I show how they can also be venues where, subverting designated usages and engaging in small transgressive practices, young Iraqis in Cairo challenge, through their everyday practices, the spatialised forms of social exclusion and immobility to which they are subjected. Young Refugees, Education and Waiting The first section of the chapter has shown how both the policies of the international refugee regime and the economic dispossession caused by displacement have had the effect of confining Iraqi refugees in Cairo in a temporal limbo. This section explores how these two factors converge in a dimension that is particularly important for young people, namely education. The interview with Ali,44 a man in his mid-­twenties who moved from Iraq to study dentistry in one of Cairo’s private universities, is a particularly representative example. Ali came to Egypt alone on a student visa, while his parents and siblings still lived in the same neighbourhood of Baghdad where he was born. When we met, in a busy coffee shop in 6th of October City, he introduced himself commenting on how tiring life in Egypt can be. He complained about his unproductive days as a student, and expressed his eagerness to go

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 347 back to Iraq as soon as possible. ‘The problem’, he said, ‘is that the situation in Iraq is not really getting better.’ Several times in the interview he compared his condition to those of Iraqis who have come to Egypt seeking refuge. Why do you want to ask people why they are here? Most people who are here . . . most people who are here are just waiting. They’re just waiting to go somewhere else, or to go back to Iraq . . . I am waiting too. I am waiting to finish my university . . . So for example for me too, even though the situation is different because I am a student, but I am waiting too. I am waiting to see what happens.45

Student migration and forced displacement, and the associated experiences of waiting, are indeed strictly intertwined for many young Iraqis in Cairo. Student visas, for example, are often used as a legal device to regularise their stay in Egypt. Unlike the permits of stay issued to people holding UN refugee status, they do not need to be renewed every six months, and hold no restrictions on travelling abroad or visiting Iraq. Moreover, parents of children enrolled as students in Egyptian universities can also obtain a regular residence permit. Discussing their reasons for migrating with their families to Cairo, it is not uncommon to hear Iraqis tell stories in which the necessity to seek asylum is often mixed with the desire to find better educational opportunities. For some of the families I met in 6th of October City, the educational and occupational future of their children was also a source of anxiety. Due to the restrictions on migrants’ enrolment in public schools and universities,46 some families of refugees had no option other than to invest large amounts of money in private education. In Mubarak’s Egypt, economic liberalisation and defunding of the public sector contributed to the creation of an extremely stratified educational landscape. Public education steadily deteriorated, and economic elites rapidly reoriented their choices to the few prestigious institutions providing international diplomas.47 In the meantime, in the new suburbs of Cairo there proliferated small private universities, offering technical curricula and targeting the less wealthy strata of the urban middle classes. While the quality of the education offered is often described as questionable by their own students,48 these institutions charge on a­ verage from US$2,000 to US$8,000 per year in tuition fees.49 As with many Egyptian families, the

348  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t financial effort that Iraqi households make in order to provide for their children can be hard to sustain. Households often resort to various forms of loans, sometimes falling into a spiral of debt, while their children are moved to less expensive schools or have to interrupt their studies to take up casual jobs. Irregular or prolonged educational journeys mark the everyday lives of young graduates not only in the context of migration and diaspora, but more generally in countries of the Global South undergoing processes of rapid economic and social change. Craig Jeffrey’s work has shown how, for young Indian graduates, chronic unemployment – or underemployment – and lack of financial stability translate into prolonged transitions to adulthood. Jeffrey defines the everyday practices these youth indulge in as ‘cultures of limbo’.50 Similarly, analysing the narratives of lower-­middle-­class Egyptian graduates, Linda Herrera defines the consequences of prolonged education, labour casualisation and rampant unemployment as ‘a transition to nowhere’.51 Daily experiences of vacuous ‘time-­ passing’ like those described by Jeffrey are common among the young Iraqis I met in Cairo. Muhammad is a nineteen-­year-old man from Basra living in Egypt with his family, and studying for a degree in architecture in one of 6th of October City’s universities. While the school he was attending at the time of our interview was relatively expensive and advertised the international standards of its degrees, Muhammad had a slightly cynical attitude toward the value and utility of his education. Once he finished, he told me, his success in finding a good job, be it in Egypt or in Iraq, would depend more on his personal and family connections than on his academic performances – a remark that resonates with the complaints one commonly hears from many young Egyptians on the importance of wasta (connections) to make one’s way in an increasingly restrictive job market.52 The consequence, Muhammad explained, was a persistent neglect of his studies, and time wasted sleeping or hanging out with friends from Iraq, a daily routine that he described as rather frustrating. To be honest, I don’t like my life, you know? Because it’s not regular, it’s not structured. To be honest (my typical day) is just wasting time. I go back from university at 3 o’clock, I sleep, wake up, and then go to the 7th neighbourhood to meet the (Iraqi) guys, that’s . . . my day.53

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 349 In the rest of the interview, Muhammad described the spaces where this ‘wasting time’ took place. Going to the 7th district – a central area of 6th of October City where most Iraqis live – ‘to meet the guys’ meant for him going to the coffee shops where Iraqis gather. The latter are nothing like the place he chose for our meeting: an upscale coffee house of a famous international retail chain. Such coffee houses, Muhammad explained, are like shopping malls, ‘special’ places where you go on a weekend outing, or to meet girls. The venues of everyday socialising instead are rather small, Iraqi-­owned coffee shops, located in popular residential areas, and where access is regulated by strict gender norms. Nevertheless, he commented, malls were becoming increasingly popular. The tension between ‘Iraqi places’ and ‘globalised spaces’ – like malls or international coffee shops – described by Muhammad points to the role of the urban environment in defining the experience of waiting among young Iraqis. Before exploring this further, the next ­section briefly outlines the dynamics characterising suburban development in ­contemporary Cairo. Diasporas and Urban Space in Contemporary Cairo 6th of October City, where this study was conducted, is a satellite city located in the Giza desert plateau, about thirty kilometres from Cairo’s city centre. Like other satellite cities in the Egyptian capital, it was built in the early 1980s as a result of the Sadat government’s plans for industrial development.54 However, it was from 2000 to 2010 that its residential neighbourhoods grew exponentially. The expansion of Cairo’s suburbs during the Sadat and Mubarak eras has been associated with specific changes in economic and social policies – mainly privatisation of public assets and liberalisation – classified under the label of ‘neoliberal urbanity’.55 From 1996 to 2006, the Egyptian capital underwent what Denis and Vignal call ‘a bifurcation of urban development’ – the spatial product of processes of social and economic ‘recomposition’ favoured by neoliberal structural adjustment. 56 On the one hand, poverty and informal settlements have proliferated within the older boundaries of the Cairo metropolitan area. On the other, the pace at which new residential areas have been erected in the desert has given many of its most upscale residents the opportunity to leave the crowdedness and pollution of central Cairo to withdraw into the luxurious exclusivity of

350  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t gated compounds.57 In these new areas, the landscape is marked by shopping malls, expensive clinics, private universities and gated residential communities. Villas are surrounded by high walls, closed-­circuit televisions (CCTVs) and private guards, defining the boundaries of domesticity through a display of the typical signs of ‘defensive homeownership’.58 The business of private security flourishes.59 As the largest of the new towns, 6th of October City is an iconic example of Cairo’s polarised urban development. Nevertheless, as most residential areas, it is not exempt from what Asef Bayat defines as the ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’ on Cairo’s ambitious projects of urban modernity.60 In the interstices of luxurious enclosed compounds, middle-­class and lower-­ middle-­class residential areas can be found. In the most peripheral areas of the city, usually close to large construction sites or industrial complexes, poor informal settlements hosting casual workers and their families have also developed. Both in the lower-­middle-­class areas and in the most precarious settlements, the city’s spontaneous growth creates spaces in which socially mixed encounters and fragile experiences of diversity occur. The existence of such spaces, however, is rather precarious. At the time when this research was conducted, the 6th of October City’s 7th district was a popular place. Iraqi restaurants and coffee shops abounded, where crowds of young adults, students and families gathered every night. Yet such shops, owned and managed by families of migrants, are often temporary small enterprises, easily affected by fluctuations in rent prices and problems with local business partners. Several stories about stores, bakeries and restaurant opened by Iraqis after 2006 and rapidly closed after having gone out of business were reported to me during my fieldwork, sometimes by former customers ­expressing their disappointment for having lost a place where they could ‘hang out’ and socialise. Diasporas, it has been argued, define themselves and come into being as collective subjects also through their relation with landscapes.61 While studies in this area have focused traditionally on landmarks of national cultures and identities, in their study of migration in urban areas in the South of the United States, Smith and Winders analyse diasporas in relation to the political economy of urban development. Confronted with the transformations triggered by neoliberal urban policies, they show that place-­making practices – ­situating

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 351 oneself in a place as community members through material acts – often become impossible.62 As the example above shows, for Iraqis in Cairo, the spatial and material infrastructure available for diasporic place-­ making is constantly eroded by broader dynamics of urban economic change. As a consequence, the spatial alternative for young Iraqis’ socialisation is increasingly the shopping mall. The emotional and embodied states that mark this everyday ‘hanging out’ in shopping centres are the focus of the next two sections. Waiting in Cairo’s Spaces of Consumption It would be difficult to provide an estimate of the number of shopping centres in Cairo. Perhaps it suffices to say that at the time when research for this chapter was conducted the Saudi-­owned Mall of Arabia, located in 6th of October and managed by a company that defines itself as ‘the largest owner and operator of shopping malls in Saudi Arabia’, was the second largest shopping centre in the Middle East. Although, as discussed below, several different categories of malls can be found in the city, their architecture often presents many similarities. In general, the rationale behind the spatial organisation of malls is, as Goss argues, to provide an artificial experience of authenticity, for example through the reproduction of natural or historical landscapes, in which the practicalities of shopping are conjugated with anxiety-­relief and fulfilment of deep emotional needs. A mall, Goss observes, can be at the same time a place of emotional investment and affective passivity.63 While these feelings are only partially elaborated in the narratives collected among young Iraqis, they powerfully emerged in the unstructured conversations I shared in daily life. Not surprisingly, boredom is the affective state most commonly associated with strolling in the mall. Obaida, a twenty-­six-year-­old student from a once affluent district of Baghdad, told me how his friends – all ­university students from Iraq, Egypt and other Arab countries – would ask him to join them for dinner at the mall’s fast-­food restaurants almost every week. ‘It’s boring you know,’ he commented, ‘but everybody goes there and at least you can walk and see things and people.’64 Hana, the youngest daughter of a family of refugees from Baghdad, explained how going to the mall meant for her just going for a walk in the evening as ‘here in (6th of) October . . . where else can you go? It’s just to go out . . . You go out and have a walk, you feel better and forget.’65

352  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t The act of strolling and ‘forgetting’, as Hana put it, is particularly significant here. Analysing the experience of the mall among impoverished middle classes in Buenos Aires, anthropologist Emanuela Guano builds on Zygmunt Bauman’s account of the ‘captive flaneur’. 66 For Bauman, the act of wandering is a fundamental modern experience of appropriation of urban spaces through unstructured time, an act that late capitalist modernity encloses in privatised spaces of consumption. In most new neighbourhoods in neoliberal Cairo, like in Guano’s Buenos Aires, the act of wandering cannot but take place in shopping malls – in 6th of October, as Hana observes, there is simply nowhere else to go. The suspension of productive time sought by the flaneur through the act of strolling thus becomes subject to the spacing and ­timings of mass consumerism. Although central in their experience, for young Iraqi refugees in Cairo the suspension of productive time is not something they actively seek. Rather, their repetitive strolling and hanging out in places that are defined as ‘boring’ reflect the lack of structure in their everyday life. Wandering in the mall is thus a practice in which a number of intertwined dimensions of waiting converge in an embodied act. Difficulties in building coherent educational and occupational projects in Egypt, as well as the loss of control of one’s mobility imposed by increasingly restrictive international migration governance, contribute to this experience of estrangement and dilated time. Shopping centres are also the space where young Iraqis’ social identities are renegotiated. The kind of malls they spend their time in, and the merchandise they can or cannot afford to buy, reflect social hierarchies that are sharply perceived by young migrants. Distinctions based on location, size and prices define the social status of shoppers and regular visitors. In certain outlets, located in more popular districts of the city, young refugees can afford to purchase cheap made-­in-­Egypt or Chinese commodities. In other, generally Saudi-­owned resorts and malls, their experience is limited to strolling and window-­shopping, typically for expensive technological gadgets. Visits to these kinds of stores are often marked by a painful ambivalence between unconvinced performances of middle-­class affluence, and awareness of their socio-­economic marginalisation. The shopping mall thus becomes ‘a simulacrum of inclusion’ that ‘the self-­contained spectacles of the neoliberal city’ offer to impoverished urban middle classes.67 In an interview conducted

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 353 at the end of this research project, when I asked her to comment on our many outings to the various 6th of October shopping malls, Hana articulated this experience of partial inclusion with clarity: The truth is . . . there are so many things I can’t buy. I thought Egypt is cheap, but (6th of) October (City) is very expensive. And the university is so expensive; it’s hard for my family because we are four children who must study . . . I want to study and build my future but . . . it’s all about money. I know I am young and I need hope, but all my hopes need money.68

‘Being forced to wait on the threshold of the globe’, Bayart writes, ‘is a form of . . . subordinate integration rather than exclusion or marginality.’69 Young Iraqis in Cairo find themselves in a ‘simulacrum’ of integration into circuits of globalised consumption, mostly as a result of the downward social mobility caused by displacement. The consequences of this progressive, and acutely perceived, economic marginalisation should not be underestimated. If globalisation as an experience of subjectivation ‘has over the past two centuries broadly become identical with the expansion of merchandise’,70 then access to commercial items is essential to processes of subject formation. Consumer cultures, as Bayart notes, also play a role in processes of political subjectivation,71 and the emotions associated with daily experiences of social exclusion, such as hope and frustration, are imbued with political potentialities. In Hana’s case, for instance, the experience of the mall triggers bitter reflections on herself and her future, to the point that a certain degree of ‘social’ anger emerges from her words. For young Iraqis in Egypt, however, unlike Jeffrey’s Indian graduates,72 these feelings are almost never articulated overtly, in the form of protests or other manifestations of rebellion and dissent. Rather, the politics of waiting take shape through more subtle everyday acts, which nonetheless challenge the power relations in which Iraqi youth in Cairo are immersed. The last section of this chapter offers an ethnographic exploration of two distinct domains in which these everyday politics are articulated: the playful ‘encroachment’ of privatised spaces of socialisation, and the forging of networks of volunteer work by young refugees engaging in charitable activities.

354  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Waiting, Leisure and Solidarity For young Iraqis in Cairo, everyday practices of waiting are often the arena where social hierarchies inscribed in urban space, religious identities, rules regulating gender interactions and national belonging are negotiated and redefined. In order to understand these mundane politics of waiting, it is first of all necessary to move beyond received assumptions about the anonymity and homogeneity of suburban spaces like the shopping mall. In Marc Augé’s famous theorisation, large retail outlets and gated compounds are paradigmatic ‘non-­places’. A space, Augé writes, that ‘cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity, will be a non-­place’. Yet, Augé goes on, a non-­place ‘never exists in pure form; places reconstitute themselves in it, relations are resumed and restored in it; the “millennial ruses” of “the invention of the everyday” and “the arts of doing” . . . can clear a path there and deploy their strategies’.73 In what follows I provide an example of these everyday practices through which the standardised anonymity of the mall is challenged, analysing it in its micro-­political implications. City Stars is a large shopping outlet (with annexed hotels and resorts) located between the neighbourhoods of Madinet Nasr and Heliopolis, to the east of Cairo. At the end of the month of Ramadan 2011, I visited the mall with a group of young Iraqis during the days of Eid al-­Fitr. Omar, the youngest son of a family with whom I had conducted several interviews, looked very excited about the outing. As he explained, it was one of those rare occasions when he managed to forget his ‘family’s problems, and all the problems Iraqis have’. 74 To get to City Stars, he and his friends had travelled all the way from 6th of October City to Madinet Nasr, spending nearly two and a half hours on microbuses. On the last weekend of the festivities, the shopping centre was so crowded that we had to queue to enter. Omar, his sister and his friends were part of the crowds of teenagers and young adults who are subject to more scrupulous security checks than other, better-­off, customers, and therefore had to ‘wait’ longer at the entrance. While walking towards the main door, Omar and his friends kept joking around, being rather loud. When they attracted the attention of the mall’s security guards, they kept quiet only for a few seconds and got away with a reproachful look. Inside the mall, groups of young boys and girls, many of whom were t­ eenagers like

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 355 them, were almost blocking the elevators. Others were sitting on the stairs, eating fast food they had bought from the many restaurants. Omar’s friends also wanted to eat and looked for a place to sit, and ended up deciding that they would also sit on the floor, wherever they could find a free corner. Similar episodes of ‘encroaching the mall’ are recurrent in my ethnography, and constitute an example of how young refugees’ everyday ‘waiting’ and ‘hanging out’ has the potential of questioning the boundaries and hierarchies of Cairo’s neoliberal urbanity, through acts that are spontaneous and embodied. Although formally prohibited by the internal regulations of the mall, administrations and security personnel often have no choice but to tolerate behaviours like sitting on the stairs, given the number of young people visiting those outlets, particularly on festive occasions. A non-­place, notes Augé, is never completed, and the project of elitist hypermodernity it epitomises can be re-­negotiated. The mall is often also a space in which to experience forms of ‘globalised’ cosmopolitanism and slightly transgressive gendered interactions. While hanging out in local and ‘Iraqi’ coffee shops and restaurants is typically a highly gendered practice, the mall offers an outwardly equal space to both young women and men, where hanging out in mixed groups, and occasionally flirting, are safe activities. The number of expatriates and migrants in suburbs like 6th of October City – mostly entrepreneurs and students from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Palestine – being particularly high, the shopping centre can also become a space of everyday cosmopolitanism.75 National belonging, ethnicity, religion and status of refugees seem to melt away in what can be defined as a performance of deterritorialised global modernity.76 It is also important to consider what these visits to the mall to celebrate religious festivities suggest about piety and religious identification among Iraqi youths. For Omar and his friends, as they all explained during our visit to City Stars, going to the mall to celebrate the end of Ramadan had become a habit since they had moved to Egypt. Conjugating pious feelings with fun and more mundane excitement about technological gadgets and fast food, this habit exemplifies the subtleties of the lived reality of religion for young Iraqis in Egypt. Referring to middle-­class and lower-­middle-­class youths in cities of the Middle East, Asef Bayat describes behaviours in which religiosity is combined with playful transgression, and their implications for

