Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel: Nation-State, Modernity and Tradition 9780748655700

Citation preview

P OL I T I C S OF N O S T A L G IA I N T HE AR ABIC N O V E L Nation-State, Modernity and Tradition

Wen-chin Ouyang

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd i

11/12/2012 16:28

In memory of my brother 㔯ṕ (1959–2009) and of our early life in Libya

© Wen-chin Ouyang, 2013 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/13 JaghbUni by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 5569 4 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 5570 0 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 5572 4 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7486 5571 7 (Amazon ebook) The right of Wen-chin Ouyang to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd ii

11/12/2012 16:28

CONTENTS

Foreword PART I

In the Realm of Memory

v

NOSTALGIA: POLITICS OF THE PAST

1 ‘The Invention of Tradition’ Revolution in Language Classical Poetics in Narratives of Modernity Modernity and Tradition Rewriting Tradition Arabic Travel Genres Poetics of Nostalgia

3 3 9 14 19 25 32

2 The Mysterious (Dis)Appearance of Tradition ‘Arguing with the Past’ Politics of Nostalgia ‘The Future of Nostalgia’ The Politics of Tradition In the Labyrinth of Intertextuality Archaeology of the Arabic Novel

44 44 47 50 53 64 68

PART II MADNESS: IN THE RUINS OF DREAM AND MEMORY 3 Semiology of Madness Impossibility of Identity Ideology of Madness Idealisation of Nation Violence of Semiology War of Terror

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd iii

77 77 83 88 91 95

11/12/2012 16:28

iv

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel Sea of Love, War on Terror War of Words

101 103

4 Semiotics of Tyranny Love with an Improper Stranger What is Tyranny? The Machinery of Despotism Going Sane, Going Mad Creative Madness

111 111 115 120 124 129

PART III NARRATING THE NATION: TIME, HISTORY, STORY 5 History Narrativised Past Novelisation of Autobiography and Biography Musāmarisation of the Novel Privatisation of Public Space Secular Humanism Nationalisation of History Biography of Tyranny

143 143 147 153 157 161 165 170

6 Story Epic of the Common Folk Personalisation of History Private Thoughts, Lessons of the Past Resistance to Tyranny State of Fear: Voyeurism, Gossipmongering, Torture Pavilions and Walls Story of Hegemony, History of Nation Return to a Woman’s Body

184 184 192 196 199 204 210 213 217

Epilogue Post-national Impulses

224

Bibliography Index

228 242

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd iv

11/12/2012 16:28

Foreword IN THE REALM OF MEMORY

What we call memory today is therefore not memory but already history. The so-called rekindling of memory is actually its final flicker as it is consumed by history’s themes. The need for memory is a need for history. Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory, p. 8 The modern imagining of nation on a geographical site is necessarily twi(n)ned with an impulse to rewrite history in a way that gives the modern nation roots in the immemorial past. History is, as Pierre Nora shows us in his stupendous project on the reconstruction of the French past, Realms of Memory, a matter of tinkering with collective memory that inevitably crystallises on a place, a locus, or, in modern times, the site of nation.1 ‘The association of the words lieu and mémoire in French proved to have profound connotations – historical, intellectual emotional, and largely unconscious (the effect was something like that of the English word “roots”)’, Nora explains, ‘These connotations arise in part from the specific role that memory played in the construction of the French idea of the nation and in part from recent changes in the attitude of the French toward their national past’.2 What Nora says of the French reconstruction of the past that would be consumed as national history and the ensuing ambivalence towards both the past and the nation in France is true of the Arab mobilisation of the past in the construction of Arab national history. The ambivalence towards the past and the nation accentuates even more the need for history, or the necessity to tinker with memory, especially when the nation and the present are often seen as born out of a problematic cultural encounter between East and West. The Arabic novel, which shares with the Arab nation its cross-cultural genealogy, has aligned itself with the nation, partaking in imagining, v

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd v

11/12/2012 16:28

vi

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

building and allegorising the nation, and modernising Arabic culture and literature at the same time. It does so by rooting both the nation and novel in the past, often mobilising the language of the past to write about the present, and saturating the novel’s textual landscape with a profound longing for the past and, more importantly, for the future that has yet to take proper and desirable shape. Interrogation of the past is synonymous with the search for future. There is, however, a dear price to be paid for always resorting to the past, to the language of the past, to express the desire for the future and map the trajectory of modernisation of both the Arab nation and Arabic novel. In the story of the triangulated relationship of nation-state, modernity and tradition the Arabic novel that ‘employs the Arab cultural heritage’ tells is another story of the dialectics of past and present, which is in turn shaped by its own search for a unique identity and indigenous roots, and driven by its own impulse to tell stories and write histories. The purpose is to let the Arabic novel tell its stories, to look at the ways in which it tells the stories and the consequences of its narrative strategies in the production of meaning, to trace the formulation of its aesthetics at the intersection between past and present in its nostalgia for both past and future and, more importantly, to track the history of the nation and novel it writes. My reading of the Arabic novel is inspired by my work on pre-modern Arabic narrative and storytelling. I was writing an article on Sīrat ʿUmar al-Nuʿmān, a mini epic cycle inserted into the Arabian Nights in the nineteenth century, when the disparity between the abundant presence of love stories with happy endings in pre-modern Arabic storytelling and their poignant absence in modern Arabic fiction suddenly became significant in the understanding of the function of the cycle of love stories in the Sīra. ʿUmar al-Nuʿmān, like a great majority of the Arabic novel, details the rise, fall and rise again of a nation, in this case defined by the kingly genealogy of the family of ʿUmar al-Nuʿmān. The continuity of this genealogy depends to a great extent on the propriety, and therefore legitimacy, of the royal marriages. The love stories are in effect discourses, in a metaphorical sort of way, on the fate of the nation. This destiny is written by the members of the family forming the nucleus of the nation in their conduct while in love: the nation rises when propriety in matters of love is observed, and falls when this propriety is violated, when legitimacy becomes questionable. When the love story observes all the requirements of propriety, the nation coheres. The love stories pervasive in the Arabic novel in contrast are about frustrated desires, disappointed hopes, broken promises, betrayals of confidence and tragic destinies. From a comparative perspective they read like a

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd vi

11/12/2012 16:28

Foreword

vii

statement on the Arabic novel as well as modern Arab nation-states, which have been grappling with issues of legitimacy. At another level, the story of the Arabic novel that employs heritage is that of, among other things, the love affair with the nation-state. Its love for the nation-state is, however, haunted by the nation-state’s problematic relationship with modernity and tradition, which bespeaks its anxiety about its own genealogy. With the West ‘playing in the dark’, nation-state and modernity become ‘improper’ strangers, or illegitimate partners to tradition and the novel, and tradition becomes the ‘proper’, or complete, stranger to nation-state, modernity and the novel. Any kind of liaison is by definition potentially alienating and of questionable legitimacy. The love stories underpinning the politics of the Arabic novel are, upon close scrutiny, reincarnations of Arabic poetics of love, not only inherent in pre-modern Arabic storytelling but also in classical and modern Arabic poetry, which are expressive of the aesthetics, ethics and politics of writing in Arab culture past and present. The Arabic novel deploys familiar tropes of love pervasive in Arabic poetry and storytelling – love, desire, nostalgia, and madness – to tell stories of Arab aspirations for the nation and modernity and disappointment in the state and modernisation from two different but interlacing perspectives locatable in the dialectics between past and present. It looks at the past through the prism of the present in its imagining of political community and will to the modern, but sees the present through the eye of the past in its allegorisation of the nation-state and interrogation of modernisation and the role of tradition in the process, all the while telling the story of its own search for form. The idea of this book, Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel, and its companion volume, Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel, is informed by the alternative visions and differing dialectics of past and present, as well as the division of labour among familiar tropes of love inherent in the Arabic novel’s expression of its longing for form, its discourses on the triangulated nation, modernity and tradition, and the history it writes for the Arab nation and the Arabic novel. I have examined in Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel how the present mobilises the past in the processes of nation-building and modernisation in the narratives focalised on the two tropes of love and desire. Taking my point for departure as the site on which changing notions of space play out the dialectics of past and present, I looked at the ways the Arabic novel takes shape while giving shape to the present in the form of territorialising the nation-state; investigated the Arabic novel’s expressions of its anxiety over the incomplete project of the nation-state at present as resembling

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd vii

11/12/2012 16:28

viii

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

that of unrequited love; and scrutinised the Arabic novel’s expressions of the desire for modernity, and the ways it intervenes in and mediates the discourses (in the Foucauldian sense of the word) on modernisation that are driven by the intersection between two impulses, one to decolonise and the other to modernise. I ended with a close look at the nostalgic impulse in the Arabic novel that engages in allegorising the nation and unravelling its possession by the past. I want now to pick up from where I left off and turn my attention to the redeployment of the tropes of nostalgia and madness in the Arabic novel. This volume, Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel, is in three parts. It continues the interrogation of the Arabic novel’s discourses on nationstate, modernity and tradition, this time with focus on its view of the present through the prism of the past. It begins by looking at the ways it nostalgically revives tradition, argues with it and rewrites it, then inserts it as an important component of the equation that will lead to an Arab modernity. It then assesses the transformation of the past into a burden when nationbuilding and modernisation come face to face with insurmountable political realities. Part I, in two chapters, seeks the shape of Arabic cultural and literary heritage in the Arabic novel. Chapter 1 uncovers precursors veiled by the intertextual maze created in and by the Arabic novel and makes manifest the national allegory disguised as discourses on the past. Chapter 2 then exposes nostalgia as a paradoxical force that simultaneously constructs and deconstructs tradition, which (dis)appears in the Arabic novel’s discourses on modernity. The road to Arab modernity is, moreover, paved with thorns, and its success is not guaranteed, especially in the present circumstances (of rampant corruption and political oppression in the Arab world, the unresolved occupation of the territories of Palestine, and the raging Islamic fundamentalist strife). The real or perceived absence of a modern nationstate as a ‘home’ where Arabs could settle and grow roots becomes a source of trouble, in fact, a cause of madness. Part II, also in two chapters, then explores the trope of love madness in the Arabic novel, and what that says about the past, present and future of the nation-state. While Chapter 3 sees madness as expressive of the hegemony of ideology, Chapter 4 locates the will to resist and unravel the semiotics of this very hegemony in madness. The book ends with Part III, again in two chapters, on the Arabic novel’s preoccupation with narrativising the nation and narrating history, here, of both the nation and the novel. Chapter 5 locates the historical impulse of the Arabic novel in its will to interrogate the past in order to write the future, creating in the process a new understanding of both the past and present.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd viii

11/12/2012 16:28

ix

Foreword

Chapter 6 then shows how it tells the (hi)story of the nation-state as well as the Arabic novel from an entirely new perspective. My ultimate purpose, however, is to provide close readings of a number of the Arabic novels that make tradition and argument with the past their central preoccupation. These novels restore tradition to the discourses on the nation-state, and intervene in the debates about modernity and heritage. Their intervention in these discourses problematises and complicates our understanding of notions of modernity and the role of tradition in modernisation especially in the Arab world. My task, as I see it, is archaeological: to unearth as many layers as possible embedded in the texts and to let loose the stories they tell, to let as many genies as possible out of the bottle that is literary history. My choice of texts is necessarily informed by the story I wish to tell about the Arabic novel, as well as my taste. There is, it seems, no escaping the hegemony of personal taste, especially where quality of writing is concerned. Needless to say, I have chosen only the novels I like and understand. I console myself with the realisation that my work is a step towards a better understanding of the Arabic novel and the culture that produced it and that I can only tell part of, not the whole of the story. I hope other like-minded scholars will pick up where I leave off, in terms of both approach and scope, and improve the quality of scholarship in the field (Arabic) and discipline (literary studies) that have thus far captivated my attention. NOTES 1. Pierre Nora, ‘From Lieux de mémoire to Realms of Memory’, Preface to the English language edn, Realms of Memory: the Construction of the French Past, I. Conflicts and Divisions, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, NY: Columbia University Press), p. xv. 2. Ibid. pp. xv–xvi.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd ix

11/12/2012 16:28

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the ten years since I began working on intertextuality and the intersection between classical and modern poetics and prosaics in modern Arabic literature, I have incurred innumerable professional and personal debts. Colleagues, friends and students listened to me patiently, at conferences or social gatherings, in living rooms or classrooms, and gave me invaluable feedback and support. Many colleagues even published some of the material I wrote on the subject in articles and book chapters. Those early contemplations are not always recognisable in Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel or its companion volume, Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel (2012), but they remain the kernel of the vision that gave shape to my books. I am particularly grateful to Roger Allen, Michael Beard, . Marshall Brown, Sabry Hafez, Marle Hammond, Tim Matthews, Christina Phillips, Mohamed-Salah Omri, Wen-Yi Ouyang, Paul Starkey and Robert Weninger. Parts of this volume were previously published in ‘The Dialectic of Past and Present in Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma by Naguib Mahfouz’, Edebiyât, 14: 1 & 2 (2003), 81–107; ‘Intertextuality Gone Awry: The Mysterious (Dis)Appearance of ‘Tradition’ in the Arabic Novel’, Intertextuality in Modern Arabic Literature since 1967, ed. Luc Deheuvels, Barbara Michalak-Pikulska and Paul Starkey, Durham Modern Languages Series, Arabic Series AR2 (2006), 45–64; and ‘Fictive Mode, ‘Journey to the West’, and Transformation of Space: Discourses of Modernisation in ʿAli Mubarak’s ʿAlam al-Din’, Comparative Critical Studies 4:3 (December 2007), 331–58. I am thankful for the permission to republish these here. Above all, I thank Lun-Yun Chang for his support, and for providing me with a most comfortable space to write uninterruptedly during my stay in Taipei in 2011.

x

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd x

11/12/2012 16:28

Chapter 1 ‘THE INVENTION OF TRADITION’ 1

REVOLUTION IN LANGUAGE

I want to write different words for you To invent a language for you alone To fit the size of your body And the size of my love When I told you: ‘I love you’ I knew I was leading a coup Against the tribal law, That I was tolling the bells of scandal. I wanted to seize power To increase the number of leaves In the forests. I wanted to make the oceans bluer And the children more innocent. I wanted to put an end to the savage age And to kill the last Caliph. It was my intention When I loved you To break down the doors of the harem To protect women’s breasts From men’s teeth: So that their nipples could Dance in the open air with delight When I said: 3

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 3

11/12/2012 16:28

4

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel ‘I love you!’ I knew I was inventing a new alphabet For a city which does not read, I was reciting my poems In an empty hall, And I was offering wine To those who did not know The joys of drunkenness. Nizār Qabbānī, The 100 Love Letters, pp. 165–74

The 100 Love Letters (1970) by Nizār Qabbānī (1923–98) are, in one important respect, homage to Pablo Neruda’s The 100 Love Sonnets. It is not possible, in Neruda’s sonnets or Qabbānī’s letters, to divorce the woman from the nation.2 But Neruda and Qabbānī do not have the same political agenda in their respective collections of love poems. While the exiled Neruda nostalgically carves the geography of Chile onto the body of his beloved Matilda, Qabbānī revolutionises the Arabic language, not so much through bringing to the fore the repressed sexual underground, as Mahfouz does in Palace of Desire, but more by pushing to the limit the ‘traditions’ framing, assessing and making judgment on how, when, where and why the Arabic language may be used. Writing is necessarily a revolutionary act, as the title of his essays asserts, ‘Al-kitāba ʿamal inqilābī’.3 It is a coup d’état that throws over the authority of the past, whether this authority is patriarchal, familial or tribal,4 that removes a poem from the familiar to the unfamiliar by going against the grain of copying, transmitting and imitating,5 and that guarantees surprise,6 all premised on replacing an existing system (niẓām qāʾim), imbued with deeply rooted covenant, history, nationalist sentiments, and language use, with a new one.7 Qabbānī’s modernist and modernising strategies involve breaking linguistic, literary and cultural taboos, which are seen as the means through which freedom of thought, individual liberty, social action, cultural renewal and literary creativity are controlled, curtailed and beaten into collective uniformity. Love is one of the possible sites of a revolution in language Qabbānī seeks, for love, as I have explained in Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel, is an episteme, a summation of an entire system of knowledge laden with political and ethical codes that frame, inform and produce not only ways of knowing but also patterns of social conduct. Love for a woman is, at one level, love for a nation, and at another, interrogation of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 4

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

5

the epistemological systems underpinning language and, more importantly, who we are as individuals and nations. Tales of Love, Julia Kristeva shows us in her eponymous book, tell us less about what binds people together emotionally or sexually but more about the systems of knowledge operative within us and producing our subjectivity, or producing us as subjects.8 For Qabbānī, love is equally about the freedom of the individual to produce his or her subjectivity, or agency in the process of subject formation. To reject the authority sanctioned by tradition, or cultural, social and linguistics practices inherited from the past is to invest power in the individual who must be given the right to fashion his or her own present. The stories of love he tells in his poetry are, like the tales of love Kristeva analyses, Qabbānī’s rebellion against rehearsed systems of knowledge; be they ideology, theology, philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, or simply social order. There is no reason why love must be censured, spoken of only in allusions, tacked as the coveted source of romantic suffering, politicised as ‘national’ allegories, or elevated as expression of divine love.9 Sensual love is itself a sufficient cause for celebration. To revel in sexuality is to strip humanity of the prison-house of civilisation, of the shackles on the mind and heart imposed by the systems of knowledge accumulated over the centuries, and restore it to nature, its primordial state, where it is possible to start again from the basics. Everything must be reduced to desire, the primordial instinct for living, survival and renewal. Desire, in Qabbānī’s poetry, comes to be the alterity of ‘social order’ constructed in and supported by the authority of hackneyed systems of knowledge, such as ‘the tribal law’, ‘the last Caliph’, the ‘harem’, and the ‘old language’ in the poem quoted above. The erotic narcissism in Qabbānī’s poetry cannot conceal the rather ‘revolutionary’ poetic vision underpinning his compositions. His erotic poetry, as Muḥy al-Dīn Ṣubḥī persuasively argues,10 transcends sex. It instead locates sexuality in what Barthes would call ‘the pleasure of the text’, an appreciation of beauty that finds expression in the new ways he uses the Arabic language to create a world full of wonder in his love poems. Love is language, love is world, and language is therefore world; it does not convey but embody. He speaks of the ‘Levantine’ inflection in his poetic language as both belonging and being: I felt that I belonged to the Lebanese family of poetry [Qabbānī speaking here of his early career as poet and his fascination with Bishāra al-Khūrī, Amīn Nakhla, Ilyās Abū Shabaka, Yūsuf Ghuṣūb, Ṣalāḥ Labakī, Sa‘īd ‘Aql and Mishāl Ṭirād]. I felt that the Levantine

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 5

11/12/2012 16:28

6

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel alphabet, through which they expressed themselves, is the common ground [shared by the Syrians and Lebanese]; it makes Damascus and Beirut seem like two fetuses moving in the same womb, or two eyes that see things of beauty and express them in the same style. When I speak of this ‘Levantine’ accent, I am speaking of a linguistic, existential, civilisational and psychic reality that gives the poetry of this part of the Mediterranean [world] special features and characteristics we cannot find in the poetry of other Arab regions.11

Qabbānī pushes the visualizing capacity of the Arabic language to the limit and paints the world with words.12 His simple poetic language, a combination of rigorous observation of ‘classical’ Arabic grammar and free deployment of the quotidian, almost colloquial syntax, phrasing and vocabulary, is utterly deceptive. His poems brim with drama, with surprising turns of events in the dynamics of amorous exchanges between man and woman, and are saturated with references to the body, its positions, movements and activities, and to the material objects adorning and surrounding it. More significantly, he breaks a number of ‘taboos’, institutionalised cultural prison-houses, constructed around woman. Qabbānī’s women are free agents and often speak in their own voices. They are worldly and complex. They do not submit to the authority of ‘the tribal law’, ‘the harem’ or ‘the Caliph’. They always exceed the expectations bred in the canonised Arabic literary tradition. They are not the convenient love prelude to court panegyrics, the classical nasīb to madīḥ. They are more than ʿUmar Ibn Abī Rabīʿa’s love conquests or Majnūn’s Laylā made unattainable to him by the ‘tribal law’. They are rarely the passive desired objects of the harem waiting to be called upon to serve the whims of the Caliph or Shahrayār. Rather, they are frequently the desiring subjects. Their desire equals that of men. Drama in Qabbānī’s erotic poems often unfolds at the will of a female desiring subject. Female desire, whether we agree with Qabbānī’s articulation of it or not, is the motor running the narrative inherent in his staging of female-male love. Female-male love is all consuming because it embodies a world view, an attitude towards life that determines how we live, socialise, behave towards power, and express who we are. Voicing the forbidden by speaking of love for a woman publically, and privileging the female, the traditionally oppressed and repressed, signal Qabbānī’s will to turn the world upside down and radically reconfigure it. The new world Qabbānī paints in his poetry is a world of vibrant colours, rich textures, intense aromas, intoxicating delights, and fearless (free) wills; it is a harem

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 6

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

7

with its doors torn down and its contents restored to their primordial state (the number of leaves in the forests will increase, the oceans will be bluer, the children will be more innocent, and the savage age will be ended). To achieve this end, deemed scandalous by subjects imprisoned in old systems of knowledge, Qabbānī calls for the invention of a new alphabet, a new language. Language is now more than just world. It is how the world is thought; it is thought. He understandably invites Arab writers to purge themselves of their memory (ilghāʾ al-dhākira) in order to write in a new way, to write new poetry. Arabic poetry’s biggest problem is its strong memory. Memory in general poses a great danger to poetry because it is an arrow moving backward [to the past] not forward to the future. We do not write. We merely perform a number of writing habits. We do not write poetry. We simply remember.13 Qabbānī seems to have rid his poetry of ‘writing habits’ of the past but his language remains haunted by ghosts from the past. It is not simply that his poems are littered with references to cultural institutions of the past, like ‘the tribal law’, ‘the Caliph’, ‘harem’, or renowned pre-modern poets, such as al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī, ʿUmar Ibn Abī Rabīʿa – and he was content to be known as the modern ʿUmar Ibn Abī Rabīʿa – Dīk al-Jinn, Abū Nuwās, Abū Tammām, al-Mutanabbī and al-Maʿarrī, or important political figures, like Ṭāriq Ibn Ziyād and Hārūn al-Rashīd, or notorious fictional tyrants, such as Shahrayār, or famous Islamic cities, such as Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba and Granada, or glorious episodes in Arab-Islamic history, especially the flowering of Islamic civilisation in al-Andalus, but that his entire career was invested ostensibly in freeing the present from the past, in manufacturing a literary and cultural amnesia. His obsessive machinations paradoxically point to the abiding presence of the past, to a hegemonic grip of memory, and to a keen nostalgia for a time and place that was the site of Arab civilisational glory and, more to the point, of Arab literary creativity and innovation. There is no getting away from the past, for language is by definition saturated with the past; it possesses a long cultural memory steeped in the history of its use across centuries, whether for mundane daily or highbrow literary purposes. It is not possible to entirely obliterate the past, but it is not impossible to repackage it by repressing some of its parts and memorialising other parts. In an act similar to what Mahfouz does in Palace of Desire, Qabbānī isolates ʿUmar Ibn Abī

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 7

11/12/2012 16:28

8

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Rabīʿa’s school of love, taking it to new heights, but pushes the rest under the rug, so to speak. Just as love is an ancient cultural institution open to a new language,14 the new poetry he writes grows (organically) out of the very earth from which the classical Arabic qaṣīda sprouted.15 To write new poetry is not necessarily to reject for the sake of rejection the so-called legitimate language that sanctified certain rhetorical categories and forms of expression (al-balāgha wa asālīb al-taʿbīr),16 in the same way that one cannot refuse a dish of meat (tharīd) and broth or exchange it for another dish. ‘I do not reject tharīd because it is tharīd. Rather, I refuse ready-made (muʿallaba) dishes that try to become a habit in my life or my destiny’.17 Language is a double-edged sword; it can be a prison, but it also bends to the will of a genius. The genius poet is always able to invent a new language even for familiar topics18 out of the old language. A new poem is necessarily grounded in a familiar poetic tradition. The appearance of a poem on paper comes relatively later than its original formation. Its final form, I mean the form we get to read eventually, is the last train station at the end of a very long journey, a journey that may have lasted thousands of years. Where does poetry come from? A poet is mistaken if he thinks that he alone is the writer of a poem. This is a big delusion. I sometimes feel that the entire humanity, the whole history encompassing the pre-Islamic, early Islamic, Umayyad and ‘Abbasid periods, and all the living and the dead, take part in the writing of any poem of mine. I will surely deny my historical, hereditary, tribal and intellectual connections and assert my freedom and individuality. I will no doubt wash my hands of the influences on me after my birth. But what do I do with the psychological and organic influences on me before I was born? For they are like deeply ingrained tattoos; they cannot be erased. Language is like a ready-made shirt. It can clothe an entire village of children. It is part of the national inheritance and of the sacred commandment against which one cannot rebel. The same may be said of ways of thinking and looking at and responding to life and things as well as of expression. These are shirts hanging in the wardrobe of history, waiting for someone to wear them. Of course, naughty children will boycott wearing their elder brothers’ shirts. They can also cut, adjust and tailor the historical shirts to fit the size of their bodies. However, the cloth remains the same, so do the cotton threads, the buttons and the lining. All this indicates that a poem does not completely belong to the time

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 8

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

9

in which it is written but to a complex time that is layered and that has roots in the deepest part of earth.19 Writing is like modern lovemaking; it must be interactive, requiring active reciprocity between man and woman, poet and paper, and, more importantly, between new and old languages, or modern and ‘traditional’ forms of expression.20 The story of love in Qabbānī’s poetry, like what we find in Ḥāwī and Mahfouz, is an allegory of modernisation of Arabic poetry and literary expressions. Modernisation is driven by the twin(n)ed processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of tradition that live and breathe in language. It is not forgetting the past but tinkering with memory. CLASSICAL POETICS IN NARRATIVES OF MODERNITY

Qabbānī’s discourse taps into what Richard Terdiman sees as the memory crisis precipitated by and in modernity, which is related to two key perceptions regarding both tradition and change: one of the most powerful perceptions was of a massive disruption of traditional forms of memory, and second, that within the atmosphere of such disruption, the functioning memory itself, the institution of memory and thereby of history, became critical preoccupations in the effort to think though what intellectuals were coming to call the ‘modern’.21 Qabbānī evokes in his writings, in his poems and what he says about poetry, this sense of memory crisis born of and for modernity. It is not simply that the past threatens to spill over the memory banks, to be forgotten, but also because it is, from a post-colonial perspective, forcefully divorced from the Arab present by the forces of Westernisation. Even as he rejects the past, he is nonetheless seduced by the very ‘nostalgia for a totalising or unproblematic circulation between present and past’.22 His preoccupation with the past is responsive to the sense that time is out of joint, that the past is inaccessible to the present.23 How he links his language to the past, to a tradition of literary and cultural use, is his way of maintaining coherence in the development of Arabic poetry, Arabic literature and Arab culture. It is part of the constant rehearsal and reproduction of culture in individual and social memory Terdiman speaks of as responsive to modernity’s memory crisis in France.24 In the Arab context, this crisis paradoxically opens Arab

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 9

11/12/2012 16:28

10

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

memory for re-mapping. Arab intellectuals take advantage of the disruption in the traditional forms of memory, and refashion tradition in such a way that would not only legitimate the modern but also give it historical roots. Modern Arabic poetry has been at the centre of such processes of tinkering with memory. Since the beginning of the modern era in the cultural history of the Arabs, poetry has been one of the central issues of debate in discourses on modernity and modernisation. Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign (1798–1805), as explained in standard political, economic, literary, cultural and intellectual histories of the Arab world, was the cataclysmic trauma that initiated a process of self-examination followed by projects of cultural transformation, of modernisation. An unexpected cultural encounter with the ‘super powers’ of the West shocked the Arabs out of their complacency, of their taken-forgranted notion of superiority. This ‘traumatic’ experience of a cultural other is paradoxically the catalyst for another modernity, a renewed opening up of culture and, more importantly, an opportunity for cultural revival, rejuvenation and perhaps even revolution. Arabic poetry, the hallmark of ‘Arab’ identity for the past fourteen centuries since the emergence of Islam, has been embroiled in debates on cultural change and its directions. Adonis, an avant-garde Arab poet, literary critic and cultural architect today, speaks of the Arab experiences of modernity like this: The retreat of Arab society from the ways opened up by modernity began with the fall of Baghdad in 1258. With the Crusades came a complete halt, prolonged by the period of Ottoman domination. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth – the time of Western colonialism and of contact with its culture and its modernity, the period known as the nahda (renaissance, a name which merits a detailed study in itself) – the question of modernity was revived and the debate resumed over the issues which it provoked.25 The terms in which Adonis articulates the ebb and flow of Arab attitudes towards cultural change, whether one speaks of it within the confines of poetry, literature, music, lifestyle and thought, as ‘issues provoked and debated’ within modernity, and ‘the ways opened up’ by it, seem to straddle the two poles of a duality already perceptible in this passage. This duality is set up in terms of a cultural self and other, which in turn spawns more dualities, such as internal and external, traditional and modern, religious

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 10

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

11

and secular, ancient and modern, orality and literacy, fixed and variable, all complexly woven into an overall web-like canvas that we may call culture. More important, modernity habitually manifests itself as both affect and effect at moments of, and on sites of tension pertinent to the social, cultural and political context of, in this case, the Arabs. ‘Foreign powers’, in Adonis’s analysis, play a key role in trajectories of transformative cultural movements centred around the idea of modernity, freezing Arab culture in ‘traditionalism’ and in the three historical moments quoted above (the invasion and occupation by the Mongols, Crusaders and Ottomans); or, on the other hand, generating change, innovation and transformation in two historical moments, the first of which Adonis locates in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, and the second in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He asserts, The problematic of poetic modernity is linked both to an internal power struggle which has many different aspects and operates on various levels, and to an external conflict against foreign powers. It would appear that the return to the ancient has been more eagerly pursued whenever the internal conflict has intensified or the danger from outside has grown more acute.26 The ‘internal power struggle’ referred to here is, from the particular perspective of Adonis’s project for modernisation, relevant to the inherited Arab world view that is inextricably woven into religion. Islam was the foundation of a state constituted as caliphate and formed as a single community in which unanimity of opinion was an essential requirement. Politics and thought were religious; religion was one and permitted no divergence.27 Modernity, from the perspective of religious and political authority, was necessarily rebellious and involved revolutionary movements the proponents of which were heretics and apostates. ‘Those in power designated everyone who did not think according to the culture of the caliphate as “the people of innovation” (ahl al-iḥdāth), excluding them with this indictment of heresy from their Islamic affiliation’.28 Philosophers who denied revelation the role of knowledge and claimed it for reason, for example, were marginalised. And the mystics who rejected the literal (evident) reading of foundational Islamic texts (including the Qurʾān) for a notion that truth and knowledge resided in the hidden, allowing for a kind of union or unity between the divine and existence, or God and man, were undermined if not persecuted.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 11

11/12/2012 16:28

12

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

The development of Arab modernity in the eighth century, Adonis contends, ‘was . . . closely connected with the intellectual movements engaged in a re-evaluation of traditional ideas and beliefs, especially in the area of religion’.29 These movements were equally responsive to ‘external struggles with foreign powers’ and ‘bound up with the revolutionary movements demanding equality, justice and an end to discrimination between Muslims on grounds of race or colour’30 as the Islamic empire complex expanded and incorporated the people, religions and cultures of former Persian and Byzantine empires. Arab modernity in the nineteenth century, part and parcel of a grand project of decolonisation, similarly involved a variety of intercultural encounters, articulated in the form of ‘the shock of modernisation’ sparked off initially by the colonial Western intrusion. It too demanded equality, both in ethnic and cultural terms, not only among the diverse ethnic groups in the Arab world but also between East and West, here premised on civilisational achievements, and a fundamental right, predicated on cultural transformation, to progress to modernity, to integration in the modern world. Here, again, it is the encounter with a cultural other, a difference, that kindles a desire for change and initiates a series of movements that would attempt to chip away at the hold on ‘the Arab mind’ of the ‘traditional way of knowing’, always constructed in and through the Arabic language, giving both shape and authority to an established, familiar way of living, thinking and speaking: tradition. ‘Opinions were divided’ with regards to modernity ‘into two general tendencies’, Adonis tells us, ‘the traditionalist/conformist (uṣūlī) tendency, which considered religion and the Arab linguistic sciences as its main base; and the transgressing/non-conformist (tajāwuzī) tendency, which saw its base, by contrast, as lying in European secularism’.31 In the estimate of ‘the philosophy of the first’, the ancient – be it in religion, poetry or language – is the ideal of true and definitive knowledge. This implies that the future is contained within it: nobody who is a product of this culture is permitted to imagine the possibility of truths or knowledge being developed which would transcend this ancient ideal. According to this theory, modernity – as established in the poetry of Abu Nuwas and Abu Tammam, in thought by Ibn al-Rawandi (d. 910), al-Razi (d. 1210) and Jabir Ibn Hayyan (d. 815), and in the nature of visionary experience by the mystics, and which assumes the emergence of new truths about man and the world – is not only a criticism of the ancient but a refutation of it.32

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 12

12/12/2012 11:08

‘The Invention of Tradition’

13

This ideological priority, enmeshed in the language-based Arabic epistemology, explains how the terms iḥdāth (innovation), muḥdath and ḥadīth (modern, new), and ḥadātha (modernity or modernism) used to characterise poetry that violated the ancient poetic principles, were carried over from the religious lexicon into literary criticism. The modern in poetry appeared to the ruling establishment of the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries as a political or intellectual attack on the culture of the regime and a rejection of the idealised standards of the ancient. For the traditionalist culture is embodied in the uninterrupted practice of an epistemological method which sees truth as existing in the text, not in experience or reality; this truth is given definitively and finally and there is no other. The role of thought is to explain and teach, proceeding from a belief in this truth, and not to search and question in order to arrive at new, conflicting truths.33 Acceptance of anything new opens up the Islamic religious vision and its cultural and intellectual apparatus to doubt, and disrupts the process of continual actualisation of the past. Modernity in Adonis’s narratives is not simply the desired state of a conveniently transformed reality, but also a narrative trope, a site of focalisation where cultural change, or transformation of world view and lifestyle, is interrogated, debated, articulated, legitimated, and perhaps even universalised.34 Modernity is, like modernisms, responsive to the condition of modernisation and the consequences of progress.35 Above all, it is an imaginary construct subject to strategies of cohesive inclusions and exclusions that are familiar features of (grand) narrative(s) of both civilisation and empire. Modernity in these grand narratives is commonly situated at a point of departure in a linear account of the present, sandwiched between a past that is the object of nostalgia and a future that is the subject of fantasy.36 However, the cohesion of this linear narrative of modernity may be unravelled with the introduction as a conceptual category of the figure of cultural other, which takes several forms, each according to the argument being made and position legitimated. The continuous shape-shifting of the cultural other has conceptual consequences. It exposes the untidy details surrounding any thinking and articulation of cultural change and, more significantly, it underscores the need for ‘othering’ in any conceptualisation of identity and of subject, in spite of the conceptual problems it generates rather than solves.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 13

11/12/2012 16:28

14

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel MODERNITY AND TRADITION

In Adonis’s narratives, amalgamating eventually into a grand narrative, Arab modernity is seen as born out of an identity crisis set off by a shocking encounter with Europe and its modernity, which disrupts an assumed linear progression of Arab history from the past to the present and then future. The rude intrusion of this simultaneously cultural and racial other into the flow of Arab history, or time, though not necessarily unwelcome, opens up the Arab cultural landscape for reconfiguration. Arab history, according to Adonis, has been given the shape of a linear narrative and has served as the source of legitimacy for a particular view of Arab civilisation, locking its past and future development in a predetermined trajectory. Even this history may be, or must be rewritten, taking the figure of the cultural other into consideration. The structuring of new narratives around a cultural other, freshly envisioned, makes it possible for Adonis and like-minded modernists to trace the roots of modernity to a re-imagined past, history and tradition. The shape the cultural other takes depends on the consequence it will have in the role the past is to play in the present, and in the narrative of modernity produced in support of a particular agenda for cultural change. While the Crusaders, Mongols and Ottomans were the ‘foreign powers’ who halted modernity between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, the Persians and Byzantines were some of the key contributors to modernity in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, just like the Europeans and Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is a clear asymmetry in Adonis’s construction of the Arab’s other. Throughout Arab narratives, the Crusaders and Mongols were considered the others of the Muslims more on the basis of religion and their military ambitions in the Islamic empire and less on the ground of ethnicity. The Mongols, who eventually settled in Central Asia, converted to Islam and established the Ilkhanid dynasty are considered members of an Islamic empire even today. The Ottomans may be vilified as lying at the root of Arab backwardness in Arabic nationalist narratives today – this view is all too pervasive – but their role in the flowering of Islamic civilisation is undeniable, and their importance as leaders of the Muslim community during the fifteenth through to the nineteenth centuries continued to be recognised, even revered, until the beginning of the twentieth century. Otherness in Adonis is constructed as the opposite of Arabness. Arab is defined, in this instance, primarily on the basis of vaguely comprehended notions of ethnicity (shared language, culture and history) but also of the political ideology behind a new imagining of community; an

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 14

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

15

Arab world that came into existence and took shape only in the second half of the twentieth century. The introduction of this fuzzily and problematically fabricated other allows for previously marginalised cultural moments to be shown up as instances of modernity suppressed by past narratives – narratives of canonisation driven and sanctioned by, in this case, religious/political authority. The other, just like modernity itself, is a narrative trope and, in this instance, it is one around which narratives of modernity are woven. Pushed into centre stage on some occasions and relegated to the background on others, the other changes from one drama of modernity to another. The starring role Adonis gives the cultural other in his narrative of Arab modernity in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries is, in comparison with, for example, ninth-century narratives of Arabic poetic modernity, a new element introduced into a new dramatisation of past events, but now cast in the light of contemporary experience, ideology and epistemology. For this other, as I have already intimated, is identified as the catalyst for modernity. Adonis situates modernity in the opening up of cultural landscape that takes place with the arrival and integration of the cultural other. The mawālī began to master the Arabic language once they settled in Islamic cities. When they used it for their self-expression, they gave it the features of their heart and mind, therefore, new dimensions. In addition, a new generation of poets of Arab stock who grew up in cities, far away from the original homeland of the Arabic language, acquired new dimensions in their expression as well.37 In the process of the Arabicisation of Persians and the Persianisation of Arabs, modernity was born. In fact, by the eighth century, those we may call ‘cultural hybrids’, such as Abū Nuwās (c. 757–815), whom Adonis identifies as one of the heroes of Arab poetic modernity, dominated all areas of the production of knowledge.38 Abū Nuwās’s poetry embodies four new elements: sensibility (derived from the presence of new things), event (based on reality), experience (grounded in lifestyle), and poetic language (producing expression). This was how he transgressed the boundaries of tradition (from imitation, taqlīd) and its ancient symbols, such as the ruined abode, shecamel and desert, mocking Bedouinness, in other words, rejecting Bedouin lifestyle and the modes of expression it required. Instead, he

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 15

11/12/2012 16:28

16

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel invites [us] to [partake in] an urban lifestyle that necessarily demanded a new mode of expression.39

The poets, critics and thinkers Adonis gives as examples of Arab modernists are, one way or another, figures of the other seen from the perspectives of today, though not always the ethnic other Adonis claims to be represented by Abū Nuwās – Abū Nuwās was not considered the cultural other in classical sources. As seen in the quotation above, otherness is defined by transgression of a tradition, which supports the authority and legitimacy of a world view that comes with established political institutions. At this juncture, the ethnic other – rather than the cultural other – overlaps with a transgressor who would be deemed other from the perspective of an authoritative tradition. Adonis insists that Abū Nuwās is simultaneously insider to and outsider of ‘traditional’ Arabic poetics. He transformed Arabic poetry from within an established tradition of Arabic poetics, the dominance of which is still felt today. His bi-cultural background is, however, instrumental in his ability to transcend the norm, to pump new blood into the life of ‘monolithic’ Arabic poetry. Adonis himself, as a poet, works to ‘modernise’ Arabic poetry from within. Modernity is neither equivalent to nor divergent from the West – either would be blind imitation – but it is rather the transformation of vision, structure of composition and poetic language, regardless of their sources. Contact with the West may have brought winds of change, but the root of modernity remains solidly grounded in the Arabic poetic tradition itself, which gives it singularity (khuṣūsṣiyya), as well as difference.40 Tradition, including the historical context of this tradition and the sense of the past it provides, is strategically divided into that which is stagnant and resistant to change, and that other which is full of vitality and ever changing. There is polarisation of the past in this account. The part identified as stagnant, or fixed (thābit), is thrust aside as an unwanted past against another desirable variable part (mutaḥawwil), a repressed memory, dug out of an archaeological site to serve as a model trajectory for the movement of present into the future. The ethnic other brings with it a temporal other, through which the ethnic other is integrated into the uninterrupted movement of history, now made up of a series of moments of modernity, all triggered by encounters with foreign powers. Modernity is arguably continuity in history, rather than the disruption of history, of the continuous flow of time from the past to the present and into the future, of tradition. There is no rejection of tradition in modernity; on the contrary, it consists in observance

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 16

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

17

and preservation of tradition. The authority of tradition, and its power to legitimate, remains palpable even in narratives privileging change, as well as difference. It appears that in these narratives of modernity, change needs to be legitimated as springing from the very tradition it seeks to erode, and difference must be presented and represented as sameness. Adonis may disagree with my account, but his history of modernity consists precisely in the ‘continual actualisation of the past’ he objects to in traditionalism. This construction of difference as sameness, it seems, comes into being under the distortive shadow of nostalgia, of longing for a repressed tradition, a forgotten past. In The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym explores and eloquently describes the longing for homecoming, for a place left behind – connoted from the two roots in Greek, nostos (return home) and algia (longing) – as ‘actually a yearning for a different time’ that goes beyond ‘individual psychology’ today.41 Nostalgia is a ‘historical emotion’, coeval with modernity, and the result of a new understanding of time and space.42 It is simultaneously ‘a sentiment of loss and displacement’ and ‘romance with one’s own fantasy’,43 an ‘affective yearning for a community with a collective memory, a longing for continuity in a fragmented world’.44 Adonis’s narrative of modernity is what Boym calls ‘transhistorical reconstruction of the lost “home” that thinks of itself as truth and tradition’, symptomatic of a ‘restorative nostalgia’ that betrays a hegemonic utopian impulse directed at both the future and the past. The very modernity of his reflection on history and cultural memory resides in his contradictory, critical and ambivalent meditation on time, and on the mediation between past and future; and, crucially, on the combination of fascination for the present with longing for another time,45 or for a future ‘swollen’ with dreams of the past.46 In Adonis’s history of Arabic poetics, past, present and future come across as superimposing times, as Benjamin imagines history, whereby every epoch dreams the next one, and in doing so revises the one before it. In conceiving time as pearls of crystallised experience, Benjamin does not entertain an ideal scene of nostalgia; instead he plays with a ‘fan of memory’ that uncovers new layers of forgetting but never reaches the origin. It is only possible to ‘fan a spark of hope in the past’, to fashion historical tradition anew from an empty continuum of forgetting.47 Adonis’s constellations, akin to Benjamin’s, are instances from a past that Adonis wishes to see actualised in the present, so as to result not only in ‘profane illuminations’ but also revolutionary collisions. Adonis’s archaeology of the present – for like Benjamin, it is the present and its potentialities for

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 17

11/12/2012 16:28

18

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

which he is most nostalgic – entails wilful remembering and forgetting at the same time, a process that alienates one part of tradition from another. In his eagerness to remember and remind the Arabs of the ‘enlightened’ instances of the past, he practically ‘demonises’ the parts of the past he wishes to forget and to repress in Arab collective memory. There is, it seems, no escape from a simultaneous process of marginalisation and canonisation in narratives of modernity. The same other may be privileged in one instance and marginalised in another. In either case, this is a cultural other narrated from the perspective of a modernity to fulfil a fantasy of homecoming, of resolving the cultural crisis – which way forward? – precipitated by modernity itself. This other, identified from reality but reconstructed in narrative, plays a key role in modernisation, even if this role is unacknowledged. The modernity Adonis imagines is predicated on an opposition between tradition – handed-down doctrine – and revolution – cyclical repetition and radical break – that is in turn effected as an opposition between a stagnant tradition and a revolutionary one, both invented to legitimate his own version of modernity. For Adonis, the modern and anti-modern in tradition, like Bruno Latour’s notion of ‘modern time of progress and anti-modern time of tradition’, ‘are twins who failed to recognise one another’.48 In Adonis’s narratives of modernity, especially in Al-thābit wa al-mutaḥawwil, his revisionist history of Arab civilisation as well as all his works on Arabic poetics, one other (ethnic) is recognised, and another (a part of tradition) is repressed. Repression is a part of a memory game that does not uncover new layers of forgetting in Benjamin’s play with the ‘fan of memory’ discussed earlier. It is rather a wilful forgetting strategically deployed to tinker with collective memory for the purpose of rewriting history. What is repressed is, upon close scrutiny, set up as a foil to what is expressed, their opposition highlighted to promote an agenda. It targets the symbolic order and the ways in which it organises the conceptual categories underpinning and structuring historical narratives, including narratives of modernity, wilfully remapping it so as to open up a new vista for cultural change. As an architect of modernisation and of cultural transformation, he turns to the past for moments that may serve as the major plots around which he would string together an uninterrupted history to support the ideal community he envisions. This agenda seems to determine the rules in the game of othering and of repressing the other simultaneously. In his reconstruction of the past, the cultural other, whether spotlighted or repressed, has an undeniable role in the unfolding of the drama of cultural transformation. He identifies a particular kind of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 18

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

19

poetics as part of the ‘tradition’ that would serve as a source of legitimacy for the cultural and literary ‘home’ he imagines for himself and, more importantly, for his own ‘modern’ poetry. REWRITING TRADITION

Modernist Arab poets have a knack for reviving and reforming historical or fictional characters found in pre-modern Arabic historiography or narrative tradition. Al-Sayyāb, ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr, and Ḥāwī, as we have seen, have on occasion turned to such figures to make statements about the world in which they lived. Qabbānī invests the present in the past despite his vociferous protestations. He scatters references to figures and episodes from the Arab past, glorious or dark, across his poems. He is no different from his Arab predecessors in his evocation of figures iconised as cultural heroes to make statements about the present. However, he takes such investment in the past a step further. He is not beneath impersonating a pre-modern poet, such as ʿUmar Ibn Abī Rabīʿa, and speaking through him to a modern context. Shahrayār is a tragic figure, whose killing of virgins every night become an allegory of the alienated modern man in ‘Dumūʿ Shahrayār’ (Shahrayār’s Tears, 1966),49 for whom sex is both an escape from reality and a form of death. Equally, Dīk al-Jinn, a bi-sexual contemporary of Abū Nuwās from Homs who killed both his female and male lovers upon hearing a rumour that they were in love, is now a Damascene man in ‘Dīk al-Jinn al-Dimashqī’,50 whose suffering from the memory of the killing is magnified as he realises that he has in fact killed himself too. These two poems, which read like two short stories, resonate with Arab readers in two ways. It is possible to understand them without knowledge of the historical references. However, an even more poignant message may be received through the channels of Arabic narrative and poetic tradition. There is, in Qabbānī’s poems, clear condemnation of the conduct of pre-modern Shahrayār and Dīk al-Jinn but, more crucially, unambiguous indictment of the cultural context conducive to, permissive and celebratory of this conduct. What should one say of the tradition that simultaneously brings about and memorialises such atrocities? This tradition must necessarily be reconsidered, re-evaluated and, more importantly, revolutionised through rewriting, or through transforming its inherent systems of knowledge. His modernisation of Shahrayār and Dīk al-Jinn is his contribution to rewriting tradition. Ways of rewriting tradition are uncountable. There is an ongoing stupendous revivalist and revisionist project in Arab culture. Arab intellectuals

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 19

11/12/2012 16:28

20

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

have been and continue to be engaged in reviving what is termed ‘cultural heritage’ (turāth), through editing and publishing manuscripts, scholarly study of ‘classics’, or critical rereading, reinterpreting and refashioning of all aspects of this cultural heritage from a plethora of perspectives: defensive, conciliatory or antagonist; religious, cultural, social, legal, linguistic and hermeneutical, to name but a few.51 The scope of this revisionist project includes Arabic poetics and prosaics. Conversely, modern Arabic poetry and prose also partake in this revivalist and revisionist project. The ways in which Arab writers rewrite the ‘classical’ Arab(ic) literary tradition in their modernist works complement their discourses on tradition in their narratives of modernity. More importantly, they translate theory into practice. Adonis’ Aghānī Miyhār al-Dimashqī (Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs,52 1960–1)53 is the actualisation of his critical discourses that I have already discussed. The intertextual strategies he employs and the intertexts he deploys resonate with, in fact, anticipate those found in the Arabic novel belonging to the ‘school of employing tradition’. I want to use Mihyar’s Songs to trace further the continuity between past and present in modernist Arabic texts, which we find in the way they at once wrestle with the same set of politics, ethics, aesthetics and systems of knowledge inherent in language, written texts, genres of writing, and cultural heritage but, more crucially, to explore the channels of open communication between modernist Arabic prose and poetry, especially among the various, here modern, literary genres. I have discussed at length in Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel (Chapters 5 and 6) the indefatigable presence of classical and modernist Arabic poetics. I now turn to one of the modern literary forms, the novel, to shed light on the ways in which these have interacted with indigenous aesthetics in the production of Arabic literary modernity. I have already alluded to the presence of ‘drama’ and ‘short story’ in modernist Arabic poetry. I will defer discussion of the impact of these literary forms on Arabic poetry for another occasion but explore, here, how the impulses and the organisational principles of the novel have offered the Arab writers, even poets, new creative channels. I want to look at the novel not merely as a literary genre in this instance but also as a conceptual category understood from Bakhtin to begin to take stock of how novelisation opens up the modern Arabic literary text in such a way that numerous, at times conflicting, voices can cohabit and collaborate towards its construction. The ‘novel’ as envisioned by Bakhtin sums up the aspirations and features of a modernist text we have already seen in Poetics of Love, as well as explaining how it is possible, even vital, for tradition to

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 20

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

21

inhabit the same textual space. Bakhtin places the burden of modernity on the novel, in particular nineteenth-century realist novels, which he calls ‘novels of historical emergence’. He argues, as Hirschkop sums up, that the truly modern novel, taking a cue from Goethe’s conceptualisation of the intersection between time and space in representation, ‘gives temporality a physical embodiment and makes movement through space a historical journey’. In the novel ‘a person emerges along with the world and he reflects the historical emergence of the world itself’ and effects transitions, of all kinds, ‘in him and through him’.54 Furthermore, as Morson and Emerson put it, ‘it would be possible to conceive of a model of the world in which creativity and potential could be real’.55 The outcome of such a new configuration of time and space in the novel is the creation of a space for ‘democracy’, grounded in the principles of sovereignty of the individual, freedom of movement, of opinion and of expression, and the right to political participation and pursuit of happiness. The kind of novel Bakhtin champions is clearly a product of the political, cultural and intellectual context specific to a particular place at an identifiable time. Bakhtin’s vision of the realist novel, as Hirschkop reminds us, is ‘an aesthetic for democracy’ articulated under the pressures of the political order in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century and in response to contemporary Russian intellectuals. This said, it is possible to avoid the kind of ‘universalising abstraction’ Hirschkop cautions against by learning from Bakhtin the ‘democratic’ principles underlying the construction of the novel. That the novel is driven by ‘dialogic imagination’ and mapped by ‘heteroglossia’ may serve as a point of departure for looking at the textual configurations of modernist Arabic poems and novels. Mihyar’s Songs, arguably Adonis’ ‘novelisation’ of Arabic poetry, are a manifestation both of the potential for ‘an aesthetic for democracy’ inherent in the novel, as both a literary form and a way of envisioning a literary text, and of the ‘limitation’ in this regard of the ‘traditional’ genres it has absorbed. These ‘traditional’ genres can be ‘imprisoned’, as it were, in the inherited paradigms of knowledge informing their choice and ordering of subject matter, textual composition and narrative trajectory. As an open form that absorbs other genres ‘dialogically’ into its discourse in a culture of ‘heteroglossia’, the novel ‘quotes’ these genres while preserving their voices and allowing them to converse with each other and with the ‘meta-discourse’ that has ‘mastered’ them. Novelisation is, in this instance, a space of resistance, where modernisation-is-Westernisation discourses may be dismantled and tradition is rewritten.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 21

11/12/2012 16:28

22

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

It is possible to read Mihyar’s Songs as a novel that employs tradition. Just as Qabbānī does in ‘Dumūʿ Shahrayār’ and ‘Dīk al-Jinn al-Dimashqi’, Adonis takes a historical figure, Mihyār al-Daylamī,56 and refashions him into his own image, a modern Arab poet, Mihyār al-Dimashqī, an Adonis. There is very little of the historical Mihyār al-Daylamī in the series of prose poems that make up the collection, as Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard point out in their introduction to their English translation of the poems. There are some biographical intersections. Mihyār al-Daylamī (d. 1036 or 1037), the last of the great Arab poets before what historians of Arabic literature would call the period of cultural decline, was of Persian origin and dedicated his poetry to the praise his Buyid patrons of Turkish stock. He was born Zoroastrian and resisted converting to Islam for a long time and when he decided to do so he adopted Shiʿism. Adonis and Mihyār have Shiʿite Islam in common – Adonis comes from a Syrian Alawite tradition. ‘The historical Mihyār,’ Haydar and Beard explain, ‘was indeed a poet, but he does not represent Adonis’s poetic tradition. What makes him an appropriate alter ego is that Mihyār of Daylam launched a rebellious voice within the political and religious culture, making him one of those who stood far enough outside the tradition to ensure its dynamism’.57 While paying homage to him – as Adonis ends with a series of elegies in recognition of Mihyār’s standing in the Arabic elegiac tradition – Adonis also ‘invites us to imagine a comparable Mihyār living far to the west in Damascus, in an alternate path of history’.58 Haydar and Beard draw attention to the narrative impulse lurking beneath the lyrical surface of Mihyar’s Songs. ‘The expression of narrative is itself the narrative’,59 they observe, ‘[fo]r Adonis’s Mihyār there exists no traditional, unified narrative . . .’ yet ‘[i]n the third poem . . ., we . . . realize immediately how concentrated storytelling can be’.60 There is a narrative thread that strings together and orders the sequence of the poems. The contours of the narrative are hidden behind the aesthetic system constructed around the concept of falling from a high place into a precipice or an abyss,61 or the language game in the poems, where no signifier leads to any firm signified62 and linguistic and historical referents refuse to be pinned down. It is nevertheless possible to identify the ‘alternate path of history’ he narrates in the poems by pursuing the metanarratives framing the signs Adonis drops in the poems, as in a Bakhtinian reading of the novel, with focus on heteroglossia and dialogism. Mihyār is a mask, according to Gaber Asfour in ‘Aqniʿat al-shiʿr al-muʿāṣir: Mihyār al-Dimashqī’,63 a concealment device that paradoxically allows Adonis to speak of and take on the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 22

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

23

world in which he lives. This device creates distance, a space of objectivity, where the world may be assessed in a dispassionate fashion. It also dialogically merges the two voices of the mask and the wearer of the mask. Mihyār the mask is, however, a shape-shifter. It is a composite of the mythical phoenix, Tammuz and Adonis – the Levantine counterpart of Tammuz – and the historical Christ, Ḥusayn and Ḥallāj, all martyrs as well as figures around which narratives of rebirth are woven. Adonis, our poet, retells the myth of death and rebirth, as one would expect of a Tammuzi poet, but he complicates the story by integrating it into his retelling of the biblical (Judaeo-Christian and Islamic) creation myth. Intertextual instances with the Bible and Qurʾān are abundant. Each section, for example, begins with a ‘psalm’. The poems are dense with biblical and Qurʾānic references: the New Testament (Al-ʿahd al-jadīd), sin (al-khaṭīʾa) the flood (ṭūfān), seven days of creation, Adam and Eve, Iram of the Pillars (iram dhāt al-ʿimād), and finally Noah. Here, ancient mythology and the biblical tradition work together to provide the mechanisms of death – fire and water – as well as of rebirth – the phoenix rising out of ashes and Noah’s ark taking humanity to the land of safety. The heroes are not the gods or biblical prophets, however, but are the revolutionary poets he eulogises – al-Ḥallāj, Abū Nuwās and Bashshār – whom he identifies as the architects of modernity in his critical works. Here, the Prometheus dimension Adonis adds to his story of creation is significant. Prometheus was a champion of mankind known for his wily intelligence in Greek mythology. He stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. Zeus then punished him for his crime by having him bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day. Asfour sees a father and son conflict as the context for Adonis’s retelling of the myth of death and rebirth and finds the reconciliation between Prometheus and Zeus in Adonis significant. The story Adonis tells, in the final analysis, of the birth of a modern poet and of modern poetry that is necessarily effected through rebellion and martyrdom followed by resurrection, is of both father and son, of Mihyār al-Daylamī and Mihyār al-Dimashqī. Mihyār is the father who must be killed in order for Adonis the son to be born. But patricide is symbolic, as Harold Bloom tells us of the predicament of the late poets trying to make a mark for themselves in the shadow of earlier great poets in The Anxiety of Influence, for it is an expression of the desire for originality. The father is synonymous with the hallowed ‘cultural heritage’. ‘The Language of Sin’ explains,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 23

11/12/2012 16:28

24

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel I burn my inheritance, I say my land is still untilled. No graves disturb my youth. For farther than God or the Devil I set out. (My path rises farther than God’s or Satan’s) I pass across my book in a procession of glowing thunderbolts, a procession of green thunderbolts. I cry out with joy ‘there is neither paradise nor a fall after me.’ With that I erase the language of sin.64

However, he lives in his son after death. As the phoenix rises from his own ashes, the ‘cultural heritage’ is reborn, albeit transformed, in modern and modernist poetry. The death-and-rebirth and creation myths from the ancient mythology and biblical tradition Adonis retells follow the trajectory of the novel, as Bakhtin would have it, ‘a person emerges along with the world and he reflects the historical emergence of the world itself’ and effects transitions, of all kinds, ‘in him and through him’, and whereby ‘it would be possible to conceive of a model of the world in which creativity and potential could be real’. This model world guarantees the individual freedom of expression, movement and political participation. Freedom, in the context of modernisation of Arabic poetry, as one would find in Qabbānī, pertains to literary and cultural modernisation; it licenses inventing a new language, writing an alternative path of history, and altering tradition. There is no question that these – a new language, an alternate path of history and an altered tradition – are to be grown out of the very earth of the Arabic literary and cultural heritage. The scope of this heritage is, however, substantially expanded. The Arabic poetic tradition is now made to go beyond the confines of its familiar linguistic and thematic history to encompass ancient mythology and the biblical tradition; it is situated in the overlapping aesthetic and epistemological systems inherent in the totality of the cultural heritage of the entire humanity. What Adonis does in his poetry is tantamount to creating a new world. He gives Arabic poetry the power to create the world. Modern Arabic poetry, just like the new world it creates, is a redeployment

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 24

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

25

of the heteroglossia existing in Arab cultural heritage that was banished in the process of the canonisation of classical Arabic poetics. It takes shape in its recreation of epistemological dialogues in the interstices of the overlapped divergent voices of heteroglossia in Mihyar’s Songs. The novelisation impulse in the poems that make up Mihyar’s Songs opens up the space of the Arabic poetic space to innovation. Adonis’s innovation is locatable in intertextuality. The work operates like a novel, absorbing the forms and expressions of the classical Arabic poetic tradition and setting their inherent ideologies in dialogue with other genres of cultural discourse, privileging, as it were, revolution and innovation, while rooting them in tradition. The aesthetic of democracy underpinning the novel makes it possible for Adonis to rewrite tradition without rejecting it completely. On the contrary, it permits him to choose and combine from what is available and appealing to him to fashion his own aesthetics. It is only in this sense that the historical Mihyār is Adonis’s alter ego.65 He cuts a paradoxical figure in Mihyar’s Songs. He is both tradition and anti-tradition. He is Adonis’s abstraction, or ‘mythification’ in Barthes’s terms, of the classical Arabic poetic tradition. He is also a model poet who stands for dissent-as-innovation. As a paradox, he provides Adonis with an entry into the hidden world of Arabic poetry, allowing him to revive the silenced voices, and to recover the concealed ‘aesthetic for democracy’. He, as a symbol of innovation, sanctions Adonis’s modernist poetics. For Adonis’s modernist poetics, as he argues in his critical discourse, are born out of cross-cultural fertilisation, between self and other, whether they represent ‘East’ and ‘West’ or ‘past’ and ‘present’. ARABIC TRAVEL GENRES

The elasticity of the novel as a literary form, its very aesthetic for democracy, allows the Arabic novel to see itself similarly as born out of intercultural exchange, and its genealogy as traceable equally to a classical Arabic narrative tradition as well as the Western novel. Its history is irreducible to only the Western influence. The ‘authenticity’ impulse alone cannot explain the shape of the Arabic novel. Nor can the Western influence. The aesthetics of the Arabic novel, like those of modern Arabic poetry, manifest themselves in novelisation, in dialogised heteroglossia, dramatised in the story of the emergence of the modern subject and of the new world it narrates. The Arabic novel absorbs poetics, and prosaics, from East and West, and from past and present as well as other genres, while interrogating their

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 25

11/12/2012 16:28

26

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

inherent systems of knowledge. I have already discussed at length the ways in which these are brought together in intertextuality to give shape to the politics, ethics and aesthetics of the Arabic novel’s imaginings of nation and narratives of modernity. The Arabic novel, just like Adonis’s Mihyar’s Songs, is not a passive recipient of tradition but an active participant in its construction. As it creates a new world out of the ashes of the old it also invents an old world in a way that legitimates the new. I now turn to another dimension of intertextuality in the Arabic novel. What shape does tradition take in the Arabic novel’s nostalgic reconstruction of it? Is it similar to the one Adonis invents in Mihyar’s Songs, an amalgamation of ancient mythology, the biblical tradition, and a combination of classical Arabic poetics and the aesthetics of modern Western poetry? More importantly, is it possible to articulate more precisely the systems of knowledge being interrogated? What are the ingredients that Arab modernists find so problematic in ‘the tribal law’, ‘the harem’ and ‘the Caliph’? I turn to Mahfouz again. This time, I look at a novel that, at least on the surface, tells the same story Adonis tells in Mihyar’s Songs, that of the modern subject struggling to find a place in the new world by creating it in his own image. Mahfouz’s Rihlat Ibn Faṭṭūma (1983; The Journey of Ibn Fattouma, 1992) is the story of an Eastern intellectual, who travels around the world in search of self, cast in the form of the journey in search of knowledge (riḥla fī ṭalab al-ʿilm), and writes about his experiences, projecting in the process a utopian fantasy on his narration of the world. Mahfouz himself has told this story already in Qaṣr al-shawq and Layālī alf layla. It is even possible to argue that he has been telling the same story over and over again in his novels since the Cairo Trilogy. What distinguishes Ibn Fattouma from his other novels is the wiliness of the referents. They are now more diverse. The part of tradition which Layālī alf layla and Qaṣr al-shawq engages is given away by the paratexts. Alf layla points unambiguously to the Nights, for example, and shawq leads to a tradition of writing about desire in Arabic. The paratexts of Ibn Fattouma are on the contrary more misleading than helpful. The title makes an ostensible gesture towards a long tradition of Arabic travel writing but Ibn Fattouma engages intertextually with more than this body of writing. Taking a cue from the title, most readers of the Arabic novel see the close affinity between Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma and Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, the travel memoirs of the famous fourteenth-century Muslim traveller from Morocco, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (1304–68 or 77), and tend to read Mahfouz’s novel against Ibn Baṭṭūta Mahfouz ‘consciously bas[ing] his Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma on the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 26

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

27

famous Riḥla of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, producing not a parody but a Bunyanesque, allegorical and picaresque narrative of Everyman’s Riḥla through life itself’.66 This obvious link led critics to consider the work ‘a pseudoclassical travel narrative’,67 and render the title into ‘travels of ibn Faṭṭūma’.68 ‘The two titles’, Malti-Douglas explains, ‘are a near match as are the name patterns of the respective heroes (ibn Faṭṭūma/ibn Baṭṭūṭa)’.69 The objective of the journeys too may be deemed the same: both are narratives of the journeys to the ‘House of God’; pilgrimage to Mecca in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and to Utopia where God’s words rule in Ibn Faṭṭūma. Both narratives document the distinctive features of the lands the two protagonists visit; while Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s travels through the lands of ʿajāʾib and gharāʾib to the House of God, Ibn Faṭṭūma journeys to the Land of God through lands where wonders never cease. Yet reading Ibn Fattouma against Ibn Baṭṭūṭa alone is not totally edifying, even if one considers the former subversive of the latter, as El-Enany does: The Travels has both its strength and weakness in its attempt at fusing the entire social experience of humanity in so short a space. Over-simplification is the almost inevitable result of such ambition. That said, the novel is still interesting, if only for the new experiment in form that it demonstrates and its successful parody of Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, a parody which consists in two elements, as I hope I have shown, first, that the novel is a riḥla in historical time rather than geographical space, and second, that Dar al-Islam, which is idealized in Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, contrary to historical evidence, is harshly criticized and shown to be in need of radical reform in Rihlat Ibn Fattuma.70 There are significant differences. Unlike Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who leaves home for a definite destination and positive purpose, the premise for Ibn Fattouma’s escape is loss, not only of his beloved Ḥalīma to a powerful figure and his mother, Fāṭima al-Azharī, to his master/teacher, but of his faith in the system governing his entire existence, a system supposedly founded on the teachings of Islam, for this system is the cause of his loss. There too is the issue of the ‘harvest’ from the Riḥla. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa not only makes his pilgrimage but travels around the world and brings home the knowledge he gained during his travels to benefit his society. Ibn Fattouma does not bring home the ‘harvest’. And, even though he manages to send home his observations – in the form of a manuscript, which constitutes the Riḥla – whether the ultimate objective of his journey is achieved is left open

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 27

11/12/2012 16:28

28

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

to interpretation. More importantly, Ibn Fattouma seems neither to arrive at Dār al-Jabal nor return to al-Waṭan. Contrary to Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s journey, where there is a clear beginning and an end as well as a sense of accomplishment, Ibn Fattouma does not find Utopia or bring home the secrets of its success. More importantly, the journey detailed in Ibn Fattouma is an intellectual one. It takes us through four major ‘ideologies’ known across the world and throughout history: from the tribal paganism of Dār al-Mashriq, to the theocratic monarchy of Dār al-Ḥayra, capitalist democracy of Dār al-Ḥalba, and aetheist(ic) communism of Dār al-Amān. Finding all these flawed in one way or another, Ibn Fattouma decides to leave for Dār al-Jabal, the enigmatic and elusive Utopia, but in the end disappears and fails in his mission to bring home the remedy for his sick country (an arjiʿa ilā waṭanī l-marīḍ bi d-dawāʾi sh-shāfī).71 The remedy Ibn Fattouma seeks here is knowledge of the truth of God’s words. Ibn Fattouma, then, reads more like the journey in search of knowledge, al-riḥla fī ṭalab al-ʿilm, which is expressed in Ibn Fattouma’s self-designation: ṭālib al-ḥikma,72 ḥikma being wisdom that comes with real knowledge. There are two levels of this journey: the seemingly ordinary journey that any studious Muslim would undertake in order to seek knowledge; and the more specific one that strikes a cord in those familiar with al-Ghazzālī’s ‘autobiography’, Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Deliverance from error).73 It is a journey motivated by a desperate need to find the Truth, which, in this case, is faith in Islam, after a serious lapse into doubt and confusion. There are many similarities between Ibn Fattouma and Al-munqidh. Ibn Fattouma consists of an introductory chapter on the circumstances leading to Ibn Fattouma’s journey, followed by four major chapters in each of which the four major ‘ideologies’ are encountered, experienced, examined and rejected, and a final chapter in which Ibn Fattouma prepares in Dār al-Ghurūb for his journey to Utopia. Al-munqidh is composed of four main parts. Part one provides the context of the journey from doubt to faith. Part two, which is made up of four chapters, takes us through four major ‘ideologies’ known to al-Ghazzālī in the eleventh century: theology, philosophy, Shiʿism, particularly Ismāʿilism, and Sufism. In part three he picks up where he has left off in the previous chapter and describes his journey from confusion to faith, which is embodied in the knowledge gained from his select brand of Sufism. Finally, in part four, which is in two chapters, he first describes the Truth, which he calls ḥaqīqat al-nubuwwa, taught to him by revelation, and which he then realises in becoming a particular

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 28

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

29

kind of Sufi. He then explains his return to teaching after over ten years of seclusion. Here, he argues for and asserts his faith in the Truth he has found through Sufism. Al-Ghazzālī’s ‘autobiography’, just like Ibn Fattouma, is presented in the form of a journey: a journey in search of the Truth, the real knowledge that is al-ʿilm al-yaqīn. Al-munqidh is another precursor of Ibn Fattouma, for both detail the intellectual forays into world views, philosophies and ideologies in the hope of finding answers regarding the human condition, or salvation for all of us. Like al-Ghazzālī of Al-munqidh, Ibn Fattouma’s preoccupation, finding salvation for his ‘ailing homeland’, is brought about by his disillusion with the state of affairs in his Islamic homeland, where Islam is no longer practiced but has rather become a prisoner in mosques (al-islāmu l-yawma qābiʾun fi l-jawāmiʿi la yataʾaddāha ilā l-khārij),74 and where injustice, poverty and ignorance have become dominant.75 He does not lose faith in Islam; rather, he realises that the past – where Islam was practiced to perfection – is lost to him, and decides to go directly to the source, Dār al-Jabal, in order to find the knowledge to restore Islam to its past glory. Al-Ghazzālī’s crisis is similarly caused by his disillusion with the practices of the ʿulamāʾ of his era. Al-ʿilm, the religious knowledge that is Islam, has become the means by which its proponents gained worldly power, forgetting that the ultimate purpose of knowledge is the knowledge of God and the salvation in the hereafter. The manifestation of the ‘loss of purpose’ is the development of quite a few competing sects (firaq), each claiming to possess real knowledge and the ways to attaining it. The combination of the objectives of these sects and the means they claim to possess led to serious consequences: chaos in the Muslim community – umma, as the Prophet Muḥammad predicted: ‘my community will be divided into seventy-three sects but only one will find salvation (sa-taftariqu ummatī thalātan wa sabʿīna firqatan, an-nājiyatu minhā wāḥida)’.76 Ibn Fattouma mimics Al-munqidh in premise, objective, structure and discourse. Like Al-munqidh, Ibn Fattouma is set up as a quest predicated on a sense of loss. Al-Ghazzālī, having lost his faith amidst the deviant practices of Islam, seeks to believe again, and Ibn Fattouma, losing faith in Islam as an instrument of political and social justice – it fails to protect him from the tyranny of the powerful – goes on a mission to find the knowledge that would restore justice in an umma that has strayed from the right path. The undesirable conditions are both conceived of as illness (maraḍ or dāʾ): while al-Ghazzālī speaks of his confusion as an illness that needed a remedy (dawāʾ), Ibn Fattouma describes his homeland as ill (marīḍ) and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 29

