Journal of Arabic Literature (33-1, 2002)

Journal Arabic of Literature V O L . X X X I I I BRILL N O . I 2 00 2 JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE Exe...

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Journal Arabic

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JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE Executive Editor SUZANNE PINCKNEY STETKEVYCH,Indiana University, Bloomington Editorial Board FEDERICOCORRIENTE,University of Saragossa MUHSIN JASSIM AL-MUSAWI, American University of Sharjah Editorial Assistant PAUL B. NELSON, Indiana University, Bloomington Since its inception in 1970 the Journal of Arabic Literature has provided an international scholarly forum for the discussion of Arabic literature and has secured its position at the forefront of critical and methodological debate. The journal publishes literary critical and historical studies, as well as reviews and bibliographies, on a broad range of Arabic materials-classical and modern, written and oral, poetry and prose, literary and colloquial. Studies that seek to integrate Arabic literature into the broader discourses of the humanities and social sciences take their place alongside technical work of a more specialized nature. The journal thus addresses itself to a readership in comparative literature and literary theory and method, in addition to specialists in Arabic and Middle Eastern literatures and Middle East studies generally. Particularly due to the many articles that include original translations of literary texts, the journal is an invaluable resource for university instruction as well as for scholarly research. The continued presence of the Journal of Arabic Literature in library holdings throughout the world testifies to its standing as a scholarly periodical of established international repute. SUBSCRIPTIONS Subscription price of Vol. 33 (2002) (ca. 296 pages in 3 issues): EUR 132.-/US$ 154 for institutions, and EUR 76.-/US$ 89.- for individuals, including postage and handling. Price includes online subscription. Claims for missing or damaged issues must be made within three months of publication (European customers) or within five months of publication (customers outside Europe). Please address your claims and enquiries to Brill's Customer Services Department. Articles submitted for publication in JAL are subject to a process of peer review, in accordance with standard academic practice. This journalis printedon acid-freepaper. BRILL LEIDEN.BOSTON-KOLN ( Copyright 2002 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

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REPERCEIVING THE PRE-ISLAMIC NASIB The lyrical symbiosis of love and grief is referred to as elegiac poetry. Elegy as a genre is motivated by loss of love and its ensuing pain.' Its sentiment is accordingly nostalgic. In Arabic literature, this modal and wide meaning of elegy connoting nostalgic love lyrics finds its earliest and most explicit expression in the pre-Islamic nasib. An obligatory prelude to the qasida full of reminiscences of people, things, and times lost and absent, the nasib usually revolves around one or more of three main motifs: the atlal, the za'n, and the khaydl.2 More than any other section of the classical Arabic qasida, the nasib has been the object of intellectual derogation. The main objections against this poetry have revolved around lack of coherence and objective description.3 Dismissed as mostly conventional form endlessly repeated with little or no inherent lyrical value, the nasib has been perceived as a prime example of unimaginative poetry. Although the last twenty years have brought to light approaches, interpretations, and translations that contradict this conception, these have mainly been preoccupied with the grand samples, the apparently complex and composite nasibs and qasidas by famed poets of the age in question.4 Complexity is often linked to, and sometimes confused with, ' This article is mainly an extract from my unpublished M.A. thesis, The Absentee: Love and Grief in Early Arabic Poetry: Nasibic Texts & Contexts, Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, University of Copenhagen, February 2001. I am very grateful to Kerstin Eksell and Michael Sells for inspiration and generous advice. Translations from the Arabic are mine unless otherwise noted. 2 Lichtenstidter in her 1932 study talks about "Hauptthemen,"which I translate here "as main motif' for lack of a better word. I deliberately refrain from using the term "theme" even where other authors choose to do so. This is to avoid confusion with the definition of the word to be outlined below. Jacobi alters "Hauptthemen"to "Rahmenmotive." The terms, "main motif', and "frame motif' (or simply "frame")will be used synonymously in the following. Ilse Lichtenstidter, "Das Nasib der altarabischen Qaside," Islamica 5 (1932): pp. 17-96; and Renate Jacobi, Studien zur Poetik der altarabischen Qaside (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1971). 3 The debate is well-known. For a survey of its voices, see Michael Sells, "The Qasida and the West: Self-Reflective Stereotype and Critical Encounter,"Al-'Arabiyya 20 (1987): pp. 307-57. 4 Displaying the richness of symbolism in the nasib, a symbolism transcending time and space, Jaroslav Stetkevych has greatly contributed to repudiating the idea of the prelude as purely form with no or little lyrical value. See his The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasib (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) and also his "Toward an Arabic Elegiac Lexicon: The Seven Words of the Nasib" in Reorientations: Arabic and Persian Poetry ed., Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994): pp. 58-129. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002

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length. As a result of this, academic interest in the topic has naturally revolved around the more lengthy and, so conceived, more complex nasibs. To my knowledge, no or only scant attention has been given to the traditionally short and seemingly simple nasibs that fill a famous anthology such as al-Mufa.ddaliyyat and, to a lesser extent, the anthology al-Asma'iyydt. The average number of lines of my count of 53 nasibs in the Mufa.ddaliyydt is merely 5.4 lines.5 Only two nasibs contain more than fifteen lines in the Mu'allaqa-style.6 Defining short as between two and six lines, the focus here is on the short nasib as found in the Mufa.d.daliyydt.The short prelude constitutes 62 per cent of all nasibs in this anthology. Admittedly, the transmitted short nasibs are strongly homogeneous contentwise and surrounded by a tediously high degree of predictability. The question is whether what we see (or rather what we hear) is all we get? Or, stated differently, does the short nasib contain any lyrical depth? For the purpose of answering this question, I propose to look for themes. My definition of theme is inspired by Erik Nielsen who describes theme as the essential meaning of a text. At the same time it is both its principle of organization and its totality of meaning.7 Thus, a theme may be said to be the comprised expression of the structure and contents of a text. It is articulated through pairs or oppositions, that is in twos, its main feature being that it always involves something dialectical.8 Naturally, it is not the case that every opposition makes a theme, rather that every opposition may be potentially thematically significant. I am aware that this cannot be done without 5 Al-Mufaddal al-Dabbi, al-Mufa.d.daliyyat, ed. by Muhammad Shakir and 'Abd al-Salam Harun (Cairo: Dar al-Ma'arif, 1964); and Charles James Lyall, The Mufaddaliyyat: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes, II. Translation and notes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918). The total number of nasibs is actually 56, but Muf XVI, Muf XXXIV, and Muf LXIV have been left out since they were composed by Islamic poets. Due to the fact that they do not form part of a qasida, or that they consist of nothing else but the subject of love, the following specimens have likewise been excluded from the count despite their containing nasibic elements: Muf XLVI (only love depicted-probably an extended nasib or a fragmented qasida of which only the nasib has survived), Muf LIII (the sample is only three lines long and obviously a fragment), Muf LVI (only love depicted), Muf LXXXI (unfinished piece-another version of this poem, Muf IV-appendix which contains additional verses, has been included in the count, however), Muf CXXV (fragment, lack of proportion between the nasib part and remainder of poem, the nasib taking up 9 out of 11 verses), and Muf III-appendix (only love depicted). It should be noted that pre-Islamic is used to cover both real pre-Islamic poetry and poetry composed by the mukhadramun. 6 Muf XXI and Muf XCVIII. 7 These terms, principle of organization and totality of meaning, are directly taken and translated from Erik Nielsen, "Om Tema" in Om Litteraturanalyse, ed. Lis M0ller (Gylling: Narayana Press, 1997): pp. 45-75. 8 It is necessary at this point to clarify, also, my definition and utilization of the terms "motif" and "topos." Both are subordinated to a theme. I define a motif as a recurrent cluster or unit of images or ideas which may be divided into smaller units of submotifs and, subsequently, topoi. Formally, a motif is a set of something, an abstract, or an idea which is com-


