Edward Said's Concept of Exile: Identity and Cultural Migration in the Middle East 9781350986190, 9781786732606

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Rehnuma Sazzad is a research associate at the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies (CCLPS) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Her book Language and Nationalism in the Decolonized World is forthcoming and she has published various book chapters as well as articles in South Asian Cultural Studies, Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies and Middle Eastern Studies. She completed a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University and was awarded MAs from both the University of Manchester and the University of Dhaka.

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‘An important contribution to the growing field on the history and criticism of Arab intellectual thought’. Anastasia Valassopoulos, Senior Lecturer in World Literatures, University of Manchester ‘A thoughtful study of the experience of exile among Arab intellectuals in the twentieth century. Sazzad’s provocative perspective places Edward Said as the defining figure whose ideas allow us to recognise that Arab writers and film makers are embedded in historical experiences that fall well beyond the boundaries of their national traditions.’ Robert J. C. Young, Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature, New York University

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EDWARD SAID’S CONCEPT OF EXILE Identity and Cultural Migration in the Middle East REHNUMA SAZZAD

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Published in 2017 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright © 2017 Rehnuma Sazzad The right of Rehnuma Sazzad to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Written Culture and Identity 6 ISBN: 978 1 78453 687 9 eISBN: 978 1 78672 260 7 ePDF: 978 1 78673 260 6 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset by Newgen Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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Pundit Binod Bihari Acharya & Professor Fakrul Alam –​My insignificant Gurudakkhina

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Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements

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Introduction

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1 Exile and Intellectual Practice

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2 Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals

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Said and the executive view of exile Said’s explorations of exile

The reflection of Said’s ideas in contemporary Arab literature and film The Arab artists and exilic intellectual practice

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3 Exile as Resistance



4 The Place of Writing in Exile

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5 Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism

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Resistance against supremacist ideologies Resistance as an emancipatory project

Adornian model: ‘Happy with the idea of unhappiness’ Auerbachian model: cultivating ‘the pleasures of exile’ ‘The last Jewish intellectual’: Saidian legacy

Nationalism and voyage in: postcolonialism in perspective Postmodernism and the exilic stance on established narratives Contrapuntal rather than postcolonial or postmodern criticism

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142 156 167

191 207 220

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Contents

Conclusion

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Notes 241 Bibliography 243 Index 261

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List of Illustrations Ill.1: Salah Ad-​Din: the peaceful progression of the Hajj pilgrims

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Ill.2: Salah Ad-​Din: the technical display of bloodshed to reduce the details of violence

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Ill.3: Prodigal Son: the clown representing the prevalent grotesquery

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Ill.4: Prodigal Son: hyper-​realistic projection of survival

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Ill.5: Salah Ad-​Din: the trials of Louise and Acre’s Governor

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Ill.6: Alexandria… New York: imaginary rendering of Yehia’s first view of Ginger

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Ill.7: Alexandria… Why?: Yehia’s Arabic rendition of a speech given by Hamlet

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Ill.8: Alexandria Again and Forever: an exasperated Yehia with Amr

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Misr International Films own all images, which are included in the book with their kind permission.

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Acknowledgements Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Matthew 7.14 (KJV)

I acknowledge a great debt to Holy Cross College in Bangladesh, because it enabled me to find my own voice as a nascent thinker. My secondary school English tutor, Pundit Binod Bihari Acharya, remains a life-​long source of inspiration for me. Professor Fakrul Alam and Professor Syed Manzoorul Islam influenced my formative days at the University of Dhaka. Professor Alam in particular encouraged me to learn about Edward Said’s intellectual mission, which eventually led me to the doctoral studies on which this book has been based. I am thoroughly indebted to my Director of Studies, Professor Patrick Williams at Nottingham Trent University, whose excellent guidance and encouragement helped me to emerge as a postcolonial interpreter. Edward Said himself as well as Amartya Sen have always been distant-​and-​yet-​near mentors for me. I am grateful to my doctoral committee members, including Dr Christopher Farrands, for their guidance and support. I also remember my MA supervisor, Dr Anastasia Volassopolous at the University of Manchester, for her generous help at the beginning of my PhD journey. Prior to that, the guidance provided by Professor Mohammed Rahamatullah in Bangladesh was invaluable to me. I am certainly thankful to the Charles Wallace Bangladesh Trust for their financial support towards my PhD project. I remain immensely grateful to Peter Bircham at the University of Cambridge for urging me to read The Cairo Trilogy, which initiated this exciting journey of discovering the Arab-​American intellectual landscape.

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Acknowledgements It has been a pleasure to work with the I.B.Tauris editors, Azmina Siddique and Sophie Rudland. Surely, I have benefitted from Sophie Rudland’s admirable expertise and insights. I am also obliged to the anonymous readers of my manuscript for their constructive suggestions. To my grandparents: this scholarship survives because of you all. To my life partner, Dr Taufiq Rahman: I would never have accomplished this book without your unwavering support throughout the time. To my son, Tauseef Rahman: loads of love from Mummy for all the joys you provided her with during her writing.

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The stories of the dispossessed are part of world history. This is suggested by the approximately 1450 bce departure of the uprooted Israelites from Egypt, whose millennia-​spanning lamentations are echoed in the wait for the Babylonian captives from Jerusalem to return home in 597 bce (Rose, 1993). Loss and longing are inexorable results of the condition of displacement. Naturally, the meaning of exile incorporates the loss of home, identity and mooring. Exilic beings are thus ‘porus entit[ies]’ (Shreiber, 1998: 274). Alienation and nostalgia for a faraway land are the two axes of their experience. Desolation, disjunction and dissonance are the inevitable consequences of the phenomenon. Having lost close links with his native Palestine, Edward Said, one of the most prominent scholars of the twentieth century, also became an exiled individual. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 by uprooting thousands of Palestinians did not leave Said’s family unaffected. When the catastrophe known as the Nakba forced a mass exodus on the Palestinian people, whose villages were razed to the ground by the Israeli authorities, the family moved permanently away from Jerusalem, their home town. They had been dividing their residence between Jerusalem and Cairo, along with a summer retreat in a Lebanese mountain village. As the Nakba turned

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile countless Palestinians into refugees, a collective statelessness engulfed all of them (Said, 2000). Though the family’s reasonably sound financial condition rescued him from suffering the devastating plight that his fellow countrymen came to experience, the Nakba and the events related to it left their traumatic imprints on his parents’ psyches (Said, 1986). Said’s exile was further intensified as he was separated from the family by following a trajectory from Cairo to Columbia during which he became a member of US academia. He had been a successful part of the academic world when the Arab–​Israeli War of 1967 broke out, which ‘seemed to embody the dislocation that subsumed all the other losses’ (Said, 2000: 293; emphasis in the original). Nevertheless, the cataclysmic event worked as an eye-​opener for him (Said, 2003). His exilic identity was brought into sharp focus as the war involved both the country of his birth and the country in which his work was based. As a Palestinian-​American living in New York, he could not join in the unanimous support for ‘our’ (the Americans’) victory against ‘them’ (the Arabs). Instead, he felt genuinely torn between his more clearly visible Arab-​Palestinian background and his recognised position as a promising American scholar, which became complicated because of what he ‘had to say about the quest for Palestinian justice –​ which was considered anti-​semitic and Nazi-​like’ (Said, 2001b: 561). Being an exile, he could not think of identity in binary terms. Instead, he embarked on a mission of formulating some momentous thoughts on cultural belonging that aimed at transcending the mainstream ideologies of both East and West. Consequently, Said’s scrutiny of the non-​divisive worldviews derived by intellectuals in exile is not limited to the socio-​political history of their cultural migration. Said is also interested in the processes of their questioning of the trappings of belonging. The commitment with which the questioning intellectuals move away from the comfort of conventions is my area of enquiry here. I illustrate this commitment in the works of Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Leila Ahmed, Nawal El Saadawi and Youssef Chahine. I  selected Mahfouz because of the augustness of his commitment in exposing the conventions that hinder the emergence of a modern Egyptian society. In doing so, the novelist remained true to the vibrant core of the society, which implies its solidity in terms of retaining ‘Pharonic, 2

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Introduction Arab, Muslim, Hellenistic, European, Christian, Judaic’ (ibid.:  319)  and many other cultural influences. Thus, Mahfouz is an apt example of remaining in exile from commonplace Egypt by migrating to its historic nucleus through his own writing. Mahfouz’s self-​exile from his familiar environment through his creative mind explains the reason behind his inclusion in the project, despite the fact that he was never an émigré (he did not even receive his Nobel Prize in Literature in person). In sheer contrast, Darwish as a Palestinian poet is an obvious choice for the book, embodying as he does the tragic fate of homelessness. Young Darwish and his family were forced to leave their village in order to survive the Israeli invasion in 1948. When the seven-​year-​old Darwish and his family slipped surreptitiously into Israel, their situation was much more vulnerable. The poet was uprooted even from his exile in Lebanon in 1982. Darwish remained a wanderer in the Arab world and in Europe for 26 years before he was given permission to return to the West Bank in 1996. However, he could not return to his demolished village and was not allowed to stay in his part of Palestine (he stayed in Galilee only for a few days). Darwish’s life, therefore, is made up of a series of temporary exiles and multiple border crossings, which enables him to lend his ‘voice to rooted exiles and the plight of the trapped refugees, to dissolving boundaries and changing identities, to radical demands and new languages’ (ibid.: 325). Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine is well reputed for his politically involved filmmaking that challenges the prevalent syntax of both his craft and his cultural world. Because of having Lebanese-​Greek-​Catholic ethnicity in Muslim Egypt, he is a marginal figure there. His pride in being an Egyptian is steadfast, even though he suffers from a loss of integration into the dominant strand of the society. However, this deprivation has unusual advantages: it makes him work through the differences of identities, avoid the pitfalls of blind sectarianism and re-​unite with all on the basis of a common humanity. Chahine’s works challenging cultural fixity inspired me to create a dialogue between his films and Said’s ideas of criticism. This is especially true because of a cameo appearance of the critic in Chahine’s film, The Other (1999). In the brief segment, Said nullifies the notion of unmovable origins of cultural productions and urges everyone to think beyond an unchangeable place of belonging. Thus, I  selected Chahine 3

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile because of his deep commitment to integrating ideas representing diverse cultural ethos. Egyptian-​American writer Leila Ahmed offers invaluable insights into negotiating cross-​cultural callings. The writer left Egypt in the mid1950s for higher education in England, had a brief sojourn in the Persian Gulf and permanently settled in America during the 1980s. She shares Said’s Anglicised upbringing in the Arab world. However, Arab language and culture were an integral part of Said’s Palestinian existence. Because of the distressing fact that Arabic was treated as a fearsome and prohibited language in America, keeping his bond alive with literary Arabic was a mark of Said’s non-​conformity to Hollywood-​infused preoccupation with Arab inferiority. This is why it was disquieting for Said that Ahmed chose to disregard a language that formed the basis of her scholarly knowledge in Islamic doctrines. The critic thinks that because she was separated from the educated Arab environment during her formative years, Ahmed was prejudiced against ‘her own language’ (Said, 2004). Said’s disapproval of Ahmed’s distance from her linguistic heritage made me interested in the two intellectuals’ views on cultural conventions and negotiations. Their viewpoints are even more worthy of discussion when we realise that in the Egyptian context Ahmed found the classical Arabic language rather inhibiting, as it ran parallel to colloquial Arabic, which was closer to the people of the country. For Ahmed, standard Arabic is a vehicle for Islamic laws and regulations, which perpetuate the subjugation of women in Muslim societies. Since Said is criticised for his lack of attention to gender and cultural conformity, Ahmed’s appearance in the book is a fruitful way of revealing the feminist aspects of the critic’s exile-​influenced mission. To highlight the feminist strength of Said’s exilic thoughts, Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi has been included in the book. During an encounter with Saadawi in a conference, Said asserted that he is a better feminist than her (Malti-​Douglas, 1995). Despite the dissimilar focuses of the writers, therefore, Saadawi’s role as an intellectual engaged in public debates has a relevant model in Said’s adversarial position to unjust and unethical power. In fact, Saadawi’s exposure of patriarchy in its multifarious guises resulted in her isolated existence in societies of East and West. 4

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Introduction Her success in the West also generated antagonism, since her feminist interpretation of Arab culture reveals its oppressive state, which confirms the Western idea of Arab backwardness. The fact remains, though, that the cruelty that Saadawi endures at home and abroad ironically enriches her perpetual search for non-​domination in a non-​hierarchical society. Rather than being paralysed by the distress of exclusion, Saadawi determinedly negotiates freedom for men and women through her writing, which brings her closer to the Saidian mission of advancing human freedom. Saadawi, as well as the creative minds mentioned above, are therefore selected to present a formidable intellectual practice that places the principles of truth, justice and freedom in the centre of all erudite activities. This calls for an introduction to the works of each of the figures and their contributions to their respective arenas. Naguib Mahfouz earned the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, which remains the Arab world’s sole award of this nature in the field. As I explained above, he is also the only artist here who does not share Said’s experience of displacement. However, Mahfouz was neither a conformist nor just an ordinary citizen of his country. In 1994 Islamist extremists stabbed him in the neck for his courageous stance in favour of writers’ freedom of expression, and for his allegorical novel, Children of the Alley (1996; originally published in 1959), where he interrogates the narratives of God and man. Fauzi M. Najjar (1998) records that this writing caused a furious uproar among the clergy of Al-​Azhar, one of the oldest centres of Islamic learning, whereupon President Gamal Abdel Nasser sent a personal envoy to persuade him to stop publishing the piece. The editor of Al-​ Ahram, Egypt’s influential state-​run newspaper, intervened in Mahfouz’s favour by explaining to the president that the writer was not flouting religion in the novel. By contrast, Mahfouz’s magnificent creation, Cairo Trilogy (2001; Palace Walk was originally published in 1956; the other two parts, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street, were published in Arabic in 1957), demonstrates his antipathy to religious fundamentalism, chauvinism and authoritarianism within a dense fabric of modern Egyptian culture enlivened through the realistic and multidimensional tales of a Cairene house. The three novels are now combined in a book and considered to be ‘the magnum opus of the 5

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Cairene urban chronicles’ (Hafez, 2001: xiii; emphasis in the original). The fact that Mahfouz’s publisher initially refused to publish the weighty book is indicative of the challenge the artist faced in an intellectually dissatisfactory environment. While Mahfouz examined why the Cairene house failed to be a home for its inhabitants, he also struggled to survive in the workaday world his homeland offered to him. As a civil servant, he faced a huge challenge to continue with his writings, which he surmounted through a ‘ruthless control over his time and total subservience to the force of habit’ (El-​Enany, 1993: 33). Through his rigorous efforts he turned the unfavourable situation around. Consequently, he was able to be part of the bureaucratic system as a government employee and yet outside it as an astute observer of life in his writing. Samia Mehrez (1993: 76) explains: ‘he learned to do two things at once: internalise [the rigid system], even in his attitude as a “free” writer, and attack it while shielding himself against it’. We will eventually discover that Mahfouz’s ability to be both inside and outside his authoritarian culture comes beautifully alive through the Trilogy. His Echoes of an Autobiography (1997; first published in Al-​Ahram in 1994) establishes this even more pithily through his meditative commentaries on life and musings over death. In accord with Hala Nassar and Najat Rahman (2008), I  believe that Mahmoud Darwish’s writing, resulting as it does from his experiences of exile and loss, makes him a world-​renowned contemporary poet. Said attests to this by calling Darwish ‘a poet of many dimensions’ who is ‘certainly a public poet, but also an intensely personal and lyrical poet. And I think, on the world scale today, he’s certainly one of the best’ (see Said and Barsamian, 2003: 162). Indeed, the intimacy and profundity of Darwish’s thoughts earned him international recognition. He stood out not only by rebelling against the oppressions of the Palestinians but also for enhancing ‘cultural freedom’ through advocating a peaceful solution of the Palestine–​Israel conflict (see Lannan Foundation, 2002). The poet’s works explored in the following chapters fully prove his sublime vision and staunch humanism. A collection of his verses written during the 1960s and 1970s, entitled Selected Poems (1973), suggests that the words are produced as a result of his witnessing the sufferings of his 6

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Introduction dispossessed people. Even so, his images transcend the locale in which they are embedded, and embrace the universal feeling of deprivation and loss. Memory for Forgetfulness (1995; originally published in 1986) proves this anew. It contains the memory of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 but pays tribute to human existence. Another collection of his poems, The Adam of Two Edens (2000), establishes ‘the capaciousness of his imagination and the vast cultural and humanistic scope of the landscapes of his concern’, (Akash, 2000:  21). Similarly, the Palestinian-​American poet Fady Joudah’s translation of three Darwish books by combining them in The Butterfly’s Burden (2007) is remarkable for introducing us to the Darwishian dialogues between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, home and exile, and poetry and prose. Similarly, Youssef Chahine audaciously examined the status quo, which earned him the title of ‘the madman’ (Fawal, 2001: 44) at the early stage of his career. But his short-​lived exile (1965–​7) in Lebanon because of disagreement with the government is a less known event, especially compared to his more important stay in the US to be trained as an actor. Ibrahim Fawal (2001) records that Chahine thought of himself as a self-​chosen exile during his short stay away from Egypt, which was caused by his dispute with the Deputy Minister of Culture regarding his film project on the Aswan Dam. Since the construction of the dam was a key objective of the Nasser government, Chahine’s confrontation with the minister cost him the major awards for his epic film El Naser Salah Ad-​Din (1963), which was created under the aegis of the national cinema authorities. When President Nasser consented to his return, Chahine was uncertain ‘whether the red carpet or the red cap (symbol of death sentence) would be waiting him. Neither was in sight’ (ibid.: 44). He went on building an extraordinary career of creating about 40 feature films in the span of 58 years without compromising on his criticism of the Egyptian leadership. His life-​long contribution to world cinema was recognised when he won the Cannes Film Festival 50th Anniversary Prize in 1997. Along with El Naser Salah Ad-​Din (1963), some of the Chahine films I discuss in the following chapters include The Return of the Prodigal Son (1976), Destiny (1997) and the Alexandria Quartet incorporating Alexandria… Why? (1978), An Egyptian Story (1982), Alexandria Again 7

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile and Forever (1989) and Alexandria… New York (2004). Chahine presents his disillusionment with state nationalism in his Andre Gide adaptation, The Return of the Prodigal Son. Gide (1953) examines identity formation in a socio-​religious context through the biblical myth of the Prodigal Son. In his short story, a rebellious son leaves his father’s house because he finds it unsatisfactory. When the profligate son returns home with hunger, poverty and frustration as his failures, he engages in dialogues with his parents and elder brother. This becomes Gide’s means of questioning a free spirit’s struggle against a priori thought processes. Chahine retains the framework of the story but his focus lies on an idealist’s entrapment in the post-​Nasserite era. Thus, Chahine interrogates the history of postcolonial Egypt and the individual struggle for a satisfactory identity through Gide’s mediation of the biblical parable. Destiny is also a historical drama, which portrays the twelfth-​century Arab scholar Ibn Rushd as an enlightened soul. The film shows that the renowned scholar suffered exile due to his progressive ideas and his books were burnt in a public square, which signifies the ban on some of Chahine’s maverick films. The first of the Alexandria Quartet, Alexandria …Why?, was banned in some parts of the Arab world because it favoured peace and tolerance between the Arabs and the Israelis (see ibid.). On the other hand, An Egyptian Story makes us feel that the director is banished to an inner world in order to search for his truthful face amongst the many faces he has acquired over the years. Alexandria Again and Forever is a musical that traces the meaning of democracy through the legacies of Alexander and Cleopatra against the backdrop of a hunger strike called by the Egyptian film industry. Alexandria… New York is a powerful musical that conjures up cultural references like a dance sequence borrowed from Alexandria and the old quarters of Cairo. As a result of these creations, Nick Bradshaw (2008) suggests that ‘Chahine continued to resist borders wherever the world raised them’. Leila Ahmed, the Victor S.  Thomas Professor of Divinity at Harvard University and the winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion (Sacirbey, 2012), did not enter into direct conflict with the Egyptian state. When Ahmed returned to Cairo after finishing her undergraduate studies at Cambridge she became a victim of Nasser’s bureaucratic machinery. In 8

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Introduction that respect, the essayist inherited the conflict through her father, due to his strong opposition to Nasser’s Aswan Dam project. ‘A learned civil engineer, Ahmed’s father saw this project as politically motivated and short-​ sighted. However, with the prevalence of fierce nationalism, his opposition was looked upon as a form of treason’ (Thomas and Hook, 2001). Ahmed’s memoir, A Border Passage: From Cairo to America –​A Woman’s Journey (2000), records that her father Dr Abd al-​Aziz Ahmad’s oppositional act triggered the government’s increasingly harsh punishment of the family, starting with his removal from his post. When Ahmed required a permit to leave the country to go to England for her doctoral studies, this was indefinitely postponed. Ahmed fought against the authorities for four years before she obtained the much-​desired permission. I also discuss her seminal book, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (1992). Said (1993: xxiv) underscores that the writing expounds ‘a very different sort of idea about Islam, the Arabs and the Middle East’ by breaking off any monolithic views on them, which he calls ‘the old despotism’. On the other hand, Nawal El Saadawi has been put in prison, dismissed from a high government post and forced into exile for unfailingly speaking out against the flaws of her society. It is no wonder that she feels homeless both inside and outside her homeland for standing up against male chauvinist practices and authorities. She dedicates her travelogue: To all who travel and who know exile far from the homeland. And to all who know exile in the homeland. (Saadawi, 1992: vi) Her spirited writing and activism have been rewarded for advancing ‘a vision of piece and humanity by imagining one day each year when the world is free from injustice and violence’ (Dagerman, 2012). This is reflected in my analyses of her works like The Hidden Face of Eve:  Women in the Arab World (1980; originally published in 1977), Memoirs from the Women’s Prison (1986; originally published in 1983), A Daughter of Isis (1999) and Walking through Fire (2002). Saadawi’s radical 9

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile views against the oppression of women in The Hidden Face of Eve resonate with both her own life experience and that of the women she came to know through her medical profession, writing and activism. Memoirs from the Women’s Prison depicts a remarkable fellow-​feeling inside al-​Qanatir prison, which Saadawi experienced with detainees as diverse as secular writers, Islamists and an oblivious village girl, who were incarcerated by President Anwar Sadat’s regime due to their alleged defiance of the state. A Daughter of Isis is an autobiographical piece that tells us how the writer acquired a dauntless spirit of speaking truth at all costs. Its sequel, Walking through Fire, concentrates on a critical analysis of a death threat that exiled the writer. Perceivably, Saadawi’s courage in speaking the unadorned truth is exemplary. Even though Said (1990: 280) asserts that Saadawi is ‘overexposed (and overcited)’ in the West, we shall discover both the significance and the limitation of Saadawi’s dissenting voice. Notably, the writers and the director’s anti-​authoritarian stance is unchanged, despite their varied class backgrounds. Ahmed’s background combined the classes of the aristocrat and the professional elite. Both Said and Chahine belonged to an educated middleclass, though Said enjoyed the greater assurance of wealth. Darwish originated from a land-​owning farming class. While Mahfouz was from a lower-​middle-​class background, Saadawi could be associated with both the aristocracy, because of her mother’s ancestry, and the lower-​middle-​class and peasantry, as her father was part of both. In fact, the intellectuals’ humanistic politics is applied not only to challenge the locally existing problematics of class, race and gender relations but also to create a comprehensive understanding of the cultures of the world. How they transcend their Middle Eastern, Arab, American, Egyptian, Palestinian identities in order to examine the parallel flows of the cultures of the East and the West is what struck me most about their endeavours. As Terry Eagleton (2009: 155) emphasises that ‘culture has to be the means through which humans’ civilisational values are reflected’, the intellectuals unflaggingly project the interconnection of cultures through the counter-​mapping of the East/​West axis. The fact that the four intellectuals are from Egypt highlights the country’s historic role in influencing various cultures and civilisations. In fact, the country has had a leading role in the publishing and filmmaking sectors of 10

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Introduction the region. The revival of modern Arabic literature also began in Egypt during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Palestinian artists represent another hub of creativity in the area. Therefore the Palestinian poet contributes to the productive values of cultural exchanges through Palestine’s historic plurality and its present plight of increasingly narrowing existence in the Arab world. Thus, the intellectuals are representative of the Arab countries’ current turmoil in identity formation due to cultural contacts with the Western world through migration and colonial and imperial presences in the region. The intellectuals’ representative works regarding Arab social formation, continuity and trajectory strengthen my claim. There are many other valiant Arab writers and filmmakers who stand for the pressing issues. Considering the scope of the book, though, the inclusion of intellectuals from other countries of the region would not have been possible. I would still like to emphasise that the richness of the Arab social framework comes from the reality of surviving a variety of climactic and cultural influences in the region. Roger Allen (2003) reminds us that both community formation and the expansion of cultural horizon form a significant part of the Arab literary tradition. Samih al-​Qasim (1939–​2014), who is regarded as one of the finest poets of Palestine, believes that Arab nations should form a greater community based on the shared language. The Syrian love poet, Nizar Qabbani (1923–​98), also vouches for Arab unity, despite his searing criticism of the region, which is destabilised by war and destruction. ‘The stories of love he tells in his poetry are … rebellion against rehearsed systems of knowledge; be they ideology, theology, philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, or simply social order’ (Ouyang, 2013: 5). Qabbani upholds the power of love, because it empowers an individual to connect to his/​her inner self as well as form an agency for social transformation. Likewise, the Syrian revolutionary poet Adonis (1930–​) advocates both rootedness to Arab culture and its rejuvenation. In the words of his translator, Khaled Mattawa:  ‘He’s been unsparing against the deeply rooted forces of intolerance in Arab thought, but also celebratory of regenerative streaks in Arab culture’ (see Jaggi, 2012). Another pioneer of reviving Arabic poetry, the Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-​Sayyab (1925–​64), alludes to 11

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile historical characters in order to comment on the present state of affairs. The emergence of Arab women in the process of reformation is indicative of the educational advancement of Arab societies. Like Adonis, Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan (1917–​2003) questions the regressive social norms, even though she views them through the prism of the non-​freedom of her homeland. ‘“When the roof fell on Palestine, the veil fell off the face of the Nablus woman,” she wrote’ (Joffe, 2003). Kuwaiti poet Suad al-​Sabah (1942–​) contributes to the call of emancipation by stating her ennui about ‘traditional words’ and announcing her resolve to ‘invent’ herself by ‘deviat[ing] a bit from the text’ (see Allen, 2003: 110, 111). The Arabic novel emerged during the 1930s from the need to diverge from the perennial poetic form and ‘to explore topics of current concern’ (ibid.: 185). Maghribi novelist Tahir Wattar (1936–​2010) utilised the new mode of writing to preserve the cultural memory of the War of Liberation in Algeria (1954–​62) and that country’s post-​independence struggle. On the other hand, Muhammad Barradah (1938–​) and Muhammad Shukri (1935–​2003) explored the familial crises through the art form. Barradah’s first novel, The Game of Forgetting (1997), recounts the pre-​and post-​independence experience of a Morroccan family in order to reveal how ‘[t]‌he language of the heart is always ripped open between reality and dream’ (see Qader, 2000: 220). On the other hand, Muhammad Shukri’s major work, For Bread Alone (1973), relates to his family’s struggle against poverty and his personal resolve for literacy. Shukri mastered his language when he was a young man. Similarly, I acquired my knowledge of reading Arabic and a permanent familiarity with it through my pre-​university education. Nevertheless, I consulted translation and subtitles to help me understand Mahfouz, Darwish, Saadawi and Chahine better. To comprehend Darwish fully, for example, I read the verses and the translations that appear side by side in texts like The Butterfly’s Burden. Said and Ahmed wrote in English, which enables me to not be entirely dependent on translations. This is not to deny the fact that my reading of the texts had to face the difficulties related to literary translations. Mustapha Ettobi (2006) offers a comparative discussion between the original text of Shukri’s work mentioned above and its English and French translations by delineating how the writer’s voice is not 12

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Introduction properly transmitted, due to the translators’ personal preferences for various socio-​political aspects of the writing. Plainly put, translation becomes a sort of interpretation by the translator, whose voice is sometimes more intensified than the original expressions, and sometimes less due to missing out the connotations and cultural nuances. The shortcoming this entails is succinctly expressed by Saadawi (2000/​01: 34), when she explains that one cannot translate ‘the spirit’, or, ‘the music of the language’ contained in a piece of writing. Marion Stocking (2008) endorses this view while discussing Darwish’s poetry. However, Stocking accepts that ‘[t]‌he magic of image, litany, rhythm, and incantation does survive linguistic boundaries’, which is why reading the texts in translation is similar to knowing the intellectuals’ ‘second voice’ (ibid.). Indeed, the thought content of the writing remains intact even in its translated appearance. Following Jeffrey Sacks (2011), therefore, I consider the original texts/​arts to be a form of translation of the intellectuals’ thoughts from their consciousness. Therefore, the ‘second voice’ of the consciousness is created through a further translation of the ideas from the existing language. Ultimately, the process advances the goal of accelerating cultural exchanges around the globe by removing the linguistic barriers. However, texts like Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language (Kilito, 2008) prohibit the exchange because of possessiveness about the Arabic language and the power dynamics mediating the politico-​cultural encounter between Arabic and European languages. Ironically, the eloquent polemic of the prominent Moroccan critic Abdelfattah Kilito (2008) was accessible to the speakers of English through Waïl Hassan’s adroit translation. Consequently, the critic was able to create a forceful intervention into the discourse of world literature by summoning the experts to be mindful of the knowledge production mechanism about the Arab world. Denys Johnson-​Davies and Ferial Ghazoul (1983) clinch the matter for me. As they explain, translation is an act that effectively transfers new ideas, frames of mind and creative achievements into another culture through finding readership in a different linguistic arena. Consequently, a reader’s understanding of the cultural codes concerning the original text is a prerequisite for properly experiencing the different shades of transference 13

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile facilitated by its translation. I have considerable knowledge of Arabic culture due to a shared connection with the sphere, and certainly possess the sensibility to appreciate the context of the texts and films I analyse in the chapters that follow. More importantly, the intervention I propose in the field of engaged intellectual practice is extremely significant for at least two reasons. First of all, the pursuit of noble principles may appear lacklustre in our technology-​governed world, though Bertrand Russell (1939) argues that technologists cannot provide us with wholesome guidance about the purpose and duties of human life; the sagacious voice of the intellectual has to fulfil this function. My book examines the cultivation of the astute voice that Said’s exile-​steeped writing proposes so that the modern intellectual’s effort to remove the limiting aspects of human thoughts can be emphasised. This opposes the idealist intellectual’s ivory-tower complacency and smug disregard for the workaday world. Eugene TeSelle (2001) reminds us that twenty-​first-century intellectuals can hardly afford to be aloof. Due to the repercussions of the twentieth-​century colonial control and globalisation, the need for today’s intellectuals to offer independent thoughts on socio-​political issues is far greater than ever before. Secondly, my book tests the applicability of Saidian ideas in the contemporary world by investigating their reflection in the works of the most prominent Arab intellectuals mentioned above. In the context of Arab literary formation after 1967, the novel assessment of the works supports the contemporary Arab artists’ commitment to introducing profundity in their thoughts about home and the world. This reasserts not the prestige bestowed upon literary creations in Arabic tradition but also the artists’ realisation of the power of their words and imagination in changing the direction of their society. As Roger Allen (2003: 51) puts it: ‘Littérateurs in Arab society continue to have at their disposal a formidable mode of expression in order to uplift, persuade, criticise, and entertain.’ Said’s ideas enable me to highlight the higher faculties through which the powerful voice of an intellectual come into play to cope with the various crises that the region has been undergoing since colonial times. This brings to light one of the fundamental aspects of Arabic literary tradition, the littérateur as the preserver of cultural memories, which 14

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Introduction reconfirms his/​her crucial position in society. Hilary Kilpatrick reiterates that Arab literature from its pre-​Islamic heroism to its modern-day effervescence, has been a home of Arab remembrance. This nullifies the accusation of inaction against the Arab world, which is dismissed ‘as bewitched and drugged with sleep’ (Kilpatrick 2000:38). My contribution to this debate is that Arab intellectual vigilance expressed through Egyptian and Palestinian creativity becomes a model of cultural continuation in the face of historico-​political maelstrom. Said’s concept of exile helps me to demarcate the process and effectiveness of the continuation. I define the concept by delineating how various terms of criticism developed throughout his career present his noble mission. Furthermore, I illustrate the reflection of the mission in Mahfouz, Darwish, Ahmed, Chahine and Saadawi’s intellectual practices by shedding light on the dissimilar political positions they occupy, the diverse resistances they form and the humanistic world they yearn for. Thus, I hope to establish the contours of Saidian intellectual framework and its function in the contemporary world.

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1 Exile and Intellectual Practice

Edward Said (2001b: 186) presents displacement through effective natural imagery when he explains that ‘[e]‌xile, in the words of Wallace Stevens, is “a mind of winter” in which the pathos of summer and autumn as much as the potential of spring are nearby but unobtainable’. He contrasts three seasons of nature and the feelings surrounding them with the mono-​seasonal standing of exile. This denotes life inside homeland as a natural event and life outside it as a strange phenomenon, which does not follow the known rhythm, familiar feelings or settled ways of living. A frosty expanse dominates the landscape of an exile’s mind, because it remains separated from the sights and sounds it surveys. Even if an exile yearns for the warmth of summer and autumn or the joys of spring to vivify the mind’s landscape, they refuse to settle there permanently. Nevertheless, the frosty mind does not suggest misery of non-​belonging alone. The Stevensian image implies a mind made motionless through contemplation so that one may observe nature more intently. Winter, snow and ice act as symbols of quietude and reflection (Stevens 2007) in this context. Through listening to the innermost core of oneself, one differentiates between the illusory and transcendental reality. Therefore, exile evokes a complex phenomenon. It is cold,

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile colourless and dismal. Paradoxically, these create an occasion for profound thoughts. To Said, exile is similar to the Arabic manfa, which denotes banishment. However, Juliane Hammer (2005) points out that another Arabic term, ghurba, has been more prevalent in Palestinian literary writings to denote displacement. Hammer adds that ghurba highlights the sufferings of dislocation but manfa depicts the cause of uprootedness –​ expulsion from one’s native land. This indicates that Said’s model of deracination is based on the history of the Palestinians, whose winter of estrangement started with the Nakba. Besides, manfa as exile not only invokes the historical cause of Palestinian homelessness but also conjures up a picture of contemplation. Therefore, Said chooses the term exile to describe the loss of a homeland and represent an occasion for reflection. Being an exile himself, Said is unwilling to accept the feeling of loss as an ultimate reality of being separated from a homeland. Instead, he reads estrangement as a representative feature of modern culture. In fact, the critic believes that Western modernity has taken shape due to the work of émigrés and exiles to a great extent. Said (2001b: 173) clarifies that the intellectual and aesthetic vistas of America have been majorly formed by ‘refugees from fascism, communism, and other regimes given to the oppression and expulsion of dissidents’. The critic observes that exile is designed to diminish the dignity of an individual obtained through a secure identity by being part of a specific group, culture and locale. If anything can ameliorate the loss of dignity in the insecure condition it is the creative work of writers and artists, who put the anguish into positive use. Said reiterates that the uprooted intellectuals do not obfuscate the dreadful sufferings of exile. On the contrary, their disjointed state inspires them to reconfigure their shattered life, which appears to be the operative value of the onerous phenomenon. In this way, self-​reflection becomes the paradoxical benefit of exile for Said. The critic’s writing elaborates on the process of reflection that leads to dissociation from the prevalent ideas of identity, belonging and security. Said (ibid.: 185) asserts: ‘Borders and barriers, which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory, can also become prison, and are often defended beyond reason or necessity.’ In order to counteract the imprisoning 18

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Exile and Intellectual Practice influences of home, he underlines the urgency of realising its non-​final nature. He repeatedly quotes a twelfth-​century German monk, Hugo of St Victor, whose perfect man is a spiritually homeless person. Such an individual investigates her/​his attachment to familiar places and overcomes the unquestioning love for them. Said invokes St Victor’s notion of the entire world as an unknown place to illustrate a secular process of being in exile that enables intellectuals to accomplish independent criticisms of home and host cultures. The love of homeland is not banished from such an idealistic intellectual’s heart but s/​he ceases to see home as a given idea. Said’s ideal intellectual stops unquestioningly accepting the homogenous culture as delightful. Rather, s/​he distances him/​herself from a comfortable loyalty to it that begins with an automated delight in home culture. In fact, the geographical, physical or metaphorical conditions of the intellectuals are such that they cannot recapture the auto-​generated veneration, even if they want to. They then critically decide what aspects or practices of their home cultures to give up and what values to sustain. They judge ‘alien cultures with the same combination of intimacy and distance’ (Said 2003: 259). This is how they remain in a permanent state of non-​belonging through which, however, they are free from being engulfed by the dogmas or illusions of home, the natural divisiveness of identity formation (‘us’ versus ‘them’), and the narrow perspectives on foreign cultures. Therefore, Said insists on intellectually transcending the existential sufferings of any form of separation from homeland in order to cultivate what George Lamming (1960) famously calls ‘the pleasures of exile’. The benefits of forming new thoughts and welcoming unknown experiences tell us why Said’s exile is essentially an intellectual, not an ordinary citizen or a refugee. By no means does Said (2001b: 175) undermine, though, the sufferings of ‘the uncountable masses for whom UN agencies have been created’. On the contrary, he wants his model intellectual to perceive that the condition of being torn from one’s familiar environment is ‘like death but without death’s ultimate mercy’ (ibid.: 174). Said further asserts that the condition of refugees is invariably grounded in worldly realities, which bear the unfortunate traces of injustice towards one group of humans by another. The perception of the acute sufferings of the uprooted 19

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile people and the systems of injustice working behind the phenomenon leads Said (1993: 332) to confirm that ‘it would be the rankest Panglossian dishonesty to say that the bravura performances of the intellectual exile and the miseries of the displaced person or refugee are the same’. Surely, no one in his/​her right mind can claim that individuals remain undeprived by the upheaval of deracination. However, Said inspires us not to accept the privation as a totality. Instead, he urges intellectuals to comprehend the transformative power of exile and cultivate the paradoxical blessings of their physical or metaphorical disjunction from the home and the world. Said’s life and works exemplify a powerful transformation of the loss into an intellectual existence, which is determined not to be defeated by the forces that impose the loss on ordinary individuals. I will soon illustrate that Palestine remained the central trope in the formulations of his thoughts regarding exile throughout his oeuvre. Naturally, he believes that gifted intellectuals should endeavour to stop the systems from generating injustice both inside and outside the homeland so that human beings in general can benefit from their stance against oppression and compartmentalisation of all kinds. As I explained above, Said views the writings, films and photographs created out of ‘unhoused exilic experiences’ (ibid.: 330) as a revitalising force for Western modernism. More importantly, he believes that the pressing duty for today’s intellectual is twofold. First, they have to connect the histories of dislocations with the socio-​political interdependence of human beings around the globe. Secondly, they must resist the monopolisation of cultural histories by bringing forward the complex and intersecting points among them. Arguably, Said’s parallel thoughts on exile as a lived experience and as a model for political dissent and cultural diversity have remained ambiguous, despite the fact that a lot has been written on his vocation of exile, as will be evident from the discussion below. The comprehensive view of the term neither dissociates exile from its contextual realities nor places it on an idealised realm as a figurative form of criticism. Instead, my analysis of Saidian exile shows how a committed intellectual is cut off from his/​her homeland, whether or not s/​he actually migrates from its ambience. The discussion further elaborates the paradoxical benefits of the disconnection, which are not limited to oppositional thoughts alone. As I suggested 20

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Exile and Intellectual Practice above, Said urges the unhoused intellectual to incorporate a constructive worldview involving connections and comparisons among vastly different cultural practices. Far from diminishing the human cost of losing a homeland, therefore, Said emphasises the intellectual values of the exilic vocation. To reiterate, Said’s view of exile appears with a duality, which never allows the critic to forget that ‘it is an actual condition’, while giving him reasons to assert that the term also denotes ‘a metaphorical condition’ (Said 1996: 52; emphasis in the original). The metaphorical dimension is derived from the fact that an intellectual does not necessarily have to migrate to a different country in order to dissociate his/​her thinking self from the dominant cultural environment. Said unequivocally states that: Even if one is not an actual immigrant or expatriate, it is still possible to think as one, to imagine and investigate in spite of barriers, and always to move away from the centralizing authorities towards the margins, where you see things that are usually lost on minds that have never traveled beyond the conventional and the comfortable (ibid: 63).

Therefore, exile is an exemplary situation for a Saidian intellectual, who imagines cultural realities by travelling beyond the existing boundaries and questions the authorities that create the limits to categorise people. Therefore, Said’s exilic intellectual must be able to cultivate the scholarly benefits of voyaging away from customary and convenient thoughts. As I have been pinpointing, the severance with the customariness will endow Saidian intellectuals with the ability to contemplate and form independent thoughts, be mindful of historical realities, reconfigure markers of identity, master non-​fixation with the idea of home, hold non-​divisive worldviews and form unhierarchical perspectives on cultures. Said (1993: 332) further confirms that this is a politically conscious position that enables intellectuals to be ‘between domains, between forms, between homes, and between languages’. To put it succinctly, Said’s exile is a vocation of bringing together traditions, locations and groups to generate novel perspectives out of the comparisons among the entities without basing the practice on coercion or compartmentalisation. 21

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile

Said and the executive view of exile Because he is an upholder of justice and fair play, Said does not minimise the turmoil of exile for its executive value. Bruce Robbins identifies the critic’s dual approach to exile very early on. Robbins (1983: 69) asserts that while Said centralises ‘the chronic ache of exile from origin, tradition, and home culture’ for questioning the boundaries of modernism, his Palestinian background makes him ‘too aware of the psychological and political cost of displacement to exult in its dizzying unanchoredness’. Clearly, Said’s metaphoric narrative of exile is not a celebration of an exorbitant, confounding and insecure condition. Contrary to the simplistic way of conceiving exile, Said introduces the concept as a means of pressing ahead, despite the challenges of circumstances. This philosophy is reflected in his stance on the Palestinian cause. He advocates that no human being should be driven out of his/​her homeland; no human being should be forced to cast off his/​her native land and culture. Despite the exigency of the Palestinian affair, however, Said refuses to compromise on his indifference to any fixed moorings. The dispersed and fragmented life of the Palestinians, who mostly occupy a non-​space in the world map, and whose stories move across historical boundaries, symbolises cubist paintings to Said. ‘The cubist nonplace of the Palestinians bears a strong resemblance to the shifting, interstitial locus of Said’s modernist criticism’ (ibid.: 70), suggests Robbins. I would argue that the criticism delineates Said’s exilic imagination that influences the arena by urging the reformation of existing ideas about human belonging. If the freedom to spontaneously reassess the ideas composing a secure identity is unavailable, Said cannot be at home in any institutions or places. Consequently, his exilic intellectual practice is fraught with desolation. Nevertheless, Robbins argues that Said’s contribution to modernism begins with his realisation that the feeling of homelessness is not deprived of its operational values. In truth, Robbins asserts that ‘Said’s long meditations on exile … have helped him convert its forlornness and nihilism into vocational energy’ (ibid.: 77). Without the energy, the reconstitution of our identity markers remains decidedly unaccomplished. 22

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Exile and Intellectual Practice Despite Robbins’ clarity of thought regarding Said’s dual viewpoint on exile, the specificity of the concept makes it complex. Hamid Dabashi (2011a: 23) states point-​blank that the term is dissatisfactory: ‘Contrary to Said, I  no longer see the point of being in exile or in diaspora; both these terms alienate and disqualify.’ The assertion results from his discussion of some writers from Arab-​African countries, who betray the people from whom they originate by demeaning their native cultures in the guise of criticism, which is encouraged by the distance and security provided by their migration to America. Evidently, Dabashi does not distinguish between the terms ‘exile’ and ‘diaspora’. However, Said (2005) is against using ‘diaspora’ to denote the Palestinian situation, since it was appropriated by the official Zionist discourse to establish a mythical claim on the land. As a result, Said did not utilise the term to suggest an intellectual vocation; rather, he was more interested in a historical rather than a mythical imagination regarding cultural migration and/​or nation formation. By conflating exile with diaspora, though, Dabashi concludes that migration to the West is responsible for his chosen writers’ surrender to America’s imperialistic mission, since they produce information to serve its purpose. The echoing of the American government’s viewpoint by supposedly Middle East experts earned Said’s disapproval too for the elitism and oversimplification involved in their manufactured opinions. Said shows how the supposed specialists fall into the same group of writers Dabashi reviews. To Said (2003: xxi), the expert’s stance against his own people is nothing less than what Julien Benda (2007 [1927]) calls a ‘trahison des clercs’(2003: xxi). When Dabashi (2011a: 39) suggests that ‘[i]‌n the shadow of Said’s exilic intellectual, however, has always lurked a parasite called the comprador intellectual’, it becomes apparent that the intermediary intellectual should be regarded as a treasonous one. Furthermore, Dabashi notes that ‘comprador’ etymologically means ‘house-​steward’ (see ibid.). Understandably, the writer is discussing an insider and an aye-​sayer, not a Saidian exile. In order to take up the Saidian mission, intellectuals have to be ‘at odds with their society and therefore outsiders and exiles so far as privileges, power, and honors are concerned’ (Said 1996: 52–​3). By thinking of exile as a spatial phenomenon, Dabashi obliterates the fact that Said 23

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile introduces the concept as both a geographical condition and a principled position. Interestingly, Dabashi recognises part of the figurative aspect of being a Saidian exile by dint of the intellectual’s courage to challenge the established systems of recognition. Dabashi (2011a: 39) writes that Said’s prototypical intellectual ‘is a sort of amphibian character who has left the colonial site of his upbringing for the presumed center of capital … to dismantle its ideological edifice and subvert its claim to political legitimacy’. Problematically, Dabashi does not underscore that migrating from the colonial centre is not a prerequisite for the subversive role Said’s exilic intellectual carries out. As a result, he misses out on Said’s ideational rendering of belonging. As explained above through Hugo of St Victor, belonging for an exilic intellectual is not automated. It requires the intellectual to be aware of the multiplicity of cultural strands that need to be weighted and negotiated for creating a metaphorical disconnection with the locale s/​he inhabits. Therefore, Dabashi’s belief that ‘[h]‌ome is where you hold your horses, hang your hat, and above all raise your voice in defiance and say no to oppression’ (ibid.: 23) is not entirely applicable to the exilic intellectual; because location is primeval in this definition. For Dabashi, home is a place where an intellectual is adversarial. For Said, home is a place that an intellectual is disconnected from either actually and/​or metaphorically in order to question the unjust system as well as offer a more humanistic view of the socio-​political structure. In this connection, I  reiterate that homelessness is no condition for celebration in Said’s exilic vocation. Having assessed diasporic intellectuals in the American context, Timothy Brennan (2012) concludes that the post-​World War II cosmopolitans in New York held onto the idea of migration as an opportunity for liberation, and expanded the horizon of modernism by including the knowledge of the non-​West to the static cultural industry of the country. However, the discourse of the displaced writers excluded migrant labourers, who are alienated from the cultural activities and embittered by the forced dislocation due to their pressing need to find a satisfactory wage and improved working conditions. Unlike diasporic writers, labourers cannot negotiate the irremovable differences between their foreign and native lands. In this context, it might appear that Said’s 24

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Exile and Intellectual Practice exilic vocation also overshadows the non-​intellectual aspect of dislodgement by focusing on human capabilities of turning the pain of uprooting into intellectual privileges. However, far from withdrawing to an imaginary realm where one concentrates on abstract and aesthetic thoughts, Said’s exilic intellectual forms audiences in order to be organically connected to the powerless. Thus, the difference between Brennan’s diasporic and Said’s exilic intellectuals lies in the efforts of the latter to work against clique formation so as not to shroud the sufferings of homelessness both in its actual and figurative dimensions. Conor McCarthy (2010: 200) is right when he explains that the combination of the two dimensions enables Said to offer ‘a Romantic image of the intellectual as a brave individual’ alongside upholding a contemporary sensibility derived from ‘mobility, fluidity, border-​crossing, exile, and the abandonment of the redoubts of power’. Understandably, Said’s exilic stance bears a romantic image because of his nonconformist position. He can even be regarded as a maverick, though we cannot forget that he always remains a firm upholder of emancipatory worldviews. In effect, Said’s exile is a vocation of cultivating ethical and humane ideas in working unceasingly against dehumanisations of all kinds. This is why exile can never simply be a literal phenomenon, if we follow Said. As Terry Eagleton (2004) puts it, ‘[n]‌ot every post-​colonial who steps off the plane to take up a well-​paid job at Oxford or Yale is an exile’ in Said’s sense of the term, for it implies a life dedicated to advancing ideas that enhance the entire fabric of culture(s) associated with him/​her in a profoundly humanistic way. Neil Lazarus asks whether the overwhelming emphasis on agency overshadows another significant aspect of intellectual endeavours, which is community formation to bring about positive social changes in order to contribute to the same humanistic goal. Said’s belief in the foremost role intellectuals play in fighting against systems of domination appears to be a self-​focused idealisation of the vocation to the writer. In particular, Lazarus points out that Said’s idea of ‘exile not as deracination but as a willed principle’ (2005: 118; emphasis in the original) positions loneliness over solidarity. The metaphoric dissociation of the exilic intellectual from a distinct group identity lessens the strength of his/​her humanistic mission, Lazarus believes. He further explains that the Saidian exile’s distance for maintaining 25

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile critical forcefulness ultimately de-​emphasises the effectiveness of a dissenting voice. Therefore, the writer decides that Said’s romantic picture of the exilic mission rather endangers the politically aware intellectual, who is determined to positively influence the public arena; for the unwholesome reality is that the sphere is particularly hostile to neophytes. Notwithstanding Lazarus’ materialistic assessment of the limitations of Said’s exilic vocation, Robert Spencer affirms that it is not initiated for self-​ fulfilment. Having withdrawn from a prearranged group, the exilic mind seeks out diverse viewpoints and experiences in order to identify human commonalities among these phenomena. Spencer (2010: 392) stresses that, by bringing together isolated events and countless divergent perspectives, Said’s exilic intellectual ‘strengthens the bonds of sympathy and solidarity necessary to inaugurate a just, equitable, and … borderless homeland’. Therefore, the solidarity the exile proposes has a wider base and more cosmopolitan form than the cause-​based unity Lazarus suggests. As Spencer notes, this is possible because of the fact that understanding another society requires a careful examination of the culture rather than readily accepting any prevalent notions about it. Surely, Said situates careful questioning over and above group formation in order not to be a loner and a wayfarer all the while. He persistently challenges the forces of destruction without losing the sight of the community of the unco-​opted voices worldwide. Said’s gift to the world remains his determination not to search for ‘premature refuge in political submission, disciplinary conformity, academic nearsightedness, or intellectual orthodoxy’ (ibid.: 410) in order to find a place in an international community that works for enhancing the freedom and dignity of all humans. Aamir Mufti (2004: 2) ascertains that the paradoxical power of choosing powerlessness through Said’s exilic mission is the beauty of thinking differently from the existent maverick framework: ‘Every world he lived in, he inhabited fully, and yet with an uncompromising critical distance.’ The emphasis on rethinking that Said’s unfailing distance from the available discourse brings into view is intended to facilitate the production of positive knowledge. Hence, his ‘insistence on the connections between criticism and exile’ (ibid.) is especially significant in today’s world, where identitarianism has shown its hysterical and lethal effects to an enormous 26

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Exile and Intellectual Practice extent. Said’s metaphoric view of exile enriches the field of criticism by encouraging cultural analysts to be perceptive of the societal realities with the attached discords and discrepancies. Consequently, Said’s vocation is about crossing ‘boundaries of nation, tradition, religion, race, and language’ (ibid.: 4) in order to transform the entire world into the plane of practising committed intellectual activities. By assuming the universal voice of criticising oppression on the ground, Said proves the efficacy of his exilic mission in reintroducing the questions of the periphery to the colonial and imperial centres, which fundamentally transfigures both the locations. His work manifests the executive value of exile by empowering him to live ‘without sentimental brooding, on the one hand, but also without simple-​minded optimism or cheerfulness’ (ibid.: 9). Notwithstanding his hope for a more accommodating world for all its inhabitants, his writing illustrates that this depends on intellectuals’ unceasing efforts in vindicating secular humanist values. His exilic legacy is, then, about learning from the loss of security and converting the insecurity into a committed engagement of urging individuals to make positive changes in society. From the above discussion it is evident that Said saw exile as both a devastating and an insight-​endowing phenomenon. Perhaps even more paradoxical is the fact that his thoughts were inspired by his discerning the forceful aspects of the Jewish diaspora. Judith Butler believes that he  aligned himself with the unmoored energy of the diaspora in order to create a programme that continues to challenge the cycle of human catastrophes on the one hand, and advances hope for cultural pluralism on the other. The endeavour is utopian, since the humanistic imagination the exilic intellectual presents reflects a world that is yet to materialise. In the end, Butler (2012) finds that Saidian exile evokes not only deracination but also a creative process that fosters possibilities about transcending traditional ideas of political entities. Neither Butler nor the other commentators of Said’s double vision on exile, however, delineates the contours of his thoughts by illustrating the full gamut of the concept. It is generally agreed that the exilic intellectual practice is effective for various reasons. The particular aspects of the mission contributing to the efficacy are never fully explored, though. 27

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Surely, we have to discover the entire range of ideas that Said incorporates within his notion of exile. To put it more clearly, Said’s exilic consciousness created a trajectory based on the terms of criticism we come across in his oeuvre. However, the terms of criticism have not yet shared a common platform so that a discourse of Saidian exile emerges in its complete form. I  would contend that along with realising the critical connection between his exilic life and unanchored criticism, we have to comprehend a composite picture of the exilic intellectual practice through his terms of criticism.

Said’s explorations of exile My position is that Said explores the pattern of exile throughout his writings. Therefore, the composite definition of the concept that I present here covers all his major texts including The World, the Text, and the Critic, Culture and Imperialism, Representations of the Intellectual, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Orientalism, Humanism and Democratic Criticism and On Late Style. By putting together Said’s varied terms of criticism emanating from these works, my discussion illuminates a tangible pattern of the exilic intellectual practice. In other words, I introduce Said’s terms of criticism one after another so as to demonstrate how exile infuses the entire course of his scholarship. To reaffirm, I reconceptualise Said’s exile as a combination of critical terms, which appear in his observations of the text and the world. The techniques of criticism are as follows: ‘critical consciousness’, ‘secular consciousness’, ‘oppositional consciousness’, ‘contrapuntal consciousness’, ‘polyphonic consciousness’, the technique of ‘voyage in’, ‘universal humanism’ and ‘late style’. The elements create a framework for my overall analysis of being an independent intellectual in a Saidian way. The structure I obtain from the key terms helps me to ascertain the breadth and depth of Said’s exile by creating a comprehensive picture of the concept, and to map out the intellectual faculties required for the practice. Certainly, I elaborate the connection between the varied terms of criticism and Said’s own exilic experiences. Indeed, Said (1996: 59) propounds that ‘exile is the condition that characterises the intellectual as someone who 28

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Exile and Intellectual Practice stands as a marginal figure outside the comforts of privilege, power, being-​ at-​homeness’, which also bestows the figuratively homeless intellectual with the privilege of envisioning a more humane world. By elaborating the process of cultivating the intellectual rewards of the actual and/​or metaphoric condition through Said’s techniques of criticism, therefore, I project Saidian exile to be simultaneously an idea and a practice. First of all, individual consciousness plays a pivotal role in this vocation. Although individuals are familiar with ‘texts, traditions, continuities that make up the very web of a culture’ and with its ‘ideologies, philosophies, dogmas, notions and values’ (Said 1984: 6, 10), they do not have to readily associate themselves with any of these, because through their comfortable acceptance of the idées reçues they unknowingly help defective and damaging systems to flourish. Therefore, the exile has to constantly maintain a ‘critical consciousness’ or an ethic of shielding the individual’s analytical mind against the beliefs and ideas ‘supported by known powers and acceptable values’ (ibid.: 16). Clearly, the term denotes Said’s exilic consciousness by dint of separating the mind from the familiar environment through a questioning conscience. This is not to destroy an intellectual’s group identity but to ensure his/​her ‘willed homelessness’ (ibid.: 7) with which s/​he remains wary of the cultural systems governing the native and/​ or foreign land s/​he is associated with. By defining ‘critical consciousness’ as a momentous component of the cultural and literary frameworks of an intellectual’s world, Said points out in The World, the Text, and the Critic that the quality of the mind connects the critic with the socio-​political realities surrounding him/​her. Through Said’s own participation in social movements challenging age-​old doctrines and traditions, he demonstrates his exilic position of remaining ‘between the dominant culture and the totalizing forms of critical systems’ (ibid.:  5), which is usually supported by strict textual adherence. Understandably, the exilic quality delineates Said’s Palestinian position by revealing his strategy for incorporating real world political struggles into the arena of cultural criticism. The technique of comprehending cultures through a questioning mind is more strongly promoted in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, where Said affirms Palestine as a formative presence in his critical endeavours. Being a Palestinian expatriate in America, 29

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Said (2001b: xxxxv) knows that ‘exile can produce rancor and regret, as well as a sharpened vision’. Undoubtedly, the piercing vision declares its presence through the exercise of the ‘critical consciousness’, which is why it has a central existence in Said’s intellectual mission. Duly, the critic finds that Theodor Adorno’s motto, ‘It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home’ (see Said 1996: 57; emphasis in the original) has a fundamental importance in his exilic efforts. As I explained above, this does not imply that through exercising the willed deracination, the Saidian exile withdraws from his/​her cultural or literary world. On the contrary, s/​he belongs to the world in a more examined way. The foremost duty of the exile is, then, not to accept ideas of belonging without doubting them first so that s/​he transcends filiations and affiliations with existing systems. Said (2001b: xxxiii) reasserts the crucial function of the exile to be ‘always on guard’, which he determines as the major issue in an idealist intellectual venture. In his writings and naturally ‘in [his] Reith Lectures (Representations of the Intellectual)’ (ibid.), Said speaks not only against intellectuals’ smooth performance but also non-​engagement with the cultural and political entanglements. Surely, the ‘critical consciousness’ provides intellectuals with a moral compass in their engagement with mired realities. Because of intellectuals’ filiations (connections primarily to family) and affiliations (connections to society, institutions and systems), Said believes that their writings forming discourses become worldly. The exiles’ task, therefore, is to be aware of the non-​divine nature of the cultural matrix. They should view the cultural world as an outcome of men and women’s unceasing socio-​historical pursuits. In The World, the Text, and the Critic, Said thus presents the outline of ‘secular consciousness’, which is not necessarily directed against religions. Rather, it is a mode of transcending any fixed, fundamental and essential beliefs in cultural developments and norms. Aamir Mufti adds: ‘Secular implies for Said a critique of… hearth and home… a critique of the “assurance”, “confidence”, and “majority sense” that claims on behalf of national culture always imply…’ (1998: 107; emphasis in the original) Evidently, the security provided by tradition and nation can wield a religious authority not in the sense of piety, but by ‘shutting off human investigation, criticism, and effort’ (Said 30

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Exile and Intellectual Practice 1984: 290) in consideration of the importance of group loyalty. This abnegates the prime fact that cultural systems are human creations, because of which it is de rigueur for intellectuals to investigate their constitution. Notably, Said explains that ‘critical consciousness’ depends upon intellectuals’ knowledge of the worldly state of affairs; because its goal is to obtain a sharp sense of the ‘political, social and human values’ (ibid.: 26) involved in cultural systems reflecting the earthly situations. With this aim, the exilic intellectual stands between culture and the system representing it, and investigates why something is left out in a discourse and/​ or how it generates the ‘assurance’, ‘confidence’ and ‘majority sense’ that Mufti describes above. To be able to question the system of identity, then, the exilic intellectual cannot but be connected to ‘a concrete reality about which political, moral, and social judgments have to be made and, if not only made, then exposed and demystified’ (ibid.). In short, the exile learns to live with the native and/​or foreign land in order to employ his/​ her ‘secular consciousness’ that offers an alternative view to the dominant culture by revealing who its deprived and privileged groups are, and why they are created as such. Said (1996: 60) reasserts in Representations of the Intellectual that ‘the exile standpoint for an intellectual’ is to realise the mechanism working behind the material reality. Viewing worldly situations as consequences of continuous human endeavours thus enables the exilic intellectual to affirm their changeability, impermanence and reversibility. Certainly, Said’s exilic consciousness works behind the creation of the technique of ‘secular consciousness’ that suggests the possibility of a more amenable world. His seminal work, Orientalism, is the best example in this regard. Not only does the scholar prove the man-​made nature of the apparently sealed off Orientalist system that produces socio-​cultural judgements on colonised subjects, but he also exposes the political intent underlying the debilitating Western projections regarding the Easterners. Especially as an Arab-​Palestinian living in the West, Said is motivated to demonstrate that Orientalism’s predetermined disregard for the subjugated Arab population comes from its practitioners’ failure to connect with the lived realities of the region. Unsurprisingly, the preface of the book includes a perfect manifestation of the author’s ‘secular consciousness’, which is 31

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile largely absent within the Western discursive system. Said (2003: xx) regretfully notes that even in our current world [r]‌eflection, debate, rational argument, moral principle based on a secular notion that human beings must create their own history, have been replaced by abstract ideas that celebrate American or Western exceptionalism, denigrate the relevance of context, and regard other cultures with derisive contempt.