11/12/2012 16:28

30

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

the objective of his search as medicine (dawāʾ). The journey is the process through which knowledge is to be attained – al-riḥla fī ṭalab al-ʿilm. Locating such pre-modern precursors for a contemporary literary work paradoxically recasts these precursors. What Mahfouz does is tantamount to redefining the genre of Al-munqidh; he now defines it as a work of literature, a novel, a notion already proposed in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1943, an Egyptian scholar by the name of ʿAbd al-Dāʾim al-Baqarī had already dealt with Al-munqidh as a sort of novel with a proposition (Roman à thèse) of which the hero would be al-Ghazzālī himself, in a book entitled I’tirafāt al-Ghazzālī: kayfa arrakha al-Ghazzālī nafsahu.77As McCarthy sums up in his introduction to his translation of Al-munqidh, Al-Baqarī thinks that the great Muslim thinker would have sought, very consciously and often very judiciously, to leave to posterity a fictional image of his personality and to give an interpretation of his life which would give him an unrivalled place in all the domains of thought and of the life of the Muslims of his time, including especially the knowledge and Sufi practice. And that thanks to a wise dosage of avowals and insinuations – in which he sometimes betrays himself – a wise dosage which, without being totally false, would not correspond to the historical reality.78 In other words, Al-munqidh is a work of fiction; it is neither veridical nor sincere. To use a contemporary critical term, Al-Baqarī is in fact calling Al-munqidh a fictionalised autobiography, in which the substance may be the facts but the ways these facts are comprehended and linked – narrativised – are fictitious. Ibn Fattouma gives a literary interpretation of Al-munqidh, deriving its own meaning from this reading. Reading Mahfouz’s text is consequently dependent on its literary reading of al-Ghazzālī’s, as Netton concludes with regard to the pre-modern travel literature in Arabic, that ‘the Riḥla in mediaeval Islam must be conceived of, and appreciated as a “literary genre” ’.79 Al-munqidh should now be read as a novel, perhaps even a kind of Bildungsroman, the plot of which is the transformation of protagonist through education. The shift of focus from attainment of knowledge in al-riḥla fī ṭalab al-ʿilm to transformation is effected through the evocation of another genre of riḥla in classical Arabic literature, or the poetics of the journey of transformation implicit in the pre-Islamic qaṣīda. Ibn Fattouma

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 30

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

31

echoes the tripartite structure of the archetypal Arabic qaṣīda, especially, the tropes of nasīb and raḥīl. The novel is constructed as nasīb, the love prelude that necessarily leads to departure then journey, raḥīl. The final part of the qaṣīda, in which the protagonist reaches his destination, is only alluded to in the narrative; like nasīb, it anticipates and is prelude to the journey towards Utopia, but unlike the qaṣīda, it does not celebrate return. The novel begins with remembrance of a homeland left behind and love lost as well as reliving the sorrows of departure. The protagonist Ibn Fattouma’s departure, like that of a qaṣīda, is prompted by disappointment in love; he decides to leave because he is forcefully separated from his beloved Ḥalīma. Chapter One of the novel reads like the love prelude to a qaṣīda; it revisits both the sorrow felt at a love lost and the circumstances that led to the protagonist’s departure, and describes the homeland left behind. Then the novel takes us on the protagonist’s journey as he travels through the lands of Dār al-Mashriq, Dār al-Ḥayra, Dār al-Ḥalba, Dār al-Amān and Dār al-Ghurūb, each in a chapter. The structure of the first chapter, which serves as the frame story, is repeated in the following five chapters. The journey to Dār al-Mashriq begins with Ibn Fattouma leaving the homeland while yearning for Ḥalīma, and ends with a new departure for another journey as he finds love, ʿArūsa, then loses it. The second journey to Dār al-Ḥayra is premised on the loss of ʿArūsa and ends with finding and losing her again. Dār al-Ḥalba begins with losing ʿArūsa and ends with leaving his new wife, Sāmiya, and children. And Dār al-Amān again ends with memories of both ʿArūsa and Sāmiya. Looming large in the background of the novel is the protagonist’s memory of and yearning for Ḥalīma. The raḥīl theme too works in the same way structurally. At the macro level, the novel comprises one journey that begins with departure and ends with the hope of return, and that recounts the harrowing experiences of the protagonist on his travels. At the micro level, each chapter comprises a single journey that includes the events lived in one of the ‘lands’. Like raḥīl in the qaṣīda, the journey comprises potentially life-threatening experiences. The difference is that instead of expressing the dangerous experience metaphorically through the camel or wild animal motif, Ibn Fattouma relates the protagonist’s own experience. In Dār al-Mashriq, he comes faces to face with ‘religious persecution’ and is imprisoned then expelled from the ‘land’ because he tries to bring up his children in the religion not Dār alMashriq’s; in Dār al-Ḥayra he is jailed for twenty years because the sage of the land covets ʿArūsa; in Dār al-Ḥalba he is besieged by threats of war and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 31

11/12/2012 16:28

32

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

more importantly by his inner turmoil caused by the neglect of his initial objective; and in Dār al-Amān he finds himself in the middle of war again. The presence of the nasīb motif in Ibn Fattouma invites us again to revisit Al-munqidh. The journey in search for knowledge in Al-munqidh may too be looked at as echoing the tripartite qaṣīda, in which departure is presented as a necessary step taken in the face of crisis to get away from a source of trouble. Disillusion in Al-munqidh is akin to disappointment in love of a qaṣīda. Al-Ghazzālī’s account of his departure from Baghdad and the school where he taught, the process of his regaining faith and his final return to teaching, can – to searching critical eyes – resemble the familiar tripartite structure of the qaṣīda. Loss of love, which prompts the departure that leads to the journey, and finally all are present in Al-munqidh. The journey makes up the bulk of Al-munqidh. It recounts in detail the ‘dangerous’ encounters the protagonist of the narrative faced and fought off successfully before he arrived at the Truth, which is the knowledge of God, or the restored faith in Islam, and that Sufism is the ‘right’ path to salvation. Above all, the journey in Al-munqidh is premised on yearning, the yearning for God, which, according to al-Ghazzālī, is derived from love, and is constructed as a Sufi path to God, the language of which is that of love.80 POETICS OF NOSTALGIA

In the chapter on ‘the way of the Sufis (ṭuruq al-ṣūfiyya)’, in which the narrator describes the turning point in the process of the protagonist’s recovery, the protagonist’s illness is diagnosed as pertaining to the heart, which reads like love sickness: I struggled with myself to teach . . . but my tongue would not utter a single word: I was completely unable to say anything. As a result that impediment of my speech caused a sadness in my heart accompanied by an inability to digest; food and drink became unpalatable to me so that I could neither swallow broth easily or digest a mouthful of solid food. That led to such a weakening of my powers that the physicians lost hope of treating me and said: ‘This is something which has settled in his heart and crept from it into his humors; there is no way to treat it unless his heart be eased of the anxiety which has visited it.81 The cure for this sickness, as he prescribes in the immediately following chapter, is faith, which is provided by the prophets, or as he calls them,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 32

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

33

doctors of the heart. Two journeys, physically leaving then returning to Baghdad and intellectually roaming through the various forms of knowledge, are intersected, just as illness and doubt or health and faith, and the physical and intellectual are linked by the language of love – love, a sickness in the heart, always manifests itself physically. Love here is both for and from God and is maintained by faith, and the absence of faith breaks the heart because it severs the relationship with God. The path to God is spoken of as that of love: the Prophet Muhammad’s faith is founded on his love for God, ʿāshiq rabbahu;82 and finding God is termed wuṣūl,83 a word derived from same root as that of waṣl and wiṣāl of love.84 In The Zephyrs of Najd: the Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb, Jaroslav Stetkevych locates the development of Sufi poetics in the history of nasīb, which he defined as the love prelude in pre-Islamic qaṣīda and containing nostalgia for the ruins of previous abode, and ghazal, poetry of profane love that derived itself but departed from the earlier nasīb. Nasīb, together with the two trends of this new poetics, first of sensuality represented by ʿUmar Ibn Abī Rabīʿa and second of ‘platonic’ love defined by the ʿUdhrīs, especially Majnūn Laylā, served as the foundation for Sufi poetics. However, Sufi poetics, even as it retains the trope of nasīb, radically transforms the poetics of profane love, and carves out for itself an entirely new course of development. While using its language, it transforms its object of desire. The woman of profane love becomes a metaphor for God or the state of being overwhelmed by the love of and for God.85 Even Majnūn Laylā, as a literary trope, can become the expression of Sufi transcendence. Profane love becomes the metaphor for this life, a distraction, an obstacle that must be overcome. Poetry, as the expression of worldly passions, is therefore condemned,86 but Sufi poetics, as both expression and instrument of transcendence as we see in Al-munqidh, is not. More importantly, like the qaṣīda, transformation of the protagonist is the crux of the matter in Al-munqidh. The axis of the process of the protagonist’s transformation in Al-munqidh is the chapter on ‘the way of the Sufis’, which is crucially situated in the middle of the work, the preceding part dealing with confusing forms of knowledge that led to his departure from teaching (‘Avenues to Sophistry and Scepticism’, ‘The Categories of Those Who Seek the Truth’, ‘The Aim and Purport of the Science of Kalam’, ‘Philosophy’ and ‘The Doctrine of Taʿlimism and Its Danger’), and the following part on the True Knowledge that returned him to teaching (‘The True Nature of Prophecy and the Need All Men have for It’ and ‘The Reason for Resuming Teaching After Having Given it up’). Like the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 33

11/12/2012 16:28

34

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

protagonist of a pre-Islamic qaṣīda, al-Ghazzālī is able to purge himself of confusion, overcome the dangers encountered during his journey and return to his community assuming a heroic role as he successfully completes what Suzanne Stetkevych calls the three stages of the rite of passage – nasīb, raḥīl and fakhr, as corresponding in anthropological terms to separation, liminality and re-aggregation.87 In his study of the notions of time in the nasīb of the qaṣīda, Jaroslav Stetkevych observes as follows: If we were to represent poetic time graphically in the nasīb, we would draw a curve that begins in the radical past, rises to the plane of subjective past, and from there continues rising steeply to the psychological present of the memory as reverie, only to drop from there precipitously to the original level of the past as radical loss. If poetic time at the vertex of the curve thus seems to take us out of the past into its own realm of the present, that realm is nevertheless irredeemably swallowed up by the ultimate-and-original reality of loss, whose realm is the past.88 Deriving this interpretation of the trope from his multi-layered reading of the motif of the ‘ruinous abode’ – al-bukāʾ ʿalā l-aṭlāl – Stetkevych sees that the ‘ruinous abode’ of the Arabic qaṣīda is ‘not unlike the “abode” or “abodes” of the Taoist earthly paradise’,89 which ‘is a paradise that has come closer to archetypal memory by being a “lost paradise”, or a paradise of poetic imagination’.90 In the structured forward movement of the qaṣīda from nasīb to raḥīl then fakhr, the return to this ‘lost paradise’ is impossible. The nostalgia is so palpable in the nasīb precisely because of the protagonist’s knowledge of the impossibility of return. The protagonist’s successful transition from nasīb to fakhr is then premised on this awareness as well as his resolution or need to break away from the past and seek a new present.91 In other words, the movement in the qaṣīda is linear in both temporal and spatial terms; time and space move in parallels, from past to present, beginning to end. The premise and objective of al-raḥīl in Al-munqidh,92 it seems, are the same as those of the qaṣīda. Al-raḥīl (departure) in both Al-munqidh and Ibn Fattouma represents the break with the past, or rather, the present which has distorted the past, as well as the beginning of the search for a path towards a present, or future, where the ideal(ised) past may be restored. Like what we find in Ibn Fattouma, the source of trouble in

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 34

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

35

Al-munqidh is the present’s alienation from the past: the present has strayed from the ‘right path’ delineated by the past. The deviation from the past – the irreconcilable difference between Islam in theory and practice (al-ʿilm aysar min al-ʿamal) – is precisely what led to the present crisis: loss of both purpose and faith. The disillusion in the Muslim practices is especially poignant when the present is set against the past, the golden age of Islam represented by the ideal umma, Prophet Muhammad’s community in Medina. Ibn Fattouma recapitulates the dialectic between past and present in Al-munqidh; they both tackle the problematic relations between past and present and seek the integration of one into the other. Al-riḥla is metaphor for the journey of transformation from alienation to belonging. Narrative is the mechanism of transformation in Al-munqidh and the landscape on which the process of this transformation takes place. This process, however, cannot be completed until the break between past and present is resolved. The dialectic between past and present is seen on two levels: the narrative’s movement from the beginning to the end, and the protagonist’s gradual but sure integration with the narrator. The two processes take place simultaneously; as the narrative moves from the beginning – searching for the Truth – to the end – finding the Truth – the protagonist becomes one with the narrator. As the narrative works its way through the various ‘wrong solutions’ to the problem, it finally reaches a resolution: the certainty that Muhammad’s Prophecy is the Truth (ḥaqīqat al-nubuwwa). More importantly, the narrative reconstructs the process by means of which the Truth is recovered. The means to the Truth is neither imitation of the predecessors, tradition (taqlīd), nor reason (ʿaql); rather, it is the heart (qalb).93 By experiencing the Truth of Prophecy with the heart, the past can again be integrated into the present. The past is no longer the divergent paths taken but an essence, an idea, an ideal, a vision. The transformation of the past from experience lived through the senses into a vision comprehended by the heart is the mechanism through which the break with the past is mended; ignorance is educated into knowledge, loss turned into gain, and scepticism moulded into certainty. The transformation of the notion of the past serves too as the mechanism for the transformation of the protagonist of the narrative into the narrator. The narrator of Al-munqidh, let us say, the transformed al-Ghazzālī, tells the story of his own transformation, the transformation of the protagonist of his narrative from the perspective of present certainty, knowing very well the outcome of the story. The split between the past – the protagonist – and the present – the narrator – serves as the premise of the story, and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 35

11/12/2012 16:28

36

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

propels a narrative that takes the protagonist from ignorance, the source of trouble, to knowledge, the self-assured narrator. The past, the protagonist, is reconciled with and integrated into the present, the narrator. However, the integration could not have taken place without the split between the past and present, protagonist and narrator. As the protagonist is instrumental in the emergence of the narrator, so is the past in shaping the present, ignorance leading to knowledge, scepticism finding the way to certainty, and doubt turning into faith. The narrator at the same time wilfully narrates the protagonist into the doubtless present. The first word of the title, al-munqidh, active participle derived from anqadha, which means to rescue, can easily denote the narrator as well as the narrative. In Al-munqidh narration is knowledge and narrative is the process through which this knowledge is attained. This is not exactly duplicated in Ibn Fattouma. There are two movements in Mahfouz’s novel, one linear and the other circular. On the surface the novel seems to mimic the qaṣīda in its temporal and spatial movements. As the protagonist traverses the various ‘lands’ in tandem he seems to move from the past to the present. Framing this journey, however, is the movement of the sun. The names of the first and last stations of Ibn Fattouma’s journey, al-mashriq and al-ghurūb, which are derived from sharq and gharb respectively, mean originally in the Arabic language the places where the sun rises and sets, therefore, east and west. But the movement of the sun is circular; it rises and sets, then rises and sets again day after day. Mimicking the circular movement of the sun, the novel ends at the beginning or begins at the end, as the title of the last chapter, ‘al-bidāya’, indicates. It is perhaps significant then that the name of the beloved is Ḥalīma, a name in the pattern of faʿīl, which can have the meaning of active or passive participles, and derived from ḥ-l-m, which is the root for dream, ḥulm. Viewed in the cyclical movement of the novel, the beloved is identified as Utopia by the protagonist’s yearning, both being the object of his fantasy. Is the past or the future a dream? Is the past, the ‘lost paradise’, therefore, a dream, or is it Utopia that is the ‘lost paradise’, therefore, a dream? Or is Utopia the past that only exists in nostalgic dreams? Ḥ-l-m is also the root from which the word ḥilma, nipple, is derived. Should the protagonist’s attachment to Ḥalīma be interpreted against his mother’s name, Fatima, an active participle derived from f-ṭ-m, the root of the verb faṭama, meaning to wean? Cannot the protagonist be weaned from the past, the idealised past repackaged as Utopia? Nostalgia, brimming in Ibn Fattouma but absent in Al-munqidh, is both evocative and subversive.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 36

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

37

Ibn Fattouma reconstructs Al-munqidh’s genealogy by evoking the poetics of profane and Sufi love simultaneously. This introductory passage of the novel evokes the Sufi underpinnings of Al-munqidh: Life and death, dreaming and wakefulness: stations for the perplexed soul. It traverses them, stage by stage, taking signs and hints from things, groping about in the sea of darkness, clinging stubbornly to a hope that smilingly and mysteriously renews itself.94 The first two sentences, constructed in the style of izdiwāj, a well-known feature of Arabic prose referred to as parallelism in English, equate life with dreaming and death with wakefulness. This echoes a known Sufi tenet found in al-Ghazzālī. Life is an illusion, as well as a Sufi path to enlightenment for the perplexed, and a journey to the hereafter where the Truth will be unequivocally unveiled and experienced. But this introduction of Ibn Fattouma serves not only as prelude to a Sufi journey but also a profane one. Here, Ibn Fattouma subverts Al-munqidh yet again; while the latter transformed nasīb from the profane to the sacred, the former restores its original profanity even as it retains its intellectual and seemingly religious aspirations; unlike al-Ghazzālī, Ibn Fattouma does not complete the rite of passage inherent in the structure of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda; he remains a prisoner of his nostalgia, achieves no transformation and does not return to his community.95 By simultaneously unearthing the Sufi poetics’ past and disrupting its underpinning formula, Ibn Fattouma questions the validity of the path to Truth proposed by Al-munqidh. If the relationship between the past and present is unproblematic in Al-munqidh, it is more complex in Ibn Fattouma. Here, the past plays two roles: on the one hand, it is the golden age that one pines for; and on the other, it is paradoxically a ghost, a dead weight that one must shed in order to find a future. The present is trapped, stuck between these two notions of the past: the memory of the golden age and the authority of this golden age despite current problems. By engaging in discourse with it, however, Ibn Fattouma also identifies Al-munqidh as a form of discourse that must be located in a particular context. This context is equally implicated. Ibn Fattouma locates Al-munqidh as discourse in the trajectory of theological, philosophical and Shiʿite discourses. Thus, the dialectic between past and present can no longer be viewed as only pertaining to personal history, as al-Ghazzālī does in Al-munqidh, but must be related to the collective history whose discourses do not necessarily

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 37

11/12/2012 16:28

38

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

coincide with any personal history, but rather collide and collude with it as well as with one another. Mimesis is the mechanism of subversion. This subversion is, however, obfuscated perhaps because of the symbolic status of al-Ghazzālī’s in Islam,96 and, more importantly, in the current discourses on the political role of Islam. NOTES 1. Inspired by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 2. Nizār Qabbānī, Qiṣṣatī maʿ al-shiʿr: sīra dhātiyya (Beirut: Manshūrāt Nizār Qabbānī, 1973), pp. 165–74. 3. It is also the title of the collection of essays he wrote for the weekly magazine, Al-usbūʿ al-ʿarabī, between 1973 and 1975, Al-kitāba ʿamal inqilābī (Beirut: Manshūrāt Nizār Qabbānī, 1978), and of the lead essay in the collection. 4. References are made to Qabbānī, Al-kitāba ʿamal inqilābī, p. 8. 5. Ibid. p. 7. 6. Ibid. p. 8. 7. Ibid. p. 8. 8. Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, tr. Leon S. Roudiez (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1987). 9. Qabbānī, Qiṣṣatī maʿ al-shiʿr, p. 169. 10. For a discussion of this aspect of Qabbani’s poetic vision, see Muḥy al-Dīn Subḥī, Al-kwan al-shiʿrī ʿinda Nizār Qabbānī (Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʿa, 1977), which remains the most substantive study of the poetry of Qabbānī to date. 11. Qabbānī, Qiṣṣatī maʿ al-shiʿr, p. 117. 12. Taken from the title of a collection of his poetry, Al-rasm bi l-kalimāt (1966). See also Ṣalāḥ Niyāzī, Nizār Qabbānī rassām al-shuʿāra’ (London: al-Rafid, 1998). 13. Qabbānī, Al-kitāba ʿamal inqilābī, p. 10. 14. Qabbānī, Qiṣṣatī maʿ al-shiʿr, p. 128. 15. Qabbani, Al-kitāba ʿamal inqilābī, p. 28. 16. Ibid. p. 124. 17. Ibid. p. 124. 18. Ibid. p. 124. 19. Ibid. pp. 189–90. 20. Ibid. pp. 190–2. 21. Richard Terdiman, Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 5. 22. Ibid. p. 22. 23. Ibid. p. 23.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 38

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

39

24. Ibid. p. 27. 25. Adonis, Introduction to Arab Poetics, tr. Catherine Cobham (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1990), p. 77. 26. Ibid. p. 76. 27. Ibid. p. 75. 28. Ibid. p. 76. 29. Ibid. p. 75. 30. Ibid. p. 75. 31. Ibid. p. 77. 32. Ibid. p. 78. 33. Ibid. p. 78. 34. Judith Butler, ‘Restaging the universal: hegemony and the limits of formalism’, in Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slovaj Žižek (eds), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000), pp. 11–43. 35. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001). 36. Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, tr. Harry Zorn (London: Pimlico, 1968), pp. 245–55. 37. Adūnīs, Al-thābit wa l-mutaḥawwil: baḥth fī l-ibdāʿ wa l-itbāʿ ʿind al-ʿarab, 7th edn (London: Dar Saqi, 1994), vol. 2, p. 112. 38. Ibid. vol. 2, p. 114. 39. Ibid. vol. 2, p. 118. 40. Adūnīs, ‘Bayān al-ḥadātha’, in Muḥammad Luṭfī al-Yūsufī (ed.), Al-bayānāt (Tunis: Sarash li al-Nashr, 1995), pp. 22–54. 41. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p. xv. 42. Ibid. p. xvi. 43. Ibid. p. xiii. 44. Ibid. p. xiv. 45. Ibid. p. 22. 46. Ibid. pp. 27–8. 47. Walter Benjamin, ‘A Berlin Chronicle’, in Reflections, tr. Edmond Jephcott (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1986), pp. 3–60; 6. Quoted in Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, pp. 27–8. 48. Quoted in Boym, p. 19. 49. Nizār Qabbānī, Al-rasm bi l-kalimat (1966). References are made to Al-aʿmāl al-shiʿriyya al-kāmila (Beirut: Manshūrāt Nizār Qabbānī, 1970?), pp. 545–6. 50. Ibid. pp. 549–51. 51. For a convenient survey of the key authors and works, as well as secondary literature, see Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010). The bibliography is especially useful. Two earlier

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 39

11/12/2012 16:28

40

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70.

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel works, Albert Hourani’s Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962) and Issa J. Boullata’s Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), are also useful. Adūnīs, Aghānī Mihyār al-Dimashqī (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1988); Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard’s translation, Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs (Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2008). References are made to the 1988 Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb edition finalised for publication by Adonis himself. Ken Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin: an Aesthetic for Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 234. Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 411. There is little contemporary scholarship on and criticism of Mihyar’s poetry. For his biography and a survey of his works, see ʿAlī ʿAlī al-Fallāl, Mihyār al-Daylamī wa shiʿruhu (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-ʿArabī, 1948); and ʿIṣām ʿAbd ʿAlī, Mihyār al-Daylamī, ḥayātuhu wa shiʿruhu (Baghdad: Manshūrāt Wizārat al-Iʿlām, 1976). His poetry was published in four volumes as early as 1925. See Dīwān Mihyār al-Daylamī, edited and introduced by Aḥmad Nasīm (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1925). Haydar and Beard, Mihyar’s Songs, p. 12. Ibid. p. 12. Ibid. p. 14. Ibid. p. 13. Ibid. p. 13. Ibid. p. 14. Gaber Asfour, ‘Aqniʿat al-shiʿr al-muʿāṣir: Mihyār al-Dimashqī’, Fuṣūl, 1: 4 (1981), pp. 123–48. Adūnīs, Aghānī Mihyār, p. 49; Haydar and Beard, Mihyar’s Songs, p. 43. Haydar and Beard, Mihyar’s Songs, p. 12. Ian Netton, ‘Rihla’, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), vol. VIII, p. 528. Malti-Douglas, ‘Mahfouz’s Dreams’, in Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar (eds), Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993), pp. 126–43; 127. Roger Allen, ‘Mahfouz and the Arabic novel’, in Beard and Haydar (eds), Naguib Mahfouz, pp. 28–36; 31; Rasheed El-Enany, Naguib Mahfouz: the Pursuit of Meaning (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 168–74; Malti-Douglas, ‘Mahfouz’s Dreams’, p. 129. Malti-Douglas, ‘Mahfouz’s Dreams’, p. 129. See also El-Enany, The Pursuit of Meaning, p. 168. El-Enany, The Pursuit of Meaning, p. 174.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 40

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

41

71. References are made to Najīb Maḥfūẓ, Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma (Cairo: Maktabat Miṣr, 1983), p. 19. 72. Ibid. p. 19. 73. There are two English translations of Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl: Richard Joseph McCarthy, Freedom and Fulfillment: an Annotated Translation of alGhazali’s al-Munqidh min al-Dalal and Other Relevant Works of al-Ghazali (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1980); and W. Montgomery Watt, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazālī (Chicago, IL: Kazi Publications, 1982). 74. Maḥfūẓ, Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma, p. 8. 75. Ibid. p. 11. 76. Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ghazzālī, Al-munqidh in al-ḍalāl, eds Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Abū al-ʿAlāʾ and Muḥammad Muḥammad Jābir (Cairo: Maktabat al-Jundī, 1973), p. 24. 77. ʿAbd al-Dāʾim al-Baqarī, Iʿtirafāt al-Ghazzālī: kayfa arrakha al-Ghazzālī nafsahu (Cairo, 1943). 78. McCarthy, Freedom and Fulfillment, p. xxvi. 79. Netton, ‘Rihla’, p. 528. 80. See Marie Louise Siauve, L’amour de Dieu chez Gazali: une philosphe de l’amour à Bagdad au début du XIIe siécle (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin/ Lille: Atelier National Reproduction de Theses, Universite de Lille III, 1986); M. Umaruddin, ‘al-Ghazzali’s Conception of Love with Special Reference to the Love of God’, Al-imām Abī Ḥamid al-Ghazzāli fī murūr tisʿ miʾat sana ʿalā wafātihi (al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: ISESCO, 1988), pp. 241–55. 81. McCarthy, Freedom and Fulfillment, p. 92. 82. Al-Ghazzālī, Al-munqidh, pp. 76–7. 83. Ibid. p. 76. 84. The literary tradition of Sufi love, including poetry, is more expressly used in al-Ghazzālī’s other works. As well as discussing love (maḥabba and ʿishq) in Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn and a number of other works, e.g. Fī maʿārij al-quds fī madārij maʿrifat al-nasfs (Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq, 1927), he is alleged to have composed two poems (many works have been wrongly attributed to al-Ghazzālī). For a discussion of this issue and attempt at authenticating his works, see ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī, Muʾallafāt al-Ghazzālī (Cairo: alMajlis al-Aʿlā li Riʿāyat al-Funūn wa al-Ādab wa al-ʿUlūm al-Ijtimāʿiyya, 1961); Maurice Bouyges, Essai de chonologie de oweuvres de al-Ghazzali (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1959); the Hāʾiyya and Ṭāʾiyya (subject of study by Zakī Najīb Maḥmūd, ‘Al-qaṣīda al-ṭāʾiyya li al-imām al-Ghazzālī’, Al-imām Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī fī murūr tisʿ miʾat sana ʿalā wafātihi (al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: ISESCO, 1988), pp. 259–69), both published in the appendix to Fī maʿārij al-quds fī madārij maʿrifat al-nafs. Al-munqidh is reiterated in the Ṭāʾiyya (365 lines), which focuses on the emotional journey rather than the intellectual one. The language is explicitly that of love. In the section (lines

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 41

11/12/2012 16:28

42

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel 231–48) on the longing for God and His love as well the hardship of the path to God, to the sublime Sufi state of fulfilment, both the themes and expressions are reminiscent of the love prelude of nasīb of the classical qaṣīda and the love poems of ghazal. This section of the poem is constructed like nasīb. It begins with remembrance of the ‘ruinous abode’ and the love that resides there (lines 231–42), then moves on to describe the hardship of separation, from yearning for waṣl in the heart to tears streaming down the eyes and the burning felt with every breath (lines 233–42), and finally to complain about the malicious gossipmongers who caused the rift. In the final lines (244–8) the object of desire is seen in dialogue with the protagonist. Without the larger context of the poem, these lines read like a love poem. See Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd: the Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasib (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Al-Ghazzālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, vol. 1, pp. 36–7. English translation of these chapter titles are by Richard Joseph McCarthy. J. Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd, p. 25. Ibid. p. 3. Ibid. p. 31. Ibid. pp. 1–49. Al-Ghazzālī, Al-munqidh, p. 71. See also Hasan Bazūn, Al-maʿrifa ʿind al-Ghazzālī: al-naẓariyya al-tarbawiyya al-taʿlīmiyya (Beirut: al-Intishār al-ʿArabī, 1997); and Farid Jabre, La notion de la maʿrifa chez Ghazali (Beirut: Lettres Orientales, 1958). Denys Johnson-Davies, The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (London: Doubleday, 1993), p. 1. See Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). This status is discussed in extensive literature on al-Ghazzālī from a variety of angles. For general studies on his life and works, see Anon., Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī: dirāsāt fī fikrihi wa atharihi wa taʾthīrihi (Rabat: Jāmiʿat Muḥammad al-Khāmis, 1988); Ḥusayn Amīn, Al-Ghazzālī faqīhan wa faylasūfan wa mutaṣawwifan (Baghdad: Maṭbaʿat al-Irshād, 1963); Farīd Juḥā, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī (Damascus: Ṭalas, 1986); Hava LazarusYafeh, Studies in al-Ghazzali (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1975); Ismāʿīl al-Mahdawī, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī: al-falsafa, al-taṣawwuf wa ʿilm al-kalām (Marrakush: Tānsīft, 1993); W. Montgomery Watt, Muslim Intellectual: a Study of al-Ghazali (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963); and A. J. Wensinck, La pensée de Ghazzali (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940). On the influence of philosophy on him, see ʿAbd al-Amīr al-Aʿẓam, Al-faylasūf al-Ghazzālī: Iʿādat taqyīm li manḥā taṭawwurihi l-rūḥī (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li al-Nashr, 1974); Muḥy al-Dīn ʿAzzūz, Al-lāmaʿqūl wa falsafat al-Ghazzālī (Tunis: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li al-Kitāb, 1988);ʿAbd

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 42

11/12/2012 16:28

‘The Invention of Tradition’

43

al-Ḥamīd Khaṭṭāb, al-Ghazzālī bayn al-dīn wa l-falsafa (Algiers: al-Muʾassasa al-Waṭaniyya li al-Kitāb, 1986); Abū Yaʿrub al-Marzūqī, Mafhūm al-sababiyya ʿind al-Ghazzālī (Tunis: Dar Bū Salāma li al-Ṭibāʿa wa al-Nashr, 1978); Jamāl Rajab Sidb, Naẓariyyat al-nafs bayna Ibn Sīnā wa l-Ghazzālī (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li al-Kitāb, 2000); ʿĀrif Ṭāmir, al-Ghazzālī bayn al-falsafa wa l-dīn (London: Riyad El-Rayyes, 1987); and ʿAlī Zakī, Fikrat al-āliyya fī falsafat al-Ghazzālī Abī Ḥāmid: dirāsa muqārana naqdiyya (Algiers: Dīwān al-Maṭbūʿāt al-Jāmiʿiyya, 1992). On his ethical concepts, see Muhammad Abul Quasem, The Ethics of al-Ghazali: a Composite Ethics in Islam (Selangor?, 1975); Zakī Mubārak, Al-akhlāq ʿind al-Ghazzālī (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, n.d.); and M. Umaruddin, The Ethical Philosophy of al-Ghazzali (Aligarh: Muslim University, 1962). On the influence of theology, see Richard M. Frank, Al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarite School (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994). On his mysticism, see Margaret Smith, Al-Ghazālī, the Mystic: a Study of the life and Personality of Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī al-Ghazālī (London: Luzac, 1944).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 43

11/12/2012 16:28

Chapter 2 THE MYSTERIOUS (DIS)APPEARANCE OF TRADITION

‘ARGUING WITH THE PAST’ 1

In Youssef Chahine’s 1997 film, Al-maṣīr (Destiny), the occasionally violent conflict between the secularists and religious fundamentalists in Egypt today is portrayed as a clash between the ideology of Ibn Rushd (Averroes), the well-known Andalusian Muslim philosopher, and that of the followers of al-Ghazzālī, religious fanatics who would impose their own world view at all costs. The irreconcilable difference lies in the position of both with regard to human reason, the will of the individual and life, symbolised by worldly pleasures, such as love, music and dancing. Whereas Ibn Rushd is portrayed as a champion of all, al-Ghazzālī is made the symbol of uncompromising, community-oriented traditionalism that leaves room for none; in fact, his followers – portrayed as members of a cult-like Sufi ṭarīqa – would resort to assassination of those who do not conform or convert to their way of life. Chahine’s indictment of al-Ghazzālī, albeit exaggerated, is not unfounded in some of the current assessments of al-Ghazzālī’s contribution to Islam as, let me borrow the words of W. Montgomery Watt, an ‘outstanding theologian, jurist, original thinker, mystic and religious reformer’;2 in fact, it parodies current Islamic discourses. Al-Ghazzālī’s ‘religious reform’ is on hindsight considered by many conservative Muslim thinkers pivotal in the establishment of what scholars of Islam would call Sunni orthodoxy.3 His attacks on theology, Shiʿism and particularly philosophy, as he is deemed to have summarised in Al-munqidh, set the trend for the way subsequent ‘orthodox’ Sunni Muslims thought about Islam as exclusive of these areas of knowledge. This symbolic status of al-Ghazzālī is founded on what is understood to be his unequivocal rejection of these subjects based on the ideal relation he thinks a Muslim ought to have with God, from which knowledge of the Truth (God) is then derived 44

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 44

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

45

and salvation in the hereafter secured. God, not the human mind, is both the source and means of knowledge. Reason (ʿaql) is limited and, he tells us in Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, should be subordinated to the heart (qalb), for the heart will lead to the knowledge of God and where God resides.4 The heart is then the source and means of knowledge, which is revelation. It is only when the knowledge of God is attained that the mind can function effectively in recognising wrong from right. More importantly, only the heart can recognise and accept the miracle that is Prophecy. His objections to theology and Shiʿism are now understandable; God is not the direct source or means of knowledge: theology borrows its method from philosophy and Shiʿism ordains that the infallible imam (imām maʿṣūm) is the means to knowledge. Philosophy too is rejected because of its theoretical assumptions, detailed in Tahāfut al-falāsifa and summarised in Al-munqidh, which subordinate qalb to ʿaql, in other words, knowledge of God is subject to tests devised by the human mind. Philosophy, not surprisingly, arrived at propositions, three to be exact,5 that are outright blasphemous. Elsewhere, it offers nothing that religion does not already. There is, therefore, no need for Greek-style philosophy, for Islam provides all answers.6 Ibn Fattouma problematises the ahistorical elevation of al-Ghazzālī to the symbol of Islamic purity, exposing the fallacies of the various contemporary discourses on Islam by concomitantly allegorising Al-munqidh and restoring it to its complex historical and literary context as well as rereading it. Ibn Fattouma is then a simultaneously mimetic and subversive text; it mimics Al-munqidh in form but subverts it in discourse. At the outset, the less than perfect conditions al-Ghazzālī describes in Al-munqidh remain a distinctive feature of the Islamic parts of the world. The model offered by al-Ghazzālī has not worked thus far, and between the eleventh century, when al-Ghazzālī lived, wrote and taught, and the twentieth century, when Mahfouz is active, Dār al-Islām, as Ibn Fattouma tells us in no uncertain terms, has been mired in ignorance, poverty and injustice. There too is the issue of Egypt’s Shiʿite past. Ibn Fattouma, the intellectual in search of knowledge, is identified as the son of Fāṭima al-Azharī, which alludes to the Prophet’s daughter and the wife of ʿAlī, Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ, of whom the Shiʿites who ruled Egypt for centuries, the Fatimids, and the Ismaʿilis today claim to be descendants, as well as to al-Azhar, one of the monuments of Islamic learning bequeathed by the Fatimids. Is there no contradiction in housing al-Ghazzālī, now made the symbol of ‘Sunni orthodoxy’, in the institution of learning founded by the Shiʿites? Is the current reconstruction of the past not fiction?

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 45

11/12/2012 16:28

46

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Ibn Fattouma uncovers Al-munqidh’s roots in the philosophical tradition, both earlier Greek and later Islamic. In its mimicry of Al-munqidh, Ibn Fattouma draws our attention to the method of al-Ghazzālī’s argument, which is based on reason and individual initiative, and reminds us that al-Ghazzālī was an avid student of philosophy, was well-read in the philosophical tradition from the early Greeks to their Muslim disciples, and put what he learned from philosophy to good use. Knowledge in Ibn Fattouma, then, is attained through a journey similar to that which is detailed in Al-munqidh and not by accepting the conclusion of the latter at face value. What should be the lesson from Al-munqidh? What it says or what it does? Knowledge in Ibn Fattouma, like in Al-munqidh, is not only revelation but encompasses all knowledge whatever its source may be. Ibn Fattouma redefines the object of desire in its allegory of its premodern precursors; the object of desire is no longer the personal glory of the qaṣīda, the House of God of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa or the knowledge of God of al-Ghazzālī; rather, the Utopia Ibn Fattouma pursues is a ‘country’ where God’s revelation is practiced to perfection. Knowledge of God is not al-Ghazzālī’s faith, but the know-how of the application of the revelation so that tyranny will turn into justice, poverty into prosperity, discord into harmony and war into peace. If Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and Al-munqidh are purposely oblivious of the question of political authority, Ibn Fattouma places it squarely in its discourse. Here, Ibn Fattouma inverts the plot of its precursors and departs in both mood and end. If Ibn Baṭṭūṭa successfully completes the pilgrimage, Ibn Fattouma does not reach Dār al-Jabal. If the hero of the qaṣīda achieves transformation, Ibn Fattouma flounders every step of the way, distracted by carnal desires and worldly concerns, victimised by political oppression and thwarted by threats of war, all in an atmosphere rife with grief and despair, gloom and doom so to speak. More importantly, Ibn Fattouma takes issue with the objective of knowledge as means of individual salvation as well as with withdrawal from politics and cultivating the hereafter, as al-Ghazzālī did and advocated in his response to the rampaging sectarian strife surrounding him and the Crusades. Ibn Fattouma, on the contrary, sees that the salvation of the individual is inextricably connected with the salvation of the nation: if individual salvation is the key to the reform of the umma in Al-munqidh, it is the restoration of the community that will lead to individual salvation in Ibn Fattouma. The means of transformation is no longer recovery of faith (religion) but politics; what we do with political authority. The absence of cohesion between past and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 46

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

47

present in Ibn Fattouma when read against the narrative certainty of its precursors can only mean that political authority remains an unresolved issue. POLITICS OF NOSTALGIA

Political authority is the crux of the matter, asserts Mahfouz, who has not been as overtly political as other Arab novelists: ‘You will find politics in every thing I write’, he confesses to al-Ghīṭānī, ‘you may find a story free of love or any thing else but not politics, because it is the heart of what we think. Political conflict is in all my writings, even in Awlād ḥāratinā, which you can describe as a metaphysical novel, you will find conflict over the waqf (an estate created out of religious endowment)’.7 Ibn Fattouma brings to the fore the question of political authority and makes it central to solving the problems of Dār al-Islām. It exposes, for example, al-Ghazzālī’s concern with political authority, which may be deduced from his various essays on the Islamic public institutions in Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn. The role of political authority is limited to the maintenance of justice as prescribed by religion. Holders of political authority, umarāʾ wa salāṭīn, are responsible for this function under the guidance of the ʿulamāʾ who will make sure that God’s commands are observed and His prohibitions avoided, al-amr bi l-maʿrūf wa l-nahy ʿan al-munkar.8 They are the instrument of divine justice but only if they apply rigorously the teachings of Islam. It is important, therefore, that they are good Muslims, for in their virtues lies the welfare of the community. And if this model does not work, as he tells us in Al-munqidh, the solution is for the Muslims, including the ʿulamāʾ, to turn to personal salvation; after all, what is this life in relation to the hereafter? The underlying assumption is that if all Muslims practice what al-Ghazzālī teaches, there will be no need to worry about political authority. Put differently, the salvation of the community hinges on the salvation of the individual. Ibn Fattouma, on the contrary, makes political participation a necessity. If Al-munqidh implies that boycotting politics by the protagonist’s retirement from public life, if only temporarily, is the position the ʿulamāʾ must take vis-à-vis unjust, corrupt political figures (a moral position al-Ghazzālī fervently argues for at some length in Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn),9 Ibn Fattouma takes a pragmatic stance and turns outward, fully participating in the daily life of every ‘land’ he visits, engaging in dialogues with the intellectuals as well as political figures there, and hoping to return to his homeland one day with the remedy he hopes to find in order to apply it, to participate in the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 47

11/12/2012 16:28

48

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

process of transforming political authority from agent of tyranny into that of justice. If Ibn Fattouma seems to agree with the Islamic discourses today on the primacy of political authority, it does so only to reveal their misconceived genesis. It draws attention to the absence of this issue in Al-munqidh and invites us to re-examine in a broader context al-Ghazzālī and to re-see his problematic status in Islamic history. His ‘apolitical’ stance was atypical among many contemporary Sufi orders, which took active part in the struggle against colonisation and continue to participate in political life in many parts of the Arab world. More importantly, he was in fact quite controversial.10 The Moroccan Moravid Sultan Yūsuf Ibn Tāshifīn, for example, ordered his works burned in Morocco in 537AH.11 His works remained for a long time buried in the remote corners of some Sufi outposts and maligned by jurists. His critics, including philosophers, especially Ibn Rushd, Sufis and jurists, attacked him not only on the grounds of his Sufism but also of the way he arrived at Sufism, his way of thinking which in effect remained imprinted with various intellectual strands traceable to theology, philosophy and Shiʿism. Jurists especially took issue with his stance towards tradition; he advocated and practiced independent thought that was free of imitation, taqlīd, the staple mechanism of learning in the Islamic legal tradition.12 This historical al-Ghazzālī is not the al-Ghazzālī of the current Islamic discourses. Ibn Fattouma takes issue with the current discourses on the past. It questions the reductive constructions of the past, as in the case of elevating al-Ghazzālī to the status of Islamic purity then basing legitimacy on this newly reconstructed past. At the most obvious level, it takes issue with legitimating particular models of knowledge based on received wisdom, such as that which is proposed by Al-munqidh – knowledge is faith. In the world of Ibn Fattouma, the kind of knowledge al-Ghazzālī advocates is of little usefulness.13 Like the instructions of Ibn Fattouma’s teacher, the Sufi master Maghāgha al-Jubaylī, this kind of knowledge may be true illumination but cannot provide solutions to real problems. At another level, Ibn Fattouma interrogates the validity of Al-munqidh’s assertion of its own Truth by implicating Al-munqidh as a form of discourse on Truth that must be placed in its proper historical context. Truth, so unquestionably tangible in discourses such as Al-munqidh’s becomes as illusory as a dream or fantasy that has no correspondence in reality, for Truth is deduced from reconstruction of the past, a reconstruction effected by discourse. The definition of the past is then a matter of discourse and can differ from one

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 48

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

49

discourse to another. No past constructed by discourses can stand the test of history. In its nostalgic reading of Al-munqidh, Ibn Fattouma not only uncovers its contentious history but also provides an alternative interpretation by underscoring the paradox of Al-munqidh, which on the one hand demands conformity from all, and on the other advocates and is the product of individual effort, ijtihād in a culture of diversity. While it denounces the search for Truth in the idealised past, the lesson the Muslim fundamentalists seem to have learned from al-Ghazzālī, it pleads for the path he has taken for his own enlightenment. The ‘journey in search for knowledge’ taking place in the idealised past leads nowhere; rather, it ends where it begins, or begins again. But the search goes on, in fact, must go on in perpetuity. The importance of ijtihād, the spirit of al-Ghazzālī and in which Al-munqidh was written, emerges suddenly as the crux of the matter. The search is the only meaningful thing just as the journey is the story in Ibn Fattouma. Ḥ-l-m is at another level the root from which wisdom associated with maturity, ḥilm, is derived. Halima, the object of desire, is the knowledge, ḥikma (a near synonym of ḥilm), sought in this case. The story in this work is the love affair with knowledge, and whether the ending of this love affair is a happy one or not is of no relevance. It is the story that matters, for, just as in Al-munqidh, narration is knowledge and narrative is the means to attaining it. With due respect to Maghāgha al-Jubaylī’s knowledge and wisdom – al-Jubaylī’s link to Dār al-Jabal is obvious: jubayl is diminutive of jabal, and jubaylī, nisba adjective derived for jubayl, indicates the possible origin of al-Jubaylī in Dār al-Jabal – Ibn Fattouma must arrive at knowledge on his own. Ibn Fattouma, the narratee, may be hostage to nostalgia, but Ibn Fattouma, the narrative, is not. The role of real life in the acquisition of knowledge is another area that is restored in Ibn Fattouma. Rather than turning inward and seeking individual salvation in isolation from the world (al-ʿuzla) at a time of crisis, as al-Ghazzālī does in Al-munqidh, Ibn Fattouma instead immerses in it. If al-Ghazzālī regards real life, al-dunyā, a curse, a distraction from the real purpose of life, just like a seductive beautiful woman who is necessarily full of treachery14 and must be resisted at all cost, Ibn Fattouma conversely fulfils his worldly desires as he falls in love and marries twice, to ʿArūsa in Dār al-Mashriq and Sāmiya in Dār al-Ḥalba. The name of Ibn Fattouma’s first wife, ʿArūsa, seems coincidentally evocative of al-Ghazzālī’s notion of life. ʿArūsa means not only bride in classical Arabic, but also beautiful woman in the colloquial. In marrying her and thereafter pining for her, is

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 49

11/12/2012 16:28

50

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Ibn Fattouma not doing exactly what al-Ghazzālī admonishes Muslims not to do, choose this life over the hereafter? In a conversation with Rajāʾ al-Naqqāsh, Mahfouz, without denying his interest in and influence by Sufi writings, finds the Sufi rejection of life unacceptable: ‘I am not convinced with the idea of rejecting life and cannot imagine any religion would at all advocate rejection of life’.15 Even as it questions the legitimacy of current notions of the past, however, Ibn Fattouma paradoxically mediates between past and present. By calling upon the pre-modern archetypal Arabic qaṣīda, Al-munqidh and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, as symbolic texts, and the heroic poet al-Ghazzālī and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, as literary personae, as its precursors and site of discourse, it traces its genealogy to the past. This past is simultaneously delineated and contested; it is the history defined by a multiplicity of texts and personae, but it is not an isolated, idealised moment; rather it is an open-ended landscape marked by discourses on contemporary concerns. Contextualising Al-munqidh, a symbolically exemplary text purporting to tell and be the Truth, in its literary history as well as the various discourses on the Truth, seems to question the veracity of this idealisation of the past. The past, like Al-munqidh, is a narrative construct, and can vary from one discourse to another. The past, like Ibn Fattouma’s textual past, is layered and complex, as its texts and literary personae are, and its truth eludes singular definition, just like al-Ghazzālī who defies categorisation,16 and must be understood in all its complexity. Nevertheless, the present and future must be founded on the past, just as Ibn Fattouma locates its genealogy in its precursors, the past must serve as the source of authenticity. Authenticity, however, is not predicated on the return to a single moment in the past, but on the processes through which it shaped itself. The truth of the past, therefore the Truth, is not this isolated moment, frozen in time, but rather its discourses on the Truth. This is the past that must be integrated into the present. Only this past will allow the present to develop, for departing from its course is precisely continuing its very course. Ibn Fattouma in effect redefines the past to accommodate and illuminate the present, as well as the present’s relationship with its past. The past is no longer imitation but freedom to explore. ‘THE FUTURE OF NOSTALGIA’ 17

Ibn Fattouma and Mihyar’s Songs belong to the same modernist discourses on Arab nation, Arabic literature and Arab culture. They both legitimate their present practices by a process of what Eric Hobsbawm and Terence

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 50

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

51

Ranger would call ‘invention of tradition’. They fashion a tradition from elements of the past, and memorialise this tradition in the form of public ritual performances, as Mahfouz and Adonis repeatedly do in their writings aimed for public consumption. In their ‘romance’ with their own ‘fantasy of homecoming’, as Boym would put it, they do not stop at ‘longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed’, but rather transform the ‘sentiment of loss and displacement’ into ‘repairing’ their ‘longing with final belonging’, not simply ‘dreaming’ of it, as Boym observes of Russian immigrants in The Future of Nostalgia.18 They do so by redeploying classical Arabic poetics of nostalgia in their responses to global modernity and local discourses on modernity. While insisting on using ‘local currency’, on reviving traditional forms of expression, they simultaneously inject into it global relevance. Their turn to and refashioning of, say, the novel, are both artistic devices and strategies of survival; they allow Adonis and Mahfouz artistic freedom and legitimate their endeavours. More importantly, these strategies give their works the aura of the triad of ‘authenticity’, ‘originality’ and ‘modernity’ coveted in and for modern Arabic literature. Nostalgia in Arabic modernist writings is coeval with modernity at large in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The way it has transformed our understanding of time and space has, as Boym puts it, made the division into ‘local’ and ‘universal’ possible.19 The global reach of modernity paradoxically ‘encouraged stronger local attachments’.20 Nostalgia in the Arab context, however, ‘is not merely an expression of local longing’,21 of national imagining of community and nationalisation of modernity, but is also ‘a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and turn it into private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition’,22 as well as against the Western history of civilisation. Its ‘affective yearning for a community with a collective memory, a longing for continuity in a fragmented world’23 is its defensive mechanism not only to the ‘accelerated rhythms of life and historical upheavals’ that is modernity24 but also to the overwhelming presence of the cultural other in Arab modernity. Modern Arabic literature, whether we speak of poetry, drama, the short story or the novel, has internalised Western forms, expressions and even aesthetics. It has done so not because it is incapable of resisting the West or Western modernity but in an attempt, as Adonis and Mahfouz would put it, to achieve world relevance. The global ambition of modern Arabic literature, this said, never prevented it from establishing its distinct, local identity. Nostalgia, seen in this light, is also the creative mechanism.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 51

11/12/2012 16:28

52

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

What Adonis and Mahfouz take part in, as well as all the poets and novelists I have discussed, is a game of cultural memory driven and shaped by nostalgia not so much for an old home left behind – though that too – or an actual past, but for an ‘aesthetic for democracy’ to be reconstructed from the revolutionary discourses repressed in and by the past, a Utopia where individual and community have space, inside and outside the literary and cultural texts, to fashion a unique and ‘original’ identity for themselves. Their nostalgia, in this sense, is both restorative and reflective. Their longing takes the shape of ‘rebuild[ing] the lost home and patch[ing] up the memory gaps’ as well as ‘dwelling in longing and loss’.25 Their nostalgia evokes ‘national past’ and concerns itself equally with ‘individual and cultural memory’.26 Their ‘myth of return’ is, however, responsive to other ‘myths of return’, to the one-track-minded nostalgia that believes in the absoluteness of the past and of its absolute truth. It does not seek ‘total reconstructions of monuments of the past’,27 or the relocation of the present to an idealised religious community. It rather ‘lingers on ruins, the patinas of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time’,28 critically assessing the past, identifying its moments of enlightenment, and finding its longing, or mourning, cathartic. It makes sense of the impossibility of homecoming and transforms it into an opportunity for creative renewal individually and collectively. It frowns upon the ‘myths of return’ to ‘the pure origin’. The future they seek in at once retrospective and prospective nostalgia is a tradition of rational thinking, freedom of thought and creative potentials instead of a tradition of monologism given shape and authority through processes of repression and oppression. Both authors take advantage of the novel’s dialogism and heteroglossia to relaunch the revolutionary impulses in one half of tradition repressed by the other. There is, however, a marked difference between Adonis and Mahfouz’s nostalgia. While Adonis concerns himself more with individual and cultural memory in his preoccupation with literary creativity and originality, at least in Mihyar’s Songs, Mahfouz remembers well the novel as the ground on which national imagining of community takes shape. While Adonis refers vaguely to the power, productive, supportive and preserving, of a univocal tradition, what Qabbānī calls ‘the tribal law’, ‘the harem’ and ‘the Caliph’, Mahfouz takes a very close look at these sources of power and examines their relation to political authority. The failure of political authority, as we have seen, is explicable in terms of their imperfection as systems of knowledge. This imperfection is manifest in their inability to contain the political authority’s abuse of power and redress its negligence of justice. Mahfouz,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 52

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

53

more crucially, relaunches in his text the poetics of love and desire in classical Arabic poetry and narrative tradition. Love may be sabotaged (both Ḥalīma and ʿArūsa are taken from him, and he leaves Sāmiya) but desire is given the freedom to roam, to guide his steps, to send him on multiple journeys, and to map the trajectories of narrative. The multiple trajectories of desire in Ibn Fattouma make it possible for Mahfouz to contemplate what Boym would call the divisive potential of nostalgia,29 especially in projects that attempt to ‘repair longing with belonging’.30 These projects dangerously ‘confuse the actual home with the imaginary one’,31 to use Boym’s words, but more importantly, they ‘put an end to mutual understanding’32 and to the collective dream for a harmonious community. Desire in Ibn Fattouma interrogates nostalgia in another way too. The past in Ibn Fattouma is effectively a ‘foreign country’, as David Lowethal would have it,33 and takes shape only in the ways in which it is remembered in narrative and discourse. Its future depends on nostalgia and its constructive impulses. These impulses are, as Mahfouz shows, informed by ideologies that give shape to narrative and discourse. The multiple trajectories of desire in Ibn Fattouma allude to what Boym would call the unpredictability of the past.34 As Boym observes, ‘the alluring object of nostalgia is notoriously elusive’35 not only because the actual past is forgotten in nostalgia36 but also because the past comes to be reincarnated in an endless variety of forms, each dependent on the narrative and discourse that give it shape. Mihyar’s Songs and Ibn Fattouma, for example, construct the past differently. They have in common the preoccupation with the hegemonic grip of the past on the present, but they resort to divergent traditions of writing to resurrect the ‘potential for creativity and originality’ in them. The past can never take a decisive shape, and tradition comes to be seen as a matter of intertextuality, of the ways in which it is reproduced in text. The unpredictability of the past becomes an obsession in the Arabic novel, which repeatedly tells the story of search that inevitably ends in disappointment. THE POLITICS OF TRADITION

Imraʾat al-Qārūra (Woman of the Bottle, 1990), the novel for which Iraqi writer-in-exile Salīm Maṭar Kāmil received the prize sponsored by the London-based Arabic literary journal Al-nāqid the year it was published, tells the story of a woman who has been given immortality as early as the beginning of Sumerian civilisation in the Ahwār region, in the southern part of Iraq today. The price of her immortality is her eternal imprisonment

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 53

11/12/2012 16:28

54

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

in the bottle. The bottle, upon the death of its first owner, a Sumerian king who loved his mistress so much that he had her immortalised in the bottle, is passed down from one generation to another. The woman of the bottle becomes witness to and storehouse of Iraqi history. When the protagonist, an exiled Iraqi living in Switzerland, discovers her she becomes embroiled in two love affairs, with him and his friend the narrator. At the end of the novel, the protagonist and narrator find a way to release her from immortality and consequently the bottle. She fails in her application for political asylum in Switzerland, is arrested by the police and deported. She disappears and her fate is unknown. As the novel ends, the narrator, protagonist and his pregnant wife, drink the liquid in the bottle, which is supposed to be the elixir of immortality, and in turn disappear as they spin out of control on the ski slope. This story is framed by a story of an Iraqi soldier who finally reaches Switzerland after seven attempts at escaping the Iran–Iraq War. As this soldier goes to his first cafe upon arrival in Switzerland, he is handed a manuscript by the bartender. The bartender tells him he, the refugee, is the owner of the manuscript. This manuscript contains the story of the woman of the bottle. Readers of the Arabic novel will have no difficulty identifying the woman of the bottle as a symbol of the past. The novel rewrites the history of Iraq from Sumerian times to the present, taking us through the historical hegemonic rules and bloodbaths one after another, evoking the atmosphere of ancient Sumerian and Babylonian mythology as well as the supernatural and labyrinthine quality of Arabian Nights’ story and narrative. The past in this novel, whether in the form of a genie in the bottle or not, haunts the present. The persistent presence of the past in the present makes it impossible for the present to progress towards the future. This arrested development of the present in the shadow of the past comes to represent the impasse Arab intellectuals have reached with regard to modernity and the modernisation of their community, history, culture and literature. History, I have already explained, has become elusive under the current political and historical circumstances but, more crucially, because of the divergent agendas of revisionist projects. As the woman of the bottle disappears, the past melts into thin air as well. Precisely because it is ephemeral, the past has become the object of desire in Arabic writings today. There is not a more expressive manifestation of this obsession than the wave of intertextuality that pervades the modern Arabic literary landscape. Proliferation of intertextuality is explained in the main as a symptom and symbol of the Arabic novel’s search for identity in

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 54

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

55

the post-colonial context. The Arabic novel, having borrowed its form from the West, derives its identity – authenticity – from locating its history in the Arabic cultural and literary heritage in general, and a tradition of Arabic narrative and storytelling in particular. The Arabic novel always seems to straddle the two poles of its proclaimed origins: the West and the past. The quest for identity is necessarily a twofold journey, one outward bound and the other inward. Ibn Fattouma is, in part, an account of the twofold journey of modern Arabic literature couched in terms of an Arab-Muslim intellectual’s search for the ‘Truth’. While the protagonist travels outside the ‘homeland’ in search of new knowledge, he too journeys inside what is defined by the novel as tradition, seeking authenticity. Intertextuality is a strategy to access and assess tradition. It negotiates the role of tradition in contemporary life as well as in giving shape to modern literary texts. Intertextuality operates on the assumption that tradition is a clearly defined body of knowledge constructed around an identifiable collection of texts. The Arabic novel, I have already alluded to, makes an ambivalent statement about assumption. In the 1990s, the novels fully mired in intertextuality put pressure on this assumption, at once engaging in and undermining intertextuality’s reconstructive potential. ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Rikābī37 looks at the affects of intertextuality in Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq (1994; The seventh day of creation), examining the ways in which the Arabic novel and tradition take shape as the former negotiates the triangular relationship of ‘authenticity’, ‘originality’ and ‘modernity’ in the creative process of a modernist literary text. In a moment of creative uncertainty, the narrator-protagonist of al-Rikābī’s novel confides his anxiety to his poet friend. He muses despairingly: ‘What is the point of adding another novel to a pile of novels being spewed out by the printing presses every minute?’ The following conversation ensues. The voice of poet rang out in the darkness: ‘if every novelist thought in this fashion, the novel would have become extinct since it reached the peak of its maturity at the end of the nineteenth century. Twentieth century novelists would not have been able to challenge new forms of storytelling, such as cinema, radio and television, and create (yabtakirū) their novels’. I wondered aloud, laughing bitterly: ‘And have these novelists left us any room for creating more?’ The poet replies, ‘listen, my friend! Every great novel will bear the marks of its creator (malāmiḥ mubdiʿihā), like the way a thumbprint implicates the identity of every human being. The question of intertextuality (tanāṣṣ)

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 55

11/12/2012 16:28

56

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel and similarity (tashābuh) worrying you now is something time has made irrelevant (amr ʿafā ʿalayhi z-zaman). It is not possible for novels not to read like one another in some lines or pages because the material of all novelists comes from the face of this planet; life itself. Borges has once said something to the effect that no writer could claim originality (aṣāla) because they are all translators and annotators of pre-existing archetypes’. In fact, he defined ‘modern’ literature as grounded in four basic devices (taqniyāt asāsiyya): work within work (al-kitāb dākhil al-kitāb), the contamination of reality by dream (ʿadwā l-wāqiʿ bi l-ḥulm), the voyage in time (as-safar fī z-zaman), and doubling (al-muḍāʿafa)’. Would I be able to make full use of all these four devices in this novel?38

This passage brings together in a nutshell the disparate strands of critical thinking about intertextuality and its relationship to authenticity (aṣāla) in both of its meanings, in the context of contemporary Arabic writing in general and the Arabic novel in particular. The reference to Borges and his influence on fiction writing worldwide is important. It acknowledges the importance of Borges in integrating the narrative techniques of the Nights into modern Western fiction, popularising in the process the Nights even more. It more significantly alludes to Borges as a precursor of the type of writing that incorporates the fantastic into its world. It highlights the Borgesian understanding and use of intertextuality. There are, however, distortions of Borges, which are specific. Al-Rikābī collapses the Borgesian sense of originality on the all-too-familiar Arab notion of rootedness in tradition, or cultural and literary heritage – al-turāth. For one thing, the Borgesian sense of originality39 is rendered into aṣāla, rather than, let us say, ibtikār, the derivatives of which appear in the passage, or ibdāʿ as is customary in Arabic. Aṣāla, a more appropriate term for the novel under discussion, relates originality to intertextuality, not in the sense of Kristeva’s use of the term, the transposition of one or more systems of signs into another, but rather in the Borgesian sense of explicit, open engagement with ‘the sources of a literary work’, extensively elaborated in Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination and Genette’s Palimpsest. For another thing, Borges’s definition of ‘fantastic literature’, characterised by the four devices of ‘work within work, the contamination of reality by dream, the voyage in time, and the double’,40 is applied to modern literature in general. There are, of course, reasons for these distortions. They explain the ways in which the Arabic novel achieves authenticity and originality

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 56

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

57

simultaneously through intertextuality with pre-existing texts belonging to diverse genres. The text of al-Rikābī’s novel exemplifies the narrative and textual strategies of this approach. Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq is a novel of about four hundred pages. It is the third and last of a trilogy preceded by Al-rāwūq (1986; Pure water) and Qabl an yuḥalliq al-bāshiq (1990; Before the Bāshiq soared). The trilogy is in one sense an epic, a grand history of Iraq between the seventeenth century and the present told as the story of the ebbing and flowing fortunes of the Bawhāshiq tribe (ʿashīrat al-bawāshiq), a tribe based in the countryside. The three parts of the trilogy seem to tell one story of the disintegration of the Bawāshiq as its leadership is split between those who succumb to and those who resist the authority of the city. The story, as a matter of course, ends with the dominion of the city over the countryside. This history of Iraq as written by al-Rikābī is an amalgamation of the stories of the individual men and women, especially those in privileged positions, who make up the community that is the tribe. Through the stories of their loves, conflicts, transgressions and struggles, the history of Iraq unfolds as that of its people’s coping with various forms of political authority imposed on them from the outside, from the Ottomans to the British then the Baʿthists. The beginning of the breakdown of the family is traced to the disagreement between al-Sayyid Nūr, the religious and spiritual leader of the community possessing mystical powers, and the leader of the tribe, the elderly al-Bāshiq, Muṭlaq. Al-Sayyid Nūr moves out of protection of the tribe and establishes a hut that becomes the heart and soul of the tribesmen, and Muṭlaq builds a castle on top of a hill that becomes the symbol of his power. The story ends with the death of most of Muṭlaq’s sons in a confrontation with the soldiers sent by the city, except for one, and the disappearance of the tribe into the labyrinth of the city. The story in the three parts of the trilogy may be variations of the same theme, as may already be seen in al-Rikābī’s earlier novels, but the narrative techniques differ from one part to another. Al-rāwūq, which deals with the Ottoman period, and Qabl an yuḥalliq al-bāshiq, which details life under the British occupation, seem to have opened up new vistas for Arabic narrative and storytelling. Al-rāwūq, reviewer Yāsīn al-Nuṣayr lauds, ‘combines all the artistic techniques that go into the novelistic narrative: poetical, allegorical, cinematic, traditional, magical and realistic’.41 Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq covers the contemporary period in Iraq’s history. In addition, it retells the stories already detailed in the first two parts. It tells three stories attributed to different narrators in the first-person narrative.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 57

11/12/2012 16:28

58

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

The first story is of a novelist’s search for a new form. As the story unfolds, it transpires that the novelist is continuing work begun in Al-rāwūq, which recounts the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the manuscripts of an old text also known as Al-rāwūq (the reference to this first part of the trilogy is explicit). This old text, according to all, contains the secret history of Madīnat al-Aslāf (City of Forefathers), the subject of all the novels written by the novelist, the textualised author. The search for the definitive Al-rāwūq manuscript leads the novelist to the ‘Museum’ and its founder and director, the various manuscripts housed in the ‘Museum’, to Shabīb Ṭāhir al-Ghiyāth, the last transmitter of the (hi)story of the Bawāshiq, and more importantly, his love interest, Warqāʾ. Two processes take place at the same time: the reconstruction of the manuscript of Al-rāwūq and the construction of his latest novel. These searches, more over, parallel his courtship of Warqāʾ. The second story consists of accounts of two attempts made at producing a definitive version or edition of the text complete with chains of transmission (isnād), one by the novelist and the other by Shabīb Ṭāhir al-Ghiyāth. The story of the former frames that of the latter. Both fail in the endeavour. The text, originally attributed to a Sufi-like saint, al-Sayyid Nūr, turns out to be the work of many hands through many generations. As this second story unfolds, we are given to understand that at one time there existed a big black book that collated all the reliable or self-serving writings of those who oversaw the Mazār of al-Sayyid Nūr, a shrine built on the site of the hut he lived in after his death. All the versions are centred round al-Sayyid Nūr’s account of the circumstances leading to the rise of the Muṭlaq family to leadership position (mashīkha) among the Bawāshiq. This big black book is torn asunder during a turbulent episode in the history of Madīnat al-Aslaf and falls back into the original state of disarray of the text, disparate fragments that tell bits and pieces of divergent stories. This written version of the (hi)story of the Bawāshiq, moreover, has oral origins. Al-Sayyid Nūr begins transcribing the orally-performed (hi)story in ink onto paper only when it becomes banned by the Bawāshiq as they try to suppress the subversive elements of the storytelling. The text, and therefore the story, exists in numerous recensions. Each recension tells a different story, and the shape of the story depends on the ways in which various fragments are pieced together. The discovery of a leaf of manuscript related to the work, for example, can radically change the story as well as the shape of the text. The third story is the written transcript recording the oral version of the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 58

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

59

popular history of the Muṭlaq family, known as al-sīra al-muṭlaqiyya (The epic of the Muṭlaq family), sung to the soulful tunes of the rabāb by the poet of the tribe (shāʿir). The sīra is structured around the conflict between the Mashīkha of Muṭlaq and the Mazār of al-Sayyid Nūr, and told in four parts, each sung by a different poet. It begins with Muṭlaq’s rise to power in the Ahwār region and his parting of the way with al-Sayyid Nūr. As Muṭlaq transforms the livelihood of the tribe from shepherding to agriculture, he also turns to outsiders, soldiers and dealers from the ‘city’ (al-balda), to fortify his position and increase his and the tribe’s wealth. When he succeeds he decides to build a castle (al-qalʿa) as an expression of his newly acquired power and status. Muṭlaq’s decision to build this castle is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. As soon as work begins on top of the hill, alSayyid Nūr moves out of Muṭlaq’s ‘protection’ and takes up residence in a hut (kūkh) across the field from the south, withholding his almost divine grace and, more importantly, his blessings from Muṭlaq’s family. Before long, disasters strike the Bawāshiq. The first disaster comes in the form of a flood that destroys the harvest, and the second a plague that wipes out half the population of the Bawāshiq tribe, including Muṭlaq’s wife. Muṭlaq himself contracts the disease and in delirium crawls all the way to al-Sayyid Nūr’s hut across the field, knocks on his door, and is imbued with the grace of his presence and the light shining on his face. He miraculously survives. He repents and gives up his castle. His repentance, however, does not last very long. The second part of the sīra details the process of recuperating his power soon thereafter. Muṭlaq returns to power among the Bawāshiq after a twoyear drought. Muṭlaq marries the wife of Mujbir, his right-hand man before the plague. Rāziqiyya gives him five sons in addition to the two he had with his first wife. Muṭlaq’s eldest son, Ṭārish, falls in love with Fitna, daughter of Dhiyāb from the boat people known for their thievery and possession of guns, the al-Muʿīdīs. Through the marriage of Ṭārish and Fitna, the Bawāshiq acquire guns. The third part of the sīra then goes on to tell the story of the expansion of Muṭlaq’s family as his other (six) sons – Janāḥ, Qāṣid, Khiḍr, Rabīʿ, Nāʾif and Hasūd – marry and produce children one after another. The fourth and final part tells of their inevitable decline as their power comes to be seen as a threat to the authority of the city. At the end, the city sends in its troops and in a confrontation of epical proportions the era of the Muṭlaq family comes to an end as father and six sons are killed in the final battle, Wāqiʿat Dakkat al-Midfaʿ, when their guns prove inadequate to protect them from the cannons brought in by the city. Ṭārish,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 59