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the risk of either overlooking a willed simplicity or a willed complexity on the part of the creator of the text. In the first case one sees twos where there is only one; in the second, one reduces intricate structures to simple binary oppositions. In both cases preconceived notions of structure are imposed on the text. Furthermore, focusing solely on oppositions may blind the reader to the finer insights of other interpretations. It is true of any interpretation, however, that it either rules out or fails to heed other valid explanations. And in the end, this critique is applicable to any kind of reductionism, be it opposition-oriented and structuralist, ritual, mytho-poetical, etc. The method of looking for themes, or "theme-reading" as I shall call this approach, has as its aim to investigate the dynamics of polarities within a nasib so as to extract its meaning. Theme-reading recognizes the ritual and mythical underpinnings of much of the corpus in question, but only to the extent that these explanations do not undermine the idea of poetical creativity. That we may discern creative intent and specificity in the landscape of convention surrounding the pre-Islamic nasib remains an important underlying assumption of this investigation. Jacobi's modified version of Lichtenstadter's early schemes neatly sums up the frame motifs and other vital (non-frame) motifs, their respective submotifs and the succession of these in the nasib. These inventories and the categorization of contents into frames are very useful as tools for understanding the basic structure of the nasib. In fact, for a long time trying to add something to the laid-down typology of the nasib seemed impossible. It was as if everything that could be said had already been said, and poignantly so. The idea of frames is based upon the belief that the nasib forms part of a homogeneous and collected corpus. My argument is that these poems-in this case these traditional short nasibs-are homogeneous, but only to a certain extent. At the same time they are also the expression of individual creativity. And if this is the case, one is allowed or, indeed, obliged to apply a method that searches for the particular or individual message in every poem. Thus, to comprehend nasibic structures, the idea of frame motifs seemed to me to merely touch the surface layers of meaning. It is my belief that a deeper understanding may be reached by thoroughly searching for meaning-carrying oppositions. posite consisting of one or several topoi. Materially, a motif takes only one, i.e., it is the expression of one idea or one polarity of a potential thematic duality. As for topos, it is the smallest unit in this interrelation of three literary terms. It is a single image, one picture, one idea. What characterizes both a motif and a topos and what separates them from a theme is their easily recognizable quality. This is not to say that they are ideas or lines of thought uniformly represented, only that the frequency of their occurrence makes their detection a fairly unproblematic enterprise. In other words, locating them requires no interpretation, as does the detection of a theme, only a basic knowledge of the genre of which they form part.

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As will soon become clear, the oppositions are there. The challenge lies in not reducing these to charts and schemes of static antitheses; in trying to avoid essentializing the poems into structures of frozen pairs, however dynamic these are deemed.9 The attempt to decipher the short nasib beyond its frame motifs is first and foremost a textual approach. The method may be desribed as the textual structural analysis of individual poems, in other words, detailed, lineby-line analyses of handpicked poems. There is a clear focus on depth, as I have opted for a thorough investigation of a few nasibs instead of general analyses of many. The main implication is, consequently, that the findings have a limited validity as it would be methodologically unsafe to apply conclusions based on just a few poems to a whole genre. It should be stressed that this paper does not presume to be exhaustive nor to be a genre analysis. The criteria of selection have been mainly objective, namely, that a given nasib fulfilled the requirements of age, i.e., it was pre-lslamic; of size, i.e., it was short, as defined; and of recognizability, i.e., it was easily identified as a traditional nasib containing what such texts usually contain. The approach is at the same time contextual since theme-reading does not look at the text as being closed off from the outside world. It acknowledges that the text exists in a close and dynamic relationship with the reality in which it was created. Therefore, it is both text and reality and one cannot look at a poem without taking into regard important aspects of the poet's way and vision of life.10 Finally, the way in which theme-reading approaches its object may be described as follows: intentional (looking for the poet's conscious or subconscious intent and looking at the poem as a creative and aesthetic expression), subjectively interpretational (looking for themes in terms of dynamic oppositions and pairs based on the conviction that these both structure the text and, when interpreted, reveal its essence of meaning), and specific (looking for the particulars in every poem). This is in contrast to the com9 Abu Deeb carried it too far when mapping out the structures of the Eros and Key poems. I agree with S. Stetkevych that some of his listed oppositions simply lack legitimacy: "Abu Deeb begins his analysis of the Mu'allaqa of Labid by sniffing out oppositions, of which he finds many, both real and imaginary" (87). 1 do not believe, however, that the exercise of sniffing out oppositions need be "meaningless mechanical." My main objection concerns the way Abu Deeb freezes the oppositions into charts. Otherwise, his method remains an inspirational source for the approach taken in this paper. Kamal Abu Deeb, "Towards a Structural Analysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 6 (1975): pp. 148-84; and "Towards a StructuralAnalysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry (II): The Eros Vision," Edehiydt 1 (1976): pp. 3-69; Suzanne Stetkevych, "Structuralist Interpretationsof Pre-Islamic Poetry: Critique and New Directions," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 42, no. 2 (1983): pp. 85-107. 10 In a more narrow sense the approach is non-contextual as it focuses on the nasib as movement without taking into regard the larger body of movements of which it is only a part. It is important to make this distinction between reality context and genre context.

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mon division into frame motifs ("frame-reading"), which on the other hand is non-intentional, objectively interpretational, and general. As mentioned this study is concerned with the poetic texts themselves. Employing the method of theme-reading, the objective here is to find out exactly what structures and informs a given nasib. The present article reperceives Muf LIV, Muf XIX, and Muf XXV, which are all set within the most famous of frames, that of the atlal (ruins of the abode). First and foremost they are distinguished by their conventional appearance and shortness of length. Theme-reading Muf LIV (Shdkir, pp. 237-38/Lyall, p. 181) Due to its metre, a rare form of sari', ancient vocabulary, and reference to events not explained by the commentators, Lyall considers Muf LIV by Muraqqish al-Akbar to be very ancient. The poem takes up thirty-five lines, its nasib only six:" hal bi-l-diydrian tujiba samam law kana rasmunndtiqankallam al-ddruqafrunwa-l-rusumuka-md raqqashafi zahri l-adimi qalam allati tabalat diydruAsmnd'a qalbi fa-'ayni mn'u-hdyasjum adhat khald'annabtu-hdtha'idun nawwarafi-ha zahwu-hui fa-'tamm bal hal shajat-kal-zu'nubakiratan ka-anna-hunnal-nakhlumin Malham al-nashru:miskunwa-l-wujuhudandniru wa-atrdful-bandni'anam Are they mute, the abodes, too mute to reply if a trace had the gift of speech, it would speak the abode is desolate, the traces like the writing of a pen on the surfaceof leather [They are] the abodes of Asma' who made sick my heart-and tears well forth from my eyes It became deserted[late one morning],[now only] moist herbage, its red [and yellow] blossoms glowing there, blossoming abundantly,densely

" Throughout,Lane is the main source of reference.EdwardWilliam Lane, An ArabicEnglish Lexicon,8 vols. (New York: FrederickUngar PublishingCo., 1956) [London, 1863].

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Say, was it [the sight of] the littersdepartingbefore dawn that stirred you as if [the women] were date-palmsof Malham? from them the fragranceof musk, their faces gold, the tips of their fingers'anam-red The ambience of loss, sorrow and nostalgia lacks nothing here. The poet questions the desolate abodes, almost rebukes them for not being able to speak. He proceeds to describe the abodes and the plants and flowers growing wild there. He recalls the painstaking moment of the beloved's departure early one morning and ends his nasib by describing the women in the litters. Briefly stated, the nasib of Muf LIV is on the loss of love, the pain of the loss, and on the place that used to hold this love. This is almost a tautological statement, as if trying to say this nasib is a nasib. There is much that can be added, however. Both from a formal and material point of view, this specimen displays several features worth remarking on. In the following first attempt of a theme-reading, I will begin by pointing out traits of coherence. Finding out how the lines link to each other is a way of determining how the nasib is internally structured. This will then lay the foundation for an articulation and discussion of what this nasib is really about, or what it is also about. The structure is bipartite. Lines 1-4: the atldl, wild flowers; lines 5-6: the departing litters, description of women. In line 1 the motif of the atlal, as is very common, opens the nasib with a rhetorical question using the interrogative particle hal. The litters of 1. 5 are introduced likewise. Thus, both major motifs-the two frames-are introduced in a similar manner. Repetition as a means of tightening the structure is not abundant, but still noticeable. Ddrldiydr (abode) is mentioned thrice and in each instance as the initial word of a verse except for 1. 1, which commences with hal bi-l-diyari. Rasmlrusum (trace) is mentioned twice. All repetitions of single words occur within the first three verses, a feature which makes the atlil-section of this nasib particularly coherent. To this can be added repetition on a semantic level; the qafrlkhald' parallel of 11.2 and 4. Both words connote emptiness, void, desolation. They may also both be said to be opposed to another well-known nasib-word, one which, however, is not mentioned in this particular specimen. It is that of anis, which is used of a person who is friendly and sociable, and by whose company one is cheered or consoled. In the elegiac context of the nasib, the word contains a notion of "fullness" of people's presence, of sociability and of human activity. This is exactly the opposite of what is implied in qafrlkhald'. Besides the synonymity of qafr/khald', lines 2 and 4 are also, at least vaguely, linked through a combined phonological-morphological-semantic similarity in verse build-up. This may be illustrated as follows:

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first the abodes are described as being empty (semantic parallel) description of what is now there, traces and flowers, respectively (semantic parallel) a main verb in the form fa"ala followed by the preposition fi opens both second hemistichs (morphological parallel) alliteration between the following nouns, i.e., a partial paranomasia (tajnfs): zahri/zahwu (phonological parallel)