356  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t a ­redefinition of the public religious sphere, as the ‘politics of fun’.77 By fun, Bayat refers to an array of ad hoc, nonroutine, and joyful pursuits – ranging from playing games, joking, dancing . . . to particular ways of speaking, laughing, appearing, or carrying oneself – where individuals break free temporarily from the disciplined constraints of daily life, normative obligations, and organised power. Fun is a metaphor for the expression of individuality, spontaneity, and lightness, in which joy is the central element.78

Although carrying a degree of transformative potential, spontaneous acts of leisure and fun, Bayat reminds us, can be easily ‘pacified, commoditized, institutionalized, and incorporated’,79 for example, as could be argued about the case described above, into patterns of mass consumerism. However, it is undeniable that ‘the practice of such cultural politics subvert[s] the . . . portrayal of Muslim youth as a selfless mass devoid of individuality in the service of stern moral codes’.80 Unsettling commonly held notions of Muslim identities as monolithic and predicated upon ethno-­religious identification exclusively, the experience of young refugees in Cairo suggest alternative ways of conceptualising the role of religion among the Iraqi diaspora. As already remarked, categories such as ethno-­religious sectarianism are largely employed in academic and media reports on contemporary Iraq, but only rarely are they discussed in their historical and contextual complexity. In this regard, ethnography can help to highlight the performative and creative aspects that allow subjects to cross the boundaries of religious identification. In the case of Iraqis in Cairo, their Sunni Muslim identity, however important in their migration history and also in the choice of Egypt as a country of destination, often appears diluted in shifting expressions of everyday religiosity. Nevertheless, the transgression of dominant cultural and moral codes through the politics of fun is not tantamount to a straightforward rejection of religion. Rather, as Bayat writes, it constitutes a reinvention of Islam ‘to accommodate their youthful claims’, through a process of ‘subversive accommodation’.81 This is not only visible in the playful – and somewhat controversial – mix of religiosity and consumerism at work in the outings to the mall described above. Volunteer social activities can also be a space where, while

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 357 trying to overcome the passivity, frustration and anxieties associated with waiting, the everyday practices of Iraqi youths unsettle received categories of religious belonging. In 6th of October City, many young Iraqis take part in religious groups in which students of different nationalities engage in charitable activities. In Ramadan 2011, I had the opportunity to directly observe the activities of one of these groups for a period of about two weeks. During that time, young women collected food and money and delivered it to an Egyptian care home hosting elderly women with mental health i­llnesses, located in the 7th district. In the days of celebration at the end of Ramadan, they also volunteered to spend time with the old women at the care home. Although characterised as Muslim associations and defined by a vocabulary imbued with references to Islamic morality, their group, as many similar others, did not require their members to adhere to any specific code of religious practice. Moreover, their beneficiaries included people of different national and religious backgrounds. As Hadeel, a twenty-one-year-old student from Baghdad, and a member of one of these groups, put it: We are here; we have nothing to do after school. Most days we are just sitting at home. And we are lucky compared to other people; even if we are refugees, our situation is difficult but we do not lack anything. I am happy to help other people if I can; (it) is my duty as a Muslim. And it does not matter whether they are Egyptians, or Iraqis, or Christians of any nationality.82

As discussed in the first section of this chapter, relations between Iraqi refugees and locals in Cairo are sometimes marked by mutual diffidence. Yet the activities of groups like Hadeel’s constitute an interesting but not uncommon case of refugees helping local populations.83 The ‘cultures of limbo’ of young migrants in Cairo can generate practices of solidarity where the boundaries of religion, gender, and national identification are consciously crossed, often in search for moral and emotional fulfilment that gives meaning to the time spent waiting. Conclusion This chapter has explored how displacement and downward social mobility contribute to what can be defined as the social production of waiting among

358  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t young Iraqis in Cairo. Waiting has been described as a condition of liminality that these youth experience through their daily activities, including study and leisure, and that materialises in their relation with the non-­places of urban peripheries, particularly in the shopping malls where they spend their time ‘hanging out’. Although often marked by feelings of frustration and disillusionment, the practices that characterise everyday experiences can have transformative effects on migrants’ individual and collective identifications. Attending to these practices through ethnographic exploration is thus important for an approach to diaspora that is sensitive to the complexities of identity. As Avtar Brah has argued, diaspora can be a powerful conceptual ‘point of confluence’ where ‘the polymorphous compounded-­ness of social relations and subjectivities’ can be decoded, avoiding essentialising readings.84 This, I have suggested, is all the more crucial in the case of Iraq and its diasporas, whose study is all too often centred on unquestioned religious and ethnic categories. In a time of conflicts, displacement and mass uprisings throughout the Middle East, it is perhaps worth asking the question as to whether a small-­ scale, ethnographic approach such as the one adopted in this chapter still retains any relevance for the study of migration, identity and social change in the region. Yet, as Asef Bayat reminds us, radical change in the Middle East has its roots in daily acts that transform society,85 subverting designated usages of urban spaces, or hybridising religious practices through a mix of piety, fun and consumerism. Although their role is often overlooked, the case of young Iraqis in Cairo shows how refugees, migrants and diasporic communities can play an essential role in the genesis of processes of social and political change in the Middle East. Notes   1. Philip Marfleet, ‘Iraq’s Refugees: “Exit” from the State’, International Journal of Iraqi Studies 1: 3 (2007), pp. 397–419.  2. Géraldine Chatelard, ‘Iraqi Refugees: Making the Urban Refugee Approach Context-­specific’, Humanitarian Exchange 51 (April 2011), pp. 9–11.   3. Thabit Abdullah, Dictatorship, Imperialism and Chaos. Iraq since 1989 (London: Zed Books, 2003).

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 359   4. Nadje Al Ali, Iraqi Women. Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (London: Zed Books, 2007); Madawi Al-­Rasheed, ‘Political Migration and Downward Socio-­Economic Mobility: The Iraqi Community in London’, New Community 18: 4 (1992), pp. 537–50; Madawi Al-­Rasheed, ‘In Search of Ethnic Visibility: Iraqi Assyrian Christians in London’, in Gerd Baumann and Thijl Sunier (eds), Post-­Migration Ethnicity (The Hague: University of Amsterdam Press, 1995), pp. 10–35; Ibrahim Sirkeci, ‘Iraqi International Migration: Potentials for the Postwar Period’, Population Review 43: 1 (2004), pp. 37–49.  5. Géraldine Chatelard, ‘What Visibility Conceals. Re-­ embedding Refugee Migration from Iraq’, in Dawn Chatty and Bill Finlayson (eds), Dispossession and Displacement. Forced Migration in the Middle East and Africa (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 3.   6. Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora. Contesting Identities (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1996), p. 182.  7. Deirdre Conlon, ‘Waiting: Feminist Perspectives on the Spacings/Timings of (Im)mobility’, Gender, Place and Culture 18: 3 (2011), pp. 353–60.; Craig Jeffrey, ‘Waiting’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008), pp. 954–8.   8. Jean-­François Bayart, Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalization (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).   9. Craig Jeffrey, Timepass. Youth Class and the Politics of Waiting in India (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), p. 135. 10. Bayart, Global Subjects, pp. 269–87. 11. Human Rights Watch, From a Flood to a Trickle: Neighbouring States Stop Iraqis Feeling War and Persecution (2007). www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/refu gees/iraq0407/iraq0407.pdf (accessed 27 May 2013), pp. 14–18. 12. Michael Kagan, ‘Shared Responsibility in a New Egypt. A Strategy for Refugee Protection’, Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies Working Papers (2011). www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cmrs/documents/kaganrefugeepolicyegypt1109.pdf (accessed 26 August 2013), p. 14. 13. Victoria Mason, ‘The Im/mobilities of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan: Pan-­Arabism, “Hospitality” and the Figure of the “Refugee”’, Mobilities 6: 3 (2012), pp. 353–73. 14. Nabil Al-­Tikriti, ‘There Goes the Neighbourhood: Regional Policy Variants vis-­à-­vis Iraqi Refugees’, in Dawn Chatty and Bill Finlayson (eds) Dispossession and Displacement. Forced Migration in the Middle East and Africa (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 249–52. On the origins of

360  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t sectarian divisions in contemporary Iraq, see Abdullah, Dictatorship, Imperialism and Chaos, p. 2. 15. Al-­ Tikriti, ‘There Goes the Neighbourhood’, pp.  252–72; Tarek Ismael and Max Fuller, ‘The Disintegration of Iraq: The Manufacturing and Politicization of Sectarianism’, Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 2: 3 (2009), pp. 443–73. 16. Sarah Sabry, ‘How Poverty is Underestimated in Greater Cairo’, Environment and Urbanization 22: 2 (2010), pp. 523–41; Eric Denis and Leïla Vignal, ‘Cairo as Regional/Global Economic Capital?’, in Diane Singerman and Paul  Amar (eds), Cairo Cosmopolitan. Politics, Culture and Urban Space in the New Globalised Middle East (New York, NY and Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2006), pp. 145–51. 17. Chatelard, ‘What Visibility Conceals’, p. 40. 18. Stefan Sperl, ‘Evaluation of UNHCR Policies on Refugees in Urban Areas. A Case Study Review from Cairo’, United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit Report (2001). www.unhcr.org/3b3310382. pdf (accessed 26 August 2013). 19. Kagan, ‘Shared Responsibility in a New Egypt’, p. 14. 20. This had an impact also on the way that participants for this research project were recruited. Most of my contacts among the Iraqi communities were in fact developed through non-­governmental organisations that work in partnership with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Snowballing among their neighbours, friends and acquaintances I tried to diversify as much as possible the range of people I got to know and talk to. While three of the youth involved in the study were living in Egypt alone as students, the majority of them had moved to Egypt with their families and had obtained refugee status from UNHCR. 21. Michael Kagan, ‘“We Live in a Country of UNHCR”: The UN Surrogate State and Refugee Policies in the Middle East’, New Issues in Refugee Research Working Paper No. 201 (Geneva: UNHCR Policy Development and Evaluation Service, February 2011), pp. 14–16. 22. Jennifer Hyndman, Managing Displacement. Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 183. 23. Kagan, ‘We Live in a Country of UNHCR’, pp. 3–4 and 12–15. 24. Sperl, ‘Evaluation of UNHCR Policies’, pp. 12–15. 25. Wynona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman, ‘Waiting for What? The Feminization

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 361 of Asylum in Protracted Situations’, Gender, Place and Culture 18: 3 (2011), pp. 361–79. 26. Emily Minnick and Noheier Nashaat, ‘Stuck’ in Egypt: Iraqi Refugees’ Perceptions of Their Prospects for Resettlement to Third Countries and Return to Iraq, Center for Migration and Refugee Studies Working Papers, The American University in Cairo (February 2009). www.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/cmrs/reports/ Documents/CMRS_Reporton_Return_and_Resettlement_For_Web.pdf (accessed 26 August 2012), pp. 10–12. 27. Ibid., p. 2. 28. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, p. 16. 29. Ibid., see also pp. 15 and 181–90. 30. See, among many others: Adrian J. Bailey et al., ‘(Re)producing Salvadoran Transnational Geographies’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92: 1 (2002), pp. 125–44; Biao Xiang, ‘A Time of Global Mobility, A Time of Global Entrapment’, in Essay for Double: Photographs by Chang Chien-­Chi (Singapore: The National Museum of Singapore, 2008), pp. 15–19; Kevin Hannam, Mimi Sheller and John Urry, ‘Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings’, Mobilities 1: 1 (2006), pp. 1–22; Greta Uehling, ‘Sitting on Suitcases: Ambivalence and Ambiguity in the Migration Intentions of Crimean Tatar Women’, Journal of Refugee Studies 15 (2002), pp. 388–408. 31. Bayart, Global Subjects, pp. 269–87. 32. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, pp. 204–10; James Clifford, ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 3 (1994), pp. 302–38; Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2008); Susan Stanford Friedman, ‘Migration, Diasporas, Borders’, in David Nicholls (ed.), Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures (New York, NY: MLA, 2007), pp. 260–93. 33. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, p. 200. 34. Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, The Multiplication of Labour (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 133–6. 35. Étienne Balibar, We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 1. 36. Stephen Graham, Cities under Siege. The New Military Urbanism (London: Verso, 2008), pp. 89–105; Peter Michael Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo, ‘Global Mobility, Shifting Borders and Urban Citizenship’, Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 100: 5 (2009), pp. 610–22. 37. Bayart, Global Subjects, pp. 274–7.

362  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 38. Ibid., p. 279. 39. Ibid., pp. 126–30, 209–16. 40. Ibid., p. 278. 41. Although participant observation has been complemented with unstructured interviews, my learning has been based primarily on ‘going along’. Kusenbach defines this method as one in which ‘fieldworkers accompany individual informants on their “natural” outings and – through asking questions, listening and observing – actively explore their subjects’ stream of experiences and practices as they move through, and interact with, their physical environment’; see Margarethe Kusenbach, ‘Street Phenomenology: The Go-­along as Ethnographic Research Tool’, Ethnography 4: 3 (2003), p. 463. 42. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 183, 232–3. 43. Marc Augé, Non-­ places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London and New York, NY: Verso, 1995), pp. 77–9. 44. To protect confidentiality, all the names of participants have been changed. 45. Interview conducted in English in Cairo, May 2011. 46. Kagan, ‘Shared Responsibility in a New Egypt’, p. 17. 47. Anouk de Koning, Global Dreams: Class, Gender and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo (Cairo and New York, NY: The American University in Cairo Press, 2009), pp. 51–3. 48. Ibid., p. 52. 49. Information gathered through conversations with students and parents, which was impossible to verify directly with the universities. 50. Craig Jeffrey, ‘Global Godot’, Dialogues in Human Geography 2 (2012), p. 107. 51. Linda Herrera, ‘Young Egyptians’ Quest for Jobs and Justice’, in Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat (eds), Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 131. 52. de Koning, Global Dreams, p. 76. 53. Interview, Cairo, June 2011. 54. Dona J. Stewart, ‘Cities in the Desert: The Egyptian New-­Town Program’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86: 3 (1996), pp. 459–66; Dalia Wahdan, ‘Transport Thugs: Spatial Marginalization in a Cairo Suburb’, in Ray Bush and Habib Ayeb (eds), Marginalities and Exclusion in Egypt and the Middle East (London: Zed Books, 2012), pp. 112–32.

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 363 55. Asef Bayat and Kees Biekart, ‘Cities of Extremes’, Development and Change 40: 5 (2009), pp. 816–18. 56. Denis and Vignal, ‘Cairo as Regional/Global Economic Capital?’, p. 99. 57. Eric Denis, ‘Cairo as Neoliberal Capital? From Walled City to Gated Communities’, in Diane Singerman and Paul Amar, Cairo Cosmopolitan. Politics, Culture and Urban Space in the New Globalised Middle East (New York, NY and Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2006), pp. 48–50. 58. Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy, ‘Panic Rooms: The Rise of Defensive Homeownership’, Housing Studies 22: 4 (2002), pp. 452–4; see also Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy, ‘Introduction: International Perspectives on New Enclavism and the Rise of Gated Communities’, Housing Studies 20: 2 (2005), pp. 177–86. 59. Mona Abaza, ‘Egyptianizing the American Dream: Nasr City’s Shopping Malls, Public Order, and the Privatized Military’, in Diane Singerman and Paul Amar (eds), Cairo Cosmopolitan. Politics, Culture and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006), pp. 203–4. 60. Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Palo Alto, CA: Sanford University Press, 2009), pp. 90–5. 61. Judith A. Carney and Robert A. Voeks, ‘Landscape Legacies of the African Diaspora in Brazil’, Progress in Human Geography 27: 2 (2003), pp. 139–41; Divya Tolia-­ Kelly, ‘Materializing Post-­ colonial Geographies: Examining the Textural Landscapes of Migration in the South Asian Home’, Geoforum 35 (2004), pp. 675–80; Divya Tolia-­Kelly, ‘Landscape, Race and Memory: Biographical Mapping of the Routes of British Asian Landscape Values’, Landscape Research 29 (2004), pp. 291–2. 62. Barbara Ellen Smith and Jane Winders, ‘“We’re Here to Stay”: Economic Restructuring, Latino Migration and Place Making in the US South’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33: 1 (2008), p. 60. 63. Jon Goss, ‘Once-­upon-­a-­time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89: 1 (1999), pp. 60 and 71–2. 64. Fieldnotes, Cairo, August 2011. 65. Fieldnotes, Cairo, April 2011. 66. Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Desert Spectacular’, in Keith Tester (ed.), The Flaneur (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 138–58.

364  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 67. Emanuela Guano, ‘Spectacles of Modernity: Transnational Imagination and Local Hegemonies in Neoliberal Buenos Aires’, Cultural Anthropology 17: 2 (2002), p. 187. 68. Interview originally conducted in Arabic, Cairo, April 2011. 69. Bayart, Global Subjects, p. 282. 70. Ibid., p. 234. 71. Ibid., pp. 213–35. 72. Jeffrey, Timepass, pp. 103–34. 73. Augé, Non-­places, pp. 78–9. 74. Fieldnotes, Cairo, August 2011. 75. Bayat, Life as Politics, p. 187. 76. Guano, ‘Spectacles of Modernity’, pp. 191 and 202–3. 77. Bayat, Life as Politics, pp. 137–58; see also Asef Bayat, ‘Islamism and the Politics of Fun’, Public Culture 19: 3 (2007), pp. 433–59. 78. Bayat, Life as Politics, p. 138. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., p. 143. 81. Ibid. 82. Field notes, Cairo, August 2011. 83. See, among others: Adam Ramadan, ‘The Guests’ Guests: Palestinian Refugees, Lebanese Civilians, and the War of 2006’, Antipode 40: 4 (2008), pp. 658–77; Laleh Khalili, ‘The Refugees who Give Refuge’, The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (2006), pp. 57–67. 84. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, p. 210. 85. Bayat, Life as Politics, p. 14.