11/12/2012 16:28

60

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

however, escapes this fate by running away with his wife and children to his in-laws in the marshes. Intertextuality plays an instrumental part in the telling of this story of the vicissitudes of the fortunes of the Muṭlaq family. This ‘modern’, some would even say ‘postmodern’ text, evokes, emulates, resurrects and rewrites pre-existing texts and genres. It alludes to Babylonian myths. The flood in the first part of al-sīra al-muṭlaqiyya is clearly a re-enactment of the creation myth in Babylonian mythology that finds confirmation in the biblical tradition.42 The text explicitly acknowledges too its indebtedness to texts such as the Nights,43 Al-insān al-kāmil fī maʾrifat al-awākhir wa l-awāʾil by ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī,44 and Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam and Al-futūḥāt al-makiyya by Ibn ʿArabī.45 It casts itself in the genre of popular Arabic epics, al-sīra al-shaʿbiyya, which serves as the vehicle for ‘writing’ down the oral history of a tribe. Al-sīra al-muṭlaqiyya is, for example, sung orally by poets first, then recorded on tape, and finally transcribed and integrated into the novel. The kind of intertextuality devised in this novel manifests itself in the form of text-shaping diverse narrative strategies and techniques inspired by Borges: work within work, the contamination of reality by dream, the voyage in time, and doubling. The innovative use of these diverse narrative strategies and techniques comes to a head here to produce one of the most profoundly intriguing and intriguingly profound Arabic novels. These clearly identified narrative strategies and techniques are necessarily framed by the search for ‘originality’ in the novel. As I alluded to above, part of the story of this novel is the novelist’s search for a new form, for writing a novel unlike any already written. The textualised author’s anxiety haunts the entire text and brings to the fore the angst of his predecessors about whom stories are told and whose stories are retold. The textualised author, both as novelist and manuscript hunter, finds his doubles in two types of predecessors. The oral storytellers of al-sīra al-muṭlaqiyya – ʿAbdallāh al-Baṣīr, Madlūl a-Yatīm and ʿAdhīb al-ʿĀshiq – serve as his artistic precursors, especially before the epic is written down and the story becomes that of a search for the definitive manuscript. The attention al-Baṣīr pays to the making of his rabāb and the ways in which he organises the parts of the epic and integrates music into storytelling46 remind us of the creative angst the novelist experiences. Al-Baṣīr, dejection at the realisation that his pupil, al-Yatīm, has taken over the affections of his audience is even more acutely felt when al-Yatīm’s innovations are highlighted as the main reason for his retirement. The transcribers of this oral tradition – al-Sayyid Nūr, Dhākir al-Qayyim and Shabīb Ṭāhir al-Ghiyāth

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 60

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

61

– are his models of historians exemplifying scholarly attentiveness. These two sets of storytellers and historians, tellers and writers, are in turn each other’s double. Doubling here must mean both mirroring and multiplying. The intersection of the two notions of doubling is the spring of narrative in the novel, holding the narrative strands together as well as propelling their movement. The novelist’s search for both an original form of the novel and the authentic manuscript opens up the textual space of the novel to two major strands of story, each with sub-strands, that in the final analysis make up the novel and the story of the novelist. The history of the Bawāshiq represented in the manuscript is so intricately embroiled in the story told by the storytellers that it is impossible to locate one without uncovering the other. Doubling here entails framing, one story framing another. The novel is constructed on the principle of work-within-work at both the levels of story and text. Stories follow the frame-within-frame structure of the Nights. The story of the novelist is told in the seven chapters, each entitled Kitāb al-kutub (The book of books) followed by a subtitle made up of sifr (another word for book) and one of the seven letters of the word al-raḥmān, one of the ninety-nine names of Allāh. These chapters frame in an alternate fashion the following chapters: Ishrāq al-asmāʾ, Kitāb al-inniyya, Ishrāq al-ṣifāt, Kitāb al-huwiyya, Ishrāq al-dhāt, and Kitab al-aḥādiyya. In the chapters entitled Ishrāq, Al-sīra al-muṭlaqiyya is recounted and recorded, and in the chapters entitled Kitāb, the story of the manuscript is told. More significantly, the texts of al-sīra al-muṭlaqiyya are written on and over the texts of Al-Insān al-kāmil47 and Alf layla wa layla.48 The old texts have as a result become an integral part of the new texts, just as the old tales are of the new stories. The confluence of old texts and stories with new ones makes it impossible to tell them apart. Dhākir al-Qayyim’s eight-page text written on the back pages of a copy of al-Jīlī’s book, Al-insān al-kāmil, takes on the structure of the two chapters printed on those eight pages. Even the titles of these chapters in the two texts are identical: al-huwiyya and alinniyya.49 More mind-boggling to the novelist is perhaps the convergence of both content and language in the two extremely divergent types of work. How could the oral story composed by an illiterate storyteller, recorded by Dhākir al-Qayyim, have adopted a Sufi world view and language belonging to a written tradition? Is it a coincidence that the parts of the history of the Bawāshiq found in these pages correspond to the two stages of the Sufi journey denoted in the two terms of the titles? The principles of doubling and work-within-work intertwine in the game of numbers at the heart of the novel. The seventh day of creation, the title of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 61

11/12/2012 16:28

62

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

the novel, begins as part of the Babylonian myth as well as the biblical story of creation and ends as a narrative of the formation of the novel. It is no coincidence that the novelist is the seventh storyteller of the epic of Muṭlaq and his seven sons. The title of the chapters make up the seven letters of the word al-raḥmān, the numerical value of which equals that of the word, al-rāwūq, the name given to the manuscript of the Muṭlaq epic made up of seven letters as well. Babylonian mythology, if one may think of it as a work, frames the biblical tradition, another work that frames the Sufi numerology, yet another work that informs the structure of the novel. The narrative patterns embedded in the three kinds of cosmological articulation framing the structure of the novel take the form of history, of the journey in time that Borges speaks of. Here, the history of the Bawāshiq is only the pretext for an exploration of the development of the craft of history making and the art of storytelling from Bablyonian times to the present, through the biblical tradition and Islamic Sufism. Narrative movements driven by historical forces are, however, guided, checked and bounded by the geography or, more appropriately, architecture of space. The textual space of the novel mirrors the architecture of Badr Farhūd Ṭārish’s ‘Museum’, which consists of seemingly endless corridors leading to uncountable halls named after the storytellers with no particular rhyme or reason. It also reflects the landscape of Madīnat al-Aslāf, which is made up of interwoven winding avenues and alleys that lead everywhere and nowhere in particular. The narrative movements, driven by a search for the history of Madīnat al-Aslāf, necessarily follow the paths set by its avenues and alleys, going everywhere and nowhere. The novel, like its doubles, the ‘Museum’ and the ‘City of Forefathers’, is a geographical and historical matāha,50 a labyrinth of Borgesian proportions, its labyrinthine quality heightened by the contamination of reality by dream. That the storytellers all see al-Sayyid Nūr appearing in their dreams, urging them to tell the story of the Bawāshiq, makes it impossible to tell for certain his role in the construction of Al-sīra al-muṭlaqiyya. Is he merely a scribe? Is he the voice of conscience? Is he the real storyteller and historian? Or is he simply an apparition, a ghost from the past, a fantasy of origin? The novel is clearly about the twofold search for history – the truth of the past and the tradition that can tell us this truth – and story, especially originality. The central metaphor of the novel, the state of the ‘manuscript’ (al-makhṭūṭ), says as much. The textualised novelist places the stake of his novel, which is presented in the form of a manuscript complete with conventional identification markings, in consolidating the manuscript known

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 62

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

63

as Al-rāwūq, a text that can purportedly tell the history of the city he lives in, Madīnat al-Aslāf. In the end, the dream of finding that definitive text disintegrates as we discover that the various manuscripts form a labyrinth, the ways in and out of which are impossible to know and, more importantly, they never lead to an intended destination. The search for the Absolute Truth, symbolised by the search for the definitive text, and the eventual outcome of the search are explained through Ibn ʿArabī and al-Jīlī’s concepts of ‘perfect man’ (al-insān al-kāmil)51 and ‘truth’ (al-ḥaqīqa). The novelist justifies his ‘creative wanderlust’, arguing that his quest for both the definitive Al-rāwūq text and for a new form for the novel is driven by his knowledge of his own imperfections as an artist. The perfect man in Ibn ʿArabī and al-Jīlī is the man who realises that he is imperfect and endeavours to redress his imperfections. The Sufi odyssey culminates in the search for the Truth. In Ibn ʿArabī’s formulation, especially Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam,52 the Truth has myriad different manifestations; however, each manifestation reflects or represents truthfully this Truth in a particular way. In other words, these manifestations, despite their seemingly irreconcilable differences, are the expressions of the same Truth, and are, in their own ways, the Truth itself. Seen in this light, the various versions of the history of Madīnat al-Aslāf presented and represented in the novel are all true. The form of the novel, true to its message, reflects this Sufi understanding of the Truth and its manifestations. This understanding matches perfectly the Borgesian labyrinth and Nights narrative. Like the Nights narrative, the narrative of Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq is labyrinthine. The text is meant to be open-ended, like the Nights before it became imprisoned in written forms.53 The narrative movements are unpredictable and full of suspense. The construction of the novel in the form of various overlapping labyrinths – Borges, Nights, the Sufi ‘Truth’, the ‘Museum’, Madīnat al-Aslāf and Al-rāwūq – leads to one question about the novel itself: what is the story it wants to tell? More importantly, is the novel like the Al-rāwūq manuscript? Is it an unreliable text? The ending of the story of the novelist seems to point to this course of interpretation. While conducting research on the Al-rāwūq manuscript(s), he falls in love with one of the Museum clerks, a woman by the name of Warqāʾ. He becomes certain that she returns his affections when he begins receiving phone calls from an anonymous woman who clearly knows all the details of his work. He then decides to confront Warqāʾ and ask her to marry him. He follows her to her bus, rides with her all the way to her house, and begins an interrogation of her in his indirect way. Even though

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 63

11/12/2012 16:28

64

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

she seems puzzled by his conjectures he comes to the conclusion that she is the anonymous woman. In the end, however, there is no way of knowing for certain whether she is the anonymous woman or a creature of the novelist’s flights of fantasy, a utopian dream. The ending of their ‘love story’ is not known. Is there even a ‘love story’? It may have been a one-sided love affair on the part of the novelist. After all, the word Warqāʾ is a Sufi term for the divine book that contains that Truth, al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ, and the Truth in Sufism is, from the perspective of those looking for simple certainty, at best multiple and at worst elusive. Warqāʾ to the novelist is more likely a dream that cannot be realised. Or is she a creature of the novelist’s flights of fantasy, utopian dreams? That there can be no definitive answers to these questions makes the novel an unreliable text and the outcome of its central quest uncertain. The three stories contained in the novel end unhappily, if one were expecting the conventional type of happy ending. There is no definitive text of Al-rāwūq and the history of Madīnat al-Aslāf cannot be reconstructed. The story of the Muṭlaq family is known only through oral storytelling, but exactly how that fits into the history of the Bawāshiq or Madīnat al-Aslāf is not knowable. And, finally, the story of the textualised novelist is unreliable. In a nutshell, there is no reliable way of knowing the past or, for that matter, the present. If knowledge of the past is unreliable, originality is similarly uncertain. The search for the past in the novel, I have already explained, is parallel to the search for originality. The novelist strives to write an original novel on the basis of history, and the singer of tales (shāʿir) endeavours to transcend his predecessor and master the art of storytelling through retelling and adding to the stories they tell. Originality, seen is this light, seems predicated on authenticity, on knowledge of and rootedness in the past, which is impossible, followed by transcending this past, which becomes uncertain. The achievements of the novel, as a novel, seem to rest on both groundedness in and departure from the tradition bequeathed by the past. Intertextuality becomes a convenient narrative strategy. However, the paradox of authenticity (aṣāla) rather destabilises both notions of originality and tradition. Both become illusory and elusive, just like a definitive Al-rāwūq text, or the Truth in Sufism. IN THE LABYRINTH OF INTERTEXTUALITY

Borges has, in his various short stories, lectures and essays, argued that each literary text creates its own precursors. The tradition constructed

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 64

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

65

through intertextuality takes a different shape in every text. Each text in effect invents its own tradition. This tradition is a shape-shifter; its appearance is necessarily determined by the text engaged in intertextuality with the tradition it invents. Tradition disappears in the labyrinth of the intertextuality that purports to revive it, to set it as the foundation of identity, and to give it authority as the source of authenticity. It is no wonder that tradition, and therefore the past, becomes untenable and out of reach. In this regard the similarities between Imraʾat al-qārura and Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq are difficult to miss. Intertextuality, textualisation of the novelist, the framewithin-frame structure, presentation of the novel as a manuscript, and centring the narrative on the journey in search of this manuscript are some of the obvious affinities. The past and the tradition that is its source – roughly defined as a body of texts expressive of priorities, values, practices, world views and histories accumulated over centuries of development – melt into air upon close scrutiny. The Arabic novel’s engagement with tradition is, however, effected at the level of the written or printed text in that it takes place in the clearly identifiable black and white pages. Intertextuality, in this kind of engagement, brings a number of texts into Bakhtinian dialogism, with which theory the novelist is familiar,54 all within the borders of the written text. The principles of engagement are very different from the kind found in orality or oral literature. Oral compositions, when dialogised in this novel, are textualised, written down first then integrated into the text in their now written form. In other words, intertextuality is a feature of textuality, even when it pretends to mimic orality. Textualisation necessarily leads to distortions. The past as embodied by oral storytelling, as in the case of the Nights, has a life of its own with limitless potential for growth. However, it becomes frozen at a specific juncture in time and space when it is transferred to the pages of a written or printed text with clear boundaries set by the creative agenda as well as the ideology of the author of the text. This kind of engagement with tradition pervading the Arabic novel is challenged by a constant need for originality, a term associated with both individual talent and modernity in the Arabic novel, eloquently articulated by al-Rikābī in the passage I quoted above. The Arabic novel is always under pressure to express its author’s ability to be uniquely innovative – to have something new to say and to say it in a new way; to be modern rather than traditional; to deal with contemporary issues, adopt new world views, and employ ‘avant-garde’ narrative techniques. Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq rises to the challenges internalised by intertextuality in the Arabic novel. Despite

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 65

11/12/2012 16:28

66

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

his obsession with the history of Madīnat al-Aslāf, the novelist textualised in this novel confesses openly that he is not a historian and is not necessarily interested in writing a true history of his city: rather, he is an artist more concerned with the originality of his final product. His turn, or return, to history is a mere ploy, a way of uncovering or discovering new narrative vistas. His poet friend reminds him insistently of this fact, and of the need to take care not to link the outcome of his novel to the fate of a definitive Al-rāwūq manuscript. In fact, he should do the exact opposite. It is all very well that you should let those documents provide you with an appropriate atmosphere for your novel, but beware of making yourself a prisoner to them. Mould them in the service of your novel before you let them take your novel on the paths they have paved, which are necessarily not the courses of innovation.55 This said, the novel is inevitably haunted, even shaped by this history and geography of Madīnat al-Aslāf, which are in turn informed by and under the influence of the prevalent ideology determining a particular way of imagining community. Benedict Anderson has acutely pointed out that ‘an immemorial past’56 – what Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger would call ‘an invented tradition’57 – has served as one of the legitimating foundations of the nation-state. Paradoxically, the shape of the past is informed and formed by the geography of the nation-state. The past and tradition in contemporary Arab discourses, as we have seen, are more often than not defined according to ideologies attendant to Arab nationalism and modernisation, and above all, the reality of the nation-state. The Arabic novel writes its own (hi)story in tandem with narrating the emergence, modernisation and failure of the Arab nation at large and Arab nation-states in particular. The post-colonial nationalist discourses and narratives of modernity, whether critical or creative, have taken for granted that the nation-state is the framework within which past and tradition may be constructed positively, and that the reconstructed past and tradition would in turn legitimate the nation-state. The key assumption underlying the stupendous revisionist projects to reconstruct the past and the tradition it bequeathed within the framework of the modern nation-state, notwithstanding the variety of ideologies framing them, is that the past is knowable and tradition tangible. Mahfouz and al-Rikābī, as well as a generation of post-1967 intellectuals and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 66

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

67

artists, point out the fallacy of this assumption and unravel the positivist knowledge of the past. They simultaneously employ and question intertextuality and its role in reconstructing the past and tradition. In this they echo critic Jūrj Ṭarābīshī’s scepticism in Madhbaḥat al-turāth fī l-thaqāfa l-ʿarabiyya l-muʿāṣira (1993). In the zeal to reconstruct their so-called cultural heritage, the Arabs have only distorted, disfigured and butchered this heritage. Al-Rikābī tells a fantastic tale of intertextuality gone awry. Intertextuality cannot serve as the mechanism for constructing the ‘immemorial past’ of the nation-state. Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq disrupts the paradigm of knowledge inherent in narratives of nation and modernity. The modern nation-state is neither original nor the originary source from which the past may be derived, neither the structure into which tradition may be cast nor, more importantly, the framework within which both may be understood. On the contrary, as an affect of ideology, it is the straightjacket that stifles the movements of history and the developments of story. The novel is an exploration of narrative possibilities outside the ideological framework set up by Arab nationalist discourses and narratives of modernity. The novel sets its own agenda and maps its own trajectory away from the shadow of the modern nation-state. Haunted as it is by the priorities of this modern nationstate – writing its history as a series of resistance to hegemonic authority imposed externally leading to the rise of Madīnat al-Aslāf – it forcefully reverses the nationalist hierarchy. The novel does not serve the nationalist cause. The unruly strands of the history of Madīnat al-Aslāf point to the ways forward not for the nation but the novel. This novel is less engaged with imagining a community or allegorising the nation but more concerned with theorising the novel, as the textualised novelist declares: ‘every theory of the novel must be itself a novel’.58 It parodies the novel of intertextuality. In doing so, it seeks to transcend the ideologies, textual patterns and narrative strategies internalised by, let us say, ‘the school of employing heritage’ patronised by nationalism. For al-Rikābī in particular, the legitimacy of Iraq as a nation-state must be doubtful. After all, what gives it the authority to commit unspeakable atrocities against its citizens, go to war with Iran, invade Kuwait, and massacre Kurds? The shift from nationalist representation of reality to search for form in his work is a statement on the disintegration of the nation-state. In the collapse of the nation-state, the paradigm of knowledge giving shape to the novel falls apart and a search for a workable alternative begins in earnest.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 67

11/12/2012 16:28

68

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ARABIC NOVEL

The surface bravura of the novel cannot silence the longing for certainty, or the Truth, that drives its central quest. This longing is manifest in the form of unrequited love in the love story on to which the search of the definitive text of Al-rāwūq, of tradition, is inscribed. Warqāʾ to the textualised novelist in Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq is, let us say, Ḥalīma and ʿArūsa to Ibn Fattouma in Mahfouz’s national allegory. Tradition is equally elusive as nation and modernity in the absence of the perfect community, of Utopia. It too becomes the object of desire in modernist Arabic narratives. Tradition, whatever form it takes in the novel’s reconstruction of it, comes to be a key building block of the Arabic novel, giving it historical layers and narrative texture. It gives it an inflection unique to each instance of intertextuality, to every new novel that engages intertextually with tradition. This makes the reading of the Arabic novel triply complicated. We can no longer read it as a Western novel, looking only for ‘the relation of character and setting, the fascination with appearance and social role, and the self-conscious manipulation of point of view’, or as a third world ‘national allegory’ that seeks ‘defining a national character and articulating national problems’.59 In both instances, the reward will be disappointing. The Arabic novel is quite often both and more. It does situate itself in an Arabic narrative tradition, albeit fabricated on its pages, constructed in its narratives and invented in its intertextuality with texts from the past. Edward Said speaks of reading the Arabic novel as a complex, comparative process that must involve, among other things, working out its cross-cultural genealogy and situating it both in the history of the European and American novel and pre-modern Arabic narrative forms.60 Reading the Arabic novel is complicated by not the worldliness of the text, as Said says elsewhere, but the absence of a consolidated notion of the Arabic narrative tradition, especially storytelling, which, despite its long history, has not been canonised the way the Western novel has been. The comparative process Said speaks of is then more easily applicable to looking at the Arabic novel within the context of the Western novel, for the tradition of Arabic storytelling is only now being defined, primarily by the Arabic novel as it rewrites its own extra-Western history. The question of how it belongs to the Arabic tradition of narrative and storytelling is, it seems, most difficult to determine. In most cases, however, the novel provides us with clues to its genealogy. These clues are found in the novel itself, in what Gerard Genette calls paratexts61 and in the text itself. Let me illustrate

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 68

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

69

with one example. Two elements of Ibn Fattouma’s paratexts are of special interest: its genre indication62 and its title; each defines the other. Riwāya, an Arabic term for the novel today, defines the text as a novel and is in turn defined by riḥla, journey, as a very specific genre of the novel, that which deals with the relationship between knowledge and transformation. Riḥla in Arabic narrative tradition, however, encompasses more than one genre. All genres of riḥla are evoked, allegorised and contested. The text is what Genette would call a palimpsest,63 its composition an amalgam of overlapping, coexisting and contesting genres, all engaged in a dialogism that contributes to the polyphony of the novel, as Bakhtin would say. Reading such a novel then is a kind of archaeology that involves unearthing the layers of the text. Identifying these textual layers is, however, only a first step toward understanding the text. A meaningful interpretation depends to a great extent on seeing, as Genette would say, the ‘generic reactivation’64 of these textual layers. Each genre incorporated into the text brings with it its own generic expectations, implicit in narrative paradigms, which become fully operative in the text into which the genre is imported. Where more than one genre is conjoined, ideologies of all genres, let us say, become participants in the discourse of the novel. There seems no escape from genre ideology in reading the Arabic novel, and for that matter, all literary texts; however, rather than examining it through the lenses of a single genre ideology it may be more productive to look at the text as a site where various ideologies of genres interact to produce meaning, just as the text of Ibn Fattouma does. The text of Ibn Fattouma is discourse on its form, its originality, modernity, history and authenticity, just as Mahfouz tells us in his conversation with al-Ghīṭānī about his attempts since the 1980s, and is necessarily subject to the cultural pressures surrounding it. By retaining the Western form but locating its history in the Arabic narrative tradition, it ‘offers us the vista of two parallel streams of literary history’65 but not in the sense Beard speaks of; rather, these two histories go beyond the modern period to encompass two narrative traditions. One is Western, including the modern European novel and its more recent series of novelistic traditions that have grown up outside Europe or the United States, and the other a historically indigenous narrative tradition. ‘Anxiety of influence’ operates not only within one tradition but also across two traditions. Ibn Fattouma resists the Western novel and its deviation from this tradition may be considered misreading, but it appropriates classical Arabic narrative, not necessarily misreading but rather rereading it. ‘Dialogic imagination’ works too,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 69

11/12/2012 16:28

70

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

though across cultures, as an alien genre appropriates and absorbs indigenous narratives into its form. ‘Generic instability’ too is manifest crossculturally as the various forms of classical Arabic narrative participate in discourse with and reshape the novel, which now can no longer be read as a strictly Western genre. The genre has changed in its travels across cultures, and these changes must be taken into consideration in our reading of it. Paradoxically, generic expectations remain an avoidable starting point. NOTES 1. Inspired by Gillian Beer, Arguing with the Past: Essays in Narrative from Woolf to Sidney (London: Routledge, 1989). 2. W. Montgomery Watt, ‘al-Ghazzali’, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, vol. II (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965), pp. 1038–1041; 1038. 3. See, for example, Iysa A. Bello, The Medieval Islamic Controversy Between Philosophy and Orthodoxy: ijmaʿ and taʾwil in the conflict between alGhazali and Ibn Rushd (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989). 4. Al-Ghazzālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 5 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Qalam, 1st edn: n.d), vol. 3, pp. 3–20. Abridged by Maḥmūd al-Muʿawwaḍ as Ṭibb al-qulūb aw hafawāt iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn li l-imam al-Ghazzālī, 4th edn (Cairo, 1964). 5. Al-Ghazzālī, Al-munqidh in al-ḍalāl, eds Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Abū al-ʿAlāʾ and Muḥammad Muḥammad Jābir (Cairo: Maktabat al-Jundī, 1973), pp. 51–2. 6. Ibid. p. 52. 7. Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī, Najīb Maḥfūẓ yatadhakkar (Beirut: Dār al-Masīra, 1980), p. 78. 8. Al-Ghazzālī, Ihyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, vol. 2, pp. 281–326. These views are presented in a briefer form in his other work, Al-tibr al-masbūk fī naṣīḥat al-mulūk, ed. Muḥammad Aḥmad Damāj (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-Jāmiʿiyya li al-Dirāsāt wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 1987). See also Henri Laoust, La politique de Gazali (Paris: Geuthner, 1970). 9. Al-Ghazzālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, vol. 2, pp. 129–38. 10. For an overview of the paradoxical historical assessment of al-Ghazzālī in the past and at present, see Maytham al-Janābī, ‘al-Ghazzālī fī l-Ghazzāliyāt al-qadīma wa l-muʿāṣira’, in Al-Ghazzālī: al-taʾāluf al-lāhūti l-falasafi l-ṣūfī (Damascus: Dār al-Madā, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 13–34. 11. Al-Janābī, Al-Ghazzālī, vol. 1, p. 19. For Moroccan jurists’ position vis-à-vis his works, see al-Ṭāhir al-Maʿmūrī, al-Ghazzālī wa ʿulāmaʾ al-maghrib, 4 vols (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li al-Nashr, 1990). 12. Al-Janābī, Al-Ghazzālī, vol. 1, pp. 13–34. 13. In the story Mahfouz tells of Nur al-Dīn’s search for knowledge in Layalī alf layla and his studentship with the Sufi master ʿAbdallāh al-Balkhī, Fāḍil

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 70

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

71

Ṣanʿān, a former disciple of al-Balkhi, is heard saying that attaining knowledge may lead to two different paths – self-salvation or holy war. Ṣanʿān left al-Balkhī because al-Balkhī believes that the purpose of knowledge is selfsalvation whereas Ṣanʿān believes it is holy war. Holy war here does not mean warring with the Christians, but involvement in the running of the community, especially where justice is at stake. Ibn Fattouma seems more inclined towards Ṣanʿān’s notion of knowledge. Al-Ghazzālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, vol. 3, p. 189. Rajāʾ al-Naqqāsh, Najīb Maḥfūẓ: Ṣafaḥāt min mudhakkirātihi (Cairo: Muʾassasat al-Ahrām, 1998), p. 294. The list of labels applied to al-Ghazzālī is very long. See al-Janābī, Al-Ghazzālī, vol. 1, pp, 32–3. Inspired by Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001). Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p. xiii. Ibid. p. xvi. Ibid. p. xiv. Ibid. p. xiv. Ibid. p. xiv. Ibid. p. xiv. Ibid. p. xiv. Ibid. p. 41. Ibid. p. 49. Ibid. p. 41. Ibid. p. 41. Ibid. p. xiii. Ibid. p. xv. Ibid. p. xvi. Ibid. p. xv. David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p. xiv. Ibid. p. xiv. Ibid. p. xiii. There is very little biographical information available on this important Iraqi poet, fiction writer and dramatist. It is not known when al-Rikābī was born. There is, however, mention of Badra as his birth place, a village of Shiʿite majority located in central Iraq towards the east of the country and close to the Iranian border. It is also known that he has been an invalid, in fact bedridden, since perhaps even before 1980. Al-Rikābī began his literary career as a poet. He may have started publishing his poems in various Arabic newspapers and literary journals in the 1970s. A collection of poetry appeared in 1976

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 71

11/12/2012 16:28

72

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel under the title Mawt bayn al-baḥr wa al-ṣaḥrāʾ (Death between the sea and the desert). Though relatively well known as a poet, al-Rikābī seemed to have attracted more critical attention as a fiction writer. His first novel, Nāfidha bi-siʿat al-ḥulm (A window the size of dream), debuted to universal critical acclaim in 1978. A Window the Size of Dream launched al-Rikābī’s career as a fiction writer in two ways: it put him on the literary map of Arabic fiction and it delineated his fictional trajectory. 1982 saw the publication of many of his short stories, such as ‘Ḥāʾiṭ al-banādiq (Wall of rifles)’, ‘Al-khayāl (Apparition)’ and ‘Al-muḥārib (The warrior)’, which were later published in a collection of short stories under the title Wall of Rifles in 1983. The appearance of his short stories coincided with the publication in the same year, 1982, of his second novel, Man yaftaḥ bāb al-ṭilsam (Who will open the talisman gate?), which gives a fictional account of life under Ottoman rule in a small Iraqi village at the turn of the nineteenth century. Mukābadāt ʿAbdallāh al-ʿĀshiq (The passions of Abdallah, the lover), his third novel, appeared in the same year. It too is a historical novel concerned with the question of political hegemony covering the periods of Ottoman rule, the British occupation and independence. These early efforts anticipated what would follow. The themes raised and the experiment with narrative techniques there would culminate in the trilogy of Iraqi history: Al-rāwūq (Pure water), 1986; Qabl an yuḥalliq al-bāshiq (Before the Bashiq soared), 1990; and Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq (The seventh day of creation), 1994. A simple short play on the tribal custom of revenge, Al-bayzār (The falconer), appeared in 1998. This was to be followed by another, Nahārat al-layālī l-alf (The days of the thousand nights), however, it is not known whether it has actually been published or not. Al-Rikābī is said to belong to the ‘generation of the sixties’ (jil al-sittinat), like al-Ghīṭānī, and is considered by Iraqi critics as one of the foremost Iraqi novelists, ranked only second to fiction giants like Ghāʾib Ṭuʿma Faramān and Fuʾād al-Takarlī. ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Rikābī, Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq (Baghdad: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa al-I ʿlām, 1994), pp. 164–5. James E. Irby, ‘Introduction’, in Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and other Writings, eds Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (New York, NY: New Directions Books, 1964), pp. xv–xxiii; xix. Ibid. p. xv. Yāsīn al-Nuṣayr, ‘Jadaliyyat al-qirāʾa al-thālitha’, Al-aqlām 23: 3 (March 1988), pp. 22–39; 24. Al-Rikābī, Sābiʿ, p. 98. Ibid. pp. 98, 132, 151, 232. Ibid. pp. 99, 248. Ibid. p. 99. Ibid. pp. 40–6. Ibid. pp. 122, 248.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 72

11/12/2012 16:28

(Dis)Appearance of Tradition 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

73

Ibid. p. 151. Ibid. pp. 122, 248. Ibid. respectively p. 143 and p. 153. Reference is made to ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī, Al-insān al-kāmil fī maʿrifat al-awākhir wa-l-awāʾil (Cairo: Maktabat Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṣabīḥ, 1945). Reference is made to Muḥyi al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Qum: Intisharāt Badyar, 1999 or 2000). Al-Rikābī, Sābiʿ, p. 232. Ibid. p. 164. Ibid. p. 242. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Al-Rikābī, Sābiʿ, p. 249. Michael Beard, ‘The Mahfouzian Sublime’, in Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar (eds), Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993), pp. 95–105; 96. Edward Said, ‘Arabic prose and prose fiction after 148’, in Reflections On Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 41. Originally published as ‘Arabic prose and prose fiction since 1948: an introduction’, in Halim Barakat, Days of Dust, tr. Trevor LeGassick, with an introduction by Edward Said (Wilmette, IL: Medina Press, 1974). Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, tr. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Discussed in Genette, ‘Genre indications’, Paratexts, pp. 94–103. Gerard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, tr. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). Discussed in Genette, ‘Generic reactivation’, Palimpsests, pp. 210–12. Beard, ‘The Mahfouzian Sublime’, p. 96.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 73

11/12/2012 16:28

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 74

11/12/2012 16:28

Chapter 3 SEMIOLOGY OF MADNESS

IMPOSSIBILITY OF IDENTITY

Your eyes are a thorn in the heart; It pains me, yet I adore it And shelter it from the wind. I plunge it into my flesh Hiding it from night and sorrow And its wound ignites the lights of stars. My present makes its future Dearer to me than my soul When our eyes meet, I soon forget That once, behind bolted doors, We were two. Her eyes are Palestinian; Her name is Palestinian; Her dreams and sorrows; Her veil, her feet and body; Her words and silence are Palestinian; Her birth . . . her death. I carried you in my old notebooks; You were fire for my verses, Provisions for my excursions. In your name I shouted to the valleys: ‘I know the Romans’ horses Though the battlefield has changed. Beware of the lightning My song engraved on granite. 77

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 77

11/12/2012 16:28

78

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel I am the fire of youth and the knight of knights. I am the iconoclast. My poems are eagles Hovering over the Levantine borders.’ Maḥmūd Darwīsh, ‘A Lover from Palestine’, 19661

There has been all too much investment in the nation-state ideologically and emotionally, and, more importantly, epistemologically and ontologically. Since the end of the first half of the twentieth century, all hopes for the future have been pinned on the nation-state. Decolonisation and modernisation, two of the main projects of twentieth-century Arab nationalism, have been invested in the ‘imagined political community’ that was to rise out of the ashes of ‘religious community’ and ‘dynastic realm’ and take ‘proper’ shape as nation-state in the shadows of empire. This nation-state, imagined as modern, progressive and democratic that is simultaneously authentic and historical, is endowed with magical powers to ensure a happy destiny for the collective and the individual. It is the ultimate project of collective and individual liberation. It would deliver the nation from the tight grip of colonial powers, and the individual from the hegemony of religious, and traditional political and cultural institutions. During the height of nationalist utopian fantasy of the early period of decolonisation and national liberation movements, it was expected to transform the world through the individual, who has now moved from the margin to the centre as both the subject of knowledge and agent of political action. It is not surprising then that the nation-state would become the hallmark not only of collective but also individual identity. Identity, under the circumstances of the various overlapping liberation movements in the second half of the twentieth century, is necessarily and inevitably identification with the nation-state. This heavy investment in the nation-state did not bode well for the individual ontologically from the very outset of imagining the nation-state as the ideal political community. Nationalism, which means imagining the nation-state in Anderson’s vocabulary, is philosophically poor, as Anderson himself states. Even within the narrow confines of looking at nationalist discourses in the Arabic novel as inherent in imagining community or national allegory, nationalism has been plagued by epistemological problems from the beginning. These are visible in the ways in which the stories of the rise and even the fall of the nation-state, of the experiences of modernity within the boundaries of the nation-state, and of the invention of traditions driven by the aspirations of the nation-state for authenticity,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 78

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

79

are told as failed, sabotaged or tragic ‘tales of love’, if I may borrow Julia Kristeva’s terms; as stories of unrequited love, of improper desire, or of loss in nostalgia. There is much that is wrong-headed in the gender thinking innate in Arab imaginings of community and national allegories. The nation-state is more often than not feminised. She is Ishtar, simultaneously the mother, sister and lover of Tammuz, the masculinised agent of imagination and national hero. The nation-state is then dichotomised further. Nation is now Shahrazād, who must survive by her wits, and the state Shahrayār, the tyrannical patriarch. Modernity, as experienced in the nation-state, is an alluring female object of desire to the decolonising and nationalising male desiring subject. The same may be said of the tradition invented for the purpose of giving the nation-state an aura of authenticity. Ishtar-like, she blurs the lines separating mother from sister and lover. Al-Rikābī’s Warqāʾ, the object of desire and symbol of ‘tradition’ in Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq, is linked to both Anu, goddess of fertility, and Sin, goddess of war, from ancient Mesopotamian mythology. Loving the nation-state is a complicated affair. It is rather mad. No one epitomises this mad love more than Maḥmūd Darwīsh (1942–2008), the Palestinian national poet. He has internalised in his writings the paradigms of love I have explored at length in the previous chapters, as well as exposed their intrinsic madness in his nationalist poetics. ʿĀshiq min Filasṭīn (1966), the poem and the eponymous collection (dīwān) which catapulted Darwīsh to the status of Palestinian national poet, combine the fervour of al-Sayyāb’s constructive narrative of nation and the passions of Qabbānī’s love poems. The poem is a love song dedicated not to a woman but to a homeland highjacked on ‘her’ way to independence and modernisation and sabotaged in ‘her’ project of nation-building. The poem begins like al-Sayyāb’s ‘Song of Rain’, sorrowful and elegiac, but reads like Qabbānī’s love poems, obsessive and passionate, and ends with a return to al-Sayyāb, to a fiery revolutionary call, threatening and blood-thirsty. The emotional landscape of this poem is rather turbulent; it exposes love as volatile. Love runs the gamut of contradictory feelings all at once – joy, sorrow, dedication, pain, resentment, anger, rebellion, revenge, death – which always tend to spin out of control, to escape the controlling grip of sanity, or reason, and to relish in chaos. Love is madness, and to love a nation-state is to go mad. But there is more to madness, I want to argue, in the Arab literary imaginary in general and the Arabic novel in particular. Madness is more than an expression of passionate love gone awry. It says a great deal about the lived experiences of the nation-state and the future of literary pursuits. And,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 79

11/12/2012 16:28

80

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

more importantly, it unravels the complicated relationship between epistemology and ontology. We have already experienced madness in a variety of forms. It is a literary trope complementing those of love, desire and nostalgia. Together they form the foundational quad of any paradigm of love in Arabic poetics. It is the symptom, or even consequence, of excess and deprivation. It is most often associated with desire that is at the heart of both love and nostalgia. Unchecked or unfulfilled, desire goes on a rampage, and overwhelms reason that structures proper conduct for the collective and individual. It disables the triad of proper kingship – reason, justice and political authority – and renders suspect the legitimacy of kingdom. Madness is at the same time expressive of the profound sense of alienation and powerlessness experienced in life with the nation-state when the imagined Utopia falls short of the ideal and turns into a new site of oppression. It is the unveiling of the nation-state as an apocalyptic world in which the fragmented selfhood of the individual is forever haunted by an impossible quest for coherence. When the triad of modernity – subject, knowledge and power – cannot find their way to a reunion, madness ensues. Paradoxically, madness is rebellion against the status quo; it puts under pressure another triad of modernity – authenticity, originality and tradition – and chips away at its influence, especially on the reasonable mind and the literary imaginary. It instead opens up a new vista of knowledge, and accesses truth, if there is such a thing, in an entirely new manner. We only need to follow in the footsteps of the madman. We have encountered the three types of madman figure in the Arabic novel already. They are reminiscent of ‘the romantic fool’, ‘the wise fool’, and ‘the holy fool’ Michael Dols finds in classical Arabic writings.2 Mahfouz’s Kamāl is temporarily love-mad in Qaṣr al-shawq, and for a few months he is the quintessential ‘romantic fool’, Majnūn-Laylā-like, who sees the world through the prism of his love, or ʿishq for ʿĀyda. The madness of Habiby’s pessoptimist is, like Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot or Lu Xun’s A Q, ‘the wise fool’ who unveils the absurdity of Palestinian existence under Israeli occupation. The two madmen in Mahfouz’s Layālī alf layla, ʿAbdallāh and Shahrayār, combine Dols’ three fools in an interesting fashion. ʿAbdallāh, the reincarnated Jamaṣa al-Bultī, begins his career in madness seemingly as a ‘holy fool’, given simply the honorific of al-majnūn, who seeks and sees the ‘truth’, or the true culprits behind any unjust occurrence, and ends as a ‘wise fool’, now nicknamed al-ʿāqil, who will advise the running of the state. Mahfouz’s Shahrayār charts a similar but different trajectory. He begins as a tyrant gone mad as Shahrazād’s

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 80

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

81

husband, becomes a romantic fool, love-mad when he marries the queen of a utopian city, and ends as a ‘holy fool’, one may argue, who searches for the ‘divine’, for his lost paradise, or for that which will make him whole and at one with the world again. Madness in these instances, if we were to take a cue from Asʿad Khairallah’s observations of the love-mad Majnūn, is one of the best literary symbols of the universal rebel against established order that stands between his free self and reality, whether this reality be the inner introspective or the outer physical society. The madman will represent the rebellion against the stifling laws of reasonable society and common sense. His imagination is his reason, and where ‘sane’ people hesitate in front of social and intellectual norms, he simply asserts his mode of vision with the same innocence and force of prophetic utterance. This purity of vision, and the courage of expressing it make the madman an almost poetic ideal.3 If Khairallah seems to be speaking of Mahfouz’s Kamāl, it is because Kamāl is modelled on Majnūn, the most famous love-mad poet in the Arabic literary tradition. His madness, albeit only temporary, allows him to see and, more crucially, articulate and even critique the hypocrisy of his father’s patriarchal authority and the ignorance of the tradition by which his mother lives. He embodies the kind of critical consciousness Foucault identifies in medieval comprehension of madness. Kamāl has, in common with Mahfouz’s other madman/wiseman, ʿAbdallāh al-majnūn/al-ʿāqil, and Shahrayār, as well as Habiby’s pessoptimist, not outright rebellion or revolution but quiet dissent that reverses the order of sanity and madness. They, in their internal monologues or outer shenanigans, expose that sanity, which ‘is generally equated with conformity to established norms’,4 as absurd; for social, religious and intellectual conventions are but rules of the game devised by the powerful who, by making claims to absolute knowledge try to hold on to their power. Madness, which unmasks the political agenda of social inclusion and exclusion to established norms on the basis of conformity, is nothing short of ‘divine’ revelation. Habiby’s pessoptimist is rather prophetic in his always foolishly and accidentally showing up the farce that is the Israeli occupation of Palestine, underscoring the absurdity of the inclusion and exclusion policies in the membership of the Israeli state, the tight measures of control imposed on the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, and, equally, in the hypocrisy of the Arab world at large.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 81

11/12/2012 16:28

82

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

These policies and measures dehumanise the Palestinians and leave them with nowhere to go. They, in fact, quite often pretend that the Palestinians do not exist at all despite their incontestable physical presence, for they do not own the appropriate paperwork that identifies them as belonging to a recognisable nation-state. There is understandably a new madman figure who does not quite fit with Dols’ types. Naṣrallāh’s Ḥammād in Barārī al-ḥummā is not a familiar type. He instead represents a ‘schizophrenic’ modern subject whose two selves refuse to cohere into one. In his case, madness is not desire gone out of control, but a state of being for a subject that must but cannot establish an identity within the nation-state paradigm, or, put slightly differently, cannot achieve identification with the nation-state. Statelessness is synonymous with homelessness, and exile deprives a subject of the coordinates of identity and may lead to madness. Darwīsh speaks eloquently of the variegated instances the ontological bind this epistemological trap, set up by the imagining of political community as nation-state, puts a Palestinian subject in. In the first instance, when knowledge of self is contingent upon internationally acknowledged membership in a universally recognised nation-state, there can be no viable Palestinian identity. Nothing triggers an identity crisis more quickly than travel. In ‘Ḥālat intiẓār’, an essay written in the early 1970s and published in a collected volume entitled, Yawmiyyāt al-ḥuzn al-ʿādī (1973; Diaries of ordinary sadness),5 Darwīsh contemplates the long wait that lies ahead of every Palestinian ‘national’ at border crossings. ‘Your destiny insists on a stated itinerary. Your identity, ambiguous on paper but clear like a sunny day in your heart, demands that you reconcile between them [between ambiguity and clarity]. As if all at once and very suddenly, from the day you were born until the present moment, you are faced with this question: who are you?’.6 Here, official Israeli travel papers, contrary to expectations, exacerbate the dilemma of Palestinian identity, now deemed an impossibility simply because there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation-state. The French police are incapable of understanding what escapes the comprehension of the Israeli police. Your travel document says you are of ambiguous nationality. In vain you try to explain to the French security officer the meaning hidden in this ambiguity. Your explanations only lead to further confusion begun by his colleague in Tel Aviv. Where were you born? Palestine. Where do you live? Israel? You are, therefore, ambiguous.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 82

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

83

In the airport’s detention hall, you contemplate this accusation – that you are ambiguity personified, and immerse yourself in the task of proving your identity. Those who have come from the Old Testament took away not only your homeland but also your means to belonging in the world. When they decided their destiny, they also removed from your face those distinct features that made it possible for the world to recognize you. It has made it difficult for you to close the historical gap, which has turned into a geographical distance between Palestine and Israel in the world’s comprehension. You know you are Palestinian, but there is no Palestine in the view of the world. When you try to exit into the world you have to traverse this brutal antechamber of contradiction: that you become Israeli. But your place of birth, sense of belonging and refusal [of the situation you are presently in] weave a web of ambiguity and contradiction around you. Who are you, really? This happens again in Sofia. You are not faced with a theoretical question this time. You are a scandal, a rumour, an irony. . .7 The problem Darwīsh identifies here is relevant to the inexorable connection between language, history and reality. The right to exist depends on victory in naming and claiming history. The fact that there is no named, therefore, recognisable Palestinian nation-state must mean that there are no Palestinians. This obviously makes no sense to any Palestinian, or anyone who knows Palestinians and the history of the region from where they hail. There is something resembling madness in the Palestinian situation. Madness here, in the second instance, is not what Foucault sees as the other of reason, silenced in logo-centrism, but an ideology that persists in persecuting and obliterating the victims of statelessness, statelessness here seen as the outcome of colonisation whereby the Palestinian homeland is occupied by colonisers whose mission is to safeguard their own interest and maintain their power in the territories they have conquered. IDEOLOGY OF MADNESS

‘Ideology of madness’ (īdiyūlūjiyā al-junūn), ‘new Rome’ (rūmā al-jadīda) and ‘Sparta of technology’ (isbārtat al-tiknūlūjiyā) form the triad of white supremacy in the new world in ‘Khuṭbat “al-hindī al-aḥmar” mā qabl al-akhīra amām al-rajul al-abyaḍ’ (‘The Red Indian’s penultimate speech before the white man’), one of the poems of Aḥada ʿashara kawkaban

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 83

11/12/2012 16:28

84

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

(1993; Eleven planets).8 Darwīsh takes advantage of the similarities between the recent history of the native inhabitants of North America and Israel – that entire nations should be dispossessed of their birthplaces and –rights – and speaks allegorically of the Palestinian plight. Must territorial conquest and empire-building (rūmā al-jadīda)9 following Christopher Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the New World necessarily entail genocide of the original inhabitants (ḥarb al-ibāda)?10 Technology (isbārtat al-tiknulūjiyā)11 may give the ‘white’ military superiority, but heaven and earth (the stars, the clouds, the winds, the trees, the prairies, the flowers, the birds, the gazelles, the horses, the rivers and the seas) will forever preserve the memories of the native inhabitants. Their presence, history and culture may be obfuscated by the intrusion, narrative and civilising process12 of the white intruder (nubashshirukum bi l-ḥaḍāraʾ, qāla l-gharīb),13 but cannot be completely obliterated. The land in Darwīsh’s poem is a palimpsest, just like a literary text, and is subject to writing and rewriting. No single writing, however, is able to erase the traces of previous writings. The white man’s victory is not final. The same must be said of the ‘Israeli occupation of Palestine’. The alliance between white men, al-bīḍ, and Israelis, unnamed but evoked, parallels the affinity between American Indians and Palestinians. The contest over land may be temporarily won, but ‘history’ has yet to have its say. There is then a need to insist on telling the history of the ‘natives’, again and again, and on reviving the language through which they have named their world and made themselves known. Such a step inevitably leads to a war of words. Darwīsh thrives on wars of words. ‘A Red Indian’s speech’ alludes to and partakes in a struggle to claim the originary language of the ‘natives’ – the language that affirms their belonging to a world now claimed by strangers. He juxtaposes the so-called white civilising mission to the native endeavour to hang on to their memories. The white master will not understand ancient words, Here, in the spirits roaming between heaven and forests. . . Free Columbus has the right to discover India at any sea, To name us spices or Indians, He can even break the compass so that a straight line may be drawn, along with errors made by the north wind, but why cannot he believe that people Are equal, like air and water outside the kingdom of cartography! That they are born, as people are born in Barcelona, but that they worship

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 84

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

85

The God of Nature in everything, that they do not worship gold And free Columbus looks for a language he cannot find here, For gold in our good ancestors’ skulls, he finds What he wants in the living and the dead among us. Why Then does he insist on genocide, from his grave, to the very end?14 Our names are trees in God’s words, and birds flying above Guns. Do not cut down the trees of our names, o, warring newcomers From the sea intent on war, do not spit fire of your horses on the plains You have your god and we have ours, you have your religion and we ours Do not bury God in books that promise you a land on our land, As you claim, and do not appoint your lord a chamberlain at the king’s court! Take the roses of our dreams and see the joy we know! Sleep in the shade of our willows, and fly away like doves, Like our good ancestors, then return in peace. You, white men, will have no memory of leaving the Mediterranean, You will not know the everlasting isolation in a forest not overlooking the abyss, The wisdom gained from setbacks and defeats, A rock that disobeys the rapid currents of the river of time, An hour for contemplation, of anything, that A heaven necessary for earth may mature, you will not experience An hour spent on hesitation between two paths, Euripides will disappear on you one day, so will poems from Canaan and Babylon, And Soloman’s song for the Shulamite, you will not know to yearn for a lily of the valley, You will miss, o, white men, a memory that will tame the wild horses of madness, A heart that will carve rocks to the tunes of the violin, you will miss Miss a confusion that will stop the hand from firing the gun: If you have to kill us, Please do not kill that creatures who were our friends, or our yesterday, For you will miss a truce with our ghosts on winter’s barren nights, And an even colder sun, a waning moon, that your crime

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 85

11/12/2012 16:28

86

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel Will not be celebrated so exuberantly on the silver screen, take your time, then, Killing God!15

Darwīsh concludes at length and in painstaking detail that despite their technological disadvantage, ‘the Red Indians’ will have their day at the court of history, for their memories are forever imprinted in the various elements of nature in which world they were born, lived and died.16 The struggle, or conflict (al-ṣirāʿ) Darwīsh sees as both necessity and inevitability in the Palestinian fight for survival extends beyond the political and historical to encompass the politics of language and memory. The right to land, birthplace, and ‘native’ habitat must find corroboration in a language that names the contested places and revives in them memories of Palestinian presence. He insists on the potential efficacy of language in preserving history and identity, for the contest over land is wrapped up in language, in the ways in which it establishes and severs ties between man and land. Tracking the fate of two ‘national’ love songs expressive of homesickness for the same land of Israel/Palestine, Darwīsh observes how one song, written by a Russian Jew, defeated its Palestinian counterpart, now banned by the Israeli authorities in ‘Al-waṭan: bayna l-dhākira wa l-ḥaqība’ (‘Homeland: between memory and a suitcase’), another essay written in the 1970s and also published in Yawmiyyāt al-ḥuzn al-ʿādī.17 There are no significant differences between the two songs except perhaps that one springs from distant longing and another emerges out of here. They both define homeland as a sense of belonging with the ancestors. One song was by a Jewish poet who had lived in Russia. The other by an Arab poet who lived in Palestine and who never saw exile or heard of it. The first song soon defeated the second one, and the second poet came to sing of distant longing. The Arab youth who remained in their homeland came to be deprived of their poet’s song. Their future now depends on their perfecting the songs of the Jewish poet who used to live in Russia. Any Arab teacher who dared to teach a song of love for the homeland is dismissed from work on grounds of sedition against the State of Israel, and of anti-Semitism. We grew older and they taught us the difficult epics composed by that same poet. We learned little of al-Mutanabbī. Nothing but that ‘they are the adversaries and they are the judges; they will define for us “what is homeland” ’.18

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 86

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

87

Such a war of definition can only be fought with words and, here, fighting itself comes to give homeland a definition. You will not ask what homeland means after today. Maps will not give you the answer. Maps are like abstract paintings. Your grandfather’s grave provides no answer either. A tiny grove is enough to hide it from view. Neither is hanging on to a rock a sufficient answer. Your alienation is more than material. They have not only occupied your land and work but also your psyche, your mind and your relationship with your homeland. You have even begun to ask: ‘what is the meaning of homeland?’ Your daily worries and struggle for survival distract you from the fact that you are occupied. That you are a second-class citizen? This is not the right question to ask. Your cause is not democracy or humanity. Your suffering does not stem from your personal conduct. ‘Stay passive and you will be safe’. This is no innocent advice. It is an invitation to wash your hands off your homeland for which you cannot find a name. They pulled the land from under your feet and you hid beneath your skin. They tortured you but you confessed even more mad love for the causes of your pain. No threat from inside (the occupation) will erase your belonging, and no promises from outside will guarantee you safety. You must carry your cross and make your way to your date with suicide. Do not say ‘yes’. The sense of alienation that grows in you from day to day will turn into a truce with the winds under your clattering chains. Freedom embraces you in prison. You are filled with homeland in prison. Struggle is the answer. If you struggle you belong. Homeland is struggle. There is no solution between memory and a suitcase but struggle. The truth (or right to homeland), freedom, belonging and worthiness are announced through struggle. They are not content with taking everything away from you. They even want to take away your sense of belonging. They want to turn you against your homeland by turning it into a burden, a shackle, and pain. You will not find freedom without this shackle. You will not find rest away from this burden. You will not find pleasure outside this pain. The homeland is alive in your memory, in every cell of your body, is involved in a war with the homeland under their thumb and packed away in their homecoming suitcases.19 Darwīsh’s career is a manifestation of this struggle. He has dedicated his life to the Palestinian cause and his poetry to recreating in words a Palestine

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 87

11/12/2012 16:28

88

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

that is distinct from Israel. From love songs that celebrate everything Palestinian, such as ʿĀshiq min Filasṭīn, to Palestinian creation myths that compete with Israeli versions in deployment of Babylonian, Canaanite and biblical mythology and folklore,20 such as Madīḥ al-ẓill al-ʿālī (1983; In praise of tall shadows),21 he has, as his critics have noted, created a Palestinian homeland in words.22 His devotion is so total, his ‘annihilation’ – the annihilation of his self in its union with the land – so complete that he has become one with Palestine. He is the Palestinian national poet par excellence, a love-mad Qays swapping Laylā for Palestine, known around the Arab critical circles as ‘poet of resistance’ (shāʿir al-muqāwama), ‘poet of a cause’ (shāʿir al-qaḍiyya), ‘conscience of Palestine’ (ḍamīr Filasṭīn), ‘possessed by soil’ (majnūn al-turāb), and ‘mad-lover of the land’ (ʿāshiq al-arḍ).23 He confesses to his interviewer that the object of his love in his love poems is the Palestinian land in Shayʾun ʿan al-waṭan, a collection of essays published in1971. In ‘Al-arḍ ḥabībatī’ (The land is my beloved), he states, ‘I write nothing but love poems (ghazal). The horizon of love poetry has grown broader and deeper and it now encompasses everything in life. My beloved is the land. I make love to her, to homeland, to humanity, and to human values’.24 IDEALISATION OF NATION

Madness, here, in the third instance, is a strategy deployed to combat the ‘ideology of madness’ manifest in the colonisers or occupiers’ programme of complete rehabilitation of the land. It is counter-imperial, colonial and, in this particular case, state ideology. It is the language silenced by the ‘ideology of madness’, as Foucault would say, alluded to, as we have seen in ‘Khuṭbat al-hindī al-aḥmar’, as spawning and steered by wild horses. It is the unleashing of originary language, memory, history and mythology obfuscated by the colonisers’ strategies of control and resistant to their programmes of rehabilitation. Resistance begins with a simple act of devotion: ‘even more love for the homeland’ (mazīd min al-ḥubb li-hādhā l-waṭan).25 Only unwavering love will keep a Palestinian’s ties to his homeland strong. This is crucial, for any sign of lassitude will be taken advantage of as a crack through which the enemy will launch further assault. Love-madness is, in Darwīsh’s vocabulary, the antidote of ‘ideology of madness’. Resistance in his language paradoxically takes the form of the ‘ideology of madness’ he has been trying to dismantle and discredit: in responding to the creation/ foundation myth and master narrative of Israel, he fashions from the same

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 88

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

89

material (cartography, Babylonian and Canaanite mythology and biblical folklore) and devises a similar language (poetics of love refashioned into a nationalist discourse), as Darwīsh himself has noted, to produce a counter creation/foundation myth and articulate a counter master narrative that are now centred around Palestine imagined as a nation with roots in an immemorial past. Palestine, like all Arab nations (-states), is projected onto the body of an idealised woman. ‘Woman embodies all the meanings I have mentioned [everything in life: homeland, humanity and human values]’, Darwīsh explains his dedication to love poetry in Shayun ʿan al-waṭan, ‘it is impossible to separate the image of woman from that of earth (al-arḍ). Is earth not the mother and the beloved?’26 I have already explored at length the various facets of the idealisation of woman as a symbol of the nation-state or the stateless nation in Arab imaginings of nation and national allegories. I now turn my attention to the epistemological problems attendant to idealisation, especially those relevant to ‘tales of love’ in the Arabic novel I have been looking at. I want to take a cue from Darwīsh’s poem, ‘Khutḅat al-hindī al-aḥmar’, and think about the implications of the type of idealisation, of both woman and nation, prevalent in contemporary Arabic poetics of love. The reference to King Solomon and the Shulamite evokes what Kristeva calls the biblical ‘erotics’ of the Song of Songs,27 that have become an integral part of what ‘constitutes the most exquisite storehouse of the Western soul’,28 together with mythology, philosophy, theology and literature. What Kristeva means by ‘soul’ is subject, or sense of self, or selfhood that is of interest to her as a psychoanalyst. The subject finds expression in what she calls ‘the language of love’ underpinning mythology, the Bible and the biblical folklore, philosophical and theological and literary discourses. ‘Tales of love’ are allegories of births and rebirths, formations and transformations, joys and discontents, deaths and renewals of the subject, and as such ‘the language of love is impossible, inadequate, immediately allusive’,29 for love, a ‘twisted mingling of sexuality and ideals’,30 is like the subject it speaks for but always misses the target, ‘a crucible of contradictions and misunderstandings – at the same time infinity of meaning and occultation of meaning – it is because, as such, it prevents me from being smothered to death beneath the hotchpotch of subterfuges and compromises of group or couple neuroses’.31 Tales of Love is Kristeva’s tracing and meditation on what the language of love tells us about the subject. Her insights into idealisation understood from the language of love are of interest to me. Idealisation, Kristeva observes, is a fundamental part of love, which is

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 89

11/12/2012 16:28

90

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

in turn expressive of the human subject. Love is experienced as simultaneously ‘a hymn to total giving to the other’ and ‘a hymn to the narcissistic power to which I may even sacrifice it, sacrifice myself’.32 In other words, love is centred on the self but drawn to the ideal other;33 it is not possible without idealisation of the other, for it is this ‘unapproachable other whom I love and who causes me to be’.34 The ideal, in whatever form it may take – the mother, the father, the female other, or the male other, or simply knowledge – is of unbearable weight, yet without it there can be no love, no subject, no identity. Insanity, understandably, comes from the absence of the object of desire,35 of the impossibility of union with the ideal. Given the ‘violence of our passions about the other’,36 that, ‘as if, at the very moment when the individual discovered himself to be intensely true, powerfully subjective, but violently ethical because he would be generously ready to do anything for the other, he also discovered the confines of his conditions and the powerlessness of his language’,37 violence comes to be synonymous with madness, a symptom of impossibility of love, and a consequence of the inability to be at one with the ideal. The story of Solomon and the Shulamite from the Song of Songs is a tale of impossible love that Kristeva sees as belonging with a body of ‘tales of love’ born out of a marriage between ancient idealisation of maternal love, ‘Solomon and the Shulamite’ being an amalgamation of Judaic family ethics with ancient Babylonian and Canaanite rites, and Christian idealisation of paternal love that serves as a ‘pedestal for what is most dear to love – what is most reassuring, fulfilling, and sheltering when confronting the abyss of death’.38 These paradoxically generated other tales that combine ‘destructive possession and idealization’, include Tristan and Isolde, symbols of the forbidden couple, of death-love, of flesh rebelling against the law. Don Juan, the unbelieving seducer, overrun with a passion for subduing without possessing, eternal son achieving jouissance only in the mortal embrace of a father as idealized as he is terrifying. Romeo and Juliet, the accursed children of Verona who believe they have overcome hatred even as hatred consumes them in the purest moments of their passion.39 Love, in these tales, is ‘crest between the flow of desire and the boundaries set up by prohibition’,40 inherent in law and, more poignantly, in language, and in its attempt to transgress these boundaries of prohibition, of law and language, it may turn into madness, madness being the other

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 90

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

91

of logo-centrism that expresses itself in its own law and language, and commit violence in order to free itself. Law, external to the subject,41 is by definition a prison-house; so is language. Love is, like madness, synonymous with violence. I want to look more closely at the prison-house of the language of love lying at the heart of madness that is violence. I come now to the fourth instance of madness in contemporary Arabic poetics of love. VIOLENCE OF SEMIOLOGY

‘Madness is like a hurricane,’ Etel Adnan describes the feel of the Lebanese civil war in Sitt Marie-Rose, ‘and its motion is circular. It all turns around and around, drawing circles of fire in this country, which has become nothing but a closed arena, and in this city which is nothing but a huge square of cement’.42 Sitt Marie-Rose was Adnan’s first novel. Originally written in French in 1978, it was her response to the Lebanese civil war, which erupted in 1975 and ended, officially, in 1990, even though its sectarian fires have never been really doused. Adnan perceives the perpetrators of sectarian violence as prisoners of hatred born in and out of arguments blind to differing views. ‘They circle around each other in their hollow arguments, hollow like the ramshackle walls, their hatred, their blindness’, she indicts the militias who went on an unstoppable killing spree. ‘They only address each other with cannons, machine guns, razors, knives. And the sea, receiving them in an advanced state of decomposition, reconciles them in the void’.43 The madness of the militias is contrasted to the love of Marie-Rose, who says to her Maronite captors, ‘I represent love, new roads, the unknown, the untried’.44 Love, in Adnan’s novel, is the other of hatred, violence and madness. It is part and parcel of her ‘language of love’ that speaks allegorically of the traumatic impact of war on the subject. It is at the same time her critical language, or the critical tools, available to her to tap into the epistemes at the heart of madness, hatred, violence and, above all, civil war. Adnan’s rather short novel details the capture and execution of MarieRose, a Christian school teacher who joined the Palestinian cause and fell in love with a Muslim Palestinian activist after she divorced her Christian husband. She is kidnapped by a gang of Maronite youth, Mounir, Tony and Fouad, one day when she is crossing from East Beirut, the Christian half of the city, to West Beirut, the Muslim half where the Palestinian refugee camps are. She is told to give up her cause, for the Maronites see

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 91

11/12/2012 16:28

92

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

the Palestinians as at the root of the civil war. When she refuses, they kill her. Their actions, it seems, are sanctioned by Bouna Lias, the Maronite priest who, like the youth he blesses, demands that Marie-Rose repent from her ‘acts of betrayal’, from working with the Palestinians. The episode of Marie-Rose’s capture and execution is framed by the story of an anonymous narrator’s experience with Mounir, Tony and Fouad. At the beginning of the novel, they are fun-loving young men, rich and idle, who are merely oblivious to the plight of the unfortunate. Mounir wants to make a film about Syrians, for example, but refuses to look at the dire conditions of the Syrian labourers working in Beirut. Instead, he wants to film the beauty of the Syrian Desert, which the labourers must traverse in order to reach Beirut. The benign oblivion in which Mounir, Tony and Fouad live is, however, deceptive. For it holds the seeds of their cruelty. It is their blindness to and disinterest in the suffering of others that would unleash the violence within them. Their violence, explicated in the unfolding of the narrative, is male, born in and responsive to paradigms of knowledge inherent in and inherited from ‘Middle Eastern’ narratives, from Babylonian epics, to Babylonian, Canaanite and Egyptian mythology, and the biblical tradition. The following three quotes are illustrative of Adnan’s discontent with the Lebanese literary and cultural heritage. I. For ten thousand years in this part of the world we’ve always been tribal, tribal, tribal. But Gilgamesh left alone, all ties forever broken, searching for life and death. Since that distant day we haven’t invented a single man who didn’t found a religion. We haven’t had a single man who was effectively alone, who sought on his own account, to understand good and evil, who could stand up crucified without anyone knowing it, and carry his adventure and his secret to a grave that didn’t open on either Heaven or Hell. Shepherd or sheep you always have defined yourselves in terms of herds.45 II. She [Marie-Rose] breaks on the territory of their imaginations like a tidal wave. She rouses in their memoires the oldest litanies of curses. To them, love is a kind of cannibalism. Feminine symbols tear at them with their claws. For seven thousand years the goddess Isis has given birth without there being a father. Isis in Egypt, Ishtar in Baghdad,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 92

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

93

Anat in Marrakesh, the Virgin in Beirut. Nothing survives the passing of these divinities: they only loved Power, their Brother or their Son. And you expect Marie-Rose to hold her head up to this procession of terrible women, and find grace in the eyes of the males of this country?46 III. If I [Marie-Rose addressing Bouna Lias] had to say what families are! Hardened muscles, blocked horizons, cauldrons where evil stews, oppressive cells. They are also your victims. You taught them that the ideal family consists of a Christ without a father, and a mother who like the Arab woman loves no one but her son.47 Adnan casts a feminist eye on the three major ‘myths’ that have found their way into Arab nationalist discourses I have been examining, be they in imaginings of nation or national allegories, more particularly, on their dark side, on the way they have shaped the male subject. She traces the root of sectarianism to the Epic of Gilgamesh, arguably one of the earliest ‘national’ narratives in human history, and locates religious fanaticism in Gilgamesh’s search for immortality, which she sees as overlapping with the aspiration to eventually arrive at and live, eternally, in paradise – that is, in the final analysis, the ultimate objective of monotheistic religions. The faithful, given such a promise, are willing to sacrifice everything, including themselves, as Kristeva would say, to make their way to the ideal, the idealised object of desire. Misogyny fuels the fire of such fanaticism further. Adnan points her accusatory finger at the ancient Middle Eastern fertility rites – the myths of Isis, Ishtar and Anat – and uncovers the hunger for power residing within the goddesses of fertility and what would be in our ethical vocabulary today improper desire and love for their brother/son. These myths have ingrained in Middle Eastern Arab men a profound fear of and intense hatred for women. Mounir, Tony, Fouad and Bouna Lias are products and victims of these myths, which, together with their reincarnation in the biblical Mary-Jesus story, reinforce their sense of marginalisation and insecurity. The two lessons these myths teach them – that they will be rewarded for sacrificing everything for the ideal, and that they have no other role in the grand scheme of things in the universe – fashions in them their fanaticism and total disregard for the suffering of others. These two qualities, I have already explained, lie at the heart of their violence.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 93

11/12/2012 16:28

94

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

I am not entirely sympathetic to Adnan’s wholesale condemnation of Middle Eastern mythology and the monotheistic tradition. However, her suggestion that the Arab male subject reacts violently to his imprisonment in the paradigms of knowledge recurring in literary expressions of the region for at least ten thousand years is in tune with Kristeva’s insight that, through a judicious analysis of the language of love, the subject inevitably rebels against law and language, or against the limits of prohibition they set up. Law and language, seen in this light, work in a paradoxical fashion; they give shape, but by giving shape they impose limits of prohibition, breeding violence and provoking aggression. The language of love, one may argue, defines the object of desire and fashions it into the ideal, but at the same time, it prohibits union with the ideal. This insight is relevant to our understanding of Adnan, and of the ways in which Arabic poetics of love provide diagnosis and prognosis of the violence erupting within and around the nation-state. At one level, as Adnan would insist, violence is innate in the material that went into the construction of the nation-state. At another level, the nation-state, as it is constructed in the language of love, is not only an unrealisable utopian fantasy but also an oppressive straightjacket. The only way out of this epistemological bind is to give in to desire, or madness. At yet a third level, the nationalist rhetoric pushes to the limit the violence innate in love and repressed in the language of love, what Kristeva calls ‘the soothed language of idealisation’ in the context of her discussion of Plato’s privileging of effect over essence with his emphasis on rhetoric in philosophical discourse.48 There is, it seems, no escape from violence in the experience of nation-state as state-of-fantasy. The Lebanese civil war in Adnan’s narrative is the expected consequence of the semiology within which the nation-state is imagined as the ideal, the Utopia, the ultimate object of desire, the union with which anticipates the birth of the modern subject and gives it shape. The failure of the nation-state, whether in its lapse back into religious community or dynastic realm of the past, or in its inability to take full form, such as the stateless Palestinian nation, gives a free rein to the subject to act out, even externalise, the violence intrinsic in love and its language – the semiology within which the nation-state is constructed – in response, as it were, to disappointment in love; it goes on a destructive rampage in its disappointment in possessing the ideal, as we see in the Lebanese civil war Adnan mulls over in Sitt Marie-Rose, or in its fear of losing possession of the ideal, as we shall see in two types of state-sponsored violence: one a war waged by one state against another; and the other the tyranny imposed by a state on

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 94

11/12/2012 16:28

95

Semiology of Madness

its other half, the nation. Let me now turn to the first. I want to dwell on the Lebanese civil war a bit longer, but look at it this time from another angle, from the perspective of a Palestinian taking stock of the Israeli invasion of Beirut in August 1982 in the name of national security, and madness, as both episteme and manifestation, transforms what is war on terror in one nationalist discourse to war of terror in another. WAR OF TERROR

I turn to Maḥmūd Darwīsh yet again. This time I focus on one of his prose works, Dhākira li l-nisyān (Memory for Forgetfulness,49 1982–4),50 which reacts to the terrifying 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It is an account in the first person narrative of the ‘events’ of a single day in August in the life of the protagonist ‘poet’ during the bombing siege of Beirut, beginning at three o’clock, in the morning, as he wakes to a dream, and ending at nightfall, when he turns in only to come face to face with the same dream. Dhākira li l-nisyān is a complex engagement with the paradigmatic poetics of love informing the structure, emplotment and narrative trajectory of the Arabic novel. It is not identified as a novel, not by Darwīsh or his critics, but may easily be read as one. It tallies with his definition of novel, which he reveals to ʿAbduh Wāzin in one of a series of interviews. He confessed his admiration for the genre and spoke of its potentials for expressing the human condition. I have never thought of writing a novel despite my boundless fondness for the genre. I do envy the novelists. Their world is larger, for the novel is able to encompass all forms of knowledge, intellectual traditions, issues, concerns and life experiences. It can absorb poetry and all other literary genres, infinitely benefiting from these. The beauty of the novel is that it is not subject to crises, for there is a novel in every human being. For this reason alone, the novel [as a form of literary expression] will last millions of years. All the novelist has to do is to be inspired by his/her lived experiences. I have never thought of writing a novel because I can never guarantee the outcome [of my writing projects]. Writing a novel demands effort and endurance, both of which I do not have . . . The novel must combine narrative and characterization as well as meet some other requirements. I love the novel as story. I am not terribly fond of the non-novel novel. I consider it chatter. It might be beautifully written but it is not the kind of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 95