No coherence can be established between the remaining feet of the two verses. The similarity is therefore indicative rather than striking. Another synonym is found if we compare the verb raqqasha in 1. 2,2 with the verb tabalat in 1. 3,1. Raqqasha refers to the act of decorating, embellishing something, and also to writing with a pen, as in this context, where the poet makes the traditional comparison between the traces of the abodes and the drawings/writings of a pen.12 Tabala, in a specific sense, means to smite someone with lovesickness and is especially used to describe a woman doing this to a man. But more generally, tabala can mean to season, to use seasoning or spices (tdbil) in cooking, or used about language (tawbala kaldma-hu) to season speech/language, i.e., to embellish speech. It will soon be clear why this holds special interest. So far repetition and synonymity have linked lines 1 and 3. Poetic association turns out to be the third cohesive element of this piece linking 1. 3 to 1. 4, 1. 4 to 1. 5, and 1. 4 to 1. 6. In 1. 3,2 "tears well forth from my eyes." The topos of the poet's tears is very recurrent.'3We notice that it is water that is the agent and not the poet or his eyes. This is a subtle way of describing man and his body as being affected by deeper factors or forces beyond their control. Furthermore, it is possible to argue that lines 3 and 4 cohere via the association and juxtaposition of water in terms of quantity and substance. There is water as tears described as abundant, fa-'ayni md'u-hd yasjum, in 1. 3, and water as moist, dewy implying droplets, tha'idun, in 1. 4. From his tears, the poet returns to the sight of the abodes and to the wild plants now growing there, 1. 4. In the nasibic sequence of events, it is the 12

One cannothelp, of course, but ponderthe relationshipbetween this root r-q-sh and the poet's name. It was not uncommonfor the early poets to obtain names derived from their poetry.It is stated that Muraqqishis exactly this, i.e., drawnfrom the presentverse to form a cognomen. Anothersuggestionhas it that Muraqqishis merely a pseudonymfor Marqus. Charles Pellat in The Encyclopaediaof Islam, new ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993): vol. 7, "Murakkish." 13 A bold claim has been put forwardby Abu Deeb, who argues for an "either-or"-relationshipbetweentears and rain:"theatlal movementis characterizedby the absenceof water and by the strikingflow of tears. Neither feature is accidental.A structuralpropertyof the Eros poem is that one kind of moistureexcludes anotherform from the same unit."Abu Deeb (1976), p. 45. See also the objectionsmade by S. Stetkevych(1983), p. 93.

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change of season that dictates when the tribes should leave a dwelling and move on. The site that the poet revisits is not only a site of abandonment, but also of a past love-relationship. There is a clear fertility aspect in the replacement of the former beloved with flowers and moist herbage. One notices the abundance of blossoming in fa-a'tamm. The main signification of this verb in form VIII is putting on a turban. But in relation to plants or herbage it refers to their reaching their full height and becoming luxuriant and dense. Implicit in zahwu-hd, "its blossoms," are the colours red and/or yellow. The verb used is nawwara, to light up. Furthermore, the contrast between the desolation and barrenness of the abodes and the richness and wetness of moist herbage and wild flowers (and, not to forget, the moisture of the poet's tears of 1. 3) is striking. The verse is a small garden scene almost, full of smell, colour, and nature's uninhibited growth. The desolation of the site is momentarily compensated for by this idyllic scene. The image of plants and flowers is not entirely abandoned when the departing litters are introduced in 1. 5. Rather the image of plants is continued with a new simile in 1. 5,2, ka-anna-hunna l-nakhlu min Malham. Line 5 breaks with the stillness of the preceding section. A new question is posed, this time introducing the motif of the departing litters: bal hal shajat-ka 1zu'nu bakiratan. The question, the use of bal and the sudden shift of poetic subject from the first person singular in 1. 3 to the second person masculine singular in 1. 5 all serve as stylistic devices to direct the attention to what follows. The event of departure is not described at length, however. But the mere mention of the words al-zu'nu bdkiratan (the litters departing before dawn) is enough to evoke the whole scene of the preparations for departure, the actual setting off, the gradual disappearance of the litters, and the poet's grief as he witnesses it all. The (frame) story is familiar to every listener because it has been told so many times. Furthermore bdkiratan (departing before dawn) is loaded with emotion. Usually it implies that the poet is awakened by, or suddenly wakes up, to the unhappy event of his beloved's departure. His surprise at seeing the packed camels and litters instantly turns into grief. Bdkiratan thus becomes just as valorized as qafrun and khald'an and enhances the elegiac sentiment of the nasib in much the same way. The only description of the litters is the already referred-to simile of 1. 5,2 "as if they were date-palms of Malham." The question is whether kaanna-hunna refers to the litters or whether the poet is making a metonymical reference to what is inside them, i.e., the women. The fact that the pronominal suffix -hunna is used instead of -hd supports this idea. The geographical name of Malham is described simply as a place with many palmtrees.'4 To lean towards the interpretation that the object of comparison in 14

"wa-hiyamawsufatunbi-kithratil-nakhli."Yaqutb. 'Abd Allah al-Hamawi,Mu'jamal-

Bulddn, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1957): vol. 5, p. 195.

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this simile is al-zu'nu would imply that it is the great number of packed litters the poet is referring to when making this comparison. More subtly, one could also argue that the image of well-stocked date-palms, swaggering, swinging from side to side, succintly depicts the swaying motion of the loaded and litter-bearing camels. Still, I do not see a reason why the poet would explicitly mention the feminine third person plural if not to intend as well a comparison of the women to the palm-trees. The image is then less centered upon their quantity or great number as upon the physical appearance, the tertium comparationis being their height and elevation as they are seated in the camel-borne litters. There follows a specification of the women. In line 6 are inserted details of their fragrance, faces, and fingers. Both the date-palm simile and the sense-fullfilment of smell and especially of sight provide a smooth transition from the atldl-section to the departing litters-section. Through association the colours and the glow of the flowers in 1. 3 are again recalled in the last verse as the poet describes the women with metaphors of light/shining and the colour red. Their faces are dandniru, i.e., like gold coins, which simultaneously brings to mind images of both brilliance and roundness. As is the case with another common comparison between face and sun or face and moon, the intended reference is to the glow and light colour of the skin. A bright, shining face is much more than just a pretty physical feature, though. It connotes noble character and descent: "den edlen, makellosen Charakter eines Menschen und die edle Herkunft,"15which is why we also find this face-sun/moon simile attributed to men in the praise or self-praise sections of the qasida or in the marthiya. 'Anam is a certain tree with a red fruit to which women's dyed fingers are compared. The metaphorical value of 'anamred fingers appears to be sensual and stimulating to the eye. Looking for thematically significant pairs or oppositions, 1. 1 provides a good point of departure. Four words in this verse revolve around speaking or not-speaking: tujiba, samam, natiqan, and kallam. The most obvious opposition exists between samam on one hand, and ndtiqan and kallam on the other. Samma, to be or become deaf or mute, connotes the inability not only to hear, but also to utter or make any sound or noise. In deafness and muteness, samam, lies then also the causal effect of no sound, i.e., silence. In contrast to this, there is speech or the sound of the semantically parallel meanings of nataqa and kallama. Nataqa, however, implies not merely the act, but also the ability to utter or pronounce a word. Lyall's translation of ndtiqan is sensitive to this distinction and has therefore been adopted: "if a "5 WolfdietrichFischer, Farb- und Formbezeichnungen in der Sprache der altarabischen Dichtung(Wiesbaden:Otto Harrassowitz,1965): p. 247. See also Thomas Bauer, Liebe und Liebesdichtungin der arabischenWelt des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts.Eine literatur-und menStudiedes arabischeGazal(Wiesbaden:OttoHarrassowitz,1998):p. 218ff. talitdtsgeschichtliche