Bibliography Abaza, Mona, ‘Egyptianizing the American Dream: Nasr City’s Shopping Malls, Public Order, and the Privatized Military’, in Diane Singerman and Paul Amar (eds), Cairo Cosmopolitan. Politics, Culture and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006), pp. 193–220. Abdullah, Thabit, Dictatorship, Imperialism and Chaos. Iraq since 1989 (London: Zed Books, 2003). Al Ali, Nadje, Iraqi Women. Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (London: Zed Books, 2007). Al-­ Rasheed, Madawi, ‘Political Migration and Downward Socio-­ Economic

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 365 Mobility: The Iraqi Community in London’, New Community 18: 4 (1992), pp. 537–50. Al-­Rasheed, Madawi, ‘In Search of Ethnic Visibility: Iraqi Assyrian Christians in London’, in Gerd Baumann and Thijl Sunier (eds), Post-­Migration Ethnicity (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff International, 1995), pp. 10–35. Al-­ Tikriti, Nabil, ‘There Goes the Neighbourhood: Regional Policy Variants vis-­ ­ à-­ vis Iraqi Refugees’, in Dawn Chatty and Bill Finlayson (eds), Dispossession and Displacement. Forced Migration in the Middle East and Africa (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 249–72. Atkinson, Rowland and Sarah Blandy, ‘Panic Rooms: The Rise of Defensive Homeownership’, Housing Studies 22: 4 (2002), pp. 443–58. Atkinson, Rowland and Sarah Blandy, ‘Introduction: International Perspectives on New Enclavism and the Rise of Gated Communities’, Housing Studies 20: 2 (2005), pp. 177–86. Augé, Marc, Non-­places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London and New York, NY: Verso, 1995). Bailey, Adrian J. et al., ‘(Re)producing Salvadoran Transnational Geographies’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92: 1 (2002), pp. 125–44. Balibar, Étienne, We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Bauman, Zygmunt, ‘Desert Spectacular’, in Keith Tester (ed.), The Flaneur (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 138–58. Bayart, Jean-­François, Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalization (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007). Bayat, Asef, ‘Islamism and the Politics of Fun’, Public Culture 19:3 (2007), pp. 433–59. Bayat, Asef, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Palo Alto, CA: Sanford University Press, 2009). Bayat, Asef and Kees Biekart, ‘Cities of Extremes’, Development and Change 40: 5 (2009), pp. 815–25. Brah, Avtar, Cartographies of Diaspora. Contesting Identities (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1996). Carney, Judith A. and Robert A. Voeks, ‘Landscape Legacies of the African Diaspora in Brazil’, Progress in Human Geography 27: 2 (2003), pp. 139–52. Chatelard, Géraldine, ‘What Visibility Conceals. Re-­embedding Refugee Migration from Iraq’, in Dawn Chatty and Bill Finlayson (eds), Dispossession and

366  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Displacement. Forced Migration in the Middle East and Africa (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 17–44. Chatelard, Géraldine, ‘Iraqi Refugees: Making the Urban Refugee Approach Context-­specific’, Humanitarian Exchange 51 (April 2011), pp. 9–11. Clifford, James, ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology 9: 3 (1994), pp. 302–38. Cohen, Robin, Global Diasporas (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2008). Conlon, Deirdre, ‘Waiting: Feminist Perspectives on the Spacings/Timings of (Im) mobility’, Gender, Place and Culture 18: 3 (2011), pp. 353–60. de Koning, Anouk, Global Dreams: Class, Gender and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo (Cairo and New York, NY: The American University in Cairo Press, 2009). Denis, Eric, ‘Cairo as Neoliberal Capital? From Walled City to Gated Communities’, in Diane Singerman and Paul Amar (eds), Cairo Cosmopolitan. Politics, Culture and Urban Space in the New Globalised Middle East (New York, NY and Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2006), pp. 47–71. Denis, Eric and Leïla Vignal, ‘Cairo as Regional/Global Economic Capital?’, in Diane Singerman and Paul Amar (eds), Cairo Cosmopolitan. Politics, Culture and Urban Space in the New Globalised Middle East (New York, NY and Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2006), pp. 99–151. Giles, Wynona and Jennifer Hyndman, ‘Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations’, Gender, Place and Culture 18: 3 (2011), pp. 361–79. Goss, Jon, ‘Once-­upon-­a-­time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89: 1 (1999), pp. 45–75. Graham, Stephen, Cities under Siege. The New Military Urbanism (London: Verso, 2008). Guano, Emanuela, ‘Spectacles of Modernity: Transnational Imagination and Local Hegemonies in Neoliberal Buenos Aires’, Cultural Anthropology 17: 2 (2002), pp. 181–209. Hannam, Kevin, Mimi Sheller and John Urry, ‘Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings’, Mobilities 1: 1 (2006), pp. 1–22. Herrera, Linda, ‘Young Egyptians’ Quest for Jobs and Justice’, in Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat (eds), Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 127–44. Human Rights Watch, From a Flood to a Trickle: Neighbouring States Stop Iraqis

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 367 Feeling War and Persecution (1 April 2007). www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/ refugees/iraq0407/iraq0407.pdf (accessed 27 May 2013). Hyndman, Jennifer, Managing Displacement. Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). Ismael, Tarek and Max Fuller, ‘The Disintegration of Iraq: The Manufacturing and Politicization of Sectarianism’, Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 2: 3 (2009), pp. 443–73. Jeffrey, Craig, ‘Waiting’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008), pp. 954–8. Jeffrey, Craig, Timepass. Youth Class and the Politics of Waiting in India (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). Jeffrey, Craig, ‘Global Godot’, Dialogues in Human Geography 2 (2012), pp. 106–9. Kagan, Michael, ‘Shared Responsibility in a New Egypt. A Strategy for Refugee Protection’, Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies Working Papers, Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies, the American University in Cairo (2011). www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cmrs/documents/kaganrefugeepolicyegypt1109.pdf (accessed 26 August 2013). Kagan, Michael, ‘“We Live in a Country of UNHCR”: The UN Surrogate State and Refugee Policies in the Middle East’, New Issues in Refugee Research Working Paper No. 201 (Geneva: UNHCR Policy Development and Evaluation Service, February 2011). Kallio, Kirsi P., ‘Political Presence and the Politics of Noise’, Space and Polity 16: 3 (2012), pp. 287–302. Khalili, Laleh, ‘The Refugees who Give Refuge’, The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (2006), pp. 57–67. Kusenbach, Margarethe, ‘Street Phenomenology: The Go-­along as Ethnographic Research Tool’, Ethnography 4: 3 (2003), pp. 456–85. Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). Marfleet, Philip, ‘Iraq’s Refugees: “Exit” from the State’, International Journal of Iraqi Studies 1: 3 (2007), pp. 397–419. Mason, Victoria, ‘The Im/mobilities of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan: Pan-­Arabism, “Hospitality” and the Figure of the “Refugee”’, Mobilities 6: 3 (2012), pp. 353–73. Mezzadra, Sandro and Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, The Multiplication of Labour (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). Minnick, Emily and Noheier Nashaat, ‘Stuck’ in Egypt: Iraqi Refugees’ Perceptions of Their Prospects for Resettlement to Third Countries and Return to Iraq,

368  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Center for Migration and Refugee Studies Working Papers, The American University in Cairo (February 2009). www.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/cmrs/reports/ Documents/CMRS_Reporton_Return_and_Resettlement_For_Web.pdf (accessed 26 August 2012). Ramadan, Adam, ‘The Guests’ Guests: Palestinian Refugees, Lebanese Civilians, and the War of 2006’, Antipode 40: 4 (2008), pp. 658–77. Sabry, Sarah, ‘How Poverty is Underestimated in Greater Cairo’, Environment and Urbanization 22: 2 (2010), pp. 523–41. Sirkeci, Ibrahim, ‘Iraqi International Migration: Potentials for the Postwar Period’, Population Review 43: 1 (2004), pp. 37–49. Skelton, Tracy and Gill Valentine, ‘Political Participation, Political Action and Political Identities: Young D/deaf People’s Perspectives’, Space and Polity 7: 2 (2003), pp. 117–34. Smith, Barbara Ellen and Jane Winders, ‘“We’re Here to Stay”: Economic Restructuring, Latino Migration and Place Making in the US South’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33: 1 (2008), pp. 60–72. Smith, Peter Michael and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo, ‘Global Mobility, Shifting Borders and Urban Citizenship’, Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 100: 5 (2009), pp. 610–22. Sperl, Stefan, ‘Evaluation of UNHCR Policies on Refugees in Urban Areas. A Case Study Review from Cairo’, United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit Report (2001). www.unhcr.org/3b3310382. pdf (accessed 26 August 2013). Stanford Friedman, Susan, ‘Migration, Diasporas, Borders’, in David Nicholls (ed.), Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures (New York, NY: MLA, 2007), pp. 260–93. Stewart, Dona J., ‘Cities in the Desert: The Egyptian New-­Town Program’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86: 3 (1996), pp. 459–80. Tolia-­Kelly, Divya P., ‘Landscape, Race and Memory: Biographical Mapping of the Routes of British Asian Landscape Values’, Landscape Research 29 (2004), pp. 277–92. Tolia-­ Kelly, Divya P., ‘Materializing Post-­ colonial Geographies: Examining the Textural Landscapes of Migration in the South Asian Home’, Geoforum 35 (2004), pp. 675–88. Uehling, Greta, ‘Sitting on Suitcases: Ambivalence and Ambiguity in the Migration Intentions of Crimean Tatar Women’, Journal of Refugee Studies 15 (2002), pp. 388–408.

y oung i ra qi ref ug ees i n ca ir o  | 369 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2009, Annex: Table 5, p. 77. www.unhcr.org/pages/4a02afce6.html (accessed 27 May 2013). United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2008, Annex: Table 5, p. 84. www.unhcr.org/pages/4a02afce6.html (accessed 27 May 2013). Wahdan, Dalia, ‘Transport Thugs: Spatial Marginalization in a Cairo Suburb’, in Ray Bush and Habib Ayeb (eds), Marginalities and Exclusion in Egypt and the Middle East (London: Zed Books, 2012), pp. 112–32. Xiang, Biao, ‘A Time of Global Mobility, A Time of Global Entrapment’, in Essay for Double: Photographs by Chang Chien-­Chi (Singapore: The National Museum of Singapore, 2008), pp. 15–19.

11 Home in Lebanese Diaspora Literature Jumana Bayeh

T

his chapter explores the representation of home in a range of contemporary Lebanese diaspora novels. It illustrates the importance of this theme to Lebanese diaspora fiction and how such fiction presents varied and even innovative views of home. In doing so it showcases that literature is not tangential to diaspora but is an essential component in broadening our understanding of the term. This latter point is pursued in the recently published volume A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (2013), particularly by the editors Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani. They argue that despite the relatively recent development of Diaspora Studies, dated from 1991 with the inauguration of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, the field has nevertheless ‘progressively acquired scholarly coherence with a visible set of debates’.1 These debates can be grouped into two streams. The first involves diaspora theorists like Robin Cohen, Stephane Dufoix and William Safran who set out ‘highly productive typologies of diaspora’ in their work. The second group features writers like Marianne Hirsh, Paul Gilroy and James Clifford who focus on the trauma of displacement as well as ‘offering models for rethinking the hybridities of diaspora’.2 While both groups deal with the phenomenon of diaspora as a form of displacement, the distinction between them relates to the former group’s efforts to establish models of diaspora and the latter’s ‘attempt[s] to describe the intangible elements of nostalgia, memory, and desire that elude the typologies of the social sciences’. In light 370

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 371 of these differences, Quayson and Daswani suggest that ‘both social sciences and humanities approaches are imperative for understanding the full spectrum of the significations of diaspora’.3 Despite this recognised need for contributions from both disciplines the more traditional and dominant of the two has been, in Floya Anthias’s estimation, the ‘sociological approach that uses “diaspora” as a descriptive typological tool’.4 One of the key features of this approach is the framing of diaspora around the notion of an original home. This is not surprising given that the concepts of home and homeland are fundamental aspects of diaspora and are widely perceived as the opposite of dispersal and dislocation. Indeed, as Avtar Brah suggests, ‘the concept of diaspora embodies a subtext of home’.5 This subtext is evident in the six criteria points that Safran lists in his typology of diaspora. Safran’s criteria stress the dispersed community’s relationship to the homeland and its relentless desire to return to its ‘original’ and ‘true’ home.6 Cohen and Dufoix offer even more detailed typologies, which may not be as prescriptive as Safran’s but nevertheless reinforce the centrality of the homeland for diaspora communities. The kind of home that is predominately presented by the practitioners of this approach is not simply one where home is an abstract idea or an imagined, mythical space but one that is geographically and territorially based. For instance, even though Cohen argues that diasporas do not ‘require homelands in the strict territorial sense’ and makes an effort to describe certain diasporas in terms that are independent of their homelands – the Lebanese and Chinese are depicted as ‘trade’ diasporas, the Armenian as a ‘victim’ diaspora – he nevertheless frames these global communities through their geographical sites of origin.7 In Safran’s own typology the territorial nature of the homeland is no less apparent. This is because his diaspora model is based almost exclusively on the Jewish experience of dispersal. As Safran states: ‘[W]e may legitimately speak of Armenian, Maghrebi, Turkish, Palestinian, Cuban, Greek, and perhaps Chinese diasporas at present and of the Polish diaspora of the past, although none of them fully conforms to the “ideal type” of the Jewish Diaspora.’8 Safran’s bias for a territorially based version of home is drawn from the ability of displaced Jews to return to their Israeli homeland. As Jon Stratton points out, Safran’s view of diaspora ‘only make[s] sense . . . in relation to the Israeli nation-­state’.9 Safran’s typology has been widely criticised, mainly for its Jewish

372  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t c­ entricity as well as its normative view of home and return. But an important oversight in Safran’s work, largely overlooked by critics, is what Erich Gruen and Julian Murphet have identified as the central item that has been formative in the construction of the Jewish diaspora – the literary text.10 As Murphet notes: Taking diaspora back to its geopolitical roots in the Galuth [Jewish exile from Palestine] or Tefutzot [Jewish settlement outside of Israel], the violent scattering of Israel’s seeds in the deserts of Khorasan and the urban spaces of Babylon, Antioch, and Alexandria, we can sense immediately the degree to which the reactive recuperation of a national identity and ethno-­ religious continuity across the diasporic checkerboard depended upon a single, ­privileged media form: the book.11

It was the book, ‘the Sefer Torah . . . a portable scroll [that] managed to bind the scattered tribes of Israel into a single “imagined community”’.12 Gruen extends this argument, highlighting that the importance of the literary text exposes how the notion of home has been interpreted and represented in alternate and conflicting ways within the Jewish diaspora. While one view insists that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, another argues that the Jews ‘are “the people of the Book”’ and that their ‘homeland resides in the text’.13 The text is ‘not just the canonical Scriptures but an array of Jewish writings that help to define the nation and give voice to its identity’.14 That array of literary texts consists, as Murphet suggests, of ‘the retellings of oral folklore, the circulation of songs, the scribal tradition of textual transcription and preservation’, all of which ‘render an uprooted community properly diasporic (rather than simply defeated or lost)’.15 From this perspective, despite what the typological approach tends to emphasise, ‘Jews require no territorial sanctuary’ and their ‘geographical restoration’ to the Jewish homeland is perceived as ‘superfluous’.16 But this view of home that privileges literary texts has been, as Gruen’s observations confirm, subverted in favour of interpretations that posit Israel as the sole and authentic Jewish homeland. While the role of the literary text for the Jewish diaspora has been marginalised, literature’s significance has not been completely ignored in relation to other diasporas. The Indian diaspora, for instance, does not define home simply as the Indian homeland. Rather, members of this global community

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 373 focus, as Amitav Ghosh argues, on recreating Indian culture within their various places of settlement. Through writers and poets like V. S. Naipaul and A. K. Ramanujan it is argued that India, via cultural expression, has been infinitely reproduced outside of its centre.17 This is not dissimilar from the approach taken in relation to the Lebanese diaspora, whose literary output has been used to understand the development of this dispersed community and its complex understanding of home.18 Lebanese diaspora fiction is deeply preoccupied with the topic of home but does not convey this preoccupation in terms of a linear relationship, where return to the Lebanese homeland is seen as neither essential nor vital. This is most likely due to the particular circumstances that spurred the migration of the Lebanese and ultimately ensured that return was not possible. Those particular circumstances refer to the civil war that beleaguered Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. While prior to this war, in the 1960s and first half of the 1970s, approximately 10,000 Lebanese per year relocated mainly to the oil-­producing states in the Gulf, the onset of the war saw a dramatic acceleration in migration. Dalia Abdelhady estimates that 990,000 Lebanese migrated during the fifteen-­year civil war.19 A peace agreement, known as the Ta’if Agreement (or Ta’if Accord), was signed in 1989 but failed to bring the unrest and violence to a complete end. As a result the war continued for approximately two more years, principally between a number of Christian factions, compelling more Lebanese to look for stable conditions abroad. The failure of Ta’if to guarantee peace and stability ‘led many Lebanese to think of their presence outside of Lebanon as less of a temporary exile and more in terms of permanent settlement’.20 This settlement can be traced to a wide range of places like Syria, Egypt, the Gulf, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, the USA, France, Australia and West Africa, illustrating that ‘Lebanese immigrant communities have historical roots in almost every corner of the world’.21 The civil war that the Lebanese endured has had a significant impact on the Lebanese diaspora that has been examined from sociological and political perspectives.22 But the war, and in particular what Syrine Hout describes as its ‘senseless brutality’, has also been formative for a generation of Lebanese immigrant writers.23 Authors like Rabih Alameddine, Nathalie Abi-­Ezzi, Thérèse Chehade, Rawi Hage, Jad El Hage, Tony Hanania, Nada Awar