To Said, reflective exercises are bound to begin with the secular notion that global cultures are complex phenomena. Therefore, human agency should be formed to critique and positively influence cultural sensibilities and practices, not to generate hostility towards them. In Orientalism, Said’s opposition to Europe’s ‘dogmatic views of “the Oriental” as a kind of ideal and unchanging abstraction’ (ibid.: 8) underscores that the exile intervenes in the discursive arena in favour of the disregarded (and dispossessed). Given the exilic intellectual’s uncompromising stance on critical and secular consciousness, s/​he is unable to accept unexamined dogmas, doctrines and political thoughts and be content with ‘guilds, special interests, imperialised fiefdoms, and orthodox habits of mind’ (Said 1984: 29). The combination results into his/​her automatic opposition to every form of domination, injustice and corruption. Through this ‘oppositional consciousness’, Said envisages that the exile remains intuitively irreconcilable to the power network. This is possible due to his/​her unflinching devotion to the principles of truth and justice, which prevents him/​her from assigning fellow human beings to prior categories, ranks and ideas. Such steadfastness is not a formula for gaining a wide-​ranging acceptance in society. In fact, it makes the exilic intellectual a true exile in the sense that s/​he becomes an outsider to societal privileges by undermining them. This suggests how the exilic quality is directly connected to Said’s own experience. In the introduction of Representations of the Intellectual Said relates how a group developed in the early 1990s to criticise the British Broadcasting Corporation for inviting him for the Reith Lectures, since he was a known voice for Palestinian rights. However, Said’s detractors proved the point of being an idealist intellectual according to the scholar, which 32

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Exile and Intellectual Practice was to surmount the pressure of being accommodated into the influential channels of society. Ironically, the principled position guarantees real love for an intellectual’s works and contributions to society, as Said’s selection for the prestigious platform suggests. This is why Said (1996: xvi) stresses that he characterises a noble intellectual ‘as exile and marginal, as amateur, and as the author of a language that tries to speak the truth to power’. He truly believes that the oppositional spirit is an overriding necessity of our time when the deprived and the dispossessed are broadly held responsible for their hardships. Indeed, challenging the status quo is a Saidian motto not because he wants intellectuals to be perennially dissatisfied; it is more because in our troubled time, intellectuals should do better than showing ‘a gregarious tolerance for the way things are’ (ibid.: xviii). Abdul R. Jan Mohamed calls Said a ‘specular border intellectual’, who examines the cultures of East and West by standing at the demarcation line between them, which is contrary to a ‘syncretic border intellectual’ who is rather ‘“at home” in both’ (1992: 97; emphasis in the original). By judging cultures from ‘an in-​between or interstitial “space”’ (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 1999: 8), the exile stands against their fixed compositions. Not being tied to any prefigured cultural ideas means that the exile comprehends one culture against the backdrop of another. In this context, everything can be critically valued with the help of a counterpoint, a comparable perspective, from another culture (Said 1996: 60). Said calls the exilic ability to view the world with a non-​insular gaze ‘contrapuntal consciousness’. As a Palestinian from a Christian background, Said was not considered to be a member of the mainstream Muslim society. Even as a Christian Palestinian, he was part of a minority within a minority because of his Anglican identity. In America, his Arab-​ Palestinian background was anathema, as it was proved to be during the 1967 war. In Reflections on Exile and Other Essays Said outlines his boyhood feeling of living at the margin of colonial societies. He was a Palestinian with an English forename and American citizenship, who attended an anglicised Egyptian school. The atypical amalgamation of cultural markers made the young learner perplexingly aware of his unstable background (Said 2001b: 557). In order not to be bogged down by the crushing irregularity, Said had two options: first, to be completely engulfed by the dominant culture and 33

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile entirely erase his differences with it; secondly, to begin ‘to think and write contrapuntally, using the disparate halves of [his] experience, as an Arab and as an American, to work with and also against each other’ (ibid.: 562). Obviously, the second option is challenging and critically demanding. Understandably though, Said’s legacy is based on the difficult exercise. Rather than trying to recuperate the loss of living at the border of societies, Said (2005: 70) transforms this marginal position into a non-​conformist one through his ‘contrapuntal consciousness’, which makes him ‘always in and out of things, and never really of anything for very long’ (emphasis in the original). For Said (1996:  60), then, the exile’s liberated views come from his/​ her affiliation with at least two different cultures, which can be juxtaposed against each other by ‘making them both appear in a sometimes new and unpredictable light’ that improves upon the intellectual’s secular understanding of the world. In Culture and Imperialism, Said’s contrapuntal reading of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is noteworthy in this regard. In his remarkable reading of the classic, Said juxtaposes the question of justice in England with that in Antigua, and presents Antiguan slaves’ claim on dignity as a counterpoint to Austen’s upholding of morality in England. He shows Austen’s unease about being part of a slave-​owning society, which is comprehensible through the wall of silence her protagonist encounters when enquiring about the slave trade to the owner of Mansfield Park estate. However, the fact that the writer subtly suggests colonial Antigua is compulsory for metropolitan splendour reveals the limitation of her time in connecting the two disparate worlds, despite their crucial interdependence. The scholar’s ‘contrapuntal consciousness’ enables him to rise above the impediment the author displays. Therefore, Said (1993:  97)  explains that the duty of today’s intellectual is to draw the hitherto undrawable connection between East and West by considering historic and aesthetic criteria together. The reward of this extraordinary comparison is a better and newer understanding of justice through a broader historico-​cultural perspective. The exilic standpoint is enabling in another form as well, as it enriches an intellectual with polyvalent affiliations that generate independent thoughts. Indeed, if the multiplicity of cultural belonging helps an exilic 34

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Exile and Intellectual Practice intellectual to be off the beaten track of justice through his/​her ‘contrapuntal consciousness’, it also provides him/​her with a pluralistic worldview that leads to a principled outsiderness from the circle of fortune and favour. In Representations of the Intellectual Said explains through a personal anecdote how his pluralistic thinking ensures his exilic stance as an intellectual. Citing an Iranian scholar’s commendable role in creating awareness about the Shah’s despotism followed by his confounding rounds of loyalty to Khomeini and his rival Bani Sadr and several other somersaults, Said ponders on the price of a single identity. Whereas the Iranian intellectual ended his displaced life in America by going back home and passionately joining one after another contradictory group, Said continued to live in exile both spatially and metaphorically. Given his manifold cultural adjustments, he inevitably ‘rationalized the virtues of outsiderhood’ (Said 1996:  107). Indeed, through observing the intellectual’s eagerness to be loyal to his native country’s rulers and to reject his Western affiliation, Said realised the strange blessing his pluralistic backdrop had given him. He was happy that ‘being a Palestinian with American citizenship was likely to be [his] only fate, with no more attractive alternatives to cozy up to, for the rest of [his] life’ (ibid.). Being connected to and yet distanced from the cultures saved Said not only from a blind allegiance to them but also from an ingratiation with the powers that govern the systems. Unsurprisingly, Said’s pluralistic mind produces a powerful challenge to the idea of cultural and ethnic essences based on which Orientalist discourse operates. In Orientalism Said (2003:  333)  asserts that the notion of ‘a stable essence’ obstructs an intellectual from a secular understanding of the constantly ‘made and unmade’ human society, which is why s/​he has recourse to xenophobia and chauvinism. The Iranian intellectual cited above demonstrates the attitude to some extent. In Culture and Imperialism, therefore, Said meditates on a more dynamic understanding of cultural identity by moving beyond essentialisation of any kinds. Said (1993: 52), argues that ‘Greeks always require barbarians, and Europeans Africans, Orientals’, which suggests an obligatorily plural perspective even on settled identities. Therefore, the scholar urges a plural outlook on the cultures of the colonised and the coloniser, not to diminish their distances and differences but to highlight their enmeshed histories. 35

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile The pluralistic way of incorporating different viewpoints without allowing a particular perspective to dominate is what Said calls a ‘polyphonic consciousness’. Said derives this technique from composers like J.  S. Bach, who creates independent melodies that float harmoniously throughout the composition. Said illuminates the tradition of Western classical music, where multiple melodies work together with a temporary focus on each one in an ordered way, which results into ‘an organized interplay that derives from the themes, not from a rigorous melodic or formal principle outside the work’ (ibid.: 51). Said explains that, if incorporated into the cultural world, the approach will create novel narratives on territorial and hemispheric histories. By considering traditions and geographies as overspreading, which has been turned into a global matter because of colonial and imperial domination of the West, the exilic intellectual will be able to nullify the inevitability that they will only clash against each other. The ‘polyphonic consciousness’, therefore, successfully resists identity politics of any sort. Said reaffirms that instead of an exclusive identity, his aim is to nurture ‘the polyphony of many voices playing off against each other’ (Said and Marranca 1991: 26) so that his works display the success of providing the mélange of human thoughts and aspirations with a shared space. Certainly, Said prefers the multi-​dimensionality of experience to a monotonous monoculturalism; because in today’s world, it is perfectly possible for someone, for example, to be an Indian, a woman, a Muslim, an American and more at the same time. What matters most to the Saidian exile, then, is creating an effective connection between these identities through engaging with their positive and negative aspects. The ‘polyphonic consciousness’ receives primacy in the exilic scheme of thinking due to the fact that varied cultural awareness, beliefs, ideas, creativities and axioms started to proliferate in the metropolitan centres of the West from the 1980s onward through the arrival of the peripheral writers and scholars in the strategic locations. As Said notes in Culture and Imperialism, their movement across national borders not only broke down cultural barriers but also generated lasting imprints of diverse histories and geographies on the Western centres. As a result, ‘the old categories, the tight separations, and the comfortable autonomies’ (Said 1993: 53) regarding 36

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Exile and Intellectual Practice East and West started to be outmoded. The travelling of non-​European writings into the colonial and imperial interiors is what Said calls ‘voyage in’. Understandably, the technique is directly related to the exilic drift around the cultural and geographical maps of the world. Said himself is one of the scholars who profusely contributed to the powerful transformation he observes here. If nothing else, his Orientalism remains a groundbreaking text regarding the encounter between East and West. The technique of ‘voyage in’ displays the interconnection between the spatial and metaphorical views of exile, since it contains an actual border crossing through the entrance of peripheral works in the colonial heartland and a metaphorical one through their dissociation from the prevalent Western ideas. Consequently, the ‘first-​rate literature and scholarship emanating from the post-​colonial world’ turn the metropolitan culture into a pluralistic one by using the language of the centre while remaining ‘organically related to the mass resistance to empire’ (ibid.: 243). Thus, the ‘voyage in’ transforms Western discourses through the exilic intellectuals’ experimental styles and viewpoints. Said further observes that the dissidents, émigrés and itinerants ‘paradoxically work better in the heart of the empire than in its far-​flung domains’ (ibid.: 242), presumably because the productive cultural exchanges play a major role in honing their crafts. This also suggests why the films and writings of the peripheral artists and writers make their mark in the West once they master the technique of benefiting from the cross-​fertilisation of ideas from around the world. The process takes place with or without the intellectuals’ physical movement to the metropolises. As Said emphasises, the ‘voyage in’ is mainly about peripheral intellectuals’ heterogeneous works that challenge the imperial thought structure. ‘No longer does the logos dwell exclusively, as it were, in London and Paris’ (ibid.: 244). By the Eastern writers’ utilisation of Western knowledge in relating their own stories, the imperial divisiveness lessens and the vision of a more inclusive world emerges through the productive cultural dialogues. Of course, justice and positive knowledge are the main focus of the endeavours. Having analysed the contributions of anti-​imperialist authors like C. L. R. James (The Black Jacobins), George Antonius (Arab Awakening), Ranajit Guha (A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on 37

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile the Idea of Permanent Settlement), and S. H. Alatas (The Myth of the Lazy Native), Said exhibits how these authors enrich the idea of justice and freedom in Western discourses through their emphasis on the Easterners’ equal claim on these. In fact, Said underscores that the combination of scholarship and politics in their works endows the writers with the status of an envoy in the Western world. Therefore, the West cannot dismiss their intervention out of hand ‘as emotional and subjective cris de coeur of strenuous activists and partisan politicians’ (ibid.: 258), because their counter-​narratives not only challenge the monopoly of the Western representation of ideas but also advance human knowledge a great deal by stressing the values of justice and emancipation for every insider/​outsider to a cultural system. For this reason, the exilic intellectual does not necessarily see eye to eye with a nationalist, even though both attach great importance to emancipation. Since ‘the concept of race’ forms nationalism’s ‘raison d’être’ (ibid.: 215), the ideology can be a considerable driving force behind the production of conformity within a specified location. Consequently, nationalism becomes bigoted and repeats the same colonial race division it sets out to oppose. Said cites Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore, who affirms that the national form can be creatively utilised instead. As Said demonstrates in Reflections on Exile, the creative solution will take place from the exilic intellectual’s ability to separate the principles of truth and justice from the nationalist discourse, which will enable him/​her to evaluate whether the nation repeats the imperialist history or not. The strategy is significant for Said from the Palestinian perspective. He argues that the idea of that nation ‘has been interpreted away in the West’ (Said 2001b: 435) in order to define another national identity in its place. Obviously, the process does not employ the same humanist approach for the two entities. Therefore, Said’s nationalist politics is dedicated towards establishing ‘that Jewish and Palestinian suffering exist in and belong to the same history’ (ibid.) of human rights abuse. Therefore, peoples’ coexistence in the land will initiate a bifurcated nationalist belonging based on respect for each side’s humanistic claim to exist. Perceivably, Said’s answer to the discourse of the ‘Other’ is not negritude, Arabism or Islamism, for these exchange one form of ethnic 38

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Exile and Intellectual Practice essentialism for another. In fact, Said (1996: 93) advises his exiles to unfailingly champion the same dignity for each and every human being, not simply for the people of whom their ideologies, native culture and nation approve. In his final book, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, Said discovers that the intellectual failure to uphold the principles of freedom and dignity for all human beings led to the historical abuses of humanism as an ideology. However, the scholar points out that the commitment to the idea cannot be tarnished just as easily. That is why we have to broaden the sphere of humanism and recognise its continued relevance for its ‘democratic, secular and open character’, which suggests that the humanistic commitment can be improved to open it for people of ‘all classes and backgrounds’ (Said 2004: 22, 21). In fact, Said’s Culture and Imperialism suggests the outline of the enhanced humanism. The book elaborates that this is achieved by intellectuals like Frantz Fanon, who was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique but spent a great part of his short life in exile in France and Algeria. Based on these experiences, Fanon proposed to overcome the obduracy of [late Western capitalism produced] theoretical elaborations by an act of political will, to run them back against their authors so as to be able, in the phrase he borrows from Cesaire, to invent new souls (Said 1993: 268; emphasis in the original).

Dignity and freedom for humans are the main principles of one of the theoretical propositions of the West, namely, Western humanism. However, its imperialist version distorted the ideals as colonial practices denoted ‘Western Men’ with the word ‘Men’. Fanon (1967: 254) reiterates that ‘if we want humanity to advance a step farther, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries’. Therefore, Fanon upholds justice, dignity and freedom for all human beings in order to engage European and non-​ European activists alike in the struggle against dominations and dehumanisations of all kinds in planet earth. To put it simply, then, upholding the same principle of dignity for human beings, whether they are from one’s own or an opposing group, is ‘universal humanism’, by embracing which 39

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Said’s exile moves forward ‘in the company of Man, in the company of all men’ (Fanon 1967: 254). It is worth mentioning here that the universal approach to humanism is expounded in The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon’s last book. Here, Fanon disapproves of imperialist violence but denounces nationalist bourgeoisie, because the latter drugs the decolonised with nationalism in order to exploit them in the same way as their predecessors. Thus, he remains unreconciled to both colonialism and its nationalist counterforce by arguing for liberation through a ‘trans-​personal and trans-​national force’ (Said 1993: 269). From the Afro-​European experiences, Fanon realises that power relations cannot be readily transfigured to be supportive of human freedom. That is why he foresees liberation and emancipation to deeply depend upon individuals’ constant striving against power. Fanon’s late work suggesting irreconciliation to power relations is of great interest to Said. He calls this ‘late style’, which is ‘what happens if art does not abdicate its rights in favour of reality’ (Said 2007: 9). In other words, when aged intellectuals endeavour to keep alive the irresolutions and tensions of worldly situations instead of showing the usual lenity towards them, they demonstrate the ‘late style’ of beginning anew the search for positive knowledge. Said cites Ludwig van Beethoven as an example of an artist’s intransigence in the late stage of his life. Far from being syncretic and unitary, Beethoven offers no resolve towards uplifting and appeasing moods in his late works. It is as if the lonely, hearing-​impaired and disaffected artist forsakes interactions with the familiar social environment in order to figuratively withdraw himself from the setting and test his intrinsic hope in its betterment for human inhabitation, which his middle-​period works master. As opposed to his second-​period Fifth Symphony, which is motivated and constant, the third-​period Missa Solemnis remains demanding, disjointed and disengaging. In this way, ‘[h]‌is late works constitute a form of exile’ (ibid.: 8). Indeed, the intellectual quality called, ‘late style’, embodies an exilic consciousness by being resistant to recognised norms and order. By defying time-​honoured serenity, orderliness and poise in the old age, the criterion forms part of Saidian exile’s restless, unsettling and sceptical consciousness. Interestingly, the decidedly unmellow stance towards concerted opinions, emotions and beliefs symbolises not only a self-​exile from the 40

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Exile and Intellectual Practice prevalent cultural environment but also the courage to persist with the struggle for truth and justice. From this standpoint, Said’s final term of criticism in his posthumously published book, On Late Style, completes his exploration of exile in a remarkably enriching way by elucidating the productiveness of the apparently unproductive struggle for freedom in Historic Palestine. He elaborates French intellectual and activist Jean Genet’s participation in the Palestinian movement. Genet’s last book, Prisoner of Love (1983), records his experience of living among the displaced people during the 1970s. The writer supported the cause of the deprived people because of the love he felt for them, ‘not because of the accidents of nationality, or the likelihood of success, or the dictates of theory’ (ibid.: 81). This is why his last work portrays no easy hope for winning the freedom. Neither does it show that his French nationality did not challenge his solidarity with the Arab-​Palestinians. This explains the confounding fragmentariness and lyricism of his autobiographical piece. In fact, the Palestinian dispossession teaches the activist the importance of non-​surrender to an unreal hope for superseding the identitarian process of the modern world. Understandably, Said chooses Genet to highlight Palestine as an inspiration for ‘late style’ that enables intellectuals to travel between identitarian poles without settling down to circumvent their opposite strains. In the last stage of Said’s life as well, Palestine thus retains its formative influence through providing him with an ungrounded position on identity formation. This proves the paradoxical benefit of exile anew: lack of habitual comfort and yet an opportunity of becoming. Thus, Said’s exilic consciousness endows him with the critical intellect of sustaining his struggle for truth, justice and freedom even when he approaches the end. Evidently, Said’s varied employment of his exilic consciousness through his major terms of criticism establishes the connection between the materiality of exile and the metaphoric dimension it achieves in the scholar’s oeuvre. Said’s figurative view of exile sculpts an effective model of intellectual efficacy that resonates with positivity, despite the experience of tremendous losses. This further suggests that Saidian exile is not solely dependent on the critique of home and foreign cultures. Along with the critical, secular and oppositional consciousness, the exilic intellectual must 41

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile demonstrate the contrapuntal and polyphonic consciousness, humanism of a universal stature and the ability to voyage in the Western discourse as well as maintain a lateness of style, which confirms that the struggle for freedom is extant. Understandably, these critical and constructive components form the basis of my book, which offers a discursive analysis of Saidian exile through tracing the reflection of the qualities in the most prominent Arab intellectuals’ writings and films. My discussion in the following chapters demonstrates that the Middle Eastern novelist, poet, filmmaker, essayist and feminist I have chosen highlight an angular view on cultural belonging through upholding the qualities of Saidian exile, which also enables them to envision a humanly satisfactory world. The intellectuals from the varied fields stress the qualities of mind without obviously the aim of being part of the Saidian discourse. When I illustrate the reflection of the exilic criteria in their works and films, however, I reiterate the significance of recognising the framework of a redoubtable intellectual practice. Following Said (1996: 63), then, I can safely assert that for an intellectual ‘to be as marginal and as undomesticated as someone who is in real exile’ is not only to cast a critical eye over the status quo but also to keep an open mind about exploratory, uncertain and unestablished matters. In order to illustrate the critical and creative aspects of the exile, I focus on a specific arrangement of the intellectual elements in each chapter that follows. In the second chapter, I demonstrate that Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Leila Ahmed, Youssef Chahine and Nawal El Saadawi portray all the traits of Saidian exile. The discussion makes us realise how Said and the Middle Eastern intellectuals transform the sorrows and sufferings of their deracination into a privilege of cultivating intellectual freedom. This further helps me to account for the intellectuals’ socialist, feminist, nationalist and humanist positions and their different socio-​political realities in relation to the orientations of modern Arab literature and film. In other words, I delineate how the Saidian reading of the Egyptian, Palestinian and American works and films contribute to the advancement of Arab cultural studies. The third chapter elaborates on the adversarial position of the exile by showing how Mahfouz, Darwish and Saadawi’s critical, secular and 42

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Exile and Intellectual Practice oppositional consciousness, and universal humanism, are ingrained in their resistance. Based on the exilic criteria, I analyse the intellectuals’ anti-​authoritarian writings as well as comment on the ethical strength of their mission. Thus, their writings have two sides: challenging established ideas that protract unequal social systems and sustaining a firm belief in the fundamental values of human life. These exercises make the exile an ‘unrewarded, amateurish conscience’ (ibid.: 84); but s/​he also creates a forceful intellectual presence through upholding the same principle for every human being. Following Adorno, Said (2001b) further suggests that the cultural worlds associated with the exilic intellectual are pivotal to him/​her in formulating the idea of home. Therefore, my fourth chapter discusses Mahfouz, Darwish and Ahmed in order to contend that words being the constant apparatus of an intellectual, they are what the exilic intellectuals build their figurative home with. Thus, Said’s exile is not all about being adversarial or antithetical; we discover that the attempt at reconciliation with dissimilar ideologies and the struggle with irreconcilables play a great role in this intellectual practice. As a result, the chapter not only highlights critical and secular consciousness but also universal humanism, polyphonic consciousness and late style. The final chapter combines the adversarial and directional aspects of the exilic intellectual practice to ascertain the association of the vocation with the two most well-​known contemporary schools of thought, namely, postcolonialism and postmodernism. By illustrating that Chahine, Darwish and Ahmed’s works reflect their exilic mindset, I project the combination of the two approaches. The artists’ voyage shows the adversarial aspect of Saidian exile through their anti-​colonialism, a stance with which postcolonial movement started. Similarly, polyphonic consciousness shows the directional aspect of the vocation and is visible through the intellectuals’ anti-​essentialist view on cultural belonging, which is a shared space between the discourses of postmodernism and the concept of exile. Finally, contrapuntal consciousness strengthens the ethical force of postcolonialism and reveals the ironic vision postmodernism offers in demystifying marginality without reinforcing heterogeneity. This proves the exilic discourse’s transcendence of the latter two arenas. 43

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile In this way, I examine Said’s ideals of criticism to create a screening process of identifying an unco-​ opted intellectual. Through the Arab-​ American intellectuals’ critical, secular, oppositional, contrapuntal or comparative and pluralistic outlooks of perceiving cultural systems, their unmoored creativity becomes comprehensible. Surely, my writing brings the exilic components under one framework in order to present a powerful practice that puts the principles of truth, justice and freedom in the centre of all intellectual activities.

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2 Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals

By reviewing the role of intellectuals in influencing Middle Eastern history, Nikki R. Keddie (1972) outlines its magnitude during the initial period of Islam and its renewed significance during the twentieth century. Especially in the early twentieth century, Arab intellectuals performed a significant task of transforming society through introducing ideas related to constitutional government, democracy, women’s rights, nationalism and social justice. However, Keddie marks the post-​World War II pervasiveness of pan-​Arab nationalism on the one hand, and on the other hand, intellectual doubts about proclaiming nationalist glories in Arab countries due to their painful defeats by Western powers during the period. Nevertheless, both the factors imposed considerable constraints on Arab intellectuals, which is why many of them had to choose exile because of their failure to create positive impacts in the socio-​political context. Evidently, the modern Middle Eastern intellectuals were not in favour of continuing with their society’s millennia-​old traditions. Despite their sincere desire for reform, there is an intellectual crisis in the Arab Middle East due to discernible differences in the trends of thought that have characterised the contemporary approaches to the reconstitution of the cultural world. Issa J. Boullata (1990) categorises the trends in three ways. The

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile first strand subscribes to the idea of a complete cultural revolution in Arab societies that will replace the religion-​based customs with rationalist and scientific objectives. The second train of thought envisions change without a radical overhaul of the sociocultural structure. This advocates an admixture of positive aspects of the traditional culture and the modern outlook. The third strand, however, focuses on the religious elements of Arab culture and suggests the restoration of authentic Islamic values. Since there is no final answer to the question of strategies for reviving Arab culture, the feeling of exile deepens among Arab intellectuals, especially as they struggle against incorporation into the regimes or feel dazed by the impossibility of regaining fully fledged freedom. In fact, remembering the 1,400-​year-old tradition of the theme of exile in Arabic literature, starting with Imru’ el-​Qyss, who was banished from his father’s kingdom for writing poetry, M. Lynx Qualey (2014) probes the resurfacing of the trope in contemporary writings of the region. Ever since the banished prince-​cum-​poet Imru’ el-​Qyss, who sought redress for his father’s assassination and dethronement, exile has appeared in Arabic literary creations as a metaphor of both personal and collective losses. Given the constant political convulsions of the region, the experience of outsiderness has become a potent leitmotif of modern Arabic literary creations, which is why Qualey believes that the entrance of contemporary Arabic poetry and fictions into the arena of world literature through translation has been extraordinary. Unsurprisingly, the feeling of being a stranger to one’s own surroundings, depicted as a core theme of the most compelling Arabic books, has deeply resonated with the global readership. Halim Barakat (2000) elaborates on the connection between exile and creative spirit. Enquiring into the flourishing of Arabic texts during the Abbasid (750–​1258 ce) and Andalusian (711–​1492 ce) periods, Barakat emphasises cultural plurality, adaptability and continuity of the times that contributed to the phenomenon. Through Arab intellectuals’ migration to Europe and America, the region has continued with its tradition of intercultural exchanges throughout the twentieth century as well. Consequently, Barakat stresses the significance of cultural relocation in Arabic literary tradition that delineates exile as an opportunity to demarcate unprescribed ways of life, despite the longing and sorrows involved with the condition. 46

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals The writer notes that Edward Said’s notion of exile contributes to this tradition of discovery. More importantly, he highlights the inspiring creativity of exiled Palestinian poets like Mahmoud Darwish, who not only identify change as a constant truth of human life but also portray that exile in one’s homeland is the most acute form of alienation. If contemporary Palestinian poets utilised their exile to introduce radical thoughts about a cultural habitat, Arab-​American poets of the twentieth century cultivated their freedom from their traditionally authoritarian society to inculcate modernism in Arabic literature. Anna Bernard (2015) believes that modernism in Arabic fiction appeared through the contemporary writers’ polyphonic mind. The modern Arab novelists veered away from their precursors through the employment of multifaceted styles, forms and patterns in their writings. The multi-layered texts with the polyvocal narratives are the authors’ respond to the socio-​political crises in the aftermath of the 1948 and 1967 wars as well as the rise of post-​independence debacles. Bernard correctly recognises that ‘these strategies draw readers’ attention to the laborious attempt to impose narrative order on an incoherent present’ (ibid.: 468). Befittingly, the modern era of Arabic creativity is distinguished by ‘iltizām, a translation of Jean-​Paul Sartre’s engagement’ (ibid.: 467; emphases in the original), which foregrounds literature as an invigorative force in society. Analogously, the pre-​modern tradition of Arabic autobiographies goes through a paradigm shift in the modern period through a variety of forms and individualistic styles. The preceding autobiographies work as a historical rather than stylistic or structural reference point for the modern works. The individualistic style inspiring the formal innovations suggests significant aspects of self-​portrayal in the Arabic literary tradition. First, the innovative elements portray an inner self that enables us to evaluate the author’s disposition, inclination and passion. Secondly, the techniques of writing reveal the connection between literary representation and the author’s personality (see Reynolds 2001). Dwight Reynolds’ edited book further espouses the notion that, as opposed to the Western chronological order of narration, the Arabic autobiographies provide readers with outside verification of the statements appearing in the account, poetic narration and imagined worldviews. More importantly, the chronological order 47

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile is replaced by thematic arrangement of various stages of the author’s life. The multiplicity is also recognisable in the authors’ multi-​ethnic backgrounds, which influence the lens through which they project the self. The autobiographies written in Arabic, thus, present the medium as a means of intellectual dialogue, rather than an exclusive replica of an educated life in the North or the South. Viola Shafik (1998) identifies the origin of the film medium in the North, whose superpowers have swayed the Middle East since the early twentieth century. The long-​lasting political control did not leave Arab films unaffected. Despite considerable constraints, however, Egypt became a pioneer in the field, mainly due to its vibrant cultural heritage. The mass uprising of 1919 against British domination worked as a catalyst for the autarkic Egyptian film industry. In particular, the inclusion of popular music created a desired impetus for the films throughout the Arab world. During the 1970s, though, experimenting with unconventional approaches to filmmaking began with the appearance of the ‘New Arab Cinema’ as a result of which the ills of authoritarian state policies were unveiled. Against this backdrop, cinema d’auteur became a significant mode of expressing individualistic and multifarious interpretations of symbols and phenomena. The cinematic style improvised modern literary narrative techniques such as the stream of consciousness and the discontinuous view of temporal and spatial realities. Naturally, the cinematic style highlighted regional, marginalised and hybrid identities. Thus, the cinema established its own iltizām. Evidently, Arab literary and filmic texts portray Arab intellectuals’ struggle between high ideals and harsh realities. The artistic creations not only mediate between abiding tradition and the current social mould but also uphold the revolutionary spirit of introducing positive changes to strengthen justice, unity and freedom in society. To imagine a worthwhile future for Arab society is to find a means of rising above the burdensome feeling of defeat at the hands of tyrannical power of many kinds. In this context, Said’s intellectual legacy is one of uplift and honour for the region from which he originated. Sabry Hafez (2010) identifies Said’s contribution to contemporary Arab culture through his Western humanist training and European literary expertise. Hafez argues that despite the lack of Arab 48

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals influence in Said’s mission, the strength he brought to Arab intellectuals’ search for socio-​political freedom and justice is significant. He became exemplary for upholding moral values and practising integrity whenever compromise was demanded. Due to Western domination, some Arab intellectuals decided to return to their native cultural roots, as we saw above. However, Said’s mediation between East and West created an inspiring environment, which Hafez rightly suggests to have had a deep impact. The growing interest in Said’s intellectual vocation, as we saw above through Barakat’s utilisation of Said’s view on exile in evaluating Arabic poetic tradition, shows that he has been discussed as a figure that rescues contemporary Arab intellectuals from any delusional notions about home and the world. Waïl Hassan (2002b) adds that Said’s Orientalism shared many arguments put forward by Arab intellectuals since the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, neither his analysis of colonial discourse nor his later theoretical developments have been properly studied in the context of the Arab world. Hassan strongly suggests that by connecting Said’s postcolonial analysis to Arabic cultural productions the horizons of the field can be considerably broadened. Consequently, one of the major reasons for my tracing the elements of Said’s intellectual practice in the works of the most prominent Arab intellectuals, namely, Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Leila Ahmed, Nawal El Saadawi and Youssef Chahine, is to interconnect the postcolonial field with Arab literary and cultural studies. By presenting some important literary and filmic texts produced by the intellectuals through a Saidian lens, I suggest the need for a renewed interest in their iltizām. As Hafez emphasises above, Said appears as a source of revival among Arab intellectuals, who combat the forces of destruction by dint of their creativity. By showing the reflection of Said’s idealistic intellectual practice in some of the works that precede and concur with the development of the vocation, I demonstrate the ground of his relevance in the region. This also revivifies the circularity between postcolonialism and Arab cultural wealth that Hassan highlights. Thus, I aim to substantiate the tradition of Arab intellectuals as a powerful force of positive change through my Saidian analysis of the contemporary artists. By delineating the faculties through which the intellectuals are able to perform their traditional role as a reservoir of 49

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile cultural memories and their contemporary function as an invincible force of social transformation, I elaborate the rationale behind the distinguished standing of intellectuals in the Arab world.

The reflection of Said’s ideas in contemporary Arab literature and film As we observed in the previous chapter, the exilic intellectual practice has eight discernible properties: critical consciousness, secular consciousness, oppositional consciousness, contrapuntal consciousness, polyphonic consciousness, voyage in, universal humanism and late style. I demonstrate below the presence of the properties in the above-​mentioned intellectuals’ creations in order to highlight the map of the qualities of mind required for the exilic vocation. By locating the exilic qualities in Mahfouz’s novel and autobiography, Darwish’s lyrics and prose poetry, Chahine’s films, Ahmed’s autobiography, and Saadawi’s autobiographies, autobiographical novel and feminist writing, I integrate the oeuvres into the Saidian discourse. First of all, by tracing the projection of the first component of Said’s exile in the works of the intellectuals, I find that they distance themselves from the orthodox societal practices through their independent judgement on them. Rather than following social mores with what Said (1996) disparagingly calls unsceptical conviviality, they reflect on their nature with a metaphorical disconnection. Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy is renowned for illuminating Egypt’s modern history, society and culture through vividly inscribing Cairo’s life, atmosphere and rhythm in its narrative texture. Sasson Somekh (1973) explains that the novel presents Egypt’s transition to independence from British control through the portrayal of a middle-​class Cairene family and a precise account of the fabric and feel of city life from the early to mid-​twentieth century. Nevertheless, the master storyteller chooses the realistic mode of fiction to recount how his characters are trapped in an unfulfilling society. Rather than being loyal to its politics and practices, Mahfouz queries them by bringing out their true nature. Through the uninvolved portrayal of the sufferings of an ordinary family, Mahfouz shows how a repressive situation reigns in the name of tradition and crushes individuals in many ways. 50

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals The novelist demonstrates that, Ahmad Al Jawad, the dubious head of the family represented in the Trilogy, gets away with his ambiguous religiosity accompanied by acute hedonism because of his societal privilege of being ‘a man’, who does not ‘accept any criticism of [his] behaviour’ (Mahfouz 2001: 8). The writer projects the view that people in his society are generally given over to opportunism and hedonism; education is valued not for its own sake but for the chances it offers to climb the social ladder; marriage serves the same purpose; prostitution appears to be an accepted norm; and the worshipping of power of every kind continues. Mahfouz’s Cairo becomes a place where a pure soul like Fahmy, Al Jawad’s finest son, is annihilated in the anti-​ colonial struggle. These aspects confirm that the writer’s aim is not solely to render some socio-​historical events and facts through an entertaining familial story. Mahfouz asserts that despite his dispassionate style of rendering the generational struggle of a family, the novel ‘attests to a well-​defined view of the world which is revealed in the sequence of events’ (see Mahfouz and Dawwarah 1989: 24). Thus, his relentless unmasking of the depravity of his known world marks out his critical consciousness in the fiction. Chahine’s critical understanding of Egyptian society sheds more light on the unfavourable reality. Unlike Mahfouz’s familial tale, Chahine presents a historical allegory to speak of the religious extremism in his society. In the Andalusian Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averröes), he finds a historical figure to symbolise the past for the present. Therefore, Ibn Rushd speaks for him in Destiny. A  three-​party conflict lies at the heart of the story. Ibn Rushd, a philosopher and judge, stands for a real understanding of religion and society through critical interpretations of texts and laws. Sultan Al Mansour, however, is solely interested in ensuring that his power is all pervasive and unchallenged. In between the two poles, a deadly fundamentalist force keeps spreading its poison against both the interpretative tradition and the sovereignty of the state. Chahine’s handling of the three-​ way clash makes a lucid allegory of modern day Egypt, where fundamentalism is fatally on the increase through undermining the state and rationalist thinking. Thus, in the film, ‘Chahine’s warning is forceful: unless today’s Egyptians allow free exchange of ideas and respect their artists and thinkers –​and unless they reconcile reason and revelation –​one day they might find themselves engulfed in their own Dark Ages’ (Fawal 2001: 182). 51

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Not surprisingly, then, like Chahine, Saadawi’s critical consciousness also works against the fundamentalists in present-​day Egypt. However, unlike Chahine, her denunciation of them takes a factual form, as she writes about her own experience of fighting against them. The second part of her autobiography, Walking through Fire, begins with ‘The Threat’ from the fundamentalists, who have put her on a death-​list, because: ‘You are a heretic, an enemy of Islam, an instrument of the Devil’ (Saadawi 2002b: 1, 19). Obviously, Saadawi’s criticism of her society’s oppression of women in the name of Islam is the root cause of the fundamentalists’ attack against her. However, the author takes us back to her student life to give us an account of the beginning of her critical distance from them. It was just before the 1952 revolution, when the medical school was inundated with political demonstrations. In one of those gatherings she meets Omran, a student leader of the Muslim Brothers, Egypt’s foremost fundamentalist party: ‘He wore a tight suit into which he squeezed his square body and sported a waistcoat with a silver chain … his thick lips parted as though he were smiling up at some force hidden in the heavens’ (ibid.: 30). Clearly, Saadawi’s ironic tone and a feeling of aversion towards the man turn the portrayal into a critical verdict on his pretentious holiness. Since Darwish’s reality of society and culture is radically different from that of Mahfouz, Chahine and Saadawi, his use of critical consciousness is dissimilar to them all. Darwish does not have a state from which his thinking has to be metaphysically disconnected. His critical consciousness, therefore, is perceived through his politics of a homeland that has been occupied by the Israeli authorities, who would like us all to consider it nonexistent. The poet transforms his personal losses into a public voice to assert the rights of his people who, like him, are dispossessed of their land and identity. The earth is closing on us, pushing us through the last passage, and   we tear off our limbs to pass through … Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky? Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air? We will   write our names with scarlet steam. (Darwish et al. 1984: 13) 52

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals The image of a people incessantly pushed out of their land is likened to that of plants pressingly needing air or birds desperately searching a sky for survival. Thus, the extremely threatened condition of the Palestinians is felt as an urgent crisis of existence for some living beings. In creating this image, Darwish’s critical consciousness stands against what Said calls the ‘messianic zealotry’ (see Said and Barsamian 2003: 149) with which Israel occupies more and more Palestinian lands. If Darwish’s imagination is richly poetical, Ahmed’s mind is beautifully analytical. A Border Passage shows that her upbringing makes it impossible for her to denounce colonialism out of hand, since her ‘childhood fell in the era when the words “imperialism” and “the West” had not yet acquired the connotations they have today –​they had not yet become, that is, mere synonyms for “racism”, “oppression”, and “exploitation”’ (Ahmed 2000:  5). The author is against turning British rule into obvious synonyms for tyranny and darkness due to the fact that the education and modernist values that her family members gained through the system endowed them with splendid intellectual and cultural benefits. Nevertheless, Ahmed’s critical consciousness enables her to dissociate herself from her parents’ ‘internalised colonialism’ (ibid.:  25). Looking back, Ahmed discovers that the supposed British superiority is not as unquestionable as it seemed in her parents’ eyes. Her father, for example, suffered from a British policy of preventing Egyptians from becoming engineers. It was the colonialist way of making sure that the natives would always depend on their ruler’s technological know-​how. Ahmed herself faced racism in her famous British-​run Victoria College in Cairo. She does not forget the country’s political and economic sufferings due to colonialism either. The writer thus neither unthinkingly vilifies nor extols British colonialism. Evidently, Ahmed, Darwish, Mahfouz, Saadawi and Chahine’s voices concur in approaching their society and reality through an unfailing critical consciousness, which disallows their acceptance of idées reçues regarding societal norms, religious fundamentalism, dispossession and internal colonisation. Similarly, the second quality of the exile, secular consciousness, enables them to interpret the nature of their home culture through its political, social, religious, economic and gender relationships. 53

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Mahfouz shows in The Cairo Trilogy that the prevalent oppressive system works through the three generations of the Al Jawad family’s mechanical compliance with it. Following the norms of a male chauvinist society, Al Jawad builds up a master’s image for himself at home, makes his wife and children submit to him by instilling a terrible fear in them and treats his wife outrageously as a personal servant. The irony is that he becomes caught in his own net of subjugation; the master becomes the slave of the self-​created prison, as he attains neither connectivity nor authenticity in any of his relationships. The intimacy seen in his liaisons with courtesans is superficial and hence satisfying only for the period of entertainment. Even his supposed charity work brings him only false respectability, for the sheikh who receives allowances from him knows about his night-​time ventures for pleasure and does not look upon him as a God-​fearing person. Unlike him, Kamal is full of theories of freedom and justice that he miserably fails to connect to the real life. His excessive desire to Westernise himself metamorphoses him from a sprightly, frolicking, inquisitive little boy into an epitome of desolation. The dreamer Kamal, who is ‘determined to make philosophy [his] work and literature [his] relaxation’, ends up admitting that he has accomplished neither, since ‘[a]‌philosopher is not a parrot who merely repeats what other philosophers have said’ (Mahfouz 2001: 747, 1194). His nephews, on the other hand, actively link their thinking to left and ultra-​right politics. Caught in the political upheaval of a changing society, one of them becomes a communist and the other a fundamentalist. Neither of them, however, examines their party loyalties or analyses the nature of the political movements they sign up to. All the generations thus display that they live in a society where individuals are born to discover that there is already a pattern waiting for them to fit into. Even if they try to move beyond it, they are not allowed to form a real challenge to their pre-​designed roles. Mahfouz’s exposition of how the established social system entraps the Cairo-dwellers is a proof of his secular consciousness. If Mahfouz’s criticism of his society creates a specular reflection, Darwish’s secular consciousness is dedicated to the creation of an aesthetic of home that is spun out of his people’s deep sorrows of dispossession, 54

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals loss and suffering. In ‘A Poem Which is not Green, from My Country’, Darwish writes: In my country are the graveyards of light and luminous flowers, the well-​spring of grief.   The colours of our letter are persecuted. Trussed it cries out. They stifled it. They squeezed its spark from it. They robbed it of the borders of kindness …   Our letter became a wound where the dusk is swimming.   In silence it is breaking into bud the flowers and bunches of basil! (1973: 21) Darwish unmasks how the system of persecution operates in turning his native land into ‘the well-​spring of grief’. His secular consciousness grounds the verse in the political/​material world, where ‘they’ are the dominant force dispossessing ‘us’ of ‘light and luminous flowers’. However, the deprivation of a luminous life and the mutilation of the poet’s literature and culture symbolised by the systematic stifling of ‘our letter’ are rejected as being the end of everything, let alone the extinguishment of a strong desire for achieving a political homeland. Darwish asserts that their ‘wound’ in reverse nourishes ‘the flowers and bunches of basil’. These bunches might be innocuous, unnoticed by the outside world, and even of little importance to others; but they are resilient and beautifully undying. They provide courage and strength for maintaining an alternative existence ‘[i]‌n silence’. Darwish’s analysis of home, therefore, transforms his people’s existential misery of homelessness into an invincible longing for a peaceful abode. Chahine’s secular consciousness presents the longing for home from a completely different angle. He seeks out an aesthetically fulfilling abode through the existential scrutiny of Alexandria, his native city. However, in Alexandria … Why?, the young Chahine is represented by Yehia, who finds his dream to become a filmmaker to be almost impossible to fulfil in Egypt. Ravaged by colonialism, post-​World War II Egypt is no home, 55

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile no nurturing ground for an ambitious young boy driven by powerful aspirations to bring about positive changes in its cultural milieu. One of Yehia’s friends has a power-​hungry nouveau riche father who thinks that his son should, without a qualm, enjoy the privilege of studying abroad, and benefit from the West’s progressive knowledge, because he can easily afford the expensive education. Through familial sacrifice, though, Yehia sets off to study in America. As his ship sails away, his mother appears on the screen symbolising mother Egypt, and pleads her son to return to them. This reiterates the young exile’s commitment to his homeland; once he finishes at Pasadena Playhouse, a famous institution of theatre arts in California, he wants to be back in Alexandria and to contribute to Egyptian culture through his advanced knowledge and improved abilities. Thus, Chahine’s secular consciousness is visible through his implacable commitment to building an alternative to the demoralising situation masquerading as home. Like Chahine, Saadawi’s secular consciousness also circles around an individual versus an adverse society. However, unlike Chahine’s portrayal of a challenge to self-​fulfilment, Saadawi draws a bleak picture of the annihilation of an innocent self. In Walking through Fire she records the story of a young girl, Masouda, who is forced to marry an aged man and go through sexual abuses. The account begins with Masouda being known to be possessed by devils and the torturous exorcism that follows. Saadawi’s opposition to this and her endeavour to rid the villagers’ minds of the superstition are unsuccessful. The powerful people in the village –​the sheikh controlling the mosque, the village guards and headman –​ unite against her. The invisible pressure they create on the helpless Masouda ensures that she will never master the courage to explain fully the horrific abuses that make her lose control of her mind, which is the source of her so-​called spirit possession. However, Saadawi never points out that the girl’s rueful plight is a manifest violation of religious laws regarding marriage and human conduct. Rather, she claims that the situation ‘drew its authority from God’s jurisprudence. I was putting myself in the position of someone opposed to God and His laws’ (Saadawi 2002b: 102). Consequently, she fails to reveal how religion is manipulated in the worldly context, which undermines her secular consciousness. 56

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals Unlike Saadawi, Ahmed’s feminist concerns do not allow her to be carried away by passionate conviction. Reading Saadawi’s autobiographies, one gets the impression that the individuals discussed in the writings represent the entire society, but Ahmed’s memoir makes it clear that her observation centres around her class environment. Around 1952, Saadawi’s Masouda loses her life thanks to society’s manifest injustice in compelling her to submit to a heinous husband. In contrast, in A Border Passage Ahmed illustrates how, long before 1952, her mother started to enjoy a marriage based on mutual understanding and respect. Understandably, Ahmed’s parents’ upper-​middle-​class existence, spun around a Westernised and educated lifestyle, plays a key role in nullifying these practices. Thus, class and education determine how far religious, social or state laws and customs victimise women. In her autobiographical novella Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, Saadawi broadly focuses on a girl child’s experience of unfairness in her conservative household. Faced with harsh realities sketched in the novel, Saadawi (1989: 14) creates ‘an imaginary private world for myself in which I was a goddess and men were stupid, helpless creatures at my beck and call’. When one of young Ahmed’s male playmates tries to take advantage of her and she is forbidden to play with boys forever, she does not vilify them. Instead, she finds a new companion in books. In A Border Passage, Ahmed’s knowledge of Huda Sharawi, a pioneer of the Egyptian feminist movement, broadens the canvas of her secular consciousness by including historico-​political facts in depicting women in the face of unjust systems. Through Sharawi’s background as a slave-​ born child, Ahmed brings out two of the historico-​political systems that degraded women in her society:  ‘slavery and concubinage’, which for centuries fed into the idea of women being ‘inferior creatures, essentially sex objects and breeders’ (Ahmed 2000: 100). Thus, the writer surveys the deplorable history of slavery brought to her society through Turkish politics. However, Sharawi’s personal revolt against the reprehensible ideas related to women provides Ahmed with a vital alternative to the history. She thus projects how a positive change in the situation was made possible through women’s struggle. Thus we realise that the intellectuals’ secular consciousness empowers them to examine their social systems and expose the defects embedded in 57

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile them. However, Saadawi helps us to realise that in doing so, a Saidian exile cannot jeopardise his/​her observation with hastiness, since his/​her aim is to carefully probe the worldly reality. This is strengthened by the exile’s oppositional consciousness, as we shall soon observe. A Border Passage remarkably projects how Ahmed’s passion for varied interests in history, politics and culture leads her to challenge the ‘Islam of sheikhs, ayatollahs, mullahs, and clerics’ (ibid.: 125) that dominates her native society. Unlike Saadawi, then, Ahmed realises that Islam can be of various kinds, depending on its application. Therefore, she opposes the ‘authoritative Islam’ (ibid.: 128) proposed by the presumed religious heads because of its falsehood and tyrannical attitude towards women. She thus takes a courageous stance in combating ‘the Islam of the arcane, mostly medieval written heritage in which sheikhs are trained’ (ibid.: 125). She considers this version of Islam to be the making of a group of medieval men who posed their ‘abstruse and obscure’ and ‘exclusively male views’ (ibid.: 126) as the essential interpretation of the Qur’an’. Like Said, she is against any such essentialist interpretation of texts. Furthermore, she refutes the assertion that the medieval views that oppress women so much can claim to be genuine Islam at all, because the fact that the Qur’an’ repeatedly proclaims the values of ‘mercy, justice, spirit, compassion, humanity, fairness, kindness, truthfulness, charity’ (ibid.) for both men and women is simply not reflected in the views. Not only does Ahmed stand up to textual Islam made up of medieval explanations but she also totally nullifies any claims the fundamentalists might have on the religion, since theirs ‘is a more ill-​informed version of old-​style official Islam’ (ibid.: 128). Thus the writer proves her oppositional consciousness through her ability to judge and criticise established authorities, without accepting them to be a priori. Saadawi is at one with Ahmed in confronting powers of domination, though there is a distinct difference between their positions. Saadawi’s public engagement is greater than Ahmed’s, so much so that Saadawi gave up the medical profession in order to continue to fight for women’s rights, democracy and social justice in Egypt. Ahmed (1981: 750) stresses: ‘I know of no other woman within her society who has attacked its patriarchal values … as openly, cogently, and uncompromisingly as she.’ She acts not 58

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals only against patriarchy but all forms of social injustice. Saadawi (1999) records how she thought of justice and fair play even as a young girl. Even though she portrays her poverty-​stricken primary teachers as ‘not only ignorant but also extremely harsh’, she proves how they were manipulated by the authorities sarcastically called ‘the Ministry of Nauseation’ (ibid.: 91, 92). She does not fail to link the hopeless situations with a bigger power game created through colonial subjugation and the failures of the political parties to put the people first on their agenda. In fact, from the village circle to the national and international arenas, no power seems to be too large for her forthright criticism: ‘[Saadawi] is openly critical of everything from the Palestinian peace accord … to American involvement in the Gulf War …’ (Winokur 1994: 12). Saadawi’s undaunted spirit is her strongest point as an exilic intellectual. Like Saadawi, Chahine is a great believer in speaking truth to power, even though he does not project himself as a public intellectual. All through his career, Chahine’s opposition to British colonialism, Egyptian regimes, oppressive systems, fundamentalism and American dominance over the region turned him into an enemy of forces that curtail individual and collective freedom. To illustrate, in Alexandria … Why?, when Yehia’s ship finally reaches the American coast, he sees an ugly-​faced Statue of Liberty wickedly laughing at him. Despite young Yehia/​ Chahine’s American dream, the grown-​up Chahine denounces the symbol of America in protesting against the country’s extraordinary control over world politics. In this way, his relentless criticism of power remained audacious all along, which proved his resolute commitment to truth and justice. Mahfouz joins the oppositional mission with the same commitment. He is not, however, as forthright and fierce as Chahine or Saadawi. The Cairo Trilogy, for example, never plainly protests or preaches against the tyrannies it exposes – patriarchy, restraining traditions, colonial domination, post-​independence corruption in society, corruption as a legacy of colonial politics and bureaucracy and so on. Because of a determined and comprehensive disclosure of systems of power in the novel, it becomes a ‘national allegory’ in Fredric Jameson’s terms, who believes that in ThirdWorld literatures the story of individuals’ struggle is inevitably bound up with ‘the whole laborious telling of the experience of the collectivity itself’ 59

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile (Jameson 1986: 69, 86).The Trilogy shows that the familial saga is tied up with the turbulence of national history from 1919 (the birth of Egyptian national consciousness) onwards. By earmarking different historical turning points, Mahfouz portrays Egypt as a playground of Ottoman, British and (ineffective) national governments’ muddled politics. In particular, the completion of the Trilogy coincides with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s revolution in 1952, which was not a step in the right direction after the Wafdist failure of the turbulent 1940s to deliver in government (Wafd was the key nationalist party for earning Egypt’s independence from Britain). The revolution rescued the country from colonial domination and highlighted the ideals of democracy and social justice; but the formation of a regime worked against them. Arguably, Mahfouz’s exposition of the power network in his society achieves another dimension as an allegorical illustration of how the authoritarian Egyptian society breeds a Nasserite regime. As we see, Al Jawad’s way of maintaining control over his family parallels Nasser’s policies: sustaining people’s deeply held belief in the master’s superpower and crushing all dissent through punishment or even exile (indeed, Amina was banished from home for visiting a shrine without the patriarch’s permission). The parallelism explains why Mahfouz sets his story as far back as 1917, despite publishing it in 1956, as a way of getting to the bottom of the problem of his society and its power. Searching for freedom in a (post)colonial society devoid of democracy, his familial story becomes a medium of his uncompromising unmasking of unjust powers. From this perspective, Mahfouz is much nearer to Darwish in the latter’s oppositional position. Darwish’s poems also represent a search for freedom on behalf of an oppressed people, as he transfigures the saga of a trampled-​upon identity into a visibly resisting agency. His oppositional consciousness is employed in combating the constant dehumanisation of his people. Write down I am an Arab. You usurped my grandfather’s vineyards and the plot of land I used to plough …

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals So be it.   Write down at the top of the first page: I do not hate people. I steal from no-​one. However if I am hungry I will eat the flesh of my usurper. (Darwish 1973: 25) In the face of unrelenting Israeli aggression, Darwish asserts his identity through some of the most fundamental characteristics of humanity, which include the need for food, work and connection to other people. However, these needs are denied to the Arab-​Palestinians, as their land, succession and economic security are continuously ‘usurped’. Consequently, the bare human in Darwish roars against the Israeli aggressive force by warning it that his hunger will make him rebel in an extreme way. In the furious final line, Darwish unreservedly announces that if the Palestinians are relentlessly stripped of their humanity, the animal in them will come out at some stage. Though Darwish’s resistance became more sophisticated later on, this forceful utterance of the plain truth made this poem, ‘Identity Card’, a strong weapon against Israeli assaults in every Palestinian’s mind, even including that of Said (1980: 155). Darwish’s direct proclamation of revolt not only reflects his persistent and vehement resistance to the Israeli authorities but also confirms his exilic stance. If an exilic intellectual thus utilises his/​her oppositional consciousness in order to combat power, s/​he also views the home and foreign cultures to be parallel to each other. In other words, the exile juxtaposes one cultural perspective or practice against another in order to enhance his/​her independent viewpoint. In this context, I analyse the presence of the contrapuntal consciousness in the intellectuals’ works. In September 11, Chahine presents his views on America’s tragedy in conjunction with the similar ones in the Arab world. The compact film (rendered skilfully in only 11 minutes and nine seconds) brings together three people from three completely different backgrounds by linking them in a comparative context. We see ‘an imaginary encounter between an unnamed film director, a US marine killed in Beirut and his fundamentalist

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile assassin’ (Whitaker 2008) through which a contrapuntal response to the shattering event is presented. Predictably, the filmmaker acts as a Chahine-​ persona by answering journalists just after the 11 September 2001 tragedy. Asked to comment on the incident, he says that he has to think before constructing his views. Clearly, he does not want to formulate an indiscreet for or against answer to the catastrophe; he is more interested in analysing why disasters like these arise. Here lies the significance of his allusion to the Beirut marine barracks bombing in1983 during the Lebanese Civil War. As the Chahine-​persona next enters into a speculative conversation with a young American marine killed by the Beirut bomb, the soldier accuses him of being an Arab, because the bombing was perpetrated by Arab extremists. Chahine then summons the third person involved in the make-​believe encounter, a Palestinian fighter, to record his experience of Israeli violence. This is not to justify one incident of hostility by another. By juxtaposing the standpoint of the American marine against that of the Palestinian bomber, Chahine explains the circularity of violence. We discover that the Palestinian is getting ready to fight while his parents look on. The next moment the all-​too-​common tragedy of a bomb blast fills the screen. This picture may appear shocking to unthinking viewers at the bleak moment of America’s great loss. However, Chahine’s counterpoint to the notion of Arab violence becomes humane when he talks to the Palestinian family and asks them to explain this apparently shocking and destructive act. The parents explain to Chahine and the American soldier the root cause of their son’s desperate act and their seemingly absurd acceptance of it. Chahine’s camera illustrates the mother’s tragedy, as she speaks: a bulldozer uproots an olive tree symbolising her security and the Israeli soldiers humiliate her husband. If this is their daily life, we are asked how they are supposed to react to the recurrent tortures. In this context, Whitaker’s introduction to the Palestinian as a ‘fundamentalist assassin’ becomes an ideologically loaded (mis)representation for two reasons. First, we cannot assume that all Palestinian suicide bombers are fundamentalists and, second, Chahine’s film does not show if the bomber actually assassinates anyone. The suicide bomber is neither a martyr nor a nationalist hero here, because Chahine attempts to reveal the condition behind his irrational act, not to justify it. 62

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals Because Chahine assembles so many perspectives together in such a short film, his counterpoints are fast-​paced. Unlike Chahine, however, Darwish unfolds his emotions, thoughts and ideas slowly and meditatively through his counterpoints. We can consider one of his masterpieces, Memory for Forgetfulness, in this regard. Though this poetic memoir is based on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, there are two sides of Darwish’s memory that are depicted in parallel to each other. Writing three years after the invasion, the poet looks at his remote memory of occupied Palestine through the lens of his close memory of the siege. Like Chahine’s camera capturing two disparate phenomena together, Darwish’s poetic-​prose links the two different times of being occupied by the same aggressor, once in Palestine and another time in Beirut. Out of the situations, he reflects how apparently simple matters have nonetheless left a deep impact on his psyche. For example, having a cup of coffee in the morning is a life-​giving phenomenon, or a symbol of freedom to him; but he writes that it is vehemently denied to him during the Beirut siege as well as during his time in an Israeli prison for his poems. Darwish (1995: 6) asserts how the deprivation of coffee hurts under the siege: ‘I want the aroma of coffee. I want nothing more than the aroma of coffee.’ The next moment, he juxtaposes the same deprivation during his imprisonment: ‘I got used to counting the number of weevils in the dish of lentil soup … But I never did get used to the absence of my morning coffee and having to take washed-​out tea instead’ (ibid.: 21). Darwish’s outcry for a cup of coffee becomes a counterpoint to the denial of his existence both in Beirut and Palestine, because the desire acts as his imperishable yearning not to be extinguished. His creative recording of the desire becomes a powerful counterpoint to the Beirut siege as well, because it proves that his writing is not susceptible to attack. His dramatic monologue puts forward his writing/​strength of mind, which cannot be broken into pieces by heavy artillery, as a counterpoint to the destruction: ‘Yes, I want to sing to this burning day … I want a find a language that transforms language itself into steel for the spirit –​a language to use against these sparkling silver insects, these jets’ (ibid.: 52). The intuitive and artfully artless language that he uses in the memoir is ‘steel for the spirit’, for it truthfully captures the bleak reality around him. 63

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile The ingenuousness of his language is, therefore, presented contrapuntally with the soulless language of the media. Intensive bombardment of Beirut. Is this aired as an ordinary news item about an ordinary day in an ordinary war in an ordinary newscast? I  move the dial to the BBC. Deadly lukewarm voices of announcers smoking pipes within hearing of the listeners. (Ibid.: 23; emphasis in the original)

As opposed to the ossified rendering of the newscasters, the poet employs his creative voice to reconstruct the siege in writing so as to purge his mind of the memory. The poet wants to forget the event, though his endeavour towards forgetfulness ironically becomes its counterpoint; because the writing reinscribes the memory on the pages of his memoir. It is also human that the poet also wants to forget his abysmal days in prison, where he spent days ‘counting the number of weevils in the dish of lentil soup’ and suffering from the absence of coffee. But such cruel facts are not delivered with thunder in Darwish’s art, unlike Chahine’s. Chahine’s outburst in September 11 against the American soldier’s one-​sided demand for justice is undoubtedly cogent. Nevertheless, Darwish’s rage appears more courageously controlled, as his counterpoints make his deep aesthetics linger in our memory strengthening his exilic resistance against injustice, humiliation and demolition. Compared to both Darwish and Chahine, Mahfouz’s voice is dispassionate in delineating a counterpoint due to his objective style of narration. Therefore, Mahfouz’s disapproval of Amina’s miseries lies in a thoughtful handling of the narrative of the Trilogy through a contrapuntal outlook that eventually shifts the focus from Al Jawad to Amina. Commenting on the spatio-temporal arrangement of the narrative, Sabry Hafez (2001) notes that Al Jawad’s family home is hierarchically arranged, with the patriarch occupying the top floor and his wife remaining busy in the ground floor baking room most of the time. The temporal arrangement thus brings ‘the domain of the mother and her domestic activities forward’ (ibid.: xvi). In this way, Mahfouz portrays Amina as a counter-​force to Al Jawad by allowing her world to rise over the patriarchal structure. As opposed to Amina’s hypocritical and superficial husband, too, she is practical and strong in 64

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals her capacity to endure the trials of time. As a result, Mahfouz parallels the conflicting cultural patterns of patriarchal domination and high respect for a mother figure in order to undermine the unquestioned acceptance of the former in his society. By judging discordant strands of his culture in a familial context, Mahfouz’s exilic mind works through his contrapuntal consciousness. Like Mahfouz, Ahmed carefully weaves a contrapuntal vision through her narrative. However, unlike Mahfouz’s symbolic presentation, Ahmed’s delineation of the counterpoint is polemical. She likens Girton College, Cambridge to her grandmother’s harem in Alexandria, since both represent enclosures for women. However, Ahmed (2000: 183), does not parallel the ‘two harem communities, a Turco-​Egyptian one and a British one’ just to narrate her memory. Such an extraordinary comparison dismisses the idea that an Eastern harem is a place of physical sensation and oppression whereas a Western one is an abode of learning and emancipation. In other words, Ahmed carefully constructs the narrative as a contrapuntal polemic to dispel the Orientalist idea of a harem as a symbol of exotic life that is diametrically opposed to Western culture. Ahmed maintains that the Eastern harem gives women from various walks of life straightforward access to community life across class and opinion lines. For instance, the harem at Alexandria was an environment in which Ahmed’s grandmother, her daughters, their women relatives and maids shared their daily life. Through sharing their problems and analysing them, not only was class division overcome but ‘children were saved the devastation of divorce, husbands kept monogamous, and women appeased (for good or ill) so as to endure some unendurable situation’ (ibid.: 191). Ahmed argues that the Alexandrian women’s analysis of life events was not fundamentally different from the Girton female undergraduates’ literary scrutiny of ‘words, meaning, motives, characters, consequences and responsibilities’ (ibid.). Thus, Ahmed counterposes Alexandria’s oral tradition against Girton’s professional activity to show that the same mode of analysis applied in Alexandria and Girton is treated differently in the world. The Alexandrian practice is called ‘idle gossip, the empty and even sometimes evil, malicious talk of women’, whereas the Girton activity is termed as ‘honorable, serious and important work’ (ibid.: 192). Thus, 65

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Ahmed’s contrapuntal consciousness judges a cultural system and the conventional views attached to it with the help of counterpoints drawn from a different one. Saadawi also uses her counterpoints polemically. However, her polemic is directed not against cultural systems but identity politics. From her experience of attending different conferences in Europe and North America dealing with African culture/​identity, she wonders why this is the subject of so much discussion. She contrasts this reality with the fact that no conferences held in Africa, Asia or even in America deal with pan-​ Americanism. The question is whether pan-​Americanism does not require any examination, unlike pan-​Africanism. The contrapuntal questioning reveals that African identity can be reified by the West, since the latter still holds power over the former. This explains why Saadawi’s Egyptian identity is categorised according to the dictate of the West. In today’s world, her Arab and African identity lose focus as ‘a new identity’ is ‘coined for [her] by the global powers’ (Saadawi 1997: 117). Saadawi is termed a Middle Easterner, ‘not Arab at all. That way [she] can be postmodern, updated, moving with the times’ (ibid.: 118). She makes fun of such identity formation, saying that its postmodern nature is inherited from colonial geography. Colonial Egypt and India were declared to be the Middle and Far East, considering their distance from England, the colonising centre. To reverse this, she now calls Britain the Middle West and the US the Far West (see Saadawi and Appiah 2009). Obviously, her contrapuntal geography puts Egypt in the centre. In this way, Saadawi, Ahmed, Mahfouz, Darwish and Chahine project their contrapuntal consciousness by paralleling dissimilar cultural identities, practices, patterns, conflicts and even antagonisms that draw out their connections and broaden our perspective on them. Polyphonic consciousness is another exilic way of incorporating different viewpoints, which is more harmonious. This exilic property creates an effective interplay between multiple identities and worldviews in the intellectuals’ works. In A Daughter of Isis and The Nawal El Saadawi Reader, Saadawi’s pluralistic existence is admirably manifested through her passionate embrace of Pharaonic Egypt (fascination for the goddess Isis), engagement with 66

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals Islam (critical approach to the Prophet’s life to enhance women’s dignity) and her strong belief in Western philosophy of individual freedom (teaching ‘dissidence and creativity’ at Duke University in order to stimulate students’ original thoughts opposing non-​freedom). Amal Amireh (2000: 230) sums up Saadawi’s polyphonic mind thus: ‘Readers of her nonfiction encounter Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and the Prophet Muhammad all on the same page … In being eclectic, El Saadawi is actually asserting her independence.’ It is no wonder that Mahfouz, like Saadawi, is also passionately pluralistic in his writing. But to me his polyphonic consciousness is much more deep-​rooted than that of Saadawi. Mahfouz (1988) asserts in his Nobel lecture: It was my fate, ladies and gentlemen, to be born in the lap of these two [Pharaonic and Islamic] civilizations, and to absorb their milk, to feed on their literature and art. Then I drank the nectar of your [the West’s] rich and fascinating culture.