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trace had the gift of speech, it would speak."16Tujiba from j-w-b form IV means to reply, answer, comply. This is another way of expressing speech by opposing it to samam and coordinating it to ndtiqan and kallam. Curiously, j-w-b form IV has later come to mean, also, to hear. This is very close to the core of the kind of answer implied in the classical signification of the root. When used of God as in "God answered his prayer," it is obvious that the answering and fulfillment of the prayer presupposes hearing. Said of tears, the meaning is "tears flowing... as though called for and answering the call,"17 in other words, as if the tears were listening. Thus, this verse contains an overall opposition (tibdq) between silence and sound, which in turn holds a number of sub-oppositions: silence/deafness versus sound/speech (samam vs. tujiba, natiqan, and kallam); hearing versus deafness (tujiba vs. samam); the inability to hear versus the ability to speak (samam vs. natiqan); the act of hearing versus the act of speaking (tujfibavs. kallam). The latter two juxtapositions might just as well, or more rightly so, be termed parallels in another opposition, namely that of two abilities versus two acts. To this antithesis of silence and sound, we may add a third element: writing. The simile of 1. 2 compares the traces of the abode to "the writing of a pen on the surface of leather." Speech and writing, of course, form two of the most important means of human communication. But whereas the first is characterized by transience and momentariness, the latter is marked by permanence and durability. The spoken word exists only as it is spoken; the written word lasts. This leads us, indeed reminds us, of the fate of the abodes. They are always effaced, never durable. What one finds there are only remnants. One of the most commonly used motifs of the nasib is that of the winds causing the effacement and fading away of the abodes. Muf LIV has no winds, no vivid illustration of the process of gradual eradication. This enhances the impression of stasis in this first section of the nasib. The poet merely notes the state of things in two short simple sentences: 1. 2 al-ddru qafrun (the abode is desolate); 1. 4 adhat khala'an (it became deserted). Thus, the abodes have become like speech, like the poet's spoken word and question; non-durable, non-lasting. A slight modification of this argument could be added. Although the written word is lasting, its physical appearance is not immune to the passing of time. It, too, fades and becomes less clear. This is why retracing is often necessary. The topos of the remaking and retracing of a tattoo is an articulation of this link between something that is permanent and at the same time faded.'8 And this is why the 16

Lyall (1918): p. 181.

?7 Lane (1956): part 2, p. 478. 18 The traces-tattoo simile is very common. See Muf XIX below. See also Muf XXI, 1. 7 and Muf XXXVIII, 1. 2.

REPERCEIVINGTHE PRE-ISLAMICNASiB

11

abodes may also be seen as signs of the written:they are lasting and yet not wholly so. The diydr in this nasib are both speech and writing. It is now possible to returnto the verbs raqqasha,to write, decorate,in 1. 2, and tabala, to smite with lovesickness,season, season/embellishspeech, in 1. 3. Their connotationof decorationand embellishmentlinked to writing and speech, respectively,furthersthe potency of the aforementionedopposition between silence and sound. Speculatively,I suggest that tabalat qalbi (made sick my heart) not only implies that Asma' has made the poet lovesick, but also how: throughthe use of embellished speech; speech that in the end proved empty. The specimen offers no furtherjustificationfor this interpretation,but the motif of the beloved's treachery,her brokenpromises and empty words is a well-knownone in the pre-Islamicnasib.'9 Silence and writing are linked via their mutualquality as oppositionsto sound and speech. In the context of this poem, however, it is also possible to say that silence is writing, and writing is silence. Silence ("are they mute,""the abodes too mute to reply,""the abode is desolate,""it became deserted")and the image of writing/tracery("the tracerylike the writing of a pen on the surface of leather")are united here because they both define the abodes after the litters have departed.Their presence vis-a-vis the absence of humanbeings, especially the absence of the beloved, is a strongly audible (actually non-audible) and visible sign of the poet's loss.

In short, the theme as the totality of meaning and unifying (or structuring) force may be statedas a dynamicoppositionbetween silence and sound setting off an intricateline of suboppositions.To attemptan illustrationof the line of thought implied in this opposition, a taxonomy of significant dualitiesis given below. It is not meantto standalone, as it fails, of course, to indicatethe more subtle interrelationships between the components.These interrelationshave all been presentedand explainedabove, however, and so the taxonomyis meant to functionas a supplementand for the benefit of a simple overview. Horizontally,all items equal each other or bear a positive correlationto each other,whereas the verticalrelationshipbetween items is one of opposition,e.g., silence is writing,writing is permanence;silence vs. sound, writing vs. speech, etc. silence

writing

samam

raqqasha qalam

(non-explicit)

sound

speech

transience

kallam tujiba

natiqan / tabalat qalbi

(non-explicit)

19 E.g., Muf X, 1. 7. Lichtenstadter (1932): p. 77f.

permanence

12

REPERCEIVING THEPRE-ISLAMIC NASIB

Theme-reading Muf XIX (Shdkir, pp. 105-6/Lyall, p. 66) The following nasib by 'Abd-Allh b. Salima al-Ghamidi, Muf XIX of only four verses, strikes the reader as incomplete or fragmentary.20The entire ode as such is short, too. It contains fourteen lines and is composed in the kdmil metre. In line 4 the poet makes an inserted reference to an unidentified she: "since she is far." This is probably what makes Lyall assume that "the name of the woman celebrated in the amatory prelude has been lost."21 li-man il-diydrubi-Tawla'infa-Yabusi fa-bay.du Raytataghayra dhiti anisi amsat bi-mustannil-riydhimufilatan ka-l-washmirujji'afi-l-yadi l-manktisi wa-ka-anna-mdjarru l-rawdmisidhayla-hd fi sahni-ha l-ma'fuwwidhaylu 'aruisi fa-ta'adda 'an-hd idh na'at bi-shimillatin harfinka-'uidil-qawsi ghayri daruisi. Whose abodes are these in Tawla', in Yabfis The white plains of Rayta, devoid of humanpresence [Abodes] made vague at evening by winds whirling like a faded tattoo restoredon a hand. As if the obliteratingwinds drawingtheir train in the effaced court were the trainof a bride. So turn away from them, since she is far, on a she-camel lean as the wood of a bow, not prone to bite. The nasib as it has come down to us consists of three lines only. Line 4 is a takhallus-verse that serves to link the nasib to the camel description that succeeds it. Since there seems to be a lacuna between 1. 4 and the rest of the poem, 1. 4 is incorporated in the following analysis. The structure of this piece is easily accounted for. Lines 1-3: the atldl-motif; no inhabitants; the playing of the winds likened to a tattoo (1. 2), and to the train of a bride (1. 3). Verse 4: takhallus containing the formula fa-ta'adda 'an-hd (so turn away from them); description of she-camel. As in the case of Muf LIV, this specimen is a show-piece of easily recognizable traits: the rhetorical question li-mani l-diydru (whose abodes are these); the geographical names, the catalogue words: diydr, anis; the motif of the winds; the topos of the tattoo; and the takhallus formula. Or even more briefly defined: Muf XIX is a nasib on desolate abodes and the playing thereon of the winds. Is there more? 20 Lyall (1918): p. 66. 21 Ibid.

REPERCEIVING THEPRE-ISLAMIC NASiB

13

Of the three geographicalnames of 1. 1, Tawla', Yabus, and Rayta, only Yabus holds a connotationthat could prove interestingto this analysis.With its meaningof a place that is dry after having been moist, "a place that has had in it water which has gone away,"22Yabus both enhances the image of the abandonedand dried up campsite and anticipates the depiction in the following two verses of the winds stirringup the sand and leaving only traces of what used to be a place of habitation.Recalling the schemes of the usual succession of motifs as summedup by Jacobi, the descriptionof rain as agent watering(and blessing) the abodes is very common. Like the winds, the rain causes the effacementof the abodes. Common also is the topos of wild flowers and plants serving both as a sign of the desolationof the campsiteand of idyll and fertilityas in Muf LIV. Since these very recurrent topoi of water and moisture,rain and flowers, are utterly absent from the specimenat hand, the meaningof Yabfis as an abandonedand dried up place becomes all the more vivid. The descriptionof the winds takes up the better part of this brief nasib. It contains two similes: a verbal one connectedby ka- 1. 2,1, and an indeThe first simpendentor "subject-free"simile introducedby ka-anna-md.23 ile, that of the tattoo, is modifiedby a relative clause. It is asyndeticeither by poetic license, or maybe more properlybecause al-washm"a tattoo,"as the translationreveals, shouldbe understoodas being indefinite.Its modifier, al-mankiusl,denotes "relapsed,"here conveying the idea of fading. The simile contains a verb in the passive, rujji'a. Rajja'a form II is causative, to make return,but also signifies to renew, bring back repeatedly;to reverberate. The intensity or reiterationof the form II verb used about a tattoo echoes the continuouscommotionof the winds, bi-mustannil-riyahi,which made up the first hemistich of the same verse. Bringingback or renewing (repeatedly) what has become vague or "dim and doubtful" in Lyall's words24captures the essence not only of this, but of many a pre-Islamic nasib. That rujji'a is indeed relevant to the deeper meaning, the theme, is supportedby 1. 3. Here the particleof comparisonis followed by an idafa, the first partof which is the verbalnounjarru signifyingto draw,pull, drag. Apparentlythere is no correlationof contentbetween rujji'aandjarr. What we have instead is a formal link, i.e., a partialtajnis extendingeven to the nouns that are linked to these two words: al-washmi rujji'a (a tattoo restored) andjarru l-rawamisi(obliteratingwinds drawing). 22

Lane (1956): part 8, p. 2975. this poem is kamil.Jacobi,as a testimonyto the close relationshipbetween style and metre, points out that similes construedwith ka-anna-mdand without a subject (sometimesprecededby the conjunctionwa- or fa-) occur always in poems in kdmil.Jacobi (1971): p. 127. 23 The metreof

24

Lyall (1918): p. 66.