374  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Jarrar, Dimitri Nasrallah and Patricia Sarrafian Ward left Lebanon in their childhood or adolescent years and later penned novels that told Lebanon’s war story from abroad. In Elise Salem Manganaro’s assessment, these writers straddle two literary genres as they have both broadened the ‘definition of what constitutes . . . Lebanese literature’ and also helped to define a new genre of Lebanese immigrant writing.24 Influenced by Manganaro’s plea for ‘literary pluralism’ when examining Lebanese literature, Hout argued in 2006 that ‘post-­war novels characterise a new literary and cultural phenomenon, and have founded what one may predict to become a full-­fledged branch of Lebanese exilic (mahjar) literature’.25 Hout identifies two themes that have shaped this genre. These are the ‘civil strife’ that marred Lebanese society in the 1970s and 1980s along with the ‘expatriation’ that resulted from the war. In the several years that have elapsed since Hout’s forecast, the field has developed in line with her prediction. Six years later, in 2012, Hout published the first book-­length study focusing on Lebanese immigrant literature and rebranded this group of writers and their novels as diasporic.26 In this mode of diaspora writing it is not only the civil war and expatriation that preoccupy Lebanese immigrant writers. What also organises Lebanese diaspora literature is the theme of home and various related categories like domesticity, homeland, motherland, national home and the nation-­state. This preoccupation, however, does not mean that Lebanese diaspora novels reflect a single or common image of home. In fact, as this chapter demonstrates, there are three models of home that tend to recur in Lebanese diaspora fiction. The first positions home in terms of roots and stasis; the second suggests that the narrative of home is reflected in the routes that a migrant community travels; and the third depicts home as being constituted by a combination of roots and routes. Interestingly, diaspora scholarship categorises home using comparable models but also assesses each one in terms of their conservative or progressive nature. For instance, when home is depicted as a form of roots it is viewed as regressive because it stresses a singular form of home that is associated with a diasporic community’s original home or homeland. Conversely, where home is portrayed as a form of routes its more liberal and progressive qualities, its portability and boundlessness, are underscored. The third model, despite promoting the coexistence of roots and routes, reinforces the essentialist nature of the former. This is because

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 375 roots remain located in the past while routes are seen as part of the evolving narrative of home.27 There is, however, another representation of home that challenges these three well-­established models. This form of home is found in The Night Counter (2009) by the Lebanese-­American writer Alia Yunis, which illustrates that roots are not simply located in the past but are an integral part of formulating a progressive model of home. After outlining the three dominant models of home that Lebanese diaspora fiction and diaspora theory explore, the chapter then turns to the unique expression of home that The Night Counter offers, highlighting the important contribution that this novel makes to both Lebanese diaspora literature and theories of dispersal. Home-­as-­Roots Avtar Brah argues that not only is home deeply embedded in the concept of diaspora but also that it is often expressed within diaspora scholarship in terms of origins or roots.28 In this construction homes are geographically located or, to borrow from Paul Gilroy, are depicted as being ‘rooted’ in a specific place.29 This is reflected in the dominant mode used to categorise or label dispersed communities. As noted previously, most diasporas are identified by their national place of origin, like the Armenian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, Palestinian and Lebanese diasporas. Scholars have also written about Asian, African, Latin American and Middle Eastern diasporas.30 While these latter categorisations may not refer to specific national homes, they nonetheless register broader geographically based homelands or roots.31 It seems, then, that home is conflated with roots when discussed in the context of diaspora. This is reflected in Diana Brydon’s research on home. While her general view is that home is a malleable and mobile concept, she advances a fixed conception of it when she considers it within a diasporic frame, asserting that ‘unitary, rather than dilemmatic notions of home tend to anchor diaspora studies in ways that focus on singularities . . . essentializing home as a given’.32 In light of these arguments, it is difficult to disagree with Nigel Rapport and Andrew Dawson’s claim that ‘traditional conceptualizations of home’ emphasise it as ‘the stable physical centre of one’s universe – a safe and still place to leave and return to’.33 In this formulation home is often expressed through the imagery of a house. This is especially the case in literature that is replete with famous houses. Mansfield Park in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

376  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t (1814), Thrushcross Grange in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and Gardencourt in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady (1881) represent three of the most important literary houses in the English canon. Furthermore, literary critics like Marilyn Booth, Chiara Briganti and Kathy Mezei have made much of the interconnectedness between the novelistic form and the architectural structure of a house. Booth argues that ‘across the globe and across time, authors have built novels with, around and through imagined and remembered [domestic] edifices’ while Mezei and Briganti note that the ‘house – and architecture – have served as foundational, powerful and recurring analogues’ within literary practice and interpretation.34 But what such novels and literary criticism overlook is the significance of the imagery of roots for displaced writers. Given the deracination that diaspora writers experience, it is not just houses that determine their exploration of home but also roots.35 Both houses and roots facilitate the expression of home as a fixed and stable centre. In Lebanese diaspora fiction, the three terms ‘home’, ‘houses’ and ‘roots’ are difficult to separate and, to borrow from Angelika Bammer, ‘operate within the same mythic metaphorical field’ to privilege a domestic terminology of stasis.36 Two novels, Somewhere, Home (2004) and The Myrtle Tree (2007), convey this most clearly, where the former focuses on the architectural structure of a house and the latter heavily invests in the imagery of roots. Somewhere, Home by the Lebanese-­Australian author Nada Awar Jarrar is divided into three parts, with each narrated by a different female character.37 Part one, Maysa’s story, is set in an unspecified Lebanese village in the mountains during the Lebanese Civil War; part two, Aida’s narrative, takes place in Beirut immediately after the civil war; and part three, Salwa’s story, is set in Australia, presumably some years after the end of the war. Although this tripartite structure, with its varying geographical and temporal settings, prompts Syrine Hout to assess Somewhere, Home as a collection of short stories, the narratives contained in this text are not completely unrelated.38 Jarrar incorporates one unifying feature, an abandoned house in rural Lebanon, and inserts it into each narrative. This is why Rayyan al-­Shawaf insists that Jarrar’s text may ‘lack a single, coherent storyline’ but it is not a simple ‘patchwork of unrelated sketches’ and therefore should be classified as a novel.39 While the recurring feature of the house transforms this collection of short stories into

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 377 a novel, its use also exposes the novel’s preference for a model of home that is fixed and located in a specific place. This is reflected in the novel’s very title – Somewhere, Home – that instantly references the search for home that Maysa, Aida and Salwa undertake. What organises their ultimately failed quests is the house. For instance, in part one Maysa relocates from Beirut to her ancestral home in the Lebanese mountains in order to write the history of her female kin. While her female-­ focused treatise is based on her own recollections, Maysa believes that she must retreat to the house in order to gather memories that are archived there. The house, then, is the undisputed site of her family’s origins, the place, Maysa states, ‘where everything began’.40 In the second part the house has no familial significance for Aida but its depiction as a stable centre is no less emphasised. Aida returns to her family’s apartment in Beirut after spending her adolescence in an unidentified European city. With the civil war over she hopes to re-­establish her childhood sense of home, which is kept alive with her ‘near perfect memory for the minutiae of her past’, all of which pertain to ‘recollections of [her pre-­war Beirut] home’.41 But the city’s post-­war ‘shabby streets . . . shock’ and fill ‘Aida’s mind with doubt’, alienating her from her home-­city.42 It is not until her encounter with the house, during a day-­trip to the village where the house is located, that her feeling of estrangement is transformed into one of belonging. Sitting on the house’s front porch and surveying the view of ‘the village and the valley . . . and . . . [the] mountains’ Aida feels ‘an instant sense of calm’.43 After this moment and back in the city Aida continues to be preoccupied by the house. She ‘imagines walking through its front door . . . and feeling once again the peace that she had found there’ during her day trip.44 Thus, as in Maysa’s story, it is the house, as a fixed and stable structure, that imparts a sense of home for Aida and grounds her, even if momentarily, in her homeland. Similarly, The Myrtle Tree by the Lebanese-­Australian writer Jad El Hage, exhibits a preference for a fixed and stable sense of home but does so through the imagery of roots.45 El Hage’s novel, his second in English, has been described by Hout as an immediate ‘post-­war’ text because, even though it was published two decades after the civil war ended, it remains intensely invested in depicting the chaos that the war produced.46 Adam Awad, the central character, moves from Beirut to his ancestral village, Wahdeh, with

378  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t his wife, Yousra, and their daughter. He and Yousra, although ‘young, educated professionals’, have wilfully ‘opted out of city life’.47 While the immediate reason for this retreat to the village is the civil war, what compels the Awad family to stay is explained in terms of the rural idyll that Wahdeh provides. When the war threatens to shatter their rural safe haven, Adam and Yousra respond with a fierce determination to remain. Adam explains that ‘we had sealed our love beneath the vaults of the [Awad family’s] olive press we’d vowed to revive . . . Sure we both objected to the war, but we had never considered leaving the country.’48 This commitment from the characters to remain rooted in the land is echoed by the variety of trees that El Hage interweaves in his novel. While the oak and the almond are mentioned several times, it is the olive and myrtle trees that are used to reinforce the continuity that roots reflect.49 The myrtle tree, which is referenced in the novel’s title, resurfaces in the dream-­like sequence of the epilogue. Here it is suggested that Adam has died in a bomb attack and he sits under a myrtle tree with his deceased father, uncle and grandmother, drinking water from a clay pitcher.50 This scene, which immediately follows the dramatic bombing, is replete with earth-­like imagery – the tree, the water and a clay pitcher – and restores Adam to a perfected image of rural Lebanon surrounded by his kin. The olive trees, which also connect Adam to his family’s rural heritage, reinforce the notion of roots as a form of stasis through their longevity. In the Levant scientists have shown that some olive trees date as far back as nine hundred years. Their permanence is noted in the novel by Adam: ‘if you prune a hundred year old olive tree right down to its base, it’ll sprout again. They can live many hundreds of years.’51 It is this enduring, earthy lifestyle located in rural Lebanon that Adam pursues and that the novel conveys through this tree imagery. Evidently, what the roots of El Hage’s myrtle and olive trees and the house in Jarrar’s novel highlight is a representation of home that is stable, enduring and fixed in the land. Home-­as-­Routes The second way that diaspora has conceived of home inverts the static and fixed model outlined above. In this construction home is not conflated with roots, trees or a dwelling space but is expressed as movement and presented in forms that are not structurally permanent or anchored in the land. This is

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 379 evident in James Clifford’s article ‘Diasporas’, where he interrogates the concept of roots and suggests that home should be oriented towards ‘a reinvented “tradition”, a “book”, a portable eschatology’.52 This is because in Clifford’s study diaspora neither ‘presupposes a center’ nor assumes a teleology of return to an original home.53 Rather, what interests Clifford is ‘how . . . diaspora discourses represent experiences of displacement [and]  . . . construct home away from home’.54 Diasporas do this through ‘decentred’ and ‘lateral’ connections that promote ‘overlapping networks of communication, travel, trade, and kinship’ among transnational peoples.55 Such decentred and lateral connections are particularly crucial for the Palestinian diaspora’s sense of home and collective identity. This is because since the Nakba (The Catastrophe) of 1948, the subsequent Naksa (The Setback) of 1967, and the ongoing annexation of land by the state of Israel, displaced Palestinians find it impossible to return to a home that is, in Edward Said’s view, ‘irrevocably lost’.56 In order to maintain a sense of home, Palestinians collect and hold on to ‘intimate mementoes of the past’, like photographs and national costumes, as well as keys and deed titles to the houses they once owned. These items ‘circulate among’ Palestinians and, as Said illuminates, are ‘much reproduced, enlarged, thematized, embroidered, and passed around [so that] they [become the] . . . strands in the web of affiliations we Palestinians use to tie ourselves to our identity and to each other’.57 For Palestinians within and beyond the West Bank and Gaza, home is an exilic network of disseminated cultural items and shared narratives of displacement. This dislocated and mobile model of home that Said and Clifford outline is evident in a number of Lebanese diaspora texts, the most notable being Amin Maalouf’s Ports of Call (1999) and Jad El Hage’s The Last Migration: A Novel of Love and Diaspora (2002).58 The subtitle of El Hage’s novel – A Novel of Love and Diaspora – suggests that the question of diaspora is intertwined with the theme of love. This is particularly the case for Ashraf Saad, the novel’s central character. Ashraf designates diaspora as ‘being away from loved ones . . . where family and friends are scattered across the globe’ and love as ‘the end of waiting’.59 In light of these statements it is clear that Ashraf’s quest for romantic love is what orients his sense of home. Rather than search for a past home to return to, as Maysa and Aida do in Somewhere, Home, Ashraf finds home in love. Aside from romantic love, Ashraf seeks familial affection

380  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t by periodically visiting his daughters in Australia and mother in Lebanon. This leads to an observation from Ashraf’s childhood friend Marwan that for Ashraf home is connected to love and desire rather than an ancestral house or a native homeland. What this novel does, then, is reflect Brah’s claim that a diasporan’s ‘homing desire . . . is not the same as desire for the “homeland”’.60 In The Last Migration, home is not fixed or rooted in any one place but is, as Hout notes, ‘mobile, portable, circumstantial, [and] . . . transferable’.61 In Ports of Call, Maalouf promotes a similar deracinated image of home but with a broader political agenda.62 Set in the years that precede the foundation of the Israeli state, Maalouf focuses on the mobility and portability of home in order to undermine the territoriality that dominates the conflict in Palestine. Ports of Call tells of the tragic love story between Ossyane Ketabdar, Lebanese-­born with a Turkish father and Armenian mother, and Clara Emden, an Austrian Jew who settles in Haifa after the extermination of her family during the Second World War. The couple elect to have two homes, one in Beirut and the other in Haifa, and commute between them constantly. Prior to 1948 they are able to maintain what Ossyane refers to as their ‘two ports of call’ because of the relatively easy passage between the two cities.63 As Ossyane indicates, ‘from Haifa to Beirut it is no more than a hundred and fifty kilometres . . . about four hours by car’.64 The degree to which Clara and Ossyane are dedicated to this peripatetic lifestyle is evident in their lack of home ownership. Ossyane confesses that although he and Clara ‘had . . . a number of houses’ in the two cities they had ‘none to call [their] own’.65 Such examples reveal that the ideal living arrangement for these two characters is constituted, as Gil Hochberg points out, by ‘the continuous space open between the two locations’.66 When the borders become ‘hermeneutically sealed’ in 1948, Ossyane and Clara find themselves trapped in separate cities, unable to penetrate the frontier that divides them.67 At this point the two characters’ ideal of home is acutely compromised and Ossyane suffers a prolonged mental breakdown as a result. His insanity and the thirty years he spends confined in an asylum, referred to in the novel as the ‘Home’, are aligned with a model of home that insists on the fixed geometry of sites and roots. What Maalouf illustrates in this novel, then, is that a more viable sense of home is determined through territorial detachment and mobility.

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 381 Home: Roots and Routes The third model of home recognises both the significance of roots and routes in relation to diaspora. This model retains the geographical or cultural origins of a transnational community while also acknowledging the community’s diversity and mobility. The notion that home is constituted by both roots and routes is one of Paul Gilroy’s key contributions to the field of Diaspora Studies. Gilroy argues that a sustained and exclusive focus on roots, or the authentic origins of transnational communities, overlooks the routes that these communities have travelled. A concentration on roots also obscures the new cultural encounters that unfold and are negotiated and absorbed within such routes of travel.68 Gilroy argues that routes do not simply constitute temporal motions between ‘here’ and ‘there’ places; rather every route travelled merges together discrete places that are both shaped by and in turn shape the people and communities moving through them.69 Lebanese diaspora novels tend to depict a diasporic sensibility of home that oscillates between roots and routes. This is undertaken in two principal ways. The first entails conflicting expressions of commitment to both roots and routes and the second involves the inclusion of characters who express ‘inbetween’ feelings of estrangement from and belonging to both the homeland and the host state. One author, Rabih Alameddine, best conveys this sense of ‘inbetweenness’ in his critically acclaimed I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters (2003). As a migrant from Lebanon, Alameddine has described himself as an individual who occupies a liminal space. Born to a Lebanese-­Druze family in 1959, he was raised in Kuwait until 1970 when his family relocated to Lebanon. They remained there until 1975 when the war forced them to leave. The short period spent in Lebanon is remembered by Alameddine nostalgically, particularly his ancestral village in the Lebanese mountains. Since his departure from Lebanon, Alameddine has spent the majority of his life in the United States and indicates that this has had a profound impact on his sense of self. In an interview with Carol Fadda-­Conrey he states, ‘I’m both an Arab and an American, although I have a problem with hyphenated identities, so I don’t consider myself Arab American.’70 The central character in I, the Divine, Sarah Nour el-­Dine, is not unlike the author in terms of her mixed identity. As the daughter of a Lebanese-­Druze father and