11/12/2012 16:28

96

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel novel I like. I have recently read an astonishing novel, the Yacoubian Building, by the Egyptian ʿAlāʾ al-Aswānī. What is amazing about this novel is that it is in no need of writing or literary language; the richness of human experience has made [the craft of] language superfluous.51

Here, Darwīsh seems to distinguish the novel from poetry, and prose in general, by a number of generic features. These include story, narrative and characterisation. This said, the novel, as a literary-genre constructed language, is not radically different from poetry or other prose genres in that all poems are ‘planned structures’ founded on ‘conscious intellectual work’52 that engage dialogically with other literary texts, genres and cultural traditions, absorbing them into it and benefiting from them, just as he would have a novel do.53 In this sense, he makes no distinction between poetry and prose. On the contrary, he sees prose as encompassing poetry. When asked about the ‘renewal’ (tajdīd) of the poetic language in a long discussion of his works (with Ghassān Zaqṭān, Ḥusayn al-Barghūthī, Ḥasan Khiḍr, Zakariyyā Muḥammad and al-Mutawakkil Ṭāhā), he spoke of rebelling against what he called the ‘hackneyed’ poetic language and of ‘returning poetry to her mother: prose (an narjiʿa bi l-shiʿri ilā ummihi wa-hiya al-nathr)’.54 The absence of ‘prose poems’ from his repertoire, he explained, did not signal his judgment of them as inferior to metred poetry (shiʿr al-tafʿīla); rather, it showed his preference for the kind of music, the classical rhythmic pattern, provided by the ʿtafʿīla.55 He strives for the same musicality in his prose works and more. Dhākira li l-nisyān is, as Ibrahim Muhawi insists, ‘an open work’,56 ‘a work of art’57 that ‘partakes of the nature of both [poetry and prose]’,58 and of all the genres of ‘chronology, journal, history, memoir, fiction, myth [and] allegory’,59 or in other words, ‘on the page different kinds of writing converge: the poem, both verse and prose; dialogue; Scripture; history; myth; myth in the guise of history; narrative fiction; literary criticism; and dream visions’.60 I do not want to insist that Dhākira li l-nisyān is a novel. I will, however, read it as a novel. I draw a parallel between the palimpsestine quality of the text of Dhākira li l-nisyān and the intertextual Arabic novel, and the ways in which this non-novelistic text – as a non-story novel would – takes advantage of the narrative structure of the novel, its dependence on characterisation, and its obsession with representing reality, to tell a story and write a history. It also taps into the dialogic impulses that Bakhtin observes of the novel and invests in the dense intertextual

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 96

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

97

networks it creates for the production of meaning. Here, more crucially for my purposes, it mobilises intertextuality to convey the epistemological and ontological problematiques the Israeli ‘war on terror’ stirs up in the individual Palestinian psyche and the collective Arab consciousness. Dhākira li l-nisyān fills a gap in the exploration of the trope of madness in the kind of intertextual Arabic novel I am looking at. Madness (junūn) pervades Darwīsh’s text in various guises. The manifestations of madness in Darwīsh’s text provide us with key clues for our understanding of the language of love familiar in the Arabic writings in general and the Arabic novel in particular. At the outset, Dhākira li l-nisyān is a history of Palestine and the Palestinian nation whose meaning and meaningfulness are shaped by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the attempt to stem the Palestinian presence in Lebanon that culminated with the siege of Beirut. This history is told in the form of a series of reveries. These reveries appear in the form of interlaced collective and personal dreams and memories. The dreams frame the memories, punctuating the temporal flow from past to present, and the personal give the collective shape and drive their movement. The recurring dream sequence, ‘out of one dream, another dream is born’61 and ‘Does it often happen that I am awakened from one dream by another’,62 which frames Dhākira – the work begins and ends with it and it appears at a number of key intervals – reads like a war-time love story, from courtship to involved relationship and finally mutual understanding, ‘Man doesn’t understand woman. And woman doesn’t understand man’.63 This love story, which I shall explore fully later, is deceptively autobiographical. It harks back at a series of poems he wrote earlier on the impossibility of love between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman, Rita, that are purportedly allegories of the Palestinian condition based on Darwīsh’s personal experience. It is at the same time sufficiently vague to point the reading in another direction. At the outset, this love story, the dream, signal that the textual landscape is of interiority, of what goes on in the mind of the protagonist poet, M (M being the initial of Maḥmūd), as he travels geographically from his apartment to the various hotels where he meets his friends, his office where he works, the streets he roams, the Beirut neighbourhoods he visits, and finally his apartment yet again; and temporally from his first trip to Beirut when he was a child of nine escaping the Israeli occupation of his hometown Birwa to his present ten-year sojourn in Beirut and anticipation of another Palestinian exodus, this time from Beirut. Palestinian history unfolds with the events of the day. The events of the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 97

11/12/2012 16:28

98

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

day comprise M’s encounters with an array of real persons now fictionalised as characters in the story he tells; they do not tell their own stories but are deployed as symbols in the story M tells of the Palestinian presence in Beirut. We first encounter Samir, before 7 a.m., a childhood friend, who took part in fighting the Israeli occupation and ended up in prison. He received a life sentence three times for helping Palestinian inmates break out of prison and was finally released into Beirut in a prisoner-exchange programme. To his surprise and dismay, he has found more freedom to fight for the Palestinian cause in Israeli prison than Beirut.64 We then meet his eighty-year-old neighbour at 7 a.m. on his way out of the building to look for a newspaper, having had his coffee and listened to the news on the radio. He says hello to this Lebanese poet and editor/publisher of a literary journal. The ‘good morning’ greetings serve up an episode of their recent encounter in the company of the neighbour’s Maronite wife. She represents the Maronite position in M’s reverie; she wants the Palestinians out of Beirut.65 Y, a poet whom M met in Baghdad, and F, another poet, convene a morning meeting with him for a quick summation of the Palestinian situation at Hotel Cavalier at 8 a.m.: ‘Brother, this is impossible. Impossible. Brother, this is absolutely impossible’.66 At Hotel Commodore, most likely at around 10 a.m., he speaks to foreign correspondents and tells them that poets and artists have no role to play in the war. He exclaims when Fayiz Ahmad Fayiz, ‘a great from Pakistan’, asks, ‘Where are the artists?’, ‘Which artists, Fayiz?’, I ask, ‘The artists of Beirut.’ ‘What do you want from them?’ ‘To draw this war on the walls of the city.’ ‘What’s come over you?’ I exclaim. ‘Don’t you see the walls tumbling?’67 At his burned-down office, at 11 a.m., he meets up with Z. They go on a drive in Raouche at noon on the pretext of lunch. He takes stock of the Palestinian plight from 1949, when he was forced to leave Birwa at the age of six and stay in Damur for a few months, until the present moment, in 1982. He focuses specifically on the Lebanese decade, and the Palestinian struggle to gain international recognition of their rights and the possible outcome of the war.68 He then visits a number of friends in the afternoon. There is S, a neighbourhood poet, who is entirely for war,69 G, whose resistance to the war is sleep,70 H, who wants to push Palestinians out of Lebanon,71 B and A, who thrive on war and insist on staying steadfast,72 and ʿIzz al-Dīn Qalaq, a Palestinian activist assassinated by the Israeli intelligence service in Paris, who appears to ‘Darwīsh’ in a day-dream.73 Finally, in the evening, when M returns home at around 10 p.m., we meet Kamāl, lovemad for Haifa, who has sat on a rock on the shores of Tyre looking at Haifa

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 98

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

99

on the end of the coastline for years and at last decides to sneak back into his birthplace to die in its embrace.74 These various Palestinian positions are framed by two radically divergent Lebanese stances, one represented by Saʿīd ʿAql,75 who advocated the purity of the Lebanese race, and Khalīl Ḥāwī,76 who committed suicide on the balcony of his house during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. M’s reveries are simultaneously punctuated by quotations from Darwīsh’s poems, Arabic lexicography and historical sources, and the Bible, implicating the role of the collective and personal past in shaping the present. Passages from Madīḥ al-ẓill al-ʿālī, also written shortly after the Palestinian exodus from Lebanon in 1983, remind us of Darwīsh’s status as the Palestinian national poet. M may be in a quandary regarding the role of poetry at a time of war, but Darwīsh sees it as his duty and responsibility to write a Palestinian ‘creation/foundation myth’. These passages from Madīḥ al-ẓill al-ʿālī serve as a catalyst around which the quoted passages from Arabic historical sources and the Bible are woven into a network of signs. The overlapping histories of the Palestinians and the Jews between past and present are complicated by the Crusades in the medieval past, and ‘Western’ colonisation in the recent past. Creation in Middle Eastern mythology is intimately connected with water. Images of water dominate the text. The quotation from Ibn Sīda’s Al-mukhaṣṣaṣ77 confirms the key role water plays in the creation of the world. Ibn al-Athīr’s summary of the current creation stories familiar to and debated by Muslim scholars and historians places water at the heart of monotheistic creation myths: Then God, having created the Pen and commanded it, so that it wrote into being everything that will exist till the Day of Judgment, created delicate clouds – the mist which the Prophet . . . mentioned when asked by Abu Ruzayn al-ʿUqaili, ‘Where was the Lord before he created creation?’ And he answered, ‘In a fine mist, with air above him and air below. Then he created the Throne on the water.’78 This is followed by a quote from the Bible (Matthew 13: 1–8 and 14: 21–8) that brings Jesus to the sea and our attention to Canaan,79 or the Levant, and specifically Palestine, where the contested territory is today. Yet another quote (Joshua 6: 16–22) gestures towards the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan and, here, the destruction of Jericho as well.80 A return to Arabic sources (Ibn Kathīr, Al-bidāya wa l-nihāya) brings history forward to the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 99

11/12/2012 16:28

100

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Crusades, to the year Jerusalem was taken by the Franks, chaos spread in Islamic lands, and a series of negotiations and truces between the Muslims (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn) and the Crusaders.81 And, finally, a passage from Usāma Ibn Munqidh’s ‘autobiography’ reflects the seeds of difference between the Franks and the Muslims, and the perplexity underlying their encounters: ‘The Franks are void of all zeal and jealousy . . . Consider now this great contradiction! They have neither jealousy nor zeal but they have great courage, although courage is nothing but the product of zeal and of ambition to be above ill repute’.82 This context of competing myths of creation/foundation, religious claims to Canaan and the historical encounters between ‘East’ and ‘West’ frame and anticipate the current war in Lebanon. Darwīsh, like Adnan, sees the potential for violence in semiology, in the way mythology, religion and history, all understood as constructed in words, and the signs, or epistemes these words inhere, anticipate violence and war. The war of words is a sure omen for military conflict. It is as if words create, ‘Then God, having created the Pen and commanded it, so that it wrote into being everything that will exist till the Day of Judgment’, as Ibn al-Athīr reports in Al-kāmil fī l-tārīkh,83 and bring into existence the reality we live. Here, Darwīsh parts company with Adnan; while Adnan unflinchingly condemns semiology in rather absolute terms, Darwīsh thrives on bending semiology to his will, of rewriting history and remapping thought. However, this defiant will – and the various conjugations of the verb arāda (to will, to want) permeates the text – cannot disguise the absurdity of war or the horror it lets loose in its wake. Madness (junūn) and its associates, such as hawas and ʿishq, as well as their derivatives, come to dominate the text equally – even loaned words, such as hysteria. I have already examined four instances of madness in Darwīsh’s works and will not repeat them here. I will, however, pick up from where I left off in the discussion of the strategies of control and programmes of rehabilitation driven by what Darwīsh calls the colonisers’ ‘ideology of madness’. Dhākira’s li-nisyān goes over and beyond the same ground. The escalation of the Lebanese civil war to the Israeli siege of Beirut is a manifestation of Begin’s madness, ‘Begin was repeating the history of his madness and crimes’,84 impersonating Solomon,85 and waging a personal war on Nebuchadnezzar.86 Equally, resistance resides in this madness, ‘the commander in chief . . . Yesterday, he played chess in front of American cameras to push Begin into an excess of madness, to deprive him of grounds for political abuse and force him into racist vituperations: “These Palestinians are not human. They’re animals who walk

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 100

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

101

on all fours”.’87 This ‘war on terror’ stokes up fear but also the determination to keep under wrap its wild flames. SEA OF LOVE, WAR ON TERROR

‘Darwīsh’s nervous text’,88 Muhawi observes, ‘is an attempt to confront the fact of fear’, as he was told by Darwīsh himself in their conversation in 1993, as well as ‘the violence and destruction’,89 and more poignantly, death. Fear (khawf) is in the air; it is everywhere. The text is full of words, phrases, sentences and images expressive of fear. The beginning and end give us a taste of this sense of total fear. It has, here, merged with the sea, the bringer of war, destruction and death. Darwīsh’s sea, however, is a sign of multiple signifiers and signified. It is the total experience of war, here, more particularly, of violence committed in the name of nation-state. Three o’clock. Daybreak riding on fire. A nightmare coming from the sea. Roosters made of metal. Smoke. Metal preparing a fest for metal the master, and at dawn that flares up in all the senses before it breaks. A roaring that chases me out of bed and throws me into this narrow hallway. I want nothing, and I hope for nothing. I can’t direct my limbs in this pandemonium. No time for caution, and no time for time. If I only knew – if I knew how to organize the crush of this death that keeps pouring forth. If only I knew how to liberate the screams held back in a body that no longer feels like mine from the sheer effort spent to save itself in this uninterrupted chaos of shells. ‘Enough!’ ‘Enough!’ I whisper, to find out if I can still do anything that will guide me to myself and point to the abyss opening in six directions. I can’t surrender to this fate, and I can’t resist it. Steel and howls, only to have other steel bark back. The fever of metal is the song of this dawn.90 The sea is walking in the streets. The sea is dangling from windows and the branches of shrivelled trees. The sea drops from the sky and comes into the room. Blue, white, foams, waves. I don’t like the sea. I don’t want the sea, because I don’t see a shore, or a dove. I see nothing in the sea except the sea. I don’t see a shore. I don’t see a dove.91

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 101

11/12/2012 16:28

102

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

The sea in Arabic love stories, as I have shown in Chapter 3 of Poetics of Love, is a metaphor for madness, for desire gone out of control that brings on destruction and death when it becomes the flipside of love. It is a metaphor for a dystopian nightmare92 in Darwīsh’s vision of the war, when a community has to face potential annihilation. The terror provoked by war is madness in Darwīsh’s writing, in the fifth instance, for it is unfathomable and uncontrollable, just like desire. So is war, in the sixth instance. It is similarly desire gone out of control, unreasonable and unstoppable. Nothing accentuates the absence of reason from war more than a temporary truce the warring parties are willing to call for a game of football,93 when they would not halt the killing of Palestinians and innocent bystanders. The sea (baḥr), seen in this light, becomes additionally the metaphor for war (ḥarb); baḥr shares with ḥarb their root letters, b-ḥ-r, though, here, arranged in differing patterns. War, in the seventh instance, is madness. This madness, as we have seen in Poetics of Love Chapter 3 and earlier in this chapter, is the result of passion running astray or into obstacles on its route to the ideal, the idealised object of desire that is the nation-state; it is born in and out of unrequited love. There are two outcomes of this madness: violence against perceived enemies, as Adnan and Darwīsh tell us in the examples of the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli siege of Beirut; or suicide, as Darwīsh tells us here through the story of Kamāl. The story of Kamāl is narrated in the Arabic language of love, particularly that of Ibn Ḥazm’s Ṭawq al-ḥamāma. Kamāl has learned well the lessons Ibn Ḥazm imparts on loyalty, patience and endurance in love. His devotion to Palestine is like ʿAzīza’s devotion to ʿAzīz, which I discussed in Chapter 3 of Poetics of Love;94 he prefers to die for and in the arms of his beloved, ‘I want to bury my body with my own hands within the ring of the Dove’.95 The sea of madness that engulfs Darwīsh and Beirut, as we have been seeing, has never been of stable signification. It is the means to reach the beloved in the story of Kamāl; it is the very mad love he, Darwīsh, feels for Palestine. We have, it seems, come a full circle in our exploration of notions of love in Darwīsh’s writing. But the story of madness in Arabic poetics of love does not end here. Darwīsh has more in store for us. He will raise the stake of love-madness a few notches here, and take us on a new journey in our understanding of madness. This journey takes place in his clever play with words. He now delves into the substance of the sea, water, turning the notion of madness as war and terror upside down, and stages resistance to the terror of war on water, on the sea, on madness. Just as the sea is the site of creation, water is the source of life. To have access to it, to use it, and to

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 102

11/12/2012 16:28

103

Semiology of Madness

consume it is to cling to life, to resist violence and destruction, and to keep death at bay. It is the antithesis to ‘ideology of madness’. The tale of the slightly power-mad landlord who got himself into the habit of withholding water from his tenants for any trivial reason serves as reminder of madness as a manifestation of power and control. Paradoxically, it has also taught the tenants to find ways to beat him at his games. They would listen assiduously to the pipes, and at the slightest gurgle rush with their pots, pans, buckets, whatever they could find, to catch the running water and store up for days of drought. They have somehow managed to beat the landlord at his game of control.96 Darwīsh understandably relishes in making coffee, deliberately, slowly, and exactingly, as well as counting meticulously the drops of water under his disposal, portioning them, drop by drop, for the tasks of the day ahead, for coffee, for brushing his teeth, washing his face, his body, part after part, and limb by limb. To insist on making coffee so exactingly at a time of non-stop intense bombing, on washing every part of his body, on going out to the sea is nothing short of madness. WAR OF WORDS

There is no other way of fighting madness except by madness. Madness, in the seventh instance, is resistance. It is resistance to fear, to war, to destruction and death. Even as he sees his own funeral in his mind’s eye,97 he must perform his daily routines, the sum total of Dhākira li l-nisyān. The recurring refrain, ‘block your blockade with madness’,98 makes sense only with this additional understanding of madness. If fighting is the Fedayeen’s response, the quotidian the ordinary man’s mechanism of coping, then words become the site of a poet’s resistance: Our stumps, our names; our names, our stumps. Block your blockade with madness. With madness And with madness They have gone, the ones you love. Gone. You will either have to be Or you will not be.99 Here, sea as war-mad and sea as fear-mad overlap with sea as word-mad. The other meaning of baḥr, as Muhawi also points out, is poetic metre.100 ‘Good-bye, sir. –Where to? –Madness. –Which madness? –Any madness,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 103

11/12/2012 16:28

104

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

for I have turned into words’.101 Madness, in the eighth instance, is the craft of words; it is poetry. It is here that Darwīsh turns the table on us again. For poetry is a double-edged sword. It instils courage, ‘I want to find a language that transforms language itself into steel for the spirit’,102 and preserves history, as his poetry does, ensuring the survival of a nation, at least in memory, but it also abstracts, and abstraction sanctions violence: ‘S is elated by the war: it has allowed his repressed violence to emerge and ally itself with chaos . . . S stands somewhere between Don Quixote and Sancho, transforming enemies into abstractions ready at hand’.103 We have seen all too well the danger of abstraction premised on reducing reality to language, of semiology. The dizzying spell Darwīsh’s madness induces gestures towards what he would see as the impact on the subject of the disparity between reality as lived experiences and reality as abstracted in language, or between reality and representation in the language of literary criticism today, and between ontology and epistemology in the language of philosophy. At the heart of ‘his’ madness is the realisation that the modern subject, despite his or her move to the centre of knowing in modernity, is ill-equipped to know; knowledge of the truth is impossible. He speaks of this crisis-generating ontological-epistemological impasse in his meditations on the tight spot the Palestinians have been forced into in Lebanon as the consequence of lack of understanding on the part of the Palestinians as well as the rest of the world. We did not understand Lebanon. We never understood Lebanon. We will not understand Lebanon. We will never understand Lebanon. We saw in Lebanon only our own image in the polished stone – an imagination that re-creates the world in its shape, not because it is deluded, but because it needs a foothold for the vision. Something like making a video: we write the script and the dialogue; we design the scenario; we pick the actors, the cameraman, the director, and the producer; and we distribute the roles without realizing we are the ones being cast in them. When we see our faces and our blood on the screen, we applaud the image, forgetting it’s of our own making. And by the time production goes into postproduction, we are only too ready to believe it is the Other who is pointing at us. Was it within our power to see differently, to see anything other than what made it easy for us to set reality against its own materiality? Our morale is our infrastructure. In other words, we are standing Marx on his head and bringing Hegel back to stand on his feet with the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 104

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

105

devices of Machiavelli who embraced Islam at the entrance to one of Saladin’s tents. Is it simply because Lebanon is like that – difficult to study and understand? Or is it because we had no tools for knowing Lebanon other than this manner of adapting? I’m not so much getting entangled in answering as I’m forcing myself into a quandary. No one understands Lebanon. Not its supposed owners or its makers; not its destroyers or its builders; not its allies or its friends; and not those coming into it, or those leaving it. Is it because disjointed reality cannot be grasped, or because disjointed consciousness is unable to grasp?104 Knowledge is like the sea, unfathomable, its waves unpredictable, refusing to fall in line with any mapped trajectory. In the absence of knowledge, of possession and mastery of the truth, access to power is denied to the subject. There is a relationship between knowledge and power, just as Foucault would insist, but it is rather ambiguous which is the cause and which the effect. Does the want of knowledge lead to powerlessness, or is powerlessness the reason behind the mystery of Lebanon? The Palestinians never had mastery of their situation in Lebanon. Their place there was, always, determined by their status as guests. As a nation-state, Lebanon was the ideal political community for the Lebanese not the Palestinians, if we were to use the nation-state logic and language to address the question of national belonging in the twentieth century, as well as rights to political participation. The puzzle that is Lebanon in Darwīsh, ‘We did not understand Lebanon. . . We will never understand Lebanon’, pertains less to its innate mystique but more to its role in complicating the Palestinian subject, sense of self, and identity. Its capital, Beirut, provided a temporary site for Palestinian nationalist idealisation for a decade, making it possible for the Palestinian ‘state of fantasy’ to be projected onto a territory outside the borders of the geographical Palestine. Of all people, S is the most anxious at the thought of leaving. He is terrified of becoming an orphan again . . . He is one of the hundreds of writers who had emigrated to the Revolution, which has become a home and identity. He has nothing that can identify him: no identity card, no passport, and no birth certificate. That’s why he finds in us, who have no homeland or family, a people and a homeland. Like Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian and Palestinian immigrants, he has projected

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 105

11/12/2012 16:28

106

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

upon Beirut a finality of meaning that grants their ambiguous relationship to the city the legitimate rights of a citizen, frightening many Lebanese, who know their city and society better. They knew Beirut could not sustain all this projection. . . Yet Beirut was the place where Palestinian political information and expression flourished. Beirut was the birthplace for thousands of Palestinians who knew no other cradle. Beirut was an island upon which Arab immigrants dreaming of a new world landed. It was the foster mother of a heroic mythology that could offer the Arabs a promise other than that born of the June War. Each held on to what he cherished in the idea of a Beirut so fascinating that all had made mistakes, though she didn’t enable anyone to define a comprehensive meaning for this fascination. Thus in the absence of the state apparatus that repressed citizens everywhere else, the link to Beirut became an addiction to language so metaphorical as to allow a claim of citizenship in Beirut, where one (anyone representing a state within this state) could carry on as he thought fit and turn this presumption upon the city into one of the forms of Arab training for an imagined democracy.105 Such transference of the object of idealisation, from Palestine to Beirut, as we read in Darwīsh’s musings, has created a state of confusion for both the Lebanese and the Palestinians. The Lebanese civil war, seen in this light, is the consequence of competing claims to Beirut, and the manifestation of confused and confusing semiology. For it is entirely inappropriate for the Palestinians to desire Beirut, to be possessive of Beirut as the capital of Palestine, to hanker for a Palestine within Lebanon. The Palestinian love affair with Beirut is love with an improper stranger that will necessarily end in separation and heartbreak. Madness in Darwīsh’s writing is, in the tenth instance, the outcome of the transference of desire to an improper love object. Dhākira li l-nisyān is, seen from this perspective, a reckoning with this realisation, and a long farewell to a love affair that must end, just like a Palestinian’s love affair with an Israeli. NOTES 1. ‘A Lover from Palestine’, tr. Baderddine M. Bennani, Journal of Arabic Literature 5 (1974), pp. 129–33. 2. Michael Dols, Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, ed. Diana E. Immisch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 313–422.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 106

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

107

3. Asʿad Khairallah, Love, Madness, and Poetry: an Interpretation of the Mağnūn Legend (Beirut: Der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1980), p. 20. 4. Khairallah, Love, Madness and Poetry, p. 20. 5. Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Yawmiyyāt al-ḥuzn al-ʿādī (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li al-Dirāsāt wa al-Nashr, 1973), pp. 9–27. 6. Ibid. p. 9. 7. Ibid. p. 9. 8. The eleven stars of the title of the collection (of poems) refer to Joseph’s dream in the biblical tradition, which marks him as prophet but also induces his brothers’ jealousy. 9. Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Aḥada ʿashara kawkaban (Beirut: Dār al-Jadīd, 1999), p. 39. 10. Ibid. p. 39. 11. Ibid. p. 39. 12. I refer here to Norbert Elias’s term as defined in his work, The Civilizing Process (Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, original German published in 1939, translated into English by Edmund Jephcott [Oxford: Blackwell, 1982, 1994, 2000]), in which he details the rhetoric of imperialism, colonialism and state formation. 13. Darwīsh, Aḥada ʿashara kawkaban, p. 43. 14. Ibid. pp. 38–9. 15. Ibid. pp. 40–2. 16. Ibid. pp. 42–51. 17. Also published in Darwīsh, Yawmiyyāt al-ḥuzn al-ʿādī, pp. 49–65. 18. Ibid. p. 50. 19. Ibid. pp. 64–5. 20. For this aspect of Darwīsh’s poetry, see Ipek Azime Celik, ‘Alternative history, expanding identity: myths reconsidered in Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry’, in Hala Khamis and Najat Rahman (eds), Mahmoud Darwish: Exile’s Poet (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2008), pp. 273–91; and Saḥar Sāmī, ‘Al-tanāṣṣ al-dīnī fī shiʿr Maḥmūd Darwīsh’, in Samīḥ al-Qāsim et al., Al-mukhtalif al-ḥaqīqī: dirāsa wa shahāda (Amman: Dār al-Shurūq, 1999), pp. 79–109. 21. For a full analysis of this Palestinian creation myth or epic, see Afnān Qāsim, Masʾalat al-shiʿr wa l-malḥama l-darwīshīyya: Maḥmūd Darwīsh fī Madīḥ al-ẓill al-ʿālī (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1987). 22. See Anette Mansson, Passage to a New Wor(l)d: Exile and Restoration in Mahmud Darwish’s Writings 1960–1995 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2003), pp. 212–13; and Angelika Neuwirth, ‘Hebrew bible and Arabic poetry: Mahmoud Darwish’s Palestine – from paradise lost to a homeland made of words’, in Hala Khamis and Najat Rahman

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 107

11/12/2012 16:28

108

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel (eds), Mahmoud Darwish: Exile’s Poet (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2008), pp. 167–90. This list of Darwīsh’s honorifics appears in Ṣubḥī Ḥadīdī, ‘Mādhā yafʿal al-ʿāshiq min dūn al-manfā’ (What does a mad-lover do without exile)?, in Samīḥ al-Qāsim et al., Al-mukhtalif al-ḥaqīqī: dirāsa wa shahāda (Amman: Dār al-Shurūq, 1999), pp. 47–73; 47. Translated into English by Najat Rahman and Rim Bejaoui as ‘Mahmoud Darwish’s love poem: history, exile, and the epic call’, in Hala Khamis and Najat Rahman (eds), Mahmoud Darwish: Exile’s Poet (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2008), pp. 95–122. Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Shayʾun ʿan al-waṭan (Beirut: Dār al-ʿAwda, 1971), p. 296. Darwīsh, ‘Al-faraḥ. . . ʿindamā yakhūn’, Yawmiyyāt al-ḥuzn al-ʿādī, pp. 119–36; 135. Darwīsh, Shayʾun ʿan al-waṭan, p. 297. Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, translated into English by Leon S. Roudiez (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 60. Ibid. p. 59. Ibid. p. 1. Ibid. p. 1. Ibid. p. 2. Ibid. pp. 1–2. Ibid. p. 59. Ibid. p. 59. Ibid. p. 116. Ibid. p. 1. Ibid. p. 3. Ibid. p. 60. Ibid. p. 61. Ibid. p. 61. Ibid. p. 209. Etel Adnan, Sitt Marie-Rose, translated from the French (1978) by Georgina Kleege (Sausalito: Post-Apollo Press, 1982), pp. 98–9. Ibid. p. 99. Ibid. p. 58. Ibid. p. 58. Ibid. pp. 68–9. Ibid. p. 97. Kristeva, Tales of Love, p. 67. Beautifully rendered into English by Ibrahim Muhawi (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995). The original Arabic edition appeared in Al Karmel 21–2 (1986), pp. 4–96.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 108

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiology of Madness

109

51. In ʿAbduh Wāzin, Maḥmud Darwīsh: al-gharīb yaqaʿ ʿalā nafish: qirāʿa fī aʿmālih al-jadīda (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 2006), pp. 89–90. 52. Ibid. p. 81. 53. Al-mukhtalif al-haqīqī: dirāsa wa shahāda, prepared by Samīḥ al-Qāsim et al. (Amman: Dār al-Shurūq, 1999), pp. 14–18. 54. Al-mukhtalif al-ḥaqīqī, p. 25. 55. Wāzin, Maḥmūd Darwīsh, pp. 74–5. 56. Muhawi, ‘Introduction’, Memory for Forgetfulness, p. xviii. 57. Ibid. p. xxvi. 58. Ibid. p. xxviii. 59. Ibid. p. xxix. 60. Ibid. p. xvii. 61. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 4; Muhawi, Memory, p. 3. 62. Darwīsh, Dhakira, p. 96; Muhawi, Memory, p. 182. 63. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 96; Muhawi, Memory, p. 182. 64. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 16–18; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 28–32. 65. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 20–2; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 36–41. 66. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 29–33; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 55–60. 67. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 33–5; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 61–5. 68. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 37–43; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 66–81. 69. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 44–5; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 81–4. 70. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 76; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 146. 71. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 78–80; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 149–52. 72. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 81–3; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 155–7. 73. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 84–5; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 159–63. 74. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 85–91; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 163–72. 75. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 70; Muhawi, Memory, p. 135. 76. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 81; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 154–5. 77. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 19–20; Muhawi, Memory, p. 36. 78. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 22–4; 22; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 42–5; 42. 79. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 33; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 60–1. 80. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 42; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 78–9. 81. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 58–60; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 111–15. 82. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 60–1; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 116–17. 83. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 22; Muhawi, Memory, p. 42. 84. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 44; Muhawai, Memory, p. 77. 85. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 74; Muhawi, Memory, p. 144. 86. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 44; Muhawi, Memory, p. 84. 87. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 44; Muhawi, Memory, p. 77. 88. Muhawi, ‘Introduction’, Memory, p. xxi. 89. Ibid. p. xv. 90. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 5; Muhawi, Memory, p. 4.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 109

11/12/2012 16:28

110

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

91. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 96; Muhawi, Memory, p. 182. 92. I have explore this metaphoric aspect of love stories in Arabic narrative tradition at length in ‘Utopian fantasy or dystopian nightmare: trajectories of desire in classical Arabic and Chinese fiction’, in Aboubakr Chraïbi, Frédéric Bauden and Antonella Ghersetti (eds), Le repertoire narrative arabe medieval: transmission et ouverture (Geneva: Droz, 2008), pp. 323–51. 93. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 57; Muhawi, Memory, p. 109. 94. See also Wen-chin Ouyang, ‘The epical turn of romance: love in the narrative of ‘Umar al-Nu‘man’, Oriente Moderno 19: 1 (2002), pp. 485–504. 95. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 90; Muhawi, Memory, p. 171. 96. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 19; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 34–5. 97. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 14–15; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 24–6. 98. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 32; Muhawi, Memory, p. 59. 99. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 32; Muhawi, Memory, p. 59. 100. Muhawi, ‘Introduction’, Memory, p. xxv. 101. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 27; Muhawi, Memory, p. 51. 102. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 28; Muhawi, Memory, p. 52. 103. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 44; Muhwai, Memory, p. 83. 104. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 24–5; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 45–6. 105. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 69–70; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 133–4.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 110

11/12/2012 16:28

Chapter 4 SEMIOTICS OF TYRANNY

LOVE WITH AN IMPROPER STRANGER

Muhawi speaks of Dhākira li l-nisyān as Darwīsh’s ‘attempt to get the Lebanese phase of Palestinian history, the madness that was Beirut (junūn Beirut, also meaning “possession by Beirut”) and his attachment to the city out of his system’.1 He also situates the Palestinian exit from Beirut within the larger context of Palestinian exile, both of which experiences have made an indelible impact on Palestinian understanding of reality. This understanding is reflected in Darwīsh’s language, which is here marked by what Muhawi calls ‘reversal’ or a juxtaposition, whether of two segments of the text or two (or more) perspectives. For example, in the first two sentences of the book the discourse shifts from direct statement to dialogue . . . Immediately thereafter comes a reversal of ordinary assumptions about birth, love, life, and death: ‘Because you woke me up when you stirred in my belly. I knew then I was your coffin.’ To be born is to die. Memory is for forgetfulness; it exists to be forgotten.2 Muhawi adds, The rhythm of reversal that weaves the text together is rooted in historical experience, reflecting the departure of the Palestinian leadership from Lebanon in 1982, and the earlier exist from Palestine in 1948. With that exit, which turned a settled population into refuges, reality itself was reversed and the words became hollow shells without meaning in the Arab wasteland (the ‘desert’ and ‘wilderness’ in the text), forcing the Palestinians to reverse the process of intellectual, 111

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 111

11/12/2012 16:28

112

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

political, and spiritual degeneration that has taken hold of the Arabs: ‘From now on we have nothing to lose, so long as Beirut is here and we’re here in Beirut as names for a different homeland, where meaning will find their words again in the midst of this sea and on the edge of this desert.’ In the text this rhythm of reversal emerges in a whole lexicon of words from other words (nouns, verbs, verbal nouns), all meaning to ‘exit’ (e.g., kharaja and its variants). The departure from Beirut; the exit from Palestine; the birth of the dream from the dream, of the text from the dream, of the words from each other, and of the textual segments from each other are all united in this rhythm.3 I want here to pick up from where Muhawi left off, and think of Darwīsh’s text not only as a metaphor of the history of the Palestinian double exodus, but also as a peculiar kind of national allegory that questions the legitimacy of the fantasy of ‘nation-state within nation-state’. This fantasy is what constitutes the ‘madness that is Beirut’ (junūn Beirut) that Darwīsh spoke of to Muhawi as an obsession he needed to get out of his system. This madness is his, or Palestine’s, love affair with an improper stranger, a nation-state that can never be and should not replace Palestine. A ‘love song’ is woven into the history of Palestinian diaspora in Dhākira li l-nisyān: ‘I’ll whistle a tune, the opening of a song dedicated to Beirut, exploding in this war’.4 This love song, as the text unfolds, is the expression of a hopeless love punctuated by questions of its legitimacy. We read this clearly in his exchange with his Maronite neighbour the first thing in the morning. Suddenly, Feiruz’s voice rises from the radio, I love you, O Lebanon. It rises from two warring stations. I say, ‘Don’t you love this song?’ She says, ‘I love it, and you?’ I say, ‘I love it very much, and it hurts me.’ She says, ‘By what right do you love it? Don’t you see how far beyond the limit you Palestinians have gone?’ I say, ‘It’s beautiful, and Lebanon is beautiful. That’s all there is to it.’ She says, ‘You’ve got to love Jerusalem.’ I say, ‘I love Jerusalem. The Israelis love Jerusalem and sing for it. You love Jerusalem. Feiruz sings for Jerusalem. And Richard the Lion-Hearted loved Jerusalem. And . . .’ Says she, ‘I don’t love Jerusalem.’5

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 112

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

113

What follows is an uncompromising confrontation with the decade-long Palestinian presence in Lebanon, a presence that was marked by the Palestinian conduct not as guests but as ‘nationals’, by the blurring of the boundaries between two nation-states, and that must now come to an end. If the stirrings of love – and this love affair began thirty-four years ago and was cemented in the past ten years – has obfuscated the impropriety of the match, the war now exposes it as nothing more than the capital of Arab hope,6 erected in the language of Arab nationalism perfected by Nasser, and which fell apart with the death of Nasser and the collapse of his nationalist project.7 Beirut, as it turns out, is but a reflection of a nationalist fantasy, fabricated in the hope to satisfy the Palestinian instinct for survival.8 It is a dream within a dream, a state of fantasy within another state of fantasy. The war has awakened the dreamer and shattered his fantasy. ‘I cannot carve my name on a rock in Damur’,9 M muses, as he wanders around in the outskirts of Beirut with S, revisiting Damur, the site of his first refuge during the 1948 Palestinian exodus and of his first kiss, and marvels at the end of a very long day why it is necessary for him to say in Beirut what he had to say in Israel, ‘Put this in your record: I am Arab’.10 The war has brought an end to what Darwīsh calls ‘hospitality’ (intahat al-ḍiyāfa),11 or the Palestinian presence in Lebanon, ‘the experiment of a new Palestinian society in Lebanon is about to come to an end’,12 and it is now time for him to send his apologies13 for confusing the rights of a guest with those of a citizen (iltibās sharʿiyyat ḥaqq al-muwāṭin).14 He must also bid his farewell and come to terms with his loss. The enormity of the pain of goodbye is measured by the intensity of love: Palestinian exit from Beirut is Adam’s fall from heaven (al-khurūj min al-janna).15 And, there is enough love for Beirut to go around the entire Arab world. There has always been a slight unease about this mad love for Beirut, which Darwīsh speaks of as iftinān (derived from fatana),16 which finds no equivalent in the English language – not even in what Muhawi renders elegantly as ‘so fascinating’ in ‘each held on to what he cherished in the idea of a Beirut so fascinating that all had made mistakes,’ –17 for fitna is associated with destruction resulting from distraction caused by either feminine allure or misguided political ambition. Darwīsh makes unambiguous reference to the most famous political incident in Islamic history: the first sectarian war known as Fitnat ʿUthmān (in 656). This Lebanese civil war is reminiscent of the first Islamic civil war. There is, however, a marked difference between the two civil wars, here, created in Darwīsh’s language. Darwīsh overlaps feminine allure with misguided political ambition and tells the story of the Lebanese

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 113

11/12/2012 16:28

114

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

civil war as a ‘tale of mad love’, here, as an illicit Palestinian love affair with Beirut. The moment of crystallisation, of arriving at the realisation that the dream of building a Palestinian state within the Lebanese state is nothing more than a one-night stand, occurs in the middle of the day, in the middle of M’s delirium, remembering a former lover and their parting while contemplating the incessant bombardment of Beirut. This dream within dream is nothing but madness. The whole affair is mad when a woman you love is a wild mare. ‘I shall call you D because you’re the dawning of madness, the dawning of hell, the dawning of paradise, and the dawning of all passions that can win a war by and act of love not realisable except in the fear of death’.18 This is how Muhawi translates the key passage in Darwīsh’s reckoning: ‘Sa adʿūki jīm li-annaki maṭlaʿu l-junūni, wa maṭlaʿu al-jannati wa maṭlaʿu jahannama wa maṭlaʿu jamīʿi sh-shahawāti al-muntaṣirati ʿalā l-ḥarbi bi-jimāʿin lā yataḥaqqaqu illā fī l-khawfi min al-mawti’.19 The five words and phrases beginning with jīm (junūn, janna, jahannam, jamīʿ al-shahawāt, and jimāʿ) are respectively, madness, paradise, hell, all passions, and sex, which form the axis around which the story of the Palestinian love affair with Beirut is told, as a story of casual sex sought for the sake of comfort from the fear of death. Don’t ask me if I love you, because you know how my body, searching for its safety in another body, worships yours. Take some bread and a bottle of water, so you can say you’ve been searching for bread and water for the past hour. You will be sung in my poetry because you didn’t remain with me as did the Lily of the Valley, born from the Song of Songs. You will be visiting my poetry because you went away as she went away. And you will be born out of a dream that is born out of another dream, as the Lily of the Valley was born this dawn.20 The Arabic poetics of love and the biblical erotics come together here to convey what Muhawi calls ‘the madness that is Beirut’ in Darwīsh’s national allegory. The utopian fantasy (janna) taking shape in desire’s misguided trajectory (jamīʿ al-shahawāt, bi jimāʿ) turns into an apocalyptic world (jahnnam) that brings forth destruction and death (mawt). Here, yet again, as we have been seeing in Arabic poetry and the Arabic novel, the story of the nation gone astray is told in the form of a love affair with an improper stranger, a stranger good for temporary love but not appropriate

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 114

11/12/2012 16:28

115

Semiotics of Tyranny

for a lasting, happy marriage. The consequence is chaos and violence, where epistemological confusion corresponds to ontological apocalypse. Elsewhere, the violence of semiology that is at the root of tyranny is also expressed as the outcome of improper love. We have seen this already in Sitt Marie-Rose. There is more than a hint that Tony’s unrequited love for Marie-Rose – and Marie-Rose is at the same time perceived as a traitor to Lebanon for being in love with a Palestinian – is the seed of anger that would eventually erupt into civil war and lead to physical violence against Marie-Rose. Dhākira li l-nisyān, notwithstanding Darwīsh’s Palestinian perspective, tows very similar lines. On the contrary, this very Palestinian perspective accentuates even more the uncompromising violence of the nation-state semiology. Palestinian love for Beirut is illegitimate in every conceivable way, and it must be stemmed or suppressed. The Palestinians in Lebanon must die or leave, for there can be no nation-state within another nation-state, not even at the level of fantasy. There is too a hint of the tyrannical quality of the nation-state semiology in Adnan and Darwīsh. The nation-state is a hegemonic discourse. The idealisation of political community as ‘Garden of Eden’ necessarily suppresses desire for difference that is the motor of fantasy and raison d’être of subject. The hoped-for harmony between state and nation, political authority and individual right, and identity and subject to be achieved within the nation-state semiology is but a flight of fantasy. It is a desire that must suppress all other desires. More importantly, political authority, even the kind that lies at the heart of the imagined nation-state, is by definition selfishly tyrannical. It achieves staying power by suppressing any other desire for power. Tyranny is essential to the authority of the state. As such it is an unstoppable grand desire for power that flouts all bounds of reason and law. It is madness. It does, however, have its own semiotics, of tale-telling signs, of signifiers that assuredly point to the one and only recognisable signified: tyranny. WHAT IS TYRANNY?

Majnūn al-ḥukm (1990) is Bensalem Himmich’s essay on tyranny through refashioning the well-known words and deeds of the historical mad Fatimid caliph, al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh (985–1021). Himmich’s al-Ḥākim is not very different from the historical character we read about in Arabic historiography. He is rather a consolidation of the accounts (akhbār) disparately distributed in the historical sources to which Himmich painstakingly refers throughout his text. In this, Majnūn al-ḥukm reads very much like the entry

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 115

11/12/2012 16:28

116

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

on al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh in the Encyclopaedia of Islam. It is a synthesis and assessment of the historical records of the rule, madness and disappearance of the Fatimid caliph who would be idolised by both the Druze and Ismaʿilis. It is not, however, a straightforward modern historical narrative of the Fatimid ruler. Rather, it integrates the pre-modern sources into the texture of the novel, its open form allowing their divergent voices to be heard, and the variety of their styles to give colour to the diverse strands of narrative. Fragments of the historical sources on al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh appear as paratexts and quotations in the novel, serving as the kernel around which Himmich weaves his exploration of the madness of King al-Ḥākim, from the initial diagnosis of his melancholy to his delirious prophecies (while soaking in lavender oil, the prescribed remedy for melancholy in pre-modern medical sources), contradictory decisions, irrational edicts, despotic behaviour, and finally his mysterious disappearance. The familiar story, the disparate bits and pieces now strung together by Himmich into a coherent narrative with beginning and end, serves as the bedrock of a new semiotic edifice, which reorganises the signs in such a way that all signifiers lead to one gargantuan signified: tyranny. The history of al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, if we may thus describe Majnūn al-ḥukm, is not a fictionalised biography of a Fatimid ruler, the novelisation of his sīra or tarjama, but a historiographical treatise on the nature of political authority structured around the madness of a historical figure. More importantly, it is a study of power reflective of lessons learned from the experience of living with the nation-state. Himmich, though better known for his novels, is an academic historian specialised in Ibn Khalūdn (1332– 1406). In his post-modernist reading of Ibn Khaldūn’s Maghreb-focused history, Al-khaldūniyya fī ḍaw falsafat al-tārīkh (2006; Khaldūnism in the light of historiography), he insists that ‘history [as a discipline of knowledge] is the best gateway to strengthening the mind for the purpose of comprehending and internalizing [present] reality’,21 and proposes that history, as a body of writing, must be analysed as a system of knowledge constructed from linguistic signs; history cannot be understood outside the language in which it is written, which language is itself a semiotic system.22 It is possible to see the epistemological layers accumulated around linguistic signs, as well as cultural signs, over the centuries, and find out whether history, as a system of knowledge from the past, continues to maintain its grip on the present. It is this aspect of historical research that is meaningful to the present. Al-khaldūniyya is to a large extent his exploration of political despotism in the Arabic-Islamic world based on Ibn Khaldūn’s writings,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 116

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

117

especially the Prolegomena (Al-muqaddima) in two parts: the life cycle of a state (manḥā ḥayāt al-dawla),23 and the semiotics of tyranny (sīmīyāʾiyyat al-istibdād).24 A state lives and dies in accordance to a cycle of five phases: acquisition of power and establishment of state through deployment of the communal bond (al-ʿaṣabiyya) Ibn Khaldūn famously theorised; tyranny (al-istibdād), when the ruler monopolises rule and embarks on breaking the ʿaṣbiyya even of his own power base; relaxation, when the ruler seeks to consolidate his power through distributing wealth and building monuments; peace and preservation of tradition in which the ruling class engages in raising funds for the purpose; and finally extravagance and improvidence leading to the inevitable demise of the state. Semiotics of tyranny constitutes the gestures the state makes and the steps it takes to ensure its hold on power and the longevity of its rule. Material objects utilised in ceremonial rites, writing, conquest, minting and erecting public buildings, gift-giving and political marriage are all signs of tyranny. This semiotics of tyranny, as elaborated by Himmich, is precisely the underpinning semiology shaping the text of Majnūn al-ḥukm, providing it with plot and narrative itinerary. Al-Ḥākim’s madness is a convenient trope around which Himmich structured his inquiry into contemporary political despotism in the form of allegory. Himmich’s al-Ḥākim is reminiscent of contemporary Arab despots so well known to us. Like Darwīsh, Himmich sees madness as ideology, less as suppressive of subject but more as productive of a semiology that combines will to power with discourses on knowledge. Here, Himmich is interested in the intersection between religion, specifically Islamic systems of knowledge, and the various forms of political authority produced in dialectical relationship with it. Majnūn al-ḥukm, poignantly translated by Roger Allen as The Theocrat (2005),25 provides the theoretical skeleton Himmich draws in Al-khaldūniyya with flesh and blood. Speaking of the Muslim epistemological heritage, Himmich suggests that the history of the Muslims is always animated by a violent dialectic through which theoretical propositions transform into theories of resistance. In the interaction between socio-political and religious dimensions of Islam, the more the ideas immersed themselves in theology – in discussion of, for example, the essence of the divine, the place of the human in the universe – the more they disclosed clear political ambitions or shaped active if not violent movements of resistance.26

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 117

11/12/2012 16:28

118

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Madness is equivalent to ideology in this case, what Deleuze calls, quoting his long-time collaborator Guattari, ‘a formalism of power’ in his essay on ‘Two Regimes of Madness’.27 The workings of power are visible in ‘the point of conversation between the abstract, non-figurative line’ and ‘the two lines of segmentarity’28 in the three forms of power he gives as examples: the puppeteer, the banking power of capitalism and the power of war. The puppeteer has a certain power, to work the puppets, but also the power he exerts over the children . . . He makes his puppet move according to a vertical line, wherein the puppet’s center of gravity, or rather, center of levity, is displaced. It is a perfectly abstract line, not in the least figurative, and no more symbolic than figurative. The line is mutant because it is made up of as many singularities as stopping points, and yet these do not break up the line. There is never any binary relationship or bi-univocal relations between this vertical, abstract line – which is for this reason all the more real – and the concrete movements of the puppet. In the second place, there are the movements of an entirely different kind: tangible, representative curves, an arm that rounds itself out, a head that tilts. This line is no longer made up of singularities but rather of very supple segments – one gesture, then another gesture. Finally, there is a third line, one of a much harder segmentarity which corresponds to the moments of the story represented by the play of the puppets. The binary relationships and the bi-univocal relations that the Structuralists tell us about might form in and between segmentarizable lines. But the power of the puppeteer himself arises more at the point of conversion between the abstract, non-figurative line, on the one hand, and the two lines of segmentarity, on the other.29 The banking power of capitalism works in a very similar fashion. It is well known that there are two forms of money . . . There is money as financing structure, or even as monetary creation and destruction: a non-realizable quantity, an abstract or mutant line with its singularities. And then a second, completely different line, concrete, made of tangible curves: money as means of payment capable of being segmented, allocated for salaries, profit, interest, etc. And this money as means of payment will carry in turn a third segmentarized line: all goods produced as a whole in a given period, all the equipment, and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 118

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

119

all the consumption . . . Banking-power occurs at the level of conversion between the abstract line, the financing structure, and the concrete line, means of payment-goods produced. The conversion occurs on the level of central banks, the gold standard, the current role of the dollar, etc.30 And, the power of war similarly resides in the conversion of abstract line – ‘absolute war’ that does not really exist, the ‘limited war’ or ‘total war’ a state mobilises to serve its politics, and the forms these latter wars take.31 He is here as a psychoanalyst, more interested in ‘how power exerts itself, where it takes shape, and why it is everywhere’,32 but even more importantly, ‘lines of escape’, what he call ‘deterritorializations’.33 One of the principle goals of schizoanalysis would be to look in each one of us for the crossing lines that are those of desire itself: nonfigurative abstract lines of escape, that is, deterritorialization; lines of segmentarities, whether supple or hard, in which one gets entangled, or which one evades, moving beneath the horizon of one’s abstract line; and how conversions happen from one line to the others.34 He brings up Guattari’s engagement in the process of plotting a chart of semiotic regimes informed, as it were, by the two regimes of signs already present in psychiatry of the latter part of the nineteenth century. The first is the paranoid regime of signs, or what he calls despotic or imperial. In this regime of signs, ‘which functions in a very complex way’, ‘one sign defers to other signs, and these other signs to still other signs, to infinity (irradiation, an ever extending circularity) . . . a sign always refers to another sign, indefinitely, and that the supposed infinite ensemble of signs itself refers to a greater signifier’. The other regime is passional. ‘A sign, or a small group, a little bundle of signs, begins to flow, to follow a certain line. We no longer have a vast circular formation in perpetual extension, but rather a linear network. Instead of signs that defer themselves to one another, there is a sign that defers to a subject’.35 These two regimes of signs, the paranoid and the passional, are useful in understanding social formations as well, for they are, in a manner of speaking, the foundational epistemology of these social formations. In the great imperial formations, whether archaic or even ancient, there is the great signifier, the signifier of the despot; and beneath it the infinite

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 119

11/12/2012 16:28

120

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

network of signs that refer themselves to one another. But you also need all sorts of categories of specialized people whose job it is to circulate these signs, to say what they mean, to interpret them, to thereby freeze the signifier: priests, bureaucrats, messengers, etc. It is the coupling of meaning and interpretation. And then there is still something else: there still must be subjects who receive the message, who listen to the interpretation and obey, carrying out the tedious assignments . . . And each time, one could say that having reached its limit, the signified generates more meaning, allowing the circle to grow.36 Deleuze, as well as Guattari, is interested in both the formalism of power and lines of escape. He gives the example of the Germans in the Roman Empire, who were simultaneously ‘tempted to . . . integrate into the empire’ and ‘pressured by the Huns to form a nomadic line of escape, a war machine of a new variety, marginal and non-assimilable’.37 Himmich may be interested in deterritorialisation elsewhere but not in Majnūn al-ḥukm. He is concerned rather with the type of despotism prevalent in the Arabic-Islamic world from which there are no detectable lines of escape. He does as Deleuze and Guattari do; he sees despotism as a formalism of power unpinned by a regime of signs that may be thought of only as madness. He takes for granted that despotism is madness. However, he finds himself engaged not in explaining the workings of power, or in articulating ‘how power exerts itself, where it takes shape, and why it is everywhere’, but in reading and interpreting the signs of a regime having taken shape in a history of despotism. This history seems to repeat itself in a vicious cycle, as if the regime of signs that is madness has so tightened its noose that no lines of escape from it may be found. Desire, the driving force of deterritorialisation in Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of power and its impact on subject, or the seed of rebellion in the majority of Arabic storytelling past and present, is here the other side of the despotism coin. It covets not self-empowerment and liberation from tyranny but the very tyranny itself. Desire is madness, madness is tyranny, and tyranny is desire. Political authority never seems able to break out of this triadic regime of signs. THE MACHINERY OF DESPOTISM

Majnūn al-ḥukm tells a tale of history perpetually repeating itself as the story of the unrelenting recurrence of tyranny. Even lines of escape are

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 120

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

121

inevitably paths to tyranny. Al-Ḥākim’s ‘madness’ is symptomatic of despotism. It is a manifestation of unchecked desire, absolute and total, that leaves no subject unaffected. I have already alluded to Himmich’s interrogation of theocracy in Majnūn al-ḥukm. Himmich, I think, is interested in religion less as power but more as a mechanism through which political authority gains legitimacy. Even al-Ḥākim’s mad behaviour and edicts, or delirium as Deleuze would have it, may be packaged as divinely inspired prophecies, the purpose of which is to serve the Muslim community. Their unfathomable existential significance notwithstanding, these prophecies are considered, as Himmich tells us through his re-assemblage of historical texts, by the Ismaʿilis and the Druze alike as containing the secret of the universe, existence and faith revealed to their respective communities exclusively. But this is only a camouflage. These symptoms of madness, whether of al-Ḥākim himself, as he wavers between two contradictory edicts or utters prophecies in delirium, or of the community of his believers as they repackage his madness as revelation, are only a pretext for Himmich to unveil the machinery of tyranny by establishing the common trajectory of rule, resistance and rebellion. The ‘head’ of state in all three scenarios, representing the three stages of al-Ḥākim’s ‘state of tyranny’ from establishment to consolidation and demise, whether obviously mad, like al-Ḥākim, or inherently mad, like Abū Rakwa, or resistant to their madness, like Sitt al-Mulk, is a despot at home, as it were, in the regime of signs structured by the triad of madness, tyranny and desire. We see this in the ‘war machine’ al-Ḥākim deploys to quash Abū Rakwa and Sitt al-Mulk, and Abū Rakwa and Sitt al-Mulk mobilise respectively to depose al-Ḥākim. In the particular context of his discussion of ‘war machine’, Deleuze speaks of ‘great despotic apparatuses’ of a state as based first and foremost on bureaucracy and the police.38 This is not to say that a state does not conduct war as part of its strategy of control, but rather that it resorts to it only when necessary, especially where war provides lines of escape for deterritorialising subjects. It is perhaps productive to begin with al-Ḥākim’s deployment of the ‘war machine’ to establish and consolidate his ‘state of tyranny’. The novel opens with al-Ḥākim’s proclamations as he comes into power, when he rids himself of his regent. In the ‘Prelude to “The Smoke” ’, he immediately declares himself history (‘I am Clear Smoke. History will comprehend me’),39 and that his rule would be marked not by love and brotherhood (‘love and brotherhood are qualities of the people of paradise’),40 but politics, which would be either tyranny or death (‘the nature of politics is tyranny’;41 ‘death is the other side of politics’).42 More

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 121

11/12/2012 16:28

122

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

importantly, ‘features of tyranny include wariness, caution, and a resort to preventive violence’.43 He, having put himself in the role of the puppeteer, practically announces his reign of terror that would be marked by death, destruction and intrigue. The four main chapters of the novel gesture towards but do not really correspond to the five phases of the life cycle of a tyrannical state theorised by Ibn Khaldūn. The life cycle of al-Ḥākim’s reign in Majnūn al-ḥukm consists only of the measures he has taken to acquire, monopolise and exert power and the responses these elicited. But none of the processes of ‘nationbuilding’, distribution of wealth, relaxation and extravagance Ibn Khaldūn speaks of, which are observable of al-Ḥākim’s rule in the various historical accounts, is made part of Majnūn al-ḥukm. We have here instead a litany of ‘abuses’, whether in al-Ḥākim’s strategies of control or in Abū Rakwa and Sitt al-Mulk’s responses to them, involving manipulation of bureaucracy, especially writing, the police, the war machine and propaganda, or what Deleuze refers to as meaning and interpretation. Fear (al-khawf),44 writing and bureaucracy (al-kitāba)45 and war (al-ghazw)46 are three major signs of despotism in Himmich’s semiotics of tyranny. Chapter One (‘On Enticements and Threats from the Ascendants of al-Hakim’), divided into two sections (‘From records of decrees and interdictions’ and ‘The slave Masʿud, or the agent for Sodomite punishment’), and Chapter Two (‘At alHakim’s Councils’), in three sections (‘A session of violet oil’, ‘A session in quest of surprise’, and ‘A session on theology with the devotees’), recount the strategies of control al-Ḥākim employs on his unsuspecting subjects. His arbitrary and contradictory decrees and interdictions in Chapter One are buttressed by his use of force, via the office of the market police (ḥisba), of which he takes charge himself. He uses his slave, Masʿūd, an ugly giant, to sodomise any offender. In Chapter Two, he puts his own brand of bureaucracy to good use and has his sayings and deeds recorded in writing, even if uttered and performed in delirium (section one) only to dictate to his devotees his interpretation of them, especially his claim to divinity, and how best to disseminate these among his community (section three). The longest chapter of the novel, Chapter Three, ostensibly details Abū Rakwa’s revolt and anticipates the fall of al-Ḥākim’s ‘state of tyranny’, but is arguably another study of despotism. This time, the protagonist is ‘the revolutionary in the name of Allah’, Abū Rakwa, a descendant of the Andalusian Umayyads, who led a confederation of North African tribes (Banu Qurra, Luwata, Mizana and Zanata) and, at the invitation of many of al-Ḥākim’s officers, such as al-Husayn Ibn Jawhar, invade Cairo

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 122

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

123

and help them dispose of al-Ḥākim. The conduct of Abū Rakwa is more important than his failure and execution. In Himmich’s rendition of this leader of tribes and al-Ḥākim’s potential nemesis, Abū Bakr is himself a despot, a mirror image of al-Ḥākim, for he resorts to similar strategies of control: claims to mysterious sources of knowledge and affinities with the descendants of the Prophet, apparently devout sermons and practices, feigned asceticism, proclamations of his commitment to peace among the tribes, and dispensation of justice all put him in the position of leadership. The ‘revolutionary in God’s name’ may disguise his imperial ambitions in the form of sanity, as counter to al-Ḥākim’s madness, but cannot hide his hunger for power and thirst for blood. All these strategies package his intended conquest of Egypt as God’s war, a war of justice that will bring ‘glad tidings of justice and unified faith, not of tyranny and oppression’.47 One incident gives him away. He does not hesitate to strike off the head of Yanāl al-Ṭawīl the Turk, al-Ḥākim’s garrison commander, who refuses to surrender the Fatimid positions to him. When his close ally, Shihāb al-Dīn, expresses shock, ‘How could you use such unprecedented violence to cut off his head with your own noble hands’, Abū Rakwa replies, ‘I shall behave this way and even more so with anyone who closes doors in my face and leaves me no way out’.48 The same may be said of Sitt al-Mulk, al-Ḥākim’s sister, who is spurred into action when her mad brother burns the city of Cairo when the citizens finally respond to his tyranny with a campaign of slanders and curses. Sitt al-Mulk, encouraged by the instructions of Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ, decides to interfere and speak to her brother. Her unannounced visit only provokes his anger, and he accuses her of debauchery. She realises that he will undoubtedly kill her. She plots his assassination right away. She turns to Sayf al-Dawla al-Ḥusyan Ibn Dawwās, chief of the Qutāma tribe, for help. His assassins succeed one night when al-Ḥākim takes his usual nocturnal excursion to the Muqaṭṭam Hills. Sitt al-Mulk assumes power. She, like al-Ḥākim and Abū Rakwa, begins by consolidating her power then going on to monopolise it. The long wait and al-Hakim’s empty throne seemed to her like a sword; either she had to use it, or else it would strike her down. In order for her gamble to succeed, she would have to get the Tunisian and Turkish soldiers on her side, distribute cash and rewards among them, and make land-grants to their commanders and officers. In order to broaden her sphere of discretion, she found it necessary to let the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 123

11/12/2012 16:28

124

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Prime Minister, Khatir al-Mulk, in on the secret of al-Hakim’s murder, in exchange for which she extracted from him a solemn oath of loyalty and total secrecy. She ordered him to bring the heir-apparent, ‘Abd alRahman ibn Iyas, back from Syria. Since she was adamantly opposed to seeing the caliphate transferred to al-Hakim’s cousins, she also gave the minister the task of forcing the young man to commit suicide. A short while later Khatir al-Mulk did exactly that.49 Installing Caliph al-Ẓāhir on the throne, she then proceeds to quash all opposition. In time, she has Nasīm, Chief of Security, murder both Ibn Dawwās and Khaṭīr al-Mulk, the only two people who know of her role in al-Ḥākim’s murder. Her final victory comes with killing al-Drūzī, a cult leader who is actively spreading al-Ḥākim’s divinity and edicts. There is very little difference between al-Ḥākim and Sitt al-Mulk in Himmich’s novel, despite the contrast between their respective ‘mad’ and ‘sane’ reigns in the historical records he quotes. Both are despots in his account. For, even when she reverses the policies of al-Ḥākim by renewing giftgiving and land-granting, which are for Himmich two signs of tyranny, Sitt al-Mulk seems to operate within the same regime of signs as her brother.50 GOING SANE, GOING MAD

For four years following al-Hakim’s murder Sitt al-Mulk controlled state affairs. She restored prosperity to the royal house, filled the treasury with funds, and gave a number of men assignments. Then she fell ill; a disease of the digestion caused her to become dehydrated, and she died. She was knowledgeable, well-organized, and highly intelligent. Ibn Sabi, The Book of History – Completion of Thabit Ibn Sinan’s Book of History51 With this and another quote from Ibn Qalanisi’s Afterword to the History of Damascus, Himmich begins his reconstruction of the four-year reign of Sitt al-Mulk whom, according to him, the people of Egypt called ‘Mistress of the Kingdom, the Sultana, the Lady of All’ (Sitt al-Mulk wa al-Sulṭāna wa Sayyidat al-Kull).52 Sitt al-Mulk is the beloved of al-Ḥākim’s and her father, al-ʿAzīz, dear to him as well as the elite and common people of Egypt for her intelligence (ʿaql) and composure (razāna) in addition to her beauty (jamāl).53 That she is ‘reasonable’ and behaves ‘sanely’ – ghazīrat

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 124

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

125

al-ʿaql54 (rendered by Allen as ‘highly intelligent’ above, ʿaqluhā wa razānatuhā,55 tanẓur bimā uʿṭiyat min al-ʿaqli wa r-razāna)56 – is repeated several times. She is, at first glance at least, the opposite of al-Ḥākim in temperament and conduct. He is mad, struck by melancholy, while she is endowed with reason. Even her initial support of al-Ḥākim is considered ‘one of the clearest signs of her intelligence and composure’ (min āyāti taʿaqqulihā wa razānatihā).57 She ‘did not begin to feel aversion and hatred towards her brother, though without letting this bitter feeling make her lose her intelligence and composure (dūna an yufqida hādhā sh-shuʿūru l-marīru ʿaqlahā wa razānatahā)’,58 even though ‘eventually she became all too aware of his tyrannical moods and bloodthirsty instincts’.59 The unravelling of Sitt al-Mulk as a despot in Himmich’s refashioning of her character and rule is part of his semiotics of tyranny. Madness (junūn) and reason (ʿaql), I have already explained, make an odd couple in Arabic epistemology. They are not necessarily diametrically opposed in Arabic poetics of love. Rather, they show each other up in order to accentuate their need for each other in any process of comprehension, here, of tyranny. The pairing of al-Ḥākim and Sitt al-Mulk in the way Himmich does in his interrogation of tyranny merits a closer examination. For despite their obvious differences, as I have already alluded to, they are in the final analysis two faces of the same despotism. They are like the siblings or cousins from pre-modern Arabic storytelling, especially The 1001 Nights, familiar to us not only in their original incarnations but also in their reincarnations in the Arabic novel. I have already shown how Shahrayār and Shāhzamān, Shahrazād and Dunyāzād, Sharrkān and Ḍaww al-Makān, Ḍaww al-Makān and Nuzhat al-Zamān, ʿAzīz and ʿAzīza, al-Asʿad and alAmjad, to name but a few, represent two different facets of the same thing in the imagining and managing of ‘nation’, whether in the form of kingdom or empire. Himmich’s al-Ḥākim and Sitt al-Mulk work in a similar fashion. They represent two forms of rule, one dictated by madness and another determined by sanity. They are, however, unable to resist the allure of power and succumb equally to tyranny. For political authority, Himmich has already informed us at the start in the mad language of al-Ḥākim, is by definition tyranny. Madness and sanity are two sides of the same coin when tyranny is omnipresent. The edifice of Sitt al-Mulk’s sanity is all too fragile. Her aura is always marred by reports of desire, circulated in love poetry extolling her beauty, if not rumours of improper sexual conduct. In the final confrontation between al-Ḥākim and Sitt al-Mulk, the brother bursts out in anger,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 125

11/12/2012 16:28

126

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

And how do you dare to claim responsibility for this house? . . . Talk to me instead about your own house. You’ve turned it into a brothel. You allow men and lovers to come there and enjoy your favours and your accursed body. I’ve heard that a lewd poet with whom you’ve been consorting has even written a poem that begins, ‘How oft I have sighed at a bosom that brought a wayfarer such luscious food!’ not to mention similar outrages. As your brother, I should have kept you cloistered once you had attained puberty; that was when your lustful bosom started to bloom, and the obedient and innocent main in you died forever.60 The way Himmich has written her death scene is even more poignant, especially in comparison with Ibn Qalanisi’s simple account quoted above. One spring evening when the sun had almost set, Sitt al-Mulk was sitting in the most beautiful part of her gardens and communing with nature. Her eyes glowed and her complexion shone with sheer emotion; a gentle, scented breeze was toying with her hair and every part of her body. At that moment she closed her eyes and surrendered to a strange, God-inspired sleep. No sooner had she fallen into its embrace that a group of named and barefoot poets appeared, each of them reading from his own poetry and demanding from her body a touch or a kiss in exchange. They all fell silent and receded when the master poet among them appeared and recited the following line: O love of my life, have pity, for love of you I burn on fire. Then the master of masters burst on the sent to recite his line of love: For love you letters within my heart have been tilted with tears and sleeplessness. Lastly there arrived a thin poet. With great merriment he sang a poem fragment to the accompaniment of a chorus of transvestites who repeated the chorus while pinching anyone who objected: My fault in loving you I cannot, cannot see! That my goal is to please you That seems good, so good to me! If you choose to torture me, I care not, care not! The poets kept topping each other’s efforts in both poetry and drinking till they were all equally drunk and rowdy. They then started hugging and kissing each other, exchanging victory medals, and prancing around singing over and over gain, ‘That seems good, so good to me!’

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 126

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

127

The way the poets were making a huge row around Sitt al-Mulk and fighting each other to get hold of her only came to an end with the rapid arrival of the senior officials and generals of the state: Ibn Dawwas, Khatir al-Mulk, and al-Druzi. They rudely drove the poets away and started to strip Sitt al-Mulk of her clothes, grabbing, fondling, and kissing her body as they did so. Having decided to have sex with her, they all wanted to go first, whereupon they all started cursing and swearing at each other. They tried casting lots, but nobody won. Then they took up their swords and started fighting. The winner was al-Husayn ibn Dawwas, the Kutami chief. No sooner had he recovered his breath and savored the moment of victory than he started taking his clothes off and preparing to leap on top of Sitt al-Mulk’s naked body and rape her as an act of revenge. He mounted her and started pressing down, but she kept resisting and calling out for help. Almost at once Nasim, the Security Chief, arrived on the scene along with Ibn Miskin, the Chief Lancer, and a contingent of slaves. They pulled Ibn Dawwas off their mistress and dealt him a series of deadly blows. The slaves then did obeisance to her and approached her on their knees. They too leapt on top of her in a crushing mass: one of them was kissing her limbs, another was squeezing her breasts, and still another was rubbing himself against her – all with devout blessings. All but Ibn Miskin could do was to take spears to them and leave them either dead or wounded. When Nasim noticed signs of lechery in Ibn Miskin’s expression as well, he grabbed his spear and killed him . . . Now only Nasim and Sitt al-Mulk remained in this place now crammed with the dead and dying. Night was bidding adieu to its last shadows, and only the groans of the dying disturbed the quiet of an elemental silence. Within this final circle of Sitt al-Mulk’s dream Nasim stood in front of her and stripped. ‘The keeper of all secrets, my lady, the victor in every battle, and yet a eunuch! As you see, I am unable to serve you. Being myself at the point of death, I can no longer conceal from you the degree of my love and passion for you. You are the one I adore, my cause and my guide in this life and on the Day of Resurrection. It is this secret burning inside my heart that has impelled me to do away with all your lovers, one after the other, and to rescue you from all those who shared knowledge of the way you arranged al-Hakim’s murder. Now you must kill my secret by killing me. Otherwise I shall reveal your secret and then kill myself.’