14

REPERCEIVINGTHE PRE-ISLAMICNASiB

The simile of 1. 3 contains within it its own metaphor, one which formulates into something like the "train of the winds." The trace-effacing winds, al-rawdmis, like women trailing the trains of their gowns obliterate the surface of the sand.25 Twice now the obliterating and erasing effect of the winds has been emphasized. The result is vagueness and dimness of the traces. It is interesting to note that if we go back to 1. 2, what is laid out as a comparison is inherently oppositional. The abodes made vague are like a tattoo brought back! It only makes sense when the tattoo is visualized as something that fades, which it eventually does, thus the need for redrawing and redyeing it. What we have here is a play on an antithesis made simile. It is my suggestion that rujji'a is the textually manifest articulation of the theme which can be identified as a dialectic between return, renewal on the one hand and fadedness, vagueness on the other. Rujji'a is both part of and the point of departure for grasping the inner dynamics of this claimed antithesis. An associative line of opppositions may be established based on the occurrence of rujji'a in this particular nasib. Thus, to bring back, to cause to return, to renew can be translated into, first, clarity, visibility, and, second, nearness. The tattoo is made visible once more, its lines are returned, redrawn unlike the traces and lines of the deserted dwellings which are being erased, effaced, made gradually invisible. On a deeper level, return and renewal also equal nearness. With the nasib environment being basically feminine, it must be the nearness of a woman, but not necessarily the "she" implicit in 1. 4. This is made explicit and confirmed in the two similes which both evoke images of a woman. To bring back a woman is thus what the poet does both when he compares the whirling winds to a tattoo (using a verb in the passive voice surrounded by urgency and intensityrujji'a) and to the train of a bride. A tattoo on a hand-much like the 'anamred fingers of Muf LIV-is something naturally and intrinsically connected with women.26 The second simile repeats the word dhayl. First as dhayla-ha (their train), then as dhaylu 'aruisi (train of a bride). The pronominal suffix -ha and the bride, as well as train, all serve to vitalize the notion of femininity and the "she" of the nasib. 25 The whole construction jarru I-rawamisi dhayla-ha...

dhaylu 'arusi is, at least at first,

a bit complex. Naturally,it is the train of the winds which is comparedto the train of a bride's gown. Even when the line, a nominal sentence, puts the train of the winds in the accusative,all threewordsjarru l-rawdmisidhayla-hamust be understoodas formingthe subject to the predicatedhaylu-'arusi,with dhayla-ha standingas an objective complementto jarr. W. Wright, A Grammar of the Arabic Language, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge

UniversityPress, 1955): vol. 2, p. 59. 26 Indeed Lyall translatesthis hemistich "even like the (faded) tracery which is being renewedon a woman's hand and broughtback again."In pre-IslamicArabiaonly women tattooed their hands, and only noble or high-standing women, the tattoo serving also as a marker

of status.

NASiB THEPRE-ISLAMIC REPERCEIVING

15

Keeping in mind that 1. 4 belongs to the nasib only peripherally,it nevertheless proves interestingto my analysis here. Two words may be said to stand out and be in need of furtherelaboration:fa-ta'adda 'an-hd idh na'at bi-shimillatin:"thenturnaway from them, since she is far, on a she-camel." As noted above, there is no prior mention of a woman in this brief nasib. This makes this asyndetic sentence all the more interesting."Since she is far" is the stated reason for the poet's turningaway from the abodes. But what if she were not far away? Then what? The implicationsof asking this counter-questionmay add or disclose an aspectwhich is thematicallyimportant. If she were not far away, then the diydr would not be diyar ghayra dhdti anisi, and the winds would not make the diydr mufilatan. There would

be no desolation,no fadedness.If she were not far, not absent but present, the whole nasib would be negated.What is broughtto mind, instead, is the image of a woman, the image of a bond, the image of two tribes camping together,etc. In fact, withoutincludingthe vital descriptionof a woman, the poet neverthelessmanages,throughthe device of poetic association,to bring her back. This is in accordancewith the idea that all naslbs, in one way or another,are concernedwith a beloved because she is the catalystof this part of the qasida.27'Abd-Allah'snasib succeedsjust as much as any nasib containing an elaboratedescriptionof the beloved in evoking the whole setting of two tribescoming together,then separating,of the poet and woman bonding, then separating.It is a long and well-known story told in just two words. Everythingis recalled, rememberedat the wuquf 'aladl-atldl (stopping at the ruins), even if only associatively so. Proximityand distance,then, become thematicallyvery valid. Distance is implied in the formulaictakhallussentenceand in idh na'at; nearnessby its inherentnegation. Taxonomicallystated,this nasib discloses a preoccupationwith the interrelationshipof the following concepts: return/renewal

clarity

nearness

rujji'a

al-washmi rujji'a

idh na'at (negated)

vagueness

unclarity

distance

amsat mufilatan

al-ma'fuwwi

idh na'at

27 That the poet is ultimatelyconcernedwith bringingher back, that he is preoccupiedwith femininepresence,that he himself is broughtinto a feminizedposition in relationto her, and that all this femininityof the nasib is in contrastto the remainderof the ode are but some of the main argumentsof my thesis. The scope of this article leaves no room for a more thorough articulationof these arguments.Khankan(2001): p. 24ff.

16


Theme-reading Muf XXV (Shdkir, pp. 132-33/Lyall, p. 91) Al-Harith b. Hilliza al-Yashkuri's nasib forms part of a short panegyrical qasida in the kdmil metre. I have somewhat modified Lyall's translation. li-mani l-diydru'afawnabi-l-Hubsi dydtu-hdka-mahdriqil-fursi ladshay'afi-hd ghayru aswiratin suf'i l-khududiyaluhna ka-l-shamsi aw ghayruathdri l-jiyddibi-a'rddi l-jimddiwa-dyatil-da'si fa-habastafi-hd l-rakbaahdisufi kulli l-umuriwa-kuntudhd hadsi hattd idhd Itafa'al-zibd'ubi-atrdfi l-zildli wa-qilnafi-l-kunsi wa-ya'istumimmdqad shughiftubi-hi min-hdwa-ld yusli-ka ka-l-ya'si Whose are the dwellings at al-Hubs, its traces faded out like the writtensheets of the Persians? Nothing is found there except the herds of oryx, black-cheeked,[theirwhite backs] shining like the sun, Or except the marksof noble steeds in the sides of the higherground,and the trace of their tramplings. You [I] detainedthe ridersthere, speculatingabout all things-and I was one to speculate, Until, when the gazelles wrappedthemselvesin the skirtsof the shade, and sought the noon-tidesheltersthey had made [by the roots of trees], And I lost all hope of what I had longed for with pain from herand nothingconsoles you like hopelessness,... Conformity to convention marks the description of the dwellings at al-Hubs. They have been effaced, only traces remain. There is no description of a beloved in this nasib, no explicit femininity. But a single prepositional phrase in the last verse min-hd indicates that a woman is connected to the poet's feelings, and that the longing and sense of loss are attributableto her former presence. The structure of the nasib is tripartite. Line I forms its first section with traditional atldl-terminology. The second section is made up by the following two lines describing the wildlife now inhabiting the atldl. The third and final section runs from 1. 4 to 1. 6 and contains a description of the poet's halt. Fa-habasta bi-hi l-rakba (You detained the riders there) is but a slight variation of the regular wuquf-motif. Formally, one finds the usual repetition of words and instances of paranomasia: dydtu-hd/wa-dydti l-da'si in 1. 1 and


17

1. 3; ahdisulhadsi in 1. 4; ya'istulya'si in 1. 6; and al-jiyddi/al-jimddi in 1. 3. From a semantic point of view, the tajnis of 1. 3 is particularly interesting due to the fact that it is also an opposition in disguise. The base form of the verb jdda (< jiydd) denotes to flow, to stream, said of rain and tears. The second verb jamada (< jimdd) signifies to be hard, solid, when used of the heart, and to be frozen, when said of water. Thus, when juxtaposed, jdda, and jamada describe the two main states in which water is found: either flowing, running, or solid, frozen. Looking at the imagery, we observe that tropes are scant in this nasib. If the variant reading of 1. 2 fi-l-shamsi rather than ka-l-shamsi is adopted, in accordance with Lyall's rendering, only one simile and one metaphor remain.28In 1. 1 the vague traces of the deserted dwelling places are compared to the written sheets of the Persians,29ka-mahdriqi l-fursi.30Traces are frequently compared to the image of written sheets and pages. In fact, writing in a broad sense-and not only in the form of the end result of writing, i.e., written sheets and pages-forms associations in the nasib, also, to the material used for writing,3' and to the actual act or process of writing.32In light of the widespread utilization of this image, the poetic function of this present writing simile remains merely descriptive if it does not link to other ideas and images in its context. No such links can be established. The second trope is found in 1. 5 in the metaphor comprised in idha Itafa'a l-zibd'u bi-atrdfi l-zildli. The verb iltafa'a means to wrap oneself in a garment and is synonymous with ishtamala. Here the gazelles are described as wrapping themselves in the skirts of shade as if the shade were a garment. This image is not bound by convention as is that of writing, and therefore strikes one as being far more eloquent. At the same time, it forms 28