382  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t an American mother, Sarah indicates that she is confused about her cultural identity. Born and raised in Lebanon, she later relocates to New York to work as a painter. While she revels in the ‘individualism’ that American culture valorises, happily rejecting the collective family based identity that Lebanese culture stresses, she also recognises that ‘my American patina covers an Arab soul’.71 This battle between her ‘half Lebanese and half American’ identity ‘never comes to a satisfactory conclusion’ for Sarah and she is increasingly unsure about the location of her home.72 Her uncertainty is reflected most poignantly after she migrates to the United States in the 1980s. While walking through New York she notes the city’s death-­like state in the winter. Her mind then turns to the civil war that continues to engulf Lebanon and she wonders how members of her family who remain in Lebanon will survive. Images of both places come to mind and she is ‘tugged on by both worlds’.73 She questions herself, asking ‘can there be any here?’ and answers no because ‘whenever she is in Beirut, home is New York. Whenever she is in New York, home is Beirut. Home is never where she is, but where she is not.’74 As the character of Sarah highlights, home in a diasporic context is not always a stable site but can be suspended between roots and routes. In addition to the kind of confusion depicted in Alameddine’s novel, conflicting expressions of commitment to roots and routes further convey the way that home is negotiated in Lebanese diaspora literature. Amin Maalouf illustrates this not only in the novels he composes but also in relation to his experience as a migrant. Fleeing his native homeland a year after the war began in 1976, Maalouf quickly adopted his country of settlement, France, as another home. This is why he writes ‘I don’t have just one country’ and suggests that he possesses at least two countries, ‘two or three languages and several cultural traditions’.75 For his literary work Maalouf has received the highest accolades within the French cultural scene. In 1993 he was awarded the prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for his novel The Rock of Tanios and in 2011 was elected to the Académie française, replacing the late Claude Levi-­Strauss.76 Despite this acceptance and critical acclaim within France, Maalouf’s work continues to showcase a struggle with the issue of ‘roots or routes’. This is evident in Origins: A Memoir (2008), a text where Maalouf traces the history of his paternal kin. He starts in the place where his grandfather and great-­uncle originated, in a small Lebanese mountain

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 383 village, but quickly realises that he must travel to their places of migration, America and Cuba, in order to complete his ‘origins’ narrative. In the prologue Maalouf states that he does not ‘like the word [roots], and . . . even less the image it conveys’.77 This is because roots ‘burrow into the ground . . . [and] hold their trees in captivity from their inception and nourish them at the price of a blackmail: “Free yourself and you’ll die!”’78 Given this rejection of roots it is not surprising that Maalouf embraces ‘routes’. After all, routes emphasise acts of movement and journeys, acts that Maalouf perceives as central to the story of his family’s history of migration. What is surprising, however, is the author’s swift revision of his dislike for roots only several pages later. While contemplating a visit to Lebanon he poses the following question: ‘does . . . [my distaste for roots] mean I do not miss my [Lebanese home in the] Mountains?’ and answers unequivocally ‘of course I do – as God is my witness’.79 Even though he qualifies this by stating that it is the distance from his roots that preserves his love for his native Lebanese village, he nevertheless moderates his initial commitment to the freedom that routes provide.80 Much like Sarah’s inability to commit to one home in I, the Divine, these conflicting positions from Maalouf are not resolved in Origins. What this ambivalence highlights is that certain Lebanese diaspora novels cannot sustain a vision of home that is exclusively based in roots or routes, but attempt to construct home as a compromise between the two. Roots-­as-­Home As the three models of home outlined above indicate, the meaning of home from the perspective of diaspora is oriented by origins or roots, by dislocation or routes and by a combination of the two. While it might seem from the above descriptions that these forms are neutral and simply express different meanings of home within a context of dispersal, they are in actual fact value-­ laden concepts. What this means is that even though most diaspora scholarship insists upon the need to retain a discussion of roots in an analysis of diaspora, such scholarship also consistently cautions against an overemphasis on origins at the expense of routes. James Clifford, Diana Brydon and Paul Gilroy all outline the limitations of theorising diaspora in relation to origins but it is in Stuart Hall’s discussion of Caribbean cinema and diasporic identity that the negative aspects of roots are most clearly illustrated.81 Initially,

384  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Hall insists that the lure of the homeland, in this case the Caribbean homeland, and the ‘endless desire to return to “lost origins”, to be at one again with the mother[land], to go back to the beginning’ should not be discredited.82 After all, ‘who can ever forget when once seen rising up out of that blue-­ green Caribbean, those islands of enchantment. Who has not known, at this moment, the surge of nostalgia for lost origins, for “times past”?’83 And yet, as soon as he makes this case for roots he immediately undermines it by recalling the limitations that roots-­based thinking encourages. Any ‘“return to the beginning”’ Hall writes, ‘is like the imaginary in Jacques Lacan – it can neither be fulfilled nor requited’. To believe that a return to the beginning is possible represents ‘the old, . . . imperialising [and] hegemonising’ conception of diaspora that must be avoided. The cost of not doing so is reflected, according to Hall, in the ‘fate of the people of Palestine’ who have suffered ‘at the hands of this backward-­looking conception’ of diaspora.84 In light of these arguments it is not without reason, as Ghassan Hage explains, that roots have developed ‘a bad name in certain intellectual circles [because] they are associated with stasis, conservatism and narrow mindedness’.85 When roots are experienced in this particular way, they drive ‘people . . . to bury . . . themselves in their roots [so that] their rootedness becomes territorial and . . . claustrophobic’.86 However, while Hall and other diaspora critics make a strong case for highlighting the negativity and narrowness that are supposedly inherent to roots, there is no need to accept this construction uncritically or, as Hage states, to universalise it. Hage posits that roots can also be the opposite ‘of occupying space statically, of being locked in the ground unable to move’.87 Roots can be a force of movement and can even foster a more open, rather than an essentialist, view of home. It is precisely this model of home that is apparent in Alia Yunis’s The Night Counter, the first Lebanese diaspora novel to represent roots as a force of mobility and progression. The stress that Yunis’s novel places on roots and mobility stem from the author’s own peripatetic life. Yunis was born in Chicago and grew up not only in the United States, but also in Greece and various places in the Middle East, particularly Beirut during the civil war. She has worked as a filmmaker and journalist in several cities, among them Los Angeles, and currently lives in Abu Dhabi where she teaches at Zayed University. Given this movement and dislocation, it is not surprising that Yunis’s view of home is unstable. Her

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 385 statements in various interviews reveal that while she retains a sense of home that is anchored by her Lebanese homeland,88 she is also unable to definitively answer the question, ‘[W]here is home?’, preferring to respond with ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I’m okay anywhere I go’.89 Initially, these statements may seem conflicted, but when considered in light of Yunis’s novel, they become easier to reconcile. This is because The Night Counter overturns the conventional meaning of roots, principally through its protagonist, Fatima Abdullah, and her own shifting views of home. Fatima is an eighty-­five-year-­old migrant who has lived in the United States for approximately seventy years. During this entire period, and despite establishing a home in Detroit with her second husband and giving birth to ten children, Fatima remains consumed by her childhood home located in Deir Zeitoon, a fictional Lebanese village. Her sole mission is to bequeath the house to one of her many American-­born offspring. The house, the dilemma of who should inherit it and Fatima’s nostalgic memories of it, are conveyed to Scheherazade, the legendary protagonist from the epic A Thousand and One Nights, who visits Fatima on a nightly basis. Readers are led to believe that the tales that Fatima recounts to Scheherazade are all concerned with the childhood dwelling and Deir Zeitoon.90 Even after nine hundred and ninety-­two nights of house-­related tales, when Scheherazade pleads that Fatima talk to her of something else (‘Ya seit el beit, oh lady of the house . . . Wahayat deen el-­nebi, in the name of the prophet’s religion, you’ve had ten children and two husbands. Surely something must have happened in the last sixty-­years?’) the house remains the only subject of Fatima’s stories.91 This is why reviewers of the novel describe Fatima as being ‘obsessed’ with her Lebanese house and evaluate the novel in terms of the protagonist’s fixation with it.92 Despite this obsession and despite the stasis that houses represent, The Night Counter nevertheless manages to depict roots as a force of mobility and progression. This is done in two ways. The first relates to how The Night Counter undermines a model of home that is framed in terms of an architectural structure, and the second concerns the transformation of Fatima’s perception of home away from one that is house-­centric. With regard to the former, The Night Counter destabilises the association between home and house by omitting details of Fatima’s ancestral home. This is surprising given that the novel begins by establishing a definition of home

386  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t that aligns it with Fatima’s childhood dwelling. In the opening scene Fatima, who believes that she has only nine days left to live, expresses that her most vital concern is the house she remembers back in Lebanon. The extent of her devotion to this house is measured by the fact that despite ‘not [having] seen it in seven decades’ she remains ‘haunted’ by thoughts about who should inherit it.93 In this first scene Fatima determines that her eight surviving children are unsuitable heirs because they all had ‘somehow ended up with their own thoughts and ideas’, none of which involved any interest in her past home.94 She intends to spend the remaining days of her life finding a suitable heir. In light of this, the house is not only significant to the central character but is also crucial in terms of narrative development. And yet, despite this importance, no details of the house’s structure or design features are given in the text. This is a curious omission because in other diaspora novels where a house is central to both the protagonist and the narrative, descriptions of its design and architectural features are prominent. Jarrar’s Somewhere, Home, for instance, records the physical attributes of Maysa’s ancestral home. Maysa explains that the addition of family members saw the house expand in size and undergo a process of modernisation in preparation for the birth of her daughter.95 Bedrooms and various household objects are also described in reference to Maysa’s family members, such as her father, uncles, aunt and grandmother.96 The number of rooms, the functionality of those rooms and the areas that immediately surround the house are fundamental components of the narrative. However, the most that readers of The Night Counter learn of Fatima’s house is that it is constructed of ‘limestone brick’ and has a ‘terra-­ cotta roof’.97 What this means is that The Night Counter does not accept the links that Fatima’s character draws between home and house. In doing this the novel, as opposed to the character, marginalises a construction of home that conflates it with an architectural structure. Alongside this lack of description, The Night Counter completes its assault on this narrow view of home by eventually destroying the house. This takes place in the novel’s closing scenes where Fatima is informed that the house she deeply yearns for no longer exists. It was, in fact, razed during the early stages of the civil war. A letter from her former Lebanese neighbour, dated April 1989 but uncovered almost fifteen years after its composition, confirms that ‘Deir Zeitoon was one of the first villages ravaged during the war’ and

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 387 describes the intensity of the violence that either killed or forced everyone in Fatima’s extended family to escape.98 It is not only the house that is devastated but also that, as Fatima eventually discovers, the entire village is irreversibly altered. Certain hallmarks that the protagonist considers permanent fixtures in Deir Zeitoon – like the water fountain in the centre of the village square, the blacksmith’s workshop and members of the Abdel Aziz clan – are no longer present. The village square is now ‘congested with Internet cafés and beeping cars’, the blacksmith migrated to America and ‘closed his shop fifty years ago’ and no one from the Abdel Aziz family remains in the village.99 The alterations to the village and the destruction of the house, like the exclusion of any description of its architectural features, undermine a house-­centric vision of home in Yunis’s novel. While the novel expunges the house from the narrative it does not treat roots in the same way. Roots are elevated as a key expression of home, representing the second way that The Night Counter advances its mobile model of home. This may seem an unlikely and confused idea given that roots, as already outlined, are depicted in diaspora literature and theory in pejorative terms, as being static and unyielding. Roots, however, need not manifest themselves in such an essentialist or conservative way and, as the ending of Yunis’s novel shows, they can actually be the catalyst for feeling grounded in one’s place of settlement. The anthropologist Ghassan Hage explains this alternative function to roots in his article ‘With the Fig, the Olive and the Pomegranate Trees: Thoughts on Australian Belonging’. Witnessing the sight of three trees – fig, olive and pomegranate – planted by his Lebanese migrant grandfather in a rural township in Australia, Hage, himself a migrant to Australia, remarks that these trees made him feel intensely Australian. This is a revealing moment for Hage because standing in his grandfather’s backyard ‘next to these very Lebanese trees, planted by my very Lebanese grandfather’ he realises more than ever just how rooted he is in Australia and how profoundly Australian he is.100 What is most interesting about Hage’s sentiment of rootedness is his categorisation of it in ‘non-­paradoxical’ and ‘non-­ambivalent’ terms. He states that the Lebanese trees did not make me feel Australian and Lebanese, although I do feel both at many moments of life. Nor did they make me feel torn between

388  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t my Lebaneseness and my Australianness. They simply made me feel . . . more Australian.101

This newly found ‘sense of rootedness’, as Hage goes on to explain, ‘does not mean a sense of being locked in the ground, unable to move’ but is more accurately, even if paradoxically, ‘experienced like an extra pair of wings’. This is, he finally argues, ‘exactly how I experienced my trees. I felt them propelling me.’102 Not unlike Hage’s epiphany in his grandfather’s backyard, Fatima experiences a similar form of arboreal-­induced propulsion to a new sense of home when she discovers that her fig tree, after seven decades of sterility, has finally produced its first fruit. The tree, transported from Deir Zeitoon first to Detroit and finally to Los Angeles, has not only rooted itself successfully in American soil but also ‘found [itself] a home in America’.103 It is noteworthy that it is after this event that Fatima tells Scheherazade that she no longer wishes to be beholden to a past and a former house that have weighed her down for several decades. In the novel’s closing pages Fatima accepts her own undeniable rootedness in America and does so without being territorial. This is evident in her decision regarding the settlement of the Detroit house that she inherits from her recently deceased ex-­husband. When Scheherazade asks, ‘[T]o whom will you leave this house in Detroit?’ Fatima’s reply of ‘someone . . . anyone’ speaks volumes of her transformation with regard to houses and homes.104 In this scene Fatima exhibits a form of rootedness that is more progressive in character because it is an expression of home that stands in opposition to the territorial and static mode of roots that several diaspora and migration theorists have criticised. Conclusion The literary texts composed by Lebanese diaspora writers reflect a preoccupation with the notion of home. In light of this preoccupation it is no surprise that home is presented in a diverse number of ways. More conventional portrayals involve aligning home with roots or exploring the theme of home through the architectural structure of a house. Narratives such as Jarrar’s Somewhere, Home and El Hage’s The Myrtle Tree emphasise home’s fixed and static qualities. Other texts, like Maalouf’s Ports of Call and El Hage’s The Last

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 389 Migration, contest such fixed portrayals and instead stress home’s mobility. Home is, in this formulation, a story of the routes one travels rather than one’s origins or roots. A third category of novels takes a more ambivalent approach and reflects a view of home that combines both roots and routes. In Maalouf’s Origins and Alameddine’s I, the Divine characters express a commitment to both the original homeland and the new home, remaining suspended between past and present homes. These literary-­based depictions are echoed in the work of several diaspora theorists, such as William Safran and Robin Cohen, who tend to evoke more conventional notions of home, Stuart Hall and James Clifford, who stress home’s mobility, or Paul Gilroy, who argues that home is constituted in terms of both stasis and mobility in a diasporic context. While these three views of home differ in various ways, what remains constant is the representation of roots as being fixed and related to nostalgic attachments to the homeland. This is where Yunis’s novel differs. The first of its kind in Lebanese diaspora fiction, The Night Counter further complicates the notions of home and roots. In doing so it defies extant models of home within diaspora scholarship and transforms roots into a force of movement and progression. Notes   1. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani, ‘Introduction – Diaspora and Transnationalism: Scapes, Scales, and Scopes’, in A. Quayson and G. Daswani (eds), A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2013), p. 7.   2. Ibid., pp. 7–8.   3. Ibid., p. 8.   4. Floya Anthias, ‘Evaluating “Diaspora”: Beyond Ethnicity?’, Sociology 32: 3 (1998), p. 559; emphasis in original.   5. Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London and New York, NY: Routledge, [1996] 2003), p. 190.    6. See William Safran, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (1991), pp. 83–4 for a full list of Safran’s diaspora criteria. Points one, two and five refer to the ancestral home as the ‘original homeland’ and point five as the ‘true, ideal home’.   7. Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007), p. 103.

390  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t    8. Safran, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies’, p. 84.   9. Jon Stratton, ‘(Dis)placing the Jews: Historicizing the Idea of Diaspora’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 6: 3 (1997), p. 307.  10. Erich Gruen, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Julian Murphet, ‘Communication and Media Studies’, in A. Quayson and G. Daswani (eds), A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2013). See also Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, ‘Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity’, Critical Inquiry 19: 4 (1993), pp. 693–725 and Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002) for further discussion on the importance of texts in the propagation of diasporic Jewish identity.  11. Julian Murphet, ‘Communication and Media Studies’, in A. Quayson and G. Daswani (eds), A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2013), p. 55.  12. Ibid.  13. Gruen, Diaspora, p. 232.  14. Ibid.   15. Murphet, ‘Communication and Media Studies’, p. 55.  16. Gruen, Diaspora, p. 232.   17. Amitav Ghosh, ‘The Diaspora in Indian Culture’, in The Imam and the Indian: Prose Pieces (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002), p. 248.  18. For texts that deal with the role of literature for understanding the Lebanese diaspora, see Ghassan Hage, ‘Under the Global Olive Tree: A Review of Amin Maalouf’s Origines’, Griffith Review – Our Global Face: Inside the Australian Diaspora 6 (2004), pp. 213–21; Syrine Hout, Post-­ War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction: Home Matters in the Diaspora (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University  Press, 2012); and Syrine Hout, ‘Memory, Home, and Exile in Contemporary Anglophone Lebanese Fiction’, Critique 46: 3 (2005), pp. 219–43.   19. Dalia Abdelhady, ‘Representing the Homeland: Lebanese Diasporic Notions of Home and Return in a Global Context’, Cultural Dynamics 20: 1 (2008), p. 57.   20. Ibid., p. 58.   21. Dalia Abdelhady, The Lebanese Diaspora: The Arab Immigrant Experience in Montreal, New York, and Paris (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2011), p. 5.