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 127

11/12/2012 16:28

128

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Sitt al-Mulk did not utter a word. Her stomach was upset, her heart was palpitating, and she had difficulty breathing, as though she too were suffering death agonies. Faced with such a determined silence Nasim approached her and emptied a vial of poison into her mouth and another one into his own. He lay down beside her, suckling from her breast and awaiting the advent of the angel of death. Next morning, the seventh day of spring in A.H. 414, Sitt al-Mulk’s dead body was discovered, locked in its eternal slumber and looking like one of the houris of paradise. Her hair had turned white, and lines had begun to appear on her face, lending her visage an even greater nobility and radiance.61 Himmich seems to tap into Arabic poetics of love, consciously or unwittingly, in his summation of Sitt al-Mulk’s public and political career. In her dream, which anticipates her death, Sitt al-Mulk’s subconscious seems to confirm al-Ḥākim’s view of her as an embodiment of sexual desire, as both giver and recipient of sexual favours. This desire, at this point in the novel, is more than simply sexual. It is rather wrapped around power. Sex and power, in Himmich’s semiotics of tyranny, are inseparable. While the poets who sing her praises, ostensibly of her physical beauty, are in charge of the propaganda machine that would give her an aura of mystery and perhaps even moral superiority – for she has by now gained the reputation of being a ‘sane’ ‘mistress of all’ as opposed to her brother’s mad conduct – the officials and generals are responsible for her acquiring, maintaining and monopolising power. More crucially, it is her power that elicits such responsive obeisance to her wishes and commands. The poets, slaves, officials and generals, who cannot resist her sexual allure, are more in awe of her position of power. They rush to her service because they too want power. The few lines of poetry quoted at the beginning of this dream sequence, ‘O love of my life, have pity, for love of you I burn on fire’ and ‘My fault in loving you I cannot, cannot see!/That my goal is to please you That seems good, so good to me!/If you choose to torture me, I care not, care not!’, are expressive of the love for power that escalates into action, when all, the poets, slaves, officials and generals, want to make love to her. As they kill each other off, we come to the realisation that this dream sequence re-enacts the history of bloodshed unleashed by Sitt al-Mulk in order for her to consolidate her power. Nasīm’s final words to her say as much. The catch is that for her to maintain power she must die, otherwise she would come to the same end as al-Ḥākim; she must face the demise

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 128

11/12/2012 16:28

129

Semiotics of Tyranny

of her ‘state of tyranny’ once the secrets of her machinations for the sake of power are revealed. Her sudden death spares her of this fate, and this distinguishes her rule from that of al-Ḥākim in my reading of Himmich’s biography of tyranny structured around the interplay between al-Ḥākim’s madness and Sitt al-Mulk’s sanity. CREATIVE MADNESS

There is no escape from the regime of signs that structures power or our response to it; it is everywhere and, more importantly, it shapes the subject. Seen from this perspective, the existential angst, or sense of alienation, born out of a subject’s failure to identify with the nation-state becomes easily comprehensible. Without this identification, the subject is in danger of never taking shape and of being doomed to forever yearn for a union with a ‘state of fantasy’. Such a sense of alienation is felt equally by the sane and the mad. Alienation is the Arab subject’s state-of-being. The Arabic poetics of love tells us this. We have seen the result of political disappointment in the Palestinian subject: every Palestinian writer has experienced and written about the divided self. There is another twist. At one level, identification with the nation-state is not always desirable, for ultimately the subject, if it were to be free, must have desire, and identification would stifle desire. At another level, too much desire leads to madness. There is yet another ontological dimension that is perhaps even more poignant epistemologically. It is living with the knowledge that there can be no way of transcending tyranny and there is nothing anyone can do about it – even if the subject wishes, it can never transcend its own tyranny. The subject is always divided between its own despotic inclinations and its desire to find a line of escape, to free life of oppression. Himmich tells us here that this is a common Arab experience, for the subject is alienated from the nation-state, a tyrannical state in modern disguise, as political authority is incapable of transcending despotism, or from itself, if it were to pursue a line of escape from tyranny. The ontological impasse created in Arabic poetics of love can, however, be quite self-serving. It has a keen interest in the divided subject, in madness, in ensuring that the subject is in permanent exile, always drowning in alienation and never experiencing the enigma of arrival. For the mad will go on looking for the original home, while the sane make do with the new one. Madness is the trope through which poetics speaks not only of political oppression and individual liberty but also of literary creativity. It

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 129

11/12/2012 16:28

130

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

is about finding freedom from the regimes of signs inherent in language, literature and poetry. Darwīsh declares at the peak of madness during the siege of Beirut: ‘I have turned into words’,62 then invites himself to ‘block the blockade with madness’,63 or to resist terror, siege and war with poetry. Madness, as an effect and affect of a subject’s total loss of control, of its permanent alienation from itself, is the source spring of creativity. A poem is created and new writing is born when madness hits a high note.64 For a new language may only be born in madness, in the absence of language, or more aptly here, of the old language, a totalitarian semiological system that shapes and is shaped by a long history of abstraction of lived experiences. I want to return here to the idea that madness and sanity are an odd couple in literary and cultural expressions, as Adam Phillips puts it in Going Sane, in ‘the theatre of language; they never quite do what they should for each other’. We have seen that they ‘don’t function as true contraries’, ‘unlike most oppositional or related terms’.65 ‘As categories’, Phillips explains, ‘one is too full and one is too empty’.66 While the mad, when not pathologised as dysfunctional and dangerous, ‘have traditionally been idealized, if not glamorized, as inspired; as being in touch . . . with powers and forces and voices for which everyone else is more or less excluded . . . the mad, like lovers and poets, have privileged access to essential truths; they are the heroes and heroines of what they can bear. Scapegoated and idolized as oracles and irritants, as geniuses and fools, as artists and frauds, they are represented as at worst provocative and disturbing and at best uniquely illuminating’,67 the sane may be considered dull,68 compliant and submissive, mindful of social and professional success,69 law-abiding, sensible, and self-possessed.70 Madness excites but sanity ‘bores us, and gives us pleasure only when it is mocked’71 because madness as a spectacle, madness as a terror and as a fascination – the sense of being possessed or driven or haunted by something alien and unfamiliar in oneself – has dominated our descriptions of what it is to be a person. We have tended to believe, or have wanted to believe, that there is something inside us – it can be called God or the gods, or the soul, or instincts, or the unconscious, or the ancestors, or our histories – that is in excess of our conscious designs for ourselves. And, madness, more than sanity, is of a piece with this repertoire of commanding presences under whose aegis, in this picture, we believe that we live. We are part of something not only more powerful

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 130

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

131

than ourselves, but also quite different in kind from ourselves as we imagine ourselves to be.72 ‘Madness may horrify us’, Phillips explains further, ‘but passion, strange eccentricity, careless and careful transgression – all the ingredients of modern individualism, of life lived to the full – are what fascinates us’.73 Both madness and sanity are paradoxes for both ‘can refer to what we most treasure about ourselves, and to what most horrifies us about ourselves’74 at the same time. ‘Because what is at stake here is precisely how we describe what we most value about ourselves, which includes, of course, the histories of how we have come to our conclusions about things; our conclusions about what we must – or want ourselves to – be made of’.75 Madness is privileged in the theatre of language because it ‘hits on things . . . prosperously’76 – Hamlet’s madness, for example, ‘is more poetic, more suggestive, more evocative, more flaunting of its verbal gifts and talents than mere sanity’77 – and, more importantly, because it allows our more pregnant conceptions to be free78 and makes us ‘more of a piece with our “deeper, truer” inner selves, less estranged from what really gives our lives value’.79 Let me return to Darwīsh again. I want to use him one more time as my guide to the complex life of madness in Arabic literary expressions and explore the ways in which madness, as a trope, allows him to transcend the epistemological and ontological impasse resultant from the impossibility of subject’s identification with the nation-state and take advantage of the notion of the split subject to not only address literary creativity but also to find a new poetic language. I begin with a quote from ‘Khudh al-qaṣīda ʿannī’ (Take poetry away from me), a letter he wrote to Samīḥ al-Qāsim from Paris in 1986, as part of the public exchange of letters between a poet in exile, Darwīsh, and another who lived under Israeli occupation, al-Qāsim.80 Take poetry away from me, my dear, for an innovator now finds what he innovates intolerable, and a creator what he creates unbearable. Where will you find honey? Where will I find hope? Please take poetry away from me, for I can no longer bear beauty’s deceptiveness any longer. I cannot stand the power of language which pushes us into a tight corner only to open up for it, not for us, the heroism of horizon. I cannot abide the power of language which changes nothing but the speaker’s relationship with himself. Take poetry away from me for

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 131

11/12/2012 16:28

132

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

a little while and tell me about the map of the desert, for here we are, counting our migrations at a moment when we are given a short respite between two migrations.81 We see in this passage Darwīsh’s contradictory feelings about the political efficacy of poetry. He is not certain that poetry actually has a role to play in Palestinian resistance to Israel occupation. Such feelings are relevant to Darwīsh’s paradoxical position towards his status as Palestinian national poet as well. He is asking al-Qāsim and, more importantly, himself two overlapping questions. First, what can poetry do in the face of military occupation? The power of poetry may deceive one into believing that to continue to write poetry under occupation is resistance, but in truth such resistance achieves very little in terms of removing this military occupation. And, second, does the status of national poet not in reality place him in a prison-house built especially for him from the political expectations of the Palestinian collective? He is required to always speak on behalf of the Palestinians, state their presence and identity, express their fears and hopes, make their demands, and record their history? What does a national poet do with individuality and creativity, two of the most cherished qualities of any literary expression worthy of attention? How does a national poet meet the expectations of his nation without giving up his own voice? This is the same dilemma contemporary Arab novelists have to face as well. Is there room for originality in the face of the massive politicisation of Arabic literature? And, perhaps even more important, how is a modern writer, poet or novelist to manage the anxiety of influence from, as Harold Bloom would say, very strong forefathers? In an interview with ʿAbduh Wāzin, Darwīsh speaks of two principles: ‘I feel that I am always in need of a new poetic language that makes a poem as poetic as possible. I try to lessen the pressure the historical moment places on the aesthetics of poetry without abandoning the historical condition’; ‘I am obsessed with the idea that I have not written what I really want to write. You will ask me what I want to write and I will tell you that I do not know. My journey is to the poetic known in search of a poet able to transcend its historical moment and realizes the conditions of living in another time’.82 This requires that the poet ‘revives language that has become familiar and ordinary’ in a way that simultaneously respects and rebels against ‘its memory, system, structure, history and heritage’.83 Darwīsh fleshes out these two principles eloquently in his homage to al-Sayyāb. Al-Sayyāb, the moderniser of Arabic poetry, achieved two

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 132

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

133

things: he created a national myth for the collective while maintaining his own individual voice; and he defamiliarised the Arabic poetic language without making it unfamiliar.84 The creative process in poetry, according to Darwīsh, involves managing but at the same time maintaining the tension between two contradictory impulses in three sets of paradoxes: expressing historical reality while transcending it; speaking for the collective without sacrificing individual voice; and revolutionising language without losing touch with its structure, memory, history and tradition. The split between two extremes of each paradox may be seen as corresponding closely to the split in subject Phillips sees expressed in madness – in the tension between exteriority (society and law) and interiority (what we really value about ourselves). Darwīsh speaks of another dimension of the creative process in Fī ḥaḍrat al-ghiyāb (2006; In the presence of absence), in addition to that generated in the impossibility of identification with Palestinian nation-state despite the overwhelming presence of Palestine in history poetry, in the form of his polarized destiny: his potential immortality as poet, or perpetual presence in language, and his death, or future absence, as a man.85 More importantly, he sees such splits as the heart and soul of creativity. Creativity is born in the union between two contradictory impulses that necessarily generates tension and further splits. This tension may be spoken of only in the language of love, of the love-mad, of wanting to become two in one while maintaining individual freedom, of becoming master and slave at the same time,86 but never achieving the union and condemned to live forever in alienation and longing, like Majnūn Laylā. However, this longing is paradoxically the fountain of creativity. Darwīsh speaks of this in Sarīr al-gharība (1998; In bed with a stranger),87 a collection of love poems unadulterated by politics. I want to draw attention to ‘Qināʿ li Majnūn Laylā’ (A mask for Majnūn Laylā), especially the ways in which Darwīsh addresses the question of literary creativity. I found a mask, so I liked that I can become my other. I was less than thirty years old, thinking the boundaries of existence were words. And I was sick with Laila like any other young man when salt beams in his blood. When she wasn’t present as body she was the soul’s image in everything. Drawing me closer

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 133

11/12/2012 16:28

134

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

to the orbits of planets. Distancing me from life on earth. She is neither death nor is she Laila. ‘I am you, Laila, there must be a blue void for the endless embrace.’ The river doctored me when I threw myself to the river as suicide, but a passerby brought me back, so I asked: Why do you give me back the air and prolong my death? He said: To know yourself better. . . Who are you? I said: I am Qyss Laila, and you? He said: I am her husband And we walked together in Granada’s alleys Remembering our days in the Gulf. . . painlessly Remembering our days in the faraway Gulf I am Qyss Laila A stranger to my name and to my time I do not shake absence like a palm tree trunk to push away loss, or to bring back the air on the ground of Najd. But I – and the faraway is as it has been on my shoulder – am Laila’s voice to her heart so let there be a wilderness for the gazelle other than my path to her unknown. Shall I diminish her desert to expand my night For two stars on her path to unite us? I only see on my road to her love a yesterday amusing with my ancient poetry the sleepiness of caravans in her night, and lighting the Silk Road with my ancient wound. Perhaps commerce also has a need for what I am in. I am of those who die when they love. Nothing is further than my name from the Jahili ode and nothing is further than my language from the prince of Damascus. I am the first of losers. I am the last dreamers and faraway’s slave. I am a being who never was. And I am an idea for the poem

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 134

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

135

without land or body without father or son I am Qyss Laila, I am and I am . . . no one!88 Darwīsh returns here to the theme of love with an improper stranger – Qays’s love for a married woman, Laylā – but not to speak of the impossibility of a Palestinian nation-state but of the possibility of literary creativity born out of a permanent sense of loss, ‘I am the first of losers’, and alienation, ‘I am Qyss Laila, a stranger to my name and to my time’, ‘I am a being who never was’. Laylā is not a woman but his own other, the other half of his divided self, through the search for whom in ‘Granada’s alleys’, ‘Silk Road’ and ‘the ground of Najd’, he would find himself, ‘an idea for the poem without land or body, without father or son’, and a language freed from the ‘Jahili ode’ and ‘the prince of Damascus’. The creative process he allegorises in his retelling of the Majnūn legend smacks of his homage to al-Sayyāb, and of the key theoretical principle informing intertextuality in the Arabic novel: to ground writing in the Arabic literary heritage and transcend it at the same time, as we have seen in the preceding chapters. Himmich speaks of ‘authentic writing’ (al-kitāba al-aṣīla) as putting forms and styles of writing inherited from the past to the test of change (maḥakk al-taghyīr), so it may be enriched with added modern values (qiyam al-ḥadātha al-muḍāfa).89 Literary, as well as epistemological, heritage becomes the raw material for new literary works. Majnūn al-ḥukm, as I have shown, is Himmich’s rewriting of history informed by modern comprehension of the past and, more importantly, of the workings and effects of power. The openness of the novel as a literary form allows him complete freedom to roam in the past only to open up in it a new vista to the present. ‘My first novel, Majnūn al-ḥukm, is not an historical novel per se’, Himmich explains in his essay on ‘Thaqāfat al-riwāya’ (Cultural heritage of the novel), ‘for I did not build my writing on a narrative plan faithful to chronology or familiar historical periodization, or on strict adherence to any historical material’.90 He rather turned to his imagination and let it set the events in the realm of the possible (al-muḥtamal wa l-mumkin) in order to achieve artistry for the novel and at the same time fill the gaps left wide open in historiography.91 The purpose in rewriting history, especially in the form of a novel, is to ask new questions of the past and to re-imagine the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 135

11/12/2012 16:28

136

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

ways in which the various realms of life, such as the quotidian and love, intersect with political authority, all for the sake of making the workings of political authority transparent, comprehensible and accessible.92 History, or the material on the past inherited from the past, is for Himmich the ‘mask’ for/of Majnūn Laylā Darwīsh wears when speaking of the present and of the need to escape the present conditions of his living, as a human being, and of his creativity, as an artist. Madness is both subject and mechanism of creative writing. The paradoxical attitude towards the past, the obsessive engagement with it and the flagrant disregard for its rules, is a form of madness that allows the subject to find a line of escape from the despotic regime of signs inherent in language, literary tradition and cultural heritage. NOTES 1. Ibrahim Muhawi, ‘Introduction’, Memory for Forgetfulness (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), pp. xx–xxi. 2. Ibid. p. xxiv. 3. Ibid. pp. xxiv–xxv. 4. References are made to the original Arabic edition of Dhākira li l-nisyān which appeared in Al Karmel, 21–2 (1986), pp. 4–96. Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 20; Muhawi, Memory, p. 37. 5. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 22; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 40–1. 6. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 37; Muhawi, Memory, p. 68. 7. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 25; Muhawi, Memory, p. 46. 8. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 24–37; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 45–69. 9. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 47; Muhawi, Memory, p. 89. 10. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 92; Muhawi, Memory, p. 174. 11. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 69. 12. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 76; Muhawi, Memory, p. 147. 13. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 78; Muhawi, Memory, p. 151. 14. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 69. 15. Ibid. pp. 27 and 82. 16. Ibid. p. 70. 17. Muhawi, Memory, p. 134. 18. Ibid. p. 127. 19. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 66. 20. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 68; Muhawi, Memory, p. 131. 21. Bin-Sālim Ḥimmīsh (Bensalem Himmich), Al-khaldūniyya fī ḍaw falsafat al-tārīkh (Cairo: al-Majlas al-Aʿlā li Thaqāfa, 2006), p. 11. 22. Ibid. pp. 17–22.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 136

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

137

23. Ibid. pp. 135–45. 24. Ibid. pp. 145–71. 25. Bensalem Himmich, The Theocrat, tr. Roger Allen (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005) [original: Bensalem Himmich, Majnūn al-ḥukm (London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1990)]. 26. Himmich, Al-khaldūniyya, p. 33. 27. Collected in Gilles Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, ed. David Lapoujade, translated into English by Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (New York, NY: Semiotext(e), 2007), pp. 11–16. 28. Ibid. p. 12. 29. Ibid. pp. 11–12. 30. Ibid. p. 12. 31. Ibid. p. 12. 32. Ibid. p. 11. 33. Ibid. p. 13. 34. Ibid. p. 13. 35. Ibid. p. 14. 36. Ibid. p. 15. 37. Ibid. p. 16. 38. Ibid. p. 13. 39. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 15; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 7. 40. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 16; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 8. 41. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 17. Allen’s translation of this sentence, ‘Concerning the nature of Politics and Tyranny’ (The Theocrat, p. 9) is erroneous. 42. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 18; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 9. 43. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 18; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 9. 44. Himmich, Al-khaldūniyya, p. 151. 45. Ibid. pp. 151–9. 46. Ibid. pp. 159–63. 47. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 169; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 126. 48. Himmich, Majnūn, pp. 145–6; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 107. 49. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 247; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 188. 50. Himmich, Al-khaldūniyya, p. 164. 51. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 231; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 176. 52. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 233; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 177. 53. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 235; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 179. 54. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 231. 55. Ibid. p. 235. 56. Ibid. p. 236. 57. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 236; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 179. 58. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 236. Allen’s translation, ‘Sitt al-Mulk never displayed aversion or hatred toward her brother; any such bitter sentiments would have

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 137

11/12/2012 16:28

138

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel had a negative impact on her intelligence and composure’ (The Theocrat, p. 179), does not quite convey the meaning of the Arabic original. Himmich, Majnūn, p. 236; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 179. Himmich, Majnūn, pp. 239–40; Allen, The Theocrat, p. 182. Himmich, Majnūn, pp. 260–3; Allen, The Theocrat, pp. 199–201. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 27; Muhawi, Memory, p. 51. Darwīsh, Dhākira, pp. 32, 71; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 59, 118. Darwīsh, Dhākira, p. 35; Muhawi, Memory, pp. 64–5. Adam Phillips, Going Sane (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005), p. 45. Ibid. p. 45. Ibid. pp. 40–1. Ibid. p. 21. Ibid. p. 28. Ibid. p. 70. Ibid. p. 47. Ibid. p. 49. Ibid. p. 47. Ibid. p. 31. Ibid. pp. 31–2. Ibid. p. 21. Ibid. p. 21. Ibid. p. 24. Ibid. p. 28. I refer to the collected letters published as Al-rasāʾl (Beirut: Dār al-ʿAwda, 1986). Al-rasāʾil, p. 64. ʿAbduh Wāzin, Maḥmud Darwīsh: al-gharīb yaqaʿ ʿalā nafsih: qirāʿa fī aʿmālih al-jadīda (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 2006), pp. 70–1. Ibid. p. 85. Maḥmūd Darwīsh, ‘Maṭar al-Sayyāb’, a testimony given at the colloquium held in Paris in memory of the thirtieth anniversary of al-Sayyāb’s death, published in Ḥayrat al-ʿāʾid (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes, 2007), pp. 121–130. Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Fī ḥaḍrat al-ghiyāb (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes, 2006), pp. 10–11. Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Ḥālat ḥiṣār (State of siege) (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes, 2002), p. 52. Both the Arabic original and English translation are found in Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly’s Burden, tr. Fady Joudah (Highgreen: Bloodaxe, 2007). ‘Qināʿ li Majnūn Laylā’ from Sarīr al-gharība (1998), translated as ‘A Mask. . . for Majnoon Laila’ and The Stranger’s Bed respectively by Fady Joudah, Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly’s Burden, pp. 96–8.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 138

11/12/2012 16:28

Semiotics of Tyranny

139

89. Bensalem Himmich, ‘Thaqāfat al-riwāya’, Fuṣūl 17: 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 192–207; 192. 90. Ibid. p. 201. 91. Ibid. pp. 201–2. 92. Ibid. p. 203.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 139

11/12/2012 16:28

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 140

11/12/2012 16:28

Chapter 5 HISTORY

NARRATIVISED PAST

The imagination has a history, as yet unwritten, and it has a geography, as yet only dimly seen. History and geography are inextricable disciplines. They have different shelves in the Library, and different offices at the University, but they cannot get along for a minute without consulting the other. Geography is the wife of history, as space is the wife of time. Guy Davenport, ‘The Geography of the Imagination’1 I find Davenport’s pronouncement on the relationship between geography and history tantalisingly appropriate for my exploration of the Arabic novel, for it elegantly sums up a key theoretical principle underpinning any discussion of Arabic narrative and storytelling at the juncture of the transformation from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ in the recent history of Arab culture and literature. Davenport not only places the stake of geography and history in each other, but also opens up the imagination to the forces of geography and history. He allows the imagination to be mapped by our notions of space and time and, more importantly, sees the workings of the mind in spatial and temporal dimensions. The idea is not new. What Davenport says of ‘imagination’ – that even though it is ‘metaphoric’, ‘like all things in time’, it ‘is also rooted in a ground, a geography’2 – has been a familiar, if not dominant ‘motif’ or ‘trope’ in an array of ‘histories’, of science, thought, critical thought, art, literature and culture. Breakthroughs are often explained as premised on the transformation in what Bakhtin would call ‘chronotope’, or a particular conception of time-space continuum. The transformation or, more appropriately, the reconfiguration of this time-space continuum creates new vistas for alternative visions of the 143

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 143

11/12/2012 16:28

144

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

world, of modes of being and, of course, of actions to be taken in response to or maintenance of the newly ‘imagined’ existence. Modernity, the experience of the present that underpins my inquiry of the Arabic novel’s intertextuality with tradition, whether defined as a general state of being in time and timely, or as a transformed European way of life belonging to a specific historical era that developed out of the Enlightenment grounded in a technologised material culture, for example, is no stranger to the chronotope treatment. It is typically subject to the kind of explanation accorded major cultural transformations in the past, such as the European Renaissance and the Enlightenment; that they too are, in part, born out of a transformation of the hitherto familiar notion of the time-space continuum. Writing in general and literature in particular – as cultural artefacts subject to the various and on occasion competing forces of change – are often seen as both product and architect of a new chronotope. They internalise and externalise not only the reconfigured chronotope but also the processes of the reconfiguration; in fact, they take part in the politics of this reconfiguration. Modern texts, literary or otherwise, must, in a sense, necessarily, unavoidably, even wilfully partake in the politics of modernity, driving the processes of modernisation and defining the modern. In doing so, they reveal the complex and intricate ways in which imagination interact with reality. While geography and history exert influence on the workings of imagination, imagination in turn reshapes space and time and restructures their relationship. In the preceding chapters we have caught a glimpse of the ways in which time and space form an inseparable twosome framing how we take stock, think, and articulate our views of the world, as well as how individuals, communities and events are related to this world. The spread and dominance of the nation-state as an alternative vision for structuring and organising community in the Arabic-speaking world, especially in the twentieth century, has left an indelible mark on Arabic writing in general and the Arabic novel in particular. The nation-state, as an episteme, crucially provides the Arabic novel with what Ricoeur would call ‘operative configuring structure’, transforming Arabic aesthetics, giving literary texts shape, providing the impulse for discourse, all the while engaged in mediating the relationship between East and West and past and present. We have seen the enduring presence of Arabic poetics of love, albeit modernised, in the story the Arabic novel tells of the emergence of a modern political community and the rise of modern subject against the odds placed in their path: the wily nature of power, the inclination for tyranny in the human encounter with political authority, and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 144

11/12/2012 16:28

History

145

the hegemony of the past. The past, as we have seen, comes in a variety of forms, each bringing to bear on the present a rather unshakable epistemological paradigm that stifles the kind of hoped-for ontological transformation, such as democratisation of political community and liberation of the individual subject, which require freedom from the stranglehold of, to name but a few examples, monarchy and theocracy in the political organisation of community, patriarchy in social conduct, and imitation (whether of the past or the West) in literary expression. Arabic poetics of love, as I have shown, partake in discourses on political authority, modernity, tradition and, more importantly, artistry, but now within the epistemological and ontological framework given shape by the nation-state. The nation-state is the modern prism through which humanity is contemplated afresh, reassessed and reinvented. The past is rewritten in the process, as part of the re-imagining of community, and history – narratives of the past – comes to be the twin of geography – maps of the nation – and, more importantly, the (hi)story of the nation. This historical impulse in modern, modernist Arabic literary texts is impossible to miss. Poets and novelists alike renarrate the past, often in the language of what came to be known as cultural heritage or tradition, in their narratives of the present, of the nation-state, even when they are at their rebellious best. Qabbānī’s call to total revolution is arguably symptomatic of his helpless obsession with the Arab past he wishes to transcend and transform. I need not repeat my lengthy discussions of the politics of love, desire, nostalgia and madness in the Arabic novel and the ways in which the recurrence of these familiar tropes (inherited from classical Arabic poetics and transformed in modernist Arabic poetry in discourses on the nation’s political authority, modernity, tradition and literary creativity) provides us with alternative vistas to comprehending and articulating the aesthetics of contemporary Arabic storytelling. I want now to pick up from where I left off (Poetics of Love, Chapters 1 and 2) and look at not the spatial configuring structure of the Arabic novel but the temporal traces of the modern chronotope in its narrative itinerary. I will not dwell on poetry here, for there is little to add to what I have already discussed in detail. The impulse to locate the nation-state in ‘time immemorial’ attendant to the imagining of nation or to find roots of all evil of the present in the past in the national allegory has given content to modernist Arabic poetry and shaped both its politics and aesthetic. This poetry has rewritten the past from the perspective of the present, producing a seemingly uninterrupted history of the nation-state and revising the history, as well as cultural heritage and literary tradition, of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 145

11/12/2012 16:28

146

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

each of the geographical regions recently co-opted by the nation-state. The presence of the reshaped past in the present paradoxically gestures towards a hopeful future. We have seen the numerous ways Arab poets summon the past in their discourses on the current affairs of their respective nationstates, particularly Iraq (al-Sayyāb), Egypt (ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr), Lebanon (Ḥawī), Syria (Qabbānī and Adonis) and Palestine (Darwīsh). The shape of the past depends on where they come from, what issues are of immediate urgency to them, and how they see the way forward. The past takes the shape of the present. Paradoxically, the present equally takes the shape of the past. Arab novelists, subscribing to the same set of priorities and strategies, have internalised and externalised Arabic poetics. But they must also contend with an additional set of anxieties in a playing field that is larger than that of poetics. In meeting the challenge of naturalising or domesticating the novel, they have recalled and engaged with a stupendous, diverse narrative tradition, taking the novel into a territory quite alien to its ‘birthplace’ in Europe and at same time inventing a native genealogy and heritage for the Arabic novel. They have redeployed the spatial impulse and mobility inherent in classical geographical literature, travel writings and fiction in their mappings of the nation and allegorising of the affairs of the state. They have canonised vernacular epics and romances in their interrogation of ethics of power, and in their taking to task a legacy of tyranny in cultural institutions and political authority. They have amalgamated autobiography, journey in search of knowledge and travelogue to track and make sense of the Arab experiences of modernity. They have turned to philosophical and Sufi treatises, overlapping them with oral epics and romances, to speak of and come to terms with the burden of the past. They have located literary creativity in the state of disarray of the Arab world, finding solace in and initiating departures from classical stories of wise fools, mad lovers and insane rulers. In all this, these novelists insist on taking part in writing this history of the nation-state and that of the Arabic novel and in the process rewriting the Arab past and Arabic literary history. This persistent historical impulse, combined with the move of the subject to the centre of knowledge and the novel’s penchant for privileging of characters over events, has led to the supremacy of biography in modern fiction. Biography, fictionalised and frequently overlapped with autobiography, also fictionalised, is based on material extracted from historical sources. Majnūn al-ḥukm is Himmich’s novelisation of anecdotes (akhbār), sermons (khuṭab) and letters (rasāʾil) he collected from annals and chronicles

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 146

11/12/2012 16:28

History

147

(tawārīkh) and refashioned into a biography, not of al-Ḥākim bi Amr Allāh but of political authority – no one is immune from the maddening allure of power. Himmich grafts onto al-Ḥākim’s two more biographies, those of Abū Rakwa and Sitt al-Mulk, and gives each character a voice through the delirious rants and prophecies he creates for al-Ḥākim, sermons and behind-closed-door dialogues with confidants for Abū Rakwa, and whispers at secret meetings with co-conspirators, monologues and dreams for Sitt al-Mulk. Himmich’s history of the nation-state – or national allegory – is made up of narratives of the past from the past, as well as narratives of the present disguised as narratives of the past, in which the (hi)story of the collective – history of the nation-state – is told through the lens of the political career of and from the perspective of the individuals in positions of power – biography and autobiography of rulers and, here, leaders of revolution. Himmich is not alone or, for that matter, the first Arab novelist to cast discourses on the present in a form that is premised on the transformation of pre-modern genres of Arabic historiography, including khiṭaṭ topographies, tawārīkh annals and chronicles, tarājim and siyar biographies and autobiographies, and redeployment and subversion of their inherent genre ideologies. Such ideological priorities and narrative strategies are traceable to Arab authors of the nineteenth century. Let me return to the works of ʿAlī Mubārak with which I began my discussion of the impact of the cartography of the nation-state on the textual shape of the novel and the trajectories of its narrative. NOVELISATION OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY

ʿAlam al-Dīn (1882; The sign of religion), Mubārak’s only attempt at fiction, complements the non-fictional works, more particularly, the stupendous topography of Egypt, Al-khiṭaṭ al-tawfīqiyya (1886–9), in mapping Egyptian modernisation and carving out a space for an ‘alternative modernity’. Its cultural and identity politics are, however, in danger of being obscured, veiled by the innocuous ways in which comfortably conventional genres are deployed in the text, especially when read in isolation from other texts. ʿAlam al-Dīn is a lengthy fictional narrative, in almost 1500 pages, of the travels of a religious scholar, to and in France, on his way to England at the invitation of an unnamed English Orientalist, who needs his help with the translation of a famous Arabic lexicon, Lisān al-ʿarab. He never arrives in England. There is no evidence to indicate that Mubārak stopped in the middle and intended to complete the work later.3 The bulk of the book is,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 147

11/12/2012 16:28

148

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

as Wadad al-Qadi points out, ‘dedicated to the narration of the voyage ʿAlamuddīn, accompanied by his young son, Burhānuddīn, took with the Englishman to Europe, first from Cairo to Alexandria by train, then from Alexandria to Marseilles by boat, and then to Paris. The book ends when the company, now enlarged into four, with the introduction of an English sailor on the boat by the name of James, or Yaʿqūb, is still in Paris’.4 The theme, structure and components of the work comprise the kind of ‘Journey to the West’ popular in the nineteenth century that may be read as an ‘Arab discovery of Europe’. Al-Qadi observes, [It] attempts to convey to the Arab readers, the main achievements of modern Europe in the sciences and the arts, to inform them of some sectors of the history of learning in Europe, of the political history of some parts of it, notably France, and to present to them the specific areas of progress in contemporary Europe, particularly the economic area. It also attempts to introduce them to the social structure of European – particularly French – society, its activities, habits, customs and the like.5 Al-Qadi makes sense of the work and its construction from within this perspective of the nineteenth ‘Arab discovery of Europe’: The major part of the book, then, is devoted to a voyage to Europe and a stay in two of its cities, Marseilles and Paris, particularly the latter. This part . . . is divided into chapters, called musāmarāt, each carrying a number. Each musāmara deals with one particular subject called for by the occasion. For example, the first musāmara of the voyage deals with the subject of vapour since the company was taking the train from Cairo to Alexandria . . . Many of the musāmarāt are theoretical in nature, in the form of either discourse between members of the company, or a lecture by one of them to the others . . . Other musāmarāt deal with particular experiences the company underwent, especially during their stay in Europe. Most of the time, these experiences are very vivid, and they are followed by some elaborating discussions about them. Thus we have chapters on cafés, the theatre, the ball, singing, banks, the stock market, and similar subjects.6 Despite its facile conformity to the trend of writings expressive of the wonders that came with the ‘Arab discovery of Europe’, al-Qadi argues,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 148

11/12/2012 16:28

History

149

Mubārak ‘was not simply following a “fashion” ’.7 His choice of ‘fiction’ as a mode of writing allows him to be ‘instructive’, not just ‘informative’, as he implicitly criticises his predecessor al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–73) in Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīz (1834; The Extraction of Pure Gold in the Abridgement of Paris, 2004).8 He is able through fiction to make judgement(s) of both the East and the West by putting the East in direct confrontation with the West.9 His real object is not the West, which is unsurprisingly judged as superior to the East, but the East itself. The purpose is to juxtapose the backward East to the modern West and provide both diagnosis of and prognosis for the East and its aspiration to be modern. Religiosity, al-Qadi contends, is the abiding feature of the East and its moral strength, but the attendant religious tradition, manifest in the material poverty of the East, stands in the way of its progress. Progress in the European style, grounded in science, technology, modern political and social structure, economic prosperity, and knowledge of ‘self’ and ‘other’, may provide lessons to be learned but need not be imported wholesale. The East may pick and choose what is most suitable to its needs for its purposes.10 Termed slightly differently, ʿAlam al-Dīn is a discourse on modernisation that takes for granted the superiority of the West and locates the beginnings of Egyptian modernisation in Westernisation. That Westernisation is at the heart of Mubārak’s discourse on modernisation is also what Gaber Asfour finds in ʿAlam al-Dīn.11 Here, Asfour speaks of ʿAlam al-Dīn as a precursor of the Arabic novel that takes the East-West encounter as its subject. He locates it, as al-Qadi does, in a genre of writing about the voyage to the West, more particularly al-Ṭahṭāwī’s Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz and al-Shidyāq’s Al-sāq ʿalā l-sāq (1855).12 The discourse of modernisation in ʿAlam al-Dīn, as Asfour sees it, is undeniably under the influence of the allure of the West. It is, however, more complex than a simple confrontation between the East and the West. Rather, it straddles a set of polarities. It negotiates between the ‘self’, ‘authentic’ East and the ‘other’, the ‘foreign’ West. It privileges the ‘city’ – Cairo, Marseilles and Paris – as centres of knowledge and progress, over the ‘village’ of ʿAlam al-Dīn – an enclave of relative ignorance and poverty – and compares the ‘old’ and ‘religious education’ of ʿAlam al-Dīn with the ‘new’ and ‘secular education’ of his son Burhān al-Dīn – his name means ‘the proof of religion’ – and shows the drawbacks or advantages of attendant cultural institutions, from al-Azhar in Egypt to the Royal Asiatic Societies and the theatre in Paris. It more significantly polarises Arabic-Islamic heritage into one ‘tradition of imitation and transmission’ and another ‘tradition of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 149

11/12/2012 16:28

150

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

reason’ and places the stake of ‘modernisation’ in the revival of the latter.13 The revival of this ‘tradition of reason’ will allow Arabic-Islamic culture to open itself up to foreign influence, such as Western science and technology as well as ‘progressive’ cultural practices, which will effect a process of cultural transformation. The ‘journey to the West’ is, in this case, a journey of modernisation predicated on the ‘transformation of consciousness’ brought about by travels across place first, where wonders of Western science and technology jolts the travellers into a process of reflection. These are to be followed by travels across time, whereby past moments of ‘enlightenment’ are rediscovered, revivified and mobilised for the purpose of legitimating the present process of modernisation. The centrality of the West in Egyptian modernisation both al-Qadi and Asfour see in ʿAlam al-Dīn is understandably inspired by the career of Mubārak and what he stands for in the history of modern Egypt as one of the key architects of Egyptian modernisation. ʿAlam al-Dīn, as al-Qadi notes, reads too much like a fictionalised autobiography. For Mubārak himself came from a humble religious background in the village of Birinbāl al-Jadīda, as he tells the story in his autobiography integrated into his topography of modern Egypt, Al-khiṭaṭ al-tawfīqiyya. He went to the military school founded during the reign of Muḥammad ʿAlī, travelled to France for further studies (1844–50), then returned to modernise Egypt based on what he saw and learned in the West. There is an array of autointertextual clues in ʿAlam al-Dīn that point the way towards the necessity of reading ʿAlam al-Dīn and Al-tawfīqiyya alongside and against each other. Mubārak takes material for his fiction from the same sources on which his topographical compendium is based. Even cursory readers of the two works will, despite the divergent genres in which the material is cast, detect easily vast areas of overlap in both subject and material.14 Those who have discussed ʿAlam al-Dīn have pointed out that the work is loosely based on his own autobiography and the biography of a certain Ibrāhīm al-Dusūqī. Both are included in Al-tawfīqiyya: his autobiography in volume 915 and al-Dusūqī’s biography in volume 11.16 Al-Dusūqī’s biography is, however, a direct quotation of an autobiographical essay, maqāla, written by al-Dusūqī himself on his interaction with Edward William Lane.17 It, more importantly, gives an account of his collaboration with Lane, and particularly reading with him a classical Arabic lexicon, Tāj al-ʿarūs. These two ‘life stories’, cast in two distinct genres in Al-tawfīqiyya, are in turn fictionalised, reformulated and recast in yet another genre, now a fictionalised travel narrative modelled on al-Ṭahṭawī’s travels in Europe. Mubārak,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 150

11/12/2012 16:28

History

151

however, integrates and distributes various bits and pieces of information he collects from his various sources into a fictionalised journey made up of two overlapping journeys. It reads like an autobiographical ‘accounts of travels in foreign lands’, a classical form of a genre of travel writing made famous by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, in which form al-Ṭahṭawī recorded his observations of Europe. It also strikes a familiar chord with the ‘journey in search of knowledge’, riḥla fī ṭalab al-ʿilm, another familiar classical genre that finds echoes in al-Ṭahṭawī. ʿAlam al-Dīn is Mubārak’s life-story with a twist. In his autobiography, Mubārak speaks of his religious background in Birinbāl and of his family’s inherited role as the religious authority and ‘judge’ of the village. He also tells the story of how he ran away from home and from the role his father had in mind for him. Instead, he joined the secular schools founded by Muḥammad ʿAlī, graduated as an engineer and was sent to France for two years for further studies. The story of ʿAlam al-Dīn follows a similar trajectory, but instead of coming up against his father’s wishes he is sent by his father to Cairo to complete his education at al-Azhar not one of Muḥammad ʿAlī’s schools. It is his son, Burhān al-Dīn, who pursues a secular education. This story of father and son and their experiences in ‘traditional’ religious education and ‘modern’ secular education intersects with the story of a ‘native’ informant, al-Dusūqī, and an Orientalist scholar, Lane, who is ‘in search of knowledge’ in Cairo. ʿAlam al-Dīn’s travels are, however, modelled not on al-Dusūqī but on al-Ṭahṭawī who, like ʿAlam al-Dīn, came from a background of religious education and was sent as a companion to Muḥammad ʿAlī’s first student delegation to Paris. Al-Dusūqī’s story, however, ends when Lane returns to England. The premise of ʿAlam al-Dīn’s story is on the contrary based on a fictional invitation from the Orientalist to accompany him to England and help with his work there. In this he is more like al-Shidyāq who, albeit absented in the text,18 travelled to Malta to help translate the Bible into Arabic at the invitation of the London-based Bible Translation Society in 1848. ʿAlam al-Dīn is, seen in this light, an amalgamation of Mubārak himself, his father, al-Dusūqī and al-Ṭahṭāwī, and even al-Shidyāq. This fictive construction of factual material opens up the generic boundaries of topography, travelogue, biography, autobiography and essay and creates a new textual space. In this newly created space dialogues can take place across ideologies, generations and cultures hitherto suppressed by the paradigms of knowledge implicit in and governing each genre. The subject of the dialogues, Mubārak’s critics have all remarked, is the role of the West in the modernisation of the East but perhaps not in the simple terms

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 151

11/12/2012 16:28

152

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

of polarisation. It is not a case of pitting the inferiority of the East against the superiority of the West, or of casting the East in the role of a student of the West. The dialogues are the site on which a community (Egypt) in the process of being imagined grapples with the fraught-with-tension cultural borrowings from new colonising cultures (British and French) as it extricated itself from another, older colonising power (Ottoman). In a situation where cultural exchange and change are invested in political authority, the paradox of resistance to and acceptance of the ‘fruits’ of new colonisation is also negotiated in these dialogues. This question is contemplated: what would be the benefit of being extracted from one empire in order to be absorbed into another? Attendant to the untidy encounter between two forms of empire, the Islamic community during the last throes of the Ottoman Caliphate and the ascendant European power in the form of British and French empires, is reterritorialisation of geography and remapping of political and cultural spaces. Both Al-tawfīqiyya and ʿAlam al-Dīn partake in the politics of reterritorialisation of geography and remapping of political and cultural spaces, each following its own agenda but in such a way that they complement each other. Al-tawfīqiyya carves out a new political space on the grounds of a ‘colonial’ territory, and ʿAlam al-Dīn opens up this political space to novel cultural configurations, all the while responding to colonial discourses on Egypt and on modernisation. In their internalisation of the discourses of change, of modernisation, current in nineteenth-century Europe and Egypt, they in turn create a space where dialogues, debates and negotiations about ‘what is modern?’ can take place. Together they take part in a two way process of ‘national imagining of a political community’ and ‘dialogically imagining a democratic space’. ʿAlam al-Dīn’s novelisation of Al-tawfīqiyya is a manifestation both of the potential for ‘an aesthetic for democracy’ inherent in the novel as a narrative form and the limitation in this regard of the traditional narrative genres it has absorbed. These traditional genres can be imprisoned, as it were, in the inherited paradigms of knowledge informing their choice and ordering of subject matter, textual composition and narrative trajectory. As an open form that absorbs dialogically other genres into its discourse in a culture of heteroglossia, the novel quotes these genres while preserving their voices and allowing them to converse with each other and with the meta-discourse that has mastered them. Novelisation, in this instance, more particularly transforms the ‘contact zone’, as delineated by Pratt, into a ‘public sphere’, as theorised by Habermas,19 where ‘public’ resistance to colonial discourses is mounted and an ‘alternative modernity’

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 152

11/12/2012 16:28

153

History

is proposed, and free exchange of all kinds can take place. At the same time, it writes the (hi)story of this newly imagined community. MUSĀMARISATION OF THE NOVEL

ʿAlam al-Dīn is, it is possible to argue, a ‘novel’ structured as a series of dialogues termed musāmarāt. The use of this term as paratext signals that the stories told in the text are cast in traditional forms. Musāmara is an interactive verbal noun derived from samar, which means night-time storytelling. Its plural, asmār, is consistently paired with another term, khurāfāt, in Al-fihrist by the famous tenth-century bookseller and bio-bibliographer Ibn al-Nadīm (363–7).20 Khurāfa, singular of khurāfāt, denotes fictional stories, in fact, more often than not fantastic tales told for the purpose of entertainment. The stories of The Thousand and One Nights, for example, are included in this category. Musāmara means, as implied by the interactive verbal form in which it is cast, ‘exchange of stories’. But what are the stories being exchanged here, who is doing the exchange, and for what purpose? And what is put at stake in this ‘exchange of stories’? More importantly, how does the ‘exchange of stories’ create and transform space? The answers to these questions are perhaps best explored in looking closely at the fictional characterisation of ʿAlam al-Dīn, the protagonist of a fictionalised ‘journey to the West’, amalgamated from Mubārak’s autobiography and al-Dusūqī’s autobiographical essay masquerading as biography. Al-Dusūqī’s encounter with Lane, as I have already noted, forms the kernel of the story of ʿAlam al-Dīn, a similarly impoverished graduate of al-Azhar. He is recommended to a British Orientalist who needs an Arabic scholar to help him with his work, however; their collaboration will require him to travel to Britain. ʿAlam al-Dīn leaves Egypt and takes his son, Burhān al-Dīn, with him. The technological achievements (trains and steamboats), natural phenomena (volcano), efficient services (post), architectural monuments (palaces), cultural institutions (theatre), public spaces (streets, public gardens, restaurants, cafes) and people they meet and strangers they see, as discussed earlier, are all prompters for a musāmaratype exchange of stories, of knowledge. Within this broader framework of exchange, of stories and of knowledge, two types of exchange are relevant to the topic at hand: ʿAlam al-Dīn’s dialogues with the European Orientalists on the one hand, and his dialogues with his wife on the other. These dialogues take part in the creation of a ‘public sphere’ through a process of double transformation. As the ‘contact zone’ is turned into the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 153

11/12/2012 16:28

154

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

site of a dialogic encounter between coloniser and colonised, it also comes to be subject to privatisation or, put differently, it opens up the public space to the influence of private space, and the domestic space to public gaze. ʿAlam al-Dīn takes on a French colonial officer at the house of the president of the Royal Asiatic Society in Paris before a roomful of Orientalists21 preceding his lecture on Arabic poetry.22 When ʿAlam al-Dīn finds out that this French officer went to Egypt as a member of Napoleon’s campaign and that he actually likes Egypt and Egyptians, he tells him of what he remembers from his father’s discussion of the unrest and chaos during the French occupation of Egypt. The dialogue quickly turns into a debate when the Frenchman assigns all blame to the Mamluks who, according to him, instigated the local inhabitants and the Arabs against the French. The French, this Frenchman asserts, only went into Egypt with the support and cooperation of Egyptian notables and religious scholars to reform Egypt and help the Egyptians fight against the tyranny and corruption of the Mamluks. The evidence of French good intentions, he adds, may be found in Napoleon’s strict orders to maintain peace in Cairo and to work with Egyptians and, more importantly, in the way the French re-planned the city, restored order by policing the streets day and night, and built hospitals.23 ʿAlam al-Dīn takes on the Frenchman and gives a point-by-point rebuttal. The Egyptians had to fight the French, ʿAlam al-Dīn argues, because it was the duty of all Egyptians to defend their homeland against invading foreign forces. As for the notables, they had to work with the French occupying force in order to prevent further bloodshed. The French were no better than the Mamluks; they robbed, stole, looted and killed, causing even more mayhem in the already chaotic country. More importantly, they destroyed many mosques, violated their sanctity and persecuted the religious scholars.24 The occasion of the debate serves too as an opportunity for ʿAlam al-Dīn to give his son a private lesson on the destructive measures the French took during their occupation of Egypt. They imposed heavy taxes on practically everything. When the Egyptians took up arms to resist, the French shelled residential houses, quarters and mosques indiscriminately. They more particularly targeted al-Azhar. Once they had the free run of the city, they brought destruction to whatever came their way when they went in at night. They entered al-Azhar in their shoes and with their weapons, used the courtyard as their stable, and pulled books out of their shelves, in fact, ruined thousands of invaluable volumes in the process. They divided the city into akhṭāṭ (another plural for khiṭṭa) and imposed even more stringent

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 154

11/12/2012 16:28

History

155

taxes on the people who lived within the borders of these ‘tax districts’.25 They confiscated the properties of those citizens who could not meet their tax payments and sold them in public auctions. In their reordering of old Cairo, the French demolished the al-Ḥusayniyya Quarter, including the alleys, mosques, public bath-houses, shops, houses and tombs located outside the city gates of al-Futūḥ (conquests) and al-Naṣr (victory). They did not allow the original owners to remove anything from the sites; in fact, they took away tiles and wood from the properties and used them in building their own houses. Whatever leftover debris there was, they bundled up and sold as firewood at an exorbitant price – firewood was dear at the time. And the litany of French abuses goes on.26 The indignation at the French colonisation of Egypt and its policies of control will strike a familiar chord with readers of Al-tawfīqiyya, which contains a similar list of French atrocities.27 What distinguishes Musāmara 93 of ʿAlam al-Dīn is the direct confrontation between the colonised and his coloniser over the colonial narrative of historical events and discourse of modernisation. While the French denied playing any part in the unrest during the three years of their occupation, ʿAlam al-Dīn asserts their decisive and active role in adding fuel to the already burning fire of dissension, against Napoleon’s wishes or not. What the French saw as modernisation, or reform as implied in the Arabic term used in the context, iṣlāḥ, was a set of oppressive measures of control and a series of destructive operations. It means little that neither the Frenchman nor ʿAlam al-Dīn is in the end persuaded by the other. What matters is that the audience, and more particularly, Burhān al-Dīn, suddenly wake up to a contested episode in Egyptian history that has thus far been obscured and come to hear the two opposing narratives of the same historical events as well as the implied notions of modernisation. The narrative makes clear that the French re-planning of old Cairo is not considered modernisation but destruction in the eyes of Egyptians. The pleasure here is taken from the colonised subject’s ability to look the coloniser in the eye and tell him that his so-called ‘civilising mission’ is in effect an act of barbarism. There is, then, equal pleasure to be derived from witnessing ʿAlam al-Dīn’s ‘tour de force’ performance at the Royal Asiatic Society where he gives a lengthy lecture on Arabic poetry followed by a thorough discussion of relevant linguistic and cultural issues. If there is a hint in al-Dusūqī’s ‘autobiographical essay’ that the Orientalists know about Arabic as much as, if not more, than the Arabs themselves, then ʿAlam al-Dīn turns this notion on its head. He asserts in words and action that, after all, the Arabic language and its literary tradition, another

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 155

11/12/2012 16:28

156

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

contested area of knowledge in colonial and counter-colonial discourses, belong to the Arabs and only they possess mastery. But perhaps the real pleasure comes from mastery of the ‘contact zone’ located in and overlapping with the ‘public sphere’, created by and in the print culture of the time. In this space, it is possible to engage with the coloniser in a battle of discourses, so to speak, in which the stake is placed less on winning the argument but more on dialogue, exchange of views and hearing different voices. For, as we have already glimpsed in the contest between coloniser and colonised over the discourses of modernisation, this is precisely the space where trajectories of modernisation are put forward, debated and mapped. The ‘public sphere’, situated by Habermas between the state authority and individual sovereignty, contains but exceeds the ‘contact zone’. It is characterised by the spilling over of private space into the public as well as its institutionalisation as oriented to an audience. Private individuals, mainly of the bourgeois class, from merchants to technocrats, bureaucrats and artisans, come together to form a public in a space wrenched from direct state control by commerce of the capitalist kind in Europe between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This ‘public sphere’ Habermas speaks of is typically found in the ‘print culture’ where private views, especially those of a political kind, are freely exchanged and debated in public, in coffee-houses, for example, where subscription to newspapers served as the locus of interest for patrons. Most importantly, ‘reason’ is the dominant rule in the game. Arabic print culture of the nineteenth century, of which Al-tawfīqiyya and ʿAlam al-Dīn are a part, is arguably the fertile ground on which a ‘modern national community’ is imagined and a ‘public sphere’ constructed. Imagining a ‘modern national community’ and constructing a ‘public sphere’ are, in this case, necessarily a twin(n)ed process; for it is in the ‘public sphere’ that divergent plans for ‘nation building’ are discussed. The introduction of European technology and the role of education that combines the old and the new in bringing about a condition of ‘modernity’, which lie at the heart of both Al-tawfīqiyya and ʿAlam al-Dīn, are but two streams in an ocean of discourses on modernisation. In this, the two works are the same. They link ‘nation building’ to ‘national liberation’, with its attendant imagining of a pluralistic democratic political community, and situate the ‘modern Egyptian nation’ in the ‘contact zone’, where East meets West. ʿAlam al-Dīn, however, goes even further; it creates a ‘public sphere’ over and above the ‘contact zone’. This is most evident in the instrumental role given to women by ʿAlam al-Dīn in ‘nation building’ and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 156

11/12/2012 16:28

157

History

modernisation. In this the book, as a discourse on modernisation premised on the education of women, was ahead of its time, preceding by more than a decade the two major pioneering works in which the role of women’s education in nation-building is discussed. It appeared twelve years before Zaynab Fawwāz’s biographical dictionary of women, Al-durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr (1891–4; Scattered pearls on the generations of the mistresses of seclusion), and it advocated the education of women seventeen and eighteen years, respectively, before Qāsim Amīn’s Ṭaḥrīr al-marʾa (1899; The liberation of woman, 2000)28 and Al-marʾa al-jadīda (1900; The new woman, 2000).29 It steers away from the question of veiling and a woman’s access to the public space – the space of work and political participation – and focuses on the ways in which her intimate relationship with her husband may have an impact on the public space. Or, put differently, the ways in which restructuring of private space can lead to remapping of public space. PRIVATISATION OF PUBLIC SPACE

Musāmara 5 comprises a lengthy dialogue (muḥāwara) between ʿAlam al-Dīn and his wife, Taqiyya, which serves as a prelude to his ‘journey to the West’.30 Since the death of his father, ʿAlam al-Dīn has brought his three sisters to Cairo in order to care for them. As an impoverished student of al-Azhar, he spends his days going to lessons and his nights reciting the Qurʾān for other people’s occasions. He finds himself unable to look after his sisters, so he marries a friend’s sister. He teaches her everything he knows until she is as learned as he is. Their already modest lifestyle is dealt a severe blow when they have four children. She is no longer able to manage the large household with the meagre income he brings and becomes visibly distressed. When he sees the state she is in, he sits her down and the couple have a genuine ‘heart to heart’ talk. In their conversation, she urges him to seek a better livelihood either by going back to the village or looking for a better source of income. She ‘reasons’ that returning to the village for him to take over the position left vacant by his father’s death will secure a decent income for their family and, more importantly, he will really put his knowledge to good use. He will teach the villagers ignorant of the most basic principles of Islam how to be proper Muslims, whereas in Cairo he is simply reciting the Qurʾān for other people’s occasions and not making a positive contribution to any good cause. If he does not wish to return to the village, he should certainly look for an alternative source of livelihood

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 157

11/12/2012 16:28

158

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

even if it requires him to leave his homeland. There is no shame in securing a living. In fact, she ‘argues’, as a learned man he and his family deserve a comfortable life more than those of lesser knowledge, many of whom are unworthy of their tremendous wealth. It is rather incumbent upon him, as a good Muslim, to live well and provide well for his family. Armed with her ‘reason’, he is ready to accept travel to England for a salary and help with translating Lisān al-ʿarab into English as soon as the Orientalist makes the offer in Musāmara 6.31 He decides to postpone making a decision for one night until he has a chance to consult his trusted colleagues and, more particularly, his wife. In the meantime, his students try to deter him from leaving them by arguing that it is wrong to serve a non-Muslim for a salary, especially if the purpose is to teach him about Islam, and ‘unpatriotic’ to leave the homeland. ʿAlam al-Dīn ‘reasons’ with his students by pointing out that he will not be ‘serving’ the Englishman, but will be teaching him about Islam in the hopes that he will either convert or serve as a spokesman for Islam. Furthermore, he will be serving Arabic, for when the work is published it will be equally beneficial to Arabs and Muslims. In addition, he is responding to a call for help and in Islam help must be given even to infidels when they seek it. But most importantly, he will be leaving his homeland out of love, for he hopes to embark on a ‘journey in search of knowledge’ with the purpose of learning what makes Europe more advanced than Egypt and bring the knowledge back to help his homeland. It is also better to leave the homeland in honour and dignity than live there in poverty and humility. With this, he bids farewell to his students and returns home to ‘talk it over’ with his wife. She is, as expected, understanding and supportive. However, she suggests that he take their eldest, Burhān al-Dīn, with him so that their son will benefit from his teaching and from their travels in Europe. ʿAlam al-Dīn, we already know, takes up her suggestion without any hesitation. Taqiyya, in Mubārak’s characterisation, is a devout woman, as her name implies, who observes all the decorum of being a good Muslim, wife and mother. She is more significantly the epitome of the educated woman portrayed repeatedly in later exemplary biographies, such as Fawwāz, and lengthy polemical essays, such as Amīn. Instead of exemplary women of public life or rhetorical abstraction of women’s role in nation-building, we have here a life situation in which the details of the intimacy between husband and wife in the private space are fleshed out before a public audience for their edification. ʿAlam al-Dīn is distinguished from autobiography,32 biography and polemical essay not so much by its politics; rather, it

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 158

11/12/2012 16:28

History

159

shows exactly how the education of a good woman can be life transforming. Good homemaking is, as the Victorians also believed at the time, an integral part of good nation-building. Both are, however, premised on ‘reasonable’ dialogues among members of the community, whether in the domestic space, national space, or even international space, through which decisions are made and plans implemented. Taqiyya is, in a peculiar sense, a modern woman whose influence extends far beyond the boundaries of domesticity without her having to unveil or compete with men in the public space. She rules the public space by mastering the private space in the particular context of Musāmaras 5 and 6. This form of the modern is not synonymous with the Western that calls for unveiling of women and allowing them free access to the public space. It is rather an alternative form of modernity that is, as Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar asserts in his introduction to Alternative Modernities (2001), inspired by the West but charts its own trajectory.33 The musāmarisation, or novelisation, of the Arabic riḥla genre, be it ‘travelogue’ or ‘journey in search for knowledge’, as well as the attendant genres embedded in this particular work, such as, autobiography and biography, frees ʿAlam al-Dīn from verisimilitude that comes with, let us say, the traditional genres. A space is opened up for a plurality of voices to both coexist and engage in dialogue. ʿAlam al-Dīn does not read like al-Ṭahṭāwī and al-Shidyāq’s ‘journeys’, which are made up of relatively more monolithic observations and judgments driven, as it were, by empiricism. Instead, father and son, traveller and émigré, Egyptian and various types of European, man and woman, master and servant, are able to at least converse, not necessarily debate, across generation, gender, race and culture. The same space is now open to privatisation. The ‘public unity’ of self in the exterior-oriented traditional biography and autobiography, as Bakhtin would say, may now be complemented with a more accentuated ‘private life, private space, and private time’ where the interior is beginning to be explored and expressed. The individual has a voice and has a creative role to play in the world. The intersection between Al-tawfīqiyya and ʿAlam al-Dīn, in the ways they play against each other, marks an important transitional moment in Arab culture and Arabic narrative. In transforming traditional chronotope and adjusting Western chronotope during the process of East-West dialogue and union, they have provided Arabic narrative with a new way forward. Al-tawfīqiyya and ʿAlam al-Dīn are more often than not viewed as important historical documents and literary curiosities in the history of modern

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 159

11/12/2012 16:28

160

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Arabic fiction. ʿAlam al-Dīn, given its fictive mode, is more particularly marginalised as an isolated moment of unsuccessful attempt at narrative, a sample of didactic storytelling that proved more pedantic than entertaining, more traditional than modern, driven more by moralising than aesthetics, that did not amount to a ‘novel’. From a revisionist perspective, these texts may be considered two precursors of the Arabic novel at both thematic and generic levels. The former provides a narrative plan centred on mapping the nation. And the latter paves the way for a plethora of journeys to modernisation predicated on discovery (of self and the West) and recovery (of past moments of modernity). They are, in hindsight, the Arabic meta-novel. They textualise the instance of multiple intersections between East and West, past and present, geography and history, and real and fictive, opening up the traditional narrative space to novel ways of reconfiguration. More importantly, they mark and narrativise the moment of the transformation of notions of time and space that spawned a complex web of changes leading to, going into, defining and complicating a modernisation process peculiar to Arab culture. The very transformation of the perceived relationship between time and place at the ‘dawn’ of modernisation unleashed the novelisation of Arabic narrative. The novel, in its aftermath, comes to be not only the dominant narrative form but also the palimpsest that it is. The novels which have inherited Al-tawfīqiyya and ʿAlam al-Dīn’s political priorities and narrative strategies, al-Ghīṭānī’s Khiṭaṭ, Mahfouz’s Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma and Himmich’s Majnūn al-ḥukm, for example, take advantage of the inroads made into the public sphere by the previous generations of architects of modernisation of culture and novelisation of literature, and transform the Western novel, now grafted onto a palimpsest of Arabic topography, autobiography, biography and travel genres, into a site of national allegory. National allegories, produced and consumed as history of the present collective, are always presented as story of private life, whether cast in the past or present, during its collision and collusion with political authority. These novels are arguably biographies of political authority, of power. These biographies of power are the sum total of biographies of individuals, here, rulers and intellectuals, whose destinies are affected by their entanglement with political authority. However, they now preoccupy themselves with the post-colonial structures of power underpinning the nation-state, instead of resisting colonialism as we find in Al-tawfiqīyya and ʿAlam al-Dīn, and attempt to provide accounts of tyranny and analyses of political authority experienced within the framework of the nation-state.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 160

11/12/2012 16:28

161

History

We have already encountered a variety of (hi)story of the nation-state in diverse allegorical disguises. I want now to pursue further in a rather singleminded fashion the biographical impulse in the Arabic novel and explore the ways in which it mediates between contemporary circumstances and lessons from the past and, more importantly, history and story, in its account of Arab experience with state political authority. This experience of the present, as shall become clear in due course, is narrated as stories about the past and in the language of the past, as the persistent burden of the past, as if the present is forever haunted by if not imprisoned in the past. The unity of place, or the narrative focalisation on a Cairene ḥāra as a symbol of nation-state, in the novels I will be discussing, albeit accidental, makes it possible for a coherent (hi)story of the nation-state to be detected and constructed from the perspective of hindsight. This (hi)story is cast in the form of interrogation of the past and the ensuing struggle to comprehend the impact of its legacy on the present; it is an all-consuming argument with the past, as Gillian Beer would say, that takes place on the site of the knowing subject and the shape of a biography. SECULAR HUMANISM

I begin with a reminder of the modern chronotope.34 Anderson situates the emergence of the newly ‘imagined political community’ in a ‘limited’ and ‘sovereign’ country, and at the juncture of the transformation of our apprehension of time from what Benjamin calls ‘Messianic time’ to what Anderson would call ‘modern time’. From simultaneity-along-time (or, termed slightly differently, from a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present) to ‘homogeneous, empty time’ in which simultaneity is, as it were’ transverse, cross time, marked not by prefiguring and fulfilment but by temporal coincidence, and measured by clock and calendar’.35 In the various imaginings of community we have seen in the Arabic novel, the nation-state rises out of the ashes of past religious communities and dynastic realms, and remains haunted by their legacy. The nation-state more often than not overlaps with religious community and dynastic realm, and political authority with theocracy and monarchy. This ambivalence did, however, spawn a secular and secularising discourse that effectively retells the religion-driven Islamic history as civilisation-based history. Jurjī Zaydān’s (1861–1914) twenty-two historical novels, or romances, may controversially be read as a serialised Arabicisation or secularisation of Islamic history,36 which transforms the history of Islam into a secularised

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 161

11/12/2012 16:28

162

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

history of Islamic civilisation all Arabs, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike can claim and take pride in.37 These character-driven romances retell Islamic history through the exploits of flesh-and-blood heroes, who may be Christians, Jews or Muslims, as the story of the emergence of Islamic civilisation that would become the common culture of all those who lived in the lands of Islam and adopted Arabic as their language. In his reordering of the two all-embracing, fundamental Arabic-Islamic identitarian frames, privileging the Arabic language over Islamic religion, he imagined a linguistic Arab nation to which all speakers of Arabic, from what we would call the Arab world today, could belong. Zaydān was a Syrian Christian who immigrated to Cairo at the end of the nineteenth century and established himself there as key architect of modern Arab culture and literature. The magazine he founded, Al-hilāl, and the multi-volume History of Islamic Civilisation (Tārīkh al-tamaddun al-islāmī, 1901–6) and History of Arabic Literature (Tārīkh ādāb al-lugha l-ʿarabiyya, 1910–13) he wrote, were all part of a new vision of community.38 His historical novels dramatise this history as a chain of human choices and actions as they encounter their fortunes, adventures and destinies. They understandably met with opposition from conservative religious parties, who even today accuse him of distorting Islamic history as part of a shuʿūbī conspiracy to undermine Islam.39 But the civilisational vision in Zaydān’s biographies of Arab heroes of Islam found echo in and is complemented by equally controversial modernised versions of the biography of Muḥammad written by Muslims. As early as al-Ṭahṭāwī’s Nihāyat al-ījāz fī sīrat sākin al-Ḥijāz (1870), the life of the Muslim Prophet has become one of the sites of cultural encounter as well as cross-cultural debate. Al-Ṭahṭāwī’s biography of Muḥammad was his response to Orientalism, to Orientalist writings on Islam and its Prophet40 especially with regards to the authenticity, therefore credibility, of Arabic-Islamic historiography and, more particularly to Muḥammad, in whose character, teachings and conduct many vested their discourse on Islam’s oriental despotism, violent fundamentalism and persistent backwardness even today. The three part BBC series, The Life of Muhammad, broadcast in the UK during the month of July 2011, is a testimonial to the chequered history of the East–West, past–present cultural encounter that has pervaded modern biographies of Muhammad, East and West. The humane, wise, politically astute but peace-loving and tolerant historical Muḥammad, reconstructed from critical but sympathetic reading of Arabic-Islamic historiography by Orientalists and Muslim scholars representing divergent views and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 162

11/12/2012 16:28

History

163

positions, serves as the backdrop against which contemporary Western bigotry and Islamic fundamentalism are interrogated. This BBC series is but the most recent development of a long series of rewritten biographies of Muḥammad in the modern period. Many pioneers of Arab modernisation took an interest in Muḥammad’s life, rewriting his biography in response to Western Orientalism as well as Eastern conservatism and in the process defining Islam as civilisation based on a tradition of reason and openness to other cultures. The first generation of Egyptian novelists, if we may thus call Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal (1888–1956), ʿAbbās Maḥmūd al-ʿAqqād (1889–1964), Ṭāha Ḥusayn (1889–1973) and Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm (1898– 1987), all cosmopolitan polymaths and prolific authors conversant in English and French writings, wrote their own biographies of Muḥammad. They did not fictionalise; rather, they followed the version canonised in the Sunnite tradition, injecting their own discourses only where they deemed necessary. Haykal’s Ḥayāt Muḥammad (1933) and al-ʿAqqād’s ʿAbqariyyat Muḥammad (1942?) took the Orientalists to task for their malicious representations. Ḥusayn’s ʿAlā hāmish al-sīra (1933–51) inferred the Prophet’s humanity through his dramatic and rather lyrical portraits of his close companions. Al-Ḥakīm’s play, Muḥammad (1936), dramatises the Prophet’s life and career. From within this adherence to tradition emerged a new discourse on Arabic-Islamic civilisation that would serve as the foundation for Arab modernisation and modernity. Haykal’s introduction to the first edition of Ḥayāt Muḥammad gestures towards the Orientalist discourses on Islam and situates his work in the reform movements propagated by religious figures, such as Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1838–97) and Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905). His purpose is to ‘guide humanity to the new civilisation it seeks’ (inna hādhā l-baḥth jadīrun bi-an yahdī l-insāniyya ṭarīqahā ilā al-ḥaḍārati l-jadītati l-llatī tatallamsuhā).41 Faith is the foundation of progress and civilisation, which he alternately calls ḥaḍāra and tamaddun, but it does not contradict reason or science. A ‘scientific’ approach to Muḥammad’s life and Islamic history, as opposed to imitating the ways of the ancients, is not only more appropriate to the present historical research (. . . annanī ajrī fī hādhā l-baḥthī ʿalā t-ṭarīqati l-ʿilmiyyati l-ḥadīthati wa-aktubu bi-uslūbi l-ʿaṣri, wa innanī afʿalu dhālika li-annahu l-wasīlatu s-ṣāliḥatu fī naẓari l-muʿāṣirina li kitābati t-tārīkhi wa ghayri t-tārīkhi min al-ʿulūmi wa l-funūn),42 as he asserts in his introduction to the second edition, but also highlights the ways in which Islam has been and shall remain the foundation of civilisation, as he concludes in his epilogue.43 This foundation is the tradition of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 163