Even if the renderingof ka-shamsiis retained,its pictorialand creative value remains fairly limited.The image is then one of oryx (or their backs) shining like the sun. The symbolical depth,or ratherlack thereof,requiresno elaboration. 29 There are two possibleways to renderthis verse: "Whoseare the dwellings faded out at al-Hubs,its traces are like the writtensheets of the Persians?"or "Whose are the dwellings at al-Hubs, its traces faded out like the written sheets of the Persians?"The question is whether'afawnaal-diydruor 'afawna dydtu-hdis to be understood.Both options are equally likely. The firstrenderingsimply comparesthe tracesto the writtensheets. Choosingthe alternative option alters the image somewhat.The comparisonis now between faded traces and written sheets. What exactly is implied in the written sheets of the Persians is not certain. They could be old preserveddocuments,the writingon which, too, with the passing of time has become vague and faded. As the translationshows, this interpretation has been preferred. 30Originallya materialused for writing,but connotingalso the actual writtenproduct,the writtensheets. For the etymology of muhraq/mahdriq, see Lyall (1918): p. 91. 31 E.g. Muf CXIV where the poet comparesthe tracesof the abode to the fresh application of ink. 32 E.g. Muf CV where a skilled scribe is describedcuriouslyas "one who spells correctly." and Muf XLI describingboth the act and the result"like lines drawnby skilled handsfair on a volume's opening page."Lyall (1918): pp. 295 and 149, respectively.

18


part of a movement within this nasib which introduces semi-subjectivity, as will be suggested below. For this reason, it is not only in terms of its technical shape as metaphor that the picture of gazelles wrapping themselves in the shade will prove significant. Leaving this aside for a moment, it soon becomes clear that the last section is distinct from the rest of the nasib. Starting in the middle with line 5, closely linked to the preceding verse due to hatta, it constitutes a return to the depiction of the animal life of the diydr. In section two, there was a description of oryx. In section three we find gazelles. Metonyms for these two animals are commonly used when describing the beloved.33 Here, the point is that there seems to be a difference in approach. The description in 1. 5 is far more subjective and emotive than the neutral and, both literally and figuratively speaking, distanced description of 11.2 and 3. It is as though the poet in section two is describing what he sees from a distance and as he gradually comes closer. He does not relate to what he sees as he does to the gazelles, as will be illustrated below. Line 5 is a small, technically refined detour because the poet inserts a gazelle-description under the guise of wanting to convey the time-span of his halting: "I detained the riders there speculating about all things... until, when the gazelles wrapped themselves. ..." But then there follows a little idyllic scene of gazelles sweeping the sand-implied in al-kuns-and seeking a hiding place from the sun. Thus, the poet takes on one intention, but actually presents us with another. Albeit less striking and, admittedly, on a much smaller scale, this calls to mind the way the dissembling simile works. A feature of early Arabic poetry as convincingly surveyed and described by Sells, the dissembling simile often delivers a description of something other than its original starting point of description.34 The principle remains the same: one thing is assumed, another is delivered. In contrast to the first two sections, this part, 11.4-6, reveals a lyrical subject who not only portrays what he observes, but also to some degree shows signs of psychological projection. The observation entailed in the objectivedescription paradigm-that the pre-Islamic poets did not transfer their feelings onto nature and that this romantic notion of nature as embodying the emotions of human beings only evolved later-is valid as it stands.35Certainly we do not find the more complex empathy with nature that is characteristic of later poets. We may, however, speak of a different kind of subjectivity 33 Lichtenstadter has listed thirteen gazelle-metonymies which are used about women in the nasib. Lichtenstadter (1932): p. 63f. 34 Michael Sells, "Guises of the Ghul: Dissembling Simile and Semantic Overflow in the Classical Arabic Nasib," in Reorientations, ed. S. Stetkevych (1994): pp. 130-64. 35 Renate Jacobi, "Time and Reality in Nasib and Ghazal," Journal of Arabic Literature 16 (1985): p. 7.


19

in the pre-Islamic nasib. The poet describes himself as a speculating subject, ahdisu fi kulli l-umtri, wa-kuntu dhd hadsi,36 who at a certain point despairs and loses hope (ya'istu). Returning to 1. 5, there appears to be a parallel between the gazelles seeking shelter from the sun, withdrawing to their kinds (wa-qilna fi 1-kunsl) and the poet's decision to resign from speculation and longing. Kinds is the hiding place among trees of a gazelle. It is named kinds because the gazelle sweeps the sand (kanasa) until it reaches the moist earth. On another level, this is similar to what the poet does when, in 1. 6 he resolves on ya'si: wa-ya'istu ... wa-la yusli-ka ka-l-ya'si, "And I lost all hope ... and nothing consoles you like hopelessness." Asla, form IV, means to free oneself or someone else from anxiety and the like, or to comfort or console oneself or someone else. Thus, the movement for the gazelles is from light to darkness, from heat to coolness, from an exposed place in the open to the comfort of a covert. It is the same movement undertaken by the poet as he, more generally speaking, proceeds from the abandoned and emotionally loaded and sorrowful space of the diydr to the safety and emotionally painfree sphere of that which follows the nasib, namely a strong and muscular she-camel. More specifically and textually speaking, it is a process from hadsi and mimmd qad shughiftu bi-hi min-hd to ya'si; from the pain of speculation and longing to the consolation of hopelessness and despair (however ambigious this may sound), and, we may assume, eventually to forgetting. It is, admittedly, a process of withdrawal on very different levels, but nevertheless withdrawal, lending us the opportunity, I think, to speak of subjective connection between the poet and his surroundings. This may be termed a naYvesubjectivity or a semi-subjectivity whereby even an early poet like al-Harith may be said to be capable of projecting emotions onto nature. Relating closely to the phenomenon of subjectivity is the issue of poetic persona and the sudden shift of person that occurs in this section. The shifts are found in 11. 4 and 6. In 1. 4 the second person masculine changes abruptly to the first person in one hemistich, habasta-ahdisu. The first person is retained in the second hemistich of the same verse: wa-kuntu dhd hadsi. From the self-address contained in habasta-the poet speaking about himself and to himself at the same time-he then swiftly turns to his own 36

Hadasa means to surmise,to make conjectures,and so a more correcttranslationof the verse would be "as I began to conjectureabout all things, and I was [always] one to conjecture [or a man of conjectures]."This, however, does not convey properlywhat the poet is doing. Lyall chose the memory aspect: "As I revolved all my memoriesof things past." It seems to me that the poet is both thinkingof the past and present.At the same time he is makingspeculationsas to fate, his own life, his love, his dream,the way thingswere, the way they could have been, etc. Unfortunately,no single word in English captures this idea of thinkingof and makingguesses about all things, which is what, I believe, is implied in hads here. Lyall (1918): p. 91.