Mahfouz’s pluralistic bent of mind is understood through his characterisation in the Trilogy. Despite Al Jawad’s despotic rule and hedonistic life, he upholds some positive qualities of traditional Egyptian society: ‘Respect for authority, professions of piety, and a strong emphasis on the integrity of the family are the admirable qualities of the man’ (Armbrust 1995: 88). What Mahfouz highlights, however, is that the qualities need to be enhanced through modern Western understanding. To me, Fahmy is the only person in the Trilogy who balances traditional values with modernist attitude. On the one hand, due to his respect for authority, Fahmy’s ‘guilty conscience’ for disobeying his father by participating in the political movement works as ‘a heavy burden for his sensitive heart’ (Mahfouz 2001: 519). On the other hand, through his Western education as a lawyer, he becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his family’s tradition-​ filled ‘atmosphere of lassitude, ignorance, and indifference’ (ibid.: 349). Therefore, it is an enormous loss that the liberation struggle extinguished a rich spirit like Fahmy. Notably, Mahfouz depicts Fahmy’s martyrdom with a Western philosophy of time in order to advance the struggle. Rashed El-​Enany (1993) 67

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile informs us that Bergson’s notion of time is central to the Trilogy. Henri Bergson believes that we have to do with two different kinds of reality, the one heterogeneous, that of sensible qualities, the other homogenous, namely space. This latter, clearly conceived by the human intellect, enables us to use clean-​cut distinctions, to count, to abstract, and perhaps also to speak. (2001: 97)

Our reality is consciousness and space oriented, then. The space remains homogeneous while our states of consciousness change with time. By defining time as a continuum, Bergson adds that due to the intrusion of space in our consciousness, we experience time in its broken-down dimensions. Thus, the continuum seems fallacious to us. Following Bergson, Mahfouz shows that time does not have to be limited to the fragmentary units that we know of; it can also be seen as a collective unit through which societies evolve. Therefore, we see how the Trilogy illustrates this through the conflict of tradition and modernity in Al Jawad’s family. We see how modernity changes the familial and social structures. Totally unlike her mother Amina, Khadija is a dominant figure in her married life; Khadija’s daughter-​in-​ law enjoys self-​reliance and economic strength through education, entirely dissimilar to the mother-​in-​law; education also changes class division, as Kamal’s friend Fu’ad, Al Jawad’s assistant’s son, rises higher up the social ladder. The fact is that tradition and modernity are in conflict with each other from the viewpoint of fragmentary time that brings tragic results (Fahmy’s death, Kamal’s shattered career and his nephews’ imprisonment are catastrophic incidents). But, seen through the lens of evolutionary time, despite the familial losses and sufferings, society makes headway towards education, reform and advancement, as some of the examples above illustrate. In this way, Mahfouz’s polyphonic mind appropriates Bergson and diminishes the binary between East and West by encouraging cultural borrowing, as his Nobel lecture underlines. Like Mahfouz, Ahmed’s Eastern self was heavily Westernised due to her education and learning. Because of her mother’s French education, Ahmed spoke Arabic, French and English in her childhood. More 68

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals importantly, like Mahfouz, she sees her Egyptian identity as a pluralistic one, since it can be defined ‘as African, Nilotic, Mediterranean, Islamic, or Coptic. Or as all, or any combination of the above’ (Ahmed 2000: 11). It is fascinating then that during her Cambridge graduate studies days, when her American friend Alan came to ask her out for dinner with an African violet that later ‘flourished’, she ‘took that as a sign’ (ibid.: 209). They married within a few days. The charm of the episode lies not only in Alan’s recognition of Ahmed’s Egyptian-​African background but also in the Afro-​American dimension of their union. To me, Ahmed’s polyphonic consciousness is most fascinating when it is paralleled with the famous nineteenth-​century British ethnographer in Egypt, Edward Lane’s, pluralistic attachment to the country.1 As Ahmed felt at home in Girton and settled in the US for an academic life, Lane devoted his work to Egypt and its ‘culture that he so much loved and in which he felt, almost from the start, more at home than he did in his own land’ (ibid.: 231). It is interesting to note how both Lane and Ahmed fell in love with another homeland, Egypt and England respectively, through reading about them. If young Lane saved money painstakingly for his voyage to Egypt, Ahmed also studied hard in her youth and struggled to arrive at Hardy’s landscape where ‘the earth … transformed itself through the seasons, subtly and moment by moment and also spectacularly’ (ibid.: 14). She was also markedly influenced by Lane’s ‘unconventional but also deeply religious … interweaving [of] Islam and Christianity’, which is why she ‘never had any difficulty feeling that one could perfectly well believe both Islam and Christianity at the same time’ (ibid.: 232, 233). Due to varied influences from different faiths, philosophies and cultures, pluralism was thus implanted in Ahmed’s mind. A polyphonic consciousness was also an ingrained rather than an obtained quality in Chahine, just as this was the case with Said. Talking of Said’s polyphonic mind, Mustapha Marrouchi comments: Auden said of Rimbaud that there was a special illness of his ear, and one could say of Said that polyphony was a special illness of his inner ear, an almost pathological specialization in his way of thinking, perhaps even a condition of his psyche. (2004: 180)

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Of course, Chahine’s pluralistic mind is evident in his mastering of Western cinematic techniques and his employment of them in the service of Egypt’s cultural progress. In An Egyptian Story he superimposes his younger self on the grown-​up one; they appear side-​by-​side and then intermingle with each other in an act of reconciliation. Talking about the presence of fantasy in an otherwise realistic film, Chahine explains how he believes in reciprocity between them:  ‘I don’t believe in sticking to one thing. You come to New York. There’s the fabulous about it … it’s an amalgam of a lot of things … You must see with your heart, not only with your eyes’ (see Chahine and Massad 1999: 92). Chahine’s polyphonic consciousness makes him see both with his eyes and heart. Unlike Mahfouz or Ahmed, however, it takes a much more dramatic form. Like the dramatic superimposition of two selves of the same person, in Alexandria … Why? we are shown how an anti-​colonial Egyptian aristocrat, Adil, falls in love with a young English soldier from Dover. Chahine is thus interested in a dramatic intermixture of selves and relationships between ‘self’ and its ‘other’. The pluralism is hardly surprising given the fact that his art is deeply influenced by Alexandria, an age-​old multi-cultural city that he took pride in originating from and with which he nurtured a life-​long association. Notably, in Alexandria Again and Forever, when a young actress wants to know why Chahine’s script is in English, he answers: ‘The dialogue in Arabic … it’s wittier’ and then adds: ‘French for love scenes, English for precision’ (Chahine 1989). After that, he explains the whole pluralistic background that goes into creating his polyphonic outlook: ‘My pa’s an Arab, ma’s an Italian, wife French. I gibber in Spanish and a bit of “Rusky”. And coming from Alexandria, I get by in Greek, of course’ (ibid.). Evidently, Chahine’s world is so richly pluralistic that his Eastern self is spontaneously amalgamated with the Western other in his imagination. In Darwish’s poems, ‘self’ and ‘other’ come together in a more mythological way than they do in Chahine’s film or Mahfouz’s fiction. In ‘On a Canaanite Stone at the Dead Sea’, Darwish speaks of the common lineage of the conflicting groups, since they emerge from the land of Canaan, according to the Biblical mythology. The title of the poem emphasises their shared heritage: the Dead Sea, the ‘sea of Moses’, that contains a ‘Canaanite Stone’, which is a symbol of their common root. Therefore, the 70

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals poet’s polyphonic voice rises from the connective stone to nullify the one-​ sided focus on the sea by ‘the other’: ‘A family bond exists between us, but you will not/​rise from history, nor erase the foaming sea from your body’ (Darwish 2000: 78). The poet is visibly against believing in cultural purity and monolithic socio-​cultural and political ideas. He prefers a polyglot subjectivity that views history, memory as plural and complex. By viewing both the peoples as ‘victims’, Darwish alludes to their intertwined histories in ‘Edward Said: A Contrapuntal Reading’: And how could I talk about war and peace among the victims and the victims’ victims … And would they tell me: there is no place for two dreams in one bedroom? (2007b: 180) Evidently, Darwish looks at the question of victimhood from a plural perspective. He remains fully aware that the Palestinians were unjustly paying the price for European anti-​Semitism. Consequently, he writes from the understanding that the dialogue he advocates between the two parties is thwarted by the Israeli authorities’ use of the rhetoric of victimhood in order to hide its constant victimisation of the Palestinians. In the poem ‘As He Walks Away’ Darwish illustrates this thwarting through an autobiographical story. The poem raises the possibility of a conversation between the poet and his other, a Yemenite Jew, who settled in what used to be Darwish’s demolished village, al-​Birwa. ‘The enemy’, however, ‘drinks tea in our hovel’, ‘slings his rifle over my grandfather’s chair’, and ironically preaches ‘‘Don’t blame the victim’! (Darwish 2000: 51). This is how the usurper’s monopolised claim on victimhood turns down the possibility of interaction between ‘self’ and ‘other’. Since the exilic intellectuals are aware of more than one culture, their works project multiple identities, consciousnesses and philosophies. This explains why the creations of the intellectuals originating from outside the colonial metropolis are able to create a significant impact there. The discussion of the technique of voyage below displays how the intellectuals 71

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile become successful in making their supposedly peripheral voices heard in the West. Darwish’s resistance to the obliteration of Palestinian identity is significant from this perspective. His poetic imagination voyages in the arena of clichéd presentations of nonexistent Palestinians; there he claims his people’s life and reality to be the source of his vision. The vigour of his poetic images makes the Palestinian presence a sheer fact to be reckoned with. In ‘A Lover from Palestine’ he wrote: O Palestinian eyes and tattoos O Palestinian name O Palestinian dreams and obsessions O Palestinian handkerchief and feet and body O Palestinian words and silence O Palestinian voice O Palestinian birth and death I carried you all in my notebooks as the fire of my poems. (Darwish 1973: 65) The images here illustrate how the life of the Palestinians on earth circles around ‘birth and death’, ‘dreams and obsessions’ and ‘words and silence’ just like that of other humans. Besides, the images of ‘eyes and tattoos’, ‘name’, ‘handkerchief and feet and body’ portray the everyday reality of the Palestinian life. On the one hand, the refrain of ‘O Palestinian’ is lamenting, since the life and reality are denied in the dominant discourse. On the other, it celebrates the truth that fires the poet’s imagination. Thus, Darwish’s intervention in the dominant discourse is a trait of Saidian exile; because it asserts the voice of the voiceless in the name of positive knowledge. Notably, like Darwish, Ahmed’s counter-​ representation embodies everyday life as well. Ahmed’s A Border Passage voyages in a heartland of Western academia, Cambridge University, and depicts her experiences of being an undergraduate at Girton College in the late 1950s. Interestingly enough, her depiction takes place as an insider/​outsider to the place. She felt at home in the college from the moment of her arrival there, because ‘[t]‌he meditative, inward mood of Girton, for instance –​ this place of 72

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals books, gardens, quiet, trees –​ was very like that of Ain Shams’ (Ahmed 2000: 180), her Cairo residence. This is the place whose marvellous tutors introduced her to ‘the multiple universes of meaning’ (ibid.: 184). However, Ahmed demonstrates that despite being a Western academy par excellence, Cambridge was not full of glories for her or her other Eastern friends, who came from countries like India, Pakistan and Nigeria. They ‘clustered together at breakfast or lunch’ when ‘someone had a story about something odd and uncomfortable –​racist, as we would call it now –​that had happened’ (ibid.: 189). Whereas Ahmed’s Nigerian friend Olu was asked by a fellow Girtoner, a white South African student, to serve her morning tea, Ahmed was spat at on a bus for being an Arab! However, the humiliating memories are not presented simply as saddening phenomena. They illustrate the trials of border crossing, which is empowering when Ahmed realises why Girton seemed profoundly familiar to her: the college, with its female-governed environment of the 1950s, resembled her grandmother’s exclusively female world, as I explained earlier. The insider/​outsider perspective offered here is significant from the viewpoint of Said’s exile because it intervenes in the Western monopoly of representing Cambridge by turning it into a pluralistic phenomenon. However, the voyage in technique takes an entirely different dimension in Mahfouz’s fictional world. I believe that Mahfouz’s Trilogy voyages in the discourse of eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century realistic/​naturalistic fictions and presents us with a Vichian view of history. Explaining humanity’s emergence from a state of nature into the stage of social formation, Giambattista Vico (1982: 116) asserts that human systems of belief ‘must have progressed through the religions, laws, languages and marriages’. This process resulted in the formation and dispersion of various groups of people who acted as historical agents. Social system is, therefore, emphatic on ‘lawful marriages’, since the bonding allows the inhabitants to share ‘common religions, laws and languages’ by facilitating the formation of ‘human condition’ (ibid.: 117). According to Said (1984), Vico’s idea of history as a product of human procreation, mind and evolution is relevant to Europe’s realistic novels, due to the fact that his filiative pattern explains not only the rise of family but also a struggle among its generations. 73

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile We will now see how the Trilogy reflects this. The different stages of the colonial history of Egypt are refracted in the novel through the prism of ‘a series of genealogical repetitive cycles’ (ibid.) of Al Jawad’s family. And yet Mahfouz shows how time does not simply repeat the procreation process but also posits different generations face-​to-​face with society’s practices, prejudices and problems, just as Said asserts above. As they react differently to them, conflicts arise in the family on different occasions. To illustrate, Al Jawad disapproves of Fahmy’s nationalistic activities, although he is an ardent supporter of the cause. Despite their wholehearted efforts for Egyptian independence, the father and son diverge in their ways; the father’s role lies in funding the Wafd party and the son’s in taking part in demonstrations and distributing handbills against the English. Afterwards, innocent deaths at the demonstrations force the father to contradict himself in pressurising Fahmy to pull out of the activities. We see how time’s repetition and pressure process an aspect of Egyptian history, namely its struggle for self-​governance. Mahfouz’s voyage in the Vichian world to represent the history of colonised Egypt is, therefore, a significant phenomenon. It transfigures the dimension as well as the bounds of the Western discourse; because Mahfouz’s account of Egypt’s colonial entanglement has a universal dimension for depicting the condition of men in the face of a historical conflict. Remarkably, Chahine’s voyage in presents newer forms of creativity as well. He utilises cinema d’auteur as a means of reflection on his native society by representing the so-​called Third World to the West. In An Egyptian Story, Chahine expresses his viewpoints on personal, political and national issues in imaginative ways. He uses a stock element of Arab cinema, namely music, in an unconventional way. Even before the story starts, we hear a song floating in the midst of a mise-​en-​scène with a filmmaker at the forefront, who represents Chahine and is seen to be active behind the camera. The scene is unusual not only because of Chahine’s self-​portrayal but also for the song, which is a forewarning to post-​imperial Egypt embroiled in political complications: Who is sane among us, and who is crazy? Who is the victimiser, and who is the victimised?

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals Who sells his conscience and buys destruction? I care about the human being. Egypt, I am worried about you. O bewildered masses! This is the story: the Egyptian story. (Chahine 1982) Indeed it is so. In the film, Chahine interweaves the complications of his health, personal aspirations and familial frustrations with those of the history of national liberation and current social conditions through combining facts and fantasies. What results from this endeavour is his interpretation of an artist’s struggle in the so-​called Third World to be internationally recognised. Though made regressive by colonialism, Egypt emerges glorious as its director receives some desired recognition in the West. In Shafik’s opinion, however, the target of cinema d’auteur is ultimately the Western audience, not the native box office. But I see this filmic interpretation of individual aspiration as an important aspect of projecting the Third World vis-​à-​vis the First World. Though Chahine derives his training, technique, and sometimes financial assistance from the West, he chooses to tell an Eastern story, an Egyptian story at that, when utilising them. Chahine thus broadens the horizons of Eastern and Western cultures. On the other hand, Saadawi’s stories and writings about the degradation of women and violence against them confirm the Orientalist outlook about Arab people’s backwardness and uncivilised practices. Saadawi (1999: 17) records her relatives’ reaction after her birth, stating that ‘[n]‌othing happened to a female when she was born. Life just came to a standstill. People were simply sad, and sorrow is easier to bear than infanticide.’ Observations like this in A Daughter of Isis and other writings generate the view that women are nothing but misfortunes in traditional Arab culture. She is thus seen as a source of sensational views verifying Arab primitiveness in the West, even though the fact remains that as an oppositional intellectual, she cannot keep quiet about the dark practices of her culture. Fedwa Malti-​Douglas explains that Saadawi’s representation of her society has a ‘directness’ that frightens her detractors, which is why they want to silence her with their misguided accusation; after all, ‘[t]he image-​of-​the-​Arabs-​in-​the-​West argument is but

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile a smokescreen. What really matters is the attack she is waging on values long cherished –​and not only in the Middle East’ (Malti-​Douglas 1995: 15). Malti-​Douglas is right; Saadawi’s voyage in exposes Western profiteering policies with the same characteristic outspokenness. For instance, she is against the globalisation-​induced image culture that lures African women into putting on self-​degrading make-​up, which is ‘a postmodern veil’ that hides their ‘real features just like the hijab’ (Saadawi 1997: 129; emphasis in the original). Thus she turns Western feminist discourse into a pluralistic one by including Arab women’s issues in its circumference and by paralleling the practices of East and West. This proves that her exilic writing transforms both the conventional scope and outlook of the discourse. Therefore, the intellectuals’ works demonstrate voyage in through representing to the world the voice of the voiceless, the experiences of non-​ Western students in a Western academic institution, colonial subjugation and historical transition in a peripheral country, a Third World filmmaker’s struggle to achieve artistic excellence and Arab and Western social features that work against women. The representations not only advance our understanding of the peripheral societies but also expand the cultural view of the globe. Similarly, the exilic quality named universal humanism enhances the view by transcending the narrow nationalist enclosure, as we shall see below. Emily Apter explains: [Said’s] adherence to emancipatory humanism was profoundly in step with that of Fanon in so far as it embraced values of individual freedom, universal human rights, anti-​imperialism, release from economic dependency, and self-​determination for disenfranchised peoples. (2004: 36–​7)

Apparently there is a paradox in Said’s work for Palestinian self-​determination, despite his disbelief in nationalism as an end in itself. However, this paradox dissolves if we view his support for the Palestinian cause through his belief in universal humanism. Darwish shares exactly the same humanist values. The distress of Palestine is spun in Darwish’s poetic texture through ordinary people’s deep sorrows of deprivation of 76

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals fundamental rights. For example, his ‘Letter from Home’ is a tale of a nameless Palestinian youth who does a manual job in a foreign land, being dispossessed of home; he wants to send the message back home: ‘I’m fine.’ But his alienation becomes more acute when he does not know who to write to. He starts with addressing a beloved, and then switches to an imaginary dialogue with his mother. The internal monologue enables the uprooted young man to express his longing for love of the beloved, the family and home. As he reminisces about the once-familiar sights and sounds, Darwish makes him ask: What have we done Mother to die twice, and once in death! … Would the evening remember an exile who came here and never returned to the homeland? … What is man worth if he has no homeland, if he has no flag and no address? What good is man? (1973: 30–​3) The young man loses his sense of worth in exile due to his lack of a distinct national identity symbolised by the ‘flag’ and ‘address’. What is significant about the lines is that they cease to be the loss of a particular Palestinian. They echo the pain of every human being who ever has to witness a life-​in-​ death exile and pay for a ‘flag’ and an ‘address’ through a blood-​bath in a struggle for independence. Darwish thus transforms the national suffering into a feeling of injustice that touches the heartstrings of the world. Arguably, the poet’s generous acceptance of ‘the other’ also proves his passionate humanism. He refuses to demonise ‘the other’, despite his vehement opposition to the Palestinians’ exposure to almost daily killings, annexations and innumerable injustices through the Israeli occupation. 77

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile As a poet who never loses hope for the beautiful in human life, Darwish (2007a: 13) creates a dialogue in ‘Low Sky’ between ‘self’ and ‘other’ by preferring songs ‘that speak about love’s thirst’ to the ones that are ‘about a time that has passed’. This poem is part of The Stranger’s Bed, his first book of love poetry, where he makes the familiar and the stranger unite. Darwish transcends his customary Palestinian identity here in order to view it together with its Israeli ‘other’ so that ‘the sky will expand’ (ibid.: 17). He feels that There’s a love walking on two silken feet Happy with its estrangement in the streets, a love small and poor made wet by a passing rain that it overflows onto passer by: My gifts are larger than I am eat my wheat and drink my wine my sky is on my shoulders and my earth is yours … (ibid.: 13) The gifts highlight a spirit of sharing. The tone of offering them is mellifluous. The happy mood also befits the ‘love walking on two silken feet’. All in all, the verses are a eulogy for human bonding, signifying that even a ‘poor’ love can offer gifts greater than itself, especially when they are bread and wine, earth and sky. Though Mahfouz writes in an independent Egypt, he shares the same humanistic understanding with Darwish. The Trilogy depicts the colonial army as an aggressive force through its intimidating siege of Cairo and its more condemnable betrayal of trust through firing guns at a peaceful procession and so on. Mahfouz shows how the general public, even including a patriarch like Al Jawad and his pleasure-​seeking friends, could feel the injustice of such incidents. For the same reason, the nation is seen to be wholly united behind Sa’d Zaghlul to achieve independence. However, the writer’s nationalism is not all about being anti-​British. We see that Kamal forms a good friendship with a British soldier, despite the latter’s being part of an occupying force in his locality. Later on, we find that Kamal’s nephew and protégé, Ahmad, cannot help admiring an English academic in his university for his warmth, knowledge 78

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals and expertise, despite his own vehement nationalism. Through these incidents, Mahfouz reminds us that nationalism does not have to undermine natural human bonding and admiration. Kamal echoes the writer: ‘There’s nothing to prevent a sensible person from admiring Sa’d Zaghlul as much as Copernicus, the chemist Ostwald, or the physicist Mach’, because he sees this as an ‘effort to link Egypt with the advance of human progress’ (Mahfouz 2001: 945–​6). In other words, noble thoughts are universal properties; they cannot be narrowed down to their country or continent of origin. Kamal further reflects on the connection between nationalism and universal human aspiration: ‘Patriotism’s a virtue, if it’s not tainted by xenophobia. Of course, hating England is a form of self-​ defence. That kind of nationalism is nothing more than local manifestation of a concern for human rights’ (ibid.: 946). Kamal’s rumination resonates with the author’s total disapproval of virulent nationalism, which connects him with Darwish and Said. Chahine is at one with Mahfouz and Darwish about viewing nationalism through the lens of universal humanism. In Alexandria … Why? he depicts a sensational love affair between an upper-​class colonial Egyptian called Adil and an ordinary British soldier from Dover named Tommy. Adil’s nationalism takes the form of the acerbic hatred of which we have seen Mahfouz disapproves. Adil pays his ‘dealers’ to procure British soldiers for him so that he could kill them later on. He ‘buys’ Tommy in the same way but fails to shoot him; rather, they end up in bed. Like Mahfouz, Chahine thus places human connections above nationalistic divisions. And yet Chahine is very different from Mahfouz because of his treatment of the whole affair. Not only does the affair cross boundaries of nations and sexuality but it also shows nationalistic compartmentalisation from an ironic perspective: The relationship that ensues [between Adil and Tommy] is never devoid of the colonial-​anticolonial dichotomy. When Tommy refers to rich Egyptians as ‘Wogs’, Adil responds by saying: ‘Us Wogs! At the time my ancestors were building pyramids, your great-​grandmother gnawed your grandfather’s arm for breakfast.’ (see Chahine and Massad 1999: 85–​6; emphasis in the original)

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Evidently, Adil’s nationalistic thinking is strongly divided between ‘us’ and ‘them’. And yet ironically he is the one who falls in love with one of ‘them’. Doubly ironic is the fact that Tommy, the representative of the coloniser, teaches him the futility of killing helpless soldiers like him in the name of anti-​colonialism. Through Tommy’s life story of being a neglected child of a single parent and hopelessly pushed towards enlisting in the army, Chahine shows humanism from another perspective. After all, the coloniser is also colonised by some oppressive powers (for instance, class structure and economic pressure) beyond his control. And so Chahine points out through Tommy that Adil’s routine killing of the helpless like him can be called neither nationalism nor humanism. In the end, Chahine’s camera focuses on Adil to make humanism triumph over parochial nationalism: After the war, Adil goes in search of Tommy, only to find that, despite his confident promises, he has not survived. Adil kneels, sobbing, in front of Tommy’s grave, as the scene shifts to other cemeteries, other nationalities –​the massed, nameless and faceless Others also lost in the war. (Murphy and Williams 2007: 44)

If Chahine visualises how the colonial power game results in a devastating war affecting both ‘self’ and ‘other’, Saadawi (1997) digs deeper into the power play and diagnoses its strategies in order to resist its callous ways. Her solidarity with the Third World does not take the exclusionary route taken by slogans like ‘Africa for All Africans’, which both Said and Fanon censure. Rather, she addresses the North–​South antagonism by illustrating how the North-​based New World Order steers the profit-​driven World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in order to control the economy and politics of the South completely in its favour. Her severe criticism of the North’s neo-​ colonialism is directed against the inequality and inhumanity it generates in the South through draining material resources out of the region by dint of development and aid programmes. Furthermore, the writer elaborates how the Egyptian government plays into the hands of transnational corporations (TNCs), resulting in 40 per cent of Egypt’s people being under 80

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals the poverty line, the country’s women and children being exploited as cheap labour and its environment being polluted beyond measure. Another poignant aspect of her universal humanism is that Saadawi strongly advocates maintaining differences among nations to seek ‘unity in diversity … by discovering what we have in common as human beings with common interests that may express themselves differently’ (ibid.: 19). Her point here is that if we obliterate the cultural differences of nations, we are going to be trapped by the TNCs into becoming loyal customers of the global capitalist market. In other words, we will be forced to become consumers in a culture of simulacrum that thrives on worldwide similar needs, ensuring similar supplies from the TNCs in order to fatten their profit. ‘This is postmodern culture which is similar in many ways across the globe, irrespective of regional or national location’ (ibid.: 18). Having made consumerism the mantra, late capitalism’s postmodernist culture becomes linked with not only simulacrum but also with converting everything, including women’s bodies in both North and South, into commodities. That is why Saadawi opposes the proliferation of this sort of culture, as it ultimately works against the greater humanity. Ahmed accords with Saadawi in denouncing anti-​humanist doctrines that are contrived to exploit people through an idealistic veneer. However, if Saadawi’s technique is the diagnosis of the application of the doctrines, Ahmed’s is that of reflection on their nature and origin. In delineating the traits of chauvinistic nationalism, Ahmed reflects exilic humanism very significantly. Her genealogical survey of her Arab identity is based on three core points, all of which echo Said’s Fanon-​inspired argument that excessive nationalism is self-​destructive; it does not defeat imperialism but ends up repeating the imperialistic subjugation most shockingly. First of all, when Egypt’s military ruler Nasser started off the machinery of Arab nationalism with his vehement zeal against the classic imperialist forces of Britain and France, the result was torturous to its people due to the incessant reminders of pan-​Arabism on the radio. Apart from being extreme, the nationalism stifled the people’s freedom of thought in the most obnoxious way.2 As if media coercion to become absolute Arabs was not enough, the secret police was employed to crush every dissent against the propaganda ruthlessly. In effect, Egypt was turned into an Orwellian 81

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Animal Farm where ‘[t]‌o question our Arabness and all that Arabness implied became unthinkable’ (Ahmed 2000: 246). At the same time, the Arab nationalist propaganda undermined Egypt’s long-​cherished pluralistic heritage.3 For it was no longer a land where the Muslims, Copts and Jews lived harmoniously in a multi-​religious environment. Though 1948 was potentially a reason for all Arabs to dislike all Jews because of the racial and religious character of the conquest of Palestine, Arab nationalism became an extreme response to the Nakba by putting the Egyptian Arabs and Jews in diametrically opposed camps. This is how virulent nationalism copies the imperialist masters in denying people’s common humanity. Unsurprisingly, Nasser’s hegemony was extended through driving all the Jews out of Egypt and then by antagonising the Copts against the Muslims. Naturally, Ahmed’s exilic belief in universal humanism compels her to condemn this sort of primitive intolerance. And that is why she ‘still mourn[s]‌’ the destruction of Egypt’s rich multi-​religious past and, these days, the news of ‘intercommunal violence’ between the Muslims and Copts, especially the attacks against the Copts, who ‘are the beleaguered community’, saddens her because of the ‘bleakest’ (Ahmed 2000: 265) nature of these things. However, Ahmed’s genealogy takes a dramatic turn when it shows that Arab nationalism did not merely follow imperialism’s hegemonic ‘track’ but was brought to the path under its direct patronage. Unlike Said (2001b), who believes that Egypt represents true Arab nationalism, Ahmed strongly suggests that Egypt’s Arab character has nothing to do with genuineness. The focal point of her argument remains humanistic in a markedly Saidian way in rejecting the Western construction of her identity as an inferior Arab. But more importantly, she illustrates how the British encouraged Egypt’s Arab identity to mobilise the nation against the Ottoman Empire during World War I and how the helter-​skelter of the regional politics during World War II prevented the Egyptians from forsaking the imperialist machination of the identity. The identity is drummed up by Nasser later on. Nevertheless, the writer’s plea to be set free from ‘other people’s inventions, imputations, false constructions’ (Ahmed 2000: 255) of her identity puts forward her right to exist as a free human being. Thus her universal humanism is visible in her stance against the imperialist and nationalist 82

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals forces that rallied false identity for the Egyptians to fulfil their political gains at different points of history. Evidently Said’s Fanon-​ inspired universal humanism is prevalent among intellectuals through their strong messages of love in the face of extinction, affiliation with Western thinkers, human bonding across cultures, upholding cultural diversity against the global capitalist domination and nationalism’s alarming generation of intolerance. In the same vein, the intellectuals project the Saidian late style in their arts by not compromising with reality. Their arts, then, introduce us to their unsyncretic minds. Lecia Rosenthal (2007) shows how Said locates late style in Freud through the psychoanalyst’s viewing of identity as a rupture with no closure. Similarly, Ahmed’s strenuous Arab identity does not lead to a recovery from the trauma of losing the multi-​ethnic Egypt she cherishes. Attending a reading by the famous Lebanese writer Hanan al-​Shaykh’s of her work at Cambridge, Ahmed felt the loss of never being at home in Arabic literature, especially as the writer’s evocation of a familiar Arab life created an atmosphere of shared delight, serenity and solidarity among the audience made up of expatriates from different Arab countries. She could not admit to them that she is deconstructing the whole notion of Arabness in her memoir, simply because it would sound like a terrible betrayal to her Lebanese and Palestinian friends enjoying the warmth of their kinship. After all, Arabness is no longer a simple matter of nationalism; it provides a feeling of rootedness to the audience, which is deprived of home as a result of one or another imperialistic catastrophe. Therefore, despite Ahmed’s insightful, objective and powerful deconstruction of the discourse of Arabness, she still lacks a language through which she can attain the comfort of dissolving the question mark over her identity. Stated differently, Ahmed cannot claim that her analysis of the ingenuity of her Arab identity leads to a ‘point of rest or of finality in [her] understanding’ (Ahmed 2000: 26). Therefore, not coming to terms with her Arabness marks Ahmed’s late style with an exilic consciousness through her complex trauma, unresolved stance and uncertain language. Chahine takes a similar journey of looking at unresolved identities in one of his late films. Though his is a more dramatic style of unfolding the issue, the late addition to his autobiographical trilogy, 83

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Alexandria … New York, demonstrates resentment and tragedy in a latestyle manner. The film is full of jarring facts that are packed together without being reconciled with each other. Unlike Adil and Tommy’s unifying relationship in his previous film, the love affair here between an Egyptian filmmaker, Yehia, and his American friend, Ginger, unsettles the East and West question more and more. The problem lies within the new generation of Americans, symbolised by Yehia and Ginger’s son Alexander, who strongly rejects his Oriental father. The tragedy Chahine highlights here arises from a contrast between the old and contemporary America. Whereas the old America was welcoming to the world (symbolised by the romanticism of Ginger), these days it has transformed into its worst self by being shockingly xenophobic, as seen in Alexander’s mindset. As Chahine does not offer reconciliation between the West and the Arab world through a reunion between Yehia and Alexander, critics like Mohamed El-​Assyouti (2004) find the film embittered and diminished in strength. For me, however, the irreconcilable relationship is a form of Chahine’s search for an answer to the cultural divide. Being disinterested in a forced repair of the broken relationship, he resorts to late style that disconcerts the viewers but remains true to the existing discord between East and West. Like Chahine’s autobiographical film, Saadawi’s late autobiographical writing unsettles her readers through presenting the sickness of her society, which creates anxiety in their minds. Nevertheless, both the intellectuals utilise the medium of autobiography to uncover the discords, tensions and incongruities buried inside their familiar cultural landscapes. Saadawi presents the first part of her autobiography, A Daughter of Isis, as an internal journey of a self that emerges through a brave struggle against the discriminations it experiences along the way. The autobiography is a means through which Saadawi tries ‘to discover what is buried deep down inside me, to reveal what is hidden through fear of God, the father, the husband, the teacher … the nation’(1999: 15). She endeavours to deduce how the meaning of God changed from ‘justice or freedom or love’ to ‘a sword over my head or a veil over my mind and face’ and that of the country transformed into ‘a prison, or a police-​man wearing a fez’ (ibid.: 15–​16). She therefore sets out to scrutinise the ambience of where the changes happened and the reality that triggered off her life-​long search for social justice. 84

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals Pauline Vinson (2008: 92) comments that the cover of El Saadawi’s autobiography in the Zed paperback edition displays an enlarged portrait of El Saadawi as a young woman. The photo’s grainy quality gives it the appearance of having faded with age, suggesting the nostalgic, personal, and introspective mood of the narrative within.

Surely, the writer’s introspection in her sixties about her childhood, adolescence and part of her young life does not invite us to comforting facts. Saadawi (1999: 292) asserts that ‘[w]‌ords should not seek to please, should not hide the wounds in our bodies, the shameful moments in our lives’. That is why when one finishes reading the autobiography, one is offered no sense of closure; rather, one is puzzled and pained by the provocative questions she asks all the way through. Her inconclusive writing, anger and incessant questioning bear the traits of late style. Whereas Chahine and Saadawi’s late works examine their horizons without changing the usual style and medium, Mahfouz’s late writings veer away from his familiar mode of realistic fictions. His pithy piece, Echoes of an Autobiography, contains the crystallised fragments of his observations of life. Its second part in particular records his conversations with a sage-​ figure called Sheikh Abd-​Rabbih al-​Ta’ih, who allegorises his redeeming vision of life. Nadine Gordimer (1997: xii) thinks that the sheikh ‘works as [Mahfouz’s] elusive answer to salvation’. The sheikh is discernibly his alter ego, with whom he is carrying out a ‘Dialogue of Late Afternoon’ (Mahfouz 1997: 53). The dialogue is mysterious, not least because it creates the feeling that the famously restrained Mahfouz is opening a very special door to his inner world in the late period of his life in order to make readers hear the saintly voice that sustained his creativity from within. However, the elusiveness adds to the artistic charm of the sheikh’s expressions without making the writer sound instructive. The sheikh’s ‘cave’, the place of gathering, ‘entered [his] heart without an intermediary’, as he found it ‘charmingly tranquil and its aroma fragrant’ (ibid.: 78). Metaphorically speaking, the cavern is the place where Mahfouz confines himself for writing. His writing spreads charm and tranquillity because he is in touch with his true voice there, which gives meaning to his self-​exile. 85

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Significantly, the grotto has similarities with a Sufi place of gathering, where people dwell in mysticism without being ascetics. Indeed, the sheikh is very much intent on spending time with his friends, exchanging ideas with them and enjoying the performance of a song and dance. By emphasising a non-​ascetic but a non-​materialistic lifestyle given over to mystical reflection, the sheikh’s Sufism strengthens his standing as the writer’s spokesperson. I agree with Hilary Kilpatrick (1974: 103–​4) that Mahfouz connected the Sufi belief with his socialism to suggest that a ‘mystical search’ for meaning in human existence ‘can produce an active involvement in life’ creating greater social good. Unsurprisingly, the sheikh is very insistent on acting truthfully: I asked Sheikh Abd-​Rabbih al-​Ta’ih:   When will the state of the country be sound? He replied, When its people believe that the end result of cowardice is more disastrous than that of behaving with integrity. (Mahfouz 1997: 87–​8) Simply put, salvation will come only when individuals are true to themselves and can recognise that without reinstating the fundamental values in their lives, they are simply heading for disaster. The writer’s irreconciliation with an irredeemable reality produced by an unsound country that threatens his creativity is deeply suggestive of his desire to begin anew in his old age. Intriguingly, Mahfouz’s late work signifies an uncompromising stance on continuing with his quest for meaning. If Mahfouz’s late style presents an unquenchable thirst for finding fulfilment in the earthly life, Darwish’s late style is about surpassing the known boundary of actuality altogether. Commenting on ‘Eleven Stars Over Andalusia’, Said (1994: 115) observes that Darwish’s lateness comes from his extraordinary combination of ‘the conventional and the ethereal, the historical and the transcendently aesthetic’ that imagines a realm lying outside the reach of reality. In this poem, Darwish creates a historical account of the fall of the Kingdom of Granada (1492) to join the quincentennial commemoration of the event. The history of the kingdom marks Andalusia’s remarkable achievements in the arts, science and learning. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, Andalusia 86

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals became a marvellous intellectual centre in the Mediterranean region with the Muslim rulers’ active patronage of philosophical writings, literary creations and scholarly treatises. Since Muslim Spain is where Arab culture achieved its apogee, Andalusia is referenced as a Golden Age of Arabic literature and reminisced about with nostalgic yearning. In fact, the nostalgic tradition started with its eighth-​century exiled Umayyad ruler, Abd al-​R ahman, whose poetic tribute to his native Syria and devotion to the cultural splendour of Damascus formed the foundation of the much-celebrated Andalusian culture that combines past and present, East and West, and Arab and Judaic heritages (Elinson 2009). Therefore, Darwish writes about the fall of Granada and the expulsion of its Muslim and Jewish populations in a pensive mood and melancholic tone. In fact, Darwish’s yearning for classical Andalusia symbolises his dream about an independent, secular and pluralistic homeland in historic Palestine. Just as Andalusia was lost to Ferdinand, the King of Aragon, and his wife Isabella, the Queen of Castile, by completing the fifteenth-​ century reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, so Palestine’s existence is threatened by Israeli policies and military actions in the twenty-​first century. Apparently there is no way of resolving the contradiction between Darwish’s dream of harmony with the harsh reality of conflict in the land. Therefore, the poet’s late style embodies the playing-out of the present through his uncategorisable longing. The poet presents ‘the conventional’ through the glorious time of Andalusia to which one is unable to return: ‘I know time can’t be my ally twice’ (Darwish 2000: 153). ‘The ethereal’ is incorporated through the allusion to the story of Joseph in the Qur’an’, where he told his father about his potential of being a prophet, as he saw the stars, the sun and the moon bowing down before him. Besides, Darwish replaces history in recounting the bleak events of the siege of Granada by alluding to Castille’s raising of ‘her crown above Allah’s minaret’, ‘the Atlantic flags of Columbus’ (ibid.: 156, 163), and the gypsies’ entrance into the Arab heartland. Thus, the ‘historical’ facts are placed beside ‘the aesthetic’, the classical Andalusian heritage. Understandably, Darwish poetically parallels the Andalusian and Palestinian losses without being able to reconcile with either. 87

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Nevertheless, the poet’s unsynthesised combination of the four elements explained above attaches a transcendental significance to the historical achievements of the Arabs in Spain. We are left with an unanswerable question about the strong and vibrant past: ‘Was Andalusia/​here or there? On earth/​Or only in poems?’ (ibid.: 150; emphasis in the original) Only the verses of ‘Eleven Stars’ retain the anguish of the Andalusians before the fall of their kingdom. Like the Palestinians leaving their homeland during the Nakba, the about-​to-​be-​exiled Moors do not have time even to bid adieu to their familiar things. Darwish becomes one with them to express the pain they feel on their last evening in their land. In the face of an ominous shift of reality, the poet records their lack of resolve, which his own people came to experience during the Nakba as well. The end of Andalusia’s cultural grandeur and political mastery makes him ask: ‘Where is the road to anything?’ (ibid.: 161; emphasis in the original). Thus the strenuous and unresolved qualities with which Darwish remembers the Golden Age of Arabic culture are suggestive of his late style, which marks his exilic abandonment of the recognisable world. Evidently, exilic intellectuals like Ahmed, Chahine, Saadawi, Mahfouz and Darwish do not believe in an illusory resolution of any conflict. We have seen above how they cannot be reconciled to an established nationalist concept, are unwilling to project a forced harmony on the East/​West encounter, are disinclined to cease questioning the uncomforting social reality of women, are not disposed to come to terms with the perennial historical failures in giving meaning to life and are intransigent to accepting the loss of Andalusian heritage. Thus, they are not co-​opted to an erroneous belonging. The question remains how successful the intellectuals are in resonating with and navigating Said’s principles.

The Arab artists and exilic intellectual practice As I  explained in the Introduction, Mahfouz does not have the actual experience of losing a homeland. Darwish wandered around the world for a considerable period of his life. Ahmed spent almost all her life outside her native land. Both Saadawi and Chahine experienced exile for a limited time. Therefore the correlation between their displaced life and their 88

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals creativity is not parallel. Instead, their intellectual practice responds to Said’s view of exile as both an actual and metaphoric state. As I also demonstrated in the previous chapter, the combination of the two conditions is captured in Said’s major terms of criticism. Therefore, by delineating the presence of the exilic properties in the Arab intellectuals’ works, I illustrate their exemplification of Said’s intellectual endeavour. As I argued above, the intellectuals do not believe in an illusory resolution of any conflicts, since they do not support an erroneous belonging. They sustain their decentred, contrapuntal, polyphonic, humanist, secular, critical and oppositional consciousness through writing. Since Said believes that life is neither dialectic nor synthetic (see Dibb 2003), he is in favour of playing off the irreconcilable parallels, patterns and forms against each other in writing. Ahmed, Darwish, Mahfouz, Chahine and Saadawi project this in their own oeuvres. Mahfouz, for example, ruthlessly analyses Cairene reality in his writing as if he were both insider and outsider to the existential situation. His writing is where he displays the jarring reality and yet still maintains a glimmer of hope for a more humane future. This confirms his willing homelessness, despite his concrete Egyptian identity. In truth, his contrapuntal consciousness may appear to be delimited because of his lack of first-​hand knowledge about a comparable culture. However, his extraordinary ability to produce a split view of his home culture still enables him to exemplify all the qualities of Saidian exile. His self-​exile also contributes profusely to modern Arab literature, as his writing transforms his motherland, an ancient stage for dramas of power and its downfall, into a mirror that exhibits the human condition on earth (see Allén 1988). Likewise, Chahine’s cinema is where he brings together disparate aspects of his life. Unusual though it may be, he portrays himself in his films again and again. An Egyptian Story asks why he should expose others if he can project himself in the movies. The cinematic art becomes home for him through the process of recreating his interpretations, visions and ideas about life in celluloid. This is how he transforms his auteur position, inspired by his Egyptian-​American experience, into an emblem of independence in Arab filmmaking, since he produces thoughts that matter to him, even if they turn him into a maverick. Similarly, Darwish’s poems are 89

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile the only place where, being ‘loosened/​from the gravity of identity’s land’, he can ask ‘Who Am I, Without Exile?’:   What will we do … what will we do without exile, and a long night that stares at the water? (Darwish 2007a: 89) In effect, Saidian intellectuals like Chahine and Darwish come to depend on exile, whether it is figurative or real. The homeless, peripheral and nomadic exiles find a surrogate home in their arts, which result from their deep contemplations. Indeed, Darwish’s wandering life in the Middle East and Europe transfigure him into one of the most acclaimed Arab litterateurs of our time. The poet’s exile-​infused words both immortalise his homeland and transcend it through a universal longing for truth, beauty and love. Ahmed’s exilic mind also grapples with the alienating facts of life through her writing. Her unorthodox views of identity, culture and politics suggest that her analysis of her two worlds in East and West has no certainty, linguistically at least. Still, Ahmed articulates her thoughts about her uprooted and unsettled life, because she wants to record the events so that she can arrive at a deeper understanding of herself and the heterogeneous and sometimes conflicting moments the life accrues. Ahmed as an exilic intellectual, then, attaches no purity or finality to her identity or experience. Thus, her writing, emerging as it does out of her understanding of traversing from Cairo to the two Cambridges in England and America, enriches the classical Arabic literary form of autobiography with her modernist doubt about the human subject being an unchanging and unambiguous entity. However, Saadawi falls behind the others in exemplifying the exilic intellectual practice due to her passionate convictions. As we saw above, her secular consciousness becomes affected thanks to her feminist persuasion. Nevertheless, her struggle against coercive powers makes her writing part of the exilic discourse. Indeed, Saadawi shows that the exilic condition is initiated by a dissenting intellectual voice, but not every oppositional intellectual upholds the practice thoroughly, due to the rigorousness of the vocation. Furthermore, the locations of her writing are noteworthy

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Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals for enhancing modern Arab literature with her uncompromising stance on human dignity. For instance, when she was exiled to the US in the early 1990s and became a tutor at two prestigious universities there, she was still singled out for her Arabic accent and demeanour, both of which were commonly perceived to be outlandish. Coming from a country where gender discrimination is rife, Saadawi (2002a) felt that her ‘alien’ existence in the US was even worse than her identity of a second-​class citizen in her own country. Paradoxically, however, her stay in the US facilitated the translation of her works to a great extent, which gave her access to a worldwide audience. Therefore the writer’s multiple locations enabled her writing to demolish ‘the walls of isolation’ dissociating her from her readers as well as herself and her body, and ‘rid [her] of the feelings of alienation and exile’ (ibid.) irrespective of her place of residence. Through the navigation and negotiation of the eight distinct properties of Saidian exile, then, the artists represent the intellectual practice. By transcending the conventional politics of identity and crossing barriers between cultural divides, they certainly amalgamate traditions, locations and groups not only to generate exciting perspectives on the subjects but also to highlight a non-​hierarchical approach to these. Their writings and activities are dedicated to ensuring human freedom, be it political, economic or cultural. We will learn more about this in the next chapter.

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3 Exile as Resistance

Over the past few years the modern Middle East has generated considerable global interest due to the protest of thousands of its people against the existing regimes. The popular resistance termed the ‘Arab Spring’ began in Tunisia in December 2010, then moved on to Egypt in January 2011, and finally spread throughout the region. The protestors demanded not only the end of the status quo but also all-​out socio-​political reform. The seismic event invites an investigation into the complex cultural realities of the arena, and the formidable forces of history that have triggered the contemporary resistance movement. This will help us to evaluate the contribution of the exilic intellectuals towards strengthening the oppositional environment in their respective circumferences. The map of the modern Middle East, extending from North Africa to Iran, emerged through the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War II. Consequently, most Arab states came into existence during the early twentieth century. However, as Bezen Coskun (2012) explains, states like Iraq with sectarian varieties were not organically formed. In other words, they lacked socio-​political integrity and wholehearted support from the masses. The colonial powers joined together erstwhile Ottoman provinces according to the Western nation state model, as a result of which ethnic

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile and sectarian divides among the Arab republics still exist. Despite the extraordinary homogeneity of the Egyptian nation, however, the state also observed sweeping socio-​economic changes due to European domination. The country came under the sway of Europe in the nineteenth century, when it was occupied by Napoleon in 1798. This occupation was toppled by a joint Anglo-​Ottoman force, though the development of Egyptian cotton increasingly attracted foreign loans that catapulted the country into a financial crisis. During the 1870s an Anglo-​French administration was imposed on Egypt to oversee the country’s way out of the crisis. This generated Ahmad Urabi’s revolt against foreign participation in Egyptian affairs. Putting down the revolt led to the establishment of the British protectorate that ‘technically maintained Egypt’s Ottoman status but allowed Britain to rule in practice’ (Unwalla 2012: 139). The specific dimension of the British occupation of Egypt is a good example of the way the features of colonial domination vary in different parts of the twentieth-​century Middle East. The localised nature of British rule is evident from the case of Palestine/​ Israel as well. As British hostility towards the Ottomans increased during World War II, the colonial power saw no point in maintaining the contiguity of the Islamic Empire. Therefore, the British created a Palestinian mandate in 1920 by which they facilitated further Jewish immigration in the land. Even though Britain and France split Syria into disparate zones of administration, Ilan Pappé (2010) believes that colonial domination in other parts of the Arab world was less conflict-generating than in Israel/​ Palestine, which was promised to both the Arabs and the Zionists. Surely, the policy of granting the same land to dissimilar ethnic, sectarian and nationalist groups produced the most devastating effects of colonialism in the Arab Middle East. The legacy of inter-​ethnic feud experienced inside the states that emerged during the interwar periods is comparable to the ethnic turmoil in other parts of colonised Asia and Africa. Nevertheless, the region remains unique in colonial history, as the nation states faced the further challenge produced by the supranational identity of an Arab sphere. Indeed, the modern Middle East obscures boundaries between states through the collective bond of Islamic heritage. Islam arrived in Arabia during the seventh century and spread across Western Asia, the Nile 94

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Exile as Resistance Valley and North Africa, in the process of which it embraced various socio-​ political aspects of the regions, whereas Arabic became the medium of culture in most of the locations. By the tenth century, the Islamic civilisation strengthened cultural ties among diverse social groups. With the Crusades during the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, however, ‘the vibrancy and buoyancy of the Middle East attained in this stage went into decline’ (Ismael and Ismael 1999: 131). Nevertheless, the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 by ending Roman rule and bringing the Middle East under one administration. This time around, ethnic diversity played an ambiguous role by being the source of both cultural endowment and political conflict. As the Ottoman rulers introduced the millet system to grant legal freedom to the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities and maintain territorial integrity, solidarities among religio-​cultural groups as well as aspirations for self-​rule started to proliferate. National liberation appeared in a full form with the demise of the Turkish reign and the progress of the Arab Revolt, led by the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca, who hoped to establish an Arab Kingdom after World War II. Therefore, social transformations in countries like Egypt occurred not only in response to European domination but also due to the pressure of wielding authority within a pan-​Arab context. The process of decolonisation put Egypt’s native solidarity under question, because it depended on the colonial concept of territoriality. On the contrary, pan-​Arab nationalism emphasised the homogenous culture and tradition of the entire region, even though it was undecided whether these should be viewed in Islamic or secular terms. A number of prominent Arab nationalists attribute the secular aspect of the idea to the Syrian-​Turkish educationist Sati al-​Husri. Bassam Tibi (1997) clarifies that in the absence of a comparable Arabic word for the French term la nation, al-​Husri introduced the concept as an equivalent of al-​ummah, which implies a group of people sharing bonds of culture, history and purpose. Consequently, the Ba‘th Party in Syria and Iraq was formed in 1943 to revive Arab glory. However, pan-​Arabism’s most forceful proponent was Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ended both the monarchy and European protection with a revolutionary government in 1952 that nationalised the Suez Canal. Nasser projected himself as the charismatic ruler of the masses 95

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile of Egypt and beyond. Inside the Arab world, though, the unifying concept seemed paradoxical, as the statesmen failed to translate the rhetoric of regional unity into solid actions for their respective locations. The Arab defeat in the 1967 war against Israel shook Nasser’s legitimacy, since the Egyptians believed in his charisma more than the notion of Arab unity. The inherent discrepancy between the pursuit of regional cooperation and the aspiration for state building ultimately led to the end of the quest. Since state building was not emphasised during decolonisation, Arab states have emerged with oppressive regimes and the lack of civil societies. As opposed to the nation state-based solution to the socio-​political costs of colonialism, pan-​Arab nationalism was put forward as a panacea for all ills. The struggle over finding a narrative for a decolonised Arab nation accompanied by shaky national governments, the increasing pressure of Palestinian refugees and an ever-increasing American influence from World War II onward resulted not only in disintegration but also in the precarious concentration of power in the hands of the political elite throughout the region. In the postwar period, the Arab world has experienced the rule of governments of varied dimensions without finding a way to achieve the region’s original goal, namely, regeneration. Therefore, one aspect has remained mostly unchanged in the Arab Middle East, which is the lack of individual freedom. The stagnant political landscape suggests the absence of democracy and the prevalence of socio-​political oppressions. Without reforming the cultural environment, therefore, the region can never reach its desired destination of rejuvenation. Bassam Tibi (1984: 226) rightly reiterates that without transforming ‘the existing economic, social, and cultural structures, there can be no strong society and thus no real freedom in Arab societies’. Hence, we realise the incredible importance of exilic intellectuals in the Arab context. The Arab homeland exerts an almost omnipresent influence over individuals’ life through the state machinery that monopolises societal functions. Hence, change has to happen through committed intellectuals raising uncomfortable questions about existing social frameworks. Simultaneously, they have to be able to articulate moral visions lying behind their probing structure. In the close Arab societies, this means serious hazards and uncertainties for the intellectuals’ life and 96

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Exile as Resistance living. However, Tibi warns his Arab peers with the dictate of history that they ‘will continue to be subjected’ (ibid.: 227) unless and until they fight for their democratic rights. In the discussion that follows, I demonstrate how Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish and Nawal El Saadawi not only lift the Arab world out of the accusation of passivity but also pave the way for its resuscitation through their critical, secular and oppositional consciousness, and universal humanism. By upholding critical consciousness, the intellectuals stand against ideas and beliefs supported by established authorities. Through secular consciousness, they engage with the socio-​political world and reveal how its privileged and deprived groups are created. At the same time, they throw down a constant challenge to the authorities by forming a redoubtable agency on the basis of truth, justice and freedom, which reflects their oppositional consciousness. By believing in the inalienable rights of citizens, they also prove their universal humanism. Therefore, the combination of the exilic qualities creates the foundation for the Arab intellectuals’ resistance against supremacist ideologies that obstruct the freedom and dignity of the Arab subjects. At the same time, these qualities build a pathway for the composition of a just society that values collective emancipation. This adds a significant dimension to their writings due to the portrayal of the interconnection between cultural and ethical grounds.