11/12/2012 16:28

164

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

reason in Islam, what he calls ‘qawāʿid al-ilm wa hudā al-ʿaql’,44 based upon which an ethical economic system had sprung, what he calls Islamic socialism (al-ishtirākiyya al-islāmiyya),45 and an egalitarian system of political authority and justice had been advocated (‘al-muslimūna amama al-lāhi sawāsiya’ and ‘laysa li-waliyyi l-amri ʿalā muslimīna ṭāʿatun fī maʿṣiyya’).46 At the heart of this civilisation is the individual educated in Islamic spirituality and morality, the perfect man (al-rajul al-kāmil)47 who, having trained his mind and heart (al-ʿaql wa l-qalb) in accordance to faith (al-īmān), looks beyond the material gains, even those to be reaped from his own ‘perfect’ or ‘complete’ education (dūna n-naẓari ilā ayyati manfaʿatin mādiyyatin yajnīhā l-insānu min warāʾi t-taʾaddubi bi-hādhā l-adab). By shifting the burden of civilisation from that of God to man, Haykal does what Zaydān did: he reorders the two framing perspectives on Islam, now refocusing the gaze on the individual as the hero of civilisation. The same may be said of al-Ḥakīm’s Muḥammad. Al-ʿAqqād takes this a step further, rewriting the biography of the Prophet, ʿAbaqariyyat Muḥammad, and complementing it with a series of ʿabqariyyāt of his close companions. Ḥusayn’s modernised portrayals of heroes of early Islam, the companions of the Prophet, who are now cast as flesh-and-blood characters, emotional, thoughtful, expressive and full of conflicts taking part in the dramatic unfolding of Islamic history, are part of the similar effort to bring to the fore not only the tradition of reason in Islam but also the humanism that underpins Islamic civilisation. They have grounded their modernist vision and civilisational mission in the stupendous Arabic-Islamic tradition of biographical writings, giving the individuals re-portrayed the sensibilities of modern men and women without necessarily distorting the familiar contours of their life or depriving them of their known piety. Cultural and identity politics are not new to Arabic biography,48 perhaps the most important genre in Arabic writing since the beginning of its history.49 It comes with diverse sub-genres and divergent registers, standing alone or embedded in large-scale compendia, dedicated to a specialised area of expertise or encompassing all cultured men, addressed to the elite or directed at the general public, motivated by piety or preoccupied with the courtly culture, targeting authenticity of material or aiming for didacticism or entertainment, all of which go into the making of the complex image of Islamic civilisation. From stories of the prophets (qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ) to the life of Muḥammad (al-sīra al-nabawiyya), classes (ṭabaqāt) of Hadith scholars, grammarians and lexicographers, poets, philosophers

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 164

11/12/2012 16:28

165

History

and physicians, jurists and Sufis, secretaries,50 dictionaries (maʿājim) of men of letters, histories of cities (e.g. eleventh-century Tārīkh Baghdād by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī [d. 463AH] and twelfth-century Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq by Ibn ʿAsākir [499–571]), to name but a few examples, biography, as a form of writing,51 has been instrumental in giving Arabic writing and, more importantly, the humanism underpinning Islamic civilisation shape, texture and colour, as well as motive, priority and trajectory. It has been the most enduring, if not most important, genre of Arabic historiography. Modernist Arab writers, from the time of al-Ṭahṭāwī and Mubārak, are heirs to this tradition of writing and unsurprisingly they turned to this familiar variegated genre to express their visions for the present and future, and to tell the (hi)story of the nation-state. There is, however, a price to be paid for defining the present and future on the basis of a reshaped past. Naguib Mahfouz is all too aware of the perils of such an enterprise, even though he himself is not immune to the allure of tradition. Mindful of the prison-house of tradition, he nevertheless resorts to tradition in order to write a history of the nation-state and at the same time take his interrogation of this very tradition to a level that is rather unmatched perhaps even today. NATIONALISATION OF HISTORY

Awlād ḥāratinā (1959; Children of Gebelawi, 198152 or Children of the Alley, 1996),53 the controversial first novel Mahfouz published after Cairo Trilogy,54 is less an allegory of the entire history of humanity,55 of life,56 or of the search for the lost paradise57 but more a parody of both religious thinking58 and the process through which the early generations of Arab modernisers made a case for their civilisational projects. His interrogation of myth (usṭūra), he infers, is veiled by his close adherence to the sacred tradition in the story he retells of monotheism, here not as religion but as a tradition of humanism structured around religion. This humanism has bequeathed to an Arab Muslim the patriarchal form of authority and a tradition of superstitions in which Kamāl finds himself disillusioned in Cairo Trilogy. Awlād ḥāratinā is, I want to argue, a national allegory, a story of Egypt’s search for a just system of rule and distribution of wealth, as many of his critics see,59 as well as an interrogation of the epistemological system that guides humanity’s conduct and its comprehension of it that comes in the form of parody. It mimics what it interrogates but disrupts its logic at the same time. Monotheism is ‘myth’ in the Barthesian sense, an inherited system of knowledge, semiology, and it determines what and how

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 165

11/12/2012 16:28

166

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

we know, including that which pertains to what would be for us secular concerns, such as political authority, social justice and economic equality. The key concern here is not the essence of God, as Jūrj Ṭarābīshī sees,60 but the consequences of totalising grand narrative, as Richard Jacquemond sensibly argues,61 and, above all, of man casting himself in the image of God. This is the root of tyranny. Such deification of man, often in the form of mythifying a hero, perpetuates tyranny at its worst. For myth is necessarily an abstraction of a person’s lived life, stripped of its untidy details and reduced to an episteme, signifying not the person but the persona that is born in the projection of our utopian fantasies onto our objects of desire. Myth, as Mahfouz sees it, is easily the prevalent tradition of superstitions that have thus far defined Egypt and shaped its history. The novel is, at its most fundamental level, an exploration of the burden of and argument with the past from the perspective of the new episteme of the modern nation-state which, as we have seen, privileges the human rather than the divine in the unfolding of history, albeit respectful of religion; that tells history as the story of humanity, of collective and individual human aspirations, ambitions, strengths and weakness, as it comes up against one obstacle after another erected on their path to happiness, socially. Awlād ḥāratinā marks the beginning of Mahfouz’s close intertextual engagement with pre-modern Arabic narrative forms and anticipates four more novelisations of traditional Arabic genres of writing: Malḥamat al-ḥarāfīsh (1977), Layālī alf layla (1979), Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma (1983) and Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa al-masāʾ (1987). In the two novels I have already discussed, Layālī and Ibn Faṭṭūma, Mahfouz fashions from Arab cultural and literary heritage national allegories that interrogate the presence of the past in the contemporary structure of political authority, in the former, and the affects of unreasonable interpretation of tradition on the propagation of various forms of modern tyranny, in the latter. The other three novels, Awlād ḥāratinā, Ḥarāfīsh and Ḥadīth, partake in the same inquiry, of the burden of the past, locating present practices of power in the presence of the past in the present. They now turn to other genres of classical Arabic narrative, especially biography, bringing forth their inherent epistemological paradigms informing visions of civilisation and at the same time unravelling the process through which these paradigms have acquired the status and function of myth. Awlād ḥāratinā is, at another equally elemental level, an attempt at writing the history of the nation-state not as disruption of but continuity in a progressive linear flow of time, uninterruptedly from time immemorial to

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 166

11/12/2012 16:28

History

167

a future Utopia through rehabilitation of the turbulent present. The trajectory of this history is driven, as it were, by the imagining of nation. There are, however, a number of vantage points from which the history of the nation may be viewed and written, here, dependent not only on Mahfouz’s own perspective and position with regards to the legacy of the past and its imprint on the present, but also on the vistas prescribed in the particular genre he rewrites in each novel, even when the primary genre novelised may be traced to biography. For biography, as we have already seen in the works of Mubārak, can stand alone or be embedded in large-scale historiography and topography, just like autobiography, and more importantly, it is more democratic in its selection of narrative objects. It is relatively tolerant of cultural, confessional, sectarian, ideological, ethnical, professional, disciplinary, generational and geographical differences. Its prominent presence in historiography and topography highlights its versatility as well as exposing its limitation; it signals that individuals are the heart and soul of history but that the significance of their role may only be understood in the broader context of the collective experience of the vicissitudes of life, always locatable within a limited plot of space and a finite stretch of time. Mahfouz is heir to the pre-modern Arabic biographical tradition as well as the rewritings of the early generations of Arab modernists and modernisers. He feels the burden of the past resides not merely in the distant past but also in the recent past, in both the classical tradition and in the controversial reinterpretation of this tradition performed by his immediate predecessors. He is, however, less concerned with East-West encounter but more with past-present collusion in the foundation of the nation-state. Beneath his critique of reality through myth (naqd al-wāqiʿ ʿan ṭarīq al-usṭūra) –reality understood here to mean the reality of the nation-state – is an interrogation of myth, or as Ghālī Shukrī puts it, ‘naqd li l-usṭūra ʿan ṭarīq al-wāqiʿ’, and more particularly, a revision of the history of humanity through rewriting the story of a Cairene quarter, the ḥāra, being the origin of Egypt, the mother of the world (ḥāratunā aṣlu miṣra ummi d-dunyā), not ‘in the fashion of the stories we have inherited from the past generation after generation’,62 sacred history, but as the story of the nation’s continuous struggle to achieve fair distribution of wealth, social equality and just political authority. He turns to ‘tales of the prophets’, with all their registers,63 overlaps them with al-sīra – here denoting both the biography of Muḥammad and the popular epics, as Amanṣūr and ʿAbd al-Majīd Zarāqiṭ note64 – and writes a history of the nation-state as a story of the urban poor’s incessant search for a reasonable livelihood and resistance to monopoly and tyranny

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 167

11/12/2012 16:28

168

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

represented, respectively, by the waqf established by the founder of the ḥāra and the futuwwa guarding the estate and controlling the quarter.65 Mahfouz extracts the stories of Adam, Satan, Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus and Muḥammad from the stories of the prophets (qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ) framing the pre-modern histories (tārīkh) of the world, and recasts them not as prophets sent by God to guide the communities to salvation but as heroes who will fight for the downtrodden. Creation myth is rewritten as foundation myth. The creation of the universe, including heaven and earth, and time, such as day and night, the human in the form of Adam, and the human world on earth, to name but a few examples, is replaced by the story of al-Jabalāwī, a futuwwa hailing from the very stock of the urban poor. He builds the estate on the Muqaṭṭam Hill, removing himself and his family physically and socially from the rest of the ḥāra, and buttressing in the process the class distinction between the rich and poor. Relying on his gargantuan stature and superior physical strength, he rules his household with an iron fist. He tolerates no disobedience or betrayal of his wishes. When his eldest son, Idrīs, rebels against his decision to appoint his youngest son, Adham, as the overseer of his estate (nāẓir al-waqf), he casts him out and sends him back to the ḥāra with no means of livelihood. He similarly kicks Adham and his wife, Umayma, out of their homely paradise on earth, again, with no provision for their future, when they go against his command and try to access the secret book in which he has put down in writing the ten conditions of inheritance. The history of the nation begins. It is cast in the form not of the story of a religious community but a family saga, focused in this instance on Idrīs and Adham’s coping with life in the ḥāra and their attempt to return home or obtain their inheritance from the estate. Their respective families grow but little changes in their life. Generation after generation come face to face with two seemingly insurmountable obstacles: the hegemony of the futuwwa who control the streets and exact protection money from them, and the increasing remoteness of the estate, which could easily lift the entire ḥāra out of poverty. Four heroes emerge in the history of the ḥāra. Jabal, modelled skeletally on Moses, conquers the futuwwa and succeeds in his demand from the estate for his family’s share. The relative prosperity he brings to his own family lasts only as long as his life. Rifāʿa, cast in the image of Jesus, follows in his footsteps, but instead of using terror (symbolised by snakes) to tame the tyranny of futuwwa and the estate, he turns his attention to purging the human soul of demons (ʿafārīt) through love. He fails miserably and is beaten to death by a mob. Qāsim, a reminder

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 168

11/12/2012 16:28

History

169

of Muḥammad, then uses his physical power, charisma and street smartness to mobilise the dregs of ḥāra, uniting them against the futuwwa and the waqf, and manages finally to negotiate a settlement that would ensure a life of comfort for the entire ḥāra, not just his own family. ʿArafa appears last in Mahfouz’s panoramic drama of human history. He arrives on stage at a time when the ḥāra has lapsed into poverty and chaos again. He brings with him magic, primarily in the form of bombs, and is able to temporarily control the futuwwa through collaboration with the estate. He secures a good life for his immediate family but suddenly finds himself under the thumb of the estate. He tries to run away but is caught by the nāẓir and buried alive together with his wife. The secrets of bomb-making disappear with the notebook he throws away. It is easy to read this novel as a parody of the sacred history of the Muslim community, which is represented as a continuation of previous religions, told in the form of stories of the prophets framing the pre-modern Arabic chronicles and annals of the dynastic realm, told from the perspective of the nation-state. The absence of the founder of the ḥāra, al-Jabalāwī, in the most part of the novel, and his final death, out of fear after he hears of ʿArafa’s attempt at assassinating him but killing his manservant instead, can be read in line with Anderson’s imagining of nation. It begins with the death of God, even though the moment of its origin is always located in time immemorial, and ends with the ascendancy of science represented by ʿArafa. The entire history of humanity then reads like an uninterrupted linear progression of time, of the three major monotheistic religions from past to present, which now find themselves joined by modern science. No Muslim, I think, would argue with this account of the universal history of humanity. This sacred history in Mahfouz’s novel is, however, disrupted by the descent of the prophets from the sacred realm to the profane world. How dare he relegate the prophets to the status of modern science! More importantly, God and his prophets are all too human in his portrayal. Al-Jabalāwī has nothing of God’s compassion and magnanimity; he is a tyrannical patriarch who forgives nothing and cares not one bit for the welfare of his children, let alone humanity. Moses, Jesus and Muḥammad are too full of human frailties, often driven by their desires for social standing, material comfort and even physical pleasure. They are more like the heroes of popular epics and secular biographies, whose life consists of a series of responses to the circumstances conspiring in their making and unmaking. Awlād ḥāratina stirred up a controversy and was banned in Egypt until 2006. A steady stream of positive interpretation has countered the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 169

11/12/2012 16:28

170

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

vehemence of criticism coming from conservative Muslim circles since the publication of the novel. Two readings are of immediate relevance to my understanding of the novel as history of the nation-state. Shukrī looks at it as a leftist engagement with the social and economic reality of Egypt. How is equal distribution of wealth to be achieved in order to balance the social inequality? Mahfouz’s novel is, according to Shukrī, a study of three possible scenarios: wealth for a segment of society (Jabal), inner peace (Rifāʿa), and universal coverage (Qāsim). That these exemplars (mithāl) are short lived points to the necessity for continuous struggle, which in turn demands an abiding commitment on the part of man to society. ʿArafa’s importance resides not in modern science itself but in the method of social thought that comes with it. This method of social thought demonstrates irrevocably that every individual must not wait for a saviour hero to come to the rescue but should strive to acquire political power himself, for it is the only way through which social justice and equal distribution of wealth may be accomplished. Amanṣūr sees the novel as a ‘play’ with paradigmatic structures hidden deep in sacred discourses. It does two things at the same time in order to transcend the form and content of realism. It contemplates existential issues even as it searches for new aesthetics for the novel. In this reading, which remains too obsessed with showing how closely the novel adheres to the Qurʾān, al-Jabalāwī comes to represent the absolute (al-muṭlaq), Jabal power (al-quwwa) and the will to legislate, Rifāʿa utopian love (al-maḥabba), Qāsim justice (al-ʿadl) aiming to strike a balance among conflicting parties, and ʿArafa reason (al-ʿaql), or modern non-religious mode of thought and conduct. BIOGRAPHY OF TYRANNY

I want to pick up from where Shukrī and Amanṣūr have left off and return to some of the untidy details left unaddressed in their analyses so as to begin to think of Awlād ḥāratina as a national allegory premised on parody, as Shukrī and Amanṣūr show, and at the same time a history of the nation-state focalised around the question of power, or more appropriately, tyranny. This national allegory reads to me more like a biography of tyranny. ʿArafa’s story gives us some clues. ʿArafa is a magician (sāḥir) who puts his secret knowledge (bomb-making) to unreasonable use, from the perspectives of social realism Shukrī speaks of and the existential contemplation Amanṣūr sees. Science – let us for the moment think of magic as such – gives ʿArafa power, but he uses it to buy his personal prosperity

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 170

11/12/2012 16:28

History

171

and happiness. He sells it to the overseer of the estate, which has represented power, whether based on brute force (al-Jabalāwī as the impossibleto-defeat futuwwa) or wealth (his large estate as paradise on earth), from the very beginning of the novel. ʿArafa is a collaborator. When he fails to kill al-Jabalāwī, he begins to work with the estate. He ends up being the estate’s complicit partner in hegemony. Science comes to be the instrument of power in his hands. He represents one way of managing and working with tyranny. Such a reading of ʿArafa points to a possible alternative interpretation of the other main characters in the novel: as differing positions vis-à-vis tyranny. Qāsim, if we are to begin a revisionist reading backward, confronts tyranny head on, countering it with the full force of his physical power, charisma and cunning. Rifāʿa shrinks away from any confrontation and seeks to tame the human will to power with love. Tyranny exists only where there is desire for power. Exorcising human’s inner demons or transforming human desire for power into love for other human beings is an ideal, idealistic way of eliminating tyranny. Jabal, on the contrary, resorts to terror as his instrument of tyranny management. He is a snake charmer in a manner of speaking. His ability to control snakes gives him power to rule the futuwwa of the ḥāra – obey or I shall unleash the snakes on you – and contain the hegemony of the estate – give us what we deserve or I will let the snakes run wild in your chambers. Terror is also his means to power. These four positions tell only a part of the story of tyranny. They give a glimpse of observable responses to it but do not explain what tyranny is or how it works. The story of al-Jabalāwī comes in here to complete the picture. Al-Jabalāwī, founder and primary ruler of the ḥāra and a futuwwa himself, serves as a contrast to the futuwwa from whose midst he comes. His power comes from his physical strength – he is a giant and builds the estate only after he has overpowered all the futuwwa – and his ability to put his acquired wealth to good use. More importantly, he designs an operation system for power that of course works to his advantage. It guarantees that his rule of the estate is absolute forever. The futuwwa he leaves behind in the ḥāra are contrarily always in turmoil, their leadership open to different contenders one generation after another. However, al-Jabalāwī, the former futuwwa elevated to the status of God-like patriarch, and the common futuwwa remaining solidly on the riff-raff ground, have in common their love for and abuse of power. No one, perhaps except for Rifāʿa, is immune. Al-Jabalāwī and the futuwwa are two faces of the same coin. Al-Jabalāwī’s

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 171

11/12/2012 16:28

172

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

aloofness from the daily life of the ḥāra and the futuwwa’s close involvement expose the abusive potential of power as well as its necessity in any form of resistance to power gone abusive. Al-Jabalāwī, the absolute tyrant, gradually becomes the foil of the futuwwa in the novel. Power must be guided by strong leadership and structured by an operation system; otherwise, it easily reverts to the law of the jungle that thrives on the survival of the fittest and flagrant disregard for order and justice. This operation system paradoxically breeds new forms of abuse of power. However one chooses to look at it, power is by definition tyrannical; it begins as one form of tyranny and develops into another form, at least from the perspective of the novel. But it only becomes absolute, as in the case of al-Jabalāwī, when its potential for good (order, justice and prosperity) is projected onto a charismatic figure, who is in turn mythified as the ultimate authority, the omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent patriarchal ‘God’, who is at once generous and wrathful. Tyranny manifests itself in the practices of power as well as the utopian fantasies of a world free of abuses of power. The futuwwa, including al-Jabalāwī, dispense their dictates most often arbitrarily, to serve only their causes or simply to exert power. Al-Jabalāwī, and later his estate, imposes his will, and bestows his favours only on those who give in to his control. His selective magnanimity, however, stokes the fire of utopian fantasies and ensures his permanent presence in, let us say, collective memory. The futuwwa in general do not have the longevity of al-Jabalāwī. Al-Jabalāwī lives long but primarily in the memory of the urban poor for his heroic deeds in lifting his family out of their poverty at the beginning, and later for exiling two of his children, Idrīs and Adham, creating in them and their descendants a nostalgia that reconstructs their home as a lost paradise, a Utopia, where there is order and prosperity even in the absence of justice. He retreats into the background from as early as Adham’s exile, leaving the running of his estate not to his children but hired overseers. His legacy, however, haunts the memory of his descendants. He disappears physically but grows in symbolic stature. This unjust father, at best arbitrary in his decisions and at worst oppressive in his commands and prohibitions, gradually becomes the inspiration for crusades against poverty, injustice and tyranny. He is suddenly the good futuwwa who heroically took on the corrupt futuwwa and made the world a better place. Jabal, Rifāʿa, Qāsim and ʿArafa, the four protagonists of the novel, look up to him, seeking his approval and fashioning themselves in his image. Even ʿArafa’s attempted patricide is, arguably, one manifestation of this type of hero worship. The

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 172

11/12/2012 16:28

History

173

al-Jabalāwī memorialised in the collective memory transmitted through oral storytelling is not the al-Jabalāwī experienced by Adham and Idrīs in person. But as a symbol he is even more powerful than as a person. The tyranny of a symbol, or myth, is total. Mahfouz explores the complicit role of memory in the production of tyranny. The stories of al-Jabalāwī heroes that the narrator tells in the novel cannot be trusted. He, a contemporary of ʿArafa, is no eyewitness to the majority of events he narrates, even those in which ʿArafa played a leading role. He is, as he states, simply recording what the storytellers have been transmitting one generation after another. The text of the novel is a complex web of overlapping and intersecting narrative strands. The main narrative, in first-person, frames the narratives of the protagonists of each main section as well as the narratives about them. Most importantly, the bulk of the novel is hearsay. Information on Jabal, Rifāʿa, Qāsim and ʿArafa’s secret encounters with al-Jabalāwī comes from the protagonists themselves. Their own narrative is then seamlessly woven into that of the storytellers, who always recount their heroic deeds from the perspective of hindsight, speaking from and to the dire circumstances of their present. Narrative is unreliable. It constructs the life and deeds of ‘heroes’ in a distortive fashion. Distortion grows in proportion to the progression of time. The more distant the past is from the present the greater is the distance between the man and his heroic image. Al-Jabalāwī begins his heroic career, for example, as a wrathful patriarch but ends it as a rather benevolent, albeit remote, God. Jabal, Rifāʿa and Qāsim become prophet-like mythical heroes as soon as they move into the realm of memory, their human traits – especially weaknesses, misdeeds, transgressions and even evils – completely forgotten. The iconisation of these past figures takes place on the theatre of memory and through a process of abstraction, here, of the gist of their good service to the collective, which is in turn blown up out of proportion then frozen in time and place. It is what Barthes calls ‘myth’ that materialises when a new semiological system is derived from and built on another old, now distorted, semiological system. Icons are not subject to vicissitudes of time and place. They are forever powerful, even tyrannical on the present; they determine how life is lived and managed now. Tyranny has two faces. Its exterior is out there for the world to see. The alleys and streets of the ḥāra are the playground of the futuwwa. There they practice their power to their heart’s content. This type of tyranny is rather easy to resist, Awlād ḥāratina tells us, for all resistance requires is power. Its interior is, however, more difficult to overcome, for it is a fundamental

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 173

11/12/2012 16:28

174

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

part of the epistemology taking shape in the long progression of time from past to preset and giving structure to human thought and conduct. The figure of the patriarchal God or the heroic prophet, constructed in the slippage between memory and forgetfulness – remembering of the great and good and forgetting of the mean and evil – has such a hold on human thought and conduct because of its appearance as a symbol of a part of the past that has been transformed into a lost paradise in its travels across time. This part of the past is taken out of its full context in a particular kind of nostalgic utopian fantasy – that a better world will be possible if only the prefect past were brought back to life at present, shorn of its unwanted untidy details and fashioned into an ideal. Mahfouz unravels this type of idealisation of the past. The God-like al-Jabalāwī and the prophet-like Jabal, Rifāʿa, Qāsim, and even ʿArafa are revealed as all too human, to a fault, once Mahfouz inserts into their stories their private life – their love and desire, their malice and caprice, their bravery and magnanimity, their stoicism and readiness to act for the greater good, their charisma and leadership, their treachery and loyalty, etc. – and instructs the reader to follow the narrative in a backward trajectory, from the present to the past. The narrator tells us as much. This is the story of our alley – its stories, rather, I have witnessed on the most recent events, those of my own time, but I have recorded all of them the way our storytellers told them. Everyone in our alley tells these stories, just as they heard them in coffeehouses or as they were handed down for generations – these sources are my only basis for what I’m writing. Most of our social occasions call for storytelling. Whenever someone is depressed, suffering or humiliated, he points to the mansion at the top of the alley at the end opening out to the desert, and says sadly, ‘That is our ancestor’s house, we are all his children, and we have a right to his property. Why are we starving? What have we done?’ Then he will tell the stories and cite the lives of Adham and Gabal, of Rifaa and Qassem – some of our alley’s great men . . .66 I have witnessed the recent period in the life of our alley, and lived through the events that came about through the coming of Arafa, a dutiful son of our alley. It is thanks to one of Arafa’s friends that I am able to record some of the stories of our alley. One day he said to me, ‘You’re one of the few who know how to write, so why don’t you write down the stories of our alley? They’ve never been told in the right order, and even then always at the mercy of the storytellers’

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 174

11/12/2012 16:28

History

175

whims, all together so that people could benefit from them, and I’ll help you out with what you don’t know, with inside information.’ I acted on his advice . . .67 Such a readerly itinerary allows us to see the cumulative effect of teleology, of projection of present fantasies onto the past, and may in the long run help to restore to history the story of humanity and perhaps even lessen the burden of the past. The past is a burden. It is onerous in a variety of ways. The past is at its most powerful and prohibiting when it is represented as an idealised, ideologised ‘Garden of Eden’. It channels all creative forces into a singular project of resurrecting the past as it was, as if that were possible in the first place. The present must live in the past. Time can only move backward not forward, for the past is the future. This type of past is a straightjacket for human thought and conduct; it dictates what one thinks about and how one should make sense of it, and it determines what appropriate conduct is at home or in society, down to the minutest detail. More importantly, it imprisons the present and future in the past, and hijacks any project of modernisation as it denies humanity freedom of thought, action and will to be different. Paradoxically, the glorification of the past can provide the necessary impetus for change, to recover the lost ‘Garden of Eden’, and to restore humanity to its best. The morale of the story lies in the dialectics between past and present inscribed in the ambivalent relationship between al-Jabalāwī and his children. Jabal, Rifāʿa, Qāsim and ʿArafa’s utopian fantasy, their dream of return to the ‘Garden of Eden’, is at the heart of their worship of and resistance to al-Jabalāwī, the founder of the ‘Garden of Eden’ and its terrific despot. This story of humanity Mahfouz tells is too close to the sacred history for comfort to any believer. Consequently it is often read as a parody of religious history rather than mimicry of the sacred as a mechanism for exposing the absurd dimensions of the profane. This particular type of misreading is perhaps unavoidable for, as Mahfouz will demonstrate in his rewriting of the same story of humankind’s relationship with power in Ḥarāfīsh, there are more efficient and effective ways of achieving similar ends. Mimicry of the sacred is not necessary in parody of human history, interrogation of the burden of the past, or biography of tyranny. It is still possible to unveil the mythifying process through which memory prescribes the distortive experience of the past, produces the prison-house of tradition that the modern Arab cannot live with or without, and inculcate tyranny in humankind.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 175

11/12/2012 16:28

176

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

This is not to say Awlād ḥāratina and Ḥarāfīsh are the same novel even as they write the same history of man’s search for ways to manage power and transcend tyranny.68 On the contrary, they engage with different aspects of the legacy of the past. Awlād ḥāratina belongs with the intellectual project targeting the residual traces of ancient mythology – Babylonian, Egyptian, Sumerian, and the biblical tradition, for example – in Arabic-Islamic epistemology, as Kawwāz sums up in Min asāṭīr al-awwalīn ilā qiṣaṣ al-nabiyāʾ (2006; From the myths of the ancients to the stories of the prophets), which continues to have an effect on the ways contemporary Arabs grapple with ontological issues: Myths, despite their temporal distance, glitter with meaning, shine on corridors of confusion and anxiety and provide solace and a sense of security – this is a human fact – all of which contribute to the formation of the human character and the construction of the world in which man lives. However, the dominance of mythological epistemology (al-maʿrifa al-usṭūriyya) in all levels of thought, in such a way that imagination overwhelms reason, produces a mythological civilisation that is blind to reality and unable to address its problems. We are faced with two questions: absenting the role of myth that leads to ignorance of many features of human character, and magnifying the importance of myth that results in diminished reason. The consequence is the irreconcilable difference felt by the faithful who live in realities bounded in time and place, for which no middle ground may be struck between the mythical and the rational, and no solution may be found for the reconciliation of the two trends of thought, for bringing them together will lead to confusion between historical reality and mythological creativity.69 Ḥarāfīsh70 moves away from the murky waters of the type of myths that have proved too hot to handle. It chooses another literary site for an alternative confrontation with myth. Al-sīra l-shaʿbiyya (Arabic popular epics),71 where it is not possible to confuse myth as mythology with myth as Barthesian semiological system, provides another vista of national history. NOTES 1. ‘The Geography of the Imagination’ was originally delivered as the Distinguished Professor Lecture at the University of Kentucky for 1978 and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 176

11/12/2012 16:28

History

2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

177

later published as the lead essay in a book of the same title. References are made to the 1992 paperback edition of the same title published in New York and San Francisco by Pantheon Books. Ibid. p. 4. Wadad al-Qadi, ‘East and West in ʿAlī Mubārak’s ʿAlamuddīn’, in Marwan R. Buheiry (ed.), Intellectual Life in the Arab East, 1890–1939 (Beirut: Center for Arab and Middle East Studies, American University in Beirut, 1981), pp. 21–37. Ibid. p. 22. Ibid. p. 23. Ibid. pp. 22–3. Ibid. p. 23. See also Daniel L. Newman’s ‘Introduction’ to his translation of al-Tahtawi’s travels to France, An Imam in Paris: Account of a Stay in France by an Egyptian Cleric (1826–1831) (Takhlīṣ al-Ibrīz fī Talkhīṣ Bārīz aw al-Dīwān al-Nafīs bi-Īwān Bārīs) by Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (London: Saqi, 2004), pp. 15–91; 65. Al-Qadi, ‘East and West’, pp. 23–5. Ibid. pp. 29–37. Jābir ʿUṣfūr, ‘Ghiwāyat al-taḥdīth’, Fuṣūl 12: 1 (1993), pp. 9–21. Rasheed El-Enany places ʿAlam al-Dīn in the context of the earliest period of East-West encounter in Arabic fiction, which he called ‘The pre-colonial period; enchanted encounters’ and considers ʿAlī Mubārak’s ʿAlam al-Dīn, an expression of admiration for the ‘West’ and to be grouped with the works of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī (1754–1825), Nīqūlā al-Turk (1763–1828), Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–73), Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq (1804–87), Faransīs Marrāsh (1836–73), Khayr al-Dīn al-Tūnisī (1820?–89) and Muḥammad Bayram al-Khāmis al-Tūnisī (1840–89). See El-Enany, Arab Representation of the Occident: East-West Encounters in Arabic Fiction (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 15–33; particularly, 24–7. ʿUṣfūr, ‘Ghiwāyat al-taḥdīth’, p. 13. Much of the material is yet to be traced to its sources through, for example, careful comparison between what makes up the two texts and the subjects and their works appearing in the biographies included in Al-tawfīqiyya. The task may prove ‘easier said than done’. For one thing, sources are rarely documented in Al-tawfīqiyya and practically never in ʿAlam al-Dīn. And for another, it is not exactly clear in the current scholarship on the nineteenth-century wave of modernisation in Egypt what European sources were available to and read by Mubarak’s generation of modernisers, whether in the original language or through translation. This said, it is possible to begin to think through the cultural politics surrounding modernisation at the time by looking at what is immediately obvious in the two texts.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 177

11/12/2012 16:28

178

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

15. References are made to the first edition: Mubārak, Al-tawfīqiyya (Cairo: Bulaq, 1886–9), vol. 9, pp. 37–61. 16. Ibid. vol. 11, pp. 10–13. 17. For an assessment of Lane’s career as Arabist and his views of the Orient, see Leila Ahmed, Edward W. Lane: a Study of his Life and Works and of British Ideas of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century (London: Longman, 1978). 18. Al-Qadi, ‘East and West’, p. 23. 19. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). The version I use is the English translation by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). The subtitle of this work reads: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. 20. References are made to Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, 3rd edn, ed. Riḍā (Cairo: Dār al-Masīra, 1988), ‘Al-maqāla al-thāmina’, pp. 363–4. 21. References are made to the first four-volume edition of ʿAlam al-Dīn (Alexandria: Jarīdat al-Maḥrūsa, 1882), ‘Muāsmara 92’ and ‘93’, vol. 3, pp. 1077–93. 22. Ibid. ‘Musāmara 97’, vol. 4, pp. 1153–79. 23. Ibid. vol. 3, pp. 1080–1. 24. Ibid. vol. 3, pp. 1082–5. 25. The akhṭāṭ, according to André Raymond in Cairo: City of History (tr. Willard Wood; Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2001), are the eight administrative districts the French devised during their three-year occupation (1798–1801) of old Cairo in order to control the city (p. 294). The tactics and strategies of control deployed by the French colonisers called for a compromise between their own ‘modern’ principles and the local customs. On his arrival in Cairo, Napoleon ‘formed a dīwān (council) comprising nine members drawn from the foremost shaykhs. He appointed an aghā of the janissaries, who was in charge of the police, a wālī (night agha), a muḥtasib (supervisor of weights and measures) . . .’ (p. 293). These local officials were to help the French ‘Director of trades’, who supervised the occupational corporations, to maintain public order and ensure the collection of taxes levied on the corporations. The French also created a half-Muslim and half-Coptic court of commerce and an office of property records, which affected not only the material interests of the Egyptians but also their civil statutes (p. 293). 26. Mubārak, ʿAlam al-Dīn, vol. 3, pp. 1086–92. 27. Ibid. vol. 1, pp. 60–2. 28. English translation, The liberation of women; and The new woman, two documents in the history of Egyptian feminism, by Samiha Sidhom Peterson (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000). 29. For discussions of the debates surrounding the liberation of women and their role in nation-building, see Marilyn Booth, May Her Likes be Multiplied:

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 178

11/12/2012 16:28

History

30. 31. 32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

179

Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001); Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). Mubārak, ʿAlam al-Dīn, vol. 1, pp. 34–69. Ibid. vol. 1, pp. 69–87. Unlike others, Mubārak does write about his three marriages in his autobiography, more particularly the breakdown of his second marriage due to interference from his wife’s relatives, who accused him of marrying for money. However, he never gives away any details of his home life, especially not his relationship with his wives or children. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (ed.), Alternative Modernities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 1–23. See also Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); and Lisa Rofel, Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). There has been a growing interest in working with Bakhtin’s ‘chronotope’ in Arabic criticism on the novel in the past decade. Of interest, though perhaps not of immediate relevance to my work, is a book on the ways in which various configurations of time and space give shape to Mahfouz’s novels. See Ḥusayn Ḥammūda, Fī ghiyāb al-ḥadīqa: ḥawla mutaṣṣil al-zamān/al-makān fī riwāyat Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: Maktabat Madbūlī, 2007). Bendedict Anderson, Imagined Communities; Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), p. 24. These are welcomed by Iranians; see Kamran Rastegar, ‘Literary modernity between Arabic and Persian prose: Jurjī Zaydān’s Riwāyāt in Persian translation’, Comparative Critical Studies 4: 3 (2007), pp. 359–78. There has yet to be a systematic study of what I would call ‘vernacular nationalism’ advocated and propagated by Jurjī Zaydān, as well as generations of writers of popular fiction, in the print culture and media targeting the general public in the twentieth century, which promotes sentimental idealism rather than political ideology in their seamlessly blending Arab nationalism with Islam. Benjamin Geer addresses the similar conceptual blending in the works of Egyptian writers, starting with al-Ṭahṭāwī and including Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm and Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs in his Ph. D. thesis ‘The Priesthood of Nationalism in Egypt: Duty, Authority, Autonomy’ (SOAS, University of London, 2011). Geer has also published on ‘Prophets and priests of the nation: Naguib Mahfouz’s Karnak Café and the 1967 crisis in Egypt’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 41: 4 (November 2009), pp. 653–69.There is, however, a need to expand the scope and look

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 179

11/12/2012 16:28

180

38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49.

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel closely at all the visual and verbal materials that make up the Arabic print culture. See Anne-Laure Dupont, Gurgi Zaydan (1861–1914): ecrivan, reformiste et temoin de la renaissance (Damascus: IFPO, Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2006); Jūzīf Ḥarb, Rijāl fī rajul (Beirut: Bayt al-Hikma, 1970); and Thomas Philipp, Gurgi Zaidan: His Life and Thought, Beiruter Texte und Studien, Band 3 (Beirut/Wiesbaden: Orient-Institut der Deutchen Morgenlandschen Gesellschaft/Franz Steiner, 1979). See Shawqī Abū Khalīl, Jurjī Zaydān fī l-mizān (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1981), and Riwāyāt Jurjī Zaydān: dirāsa tārīkhiyya (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 2004). See Fārūq Abū Zayd’s ‘preface’ to his edition of al-Ṭahṭāwī’s biography of Muḥammad, Muḥammad: Niyāhat al-ījāz fī sīrat sākin al-Ḥijāz (Beirut and Saida: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, n.d. [received at SOAS Library 1983]), pp. 3–29; 11. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal, Ḥayāt Muḥammad (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1965), p. 22. Ibid. p. 47. Ibid. pp. 516–84. Ibid. p. 516. Ibid. p. 542. Ibid. p. 520. Ibid. p. 534. See, for example, Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied; Michael Cooperson, Classical Arabic Biography: the Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma’mun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Fedwa Malti-Douglas, ‘Controversy and its effects in the biographical tradition of al-Khatib al-Baghdadi’, Studia Islamica 46 (1977), pp. 115–31; and ‘Dreams, the blind, and the semiotics of the biographical notice’, Studia Islamica 51 (1980), pp. 137–62; Dwight F. Reynolds (ed.), Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001); Ruth Roded, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sa‘d Who’s Who (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994). See Wadad al-Qadi, ‘Biographical dictionaries: inner structure and cultural significance’, in George N. Atiya (ed.), The Book in the Islamic World (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 93–122, and ‘Biographical dictionaries as the scholar’s alternative history of the Muslim community’, in Gerhard Endress (ed.), Organizing Knowledge: Encyclopaedic Activities in the Pre-Eighteenth Century Muslim World (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), pp. 23–75. See also, M. J. L. Young, ‘Arabic biographical writing’, in M. J. L. Young et al. (eds), Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 180

11/12/2012 16:28

History

50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56. 57. 58. 59.

181

Period, in Cambridge History of Arabic Literature vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 168–87. For a discussion of the ‘ṭabaqāt’ as a genre, see Ibrahim Hafsi, ‘Recherches sur le genre “Ṭabaqāt” dans la literature arabe’, I, Arabica 23: 3 (September 1976), pp. 227–65; II, Arabica 24: 1 (February 1977), pp. 1–41; and III, Arabica 24: 2 (June 1977), pp. 150–86. Hartmut E. Fahndrich gives a literary reading of the Arabic biographical dictionary in ‘The Wafayāt al-Aʿyān of Ibn Khallikān: a new approach’, Journal of American Oriental Society 93: 4 (1973), pp. 432–45. Tr. Philip Stewart (London: Heinemann, 1981). Tr. Peter Theroux (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1996). It appeared initially in serialised form in al-Ahrām between September and December 1959 and finally in book form in 1967 in Lebanon. For a good discussion of this controversy and the consequent violence against Mahfouz, see Fauzi M. Najjār, ‘Islamic fundamentalism and the intellectuals: the case of Naguib Mahfouz’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 15: 1 (May 1988), pp. 139–68. See also, Samia Mehrez, Egypt’s Culture Wars: Politics and Practice (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2010), pp. 41–57; Rajāʾ al-Naqqāsh, Fī ḥubb Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1995), pp. 160–73; and Peter Theroux, ‘Children of the alley: a translator’s tale’, The Massachusetts Review 42: 4 (Winter 2001/2002), pp. 666–71. See Muḥammad Ḥasan ʿAbdallāh, Al-islāmiyya wa al-rūḥiyya fī adab Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Kuwait: Maktabat al-Amal, 1972), pp. 150–70; Rasheed El-Enany, Naguib Mahfouz: the Pursuit of Meaning (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 141–4; Matti Moosa, The Early Novels of Naguib Mahfouz: Images of Modern Egypt (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1994), pp. 274–92; Sasson Somekh, ‘The sad millenarian: an examination of Awlad Haratini’, Middle Eastern Studies 7: 1 (January 1971), pp. 49–61, republished in The Changing Rhythm (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), pp. 137–55, and Critical Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz, ed. Trevor Le Gassick (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1991), pp. 101–14. Sulaymān al-Shaṭṭī, Al-ramz wa al-ramziyya fī adab Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Kuwait: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿAṣriyya, 1976), pp. 186–222. Nabīl Rāghib, Qaḍiyyat al-shakl al-fannī ʿinda Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li al-Kitāb, 1975), pp. 225–41. Muḥamad Amanṣūr, Al-tajrīb al-riwāʾi ʿinda Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʿlā li al-Thaqāfa, 2006), pp. 207–93; Muḥammad Jibrīl, Najīb Maḥfūẓ: ṣadāqat jīlayn (Cairo: Kitābāt Naqdiyya, 1993), pp. 200–7. See Jareer Abu-Haidar, ‘Awlād Ḥāratinā by Najīb Maḥfūẓ: an event in the Arab World’, Journal of Arabic Literature 16 (1985), pp. 119–31; and Mattityahu Peled, Religion, My Own: the Literary Works of Najīb Maḥfūẓ (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983), pp. 174–83.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 181

11/12/2012 16:28

182

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

60. Jūrj Ṭarābīshī, Allāh fī riḥlat Najīb Maḥfūẓ al-ramziyya (Beirut: Dār al-Talīʿa, 1973), pp. 30–1. 61. Richard Jacquemond, ‘Thawrat al-takhyīl wa takhyīl al-thawra: qirāʿa jadīda fī Awlād ḥāratinā’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 23, (2003), pp. 118–32. 62. Ghālī Shukrī, Al-muntamī: dirāsa fī adab Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo, 1969), p. 241. 63. Defined by Muḥammad Karīm al-Kawwāz: ‘I note here that the term qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ denotes a literary genre that grew out of the works of generations of storytellers (quṣṣaṣ), Qurʾan exegetes (mufassirūn) and historians (muʾarrikhūn), who gave it shape through a set of principles of arrangement they applied to the content of the Qurʾānic stories quoted by the exegetes in their interpretation of the Qurʾān, or retold in books dedicated to the purpose’, in Min asāṭīr al-awwalīn ilā qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (Beirut: Muʾassast al-Intishār al-ʿArabī, 2006), p. 8. See also, William M. Brinner, ‘Introduction’, ʿArāʾis al-majālis fī qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā – Lives of the Prophets, tr. and ann. William Brinner (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), pp. xi–xxxiii; Muḥammad Karīm al-Kawwāz, ‘Al-muqaddima’, Al-mubtadaʾ f- qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ by Muḥammad Ibn Isḥāq (Beirut: al-Intishār al-ʿArabī, 2006), pp. 13–46; al-Ṭāhir Ibn Muḥammad al-Maʿmūrī, ‘Muqaddima’, Badʾ al-khalq wa qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā li al-Kisāʾī (Tunis: Dār Nuqūsh ʿArabiyya, 1998), pp. 7–84; Roberto Tottoli, ‘Introduction’, The Stories of the Prophets by Ibn Muṭarrif al-Ṭarafī (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2003), pp. 7–20. 64. Amanṣūr, Al-tajrīb al-riwāʾī ʿinda Najīb Maḥfūẓ, p. 216; ʿAbd al-Majīd Zarāqiṭ, ‘Bayn al-jawharī al-thābit wa al-tārīkhī al-mutaḥawwil fī tajribat Najīb Maḥfūẓ al-riwāʾiyya’, Najīb Maḥfūẓ wa al-riwāya al-ʿarabiyya: abḥāth al-muʾtamar al-thālith wa al-ʿishrīn li ittiḥād al-udabāʾ wa al-kuttāb (Cairo: Ittiḥād al-Kuttāb and al-Hayʾa al-ʿĀmma li-Quṣūr al-Thaqāfa, 2006), pp. 113–41; 123. 65. See also Jareer Abu-Haidar, ‘Awlād Ḥāratinā by Najīb Maḥfūẓ: an event in the Arab World’, Journal of Arabic Literature 16 (1985), pp. 119–31; P. J. Vatikiotis, ‘The Corruption of Futuwwa: a consideration of despair in Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s Awlād Ḥāratinā’, Middle Eastern Studies 7: 2 (May 1971), pp. 169–84. 66. Najīb Maḥfūz, Awlād ḥāratinā (Beirut: Dār al-Adāb, 2006), p. 5; Peter Theroux (tr.), Children of the Alley (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1996), p. 3. 67. Maḥfūz, Awlād, p. 7; Theroux, Children, p. 5. 68. Resheed El-Enany observes the similarity between the two novels, relating it to its locale – the ḥāra, Mahfouz’s main concern – ‘why does social evil exist and can it be eradicated’, episodic structure, and genre, what he calls ‘roman fleuve’. See Naguib Mahfouz: the Pursuit of Meaning, p. 144. This similarity is also noted by Muḥammad Badawī in ‘Mamlakat al-ḥarāfīsh: dirāsa fī Malḥamat al-ḥarāfīsh’, Fuṣūl 17: 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 97–124, 116–21;

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 182

11/12/2012 16:28

History

183

and Qāyid Diyāb in ‘Al-masʾala al-mitāfīsīqiyya fī Al-ḥarāfīsh’, Fuṣūl 69 (Summer–Autumn 2006), pp. 124–35. 69. Al-Kawwāz, Min asāṭīr al-awwalīn ilā qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, p. 7. 70. Translated into English by Catherine Cobham as The Harafish (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1994). References are made to the 1995 paperback edition. 71. Noted by ʿAbd al-Majīd Zarāqiṭ in ‘Bayn al-jawharī al-thābit wa al-tārīkhī al-mutaḥawwil fī tajribat Najīb Maḥfūẓ al-thurāthiyya’, Najīb Maḥfūẓ wa al-riwāya al-ʿarabiyya (Cairo: Ittiḥād al-Kuttāb, 2006), pp. 113–41; 133; and Fahd al-Hindāl in ‘Malāmiḥ wa mufāraqat al-baṭal al-shaʿbī fī Al-ḥarāfīsh: ʿĀshūr al-Nājī namūdhanjan’, Najīb Maḥfūẓ wa al-riwāya al-ʿarabiyya (Cairo: Ittiḥad al-Kuttāb, 2006), pp. 191–322.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 183

11/12/2012 16:28

Chapter 6 STORY

EPIC OF THE COMMON FOLK

Ḥarāfīsh provoked no controversy and generated less criticism. It seems universally liked by Mahfouz’s critics. It has been variably called a utopian fantasy, ḥulm al-madīna al-fāḍila,1 Al-madīna al-fāḍila being al-Fārābī’s description of ideal community; an epic of death and rebirth;2 an allegory of the search for metaphysical Truth and social justice;3 a national myth structured around an epic hero, recognised from the signs of his extraordinary birth, being orphaned very early in life, and his all-human traits;4 and even a magic-realist epic of man’s search for social justice.5 It is all these and more. I have no intention of exhausting the other possible interpretations of this novel. I want to narrowly focus on its historical impulse, and look at it as a history of the nation-state, this time told from the perspective of the common folk, whom Mahfouz calls the ḥarāfīsh, after the name he gave to his close circle of friends which he borrowed from the Mumluk and a later designation of the rabble of Cairo’s urban poor found in historical sources.6 Whatever group of the urban poor this term points to in Mahfouz’s epic, whether an organised group of mendicants schooled in martial arts in the earlier sources or the general ruffians of the later material, this novel is primarily a family saga focused on the urban poor, particularly the unskilled class, and details its rise to prominence in society. By taking advantage of the family saga inherent in Arabic popular epics, he manufactures a history of the nation-state from a populist perspective and at the same time crafts a narrative simultaneously productive and deconstructive of the myth of the hero inherent in heroic legends. Ḥarāfīsh, like any Arabic popular epic, is a long narrative detailing the founding of a dynasty – and I use the term dynasty here in its more popular sense to mean a family that has reached a high level of political influence 184

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 184

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

185

through generations of accumulating wealth, what Mahfouz calls aʿyān and wujahāʾ (notables) in the novel – and the vicissitudes of their fortunes and misfortunes spanning ten generations in ten cycles of stories. The founder of the dynasty is typically a foundling, of unknown parentage and birth. A childless blind sheikh, a muqriʾ (Qurʾān reader), heard a baby’s cry in ‘the passionate dark of dawn, on the path between death and life, within view of the watchful stars and within earshot of the beautiful, obscure anthems, a voice told of the trials and joys promised to our alley’,7 took him home to his wife, gave him his father’s name, ʿĀshūr, and raised him with his own brother, Darwīsh. ʿĀshūr’s adoptive parents soon die too, leaving him a young child fending for himself. Darwīsh kicks him out of the modest family dwelling in the alley, and the homeless ʿĀshūr moves to the desert and lives there for a while, sleeping rough and surviving on whatever food he can get his hands on. He grows into a giant. The chief of the ḥāra’s futuwwa invites him to join them but he refuses, ‘I haven’t the stomach for it’.8 He prefers instead to watch Zayn al-Nāṭūrī’s donkey for free. Al-Nāṭūrī takes him in and ʿĀshūr becomes a donkey boy, and in time marries al-Nāṭūrī’s stepdaughter, Zaynab. They have three sons, Ḥasballāh, Rizqallāh and Hibatallāh, who turn out wild and prefer to fight over a prostitute, Fulla, working at Darwīsh’s booze joint (al-būẓa). When ʿĀshūr goes there to bring his sons home, he himself falls in love with Fulla. He marries her. She gives birth to Shams al-Dīn. A plague hits the ḥāra. ʿĀshūr decides to remove his family from the ḥāra until the plague subsides. His first wife and old sons refuse to leave. He has no choice but to leave with Fulla and Shams al-Dīn. When they return the ḥāra is practically a ghost town, its population, including his first wife and sons, wiped out. He is unable to resist the temptation of wealth and social standing and moves in to one of the notables’ house now left vacant, the Bannān House. As life returns ʿĀshūr becomes known as al-Nājī, survivor of the plague, and recognised as the notable of the ḥāra. ʿĀshūr does not disappoint. He gives to the poor generously. The entire ḥāra is happy, and so is he, until Darwīsh returns and threatens to expose him. He compromises by not opposing Darwīsh’s project for rebuilding his booze house. His impersonation of a notable cannot last. In the end, he is found out when the government officers ask him for the deeds to the Bannān House. He goes to prison and serves his sentence. He emerges from the prison determined to be a ‘good’ man. He fights for the leadership of the futuwwa and wins it. He now uses his physical strength (he is a giant) and his leadership of the futuwwa (power) as instruments of justice, guided

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 185

11/12/2012 16:28

186

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

by the religious principles his adoptive father instilled in him and his own spirituality. He disappears, under the merciful shadow of justice pain is lost in the recesses of oblivion. Hearts bloom with confidence, drinking in the nectar of the mulberry trees, delighting in the sound of the anthems, without understanding their meaning. But will the brightness and the clear skies last forever?9 ʿĀshūr leaves his children two contradictory legacies: the spiritual just futuwwa who uses his power to spread social justice, taking from the wealthy to give the poor in public; and the errant man who is easily seduced by the beauty of a young woman and the glamour of good life in private. The remaining nine stories of Ḥarāfīsh tell of his children’s struggles to come to terms with these two legacies, to be a hero, ‘to be worthy of alNagi’s name and covenant’,10 or to justifiably live a life of debauchery, as ‘sons of a whore’ and ‘descendants of whores’. No one is able to strike a balance between private life and public action like ʿĀshūr. His children, whether from the male or female lines, all miss the mark however hard they try. They tend to choose power and wealth over social justice. They go soft, corrupt, and even mad when they become rich and powerful. Zahīra, ʿĀshūr’s great granddaughter, is most memorable. This beautiful and wily daughter from the female line has ambitions to be a rich female ʿĀshūr and control the futuwwa. She does it through playing men one against the other. By the time she marries ʿAzīz, a distant cousin from the rich male line, ‘she believed she was the clan chief [futuwwa] in woman’s skin and that the blessed life was only for the strong’.11 She dies young, killed by her second husband. Jalāl, her son from her first husband, is equally memorable. He is endowed with ʿĀshūr physique and sense of justice. He takes charge of the futuwwa, takes over the family business and becomes of one of the most powerful men in the ḥāra. Suddenly he decides to follow ʿAshur’s other set of footsteps. He marries a prostitute, Zīnāt the blonde, and goes mad at fifty. He looks for immortality, consorts with the jinns, and builds a lone minaret. Zīnāt poisons him in the end. The history of hit and miss repeats itself until ʿĀshūr II appears in the tenth and last cycle of stories. He rejects the life of decadence and pleasure; rather, he insists on being poor and austere. He eventually gains the leadership of the futuwwa. When he does, he rules justly, equalising between the rich and poor, including his own brothers. He tore down the minaret Jalāl

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 186

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

187

built, ‘renewed the mosque, the fountain, the trough, and the Qurʾān school, and founded a new school to accommodate the increase in numbers brought about by the arrival of the children of ḥarāfīsh’.12 He is practically ʿĀshūr reincarnate, though with a difference: he is steadfast in his refusal of luxury (money) and beauty (sex). He was determined that this refusal should come from within him, and not be the result of pressure from the harafish. He wanted to be better than his ancestor. The first Ashur had relied on his own strength, while he had made the harafish into an invincible force. His ancestor had been carried away by his passion; he would stand firm like the ancient wall. ‘No,’ he repeated firmly. That was his sweetest victory: his victory over himself.13 It is easy to read Ḥarāfīsh as an optimistic political allegory, as Badawī does, placing the writing of the novel in the post-1973 euphoria, when Sadat proclaimed himself victorious in the October war with Israel; as opposed to Nasser’s debacle before the Allied Forces during the crisis provoked by his nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956. Notwithstanding this optimism, it is also easy to spot the familiar contours of the emergence and development of a national leader in ʿĀshūr’s rise to power and the saga of his family from the perspective of hindsight. Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, Assad, Hussein and Gaddafi, all military men, for example, come from backgrounds of no social importance, and through luck and ability, become leaders of their state. All took drastic measures to suppress their opposition and consolidate their authority and, perhaps except for Nasser, used their position to amass wealth for their respective families. They are heroes turned despots. Most have transformed their tenure as rulers into dynasties. They all lack ʿĀshūr II’s discipline. What lies at the heart of despotism? Ḥarāfīsh’s preoccupation with power anticipates the concerns of Layālī, a rewrite interrogating the legacy of Alf layla wa layla’s kingship/ kinship model of political authority. The way it hones in on social climbing as a means to power, underdeveloped in Awlād ḥāratinā, also forecasts the class-conscious world of Layalī; Nights’ proper names, such as Shams al-Dīn, ʿAzīz and ʿAzīza, appear for the first time here in the landscape of a Mahfouzian text. The answer may lie in the legacy of the past, the five novels that rewrite pre-modern Arabic genres suggest; however, each novel tackles one specific epistemological-ontological paradigm. Ḥarāfīsh interrogates the myth of the hero, or the role of mythifying the hero inherent

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 187

11/12/2012 16:28

188

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

in Arabic popular epics, and shows yet again how myth, a semiological system, may at its best be variably constructed and serve as divergent codes of conduct, and may at its worst lead to tyranny. Mahfouz significantly situates the hero in the particular locale of today’s old Cairo, al-Ḥusayn, across the Nile from Būlāq and within a finite stretch of time, with a beginning and an end, but not in a specified known historical era. The novel in addition privileges a class of people forgotten by history. The urban poor, pedlars, porters, goatherds, donkey boys and prostitutes, exist on the fringes of society and outside the immediate purview of what would be ‘Caliphal Law’ in Layālī. The rich notables look down on them and are dismissive of their plights, and the police and government officials rarely make forays into their life. They do so only when the urban poor threaten the interests of the rich and powerful. Two instances are memorable. They repossess the Bannān House from ʿĀshūr, and pursue Samāḥa, ʿĀshūr’s great grandson, on false accusation made by the futuwwa in cahoots with the police. The ḥarāfīsh may be poor but they are fully human. Most of them struggle to live an ordered life in dignity in observance of Islam. Some are more ambitious. The futuwwa is born in the slippage between ‘government’ neglect and personal ambition. Strong and crafty young men organise themselves into gangs, maintaining order in the public spaces and at the same time extorting protection money for their travails. They are, like members of any human class, power hungry, and hopelessly in love with pleasure and wealth too. The alternative system of public control the urban poor have devised, the futuwwa, is like any political authority, subject to personal whims of the leader and open to abuse. On a good day, futuwwa is an instrument of justice, and on a bad one, it is a source of oppression. The history of the ḥarāfīsh unfolds in the dialectics between the two extremes of power’s potential, and begins in the chaos created by the futuwwa’s abuse of power. ʿĀshūr’s intervention is heroic. He is a lone individual who stands up to the hegemony of a group with nothing at his disposal but his physical strength and sense of justice. He is a hero for his ability to discipline his attitude towards power. He transcends his personal circumstances and at times goes against his own desires to put power in the service of social justice. His fallibility, as his easy seduction by beauty and wealth attests to, rarely, if at all, blinds him to the greater good. His private life does not detract from his public career. His weakness towards sex and money never puts him in the camp of the beautiful and wealthy. He is no traitor to his cause. His arrival at heroism, at this balance of strength and weakness, defiance and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 188

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

189

submission, activism and indifference, greed and sense of justice, public service and private pleasure, however, takes half a lifetime of struggle and contemplation. He is much more complex than the two legacies he leaves behind. He, as hero, is the end product of a long process of character formation. This is not how he is remembered. The ḥāra memorialises his ‘reign’, if I may thus describe his career as gangster and chief of futuwwa, as the irrecoverable ‘Golden Age’. His descendants, whether from the male or female lines, follow two ideologies, as I have already mentioned: one idealise his power, just rule and legendary status in society, and the other find in his example their excuse to pursue a life of pleasure and luxury. In all these three forms of remembering, much of the complexity of his personality and life is lost. He is a just ruler in the ḥāra’s collective memory, an undefeated leader of community in the imagination of his descendants with heroic aspirations, and a model dandy in the mind of the social climbers. Each remembering abstracts him into a Barthesian myth, pruning his character and life of the untidy details inappropriate to the iconic image being fashioned in each case. Remembering is in part convenient forgetting. Such mythifying, however, is necessary for the ḥāra and his family to go on. It creates both a sense of entitlement and expectation, which in turn generates history. History begins after ʿĀshūr’s disappearance in Ḥarāfīsh. It is spawned by the ḥāra’s foundation myth, the story of the coming into existence of a perfect world, ordered, egalitarian and happy, out of chaos. ʿĀshūr’s disappearance marks the end of the ‘Golden Age’ and the start of a long journey of recovery, driven by entitlement and expectation. The perfect reign of ʿĀshūr, lowest of the low life in the ḥāra, gives the ḥāra a sense of entitlement. Order and social justice are possible, even among the dregs of society, and they are by now theirs for the making. The world ʿĀshūr built from and for them gives them this right. ʿĀshūr also gave them the right to expect another similar leader to emerge from their midst. The ḥāra looks to his descendants to fulfil this expectation. ʿĀshūr’s family feel similarly entitled to ʿĀshūr’s legacy, his legendary status, and expect to assume leadership of society and/or live in luxury. The events unfolding in the remaining nine cycles of stories take place in the aftermath of the foundation myth and on the site of memory, through a game ruled by dialectics of remembering and forgetting. The text is inundated with references to the ʿĀshūr legacy (turāth) and myth (usṭūra) and the need to be worthy of them. While the ḥāra dream of a return to the ‘Golden Age’, his children, one generation after another, struggle to live in a way worthy of this legacy. In their interpretation of this legacy, they often remember his

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 189

11/12/2012 16:28

190

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

position of power, futuwwa, and fight to reclaim it, or give in to a life of debauchery, after all they are the descendants of a nobody and a whore, who had no scruples masquerading as a notable and as a result went to prison. Each instance of remembering-forgetting provides the blueprint for collective fantasies and individual lives. The tension among these three sets of ʿĀshūr’s traces in the ḥāra and family’s memory maps the trajectory of their dreams and actions, which engender the events and drive the narrative movement in Mahfouz’s epic of the urban poor. The conflicting interpretations of ʿĀshūr’s legacy are at the heart of the unfolding of the history of the ḥāra. Ḥarāfīsh is like Layālī in an important sense and may be read as imagining of community overlapped with national allegory too. As it invents a foundation myth for the common folk it also provides an analysis of and prognosis for their experience in self-government, in power and its management. Can the urban poor be responsible for themselves and trusted with power if the familiar oppressive structures of power are removed? The ‘government’ has little to no presence in Ḥarāfīsh, just as kingship recedes into the background in Layālī. Ḥarāfīsh, like Layālī but unlike Awlād ḥāratinā, is rather optimistic. It does, however, place the burden of political authority and social justice on the individual, not ideology or collective mythology. ʿĀshūr II, the hero of the tenth cycle of stories in Ḥarāfīsh, comes to this realisation having contemplated the failures of his ancestors to follow the example of ʿĀshūr, the founding father of, let us say, the ḥarāfīsh nation. Success lies in personal discipline, in training oneself to say no to desire for power for its own sake, and to a life of glamour and pleasure. His victory, like Maʿrūf’s in Layālī, is personal. It accentuates the reason behind ʿArafa’s failure in Awlād ḥāratinā; ʿArafa is too ready to give in to his power ambitions and too willing to kowtow to tyranny. ʿĀshūr II’s burden is twofold. His responsible role in the present, defined by self-discipline, is invested in his ‘true’ comprehension of the legacy of the past, ʿĀshūr’s life and work in their entirety, and more importantly, the way he transcended his personal demons in order to arrive at his vision for social justice and become the kind of leader he was. This self-discipline is necessarily the result of a long process of soul-searching, as ʿĀshūr and ʿĀshūr II show us, and unsurprisingly Ibn Faṭṭūma will follow suit and escalate the inquiry into how an individual may manage the burden of the past in view of the past and present abuses of power, as well as find a workable recipe for both social justice and individual happiness.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 190

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

191

Placing the responsibility of political authority on the shoulders of the individual shifts the focus of history away from structures of power underpinning religious communities and dynastic realms as well. History is now made up of stories of the individuals the totality of whom forms a political community, a nation-state, and the personal ijtihād of each contributes to the collective struggle for justice. History of the nation-state is not the objective narrative of the vicissitudes of religious communities, dynastic realms or contemporary despotism, but stories of individual subjects’ quest for Utopia, Utopia being a disciplined interiority here, where private desires do not dictate public action; it is the story of each individual’s slaying of his own dragon, taming of the tyranny within. The novel transforms al-sīra l-shaʿbiyya into a series of heroic biographies, not of kings and kingmakers, but of individuals rising up to or failing the challenges posed by the allure of power and the chequered legacy of political authority inherited from the past. There may be no escape from the burden of the past, but there is a way forward; perhaps not for past, present and future to progress in a linear fashion only, as we find in Awlād ḥāratinā and Layālī, but to follow a spiral itinerary, where the past, present and future do not go around in circles but rather intersect at crucial moments, moments which may serve as the sites of new departures, as we see in Ḥarāfīsh and Ibn Faṭṭūma. History does not have to repeat itself, or the past be forgotten. History, after all, is a game of memory. The opening up of biography, a classical Arabic historical genre, and al-sīra l-shaʿbiyya, a genre of Arabic popular history, to interiority, or the novelisation of history, allows for privatisation of collective memory. History in Ḥarāfīsh overcomes the hegemony of a particular kind of remembering or forgetting by multiplying the time frames of memory, injecting into external calendric time marked by the linear progression from minutes to hours, days, weeks, years, decades, generations and centuries, chaotic internal times manifest in dreams, nightmares, monologues, delirious prophecies, sixth sense and remembrances of things past. The history of the ḥāra is in hindsight a complex web of collective and private memories, remembrances of the past and dreams for the future, not only in the form of aspirations but also prophecies – Ḍiyā’s bizarre dreams are always accurate forecasts of future events in the novel. The past is forever in the present but it does not define it or the future. The present can take the shape of a past negotiated on the site of memory to a form proper to the present, based on which the future may be hopeful but not necessarily set in stone.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 191

11/12/2012 16:28

192

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel PERSONALISATION OF HISTORY

Focalising on political authority in personalised history, however allegorised this may be, is equally oppressively elitist; it is dismissive of a large segment of the nation wholly uninterested in political authority or even other questions of power. The membership of the nation is much more diverse. How is value to be given to each and every member of the nation, mothers, sisters, daughters, distant relatives, friends, allies, business partners, neighbours, for example, who make up the large retinue of the supporting cast in the drama of the making of a hero, without whom no epic or history would be possible or even necessary? Are they not potentially the heroes of their own stories? Are these ‘other’ individual stories not worth telling in themselves? National history is not sufficiently democratic in one major respect. It undermines the nation in its privileging the role of the national hero, here the individual invested in political authority, and partakes in its democratising processes. Mahfouz turns his attention to the private lives of a full array of members of the ḥāra, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, activist or pacifist, educated or illiterate, traditional or modern, religious or superstitious, all bound by family ties, by birth or by marriage, descendant from the male or female lines, and fashions their private lives into biographical notices, which he organises into a biographical dictionary in Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa l-masāʾ (1987; Morning and evening talk).14 This short novel comprises sixty-seven short but vivid portraits, and together they cover about two centuries of modern Egyptian history, from the time of French colonisation, through the British mandate, the 1919 and 1952 revolutions, all the way up to the 1980s. Mahfouz’s rewrite of the classical Arabic biographical dictionary15 adheres to the principles of composition and organisation of the familiar Arabic genre. The notices are arranged in alphabetical order, and each entry follows loosely the four parts of a classical biographical notice: birth and genealogy, education, contribution to a particular area of knowledge, and memorable anecdotes about the biographical subject or quotations from their works. Mahfouz privatises the classical Arabic biographical notice and introduces into it stories of love and marriage, forms of knowledge conventionally excluded, such as magic, home economy and management of small businesses and large estates, and types of activities rarely noted, especially political participation. This modern biographical dictionary of overlapping generations of one extended family living in a quarter of old Cairo, made up of three main branches

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 192

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

193

headed respectively by Yazīd al-Miṣrī, Muʿāwiya al-Qalyūbī and ʿAṭā al-Marākībī, tells a familiar story. The reader of Morning and Evening Talk finds symptoms of social breakdown everywhere in the text: as time goes by the father loses his authority, family ties grow weaker, and the family tree is increasingly dispersed across the city of Cairo and beyond. The narrative fragmentation of Morning and Evening Talk is thus an embodiment of the erosion of traditional Arab society, and the family nucleus in particular.16 Indeed. It may also be sensible to read into the narrative fragmentation of this novel Mahfouz’s erosion of the master historical narrative. Here, he does not narrate a nation and place this narrative within the history of modern Egypt in a linear progressive fashion focalised around heroic figures; rather, he pushes this master narrative into the background, breaking it apart into different dates and events, and distributing these dates and events across the biographical notices in no particular order. These are on occasion mentioned more than once. The 1919 revolution, for example, appears here and there, its impact shared by quite a few biographical subjects. In other words, Egyptian history is not the narrative of the major events of the past two centuries, but the stories of the private lives of the biographical subjects who responded to these events each in his or her own way. It is not the history of the rise of the nation structured around the story of the emergence of a national hero, nor is it the democratising process of political authority. It is simply the totality of individual lives lived in accordance to private beliefs and desires. This tacit recognition of the failure of any national master narrative to convey the lived experiences of the nation is in part due to modernity’s removal of the site of knowledge to the subject, as I have explained in Chapter 5 of Poetics of Love, and the outcome is that even knowledge of the past, or historical knowledge, comes to be defined by the modern knowing subject. If history is made up of the stories of individual private lives, as Mahfouz tells us in Ḥadīth, historical knowledge is, as Himmich will tell us, the result of private thoughts confirmed by empirical observation of reality, of a subject’s mobilisation of personal experiences of the present to understand the past, not the effect of seemingly objective narratives of the past. It is simultaneously the knowing subject’s search in the past for lessons for the present. We have already come across one of Himmich’s

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 193

11/12/2012 16:28

194

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

interrogations of present semiotics of tyranny through historical knowledge or examination of past practices in Majnūn al-ḥukm. Al-ʿallāma (1997)17 continues the story of tyranny begun in Majnūn al-ḥukm but escalates the inquiry of historical knowledge to a new level. Turning attention to another historical era, the Mamluk rule as witnessed by Ibn Khaldūn (1337–1406), he now focuses on the ways in which historical knowledge may be put to the service of the present, not only to understand it but also to resist and survive tyranny. As Mahfouz does in Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma, Himmich meditates on the role of the ‘public intellectual’ in contemplating questions of power and political authority and, more importantly, in political participation, especially his responsibility in what Edward Said would call ‘speaking truth to power’. However, he fictionalises an iconic historical figure instead of concocting his own fictional character. Al-ʿallāma rewrites Ibn Khaldūn’s ‘autobiography’ known as Al-taʿrīf, found as the final part of his historical compendium Kitāb al-ʿibar, and as an individual work, an expanded version of Al-taʿrif, famous as Al-taʿrīf bi Ibn Khaldūn wa riḥlatuhu gharban wa sharqan.18 The novel, in three chapters framed by a preface and a postscript, follows closely the trajectory of Ibn Khaldūn’s ‘political’ and ‘scholarly’ career during his Egyptian sojourn in the last twenty-three years of his life (1382–1406),19 which Ibn Khaldūn himself maps in his autobiography. Himmich zooms in on the period beginning with his dismissal from the office of the chief Māliki judge immediately preceding his departure for pilgrimage to Mecca (1387) and ending with his death (1406), punctuated by his journey to Damascus (1400) and meeting with Tamerlane (1041). In his novelisation of Ibn Khaldūn’s autobiography, Himmich overlaps it with biography, quoting passages from his various biographers, then fleshing out these oblique references into substantial details of his subject’s private thoughts and feelings, all the while alternating between first and third person narrative voices. The ‘Preface’, in third person voice, situates Ibn Khaldūn in Cairo, specifically in Palace Walk, and at a time of his dismissal from all government offices, as both teacher and judge. It introduces three fictional characters: his Egyptian manservant, Shaʿbān; Maghrebian Ḥammū al-Ḥīḥī from Fez, whom he will employ as his scribe in exchange for Shaʿbān’s service to al-Ḥīḥī’s wife, Umm al-Banīn; and Umm al-Banīn herself, who will become the heart of Ibn Khaldūn’s domestic life in Cairo later. Chapter One, in third person voice, takes its departure from two paratexts Himmich chooses from two biographies of Ibn Khaldūn,20 Lisān al-Dūn Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s (1313–74) Al-iḥāṭa fī akhbār Gharnāṭa and Sham