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 391   22. See Dalia Abdelhady, ‘Cultural Production in the Lebanese Diaspora: Memory, Nostalgia and Displacement’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology 35: 1 (2007), pp. 39–62; Dalia Abdelhady, ‘Beyond Home/Host Networks: Forms of Solidarity among Lebanese Immigrants in a Global Era’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 13: 3 (2006), pp. 427–53; Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007); Gabriel Sheffer, Diaspora Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Paul Tabar (ed.), Lebanese Diaspora: History, Racism and Belonging (Beirut: Lebanese American University Press, 2005).  23. Syrine Hout, ‘The Last Migration: The First Contemporary Example of Lebanese Diasporic Literature’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 43: 3 (2007), p. 287.   24. Elise Salem Manganaro, ‘Bearing Witness: Recent Literature from Lebanon’, The Literary Review: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing 37: 3 (1994), p. 374.  25. Syrine Hout, ‘The Predicament of In-­ Betweenness in the Contemporary Lebanese Exilic Novel in English’, in Yasir Suleiman and Ibrahim Muhawi (eds), Literature and Nation in the Middle East (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p. 190.  26. Hout, Post-­War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction.  27. See Ghassan Hage, ‘With the Fig, the Olive and the Pomegranate Trees: Thoughts on Australian Belonging’, in Paul Tabar and Jennifer Skulte-­Ouaiss (eds), Politics, Culture and the Lebanese Diaspora (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), pp. 156–8 for a discussion of how ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ are classified as either conservative or progressive. This point is further developed in the latter part of this chapter.  28. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, p. 190.  29. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 102.  30. Rhacel Parrenas and Lok Siu (eds), Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History through Culture (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2009); Darcy Zabel (ed.), Arabs in the Americas: Interdisciplinary Essays on the Arab Diaspora (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2006); Amy Kaminsky, After Exile: Writing the Latin American Diaspora (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).   31. One important anomaly of this trend is the Jewish diaspora, which is designated

392  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t as a religious or cultural transnational community. This, however, does not mean that the Jewish diaspora is devoid of geographical roots. Its roots can be traced to Israel, a place that is perceived as both the official homeland of the Jews since the state’s creation in 1948 and the ancestral homeland because it was from here that the Jewish people’s original dispersion is said to have occurred.  32. Diana Brydon, ‘Canadian Writers Negotiating Home within Global Imaginaries’, keynote address for Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities Conference at Flinders University, Australia (4 December 2007) http:// myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/Documents/1169/Negotiating%20Home.pdf (accessed 23 March 2013), p. 6.   33. Nigel Rapport and Andrew Dawson, ‘The Topic of the Book’, in N. Rapport and A. Dawson (eds), Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World of Movement (Oxford and New York, NY: Berg, 1998), p. 6.   34. Marilyn Booth, ‘House as Novel, Novel as House: The Global, the Intimate, and the Terrifying in Contemporary Egyptian Literature’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47: 4 (2011), p. 377; Kathy Mezei and Chiara Briganti, ‘Reading the House: A Literary Perspective’, Signs 27: 3 (2002), p. 837.   35. ‘Deracination’ is derived from the verb ‘to deracinate’ and means ‘to uproot’. In diaspora and migration scholarship it connotes displacement from one’s native setting or home environment.   36. Angelika Bammer, ‘Editorial’, New Formations 17 (1991), p. x.   37. Nada Awar Jarrar was born in 1958 in Australia to a Lebanese father and an Australian mother. She spent her childhood in a Druze village located in the Lebanese mountains. At the onset of the civil war in 1975 her family migrated from Lebanon, settling in London. For the period from 1975 to 1995, Jarrar remained abroad, living in Paris, Washington and Sydney, before returning to Lebanon in 1996. She is the author of three novels, Somewhere, Home (2004), Dreams of Water (2007) and A Good Land (2009).   38. Hout, ‘Memory, Home, and Exile’, p. 221.  39. Rayyan al-­Shawaf, ‘Somewhere, Home: An Evocative Look at Our Need to Belong’, The Daily Star (6 January 2004), p. 8.   40. Nada Awar Jarrar, Somewhere, Home (London: Vintage, [2003] 2004), p. 8.  41. Jarrar, Somewhere, Home, p. 83.   42. Ibid., p. 127.   43. Ibid., p. 140.   44. Ibid., p. 142.   45. Jad El Hage was born in Beirut in 1946 and migrated to Australia with his

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 393 family in 1985. He has worked as a journalist for Arabic newspapers as well as a radio broadcaster in Beirut, London, Athens and Sydney. His works include poetry, short stories and novels, both in Arabic and in English.   46. Hout, ‘The Last Migration’, p. 288.   47. Jad El Hage, The Myrtle Tree (London: Banipal, 2007), p. 39.  48. Ibid.   49. Ibid., pp. 101 and 286 contain references to oak trees and pp. 29 and 129 to almond trees.   50. Ibid., p. 287.   51. Ibid., p. 79.  52. James Clifford, ‘Diasporas’, in Routes: Travels and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 269.  53. Ibid.   54. Ibid., p. 244.   55. Ibid., p. 269.   56. Edward Said, After the Last Sky (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 14.  57. Ibid.  58. El Hage’s inclusion in this category may seem misplaced given that The Myrtle Tree, as outlined, advances a roots-­based model of home. However, what differs between these two texts and explains their alternate depiction of home is that the protagonist Ashraf Saad in The Last Migration is an expatriate while the central character in The Myrtle Tree never migrates from his ancestral village or his homeland. Consequently, the settings of each text are radically different: the events in The Myrtle Tree take place almost entirely in the insular space of a Lebanese mountain village while The Last Migration moves between Ashraf’s various homes in London, Sydney and Cana in South Lebanon.   59. Jad El Hage, The Last Migration: A Novel of Love and Diaspora (Melbourne: Panache, 2002), pp. 9, 15.  60. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, p. 177.   61. Hout, ‘The Last Migration’, p. 290.   62. Amin Maalouf was born in 1949 and migrated to France in 1976 where he worked as a journalist. His novels are written in French and have been critically acclaimed within the French literary scene.   63. Amin Maalouf, Ports of Call, trans. A. Manguel (London: The Harvill Press, 1999), p. 123. Maalouf’s novel was originally published in French as Les Échelles du Levant (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1996).

394  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t  64. Maalouf, Ports of Call, p. 116.   65. Ibid., p. 123.   66. Gil Hochberg, In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs and the Limits of Separatist Imagination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 121.  67. Maalouf, Ports of Call, p. 137.  68. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic.   69. The oscillation between roots and routes was observed by Gilroy in relation to the black Atlantic diaspora but has also been applied to the study of other transnational communities. In Hout’s Post-­War Anglophone Fiction, ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ orient the author’s opening comments on the Lebanese diaspora. In Russel Potter, ‘Black Modernisms/Black Postmodernisms’, Postmodern Culture  5: 1 (1994), http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-­only/issue.994/review­1.994 (accessed 28 October 2013), a discussion of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ is used to explain the development of new, hybrid musical styles that fused African music with American Rhythm and Blues. These styles include Rhythm and Blues, Reggae and Ska.  70. Rabih Alameddine quoted in Carol Fadda-­ Conrey, ‘Transcontinental Detachment: What Shelf Are You On?’, Al-­Jadid: A Review and Record of Arab Culture and Arts 9: 44 (2003), p. 24.   71. Rabih Alameddine, I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters (London: Phoenix, 2003), pp. 228–9.   72. Ibid., p. 229.   73. Ibid., p. 98.   74. Ibid., p. 99.   75. Amin Maalouf, On Identity, trans. B. Bray (London: The Harvill Press, 2000), p. 3.   76. The Académie française (the French Academy) is the peak body that deals with matters pertaining to the French language. Members of the academy hold their position for life and are referred to as ‘immortals’. Maalouf was the first Lebanese to be inducted as an academy immortal.   77. Amin Maalouf, Origins: A Memoir, trans. C. Temerson (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), unpaginated. This book was originally published in French as Origines (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2004).  78. Maalouf, Origins, unpaginated.  79. Ibid.  80. Ibid.  81. Clifford, ‘Diasporas’, pp.  269–71; Brydon, ‘Canadian Writers’, pp.  6–7;

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 395 Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Clifford, Gilroy and Hall do not dismiss roots completely in their work. What they do seem to express, however, is a partiality toward mobility and argue that strict narratives of roots deny this.   82. Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-­Colonial Theory: A Reader (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 402.  83. Ibid.   84. Ibid., p. 403.   85. Hage, ‘With the Fig’, p. 157.  86. Ibid.  87. Ibid.  88. Alia Yunis quoted on Kitab Book Show, ‘Alia Yunis, Part 1’ (1 December 2009), 3:06–3:45 minutes, www.youtube.com/watch?v=filEKvStxxk&feature =related (accessed 12 May 2013).   89. Alia Yunis quoted at Frankfurt City Library, ‘Alia Yunis Presents The Night Counter’, US Consulate Frankfurt Channel (24 November 2004), 0:29–0:51 minutes, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o7s6QssY10 (accessed 12 May 2013).   90. The content of these tales, apart from one, are never recorded in the novel. Readers, however, gain the impression that all Fatima talks about is the house through the third-­person narrator and the character Scheherazade.   91. Alia Yunis, The Night Counter (New York, NY: Shaye Areheart Books, 2009), p. 29.  92. Carolyn See, ‘Carolyn See Reviews The Night Counter by Alia Yunis’, The Washington Post, 14 August 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/ article/2009/08/13/AR2009081303267.html (accessed 10 October 2010); Emily Holman, ‘Humorous, Humane and Readable. But Charming?’, The Daily Star (accessed 2 December 2009), www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Arts/Dec /02/Humorous-­humane-­and-­readable-­But-­charming.ashx#axzz1iZNuuPox (accessed 11 October 2011).  93. Yunis, The Night Counter, p. 5.  94. Ibid.  95. Jarrar, Somewhere, Home, pp. 3, 48.   96. Ibid., p. 12.  97. Yunis, The Night Counter, pp. 294, 353.   98. Ibid., p. 358.   99. Ibid., p. 354. 100. Hage, ‘With the Fig’, p. 156.

396  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., p. 157, emphasis in original. 103. Yunis, The Night Counter, p. 331. 104. Ibid., p. 363.

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398  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Hanania, Tony, Eros Island (London: Bloomsbury, 2000). Hochberg, Gil, In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs and the Limits of Separatist Imagination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). Holman, Emily, ‘Humorous, Humane and Readable. But Charming?’, The Daily Star (2 December 2009). www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Arts/Dec/02/Humorous-­ humane-­a nd-­r eadable-­B ut-­c harming.ashx#axzz1iZNuuPox  (accessed 11 October 2011). Hourani, Albert and Nadim Shehadi (eds), The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration (London: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1992). Hout, Syrine, Post-­war Anglophone Lebanese Fiction: Home Matters in the Diaspora (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012). Hout, Syrine, ‘The Last Migration: The First Contemporary Example of Lebanese Diasporic Literature’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 43: 3 (2007), pp. 143–62. Hout, Syrine, ‘The Predicament of In-­Betweenness in the Contemporary Lebanese Exilic Novel in English’, in Yasir Suleiman and Ibrahim Muhawi (eds), Literature and Nation in the Middle East (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 190–207. Hout, Syrine, ‘Memory, Home, and Exile in Contemporary Anglophone Lebanese Fiction’, Critique 46: 3 (2005), pp. 219–33. Jarrar, Nada Awar, Somewhere, Home (London: Vintage, [2003] 2004). Jarrar, Nada Awar, Dreams of Water (London: HarperCollins, 2007). Jarrar, Nada Awar, A Good Land (London: HarperCollins, 2010). Kaminsky, Amy, After Exile: Writing the Latin American Diaspora (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). Kitab Book Show, ‘Alia Yunis, Part 1’ (1 December 2009). www.youtube.com/watch ?v=filEKvStxxk&feature=related (accessed 12 May 2013). Maalouf, Amin, Ports of Call, trans. A. Manguel (London: The Harvill Press, 1999). [Originally published in French as: Les Échelles du Levant (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1996).] Maalouf, Amin, On Identity, trans. B. Bray (London: The Harvill Press, 2000). Maalouf, Amin, Origins: A Memoir, trans. C. Temerson (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). [Originally published in French as: Origines (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2004).] Manganaro, Elise Salem, ‘Bearing Witness: Recent Literature from Lebanon’, The Literary Review: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing 37: 3 (1994), pp. 373–81.

h om e in leba nese di aspora li t e r a tur e  | 399 Manning, Patrick, The African Diaspora: A History through Culture (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009). Mezei, Kathy and Chiara Briganti, ‘Reading the House: A Literary Perspective’, Signs 27: 3 (2002), pp. 837–46. Murphet, Julian, ‘Communication and Media Studies’, in A. Quayson and G. Daswani (eds), A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2013), pp. 54–67. Nasrallah, Dimitri, Blackbodying (Montreal: DC Books, 2005). Nasrallah, Dimitri, Niko: A Novel (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2011). Parrenas, Rhacel and Lok Siu (eds), Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). Potter, Russel, ‘Black Modernisms/Black Postmodernisms’, Postmodern Culture 5: 1 (1994). http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-­only/issue.994/review-­1.994 (accessed 28 October 2013). Quayson, Ato and Girish Daswani, ‘Introduction – Diaspora and Transnationalism: Scapes, Scales, and Scopes’, in A. Quayson and G. Daswani (eds), A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2013), pp. 1–26. Rapport, Nigel and Andrew Dawson, ‘The Topic and the Book’, in N. Rapport and A, Dawson (eds), Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World of Movement (Oxford, and New York, NY: Berg, 1998), pp. 3–17. Safran, William, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1: 1 (1991), pp. 83–95. Said, Edward, After the Last Sky (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1986). See, Carolyn, ‘Book World: Carolyn See Reviews The Night Counter by Alia Yunis’, The Washington Post, 14 August 2009. www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/ content/article/2009/08/13/AR2009081303267.html (accessed 10 October 2010). al-­Shawaf, Rayyan, ‘Somewhere, Home: An Evocative Look at Our Need to Belong’, The Daily Star (6 January 2004), p. 8. Sheffer, Gabriel, Diaspora Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Stratton, Jon, ‘(Dis)placing the Jews: Historicizing the Idea of Diaspora’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 6: 3 (1997), pp. 301–29. Tabar, Paul (ed.), Lebanese Diaspora: History, Racism and Belonging (Beirut: Lebanese American University Press, 2005). Tabar, Paul and Jennifer Skulte-­Ouaiss (eds), Politics, Culture and the Lebanese Diaspora (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011).

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Notes on the Contributors

Anny Bakalian is the Associate Director of the Middle East & Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) as well as the Master’s Program in Middle Eastern Studies at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). She is the author of Armenian-­Americans – From Being to Feeling Armenian (1993, reissued 2011) and Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond with Mehdi Bozorgmehr (2009). Her next book project will be on Armenians travelling in Turkey following their ­ancestors’ footprints. Jumana Bayeh is an Early Career Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She has held fellowships at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Copenhagen, and the Lebanese American University in Beirut. She is the author of The Literature of the Lebanese Diaspora: Representations of Place and Transnational Identity (2015) as well as a number of articles on Arab diaspora writers. Georgy Chochiev obtained his PhD at Tbilisi State University and is presently a Senior Research Fellow in the North Ossetian Institute for the Humanities and Social Studies. His research interests are focused chiefly on the North Caucasian diasporas in the Ottoman and post-­Ottoman Middle East. He has taught Turkish history and Ottoman Turkish language at North 401

402  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Ossetian State University and held scholarships from Ankara University and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of North Caucasian (Circassian) Organisations in Turkey, 1908–1923 (2009)  (in Russian, published by the North Ossetian Institute for  Humanities and Social Studies) and a number of articles on North Caucasian immigration, colonisation and ethnic nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. May Farah received her PhD from the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and is currently an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the American University of Beirut. Her primary research has focused on the relationship between diasporic populations and national identity in a globalised media age. More broadly, she is also interested in media use among refugee populations, representations of gender and the ‘other’, and, more recently, media literacy in the Arab World. Her work is situated at the intersections of Media Studies, Cultural Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, with a particular emphasis on theories of diaspora, representations, and transnational and global media. Anthony Gorman is Senior Lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He has taught at universities in Australia, Egypt and Britain and is the author of Historians, State and Politics in Twentieth Century Egypt: Contesting the Nation (2003) as well as a number of articles on the resident foreign communities of modern Egypt. He is co-­ editor (with Marilyn Booth) of The Long 1890s in Egypt: Colonial Quiescence, Subterranean Resistance (Edinburgh University Press, 2014) and is currently co-­editing a book (with Didier Monciaud) on the press in the Middle East before independence. He is also completing a monograph on a history of the prison in the Middle East entitled Prison, Punishment and Society 1800–1950, to be published by Edinburgh University Press. Maria Holt is a Reader in Politics at the University of Westminster in London. She is currently working on a project about women, conflict and violence in the Muslim world. Recent publications include Women and Conflict in the Middle East: Palestinian Refugees and the Response to Violence (2014) and (with Haifaa Jawad) Women and Islamic Resistance in the Arab World (2013).

notes on the contri butor s  | 403 M. H. Ilias is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Gulf Studies Programme at the India-­Arab Cultural Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He completed his doctoral research in West Asian Studies at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interests include society and culture in the Gulf countries; the Gulf in international relations; film and popular culture in West Asia; and Muslims and new media. M. H. Ilias’s recent publications include India-­West Asia Relations: Understanding Cultural Interplays (co-­edited, 2007); Space Memory and Jewish National Identity (2008) and Society and Change in the Contemporary Gulf (co-­edited, 2011). Sossie Kasbarian was awarded her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She has taught at SOAS and at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. In 2011 she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) at the University of Edinburgh. Since January 2012 she has been Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Lancaster. She is co-­editor (with Kerem Öktem) of a special issue of the journal Patterns of Prejudice entitled Armenians, Turks and Kurds beyond Denial (Vol. 48, May 2014), as well as being author of several articles relating to the Middle East and Diaspora Studies. Elisa Pascucci is a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Research on Bordering, Identities, and Transnationalization (RELATE 2014–2019), University of Tampere, Finland. She completed her PhD in Geography at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, and holds a research fellowship at the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS), American University in Cairo. Her work focuses on the relation between marginalisation and political agency in contexts of neoliberal development, with particular reference to refugee communities in the Middle East. Haris Theodorelis-­Rigas holds a BA Hons degree in Classics from Oxford University and an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics (LSE). As a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations of Boğaziçi University he specialised in Identity

404  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Theory, Minority and Ethnicity Politics in the Balkans and the Middle East and taught Latin and Classical Greek in the Department of Western Languages and Literatures. He is co-­founder and series editor at istos yayın, Turkey’s first publishing house to specialise in Anatolian Greek literature, history and culture. Ehud R. Toledano is Professor of Middle East History and the Director of the Program in Ottoman & Turkish Studies at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University (TAU). With a PhD from Princeton University, he has conducted extensive research in Istanbul, Cairo, London and Paris, and taught courses on Middle East history at TAU, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Oxford and other leading universities. Among the eleven books he has written or edited, the following are noteworthy: The Ottoman Slave Trade and its Suppression, 1840–1890 (1982), State and Society in Mid-­Nineteenth-­Century Egypt (1990), Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (1998), As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in Islamic Middle East (2007) and (ed.), African Communities in Asia and the Mediterranean: Identities between Integration and Conflict (2011). Professor Toledano also served as the Director of the Graduate School of History (2004–8) and was a member of TAU’s Executive Council (2005–9). Zeynep Turan is a faculty member at Istanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture and also Visiting Scholar at Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School, New York. Zeynep’s scholarship concentrates on environment–behaviour interactions at various scales, ranging from objects and interiors to urban settings. Her work and research interests span and blend several fields, including Architecture and Architectural History, Environmental Psychology, Design Research and History, Material Culture, and Urban Studies. Zeynep’s interdisciplinary approach arose out of training in Design and Social Sciences. She holds a PhD in Environmental Psychology from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and an MA in Architectural Histories and Theories from the Architectural Association School of Architecture. Zeynep’s current research and writing looks at the effects of privatisation of public space.