Resistance against supremacist ideologies The formulation of a challenge to the powerful group is significant to Said, even though there is little or no guarantee of its success in bringing an end to the supremacist ideologies that are devised to subordinate people. As spokespeople of the masses, therefore, the exilic intellectuals unceasingly question ideas related to the established society and politics in order to resist the subordination. This ensures their conscious position against the colonial, imperial, patriarchal and classist forces that imprison them, both literally and metaphorically. We discover in this section how critical and secular consciousness enables Mahfouz, Darwish and Saadawi to compose a successful blockade against these inhibiting forces. 97

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile As we know, Said’s Orientalism challenges the disparity prevalent in colonial race relations through exposing how the inferior ‘other’ is a discursive construct by the superior ‘self’; the construction serves the West’s colonial hegemony over the East and helps it to carry out its economic exploitation of the region. One of the manifestations of the hegemony provided in his groundbreaking text is that of Israel’s colonial domination of its Palestinian ‘other’. Said (2003: 227) believes that Israel came to existence through ‘Orientalism’s worldliness’. In other words, the Orientalist discourse provided the ‘white’ Israeli settlers with a ‘superior’ garb because of which they were in a position to keep the native Palestinians subdued. Said elaborates that the Zionist control of Palestine was possible because the superiority of the Israelis’ claim over thousands of Arab Palestinians to keep the historic land was unquestionable to Arthur Balfour, whose declaration of 1917 worked behind the establishment of the Jewish state there. Since 1948, the Israeli authorities have exercised their colonialist expansion policies by driving the Palestinians from the land and denying them the right to return home. They have continued with the acquisition of more and more Arab land in the Occupied Territories and building illegal settlements there. Against the colonial backdrop, Darwish summarises the Israeli venture to eliminate the Palestinians by succinctly bringing the racial hegemony into focus. His ‘On Man’ portrays how the colonial race relationship allows the Israeli authorities to define their colonised ‘others’ in a damning way: They gagged his mouth, Bound his hands to the rock of the dead And said: Murderer! They took his food, clothes and banners, Cast him into the condemned cell And said: Thief! They drove him away from every port, Took his young sweetheart, Then said: Refugee! (Darwish 1980: 3) The poet depicts how ‘they’, the colonial settlers, commit the crimes of killing, imprisoning and uprooting the native Palestinians, and yet ‘they’ 98

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Exile as Resistance are the ones who vilify their ‘others’ as murderers, thieves and refugees. The labels highlight the depth of the denigration. The negative effect of the ‘otherisation’ is deepened by another set of images, namely, depriving the ‘others’ of their basic rights of food, clothing and flag, gagging their mouth and imprisoning them, which totally denies them political agency. Thus Darwish’s critical consciousness points out what Said (2003: 8) calls the ‘positional superiority’ (emphasis in the original) of the Israeli colonialists who oppress their Palestinian ‘others’ through condemning them as brutes. Darwish enhances this claim by showing that the Palestinians are not the aggressive side, since their ferocious reaction erupts from their dehumanised status. In ‘Beirut’ he observes that his people ‘hugged [their] guns’ as a response to their ‘burning flesh’ (Darwish 1986: 56). In fact, the racial stereotype of the Palestinians had already been drawn before they entered the conflict. It was claimed that knowledge and philosophy were not for them; they were meant to live the life of a donkey and not to seek their ancestry, because only their colonisers had the right to do so. Indeed, this was the Israelis’ most effective ideology in justifying their acquisition of Arab land. Predictably, the claim was strengthened by the assertion of their attainment of God’s sanction for the act. Darwish’s opposition to this is built on the ground that the attempt directly translates into the Palestinians’ occupation at the hands of the Israeli settlers in a colonialist style. ‘Beirut’ continues: Besieged we were By the sea and Holy Books. Are we finished? No. We will survive like ancient ruins do, Like a skull we will keep shape … (Ibid.) It is true that Palestinian existence under colonisation has become that of ‘ancient ruins’, dilapidated but not completely demolished. Indeed, to ‘keep shape’, even if it is ‘like a skull’, is the very form of Palestinian resistance that Darwish’s critical consciousness emphasises. 99

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Unlike Darwish, however, Mahfouz’s propulsion of anti-​colonialism is not readily recognised as a defence of the powerless. Nor is his anger against the colonialists directly felt. In The Cairo Trilogy, the writer employs the conversations during Amina’s coffee hour as a significant mirror of the turbulence of the nationalist struggle. In particular, he designs the coffee hour to project the evolution of nationalism from old-style loyalty to the Muslim caliphate/​Ottoman Empire to the new generation’s more secular views. Fahmy remarks after the defeat of the Germans in World War II that ‘[a]‌ll hopes of restoring the Muslim caliphate have been lost. The star of the English continues in the ascendant while ours sets’ (Mahfouz 2001: 342). Soon he veers away from the idea of the caliphate and represents the new generation of university students, who are enthused by the prospect of the ‘delegation or “wafd” composed of the nationalist leaders’ (ibid.: 345) like Sa’d Zaghlul. Yasin treats the anti-​colonial struggle with disbelief, because he cannot see what an individual like Sa’d is able to ‘do against a nation that now considers itself the unrivalled mistress of the world’ (ibid.: 346). However, the dramatic irony embedded in the declaration undercuts Yasin’s self-​serving notion. Mahfouz also rejects the dream of the caliphate by being sceptical about Amina’s steadfast loyalty to ‘Our Exiled Effendi’ (the title is tellingly put in inverted commas), the Khedive Abbas II (ibid.). Only Fahmy’s exuberance is not criticised. Fahmy pours forth his passion as he reads out a Wafdist handbill drawing the demand for the illegal English Protectorate of Egypt to be lifted. It was to be submitted in a peace conference that decided how to divide the countries under the Ottoman Empire after its defeat. It becomes quite clear that Mahfouz wants Fahmy’s voice to resonate in every household, when he declares that they ‘have taken upon [themselves] an effort to liberate [their] country and to defend its case’ (ibid.: 371) to end the sufferings Egypt endured. Thus Mahfouz’s critical consciousness dictates that the freedom of the country is never to be surrendered to a colonialist claim, whether it is that of protecting Egypt or of integrating it with the Muslim world. Some images of the 1919 revolution are fittingly captured through Fahmy’s zealous participation in the civil disobedience in response to Zaghlul’s exile by the British. Fahmy identifies that Egyptian nationalism 100

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Exile as Resistance resides in the heart of the struggle against the colonisers: ‘A hundred thousand people, wearing modern fezzes and traditional turbans –​ students, workers, civil servants, Muslim and Christian religious leaders, the judges … who could have imagined this? They don’t mind the sun. This is Egypt’ (ibid.: 525). Thus Mahfouz turns his record of the revolution into a nationalist resistance to colonialism by highlighting the indigenous community and culture. Not only does he resort to poetry, but he also registers his unequivocal condemnation of colonial subjugation. His most intense embodiment of the domination comes through the episode depicting the humiliation Al Jawad suffers at the hands of the English soldiers during the siege of the neighbourhood. The detailed description of a group of English soldiers forcing Al Jawad to join hands with a group of natives, who have been coerced to fill a pit on the road dug by the revolutionaries, is significant for its strong symbolic protest to the occupation. Apart from the psychological shock of being ordered around and mistreated by the foreign soldiers, the so-far indomitable patriarch suffers from the pain that this will shatter his one and ‘only image of … [being a] venerable and exalted power’ (ibid.: 477). Al Jawad’s god-​like stature is knocked to the ground, as he bends over to pick up a basket, tucks his cloak in the caftan and joins the ‘men, both old and young, some in modern dress and others wearing traditional turbans’ (ibid.: 479), who are filling basket after basket with earth before emptying them into the pit. Al Jawad’s dirt-​filled hands represent the profound disgrace of his historic nation, which has now fallen into the pit of subjection. As Mahfouz writes that the captured natives ‘worked with a high degree of energy stemming from their desire to live’ (ibid.), we realise what forms the core of his resistance to colonialism; its violence works against the most fundamental, and hence sacred, human sensibilities. We saw earlier that Darwish’s anti-​colonialism projects similar viewpoints by proving that the writers’ challenge to colonialism is formed through their critical consciousness. Similarly, Darwish’s and Saadawi’s secular consciousness initiates a vehement struggle against imperialism. In Culture and Imperialism, Said describes how America now fits into the imperial role played previously by the classical empires of Britain and France. Arguably, he is on a mission to invalidate America’s ‘moralistic triumphalism’ justified only by 101

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile its ‘desire for mastery and domination’ (Said 1993: 286, 290). Writing as ‘an American and Arab who lived in both worlds’ (ibid.:  294), his pursuit is twofold. On the one hand, he asks his home audience to question their Ahab-​like moral undertaking in the Arab wilderness. In other words, Said warns his fellow Americans that their seemingly moral pursuit in the Arab world may replicate the obsession that Herman Melville’s protagonist, Captain Ahab, portrayed in Moby Dick, which proved to be fanatical in the end. On the other, this image of the Arab world as a god-​forsaken place is exactly what he intends to erase. One can see, therefore, why the Arab-​American calls the monograph ‘an exile’s book’ (Said 1993: xxvi). Likewise, Saadawi sees Pax Americana as another form of patriarchal exploitation. Both her and Darwish’s works show that America’s shaping of Middle Eastern politics creates a tangibly adverse effect in the region. Notwithstanding the intellectuals’ varied focuses, they identify the base of American dominance, which is that their oil-rich region is important for the country’s economic security and prosperity; hence, it is never allowed to be free of the superpower’s grip. Indeed, America controls ‘the global oil spigot’ (Harvey 2003: 19) through controlling Middle Eastern politics. But it cloaks the domination in ‘a spaceless universalization of its own values’ (ibid.: 47) of democracy, peace and market economy, since it does not possess an empire. Perceivably, like the colonialist forces, America realises ‘the ideological need to consolidate and justify domination in cultural terms’ (Said 1993: 284). Simply put, American imperialism is an amplified continuation of the supremacist divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in a colonial style. In showing what sufferings America’s unconditional support for Israel and the Arab regimes and its promotion of the free-​market economy and fundamentalism cause in the real lives of Arab people, Darwish and Saadawi expose the true cost of its preponderance of power. Their pens thus not only disclose the ills of America’s self-​righteous leadership but also challenge its well-​publicised moral superiority of not possessing a visible empire. Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness, a classic war memoir, is an aesthetic project to counter Israel’s claim of self-​defence magnified by the Pax Americana. Armed by the general backing of the US, Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982 in the name of protecting their state from Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) gunfire. Writing against the excessive 102

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Exile as Resistance nature of this claim, Said (1984:  27)  cites the MacBride Commission’s report (1983) to prove that what Israel ultimately created in Lebanon was ‘“ethnocide” and “genocide” of the Palestinian people’, which are, however, horrifyingly ‘forgotten or routinely denied in press reports’. Darwish’s position is precisely against this denial of Palestinian sufferings. He records the memory of Beirut bearing witness to the siege and protesting the massacre. Simultaneously, the memoir proves that the Palestinians are real people with a distinct identity, which proves Darwish’s secular consciousness. Again and again Said emphasises the importance of this assertion in keeping the Palestinian cause alive. He stresses that in a struggle against the imperialist erasure ‘the “idea” of a Palestinian homeland would have to be enabled by the prior acceptance of a narrative entailing a homeland. And this has been resisted as strenuously on the imaginative and ideological level as it has been politically’ (ibid.:  35). By narrating the Palestinian experience of Beirut in 1982, Darwish voices his voiceless people in order to resist the resistance of their existence on the conjectural level. Understandably, America’s imperialist complicity with Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians shows why the latter is ‘seen as the equivalent of New  York and the Pentagon’ (see Gregory 2004:  111)  in today’s world. As Gregory suggests, Israel becomes imperialistic too, when it comes to be seen as a shadow of American power in the Middle East. Therefore, in Memory, Darwish resists the Israeli-​American depiction of Palestinians as an anti-​peace and pro-​terror people that Israel is doing all it can to exterminate. The nucleus of his resistance in the memoir lies in an outright dismissal of the imperialistic power network: And when they set about putting the siege under siege, did they know that in bringing the actual out of the marvelous into the ordinary they were supplanting the legend and revealing to the misguided Prophet of Doom the secrets of a heroism woven by the movement from the self-​evident to the self-​evident … As if a handful of human beings were to rebel against the order of things so that this people, whose birth was tempered with stubborn fire, should not be made equal to a flock of sheep herded over the fence of complicity by the Shepherds of Oppression in collusion with the Guardian of the Legend. (Darwish 1995: 12)

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile The ‘Prophet of Doom’ refers to Ariel Sharon, who engineered the entire invasion and was later applauded by the US as ‘a man of peace’ (see Gregory 2004: 113). Darwish’s satire reveals the kind of ‘peace’ he established as Israel’s ‘misguided’ minister of defence during that time by leading the ‘legend’, the Israeli army, into believing that its heroism lay in merciless killing. Furthermore, for their authoritarian and exploitative nature, the poet calls the Arab regimes the ‘Shepherds of Oppression’ and Menachem Begin, the then Israeli prime minister, the ‘Guardian of the Legend’. Clearly, the agents of imperialism are marked by Darwish’s aptly scathing titles for their ‘peace-​making’ activities in Lebanon. Thus his secular consciousness decries the agents by suggesting that their warfare, even though buttressed by the Pax Americana, was bound to fail, since it was undeniable that the Palestinians were not disappearing. Instead, they were creating their own reality out of the surreal situation by besetting the siege. Having been reborn out of their unyielding spirit, they simply refused to be reduced to becoming a nameless herd, much to the chagrin of the agents. However impossible this sounds in the context of the invasion, therefore, Darwish (1995: 12) announces his oneness with the resolve by reiterating that ‘[t]‌hey shall not pass as long as there’s life in our bodies’. In other words, resistance becomes part of the very existence of the Palestinians. This makes them an implacable opponent of Arab regimes, obviously a major part of the imperialist triangle in the region. Unsurprisingly, Darwish is more interested in expressing his anger against the regimes and their dispirited subjects through subversive ironies, rather than explosive outbursts. Therefore, his criticism of them adds to the wry humour of the memoir: How long are they going to spoil Arab evenings with corpses that interrupt the sequence of American television series? How long are they going to carry on the fight when it’s the height of the season for vacations, the World Cup, and the raising of frogs? (Ibid.: 100; emphasis in the original)

Darwish appropriately chooses black humour to convey his people’s sharp pain at the Arab betrayal. As Arab governments are enmeshed in the American ‘peace-​keeping’ mission through their compliance with 104

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Exile as Resistance the superpower’s regional policies, the people are given over to its entertainment world. Their excessive love for ‘American television series’ makes them condemn the Palestinians, whose dreadful news spoils their evening enjoyment. This is how Darwish censures these people’s lulled conscience as they plunge into the gratification of senses through idle TV watching, ‘vacations, the World Cup, and the raising of frogs’. Their addiction to a happy-​go-​lucky life rewards them with repressive rulers, who in turn depend on the people’s lethargy to remain subdued by imperial America. Darwish sees through the reason behind these inert people’s breaking out in massive demonstrations against a referee’s decision in World Cup football, though they do not even demur at the siege of Beirut: ‘Soccer is the field of expression permitted by secret understanding between ruler and ruled in the prison cell of Arab democracy …’ (ibid.: 102–​3) Their sensual indulgence transforms them into the inmates of ‘the prison cell’ of their own making by accepting subjugation at both national and international levels. Compared to them, the Palestinians appear far more respectable, as they cling to whatever form of life is left to them. Needless to say, the poet’s secular analysis courageously advances the Palestinian struggle, which cannot but be anti-​imperialistic, given the unsympathetic Arab regimes. In order to oppose America’s imperialistic role, Darwish views Beirut in parallel with the historical conflict and sufferings of Hiroshima, Nazi Berlin and Jerusalem: The vacuum bomb. Hiroshima. Manhunt by jet fighter. Vanquished remnants of the Nazi army in Berlin. A flaring up of the personal conflict between Begin and Nebuchadnezzar … A Greek fate lying in wait for young heroes … On this day, on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb, they are trying out the vacuum bomb on our flesh, and the experiment is successful. (Ibid.: 84)

As the bombs in Beirut and Hiroshima fall, ensuring imperialism’s ‘unbridled show of strength’ (ibid.: 173), history becomes the connecting ground of events and experiences for the poet. In effect, he presents history 105

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile as an arena where humans enact the same power game in different settings. That is why he puts together the three conquerors from disparate times, Nebuchadnezzar, the Nazis and Begin. This serves at least two purposes. First, it implies that what Nebuchadnezzar is to the Jews, Begin is to the Palestinians. Secondly, he proves that an ironic repetition of similar tragedies occurs fruitlessly in history, spanning even millennia. In Biblical times, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and created the Babylonian exile. In modern times, the Nazis attempted to annihilate the Jews, the process of which exiled them from Europe. But in recent times, Begin’s army has brought down death, destruction and (re)exile on the Palestinians, as if to settle with Nebuchadnezzar by emulating the Nazis, standing as he did on the same footing with them as a wielder of power. This is why history as a medium is questionable to Darwish. Not only are the powerful glorified here but they are also seen to be following the worst examples. This is why Memory does not celebrate any recent Nebuchadnezzars, neither Begin nor his American allies. Rather, it aims to salvage Darwish’s own history, which does not receive an official appearance, since it has been auctioned off and thrown open for the powerful to experiment with. Like Darwish, Saadawi also sees representation as a site of power struggle. But if interrogating historical representations forms a powerful facet of Darwish’s counter-​hegemonic endeavours, Saadawi attempts to keep the creative power of language alive through dissidence. She thinks that without struggle against different forms of power ‘dissidence becomes a word devoid of responsibility, devoid of meaning’ (Saadawi 1997:  158). This is where Saadawi’s struggle against supremacist ideologies is markedly different from that of Darwish. She was a physician who preferred her activism and writing to create a democratically inspired social movement. In fact, her passion for working against domination of all sorts exceeded all her interests. But Darwish was primarily a poet who turned into an engaged intellectual due to the Palestinian situation. He goes so far as to assert that ‘[t]‌here is no meaning to [his] life outside poetry’ (see Mosbahi 1999). Despite this, the most important ground they share is collecting evidence from rock-​bottom reality in order to make their opposition sharp and piercing. 106

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Exile as Resistance For Saadawi’s treatment of the real through her secular consciousness, we now turn to one of her most renowned novels, Woman at Point Zero. Recording meeting the novel’s protagonist, Firdaus, at Qanatir prison while conducting her research on women’s neuroses in 1972, Saadawi acts as her faithful scribe. Thus she seals the connection between her text and the world, as this happens in Memory as well. Like Darwish, Saadawi evidently believes in expressing the extraordinary dimension of power through the medium of the ordinary. The writer turns Firdaus’ failed life into a commentary on Egypt’s prevalent socio-​economic condition. At the beginning of the story we are told that it is ‘they’ who Firdaus is revolting against: ‘“They? Who are they?” … I heard her [the warder] muttering to herself: “How can she [the narrator] be the only one who does not know them?”’ (Saadawi 1983: 2–​3; emphasis in the original) The rest of the story is a determined effort to unmask who they are. As it turns out, ‘they’ are the males and masters, who categorise ‘us’, the females, as slaves or their possessions. Firdaus confirms that all the male members of her society ‘taught [her] to grow up as a prostitute’ (ibid.: 99). Indeed, prostitution takes on a new meaning in Saadawi’s delineation. Firdaus affirms: ‘I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices …’ (ibid.: 76). Because of this symbolic dimension, Sherifa Zuhur (2001) stresses that the novel carries Saadawi’s adversarial views regarding the economic control over Egypt by Western powers through its authoritarian rulers’ selling of national interest to them. Writing during Sadat’s rule (Woman at Point Zero was originally published in 1975 and the presidency lasted from 1970–​81), it is unsurprising that Saadawi voices her condemnation of the national government that aligned Egypt with American capitalism through the harmful policy of Infitah (‘open door’). Whereas the free-​ market policy favoured the rich and the powerful, it disadvantaged the poor, as the economy was pushed to the point of requiring subsidies on basic foodstuffs. Saadawi’s denunciation of the ‘free-​market’ hegemony of the capitalist US could not have been more severe. She shows that by being enticed by the concept, the corrupt rulers of Egypt coerced the country into being abused by the world’s economic and political authorities without remission. 107

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile By unveiling the effect of the ‘free-​market’ hegemony in this way, Saadawi (1997: 176) encourages the public to recognise that whatever name is given to the patriarchal capitalist system –​ imperialism, neo-​colonialism or globalisation –​it functions simply by controlling ‘the minds of the vast majority of the women and men’. The writer’s collection of essays, based on her 1980s and 1990s’ reflections, illustrates how this happens. Egypt, for example, is forced to be the mouthpiece of the US in the region not just politically but also culturally by agreeing to protect Hollywood films and products of American mass culture. In fact, American cultural invasion is felt throughout the world, including in Egypt. Coca-​Cola or American cigarette advertisements infiltrate even the remotest African villages. The invasion of image culture continues by homogenising indigenous African cultures under the influence of Americanisation. ‘In villages that continue to be deprived of the basic necessities of life it is possible to see Star TV, MTV, Zee TV …’ (ibid.: 129). Through such direct and clear messages, Saadawi forms a successful agency against the current imperial power by asking people to be wary of their consciousness being lulled by its deceptive ‘[w]‌ords, language, culture, information, education and communication’ (ibid.: 176). Saadawi goes on to argue that progress and peace in the developing world, especially the Middle East, are not what the imperialists want. The militarily strong US speaks about peace all the time to shroud its warmongering. The powerful ideological façade can easily be blown by the US’s wars in the region. The Gulf War, for example, was proclaimed to have been fought on ethical grounds. But Saadawi nullifies the claim by saying that the denunciation of the Iraqi dictator as a ‘devil’ or the ‘enemy’ of the USA and Europe (ibid.: 21) for his oppression of the Kuwaitis and Kurds is not US-​interest free at all. Otherwise, why was he not depicted as a ‘devil’ but as a good friend of the West when he was fighting another ‘devil’, Iran, which still remains so? Ultimately, the moral ground of the US domination is very questionable; if you obey the US, you are a ‘friend’, if you disobey, you are a ‘devil’. By exposing this oft-​trumpeted US ideology, Saadawi’s point becomes closer to that of Darwish, especially as she picks the most prominent proof of this: Israel. She argues that it is not just Iraq who violated UN resolutions; Israel does this all the time. But does the US punish Israel for that? 108

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Exile as Resistance Darwish’s Memory has an appropriate answer to this, as we saw earlier. But Saadawi digs even deeper. She points out that the current religious resurgence in the world is strongly linked with imperialism. She sees all sorts of fundamentalisms (Islamic, Christian, Hindu and Jewish) as a consequence of ‘the economic and social crisis sweeping over our world’ (ibid.: 41), which is arguably sustained by the imperialists to control the market. However, there is an interesting twist to this situation. In an apparent volte-​face, the fundamentalists become the imperialists’ brothers in business (see ibid.: 93). Therefore, despite the ‘official’ anti-​West stance of the fundamentalists, the astounding effect of their presence is that they deepen the shadow of capitalism over the world. They worsen the imperialist hegemony, if not prolong it, despite their loud claim to resist it. Furthermore, Saadawi argues that the fundamentalists are utilised to overcome popular resistance against detrimental imperial policies. More alarmingly, they are employed to block the progressive forces. For example, Islamic fundamentalists were let loose in Egypt to counter the socialists. The politico-​economic policies of Egyptian presidents Sadat and Mubarak have been largely supported by the US for their success in this. The practice is part of the legacy of British colonialism, argues Saadawi. Why did the British support the Muslim Brotherhood from its birth? The answer is that the Brotherhood was employed against Wafd’s policies of democracy, liberalism and, of course, national independence. Following a similar trajectory, the US needs yes-​men like Saudi Arabia to secure its sway in the Arab world. Thus, Saadawi’s secular consciousness shatters the veneer of America’s pronounced patronage of progress and sustainable peace in the world. Once the writers expose links like these, we begin to see the ruinous results of ‘American ascendancy’. If, however, their writings appear ‘dispiriting’, it is because they are up against a ‘new form of imperialism’, which ‘regularly employed idioms of gigantism and apocalypse that could not have been applied as easily to the classical empires during their heyday’ (Said 1993: 283). Certainly, the apparatus of the Pax Americana is the more fatal for its Puritan mask, which is what Saadawi and Darwish uncompromisingly tear apart through their secular consciousness. Thus they resist America’s extensive claim to morality, in the name of which it 109

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile threatens the world by pretending to save it from its catastrophes. Indeed, any supremacist ideology, whether it is Puritanical or patriarchal, creates similarly disastrous outcomes. Interestingly, feminists have criticised Said’s silence on gender issues. In Orientalism, suggests Christine Holmlund (1991:  1), he ignored ‘the female racial other’ and thus perpetuated ‘the patriarchal definition of women as “lamentably alien”’ (emphasis in the original). What Holmlund claims here is not remotely connected to what actually happens in the book, though. It is true that there is a predominantly male presence there, with the lack of focus on gendered binaries. Nevertheless, this does not suggest that Said is perpetuating the ‘otherisation’ of the female. Notwithstanding his ironic disregard for the ‘self’ and ‘other’ division in its gendered manifestation, his anti-​authoritarian method paves new ways for the liminality of women to be a state of intervention, since he views a border position as a potentially oppositional one. Following Said, we can see how gender oppression at home turns it into a form of physical exile for women. L. H. M. Ling (2007) identifies this well, believing that Said’s concept of exile provides us with a structure through which to comprehensively understand gender relations in society. Due to this significant contribution to probing gender queries, Sondra Hale (2005: 1) calls him an ‘accidental feminist’. Quite contrarily, even Saadawi (1989) declares that she fathomed an adverse reality for her even before she knew the nature of the womb that sheltered her before she was ejected from its protection. This opening statement of Saadawi’s first novel, Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, fittingly announces the arrival of a determined anti-​patriarchal writer. Noticeably, Saadawi wages the war on a discursive level by announcing her disagreement with the role set for her. The protagonist created in Saadawi’s self-​ image is furious as she realises that she is not going to perceive the nature, meaning and significance of her identity in her own terms through the natural progression of life because of her femininity. Even before she has any self-​awakening, she is thus trapped in a preconfigured role in the world. Saadawi’s discursive war is, therefore, against the premise of inequality governing the hostile reality of being a woman in a male-dominated 110

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Exile as Resistance society. In Woman at Point Zero, Firdaus’ perfectly honourable quest for self-​reliance is shown to have created totally dishonourable results for her. She dreamed about escaping her poverty-​stricken peasant life by earning her own livelihood. As her parents died, however, she passed through the hands of her hypocritical uncle, her aged but torturous husband, her betraying male friend and her female rescuer, who introduced her to prostitution. Why did her first rescuer Bayoumi so easily force his friends onto her? He knew that she was easy prey. Having left home, she was out of the bounds of respectability. Therefore, society would never ask why he behaved so sadistically towards her by abandoning the pretence of being a kind man, with which he first befriended her. Madam Sharifa, who ran the brothel in which Firdaus eventually lived, confirmed patriarchy’s hostility to women by saying that it did not matter who initiated her downfall, because male action remains the same under various guises. Saadawi writes so that women can unmistakably recognise the far-​reaching shackle of patriarchy. When Firdaus fled from Sharifa’s den to save her from being economically exploited (both home and business place are alienating in the same way), the street taught her the important lesson that money was the real power. Unlike the sly policeman, who got away with paying nothing to her, an ordinary gentleman offered her her first wages. When she went to spend the money in a restaurant, the waiters’ averted gaze from it became revelatory. Their uneasy gaze suggested the inclusion of money into the discourse of ‘awra (shame). Saadawi thus implies that male hegemony turns money into ‘awra in order to keep women away from it. But as Firdaus unlearnt the hegemony by overturning its rules, she looked straight into people’s eyes, fixed an ‘unwinking gaze’ (Saadawi 1983: 68) on their money, and emerged a knowing player in the buying and selling world. When the next opportunity came, she turned down the man offering her ten pounds by preferring the one with 20. When the pimp wanted to share a chunk of her income, she retorted that her body was solely owned by her. Anastasia Valassopoulos (2007) explains that this is how Firdaus repetitively turned around the discourse of ‘awra through asserting the economic freedom the material use of her body granted her. By allowing Firdaus to carve out her victory against the concept of shamefulness attached to the female body/​ 111

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile identity, despite its limited and, one might say, problematic nature, Saadawi endows Firdaus with a powerful agency. From this perspective, Firdaus’ dominant narrative role is strategically important to the writer. Saadawi, who denounces feminists for claiming to be the spokespersons for others, makes it a point in the novel not to do so herself. Her secular consciousness is prevalent in the depiction of Firdaus, which lays the foundations of the wretched woman’s final victory over patriarchy. The societal outcast experiences a life tragically terminated through a death sentence because of her murder of the pimp. However, her ultimate defiance over the patriarchal structure that deprives her of a settled life lies in being represented by the writer, who speaks to Firdaus by playing a secondary role as the narrator. The story is the only means through which Firdaus manages to live as herself once and for all. Indeed, the narrator wants Firdaus’ voice, not hers, to vibrate ‘in the whole world, shaking everything, spreading fear wherever it went’ (Saadawi 1983: 106). Saadawi stresses Firdaus’ killer eyes that see through and defeat the system, despite ending up at point zero, the nadir of existence. The writer believes that zero once revolutionised arithmetic, and it now has a similar effect through Firdaus’ power of unmasking what lies beneath the normative (see Gilbert 2009). Recognisably, the main driving force for the author in Woman at Point Zero is to establish her ideas against male domination. For this, I  think, Saadawi’s characters become subordinate to her ideological mission. Sadly, this leads her to expect that all novels will be clear about their mission statements as well, for lack of which, in the last analysis she considers Mahfouz to be a male chauvinist. She accuses Mahfouz of producing prostitute characters, who represent the novelist’s socialist thoughts more than their true stories. Contrarily, my discussion below demonstrates that ‘a deep and sensitive realization of the tragedy women are made to live’ (Saadawi 1980: 167) is Mahfouz’s forte. In accordance with Nadine Gordimer (1997), I argue that far from being a male chauvinist, Mahfouz presents a remarkably rich counter-​discourse to male hegemony, which his readers have to demystify. A closer look at Mahfouz’s confined women’s quarters and relaxed soirees with female entertainers is necessary to realise the nature of the author’s resistance through his exposure of the complex men/​women relationships in his society. 112

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Exile as Resistance In the Trilogy, Amina’s famous latticed balcony is introduced as a ‘cage’ (Mahfouz 2001: 6), even to step on which she had to wear the veil. What she could glimpse peeking ‘out through the tiny, round openings of the latticework panels that protected her from being seen from the street’ (ibid.) was the entire outside world allowed to her. Even though she could see no more than some minarets from there, she never got tired of them ‘over a quarter of a century’ (ibid.). The pathos of the confinement suggested here may be lightened by Khadija’s oft-​repeated sarcasm of their home as the ‘notorious Tokar Prison’ (ibid.: 150), but this remark also highlights the sad truth of the severe restraint imposed on them. This tears apart the veneer of protection by revealing that the freedom of the women was bought inexpensively. Amina’s life is a living example of this. Because of putting up with her husband’s ‘shortcomings’, she was ‘rewarded’ with ‘children who were the apples of her eye, a home amply provided with comforts and blessing and a happy, adult life’ (ibid.: 9). To earn this safe and secure life, however, she had to utterly submit to Al Jawad’s superior will. Amina’s daughters enact the tragedy of entrapment too, as members of the restricted women’s quarters. Being a strong upholder of the rules imposed on them, Khadija becomes a stronghold of peace and tranquillity in her father’s house. But a closer look into this reveals a complex picture. Through her constant trial of forcing Aisha to conform to the rules, she in fact suppresses a strong internal conflict. Here is one of her regular admonishments to Aisha: ‘Listen, madam, this is the home of an honorable man. There would be nothing wrong with his daughters having voices like donkeys, but it’s disgrace for them to be nothing but pretty pictures of no use or value’ (ibid.: 30). Despite Khadija’s zeal, she had it wrong. In reality, it did not matter if the Al Jawad daughters turned out to be lifeless sketches, as long as they were valued objects in the marriage market. This reveals the extent of pressure they underwent in order to make them marriageable. The problem, however, was that the dominant ideology that objectified women was not on Khadija’s side. In the marriage market, her sister’s beauty was worth more than her skills: ‘Neither her extraordinary proficiency in running the house nor doing embroidery or her indefatigable 113

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile vigour, which never dimmed or dulled, gained her anything’ (ibid.:  31). Thus marriage, Khadija’s only means of achieving freedom, was turned into a chimera for her for a while. Brandishing her stick over Aisha was a sign of the turmoil inside; because deep down she knew that, unlike Aisha, she would be the one caught and left out. By depicting Khadija’s hard reality, Mahfouz objects to her situation. In Mahfouz’s world, Khadija’s earthly values and her determination of retaining her self-​worth win, as she becomes the mainstay of her nest. On the contrary, Aisha’s household, which pleased all the authorities concerned and became a hub of merriment, soon fell like a pack of cards. Therefore, Khadija’s success is very significant for Mahfouz, as it overwrites the notion of patriarchal home from within. Nevertheless, Anshuman Mondal (2003) also fails to fathom this disestablishing oppositional strategy. He presumes that Mahfouz’s narrative draws sexualised female bodies in order to provide his male readers with voyeuristic pleasure. Ironically, the outrage created in Mondal is the first proof of Mahfouz’s resistance to the sexualisation of the female bodies. Secondly, Mahfouz graphically describes the bodies in order not to sustain, but to destroy the image of women as sexual objects. We can consider Yasin’s case to show how this is done. Waiting impatiently at al-​Sayyid Ali’s coffee shop for Zanuba, the entertainer he longs for, to be seen through the window of the house across the street, he soliloquises about her beauty in purely physical terms. In doing so, however, he demeans none other than himself. For one, he happily confirms his ‘mule’ (Mahfouz 2001: 305) status, which is the author’s predominant image for him. Zanuba calls him her ‘camel’ (ibid.:  263). The author reminds us that the person objectifying women is also called an ‘ox’ (ibid.: 305) by his exasperated father, who has to rescue him repeatedly from the trouble he gets into through his uncontrolled sexuality. Furthermore, Yasin’s yearning is self-​defeating, as he admits that the likes of him are knaves because of their obsession with women’s bodies. Such a subtle but strong opposition to the objectification of women is no less significant than Saadawi’s, because of the depth of the censure. If Saadawi focuses on the discourse of ‘awra, Mondal (2003) is right to assert that Mahfouz presents the discourse of honour as patriarchy’s 114

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Exile as Resistance foundational pillar. However, I disagree that he reinforces the discourse. It is true that Mahfouz’s women generally fall into two categories: the respectable homemakers and the unrespectable companions of licentious men. However, this is just a starting point to overturn the policing of women through such classifications. Rather than following the societal convention about the disrespectable group, Mahfouz draws Zanuba, the lute player, as a resourceful person with ambition, intelligence and charisma. Through her shrewd and driven nature, she controls Al Jawad and Yasin, two of the most infamous towers of patriarchy in the novel, with remarkable ease and composure. Firstly, she plays the role of an unobtainable lover in order to manipulate the enamoured Yasin. It works because her refusals only heighten his reckless passion. With the father, though, Zanuba is more cautious. She pressurises him to spend more and more money on her in order to gain an independent life (she acquires a houseboat leased in her name). He admits: ‘Nowadays, desire for [Zanuba] had subjected his will to hers and made the expenses appear trivial to him’ (Mahfouz 2001: 679). Coming from the mouth of a formidable patriarch, this is victory enough for a poor entertainer because she has turned the gender relation upside down by making his will subordinate to hers. Ironically, all of this is possible because she does not have to comply with respectability, a social mask, and hence a successful hegemonic tool for patriarchy. Since Zanuba has no social image to lose, she can act boldly to lead Al Jawad into granting her the lavish life without demanding her submissiveness. Mahfouz’s secular consciousness turns the victim of patriarchy into the cause of its downfall, just as Saadawi’s exilic mind endows Firdaus with defying power. In both cases, the agency is complex due to the women’s disreputable profession. Zanuba is no Firdaus, though. If Firdaus was entrapped in the patriarchal structure, Zanuba turned the picture upside down by using her body more skilfully. She was not primarily aware of the father-​son relationship between Al Jawad and Yasin. Even so, she manipulated their desire for her, as the male chauvinists were not capable of comprehending her control over them by being too assured of their superiority. Having established Zanuba’s character against the stereotypical subservient role, Mahfouz adds another dimension to his anti-​patriarchal scheme. 115

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile He implies that men’s knowledge of women as immutably compliant is their self-​created illusion. This is why ‘Mahfouz mocks his men, whose delusions of power and knowledge women expose’ (Cooke 1993: 123). One final point about Mahfouz’s anti-​patriarchal position has to be made. Miriam Cooke wonders if Mahfouz is a feminist in the end. True to being an exilic intellectual, Mahfouz does not declare his allegiance to feminism or any other ‘ism’. His feminist views are part of his mission to invalidate all oppressive ideologies. Hence, his powerful opposition to all forms of repression, including classism, should be recognised. This is true about Saadawi too, whose critical consciousness challenges classism with equal vehemence. Despite his being a minority Anglican within a minority Christian community in Palestine, Stephen Howe (2003) argues that Said was a privileged person as a member of the upper-​middle class. Perhaps this is why opposition to racial discrimination, rather than class oppression, takes the forefront in Said’s oeuvre. However, even though upper-​class marginalisation of the lower classes as its inferior ‘others’ is not focused in Said’s writings, he is vocal in his anti-​classism: Marginality and homelessness are not, in my opinion, to be gloried in; they are to be brought to an end, so that more, and not fewer, people can enjoy the benefits of what has for centuries been denied the victims of race, class or gender. (Said 2001b: 385)

I argue that such anti-​authoritarian thought works as a framework for Mahfouz’s and Saadawi’s delineation of class struggle, despite the fact that they experienced class oppression in a way that Said never did. To begin with, the adverse reality of the Middle East compelled Mahfouz to pursue his writer’s vocation in the shadow of a civil service career. Because of receiving poor royalties from his books, Mahfouz had to supplement his salary with film and television adaptations of his novels and bear a frustrated middle-​class experience in a postcolonial country. The tension between his social class and intellectual distinction is reflected in his destruction of bourgeois pride as a classist veneer for dominating the lower classes in order to continue with its disproportionate wealth 116

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Exile as Resistance accumulation. One cannot miss the Orientalist echo when Mahfouz records how the Cairene bourgeoisie claims to be more intelligent and important compared to the lower classes, which are professed to be not only culturally inferior but also socially less deserving. This is evident from the deep divide between Kamal and Aïda Shadad in the Trilogy. As a petty-​bourgeois merchant’s son, Kamal has a lower-​ middle-​class upbringing and is habituated to a traditional (Egyptian/​ Eastern) life in al-​Jamaliyya, Cairo’s old quarter. But Aïda comes from a Westernised upper-​class family with a sumptuous lifestyle in al-​Abbasiya, Cairo’s rich suburbia. The unbridgeable class difference never lets them unite, as Rashed El-​Enany (1993) suggests that Kamal yearns for Aïda’s Westernised conduct and outlook, though he fails to internalise them. Nevertheless, I suggest that it is not different class cultures but their classist use that pitches Kamal out of Aïda’s life. Aïda’s denigration of Kamal is what destroys all his aspirations, for he never recovers from the cold rejection. His love was so overpoweringly devotional that it verged on his worshipping her as a deity. El-​Enany observes: ‘The unwritten social code would permit Kamal to become Husayn Shaddad’s (Ayda’s brother) best friend, but marriage and the union of the families [were] a different matter altogether …’ (ibid.: 86) El-​Enany does recognise that the relationships are taut with class difference; but he fails to see that the unuttered social code that created this strain was a hegemonic device to keep the classes apart. Being keen on projecting the relationship in terms of East/​West binary, he never questions why friendship was permitted between the classes, but not marriage. Mahfouz builds up the relationship in terms of East/​West binary in order to reveal the Orientalist-​style barrier separating them. He consistently highlights how the notion of class superiority positions people in perpetually separate worlds. For instance, Kamal’s ‘admiration’ for al-​ Abbasiya’s ‘cleanliness’, ‘careful planning’ and ‘restful calm’ (Mahfouz 2001: 685) reminds us of Frantz Fanon’s colonial town. As the shanty towns are for some of Fanon’s natives, so the noisy areas are for Mahfouz’s petty-​bourgeoisie. That the upper class is treated like the Sahibs is also noticeable when Kamal welcomes a tanned Husayn Shadad to Cairo after his Alexandrian summer holiday with the non-​ironic greeting: ‘You’re 117

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile the European among us darker types’ (ibid.: 688).The professed inequality gives Aïda grounds to manipulate Kamal and encourage his self-​defeating devotion for her. The lovelorn Kamal cannot admit that Aïda’s haughtiness puzzles him and weakens his resolve to propose to her. It takes his down-​ to-​earth friend Ismail Latif to drag him out of the fool’s paradise of Aïda worship. During the day of her wedding with Hasan Salim, ‘the son of the superior court judge’, Ismail points out why Aïda always knew that she was going to choose him, but never hesitated to have some fun at the expense of her ‘lovesick suitor’ (ibid.: 870, 873). Apparently, Kamal’s acquisition of the title after his failure to propose to her turned him into a great joke for her entire family. When he hears the fact, he ‘imagined’ that the ‘feet’ of his social superiors ‘were heartlessly trampling his honor’ (ibid.: 874). Mahfouz thus reveals the ingrained classism in his society and the nature of oppression it creates. Arguably, such emotional exploitation is possible in a class society where the veneer of superiority is the upper class’s prerogative. Hence, the Shadads are so insistent on maintaining this by strongly emphasising their Westernised standing. Even Egyptian heritage is denigrated, as Husyan vilifies the pyramids during an expedition. Whereas patriotic Kamal discerns ‘[i]‌mmortality’ in them, Husayn views them as a ‘wasted effort’ and sneers at the nation ‘whose most notable manifestations are tombs and corpses’ (ibid.: 725), in order to assert how far beneath his Parisian taste the native culture stands, as if it has nothing to do with him. Aïda is no less interested in maintaining her foreignness. She is flattered to be ‘considered an authority on Parisian taste throughout [their] whole district’ (ibid.: 737). It is no wonder that flouting the ubiquitous cultural sensitivity was a norm with the family. Kamal is shocked to see that the siblings have brought ham and beer, religiously forbidden food, for the picnic. The world-​weary Ismail reckons that it was perfectly in keeping with their custom that they hired an orchestra during Aïda’s wedding ‘to entertain the dignitaries amidst extravagant dinner and the champagne;’ because they had ‘little respect for our wedding traditions’ (ibid.: 863) involving performances by local musicians. It is not just the indigenous culture that is held in contempt. The conversations among Kamal’s friends reveal that the upper-​ class 118

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Exile as Resistance pride is adverse to national interests too. Hasan, for example, disparages Sa’d Zaghlul as a rabble-​ rouser; but glorifies ‘the majesty of Adli, Tharwat, Muhammad Mahmud, and other members of the Liberal Constitutionalist group, who, in Kamal’s eyes, were traitors or Englishmen in fezzes’ (ibid.: 698). Naturally, aristocrat Husayn supports bureaucrat Hasan by pinpointing their classist rejection of the nationalist leader Sa’d, who, in his opinion, ‘is nothing but a former seminarian from al-​Azhar’ (ibid.: 700). Therefore, the political difference between Kamal, a Wafdist schoolteacher, and his bourgeoisie friends is acute. Their classism makes them support the politicians who favoured the British in Egypt in order to retain their power in Parliament. However, for Sa’d, who emerged from an ordinary background, this is simply non-​negotiable ground, because it jeopardised the possibility of attaining complete independence. The classist supremacy thus accelerated national disharmony, which simply kept fuelling the British oppression in the country. Expectedly, Saadawi’s stance against the upper-​class domination of the lower strata is more avowed. In A Daughter of Isis Saadawi’s point is that her poor peasant grandmother’s life-​struggle saw success through her son’s achieving the effendi status, which tells a story of class mobility on account of individual merit. This inspires Saadawi’s father to instil in his daughter a counter-​hegemonic idea of class formation, as he believes, ‘to live as a tail is to live among the henchmen who are ordered to commit wrongdoings or crimes’ (Saadawi 1999: 81). In other words, one’s position is low in society not because of one’s lack of wealth, but because of one’s lack of morality. Despite this, Saadawi believes that the conventional class distinction can be an oppositional tool in subverting male hegemony. The writer records how her mother’s nobility strengthened her position in the family and enabled her to maintain an equal partnership with the head of the household. Arguably, the aim of Saadawi’s writings is to expose the shared nature of cultural meanings, which form the ground of ideological domination; because ‘in societies marked by class/​status cleavages or patterns of male dominance (or both), these public, shared ideas are associated with power relations’ (Messick 1987: 216). Saadawi’s critical consciousness, therefore, 119

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile inverts the power relation associated with class. Saadawi explains that the master-​slave binary fuelling the male hegemony is classist in nature: The oppression of women is not essentially due to religious ideologies, or to whether she is born in a Western or Eastern society, but derives its roots from the class and patriarchal system that has ruled over human beings ever since slavery started to hold sway. (1980: 211)

By defining patriarchy as a classist ideology, Saadawi further asserts that it has an adverse effect on men and women, for the idea of an essential inequality between them creates psychological difficulties for both. Men suffer from an inferiority complex, since they feel that they cannot live up to the image prepared for them. On the other hand, women feel that they are more capable than their prescribed roles reveal. The writer warns us that such a contradiction between the dominant ideas about gender roles and the reality may even lead to psychological disorders. From this position, Saadawi probes into patriarchy’s birth from the primitive class division between landowners and slaves. As soon as the class structure was put in place, men portrayed themselves as masters and ensured that they enjoyed privileges at the expense of women. For example, the earliest gender regulations reflect how men utilised women both as wives and prostitutes. Since they were the masters, controlling their subordinate class was projected to be completely normal: ‘Men needed marriage to identify their children, but they also wanted to give free rein to their sexual desires. The chastity belt and marital fidelity were therefore imposed on women alone’ (ibid.: 56–​7). In this way, men were able to maintain their double standards regarding fidelity. Women have always taken part in prostitution because of their economic need, whereas men have been involved in it for mitigating their carnal desire. Due to the classist outlook, however, the need of the master is flagged as more important. Therefore, despite the fact that prostitution satisfies man’s need for reckless pleasure but woman’s fundamental need of survival, it creates completely opposite results for them. Despite Mahfouz’s, Darwish’s and Saadawi’s different approaches to classism, patriarchy, imperialism and colonialism, their argument is that 120

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Exile as Resistance these are mostly bourgeois ideologies, which have developed into common knowledge. The writers revolt against these ideas by troubling the consensus, which highlights the following facts. First, all of these hegemonies live on through the superficial ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide; they are a means of economic exploitation; they also debilitate the oppressor. The writers’ endeavour is directed towards changing the horrendous picture of domination through a slow but long-​term intellectual reform. As we have seen, they remain organically connected to their socio-​political world and exercise their critical consciousness by challenging ideas and beliefs related to colonialism, imperialism, gender and class, which are supported by the dominant groups to maintain their power over the people concerned. The writers’ secular consciousness is also apparent through their engagement with worldly realities. This is how they form a counter-​hegemonic project by fulfilling their exilic role of challenging authorities.

Resistance as an emancipatory project Disidentifying with bourgeois ideology is the exilic way of rendering the existing power structure unacceptable. Without strong ethics, however, it is not possible for the exilic intellectuals to wage their war against the power network. As I discussed earlier, being a menace to the system meant that the intellectuals suffered from exclusions and anguish, which were not easy to endure. What gave them strength to go through the sufferings of defamation, imprisonment, isolation, spatial exile, job loss and threats against their life was their moral courage. Belief in truth, justice and liberation gave them an unflinching resolve to fight for their intellectual freedom without claiming recognition, or indeed adulation, from others. Thus, they upheld their oppositional consciousness. Their devotion to beauty and eternal truth did not propel them to disengage with the socio-​political world. Instead, the unfavourable conditions of everyday life are the materials of their worldly arts sustaining their universal humanism, which believes in the dignity of all humans. The ideals of truth and justice are entangled in the cultural web, which is why they can be highly debatable ideas. Friedrich Nietzsche (1976: 47) goes so far as to claim that ‘truths are illusions about which one has forgotten 121

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile that this is what they are’. Even though Said (2003: 203) dismisses this definition ‘as too nihilistic’, he utilises Michel Foucault’s Nietzsche-​inspired methodology in Orientalism. Viewing Foucault’s discursivity as a new mental map, Said detects its rules for dominating knowledge. He explains that truth as a function of discourse signifies that its production is not value free. The question is whether this gives us grounds to lose faith in it. Said vehemently argues in the negative. Said (2005) believes that Foucault ultimately surrenders to the system by dwelling on the historico-​cultural influences on discourses that diminish the fundamental significance of the ideas of truth, justice and freedom. Notwithstanding Said’s dismissal, we have to ask whether Foucault’s exposition of the hermetic system signifies his abolition of the ideals. This leads us to discover that Foucault (1980: 126, 133) stands up for the ‘specific’ intellectual whose goal is to disentangle ‘the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time’. In other words, power manipulates truth and turns it into hegemony by blurring the distinction between them. This is why an intellectual needs to exercise constant vigilance against unexamined ideologies. Hence, Said suggests that intellectuals’ critical consciousness is to be relentlessly used to ensure that power does not penetrate their project. Rather than claiming objective truth, then, exilic intellectuals support truth and justice for the disadvantaged. They keep the discursive game of separating truth from hegemony viable by pressing on the demand of justice for the ones disfavoured by power. The idea of realistic experience is the source of truth for both Saadawi and Said. The latter (2003: 27) writes against Orientalism because of his ‘uniquely punishing destiny’ as a Palestinian living in the West, where with his identity is caught in a discursive web of negative stereotypes. We discover the signs of a similar struggle in Saadawi (1997), who writes against patriarchy from her personal experience of the oppression and tyranny it produces. Saadawi (1980: 41–​2) argues that the underlying cause of female circumcision is not religion, as it is proclaimed; for ‘[t]‌here can be no true religion that aims at disease, mutilation of the bodies of female children, and amputation of an essential part of their reproductive organs’. In the same way, her exposition on marriage and divorce in Egyptian society 122

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Exile as Resistance brings out the deprivation of women through unfair customs validated through the regressive use of religion. In fact, by choosing to write about what she calls the ‘“sacred trilogy” of religion, sex and the class struggle’ (ibid.: 208), she is at odds with the authorities that demand that these concepts should remain unaddressed. Therefore, when she asserts that religion is a weapon of the ruler stopping her from the quest of truth, she is added to the fundamentalists’ death list. In the same way, her repeated insistence on a notion inherited from her illiterate paternal grandmother that ‘God is justice, and people have come to know that by using their reason’ (Saadawi 1999: 72) is simple but profoundly adversarial. This takes people back to the basic structure of society by encouraging them to reject injustice governing any spheres of their life, even if this appears in the guise of religion. However, one of the major drawbacks of her project is the untamed truth. For example, when Saadawi embeds ferocious truths about patriarchy in Woman at Point Zero, critics like Georges Tarabishi (1988) receive a completely different message than the one intended by the writer. Saadawi establishes Firdaus as a turbulent force in the story. Tarabishi reads this as the representation of the writer’s belligerent view of interactions between men and women in society. He fails to fathom that Firdaus appears to be hostile to men because she battles against patriarchy unceasingly owing to the force of circumstances. Predictably, he views Firdaus’ violent murder as an anti-​human act. If we look at how the murder was committed, though, we see that it was counter-​violence to patriarchy, rather than a wilful act (see Saadawi 1983: 95). Tarabishi fails to realise what compels an ordinary village girl to throw herself into the frenzy of knifing a man to death. Firdaus’ apparent bloodthirstiness is, therefore, a Saadawian metaphor for the predatory nature of patriarchy, rather than her inhumanness. Writing back to the oppressor is much more successful in Darwish’s oeuvre because of his aesthetic prowess. The poet responds to the call of truth and justice through what Hamid Dabashi (2006) terms ‘traumatic realism’ by documenting what it feels to be at the receiving end of injustice. For example, in response to the second Intifada (2000–​), which was more violent and less popular than the first Intifada (1987–​91), or Palestinian 123

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile uprising, the Israeli authorities invaded Ramallah in 2002. In Darwish’s war-​torn land, justice was thrown away once more, as the Occupied Territories were besieged, indiscriminately bombed and put under long curfews. Despite the world’s inadequate response to the torture, devastation and appalling humiliation of his people, Darwish defied the ugliness and helplessness in his poetic diary, called ‘A State of Siege’. In reproducing a clear record of the well-​executed carnage, Darwish’ aesthetic resistance takes a new form through a novel exchange between his poetic insights and journalistic techniques (see Sylvain 2009). The poetic journal begins in medias res with a strong declaration: Here, by the downslope of hills, facing the sunset and time’s muzzle, near gardens with severed shadows, we do what the prisoners do, and what the unemployed do: we nurture hope. (Darwish 2007a: 121) The poet sustains the hope of a people, who the Israeli power wants to be the prisoners of time. They, the ‘unemployed’, helplessly witness the massacre in a place where their lost gardens hold their ‘severed shadows’. Against the backdrop of disruption and dismay suggested by the unnatural colours of the sky ‘leaden at twilight/​orange at night’, the serene setting, made up of the ‘downslope of hills, facing the sunset’, ‘immigrant clouds’, and the ‘upslopes of smoke’ (ibid.: 121, 123) soothes the tormented people and furnishes them with a quiet hope. As a result, they remain rooted to whatever little corner of the land is left to them, from where they ‘do what ascenders to Allah do:/​forget pain’ (ibid.: 123). Even though the intensity of the siege makes it impossible to do so, they momentarily accomplish this feeling by comprehending the truth that the army cannot occupy the peace and hope they gain from nature. This fortifies them with an inner strength to defy the aggression. In advancing his truthful record of events, Darwish (1999: 82) finds the disregarded history to be his ally, since it allows him to form a ‘less mythic narrative’ of his erased nation. Historical stories of the conquered and butchered like the Palestinians (for example, Native Americans) 124

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Exile as Resistance display for him parallels of exploitation of the natives in a similarly Zionist fashion. Darwish breaks the prison of genre by braiding narrative and poetry together in a ‘lyrical epic’; this innovative writing, which he calls ‘the Poetry of Troy’ (see Williams 2013), relates the stories of history’s outcasts in order to intensify the account of the Palestinian loss. By taking the side of the defeated in this way, Darwish’s critical consciousness fulfils the main criterion of the exilic truth-telling, which is to be power’s ‘other’. As a ‘lyrical epic’, ‘The Speech of the Red Indian’ builds up ‘a space for the often occluded speech of the Other’ by stating the ‘unpalatable truths’ (ibid.: 71, 70) about the analogous defeats of the Palestinians and the Native Americans. Darwish’s powerful ironies convey the injustice they felt when they were almost wiped out from their native land: ‘We bring you civilization’, said the stranger. ‘We’re the masters of time come to inherit this land of yours. March in Indian file so we can tally you on the face of the lake, corpse by corpse. Keep marching, so the Gospels may thrive! We want God all to ourselves because the best Indians are dead Indians in the eyes of our Lord’. (Darwish 2000: 136; emphasis in the original) The reference to an abrupt and arrogant entrance of the white coloniser into the natives’ life offers a fitting introduction to the death and destruction they brought. Darwish records the settlers’ justification (being God’s people and bringing civilisation to the natives) of the killing to highlight its absurdly ridiculous nature. The verse also holds a strong echo of the Palestinian tragedy through its ironic accentuation of the settlers’ insistence on God being their absolute possession. Therefore, Darwish’s powerful black humour stating that the ‘dead Indians’ are the best Indians expresses his strong indictment of the erasures of the indigenous people both in America and Palestine. 125

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Like Said, Darwish believes that ensuring justice for the Palestinians is a moral mission. The friends’ commitment to truth and justice is also kept alive by their common talent as ‘masters of words’ (Darwish 2007b: 182). Their ethical writing is crucial, especially as Darwish asks in ‘Edward Said: A Contrapuntal Reading’ what role poetry plays in catastrophic times. Said’s ‘will’ left to him determines that oppositional poetry and writing should unceasingly work for ‘the impossible’ (ibid.: 182), the establishment of truth and justice in our conflict-​ridden world. From this moral responsibility, both the friends spent their lives ‘defending the right of Troy’ (ibid.). Especially for Darwish, his untarnished language under the settler colonialism his people came to experience was the most suitable weapon with which to combat the phenomenon. Thus, speaking truth to power was no means of achieving Olympian glory for either of them. In his tribute to Said, Darwish concludes: An eagle soaring higher and higher bidding farewell to his height, for dwelling on Olympus and over heights is tiresome. (Ibid.) Certainly, truth and justice were two of the core principles in the intellectual endeavours of Said and Darwish by proving their oppositional consciousness, which is also applicable to Saadawi’s writings. Theirs was also a humanist mission that implicated their exilic crafts in a precarious partisanship. Why does Darwish keep a strong faith in writing? It is because, like Said, he believes in the secular world of men and women, where power is humanly challengeable through this oppositional tool. Said’s staunch belief that our human world is humanly knowable and, hence, humanly repairable, gives grounds for this belief. Power may enjoy a supremely formidable status for a while, but its dominance cannot be eternal, since it is not created and maintained by ultra-​humans. Therefore, the rulers’ power over the ruled can never be absolute, which gives hope to the latter for constituting a successful agency against the former. Consequently, Said was on an inexorable mission to establish the exilic intellectual tradition of

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Exile as Resistance advancing dignity for all humans. For the scholar, humanism means sharpening the critical consciousness and strengthening the human will against power in grounding it in the secular world and in the flow of history. Said (2003: xxiii) goes as far as to claim that humanism is ‘the final, resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history’. In a memorial piece for Said, Darwish (2003a) calls him ‘[o]‌ur conscience and ambassador to the human consciousness’ because of his indomitable drive to create a world audience for Palestine. This is the highest tribute Darwish can give, not only to a friend but also to a great comrade in the struggle towards establishing human rights for the dispossessed. Darwish (2003b: 13) mocks himself in ‘I Talk too Much’ for the apparent fruitlessness of his struggle, and writes: I ask: Is it true, good ladies and gentlemen, that the earth of Man is for all human beings as you say? In that case, where is my little cottage, and where am I? (Emphasis in the original)

The poet portrays the bitterness of dispossession and its acute human rights crisis without sentimentality. Rather, he submits his piercing question directly to the human heart. In this way, Darwish tells the tale of Palestinians’ reduced humanity as internal refugees, exiles and the besieged. He shows how their humanity is obstructed in their transitory existence, which is deprived of usual time and place. Therefore, when he works as a witness to the trials and tribulations of his people, his ironically dispassionate tone wakes us up to their absurd reality. For instance, Darwish chooses an airport where absurdity is the expected phenomenon for them, which pithily plays out the tragic drama of their existence in limbo. ‘Athens Airport’ relates: Athens Airport boots us to other airports. A fighter said: ‘Where can I fight?’ A pregnant woman blurted at him: ‘Where can we have our child?’ … A young couple got married and looked for a room in a hurry. The groom said: ‘Where can I deflower her?’ We laughed and told him: ‘There’s no room here for such a wish, young man.’ (Darwish et al. 1984: 37)