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 194

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

195

al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī’s (1428–97) Al-ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ. The two quotes give a quick characterisation of Ibn Khaldūn as a brilliant historian who insists on his Maghrebian identity. The remainder of the chapter, ‘Seven Nights of Dictation’, evokes the dictation sessions (amālī) between master scholar and scribe, likened to those of Ibn Baṭṭūta and his scribe Ibn Juzayʾ, but in reality consists of seven evenings’ worth of question-and-answer sessions on historical knowledge between Ibn Khalūn and Ḥammū al-Ḥīḥī. It ends with his departure for pilgrimage. This third-person narrative, however, frames a series of dialogues between Ibn Khaldūn and al-Ḥīḥī, all recounted in the first person. Chapter Two, in first-person voice, equally takes its cue from two paratextual quotations from Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Rafʿ al-iṣr ʿan quḍāt miṣr and Ibn Qādī Shuhba’s Al-dhayl ʿan tārīkh al-islām. These paratexts point to the lacunae in Ibn Khaldūn’s autobiography, which is rather silent on his private life. It makes a quick mention of the death of his wife and daughters when the ship on which they were travelling from Maghreb to Egypt sank near Alexandria21 but gives no further details of his family life. Himmich constructs a love life for Ibn Khaldūn from the hints dropped by his two biographers: al-ʿAsqalānī’s ‘He liked listening to female singing and consorting with the young. He married a woman with a reckless brother who was reputed to be mixing with unsavoury company and thus fell into a pit of corruption’, and Ibn Qādī Shuhba’s quoting Ibn Khaldūn ‘In Cairo lives someone who loves me and whom I love’.22 This second chapter of the novel, ‘Between Falling in Love and Operating in the Shadow of Power’, sees him return to Cairo. He finds out that his scribe has died, leaving his wife to the mercy of her mad brother. He marries the widow of his scribe, Umm al-Banīn, and together they have a daughter they name al-Batūl. He also takes charge of the care of her mad brother, hospitalising him in the Māristān first, and then lodging him in a Sufi retreat. The period covered in this part also sees his return to teaching and law and the ups and downs of his career affected by the death of his first patron, Barqūq, and the crowning of the teenaged Faraj. Chapter Three, ‘The Journey to Tamerlane, the Scourge of the Century’, returns to speaking in third-person voice, but again interspersed with dialogues recounted in the first person, and details his involuntary journey to Damascus Levant and his historical meeting with Tamerlane. Taken to the Levant by the new Mamluk Sultan, intent on fending off Tamerlane’s advancing army, Ibn Khaldūn finds himself in a bind when the Mumluk Sultan withdraws quietly to Cairo with a small army. Ibn Khaldūn takes

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 195

11/12/2012 16:28

196

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

upon himself the responsibility of ‘dialoguing’ with Tamerlane. He writes a geography and history of the Maghreb for Tamerlane, hoping that his emphasis on the prohibiting terrain of the Maghreb would deter Tamerlane’s territorial ambitions in the area. He negotiates safe passage for his fellow intellectuals (ʿulamāʾ) from Tamerlane, and when his task is accomplished, he obtains permission to return to Cairo. Upon his return, in the postscript, which is narrated in the first-person voice, he finds that his wife and daughter have returned to Fez, having been informed of his death in Damascus. The Sultan refuses to let him travel to Fez. After a lengthy wait, he is reunited with his wife in Cairo. As he prepares to return to Fez with his wife, he is given a new appointment. He lets his wife return to Fez to take care of their daughter, knowing that he will be able to leave soon. Indeed he is quickly dismissed from his position and given permission to leave. Alas, he falls ill and dies. PRIVATE THOUGHTS, LESSONS OF THE PAST

The tone of Al-ʿallāma is more personal than Ibn Khaldūn’s autobiography and biographies. Al-taʿrīf is a factual account of Ibn Khaldūn’s career in politics dotted with appointments and dismissals as his fortunes flowed and ebbed with the various rulers from Morocco to Tunisia, Cairo and Damascus. Even though the text is overwhelmed with the panegyric poems he composed in praise of his patrons, it provides little glimpse of the feelings and private thoughts of the person behind the narrative. Al-ʿallāma fills in the gaps. The fictional accounts of his love, marriage and his anxieties over not having news of his wife and separation from his family, of his relationship with his scribe and manservant Shaʿban, of his interaction with friends, other intellectuals and patrons (including Tamerlane), and of his search for some kind of truth about the human condition, inserts his subjectivity squarely in historical knowledge. The primacy of subjectivity in Al-ʿallāma is visibly a priority. The voice of the speaking subject rings, loud and clear, in the dialogues between Ibn Khaldūn and his scribe al-Ḥīḥī. Ibn Khaldūn is given the opportunity to explain to al-Ḥīḥī his motives, aspirations and troubles as an intellectual and scholar, his views of other types of writing, and more importantly, his method of historical research. Ibn Khaldūn’s explanations take place on the site of intertextuality with texts adjacent to Al-taʿrīf. That autobiography intersects with biography here is clear. Al-ʿallāma creates another instance of intertextuality, that of the intersection of autobiography (Al-taʿrīf) with biography

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 196

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

197

and geography-driven travelogue, Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa. In this it resembles Mahfouz’s Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma. In the first conversation with al-Ḥīḥī, Ibn Khaldūn explains that he is rather seeking ‘depth’ rather than simply ‘breadth’ of knowledge. Al-Ḥīḥī immediately thinks of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, a near contemporary of Ibn Khaldūn, and his work, the Riḥla, as an example of ‘breadth’ without ‘depth’. Ibn Khaldūn responds by saying that he and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa respond to the same turbulent historical circumstances differently: while Ibn Baṭṭūṭa travels far and wide he prefers to explore one ‘country’ in depth. In Chapter Two, Ibn Khaldūn tours the historical monuments of Cairo and records in detail the places he visits, as Ibn Baṭṭūṭa does. In the third chapter, he similarly provides a description of the historical monuments he visits in the ‘Holy Lands’. This Ibn Khaldūn does not do in Al-taʿrīf. The insistence on the difference between Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and Al-taʿrīf in Al-ʿallāma paradoxically points to the uncanny resemblance between the two texts. If Ibn Baṭṭūṭa journeys across the world, leaving behind his loved ones, in search of knowledge grounded in geography, Ibn Khaldūn also travels from one end of the Islamic world to the other in search of historical knowledge in the form of comprehensive information on all eras and all peoples and, more importantly, theory on the rise and fall of ‘nations’ as well as tyranny. The kind of depth in knowledge alluded to in the novel is a prerogative of Al-ʿallāma and is located in subjectivity. The three genres Al-ʿallāma calls to mind – autobiography, biography and geography-travelogue – are all forms of history in pre-modern ArabicIslamic tradition, and they complement the kind of history represented by Ibn Khaldūn’s Kitāb al-ʿibar. History, often in the form of chronicles and annals, gives accounts of events in a chronological order in tandem with progression of time; geography makes place the locus of historical events; biography and autobiography conceive of history as made up of public lives of individuals, primarily rulers, notables and scholars. The structure of these works, the accounts they include, and the narrative they resort to, all seem to indicate that objective historical knowledge is possible, that subject has no role in shaping this knowledge. Experience, especially of the personal kind belonging to the realm of the private, is rarely accounted for as part of the formative process of knowing. How does Ibn Khaldūn feel about his patrons, about his endless appointments and dismissals, often arbitrary and dictated by the whims of those in power? What does he think of Tamerlane? Does he view Tamerlane as a ‘coloniser’, the way modern Arabs think of him? Does serving Tamerlane, and by extension all other unjust rulers, throw him into an intellectual crisis? Who were his family and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 197

11/12/2012 16:28

198

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

friends? What was his relationship with them like? In what ways did they influence his life, career and research? How have these questions affected his accounts of his life in Egypt, his encounter with Tamerlane and the shape of his universal history, Kitāb al-ʿibar? Al-taʿrīf, silent on these matters, is like his biographies, more concealing than revealing of him, of his subjectivity, even more than his history in which some details of his life are dispersed. Absent too is any kind of articulation of the impulse or motive behind his grand narrative. Al-ʿallāma, more akin to Ibn Faṭṭūma than Al-taʿrīf, is more interested in the interiority of a public intellectual. It speaks of Ibn Khaldūn’s reluctance, ambivalence, apprehension and obligation towards working with Barqūq, Faraj and especially Tamerlane. As an established scholar he teaches his students to think rationally, as a chief judge, he tries to establish a just legal system, and as leading intellectual with some influence, he strives to push forward a programme of social justice even at a time of impending attack by Tamerlane; and when this fails he tries to protect his fellow intellectuals and citizens of the besieged Damascus from Tamerlane’s bloodshed through negotiation. He even compiles a ‘history cum geography’ of the Maghreb, exaggerating the difficult terrain of the region, hoping to prevent a Tartar invasion. Subjectivity is at the heart of not only historical knowledge but also public action in Al-ʿallāma. Historical knowledge is incomplete without both private and daily life of the knowing subject. Above all, it is dependent on the knowing subject’s ability to come to rational conclusions based on empirical research, as his criticism of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s penchant to record as truth implausible events, such as ‘Abū ʿInān’s single-handed victory over an entire army’23 shows, and to ‘explore in depth the knowledge of realities and the materiality of objects and to observe the laws of change and transformation’.24 Historical knowledge, seen in this light, is necessarily conditioned by the materiality and historicity of the subject. So is public action. ‘I’m a child of my own era’, he declares to al-Ḥīḥī on their second evening session, ‘even though I can easily dodge and leap about in time. Yes, a child of my own era; in other words, of its benefits – how tragically few they are! – and of its faults as well, and sadly how many they are, particularly when we look at the extent of political disintegration and lack of willpower’.25 He enumerates some of his faults in this regard. For example, ‘I’ve allowed emotion to sway my intellect and blind my perception . . . I went too far in my defence of the ʿAbbasi caliphs against the charge of drunkenness, immorality and fornication . . .’,26 and ‘My worst offense involved some

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 198

11/12/2012 16:28

199

Story

of what I had to say about pious Sufis. For that reason one is fully justified in characterizing my epistle, The Cure for the Petitioner, as naive and worthless. It stands condemned for responding to the call of politicians to launch an attack on the spread of popular mysticism and Sufi hostels and to regulate the rules governing all Sufi devotees so that they would fall within the confines of Sunni educational practice’.27 He speaks equally frankly of his public action as driven by his allegiance to his family and their ties to, for example, the Hafsid rulers,28 and his fear of violence that may be done to him and his family and death if he does not work with the authority.29 For private life, or his life with his family, is the driving force behind his search for historical knowledge and engagement in public action. ‘For more than two years now – to be exact, ever since the sea swallowed up my wife and children – I have actually lost all desire to take a fresh look at the complex and knotty questions we’re investigating today’.30 RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY

Al-ʿallāma places Ibn Khaldūn’s works in the context of his private life and thoughts. The seven dialogues on historical knowledge, on lessons of the past, demonstrate the contingency of historical knowledge. They seemingly serve as the theoretical prelude to two episodes in Ibn Khaldūn’s life that Himmich explores in the novel, to the decisions he makes with regards to his career in politics. A closer scrutiny of the text reveals that his private life provides him with the impetus to search the past anew for lessons for the present, for strategies to cope with the vicissitudes of his political fortunes and, more importantly, the fate of the ‘nations’ he has served and continues to serve. Ibn Khaldūn has fallen in love again, and his new life with Umm al-Banīn and al-Batūl generates in him a renewed desire to make the world a better place and at the same time makes his compromises with the authorities unavoidable. The key to his happiness lies in his ability to protect and provide for his family in an environment where both the political leaders are tyrannical, ‘The sultans and rulers of this ear are the primary cause of calamity . . .’,31 and to maintain his integrity as a scholar and public intellectual when the majority are corrupt, ‘engaged in profitable employment’.32 Al-ʿallāma may be interpreted as a straightforward allegory of the contemporary intellectual’s search for a meaningful life in both private and public. It reads like Ibn Faṭṭūma in many respects. It is a meditation on the role of the public intellectual in looking for and finding solutions for present political solutions in the past, in an interrogation of the past. This

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 199

11/12/2012 16:28

200

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

interrogation of the past is, more importantly, defined by the agenda of the present. Al-ʿallāma takes this interrogation in a direction significantly different from Ibn Faṭṭūma in two ways: Himmich is interested in tracing the sources of present tyranny in the past; and equally keen in recovering possible forms of resistance from the past. His reincarnation of Ibn Khaldūn, the most influential Maghrebi Arab historian and historiographer to date who held political offices throughout his life, serves these purposes. The contemporary Arab world, according to Himmich, is the product of and heir to the period in which the historical Ibn Khaldūn lived,33 and an examination of the fourteenth century may provide insights into the problems besieging the Arab twentieth century. Al-ʿallāma accentuates the pervasiveness of tyranny in the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, manifest in the decadence of the ruling class, which he points out to Umm al-Banīn on their walks in Cairo; and even the spread of the plague that killed most of his family in Tunis when he was sixteen, as he explains to al-Ḥīḥī.34 Al-ʿallāma is a journey in semiotics of tyranny Himmich expounds in Al-khaldūniyya. It takes forward the story of the formation of the tyrannical state he tells in Majnūn al-ḥukm and now focuses on the last throes of a tyrannical state, on decadence and decay, internal fighting amongst the ruling class, the government officers’ control over the ruler, the impending overthrow of the state by another younger and more rigorous state (represented by Tamerlane), and above all the role of the intellectual, Ibn Khaldūn, in managing and resisting tyranny. Himmich is not interested in the workings of ʿaṣabiyya, Ibn Khaldūn’s famous conceptualisation of the power network underpinning the formation and longevity of the state35 made up of a constellation of kinship and interest groups, for example; rather, he gives weight to rebellion and revolution slighted by Ibn Khaldūn in his works. Another area in which I have gone astray, Ḥammū, is in my dogged insistence on the importance of group solidarity by raising it to paradigm status. It allowed me to perceive some things, but it blinded me to others. The kinds of things it did not allow me to realize were of a kind that no historian can afford to despise or ignore. By way of example, there is the matter of unsuccessful revolts, and revolutionaries and religious reformers whom I depicted in the most derogatory and insulting terms. By adopting such a posture I was on the side of the more powerful victor and keeping history confined to records written according to the logic of conquest and power. Left outside of the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 200

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

201

picture were the masses of conquered peoples and those unsupported by the solidarity of a group.36 Al-ʿallāma redresses another imbalance in the works of Ibn Khaldūn and brings to the fore the silent ‘masses and conquered people’ who must cope with and survive tyranny. The lives of Shaʿbān, al-Ḥīḥī, Umm al-Banīn, and her brother are ‘exemplars’ of resistance at its most basic. They are not rebels or revolutionaries, but their insistence on living in dignity, against all odds, is rather heroic. The novel is at the same time the story of a public intellectual who must survive the whims of those in power – ‘disasters can strike when you least expect it, and punishment and mercy alternate with each other like night and day. You can be clobbered at random, and then you’re pardoned without warning’37 – and find meaning in his work. By choosing to keep his head down, enduring exile, imprisonment and separation from his family without complaint, or taking up office diligently without protest, he is able to give help to those around him, for example, ʿUmm al-Banīn and her brother, and to uphold justice even if only temporarily. There is no shame in negotiating with a tyrant, such as Tamerlane, for the safety of the people of an entire city abandoned by its political rulers. Ibn Khaldūn’s intervention puts off Tamerlane’s planned attack on Damascus. Perhaps his most important accomplishment is his steadfastness in the face of tyranny, for it is the responsibility of the public intellectual to assume the leadership of community when its political ruler abandons it and flees, and, of course, to speak truth to power, as evidenced by his legacy is his monumental scholarship, in which he leaves behind what Himmich sees as his penetrating analysis of tyranny. Al-ʿallāma is another study of tyranny but it now links the present practices to the past. By projecting the present on the past, and by highlighting strategies of survival, Himmich writes an optimistic national allegory that traces the past in the practices of present political rulers and public intellectuals and maps the paths of quiet resistance from the perspective of the public intellectual. The public intellectual has a role, as leader of community and critic of observable practices, even under the current climate of rampant tyranny. The surface optimism of this national allegory cannot hide the profound pessimism of the novel. Time comes to a standstill, notwithstanding the linear progression of historical time from one phase of Ibn Khaldūn’s life to another, or the dialogisation of narrative time into one of public and another private. It does not move. There can be no future when the past continues to throw its long shadows on the present. There seems

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 201

11/12/2012 16:28

202

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

no way out. Tyranny pervades, so does the past. The semiotics of tyranny, which Himmich recalls in order to erode and transform, have instead, perhaps expectedly, cast a spell on the knowing subject, freezing time and locking the present in the past. History is that of continuous tyranny in the Arab world from whose grip there is no foreseeable deliverance. Tyranny simply refuses to desist. On the contrary, it now overwhelms, invading even the innermost thoughts and feelings of the knowing subject. Ibn Khaldūn’s submission to its dictates is an omen of tyranny’s sinister affect on the subject. There are already murmurs of the role of intelligence as a form of power in Al-ʿallāma. ‘Timur is the most ruthless and dangerous of all the Mongols. The reason is that he makes full use of advanced knowledge and strategy in applying his overwhelming force’,38 Ibn Khaldūn advises the council of war brought together by Faraj to devise strategies of defence against a possible Mongol invasion, and suggests, among other things, ‘mislead the tyrant’s spies’39 and ‘the dispatch of trustworthy spies and agents to infiltrate his army ranks and tribes’.40 Espionage is crucial in military victory, as Yashbak tells Ibn Khaldūn: Reliable information only comes in fits and starts . . . His [Tamerlane’s] agents inside the city are spreading all sorts of false information: they’re saying, for example, that Timur plans to drown Damascus in a hail of incendiary bombs projects by long-distance catapults that only he possesses. The strange thing is that, when these agents are captured, they still stick to their story even if they’re being tortured or threatened with death. We have twenty agents of our own, but that’s all, [and only three of them returned, their tongues and limbs cut off and their eyes gouged out. Since then] no other Mamluk would volunteer for the job even disguised as monks or dervishes. Even when we tried to dragoon some of them, they threatened to defect and kill themselves before Timur’s elephants tore them apart.41 It is also tyranny’s elixir of total control, as al-Ghīṭānī shows us in Al-Zaynī Barakāt (1971; Zayni Barakat, 1988),42 when the state sets its spying sight not on the external enemy but on the innermost private thoughts and feelings of each and every individual member of the nation. Zayni Barakat anticipates the type of response to tyranny exemplified by Himmich in Al-ʿallām almost two decades earlier. I have saved the discussion of this political allegory of the Nasser and his era (1952–70) for last

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 202

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

203

because it is the novel that precipitated the type of intertextual novel I have been looking at and, more importantly, it brings the discussion of intertextuality in the Arabic novel full circle. It embodies not only the vast array of pre-modern narrative genres the Arabic novel rewrites complexly in order to write history of the Arab nation-state, but also the narrative strategies and techniques of its nineteenth-century precursors. It is the catalyst of departure for Arab novelists and, more importantly, for historians, critics and theorists of the Arabic novel; it provides the right hindsight angle for them to finally see the Arabic novel’s relationship to Arabic literary heritage and re-examine the Arabic novel’s aesthetics and politics, now as numerous interlaced dialogues between East and West, past and present, collective and individual, culture and literature, power and political participation, to name but a few examples, and write a more nuanced history of the Arabic novel. It is, as Edward Said would say, the beginning that is necessarily already the anticipatory embodiment of the ending.43 It is so in at least two ways: it foresees the ending of the nation-state, here, ending in the senses of both fate and outcome, and forecasts the revisionist readings of the Arabic novel. It is with this novel that I end my discussion of intertextuality in the Arabic novel as homage to the work that has inspired both novelists and critics and, more significantly, demystified and demythified the Arab nation-state, exposing it to be the tyrannical state that it is. Much ink has already been spilled on the ways in which al-Ghīṭānī resurrects a historical figure, al-Zaynī Barakāt, from Ibn Iyās’ (1448–1522) chronicles of the Mumluk rule in Egypt, Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr, to craft an ironic portrayal of Nasser’s ‘mysterious’ rise to power and a censorship-defying critique of his rule of terror, deploying pre-modern forms of Arabic writing and oral communication to veil his discourse on contemporary political reality and to give the Arabic novel an authenticity derived from a fabricated kinship to Arabic narrative tradition. He skilfully grafts the present onto traditional narrative forms that tell stories of the past, and creates an atmosphere of mystery around al-Zaynī and his career: we always hear about him but never from him, and what we know about him comes from divergent, fragmentary secondary sources, which always speak obliquely through a mask of allusive sentences. This aura of mystery, sustained throughout the novel, is paradoxically the environment in which strategies of control are launched, always in secret and from unidentified corners, to spread and sustain the hegemony of al-Zaynī’s rule. The slippage between past and present, so that it is impossible to distinguish between two times, serves as the subterfuge through which the tale of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 203

11/12/2012 16:28

204

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

the role of the modern secret service in the workings of hegemony may be published, circulated and even lauded without compunction.44 STATE OF FEAR: VOYEURISM, EAVESDROPPING, GOSSIPMONGERING, TORTURE

I want to turn to two moments of intertextuality in Zayni Barakat that have thus far escaped attention. In the first instance, Ghīṭānī fictionalises the pre-modern institution of espionage (amr al-ʿuyūn wa l-jawāsīs) managed under Dīwān al-Inshāʾ into the contemporary secret service (al-mukhābarāt) he calls Dīwān al-Baṣṣaṣīn. The pre-modern Arabic terms for spies, ʿayn and jāsūs, are derived from the eye and to see or to sense respectively, and of course, baṣṣāṣ, is derived from baṣṣa, which is the verb used to denote to look or to see in colloquial Egyptian. Voyeurism is twin to eavesdropping. In international espionage, the eyes and ears are to turn toward the enemy and penetrate their camps in order that the government may acquire sensitive information and take measures accordingly to protect a country’s borders and interests. Zayni Barakat instead focuses on what is referred to as ‘internal enemies’ who are ‘to be found among the princes, the elite, as well as among the populace’45 almost to the detriment of the security of the country from external enemies: the Ottomans will conquer Egypt by the end of the novel. It is the responsibility of the baṣṣāṣ, or the national security service, then to transgress the limits of discretion and decorum and infiltrate the veils and walls in order to master the innermost privacy of an individual, to control his or her every thought and action. A national secret service did not exist in pre-modern Arab writing, at least up to the fifteenth century. Al-Qalqashandī’s (1355 or 1356–1418) discussion of the qualifications and work ethics of the ʿuyūn and jawāsīs in Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā fī ṣināʿat al-inshā accounts for James Bond figures only.46 Ghīṭānī adds the function of the mukhābarāt to the Dīwān al-Baṣṣāṣīn; in fact, he magnifies this function almost to the exclusion of their role as international spies. Ghīṭānī’s baṣṣāṣīn are not Himmich’s jawāsīs or al-Qalqashandī’s ʿuyūn wa jawāsīs. However, the baṣṣāṣīn must possess at least the qualities and qualifications of the ʿuyūn wa jawāsīs as prescribed by al-Qalqashandī and more. The baṣṣāṣīn, ‘from the chief spy who has control over the affairs of the whole State down to the junior spy who trails a man or a woman and who reports everything that is said in a gathering, of all of them it requires intelligence and astuteness (ṣāḥib fiṭna wa dhakāʾ)’, Zakariyyā Ibn Rāḍī,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 204

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

205

al-Zaynī’s deputy in all his functions, writes in his report to the international congress of spies he organises in Cairo, ‘Each has to find ways and means that enable him not only to live securely among men but also to be popular and well-liked’.47 How does the spy become well liked by the people? – he introduces his discourse with this rhetorical question, then translates al-Qalqashandī’s list of particulars for the jāsūs into Zakariyyā’s discourse on the baṣṣāṣ into a modern secret service. That the jāsūs must be trustworthy (an uakūna mimman yūthaqu bi-naṣīḥatihi wa ṣidqihi), of sound sense and keen acumen (an yakūna dhā ḥidsin ṣāʾibin wa firāsatin tāmmatin), master of artful cunning, stratagems and subterfuge (an yakūna kathīra l-dahāʾi wa l-ḥiyali wa l-khadīʿati), widely travelled and knowledgeable about the countries to which he is sent (lahu durbatun bi l-asfāri wa maʿrifatun bi l-bilādi al-lattī yatajjahu ilayhā), fluent in the languages of the people on whom he is to spy (an yakūna ʿārifan bi-lisāni ahli l-bilādi al-lattī yatajjihu ilayhā) and in possession of patience and endurance (an yakūna ṣabūran ʿalā ma-laʿallahu yaṣīru ilayhi min ʿuqūbatin in ẓafira bihi al-ʿaduwwu),48 comes to be: Among the characteristics of a great spy . . . is his excellent ability to acquire the talents and skills of all people. The nature of a spy’s job compels him to interact and deal with all kinds of people from different races, thousands of people who are different in temperament and predilections . . . The true spy, the real top-notch spy, is one who has been able to combine all the characteristics of all people . . . A spy should be a coal-trader when he talks to coal-traders . . . He has to move from showing hatred to expressing love in the blinking of an eye and he must be convincing in both cases. He must master the language of the rich, be humble when he mixes with the poor, be foolish and loved by the fools . . . The most important criterion to measure the skill of a spy is how knowledgeable and conversant with people’s affairs he is. The more knowledgeable a spy is, the better command he has of the foundations of learning and the different arts, the more capable he is of unveiling the secrets of the world . . . if I tell you about a young spy – one of my men – who can debate with the most learned scholars in their narrowest fields of specialization without having any prior knowledge of what he is debating . . . In addition, there is another class, which is made up of adjunct spies . . . Adjunct spies should be chosen on the basis of utmost honesty, trustworthiness and integrity.49

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 205

11/12/2012 16:28

206

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

The work of the baṣṣāṣīn, I have already alluded to earlier, is twofold. The first mission is made urgent by the Ottoman ambitions in Mumluk Egypt. Zakariyyā’s agents are planted everywhere in Ottoman lands and institutions, and must send home any information vital to the security of Egypt. This key function of the ʿuyūn and jawāsīs is, however, overshadowed by their second mission: their intrigues among the people of Egypt. It is their priority to make the innermost thoughts and feelings of each individual known to the authorities under the pretext of national security, of catching Ottoman spies, so that al-Zaynī and his deputy, who ironically turn out to be two sides of the same coin as the story unfolds, can ensure their total control of the nation. Zakariyyā’s fantasy is revealing. Sometimes, when it is pitch dark, he tries to penetrate the darkness with his mind’s eyes. How many men in the city are on top of women now? Undoubtedly innumerable men are. It is at such moments that he realizes that no matter how sharp his insight, certain matters would still elude him. If only the time would come when the spies would know how many men are having intercourse with their women, what babies will be conceived, which of these babies will be born and grow up to be trouble-makers. If he knew that in advance, he would prevent men from sleeping with the woman who would bear the baby. In this way he could eradicate evil, nip it even before it has a bud. If the Pharaoh of Egypt had had a great spy who found out the truth about the baby abandoned by his mother in the river, the world would never have heard of God’s Prophet, Moses, and the Pharaoh and his troops would not have drowned.50 This desire to penetrate darkness, to know the innermost thoughts and feelings of every national, is cleverly fleshed out into an incident that preoccupies a big part of the story of al-Zaynī’s rise to power, the lamps incident, with which the newly appointed Muḥtasib of Cairo, the market inspector and overseer of public conduct, began his career as public servant. This lamps incident, the other instance of intertextuality escaping critical notice, is inspired by one of al-Ḥākim bi Amr Allāh’s innovative or mad edicts during the sixth year of his reign, when he ordered ‘the lighting of lamps and candles at night in all Cairo, so that night became day’.51 This episode in the history of the Fatimid rule of Egypt, its precedence denied in the text: ‘It never happened before that lamps were hung’,52 is fleshed out into a controversy that explores the impact of such a step on ordinary

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 206

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

207

life. The edict is announced by heralds soon after the narrative reveals Zakariyyā’s secret fantasy, From now on there shall be hung big lamps . . . These lamps shall be hung above the gate of every alley, in front of every house, palace or caravanserai. These new lamps shall be hung and lighted by Zayni’s men every night so that Cairo might sleep in security. Be forewarned that no lamp shall be removed from its place, or else the owners of the place will be punished and penalized.53 The responses to this innovation, bidʿa, are telling of the mukhābarāti mind and the motives behind the attempt to turn night into day. But the lamps reveal our nakedness. God has created night and day: dark night and lit day; God has created the night as a cover and a shield; do we remove the cover? Do we do away with the shield that God has given us? Do we give in to our arrogance and dispel the darkness of the night from every span of the hand in the city. This is heresy, which we do not accept. It is a deviation from the law and we reject it.54 More importantly, the lamps do not ‘drive away devils, light the roads for strangers at night and deter the Mamluks of the emirs and the brigands from attacking innocent people at night’;55 rather, as the leading emirs object in their plea to the Sultan, they ‘have encouraged common women to go out after the evening prayers, to roam the streets and to stay up late in front of the tenements and bazaars. This is against all modesty and decorum’; ‘the children no longer go home early. Rather they stay in the streets for hours, singing and chanting, sometimes making fun of our Mamluks and throwing stones at them and bandying obscenities’; ‘devised only by someone who wished to sow seeds of sedition, strife and profligacy’; and, most importantly, the men who ‘climb the wooden ladders to light the lamps and clean them’ ‘spy on the people and on us. They invade people’s privacy’.56 The lamps are quickly removed but that does not dismantle the Dīwān al-Baṣṣaṣīn only pushes the secret service further underground. Agents may operate in the dark, behind disguise and beyond walls, but they always find a way to bring to light, make transparent, the obscure parts of a life, the unspoken thoughts of a mind and the hidden secrets of a heart. They have ‘the amazing methods’ of al-Zaynī (and Zakariyyā), ‘which enabled

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 207

11/12/2012 16:28

208

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

him [/them] to detect the most intimate goings-on inside houses and behind walls’.57 The head spy of Cairo, for example, knows more about the mother of ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAdawī, one of the informants, than ʿAmr himself.58 The breaking of Saʿīd al-Juhaynī sums up the objectives, methods and hegemony of the Dīwān al-Baṣṣaṣīn and those who sponsor it, run it and use it. This student of al-Azhar, a colleague of ʿAmr, disciple of al-Zaynī’s master, Abū al-Suʿūd, is an uncompromising intellectual. He watches al-Zaynī’s rise with enthusiasm, then looks on with disappointment at the unravelling of the latter’s hunger for power: his alliance with the powerful, like the rich merchant given free reign to have the monopoly over fava beans; his collaboration with the purveyors of oppression, especially Zakariyyā, in order to amass more power, evidenced by the growth of his functions and titles, and to exert control over the ‘nation’. He is, like Zakariyyā, a purveyor of oppression and his victims are numerous. Saʿīd keeps a detailed record of every victim in his mind. Finally, he calls al-Zaynī ‘liar’ in public. For all the Bureau’s intents and purposes, he must be broken and brought into the fold, be integrated into the kingdom of spies in Zakariyyā’s fantasy in which every national works as his spy. Al-Zaynī, with the help of Zakariyyā, gets to work. A network of spies, including ʿAmr, bear down on Saʿīd. They follow his every step, watch his every move, and listen in on every conversation. They even manage to eavesdrop on what he murmurs in his sleep. They figure out he is secretly in love with Samāḥ, the socialclimbing Rīḥān’s daughter, and use this knowledge to their advantage and his detriment. Al-Zaynī arranges for Samāḥ to be married to an emir, a son of the Mamluk elite. The elated Rīḥān is, needless to say, all compliance and pride. Saʿīd is heartbroken. Al-Zaynī and Zakariyyā then close in for the kill. Saʿīd disappears for two years. By the time he reappears he is a changed man, broken physically and disturbed mentally. He can barely see and lives in fear, throwing furtive glances and trembling at every sound and movement around him. He himself turns into a baṣṣāṣ. It is his job now to spy on his master, Abū al-Suʿūd. Invasion of privacy is only the first step towards the breakdown of an individual. Torture, as revealed in Saʿīd’s story, is the decisive strategy of control. In Zakariyyā’s paper delivered at the International Congress for the Baṣṣaṣīn, he provides details of torture techniques that do not leave physical marks and explains the purpose of his work: ‘it is very easy to kill a thousand people, but that is not important. What is important is changing what is in the head and the heart’,59 so that a person ‘will think, but he will think the way I want him to. He will also incite the people, but in

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 208

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

209

accordance with my goals and not as he likes’.60 There is always an ulterior motive for torture. On the surface it may be resorted to for the extraction of truth. Al-Zaynī tortures his predecessor ʿAlī Ibn Abī al-Jūd in order to extract from him the information on the places where he has hidden the money he embezzled during his tenure as Muḥtasib of Cairo. Zakariyyā tortures the Sultan’s close companion, Shaʿbān, seemingly to find out about the Sultan’s habits in the bedroom. However, this truth-finding mission is only a ruse that masks their more malevolent objective. While al-Zaynī hopes to take over ʿAlī’s wealth and power, Zakariyyā seeks to control the Sultan through blackmail. Both seek supreme power. No wonder al-Zaynī and Zakariyyā do not see eye to eye. They even try to destroy each other. Al-Zaynī applies to the Sultan to establish his own Dīwān al-Baṣṣaṣīn, and Zakariyyā spreads vicious rumours about al-Zaynī. It is only when they realise that they cannot get rid of each other that they decide to work together. Al-Zaynī initiates Zakariyyā into the games of acquiring popularity, and Zakariyyā supplies al-Zaynī with vital information on the Sultan, emirs and populace. Together they form the invincible duo heading the state of fear in which the citizens of Cairo must live, come to terms with, submit to and survive. The state operates on the basis of fear. Fear is generated from intentional violations of codes of conduct conventionalised and legislated for the protection of the individual. Voyeurism, eavesdropping, gossipmongering and torture, the four pillars of the state of fear, are the means to invasion of privacy, undermining of credibility, humiliation of dignity and erosion of integrity, which gnaw at and chip away the very foundation of how an individual feels about himself as well as how he relates to society. These methods work together to break down an individual mentally, emotionally, socially and physically in a slow or rapid process of destroying the symbolic paradigms fundamental to his sense of self and well-being. The key symbolic paradigm deployed by the state of fear in the breaking of the individual in Zayni Barakat is constructed around the epistemological paradigms structuring dignified living, particularly, the idea of shame, ḥayāʾ. Through the mastery and frequent exposure of the site and source of shame, ʿawra, of each individual, the state can exercise hegemony unchecked. The novel plays havoc with the expected spatial and temporal organisation of dignified living. It simultaneously converts private space into public spectacle, and inters supposedly transparent political practices underground; it also turns night into day and erodes the sense of the vicissitudes of time as a continuous flow of events, one superseding another, in progressive

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 209

11/12/2012 16:28

210

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

movements from past to present and future. What imposes itself on notions of space and time is the sense that they are the site and moment of shame, but only for the victims of oppression, whose plight is accentuated by the sense that they are, paradoxically, the site and moment of pleasure for their oppressors. PAVILIONS AND WALLS

There is no better place to start exploring the spatial and temporal configuration of the novel around the epistemological paradigm of shame than the body, the main site of the paradox of shame and pleasure. It is to be covered, for it is the site of shame, ʿawra, especially its lower half. Its pleasure, especially if the source is sex, is to be veiled, allowed to take place only behind curtains (sitār or ḥijāb) or closed doors and enclosed walls (ḥīṭān), inside houses (dūr or buyūt), and more importantly within a legalised framework. The baṣṣāṣ in the novel penetrates the veils and walls and looks at the naked body engaged in the sexual act, illegally, only to make this private activity into a public spectacle. The story of the rose-water distiller and his slave girl is an interesting case in point. Al-Zaynī, allegedly beseeched by the slave-girl to deliver her from the constant attention of her master, publicly flogs him and orders him to manumit her. He stirs up a controversy. People differed over Zayni Barakat’s disposition of the matter . . . A . . . group was of the opinion that he had invaded people’s innermost privacy and that no one was safe in his house and with his family any more, especially after a stronger rumour had started, denying that the girl had ever appealed to Zayni Barakat for help. According to this rumour, Zayni was able to learn of the matter thanks to his amazing methods . . . People were left with a deep-seated feeling of fear.61 Two details in the story tally with the ways in which fear is engineered by invasion of privacy and generated by tapping into the episteme of shame. First, when the rose-water distiller ‘got angry and began to shout’, at the time al-Zaynī raided his house, ‘What business does the Muḥtasib have with people’s affairs inside their homes’. Second, his shame is complete when al-Zaynī’s men ‘uncovered him and . . . were terrified at the sight of it’, and when he goes mad, and ‘whenever he appeared in a place, the crowds shouted at him, beat him on his private parts (ʿawra), laughed and made fun of him’.62 The pain inflicted on the oppressed, physically

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 210

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

211

and symbolically, is in diametric opposition to the pleasure enjoyed by the oppressor. Zakariyyā’s life is a non-stop love fest with his wives and concubines. His rape of Shaʿbān, the Sultan’s companion, brings out the paradoxical potential of the body. Zakariyyā, wanting to find out whether the Sultan is homosexual, has Shaʿbān secretly carried off to his prison and, when he is unable to break Shaʿbān: One night he couldn’t stand it any longer. He went down to the cellar, bound the boy, undressed him and kissed him on the lips. He saw the beautiful face and ears turn white. He felt the soft, smooth neck. The boy groaned and bit Zakariyya’s hand. Zakariyya threw him to the floor and spoiled the virgin land.63 While Zakariyyā thrives, Shaʿbān’s ‘beautiful face, which looked like roses adorned with dewdrops’64 becomes that of one whose ‘bloom of youth was gone, the stem of the rose broken’.65 Pleasure belongs to the oppressor and shame to the oppressed. And, in a rather perverse sense, the pleasure of the oppressed becomes his shame, and his shame is his oppressor’s pleasure. The motor of fear, of the oppressor’s pleasure derived from shaming the oppressed, is fuelled by a perverted reversal in the order of spatial organisation of the city, house and pavilion, on turning the world inside out and upside down, which principles go into one layer of the configuring structure of Zayni Barakat. The titles of all the six main blocks of the novel begin with the word surādiq (pavilion). It gives a hint of the centrality of spaces enclosed in and defined by walls, be it in city plan, khiṭṭa and akhṭāṭ, or architectural edifices, especially buildings, such as houses (dār or bayt), mosques (jāmiʿ, masjid) and their chambers (surādiq), or prisons (sijn) and its cells (ghurfa), in the unfolding and unmasking of the state of fear. The walled space is the site of unspeakable practices. The walls in a normal Islamic city, as Simon O’Meara persuasively argues, function like veils and curtains. They protect the private from the public, demarcating the sacred from the profane, the prohibited (ḥarām) from the permitted, and more importantly, they cover ʿawra and ensure that ḥayāʾ is intact. At the same time, walls are semi-private and public spaces, thresholds that allow for crossings from one space to another regulated, as it were, by doors and windows. They, together with veils and curtains, shield ʿawra, especially the body, from public ridicule in their private affairs, from shame. Walls are a key part of the architectural expression of the moral universe in which Muslims live and which they see as their guarantee for a dignified life.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 211

11/12/2012 16:28

212

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Walls, veils and curtains are unnecessary if no notion of shame exists. But shame is integral to the human constitution. Muslims have formulated laws around walls and veils in order to safeguard their ʿawra against prying eyes.66 The novel makes manifest the state of fear’s strategies of control in its spatial organisation and transgressions thereof. Walls no longer protect ʿawra and safeguard ḥayāʾ. There are already numerous references to unlawful infringements into the spaces beyond the walls in what I quoted above. Al-Zaynī’s men, when they climb up wooden ladders to hang the lamps, as one of the emirs (Tashtamar) protests, ‘invade people’s privacy’. The original Arabic expression of this idea is ‘yahtikūna ḥayāta n-nāsi fī dhākhili buyūtihim’, which literally means ‘they rip apart and unveil people’s life and disgrace or rape them inside their houses’. The verb hataka is often paired with ʿirḍahu to denote ‘to disgrace him’, ‘to violate or soil his honour’. Saʿīd’s cry at the end of the novel, ‘Oh, they ruined me and destroyed my fortresses (Ahi, Aʿṭabūnī wa hadamū ḥuṣūnī)’,67 links in no uncertain terms the complete breakdown of a man to the tearing down of the walls protecting his innermost privacy, the foundation of his dignity and integrity. Narrative in this novel conjures up what O’Meara would call ‘architectural environment’ of Muslim urban life but messes with the moral principles informing its spatial organisation in an ironic way. The partition of space into public and private stands but it is now overlapped with another division: the baṣṣāṣūn, who are now the masters of space, and the rest, the Sultan, emirs and populace, who are left with nowhere to turn for cover. Al-Zaynī, the market inspector and governor of Cairo and Egypt, and Zakariyyā, his deputy and head of the Dīwān al-Baṣṣaṣīn, together with their agents have complete mastery of space. Al-Zaynī has legitimate control over every inch of markets and streets and, with the help of Zakariyyā, extends his influence beyond walls as well, into houses, bedrooms, mosques and student quarters (riwāq). Zakariyyā even gives detailed instructions to his heralds on how to inflect their announcements with the kind of emotions he wants the populace to feel. No space is sacred to them, not even mosques, except their own. While al-Zaynī’s house in Birkat al-Raṭl is left bare with nothing of interest to any prying eye, the underground prison he runs is shrouded in secrecy. The contrast between his effort to turn night into day in the streets and alleys of Cairo and his insistence on keeping the goings-on in his house and prison in perpetual darkness is rather ironic. It is like the way he tortures and executes his predecessor. He leaves no physical marks of the gratuitous violence he inflicts on his prisoner but in the end

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 212

11/12/2012 16:28

213

Story

has ʿAlī sentenced to death by dancing. Zakariyyā is of a similar mindset, even though he has not al-Zaynī’s sense of humour. No one, but Mabrūk, his faithful servant, knows of what he has done to Shaʿbān in the torture chamber beneath his house. When he suspects that Wasīla, his favourite concubine from Aleppo, is a mole planted by al-Zaynī in his harem, he does not hesitate to apply torture to the body he has so loved and to kill her with his own hands. His and al-Zaynī’s fierce sense of privacy – and al-Zaynī remains a total enigma – has not taught them to respect the privacy of others. All spaces are their personal playground, so to speak. The Arabic novel has come a long way since Mubārak’s ʿAlam al-Dīn. Privatisation of the public sphere has gone awry. It has not led to democracy, on the contrary, it has given birth to hegemony, for the public sphere has not become the site on which competing discourses can meet, dialogue and contest. Rather, it is ruled by the silence of the nationals who’s every word and action is either dictated or quashed by tyranny and its machinery. The knowing subject no longer has influence over the public sphere. His private space is now under the complete control of the tyrants, who make it their business to transform private space into public spectacle, to nationalise private space. The only space that remains private is the clandestine and sinister underground prison cells and torture chambers where the knowing subject is worked on, managed and controlled or broken. The national space, seen in this light, is the state of fear al-Ghīṭānī’s novel unravels. Modernity’s privileging of the subject as the centre of knowing has exacted a dear price on the individual, but the infrastructure of the public sphere created in the print culture at the turn of the twentieth century is not completely lost. It is still possible for a novelist, like al-Ghīṭānī, to tell the story of present hegemony, even though he must resort to subterfuge and speak of and from the past. Intertextuality is, in this case, a convenient mask that hides behind it a subversive political discourse. STORY OF HEGEMONY, HISTORY OF NATION

Al-Ghīṭānī resurrects pre-modern genres of verbal communication in his novel. He deploys the same types of pre-modern narrative genres found in Mubārak, anticipating Mahfouz and Himmich, but here he engages Al-tawfīqiyya and ʿAlam al-Dīn more fully than Mahfouz and Himmich in their works. He invokes the historical chronicles of Ibn Iyās, grafts onto it the fabricated travelogue of Giante, and integrates into it auto/biography (Saʿīd, ʿAmr, Zakariyyā, ʿAlī, Rīḥān, Abū al-Suʿūd), and peppers it with

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 213

11/12/2012 16:28

214

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

letter (risāla) and report (taqrīr), written or oral decree (marsūm and nidāʾ), or fatwa. But he keeps the temporal reference firmly grounded in the past, in the ten years preceding the Ottoman conquest of Egypt. The temporal ordering of narrative disorientates. The framing narrative provided from fragmentary excerpts of Giante’s travel memoirs is slightly out of its expected chronological order and missing the records of numerous years. It starts from 1517, reverts to 1509, and moves forward on to 1515, 1517 and 1518. The start is a false one, Mehrez points out, for the novel really begins in 1507, as the date of the first section, surādiq, declares. This framing narrative delineates the temporal limits of the historical period of the novel as sandwiched between immediately before and after the Ottoman invasion, and sets the mood of the novel, ‘a general feeling of terror’,68 but the story begins with the rise of al-Zaynī and ends with his reappearance following a brief disappearance. Zayni Barakat, the title of the novel misleadingly suggests, is to be read as a biography of a historical figure. Al-Zaynī appears not as the subject about whom knowledge comes into sharp focus at the end of the novel, but as the object of knowledge that always eludes firm grasp. He is the projection of an amalgamation of hearsay, all without authority. The framing narrative (Giante’s travel memoirs), with its access to information unavailable in the framed narratives (the narrative blocks enclosed in each surādiq), and the framed narratives revelation of information unknown to the framing narrative, undermine each other in their display of what is available to them.69 Al-Zaynī, like al-Ustādh in Khiṭaṭ al-ghīṭānī, is an apparition in this labyrinth created in the narrative traffic of the novel. He has presence everywhere in the narrative plots of the novel. Giante sees him in a crowd, Saʿīd accompanies him to Kawm al-Jāriḥ to meet with Abū al-Suʿūd, he comes to Zakariyyā’s house and confers with him, Zakariyyā visits his house at Birkat al-Raṭl, he attends Samāḥ’s wedding at Rīḥān’s house, he is seen daily on his market inspection. However, little is known of him, of his private thoughts and feelings, of his domestic life, of his relationship with his rulers and servants, or the individual behind the contradictory impressions others have of him as at once compassionate and inspiring of fear. It seems only possible to see the face of tyranny and feel the fear it generates. But perhaps this is another strategy for sending the sign interpreter on a wild goose chase in which a signifier always leads to more than one signified, of which none may be pinned down. The coincidence of historical parallels between the Ottoman invasion of Egypt and the 1967 war with Israel, and al-Zaynī Barakāt and Gamal Abdel Nasser, for example, generates not

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 214

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

215

truths but impressions. Nothing in the novel is a straightforward statement on intention, not even when the characters are alone with themselves (but they are never really alone). The various narrative blocks, written documents and oral communications that give the novel its pastiche texture are time capsules planted in the minefield of the narrative frame, which is itself made up of memories of past events. These time capsules and memories explode, like fireworks, leaving trails of fire and smoke, but no coherent thread. It is up to the reader to infer from a vaguely detectable metanarrative what story the novel tells. This slippery ground of the semiotics of tyranny in the novel, if I may borrow Himmich’s terms for al-Ghīṭānī’s story of hegemony, is the effect of a game played on the comprehension of time as structured by the linear movement from past to present and future inherent in historical narratives. Here, narrated times (of narrative blocks, written documents and oral communications, the characters’ fantasies and dreams) do not help the narrative frame, already fragmentary, to cohere into a master narrative. Is the novel a historical novel or national allegory? Who is al-Zaynī Barakāt? How can Zakariyyā, the loving family man, be so cruel at the same time? Why is Abū al-Suʿūd so powerful? On whom has ʿAmr informed? What kind of torture was Saʿīd subjected to in prison? There is simply no way of knowing from the novel. The novel is a mystery without solution, and a nervous surface that cannot contain the fear lurking beneath. But what else needs to be told about the state of fear? Its history in the end is the sum total of stories of individuals tortured and killed, if we were to take Saddam’s Iraq and Gaddafi’s Libya as examples, and the fear the state augments in the mind and heart of its citizens. Hegemony leaves only one legacy: fear. Fear, whether examined from the perspective of the feared or the fearful, has no logic even as it makes all the right noises. The story of hegemony Zayni Barakat tells is mined with irony. The instrument of hegemony, the baṣṣāṣūn, is advertised as that of justice, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong (al-amr bi l-maʿrūf wa n-nahy ʿan al-munkar). They kidnap, arrest and torture nationals under the pretext of protecting the nation from external enemies. They are the supreme power in the nation. Al-Zaynī works with Zakariyyā, who supplies him with all the information he needs to control the nation. He may be more popular than Zakariyyā but in the end he is just like his predecessor, corrupt and tyrannical but also vulnerable. He falls, albeit temporarily, at the time Zakariyyā finds out that his alternative system of secret service is a castle in the air, a rumour perhaps spread by al-Zaynī himself. Zakariyyā is, then, the real tyrant in charge of the nation-state. But the ultimate irony lies in the play

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 215

11/12/2012 16:28

216

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

with revolutionary slogans. The word baṣṣāṣ, used to designate the state’s agent of fear, is derived from the verb baṣṣa, which is also the first word of ‘buṣṣ wu shūf Gamāl bi-yaʾmal ēh’, which demonstrators shout in loving support of a national leader: ‘look and see what Gamal is doing!’ And the loving support inherent in ‘bi r-rūḥ bi d-damm nafdīk ya Gamāl’ is now taken literally and ‘our life and blood will be your ransom, Gamal’ comes to be the reality of daily life. That the adoring eye should be rewarded with the spying eye, and that the readiness for self-sacrifice should be translated into a quotidian death sentence, is a poignant statement of the tragic-comic state of affairs in the nation-state. The state of fear makes a mockery of any notion of truth, of any possible true historical knowledge. The breakdown of Saʿīd al-Juhaynī plays havoc with the common Arabic proverb, ‘inda Juhaynta l-khabaru l-yaqīn’, for the source of true knowledge, al-khabar al-yaqīn, is no longer possible when Juhayna becomes an agent of the Dīwān al-Baṣṣaṣīn. Zayni Barakat is arguably a history of the nation-state. It tells the story of hegemony instituted by and sustained in a state of fear. In this history, al-Ghīṭānī, who was a victim of political imprisonment and torture under Nasser, translates the effects of torture into narrative strategies. Torture does not always leave physical imprints, but it has a lasting effect on memory. Memory stores the moments and sites of pain, though in no particular order or priority, and creates a relentless sense of fear in the subject. History comes to be defined by the subject’s nervous, fearful and unsteady memory, always incomplete, incoherent and unreliable, but perpetually gesturing towards the source of fear. This source of fear is, however, intangible, untraceable to a concrete institution; it operates in the dark and in such a way that it leaves only prompters in the sensorium, the body’s memory bank of its sensory experiences, and evokes fear at the slightest provocation. History is reduced to a collection of narrated moments and sites of vaguely remembered pain and fear. Al-Ghīṭānī’s national history is, like that in Mubārak, Mahfouz and Himmich, told from the perspective of the subject and as his experience of political authority, more particularly, of life in the state of fear. Al-Ghīṭānī, who equally places the subject at the centre of knowing, opens up the subject’s interiority for exploration and exploitation. In Zayni Barakat, the subject is always at risk, for as the centre of knowing, he is also the potential reformer and revolutionary the state of fear necessarily seeks to manipulate or suppress. Paradoxically, subject is not knowable; it can only be inferred from the impressions it generates. How then is the subject to be expressed? What are the signs of her presence and influence?

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 216

11/12/2012 16:28

217

Story RETURN TO A WOMAN’S BODY

Here, I draw attention, yet again, to the pervasiveness of a woman’s body in Arab national discourses. I have discussed at length the cartography of the nation on the body of a woman in Chapter 2 of Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel. I want now to make a link between the cartography of a woman’s body in the imagining of nation and the ways in which a woman’s body is deployed as the site of the private space and the expression of the interiority of the subject in the very same national discourses. Subjectivity is the foundation of identity, as I have explained, and it is impossible to imagine the individual in contradistinction to community. Nation and subject unsurprisingly come to be similarly imagined and expressed on the woman’s body. The modern privileging of the subject as the centre of knowledge has other ramifications as well. The appearance of a character like Taqiyya in ʿAlam al-Dīn, I have already explored, is symptomatic and symbolic of the privatisation of the public sphere, during which process the subject brings his knowledge, experience and needs to bear on the nation-building projects and national history. Mahfouz’s female characters all perform a similar function. ʿAyda in Qaṣr al-shawq is the catalyst of Kamāl’s search for answers to the epistemological and ontological problems posed by tradition in its encounter with modernity. Ḥalīma and ʿArūsa, to name but two female characters from Ibn Fattouma, give Ibn Faṭūmma reason and will to travel in search of knowledge. Umayma’s wishes and desires, for example, have an impact on Adham’s actions and, as a matter of fact, they decide the destiny of his entire family in Mahfouz’s Awlād ḥāratinā. Even Zahīra, the most memorable female extrovert in Mahfouz’s novels, speaks to ambitions of each male character in Ḥarāfīsh. It is as if she was the actualisation of their fantasies of power. Al-Rikābī’s Warqīʾ is equally an expression of the subject’s desire for historical knowledge in Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq, just like Himmich’s Umm al-Banīn in Al-ʿAllāma. Sexuality is at the centre of these representations of the subject. Sex, it seems, is the language through which the subject finds expression. It is, after all, the most private activity a human engages in, hopefully in the innermost privacy of his home. It makes sense then, perversely and disturbingly, that a woman’s body comes to be the site of exploration and exploitation of the subject in national history, especially in the history of the state of fear. A woman’s body is the site of all kinds of expressions of power. Sex, rape and torture all constellate on this site in Zayni Barakat. The size of ʿAlī’s harem and the frequency of his nocturnal visits to his wives and concubines are indications of

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 217

11/12/2012 16:28

218

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

his power. The same may be said of Zakariyyā. That the former is arrested while in bed sleeping ‘contented, clinging to his third wife, Sālima’,70 a signal of the beginning of his downfall, is an ironic turn of events in his life. He is unmatched in his cruelty to women. This story ʿAmr tells Saʿīd sums it up. He [ʿAmr] had had it up there with what Ali ibn Abi al-Jud was doing to the people, with all those fresh acts of injustice. Amr knew exactly what that evil man did: he stayed up all alone for two hours every night thinking up new methods of oppression, inventing new techniques of torture for his victims. It was even rumoured that he had asked Zakariyya ibn Radi, may God be displeased and angry with him, to find new ways and means to make prisoners talk – ways no one could even dream of. Amr said that he had arrested a pregnant woman, who was poor and unprotected by anyone, and had her beaten with cudgels in his presence. He then had her limbs burned with tar until she had a miscarriage and dropped the six-month old male foetus that she was bearing. Ali ibn Abi al-Jud didn’t think that was enough. He had her hanged at the Gate of Zuwayla. Why? . . . Because Zakariyya’s men caught her selling a few melons. As you and I know, he has a monopoly on melon.71 Even though his career is juxtaposed to the resilience of Zakariyyā, a parallel is drawn between their equally unscrupulous attitudes to a woman’s body. The story of Zakariyyā’s treatment of his favourite slave-girl, Wasīla, demonstrates his cruelty and that, yet again, a woman’s body is the site of the expression of power. He bought this Christian (Rumi) virgin from Turkey from the chief slave merchant, one of his most faithful agents, who found in her a perfect match for what Zakariyyā has described. Zakariyyā was ‘overjoyed’ when he ‘got Wasīla’ and ‘spent his first night with her sailing in oceans uncharted by a man or a demon, watching the first pleasurable-pain, a slight tremor stirring gently in the two wide eyes’.72 This did not stop him from torturing her when he thought he had found out that she was al-Zaynī’s spy, when the look in her eyes at the moment ended his reluctance, slew all doubt. He remembered Egypt’s greatest spy, Karazoni, when he caught one of the emirs of al-Zahir Babybars and dismembered him, beginning with his male organ, keeping him alive in pain until the

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 218

11/12/2012 16:28

219

Story

emir finally died after forty-five days. He began by shaving off her hair, which flowed like the hate in his veins. He disfigured the face so that the heart might not relent before the young features. He inserted the red-hot tip of his [heated] dagger into her and twisted it slowly. She couldn’t bear it and expired after only one night.73 Zakariyyā is able to give pleasure and inflict pain at the same time and, more pertinently, Wasīla’s body is the site of his contest with al-Zaynī over power. He has no scruples killing her, but he regrets killing her too quickly, for he still wants to know how al-Zaynī was able to arrange for her to enter his harem a few weeks before he was even appointed the Muḥtasib of Cairo. Feminisation is expressive of powerlessness, as I have alluded to, and the feminisation of the male body in Majnūn al-ḥukm and Zayni Barakat is the ultimate expression of the powerlessness of the nation and the individual as well as their complete alienation from the state. The nation, the collective, or the individual, the national subject, are the other of the state, the gendered discourse in the Arabic novel tells us. The state thrives on this alterity, on its heartless tyranny and unscrupulous will to subjugate and exploit the nation and the national subject, to map them and their destiny in a way that falls in line with the trajectory of the state’s desire for power and wealth. The nation and national subject come to be imprisoned in the hegemony of the state, when their story becomes the history of the state of fear. The geography of the nation-state in its finitude is, in a manner of speaking, the prison-house of history as well, for only one form of history is possible, that of tyranny. History is frozen in time, and necessarily dwells on moments when the desire of both nation and subject is stifled, forced to retreat into interiority at best and silence at worst. But desire is exuberant. It always finds an outlet. It translates tyranny into creative force and transforms imprisonment into transgressive but subversive expressive strategies. The history of hegemony comes to be the story of subject speaking truth to power from behind the veils and beyond the walls. These diverse veils and walls constructed in language, so to speak, give the Arabic novel its unique identity and at the same time, paradoxically, produce their own forms of hegemony visible in its exploitation of a woman’s body. NOTES 1. Rajāʾ al-Naqqāsh, Fī ḥubb Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1995), p. 152. 2. Yaḥya al-Rakhāwī, ‘Dawrāt al-ḥayāt wa ḍalāl al-khulūd: malḥamat al-mawt

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 219

11/12/2012 16:28

220

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel wa al-takhalluq fī Al-ḥarāfīsh’, Fuṣūl 7: 1–2 (October 1990), pp. 155–74. This piece is republished verbatim in Fārūq ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī, Najīb Maḥfūẓ bayn al-riwāya wa al-adab al-riwāʾī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), pp. 164–235. Qāyid Diyāb, ‘Al-masʾala al-mītāfīsīqiyya fī Al-ḥarāfīsh’, Fuṣūl 69 (Summer– Autumn 2006), pp. 124–35. Fahd al-Hindāl, ‘Malāmiḥ wa mufāraqat al-baṭal al-shaʿbī fī Al-ḥarāfīsh: ʿĀshūr al-Nājī namūdhanjan’, Najīb Maḥfūẓ wa al-riwāya al-ʿarabiyya (Cairo: Ittiḥad al-Kuttāb, 2006), pp. 191–322; 196, 197–203. Nādiya Badrān, Najīb Maḥfūẓ wa ṣiyagh riwāʾiyya jadīda (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglū al-Miṣriyya, 1996), pp. 145–217. For the meanings and uses of this term in Arabic historical sources, see William M. Brinner, ‘The significance of the Ḥarāfīsh and their “Sultan” ’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 6: 2 (July, 1963), pp. 190–215. Najīb Maḥfūẓ, Malḥamat al-ḥarāfīsh (Cairo: Maktabat Miṣr, n.d.), p. 5; tr. Catherine Cobham as The Harafish (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1993), p. 1. Maḥfūẓ, Malḥamat, p. 20; Cobham, The Harafish, p. 12. Maḥfūẓ, Malḥamat, p. 86; Cobham, The Harafish, p. 60. Maḥfūẓ, Malḥamat, p. 118; Cobham, The Harafish, p. 83, though missing the key part of ʿĀshūr’s legacy, covenant (ʿahd). Maḥfūẓ, Malḥamat, p. 379; Cobham, The Harafish, p. 268. Maḥfūẓ, Malḥamat, p. 565; Cobham, The Harafish, p. 404. Maḥfūẓ, Malḥamat, p. 566; Cobham, The Harafish, p. 405. English translation by Christina Phillips, Morning and Evening Talk (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008). Noted by Mājid Muṣṭafā, ‘Min ashkāl al-sard al-turāthī fī Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa al-masāʾ’, Fuṣūl 67 (Summer–Autumn, 2005), pp. 128–37; and related to the narrative strategies of the classical Arabic biographical dictionary by Muṣṭafā Kāmil Saʿd, ‘ʿAnāṣir al-tashkīl wa al-bunyā fī Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa al-masāʾ’, Fuṣūl 69 (Summer–Autumn, 2006), pp. 138–49. Phillips, Morning and Evening Talk, p. 210. English translation, The Polymath, is by Roger Allen (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004). The Arabic text is available in three editions: Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1960; Abu Dhabi and Beirut: Dār al-Suwaydī li al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ and al-Muʾassassa al-ʿArabiyya li al-Dirāsāt wa al-Nashr, 2003, based on Muḥammad Ibn Tāwīt al-Ṭanjī’s (d. 1963) edition; and accompanied by a French translation by Abdesselam Cheddadi in Ibn Khaldun: Autobiographie (Alger: CNRPAH, 2008). Partial English translation by Walter J. Fischel in Ibn Khaldūn and Tamerlane: their Historic Meeting in Damascus, 1401 A.D. (803 A.H.): study based on Arabic manuscripts of Ibn Khaldūn’s

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 220

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

221

‘Autobiography’, with translation in English and commentary (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1952). French translation by Abdesselam Cheddadi, Le Voyage d’Occident et d’Orient: Autobiographie (Paris: Sindbad, 1980). For an account of this period of Ibn Khaldūn’s life, see Walter J. Fischel, Ibn Khaldun in Egypt: his Public Functions and his Historical Research (1382–1406): a Study in Islamic Historiography (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967). Ibn Khaldūn’s biographies are conveniently collected by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī in Muʾallafāt Ibn Khaldūn (Tripoli and Tunis: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li al-Kitāb, 1979). Reference is made to the Dar al-Suwaydī edition, p. 295. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 95; Allen, The Polymath, p. 81. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 27; Allen, The Polymath, p. 20. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 36; Allen, The Polymath, p. 27. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 37; Allen, The Polymath, p. 27. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 37; Allen, The Polymath, p. 28. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 38; Allen, The Polymath, p. 29. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, pp. 39–41; Allen, The Polymath, pp. 30–2. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 78; Allen, The Polymath, p. 66. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 63; Allen, The Polymath, p. 53. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 79; Allen, The Polymath, p. 68. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 48; Allen, The Polymath, p. 39. Himmich, Al-khaldūniyya, pp. 17–22. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, pp. 81–3; Allen, The Polymath, pp. 70–1. Himmich, Al-khaldūniyya, pp. 135–6. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, pp. 37–8; Allen, The Polymath, pp. 28–9. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 136; Allen, The Polymath, p. 119. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 175; Allen, The Polymath, p. 155. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 181; missed by Allen, The Polymath, p. 161. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 181; Allen, The Polymath, p. 161. Himmich, Al-ʿallāma, p. 200; Allen, The Polymath, p. 179. References are made to the second Arabic edition (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1994). English translation, Zayni Barakat, by Farouk Abdel Wahab (Viking, 1988; Penguin Books, 1990). Edward Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1985). See Sāmiya Asʿad, ‘ʿIndamā yaktub al-riwāʾī al-tārīkh’, Fuṣūl 2: 2 (Spring 1982), pp. 67–73; Muḥammad Badawī, ‘Mughāmarat al-shakl ʿinda riwāʾī al-sittīnīyāt: madkhal ijtimāʿiyyāt al-shakl al-riwāʾī’, Fuṣūl 2: 2 (Spring 1982), pp. 125–42; Fayṣal Darrāj, ‘Al-riwāya wa al-tārīkh: al-Zaynī Barakāt’, Dalālāt al-ʿalāqa l-riwāʾiyya (Nicosia: IBAL Publishing, 1992), pp. 88–139,

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 221

11/12/2012 16:28

222

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel ‘Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī wa jamāliyyāt al-tajrīb al-riwāʾīʾ, Naẓariyyāt al-riwāya wa l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya (Beirut and Casablanca: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1999), pp. 227–53; Samia Mehrez, ‘Al-Zaynī Barakāt: narrative as strategy’, Egyptian Writers Between History and Fiction (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1994), pp. 96–118; Shākir al-Nābulsī, ‘Ṣabāḥ al-khayr ya Ibn Iyās: Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī’, Mabāhij al-ḥuriyya fī al-riwāya al-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li al-Dirāsat wa al-Nashr, 1992), pp. 271–328; Mahā Ḥasan al-Qaṣrawī, Al-zaman fī l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li al-Dirāsat wa al-Nashr, 2004), pp. 85–9; Ṣalāḥ Ṣāliḥ, ‘Iltihām al-turāth al-sardī l-ʿarabī’, Sardiyyāt al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya l-muʿāṣira (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʿlā li al-Thaqāfa, 2003), pp. 265–312; Saʿīd Yaqṭīn, Taḥlīl al-khitāb al-riwāʿī (Beirut and Casablanca: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1999) and Infitāḥ al-naṣṣ al-riwāʾī (Beirut and Casablanca: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2001), pp. 59–70; and Fawzī al-Zumurrulī, ‘Al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya wa nuṣūṣ al-ḥakyi l-ḥaqīqī fī l-turāth al-ʿarabī: riwāyat Al-Zaynī Barakāt li Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī unmūdhajan’, Shiʿriyyat al-riwāya al-ʿarabiyya: baḥth fī ashkāl taʾṣīl al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya wa dalālatihā (Tunis: Markaz alNashr al-Jāmiʿī, 2002), pp. 247–376. Al-Ghīṭānī, Al-Zaynī Barakāt, p. 225; Abdel Wahab, Zayni Barakat, p. 193. See Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn ʿAlī al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā fī ṣināʿat al-inshā, 14 vols (Cairo: al-Muʾassasa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma, 1920), vol. 1, pp. 123–6. Al-Ghīṭānī, Al-Zaynī Barakāt, p. 224; Abdel Wahab, Zayni Barakat, pp. 193–4. Al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā, vol. 1, pp. 123–4. Al-Ghīṭānī, Al-Zaynī Barakāt, pp. 226–7; Abdel Wahab, Zayni Barakat, pp. 194–5. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 96; Abdel Wahab, p. 81. Ibn Kathīr, Al-bidāya wa l-nihāya fī l-tārīkh, 14 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1987), vol. 12, p. 10. Qtd Himmich, Majnūn al-ḥukm, p. 35. Al-Ghīṭānī, Al-Zaynī Barakāt, pp. 114–15; Abdel Wahab, Zayni Barakat, p. 96. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 103; Abdel Wahab, p. 86. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 115; Abdel Wahab, pp. 96–7. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 115; Abdel Wahab, p. 97. Al-Ghīṭānī, pp. 116–17; Abdel Wahab, p. 98. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 12; Abdel Wahab, p. 6. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 53; Abdel Wahab, p. 45. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 230; Abdel Wahab, p. 197. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 232; Abdel Wahab, p. 199. Al-Ghīṭānī, pp. 10–11; Abdel Wahab, p. 6. Al-Ghīṭānī, pp. 10–11; Abdel Wahab, p. 5. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 34; Abdel Wahab, p. 28.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 222

11/12/2012 16:28

Story

223

64. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 33; Abdel Wahab, p. 27. 65. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 34; Abdel Wahab, p. 28. 66. Simon O’Meara, Space and Muslim Urban Life: at the Limits of the Labyrinth of Fez (London: Routledge, 2007). 67. Al-Ghīṭānī, Al-Zaynī Barakāt, p. 279; Abdel Wahab, Zayni Barakat, p. 235. 68. Samia Mehrez, ‘Al-Zaynī Barakāt: Narrative as Strategy’, Egyptian Writers between History and Fiction (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1994), pp. 96–118; 104–5. 69. Ibid. p. 107. 70. Al-Ghīṭānī, Al-Zaynī Barakāt, pp. 21; Abdel Wahab, Zayni Barakat, pp. 14–15. 71. Al-Ghīṭānī, pp. 23–4; Abdel Wahab, p. 17. 72. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 64; Abdel Wahab, p. 54. 73. Al-Ghīṭānī, p. 192; Abdel Wahab, p. 162.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 223