Index

Abaza colonies, villages, 107, 113 Abazas, 121–3, 130n Abazins, 127n, 130n ‘Abbas Hilmi II (Khedive), 79, 82, 84, 89, 90 Abbate, Onofrio, 161n ‘Abdin, 142 Abdülhamit II (Sultan), 36, 80, 83, 90–1 Abkhazia, Abkhazians 105–6, 123, 130n Abou-El-Haj, Rifaat, 92 Abyssinia, 147; see also Ethiopia Accademia d’Egitto, 152 Achutanandan, V. S., 319 Adana, 175 Adiges, 104, 107, 113, 114, 121, 130n Afghanistan, US invasion of, 324 Aflaq, Michel, 38 African Studies, 9 Agamben, Giorgio, 275–7, 285, 293 Aghet (Armen. ‘catastrophe’), 175, 193; see also Armenian genocide Aght’amar (Akdamar Island), 175, 186, 188 Agos, 180 Ahmed Fu’ad (later King Fu’ad), 145 Aida (Verdi), 153 Ain el-Hilweh camp, 221, 225 Akçam, Taner, 178 AKP, 43–4, 52, 60n; see also Justice and Development Party

Al Jazeera, 160, 285 Alameddine, Rabih, 373, 381, 382, 389 Alan Culture and Assistance Foundation, 120 Alankuş, General Muzaffer, 117 Alans, 103, 121, 122 Alawis, 39–40, 48 Aleppo, 32, 37–8, 44, 48, 83, 196 Alevis (Turkey) 39, 42 Alexandretta, 40, 47 Alexandria, 142–5, 149, 151, 155–60, 342, 372 Alexandrie Info, 158 Algeria, 5, 140 Algiers, 82 Ali, Manjalamkuzhi, 323 American Community Survey, 187 Amicale Alexandrie Hier et Aujourd’hui (AAHA), 157 anarchists, anarchist movement, 4, 46, 147–8, 151, 154 Anatolia, 4, 19, 33, 39, 41, 44–5, 82, 104–26, 173–211 Anatolian heritage (Anadoloculuk), 44 Ani, 175, 186, 189–90, 198 Ankara, 19, 119, 121, 126 Antakya, 32–3, 40, 45–9, 52–3; see also Antioch

405

406  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Antalya, 120 Antep (Gaziantep), 175, 186 Anthias, Floya, 371 Antioch (Antakya), 32, 34–5, 37, 47–9, 175, 191, 372 Antiochians, 32, 45, 47–52 Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening (1938), 38, 41, 57n Appadurai, Arjun, 8, 40, 303, 326 Arab nationalism, Arabism, 38, 40, 43, 70, 150, 279 Arab Revolt (1916), 36 Arabian Gulf, 17, 303–37 Arabisation, 32, 48, 50–1 Arabophones, 47–8, 51, 93 Araplar, 47 Ararat, Mount, 175, 186, 188–90, 205n Argentina, 139, 187, 373 Ârif Bey, Mehmet, 83 Armenia, Historic, 173–211 Armenia, Republic of, 6, 23, 175, 181, 187, 189, 190, 243, 249, 251–2 Armenian diaspora, 4, 6, 9, 12–13, 15, 20, 31, 34, 173–211, 241–73 Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), 259 Armenian genocide (Aghet), 4, 45, 173–211, 242–3, 251, 259 Armenian Patriarch, 34, 55n Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA), 177, 185 Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), 258, 267–8n Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), 177, 185, 200n Armenian Studies, 185 Armenians from Republic of Armenia (Hayastansis), 251–2 in Anatolia, 34, 108, 110–11, 129n in Cyprus, 18, 21, 241–73 in Egypt, 148, 150, 243 in Syria, 44–5, 47, 52 Aroyan, Armen, 185–7, 199 al-Arsuzi, Zaki, 40 Asad regime, 42 Asetin (Osetin), 114, 122

Association des Juifs Originaires d’Égypte (Paris), 166n Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR), 250, 264n Association for the Injured and Disabled War Veterans (Egypt), 144 Association of Maltese Communities of Egypt, 158 Associazione guide italiane, 144 Associazione italiani d’Egitto (AIDE), 152–5, 157–8, 161 Associazione nazionale pro italiani Egitto (ANPIE), 151, 157–8 Associazione nazionale profughi italiani d’Egitto, 151 Associazione portsaidini nel mondo, 157 Associazione scout cattolici italiani, 144 Atrak (Turks), 85, 92 Attarin, 142 Augé, Marc, 346, 354 Australia, 5, 139, 150, 156–8, 161, 187, 373, 376, 380, 387, 392n Austria, 90 autobiography, 151 Avoscani, Pietro, 153 aydun (those who would return), 219 Azbakiyya, 142 c Azm family, 77 azınlık (minority), 41, 43 c Aziz Bey al-Misri, 79–80 Bab al-Shari‘a, 142 Baghdad, 77, 346, 351, 357 Bahrain, 307, 313, 315, 330n Bajc, Vida, 179 Balkans, 4, 33–4, 46 Ballata Levantina (The Levantines), 151 Banya traders, 321 Basra, 77, 348 Basu, P., 179 Batha, 313 Ba‘thism, 18, 32, 38–9, 52 Batmantaş, 114 Bayart, Jean-François, 339–40, 344–6, 353 Bayat, Asef, 350, 355–6, 358 Bebek, 83

i ndex | 407 Beirut, 37, 181, 212, 220, 227–8, 281, 285–6, 288–9, 376–7, 380, 382, 384 Bekaa Valley, 221 Bekir Sami Bey (Kunduk), 114–15 berat, 35 Berger, Peter L., 176 Bhabha, Homi, 217, 228 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 319, 332n biography, 151 Bitlis, 107–9, 113, 115, 127n, 129n Black Sea, 194 Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 90 Bollettino degli italiani d’Egitto, 151 Bombay, 305, 327n Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camp, 212, 216, 218, 220–1, 226–7, 285 Bourj el-Shemali refugee camp, 225 Boyalık, 119 Bozat, 117–18 Brah, Avtar, 8, 218, 339, 344–5, 358, 371, 375, 380 Braude, Benjamin and Paraskevas Konortas, 35 Brazil, 158, 373 Brubaker, Rogers, 31 Brydon, Diana, 375, 383 Buccetti, Bruno, 151 Budayr, Hilmi, 153–4 Buenos Aires, 181, 352 Bulanık, 109, 129n Bulaq, 142 Bulgarian Archdiocese, 35 Burnaby, Captain Fred, 106 Bursa, 120 al-Bustani, Butrus, 44 Byzantine, Byzantines, 32–3, 190 Byzantium, 35, 103 Cairo, 89, 142–4, 147, 151, 153–4, 156, 338–58 Cairo Opera House, 153 Calicut, 305–6 California, 185, 190 Caliph, 90, 98n, 106 Caliphate, 38, 40, 89, 91, 98n Calotychos, Vangelis, 249 Canada, 158

Capitulations, 36,142 Cappadocia, 186 Carbone, Joe, 156 Cardullo, Marilse, 155 Caucasian, Caucasians, 4, 16, 19, 103–37 Caucasian Committee for Solidarity and Humanitarian Aid to Ossetia, 123 Caucasian Cultural Association of Ankara, 121 Caucasus, 19, 103–37 Cavid Bey, 85 cemaat (confessional community), 43, 48, 60 Cemal Paşa, 84 Çerkez, Çerkezce (Circassian), 114, 127n Chambers of Commerce (Egypt), 143 Chandy, Thomas, 323, 334n Chechens, 104, 106–7, 113, 122, 127n Chief Justice of Cairo (Qadi Misr), 82, 97n Choate, Mark, 139 Christian populations, 7, 16, 23, 33–53 Cialente, Fausta, 151 Cilicia, 175, 185 Circassia, 105 Circassian diaspora, 103–37 Circassianisation, 124 Circassianness, 115, 121 Circassians, 79, 113–14, 126n Circolo Operaio Italiano, 143 citizenship, 3, 10–11, 15, 276–7, 279–80, 328n, 345 Cypriot, 241, 249 EU, 49, 256 Gulf states, 309, 311–12 Ottoman, 38, 107 Palestinian, 279–80; denied in Lebanon, 15, 227, 282, 289–90, 295n Syrian, 43 Turkish, 40, 42 City Stars Mall, 354–5 Clifford, James, 8, 10, 16, 370, 379, 383, 388, 392n Cohen, E., 179 Cohen, Robin, 8, 139, 219, 370–1, 389 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), 80–6, 89–91

408  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t communism, communist movement, 38, 147, 268n, 317, 320 Communist Party of India (Marxist), 318–19, 324, 331–2n, 334n communitas, 174–99 Constantinople, 34–7, 46 constitution of Cyprus, 241, 248 of Syria, 41 Constitution Day (23 July), 81 Constitution of Medina, 33, 54 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 280, 342 Copts, 34 cosmopolitanism, 252–3, 313, 355 Cossack, 105 Council of Europe, 21, 256–9, 263n creolisation, 32, 50–1, 53, 95n Crispi, Francesco, 144 cultural studies, 9–10, 344 Cypriotism, 249–50, 344 Cyprus, 18, 21, 138, 241–73 Dabbas, Athanasios, 37 Dadrian, Vahakn N., 176 Dagestan, 127n Dagestanis, 106–7, 109, 113, 122 Dalmatians, 7 Damascus, 47, 109 Dante Alighieri societies, 145 Dante Ruis, General, 154 de Collalto, Max, 146 Deir Yassin massacre (1948), 220 Delta (Nile), 142, 144 Democratic Party (Turkey), 41 Derik, 194 devletçilik (statism), 39 dhimmi, dhimmis, 18, 33 Di Marco, Ramona, 159 Diaspora­– A Journal of Transnational Studies, 8, 370 Diaspora Studies, 2–3, 8–12, 31, 370, 381 diaspora classical, old, 9, 13, 23, 31 labour, 119, 139, 141, 308, 316 typologies, 371–2

Zionist paradigm of, 13 see also individual diasporas diaspora tourism Armenian, 13, 15, 17, 20, 173–211 Italian, 150, 158 Digor, 126n Digoron, 103 Dikranagerd see Diyarbakir Dink, Hrant, 61n, 178 Diyarbakir (Dikranagerd), 175, 188, 196, 198, 207n Don Bosco School, 159 Druze, 39, 381 Dubai, 23, 307, 309, 313, 328n, 330n education, 41–2, 47, 117, 144–8, 176, 247, 255, 268n, 345–9 Egypt, 6–7, 15, 18–19, 23, 138–70, 279, 320, 338–58, 373 Egyptian Greek associations, 158, 166n Egyptian-Ottomans, 70–102 Egyptianism, 71, 78 Ekmekcioglu, Lerna, 177 El Hage, Jad, 373, 377–9, 392n Elah, Valley of, 179 Elâzığ (Harput), 175, 191, 194 Enver Paşa, 81–4, 98n Ephesus, 186 Erciyes, Mount, 193 Erzurum, 108, 120 esodo (exodus), 150, 157 Esposito, Bianca, 155 Ethem, Çerkez, 114 Ethiopia, 6, 140 Euphrates, 190 Europe, 5, 226, 243–4, 256–61, 338 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, 259, 267–8n European Union, 21, 250, 253–60 accession to, 43, 257 European University Cyprus, 253 Evangelical Protestants, 179 exchange of population (1922), 5–6, 40, 47 exile, 244, 246, 250, 274–80, 290–2 Palestinians, 212–29 Eyübizades, 77

i ndex | 409 Farid Paşa, Ahmad (Ahmet), 78 Farid, Muhammad, 70–102 Fascist organisations, 144, 147 Fascists, 140 Fatah, 280, 291 Federation of Caucasian Societies of Turkey, 122 Federation of United Caucasian Societies, 122 Fındık, 114 Five Day War, 123 France, 5–6, 157, 373, 382 Fratellanza Artigiana Italiana, 143 French Algerians (Pieds-Noirs), 5 Gabaccia, Donna, 139 galuyot (‘exiles’, ‘diaspora’) of the Jews, 9 Gasseria (Kayseri), 175 gatherings (al-Tajammu‘at), 287–90, 297n Gazi Muhammed Paşa, 109 gender, 222–5 Geneva, 83–4, 87, 165n Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, 342 Georgetown University, 177 Germans, Germany, 8, 46, 49, 84, 87–8, 90, 185, 253, 338 Gethsemane, Church of, 179 Gilroy, Paul, 8, 370, 375, 381, 383, 389, 395n Giovani esploratori italiani, 144 Giza, 349 Gluck, Sherna Berger, 215 Göbekli Tepe, 186 Göçek, Fatma Müge, 176–7, 202–3n Göl, A., 176 Great School of the Nation (Fener Rum Erkek Lisesi), 51 Greek Cypriots, 21, 241–73 Greek Orthodox, 18, 31–69 Greeks, Greece, 4–7, 9, 12, 49, 51, 138, 247–8, 371, 375 Greeks of Egypt, 143, 145, 148, 150, 158–9 Gulf, Gulf states, 7, 17–18, 22, 303–37 Gulf War (1991), 8, 324, 338 Gwadar, 305

Hage, Ghassan, 384, 387–8 Hage, Rawi, 373 Halil Bey, 88 Hall, Stuart, 8, 12, 291–2, 383–4, 389 Hamas, 291 Harput, 175, 191; see also Elâzığ Hatay, 18, 40, 46–7 Heliopolis, 354 ‘Hellen’ (Greek), 36 Hellenisation, 32, 50, 51, 248 Helsinki and Copenhagen Summits (1999, 2002), 43 Hemshin, 194 Holy Sepulchre, Church of the, 179 home, 12–14, 150, 160, 212–13, 220, 225, 229, 246, 274, 275, 277, 284, 286, 289, 370–400 homeland, 2–3, 6, 9, 12–15, 31, 111, 308–10 Armenian, 173–211, 243, 249 Palestinian, 212–29, 275–80, 282–4, 286–91 host state, 2–3, 6, 9–13, 15, 243–4, 258, 259, 262n, 309, 381 Hourani, Albert, 75 Hout, Syrine, 373–4, 376 Hovannisian, Richard G., 176, 185, 191, 202n Hulik, 108, 133n Husayn Ibn cAli, 78 Husaynis (Tunis), 77 Hüseyin Hilmi Paşa (Grand Vezir), 89 Huseynig (Ulukent), 192 Hussein, Saddam, 324, 338 I, the Divine, 381, 383, 389 Ibn Battuta, 305 Imam (or Sheikh) Shamil, 104–5, 127–8n immobility, waiting, 338–69 Indian diaspora see Malayalees Indian Islam, 322 Indian National Congress (INC), 319, 334n Indian Ocean, 304 Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), 319, 324, 332n, 334n Ingathering of the Exiles, 6 Ingushis, 104

410  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t International Association of Jews from Egypt (Israel), 159 Internet, 123, 196, 285, 288, 306, 387 Iran, Iranians, 7, 81, 181, 251, 315 Iranian Armenians, 251 Iraq, 6, 8, 22–3, 74, 77 Iraq, US invasion of, 23, 318, 324, 331n, 333n, 338, 341 Iraqi diaspora, 338–69 Iron, 103 Iron æghdau (‘Ossetian order’), 112 Isfahan, 4, 181 ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), 23 ‘original Islam’, 322 Isma‘il, Khedive, 141 Ismailis, 39 Israel, Israelis, 5–6, 8–9, 23, 150, 158–9, 179, 181, 212–16, 220–1, 225–9, 279–81, 284–5, 290 296n, 318, 371–2, 379–80, 392n Istanbul, 18–19, 32–53, 71–92, 106, 109, 119–26, 178, 180, 185, 191 Italian Chamber of Commerce (Alexandria), 143 Italian consular reports, 146, 154 Italian consulates, 142, 145 Italian Government, 145–7 Italian race laws, 147 Italian Society of the Veterans of the Patriotic Campaigns, 144 Italian Workers Society, 143 italianità, 144–5 Italians, 6–7, 9, 19 Italians of Egypt, 138–70 language, 143–6 literacy, 145 nationality, 143 press, 146–8 Italians of Egypt, The (dir. Sherif Fathy Salem), 157 Izmir, 19, 119, 121, 194 Jaffa, 212 Jalilis, 77 Jarrar, Nada Awar, 374, 376, 378, 386 Jawish, Shaykh, 84 Jerusalem, 35, 179, 225, 241