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poetic voice of ahdisu. The two initial verbs of the first hemistich of 1. 6 are both kept in the first person indicating that the poet still speaks for himself, wa-ya'istu and qad shughiftu bi-hi. Then a second shift is made back to the second person, wa-ld yusli-ka ka-l-ya'si. Even though the second person is utilized, there is no reason to assume that a dialogue is intended. The context is too narrow and no other outside voices are mentioned to allow for such an interpretation. It is clear the poet is referring to himself even when straying away from his poetic "I." There is, however, a qualitative difference between the two occurrences of the second person. The first is a real you, a specific "you," so to speak, with the poet referring to himself. The second "you" being part of a proverb-like statement is of a more all-embracing nature, referring to "you," "one," or "man" in general. How, then, is the odd transition of 1. 4 to be accounted for? This feature of the poet shifting person-from talking for himself to very commonly found in early Arabic poetry. In talking to himself-is Ahlwardt's Divans of the six ancient Arabic poets, Van Gelder counts more than thirty instances of one or more shifts in the nasib. In the Mufaddaliyydt, he finds "some 20 cases."37 He also suggests that the phenomen has a collective function because the audience, disturbed by the shifts, is led from observing the poet to being addressed by him and even to identifying with him and partaking in his misery. The function is thus both rhetorical and dramatic. Another valid argument views the shift as something that concerns only the poet himself. According to this explanation, the poet changes person as a way to distance himself from what is being spoken, becoming "like an uninvolved observer" looking at himself from the outside.38In the present specimen the overall impression is that the shift seems intended. It may very well have a multiple function as a dramatic means to transfer focus, insert distance, and incorporate the audience into a narrated personal experience which then becomes a collective one. Surely the almost proverbial statement of 1. 6,2 wa-la yusli-ka ka-l-ya'si, "and nothing consoles you like hopelessness," is not a self-evident one. At first glance, it seems to be almost a paradox that hopelessness or despair should equal comfort. How can despair be said to bring comfort and consolation when discomfort and disconsolation in this connection would be more natural? One explanation could be that despair or hopelessness in the nasib-atmosphere of longing and nostalgia should be understood as an active and re37 G.J.H. Van Gelder, "The Abstracted Self in Arabic Poetry," Journal of Arabic Literature 14 (1983): pp. 27-28. 38 Ibid.: p. 29 quoting Jacobi (1971): p. 210: "aus der Distanz des unbeteiligten Zuschauers."


21

solute reaction. It is the end point of intensive yearning, which, once reached, becomes final. Hopelessness, then, in this context means the actual resolution, decision or state of mind to leave behind speculation about all things, of what was and what could have been. Ya'istu and al-ya'si in this sense become much like the fa-da' dha 'an-hd, "then turn away from her," of the takhallus-formula: both (the idea of hopelessness and of turning away) serve in the mind of the poet as the only available steps toward some kind of relief and forgetting. There is an indication to support this argument. One of the connotations of ya'isa makes it synonymous with 'alima, to know. Thus, to despair and to let go of hope is, in a sense, to know, to realize. And this is what the poet does explicitly in nasibs with a takhallus. In a nasib without a takhallus, like the one at hand, the lack of articulation does not equal lack of the same realization. Wa-ya'istu (I lost all hope) and waId yusli-ka ka-l-ya'si (nothing consoles you like despair) are, I believe, reformulations of this very idea that speculation, memory, and longing, and the diydr as dwelling places or loci of exactly these things, should be abandoned. Once abandoned, comfort is achieved. Looking at hopelessness in this way, as a reaction of turning away from speculation and longing and, both physically and mentally, from the nasib, likening it to the contents of a takhallusformula, effectively demystifies the ambigiousness entailed in 1. 6. Oppositions are not manifold, but at least two may be detected. They have been touched upon already. The first is that between light and darkness. Sunshine, or light, is implied in section two, in the description of the oryx whose backs are shining in the sun. Shade, or darkness, is used metaphorically in relation to the gazelles depicted in 1. 5. It is noticeable that both polarities of this opposition are linked to the description of animals.39The second juxtaposition is far more exciting, if only due to the fact that it is posed or presented not as an opposition, but as a parallelism. There seems to be a recurrent progression within the nasib from sadness to some kind of relief, from folly and youthful passion to sober maturity. Muf XXV is no different, and it is in light of this basic nasibic movement that the coordination of comfort and hopelessness formulated as a gnomic statement in the final verse becomes logical. At the same time, it is exactly this seeming illogic surrounding this coordinated pair of concepts that makes this opposition turned parallelism interesting.

39 If the alternative reading of fi-l-shamsi rather than ka-l-shamsi was not adopted, there is one further particularity concerning the appearance of this opposition. Keeping in mind that only two tropes distinguish this nasib, it may be said to be remarkable that each trope contains within it one polarity of this light vs. dark opposition. Thus, although limited both in a poetical and structural sense, the imagery of this nasib holds its own little inner point of interest, i.e., the juxtaposition of al-shamsi and al-zildli.

22


Basically, the relationship between comfort and hopelessness is oppositional. At least this is the impulse one gets when presented with these concepts. There is a reservation to be made, however. Just as it is not a case of an obvious parallelism of terms, it would be an overstatement to argue that we are dealing with an undisputable opposition. Ya'isa means simply to despair of something, to lose hope of something. Repeating and elaborating on the meanings of said, the word means to be or become forgetful, neglectful; to endure a loss with patience; or feel comfort or consolation for a loss. Thus, salwa signifies "contentedness or even happiness in a case of privation," a sense of "comfort or consolation for a loss or a want."40The form IV asld retains the same meaning with causativity, i.e., to make someone be content, comforted, consoled. On one hand, there is the giving up of hope for something to take place or for something to be gained; on the other, there is the acquisition of contentment in the face of loss. In the nasibatmosphere of replayed stories of loss, one would say that salwa connotes the state that follows ya's, or stated differently, ya's is the means and salwa the end. And such, in fact, was the relationship between the terms that was established above, namely a causal and not an oppositional one. Therefore, although there is an underlying feeling of two concepts inherently opposed to each other, their outward appearance as representations of one idea must also be retained.41 From here it is not difficult to link darkness/lightness and longing/consolation as the two main oppositions that inform this specimen. It is a link that illustrates a simple two-step progression within this nasib from one space to another. Whether it be the gazelles seeking the shade by retiring to their kuns (kinds), or the poet seeking forgetfulness and consolation through ya's, there is a similar movement from stress to relief. We notice, also, that the antithesis connected to the gazelles is shaped by a reversal of what is usually considered positive or negative. Light, here, comes to hold negative meaning as something to hide from, while darkness or shade bears the positive connotations of relief and refuge. Having stated this, it is now possible to make a small but meaningful taxonomical chart juxtaposing the two sets of oppositions described:

40 Lane (1956): part 4, p. 1417. 41 Still, in a very broad sense we may maintain that comfort, consolation, contentmenteven if defined by privation-is somewhere at the other end of despair and hopelessness. As states of minds and feelings, both concepts are heavily valorized. Whether seeking, obtaining, or giving comfort and consolation it is no doubt something very positive. However much despair and hopelessness are moulded to fit Jdhili pragmatism, they still remain imbued with negativity. One could say that it is exactly this double identity-at the same time both antithesis and parallel-that gives thematic potency to these concepts.


light al-shams darkness al-zildl

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memory and longing hads and mimmd qad shughiftu bi-hi consolation yusli-ka

Concluding remarks Thematically, the three specimens examined in this study have revealed complex structures of meaning on different poetic levels. These structures have been shown to be based on oppositions. The interplay and intricate connections between the thematically significant oppositions have been illustrated both conceptually and textually. What strikes one most when looking at these structures in simplified form (the taxonomical charts) is that the thematic structures do not resemble each other. Although a sampling of only three nasibs cannot represent the genre as such, it is nevertheless noticeable that the three specimens, which on the surface appear almost identical, do not even have any thematic constituents in common. The idea of being well and not being well is naturally a very recurrent one in the nasib world of love and grief. In many nasibs we find this made explicit as recovery vs. sickness or as sobriety vs. sickness. Although not textually manifest, Muf XXV, too, may be said to contain this antithesis, which it rearticulates as longing vs. consolation. Proximity and distance, also, is a potent and natural nasib opposition. None of the three specimens, however, revolve around this antithesis in a direct or simple way. It proved thematically significant only in Muf XIX, where it was projected onto the diyar. This symbolic translation made distance equal the faded state of the abodes (vagueness and unclarity), while proximity became just the opposite (renewal and clarity). The motifs may be the same, but the message delivered is a personal one. In sum, it is diversity and specificity that characterize the themes of the three nasibs. This observation clearly conflicts with the common notion that the shortnasib is a purely conventional expression of love and grief. Furthermore, it underlines how a nasib structure can only be superficially accounted for by reference to an exterior frame motif. My argument is not that all nasibs carry latent meanings. The selection clearly does not allow for such a conclusion. Still, I find that the approach of theme-reading, the search for deeper meaning through pairs and oppositions, has proved fruitful. The short nasib may be a genre of stock phrases and images. It cannot, however, be reduced to a genre of stock meanings. Complex structures of meanings were discerned in all three cases. As it tums out, each of them had its own distinctive lyric message. University of Copenhagen

NATHALIEKHANKAN

UNLOCKING THE FEMALE IN AHLAM MUSTAGHANAMI I. The Male Literary Voice

Ahlam Mustaghanamihas recentlyfaced the worst ignominythat can befall a woman writer: the accusation that a man actually wrote her first novel Dhdkirat al-Jasad (Memory of the Body, 1993).1 An article in Al-Quds al-