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Thus the Palestinians are like windblown leaves that keep floating from one airport to another knowing the pangs of denied rights, needs and opportunities. Portraying the Palestinian uprooting, Darwish reminds us that to the Israelis, returning to their ancestral home was not an act of aggression. But for the Palestinians it certainly resembled the colonial oppression, especially because of the unending cruelty and violence that followed the event. In ‘A State of Siege’, Darwish warns the Israeli authorities against their excessive military attacks, their ‘rifle’s wisdom’: (To a killer:) If you’d contemplated the victim’s face and thought, you would have remembered your mother in the gas chamber, you would have liberated yourself from the rifle’s wisdom and changed your mind: this isn’t how identity is reclaimed. (2007a: 131) Indeed, both Said and Darwish believe that a military solution is not possible in Israel and Palestine. Said calls Israel’s repeated military actions in the Occupied Territories a form of hara-​kiri, since they are carried out with the anti-​humanist belief that the only logic the Arabs comprehend is aggression (see Said and Barsamian 2003). Darwish (2007a: 163) resists this notion by pinpointing that though the Arabs ‘love life’, they ‘couldn’t find a way to it’. As a result, they brought destruction upon the occupier by resorting to ‘the last thing [they] owned’, which was the ‘blood in [their] lapis bod[ies]’ (ibid.). Ultimately, the disputed land is filled with the cries of the iris, an ancient Egyptian symbol of life: This siege, my metaphorical siege, will extend until I teach myself the ascetics of meditation: before myself –​an iris cried after myself –​an iris cried and the place is staring at the futility of the ages (Ibid.: 147) Indeed, the indiscriminate destruction of lives is inconsolable. Both sides may have ideological explanations as to why they damage their ‘others’,

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Exile as Resistance but they do not compensate for the loss of human lives. The grief emanating from such losses hardly lets the mutual wounds, bitterness and hatred rest. Therefore, the occupation will end only when both sides realise their human limitations. The profound point is delivered through a characteristic Darwishian wit: This siege will extend until The besieger feels, like the besieged, That boredom Is a human trait. (Ibid.: 143) Darwish thus raises the Palestinian demand for being equal to the Israelis as humans. His poetic persona delivers a brilliant dramatic monologue, which demonstrates how the demeaning strategy of the Israeli for the Palestinians ultimately produces a boomerang effect. In order to overturn the authorities’ dehumanising acts, the poet ruminates: (To a quasi-​Orientalist:) Suppose what you think is true suppose now that I am an idiot, idiot, idiot and I don’t play golf, and I don’t comprehend technology, and I can’t fly a plane! Is that why you took my life and made of it your life? If you were another, if I were another we would be two friends who confess a need for idiocy … Doesn’t the idiot, as the Jew in the Merchant of Venice, have a heart, and bread, and eyes that well up? (Ibid.: 160–​1) Notwithstanding Darwish’s sharp scorn at the label of ‘idiocy’ attached to the Palestinians, he registers that ‘idiocy’ is a human trait shared by both the Israeli power and its supposed subordinates. For him, the shared humanity automatically disqualifies Israel’s impulsive killing of them. To advance this point, Darwish borrows from Shakespeare. In the late sixteenth century, Shakespeare humanised Shylock against a very dominant anti-​Semitic strand in English culture by portraying him as more than a loan shark. For

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile the ironic reversion of the twentieth-​century history, Darwish now uses the same argument by replacing Shylock with the marginalised Palestinians. The ethical viewpoint remains the fundamental means for the apostle of humanism (Ammous 2008) to advance the Palestinian cause. Similarly, Mahfouz’s humanist ethics fight against the power of darkness. If mid-​period Darwish was determined to differentiate his verses from vapid slogans, Mahfouz believed all along that he should not scream at power; he spoke truth to it through the language of his humane art (see Mehrez 1994). Because Mahfouz sides with humanity, he is never neutral in his writing. He illuminates his observations about religion, social justice and human history with deep suggestiveness that saturates his narrative with a profound humanism. However, Mahfouz’s position clashed heavily with the religious authorities, who took a literal view of his works. The author repetitively clarified that it was not religion per se, rather its institutionalised misuses that he abjured (see Shabrawy 1992). As an ardent humanist, his goal was to expose unscrupulous power both in its secular and religious forms. Unsurprisingly, Mahfouz’s allegorical realism in the Children of the Alley is a strong protest about the regression of humanity through losing its core values. It is tale of humanity’s historical struggle to create authority and power. This is most apparent from Mahfouz’s analysis of the futuwwat, who represent the chain of command in the mechanism of tyranny. Their repetitive presence in all the episodes constructs a genealogy of power in the novel: As soon as a young man found that he possessed daring or brawn, he started interfering with peaceable people, attacking anyone minding their own business and imposing himself as a protector on a neighbourhood somewhere in the alley … Zaqlut was another of these … Effendi, the overseer, saw that he needed someone like this … so he kept him close by and paid him a salary from the estate income. (Mahfouz 1996: 94)

This is a perfect picture of a totalitarian society, where the big fish continually eat the little fish. As a result, to be crushed under the chain of gangsters is the fate of the ordinary people. The detailed picture of the futuwwat-​style 130

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Exile as Resistance intimidation proves the author’s unfaltering revolt against the system by delineating its inhuman nature. In fact, the anti-​human story of the futuwwat is the novelist’s mode of advancing humanity’s rectification. As the scribe of the alley, Mahfouz declares that ‘[i]‌t was [his] job to write the petitions and complaints of the oppressed and needy’, who are thrown right into the midst of ‘crowding and noise’, and ‘squalor and misery’ (ibid.: 5, 93, 94). Surely, the miseries of the poor are generated by their existence as power’s captives, which is a manifestation of the damage of the covenant between God and Adam. The covenant dictates that the wealth of the world belongs equally to all of Adam’s children, which the manager of the God-​figure Gabalawi’s estate maintained until ‘ambition stirred in his heart and he began to help himself to estate funds’ (ibid.: 94). Mahfouz censures the manager representing the monied and the powerful for appropriating the fund. Justice disposed of by them is never restored unless the covenant is reinstated to its full glory. As the novel goes on to depict, the three monotheistic messengers of God became successful in this massive task, because they were humanists first and foremost, who dedicated their efforts towards upholding justice. But as they disappeared, the memory of their idealism took the same turn. Mahfouz regrets: ‘forgetfulness is the plague of our alley’ (ibid.: 171). We can take up Gabal’s (Moses) example in this regard. No sooner had he established peace in the alley by defeating the Effendi’s (Pharaoh) attempt to take over control of Gabalawi’s estate than his own formerly oppressed people wanted to resume the old system that had exploited no one but themselves. Since Gabal’s followers demonstrated extremism in fighting for more riches, he had to instil the drastic law of retaliation in bringing order back to the alley. The bloodthirstiness among his people revealed to him the erroneousness of human nature:  ‘As soon as any of [them] get the least power, [they] lose no time in harassing and attacking others’ (ibid.:  170). Interestingly, Mahfouz’s criticism of the ancient people is at one with Darwish here, who had a similar message to the Israeli authorities, as we saw above. This is doubly ironic that Darwish now has to remind some of Gabal’s people of his own teaching. However, Mahfouz’s and Darwish’s humanist focuses are significantly different. Darwish challenges power’s absolutism from his central 131

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile concern to prove that the Palestinians are just as human as are the Israelis. Mahfouz, on the other hand, struggles to prove that the people holding power are not divinities, despite their ambition to become so. The Children of the Alley suggests that if humanity had truly believed in God’s grandeur and His messengers’ divine mission, they would have proved this through their dealings with their fellow humans. Instead, we see that injustice and suffering governed the world, indicating the absence of God in man. Consequently, God is non-​recognisable in Mahfouz’s courageous novel, where the three monotheistic prophets are presented without their spirituality. The novel was deemed transgressive and remained banned in Egypt up until the author’s death. Ironically, this proves the effectiveness of Mahfouz’s humanist strategy in fervently speaking the truth of absent justice to power. Arguing that resistance is never futile, Said (1993: 199) says that this is manifest in colonial history: ‘Very few people in Britain or France seemed to think that anything would change’ in their colonised world, since ‘the permanent primacy of the imperial power’ was inevitably ‘presumed’. And yet the truth is that the empires were almost all lost to the mighty powers soon after World War II. This is why the exile’s task is to keep the thirst for freedom alive in people so that they can hope for the impossible even under severe constraint. Therefore, Said’s Fanon-​inspired ethics of moving from ‘the history of domination toward the actuality of liberation’ through ‘the social principles of community’ (ibid.:  281)  remains paramount in the exilic intellectual vocation. The belief in social justice is ingrained in Said’s idea of universal humanism, which Pal Ahluwalia (2009) explains as a planetary view. Aamir Mufti (2004) binds Said’s humanist and oppositional viewpoints together as ‘critical secularism’, which never accepts the finality of non-​freedom imposed on humans by irrational beliefs and structures. Clearly, the liberationist principle translates the exilic intellectual’s task into a sustained opposition to power through strengthening his/​ her universal humanism. How the yearning for freedom defeated a totalitarian system is demonstrated beautifully in Saadawi’s Memoirs from the Women’s Prison. Recognised as a modern classic of prison writing, it is a faithful record of her experience in al-​ Qanatir prison, where she was thrown for 132

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Exile as Resistance criticising the Sadat regime. Saadawi powerfully evokes the utter helplessness of her first entrance into the prison cell in order to make us realise the calamitous consequence of opposing power. She talks as if a dark force was hurling her down into the bottom of a pit from which an escape seemed entirely impossible. The key swinging from a chain held by the female prison warden personifies a mercilessly crushing predatory force, as it ‘resembles a huge mallet with the head of a hammer and a long steel arm indented by jagged teeth’ (Saadawi 1986: 27). The writer could see that nothing but ‘voices resounding like a whistle, like a waft of trapped smoke’ could escape through the ‘narrow aperture’ (ibid.). The noises of the steel fortified by sharp whistles and shrill voices pierce the deadly silence by creating enormous pressure on the inmates’ nerves. The intimidation of the completely sealed environment increases with time’s immobility and the repulsive feeling due to the movement of cockroaches and rats around the odorous and uncomfortable mattresses for the inmates. Even so, Saadawi describes how her ‘sense of powerlessness was transformed into a feeling of power’ (ibid.: 34). On her first day in the prison, she could not move because of shock and panic. Dejection took over her senses. After that, a small incident took place, which serves as a great parable of overcoming power’s intimidation. Up until the moment, the writer ‘had been living according to a bizarre illusion –​ or an irrational fear –​of the gecko’ (ibid.: 33). On the dirty prison floor when the ‘gecko had crawled over her body and nothing had happened’, her fear of the lizard disappeared; she realised that the gecko and the cockroaches around were just ‘searching for sustenance in the garbage and the wall cracks’ (ibid.). Once she overcame her phobia, she perceived that the fear, which power was exercising over her mind through the unwholesome environment, was not wholly subsuming. If she could exert her mental strength against the paralysing fear of the gecko, she could do the same to resist power’s devastating pressure. Thus, Saadawi acquired ‘a new courage or self-​confidence’ (ibid.) that allowed her to overcome her sleeplessness. Indeed, the instinctive hope of defeating power is what Saadawi kept alive in the prison, with great effort. A little bit of sky that poured through 133

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile the ‘walls and wires’ made her laugh ‘out loud, like a child’ (ibid.:  35). To her, the voice of the curlew that reached her ears defied the injunction that political prisoners should not hear anything from outside. The courtyard beckoned her, because she could walk freely there, though it was also prohibited. When the prison warden asked why she hankered after the courtyard, where there was nothing but dirt, she replied: ‘There’s a tree’ (ibid.: 65). Nature gave her the strength to revive her fighting spirit, which brought her to the moment of resolve to reside in prison as if it was the life she has known since her birth. Such an iron-​willed acceptance of incarceration enabled her to achieve a complete turnaround against the natural sense of ‘defeat and pessimism’ (ibid.: 36). The search for freedom encouraged her to establish AWSA (Arab Women’s Solidarity Association) after her release. This indicates why AWSA was going to be an organisation with a difference. It was neither affiliated with any political bodies nor formed as a charity, as (women’s) organisations generally were in Egypt. Because of AWSA’s radical position, however, it was ultimately banned. Even so, Saadawi keeps stressing that the struggle of the progressive force has never stopped in Egypt. Moreover, the solidarity in which the organisation believed was not solely Egypt-​oriented. The writer highlights AWSA as a model of uniting men and women following the strategy that activism for social justice must have both local and global aspects (see Smith 2007). Winning the local fight against the lack of freedom means advancing the cause globally as well. The ingrained universal humanism of Saadawi’s struggle illustrates why the exilic intellectual’s writing and activism in support of the liberation of the oppressed creates an effective counter-​agency. Advancing human freedom is particularly significant for Saadawi, as she thinks of herself as a ‘Daughter of Isis’, an ancient Egyptian goddess, who was instructed by her goddess mother Noot to form an authority empowered by just knowledge. Even though Darwish is one of the most heroic figures of resistance against the Israeli Occupation, he does not seek company with gods. Unlike Saadawi, he is a relentless critic of his own works and stands against exaltation of any kinds (see Al-​Jarrah 1997). In his unremitting fight against the Israeli authorities, Darwish creates an aesthetic demand for the dignity of the downtrodden. 134

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Exile as Resistance From his ‘terra firma saturated with history’, Darwish (1999:  83) describes the tragic absence of Palestinian freedom. ‘On a Canaanite Stone at the Dead Sea’, he asserts: All the prophets are my kin But heaven is still far from its earth And I am still far from my words. (Darwish 2000: 74) Ironically, if Palestine had not been as ‘holy’ for the Abrahamic religions as it is claimed, the present clash would not have taken place on the land. Having all the prophets as kin has not guaranteed a heavenly situation for the Palestinians on earth. Despite this, Darwish is never willing to accept the finality of the tragedy. Inside the framework of loss, the poet’s motto endures: ‘I am myself despite my defeat’ (ibid.: 80). What does ‘myself’ represent? We find an answer here: I say: We’re not a slave nation, with all due respects to Ibn Khaldoun. (Ibid.; emphasis in the original) Darwish retells his profound cultural history by disagreeing with Ibn Khaldoun, because the Palestinians nullify the historian’s proposition that a defeated people emulate their conqueror (see Hozien 2001). The poet reaffirms his freedom-​loving spirit against rivalry among his people and the Israeli authorities, which proves that he is not willing to accept defeat yet. Darwish locates his writings in the rich Canaanite/​Palestinian tradition to highlight the fact that history’s great rulers have won and deserted his land but his distinct identity has never been wiped off: No one occupies the sea. Cyrus, Pharaoh, Caesar, the Negus and all the others came to write their names with my hand on its watery tablets. I write: The land is in my name and the name of the land is the gods who share my place on its chair of stone. (Darwish 2000: 79; emphasis in the original) 135

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile However thunderous their power to shake the world may have been, no Persian Cyrus or Roman Caesar has ever occupied the flow of history, ‘the sea’. Be he an Egyptian Pharaoh or a Semitic Negus, he remains a passer-​ by in the historic land of Palestine. However, the conqueror always wants to put his stamp on the land. Being occupied, the Palestinian hand is forced to write the ruler’s name. Darwish challenges this by asserting that the hand that writes is not a lifeless instrument. It belongs to a human whose sacred yearning is freedom. Therefore, the writing produces the inextinguishable truth: ‘The land is in my name.’ Hoping against all hopes, therefore, the Palestinians form an invincible solidarity for achieving self-​determination and freedom. However, Darwish is not just a Palestinian. As a poet, he is committed to aesthetics too. Despite announcing his solidarity with the people, he naturally insists that aesthetics remain paramount in his struggle for freedom. In ‘Edward Said: A Contrapuntal Reading’, he unambiguously urges his poetic self to Invent a hope for speech, invent a direction, a mirage to extend hope. And sing, for the aesthetic is freedom (Darwish 2007b: 181–​2) Darwish is attempting a symbiosis between the solidarity with his people and his poetry through their language that is unconquered by the Israeli occupier. The symbiosis is more keenly felt when he presents himself as an unceasing guard of the martyrs’ dreams. Surely, it is his poetry of truth and beauty through which he protects them from regular mourners, ‘from [their] guards’ knives’, and ‘from the revolt/​of the scriptures’ (Darwish 2003b: 22), as his soft note relates in ‘When the Martyrs Go to Sleep’. Thus, the aesthetic embodiment of his inherited language is the sole space left in which he can feel the joy of freedom. It is also his surest weapon in protecting the common Palestinian dreams of freedom and dignity in the name of which the martyrs sacrificed their lives. However, the reality forces the Palestinians to modify their unflinching demand for independence by taking the ‘other’s’ similar wish into account. Quite unsurprisingly, Darwish (2007a: 121) proposes aesthetics as the way forward in ‘A State of Siege’: 136

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Exile as Resistance The siege will extend until we teach our enemies paradigms of our Jahili poetry Despite the Israeli authorities’ contempt for the Palestinians as ‘Jahili’ people devoid of God’s grace, the fact remains that they produce poetry. Poetry being a true art, it speaks in a universal language even in its ‘Jahili’ form. By exchanging its ‘paradigms’ with the ‘enemies’, the Palestinian poet paves the way for a greater understanding between them. Darwish is aware that the aesthetic ‘truce’ his poetry proposes demands an incredible amount of goodwill from both sides. One side has to take their song and music to the other, while the latter has to be open-​minded about enjoying them: We said them: Truce, truce to test the will, some peace might leak into the self! … They answered: Don’t you know that peace with self opens our citadel doors to the hejaz and the nahawand? (Ibid.: 169) As the Palestinians initiate the ‘truce’, the Israelis fall under pressure to open their closed ‘citadel doors’ to them. However, once this happens, the Israelis’ isolated existence in the region will have to give way to familiarity with the Arabs, their locale and their culture. The prospect of this happening threatens the occupier, because the sweet melody of hejaz and nahawand is not only the ambassador of peace but also the basis of the Palestinian demand for equality with the rulers. This is why ‘A State of Siege’ ends with a panegyric on peace as if trying to retain the resonance of the nahawand there. Once again, aesthetics is the weaponry with which Darwish defies the bloodshed and cacophony resulting from the Ramallah siege: Salaam is the aah strutting the crescendo of a muwashah, in the heart of a bleeding guitar (Ibid.: 173) The violence may make the heart of the guitar, the poetry, bleed; but the poet’s indefatigable spirit keeps singing a song of harmony in an attempt 137

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile to create a sublime opposition. This is how the usual language of resistance is transformed into the ‘narrative of emancipation and enlightenment for all, not just for one’s own community’ (Said 2001a: 219). What remains to be said in the end is that by upholding the value of emancipation, Darwish reflects his planetary humanism. Both he and Saadawi thus prove their exilic worldview. For a Saidian exile, therefore, resistance to supremacist ideologies is always guided by steadfast moral principles. This is reflected through the different political positions the intellectuals occupy. Mahfouz’s nationalist politics resist the supremacy of the Turkish and British race over the native Egyptians, which not only disallows them from determining their own destiny but also deprives them of their social stability. Mahfouz’s nationalism works as a corrective to the wrong direction designed for his country by the colonial powers. More crucially, his nationalism reasserts the urgency of not being obliterated by the Arab vision. Whereas the novelist’s liberal view challenges the regressive state of women in his traditional society, his socialist politics defies the classist outlook. By identifying the anti-​democratic nature of the power mechanism, the novelist ushers in an Arab Spring long before its historically appointed time. On the other hand, Darwish’s nationalist resistance demonstrates that unjust race relations as well as imperialism are the operating ground for colonialism, the ramifications of which are most deeply felt in Palestine but are experienced in the entire region. Naturally, the core of his resistance writing is formed by the principles of truth, justice and freedom, which form the foundational pillars of a reformed Middle East. The poet’s liberationist principles through his nationalitarian politics are a lasting source of inspiration for people living in Arab countries, which are bespattered with region-​wide solecism and supremacist tendencies. Thus, Darwish’s poetic vision empowers ordinary people to find an outlet for the persistent uncertainty between nation-​building and community-​based aspirations. Saadawi’s feminist politics resists not only patriarchal domination, which is rife in her society, but also exposes its classist nature. The writer is truly passionate about advancing the cause of freedom through a feminism that incorporates both men and women in its circumference. Familiarity with ground-level reality not only enables her to determine 138

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Exile as Resistance the widespread damage of imperialism in the region but also makes her potent in imparting insights about inherent human strength for standing up to power. Interestingly, Saadawi’s feminist politics warns us that the exilic ­intellectual cannot be deified for resisting the power network. Quite the contrary, it is his/​her bounden duty ‘not to consolidate authority, but to understand, interpret, and question it …’ (Said 2001b: 502). From this perspective, the exile’s foremost duty is to feel homeless in his/​her own country; because Darwish points out that ‘even if it were Eden itself’ (see Shatz 2001), an uncritical harmony with the homeland means the end of creativity for her/​him.

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4 The Place of Writing in Exile

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

Home is a difficult-​to-​determine idea, despite its established familiarity and instant recognisability. Jeanne Moore (2000) writes that in spite of the axiomatic notions about home and 400 years’ references to it in English and American literature, the concept is still evolving. Sara Ahmed (2000) argues that there are physical, metaphorical and emotional dimensions of the definition of home. In other words, the spatial or physical reality alone does not determine the existence of home (see Fox 2002). Instead, it has to be seen as an affective landscape built by humans for drawing sustenance from it. Theano Terkenli (1995) stresses that home is not merely a place; it is more importantly a condition of existence, which is constructed out of ideas, emotions and beliefs. Therefore, I study the textual worlds of Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish and Leila Ahmed in order to find out the thought patterns that provide them with intellectual sustenance. As the Adorno epigraph above suggests, writing is the means through which the exilic intellectual transforms his/​her actual or metaphorical

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile migration into a platform that defines home as a place of upholding universal principles. The non-​space-​bound idea of home is not only the product of Said’s ‘own peculiar locatedness’ through his marginality in the West and the East but also the force through which he compels us ‘to reassess the nature of the link between the text and its author’ (Ashcroft 2007: 80). For Said, the text exists in the midst of conflicting forces of culture, politics and religion. Nevertheless, it gives us a vision of an improved world by constituting a challenge to home as a dogmatic idea about a point of origin or as triumphalism about identity. I create here a three-​part model to illuminate these issues by depending on Said’s borrowings from Theodor Adorno and Erich Auerbach. The first part projects the writers’ critical and secular consciousness; the second part suggests the presence of critical consciousness, secular consciousness and universal humanism in their works; and the third part demonstrates their polyphonic consciousness and late style. In this way, the chapter illustrates the significance of writing or creativity in the exilic intellectual’s mission. I illustrate how Said affiliates with Adorno and Auerbach in forming his seminal thoughts regarding the place of writing in the exilic endeavour. Adorno is pessimistic; he assures unco-​opted intellectuals of a home in his/​ her writing, but his incessantly questioning mind subverts its possibility in some way. Auerbach, on the other hand, brings some hope to the bleak picture. The triumph of the humanistic spirit, which he does not see as existing in the world, is created in his writing in order to obtain an idealistic ambience. Said’s own legacy rests with improving both the philosophies in order to add a third dimension to them. This is achieved through his distinct vision of pluralism and late style associated with the medieval history of Andalusia, where the three monotheistic religions peacefully coexisted by forming a successful cultural fusion, despite the prevalent dissonances. In the end, a constant journey towards an ideational home becomes Said’s pressing message.

Adornian model: ‘Happy with the idea of unhappiness’ Admitting that he finds himself ‘somewhat surprised by this observation’, Said (1996: 53) insists that ‘the intellectual as exile tends to be happy with 142

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The Place of Writing in Exile the idea of unhappiness, so that dissatisfaction bordering on dyspepsia, a kind of curmudgeonly disagreeableness, can become not only a style of thought, but also a new, if temporary, habitation’. When Said made this observation, he perceivably had Adorno, the epitome of brusque dissent, in mind. Adorno is known for his bitter criticism of modernity, and finding a temporary respite from the sharp feeling in his mode of thought. The process is best reflected in his exilic memoir Minima Moralia. His fragmentary renderings in what he calls ‘[t]‌he melancholy science’ (Adorno 2005: 15), were the signs of his alienation resultant from the catastrophic events of Nazism and World War II. In the 1930s the Nazi German authorities uprooted him from his academic life in Frankfurt on account of his Jewish background, forcing him eventually into physical exile in America. Adorno’s loneliness, loss and estrangement in New York and Los Angeles were heightened by his realisation that capitalism reproduced fascist dehumanisation there, though in a less acute form and with a democratic veneer. This is why the American dream of comfort and success could not counter the condition of unhomeliness that existed in that society (see Jenemann 2007). Sigmund Freud explains that heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which are not mutually contradictory, but very different from each other –​ the one relating to what is familiar and comfortable, the other to what is concealed and kept hidden. Unheimlich is the antonym of heimlich only in the latter’s first sense, not in its second. (2003: 132)

Understandably, unheimlich relates to the concealed frightening aspect of long familiar phenomena. The term refers to the strange reappearance of repressed and long-​lost ideas (Jonte-​Pace 1996). It has the power to strike fear because of the combination of the strange and the familiar (Tatar 1981). From this perspective, Adorno’s idea that the home that alienates, menaces and destroys human potential is no home at all coincides with Freud’s unheimlich. Adorno utilised his estranged existence as a European émigré in the New World to reject the illusion of obtaining the uncanny as home. The exile also exercises a ‘stiffened will’ from the border position and ‘jealously insists on his or her right to refuse to belong’, asserts Said (2001b: 182). 143

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Consequently, s/​he builds up an ideational home in the writing, the process of which Adorno draws in tangible terms: Just as he trundles papers, books, pencils, documents untidily from room to room, he creates the same disorder in his thoughts. They become pieces of furniture that he sinks into, content or irritable. He strokes them affectionately, wears them out, mixes them up, re-​arranges, ruins them. For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live. (2005: 87)

The movement of ‘papers, books, pencils, documents’ from one room to another signifies the disorderly condition of thoughts in the mind of the exile. They represent the furniture s/​he repeatedly re-​arranges until they are satisfactorily disposed. The imaginative is the real here. For Adorno, the urgent issue is to avert the devaluation of the faculties of mind in the face of the isolation. Therefore, the utmost exercise of the critical consciousness through the frequent arrangement of thoughts is the sign of the exilic writer’s unrelenting opposition to the dystopian condition inducing his/​her disunion with the society. Adorno draws the ‘Finale’ of his ‘melancholy science’ by declaring that ‘[t]‌he only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in the face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption’ (ibid.: 247). Recording the alienating process has a cathartic effect on the writer. Writing leads to a sense of redemption or deliverance, as the intellectual contemplates a way out of the bleak context. Adorno attests to the facts that Minima Moralia ‘bears witness to a dialogue intérieur’ and that ‘[t]he major part of this book was written during the war, under conditions enforcing contemplation’ (ibid.: 18). Since the negativity enforces the author’s dialogue with his inner mind, his contemplation strengthens the hope that the force of reason and goodness can survive the Nazi disaster. The hope enhances the message that humans should struggle for the idealistic society they would like to call home. This is the Adornian ‘point of morality in thought’, which signifies that the alienation of the happiness and dignity of the species to which the individual belongs, expresses the powerlessness and

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The Place of Writing in Exile nothingness of a social condition to which he equally belongs and not, as it were, the condition of his ‘substance’ per se (Blechman 2008: 187).

Knowing that the lack of substance is the ill of society rather than something innate to the human species gives the individual great consolation. It is true that s/​he is powerless over the inherited social situation. However, the exilic intellectual’s pain at the degraded condition proves his/​her non-​ belonging to it. In this divided position, his/​her writing can reflect the awareness of social realities through the secular consciousness, and act as a means to reassure him/​her about the continuation of human elements. Writing is thus home for the Adornian intellectual for its redemptive quality. Even though Mahfouz’s Egypt is no Nazi Germany, he projects an Adornian spirit of alienation from his society’s totalitarian system. Said (2001b:  319)  writes that the novelist’s ‘work is so thoroughly Egyptian (and Cairene), based as it is on a territorial and imaginative vision of a society unique in the Middle East’. I  both agree and disagree with the scholar. Mahfouz’s pride in Egypt is undeniable; but his Egyptian identity was not secure or thorough because of his powerful vision of his society. In other words, the vision was not based on the idea of the Egyptian territory as home. The abiding paradox about the novelist’s imagination is that he brought out ‘the vital integrity and even cultural compactness of Egypt’ (ibid.) through disowning an absolute connection with the country. Therefore, Mahfouz’s writing is in harmony with the Adornian model of home formation, as the novelist projects his alienated condition in his works in order to find a shelter in the unsheltering Egyptian territory. It must be stressed that Mahfouz believed in the progressive, democratic and nationalist values introduced by Wafd Party after the 1919 revolution. Consequently, the writer’s dissatisfaction with the regime formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser was unmistakable even during its high point in the 1960s. The totalitarian nature of the regime remained the precise reason for the novelist’s disapproval of Nasserism (see El-​Enany 1993). Indeed, Dawisha (2003) believes that Nasser’s ascent to power and formation of autocratic leadership became possible because of his promise to deliver dignity to his 145

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile compatriots, which they had repeatedly lost due to the colonial and imperial obstacles towards their self-​determination. Nasserism took the totalitarian form it did since the Egyptian support for the charismatic ruler showed their eagerness for a speedy recovery from their socio-​economic failures. Mahfouz’s distance from his compatriots, who voice the feeble but genuine aspiration of the region, is understandable, since he is an ardent supporter of democracy. Dawisha (2003) expounds that Nasser’s ultimate goal was to render Egypt victorious through generating a momentum that was forceful enough to drive the foreign players out of the region. Nasser’s meteoric rise as a pan-​Arab leader, as well as the exceptional proliferation of Arab nationalism throughout the region, identify not only Egypt’s leading role as the cultural custodian of the region but also the ruler’s immovable determination to achieve success in redirecting his territorially-​inclined people to a region-​bound path. It is understandable that a leader who is able to engender a radical mind-​shift within a remarkably short period of time, is encouraged to effect a major overhaul of his country’s socio-​political system. The vertical relationship between the ruler and the ruled explains the principal factor behind the region-​wide acceptance of undemocratic policies. Mahfouz’s allegory of Al Jawad as the uncontested source of power in his family, elaborated in Chapter 2, is crucial in this regard. This denotes that the major cause of autarchy in the region is paternalism, which is the established way of life. Indeed, Eva Bellin (2004) stresses that political reform is a mammoth task for the area, since its patrimonial system is buttressed by coercive measures that are not effectively challenged by formal institutional groups. Following Meir Hatina (2007), we can understand that the intrinsic tension of the monotheistic religions between the godly and worldly domains creates this prolonged failure in the effort to create such institutions that hold the authorities accountable. More particularly, the traditional notions of Islam persisted by blocking the transition of Arab societies into modern democratic entities. As a result, autonomous political culture and civil liberties are curbed by the interference of the religious authorities in state matters. Selin M. Bölme’s essay (2015) on the root cause of the predominance of totalitarian regimes in the region offers a more penetrating account 146

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The Place of Writing in Exile of how the republics and monarchies consolidated power there during the postcolonial period. Along with the religious institutions, the security forces played a decisive role in ensuring the continuation of the hierarchical structures by being part of the regimes. Consequently, the democratic transition cannot be straightforward in the postcolonial Middle East, since the coercive state apparatus is traditionally capable of wrecking the transformation. ‘One must have tradition in oneself, to hate it properly’, says Adorno (2005: 52). No such outburst is seen in Mahfouz. He is quietly satirical throughout the short, succinct and staccato musings in his unconventional and fragmentary writing, Echoes of an Autobiography, which presents Egypt as a totalitarian system that obstructs individuals’ freedom and estranges them. To illustrate further, he is silently derisive in the episode entitled ‘The Detective’, when he records the bizarre nature of the tyrannical rule in his society. A police detective knocks at the writer-​persona’s door when he is about to go to bed at night. The latter gets changed and follows him unquestioningly, because it is the norm in their centralised bureaucratic society that the officer will present himself at people’s residences at any moment without showing any concern for their inconvenience and allowing them no option but to comply. As the writer-​persona leaves home with the detective, he notices ‘the blurred shapes of people’, but does not wonder about their whispering, ‘for [he] had often done just that when following those who had gone before’ (Mahfouz 1997: 58). Surely, Mahfouz’s sly wit pinpoints the abnormal in their known normality, which gives an outlandish incident like this a customary appearance. Mahfouz’s critical consciousness is at work here, which suggests that the rule from above reinforces people’s inaction by reducing them to innocuous shapes of distant spectators. Therefore, during the moment of crisis, the narrator feels completely unconnected to them. We realise how authoritarianism alienates through distorting normality, inducing stasis, and undermining individuals’ personal integrity in the interest of the seizure of power by the few. This gives rise to the author’s subversive irony: ‘He who owns life and willpower is the possessor of everything, and the poorest living creatures own life and willpower’ (ibid.: 12). Consequently, an untarnished individual who does not compromise his/​her conscience and 147

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile independence of mind for achieving success is extremely rare in this society. This brings Mahfouz closer to Adorno (2005: 19), whose bold epigraph in Minima Moralia reads: ‘Life does not live.’ Thus, the novelist writes to convey his ill-​suited condition to a lifeless society and take respite from its imbroglio. Evidently, irony is the means through which Mahfouz embodies his isolation from the uncanny that has become home. It also fits well with his (in)famously objective style by helping him to deflate dystopia’s claim to be normal without declaring his purpose. The ironic unmasking of the pretences of his society is how Mahfouz passes his silent ‘judgment’ on it, where ‘most aspects of life are negotiable’ (Said 2001: 320). For instance, in the episode called ‘Justice’, ‘a well-​known lawyer’ tells the protagonist that ‘[y]‌ou’re in the right, but the opposing party is also in the right’ (Mahfouz 1997: 13). A jarring explanation tells us how this is the case. The lawyer clarifies that the mutual disagreement between the accuser and the accused over who threatened to kill whom proves both mad. The lawyer’s disarming statement is most ironic. He admits that he is defending the accused, knowing full well the accuser’s equivocal position on this, because he is ‘as mad as both of [them]’ (ibid.: 14). Mahfouz sketches the surreal moment to point out the pointlessness pervading his society. It is as if the black humour the brief sketch generates at the end is his last hope of preserving the remnants of any sense left. Arguably, a cruel pressure to conform to the surreal governs the society. Thus, the picture appears normal, as people concede that the powerful should prevail. If one cannot do so, however, the veneer of normality disappears, and one is crudely excluded from the circle guaranteeing sociability and togetherness. In other words, if one surrenders one’s critical consciousness, the reward is the peaceful feeling of rootedness. We see this in the episode entitled ‘Give Yourself Up’. For conveying the jagged atmosphere, the real has been mixed with the surreal here. The author-​persona goes to a friend’s house to share a hearty meal of broiled fish, olives and freshly baked bread with him, but it is interrupted by a loudspeaker asking people to surrender. Natural human contact thus comes under the disruptive power of the authorities. As the author-​persona and his friends are yet to conform, gunshots start raining down on them. ‘Trembling 148

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The Place of Writing in Exile with fear’, the writer-​persona thinks: ‘Happy is he who can give himself up’ (ibid.: 60), because unlike them, the conformist does not have to go through the disruption, fear and segregation. Mahfouz refuses to submit to this state-​inflicted fear, ‘since worship of the state tends to supplant all other human bonds’ (Said 2001: 183). He writes as a witness of time, who records the reality of the bureaucratic society without showing allegiance to it. He tells the stories of men who ‘tasted life, the sweet and the bitter, and bore it patiently’ (Mahfouz 1997:  20). However, Said (2001: 325) emphasises that despite ‘quarrelling and arguing with the Egyptian state’, the novelist steadfastly remains part of the milieu. Compared to the uprooted Elias Khoury, Mahfouz’s works appear to the scholar honourably conventional, because they are grounded in known reality. Mahfouz asserts that writing is a divine decree he cannot eschew. To fulfil his destiny, however, he has to ‘submit to being away from [his] homeland’ (Mahfouz 1997: 54). In other words, his alienated mind from the Egyptian state paradoxically fuels his realistic (and surrealistic, for that matter) writing. The disorientation further proves that [d]‌welling, in the proper sense, is now impossible. The traditional residences we grew up in have grown intolerable: each trait of comfort in them is paid for with a betrayal of knowledge, each vestige of shelter with the musty pact of family interests’ (Adorno 2005: 38).

Mahfouz’s writings demonstrate the facets of the uninhabitable dwelling Adorno highlights here. He shows in the Trilogy how home becomes a painful abode in modern Egypt through refusing to be a nurturing ground for individuals’ inclinations and aspirations. To elaborate, Aisha falls in love with a police officer called Hasan Ibrahim. This is bound to be a fulfilling marriage, since Hasan is educated, professional and nearer her age, as opposed to the opium-​addicted waning aristocrat Khalil Shawkat, to whom she is ultimately married off. Her father looks past Khalil’s lack of educational and professional backgrounds in favour of his guaranteed monthly income of a handsome amount. When the assurance of a homely environment is lost to Aisha, she gains the knowledge of its unhomeliness. 149

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile She realises how thoroughly the family has betrayed her: ‘She was alone, banished, disowned’ (Mahfouz 2001: 171). Mahfouz depicts that this is how the dominant system asphyxiates people and gives them a shadowy existence. Eventually, the lasting image of once resplendent Aisha becomes that of ‘decline and disintegration’ (ibid.: 985) with the death of her young husband and all the children. In Nadine Gordimer’s reading, Aisha’s tragedy signifies alienation on a deeper level. The tragedy lies not only in the loss of her dear ones but also in the destruction of her fulfilment through ‘the path of genuine feelings’ (Gordimer 1995: 50). A similar pattern of denial is repeated in Yasin’s life. We see that the happy-​go-​lucky Yasin actually lives an anguished life. His vitality is expressed only through raw sexual magnetism. This is what Gordimer calls ‘the paradox of excess as unfulfilment’ (ibid.: 48; emphasis in the original). In other words, the more Yasin indulges in satisfying his carnality, the more unfulfilled he feels. This explains another paradox, which is that of Yasin’s alienation, since he is one of the most conformist figures in the Trilogy. Mahfouz (2001: 357) implies that the disaffection he feels in marriage resembles exile: ‘[Yasin] was like a person whose hopes forced him away from his native land but whose failure brought him back repentant.’ In the unhomely home, marriage is a form of banishment to him. When it does not work, he returns to his native promiscuity. Having discovered that marriage is ‘dreary’, ‘a false dream’ and ‘a cruel and evil swindler’, he returns home ‘repentant’ for nurturing the dream of sharing ‘a house with a beautiful maiden forever’ (ibid.: 360, 357). This is why the alienating experience of an outsider is so dominant in Mahfouz’s writings. Fatma Moussa-​Mahmoud (1981: 99) is mystified by the fact that ‘[t]‌he angle of vision of the protagonist in many of his early, middle and late novels is, strangely enough, consistent’; because ‘it is that of an outsider’. Looking at Mahfouz as a Saidian exile solves the mystery for me. He experiments with his own outsiderness through the estranged characters. Thus, Mahfouz (1997:  23)  produces his catharsis through reflecting on the ‘wicked and fascinating’ human life. As we have seen above, the novelist investigates various aspects of his alienated condition in his society and reveals the disfigurements underlying the familiar 150

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The Place of Writing in Exile situations. Thus, he utilises his critical consciousness to combat authoritarianism that alienates through interjecting dreariness in the homely environment. Following George Kelly (1973), we can view Mahfouz as an anguished artist, who migrates to his inner world like a Romantic when the outside space is unaccommodating. The creative home as an altered address is no escape from intolerable reality. Rather, he digs deeper into the mind by facilitating a process of transcendence that achieves a home where ratiocination reigns. Simultaneously, Mahfouz’s search for an alternative to the unsatisfactory reality is part of his secular consciousness. As a result, he keeps looking for salvation through including humane values as an indispensable part of his tapestry called writing. Children of the Alley is his intriguing tale of a few great men, who exercise their inner strength as a counterforce to gangsterism that rules their thug-​governed alley. Mahfouz’s writing builds up the goodness of the human heart as a counterforce to the gory warfare of the alley in order to create a picture of self-​analysis and reform in his writing, which saves him from the surrounding emptiness. He takes up a highly ambitious project of secularising the three major monotheistic messengers, and asks us to put theology aside for a moment, at least for the sake of a good story. He neither superimposes the messengers’ lives on his characters nor suggests that we should do so. The writer aims to enthral his readers by his tale, which should generate greater hope for coping with reality. Therefore, once we are in the alley world, the mesmerising story redirects our focus from the prevalent condition of the alley symbolised by the picture of a mouse caught between a cat’s teeth to the light and air surrounding the place. Indeed, Mahfouz’s frequent references to the environs counterbalance the bleak and brutal context and consequently, become life-​giving. In particular, Rifaa’s story, based on Jesus’ life without his religious aura, is written in such a way that we feel that the song of love, peace, harmony, and happiness is constantly being sung by the elements. The silent song needs awakened ears like Rifaa’s to comprehend its rhythm. What Rifaa tells Umm Bekhatirha, the exorcist, can certainly be regarded as his life’s message: ‘[t]‌he wisest thing in your work is that you defeat evil with goodness and beauty’ (Mahfouz 1996: 192; emphasis in the original). 151

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile This is the mantra of Mahfouz’s writing too. Hence, Mahfouz ‘the exorcist’ lets the beauty of the universe heal the human heart and revivify its positive strength. Rifaa the visionary, however, is thoroughly misunderstood in the alley where the possession of power is the be-all and end-all of everything. He was born when his parents were in exile, being in flight from the gangster (futuwwa) Zanfil. After Zanfil’s death, when they returned home Rifaa’s mother Abda thought, most ironically, that there was nothing ‘sweeter than a homecoming after exile’ (ibid.: 177), for her son meets a violent death at ‘home’ at a very young age. Rifaa enters the alley ‘with an innocent face that radiated warmth and gentility’; but he feels like ‘a stranger to the earth he walked upon’ (ibid.: 179). As time passes, he is estranged from the mainstream life of the alley by being in conflict with the gangsters (futuwwat) through his plain message that happiness has nothing to do with material possessions, anathema to their ears. Moreover, he receives disdain and scorn from his own people for serving the poor. Even in death, he has to be hidden in the desert outside the alley, when ‘the light was dyeing the horizons with the melting hue of a red rose’ (ibid.: 243). Mahfouz thus pays tribute to Rifaa’s goodness, whose tragic shedding of blood suggested by the melting colour of dawn announces the re-​establishment of the force of love, ‘a red rose’. This is where Rifaa’s real significance lies in Mahfouz’s vision of home. His stance appears insanely stupid and intolerably weak to the inhabitants of the alley. However, it is of real wisdom and strength, since he changes the battlefield from the alley to the human heart, from the visible to the invisible, or from the physical to the metaphysical. Therefore, vis-​à-​vis Rifaa, Mahfouz emphasises that without goodness, humans are closer to Khunfi the gangster, who is merciless to everyone he finds challenging. By opposing this, Rifaa propounds that ‘[w]‌restling with demons [inside one’s soul] is hundreds of times harder than attacking the weak, or fighting the gangsters’ (ibid.: 236). Thus the writer revives the truth of goodness that Jesus brought to the world through Rifaa without calling him so, for his art is not theology. He identifies Jesus’s calling as a historical force that marks the triumph of positive human endeavour towards connecting humans

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The Place of Writing in Exile not only to each other but also to the universe. This spirit inspires him to dream of an idealised abode for all. Furthermore, Mahfouz composes a rationalistic explanation of what makes Rifaa’s mission a success in the malice-​governed alley. We see that Rifaa kept alive his belief in the goodness of human heart through enormous courage and conviction, for he remained undeterred by the taunts, blemishes and the physical pain inflicted on him by the gangsters. Such a depth of belief did not allow him to sink into despair, despite the intimidating estrangement. When the messenger of death appeared in front of him, he remained fearless, though his disciples had fled the danger zone as fast as they could. He was worried about the fate of the alley, not about himself, even at the point of death: ‘A profound and absolute sadness seized him, eclipsing even his fears. It seemed to him the darkness would prevail over the earth’ (ibid.: 240). Thus, his resolve, courage, and selflessness are Mahfouz’s main points of reference in his own fight against the dark reality. The writer seeks deliverance through imbibing these, and showing how love for Rifaa unites all the people of the alley against the gangsters and how their solidarity in protest against his tragic demise opens new doors for achieving harmony in the society. In the end the tale becomes a celebration of the power of the masses. This is to illustrate that humanity’s search for a meaningful existence never stops, despite the fact that the absurd alley reproduces despair in an unstoppable cycle. Thus suffering becomes part of the process of achieving salvation in Mahfouz’s writing by allowing hope never to leave its horizon. Comprehensibly, the hope for a better world is fundamental to Mahfouz, just as it is to Adorno. He asserts, as if by echoing the novelist, that when we are hoping for rescue, a voice tells us that hope is in vain, yet it is powerless hope alone that allows us to draw a single breath. All contemplation can do no more than patiently trace the ambiguity of melancholy in ever-​new configurations. Truth is inseparable from the illusory belief that from the figures of the unreal one day, in spite of all, real deliverance will come. (Adorno 2005: 121–​2)

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile In other words, contemplation alone will not do, for its task is to steadily point out the pointlessness of hope in newer outlines. Contemplation may tell us that Rifaa’s story is too good to be true, but the power of the story is such that it still lets us retain our defenceless hope in the possibility of something positive. Paradoxically, therefore, Adorno opines that truth contains both the facticity of alienation and illusive faith in deliverance. Thus, he confirms his hope in today’s unreal from which tomorrow’s real can be born. This is the crux of Mahfouz’s writing as well. Hope is an organic part of his project, giving him a platform from which to work towards liberation. Muhammad Siddiq (2007) argues that after the early phase of writing, Mahfouz became more interested in searching for spiritual strength in his characters. Siddiq makes the judgement in reference to Miramar (first published in Arabic in 1967) and some other middle-period works of the author. Rifaa’s example above, which supports Siddiq’s idea, is also from a novel that belongs to the writer’s mid-​period (1959–​79). Nevertheless, the novelist does not unexpectedly resort to the idea of deliverance depending on individuals’ moral strength in the later phase. Rather, individuals’ striving is what he always believes to be the key to achieving liberation in an otherwise unredemptive environment. Recognisably, Amina from the Trilogy is the most apt case in point, because she appears in one of the earlier writings not as a worldly character but as an ordinary person with an extraordinary strength of mind, which Siddiq finds metaphysical, due to its moral nature, perhaps. Nevertheless, I completely agree with the second part of his argument – that Mahfouz’s protagonists surmount their existential situations through their unmoving moral integrity, as Amina certainly does. Therefore we have to look into Mahfouz’s depiction of the mother figure also as an embodiment of force of goodness. As the Trilogy shows, Amina’s warm heart always had a way with reassuring her family members of life, living and love by driving out the gloom of disaster from the misfortune-​struck house of theirs. Amina’s famous coffee hour speaks volumes in this regard. This is when all the children surrounded her in the evening, shared their day’s events and basked in the glow of her affection. Mahfouz (2001: 57) writes: ‘They would cluster under their 154

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The Place of Writing in Exile mother’s wing with love and all-​embracing affection. The very way they sat leaning back with their legs folded under them showed how free and relaxed they felt.’ We can easily comprehend why Mahfouz depicts this beautiful picture of the family members’ enjoyment and relaxation in Amina’s company as a constant time-​reference in the Trilogy, notwithstanding all the changes of phenomena there. He shows that the coffee hour keeps exuding Amina’s warmth amidst the passing of time, with all its turmoil. Even in the third generation, then, we see that ‘they all assembled in a congenial chatty mood around the grandmother’s brazier for the coffee hour’ (ibid.: 1004). Therefore, as her life approaches its final moment, Kamal remembers that the undeniable force of her life is a love that embraces ‘everything in existence’ (ibid.: 1307). This is why all the places and events related to her leave behind a deep impact: ‘Light overlaps darkness as the blue of early morning blends with the roof garden, the glowing brazier of the coffee hour mingles with religious legends, and the dove’s cooing mixes with sweet songs’ (ibid.: 1308). Interestingly, Mahfouz records Amina’s last moment as a form of tribute, which he did in Rifaa’s case as well. He puts together the disparate pictures of her life in an expressionist way to embody her enduring spirit. All the sight (the azure early morning sky), smell (fresh coffee in the warm brazier), sound (the soft and sweet melody of birds), place (the rooftop garden) and subject (religious stories) associated with her become life-affirming. Amina’s sustaining spirit ‘leaves us with a lingering warmth and reassurance in the basic essence of the goodness of humanity’, stresses Mona Mikhail (1992: 21–​2). This is how Mahfouz’s ‘philosophical enquiry clothed in the form of reality’ (Kilpatrick 1974: 102) creates a positive atmosphere in his writing. The steadfast pursuer of salvation lives in his writing by conjuring up the pictures of love, hope and joy even in his bleak moments,‘[b]‌ecause we still admire beautiful words even though we do not practice them’ (Mahfouz 1997: 104). In an Adornian way, he thus refuses to let go of the uplifting power of the words. By grounding his works in the social reality and offering human goodness as an effective means of surviving its brutal aspects, Mahfouz surely highlights his secular consciousness. Through heightening the hope for deliverance in this way, Mahfouz builds an enduring shelter 155

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile for himself with words. As we saw earlier, his writing also provides him with a means to sustain his critical consciousness, despite forfeiting the reward of peaceful belonging to the known atmosphere. The combination of the critical and the secular consciousness in the novelist’s writing illuminates his exilic intellectual practice anew.

Auerbachian model: cultivating ‘the pleasures of exile’ A strong ethical sense resides at the heart of Adorno’s writing, constantly guiding his critique, the unrelenting nature of which, however, makes his vocation ‘gloomy and unyielding’ (Said 1996: 59). Ironically, the disconsolate form of exile thwarts the Adornian suggestion of salvation to some extent, if not implies its unattainability as well. Said sees this as a significant drawback in the model and asserts that Adorno fails to emphasise ‘the pleasures of exile’ that ‘enliven the intellectual’s vocation’ (ibid.). Hence, Said’s analysis of the place of writing in the exilic intellectual practice is incomplete without incorporating the Auerbachian illustration of the idea. Indeed, if Nazi Germany sent Adorno to his American exile, it transplanted Auerbach, ‘a Prussian and of the Jewish faith’ (see Said 2004: 97), as he described himself, into a quintessential land of the ‘other’ in Istanbul. Auerbach created a positive mission out of the atrocious fate. In the estranged situation, writing restored his cultural identity and reassured him of his humanity. He filled his solitude with reflections on reality, and thus turned ‘the executive value of exile … into effective use’ (Said 1984: 8). This signifies Auerbach’s flight from the intensity of war to the serene land of writing, where no Adornian discontent or cynicism is in sight. Mimesis exudes an assured calmness emanating from Auerbach’s scholarship and humanism. Unlike Adorno, Auerbach does not directly claim that writing remains his definitive home. However, the way he designs Mimesis signifies his attempt at belonging within its circumference. Hermeneutics is, therefore, his means of recuperation, and home is a centre of intellectual and moral sustenance. In order to ask where home was for the writer, Marjorie Garber (1992) emphasises Auerbach’s dramatic opening of Mimesis with his minute 156

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The Place of Writing in Exile reflection on Book 19 of the Odyssey that draws on Odysseus’ moving homecoming scene. Garber traces the exilic trajectory of Auerbach’s Istanbul residence, the writing of Mimesis there and its eventual publication from Switzerland in order to assert that it presents ‘at least in part, a politics of exile –​ and a politics of nostos and nostalgia’; this leads her to conclude that for Auerbach, ‘[h]‌ome’ was the Western tradition, and the translatio studii’ (ibid.:242). Clearly, Auerbach’s homecoming takes place through transporting learning from one place to another (translatio studii). Since he reconnected to Europe through transporting the knowledge and learning of its literature eastward, nostos, or, returning home after long-​drawn-​out travels, is cultural in his imagination, not geographical. Commenting on his ‘concrete critical recovery of Europe’ through his literary analysis, Said determines two aspects of his belonging: ‘filiation with his natal culture and, because of exile, affiliation with it through critical consciousness and scholarly work’ (1984: 16; emphasis in the original). In Mimesis one of the questions on which Auerbach (1968: 556) wants to focus is ‘to what degree and in what manner realistic subjects were treated seriously, problematically, or tragically’ in European literature from ancient times to the modern age. To arrive at an understanding of this, he selects a particular excerpt from his chosen text, analyses its techniques and expressions minutely and then places the text in the context of its society and time. In other words, he crosses the literary boundary to arrive at the greater cultural arena by dint of his lively discussions. His method ‘transcends Stilforschung [stylistic study] or, rather, juxtaposes and fuses Stilforschung with what Wellek calls “historical sociology”’, clarifies William Calin (1999: 464). Through his steadfast attention to the mixture of high and low narrative styles, Auerbach becomes a ‘critic of the earthly world’ (Said 2004: 11), whose secular consciousness presents us with an intricate, dense and entertaining analysis of the socio-​historical picture of Europe throughout Mimesis. The book begins with an apt reference to ‘Penelope’s good will’ (Auerbach 1968: 3), for he weaves on a loom of his own in order to survive the pressure of an adverse situation through an absorbingly creative process. Auerbach’s aim in Mimesis is also to preserve his human dignity, denigrated by the Nazis. However, writing ‘at the height of the modern 157

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile self-​conflagration of the culture of the West’ (Mufti 1998:102), Auerbach does not want to intoxicate or excite any further through his writing. Instead, he decides to spread peace by illuminating how our cultural belonging has to integrate a firm belief in the dignity of all mankind, which Said terms universal humanism. Auerbach achieves this not by what James Porter (2008) calls the replacement of the Homeric-​German pole of philological studies by the Biblical-​Jewish one but by delineating a much broader vision inscribed in the juxtaposition of the two strands. The famous first chapter of Mimesis parallels Homeric epic and the Old Testament by showing that Homer remains elitist, whereas the function of the Old Testament centres on the common human realities, which can be deeply complex and even tragic. For this reason, the writer prefers the Old Testament to Homer, even though both texts project social stratifications by narrating the histories of kings, princes and leaders of various kinds. Thus, Auerbach’s literariness takes us into a humanist realm by highlighting the historicity of common human events in vastly different texts. Both Auerbach’s Mimesis and Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam are products of the writers’ physical exile. Auerbach wrote Mimesis in wartime Turkey without access to state-​of-​the-​art resources. Ahmed had the most advanced technologies at her disposal in the United States. Even so, the problem of intellectual resources remained with her in some way, because her research focused on a scantily developed area. However, the intellectuals paved new paths for humanistic studies by conquering the concrete hurdles, since they were determined to investigate the available discourses independently. The result is that Auerbach belonged to his European cultural root and Ahmed to her Egyptian heritage analytically by dint of their critical and secular consciousness and universal humanism. Ahmed’s Women and Gender reflects Auerbach’s model of home formation through producing a ‘historical sociology’. Consequently, she looks at the historical discourse of gender around the time of the arrival of Islam; because ‘[t]‌hroughout Islamic history the constructs, institutions, and modes of thought devised by early Muslim societies that form the core discourses of Islam have formed a central role in defining women’s place in Muslim societies’ (Ahmed 1992: 1). By highlighting the early Muslim societies and the pre-​Islamic influence on them, the writer shows that what 158

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The Place of Writing in Exile we regard as a coherent and self-​contained discourse of Islam was in effect heavily modulated by its worldly contexts. She discovers that ‘[t]he subordination of women in the ancient Middle East’ was ‘institutionalised with the rise of urban societies’ (ibid.: 11). She also comes across an egalitarian pattern of dealing with women that existed simultaneously with the subordinating one. This makes her wonder why the egalitarian practices took a back seat in the region while the oppressive ones kept flourishing even after the rise of Islam, a system that heavily emphasised justice. Ahmed employs her critical consciousness in conducting a historical survey beginning in about 6000 bce from Asia Minor, where archaeological evidence shows that women enjoyed an eminent, even a dominant, role at times. They reached the point of being venerated as saints and worshipped as goddess figures until up to the second millennium bce in some parts of the region. These practices were quite common in various areas of the Middle East, spanning from Mesopotamia to Greece. Obviously, the question arises as to what reversed the picture later on. In order to answer this, Ahmed first looks at the rise of the urban centres in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys around 3500 and 3000 bce. Urban life flourished in the region with the rise of the Sumerians. Soon Semitic nomads entered into the territory and often gained political prominence. Therefore, the complexities of the urban centres grew. Simultaneously, city-states emerged, bringing constant warfare in their wake. The situation worked as a hotbed for the birth of patriarchy, especially as the city-states, with their increasing military competitions, needed male-​governed families for their survival. This created a class-​based society and the passing of property through a  paternal line. Eventually, the females were not only controlled by the males but their sexuality also became ‘negotiable, economically valuable property’ (ibid.: 12). Ahmed’s reading of the translated Babylonian codes of law, Code Hammurabi of about 1752 bce, tells her that they allowed husbands to use their wives as their debt pawns, if needed. The later Assyrian law around 1200 bce tightened the grip on women even more. It not only permitted women used as debt pawns to be tortured –​ which was not sanctioned by the previous code –​ but also granted husbands the right to discipline their wives by physical punishment without being liable. 159

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile In effect, these laws made ‘the man’s power over wife, children, and slaves … absolute’ (ibid.: 14). Ahmed then moves eastwards to look at the Sasanian society and the Zoroastrian religion prevalent there since the first millennium bce. Detailing the marriage system that categorically disfavoured women, she concludes: ‘Elements of these Zoroastrian regulations suggest that notionally women were somewhere between personhood and thingness –​ as evidenced by wives being legally loaned for sexual and other services’ (ibid.: 20–​1). The disheartening picture remains unchanged in Byzantium during the fifth and sixth centuries bce. Ahmed discovers a rigid segregation of the sexes, a vast emphasis on reproductive ability and a strict confinement at home for the Byzantine women. The oppressive mores existed in Classical Greece too from the fifth to the third centuries bce. Simultaneously, Ahmed carves out a recognisable pattern of a just system of treating women that existed alongside the restrictive one. For this, she compares Classical Greece and Ancient Egypt on the Mediterranean coasts by juxtaposing their social conditions during the third century bce. Indeed, Ancient Egypt helps her to challenge the Aristotelian discourse that ‘conceptualized women not merely as subordinate by social necessity but also as innately and biologically inferior in both mental and physical capacities’ (ibid.: 29). Compared to Greek laws requiring women to depend on their male relatives, Ahmed finds that Egyptian laws were advantageous by allowing them to act on their own without any such condition. This resulted in the Egyptian women’s acquiring freedom of movement, favourable marriage contracts and enjoying mostly monogamous marriages. Segregation of the sexes also disappeared in this unrestricted environment. By the time of the New Kingdom (1570–​950 bce), women had gained ‘the right to own, administer, and dispose of property … testify in court and act in all matters directly’ (ibid.: 31). This is not to say that women’s position remained invariably ideal. Nevertheless, the New Kingdom sets up powerful proof of a non-​discriminatory culture, which Ahmed juxtaposes against the discriminatory one. Notwithstanding the Egyptian precedent, however, the unfair pattern of male domination was copied from one culture to another. That the gender situation was changing and leaning heavily towards patriarchy in the 160