Jeune turc, 83 Jewish diaspora, 4, 6, 8–9, 12, 31, 179, 371–2, 391–2n Jewish Hahambaşı, 34 Jews, 6, 34, 138, 279 of Cyprus, 248 of Egypt, 6, 147, 150, 154, 159, 162n Jibin (Cibin), 186 Jordan, 23, 279–80, 340, 355 Judd, John (Giovanni Guidice), 161 Justice and Development Party, 43; see also AKP Kabarda, 103 Kabardians, 104, 106 Kabardino-Balkaria, 134n Kabri, 221 Kachadorian, George, 192 kafala (sponsorship), 307, 312 Kafkas, 114, 116 Kairali TV, 325 Kalafat, Yaşar, 115 Kamil, Mustafa, 86 Karachais, 122, 127n Karachi, 305 Karamanlıs (Libya), 77 Karapapaks, 110 Kars, 106–10, 114, 119, 127n, 175 Kasmiyye camp, 215 Kayseri, 107, 175, 193–5; see also Gasseria Kazdağlıs, 75, 77 Kazmaz, Süleyman, 115 Kelner, S., 179 Kemal Paşa, Mustafa (Atatürk), 40, 49, 114–15 Kemalism, 18, 32, 39, 52 Kerala, 22, 303–37 Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre, 319 Keralites, 18, 304, 318, 326n Khalili, Laleh, 217, 287 Khalid (Halit), Hasan Bey, 82 Khedivial Palace (Hıdıv Kasrı), 83 Knott, Kim and Seán McLoughlin, 10 Koinotites (Greek Communities), 143, 162n Kolyubakin, Aleksandr, 107 Kosovo, 134n kul, 79

i ndex | 411 Kurdish diaspora (Germany), 8 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 7, 185 Kurds, 5, 23, 108–11, 115, 119, 184, 186, 194–5, 198 Kuşha, 114, 122 Kuwait, Kuwaitis, 8, 306–7, 323, 381 Kymlicka, Will, 254, 257 Kyrenia, 245 al-Labban, 142 labour, 4, 7–8, 307–8, 310, 312–16, 341, 345, 348 associations, 147 camps, 42, 308, 312–13, 318 unions, 146, 148 unrest, 154, 309, 312, 315–16, 330–1n Lapbudak, 110–11 Latins (Roman Catholics), of Cyprus, 241, 254 Law School Egyptian, 79 Istanbul University, 82 Lebanese Armenians, 187, 242–4, 251 Lebanese diaspora, 8, 370–400 literature of, 370–400 Lebanese Government, 281–2, 289–90 Lebanon, 8, 37, 187, 243–4 Palestinians in, 14, 15, 18, 20–1, 23, 212–38, 274–300 sectarianism, 216 Lebanon Civil War, 5, 205n, 216, 280, 281 Levantines, 138, 145, 151 Libya, 8, 77, 80, 140, 147 liminality, 183, 187, 252, 292, 358 Linobambaki, 248 literature see Lebanese diaspora Al-Liwa’, 80 localisation, 18, 74, 76 Los Angeles, 181, 185, 384, 388 Low, Setha, 182 Lowry, Heath, 177 Luckman, T., 176 Luconi, Stefano, 139 Lusignans, 241 Maalouf, Amin, 379–83, 388–9 Maastricht Treaty, 256

McCallum, Fiona, 43 McCarthy, Justin, 177 Madinet Nasr, 22, 342, 354 Mahmut II (Sultan), 91 Malabar, 304–6, 317, 324 Malatia, 195 Malayalees, 17, 303–37 Mall of Arabia, 351 Mallu Enclaves, 308–18 Maltese, 6–7, 138, 148, 158–9 Mamluks, 92 Maoists, 319 Mar Elias camp, 286 Maraş (sanjak, province), 107, 114, 127n Marash (Kahramanmaraş), 175, 194 Marinetti, Filippo, 161n Maronites, 241, 254, 281 Marwaris, 321 masonic lodges, 144 networks, 4 Masters, Bruce, 37, 40 Mavratsas, Caesar V., 249 Mecca, 179 media, 175, 274–5, 279, 283, 285, 306, 310, 323; see also Internet, press, websites Mediterranean Sea, 141, 156, 185, 243 Mehmed II (Sultan), 34 Mehmet Ali Paşa, 75, 77, 91, 93; see also Muhammad ’Ali Mehter, 46 Melkites, 34, 37 Melkonian Educational Institute, 259 Memoirs and Diaries (of Muhammad Farid), 72, 78, 85 memory, 9, 13–15, 70, 156, 160, 173 Armenian, 173–211 collective, 49, 123, 180, 215, 221–3, 283, 289, 317 commemoration, 46, 182, 217 Egyptian Italian, 150–5 Palestinian, 212–29 migration global, 344–6 Iraqi, 338–69 Malayalee, 303–37 millet, 32–7, 41, 247

412  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Ministry for Italians in the World (Ministero per gli italiani nel mondo), 153, 165n Ministry of Education (Turkey), 42 minorities, 8, 37, 114, 315 of Cyprus, 241–73 see also non-Muslim missionary schools, 36–7 Mixed Courts (Egypt), 142 Monaco, Francesco, 160 Mongols, 190 Morocco, 6–7 Mosul, 77 Mubarak, Husni, 154 muhajir movement, 104–6, 108–9, 112–15, 123, 127n, 129n, 131n Muhammad ‘Ali, 37, 38, 93, 141; see also Mehmet Ali Muharram Bey, 142 Muhtar Paşa, Ahmet, 83 mukhabarat, 43 multiculturalism, 10, 31, 153, 158, 252, 255 Muş, 107–8, 110, 127n Musa Ler (Dağı), 175 Musa Paşa (Kundukhov), 109 Muscat, 305, 331n Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts (Istanbul), 178 Muslim diaspora, 307, 320–4 Mussolini government, 144, 147 mutual aid societies (Egypt), 143 Muzhir, Mahmud Efendi, 79 Muzhir Bey, Ahmad, 79 Myerhoff, Barbara, 182, 196 Myrtle Tree, The, 376–7, 388 Nahda, 37 nakba, 220, 278, 286, 338, 379 Nallino, Carlo, 161n narratives, Palestinian, 212–38 Nasser, 279 National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), 175, 184–5 National Bloc in Syria, 39 National Pact (Lebanon), 216 Nationalist Party (al-Hizb al-Watani), 70, 81 Nâzli Hanım (Princess), 86 Ndembu tribe, 183

Nepal, 316 New Julfa, 181 Niğde, 107 Night Counter, The, 375, 384–9 Noi di Port-Said (‘We of Port Said’), 157 non-Muslim minorities, 4–5, 34, 36, 38, 40–1, 49, 52 North Africa, 7, 18, 73–5, 79 North America, 5, 45, 226, 243 North Ossetia–Alania (Republic of ), 15, 103, 123 nostalgia, 6, 13, 14, 157, 225, 317, 370, 384 Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs), 279, 285, 290 Öğün, Major General Musa, 117 Oman, 305 Orfanelli, Alvise, 159 Origins: A Memoir, 382–3 Orthodox Christians, 33–5, 41, 47 Orthodox Christianity, 103 Oset, 121 Osman Efendi, 78 Osmaniye, 113 Ossetian women, 111–13, 118 Ossetianness/Caucasianness, 116, 120 Ossetians, 103–37 Ottoman Army, 46, 80, 82, 85, 109, 131n Ottoman-Egyptian elite, 70–102; see also Egyptian-Ottoman Ottoman Empire, 4–5, 16, 18–19, 22, 35–6, 103–37, 176 Ottoman-local elites, 19, 70–102 Ottoman Navy, 82, 85 Ottoman state, 35, 74 Ottomanisation, 18, 74 Ottomanism, 36, 38, 40 Ottomans, 16, 44, 82–92, 176 Overseas Indian Cultural Congress (OICC), 319 Pact of Umar, 33, 55n Pakistan, Pakistani, 7, 305, 320 Palestine, 5, 149, 159, 212–38, 274–300, 320, 355, 380, 384 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 7, 216, 228, 280, 281, 296n

i ndex | 413 Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), 281 Palestinian refugee women, 20, 212–29 Palestinians, 5, 7–9, 14–15, 17, 20–1, 212–38, 274–300, 371, 375, 379 Pamuk, Orhan, 178 Pan-Arabism, 279 Pan-Islamism, 39 Pan-Slavism, 39 Pan-Turanism, 39 Pan-Turkism, 36, 56n Panossian, Razmik, 175, 185, 189 ‘paradox of homecoming’, 159 Patriarch, Patriarchate of Antioch, 35, 37, 47, 50 Patriarchate of Alexandria, 35 Patriarchate of Constantinople, 35–6, 41–2, 44, 48–9 Patriarchate of Jerusalem, 35 Pattanam, 304 Pattie, Susan Paul, 252–3, 266n Payaslian, Simon, 45, 48, 242, 246 Pea, Enrico, 151 Pedhoulas, 246 People of the Book (ahl al-kitab), 33, 372 People’s Houses (Halkevleri), 58n, 115 Peteet, Julie, 281, 284 Petricioli, Marta, 140 Phanariots, 35 place attachment (topophilia), 182–99 Polites (Istanbulites), 51 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 280 Port Said, 157–8 Ports of Call, 379–80, 388 Poyrazlı, 113, 117–21 press, 16, 37, 145–6, 148 printing press, Arabic, 37 PRIO Cyprus Centre, 250, 264n Priyadarshini Cultural Centre, 319 Property Tax (Varlık Vergisi) (1942), 42 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, 280 Qatar, 8, 308 Quayson, Ato and Girish Daswani, 370–1 Quneitra, 107

al-Rafi‘i, ‘Abd al-Rahman, 72, 89, 92–3 Rashidiyya refugee camp, 218 refugee camps, 6, 15, 212–16, 219, 274–5, 281, 290–1; see also individual camps living conditions in, 281, 284 –7 Refugee Studies, 275–7 refugees, 17, 36 Armenian, 45, 48, 242–3, 251, 262, 266n Iraqi, 15, 17–18, 338–58 Italian, 151 Ossetian, 107 Palestinian, 14–15, 20–1, 212–38, 274–300 Sudanese, 5 Syrian, 23 religion, religiosity, 341, 356–7 remittances, 306, 330n re-Ossetianisation, 124 repatriation, 6, 44, 122–4, 134n, 150, 340 Republican People’s Party, 42, 48 resistance, Palestinian, 212–29, 277 return (to homeland), 20, 138, 155, 159, 183, 212, 343, 371–84 Palestinian, 212–29, 275, 279–92 Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), 183 rite of passage, 174, 182–3, 197 Riyadh, 313 Rize, 194 Rock of Tanios, The, 382 Roma (of Cyprus), 248, 255 Romioi, 32, 51 ‘rooted and routed’, 16 Rossi, Mario, 159 Ruberti, Roberto, 152 Ruggeri, Ruggero, 156 Rum Ortodoks, 47, 51 Rumness (Romiosini), 35–6, 48, 50, 52 Rums, 31–69 Russia, Russians, 105–6, 109–10, 112, 122, 124, 126, 253 Russian Caucasus, 109, 122–3 Russian Transcaucasus, 110 Russian ‘White Army’, 107 Russo-Caucasian War, 19, 104 Russo-Turkish War (1877–8), 106

414  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Sabra camp, 281, 295–6n Sadat government, 349 Safran, William, 8, 31, 219, 370–2, 389 Said, Edward, 244, 246–7, 250, 379 Said Halim Paşa (Grand Vezir), 82, 84–7 Salem, Sherif Fathy, 159 Sammarco, Angelo, 140, 162n San Lazzaro degli Armeni, 181 Sarıkamış, 106–9, 117 Sarmatians, 103 Saudi Arabia, 308, 312, 319, 322, 351, 355 Schiller, Nina Glick, 8 Schlee, Günter, 77 schools, 6, 39, 78, 193, 284, 347–8; see also education Armenian, 45, 244, 259 Cypriot, 247–8, 255 Greek Orthodox, Rum, 41–2, 44, 46–7, 49, 51 Italian, 144, 148, 157, 159 military, 82, 109, 117 missionary, 36, 37 Ossetian, 117 Turkish, 41–2, 195 Scottish Highlands, 179 Scythians, 103 sectarianism, 112, 247, 341, 356 secularism, 37, 39–40, 44 sedentariness, 242 Şehülislâm, 81 Selim I (Sultan), 78 September 1955 pogrom (Septemvriana), 42 Serbian Archdiocese, 35 Serbian Revolution (1804), 36 Şevket Paşa, Mahmut, 83 Sèvres Syndrome, 41 Shafak, Elif, 178 shatat (Palestinian diaspora), 9 Shatila camp, 228, 286, 293n, 295–6n Shaw, Stanford, 177 Sheffer, Gabriel, 8 Shi’a, Shi’as, 6, 315, 330n shopping malls, shopping centres, 340, 346–58 Shubra, 142 Sidi Gabir, 156

Sidon, 221 Siirt, 107 Silk Road, 186, 189 Sindesmos Aiguptioton Ellinon (Association of Egyptian Greeks), 158 Sipkans, 110 Sivas, 107, 120, 127n 6 October City (Cairo), 22, 342–58 slavery, 9 Società italiana del Risorgimento in Alexandria, 143 sojourn, sojourners, 219, 308 Somewhere, Home, 376–7, 379, 386, 388 South Asian diaspora, migrants, 303–37 South Ossetian Autonomous Region of Georgia, 103 Soviet Union, 187, 189, 251, 262n Spencer, Robert, 246 Spettatore Egiziano, Lo, 145 spiurk (Armen. ‘diaspora’), 9 Sri Lanka, 316 ‘step-homeland’, 249, 264n Suares, Raphael, 161n Sudanese refugees, 5 Suez, 144 Suez Canal, 141–2, 153 Suez crisis (1956), 150 Sufi brotherhoods, 4 Sufism, 76 Sultaniye Kalesi, 82 Sunni Muslims, 6, 23, 216, 341, 343, 356 Surp (Saint) Giragos church, 175, 188, 198, 199n Surp Magar Monastery (Cyprus), 245 Sweden, 338 syndicalism, 147 Syria, 16, 18, 22–3, 31–69, 77, 107, 124, 242–4, 279–80, 320, 340, 373 Syriacs, 34 Syrian Armenians, 242–7 Syrianism, 38 taife kâfirlerin (community of non-believers), 35 al-Tajammu‘at (‘gatherings’), 287–90, 297n

i ndex | 415 Tal al-Zaatar camp, 281, 295n Talât Pasha, 84, 87, 98n, 201n Tanzimat Reforms, 35–9, 55n Tariq el-Jdeideh, 288 Taylor, Charles, 256 Tegi, Tegâi, 126n Thordarson, Fridrik, 126n Tigris, 190 Tokaçlı, 45–7 Tokat, 107, 114 Tölölyan, Khachig, 8, 12 Topalian, Shaké, 184 topophilia, 182, 192, 198; see also place attachment translocal politics of Malayalees, 303–37 transnationalism, 8, 260, 274, 304 of Malayalees, 303–37 Treaty of Lausanne (1923), 47 Tremaglia, Mirko, 153–4, 165n Troodos, 246 Tunisia, 7, 140 Turgut Özal, government of, 43 Turkey, 7, 11, 15–16, 18, 20, 23, 31–3, 38–45, 47, 49, 52, 89, 91, 104–7, 115–26, 173–211, 247–8 Turkification, 32, 50, 115, 124, 176 Turkish Cypriots, 21, 241–73 Turkish diaspora, 8, 253 Turkish Government, 44, 107, 174, 177, 180, 190, 195, 197 Turkish nationalism, 38–40, 44, 49, 176, 241, 249 Turkish Penal Code, 178 Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), 117 Turkish War of Independence (1919–23), 114 Turkish-Islamic Synthesis (Türk-İslam sentezi), 40 Turkmen, 108, 110 Turko-Circassians, 18 Turks, 4–5, 20, 81, 85–6, 89, 92, 110, 118–19, 174, 176–8, 184, 190, 193–200, 248, 251, 254 Turner, Edith, 183 Turner, Victor, 183 Tyre, 215

Ubikhs, 127n, 130n ulema, 74–6, 323 Ungaretti, Giuseppe, 161n United Arab Emirates (UAE), 8, 308, 309, 313, 315, 316, 328n, 330n United Kingdom, 338 United Nations, 227, 250, 256–7, 281, 340, 342–3 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 338, 340, 342–4, 347 United States, 6, 11, 139, 150, 157–8, 174, 180, 184, 187, 192, 194, 198, 250, 322, 350, 381–5 Upper Egypt, 142 Vakıflı, 186, 191 Van, 175, 186, 190 Varadarajan, Latha, 11 Varjabedian, Hrag, 180 Vatican, 179 Vijayan, Pinarayi, 319 Vladikavkaz, 127n al-Waqa’i‘ al-Misriyya, 79 Watenpaugh, Keith, 39–40, 243 websites, 151–2, 155, 158, 161, 190, 334 Werbner, Pnina, 8 women, 3, 14, 79, 306–7, 357 Armenian, 194, 246 Ossetian, 111–13, 118 Palestinian, 20, 212–38 workers, 147, 215, 252, 290, 350 Egyptian, 7–8 Italian, 141–3, 147, 148 Gulf, 17, 22, 306–34, 341 Lebanese, 282 Syrian, 8 Thai, 8 World Zionist Organisation, 7 Yemen, 6, 75, 80, 305, 320 Yerevan, 189, 204n, 205n yerli yabancılar (resident aliens), 40 Yazidi communities, 23 Young Turks, 36, 39, 86

416  |  di a sporas of the mod e r n mid d l e e a s t Younis, Alia, 375, 384–9 youth Armenian, 258 Iraqi, 338–69 Italian, 144 Jewish, 179 Malayalee, 320, 323 Ossetian, 120 Palestinian, 274–300

youth clubs, 39, 42 Yozgat, 107, 113, 119–20, 125 al-Zahrawi, ‘Abd al-Hamid, 37 Zaydan, Jurji, 38 Zionist lobby, 11 Zionist narrative of 1948, 220 Zoğrafyon High School, 42, 59n Zurayq, Constantine, 38