11/12/2012 16:28

Epilogue POST-NATIONAL IMPULSES

ALL AT ONCE HERITAGE IS EVERYWHERE – in the news, in the movies, in the marketplace – in everything from galaxies to genes. It is the chief focus of patriotism and a prime lure of tourism. One can barely move without bumping into a heritage site. Every legacy is cherished. From ethnic roots to history theme parks, Hollywood to the Holocaust, the whole world is busy lauding – or lamenting – some past, be it fact or fiction. Why this rash of backward-looking concern? What makes heritage so crucial in a world beset by poverty and hunger, enmity and strife? We seek comfort in past bequests partly to allay these griefs. In recoiling from grievous loss or fending off a fearsome future, people the world over revert to ancestral legacies. As hopes of progress fade, heritage consoles us with tradition. Against what’s dreadful and dreaded today, heritage is good – indeed, the first known use of the term is Psalm 16’s ‘goodly heritage’. David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past, pp. x–xi Lowenthal is here speaking of what he calls ‘Heritage Crusades’, or a variety of practices that seek to revere, even sanctify, traces, remnants and objects belonging to the past that points to a plurality of our possible links with the past, including history, tradition, memory and myth today. To be Possessed by the Past (1996) is responsive to contemporary alienation from the past, when The Past is a Foreign Country (1985). The modern alienation of the past, that the past is no longer subject to knowledge, has precipitated ‘Heritage Crusades’, for ‘so alien a past is too hard to bear’, and ‘precursors’, ‘legends of origin and endurance, of victory and calamity’ are conjured up ‘to project the present back, and past forward’ in order to suture the rupture, ‘to clarify pasts so as to infuse them with present 224

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 224

11/12/2012 16:28

Post-national Impulses

225

purposes’, though not necessarily to ‘explore and explain pasts grown ever more opaque’, as history seeks to do.1 Lowenthal’s distinction of heritage from history taps into an antinomy traceable to our attitude towards the past: it is remote but everywhere; it is so crucial to our sense of self yet so unknowable. That such a distinction is impossible to maintain is clear in the Arab context, for history, or narratives of the past, depends entirely on heritage, on what historical object is being recalled and sanctified. However, Lowenthal’s distinction between heritage and history can be useful for an understanding of the politics of the past in the Arabic novel that rewrites Arabic cultural and literary heritage. Heritage (turāth), which encompasses religion, philosophy, history, science, art, architecture, archaeology, folklore and literature, has come to serve as the hallmark of post-colonial Arab identity. The Arab novel revives, incorporates and interrogates this heritage, simultaneously manifesting a new understanding of its own past. This ‘new’ understanding is paradoxical. Even though its legitimacy may be questionable, it can nevertheless serve as the first step towards linking the past with the present and harmonising between them. Such a revisionist vista, albeit tenuous, allows the ‘Arabic novel that employs tradition’ to achieve both authenticity and originality (aṣāla) by playing the Arabic literary tradition against the Western form. It manages to be simultaneously Eastern and Western, and traditional and modern. More importantly, it negotiates for singularity by participating in post-colonial national identity politics. It writes its own history along the line of imagining community, of grounding the present in the immemorial past, narrating the nation at the same time. Its longing for form is national.2 There is, however, more than one way of managing the Arabic novel’s longing for form. Bahāʾ Ṭāhir, for example, argues with both the past and the West and contemplates the twin(n)ed issues of authenticity and originality of the Arabic novel in Wāḥat al-ghurūb (2007; Sunset oasis) without resorting to the language of the past. Perhaps, more significantly, the prevalent type of rewriting tradition has produced its own forms of hegemony. The dominance of the nation-state as the structuring episteme and chronotope is problematical politically and aesthetically for various groups of writers. Those who do not subscribe to nationalism of the type intimately associated with the nation-state or live outside of it, stateless, in exile or on its margins, seek alternative sites for their narrative projects. Kurdish Syrian Salīm Barakāt and Libyan Ibrāhīm al-Kūnī, for example, set their novels in the desert and resurrect respectively Kurdish and

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 225

11/12/2012 16:28

226

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Tuareg mythology to resist the hegemony of the nation-state. Lebanese writers, such as Elias Khoury, Rashīd al-Ḍaʿīf, Ḥasan Dāwūd and Rabīʿ Jābir, to name but a few, work out their own political and aesthetic agenda more often than not outside the framework of the nation-state. The later works of Palestinian Ibrāhīm Naṣrallāh also steer away from the kind of nationalist politics and aesthetics prevalent in the novels I have examined. Those who do not write in Arabic, for another example, work out their identity politics differently in their engagement with the Arabic cultural and literary heritage.3 Women writers have a particular axe to grind with nationalist discourses, even in their evocation of pre-modern Arabic narrative,4 for they understandably take exception to the kind of unabashed misogyny exhibited in the story of the novel’s love affair with the nationstate. I have yet to read a national allegory written by an Arab woman writer. In The Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential Philosophy in Habermas, Kirkegaard and Havel (1993), Martin J. Matuštik has gone to great lengths to uncover the ambivalence towards the nation-state, as organising structure for community, blueprint for individual identity, and epistemological paradigm, from as early as nationalist stirrings were felt, precisely because of the potential for hegemony philosophers such as Habermas, Kirkegaard and Havel saw in it. The political history of the twentieth-century Arab world has given ample evidence of both the liberating and limiting potential of nationalism, and contemporary Arabic literary history has equally provided numerous examples of the ways in which literary nationalism may foster some creative forces and at the same time discriminate against other forms of expression. Nationalism has framed cultural and identity politics in such a way that dissenting voices may not be heard. This is visible in the Arabic novels’ engagement with modernity and tradition within the framework of the nation-state. Both modernity and tradition can take the shape of the nation-state. The ambivalence towards the nation-state inherent in the Arabic novel ‘that employs tradition’, even as it broods over the nation-state, gestures towards other ways of managing aesthetic breakthroughs, relationships with the past and present, and the role of Arabic literature in the future of Arab culture. It identifies a need to go beyond the national frame, as well as its enframed modern and traditional tropes, for inquiry into communal and individual identity and, more importantly, the formation of subject and its role in the literary expression. For the story the ‘Arabic novel that employs tradition’ tells is only one part of the history of this genre in Arabic.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 226

11/12/2012 16:28

227

Post-national Impulses NOTES

1. David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: the Heritage Crusades and the Spoils of History (London: Viking, 1996), pp. x–xi. 2. I borrow the phraseology from Timothy Brennan but speak here not of the nation but the novel’s desire for form. See Timothy Brennan, ‘The national longing for form’, in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 44–70. 3. Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati (2008); Leila Sebbar’s Sheherazde (1982), English translation by Dorothy S. Blair (London: Quartet, 1991); Tahar Ben Jelloun’s The Sandchild (1985), English translation by Alan Sheridan (London: Quartet, 1988), and Sacred Night (1987), English translation by Dorothy S. Blair (London: Quartet, 1987); Assia Djebbar’s Sister to Scheherazade (1987), English translation by Philip Boehm (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993); and Rafiq Schami’s Damascus Nights (1989), English translation by Philip Boehm (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993). 4. Nawāl al-Saʿdāwī’s Suqūṭ al-imām (1987), translated into English by Sherif Hetata as The Fall of the Imam (London: Methuen, 1988); Mayy Tilmisānī’s Dunyāzād (1995), tr. Roger Allen (London: Saqi Books, 2000); and Fawziyya Rashīd’s Al-qalaq al-sirrī: min ʿadhābāt Shahrazād (2000; Secret anxiety: Shahrazad’s sufferings).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 227

11/12/2012 16:28

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ʿAbd ʿAlī, ʿIṣām, Mihyār al-Daylamī, ḥayātuhu wa shiʿruhu (Baghdad: Manshūrāt Wizārat al-Iʿlām, 1976). ʿAbdallāh, Muḥammad Ḥasan, Al-islāmiyya wa l-rūḥiyya fī adab Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Kuwait: Maktabat al-Amal, 1972). ʿAbd al-Ghanī, Muṣṭafā, ‘Khuṣuṣiyyat al-tanāṣṣ fī l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya: Majnūn al-ḥukm namūdajan taṭbīqīyyan’, Fuṣūl 16: 4 (Spring 1998), pp. 270–89. ʿAbd al-Karīm, Muḥammad, ʿAlī Mubārak: ḥayātuhu wa maʾāthirhu (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Risāla, n.d.). Abu-Haidar, Jareer, ‘Awlād Ḥāratinā by Najīb Maḥfūẓ: an event in the Arab World’, Journal of Arabic Literature 16 (1985), pp. 119–31. Abū Ḥamdān, Samīr, ʿAlī Mubārak al-mufakkir wa l-muʿammir (Beirut: al-Sharika al-ʿĀlamiyya li al-Kitāb, 1993). Abū Khalīl, Shawqī, Jurjī Zaydān fī l-mizān (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1981). ——Riwāyāt Jurjī Zaydān: dirāsa tārīkhiyya (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 2004). Abū Zayd, Fārūq, ‘Preface’ to his edition of al-Ṭahṭāwī’s biography of Muḥammad, Muḥammad: Niyāhat al-ījāz fī sīrat sākin al-Ḥijāz (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, n.d. [received at SOAS Library 1983]), pp. 3–29. Abul Quasem, Muhammad, The Ethics of al-Ghazali: a Composite Ethics in Islam (Selangor?, 1975). Adnan, Etel, Sitt Marie-Rose, (1978), translated from the French by Georgina Kleege (Sausalito, CA: Post-Apollo Press, 1982). Adonis/Adūnīs, Al-thābith wa al-mutaḥawwil: baḥth fī l-ibdāʿ wa l-itbāʿ ʿind al-ʿarab, first published in 3 volumes in Beirut in 1973, and now available in a newly revised 4 volume edition (London: Dar Al Saqi, 1994). ——Introduction to Arab Poetics, tr. Catherine Cobham (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1990), p. 77. ——‘Bayan al-ḥadātha’, in Muḥammad Luṭfī al-Yūsufī (ed.), Al-bayānāt (Tunis: Sarash li al-Nashr, 1995), pp. 22–54.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 228

11/12/2012 16:28

Bibliography

229

——Aghānī Mihyār al-Dimashqī (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1988); tr. Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard as Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs (Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2008). Adūnīs: see Adonis. Allen, Roger, The Arabic Novel: an Historical and Critical Introduction, 2nd edn (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982). ——‘Introduction’, A Period of Time (Reading, MA: Ithaca Press, 1992), pp. 1–97. ——‘Mahfouz and the Arabic Novel’, in Michael Beard and Adnan Haidar (eds), Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993) ——(tr.), Himmich, The Polymath (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004). ——(tr.), Himmich, The Theocrat (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005). Amanṣūr, Muḥamad, Al-tajrīb al-riwāʾi ʿinda Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʿlā li al-Thaqāfa, 2006). Amīn, Aḥmad, Zuʿamāʾ l-iṣlāḥ fī l-ʿaṣr l-ḥadīth (Cairo: al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1949). Amīn, Ḥusayn, Al-Ghazzālī faqīhan wa faylasūfan wa mutaṣawwifan (Baghdad: Maṭbaʿat al-Irshād, 1963). Anderson, Bendedict, Imagined Communities; Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationliasm (London: Verso, 1991). Anon., Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī: dirāsāt fī fikrihi wa atharihi wa taʾthīrihi (Rabat: Jāmiʿat Muḥammad al-Khāmis, 1988). Asʿad, Sāmiya, ‘ʿIndamā yaktub al-riwāʾī al-tārīkh’, Fuṣūl 2: 2 (Spring 1982), pp. 67–73. Asātidhatī li Najīb Maḥfūẓ, interviews with Ibrāhīm ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Cairo: Mīrīt li al-Nashr wa al-Maʿlūmāt, 2002). Asfour, Gaber: see Jābir ʿUṣfūr. ʿAṭiyya, Aḥmad Muḥammad, Maʿ Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa, 1971). Al-Aʿẓam, ʿAbd al-Amīr, Al-faylasūf al-Ghazzālī: Iʿādat taqyīm li manḥā taṭawwurihi l-rūḥī (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li al-Nashr, 1974). ʿAzzūz, Muḥyi al-Dīn, Al-lāmaʿqūl wa falsafat al-Ghazzālī (Tunis: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li al-Kitāb, 1988). Badawī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Muʾallafāt al-Ghazzālī (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʿlā li Riʿāyat al-Funūn wa al-Ādab wa al-ʿUlūm al-Ijtimāʿiyya, 1961). ——Muʾallafāt Ibn Khaldūn (Tripoli and Tunis: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li al-Kitāb, 1979). Badawī, Muḥammad, ‘Mughāmarat al-shakl ʿind riwāʾī l-sittīnīyāt’, Fuṣūl 2: 2 (1982), pp. 125–42.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 229

12/12/2012 15:38

230

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

——‘Mamlakat al-ḥarāfīsh: dirāsa fī Malḥamat al-ḥarāfīsh’, Fuṣūl 17: 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 97–124. Badrān, Nādiya, Najīb Maḥfūẓ wa ṣiyagh riwāya jadīda (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglū al-Miṣriyya, 1996). Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, tr. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981). Al-Baqarī, ʿAbd al-Dāʾim, Iʿtirafāt al-Ghazzālī: kayfa arrakha l-Ghazzālī nafsahu (Cairo, 1943). Bazūn, Ḥasan, Al-maʿrifa ʿind al-Ghazzālī: al-naẓariyya l-tarbawiyya al-taʿlīmiyya (Beirut: al-Intishār al-ʿArabī, 1997). Beard, Michael, ‘The Mahfouzian Sublime’, in Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar, Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993), pp. 95–105. Beer, Gillian, Arguing with the Past: Essays in Narrative from Woolf to Sidney (London: Routledge, 1989). Bello, Iysa A., The Medieval Islamic Controversy Between Philosophy and Orthodoxy: ijmaʿ and taʾwil in the conflict between al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989). Benjamin, Walter, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, tr. Harry Zorn (London: Pimlico, 1968), pp. 245–55. Blonsky, Marshall (ed.), On Signs (Baltimore,MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). Bloom, Harold, The Anxiety of Influence: a Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). Bosworth, Clifford Edmund, The Medieval Islamic Underworld: the Banū Sāsān in Arabic Society and Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976). Boullata, Issa J., Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990). Boullata, Issa J. and Terri DeYoung (eds), Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Literature, (Fayetteville, AR: Arkansas University Press, 1997). Bouyges, Maurice, Essai de Chonologie de Oweuvres de al-Ghazzali (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1959). Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001). Brennan, Timothy, ‘The national longing for form’, in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 44–70. Brinner, William M., ‘The significance of the Ḥarāfīsh and their “Sultan” ’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 6: 2 (July 1963), pp. 190–215. ——‘Introduction’, in Aḥmad Ibn Muḥammad Thaʿlabī, Arāʾis al-majālis fī qiṣaṣ al-nabiyā/Lives of the Prophets, tr. and ann. William Brinner (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 230

11/12/2012 16:28

Bibliography

231

Butler, Judith, ‘Restaging the universal: hegemony and the limits of formalism’, in Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slovaj Žižek (eds), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000), pp. 11–43. Cachia, Pierre, An Overview of Modern Arabic Literature, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990. Celik, Ipek Azime, ‘Alternative history, expanding identity: myths reconsidered in Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry’, in Hala Khamis and Najat Rahman (eds), Mahmoud Darwish: Exile’s Poet (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2008), pp. 273–91. Chehayed, Jamal, La Conscience Historique dans les Rougon-Macquart d’Emile Zola et dans les Romans de Nagib Mahfuz (Damascus: Èditions Universitaires; Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1983.) Cooperson, Michael, Classical Arabic Biography: the Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma’mun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Crabbs, J. A., The Writing of History in Nineteenth-century Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press; Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1984). Darrāj, Fayṣal, Hiwār fī ʿalāqāt al-thaqāfa wa l-siyāsa (Damascus: Dāʾirat al-Iʿlām wa al-Thaqāfa, 1984). ——‘al-riwāya wa l-tārīkh: al-Zaynī Barakāt’, Dalālāt al-ʿalāqa l-riwāʾiyya (Nicosia: IBAL Publishing, 1992), pp. 88–139. ——‘Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī wa jamāliyyāt al-tajrīb al-riwāʾī’, Naẓariyyāt al-riwāya wa l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya (Beirut and Casablanca: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1999), pp. 227–53. Darwīsh, Maḥmūd, Shayʾun ʿan al-waṭan (Beirut: Dār al-ʿAwda, 1971). ——Yawmiyyāt al-ḥuzn al-ʿādī (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li al-Dirāsāt wa al-Nashr, 1973). ——‘A Lover from Palestine’, tr. Baderddine M. Bennani, Journal of Arabic Literature 5 (1974), pp. 129–33. ——‘Dhākira li l-nisyān’, Al Karmel 21–2 (1986), pp. 4–96; tr. Ibrahim Muhawi as Memory for Forgetfulness (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995). ——Al-rasāʾil: Maḥmūd Darwīsh wa Samīḥ al-Qāsim (Beirut: Dār al-ʿAwda, 1990). ——Aḥada ʿashara kawkaban (Beirut: Dār al-Jadīd, 1999). ——Ḥālat ḥiṣār/State of Siege (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes, 2002). ——Fī ḥaḍrat al-ghiyāb (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes, 2006). ——‘Maṭar al-Sayyāb’, a testimony given at the colloquium held in Paris in memory of the thirtieth anniversary of al-Sayyāb’s death, published in Ḥayrat al-ʿāʾid (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes, 2007), pp. 121–30. Delanoue, Gilbert, Moralistes et Politiques Musulmans dans l’Egypte du XIXe Siècle (1798–1882), 2 vols (Cairo: IFAO, 1982).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 231

11/12/2012 16:28

232

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Deleuze, Gilles, Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, ed. David Lapoujade, tr. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (New York, NY: Semiotext(e), 2007). Diyāb, Qāyid, ‘Al-masʾala l-mitāfīsīqiyya fī Al-ḥarāfīsh’, Fuṣūl 69 (Summer– Autumn 2006), pp. 124–35. Dols, Michael, Majnūn: the Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, ed. Diana E. Immisch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Dupont, Anne-Laure, Gurgi Zaydan (1861–1914): ecrivan, reformiste et temoin de la renaissance (Damascus: Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2006). DuVerent, Sylvia, The Observer and the Observed: Comments Concerning Six Novels by Naguib Mahfouz (Toronto: DuVernet, 1989). Dykstra, Darrell Ivan, ‘A Biographical Study in Egyptian Modernisation: ʿAlī Mubārak (1823/4–1893)’, Ph. D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1977. El-Enany, Rasheed, Naguib Mahfouz: the Pursuit of Meaning (London: Routledge, 1993). ——Arab Representations of the Occident: East-West Encounters in Arabic Fiction (London: Routledge, 2006). Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process [Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 1939], tr. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982, 1994, 2000). Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, eds Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey (London: Routledge, 1998). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, vol. II (Leiden: E. J. Brill; London: Luzac & Co., 1965). Fahndrich, Hartmut E., ‘The Wafayāt al-Aʿyān of Ibn Khallikān: a new approach’, Journal of American Oriental Society 93: 4 (1973), pp. 432–45. Al-Fallāl, ʿAlī ʿAlī, Mihyār al-Daylamī wa shiʿruhu (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-ʿArabī, 1948). Fischel, Walter J., Ibn Khaldun in Egypt: His Public Functions and His Historical Research (1382–1406): a Study in Islamic Historiography (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967). Foucault, Michel, History of Madness, ed. Jean Khalfa, tr. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London: Routledge, 2006). Frank, Richard M., Al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarite School (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994). Geer, Benjamin, ‘Prophets and priests of the nation: Naguib Mahfouz’s Karnak Café and the 1967 crisis in Egypt’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 41: 4 (November 2009), pp. 653–69. Genette, Gerard, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, tr. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). ——Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, tr. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 232

12/12/2012 15:39

Bibliography

233

Ghalyūn, Burhān, Ightiyāl al-ʿaql: miḥnat al-thaqāfa l-ʿarabiyya bayn al-salafiyya wa al-tabaʿiyya (Beirut: Dār al-Tanwūr, 1985). ——Mujʿtamaʿ al-nukhba (Beirut: Maʿhad al-Inmāʾ al-ʿArabī, 1986). ——Al-waʿy al-dhātī (al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: Manshūrāt ʿUyūn, 1987). Al-Ghazzālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 5 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Qalam, 1st edn, n.d). ——Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl, ed. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Abū al-ʿAlāʾ and Muḥammad Muḥammad Jābir (Cairo: Maktabat al-Jundī, 1973); tr. Richard Joseph McCarthy as Freedom and Fulfillment: an Annotated Translation of al-Ghazali’s al-Munqidh min al-Dalal and Other Relevant Works of al-Ghazali (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1980), and tr. W. Montgomery Watt as The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazālī (Chicago, IL: Kazi Publications, 1982). Al-Ghīṭānī, Jamāl, al-Zaynī Barakāt (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1974); tr. Farouk Abdel Wahab (Viking, 1988; Penguin Books, 1990). ——Najīb Maḥfūẓ yatadhakkar (Beirut: Dār al-Masīra, 1980). ——Khiṭaṭ al-ghīṭānī (Beirut: Dār al-Masīra, 1981). ——‘Mushkilat al-ibdāʿ al-riwāʾī ʿind al-jīl al-sittīnīyāt wa al-sabʿīnīyāt’, Fuṣūl 2: 2 (Spring 1982), pp. 208–14. ——‘Intertextual dialectics: an interview with Gamal al-Ghitany’, Alif 4 (1984), pp. 71–82. ——Muntahā al-ṭalab ilā turāth al-ʿarab: dirāsa fī l-turāth (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1997). Gordon, Haim, Naguib Mahfouz’s Egypt: Existential Themes in his Writings (New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1990). Guissouma: see Qaysūma. Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society [1962], tr. Thomas Burger with assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). Ḥadīdī, Ṣubḥī, ‘Mādhā yafʿal al-ʿāshiq min dūn al-manfā’, in Samīḥ al-Qāsim et al., Al-mukhtalif al-ḥaqīqī: dirāsa wa shahāda (Amman: Dār al-Shurūq, 1999). Hafsi, Ibrahim, ‘Recherches sur le genre “Ṭabaqāt” dans la literature arabe’, I, Arabica 23: 3 (September 1976), pp. 227–65; II, Arabica 24: 1 (February 1977), pp. 1–41; III, Arabica 24: 2 (June 1977), pp. 150–86. Ḥammūda, Ḥusayn, Fī ghiyāb al-ḥadīqa: ḥawla mutaṣṣil al-zamān/al-makān fī riwāyat Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: Maktabat Madbūlī, 2007). Ḥanafī, Ḥasan, Al-turāth wa l-tajdīd, mawqifunā min al-turāth al-qadīm (Cairo: al-Markaz al-ʿArabā li al-Baḥth wa al-Nashr, 1980). ——Al-turāth wa l-tajdīd, mawqifunā min al-turāth al-gharbī: muqaddima fī ʿilm al-istighrāb (Cairo: al-Dār al-Faniyya li al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 1991). Ḥanafī, Ḥasan, and Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī, Ḥiwār al-mashriq wa l-maghrib (Cairo: Maktabat Madbūlī, 1990).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 233

11/12/2012 16:28

234

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

Ḥarb, Jūzīf, Rijāl fī rajul (Beirut: Bayt al-Ḥikma, 1970). Haykal, Muḥammad Ḥusayn, Ḥayāt Muḥammad (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1965). Himmich, Bensalem, Majnūn al-ḥukm (London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1990); tr. Roger Allen as The Theocrat (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005). ——Al-ʿallāma (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1997); tr. Roger Allen as The Polymath (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004). ——‘Thaqāfat al-riwāya’, Fuṣūl 17: 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 192–207. ——Al-khaldūniyya fī ḍaw falsafat al-tārīkh (Cairo: al-Majlas al-Aʿlā li Thaqāfa, 2006), p. 11. Hirschkop, Ken, Mikhail Bakhtin: an Aesthetic for Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥyi al-Dīn, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Qum: Intisharāt Badyar, 1999 or 2000). Ibn Kathīr, Al-bidāya wa l-nihāya fī l-tārīkh, 14 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1987). Ibn Khaldūn, Al-taʿrīf (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1960). Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, ed. Riḍā (Cairo: Dār al-Masīra, 3rd edn, 1988). ʿImāra, Muḥammad, ʿAlī Mubārak, muʾarrikh wa muhandis al-ʿumrān (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1988). Irby, James E., ‘Introduction’, in Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, eds Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (New York, NY: New Directions Books, 1964), pp. xv-xxiii. Al-Jābirī, Muḥammad ʿĀbid, Ishkāliyyat al-fikr al-ʿarabī l-muʿāṣir (Beirut: Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥda al-ʿArabiyya, 1989). ——Al-turāth wa l-ḥadātha (Beirut: Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥda al-ʿArabiyya, 1991). Jabre, Farid, La notion de la ma‘rifa chey Ghazali (Beriut: Lettres Orientales, 1958). Jacquemond, Richard, ‘Thawrat al-takhyīl wa takhyīl al-thawra: qirāʿa jadīda fī Awlād ḥāratinā’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Literature and the Sacred 23 (2003), pp. 118–32. Jad, Ali B., Form and Technique in the Egyptian Novel 1912–1971 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1983). Al-Janābī, Maytham, ‘Al-Ghazzālī fī al-Ghazzāliyāt al-qadīma wa al-muʿāṣira’, in Al-Ghazzālī: al-taʾāluf al-lāhūti l-falasafī l-ṣūfī (Damascus: Dār al-Madā, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 13–34. Jibrīl, Muḥammad, Najīb Maḥfūẓ: ṣadāqat jīlayn (Cairo: Kitābāt Naqdiyya, 1993). al-Jīlī, ʿAbd al-Karīm, Al-insān al-kāmil fī maʿrifat al-awākhir wa-l-awāʾil (Cairo: Maktabat Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṣabīḥ, 1945).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 234

11/12/2012 16:28

Bibliography

235

Juḥā, Farīd, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī (Damascus: Ṭalas, 1986). Kassab, Elizabeth Suzanne, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010). Al-Kawwāz, Muḥammad Karīm, Min asāṭīr al-awwalīn ilā qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (Beirut: Muʾassast al-Intishār al-ʿArabī, 2006). ——‘Al-muqaddima’, in Muḥmmad Ibn Isḥāq, Al-mubtadaʾ fī qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (Beirut: al-Intishār al-ʿArabī, 2006), pp. 13–46. Kenny, Lorne, ‘ʿAlī Mubārak: Nineteenth century Egyptian educator and administrator’, Middle Eastern Journal 21 (1967), pp. 35–51. Khairallah, Asʿad, Love, Madness, and Poetry: an Interpretation of the Magnun Legend (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1980). Khalafallāh, Muḥammad Aḥmad, ʿAlī Mubārak wa āthāruhu (Cairo: AngloEgyptian Library, 1957). Khattāb, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Al-Ghazzālī bayn al-dīn wa l-falsafa (Algiers: al-Muʾassasa al-Waṭaniyya li al-Kitāb, 1986). Kristeva, Julia, Tales of Love, tr. Leon S. Roudiez (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1987). Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, Studies in al-Ghazzali (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University Press, 1975). Le Gassick, Trevor (ed.), Critical Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1991). Lowenthal, David, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). ——Possessed by the Past: the Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (London: Viking, 1996). Al-Mahdawī, Ismāʿīl, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī: al-falsafa, al-taṣawwuf wa ʿilm al-kalām (Marrakush: Tānsīft, 1993). Maḥfūẓ, Najīb, Awlād ḥāratinā (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1959); tr. Philip Stewart as Children of Gebelawi (London: Heinemann, 1981) and tr. Peter Theroux as Children of the Alley (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1996). ——Malḥamat al-ḥarāfīsh (Cairo: Maktabat Miṣr, n.d.); tr. Catherine Cobham as The Harafish (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1994). ——Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma, tr. Johnson-Davies as The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (London: Doubleday, 1993), p. 1. ——Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa l-masāʾ (Cairo: Maktabat Miṣr, n.d.); tr. Christina Phillips as Morning and Evening Talk (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008). Mahmoud, Fatma Moussa, The Arabic Novel in Egypt (Cairo: General Book Organisation, 1973). Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, ‘Controversy and its effects in the biographical tradition of al-Khatib al-Baghdadi’, Studia Islamica 46 (1977), pp. 115–31.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 235

11/12/2012 16:28

236

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

——‘Dreams, the blind, and the semiotics of the biographical notice’, Studia Islamica 51 (1980), pp. 137–62. ——‘Mahfouz’s dreams’, in Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar (eds), Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993), pp. 126–43. Al-Maʿmūrī, al-Ṭāhir Ibn Muḥammad, ‘Muqaddima’, Badʾ al-khalq wa qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā li l-Kisāʾī (Tunis: Dār Nuqūsh ʿArabiyya, 1998), pp. 7–84. Mansson, Anette, Passage to a New Wor(l)d: Exile and Restoration in Mahmud Darwish’s Writings 1960–1995 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2003). Al-Marzūqī, Abū Yaʿrub, Mafhūm al-sababiyya ʿind al-Ghazzālī (Tunis: Dar Bū Salāma li al-Ṭibāʿa wa al-Nashr, 1978). Matuštik, Martin J., The Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential Philosophy in Habermas, Kirkegaard and Havel (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1993). Mehrez, Samia, ‘Al-Zaynī Barakāt: narrative as strategy’, Egyptian Writers Between History and Fiction (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1994), pp. 96–118. ——Egypt’s Culture Wars: Politics and Practice (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2010). Mitchell, Timothy, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 1991). Moosa, Matti, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction (New York, NY: Three Continents Press, 1997). Morson, Gary Saul and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990). Mubārak, ʿAlī, ʿAlam al-Dīn (Alexandria: Jarīdat al-Maḥrūsa, 1882). ——Al-tawfīqiyya (Cairo: Bulaq, 1886–9). Mubārak, Zakī, Al-akhlāq ʿind al-Ghazzālī (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, n.d.). Muḥammad, Aḥmad Sayyid, Al-riwāya l-insiyābiyya wa taʾthīruhā ʿind al-riwāʾiyyīn al-ʿarab (Algiers: al-Muʾassasa al-Waṭaniyya li al-Kitāb, 1989). Muhawi, Ibrahim (tr.), Memory for Forgetfulness (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. Al-Mūsawī, Muḥsin J., Al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya: al-nashʾa wa al-taḥawwul (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li al-Kitāb, 1988). ——Thārāt Shahrazād: fann al-sard al-ʿarabī l-ḥadīth (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1993), p. 25. ——The Postcolonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003). Muṣṭafā, Mājid, ‘Min ashkāl al-sard al-turāthī fī Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa l-masāʾ’, Fuṣūl 67–8 (Summer–Autumn 2005), pp. 128–37. Al-Nābulsī, Shākir, Mabāhij al-ḥuriyya fī l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li al-Dirāsat wa al-Nashr, 1992).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 236

11/12/2012 16:28

Bibliography

237

Najjār, Fauzi M., ‘Islamic fundamentalism and the intellectuals: the case of Naguib Mahfouz’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 15: 1 (May 1988), pp. 139–68. Al-Najjār, Ḥusayn Fawzī, ʿAlī Mubārak Abū l-taʿlīm (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1967). Al-Naqqāsh, Rajāʾ, Fī ḥubb Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1995). ——Najīb Maḥfūẓ: Ṣafaḥāt min mudhakkirātihi (Cairo: Muʾassasat al-Ahrām, 1998). Neuwirth, Angelika, ‘Hebrew Bible and Arabic poetry: Mahmoud Darwish’s Palestine – from paradise lost to a homeland made of words’, in Hala Khamis and Najat Rahman (eds), Mahmoud Darwish: Exile’s Poet (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2008), pp. 167–90. Newman, Daniel L., An Imam in Paris: Account of a Stay in France by an Egyptian Cleric (1826–1831) (Takhlīṣ al-Ibrīz fī Talkhīṣ Bārīz aw al-Dīwān al-Nafīs bi-Īwān Bārīs) by Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (London: Saqi, 2004). Niyāzī, Ṣalāḥ, Nizār Qabbānī rassām al-shuʿāraʾ (London: al-Rafid, 1998). Nora, Pierre, Realms of Memory: the Construction of the French Past, I. Conflicts and Divisions, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996). Al-Nuṣayr, Yāsīn, ‘Jadaliyyat al-qirāʾa l-thālitha’, Al-aqlām 23: 3 (March 1988), pp. 22–39. Al-Nuwayrī (d. 732/1332), Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab (Cairo: al-Muʾassasa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma, n.d.). O’Meara, Simon, Space and Muslim Urban Life: at the Limits of the Labyrinth of Fez (London: Routledge, 2007). Peled, Mattityahu, Religion, My Own: the Literary Works of Najīb Maḥfūẓ (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983). Philipp, Thomas, Gurgi Zaidan: His Life and Thought, Beiruter Texte und Studien, Band 3 (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutchen Morgenlandschen Gesellschaft; Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979). Phillips, Adam, Going Sane (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005). Pratt, Marie Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992). Qabbānī, Nizār, Al-rasm bi l-kalimāt (Beirut, 1966). ——Al-aʿmāl al-shi ʿriyya l-kāmila (Beirut: Manshūrāt Nizār Qabbānī, 1970), pp. 545–6. ——Qiṣṣatī maʿ al-shiʿr: sīra dhātiyya (Beirut: Manshūrāt Nizār Qabbānī, 1973). ——Al-kitāba ʿamal inqilābī (Beirut: Manshūrāt Nizār Qabbānī, 1978). Al-Qadi, Wadad, ‘East and West in ʿAlī Mubārak’s ‘Alamuddīn’, in Marwan R. Buheiry (ed.), Intellectual Life in the Arab East, 1890–1939 (Beirut: Center for Arab and Middle East Studies, American University in Beirut, 1981), pp. 21–37.

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 237

11/12/2012 16:28

238

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

——‘Biographical dictionaries: inner structure and cultural significance’, in George N. Atiya (ed.), The Book in the Islamic World (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 93–122. ——‘Biographical dictionaries as the scholar’s alternative history of the Muslim community’, in Gerhard Endress (ed.), Organizing Knowledge: Encyclopeadic Activities in the Pre-Eighteenth Century Muslim World (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), pp. 23–75. Al-Qalqashandī, Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn ʿAlī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā fī ṣināʿat al-inshā, 14 vols (Cairo: al-Muʾassasa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma, 1920). Qāsim, Afnān, Masʾalat al-shiʿr wa l-malḥama l-darwīshīyya: Maḥmūd Darwīsh fī Madīḥ al-ẓill al-ʿālī (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1987). Qāsim, Sīzā Aḥmad, Bināʾ al-riwāya: dirāsa muqārana li-thulāthiyyat Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li al-Kitāb, 1984). Qaysūma/Guissouma, Manṣūr, Al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya: al-iskhāl wa l-tashakkul (Tunis: Dār Saḥar, 1997). Rāghib, Nabīl, Qaḍiyyat al-shakl al-fannī ʿind Najīb Maḥfūẓ: dirāsa taḥlīliyya li uṣūlihā l-fikriyya wa l-jamāliyya (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li al-Kitāb, 1975). Al-Rakhāwī, Yaḥya, ‘Dawrāt al-ḥayāt wa ḍalāl al-khulūd: malḥamat al-mawt wa l-takhalluq fī Al-ḥarāfīsh’, Fuṣūl 7: 1–2 (October 1990), pp. 155–74. [This piece is republished verbatim in Fārūq ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī, Najīb Maḥfūẓ bayn al-riwāya wa l-adab al-riwāʾī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), pp. 164–235]. Raymond, André, Le Caire (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayrad, 1993); tr. Willard Wood as Cairo: City of History (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2001). Reynolds, Dwight F. (ed.), Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001). Al-Rikābī, ʿAbd al-Khāliq, Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq (Baghdad: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa al-I ʿlām, 1994). Roded, Ruth, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sa‘d Who’s Who (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994). Rofel, Lisa, Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). Rose, Jacqueline, State of Fantasy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Al-Saʿāfin, Ibrāhīm, Taṭwwur al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya l-ḥadītha fī bilād al-shām 1870–1967 (Baghdad: Dār al-Rashīd, 1980). Saʿd, Muṣṭafā Kāmil, ‘Anāṣir al-tashkīl wa al-bunyā fī Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa l-masāʾ’, Fuṣūl 69 (Summer–Autumn, 2006), pp. 138–49. Said, Edward, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1985). Sakkut, Hamdi, The Egyptian Novel and Its Main Trends From 1913–1952 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1971).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 238

11/12/2012 16:28

Bibliography

239

Ṣāliḥ, Ṣalāḥ, Sardiyyāt al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya l-muʿāṣira (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʿlā li al-Thaqāfa, 2003). Sāmī, Saḥar, ‘Al-tanāṣṣ al-dīnī fī shiʿr Maḥmūd Darwīsh’, in Samīḥ al-Qāsim et al., Al-mukhtalif al-ḥaqīqī: dirāsa wa shahāda (Amman: Dār al-Shurūq, 1999), pp. 79–109. Sells, Michael, Desert Tracings: Six Classical Arabian Odes (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). Al-Sharqāwī, Maḥmūd, ʿAlī Mubārak: ḥayātuhu wa daʿwatuhu wa āthāruhu (Cairo: Anglo-Egyptian Library, 1962). Al-Shaṭṭī, Sulaymān, Al-ramz wa l-ramziyya fī adab Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Kuwait: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿAṣriyya, 1976). Shukrī, Ghālī, Al-muntamī: dirāsa fī adab Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1965). ——Burj bābil: al-naqd wa l-ḥadātha al-sharīda (London: Riad el-Rayyes, 1989). Sidb, Jamāl Rajab, Naẓariyyat al-nafs bayna Ibn Sīnā wa l-Ghazzālī (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li al-Kitāb, 2000). Smith, Margaret, Al-Ghazālī, the Mystic: a Study of the Life and Personality of Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī al-Ghazālī (London: Luzac, 1944). Smith, Steven G., Gender Thinking (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992). Somekh, Sasson, ‘The sad millenarian: an examination of Awlad Haratini’, Middle Eastern Studies 7: 1 (January 1971), pp. 49–61. Stetkevych, Jaroslav, The Zephyrs of Najd: the Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasib (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney, ‘Structuralist interpretations of pre-Islamic poetry: critique and new directions’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 42: 2 (1983), pp. 98–107. ——‘The Ṣuʿlūk and his poem: a paradigm of passage manqué’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 104: 4 (1984), pp. 661–78). ——The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). Subḥī, Muḥy al-Dīn, Al-kwan al-shiʿrī ʿinda Nizār Qabbānī (Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʿa, 1977). Sulaymān, Saʿīd Shawqī Muḥammad, Tawẓīf al-turāth fī riwāyāt Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Cairo: Ītrāk li al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 2000). Ṭāmir, ʿĀrif, al-Ghazzālī bayn al-falsafa wa l-dīn (London: Riyad El-Rayyes, 1987). Ṭarābīshī, Jūrj, Allāh fī riḥlat Najīb Maḥfūẓ al-ramziyya (Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʿa, 1973). ——Al-adab min al-dakhil (Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʿa, 1978). ——Ramziyyat al-marʾa fī l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʿa li al-Ṭibāʿa wa al-Nashr, 1981).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 239

11/12/2012 16:28

240

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

——ʿUqdat Ūdīb fī l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʿa li al-Ṭibāʿa wa alNashr, 1982). ——Al-muthaqqafūn al-ʿarab wa l-turāth: al-taḥlīl al-nafsī li ʿuṣāb jamāʿī (London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1991). ——Madhbaḥat al-turāth fī l-thaqāfa l-ʿarabiyya l-muʿāṣira (London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1993). Ṭarshūna, Maḥmūd, ‘Madrasat tawẓīf al-turāth fī l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya al-muʿāṣira’, Fuṣūl 17: 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 27–39. Terdiman, Richard, Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). Theroux, Peter, ‘Children of the Alley: a translator’s tale’, The Massachusetts Review 42: 4 (Winter 2001/2002), pp. 666–71. Tīzīnī, al-Ṭayyib, Mashrūʿ ruʾya jadīda li l-fikr al-ʿarabī fi l-ʿaṣr al-wasīt (Damascus: Dār Dimashq, 1971). ——Mashrūʿ ru’ya jadīda li l-fikr al-ʿarabī min al-ʿaṣr al-jāhiliyya ḥattā l-marḥala l-muʿāṣira: vol. 1, Min al-turāth ilā l-thawra: Ḥawl naẓariyya muqtaraḥa fī qaḍiyyat al-turāth al-ʿarabī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Khaldūn, 1978); vol. 2, Al-fikr al-ʿarabī fī bawākīrihi wa āfāqihi l-ūlā (Damascus: Dār Dimashq, 1982). Turki, Fawaz, Soul in Exile: Lives of a Palestinian Revolutionary (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1988). Umaruddin, M., The Ethical Philosophy of al-Ghazzali (Aligarh: Muslim University, 1962). ——‘al-Ghazzali’s Conception of Love with Special Reference to the Love of God’, Al-imām Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī fī murūr tisʿ miʾat sana ʿalā wafātihi (al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: ISESCO, 1988), pp. 259–69. ʿUṣfūr, Jābir/Gaber Asfour, ‘Ghiwāyat al-taḥdīth’, Fuṣūl 12: 1 (1993), pp. 9–21. ——Zaman al-riwāya (Damascus: Dār al-Madā, 1999). Vatikiotis, P. J., ‘The corruption of Futuwwa: a consideration of despair in Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s Awlād Ḥāratinā’, Middle Eastern Studies 7: 2 (May 1971), pp. 169–84. Watt, W. Montgomery, Muslim Intellectual: a Study of al-Ghazali (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963). Wāzin, ʿAbduh, Maḥmud Darwīsh: al-gharīb yaqaʿ ʿalā nafish: qirāʿa fī aʿmālih al-jadīda (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 2006). Wensinck, A. J., La pensée de Ghazzali (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940). Yaqṭīn, Saʿīd, Al-riwāya wa l-turāth al-sardī (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1992). ——Taḥlīl al-khitāb al-riwāʿī (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1999). ——Infitāḥ al-naṣṣ al-riwāʾī (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2001). Young, M. J. L., ‘Arabic biographical writing’, in M. J. L. Young et al. (eds), Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period, The Cambridge

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 240

11/12/2012 16:28

Bibliography

241

History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 168–87. Zakī, ʿAlī, Fikrat al-āliyya fī falsafat al-Ghazzālī Abī Ḥāmid: dirāsa muqārana naqdiyya (Algiers: Dīwān al-Maṭbūʿāt al-Jāmiʿiyya, 1992). Zarāqiṭ, ʿAbd al-Majīd, Najīb Maḥfūẓ wa l-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya: abḥāth al-muʾtamar al-thālith wa l-ʿishrīn li ittiḥād al-udabāʾ wa l-kuttāb (Cairo: Ittiḥād al-Kuttāb and al-Hayʾa al-ʿĀmma li-Quṣūr al-Thaqāfa, 2006). Zaydān, Jurjī, Tarājim mashāhīr al-sharq fī l-qarn al-tāsiʿ ʿashr, 2 vols (Cairo: Dār al-Hilāl, 1910). Al-Zumurrulī, Fawzī, Shiʿriyyat al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya: baḥth fī ashkāl taʾṣīl al-riwāya l-ʿarabiyya wa dalālatihā (Tunis: Markaz al-Nashr al-Jāmiʿī, 2002).

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 241

11/12/2012 16:28

INDEX

100 Love Letters, The (Qabbānī), 3–4 100 Love Sonnets, The (Neruda), 4 ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr, Salāh, 19, 146 ʿAbqariyyat Muḥammad (Al-ʿAqqād), 163, 164 Abū Nuwās, 15–16 Adnan, Etel: Sitt Marie-Rose, 91–4, 102, 115 Adonis, 10–19, 20–5, 146 Aghānī Mihyār al-Dimashqī, 20–5, 26, 50–3 Al-thābit wa l-mutaḥawwil, 15–16, 18 Aghānī Mihyār al-Dimashqī (Adonis), 20–5, 26, 50–3 ʿAlā hāmish al-sīra (Ḥusayn), 163, 164 ʿAlam al-Dīn (Mubārak), 147–60, 213, 217 Al-ʿallāma (Himmich), 194–202 Allen, Roger, 117 Amanṣūr, Muḥamad, 167, 170 America see United States Amīn, Qāsim 157 Anderson, Benedict, 66, 78, 161 Al-ʿAqqād, ʿAbbās Maḥmūd: ʿAbqariyyat Muḥammad, 163, 164 ʿAql, Saʿīd, 99 Arab identity, 10, 14–15, 54–5 ‘Al-arḍ ḥabībatī’ (Darwīsh), 88 Asfour, Gaber, 22, 23, 149–50 ʿĀshiq min Filasṭīn (Darwīsh), 79, 88 authenticity, 25, 50, 51, 55–7, 64, 65, 69, 79, 80, 135, 225 authority political, 15, 46–8, 52, 57, 80, 115–16, 125, 146–7, 160–1, 166, 190–2 of tradition, 4, 5, 12, 16, 17 autobiography, 146–7, 150–1, 153, 159, 167, 194–5, 196–7, 213 Averroes, 44, 48 Awlād ḥāratinā (Mahfouz), 47, 165–76, 190, 191, 217 Babylonian mythology, 60, 62, 88, 89, 92, 176 Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr (Ibn Iyās), 203, 213 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 20–1, 22, 24, 56, 65, 69, 96, 143, 159 Al-Baqarī, ʿAbd al-Dāʾim, 30 Barakāt, Salīm, 225–6 Barārī al-ḥummā (Naṣrallāh), 82 Barthes, Roland, 5, 25, 165, 173, 189 Beard, Michael, 22 Beer, Gillian, 161

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 242

Before the Bāshiq Soared see Qabl an yuḥalliq albāshiq (Al-Rikābī) Beiruit, seige of, 97–106, 111–15 Benjamin, Walter, 17, 18, 161 Bible, 23, 24, 60, 62, 88, 99 Al-bidāya wa l-nihāya (Ibn Kathīr), 99–100 biography, 146–7, 150, 153, 159, 160–1, 162–5, 167, 170–6, 191–7, 213, 214 Bloom, Harold, 23, 132 body, the, 210–13, 217–19; see also desire; sexuality Bonaparte, Napoleon see Napoleon I Borges, Jorge Luis, 56, 60, 62, 63, 64 Boym, Svetlana, 17, 51, 53 Britain, 57, 152; see also West, the Byzantines, 12, 14 Cairo Trilogy (Mahfouz), 165 Canaanite mythology, 88, 89, 92 cartography, 89, 147 Chahine, Youssef: Al-maṣīr, 44 change, 10, 13, 14, 16–17, 18 Children of Gebelawi see Awlād ḥāratinā (Mahfouz) chronotopes, 143–4, 145, 161, 225 collective history, 37–8 collective identity, 78, 132–3 collective memory, 17–18, 51–2, 173, 191 colonisation, 10, 48, 83, 84, 99, 152, 154–6, 160; see also decolonisation; post-colonialism creation myths, 23, 24, 60, 62, 88–9, 99–100, 168 creativity, 129–36, 146 Crusaders, 10, 11, 14, 99, 100 cultural change, 10, 13, 14, 18 cultural memory, 7, 17, 52 cultural others, 10–11, 12, 13, 14–16, 18, 51 Al-Ḍaʿīf , Rashīd, 226 Darwīsh, Maḥmūd, 79, 82–9, 95–6, 131–6, 146 ‘Al-arḍ ḥabībatī’, 88 ʿĀshiq min Filasṭīn, 77–8, 79, 88 Dhākira li l-nisyān, 95–106, 111–15 Fī ḥaḍrat al-ghiyāb, 133 ‘Ḥālat intiẓār’, 82–3 ‘Khudh al-qaṣīda ʿannī’, 131–2 ‘Khuṭbat al-hindī l-aḥmar’, 83–6, 88, 89 Madīḥ al-ẓill al-ʿālī, 88, 99 ‘Qināʿ li Majnūn Laylā’, 133–5 Sarīr al-gharība, 133–5

11/12/2012 16:28

Index Shayʾun ʿan al-waṭan, 88, 89 ‘Al-waṭan: bayna al-dhākira wa l-ḥaqība’, 86–7 Davenport, Guy, 143 Dāwūd, Ḥasan, 226 death and rebirth myths, 23–4, 89 decolonisation, 12, 78, 79; see also colonisation; postcolonialism Deleuze, Gilles, 118–20, 121, 122 democracy, aesthetic for, 21, 25, 52, 152 desire, 5, 6, 26, 46, 53, 79, 80, 93, 120, 121, 125–9; see also love; sexuality Dhākira li l-nisyān (Darwīsh), 95–106, 111–15 dialogism, 21, 22–3, 25, 52, 65, 69–70, 96 Dīk al-Jinn, 19 Dīk al-Jinn al-Dimashqī (Qabbānī), 19, 22 Dols, Michael, 80 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 80 doubling, 56, 60–2 dreams, 36, 97, 191 Dumūʿ Shahrayār (Qabbānī), 19, 22 Al-durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr (Fawwāz), 157 Al-Dusūqī, Ibrāhīm, 150, 151, 153, 155 education, 156, 157–9 Egypt, 10, 44, 45, 123, 146, 147, 150, 152, 154–5, 202–10, 214–15 Egyptian mythology, 92, 176 El-Enany, Rasheed, 27 Emerson, Caryl, 21 epic, 57, 60, 62, 92, 167, 169, 184–91 Epic of Gilgamesh, 93 epistemology, 4–5, 11, 12–13 espionage, 204–8 ethnic others, 16, 18 Europe, 12, 14, 69, 146, 148–9, 153; see also West, the exile, 53–4, 82, 86, 111, 129, 201, 225 Fawwāz, Zaynab: Al-durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr, 157 fear, 101, 122, 208–13, 215–16 Fī ḥaḍrat al-ghiyāb (Darwīsh), 133 Al-fihrist (Ibn al-Nadīm), 153 Foucault, Michel, 81, 83, 88 France, 9, 148, 152, 154–5 fundamentalism, 44, 49, 162 Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Ibn ʿArabī), 60, 63 Al-futūḥāt al-makiyya(Ibn ʿArabī), 60 Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar, 159 Genette, Gérard, 56, 68, 69 geography, 143–4, 145, 197 ghazal, 33, 88 Al-Ghazzālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl, 28–30, 32–8, 44–50 Tahāfut al-falāsifa, 45 Al-Ghīṭānī, Jamāl Khiṭaṭ, 160, 214 Al-Zaynī Barakāt, 202–19 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 21 Greek mythology, 23 Guattari, Félix, 118–20 Habermas, Jürgen, 152, 156, 226 Habiby, Emile, 80, 81 Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa l-masāʾ (Mahfouz), 166, 192–3

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 243

243 Al-Ḥakīm, Tawfīq: Muḥammad, 163, 164 ‘Ḥālat intiẓār’ (Darwīsh), 82–3 Hāwī, Khalīl, 9, 19, 99, 146 Ḥayāt Muḥammad (Haykal), 163–4 Haydar, Adnan, 22 Haykal, Muḥammad Ḥusayn: Ḥayāt Muḥammad, 163–4 heritage, 224–5 heroes, myths of, 106, 166, 173–4, 184, 187–9 heteroglossia, 21, 22, 25, 52 Himmich, Bensalem Al-ʿallāma, 194–202 Al-khaldūniyya fī ḍaw falsafat al-tārīkh, 116–17, 200 Majnūn al-ḥukm, 115–18, 120–9, 135–6, 146–7, 160, 193–4, 200, 219 ‘Thaqāfat al-riwāya’, 135–6 Hirschkop, Ken, 21 historical knowledge, 193–4, 196–9, 217 history collective, 37–8 and geography, 143–4, 145, 197 and heritage, 224–5 and identity, 84–6 of Iraq, 54, 57 of Islam, 113, 161–4 and language, 83, 116 as linear narrative, 14, 16–17 narrativisation of, 143–7 and the nation-state, 144–6, 161, 165–70, 184, 191, 203, 216 oral see oral tradition personalisation of, 192–6 rewriting of, 14, 18, 24, 135–6, 145 see also past, the History of Arabic Literature (Zaydān), 162 History of Islamic Civilisation (Zaydān), 162 Hobsbawn, Eric, 50–1, 66 ‘Homeland’ see ‘Al-waṭan: bayna al-dhākira wa l-ḥaqība’ (Darwīsh) humanism, 164, 165 Ḥusayn, Ṭāha: ʿAlā hāmish al-sīra, 163, 164 Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥyi al-Dīn Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, 60, 63 Al-futūḥāt al-makiyya, 60 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa: Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 26–8, 46, 50, 151, 197 Ibn Ḥazm: Ṭawq al-ḥamāma, 102 Ibn Iyās: Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr, 203, 213 Ibn Khalūdn, 116–17, 122, 194–202 Kitāb al-ʿibar, 197–9 Al-taʿrīf, 194, 196–8 Ibn Kathīr: Al-bidāya wa l-nihāya, 99–100 Ibn al-Nadīm: Al-fihrist, 153 Ibn Rushd see Averroes Ibn Sīda: Al-mukhaṣṣaṣ, 99 idealisation and love, 88–91, 93–4 of the nation-state, 88–91, 94, 106 of the past, 49–50, 174; see also nostalgia identity see Arab identity; collective identity; individual identity Imraʾat al-Qārūra (Maṭar Kāmil), 53–4, 65 In Bed with a Stranger see Sarīr al-gharība (Darwīsh) In Praise of Tall Shadows see Madīḥ al-ẓill al-ʿālī (Darwīsh) In the Presence of Absence see Fī ḥaḍrat al-ghiyāb (Darwīsh)

11/12/2012 16:28

244

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

individual identity, 78, 82–3, 129, 217, 226 Al-insān al-kāmil fī maʾrifat al-awākhir wa l-awāʾil, (Al-Jīlī), 60 intelligence, 202–4 intertextuality, 20, 23, 25–6, 54–7, 60–1, 64–7, 68, 96–7, 196–7, 203, 204–10 Iraq, 53–4, 57, 67, 146 Islam, 11–14, 22, 28–9, 32, 34, 37–8, 44–5, 47–8, 117, 161–4; see also Shiʿism; Sufism; Sunni Islam Jābir, Rabīʿ, 226 Jacquemond, Richard, 166 Al-Jīlī, ʿAbd al-Karīm, 60, 63 Journey of Ibn Fattouma see Rihlat Ibn Faṭṭūma (Mahfouz) journeys in search of knowledge, 26–32, 33, 35–6, 46, 49, 69, 146, 159, 197 in time, 56, 62 of transformation 35, 36, 69 to the West, 148–50, 153, 160 justice, 29, 46, 47–8, 52, 80, 185–6, 190 Al-Kawwāz, Muḥammad Karīm: Min asāṭīr al-awwalīn ilā qiṣaṣ al-nabiyāʾ, 176 Khairallah, Asʿad, 81 Al-khaldūniyya fī ḍaw falsafat al-tārīkh (Himmich), 116–17, 200 Khiṭaṭ (Al-Ghīṭānī), 160, 214 Al-khiṭaṭ al-tawfīqiyya (Mubārak), 147, 150, 152, 155, 156, 159–60, 213 Khoury, Elias, 226 ‘Khudh al-qaṣīda ʿannī’ (Darwīsh), 131–2 ‘Khuṭbat al-hindī l-aḥmar (Darwīsh), 83–6, 88, 89 Kitāb al-ʿibar (Ibn Khaldūn), 197–9 Al-kitāba ʿamal inqilābī (Qabbānī), 4, 7, 8–9 knowledge historical, 193–4, 196–9, 217 and Islam, 11, 44–5 journeys in search of, 26–32, 33, 35–6, 46, 49, 69, 146, 159, 197 and madness, 80, 104–6 and modernity, 80 systems of, 4–5, 52–3, 116 and tradition, 11, 12–13, 48–9, 66–7 Kristeva, Julia, 5, 79, 89–90, 93, 94 Al-Kūnī, Ibrāhīm, 225–6 labyrinths, 54, 62–3, 64–7 Land is my beloved, The see ‘Al-arḍ ḥabībatī’ (Darwīsh) Lane, Edward William, 150, 151, 153 language and history, 83, 116 and identity, 84–6 of love, 32–3, 89–91, 94, 102, 128 and madness, 103–4, 130–3 revolution in, 3–9 Layālī alf layla (Mahfouz), 26, 80, 166, 187, 190, 191 Lebanese civil war, 91–5, 102, 106, 113–14 Lebanon, 91–5, 97–106, 111–15, 146 legitimacy, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18, 48, 50–1, 67, 112–13, 121 Liberation of Woman, The see Al-marʾa al-jadīda (Amīn) Life of Muhammad (BBC), 162–3

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 244

love and idealisation, 88–91, 93–4 with an improper stranger, 106, 111–15, 135 as knowledge system, 4–5 language of, 32–3, 53, 89–91, 94, 102, 128 and madness, 79, 80–1, 88–9, 90–1, 102, 113–14 and the nation-state, 79, 88–9, 94, 102, 112–15 profane, 33, 37 Sufi, 32–3, 37 see also desire; sexuality love poetry, 3–4, 33, 79, 88, 133–5; see also ghazal; nasīb love stories, 63–4, 68 ‘Lover from Palestine’ see ʿĀshiq min Filasṭīn (Darwīsh) Lowenthal, David, 53, 224–5 Lu Xun, 81 McCarthy, Richard Joseph, 30 Madīḥ al-ẓill al-ʿālī (Darwīsh), 88, 99 madness, 79–88, 90–1, 97, 100–4, 111–12, 116–21, 124–36 Mahfouz, Naguib, 9, 47, 50, 66–7, 165, 217 Awlād ḥāratinā, 47, 165–76, 190, 191, 217 Cairo Trilogy, 165 Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa al-masāʾ, 166, 192–3 Layālī alf layla, 26, 80, 166, 187, 190, 191 Malḥamat al-ḥarāfīsh, 166, 175–6, 184–91, 217 Palace of Desire, 4, 7 Qaṣr al-shawq, 26, 80, 81, 217 Rihlat Ibn Faṭṭūma, 26–32, 34–7, 45–53, 55, 68–70, 160, 166, 190, 191, 194, 197, 199–200, 217 Majnūn al-ḥukm (Himmich), 115–18, 120–9, 135–6, 146–7, 160, 193–4, 200, 219 Majnūn Laylā, 33, 80, 81, 133 Malḥamat al-ḥarāfīsh (Mahfouz), 166, 175–6, 184–91, 217 Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, 27 Al-marʾa al-jadīda (Amīn), 157 Al-maṣīr (Chahine), 44 Maṭar Kāmil, Salīm: Imraʾat al-Qārūra, 53–4, 65 Matuštik, Martin J., 226 Mehrez, Samia, 214 memory, 7, 9–10, 17–18, 51–2, 84–6, 97, 191, 216 Memory of Forgetfulness see Dhākira li l-nisyān (Darwīsh) Mesopotamian mythology, 79 Mihyār al-Daylamī, 22 Mihyar’s Songs see Aghānī Mihyār al-Dimashqī (Adonis) Min asāṭīr al-awwalīn ilā qiṣaṣ al-nabiyāʾ (Kawwāz), 176 modernisation, 4, 9, 10, 19, 21, 24, 66, 78, 148–52, 155–7, 159–60 modernity, 9–19, 50–1, 55, 60, 66–7, 69, 79, 80, 144, 213, 226 Mongols, 10, 11, 14, 202 Morning and Evening Talk see Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa l-masāʾ (Mahfouz) Morson, Gary Saul, 21 Mubārak, ʿAlī ʿAlam al-Dīn, 147–60, 213, 217 Al-khiṭaṭ al-tawfīqiyya, 147, 150, 152, 155, 156, 159–60, 213 Muḥammad, 162–4, 167 Muḥammad (Al-Ḥakīm), 163, 164

11/12/2012 16:28

Index Muhawi, Ibrahim, 96, 101, 103, 111–12, 113 Al-mukhaṣṣaṣ (Ibn Sīda), 99 Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl, (Al-Ghazzālī), 28–30, 32–8, 44–50 musāmarāt, 153–7, 159 mythology Babylonian, 60, 62, 88, 89, 92, 176 Canaanite, 88, 89, 92 creation myths, 23, 24, 60, 62, 88–9, 99–100, 168 death and rebirth myths, 23–4, 89 Egyptian, 92, 176 Greek, 23 Mesopotamian, 79 myths of the hero, 106, 166, 173–4, 184, 187–9 myths of return, 52 Sumerian, 176 Napoleon I, 10, 154 nasīb, 6, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37 Naṣrallāh, Ibrāhīm, 82, 226 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 113, 187, 202–4, 214, 216 nation-states feminisation of, 4, 79, 89, 217 and history, 144–6, 160–1, 165–70, 184, 191, 203, 216 idealisation of, 88–91, 94, 106 legitimacy of, 66–7, 112 and love, 79, 88–9, 94, 102, 112–15 and madness, 80, 82–8, 129, 133 and modernity, 78–9 and the past, 66–7 and tradition, 66–7, 225–6 and violence 94 national allegories, 68, 78–9, 89, 93, 112, 145, 147, 160, 165, 190, 201, 226 nationalism, 66, 67, 78–9, 93, 113, 225–6 Neruda, Pablo: The 100 Love Sonnets, 4 Netton, Ian, 26–7, 30 New Woman, The see Ṭaḥrīr al-marʾa (Amīn) Nihāyat al-ījāz fī sīrat sākin al-Ḥijāz (Al-Ṭahṭāwī), 162 nostalgia, 17, 33, 34, 36–7, 49, 51–3, 80, 174 O’Meara, Simon, 211, 212 oral tradition, 58–9, 60–1, 64, 65, 173; see also storytelling originality, 23, 51, 52, 55–7, 60, 62, 64, 65–6, 69, 80, 225 otherness, 10–11, 12, 13, 14–16, 18, 51 Ottomans, 10, 11, 14, 57, 152, 106, 214 Ouyang, Wen-chin: Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel, 4, 20, 102, 145, 193, 217 Palace of Desire (Mahfouz), 4, 7 Palestine, 80, 81–9, 97–9, 105–6, 111–15, 129, 132, 133, 146 palimpsests, 56, 69, 84, 160 paratexts, 26, 68–9, 194–5 past, the as a burden, 146, 161, 166, 167, 175, 191 and heritage, 224–5 idealisation of, 49–50, 174; see also nostalgia and the nation-state, 66–7 rewriting of, 135–6, 145 see also history Persians, 12, 14, 15 Phillips, Adam, 130–1, 133

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 245

245 philosophy, 28, 29, 37, 44, 45, 46, 48, 89, 94, 146 Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel (Ouyang), 4, 20, 102, 145, 193, 217 political authority, 15, 46–8, 52, 57, 80, 115–16, 125, 146–7, 160–1, 166, 190–2; see also power; tyranny post-colonialism, 55, 66, 160, 225 power, 118–20, 125, 128–9, 144–7, 160, 170–3, 185–91, 200–2, 217–19; see also political authority; tyranny Pratt, Marie Louise, 152 private sphere, 153–4, 156–7, 159, 199, 209, 210–13 profane love, 33, 37 public sphere, 152, 153–4, 156–7, 159, 160, 199, 209, 210–13 Pure Water see Al-rāwūq (Al-Rikābī) Qabbānī, Nizār, 3–9, 19, 22, 52, 79, 145, 146 The 100 Love Letters, 3–4 Dīk al-Jinn al-Dimashqī, 19, 22 Dumūʿ Shahrayār, 19, 22 Al-kitāba ʿamal inqilābī, 4, 7, 8–9 Qiṣṣatī maʿ al-shiʿr, 5–6 Qabl an yuḥalliq al-bāshiq (Al-Rikābī), 57 Al-Qadi, Wadad, 148–9, 150 Al-Qalqashandī, Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn ʿAlī: Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā fī ṣināʿat al-inshā, 204, 205 qaṣīda, 30–2, 33–4, 36, 46, 50 Qaṣr al-shawq (Mahfouz), 26, 80, 81, 217 ‘Qināʿ li Majnūn Laylā’ (Darwīsh), 133–5 Qiṣṣatī maʿ al-shiʿr (Qabbānī), 5–6 Qurʾān, 11, 23 raḥīl, 31, 34 Ranger, Terence, 50–1, 66 Al-rāwūq (Al-Rikābī), 57, 58 realist novels, 21 reason, 35, 44, 45, 124–9, 130–1, 163–4 ‘Red Indian’s Speech’ see ‘Khuṭbat al-hindī l-aḥmar’ (Darwīsh) resistance, 103, 117, 199–204 return, myths of, 52 reversals, 111–12 revisionism, 19–20, 54, 66–7, 160, 225 Ricoeur, Paul, 144 Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (Ibn Baṭṭūṭa), 26–8, 46, 50, 151, 197 Rihlat Ibn Faṭṭūma (Mahfouz), 26–32, 34–7, 45–51, 55, 68–70, 160, 166, 190, 191, 194, 197, 199–200, 217 Al-Rikābī, ʿAbd al-Khāliq Qabl an yuḥalliq al-bāshiq, 57 Al-rāwūq, 57, 58 Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq, 55–64, 65–8, 79 ruinous abodes, 33, 34 Russia, 21, 86 Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq (Al-Rikābī), 55–64, 65–8, 79 Sadat, Anwar, 187 Said, Edward, 68, 194, 203 salvation, 29, 45, 46, 47 sanity see reason Al-sāq ʿalā l-sāq (Al-Shidyāq), 149 Sarīr al-gharība (Darwīsh), 133–5 Al-Sayyāb, Badr Shakir, 19, 79, 132–3, 135, 146 Scattered Pearls see Al-durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr (Fawwāz)

11/12/2012 16:28

246

Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel

science, 148, 149, 150, 163, 169–71 sea metaphors, 101–3, 105 secret service, 204–9, 215 sectarianism, 91, 93, 113 Seventh Day of Creation see Sābiʿ ayyām al-khalq (Al-Rikābī) sexuality, 4, 5, 19, 89, 114, 127–8, 210–12, 217; see also desire Shahrayāh’s Tears see Dumūʿ Shahrayār (Qabbānī) shame, 209–12 Shayʾun ʿan al-waṭan (Darwīsh), 88, 89 Al-Shidyāq, Aḥmad Fāris: Al-sāq ʿalā al-sāq, 149 Shiʿism, 22, 28, 37, 44, 45, 48 Shukrī, Ghālī, 167, 170 Sign of Religion see ʿAlam al-Dīn (Mubārak) Sitt Marie-Rose (Adnan), 91–4, 115 ‘Song of Rain’ (Al-Sayyāb), 79 Stetkevych, Jaroslav, 33, 34 Stetkevych, Suzanne, 34 storytelling, 55–8, 60–2, 64, 65, 68–9, 143, 173; see also oral tradition Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā fī ṣināʿat al-inshā (Al-Qalqashandī), 204, 205 Ṣubḥī, Muḥy al-Dīn, 5 subjectivity, 5, 196–8, 217 Sufi love, 32–3, 37 Sufism, 28–9, 32–3, 37, 44, 48, 50, 61, 63, 64, 146, 199 Sumerian mythology, 176 Sunni Islam, 44, 45, 163, 199 Sunset Oasis see Wāḥat al-ghurūb (Ṭāhir) Syria, 146 Al-taʿrīf (Ibn Khaldūn), 194, 196–8 Tahāfut al-falāsifa (Al-Ghazzālī), 45 Ṭāhir, Bahāʾ: Wāḥat al-ghurūb, 225 Ṭaḥrīr al-marʾa (Amīn), 157 Al-Ṭahṭāwī, Rifāʿa Rāfi Nihāyat al-ījāz fī sīrat sākin al-Ḥijāz, 162 Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīz, 149, 150–1 ‘Take poetry away from me’ see ‘Khudh al-qaṣīda ʿannī’ (Darwīsh) Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīz (Al-Ṭahṭāwī), 149, 150–1 Ṭarābīshī, Jūrj, 67, 166 Ṭawq al-ḥamāma (Ibn Ḥazm), 102 Terdiman, Richard, 9 Al-thābit wa l-mutaḥawwil (Adonis), 15–16, 18 ‘Thaqāfat al-riwāya’ (Himmich), 135–6 Theocrat, The see Majnūn al-ḥukm (Himmich) Thousand and One Nights, 54, 56, 60, 61, 63, 65, 125, 153 torture, 208–9, 212–13, 216, 218–19

OUYANG 9780748655694 PRINT.indd 246

tradition and authority, 4, 5, 12, 16, 17 and change, 11–13, 16–17 and intertextuality, 53, 55, 65, 68 invention of, 50–1, 65, 66 and knowledge, 11, 12–13, 48–9, 66–7 and modernity, 14–19, 80 and the nation-state, 66–7, 226 as revolutionary, 18 rewriting of, 19–25, 225 as stagnant, 9, 16, 18 transformation, 30–2, 33–4, 35–6, 37, 46, 143–5 travel genres, 25–32, 69, 146, 148, 150–1, 159, 197, 213 truth, 28–9, 32, 33, 35, 37, 44–5, 48–9, 50, 62–3, 64, 68, 80 tyranny, 29, 46, 48, 115–29, 144, 146, 166, 170–6, 188, 194, 199–204, 213–16; see also political authority; power ʿUdhrī poetry, 33 ʿUmar Ibn Abī Rabīʿa, 6, 7–8, 19, 33 United Kingdom see Britain United States, 14, 69; see also West, the Utopia, 27, 28, 31, 36, 52, 68, 80, 175, 191 violence, 90–5, 100, 102, 104, 115, 117; see also torture; war Wāḥat al-ghurūb (Ṭāhir), 225 war, 91–106, 111–14, 119, 121–3; see also violence ‘Al-waṭan: bayna al-dhākira wa l-ḥaqība’ (Darwīsh), 86–7 Watt, W. Montgomery, 44 West, the, 10, 12, 16, 55, 148–52, 153–5, 159, 160, 162–3; see also Britain; Europe; United States Western novels, 25, 68, 69, 160, 225 Westernisation, 9, 21, 51, 149 Woman of the Bottle see Imraʾat al-Qārūra (Maṭar Kāmil) women and agency, 6 and the body, 217–19 and desire, 6, 93 education of, 157–9 hatred of, 93 and national allegory, 4, 79, 89, 217 role in nation-building, 156–7, 158–9 as writers, 226 works-within-works, 56, 60, 61–2 Zarāqiṭ, ʿAbd al-Majīd, 167 Zaydān, Jurjī, 161–2, 164 Al-Zaynī Barakāt (Al-Ghīṭānī), 202–19

11/12/2012 16:28