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The Place of Writing in Exile region is evident at least from the passing of many Mesopotamian laws into Islam that acquired an even harsher hue. The practice of veiling and seclusion that was extensive by the early Christian period, and the coalescence of similar predilections embraced by the cultures of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece and the areas where Christianity and, later on, Islam became prevalent, are strong evidence for this. For example, when the Muslims conquered the Sasanian region, they took up its cultural and institutional practices straightaway. One such institutional practice being the maintenance of a harem, the writer comments that it grew exponentially through the Persian conquest of Mesopotamia, with its size reflecting the owner’s affluence and eminence. She further asserts that each of these cultures contained munificent ideas regarding women’s status in society, which were steadily lost. Instead, ideas propagating male domination and debasing women constantly gained sway through the series of annexations and the resultant cultural exchanges in the region from around the first millennium bce to the establishment of Muslim rule. Perceivably, Ahmed’s historico-​cultural grounding of Islam is one of the reasons Deniz Kandiyoti (1993) regards her book as a fruitful intervention into an ongoing debate on the treatment of women in Islam. Nevertheless, Lidwien Kapteijns (1993: 207) finds Ahmed’s work unsatisfactory, arguing that she has given ‘too much weight to otherwise unexplored processes of cultural fusion and assimilation due to invasion, inheritance, and increased interaction between different peoples’. Ahmed (1992: 4, 16) acknowledges that her ‘findings … are essentially provisional and preliminary’, and reiterates that her pictures are by no means composite, for she thinks, for example, that the Mesopotamian ‘mores and laws regarding women have yet to be comprehensively examined by a scholar of that civilization’. Even so, I wonder why a scholar should not open up a new vista into a historical archive, if her evidence directs her towards it. To me, therefore, Ahmed’s is a compelling project that suggests the growth of misogyny through acculturation. More importantly, we can clearly see how Ahmed is as much of an worldly critic as Auerbach was, since her analysis is directly connected to the historical world with real implications about the situation of women in a particular region. I agree with Eliz Sanasarian (1993) that the monograph is the product of a prolonged endeavour. Thus Ahmed, like Auerbach, 161

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile creates her own Penelope’s loom based on the two historical patterns, the detailed illustration of which must have demanded great dedication but simultaneously given her a fulfilling intellectual ambience. Ahmed’s secular consciousness is even more visible through her image of Islam as a cultural system. The writer proves Islam’s worldly nature by reworking the Jahilia discourse. Ahmed (1992: 37) argues that Islam too created an ‘other’, which is the ‘pre-​Islamic period’ termed as Jahilia, ‘the Age of Ignorance’, so that the religion emerged ‘as the sole source of all that was civilized’. Islamic discourse went to the extent of ‘successfully concealing, among other things, the fact that in some cultures of the Middle East women had been considerably better off before the rise of Islam than afterward’. The history of the good practices of Jahilia was almost lost with Islamic suppression, which is now coming to the fore due to Western research in this area. Ahmed joins the intervention and gives voice to the positive aspects of the period. Citing many examples, she concludes that Jahilia women ‘were fearlessly outspoken, defiant critics of men; authors of satirical verse aimed at formidable male opponents; keepers … of the keys of the holiest shrine in Mecca; rebels and leaders of rebellion that included men …’ (ibid.: 62). Clearly, Jahilia acknowledged women’s equality to men. The leadership and the holy roles granted to women prove that the period even allowed them to hold superior status to men. This gives us ground to believe that Ahmed’s study is about taking no systems or views uncritically. I strongly disagree with Martin Riesebrodt (1993), for he reads Ahmed’s project as nativist. For him, Ahmed considers pre-​and early Islamic Arabian (Jahilia) society – which adopted patriarchal policies through its interconnection with Byzantine and Sasanian cultures – progressive. Similarly, Egyptian women lost their rights due to Greco-​ Roman influences. As we saw above, Ahmed never claims that patriarchy was injected into Islam from outside. Instead, she contends that the male guardians of Islam later found the already established androcentrism of the region favourable for making the system work in cohesion with the ‘earlier and adjoining societies’ (Ahmed 1992: 5). Besides, institutional Islam crushed the openness of the Jahilia Arabs, which was part of its own early history, just as Hellenic Greece received influence from but did not follow the egalitarian practices of Ancient Egypt. We have to remember that 162

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The Place of Writing in Exile Ahmed identifies the time concerned to be the period of the rise of the citystates. From a civilisational point of view, therefore, the interconnection of Islam and patriarchy is to be attributed to the politics of conquest rather than a particular culture. Following Ahmed, we can see that oppression is intrinsic to neither Islam nor the other beliefs or cultures that installed it in their discourses, but to the power politics that were changing the region so dramatically during Islam’s arrival. Like Auerbach, Ahmed reconnects to her native Egyptian and Arab cultures from her physical exile through a variant of translatio studii that transports the Ancient Egyptian and Jahili precedence of liberalness and egalitarianism to the (post)modern heartland of the West, namely, America. Clearly, hers is a reverse journey to that of Auerbach. Arguably, though, the aim of both the journeys is the same in at least two ways. The intellectuals exercised their critical consciousness in order to arrive at their independent conclusions about the historical questions that puzzled them. They also attached foremost importance to their secular consciousness in analysing the questions by rigorously centring them on their worldly contexts. In this way, they prevented the domestication of their intellect, which is antithesis to the exile. Therefore, the charge of nativism does not apply to them. Furthermore, the visible originality and imperativeness of their projects kept them devoted to their works. This is why their demanding intellectual mission worked as a sanctuary for them. Thus, their writing is home to their exilic spirit through their independent intellectual practice. To reassert, Auerbach transcends his strong filiations with Christian Europe, as his physical distance from its geography necessitates his metaphorical disconnection with its predominant cultural mode. However, he returns to the area through drawing a humanistic view of its heritage. What Said borrows from Auerbach is this spirit of creating a powerfully humane home in the writing. I agree with Aamir Mufti (1998: 106) that what Said idealises ‘is not so much the Auerbachian text, the text whose author-​ function bears the name of Auerbach, but rather Auerbach as text’. We can view the Auerbachian mode of belonging in Ahmed’s writing by realising that her physical exile also gives her an insight into universal humanism and makes her install it in her intellectual abode. 163

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Ahmed’s reflections on Islam in her memoir, A Border Passage, carry universal humanism in its core. The notion of Islam she grew up with seems lost to her now. Therefore, in an Auerbachian way, she makes a decisive effort to keep the ethical Islam that institutional Islam overshadows alive in her text. In doing so, Ahmed attaches as much importance to oral texts as their written counterparts. The rationale she uses for not putting the written and oral texts in a hierarchical order echoes Said, as she asserts that texts are objects made up of lived experiences. For her, though, the oral and the written forms of texts bear similar significance in this regard. The writer regrets the fact that she had not realised the significance of her mother’s life as an oral text, the ‘deepest thoughts and feelings’ (Ahmed 2000: 74) of which shaped her worldview. The moral cognition she developed by deriving the innermost thoughts and feelings from the ephemeral texts of the lived life of her mother and that of the others in her familiar world sustains her own life and work. As in Auerbach (and of course in Said), so in Ahmed, texts are the life-​ sustaining edifices. Naturally, the oral tradition defines ethical Islam for her. Ahmed’s mother, for example, ‘did not as a rule pray or fast or observe what in [their] household were thought of as the outer trappings of religion –​ its formalities and rituals’ (ibid.: 75), but she thought of herself as a religious person. Ahmed explains that rather than performing the religious rituals, religious consciousness to her mother meant maintaining a deeply humanistic ethics, which she successfully passed on to her daughter. For Ahmed’s mother, ‘the core of Islam, the core of all religions, was summed up in one particular verse of the Qur’an’, which reads: ‘He who kills one being kills all of humanity, and he who revives, or gives life to, one being revives all of humanity’ (ibid.). Simply put, not to harm any living creature willingly and to help foster life as much as one can are the mainstays of the humanistic message that Ahmed derived from her mother. We have to note that the outward expressions of religion are downplayed here in order to reach out not only to all human beings but also to the entire living world through a particular philosophy, namely, Islam. From this perspective, Ahmed shares Auerbach’s vision of humanistic belonging. Auerbach connected to Europe and to the world through his Jewish faith. For Ahmed as well, her 164

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The Place of Writing in Exile belonging to ethical Islam is the stepping-​stone towards her affiliation with greater humanity. Surely, Ahmed’s universal humanism dictates that she can only be an insider to the women’s world as long as her moral commitment remains intact. The moment her ethics is at risk, she takes her metaphorical leave of the much-​loved environment. The dual position was also facilitated by her physical exile in Europe, and later the US. Like Auerbach’s exile in Istanbul, Ahmed’s exile in the West gives her cause to be a metaphorical outsider too in her homeland. Her Western education and the experience of living ‘in a land in which freedom of thought and religion’ (ibid.: 131) is commonly permitted inspire her to look back at her natal culture and determine when to take pride in it and when to disown the tradition. This will be evident from the following two examples. It pleases and even empowers Ahmed to know that she comes from a culture that produced women who never feared speaking their minds. In the early period of Islam, for example, women were famous for this practice. What is more, Muhammad was in the habit of listening to his women followers by trying to amend the situations that created their discontents. Ahmed elucidates: For example, his female followers, who, like the male, learned the Qur’an’, reportedly complained on one occasion that the men were outstripping them and requested that Muhammad set aside additional time to instruct them so they could catch up. This Muhammad did. (1992: 72)

More significantly, Ahmed notes that these women’s sense of dignity, freethinking and courage led them to question even God. It was their objection to the fact that the Qur’an’ had not addressed them directly that brought about the revelation that the Qur’anic verses unambiguously address women as well as men. Understandably, the writer is at home in a tradition that allowed women to voice their concerns unreservedly. Simultaneously, Ahmed offers a historical view of the dehumanisation of women in Arabo-​Islamic culture. The Abbasid Caliphate (750–​1258), to which she remains rightly averse, epitomises this for her. She defines the Abbasid time as being a time when ‘at an implicit and often an explicit 165

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile level, the words woman, and slave, and object for sexual use came close to being indistinguishably fused’ (ibid.: 67; emphasis in the original). Citing Nabila Abbott, an eminent historian of upper-​class women in the Abbasid era, Ahmed denounces the discursive practice simply because it bears a history of degradation brought about through the systems of polygamy, concubinage and seclusion. She exemplifies the degeneration by pointing out how men’s debauchery pushed harem-dwellers towards ‘resorting to manipulation, poison and falsehood’ (ibid.: 84) in their desperation for survival. In distancing herself from this demoralised environment, Ahmed risks sounding like an Orientalist, but Abbott gives her further grounds to decry the overall situation, as the historian records: ‘Acquiring a wife was a much more serious undertaking than stocking up on concubines who could be discarded, given away, or even killed without any questions raised’ (see ibid.: 83). Naturally, the age became such that some fathers came to think that the grave was the best home for their daughters. Ahmed’s humanist mind is appalled by the fact that the misogynist attitude, licentious behaviour and easy choice of divorce for men amounted to a deeply debased condition of women. ‘As a result’, we hear Ahmed the outsider assert, ‘a number of abusive uses of women became legally and religiously sanctioned Muslim practices in a way that they were not in Christianity, the other major religion of the day in the Middle East’ (ibid.: 87). The dual views suggest why the border becomes the author’s natural position. The liminal identity she forms belongs neither to the Middle East nor to the West. In her introduction to Ahmed in an American Public Media programme, Krista Tippett (2006) comments that the usual contradiction between resisting Western domination of one’s native land as well as benefitting from the powers’ knowledge and excellence is absent in the writer’s milieu. One explanation for this is that the Auerbachian model allows intellectuals to evaluate cultural traditions by paralleling them; it does not ask them to negate any cultures in toto. Rather, it is about forming a more humane identity through transforming filiations into critical affiliations. Ahmed thus remains rooted to the universal humanism through opposing Europe and yet strongly admiring its values and systems encouraging the freedom of mind. Understandably, the cartography of the border 166

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The Place of Writing in Exile she speaks from is produced in her writing alone by illustrating once again why this is her virtual home. As a Romance philologist, Auerbach believed language to be a reservoir of spirit, creativity and knowledge of a cultural group. Therefore, when individuals’ experiences interact with their languages, their human potential starts to flourish. The philosophy thus views writing shaped by the language of an intellectual as an alternative abode enabling the fulfilment of his/​her humanist spirit. Notwithstanding the utopian vision attached to the idea, its significance lies in depicting writing as a beyond-​boundary home, where the exilic intellectual sustains his/​her cherished critical and secular consciousness along with universal humanism. This explains not only the basis of Said’s dependence on the philologist to demonstrate the place of writing in his mission but also the ground of Ahmed’s reflection of the vocation through her own intellectual projects.

‘The last Jewish intellectual’: Saidian legacy Said’s complex identity of simultaneously being an Arab, American and Anglican, to name but a few, inspired him to form a habitat in a specific mode of thought rather than a place. Since the home he could have obtained in the East through filiation ceased to exist, and the home he acquired in the West through affiliation was unfulfilling, he had to choose his home in homelessness. Commenting on Said’s combination of the Arab and American worlds, Seamus Deane (2001: 12) writes: ‘If it were ever possible to live at the conjuncture between these two [the filiative and the affiliative], then the intellectual could retain the closeness to actuality and the perspective on experience that would provide an ideal balance.’ Arguably, Said breaks the cycle of a simplistic thinking that if one is born a Palestinian one must be anti-​Jew. He maintains his filiation or a close tie with his inherited environment, his ‘actuality’, by connecting it with his ‘perspective on experience’, affiliation gained from his exile. Thus, what Deane calls Said’s ‘conjunctural’ attempt is what I describe as his critical acceptance of his cultural connections. Nevertheless, Deane is successful in making us see that Said’s ‘conjunctural’ ground is utopian. As a result, even abrupt and entranced visits to this imaginary place are desirable in 167

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile order to dwell in its ideational circumference. The homecoming to the ideal space happens in Said’s writing, where its contours are continuously questioned and judged through the varied media of literature, history, politics and art. We could also say that the fruit of this toil is Said’s thoroughly imaginative identity of being ‘the last Jewish intellectual’ (Said 2005: 458), as he provocatively defines himself. Said’s Jewishness is the result of his critical affiliation and, thus, he is the real ‘Jew’ among today’s American intellectuals. In fact, he claims to be ‘the last one’, and even ‘[t]‌he only true follower of Adorno’ (ibid.) in our time. Arguably, Said re-​ordered his identity and (re) invented it as an Adornian as well as Auerbachian intellectual by rearranging the disparate and dissonant elements of his life through the originality and vivacity of his writing. He turns to his writing for a new direction out of this non-​belonging and the aggressive nullification of his connection with his native place by proving that human identities ‘are not given, they are acts of will’ (ibid.: 456). Hence, Said’s vision of writing as home involves both an attempt at reconciliation and the acceptance of its limitations. Said imbibes Andalusia’s forgotten spirit through his intellectual effort. He takes from there the evidences of ‘palimpsests: trace upon trace and writing upon writing’ (Linhard 2008: 124) of varied histories. Through his journey to the historic place, Said highlights Andalusia’s enduring legacy of polyvalence, which crosses the border of time and place because of its successful history of constant negotiations among its multiple and sometimes opposing strands. For Said, ‘Cordova retains its memorial splendor and inviting shelter’, since it is one of the few cities in the Mediterranean where the intermingling of Arab and Jewish quarters doesn’t immediately suggest conflict. Just seeing streets and squares named after Averroës [12-​ century Arab philosopher] and Maimonides [Torah Scholar, philosopher and physician] in twenty-first-​ century Cordova, one gets an immediate idea of what a universal culture was like a thousand years ago. (2002: 192–​3)

The coexistence of numerous cultures is what Said cherishes, which is why the astonishingly intermingled traces of Arab, Jewish and Latin 168

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The Place of Writing in Exile cultures found in Cordova, Granada and Seville create a great inspiration for him. However, Tabea Linhard (2008) fails to do justice to her otherwise perceptive analysis of Said’s Andalusian dream by alluding to Seville’s association with the French opera comique, Carmen, which portrays its eponymous protagonist’s tragic death centring on her changing devotions and her lover’s jealousy. Surely, Said’s Andalusia does not have Carmen’s shadow looming over it, for it is no opera of death and destruction, historical or otherwise. Therefore the scholar does not undermine the dream of a complete harmony among disparate cultures that Andalusia once exemplified; because the convivencia is a historical fact. He is inspired by the enchanting place to bring together all the dissimilar pieces of his identity onto a creative plane. From this perspective, writing is an apt platform for retaining his polyphonic consciousness. In this particular sense, it is home. Said notes that Cordova’s Mezquita was ‘[e]‌rected on the site of a Christian church’ (ibid.: 192); because Abdar-​Rahman, the Umayyad ruler, had fled Damascus, and wanted ‘to make a cultural statement’ through the mosque, since he was ‘exiled to a place literally across the world from where he had come’. However, after the Reconquista, a Christian monarch established ‘an entire cathedral into the Muslim structure’s centre, in an aggressive erasure of history and statement of faith’ (ibid.). Thus, we have a history of one past being overwritten by another, sometimes even in a hawkish way to hide the conflict of presences. However, the site is emblematic of neither the displaced prince’s usurpation nor the conqueror’s arrogant (re)possession of it. Andalusia fosters the spirit of pluralism without being diminished by the conflicting notions of identity imposed on it by the rulers. This is why the out of place Said feels a strong affinity to the place that encourages him to project the irreconcilables of his belonging side-​by-​side in his writing. Pertinently, Said’s late style preserves the tension of the irresolvable aspects of the cultures he is associated with. Benita Parry (2010) discovers a disparity between Said’s Adorno-​ inspired late style intransigence and his Auerbach-​ inspired humanistic insistence on connecting incongruent cultures. For Parry, the 169

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile contradiction exists in Said’s oeuvre, because his contrapuntal outlook makes him ignore the ‘contest between incommensurables’ in Adorno’s dialectical process and detect mainly counterpoints about ‘fascism, bourgeois mass society, and communism’ (ibid.: 506, 507) in his writing. Had this been true, there would have been no notion of late style, since the conflict of the contrasting phenomena is its starting point. The tension that Parry focuses on, therefore, exists between pluralism and the irreconcilables. Said’s late style identifies the limit of the polyphonic consciousness and improves on Auerbach’s humanism by suggesting that the discrepant concepts should be left as they are if they cannot be connected to a harmonious whole. This clarifies why both qualities play a crucial role in Said’s exilic writing. As I  explained above, writing was the process that enabled Said (2005:  456)  to discover his humanity through his pluralism, since ‘[i]‌n Latin, inventio is to find again’. Darwish too lived in the world of his polyphonic poetry in his endeavour to find his threatened humanity within its circumference. Like Said, polyphonic consciousness helped Darwish to make sense of his officially nonexistent existence. Naturally, Andalusia gave shape to his utopian dream of a harmonious world. Though the Andalusian kinship among the monotheistic religions was brutally crushed by the Reconquista, the fifteenth-​century retaking of the region by Christian kingdoms, he longed for its lost harmony in ‘Eleven Planets at the End of the Andalusian Scene’:   My kin betray my kin in wars of defending salt. But Granada is gold and silken words embroidered with almonds, silver tears in the oud string. Granada is for the great ascension to herself … (Darwish 2011: 58; ellipsis in the original) The harmony of the plural atmosphere was lost in the territorial fight of the poet’s kinfolk, all of whom wanted to defend their ‘salt’, their main claims, which soon turned into an ethnic cleansing. As a result, Granada becomes the ‘silver tears’ in his poem, his ‘oud string’, where a sad tune is strummed. Despite his sorrow over his peoples’ betrayal of each other,

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The Place of Writing in Exile though, Granada appears in ‘gold’, ‘embroidered’ in silk and adorned with ‘almonds’ in his verse. The poet weaves the tapestry of a blooming polyphonic consciousness in Granada with the strong hope of transporting it onto his aggrieved land. This also becomes evident from the elements of Granada’s heritage he laments for in the same poem:   Nothing is left of me but my old shield, my gilded saddle. Nothing is left of me but an Ibn Rushd manuscript, The Collar of the Dove, and the translations … (Ibid.: 61; ellipsis in the original) The image of the persona representing the poet here is that of a defeated soldier whose ‘gilded saddle’ and ‘old shield’ remind him of horseback and flourishing days. The soldier is unmistakably a litterateur, since he is pining for Granada’s lost collection of one surviving Ibn Rushd manuscript, translations of medieval treatises, and its possession of The Collar of the Dove. The latter is a ‘treatise on love’ by ‘the eleventh-​century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Hazm’ (Davis 2010: 36). Jordan Davis adds that the litterateur of Cordova, Ibn Hazm, influenced Darwish by dint of a vision of connecting people based on cultural exchanges. Thus the poet’s Andalusian dream is about finding a remedy to the disengagement visible in the discordant groups in Palestine and Israel that cling to their differences. However, the remedy through the interest in the ‘other’ seems viable within the perimeter of his poetry alone, in the company of Ibn Rushd, Ibn Hazm and the visionaries like them. Darwish’s writing as a provenance of love and a repository of ideas facilitating cultural exchanges is thought provoking, given the crucial role Palestine played in pan-​Arab nationalism during the 1950s and the 1960s. Whereas Darwish remains territorially bound in imagining a pluralistic Palestine by breaking down the deeply entrenched wall between Jews and Arabs, pan-​Arab nationalism saw the same locale as a source of inspiration for uniting the Arabs of the Middle East by surpassing the official boundaries of nations. Michael Doran (2002) explains that Gamal Abdel Nasser was not only the representative figure

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile of the progress-​seeking generation of the late 1930s but was obviously a major agent for Arabising his country. Therefore he drew a clear connection between the Zionist and the Egyptian struggles against the British occupation of the respective lands. However, the 1948 war had inadvertently created a pan-​Arab platform through the simultaneous defeat of the Palestinians and the official Arab armies in the hands of the Israeli force. Since Nasser emerged as a war hero, he wanted to utilise the cause of freeing the entire Arab world from foreign domination as a vital foundation of augmenting hope both inside and outside his country. In this way, Palestine became the central point of strengthening anti-​colonialism and anti-​imperialism by allowing the region to reconfigure its cultural identity. Thus, the history of pan-​Arabism marks the distinction between Palestinian struggle for a free homeland and the neighbouring states’ support for it. Clearly, Palestine was pivotal to the Arab nationalists for constituting a real bloc for safeguarding regional interest. Nevertheless, Darwish displays the historic land as a significant model of the exchange of ideas in ‘Eleven Planets at the End of the Andalusian Scene’. He gives centre stage to Lorca in the third section of the epic entitled, ‘I Have Behind the Sky a Sky’, by writing: I will exit all of my skin, and my language. And some talk about love will descend in Lorca poems that will live in my bedroom. and see what I have seen of the bedouin moon. (Darwish 2011: 59) Losing language is similar to losing his entire skin, since a home made up of his language is the only place left for him to live in a meaningful way. This is why, when all skies are lost to him, he declares that the sky of his words stays behind them all. His dialogue with Lorca is then established through his similar belief in writing. ‘Inspired by Lorca’s life story, Darwish expresses an entrenched belief in the power of the poet’s words to change reality for the better’, asserts Yair Huri (2003/​04: 249). Huri is alluding to Lorca’s revolutionary life as a poet, which was crucial to Darwish. The above verse from Darwish’s mid-​period work refers to Lorca’s famous elegy ‘A Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías’ by resonating 172

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The Place of Writing in Exile the latter’s ‘philosophical’ view stressing the cruelty and inevitability of death’ (ibid.: 252) through his brooding over his ‘exit’. As a result, we have an example of an interchange of ideas between Darwish and Lorca, since Lorca is mourning Ignacio Mejías, one of the finest Andalusian bullfighters, whereas Darwish is borrowing the elegiac mood from Lorca to mourn the lost pluralism of the place. The most important Darwishian borrowing from Lorca is visible here in the image of ‘the bedouin moon’. Fady Joudah (2009) rightly points out that the way the poets borrowed from the same linguistic reservoir creates a circular connection between them. Lorca went on a poetic expedition to Andalusia, where he was inspired by its oral history of a ninth-​century Arab poet Abu Tammam that he decided to utilise in his own art. Lorca spoke about ‘the gypsy moon’ in his ‘Somnambular Ballad’, written around the tragedy of a gypsy girl, by borrowing from Abu Tammam ‘a very old Arabic literary topos known as the atlal-​nasib’, through which ‘[t]‌he ruins of the abandoned encampment (the abodes of the poet’s beloved) become a leitmotif of the awareness of lost happiness’ (Vázquez 2003: 134, 122). Miguel Vázquez contends that the atlal-​nasib denotes a Bedouin phenomenon pre-​dating the Islamic period, and cites Jaroslav Stetkevych to explain that ‘the source of all Bedouin poetic melancholy is the awareness of happiness lost … for which the abode dār is only a figure’ (see ibid.: 126). In a reverse pilgrimage, Darwish is now coming back to Lorca in Andalusia to borrow the pre-​Islamic leitmotif of loss in forming his tribute to Granada by his allusion to the Bedouin moon. Thus, Darwish’s polyphonic verse traverses several cultures –​ Bedouin, pre-​Islamic, Spanish and, of course, Arab-​Palestinian –​in giving vent to their common pain of decamped and dispelled happiness. Arguably, for both Lorca and Darwish, the moon over Andalusia represents not just lost love but also the place’s deep sense of co-​existence that the strife and struggles of history never fully obliterated. In Lorca’s own words: ‘the tombs of the Catholic sovereign have not prevented the crescent moon from appearing in the hearts of the finest sons of Granada’ (see ibid.: 132). His conviction that Muslim influence on the Spanish psyche did not end with the Reconquista is especially effective in the context of his time, ‘when al-​Andalus was a topic very much in vogue, often 173

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile highly debated, and at times, with no little discomfort’ (ibid.: 134). As one of ‘the finest sons of Granada’, Lorca’s effort thus is to keep alive a plural Spain enlivened by his lunar imagery in the ballad, for example. Similarly, Darwish’s endeavour is to install pluralism in the heart of his house, made up of words through his affiliations with Lorca and Abu Tammam. This is what he calls ‘[a]‌telepathy of minds, or a telepathy of destinies’ among them, when he shows Lorca’s echoing of Abu Tammam at the beginning of his collection of poems, ‘Don’t Apologize for What You’ve Done’: Neither you are you nor home is home   Abu Tammam And now, I am not I and the house is not my house   Federico García Lorca (Darwish 2007: 175) The ‘telepathy of destinies’ of the poets is perceivable, since Abu Tammam who, like Darwish, is also a ‘wandering exile’ in the Arab world, uses the ‘the atlal-​nasib’ motif above to mean that in the absence of a sustaining abode, his sense of self is affected. Though Lorca is not a ‘wandering exile’ like the other two, we have reason to believe that the poet who belonged to Spain’s avant-​garde and was shot by its anti-​communist death squad was not perfectly at home in his homeland. Therefore, his allusion to Abu Tammam in his ‘Somnambular Ballad’ not only delineates an ‘emotionally distraught self’ (Vázquez 2003: 131), as Vázquez thinks, but also expresses the failure of a house to be home in the absence of the unnameable he is searching for, as represented by his repetitive doubts in the ballad over the gypsy girl’s arrival: ‘Friend! Where is she? Say!/​Where is your bitter girl?’ (see ibid.:  135).  His metaphorical homelessness then makes him turn to poetry for an alternative home formation. The ‘telepathy of minds’ occurs on this ground. As in Lorca and Darwish, so in Abu Tammam, there is ‘a vision of poetry as a sort of creation of the world through language’ (Adonis 1990: 50). Belonging is a complex process, which Darwish’s philosophical poem ‘The Hoopoe’ also sketches. Besides drawing on the Sufi classic The Conference of the Birds, the poet alludes here to a Greek myth, which forms 174

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The Place of Writing in Exile another example of his critical affiliation with an unfamiliar culture. The hoopoe, the poet’s ‘guide to the master of things’, tells him In Greece you didn’t comprehend Aristophanes. In the city you didn’t find the city. (Darwish 2003b: 33; emphasis in the original) The idea expounded here is that one does not transform something into something else simply by naming it so. Aristophanes’ famous comedy, The Birds, proves this point, and hence the allusion to him. The utopian comedy, which has been interpreted as a political allegory, begins with the wandering of ‘two discontented Athenians, Peithetairos and Euelpides’, who want to escape their strife-​striven native city by finding Tereus, ‘the hoopoefied hero’ (Schreiber 1974: 95), who will give them the address of a happy place. Eventually, Peithetairos is successful in persuading the birds of the world to create an ideal city in the sky for him, which ironically is a recreation of Athens, since the city’s atmosphere remains rooted to its culture and politics. Therefore, even with the protagonists’ ‘man-​bird condition’ (ibid.: 96) with wings to fly, they cannot free themselves from the failures of Athens. Thus, their wish to escape the city remains vacuous and their ideal city in the sky remains a phantasm. That is why Darwish tells his hoopoe that the bird did not locate the city inside its replica. In other words, naming the house in the sky ‘home’ did not lend it the qualities of home. This is why Fred Schreiber terms Aristophanes’ satire of the city ‘a double-​ barrelled joke’ (ibid.:  95). Aristophanes plays his double-​edged joke on the city by showing how it fails its people first on earth and then in their imagination. The anti-​ climactic end is what overturns Athens as a happy and welcoming place to everyone; because the city’s legal entrails make it impossible to live in. Its replica in the sky fails as a home too, because the citizens tried to escape the earthly version without realising the causes of its failures. Surely, Peithetairos’ comic city cannot be a model of Darwish’s home in the writing, for it is no fantasy to him. Rather, as we have seen, his words search intently for the meaning of home through his affiliations with varied histories, myths and literary topos. Pluralism being ingrained in him, he 175

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile could traverse the widely varied landscape of literature and culture in order to return to his verse to assert passionately in ‘Tuesday, a Bright Day’: The palm tree of Sumer, mother of songs, is his tree. The keys of Cordoba, south of the clouds, Are his keys. (Darwish 2009: 56) Sumer is home to the poet through his strong affiliation with its pluralistic culture. In particular, Darwish mentions Sumer’s palm tree, which represents the mythological Tree of Life, highlighting the connection of all life on earth. E. O. James (1968) believes that the mythological tree was in all probability a date palm, and points out that the myth is mentioned not only in the Mesopotamian cuneiforms but also in the Genesis stories, which clearly shows the interconnectivity of their lands. James further surveys the tree’s Hebraic connection along with the Phoenician, Zoroastrian and even the Roman ones, which makes us realise that because of these associations, Darwish utilises the Sumerian palm tree as a great pluralistic symbol by calling it ‘the mother of songs’. Understandably, the road of exile instructs the wandering poet to read the now invisible footprints of ancient cultures and obtain the buried knowledge about them from there so as to retain ‘[t]‌he keys of Cordoba’, another manifest symbol of mixed cultures. Darwish never forgets that his motherland shares Cordoba’s multi-​ethnic diversity and Babylon’s heritage. Therefore, his pride in possessing a motherland that inspired the Greek Plato and the Persian Suhrawardi is evident in ‘The Hoopoe’: Our mother is our mother, mother of the Athenians, Mother of the ancient Persians, Mother of Plato, Zarathustra, Plotinus, mother of Suhrawardi. She is the cosmic mother. (Darwish 2003b: 46) Clearly, he views Palestine as a land of birth for diverse philosophies and cultivates a polyphonic consciousness that leads to him being a child of ‘the cosmic mother’. As he cannot reach her, however, without breaking ‘the walls of [his] present’ (ibid.: 43), he sustains her ethos in his poetry,

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The Place of Writing in Exile which thus becomes a refuge and a surrogate home in his banishment from the environment. Similarly, Darwish rejects unreal solutions to existing conflicts. Consequently, he mirrors two aspects of late style:  keeping the irreconcilables alive and moving on with intransigence, both of which prove anew that he views writing as his last resort. Darwish writes with a poignant awareness that the two peoples in Israel and Palestine are unable to agree on their mutually exclusive story. Unlike Cordova’s Mezquita, where an inclusive sanctity prevails, despite the rewriting of a mosque with a cathedral, the imposition of one history on another achieves no reconciliation in his land. His pluralism, therefore, acknowledges its limit in ‘We Will Choose Sophocles’: … And if this autumn is the final autumn, let us abbreviate our eulogies to ancient urns, where we carved our psalms. Because others have carved over what we have carved … (Darwish 2011: 84; ellipsis in the original and added) Despite his polyphonic consciousness, he cannot mend the fractures of Israelis’ carving their claim on the land over that of Palestinians, since the former intend to completely erase the latter. This is why the poet wants to shorten his praise for his age-​old land and move further back in time by refusing to reconcile the narratives forcefully. He discovers Sophocles to evoke the commonalities of these two peoples’ existence, which ironically they cannot comprehend. Interestingly, the inescapability of fate, human vulnerability and banishment that Sophocles depicts through Oedipus and his children in the Hellenic times apply to Abraham’s children too in modern times. But this does not bring them any closer. In the above poem, Darwish says: We will choose Sophocles over Imru’ el-​Qyss, no matter how long the figs of the shepherds change, or if our previous brothers pray to Caesar alongside our previous enemies in the banquet of darkness … no matter how often the narrator’s religion changes, there must be a poet

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile who searches in the crowd for a bird that scratches the face of marble … so we choose Sophocles, at the end of the matter, and he would break the cycle. (Ibid.: 85; ellipses in the original and added) By choosing Sophocles over Imru’ el-​Qyss, Darwish declares that he is shunning the ways of the latter as a prince, not as a poet. The best-​ known pre-​Islamic poet roamed all over the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant as a defeated prince trying to regain his father’s kingdom. In the end, ‘the Byzantine emperor Justinian (called Qaysar [Caesar] in the Arabic sources)’ (Antoon 2002: 69), whose help he sought in this regard, betrayed him. In light of the 1993 Oslo Accord signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Caesar represents the US mediating the peace process between them, which Darwish came to reject due to his refusal to accept the ending of the conflict in an abrupt and unfruitful way. Thus, in a late style stance, he problematises history by resisting ‘the closing of the scene’ (ibid.: 74) imposed by Oslo. Hence, it is significant that Darwish depends on Sophocles in order to ‘break the cycle’ of the power politics, which he terms ‘the banquet of darkness’. He refers to Sophocles’ Antigone through his search ‘for a bird that scratches the face of marble’. In that drama the deceased body of Antigone’s heroic brother Polyneikes, who was unlawfully deprived of his turn to rule Thebes, was not going to be granted a proper burial, because the authorities saw him as a problematic expatriate who had returned to put his fatherland to flames. But the ‘unbending’ Antigone stood against the unjust decision with her ‘bitterness’ and anguish over her ‘visceral sense of Polyneikes’ exposed corpse’ (Segal 2003: 7) being scratched by the preying birds. Like the decisive Sophoclean hero, Darwish stands his ground with his visual anticipation that birds will scratch Palestinians’ buried history out of the marbles of Canaan one day. He believes that however many times the place’s religious identity changes, its poet’s steadfast task is to point out what is at stake through the burial of one of its narratives by another. Notably, Darwish’s pluralism takes a back seat here in the interest of his late style, which stubbornly refuses to be at peace with the reality of any settlement that does not give equal weight to his erased history.

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The Place of Writing in Exile The pro-​Palestinian stance cost the poet dearly in his personal life, which reveals another aspect of his intransigent art. Darwish often wrote about someone he called Rita, who not only belonged to the ‘others’ but also subscribed to a conflicting ideology, namely, Zionism. The poet laments the loss of his first love to the irreconcilability of their positions in ‘Rita and the Rifle’: Ah … Rita Between us are a million sparrows and pictures And many pledges Fired on … by a rifle! (See Al-​Shahham 1988: 29; ellipsis in the original) Their constant love, represented by the various pictures, numerous pledges and the millions of sparrows symbolising vigilance, was destroyed by ‘a rifle’ that suggests not only the Six-​Day War, during which they broke up; but more importantly, the irresolvable difference between their humanist and militant ideologies. The reality made their separation inevitable. Though they could not bear the pressure of the opposition, Rita returned to Darwish for a short while before the split. The night they spent together illuminates not only the force of their tempestuous love but also the insuperable gap in their positions. Nevertheless, Darwish (2011: 88) describes their union in ecstatic terms in ‘Rita’s Winter’:   Rita arranges our room’s night and says: There isn’t much wine, and these flowers are larger than my bed, open the window for them to perfume the beautiful night and place, right here, a moon on the chair, and place there, on top, the lake around my handkerchief, let the palm trees rise higher and higher … (Ellipsis in the original) Their love is drawn as a natural force. Though the wine and flowers created a congenial atmosphere, they were asking for a larger environment than 179

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile the one provided by the room. Therefore, the lovers opened the window to let the natural world in and turn their beautiful night fragrant. With the moon hanging on their chair, the lake lying around the poet’s handkerchief and the sea surging forth following Rita’s ‘slow breathing … rising and falling in the rays of her naked chest’ (ibid.), they became one with the elements. Indeed, their union was not only blessed by the sea but also celebrated by the palm trees, the great symbol of pluralism. As the lovers’ spirit ascended to an increasingly higher level, the triumph of their plural souls became certain. However, this is not long sustained, which is the reason behind their tragedy. Their triumph came to a tragic end because the satiating experience could not continue in the face of their oppositional reality. Therefore, Rita decided to leave before morning came:   Rita gets up from my knees, visits her beauty, and binds her hair with a silver butterfly … Rita returns the shirt button to the vinegary shirt … and says: Are you mine? I am yours, I say, if you leave the door open to my past, mine is a past I see born out of your absence (Ibid.: 91; ellipses in the original) The tender care the poet takes to describe the moment increases the tragedy born out of their mutually excluding existence. Rita’s fastening of her hair ‘with a silver/​butterfly’ or her buttoning of her ‘vinegary shirt’ suggests how fondly the poet remembers her and associates her with naturalness, grace and beauty. The sad reality is that even such a strong devotion as this cannot reconcile the fundamentally irreconcilable in their relationship, namely, their inimical past. Nevertheless, Darwish does not ask Rita to ‘leave the door’ to his past open to him so that they can always live in each other’s absence. Rather, if she has to stay in the relationship, she must accept him with his past as a previous inhabitant of the land. However, Rita’s Zionist views nullify this by disallowing their present to be reformulated. This determines that their paths can never unite, since ‘the seeds of Zionism are still present within her’ (Al-​ Shahham 1988: 31). 180

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The Place of Writing in Exile The insurmountable conflict makes Rita long for ‘a faraway land’ to escape territoriality as such, when she entreats:   Is it from a faraway land that the swallows come, O stranger and lover, to your lonely garden? Take me to a faraway land take me to a faraway land, Rita sobbed, this winter is long … (Darwish 2011: 93; ellipsis in the original) But the ‘faraway land’ from where ‘the swallows’ come to the poet’s ‘lonely garden’ is understandably where his imagination resides. The swallows’ visit thus makes the ‘garden’ of his poetry visible. Since the swallows symbolise one’s return to home after long sojourns, Darwish’s poetry is the home where his imaginative mind returns. Therefore, the poet cannot withdraw into the ‘faraway land’ with Rita, as she requests him, unless this happens in his verse. In other words, poetry is the only place where he and Rita live together by acknowledging the pressure of their differences. This becomes noticeable when Rita leaves by breaking ‘the ceramic of the day against the windowpane’ and surrendering her ‘handgun on the poem’s draft’ (ibid.). The first implies the silent shattering of the poet’s heart but the second shows how he is keeping their love alive by accepting the burden of the gun on his draft. The late style resolution of irresolution thus finds home in his poetry, as he cannot remove the barrier of the gun between them. The power of Darwish’s poetry lies in its phoenix-​like quality of never being vanquished. The poet rises from the ashes of his tragic love, and soars high with an intransigence that remains beleaguered by the dual pull of his love for his beloved and his devotion to his homeland. Choosing either one above the other turns him into a blind insider. Instead, he picks up the ‘last mu’allaqah’ that dropped off his ‘palm trees’ of pluralism, remains bound to the duality and mystery and becomes a sojourner within himself, sustained by the sweetness of life emanating from its simple things like a house sparrow: My last mu’allaqah fell off my palm trees. I am the traveller within me, besieged 181

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile by dualities, but life is worthy of its mystery and of the house sparrow … (Ibid.: 113; ellipsis in the original) The verse is from ‘Mural’, which could literally have been his last poem. He wrote it as an outcome of his encounter with death after having a heart attack at the age of 57 (he died ten years later). This makes the poem significant in revealing how Darwish’s late style is about remaining an eternal traveller ‘within’ his plural self: The journey did not begin, nor the road end. The sages have not attained their estrangement just as the strangers have not attained their wisdom. And of flowers we only know the anemones So let’s go to the highest mural: My poem’s land is green, high, the speech of God at dawn, and I am the distant, the far. (Ibid.: 105) Darwish wants to continue with a journey, which has not yet reached its end. This gives him hope that there is still time for the conflicting groups to gain the reciprocal ‘wisdom’ that the ‘sages’ and the ‘strangers’ need to exchange. Until that happens, Darwish proposes that they should keep walking towards ‘the highest mural’, where presumably the humanity of both will be inscribed. Notably, the poet will reach this destination, where ‘the speech of God at dawn’ resounds, through traversing his poem’s ‘green, high’ land. Evidently, through the allusion to God speaking to Moses at dawn before giving him the Ten Commandments (‘the highest mural’ thus becomes suggestive of the stone inscriptions), Darwish’s imaginary destination partakes of the setting of Mount Sinai. He stresses the calmness, clarity and intimacy suggestive of the dawn when God first spoke to Moses to borrow the atmosphere of the event in order to carve out a peaceful ground between him and his ‘other’. However, he does not press on the ground any more. Rather, he drifts, more and more distant, with his continuous travel, knowing the vulnerability of his message in the conflict-​driven world. 182

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The Place of Writing in Exile This is where the resonance of Said’s late style is robustly present in Darwish’s writing. Said began again by reviving the debate surrounding humanism towards the end of his life. Darwish too chooses the second option of being late through a greater intransigence. In composing ‘Mural’, he was perfectly aware of the possibility of death. However, he refused to bend under its pressure. Rather, he took up the opportunity to announce the prospects of life by pointing out his unfinished interests: Death! wait for me outside the earth, in your country, until I finish some passing talk with what remains of my life near your tent. Wait for me until I finish reading Tarafah. The existentialists tempt me to exhaust every moment with freedom, justice, and the wine of the gods … (Darwish 2011: 118–​19; ellipsis in the original) As death waits at the door, he wants to extend his conversation with life by discovering its new difficulties and complexities. For this, he wants to exhaust himself by reading the existentialists and the nomadic poems of Tarafah, an ancient Arab poet, whose rumination about reality and illusion beside his beloved’s ruined campsite (the atlal-​nasib) is famous. Thus, in the late phase, Darwish wants to be more forcefully engaged in interrogating the real and the imaginary through the philosophical lens. More significantly, there is no sign of resignation on his part to allow the perpetual concerns of his poetry, ‘freedom, justice, and the wine of the gods’, to rest. Darwish sees home as a distinct picture in the past that has been discontinued. The picture always beckons him, but he accepts the tragedy that his language cannot ever make him reach there for real. Therefore, he intensifies the feeling of loss in his writing. This is all he can do as a way of retaining his lost memory, lost self and lost love. This is why he talks about the lost home in terms of the atlal-​nasib in ‘Mural’: I didn’t bid the ruins farewell. I was what I was only once. I was only once: enough for me to know how time breaks 183

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile like a bedouin’s tent in the northerly wind. And how place is cleaved and wears the past, the scattering of the abandoned temple. What’s around me resembles me a lot but I resemble nothing here. As if the earth is too narrow for ailing lyricists, the devil’s grandchildren who are helpless mad: whenever they see a beautiful dream they coach the parrot some love poems before the borders open (Ibid.: 118) As he learns ‘how time breaks’, his home becomes a cleft, wind-​struck, ruined place. In this ruin, Darwish and his beloved ‘other’ can never live. He loses connection with the ruin, since it does not resemble the plural place he always knew his homeland to be. He then sees himself as one of the ‘ailing lyricists’ whose poem cannot ever materialise his dream of peace and coexistence. Even so, he is left only with his writing that gives him an opportunity to propel his life forward with a late style resolve: This is my language. And this voice is the prick in my blood but the author is another … I am not from me, if I come and don’t arrive. I am not from me, if I say and don’t speak. I am the one to whom the mysterious letters say: Write, and you’ll be. Read, and you’ll find. And if you want to speak then act, and unite your opposites in meaning … your translucent interior is the poem (Ibid.: 108; ellipsis in the original) As the ellipsis in the line ‘unite/​your opposites in meaning …’ suggests, the poet must continue to work towards the union, which is why the late-​ period poem is full of his doubts about who he ultimately is. Darwish cannot be himself if his voice is unheard or his arrival to a meaningful home 184

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The Place of Writing in Exile does not take place. Neither happens because of his poetry. It allows his ‘translucent interior’ to be reflected through his belief in the common ground between his ‘self’ and ‘other’. In addition, here he gets to play off his author self and his inner voice against each other. In the end, all he can ascertain is that his language ‘is the prick/​in [his] blood’ that enables him to continue with his existence. In a late-style manner, then, he accepts the limitations of his metaphorical home in the writing. Evidently, the exilic intellectual’s figurative home formation in the writing involves his/​her critical consciousness, secular consciousness universal humanism, polyphonic consciousness and late style. The philosophy conjured up by these elements urges the exiles to keep moving forward. Since none of the intellectuals discussed above claim that they have found an entirely satisfactory and alternative abode in the writing, their arts become more of a journey towards home than the arrival at home: It is precisely the artwork’s unfinishedness that holds the greatest promise for the subject. The artwork is not the occasion for the subject to complete itself; instead, what Adorno calls its truth content is the open-​endedness of an object at rest within its lack of completion. Its content is not something, especially not some truth, to be deciphered by the subject. The artwork is instead an occasion for the subject to liken itself to a state of unfinishedness. (Huhn 2006: 8)

Adorno, who is the main pivot of Said’s idea of writing as home, puts forward a model that suggests ‘unfinishedness’, ‘promise’, and ‘open-​ endedness’. He insists that the act of creation is ‘the transposition of [the subjective] impulses into artworks’ that are ‘not being but a process of becoming’ (Adorno 1997: 113, 176). Therefore, Thomas Huhn asserts that art is the occasion of unending self-​creation. Auerbach, the other major influence on Said, shows that writing is an art of searching the ‘truth content’. Since the truth is not simply there ‘to be deciphered’, the writing-​ home is always in the making and never completely made. Mahfouz’s democratic and socialist politics is compelling in this regard. He observes the labyrinthine ways their bureaucratic system asphyxiates individuals’ aspirations, which severely curtails the dream of an idealistic 185

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile homeland for all. However, the principled politics imbues his writing with the hope that humanity’s pursuit of a meaningful existence never ends. Ahmed’s feminist politics views the struggle for achieving a satisfactory homeland by ending misogyny through a nuanced interpretation of religio-​cultural practices. The major contribution of her politics consists in revealing the influence of socio-​political realities over religious interpretations in assigning an inferior role to women. However, her humanist mind rescues the core values of religions vis-​à-​vis Islam in order to generate a positive impetus for materialising an egalitarian society the traces of which the ancient world still bear. Darwish’s anti-​Zionist politics adds a newer dimension to the quest for a worthwhile homeland. Rather than challenging Zionism with pan-​ Arabism, his poetry excavates the ingrained pluralism of the Holy Land. This forms the politics of (impossible) peace in the land by turning poetry itself into his literal home. Extraordinarily, Arabic provides the same name, bayt, for poetic verses and homes (see Bitton 1997). Consequently, Simone Bitton’s documentary brings out Darwish’s passionate transformation of the figurative to the real through a fitting title, As the Land is the Language. The situation is not difficult to comprehend when we realise that in Darwish’s present-​absent state, the distinction between the metaphor and the real cannot always remain clear. However, there is no denying the fact that writing is never a complete substitute for an abode. Said (2001:  568)  explains that the artistic creation gives the exile ‘at most a provisional satisfaction, which is quickly ambushed by doubt, and a need to rewrite and redo that renders the text uninhabitable’. This explains once again the existence of restlessness in the exilic writing and the urge to move on. Said is intransigent with the ardent motto: ‘Better that, however, than the sleep of self-​satisfaction and the finality of death’ (ibid.; emphasis in the original).

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5 Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism

By placing postmodernism alongside postcolonialism, Edward Said (2003: 350) describes them as ‘related topics of engagement and investigation’ in the advancement of which Orientalism played an antecedent role. He recognises that in both cases the prefix suggests after-​effects rather than the transcendence of colonial and modern times. In particular, Said explains that the pioneers of postcolonialism set the mark of its Enlightenment principles, emancipatory concerns and revisionist method of analysing and engaging with the history and culture of the decolonised world. Hence, postcolonialism as a praxis of engagement with cultural, political and, of course, historical issues is momentous. This is why Said regards postcolonialism as the more significant form of investigation between the two ‘post’ theories. Nevertheless, his tongue-​in-​cheek remark below indicates his displeasure with both: ‘It would be impossible here to go into the immense terminological debates that surround both words, some of them dwelling at length on whether the phrases should or should not be hyphenated’ (ibid.). Here I investigate Said’s acceptance of postcolonialism as a form of analysis and activism and his denunciation of the theory because of its turning into a specialised field like postmodernism.

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile In fact, Said’s dissatisfaction with postcolonialism increased with its ambiguities about determining the questions of when, where and who the postcolonial is. Following a detailed and insightful analysis of these questions in Peter Childs et al. (2006), I argue that despite evoking the durability and discontinuation of the Western control of the rest of the earth, postcolonialism retains some sense of closure of the European rule of vast areas of the globe. Therefore, the concept refers to the decolonisation of Asia, Africa and Latin America that followed World War II. This inevitably identifies the location of the field too. However, the large number of immigrants in the colonial centres, the presence of white settler colonies and places like the Occupied Territories make the question of location more complex. The diasporic communities, especially the Third World academics living in the West, complicate the definition of ‘who’ as well. Naturally, the contours of postcolonialism are heavily contested. In this context, I find Linda Hutcheon’s (2001) insight in ‘Orientalism as Post-​Imperial Witnessing’ revealing, though I must point out that the term ‘post-​imperial’ is not credible; for imperialism continues in the guise of neo-​colonialism today (see, for example, Miyoshi 1993 and Shohat 1992). Previously, we also encountered the American-​Israeli bloc’s imperialistic presence in the Middle East, and saw the nature of the global capitalist control of the New World Order. Hutcheon (2001:  96)  argues that Said writes Orientalism as a witness to colonialism; but his ‘main interest here is in questioning the cultural categories of Western thought, including Western historiography’. In other words, he writes both as an Oriental and a Western academic by proposing a way of reformulating the cultural vision of the dominating Western world. Thus, Said writes from a border space with the aim of removing the hostile and ossified barrier put up by Orientalism between East and West. While he is keen to intervene in the Orientalist discourse in order to stress ‘the reciprocity of colony and empire’ (ibid.) without undermining the brute fact of subjugation, the predominant concern of postcolonial studies is the consequences of Western colonisation. Therefore, despite the field’s constantly evolving and frequently contradictory nature, I have defined postcolonialism as a distinctive process of critiquing colonial and imperial systems and practices, especially those prevalent from the twentieth century onward. 188

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism Highlighting the force of criticism in postmodernism, Said clarifies that the theory appeared to be significant to him, owing to his dissatisfaction with contemporary knowledge production. Indeed, Said asserts that he ‘was very interested in the anti-​narrative, the anti-​linear, and the notion of consecutiveness of efforts’ (see Wicke and Sprinker 1992: 258) in meaning production that the theory introduced, but certainly not its deprecation of the Enlightenment principles in favour of proficiency and accomplishment. He points out that the theory develops in a non-​exclusionary environment, where ‘the whole problematic of exile and immigration’ plays its part, which is why ‘the great modern or, if you like, post-​modern fact’ is that of ‘the standing outside of cultures’ (see Williams and Said 2007: 196; emphasis in the original). Hence, Said demarcates the common space of critical belonging the exilic intellectual practice shares with postmodernism; but denunciates its lack of ethical and humanistic groundings. His censure of postmodernism became strong due to its disconnection from reality through its disregard for history, imitation of previous arts and consumerist concepts. We need to look at the contours of the term to comprehend the source of this difficulty about realising its nature. Ihab Hassan (1993) develops the meaning of postmodernism by marking out its double perspectives on reality that offers the Apollonian reading (reason, harmony and restraint) of a period of time along with the Dionysian one (excess, passion and emotion). Hassan further explains that the multiplicity of perspectives postmodernism offers comes from taking account of contradictory aspects like identity and alterity, unity and disunity, and loyalty and rebellion. Understandably, implementing a multi-​ dimensional representation by bringing out the fluidity, processes and patterns of historical changes increases the inscrutability of the field. In the same collection, Jean-​François Lyotard (1993) stresses that the postmodern question is related to the procedures of elucidation, reminiscence, spiritual interpretation and the projection of the distorted image as natural, which aim to recreate what is exiled in our memory. The reason modernism could not address this exilic aspect is because the commodification of its features forming a new consciousness of viewing the traditional world drained their vigour; modernism was not sufficiently creative any more. 189

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Jürgen Habermas (1993) explains that modernity was put forward by the eighteenth-​century Enlightenment philosophers to develop art, science and ethics according to their inherent rationale. They believed in the role of culture to enrich everyday human life through this process. However, Habermas is of the opinion that the humanities and the sciences in the twentieth century became autonomous and specialised, which led to their dissociation from the changes on the ground. Considering the constancy of change, I have viewed postmodernism as a mode of problematising the modernist certainty about the rational human mind and its ability to produce a comprehensive worldview. By showing Said’s criticism to be ‘restless, unhoused, on exile’, Abdirahman A. Hussein (2007: 103–​4) argues that ‘it recognizes the diversity and multiplicity of human cultural forms without, however, endorsing the celebratory, often frivolous, and ultimately divisive gestures of postmodernism and multiculturalism’. Based on Youssef Chahine, Mahmoud Darwish and Leila Ahmed’s works, therefore, my discussion projects some intersections among Said’s exilic mission and postcolonialism and postmodernism; but stresses his more urgent denial of the theoretical limitations. The first section of the chapter presents the intersection through the shared anti-​colonial origin of postcolonialism and the exilic quality of voyage in. It also shows that the exilic intellectuals’ creative, enriching and effortful responses to the colonial encounters enable their voyage in to transcend the dominant mode of postcolonial criticism. Similarly, the second section of the chapter argues that polyphonic consciousness creates another important intersection between the discourses of postmodernism and the exilic intellectual practice. However, polyphonic consciousness involves a firm belief in the coexistence of cultures, which reverses the postmodernist disregard for the narratives of human dignity and freedom. The third section highlights the exilic quality called, contrapuntal consciousness, which strengthens postcolonialism by negotiating its opposing strands but transcends postmodernism by offering a productive dialogue between conflicting groups. Thus I demonstrate a more effective role of the concept of exile in advancing a humanistically inspired world, where difference stops generating an automated antagonism. 190

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Nationalism and voyage in: postcolonialism in perspective Both nationalism and voyage in are geography-​oriented notions, but I find Said’s idea more imaginative. Nationalism is a place-​based sense of community, whereas voyage in is a method of reversing the colonial journeys into the far-​flung territories of the imperial centres like Britain or France. Said takes the voyage motif prevalent in late Renaissance writings, nineteenth-​ century travel narratives and the twentieth-​ century European classics describing journeys into the non-​European lands. He discovers a pattern in all the accounts that wields an unchallenged authority over the periphery. Said observes that the dominance of the quest motif is equivalent to silencing the dissenter’s voice or having a claim on the home territory. In order to assert the denied voice, Saidian exile ‘re-​experiences the quest-​ voyage motif from which he had been banished by means of the same trope carried over from the imperial into the new culture and adopted, reused, relived’ (Said 1993: 211). In other words, there is a role reversal between the imperial narrator and the supposedly Third-World intellectual, who recreates the voyaging topos by utilising the tropes of the colonial narratives in the writings produced out of the materials of his/​her home culture. Hence, the voyage in method is about reinventing the present and creating better possibilities for the future. As an exilic property, this method features the effort of peripheral writers standing against colonial domination, remaining in favour of reviving indigenous cultures but striving not to be limited by an insider’s perspective. Said wrote Culture and Imperialism to rebuild the present by revisiting the colonial trauma arising out of the dehumanisation of the peripheral ‘others’ by the voyaging rulers from the centres. The colonial voyages resulted not only in the subjugation of the ‘others’ but also in the interruption of the continuity of their past. The colonised people were deprived of a secure sense of identity anchored in a discernible history as well as the right of self-​determination. Therefore, postcolonialism emerged as a cultural field to query the processes of imperial representation and colonial identity formation. Arif Dirlik (2001: 4) writes: ‘Integral to the postcolonial vision of this early period (peaking in the 1960s) were ideologies 191

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile of national liberation that sought national autonomy in all realms from the colonial past as well as the neo-​colonial present.’ What Said aimed to achieve further was to connect the struggle for autonomy at the periphery with the concerns for freedom at the centre, so that a common ground emerged for working against all forms of dominations. It is true that the postcolonial writers ‘bear their past within them –​as scars of humiliating wounds’, but to turn into Saidian exiles, they have to have the strength to transform the feeling into ‘potentially revised visions of the past tending towards a post​colonial future, as urgently reinterpretable and redeployable experiences’ so that their critical ability, intellectual energy and imaginative power are enjoined in opening up a ‘terrain common to whites and non-​whites’ (Said 1993: 212). Put another way, nationalism retained the idea of the distinctness of the centre and the periphery, but Said’s voyage extended the ‘post-​colonial concerns to the problems of geography’ in such a way that there could be a ‘re-​thinking of what had for centuries been believed to be an unbridgeable chasm separating East from West’ (Said 2003: 352). As a result, voyage in and nationalism came to share the same postcolonial ground but diverged on their interpretations of belonging. To reiterate, the voyage in as a rethinking and re-​envisioning approach to the colonial past renders the exilic intellectual practice distinctive. Naturally, voyage in suggests the exilic disapproval of an uncritical nationalist fervour. In this regard, Said’s apparently ambivalent view on negritude needs further understanding. Despite his judgement against the concept as a stumbling block of postcolonial criticism, in Culture and Imperialism he regarded nativism as a primary step towards fully fledged liberation. Therefore, Said’s reservation about negritude lies in the dual aspect of the concept itself. Said comprehends negritude’s aim to either shock the French colonisers with the word’s inevitable racial connotations or to assert the humanity of the black people and highlight the strength of the African cultures. However, since some of the negritude writers wanted to return to an imagined essence of the pre-​colonial African cultures, Said intervened to establish the consequences of such a move. For him, talk about essences is a way of treading on the precarious ground of metaphysics by leaving the secular historical world. Not only does the ideology 192

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism contain a potential danger of turning humans against each other but it also retains the power of transforming nationalist politics into an imperialist device. Said (1993: 229) argues that ‘[s]‌uch programs are hardly what great resistance movements had imagined as their goals’. The pioneers of the concept, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas, were themselves voyage in writers, who emphasised their shared blackness from a humanist outlook. Indeed, their key themes, ‘the black man in a white world… reconciliation of self with one’s origins… love, death, solitude, suffering, and longing for the homeland’ (Thompson 2001: 324), deal with their experiences of estrangement and intersect with some of Said’s exilic focuses. In fact, negritude was developed as a contribution to the twentieth-​century struggle to advance the rights of communities and individuals. In the later phase of postcolonialism, we encounter the identification of the limits of nationalism from a similar concern for human communities. Partha Chatterjee (1998), for example, argues that the elites and the popular anti-​colonialists came together under the nationalist struggle, though their paths diverged significantly afterwards. Understandably, because of the elites’ Eurocentrism and class bias, the political society in the decolonised world ended up lacking a sufficiently defined and suitably modified idea of community. In this way, nationalism claimed by the bourgeoisie did not reach the subalterns, whose struggle for freedom is reflected in the popular and local resistance to colonialism. Gayatri Spivak expands on this by offering an explanation of nationalism’s collapse at a deeper level. Taking her lead from Ranajit Guha, who criticises the colonial historiography for its elitism, Spivak (1994: 79) shows that the practice continues even after decolonisation, when the ‘[d]‌ominant indigenous group’ at national level displaces its foreign counterparts and facilitates global capitalism by turning their countries into a cheap labour source. Thus, class oppression, class immobility and especially the silencing of underclass women in decolonised societies become Spivak’s poignant points against the failures of the nation state. Her identification of the ‘[d] ominant indigenous groups at the regional and local levels’ is particularly significant, since she shows that due to ‘the uneven character of regional economic and social developments’, one area’s most dominant could 193

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile be ‘among the dominated in another’ (ibid.). Thus the common ground between Said’s exile and postcolonialism is visible through a nuanced approach to a decolonised society. Spivak has recently argued more emphatically against the confines of the state-​nationalist prerequisites. Her view is that once identified with the state, nationalist narratives lose focus on their imaginary and heteronormative nature. By underscoring the facts that the narratives are inventive and ‘predicated on reproductive heteronormativity’, she suggests that the nations should compare themselves with each other: ‘What a comparativism based on equivalence attempts to undermine is the possessiveness, the exclusiveness, the isolationist expansionism of mere nationalism’ (Spivak 2009: 75, 84). Said has all along noticed this anti-​essentialist vein in identitarian thinking. The forceful emphasis on non-​essentialisation explains why Said’s voyage in method works for a positive transformation of the cultural knowledge obtained through colonial experience. The technique displays a powerful, nuanced and connective stance about cultures, rather than encouraging their divisiveness. As Said (1993: 256) exemplifies through C. L. R. James, the incentive comes from his ‘wish to know and act’ by utilising his standing ‘as a Black [or a peripheral] historian for a contesting Black [peripheral] as well as a metropolitan White audience’. This ability to create a dual audience is what Said (1986: 60) calls one of the ‘strategies… to widen, expand, deepen the area of post-​colonial intellectual activity in order to treat the rich residual actualities of the colonial encounter more usefully’. Rather than being dominated by the ‘investigation of postcolonial culture and critical problems’ (Moore-​Gilbert 2000: 5) as postcolonial studies do, what is needed is a re-​examination of the colonial experience in such a way that a fruitful exchange of positive knowledge in the West and the formerly colonised world becomes possible. Whereas postcolonial theories examine ‘the material and epistemological conditions of postcoloniality’ (Young 2001: 58), Said’s voyage in is an attempt to connect the conditions of courage and strength on both sides of the colonial divide. His endeavour is to create ‘a more playful or a more powerful new narrative style’ (Said 1993: 216) for the benefit of both. This ‘more’ is then the ground on which Said’s exilic stance surmounts the confines of postcolonialism. 194

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism My analysis of Chahine’s films below displays that his voyage in incorporates a strong criticism of the decolonised nation state as well as a powerful exchange of positive thoughts between the imperial and the colonised worlds. The auteur’s voyage in has to be seen in the context of his creating what Roy Armes (1987: 227, 229) terms ‘[c]‌inema astride two cultures’, which signifies that the ‘degree of notoriety and influence’ he achieved outside Egypt marks his struggle ‘to create a filmic expression of national issues in the absence of any industrial infrastructure for film production’. Armes notes the infrastructural backwardness of the Egyptian film industry, which was a thriving one by Third World standards, compared to the West. He thus emphasises that the auteur’s creations made an international impact, despite the lack of advanced technological support, since his views on national culture had an appeal to the world audience. As Bruce Robbins (1994: 34) puts it: ‘The authority of internationalism, according to this [voyage in] narrative, comes from the national itself, or even from nationalism –​though not everyone’s nationalism, and not a nationalism that can itself be unchanged by taking part in the operation.’ Robbins’s interconnection of the internationalism of voyage in narrative with its nationalist source is significant for our understanding of Chahine’s position in his films. Obviously, he is not interested in ‘everyone’s nationalism’; what sets his mission apart is its complete denial of any preoccupations with unthinking nationalist pride. Therefore, the filmmaker’s nationalism evolves with his increased concern for universal human rights expressed through the Egyptian condition. To illustrate this, we can consider El Naser Salah Ad-​Din, Chahine’s most pronouncedly nationalistic film. The title of the film strikes the viewers by holding the echo of Nasser’s name. It also refers to the fact that both the pan-​Arab leaders shared a name meaning ‘victorious’. The film was made when Nasser’s star was at its most ascendant as an Egyptian ruler due to his success in the Suez War (1956). Consequently, it established him as a reincarnation of Saladin in the public eye. Whereas Saladin was able to bring the dissenting rulers of the Arab city states who mostly mistrusted each other into a united front, Nasser aspired to be a leader of the Third World. Therefore Chahine’s film is thought to have drawn a parallel between the two leaders, projecting Nasser as a crusading figure against Britain, France and Israel’s united attack, presenting him 195

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile as ‘an inspiration for a nation yearning for salvation’ (Fawal 2001: 158). Inevitably, the film exudes Arab nationalism and pitches a prevailing anti-​ colonial resistance. The film bases the Crusade events on the controversial Knight Reynald of Châtillon’s treachery in breaking a peace treaty between Richard and Saladin, despite the King’s strong opposition to it. Since Reynald’s aim was to plunder Muslim caravans for profit, Chahine shows how he initiated the Third Crusade by creating havoc in a procession of Hajj pilgrims progressing through the desert. We can see below (Ills 1 and 2) a stark contrast between the shots before and after the attack on the pilgrims.

Ill.1:  Salah Ad-​Din: the peaceful progression of the Hajj pilgrims

Ill.2:  Salah Ad-​Din:  the technical display of bloodshed to reduce the details of violence

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism The juxtaposition of the peace and expanse of the first scene against the violence and pointed sharpness of the second makes us aware that a staunch humanism acts as a driving force behind the film. Chahine portrays the Western presence in Jerusalem as a colonising attempt. He develops a subplot regarding an encounter between one of Saladin’s generals, the Christian soldier Issa, and Louise, a strikingly beautiful captain in the Knights Hospitallers. The Order was founded in the eleventh century to provide care for poor or injured pilgrims to the Holy Land. The Hospitallers were in fact one of the strongest military groups of the Crusades. Ibrahim Fawal rightly questions Louise’s appearance as a captain of the group. However, Hala Halim (1992) presents the historical probability of her being a Crusading nurse. Since Chahine utilises history as a means of interpreting the present, the inclusion of the Louise and Issa episode perfectly serves his purpose of explaining his Arab nationalist position in an anti-​colonial way. After the Crusaders’ defeat at Heteen (Hattin), Louise becomes a captive in Saladin’s camp. The conversation she has with Issa during this time reveals his complex position on the war, which represents Chahine’s standpoint as well: –​You’re Christian, yet you fight with them? –​With them? They are my brothers and kin. I’m an Arab. (Chahine 1963) Clearly, Issa’s Arab identity is shared with the majority of Muslims living in his native land. Therefore, defending its freedom is an existential responsibility for him. Nevertheless, Louise declares her authority:  ‘Jerusalem must remain in our hands. We are the custodians of Christianity’ (ibid.). Issa puts her in her place by pointing out that Europe’s plan is to turn the foreign place into a profit-​gathering ground, which goes against the teaching of Christianity. Issa, the Arab name for Jesus, concludes: ‘I am a better Christian than you’ (ibid.). Through Issa, Chahine’s nationalism thus shines as a humanist ideology believing in the indigenous people’s right to self-​defence. Chahine’s Arabism even nears negritude through his humanist goal to countermand the negative image of his people. His nationalist stance in 197

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile the film is to change the bloodthirsty image of the Arabs through an ardent focus on their virtues. As a result, the film abounds within stances like Saladin’s chivalrous acts, his humility during the peace negotiation with Richard by introducing himself as a ‘servant of God, and of the Arabs’ (ibid.), his paying ransom for the poor prisoners, his mercy to the thirsty Crusaders and so on. Chahine’s portrayal of Saladin as a storehouse of virtues was questionable. Comparing Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005), which recounts the story of noble crusader Balian of Ibelin’s defence of Jerusalem, with that of Saladin in Chahine, John Aberth (2005) comments that both directors unfortunately follow the Arab ruler’s propaganda image prepared by his biographers. However, we have to remember that rather than an excessive idealisation of a ruler, Chahine’s film is about honouring or dishonouring a peace treaty, protecting or not protecting the pilgrims and their caravans, behaving or not behaving honourably with the enemy camp. Ethics, either from the Christians or the Muslims, is the ultimate winner in the Crusade that Chahine delivers. This is why I agree with Maureen Kiernan (1995) that Chahine’s insertion of an Arab voice into an arena dominated by Western filmmakers’ idea of romance and heroic quest is significant, because he does not propound nationalism as a means of vaunting the nationalist’s unchecked pride. On the contrary, the voyaging artist shows that s/ he has to nurture nationalism to form an attachment to the homeland and nourish universal human values. This explains why it did not take very long for the filmmaker to become disillusioned with the Nasserite revolution, despite his great hope for Arab nationalism. He deciphered the thwarting of the nationalist, socialist and ultimately humanist principles of the revolution through the vast failures of the revolutionaries to live up to them. This is why we do not see even the remnants of the nationalist confidence that Salah Ad-​Din portrayed in The Return of the Prodigal Son, made about a decade later. By then, Egypt had seen a change of direction, brought in by Sadat’s government. His capitalist counter-​regime was particularly swift to overthrow Nasserite ideals, because they had been proved ineffective. Amidst this complete overhaul of the state’s governing ideology, Chahine perceived where the real fault lay, as he famously expostulated: ‘Socialism was for them, and capitalism was for them’ (see Fawal 2001: 108). In other words, all strategies are 198

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism bound to fail, unless the strongly engrafted bourgeois control is removed from the societal structure. Clearly, Chahine is at one with Spivak that until the bourgeoisie domination ends, the colonial legacy of oppression and exploitation will continue to crush the individuals and ultimately the home nation. Consequently, Chahine carries out an investigation of the ‘dominant indigenous group’ that Spivak describes above by illustrating why the colonial-​style elitism directing the structure of the nation will never guarantee full-​scale freedom. Indeed, he thinks that the real revolution against the existing non-​freedom will not take place without collective actions against elitism, for which the Arabs have to shun ‘their narrow familial or ultimately their state-​nationalist predispositions’ (see Khouri 2010: 113). Since he wanted to alarm the nation about its deep propensity to dominate the comparatively powerless, he aimed to appeal to a broad-​based audience through an unusual combination of song, dance and tragedy. Prodigal Son thus turns a blood-​spattered tragedy into a musical that includes some choral songs with political messages. ‘The street belongs to us’, for example, is a chorus led by the young generation, which nearly succeeds in uniting the people around them to claim the streets in an attempt to change the status quo. However, as the song comes to a close, the bandit-​like appearance of the authority-​figure sends them back home by stopping the forward march of the people in a rough and abrupt manner. Thus the fact that society is not running in a pleasant, satisfactory and expected way at all is the main stance of the movie. Since the film identifies the instability of the Egyptian state as a bourgeois failure, it circles around the tragic story of a local family who own a farm, a factory and a cinema house. Despite Madbouli family’s understandable power over the community, it passes through a dysfunctional state that gradually worsens. The factory is run by the eldest of the family, Tulba, whose tyranny over the workers and his own family members shows no sign of abating. He is part of the local bourgeois representing the ‘new class of multi-​millionaires’ (Fawal 2001: 108), who rose during the capitalist Sadat regime and worked as the agent of the First World without a care for Egypt’s socio-​economic reality. In any case, everyone eagerly awaits the return of the charismatic younger son, Ali, who was imprisoned 199

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile through the duplicity of a bigger bourgeoisie when the contracting company he worked for handed him over to the police to save it from financial ruin. However, the returned Ali is no saviour, for the 12 years in prison has brought an end to all his idealism. Rather than ending the slavery of the workers and attempting to prevent the dangers they are exposed to on a daily basis, he decides to safeguard his class interest by becoming indifferent to their grievances. He symbolises the derailed socialist, who reverts instantly to capitalism when conditions are not in their favour. The killing and destruction of the family members that end the film is a natural consequence of the clash of interests between the brothers, or the two opposing state ideologies that cannot survive the internal contradictions. This is why the red light that frequently appears on the screen has to be viewed as an alarming sign about the unsustainability of a humanistic nationalism in the prevalent structure. However, the realism of the plot comes to an end when a clown appears unexpectedly during a heated moment in the family. Armes (1987: 250) believes that ‘the framing of the film with shots of a Fellini-​esque clown at the beginning and end seems a sign of Chahine’s derision, his refusal to accept at its own evaluation of seriousness the bourgeois world he depicts’. I agree that the technique resembles Fellini’s blending of fantasy and baroque style, since the outlandish appearances of the clown are not related to the plot. However, I  do not

Ill.3:  Prodigal Son: the clown representing the prevalent grotesquery

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Ill.4:  Prodigal Son: hyper-​realistic projection of survival

think that Chahine uses him to lessen the impact of the bourgeois lunacy that is going on. Rather his derision is intended to point at the grotesqueness of the situation. Thus the clown indicates not only the tragic tension in the plot but also the filmmaker’s releasing of it. Thus, Chahine equates the ‘state-​nationalist predispositions’ of the dominant group with buffoonery, since the independence of the nation for them is an occasion of cultivation of self-interest through reinstating the colonial-​style exploitation of the working class. Inevitably, the movie is a bleak one. However, a flicker of hope is generated when it hyper-​realistically projects a cactus surviving the heat and dryness of a North African desert. The shot denotes a greater Egyptian reality of persistence than the frenzied one rendered visible by the bourgeois conflict. The plant’s humble but sturdy presence is a vital source of inspiration for the filmmaker, who perseveres against the bourgeois domination. By using the plant as a symbol of survival against the bleak and discordant condition created by the nationalistic chaos, Chahine reminds his worldwide audience that any dominating structure, be it of native or foreign descent, is bound to be disruptive to the natural human environment. Thus the auteur not only contributes to a postcolonial critique of nationalism but also adds to a modernist narration of the contemporary history of 201

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile an Arab-​African nation. Hence his voyage in is about formulating better possibilities for the future, which made a fitting impact internationally. Chahine thus proves the intersections between the exilic and the postcolonial position on nationalism that opposes colonialism from a strongly humanist perspective. How Chahine’s and Ahmed’s voyages in overcome the constraints of postcolonial criticism is the question I address next. To discuss Chahine’s projection of the East–​West connection, I find the latter part of Salah Ad-​ Din significant. It explains Richard’s reflections after leaving Saladin’s camp, through which Chahine stresses the points of goodness on both sides to overcome the hostile situation. This becomes more evident when he is keen to reformulate the experience of the war in terms of bringing the two clashing religions on a common plane by offering a feel of their ethos. Towards the end of the film, therefore, events start to shift positively. Despite Saladin’s army being impatient to wage another war as the truce expires, he orders a ceasefire to facilitate the Christmas celebration in his camp. The scene that follows his announcement is delightfully harmonious. A muezzin goes on calling for prayers, the dying sound of which is mixed with the choral hymns of the celebration. The spirituality permeates Richard’s mind, as the snowflakes fall all around him. Along with the Queen and Louise, his retinue instantly joins the prayers from their side. Despite the unrealistic presence of the snow and the midnight call for prayers, Chahine’s message is clear. He suggests that, notwithstanding the insurmountable discord, the spiritual experience is common to both sides. The setting being Bethlehem, the moment is dramatic but resounds with the union of hearts. He further creates an aesthetic rendering of the message through an innovative visual technique created by the anamorphic lens. Utilising the widescreen provided by the use of Cinema Scope, he situates two important trial scenes in the opposing camps side-​by-​side. This creates a single set divided by the crescent and the cross signs respectively. Through changing the intensity of light, Chahine focuses on one particular camp’s proceedings at a time and sometimes even on specific faces there. On King Richard’s side, the rulers of Europe are judging Louise for her betrayal in helping Issa to escape her treatment camp. Saladin, on the 202

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism other hand, is settling scores with Acre’s capitulating ruler. We see that a pillar divides the two sides, but the single-set technique lifts it out of the frame figuratively. Thus Chahine shows that the troubles and longings on both sides undermine the division. The auteur presents the crucial dialogues spoken in the camps consecutively in order to assert the nullifying effect of the common factors. Therefore, we hear the dialogues as retorts. For example, in response to Saladin’s accusation, Acre’s governor says:  ‘There’s no victory without hate’ (Chahine 1963). This is cancelled out by Richard’s musing in a different context appearing soon afterwards the previous statement: ‘And there’s no liberation without love’ (ibid.). Thus the set represents the world as a single city with varied and even conflicting inhabitants, though the pillar separating them is perceived to be traversable. In this way, what becomes prominent is not that the rulers are beset by difficulties but the fact that the auteur’s expansive vision looks beyond the struggle. His universal humanism finds a perfect translation in the trial scene through the Cinema Scope. Therefore, the shot (Ill. 5) almost becomes a literal rendering of his exilic transcendence of the arbitrary boundary between East and West. If Chahine’s belief in the points of goodness deepens the postcolonial queries regarding the cultural divide, Ahmed’s effort in creating a forceful

Ill.5:  Salah Ad-​Din: the trials of Louise and Acre’s Governor

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile and constructive outcome of the colonial encounter surpasses the theory’s framework to dismantle the Eurocentric bias in the humanities. Ahmed’s voyage in successfully counters Neil Larsen’s view of the phenomenon as ‘a “reverse” colonisation’ of the imperial centre by the periphery, since the inclusion of her voice in the intellectual sphere of the West is never merely ‘tolerated’ (Larsen 2000: 50). In fact, Ahmed’s writing is valued for its methodical expansion of Western liberalising discourses and its opening up of their boundaries, as Therese Saliba (2000) identifies. Ahmed (1992) argues that Western feminism begins with a call for a rethinking of the cultural system so that a constructive way out of its androcentric and misogynist practices can be arrived at. Methodically, therefore, the Western feminist discourse relies upon a critical involvement with the existing culture, not its total rejection. In this connection, Ahmed points out one of the fatal flaws in the discourse that implies its failure to apply this reconstructive strategy to the condition of women in other, especially Islamic, cultures. The oppression of women in native cultures becomes innate and irremediable for the discourse that suggests the adoption of Western ways as the means to end their unacceptable situation.1 Apart from noting the absurdity of the viewpoint, Ahmed details how this plays into the hands of the colonials by exacerbating the division between East and West. Far from maintaining the divide, or, as Larsen suggests above, inverting the mode of domination, Ahmed’s analysis is directed against the idea of subordination. For this, she first places the use of Western feminist rhetoric for territorial expansion and the native zeal for Islamisation as a resistance to that on the same plane as misogyny, and then shifts her feminist focus towards finding a shared voice against the subjugation of women both in the supposed centre and at the periphery. Ahmed (1992) finds it ironic that the British colonial authority used feminist language to present its territorial ambition as a modernising mission in the East. For this purpose, the British rulers showcased the norms, values and practices of the centre as a civilisational model. In particular, they portrayed Victorian customs as ideal for colonised women, even though the tradition and values marking the inferiority of Victorian women came increasingly under attack by the nascent Western feminist 204

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism discourse. Against this backdrop, Ahmed records that the issue of the veil became particularly pertinent, as it was seen as a symbol of Islam’s oppression of women and their general degradation in Arab societies. Ahmed’s crucial case study in this regard included Lord Cromer, the head of the British protectorate in Egypt from 1883 to 1907, who elaborated for her the limits of Western feminist discourse, since it became easily incorporated into his supremacist and male-​chauvinist views. Cromer linked his idea of the inferiority of the Egyptian society to Islam’s lack of fairness, especially its abhorrent system of veiling and seclusion for women. He wanted them to abandon these practices, adopt Western ways and attain ‘the mental and moral development which he desired for them’ (see Ahmed 1992: 153). But the fact that he desired these for neither the women of the East nor the West is clear from his being a guardian of the male-​chauvinist Victorian establishment that disenfranchised women. Katharine Viner (2002) acknowledges Ahmed’s insight in making us realise that Cromer’s deployment of the feminist narrative in the justification of colonialism does not represent his progressiveness; rather it comes from his zeal to replace Eastern male chauvinism with Western. This replacement of misogyny becomes even more evident when Ahmed discusses the native reception of the colonial idea. There a straightforward emulator of the West, Qassim Amin, emerged, whose treatise on how the liberation of women initiated feminism in the Arab world caused a stir. Amin sounded like Cromer’s protégé by arguing in favour of abolishing the veil and the segregation system in his society to assist its successful transformation to modernity. Naturally, his recodification of native inferiority created anti-​colonial resistance in the form of the reassertion of the veil and related customs. Thus, Ahmed (1992: 162) notes the irony that the predominant mode of the Arabic resistance became the embracing of ‘the terms set in the first place by the colonial discourse’. Ahmed illustrates that Taląt Harb’s nationalist response to Amin is nothing but a call to strengthen Islamic patriarchy in the name of tradition, duty and values. She therefore rejects both the colonialist and the nativist stances in a recognisably Saidian manner. She argues: ‘Their prescriptions for women differed literally in the manner of garb; Harb’s women must veil and Amin’s unveil… For neither side was male dominance ever in question’ 205

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile (ibid.: 163). Thus Ahmed’s writing reveals what really is veiled in the vehement East versus West debate: the issue of women’s emancipation. This is why Ahmed’s voyage in speaks to the audiences of East and West in order to help them to work through their cultural differences, rather than being alienated by them. She introduces Mai Ziyada, an early twentieth-​century Arab feminist, whose admiration for Malak Hifni Nassef, another pioneer in the field, brought out how the latter transformed her personal pain of betrayal by her elite husband and an uncaring society into a moral mission of removing corruption and unjust sufferings from its midst through the spread of education and awareness. As a Christian Palestinian living in Egypt, Ziyada was also no stranger to pain. Still, she wished Nassef more such moral pangs, because as an exile she was quick to grasp that pain is what distanced a visionary like Nassef from the prevalent norms. Their mutual recognition, support and mentorship are what Ahmed stresses, for the non-​conformist stance transcends the boundary of nation. Ahmed rephrases Virginia Woolf, who gives voice to this by ‘saying that while England was the country of Englishmen, Englishwomen had no country’ (ibid.: 187). The writer records that their refusal to be loyal to home culture without critiquing its androcentric ways sometimes may even cost them their lives. That is why Ziyada, like Woolf, and ‘a remarkable number of intellectual women of the Anglo-​American world, died “insane”’ (ibid.). Through their different forms, focuses and styles of creations, Chahine and Ahmed thus negate the ideas of warring essences, trappings of belonging, and nationalistic confinements. As Said (1993: 258) rightly believes, ‘these writers think of themselves as emissaries to Western culture representing a political freedom and accomplishment as yet unfulfilled, blocked, postponed’. Therefore, their task is to remain ‘alert to imbalances and injustices wherever these may be found in East and West, North and South’, which is where Ato Quayson (2000: 11) discerns the futurity of postcolonialism lies. Thus, as Said’s voyage in artists, Chahine and Ahmed show how the field can move beyond ‘specific “postcolonial” constituencies’ (ibid.) and redirect its focus towards correcting the imbalances of power from a worldwide perspective. Thus, the directional aspect of the exilic vocation is visible through the intellectuals’ expansive and humanistic view of 206

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism cultures, which facilitates their transcendence of the prevalent boundary of postcolonial criticism.

Postmodernism and the exilic stance on established narratives Recognising the discursive shift that Said’s radical stance creates, Gyan Prakash (1995) writes that it coheres with the larger change ushered in by postmodernism for taking the critique of dichotomies and essentialisms further. Thus, the exilic ethos of viewing established ideologies, narratives and systems with questioning eyes echoes the decentring of narratives that postmodernism espouses. Hutcheon (2002: 23) reconfirms that diverse postmodern theories converge on ‘a view of discourse as problematic and of ordering systems as suspect (and as humanly constructed)’. Paul Sheehan (2004) specifies that by challenging the Cartesian doubt that vouched for a firm foundation of knowledge, and questioning Georg W. F. Hegel, whose dialectical model was purposively driven, postmodernism became a philosophy that was anti-​foundational in style. Naturally, its dispute with Western philosophical discourses determining the criteria for ultimate truth was heavily dependent on the Nietzschean critique of the doctrines of rationality, objectivity and egalitarianism. The rereading of the logocentrism of continental philosophy that Jacques Derrida (1988) offers us advances postmodern thinking further. Derrida’s methods of deconstruction question the Western philosophical ideas of origins, centres or core meanings by illustrating that there never is a perfect and completely predictable connection between the signifier and the signified. The example he provides for this is crucial for a better comprehension of his theory and the politics embedded in it. He puts forward a name, différance, which is a neologism originating from the word ‘difference’. Unless these two words are written, one cannot differentiate between them. And so, by inventing the name, Derrida privileges writing over speech (logos). More importantly, the name becomes an effective tool of delineating the inbuilt indeterminacy of the linguistic structure. Différance is understood with its past relation to the word ‘difference’, for which it is a substitute, but it differs from that word. Besides, différance 207

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile also suggests a deferral of meaning, because the future possibility of substituting it for something new and unexpected cannot simply be done away with. Therefore, Derrida declares: If one admits that writing (and the mark in general) must be able to function in the absence of the sender, the receiver, the context of production, etc., that implies that this power, this being able, this possibility is always inscribed, hence necessarily inscribed as possibility in the functioning or the functional structure of the mark. (1988: 48; emphasis in the original)

Simply put, writing being a coded inscription implies that it will be decoded according to the mark it bears in the receiver’s mind. Thus, the way the mark functions is the way the mode of the meaning moves. Hence, the code is synonymous with an inscribed possibility. By establishing meaning as a product of an endlessly substitutable phenomenon, Derrida is able to question the assured certainty of the self. He asserts that ‘there is no subject who is agent, author, and master of difference … Subjectivity, like objectivity, is an effect of difference’ (see Royle 2003: 76). Thus, the example of différance not only shows the instability of language but also reveals Derrida’s stance on identity politics. He identifies Western philosophy’s failure to take the dissimilar and the unpredictable into account because of its illusory belief in the integrity of meaning. Deconstruction aims to transform this certainty by projecting subjectivity and identity in a non-​essentialist way. Said recognises the force of such an oppositional method that makes the non-​essentialist thinker stand at the border of ‘system-​building’ in order to safeguard his/​her intellectual freedom. He sees the Derridean method as one of ‘dedefiniton’ and ‘dethematicisation’ by rethinking ‘the mainstays of philosophical (and even popular) thought that subscribe to the idea of an authorising presence as “substance/​existence/​essence”’ (Said 1984: 203). Thus postmodernism finds a striking echo in the exilic ethos of scepticism about culture as a system that sustains essences free of subjectivity or circumstances. The exilic criterion standing against the purity or the essence of a cultural identity is called polyphonic consciousness. This is where Said’s 208

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism exilic intellectual practice also remains far removed from the postmodernist purview. Said (2005) believes that to be unable to see that the anti-​ essential, anti-​authoritarian and anti-​foundational drives of the theory ultimately stand in a dialectical relationship with the very circumstances from which they arise is to enervate its revolutionary force. Hutcheon also agrees that this results in the failure of postmodernism to formulate a successful agency. Naming the postmodernist mode of anti-​essentialism and anti-​foundationalism as ‘de-​doxification’ (the denaturalisation of the constructed reality), she admits that ‘[t]‌o ‘de-​doxify’ is not to act, even if it might be a step toward action or even a necessary precondition of it’ (Hutcheon 2002: 22). Hence she identifies two contradictory strands in postmodernism, which is ‘of complicity and critique, of reflexivity and historicity, that at once inscribes and subverts the conventions and ideologies of the dominant cultural and social forces of the twentieth-​century Western world’ (ibid.: 11–​12). This ambiguity is something that a humanist vocation like the exilic intellectual practice cannot concede to. Said suggests a criticising intellect to be the guiding factor behind the practice of humanism. Therefore, he clearly mentions at the beginning of his book in question that it was not about ‘humanism tout court… but rather humanism and critical practice, humanism as it informs what one does as an intellectual and scholar-​teacher of the humanities in today’s turbulent world’ (Said 2004:  2). Rather than calling humanism by any other name, Said’s final attempt is to make it worthy of its name. He never gives up his fight for it, whereas the postmodernists like Lyotard very easily do so. This is the major ground of Said’s departure from postmodernism that questions the foundational value of Western humanism in a Lyotardian way. Lyotard (1984: 4, 5) believes that in the technology governed late capitalist society of the West, knowledge has become another commodity that is to be ‘valorized in a new production’ and thus it ‘ceases to be an end in itself’. In fact, he views the changes of the late twentieth-​century developed world in the context of ‘the crisis of narratives’ (ibid.:  xxiii). As a disillusioned Marxist, who sees the need for revising the world historical perspectives but realises its impossibility, Lyotard questions the authority of all metanarratives because of the spread of the crisis. His further 209

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile assertion that our postmodern age is that of ‘the decline of the unifying and legitimating power of the grand narratives of speculation and emancipation’ (ibid.: 38) is based on his understanding of their waning influence in knowledge production. He argues that speculative narrative works through ‘the process of self-​exposition’ (ibid.: 35) and is incorporated into the knowledge of subjectivity. However, rather than leading towards the emancipation of the subject, Lyotard believes that speculative narrative has become a means of questioning its being in the contemporary world. On the other hand, the emancipatory narrative emphasises the subject’s practical need for governing itself but fails to become a sure means for an independent subjecthood. This is why Lyotard argues that both the narratives are failing to legitimate knowledge. Lyotard’s pronouncement that the authenticating goals of narratives no longer have any validation seems to Said (1996: 18) to be synonymous with an ‘indifference’ that prevents one from delivering ‘a correct assessment of what remains for the intellectual a truly vast array of opportunities’. Hence, he ‘sought to expand and redefine humanism: to make it more “cosmopolitan”, more accurately reflecting the contemporary world’ (El-​ Haj 2005: 548) by incorporating historical achievements of North Africa and the Middle East into the latest developments of Western humanist thought. Surely, Said’s final effort is to build a stronger base for universal humanism through his polyphonic consciousness by believing in cultural exchanges among the varied histories of parts of the globe. The endeavour helps towards enhancing our knowledge production process. In accord with Nadia Abu El-​Haj, therefore, I emphasise that far from the abandonment of the universal, Said’s exilic intellectual practice is to contain and reflect it through the smaller focuses of particular narratives. Consequently, I discuss how Chahine’s polyphonic consciousness nullifies the notion of a cultural essence in his films by redefining Arabness and critiquing the self-​complacency associated with American identity and culture. At the same time, I demonstrate that Chahine’s struggle to retain the grand narrative of emancipation upholds his belief in a more inclusive world. Thus, his polyphonic consciousness separates his art from the postmodernist circumference. Likewise, Darwish reflects his polyphonic consciousness by sustaining his belief in the meta-​narrative of speculation. 210

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism The analyses that follow, then, demonstrate the exilic intersection with as well as advantage over postmodernism. In Alexandria… New York, a dedefinition of Arabness occurs through Alexander, who is a ballet dancer and performs magnificently in a drama entitled Zorba. It is based on a novel written by Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis. It was first published during the 1940s, when his father, the Chahine-​persona called Yehia, was studying in America. Zorba is the tale of a young Mediterranean intellectual who receives help from the mysterious eponym to escape a bookish life. As Deborah Starr (2009) explains, the performance turns Alexander into not only the upholder of Western high culture but also the connecting thread between America and other ancient cultures, especially the one his father came from, namely the Mediterranean. It is doubly ironic, therefore, that the Arab-​American boy, who abhors his father’s identity by thinking it to be a mark of an uncivilised existence, maintains America’s association with classical geographies and cultures. Whether or not he realises or admits the fact, he is thus the ultimate revolt against his own essentialised notions of identity and culture. In truth, Alexander’s disparaging views of Egypt as ‘a country barely visible on the map’, and Yehia as a ‘totally unknown director’ (Chahine 2004) signal that Yehia has come to a chauvinistic land. Therefore, the impressive Lincoln Center arrangement for projecting his films baffles Alexander. Only his mother does not lose perspective. Ginger reminds her conceited son that ‘[t]‌he world does not stop at the Atlantic’ (ibid.). However, Alexander talks his father down, because he does not want to restrain his pride sanctioned by the supremacist nation. He thinks that his father is simply stating the truth of his country’s prominence in the world and feels no need to unlearn his assumptions, when Yehia warns:  ‘The violence begins in Hiroshima and ends here with you’ (ibid.). The grave truth about the circular movement of conceit and destruction escapes Alexander. As he turns the words down as ‘good old fashioned ideas’, Yehia declares: ‘It is no longer up to you to reject me. It is I who refuse to have a son like you’ (ibid.). Alexander’s self-​congratulatory America is what his father denounces by rejecting his only child, who symbolises his dearest dream in the movie. 211

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile It should be stressed here that the movie represents today’s America through the synecdoche of New York. Obviously, Chahine’s New York is not the city as it stands today. Yehia explains to his son: The difference between you and your mother is the difference between Hollywood films of the 1940s and those of today, the difference between the elegance of Fred Astaire and the brutality of Stallone, the difference between the large white staircase on which descends a star sublime to the sound of a celestial music that gives you a vision of Paradise, and the ferocious violence of action movies where the American superman always wins. (Ibid.)

Even if one is not fascinated by 1940’s dance films to the extent that Chahine was, one can easily comprehend why Astaire’s musicals are divine compared to Sylvester Stallone’s machismo-​centred action films. In other words, if 1940’s America was concentrating on aesthetic values, today’s America is dominated by commercialism. Chahine further relates the Superman culture to the circularity of violence and conceit. Throughout the film, therefore, he looks for the influences of the 1940s in today’s New York, until the conversation with his son hits home that the classical inspiration does not work any more. This explains the strong sense of disillusionment underlying all of Yehia’s attempts to reconcile the past New  York with the present one. Chahine wants us to experience the past version through his flashbacks and allusions, as he cannot film the time. Thus, his New York is similar to the Derridean différance, which represents the gap between the current city and that of the 1940s, the aesthetic quality of which seems to have been deferred. The theorist and the filmmaker delineate in their own ways how différance is at work behind names and identities. Certainly, Chahine destabilises essences regarding Arab and American identities through asserting their differentiated and deferred (through commercialisation and/​or lost) versions. Since the meaning of New York Yehia wishes to assert is deferred in today’s context, the movie ends with the current form of the city, which is averse to affection. Tearing from his heart his sincere admiration for the city, therefore, Yehia becomes lost in the New York of giant corporations 212

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism and nameless crowds. ‘New  York, why are you fighting the tenderness’ (ibid.), asks the refrain of a song heard in the background. The song suggests that the world itself has become a jungle these days; the sublimity of a human soul is not recognised to be a bird’s song; it is seen as a sign of weakness, as high culture is written over by the high rises all around. In this context, I  agree with Catherine Constable (2004:  59)  that ‘[i]‌ntertextuality can be seen as the key means of sustaining differential readings of postmodern film texts because the cues will be constructed according to the specific references known to individual viewers’. Whereas intertextualiy does not belong solely to postmodernism, it can take the form of pastiche or a discernible imitation of previous arts, which makes Constable’s claim evident. Since Chahine imitates both Egyptian and American film traditions, the possibility of the ‘differential readings’ she refers to is even stronger. The technique thus blurs the boundaries between the supposedly clashing cultures and destabilises any fixed patterns of cultural meanings. The anti-​essentialism is particularly compelling when Chahine visualises the moment young Yehia’s eyes meet youthful Ginger’s for the first time. He recreates the moment as it takes place in Yehia’s imagination. Instead of seeing Ginger as a fellow student, he views her as an embodiment of her namesake, Ginger Rogers, the dance diva and Hollywood movie star of the 1930s. Therefore, we see that the diva is descending the library staircase of Pasadena being accompanied by a rapturous Egyptian film song. The music ends, along with the vision, when Yehia embarks on their first dance together. Chahine recreates the encounter in the fashion of the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire performance referred to earlier in the conversation between Yehia and Alexander. As Yehia mentioned that the performance brought sublime stars and celestial sounds down on earth through the duo’s union on stage, he alluded to their greatest film Swing Time (1936), and especially their dance sequences to the tune ‘Never Gonna Dance’. The sequences were extremely difficult to synchronise –​ the duo had to arrive at the same time on the landing of two staircases, one on each side of the set, by dancing their way up from below. However, the famous 55 takes to perfect the moment of ascent were worth it, as it allowed viewers like Chahine to have a vision of Paradise. 213

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Ill.6:  Alexandria… New York: imaginary rendering of Yehia’s first view of Ginger

Naturally, the auteur tries to rekindle the memory of the moment through the Yehia–​Ginger union in his movie. However, his pastiche is no flat imitation. The moment Yehia sees Ginger, his mind goes back to a past experience when he was watching the beautiful Layla Murad, a muchadmired Egyptian actress-​singer, in the renowned movie My Heart is My Guide (1947). As Ginger descends the staircase, she brings to mind both the divas, especially as her union with Yehia is accompanied by the title song of the Egyptian movie, which goes: ‘My heart is my guide, it told me: you will fall in love’ (Chahine 2004). The celestial environment Chahine talks about above is also built up through evoking Murad’s resplendent performance with the operatic tune: ‘Oh my heart, my heart is my guide’ (ibid.). The rich borrowings from the two cultures thus intensify the short sequence and make the song’s assertion of the power of intuitive feeling momentous, as it speaks of the existence of the being, rather than its essence. Such a creative use of pastiche is also seen in the brilliant last scene of the movie. Having failed to make his son realise that the human heart is not to be dominated by the notion of essences, Yehia starts to wander the streets of midtown Manhattan. As the screen portrays all the landmarks of the city he once loved –​the Chrysler Building, St Patrick’s Cathedral and 214

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism Times Square –​the New York song relating the death of Yehia’s nostalgia about the city goes on. Chahine’s wandering echoes the 1977 American musical-​drama by Martin Scorsese, New York, New York. In Liza Minnelli’s singing, the theme song of the musical became full of hope, aspiration and eagerness about being part of the city. The city in her song symbolised the American dream; it suggested that if one could make it in New York, it would change one’s life in a positive way. However, Chahine’s version of the song alludes to 1940s New York through reworking the Minnelli rendering; it does not pay homage to the city. Rather, it depicts how the city does not speak of love, hope and new beginnings any more. American exceptionalism represented by Alexander has killed all these ideals for the Egyptian auteur. Chahine’s creative utilisation of pastiche is why I disagree with Fredric Jameson, who believes that it bears the mark of the postmodern artist’s lack of invention and talent. Jameson thinks that postmodern artists go on recreating styles, techniques and even themes of previous arts because they have reached the cul-​de-​sac of imagination. Hence, he states that they are bound ‘to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum’ (see Constable 2004: 48). However, I have illustrated through Chahine’s bricolage that it deepens the ambiguities and uncertainties related to identities. I reiterate through Starr (2009: 78) that the auteur’s ‘richness of unexpected juxtapositions, self-​ referentiality, playful blurring of boundaries’ give a distinctive character to his artistry, which seems bent on destabilising all ‘rigid notions of identity and place in his work’. Therefore, as Chahine searches for his lost New York through extensive allusions to its colour, form and appeal, we realise anew that he is another Saidian exile for whom the multiplicity of vision is pivotal. His polyphonic consciousness proves that the anti-​essentialist view of home and identity is a shared space between the discourses of postmodernism and the exilic intellectual practice. Because he treasures the tradition of emancipatory philosophy as an Alexandrian, Chahine cannot eschew the metanarrative of either human freedom or dignity in his oeuvre. Even when he sees a clear failure of the principles in his son in Alexandria… New York, he does not fall short of reminding him that what remains of great civilisations is their legacy, 215

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile made up of their art, craft and knowledge, their ‘philosophers, thinkers, poets, and artists –​ not the soldiers, armies and death’ (Chahine 2004). This is why the movie begins with his depiction of how his admiration for America is jeopardised by its support for Israeli aggression on Palestinians. That Chahine was fighting for the grand narrative of universal humanism is also evident from another episode. In this flashback, he meets his Jewish friend in New York to arrange for a viewing of his People and the Nile, the tenth movie he reluctantly takes there with the hope of obtaining a screening. But his friend explains that nothing that praises Nasser has any prospect of being shown in the city, since the Jews in the business dislike both the leader and the people he represents. Chahine suggests that this intolerance is due to their Zionist exclusivism. His friend confirms that he is not a Zionist like the rest, but if he is asked to choose between Nasser and Israel, he will choose the latter. Chahine is quick to explain that the motion picture is not about Nasser; it portrays the struggle for freedom of opinion on the shore of a living river. This is another way of the Alexandrian cosmopolitan’s distancing himself from Nasser’s antagonism to the West. In any case, Starr (2009:  86–​7) explains a rooted ambivalence in Chahine’s representation of cosmopolitanism: This identification of Jews as cosmopolitan, although intended in Chahine’s oeuvre as an expression of a desirable trait in a society, raises the uncomfortable history of the relationship between the terms. In anti-​ Semitic discourse through the nineteenth century and in Stalinist Soviet rhetoric, cosmopolitan was a code word […] for the Jew, where rootlessness was a condemnation and a proof of non belonging. Such negative implications of the term cosmopolitanism, according to critic Timothy Brennan, are not local and idiosyncratic, but rather central to the development of the word’s meaning and remain embedded in contemporary usages of the term.

Brennan’s questioning of cosmopolitanism is insightful, since it reveals that anti-​Semitism is built into the term. However, the auteur’s pride in Alexandrian history unmistakably encourages him to advance its meaning in light of the multicultural heritage of his native city, rather than being handicapped by its attachment to the anti-​Semitic discourse. As 216

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism Alexander’s Jewish tutor Paddy puts it, the heritage of the Egyptian city is built by intellectuals like ‘Cavafy, Durrell, and Curiel’ (Chahine 2004). Even though Henri Curiel, the anti-​colonial activist, is not directly related to the city like the poet and the novelist, his support for national liberation struggles in Africa and Latin America echoes their solidarity with the ‘other’ and their belief in human dignity. The tolerance to and interest in the ‘other’ are the Alexandrian teachings for Chahine. Thus, Chahine’s manifestation of the Jewish connection with cosmopolitanism is a forceful reinscription of his belief in the coexistence of cultures on the basis of human dignity. In fact, in Chahine the negativity attached to the concept due to its association with the Jewish history of unsettledness turns into a positive force of remaining free. In this way, the auteur renders Jewishness ‘a desirable trait in a society’, because it makes belonging more humane, rather than instantaneous. One way or another, Chahine strives to retain the grand narrative of emancipation invalidated by Lyotard in the interest of making the world more humanistic. Likewise, Darwish upholds the metanarrative of speculation, despite its being deemed nonexistent by the philosopher. Mustapha Marrouchi (2011:  32–​3) elaborates on Darwish’s achievements through his polyphonic consciousness: Where more fashionable modern lyricists might give us clusters of polysyllabic abstractions (fastidiousness, disinclination, proclivity), Darwish offers concrete chunks of life; vivid portraits and miniatures of birth, death, and the in-​between. This… can be located in the many lives he lived before he died. A ‘homo multiplex’: as Palestinian, as exile, and as poet, as lover, resistance fighter, and citizen of the world.

In what follows, I analyse how the ‘present-​absentee’ and the ‘homo multiplex’ illustrate his unflinching attachment to life, his constant trials to give it some meaning and his rigorous self-​interrogation, all of which deepen his humanist conviction. Darwish describes his birth in the land as an arbitrary phenomenon. Through the image of a traveller whose incidental halt in a Canaanite’s garden to pick a red rose, he suggests how he became enthralled by the 217

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile land forever. The red rose, the garden and the Canaanite’s horse being seduced tell a tale of birth beyond the rider’s control. Like life, death also comes alive through moving images. Darwish defines death as the end of the dream of creating a dream that is a new poem. Thus, death is when he writes the last line of his verse on the marble of his grave that in ‘And I, Even if I Were the Last’: ‘I slept… so that I can fly’ (Darwish 2007: 185). As in life, so in death, his dream of attaining freedom remains foremost. As we can see below, he lists the memories of his living in the rhythmic run-​on lines enhanced by the forward slashes in ‘Don’t Apologize for What You’ve Done’: The noon boredom in a cat’s drowsiness/​ The rooster’s crest/​ The sage fragrance/​ Mother’s coffee/​ The straw mat and the pillows/​ Your room’s metal door/​ The fly around Socrates/​ The cloud above Plato/​ The Hamassa Diwan/​ (Ibid.: 189) The enjambment compels us to pay attention to the verse form, which is an amalgamation of dissimilar experiences. Drowsiness contrasts the call of dawn; spice fragrance compliments coffee aroma; straw pillows stay opposed to door metal. The poetic self-​exposition reveals an unresolved subject. Despite this, Abu Tammam’s collection of verses surrounding the theme of valour, Hamassa Diwan, not only indicates Darwish’s everyday plunge into classical Arabic poetry but also makes the heroic poetry an inevitable inspiration for him to carry on with life. Therefore, his rest, languor, homely sights, known fragrance, life-​giving taste and life-​sustaining thoughts are duly listed to make a montage of his living. This explains why Darwish remains a musician of life through his steadfast belief in both his own humanness and that of his ‘other’. Arguably, the ‘citizen of the world’ searches for meaning neither through producing abstractions nor by asserting a mythologising voice. Rather than putting forward an idea of the unknowability of the world in 218

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism these ways, which are the postmodern styles of literature, Darwish utilises the narrative of self-​exposition, as he interrogates his name. Mahmoud (‘the praised’) thus embarks on a search of meaning in his verses which, unlike the postmodern patchwork that Chahine created in Alexandria… New  York, becomes an ‘ontological lassoo (sic)’ (Connor 2004:  66). However, far from being applauded as his name suggests, his Arab identity becomes a challenge to his being. In ‘As for Me, I Say to My Name’, he then creates a dialogue with his Arab name and asks to be relieved of its burdens: As for me, I say to my name: Let me be and get away from me, I’ve been fed up since I spoke and since your adjectives grew! Take your adjectives and test another… (Darwish 2007: 239; ellipsis in the original) The poet is exasperated at the constant vilification and nullification of his name with the increase of the ‘adjectives’ attached to it. Even though his identity is thus predetermined, this is not reason enough for him to spurn the metanarrative of human freedom. Instead, his belief in the principle makes him assert anew that he did not choose his ‘saluki loyal shadow’ (ibid.) to follow him around. That identity politics tires him is evident from this muffled cry that the unchosen shadow of his name follows him like a saluki hound aboriginally tied to the Middle Eastern deserts. In the quagmire of the politics, the metanarrative of Enlightenment becomes his incessant guide in creating a poetry that tries to return to him, ‘what’s been lost of [his] freedom!’ (ibid.). The poet declares that neither his Arab name nor the Palestinian shadow can propel his words; they are the products of his mind. In one of his memoirs, written as a prose-​poem, called Absent Presence, he writes: ‘They call you a dreamer because of the many wings that you construct from words, and which your elders cannot see; how you provoke the obscure, and live far away’ (Darwish 2010: 19). By reclaiming the freedom from under the deluge of ‘adjectives’ marking his socio-​political identity, he projects his unbending belief in human dignity. Evidently, his unwavering focus from his childhood was to preserve his human identity through the sharpening of his intellect and imagination. 219

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile Darwish’s self-​exposition through delineating the Caananite, Arab and Middle Eastern dimensions of his identity and his socio-​political reality as a Palestinian marks his polyphonic consciousness. Likewise, the Alexandrian cosmopolite Chahine projects his polyphonic mind through his courageous respect for the ‘other’. We have seen how the exilic ethos translates into their indomitable belief in human dignity and freedom, which successfully invalidates the postmodern disregard for the ideals. Despite sharing the anti-​foundational zeal of postmodernism, then, exilic intellectual practice is never postmodernist to the full.

Contrapuntal rather than postcolonial or postmodern criticism I believe that contrapuntal consciousness is the core quality of the exilic intellectual practice, since Said is against selective focus, a single strand of thought, and mono-​identity. Connecting dissimilar backgrounds or bringing opposites together is Said’s way of transcending the inevitable tensions and pressures kept in place by the politics of separation. Put differently, Said’s exilic intellectual is committed to universal humanism in such a way that s/​he shows the necessary strength of mind in engaging with different voices and identities without creating friction. This suggests Said’s combination of hermeneutics with ethics in order to transform the exile’s existence ‘between domains, between forms, between homes, and between languages’ (Said 1993: 332) into a positive force that defeats the strain of moving across ideological and geographical borders. Following May Telmissany and Stephanie Schwartz (2010), therefore, I  argue that the contrapuntal consciousness challenges the trite interpretations of lived experiences by highlighting not only the human commonality of different and antagonistic cultures but also their historical overlaps. Perceivably, contrapuntal consciousness strengthens the exilic intellectual’s political choice of interpreting colonial domination and its opposition as a paired process. Said (1993: 259) insists on bringing the colonial and the postcolonial histories together for the following reason: ‘If, for example, French and Algerian or Vietnamese history, Caribbean or African or Indian and British history are studied separately rather than together, then 220

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism the experiences of domination and being dominated remain artificially, and falsely, separated.’ As a method, then, contrapuntal consciousness maintains the parallel flows of East and West, rather than finding means to connect or disconnect them forcefully. Said argues that the approach has ‘an imaginative, even utopian vision which reconceives emancipatory (as opposed to confining) theory and performance’ (ibid.: 279). The beauty of imagining a utopian future, the creative force behind reconceiving a journey forward and the very fact of applying a musical concept for transcending a powerful conflict with hope are all embedded in the method that moves beyond the confines of postcolonial theory and its performance against injustice. Robert Young offers us a significant investigation of the intriguing remoteness from postcolonial criticism Said brought into focus, though not single-​handedly, of course. Understandably, Said’s primary reservations about the field developed from his concern over the separatism he thought it was going to generate. Young (2012a: 28) maintains that ‘Said desired to see the whole rather than the part, to see connectedness and affiliations rather than fragments’. However, the specialism of postcolonial studies nullifies Said’s concern over the ‘ghettoization and marginalization’ (ibid.) of non-Western cultures by creating significant and wide-​scale impacts on the mainstream of Western literary and humanistic studies. Despite this, Palestine challenges what Young calls the ‘postcolonial triumphalism’ (ibid.: 34) over subjugated nations’ achievement of independence and statehood, which simply do not apply to the supposedly nonexistent country. As a result, the gaps between representation and reality, theorisation and facts on the ground and questions of parts and the whole encourage Said’s ‘émigré consciousness’ (ibid.) to look for a way of transcending the triumphalism. Young puts this search into perspective: ‘It is this, above all, that Said’s writing gives us in all its pathos and power: a poignant, piercing sense of the discontinuity between us here [in the West], and the actuality there [in the East]’ (ibid.). Inevitably, the exilic ethics re-​establishes the bond between the singular and the universal. Patrick Williams rightly suggests that postcolonial studies should do more to enliven the conjunction, by explaining how Jean-​Paul Sartre can be invaluable in this regard. Sartre argued that the 221

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile colonised cannot emulate the coloniser after the revolution is complete, for the overthrow took place on the grounds of dehumanisation by a capitalist, exploitative and racist system. For this reason, the colonised must reject the model of domination along with its practitioners. Otherwise, they are bound to repeat the domination in an awkward form, since their own race will now be the target of the system. In Sartrean terms, realising this will be the ‘first step in the long process of the creation of the wholeness of the human’, rewrites Williams (2011: 210), by citing Sartre that ‘[t]‌here will be no integral humanity until every man is a whole man for all other men’. This approach gives theory an ethical form by displaying how moral concerns have to be universally applicable to humanity. If postcolonialism is an ‘an anticipatory discourse for an as-​yet unrealized condition’, it has to continuously address the Enlightenment narrative in order to arrive at a time when ‘the making of an integral humanity’ (ibid.: 211) is indeed possible. This is where Said transcends some of the limitations of postmodernism as well. The goal of postmodernism being the de-​essentialisation of identity, the theory centres on disrupting unities and certainties. Through its lack of connectivity to the world, however, it changes its strength into its grounds of failure. Daryl Chin (1989: 165) clarifies that the theory’s ‘recognition of difference’ results in a ‘complete indifference’ to universal concerns, since its motto becomes: ‘if [the Eurocentric ego] can no longer claim dominance and superiority, if equity must be awarded, if the Eurocentric ego can no longer presume on self-​importance, then nothing is important.’ Postmodernism thus reverts to Eurocentrism through its disbelief in the narrative of universally applicable values. Robert Eaglestone (2004: 189) identifies Said’s contribution as integral in advancing postmodern ethics, because his discussion of the Western Orientalist discourse reveals how its Middle Eastern ‘others’ are ‘an inverted projection of the same’. However, despite Eaglestone’s insistence on proving postmodernism to be ethical because of its willingness to mark discursive exclusions, he concludes by showing the theory’s ultimate inability to be receptive to differences. In its ever-​questioning outlook, the theory fails to lay down the moral terms on which it wants to engage with the ‘other’ for the fear of being unfair to any aspects it excludes. Without codifying its principles, 222

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism therefore, the theory becomes a frustratingly free-​floating means of interrupting the established system. The non-​efficacy of postmodernism in stopping otherisation is brought into focus by Hutcheon (2002), as well. She cites Seyla Benhabib to assert that postmodernism ‘in its infinitely sceptical and subversive attitude toward normative claims, institutional justice and political struggles, is certainly refreshing. Yet it is also debilitating’ (see ibid.: 174). The debilitation of the theory’s subversive force occurs due to the fact that it is one thing to acknowledge the presence of the ‘other’ but quite another to come to accept him/​her as completely human. The latter needs much more effort than the former. Therefore, Hutcheon concludes that the ethics of postmodernism seriously suffers from the field’s limited vision; for ‘[i]‌t is simply not enough to focus on excentricity (sic), marginality and difference as part of a demystifying process; or at least one should not stop there’ (ibid.). As opposed to being ‘as exclusive and censorious as the orthodoxies [postmodernism] opposes’ (Eagleton 1996: 27), Said’s exilic vocation is wholly involved in enriching the mainstream culture by intertwining it with the marginal. Since the contrapuntal consciousness is involved in invigorating Saidian exiles’ cultural exchange with the ‘other’, the intellectual practice becomes fundamentally different from the postmodern theory. This is further illustrated through Said’s elaboration of the ‘contrapuntal perspective’ as something that requires us to consider the ‘coronation rituals in England and the Indian durbars of the late nineteenth century’ (Said 1993: 32) together. In other words, the exile is able to think out their external discrepancies in order to link up the bases of their aims of constructions and their ritualistic functions. Thus the dissimilar aesthetic experiences offered by the two are subjected to their histories and social settings in order to portray their internal relationship with each other. Therefore the political goal of the contrapuntal method is ‘to make concurrent those views and experiences that are ideologically and culturally closed to each other’ (ibid.: 33). Ultimately, it is not the separation of cultures but their commonality that the exile spotlights through the contrapuntal standpoint. To elaborate the point, I turn to Herbert Kelman (1999: 588), who discusses the Israeli-​Palestinian conflict by showing that ‘[t]‌he exclusiveness 223

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile of each group’s national identity is embedded in a pattern of negative interdependence of the two identities’ (emphasis in the original). Stated differently, ‘each side perceives the other as a source of its own negative identity elements’ (ibid; emphasis in the original). As long as the other’s identity is seen as a threat to one’s own identity, there is no space to develop a transcendental mode of being. Therefore Kelman talks about turning the negative interdependence into a positive one by making possible the accommodation of the ‘other’ on each side. But he never stresses that the asymmetrical nature of the negativity hinders this. The acknowledgement of the Palestinians’ greater wound is what is missing in Kelman’s balancing act. However, Barbara Harlow (2012) is unambiguous that we have to take into account Israel’s unrelenting violation of human rights with regards to the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians in order to comprehend the asymmetry. This gives us a context for Darwish’s contrapuntal projection of the opposing claims about his historic (home)land. Due to his humanist ethics, his is no balancing act like Kelman’s in revealing the interdependence of the two national entities. In a poem written after the Arab defeat in the 1967 war entitled ‘A Soldier Dreams of White Tulips’, Darwish incorporates the ‘other’ into his quest of life. The Israeli soldier being a friend, he had a better opportunity to carry out the contrapuntal dialogue with him. This was facilitated by the fact that Shlomo Sand was able to question the stories and the speeches that inspired him to assert his right to the land through his gun. Expectedly, however, ‘the intimate personal touch that animates the narrative of the soldier… did not sit well with many Arab critics who saw in it an act of betrayal, or at least dalliance with the enemy’, records Muhammad Siddiq (2010: 496). Though Siddiq does not stress that neither allegation is applicable to Darwish’s stance on the Israeli ‘other’, his article reveals an important aspect of the poet’s contrapuntalism. He mentions Sand’s monograph, entitled The Invention of the Jewish People, questioning the constructed nature of his claim on the land, which ‘would be published in 2008, just as Darwish’s body was being returned, in a coffin, from a Texas hospital for burial in Ramallah’ (ibid.). Siddiq views this startling parallel as an ‘uncanny coincidence’ (ibid.), but I think this could 224

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism be interpreted as a fitting legacy for the exilic poet, whose border crossing through his friendship with the ‘other’ without compromising his cause initiated the process of breaking down the ‘invented’ ideological divisions between them. One of the aspects of Darwish’s intertwining his identity with his friend-​‘other’ is that he compares the soldier’s own insecurity before going to war with his acts of cruelty during the war. It is as if the soldier is human up until he joins the battlefield; the frontline changes him into something else so that there appears an invisible wall between his human feelings and his actions. Here is how Darwish (2003: 166) depicts the moment of his departure. It is the mother who humanises the soldier, for she ‘silently wept when they led him to the front’, and ‘her anguished voice gave birth to a new hope in his flesh’ that the warmongers in his country would see a flock of doves flying above them someday. Obviously, the expectation was not met. Therefore, rather than doves, the battlefield presented him with ‘a blood-​red boxthorn’ (ibid; emphasis in the original), his blasting of which in the sand becomes the poet’s metaphor for his killing and destruction in the battlefield. Darwish draws the difference between his enemy-​friend and the soldier in him through a pointed dialogue: –​How many did you kill? –​It’s impossible to tell. I only got one medal. (Ibid.; emphasis in the original) The black humour is affecting here, because the satire firmly establishes the purpose of the poet’s contrapuntal presentation of the two contradicting identities of his Israeli friend. Darwish’s ethics thus make fun of the Israeli power that reduces the humanity of its people and loses its credibility in this way. This is how the poet shows his rejection of the coloniser’s model of domination. Therefore I  believe that his contrapuntal presentation of the conflicting strands in the Israeli soldier forms a more powerful opposition to Israeli oppression than his Arab detractors could have imagined. This indicates how the contrapuntal approach can redirect the postcolonial concerns towards addressing a more in-​depth picture of dehumanisation resulting from the colonial process. 225

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile More significantly, Darwish displays his ‘integral humanity’ through upholding the philosophy of ‘every man being a whole man for all other men’ by dint of his contrapuntal consciousness. This is evident when he universalises his demand for justice through presenting the soldier’s killing of Palestinians in the battlefield as a counterpoint to the ‘other’s’ rationale of possessing the homeland. The way Darwish records the soldier’s confession of one particular killing of a Palestinian man shows how the latter deplores the homicide. The distressed poet asks for the detail of the incident from the soldier, who proceeds: He collapsed like a tent on stones, embracing shattered planets. His high forehead was crowned with blood. His chest was empty of medals. He was not a well-​trained fighter, but seemed instead to be a peasant, a worker, or a peddler. Like a tent he collapsed and died, his arms stretched out like dry creek-​beds. When I searched his pockets for a name, I found two photographs, one of his wife, the other of his daughter. (Ibid., 166–​7; emphasis in the original) The dialogic account of the war from the soldier makes the Palestinian claim for a normal life a counterpoint to the Israeli massacre. The novice Palestinian fighter, who is apparently dying for defending the rights of his family to exist, earns no crown other than his blood during his collapse ‘like a tent’ on the tattered soil of the Holy Land. Darwish makes it absolutely clear why the Palestinian man’s ‘arms stretched out like dry creek-​beds’ is a universal concern due to the ecological harm effected by the crisis. As a result, he pleads for a break from the dream of homeland. Instead, he speaks of tulips as a sign of a new beginning, and the olive branch, which is the symbol of peace. Thus, Darwish exemplifies a common postcolonial pursuit against land annexation (Young 2003). However, my contention is that by incorporating the ‘other’s’ point of view in the pursuit, his contrapuntalism deals quite 226

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism atypically with expulsion and landlessness. Since the poet crosses the psychological barrier between the Palestinians and the Israelis by showing that the soldier loves life, although he is duty-​bound to destroy it, he forges a human connection with his enemy in wishing for ‘a bright day, not a mad, fascist moment of triumph’ (Darwish 2003: 168; emphasis in the original). On this basis, he works out a framework of dialogue from within opposing positions. The contrapuntal consciousness thus marks the exilic ability to redirect postcolonial investigation of the subjugation of one people by another towards a profound representation of the cultural, historical and humanistic complexities involved in the process. Simultaneously, it upholds the ethics of hope by working through the complexities. If Darwish’s contrapuntal consciousness addresses his coloniser to deepen his universal humanism, Ahmed employs hers to speak to her postcolonial region with a similar aim. She looks into how the Islamist resurgence in the Middle East claims to be a return to the authentic ways of the religion as a response to the Western domination. However, Ahmed’s contrapuntal insight projects the self-​contradiction inherent in this stance through comparing the Islamists’ claim of cultural purity with the ground-​ level reality. Ahmed (1992: 237) tersely comments that ‘[r]‌ejection of things Western and rage at the Western world –​an attitude that noticeably does not include the refusal of military equipment or technology –​ is understandable’. Indeed, the rejection of the West in the name of resisting its economic control of the region, coupled with the political and technological subservience to it, only exacerbate the current picture of domination. Therefore, Ahmed successfully illustrates that the Arab world’s politics of rage counteracts the region’s deeper dependence on the Western world without discontinuing the vicious circle of its subdued condition. It is no small irony, then, that the region revives Islam to contend with the West by following the values given prominence by the latter. The writer parallels the Islamists’ supposed goals of self-​ determination, cultural autonomy, political freedom and the ideals of individual human rights with that of the principles enshrined in the Western Enlightenment discourse in order to assert that their ideas of a revival are intertwined with the components of the narrative. Paradoxically, their re-​imagined Islam takes shape due to its contact with the Western notions of freedom. By 227

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile locating the ironic nestedness of the fundamentalist Islamist discourse within the discourse of the West, Ahmed asserts that ‘today, willy-​nilly, as the Indian psychologist and critic Ashis Nandy has remarked, the West is everywhere, in “structures and in minds”’ (ibid.: 236). This is by no means to give prominence to Western domination, for she hopes for a Middle East where educated youth can be ‘committed to democratic pluralism, to respect for the individuals, and to freedom of expression and ideas’ while remaining ‘attentive to the ethical, humane voice of Islam’ (ibid.: 229). She thus stresses that their exploration of the humanistic heritage of Islam in parallel with modern Western thought may lead to the creation of a worthwhile social system. Ultimately, her exilic mind asserts that humanistic ideas and cross-​cultural borrowings enable men and women to pursue their aspirations, develop their faculties and contribute to their societies. Instead of serving the interest of the West or the Rest, then, Saidian exile aims for a productive dialogue between them. S/​he acknowledges the window the ‘other’ culture opens up for him/​her in critiquing and enhancing the view of the familiar culture. Thus his/​her contrapuntal consciousness gives postcolonial theory a more ethical form by displaying how we should be ‘doing justice to the interdependence of our ineluctably different yet also similar existences’ (Rooney 2007: 74). Caroline Rooney further believes that the interdependent approach makes our freedom of thought work ‘not just for self-​realisation but for necessarily collective movements of emancipation’ (ibid.). Even though she was speaking in the context of the Enlightenment and gender and class relations in postcolonial societies, her views are compatible with those of Ahmed and Darwish, especially given the fact that she suggests that postcolonial writers should concentrate on the poetics of reality and think in constructive terms, rather than continuing with the field’s excessive focus on the critique of the colonial power relations. Since cultural objects, phenomena and achievements are understood as universal heritage of the humankind from the exilic viewpoint, it also negates postmodern powerlessness about negotiating cultural differences. Chahine and Darwish’s disavowal of cultural separatism is strong proof of the fact. By sharing Said’s rejection of one culture’s jejune triumph over the other, the intellectuals project their contrapuntal consciousness 228

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Ill.7:  Alexandria… Why?: Yehia’s Arabic rendition of a speech given by Hamlet

that transcends the postmodernist debacle. Significantly, Margaret Litvin (2011) studies young Said’s dependence on Hamlet as an aesthetic escape from the Victorian-style schooling he received and the strict control of his father. By comparing youthful Chahine’s recourse to the Shakespearean hero in a similar fashion, she concludes that for both of them, reading Hamlet provided them with a liberating contraposition to their immediate environment. I suggest that we view Chahine’s lifelong obsession with Hamlet in this light and discuss how, throughout the Alexandria quartet, Yehia compares himself with the Dane in order to interrogate his journey as an auteur. In Alexandria… Why?, Chahine takes us inside the classroom of his British-​run Victoria College in the 1940s. ‘To be or not to be’ appears on the blackboard, transliterated in Arabic. A disinterested youngster attempts to recite the soliloquy by cheating, as he glances at the board off and on. But his stammering and heavily accented English wear out the patience of the class, especially the tutor. Yehia offers to replace him. What follows is not simply a subversion of the English-​Arabic power relation, as Zahr Stauffer (2004) suggests, because Yehia’s Arabic rendering of the soliloquy eclipses his classmate’s feeble attempt in English. 229

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile The performance cannot be seen as overthrowing British supremacy through subduing the teacher’s control over the class by creating in him ‘arousal as well as admiration’ (ibid.: 49). Nor is it the ‘other’s’ expressed desire to overwrite Shakespeare, as Stauffer believes, since Yehia wipes the Arabic inscription of the soliloquy on the blackboard behind him towards the end of the performance. This is a mark of his frustration that the life in art he dreams of poses seemingly insurmountable challenges. I think the tutor’s rapt admiration of his performance is used as a sign that his dream has a solid base after all. Instead of viewing Shakespeare as a means of referring to the ‘other’ form of sexuality, as Stauffer’s reading proposes, Chahine finds the Bard an ‘unwitting ally’ (ibid.: 52) for presenting Hamlet as a counterpoint to his trapped self. Thus, he identifies with European culture represented by Hamlet and engages with the ‘other’ for a more humane and aesthetic, rather than sexually transgressive, existence. As opposed to the postmodern style heterogeneity, Yehia is striving here for something more universal in the individual. After all, it was a breakthrough performance for him and he badly needed people like his tutor to believe in his budding talent, which is what ensued. Needless to say, this strengthened Yehia’s resolve to go to Pasadena for further training. Notably, Chahine chiefly uses two or three speeches of the Shakespearean Dane, and even repeats one of them in two of his life portraits, Alexandria… New York and Alexandria Again and Forever. Though he makes use of Hamlet’s Act 2 Scene 2 soliloquy twice, a direct reference to Hecuba is not included in Alexandria… New York but it is quite central in Alexandria Again and Forever. The context of the speech is as follows: in a play within a play, Hamlet asks the first player to perform a monologue rendering the response of Hecuba, King Priam of Troy’s widow, to her husband’s death. Hamlet compares himself with the player, who has to imagine the deeply buried grief and reveal his constructed passion as a historical character. The comparison is thematically cogent for Alexandria… New York. The film captures young Chahine’s turmoil in surviving his own challenge of self-​construction. Therefore, Hamlet’s speech echoes the agonies, doubts and self-​imposed pressures Yehia goes through: 230

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wanned, Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? (See Chahine 2004) Here, Hamlet discusses how the player employs himself in ‘a dream of passion’, which echoes Chahine’s condition in Pasadena. The player is forcing himself to bring out a certain amount of emotion through the concerted efforts of his senses and countenance. Young Yehia has equally subjected himself to the tyranny of ambition to reach a certain goal in an art career. Thus, the soliloquy reveals Chahine’s attempt to achieve a more aestheticised self. Unlike the player above, however, Hamlet feels unadulterated pain at the sad demise of his father, which he cannot reveal. He knows that were the player in his position, carrying real loss and genuine wounds inside, he would terrify the audience by drowning the stage with tears. In Alexandria Again and Forever, Chahine shows an Arab Hamlet thinking these thoughts while encountering his father’s dead body on the deck of a ship. Chahine’s Hamlet is played by grown-​up Amr, who performed as Yehia in Alexandria… Why? when he was a young boy. The director was convinced that Hamlet was the role that would earn him a well-​deserved prize in an international film festival. Since Amr no longer cares for the dream because of his repeated disappointments in this regard, the Hecuba reference becomes a perfect means for bringing out the conflict between the two. As Chahine incorporates the shooting of the film within the film in the movie, we realise the significance of the reference in this context. We encounter here an uninterested Amr who fails to summon up the required look even at the 75th take. Naturally, Amr’s blank look fails to do justice to Hamlet’s impassioned doubt about the player’s performance: What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba That he should weep for her? (See Chahine 1989) 231

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Ill.8:  Alexandria Again and Forever: an exasperated Yehia with Amr

If Hecuba symbolises the cinema world’s recognition, it appears nothing to the actor; but the director cannot act out how bona fide his dream is for making a mark on the international stage through an Arab Hamlet. The Dane thus becomes an effective parallel for Chahine to express the struggle of a so-​called Third-World artist to earn global recognition. This proves anew that the director was able to open a window to the world through the contrapuntal engagement with the ‘other’, which is no postmodern ploy for him. Instead, it contains the mark of his lived experience and bears real implications for his life. Like Chahine, Darwish finds an echo of his condition in a literary figure from another culture. However, unlike Chahine, he depends on an almost unknown protagonist from a non-​Western novel. In ‘I See my Ghost Coming from a Distance’, he surveys the life of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s main character in A Grain of Sand, Binodini: I look out on the necklace of one of the poor women of Tagore ground beneath the carriage of the handsome prince … (Darwish 2006: 4) Binodini was not wealthy, but her father was liberal enough to send her to a convent school in British India. Cultured and charismatic Binodini was 232

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Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism widowed at a young age. The poor girl came to stay with her rich relatives. The home that gave her shelter also became the ground of her destruction, as the newly married young lord of the household became attracted to her. What followed is why Darwish’s contrapuntal consciousness finds a parallel to a post-​Oslo Palestinian existence in her situation. He symbolises her fallen state through the burial of her necklace under the wealthy landlord’s carriage. Just as her refined personality was the curse of her life, so was the enriched heritage the reason behind the crushed fate of the Palestinians. As Darwish establishes this extraordinary connection through adopting the narrative form of a story within a story, we realise the extent of his willingness to embrace another culture. Heterogeneity is, therefore, no postmodern guise for him; it is very much part of his being and his reality. We can deduce from the above discussions that Saidian exiles cannot be put under any readymade cultural, geographical or even theoretical categories, because the properties of the exilic intellectual practice they employ in their works –​ namely, the technique of voyage in, polyphonic consciousness and contrapuntal consciousness –​ make their humanness prior to their group identity prominent. As we have seen above, Chahine’s pan-​Arab politics highlights that the reconquest of the sovereign Arab identity lies at the heart of the anti-​imperial struggle of both his country and region. Simultaneously, he projects a nationalitarian politics that takes the struggle against power beyond the freeing of the national territory by demonstrating that it continues internally through people’s localised but powerful efforts to earn decision making abilities from the dominant groups. Similarly, Ahmed’s liberal politics strives to be detached from the narrowness of Western feminism, especially as the narrative is utilised for justifying the colonial control of her native land. As opposed to mimicry of the West, her liberalism inspires her to create cooperation between East and West to end the subjugation of men and women through the imposition of self-​defeating values and practices. Interestingly, Darwish’s nationalist politics is enriching due to his transcendence of Arabness without abandoning it. Since safeguarding human dignity is the source of his nationalist aspiration, his sensitivity towards dissimilar cultures, including his opponents’, proves anew that the principal 233

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile duty of the exilic vocation is the advancement of human freedom. This is exactly why the ‘other’ is such a crucial question here. The exilic intellectual’s effort is to make sure that there ‘should be, no “other” as such, only individuals or groups who have been, or feel that they have been, othered by society’ (Young 2012b: 37). As a theory with a humanist goal, postcolonialism remains in a shared axis with the exilic mission for bringing a definite end to processes that create the invisibility, dehumanisation and demonisation of the ‘other’. Simon During (1993) further explains that postcolonialism challenges postmodernism due to its denial of the ‘other’ the agency s/​he requires. Surely, today’s world still needs ‘to locate the hidden rhizomes of colonialism’s historical reach, of what remains invisible, unseen, silent, or unspoken’, which Young (2012b: 21) identifies as the main reason behind the continuing presence of postcolonialism. This objective keeps the postcolonial and the exilic concepts firmly united, since both discourses affirm the non-​negotiability of liberty for all humans.

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Conclusion

Edward Said (1996: 62) asserts: ‘Exile means that you are always going to be marginal, and that what you do as an intellectual has to be made up because you cannot follow a prescribed path.’ The road the exile travels is unprescribed because s/​he imagines and struggles for a seemingly impossible but humanly agreeable world, which is just for all. This reconfirms that, for Said, the ideal intellectual is a metaphorical exile, who pays the price of marginality by remaining outside the order of the day. By doing so, s/​he neither reduces the extraordinary challenges that migrants encounter in the actual world nor introduces the vocation as a simplistic metaphor for critical practices. Said’s mission undoubtedly develops from his experiences of the dispossession of Palestine and displacement in America. This does not instantly imply that without going through the identical situations, no one can reflect the exilic principles. Simultaneously, it would be self-​defeating to argue that by transforming the material knowledge of exile into a model of intellectual practice, Said diminishes the human cost of deracination. Once we realise that Said transforms the adversity of exile into an intellectually positive phenomenon without abnegating the discomfort and torment associated with it, we are able to evaluate the practice both as an

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile oppositional and a reformist pursuit. This is why eight different properties constitute the contour of the exilic intellectual practice by showing that both critical and constructive aspects form the baseline of my argument. In fact, only three out of the eight qualities are related to critique as such: critical consciousness, secular consciousness and oppositional consciousness. The rest of the five qualities, namely, contrapuntal consciousness, polyphonic consciousness, voyage in, universal humanism and late style, relate to the socio-​political interdependence of human beings around the globe as well as the complexities related to them. The works of the novelist, poet, feminist, filmmaker and essayist that I have discussed demonstrate that their creations form part of the Saidian discourse through their reflection of these exilic qualities. The shared qualities of Saidian mission place them in a common intellectual arena, despite the fact that Naguib Mahfouz remains a non-​exile in the conventional sense of the term. As I have explained, Mahmoud Darwish, Leila Ahmed, Nawal El Saadawi and Youssef Chahine have all been exiled from their homelands at different points of their life. By sharing the same discursive platform with his compatriots, though, Mahfouz reveals a fundamental aspect of the Saidian pursuit. Mahfouz’s presence in the book illuminates that the exilic intellectual must be of remarkable merit and resolve, able to steadfastly maintain all the criteria of the practice, with or without being uprooted from their native soil. By re-​examining the Middle Eastern intellectuals through the Saidian lens, then, I determine a hitherto unmarked but absolutely crucial way of analysing the legacy of the scholar. My study duly brings the centrality of exile in Said’s scholarship into attention. Equally importantly, I select the particular intellectuals because of their prevalent connection and affinity with Said. This delimits the applicability of the intellectual practice within the contemporary world. An artist from an undefined time and place cannot possibly navigate all the exilic qualities, since these are intricately related to Said’s observations of our supposedly postcolonial and postmodern time. Without sharing the trials and tribulations of the topsy-​turvy times, intellectuals from anywhere in the world might be able to reflect the oppositional qualities of exile, but not the constructive ones. These qualities –​contrapuntal 236

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Conclusion consciousness, polyphonic consciousness, voyage in, universal humanism and late style –​ are specifically derived from Said’s knowledge of colonial and imperial encounters and his appreciation of postmodernist anti-​essentialism. They also reflect Said’s endeavour to transcend the limitations of postcolonial and postmodern theories through an expansive view of the world. Therefore, the exilic framework could be tested with respect to contemporary intellectuals who endure colonial and imperial domination and yet retain their faith in a humanistic world through their creativity, that correlates conflicting identities. Asaad Al-​Saleh’s comparison between Said and Fawaz Turki’s memoirs of disinheritence is to be remebered here. Al-​Saleh shows that, unlike the former, the latter fails to overcome the bitterness and bellicosity resultaing from an irreparable sense of loss. Indeed, Said transforms himself into ‘a moral agent in objecting to both Israeli procedures againt Palestinians and the imperialistic role some Western powers still want to play in that region’ (Al-​Saleh 2011: 92). Of course, Said was fortunate not to have experienced the harsh life of refugee camps that Turki simply could not escape. Nevertheless, Said was unambiguous about his moral responsibility in speaking out against the injustices of domination. Unlike Albert Camus, too, he is never unassertive about his right to his native land. Camus could not reconcile his French intellectual training with his Algerian connection (see LeBlanc 2002), whereas Said developed a contrapuntal approach to initiate a dialogue between the Eastern and the Western cultures he traversed. By engaging with the dialogic platform Said creates in his writings, my book establishes the revelatory significance of utilising the exilic intellectual practice for Arab literature studies as well. As we saw earlier, the predominant challenge for the Arab intellectuals is to demarcate an effective path towards ensuring truth and justice in society. This endows them with the responsibility of producing art that is exceptional as well as adversarial. Both the objectives create extraordinary demands on the intellectuals to take creative risks while showing the tenacity to confront the status quo by calling for change. Despite the exorbitant requirement, the Arab artists I have chosen mostly excel in combining art and politics in a purposeful manner. This creates hope for positive changes 237

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile in the turbulent region, since the combination enthrals and enlightens people at the same time. Therefore my book opens up a new horizon for Arab literature and film studies, since exilic intellectual practice bears out the social benefit of Arab talents’ courage, determination and resourcefulness in keeping alive the fight for progressive thought and actions. We fully comprehend that cultural productions are valuable in a coercive society for the cathartic effects they generate. Following in the footsteps of Mahfouz et al., therefore, contemporary Arab litterateurs and filmmakers can strengthen the tradition of ceaselessly working towards the elevation of positive knowledge and human dignity in their societies. One of the abiding paradoxes of the Arab world revealed by this book is precisely this. We have seen how a hermetic system governs the Arab nations, and yet we come across extraordinary talents rising above various forms of constraint by dint of an ennobling vision that presents the dynamics of improved social relations. Arab poets have long been hailed for their prophetic role in this regard. In order to cope with the dramatic developments of their postcolonial societies, the poets became predominantly concerned with pan-​Arab existence and the manifestation of their discontent with the wider world. As my discussions in the previous chapters suggest, Arab poets rightfully played a leading role in rejuvenating their hackneyed society. Bassam Frangieh (2000: 224) demonstrates that contemporary Arab poetry actually flourished with the aims of creating ‘[a]‌new Arab nation and a new Arab man’ by drawing from ancient Arab culture and the modern European literary tradition. This poses the inevitable questions about the effectiveness of being an exilic intellectual, which poets like Darwish accomplish in order to make way for the coveted progress. The question truly is whether Arabic poetry is realistically capable of materialising its revolutionary zeal. Understandably, the seismic shifts desired by the Arab poets and artists for entrenching democracy and civil liberties lie beyond the bounds of possibility so far. Darwish himself admitted:  ‘I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize … but now I think that poetry changes only the poet’ (see Handal 2002: 24). In the twenty-​first-​century context, then, complex political crises mean that the 238

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Conclusion Arab poets’ traditional role as harbingers of change has become increasingly difficult to maintain. In the same interview, however, Darwish asserts that intellectual effort to bring positive results in society is still imperative. Hence the importance of the exilic intellectual practice for the creative arena in the Arab world lies in its effectiveness in increasing the intensity and quality of the efforts for both resistance and reform. The alternative would be to accept that the creative world will continue to embrace the fear of the people holding the reins of power. If the humanising and aesthetic efforts fail, both the creative and the social spheres will remain stagnant by allowing oppression and regression to proliferate. Given the flux in which the Middle Eastern region resides due to constant regime changes and socio-​economic volatilities, the intellectuals of the region become repeatedly disillusioned about the efficacy of their agency. Indeed, many intellectuals withdrew from the struggle to enhance freedom and justice in the region, because there was no immediate response to their words. Despite some intellectuals’ silence and self-​protective retraction, the exilic intellectuals I highlighted continued unyieldingly. They knew that if they stopped their pursuit, the socio-​political, cultural, national and global advancements they sought would be entombed. They also realised that they represent vast numbers of people, who either do not have the voice or cannot master the strength to express the desire for the progress in the specified fields. Saadawi’s example is to be restated here. Her Memoirs from the Women’s Prison relates how she and her fellow inmates upheld the hope for freedom even amidst the farcical trial of their supposedly anti-​state activities. President Anwar Sadat’s unexpected death rekindled hope and made them ecstatic, as this brought the possibility of their release quite near. Nevertheless, when their cases did not move even after the regime change had shaken the country, despair reigned supreme and sickness surrounded the cellmates. Then, Saadawi (1986: 136) learnt that ‘[p]‌rison is doubt. And doubt is the most certain of tortures.’ Since she refused to be her own executioner, her strong petition sent to the newly installed president not only secured her release but also led to the discharge of her fellows, at long last. Naturally, this form of discussion reaffirms the redoubtable nature of the exilic vocation, which appears utopian but remains real and achievable 239

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Edward Said’s Concept of Exile due to an enormous intellectual commitment to the principles of truth, justice and universal humanism. Certainly, eminent intellectuals from the Middle East uphold the principles so steadfastly that their works convey the intersection between the exilic intellectual practice and postcolonial criticism. The exilic narrative reconfirms the interdisciplinary aspect of postcolonialism along with its historically situated, politically attentive and theoretically powerful position. Therefore, my book mediates between Said’s renunciation of postcolonialism for its guild-​forming propensity and his lasting contribution to inculcating the field with the ardour of interrogating national and cultural differences by assuming neither known hostility nor expressed essences. The Middle East is the hub of current political conflicts due to irresolvable cultural differences, and thus it paradoxically becomes a rich source for the field to probe the question further. Therefore, my focus on writings and films from the region remedies to some extent its general omission from postcolonial criticism. Hopefully, my writing enriches the field by highlighting polyphonic writers like Mahfouz, who simultaneously belong to Pharaonic, Islamic and Western civilisations. I also hope that my book befittingly restores Said’s legacy in exploring diversified realms of cultures and identities, the claim with which Orientalism made postcolonialism succeed.

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Notes 2  Middle Eastern Artists as Exilic Intellectuals 1. Edward Lane was a nineteenth-​century British ethnographer on whose life and works Ahmed’s doctoral study elaborated. When Ahmed was enduring a difficult time, mainly due to health reasons, Lane’s longing for Egypt came to her rescue, since she enjoyed the company of another polyphonic mind. Therefore, it is unfortunate that Said found Lane’s pluralism questionable. To Said (2003), Lane’s devotion to Egypt was damaged by his Orientalist inclination, since his Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians was written from the point of view of a European master, who intended to establish Europe’s superiority over the East vis-​à-​vis Egypt. Today, Ahmed’s reading of Lane both agrees and disagrees with that of Said. Ahmed (2000: 241) argues that Lane’s limitation surely lies in not being able to go beyond the Orientalist ‘views and assumptions’ of his time, but that his extraordinary love still worked ‘against them.’ 2. Nicholas Cull et al. (2003) record that Nasser utilised Egyptian media to embolden his image as an Arab champion by emphasising the urgency of unity among the cultural group divided by various state boundaries. The message was broadcast day in and day out with ever-increasing frequency over the period of Nasser’s rule. The propagandist technique was aimed at quelling the oppositional voice that questioned the efficacy of his programme. Keith Wheelock (1960) reaffirms that the strategy of the regime was to isolate the home-​grown dissenters and eliminate them. 3. Unlike Ahmed, Chahine believed in Nasser’s project, which promised to be socialist and nationalist. Nonetheless, the project failed due to the regime’s totalitarianism. Its expulsion of non-​Arab minorities from Egypt demonstrates the fissure between its promise and the reality.

5 Exile in the Contexts of Postcolonialism and Postmodernism 1. Ahmed notes that in the early twentieth century, sympathetic European feminists like Eugénie Le Brun argued for young Muslim women to be instructed about ‘the European understanding of the meaning of the veil’ so that they

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Notes to Page 204 could be convinced ‘to cast it off as the essential first step’ (1992: 154) towards achieving the desired freedom from male oppression. Interestingly, the belief was more strongly echoed in 1980s America. The radical American feminists the writer encountered by attending women’s studies seminars, meetings and public lectures during that time made her feel that the liberation of Muslim women like her involved abandoning their cultural practices in order to internalise Western processes (Ahmed 2000). In the aftermath of 9/​11, Ahmed found that the view was established knowledge in the Western media, so much so that the British journalist Polly Toynbee described how the full-body cloak of the Afghan women proved to be the simplified rationale for the Western war in the region (Ahmed 2011).

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Bibliography at:   http://​w ww.huffingtonpost.com/​2012/​11/​30/​leila-​a hmed-​g rawemeyer-​ award_​n_​2220953.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009 [Accessed: 1June 2013]. Shabrawy, Charlotte El. (1992) ‘Naguib Mahfouz, The Art of Fiction’. The Paris Review, (123). Available at: http://​www.theparisreview.org/​interviews/​2062/​ the-​art-​of-​fiction-​no-​2129-​naguib-​mahfouz [Accessed: 2013 August 2010]. Shatz, Adam. (2001) ‘A Poet’s Palestine as Metaphor. Mahmoud Darwish. In the Presence of Absence’. Available at: http://​www.mahmouddarwish.com/​ui/​english/​ShowContent.aspx?ContentId=21 [Accessed: 6 April 2010]. Stevens, Wallace. (2007) ‘The Snow Man. Modern & Contemporary American Poetry’. Available at: http://​www.writing.upenn.edu/​~afilreis/​88/​stevens-​snowman.html [Accessed: 2 November 2009]. Stocking, Marion. (2008) ‘Books in Brief, Translation: Text and Context’. Poetry Daily. Available at: http://​poems.com/​special_​features/​prose/​essay_​stocking3. php [Accessed: 29 August 2011]. Thomas, Christopher K and Hook, Elizabeth. (2001) ‘Leila Ahmed. Voices from the Gaps’. Available at: http://​voices.cla.umn.edu/​artistpages/​ahmedLeila.php [Accessed: 4 April 2013]. Tippett, Krista. (2006) ‘Muslim Women and Other Misunderstandings’. American Public Media. Available at: http://​being.publicradio.org/​programs/​muslimwomen/​[Accessed: 30 June 2011]. Viner, Katharine. (2002) ‘Feminism as Imperialism’. Guardian, 21 September. Available at: http://​www.guardian.co.uk/​world/​2002/​sep/​21/​gender.usa [Accessed: 11 May 2012]. Whitaker, Sheila. (2008) ‘Youssef Chahine’. Guardian, 28 July. Available at: http://​ www.guardian.co.uk/​film/​2008/​jul/​28/​egypt [Accessed: 5 May 2009]. Zuhur, Sherifa. (2001) ‘Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero’. Nawal El Saadawi Sherif Hetata. Available at: http://​www.nawalsaadawi.net/​oldsite/​articles/​sherifazuhur.htm [Accessed: 21 April 2010].

Audiovisual materials Bitton, Simone. (1997) Mahmoud Darwish:  As the Land is the Language. Lyons: France 3. Chahine, Youssef. (1963) El Naser Salah Ad-​Din. Cairo:  Lotus Film and the Egyptian Cinema Organization. —​—​—​ (1976) The Return of the Prodigal Son. Cairo and Algiers: ONCIC and Misr International Films. —​—​—​ (1978) Alexandria… Why?. Cairo: Misr International Films. —​—​—​ (1982) An Egyptian Story. Cairo: Misr International Films.

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Bibliography —​—​—​ (1989) Alexandria Again and Forever. Cairo and Paris: Misr International Films & Paris Classics Productions. —​—​—​ (1997) Destiny. Paris and Cairo: Ognon Pictures and Misr International Films. —​—​— (1999) The Other. Cairo: Misr International Films. —​—​—​ (2002) September 11 (segment ‘Egypt’). Paris: Galatee Films/​Studio Canal. —​—​—​ (2004) Alexandria… New York. Paris and Cairo: Ognon Pictures and Misr International Films. Dibb, Mike. (2003) Edward Said: The Last Interview. London: The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).

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Index Abbasid 46, 165–​6 Aberth, John 198 Adorno, Theodor 30, 43, 141–​4, 147, 148, 149, 153–​4, 156, 168, 169, 170, 185 Minima Moralia 141, 143–​4, 148 Africa 66, 80, 93, 94, 95, 188, 210, 217 agency 25, 32, 60, 97, 99, 108, 112, 115, 126, 209, 234 Ahluwalia, Pal 132 Ahmed, Leila 42, 43, 49, 50, 53, 57–​8, 65–​6, 68–​70, 72–​3, 81–​2, 83, 88–​90, 141, 158, 159–​67, 186, 190, 202, 203, 204–​6, 227–​8, 233, 241n1, 241n3, 214–​2n.1 A Border Passage 53, 57–​8, 72, 164 Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate 9, 158 Ahmed, Sara 141 Alatas, S. H. 38 The Myth of the Lazy Native 38 Algeria 39, 220 alienation 47, 77, 91, 143–​5, 150, 154 Amin, Qassim 205 Amireh, Amal 67 Andalusia 46, 51, 86–​8, 142, 168–​71, 173 anti-​Semitism 71, 216 Antonius, George 37

Arab Awakening 37 Apter, Emily 76 Arab Women’s Solidarity Association (AWSA) 134 Arab-​African 23, 202 Arab-​American 44, 47, 102, 211 Arab-​Palestinian 31, 33, 41, 61, 173 Aristophanes, The Birds 175 Armes, Roy 195, 200 artists 18, 37, 43, 49, 51, 88–​91, 206, 215, 216 Asia 66, 94, 159, 188 El-​Assyouti, Mohamed 84 atlal-​nasib 173, 174, 183 Auerbach, Erich 142, 156–​67, 168–​70, 185 Mimesis 156–​8 Austen, Jane, Mansfield Park 34 ‘awra (shame) 111, 114 Bach, J. S. 36 Balfour, Arthur 98 banishment 18, 150, 177 Barakat, Halim 46, 49 barriers 18, 21, 36, 91 Ba‘th Party 95 Beethoven, Ludwig van 40 Begin, Menachem 104–​6 Beirut 61–​4, 105 siege (1982) 61–​4, 103, 105 Bellin, Eva 146

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Index belonging 18, 22, 24, 30, 34, 38, 42, 43, 88, 89, 156, 157, 158, 163–​5, 169, 174, 189, 192, 206, 217 non-​17, 19, 54, 168 Benda, Julien 23 Benhabib, Seyla 223 Bergson, Henri 68 Bernard, Anna 47 Bitton, Simone 186 As the Land is the Language 186 Bölme, Selin M. 146 borders 18, 36, 55, 184, 220 Boullata, Issa J. 45 bourgeoisie/​bourgeois 40, 116–​7, 119, 121, 170, 193, 199, 200–​1 Brennan, Timothy 24–​5, 216 Britain/​British 48, 50, 53, 59, 60, 65, 66, 69, 78, 79, 81, 82, 94, 100, 101, 109, 119, 132, 138, 172, 191, 195, 204, 205, 220, 229–​30 protectorate 94, 100, 205 Brun, Eugénie Le 241–​2n.1 Butler, Judith 27 Calin, William 157 capitalism 39, 81, 83, 107, 108, 109, 143, 188, 193, 198, 199, 200, 209, 222 Césaire, Aimé 193 Chahine, Youssef 42, 43, 49, 50, 51–​2, 53, 55–​6, 59, 61–​4, 66, 69–​70, 74, 75, 79–​80, 83–​4, 85, 88, 89, 90, 190, 195–​203, 206, 210–​7, 219, 220, 228–​32, 233, 241n.3 Alexandria … New York 84, 211, 214 Ill. 6, 215, 219, 230

Alexandria … Why? 55, 59, 70, 79, 229 Ill. 7, 229, 231 Alexandria Again and Forever 8, 70, 230, 231, 232 Ill. 8 An Egyptian Story 7, 8, 70, 74, 89 El Naser Salah Ad-​Din 195, 196 Ill. 1, 196 Ill. 2, 198, 202, 203 Ill. 5 Return of the Prodigal Son 198–​9, 200 Ill. 3, 201 Ill. 4 September 11 61, 64 Chatterjee, Partha 193 chauvinism 35, 54, 81, 112, 115, 205, 211 Childs, Peter 188 Chin, Daryl 222 Christians 198 cinema d’auteur 48, 74, 75 class/​classism 39, 57, 65, 68, 80, 97, 116–​21, 123, 138, 159, 193, 200–​1, 228 coercion 21, 81 colonialism 24, 27, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 49, 53, 55, 59, 60, 66, 71, 74–​6, 79, 80, 93–​6, 97–​101, 102, 108, 109, 120, 121, 126, 128, 132, 138, 146, 188, 191, 192, 193, 194, 199, 201, 202, 204, 205, 220, 225, 228, 233, 234 anti-​43, 51, 70, 79, 80, 100, 101, 172, 190, 193, 196, 197, 205, 217 neo-​108, 188, 192 post-​25, 43, 49, 60, 116, 147, 187–​234 commonality 26, 177, 220, 223 communism 18, 170 compartmentalisation 20, 21, 79 concubinage 57, 166 Constable, Catherine 213

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Index contrapuntal consciousness 28, 33, 34, 35, 43, 50, 61, 65–​6, 89, 190, 220–​1, 223, 226, 227, 228, 233 Cooke, Miriam 116 Copts 82 see also religion, Coptic Coskun, Bezen 93 creativity 44, 47, 49, 67, 74, 85, 86, 89, 139, 142, 167 critical consciousness 28, 29, 30, 31, 50–​3, 97, 99, 100, 101, 116–​7, 119, 121, 122, 125, 127, 142, 144, 147, 148, 151, 156, 157, 159, 163, 167, 185 criticism 19, 20, 22, 23, 26–​7, 28–​9, 30, 41, 44, 52, 54, 59, 80, 89, 104, 131, 143, 189, 190, 192, 195, 202, 207, 220–​34 culture 18, 19, 22, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 41, 46, 48, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 61, 65–​7, 69, 71, 75, 76, 81, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 95, 101, 108, 117, 118, 129, 137, 142, 146, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 173, 175, 176, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 195, 204, 206–​7, 208, 210–​4, 217, 220, 221, 223, 228, 230, 232, 233 African 66, 108, 192 American 108, 210 Arab 46, 48, 75, 87, 88, 137, 165 class 117 dominant 29, 31, 33 Egyptian 50, 56, 163 English 129 home 19, 22, 41, 53, 61, 89, 191, 206 national 30, 195

native 39, 118, 204 traditional 46 Western 33, 65, 67, 75, 158, 163, 204, 206, 211 Dabashi, Hamid 23–​4, 123 Damas, Léon 193 Darwish, Mahmoud 42, 43, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54–​5, 60–​1, 63–​4, 66, 70–​2, 76–​9, 86–​8, 89–​90, 97, 98–​100, 101, 102–​6, 107, 108–​9, 120, 123–​30, 131, 134–​9, 141, 170–​84, 186, 190, 210, 217–​20, 224, 225–​7, 228, 232–​3 Absent Presence 219 ‘And I, Even if I Were the Last’ 218 ‘As for Me, I Say to My Name’ 219 ‘As He Walks Away’ 71 ‘Athens Airport’ 127 ‘Beirut’ 99 ‘Don’t Apologize for What You’ve Done’ 174, 218 ‘Edward Said: A Contrapuntal Reading’ 71, 126, 136 ‘Eleven Planets at the End of the Andalusian Scene’ 170, 172 ‘Eleven Stars Over Andalusia’ 86, 88 ‘The Hoopoe’ 174, 176 ‘I Have Behind the Sky a Sky’ 172 ‘I See my Ghost Coming from a Distance ‘I Talk too Much’ 127 ‘Identity Card’ 61 ‘A Lover from Palestine’ 72 ‘Low Sky’ 78 Memory for Forgetfulness 63, 102–​3, 106, 107, 109

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Index Darwish, Mahmoud (cont.) ‘Mural’ 182–​3 ‘On a Canaanite Stone at the Dead Sea’ 70, 135 ‘On Man’ 98 ‘A Poem Which is not Green, from My Country’ 55 Rita and the Rifle’ 179 ‘Rita’s Winter’ 179–​81 ‘A Soldier Dreams of White Tulips’ 224 ‘The Speech of the Red Indian’ 125 ‘A State of Siege’ 124, 128, 136–​7 ‘The Stranger’s Bed 78 ‘Tuesday, a Bright Day’ 176 ‘We Will Choose Sophocles’ 177 ‘When the Martyrs Go to Sleep’ 136 ‘Who Am I, Without Exile?’ 90 Davis, Jordan 171 Dawisha, Adeed 145, 146 Deane, Seamus 167 decolonisation 95, 96, 188, 193 dehumanisation 25, 39, 60, 99, 129, 143, 165, 191, 222, 225 democracy 39, 45, 58, 60, 96–​7, 102, 105, 109, 143, 145–​6, 147, 185, 228 deprivation 31, 33, 41, 55, 63, 76, 83, 97, 99, 108, 112, 123, 127, 128, 191 deracination 18, 20, 25, 27, 30, 42 Derrida, Jacques 207–​8, 212 différance 207–​8, 212 desolation 22, 54 diaspora 23, 27 dignity 18, 26, 34, 39, 67, 91, 97, 121, 127, 134, 136, 144, 145, 157, 158, 165, 190, 215, 217, 219, 220, 233 Dirlik, Arif 191

disconnection 20, 24, 50, 52, 163, 189 dislocation 18, 20, 24 displacement 17, 18, 22 dispossession 32, 33, 41, 52, 53, 54, 77, 127, 224 dissent 20, 26, 60, 81, 90, 143, 191, 195 dissidents 18, 37 diversity cultural 20, 81, 83, 190 ethnic 95, 176 dogma 19, 29, 32, 142 domination 106, 121, 132, 192, 199, 201 capitalist 83 class 119 colonial/​imperial 25, 32, 39, 36, 48–​9, 58–​60, 94, 95, 98, 101, 102, 108, 166, 172, 191, 204, 220–​1, 222, 225, 227, 228 male/​patriarchal 65, 112, 138, 160, 161 Doran, Michael 171 duality 21, 181 Eaglestone, Robert 222 Eagleton, Terry 25 education 51, 53, 56, 57, 67, 68, 108, 165, 206 Egypt/​Egyptian 33, 42, 48, 50, 51–​2, 53, 55–​60, 65–​7, 69–​70, 74–​5, 78–​84, 89, 93–​6, 100–​1, 107–​9, 117, 118, 119, 122, 128, 132, 134, 138, 145–​6, 147, 149, 158, 160, 162, 163, 172, 195, 198, 199, 201, 205, 206, 211, 213–​5, 217, 241n.1, 241n.3 elitism 23, 193, 199 emancipation 38, 40, 65, 97, 121–​39, 206, 210, 217, 228 émigrés 18, 37

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Index Enany, Rashed El-​67, 117 Enlightenment, the 187, 189, 190, 219, 222, 227–​8 essentialism 39, 58, 207, 211 anti-​43, 194, 209, 213, 215 non-​ 208 ethnic cleansing 35, 38, 93, 170 ethnicity 94 Eurocentrism 193, 204, 222 Europe 32, 39, 46, 66, 73, 90, 94, 106, 108, 157, 163, 164, 165, 166, 197, 202 exploitation 53, 98, 102, 118, 121, 125, 199, 201 expulsion 18, 87, 227, 241n.3

Garber, Marjorie 156–​7 gender 53, 91, 110, 115–​6, 120–​1, 158, 160, 228 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 80 Genet, Jean 41 Prisoner of Love 41 Germany 145, 156 globalisation 76, 108 Gordimer, Nadine 85, 112, 150 Guha, Ranajit 37, 193 A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement 37

fair play 22, 59 Fanon, Frantz 39–​40, 76, 80, 81, 83, 117, 132 The Wretched of the Earth 40 fascism 18, 170 feminism/​feminist 42, 50, 57, 76, 90, 110, 112, 116, 138–​9, 186, 204–​6, 233 film 20, 37, 42, 48, 49, 50–​88, 89, 108, 116, 195–​202, 210–​3, 230, 231 Foucault, Michel 122 France 39, 81, 94, 101, 132, 191, 195 freedom 22, 26, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 54, 59, 60, 63, 67, 76, 81, 84, 91, 95, 96, 97, 100, 111, 113, 121, 122, 132, 134, 135, 136, 138, 147, 160, 165, 166, 183, 190, 192, 193, 197, 199, 206, 208, 215, 216, 218, 219, 220, 227, 228, 234 Freud, Sigmund 67, 83, 143 fundamentalism/​fundamentalist 51–​4, 58–​9, 61, 62, 102, 109, 123, 228 futuwwat 130–​1, 152

Hafez, Sabry 48–​9, 64 Haj, Nadia Abu El-​ 210 Hale, Sondra 110 Halim, Hala 197 Hammer, Juliane 18 Harb, Taląt 205 harem 65, 161, 166 Harlow, Barbara 224 Hassan, Ihab 189 Hassan, Waïl 49 Hatina, Meir 146 Hegel, Georg W. F. 207 hegemony 82, 98, 109, 122 male 111–​2, 119–​20 ‘market’ 107–​8 Hiroshima 105, 211 history 18, 32, 38, 45, 50, 57, 58, 60, 71, 73, 74, 75, 83, 86, 87, 93, 94, 95, 97, 105, 106, 124, 125, 127, 130, 132, 135, 136, 142, 138, 162, 166, 168, 169, 172, 173, 177, 178, 187, 189, 191, 197, 201, 216, 217, 220 Holmlund, Christine 110

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Index Holy Land, the 186, 197, 226 home 19, 20, 21, 24, 30, 33, 35, 43, 49, 54–​6, 60, 69, 77, 83, 89, 90, 98, 113, 114, 128, 141–​5, 147–​52, 156, 157, 158, 163, 166, 167–​9, 172, 174–​7, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 215, 233 homeland 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 47, 52, 55, 56, 69, 77, 87, 88, 90, 96, 103, 139, 141, 144, 149, 165, 172, 174, 181, 184, 186, 193, 198, 224, 226 homelessness 18, 19, 22, 24, 25, 29, 55, 89, 90, 116, 139, 167, 174 Howe, Stephen 116 Hugo of St Victor 19, 24 Huhn, Thomas 185 humanism 24, 25, 27, 28, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 48, 50, 76–​83, 89, 97, 121, 126–​7, 130–​2, 134, 138, 142, 156, 158, 163–​7, 169, 170, 179, 183, 185, 186, 189, 190, 193, 197, 198, 200, 202, 203, 206, 209, 210, 216, 217, 220, 221, 224, 227, 228, 234 universal 28, 39, 43, 50, 76, 79, 81, 82–​3, 97, 121, 132, 134, 142, 158, 163–​7, 185, 203, 210, 216, 220, 227 Huri,Yair 172 al-​Husri, Sati 95 Hussein, Abdirahman A. 190 Hutcheon, Linda 188, 207, 209, 223 ‘Orientalism as Post-​Imperial Witnessing’ 188 Ibn Hazm 171 The Collar of the Dove 171 Ibn Khaldoun 135

Ibn Rushd (Averröes) 51, 171 identity 18, 21, 22, 52, 60, 61, 66, 82–​3, 90, 91, 94, 103, 110, 112, 122, 128, 135, 142, 166, 167, 168, 169, 189, 191, 208, 211, 215, 219, 220, 222, 224, 225 cultural 35, 156, 172 formation 19, 31, 33, 35, 36, 41, 66 group/​national 25, 29, 38, 69, 72, 77, 78, 81, 82–​3, 89, 103, 145, 197, 210, 219, 244, 233 political 36, 66, 91, 208 ideology 24, 29, 38, 39, 43, 62, 97–​121, 122, 128, 138, 179, 191–​2, 197, 198, 200, 207, 209, 220, 223, 225 iltizām 48, 49, 47 immigration 94, 189 imperialism 23, 27, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 53, 81, 82, 83, 97, 101–​5, 108, 109, 120–​1, 132, 138–​9, 146, 188, 191, 193, 195, 204 anti-​76, 105, 172, 233 post-​ 74, 188 imprisonment 63, 98–​9, 121 see also prison independence 89, 109, 119, 201, 221 Egyptian 50, 60, 74, 78 Palestinian 77, 136 post-​ 47, 59 India 66, 73, 220, 223, 232 Infitah 107 injustice 19, 20, 32, 57, 59, 64, 77, 78, 123, 125, 127, 132, 206, 221 insecurity 27, 225 integrity 49, 67, 86, 93, 95, 145, 147, 154, 208

266

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Index intellectual practice 17–​44, 49, 50, 88–​ 91, 156, 163, 189, 190, 192, 209, 210, 215, 220, 223, 233 intellectuals 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 33, 37, 39, 40–​4, 45–​91, 93, 96, 97, 102, 121, 122, 138, 142, 158, 163, 166, 168, 185, 190, 206, 217, 228 interdependence 20, 34, 224, 228 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 80 Intifada first 123 second 123 Israel/​Israeli 52–​3, 61–​3, 71, 77–​8, 87, 94, 96, 98–​9, 102–​4, 108, 124, 128–​9, 131–​2, 134–​6, 171–​2, 177–​ 8, 188, 195, 216, 223–​4, 225–​7 Jahilia 162 James, C. L. R. 37, 194 The Black Jacobins 37 James, E. O. 176 Jameson, Fredric 59, 215 Jerusalem 105–​6, 197–​8 Jews 27, 38, 82, 98, 106, 143, 216 see also religion, Judaism Joudah, Fady 173 justice 22, 32, 34–​5, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 45, 48, 49, 54, 58–​60, 64, 84, 97, 121–​4, 126, 130, 131, 132, 134, 138, 159, 183, 223, 226 Kandiyoti, Deniz 161 Kapteijns, Lidwien 161 Kazantzakis, Nikos, Zorba 211 Keddie, Nikki R. 45 Kelly, George 151

Kelman, Herbert 223–​4 Khomeini, Ayatollah 35 Kiernan, Maureen 198 Kilpatrick, Hilary 86 knowledge 24, 26, 31, 37, 38, 40, 56, 72, 78, 99, 116, 121, 122, 134, 149, 157, 166, 167, 176, 189, 194, 207, 209, 210, 216 Lamming, George 19 Lane, Edward 69, 241n.1 Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians 241n.1 language 21, 27, 33, 37, 63–​4, 73, 83, 106, 108, 126, 136, 137, 167, 172, 174, 183–​5, 204, 208, 220 Larsen, Neil 204 late style 28, 40, 41, 43, 50, 83–​8, 142, 169–​70, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185 Latin America 188, 217 law 51, 56, 57, 73, 159–​61 Lazarus, Neil 25–​6 Lebanon 63, 102–​4 Israeli invasion (1982) 63, 102–​4 liberation 24, 40, 67, 75, 95, 121, 132, 134.138, 154, 192, 203, 205, 217 Ling, L. H. M. 110 Linhard, Tabea 169 literature 37, 42, 46, 47, 50–​88, 89, 91, 141, 157, 168, 176, 219 Litvin, Margaret 229 loneliness 25, 143 Lorca, Federico García 172–​4 ‘A Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías’ 172 ‘Somnambular Ballad’ 173–​4

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Index loyalty 19, 31, 35, 100, 189 Lyotard, Jean-​François 189, 209–​10, 217 MacBride Commission report 103 Mafouz, Miramar 154 Mahfouz, Naguib 42, 43, 49–​54, 59–​60, 64–​5, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73–​4, 78–​9, 85–​6, 88, 89, 97, 100–​1, 112, 114–​8, 120, 130–​2, 138, 141, 145–​ 6, 147–​55, 185 The Cairo Trilogy 50, 51, 54, 59–​60, 64, 67–​8, 73–​4, 78, 100, 113, 117, 149, 150, 154–​5 Children of the Alley 130, 132, 151 ‘Dialogue of Late Afternoon’ 85 Echoes of an Autobiography 85, 147 Malti-​Douglas, Fedwa 75–​6 marginalisation/​marginality 43, 116, 142, 221, 223 marriage 51, 56, 57, 73, 113–​4, 117, 120, 122, 149, 150, 160 Marrouchi, Mustapha 69, 217 Marx, Karl 67 McCarthy, Conor 25 media 64, 81, 168, 241n.2 Mejías, Ignacio 173 Melville, Herman, Moby Dick 102 metaphor 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 35, 37, 41, 46, 50, 85, 89, 97, 123, 128, 141, 163, 165, 174, 185, 186, 225 Middle East 23, 45–​91, 93–​6, 102, 103, 108, 116, 138, 145, 147, 159, 162, 166, 171, 188, 210, 220, 222, 227, 228 migration 23, 24, 46, 142 Mikhail, Mona 155

misogyny 161, 186, 204, 205 modernism 20, 22, 24, 43, 47, 187–​234 post-​43, 66, 76, 81, 187–​234 modernity 18, 68, 143, 190, 205 Mondal, Anshuman 114 Moore, Jeanne 141 morality 30, 34, 109, 110, 119, 144 Moussa-​Mahmoud, Fatma 150 Mufti, Aamir 26, 30–​1, 132, 163 Muslim Brotherhood 109 Muslim Brothers 52 Muslims 82, 161, 197, 198 see also religion, Islam Nakba 18, 82, 88 Nandy, Ashis 228 narrative(s) 22, 36, 47, 48, 50, 64, 65, 85, 96, 103, 112, 114, 124, 125, 130, 138, 157, 177, 178, 190, 191, 194, 195, 205, 207–​20, 222, 224, 227, 233 Nassef, Malak Hifni 206 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 60, 81–​2, 95–​6, 145–​6, 171–​2, 195, 198, 216, 241n.2 nationalism 38, 40, 42, 45, 62, 74, 76, 78–​9, 80–​3, 88, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 138, 145, 146, 171, 172, 191–​207, 233 Native Americans 125 native land 18, 22, 24, 55, 88, 125, 150, 166, 197, 233 nature 17, 30, 73, 124, 134 Nazis/​Nazism 105–​6, 143, 144, 145, 156, 157 Nebuchadnezzar 105–​6 New Arab Cinema 48 Nietzsche, Friedrich 121–​2, 207 Nigeria 73

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Index occupation British 94, 172 French 94 Israeli 77, 99, 101, 129, 134 Occupied Territories 98, 128, 188 Odyssey, The 157 oppositional consciousness 28, 32, 41, 43, 50, 58, 60, 61, 89, 97, 121, 126 oppression 18, 20, 24, 27, 52, 53, 65, 96, 108, 122, 128, 163, 199, 225 class 116, 118, 119, 193 gender 52, 65, 110, 120, 204, 205 Orientalism 31, 35, 65, 75, 98, 117, 122, 166, 188, 222, 241n.1 origin 22, 79, 81, 142, 193, 207 Orwell, George 81–​2 Animal Farm 82 ‘other’ 38, 70, 71, 78, 80, 98, 110, 125, 136, 156, 162, 171, 182, 184–​5, 217, 218, 220, 222–​6, 228, 230, 232, 234 Ottoman Empire 60, 82, 93–​5, 100 Pakistan 73 Palestine 20, 29, 41, 63, 72, 76, 82, 87, 94, 98, 102, 116, 125, 127, 128, 135, 136, 138, 171, 172, 176, 177, 221 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 102 Palestinians 22, 61, 71, 72, 77, 88, 98–​9, 103, 104, 105, 106, 125, 126, 127–​ 30, 132, 136–​7, 172, 177, 178, 216, 224, 226, 227, 233 pan-​Arabism 45, 81, 95–​6, 146, 171–​2, 186, 195, 233 Pappé, Ilan 94 Parry, Benita 169–​70

pathos 17, 113, 221 patriarchy 58–​9, 60, 64–​5, 97, 102, 108, 110–​2, 114–​5, 120, 122, 123, 138, 159, 160, 162–​3, 205 philosophy 22, 54, 67, 99, 144, 164, 167, 185, 207, 208, 215, 226 pluralism/​pluralist 27, 35–​6, 37, 44, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 76, 82, 87, 142, 169–​71, 173–​8, 180, 181, 186, 228, 241n.1 poetry 46, 50, 78, 101, 106, 125, 126, 136, 137, 170, 171, 174, 176, 181, 183, 185, 186, 218, 219 politics 38, 50, 52, 54, 57–​60, 80, 82, 90, 97, 102, 138–​9, 142, 163, 168, 175, 178, 185–​6, 193, 207, 227, 233 polygamy 166 polyphonic consciousness 28, 36, 42, 43, 50, 67, 69, 70, 142, 169–​71, 176, 177, 185, 190, 208, 210, 215, 217, 220, 233 Porter, James 158 postcolonialism see colonialism, post-​ postmodernism see modernism, post-​ power 23, 25, 26, 29, 32, 33, 40, 48, 51, 59–​61, 66, 80, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96, 101, 102, 103, 106–​8, 111, 112, 115, 116, 119–​20, 121, 122, 124–​7, 129, 130–​3, 136, 138, 139, 145, 146, 147, 148, 152, 153, 154, 160, 163, 166, 178, 199, 206, 208, 210, 221, 225, 228, 229, 233 powerlessness 25, 26, 100, 133, 144–​5, 199, 228 Prakash, Gyan 207 prison 63, 64, 107, 113, 132–​4, 199

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Index privilege 23, 25, 29, 31, 32, 42, 51, 56, 97, 116, 120, 207 Prophet Muhammad 67, 165

Reynolds, Dwight 47 Riesebrodt, Martin 162 rights 32, 52, 77, 97, 99, 193, 226 human 38, 76, 79, 127–​8, 195, 224, 227 women’s 45, 58, 162 Robbins, Bruce 22–​3, 195 Romance/​Romantic 25, 26, 151, 167 Rooney, Caroline 228 Rosenthal, Lecia 83

Qualey, M. Lynx 46 Quayson, Ato 206 Qur’an 58, 87, 164, 165 Qyss, Imru ’el-​46, 177–​8 race/​racism 27, 38, 53, 73, 98, 116, 138, 222 Rahman, Abd al-​ 87 Ramallah 124 Ramallah, siege 137 refugees 18, 19, 96, 99, 127 Reith Lectures 30, 32 religion 27, 30, 46, 51, 56, 58, 73, 122–​3, 130, 135, 142, 146, 160, 162, 164, 165, 166, 170, 177, 186, 202, 227 Christianity 33, 69, 95, 101, 109, 116, 161, 163, 166, 169, 170, 197, 206 see also Christians Coptic 69 see also Copts Islam 38, 45, 46, 52, 58, 67, 69, 94–​5, 101, 109, 146, 158–​9, 161–​5, 173, 186, 204–​5, 227–​8 see also Muslims Judaism 87, 94, 95, 109, 156, 158, 164, 167–​86, 217 see also Jews repression 50, 105, 116 resistance 37, 43, 61, 64, 72, 93–​139, 193, 196, 204, 205, 217 revolution 101, 199, 222 revolution, 1919 48, 60, 100, 145 revolution, 1952 25, 60, 198

El Saadawi, Nawal 42, 49, 50, 52, 53, 56–​9, 66–​7, 75–​6, 81, 84–​5, 88–​91, 97, 101, 102, 106–​12, 114, 115, 116, 119–​20, 122–​3, 126, 132–​4, 138–​9 A Daughter of Isis 66, 75, 84, 119 Memoirs from the Women’s Prison 133 Memoirs of a Woman Doctor 57, 110 The Nawal El Saadawi Reader 66 Walking through Fire 52, 56 Woman at Point Zero 107, 111, 112, 123 Sadat, Anwar 107, 109, 133, 198, 199 Sadr, Bani 35 Said, Edward, works Culture and Imperialism 28, 34, 35, 36, 39, 101, 191, 192 Humanism and Democratic Criticism 28, 39 On Late Style 28, 41 Orientalism 28, 31, 32, 35, 37, 49, 98, 110, 122, 187, 188 Reflections on Exile and Other Essays 28, 29, 33, 38 Representations of the Intellectual 28, 30, 31, 32, 35 The World, the Text, and the Critic 28, 29, 30

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Index Saliba, Therese 204 Sanasarian, Eliz 161 Sand, Shlomo, The Invention of the Jewish People 224 Sartre, Jean-​Paul 47, 221–​2 Schreiber, Fred 175 Scott, Ridley, Kingdom of Heaven 198 sectarianism 93–​4 secular consciousness 28, 30, 31, 32, 43, 50, 53–​7, 90, 97, 101, 103, 104, 107, 109, 112, 115, 121, 142, 145, 151, 155–​6, 157, 158, 162, 163, 167, 185 secularism 19, 27, 32, 34, 35, 39, 95, 97, 100, 105, 126–​7, 130, 132, 192 security 18, 23, 27, 30, 61, 62, 102, 147 ‘self ’ 70, 71, 78, 80, 98, 110, 185 Senghor, Léopold Sédar 193 Shafik, Viola 47, 75 Shakespeare, William 129, 229, 230 Sharawi, Huda 57 Sharon, Ariel 104 Shaykh, Hanan al-​ 83 Sheehan, Paul 207 Siddiq, Muhammad 154, 224 slavery 57, 120, 166, 200 social system 43, 54, 57, 73, 228 socialism 86, 198 sociology, historical 157, 158 solidarity 25, 26, 41, 80, 83, 95, 134, 136, 153, 217 Somekh, Sasson 50 Spain 87, 88, 174 Spencer, Robert 26 Spivak, Gayatri 193–​4, 199 Starr, Deborah 211, 215, 216 Stauffer, Zahr 229–​30 Stetkevych, Jaroslav 173

Stevens, Wallace 17 subjugation 31, 54, 59, 76, 81, 101, 105, 188, 191, 204, 221, 227, 233 Suez Canal 95 sufferings 18, 19, 25, 50, 53, 68, 100, 102, 103, 105, 121, 206 superpower 48, 60, 102, 105 supremacism/​supremacist 97–​121, 138, 205, 211, 230 Syria 87, 94, 95 Tagore, Rabindranath, A Grain of Sand 232 Tammam, Abu 173–​4, 218 Hamassa Diwan 218 Tarabishi, Georges 123 Terkenli, Theano 141 Third World 59, 74, 75, 76, 80, 188, 191, 195, 232 Tibi, Bassam 95, 96–​7 Tippett, Krista 166 topos 173, 175, 191 totalitarianism 130, 132, 145, 146–​7, 241n.3 Toynbee, Polly 242n.1 tradition(s) 21, 22, 27, 29, 30, 36, 45, 48–​50, 59, 65, 68, 87, 91, 95, 118, 135, 147, 157, 164, 165, 166, 204, 205, 215 transformation 19, 37, 50, 95, 147, 186, 194, 205 transnational corporations (TNCs) 80–​1 truth 32, 33, 38, 41, 44, 47, 59, 61, 72, 89, 90, 97, 113, 121–​3, 124, 125, 126, 130, 132, 136, 138, 152, 153–​4, 185, 207, 211 tyranny 53, 122, 130, 199, 231

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27

Index United Nations (UN) 19, 108 United States of America (USA) 18, 23, 24, 29, 32, 33, 35, 46, 56, 59, 61, 62, 66, 69, 84, 90, 91, 96, 101–​4, 105, 107–​9, 125, 143, 163, 165, 178, 211, 212, 216, 242n.1 Pax Americana 102, 104, 109 uprootedness 18, 19, 77, 90, 143, 149 Urabi, Ahmad 94 utopian 27, 167, 170, 175, 221 Valassopoulos, Anastasia 111 Vázquez, Miguel 173, 174 Vico, Giambattista 73 Vinson, Pauline 85 violence 40, 62, 75, 82, 101, 128, 137, 196 Ill.2, 197, 211, 212 voyage in 28, 37, 42, 50, 73, 74, 76, 190, 191–​207, 233 Wafd Party 60, 74, 100, 109, 119, 145 war 64, 71, 80, 102, 197, 202, 225, 226 Arab–​Israeli (1948) 47, 172

Arab–​Israeli (1967) (Six-​Day War) 33, 47, 179, 224 Gulf 59, 108, 144, 156 Lebanese Civil 62 Suez War 195 World War I 82 World War II 82, 94, 95, 96, 100, 143 World War II, post-​24, 45, 55, 93, 132, 188 Wellek, René 157 Wheelock, Keith 241n.3 Williams, Patrick 221–​2 Woolf, Virginia 206 World Bank 80 xenophobia 35, 79 Young, Robert 221, 234 Zaghlul, Sa’ d 78–​9, 100, 119 Zionism/​Zionist 23, 94, 98, 125, 172, 179, 180, 186, 216 Ziyada, Mai 206 Zuhur, Sherifa 107

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