'Arabi describesher sense of disappointmentand betrayalat the allegation that the Iraqi writer and poet Sa'di Yfisuf was the novel's true author (Ribahi, 1). This contentionstrips the work of its claim to fame as the first Algerian novel writtenin Arabic by a woman, robbingthe text of its powerful symbolism as a female incursioninto the "fathertongue"of written Arabic.2Regardless,the assertionby the anonymousauthorin Al-KhabaralUsbfi'i is the most superficialinterpretationof the novel possible, associating a masculine narratorwith a masculine author, ignoring the current debates in Maghrebiliteratureover issues of voice and subjectivity,writing and gender, languageand identity. engages Throughthe narrativestructureof Dhdkiratal-Jasad,Mustaghanami in an extensive study of the natureof the masculine narrativevoice. The novel, fictitiouslywrittenby its male narrator,is an imitationand emulation of the masculineauthorialperspective.In Dhdkiratal-Jasad, Mustaghanami literally hides behind this voice, pushing it to the forefront while she remainson the edges of the narrative,a silent, and perhapssilenced, participant. In the novel, the principal female character is a writer named "Ahlam"(Dreams),and though she is endlessly discussed, interpreted,and analyzed, she rarely enters center stage.3 Rather, her voice is principally I The

American University in Cairo Press has recently published an English translation entitled Memory in the Flesh (1999). While more idiomatic, it loses the ambiguity of Mustaghanami's title of the remembering of the body versus the body that is being remembered, active and passive, male and female. All translations from Dhakirat al-Jasad, Fawda al-Hawdss, and Algerie: femme et ecritures are my own. 2 The Moroccan sociologist and novelist Abdelkebir Khatibi asserts that written Arabic has been alienated from its feminine, oral side, a theory a number of critics of Maghrebi literature have taken up, following his lead. See Khatibi (1983: 182-193), Basfao (1985), and Bonn (1988). Note that Arabic transcriptions of names are only used when referring to Arabic works, as reflected in the bibliography. Mustaghanami spells her name "Ahlem Mosteghanemi," while the AUC translation of Dhakirat al-Jasad spells her first name as "Ahlam." 3 Within the text, this character has two names, Ahlam (Dreams) and Hayat (Life), one granted by her father and the other by her mother. Though Khalid, the narrator, thinks of her © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002

Journal of Arabic Literature, XXXIII,I

UNLOCKING THEFEMALEIN AHLAMMUSTAGHANAMI

25

heard through the narrator Khalid's recapitulations of their dialogues, as he imposes his own version of the events upon the narrative. Though the work is composed in the form of a dialogue, as an address in the second person, Ahlam remains essentially unresponsive; her works are not "read" as Khalid's text is read. In this respect, the female, or feminine, voice remains little more than a shadow throughout Dhakirat al-Jasad, vicariously experienced. The effect of this structure is that Khalid's voice eclipses that of Ahlam, and she is buried under layers of abstracted images, metaphors, and symbols. Within the novel, Mustaghanami likens this mode of representation to veils, as it disguises her authorial identity, and simultaneously situates her within the parameters of a particular literary and social tradition. Such an approach might have the effect of obscuring her persona to the point of erasure, a possibility demonstrated by the recent accusation against her. In other, later writings, she reflects on the internalized marginalization of her own voice, a suppression that she likens to repression. Dhdkirat al-Jasad is not only a reflection on, but a reflection of the modes of representation that have come to dominate the field of contemporary Algerian literature, dominated by male writers. Through her male narrator, Mustaghanami meditates on the nature of the authorial voice as it has developed over the last five decades, outlining its characteristics and its inherent faults. She bounces back particular images of herself as an Algerian woman, gleaned from her own extensive study of contemporary Algerian literature in her critical work, Algerie: femme et ecritures (Algeria: Woman and Writings, 1985). There are fault lines in this mirror through which her voice gleams, however fragmented and partial. It is precisely through these cracks that the writing subject reveals herself, in the sense intended by Lacan. "Ainsi l'inconscient se manifeste toujours comme ce qui vacille dans une coupure du sujet-d'ou resurgit une trouvaille, que Freud assimile au d6sir-desir que nous situerons provisoirement dans la metonimie denudee du discours en cause, ou le sujet se saisit en quelque point inattendu."4The coupure du sujet is the dialectic within the text between male and female voice, male and female desire. But only through resistance, female resistance against the dominance of the male voice, is the coupure born, and with it, the trouvaille of desire and the expression of the subject. Through as Ahlam, her "real"name is Hayat,her pen name, and the name by which friendsand family addressher. The name Ahlamhas been used here because it reflectsKhalid'svision of the character,the viewpointthat dominatesthe text. It has also been used to emphasizethe connection intendedby Mustaghinami,linking the characterwith the author. 4 "Thusthe unconsciousalways manifestsitself as that which vacillatesin the breakin the subject-from where resurgesa findingthat Freudidentifieswith desire-desire that we provisionally situate in the denudedmetonymyof the discourse in question,where the subject grasps himself at some unexpectedpoint"(Lacan, 1973: 29). Translationmine.

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UNLOCKING THE FEMALE IN AHLAM MUSTAGHANAMI

these gaps in the narrative, flashes of Mustaghanami's voice, and literally, her desire, shine through. But it is only at the points of refusal of Khalid's vision that her own vision begins to emerge, in an assertion of her own will. While Dhdkirat al-Jasad can be truly considered the metonimie denudee of the mode of discourse developed in Algerian literature, the coupure is not complete; her resistance is faint echoes in the text. Only through a broader reference to Mustaghanami's oeuvre, Algerie: femme et ecritures, the sequel to Dhdkirat al-Jasad, Fawdd al-Hawass (Chaos of the Senses, 1998), and her essay "Writing Against Time and History" (1994), can her struggle for fuller expression be understood. She achieves this with Fawdd al-Hawdss, standing naked and desirous before the reader. Joseph Zeidan remarks in Arab Women Novelists that conformity to the male literary tradition characterized the early pioneers of women's literature in the Mashriq. Because women writers had no predecessors, they worked within the parameters of the extant literary tradition, going through a period of conformity and imitation. Only later did they move toward a more particular expression of their social experience, focussing in closely on the self and the body. For Zeidan, such expressions of individuality were an essential first step in defiance of the exigencies of society. During this second stage, however, critics often viciously attacked women writers for their supposed lack of political awareness and social commitment. This could be considered equally true for Algerian author Assia Djebar as it is for Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom were criticized for their narcissistic self-absorption during periods of radical social change.5 For what might be called the second generation of women writers, social change begins at the level of the self, in the body and consciousness. The sequence of Mustaghanami's two novels, Dhakirat al-Jasad and Fawdd alHawdss, reflects the progression of these generations as described by Zeidan. Fawdd al-Hawdss is narrated by a woman author, the very same character marginalized in Dhakirat al-Jasad. Dhdkirat al-Jasad begins with homage to Mustaghanami's male predecessors in its epigraph. The novel is dedicated first to the Algerian writer Malek Haddad, then to her father. "This book is his book," she writes, already providing fodder for her detractors (1993: 5). Nevertheless, the dedication itself casts doubt upon the strength of the literary tradition's patriarchal heritage, in keeping with the novel's content. Although Mustaghanami's father was a poet, he could neither read nor write Arabic. Similarly, Haddad is famous for having declared himself "in exile in the French language." A prolific writer before independence, he stopped writing altogether,

5 For a discussion of the critical attacks on Djebar's early works, see Accad (1985).


27

"becomingthe firstmartyrto the Arabiclanguage,the firstwriterwho chose to die silenced, vanquished,and in love with her"(1993: 5). Haddadcan be consideredthe main prototypefor Khalid, himself describedas in exile in Paris.6As Mustaghanamiobserves in Algerie:femme et ecritures,Haddad's work is characterizedby symbolicrepresentationsof women, as emblemsof nation, city, land, or the revolution, tropes that Khalid obsessively and repeatedly recycles to depict Ahlam (1985: 177-80). These images will become burdensweighing down Ahlam, leading her to dispense with them and to dispense with Khalid. Dhdkiratal-Jasad is a literaryreformulationof many of Mustaghanami's observationsin Algerie:femme et ecritures. This work, based on her doctoral thesis, "La femme dans la litt6raturealgeriennecontemporaine,"is a nearly complete review of contemporaryAlgerian literaturewritten in both Arabic and French.The first part surveys the early literature,roughly spanning the twenties to the sixties of the twentiethcentury,works composed principallyby male authors.While there are a few female authorsin this section, such as Zhour Ouanissi, their themes and motifs largely parallel those of the male authors,reflectingZeidan's schema. Mustaghanami'scriticism is divided into the different"types"of women that appearin the literature:the mother, the foreigner,the militant, the woman-object,and the woman-symbol.In many cases, she criticizes these portraitsof women as unrealisticand reductionist,though each of these kinds of women appears in Dhdkiratal-Jasad. Khalid is perhapsmodeled on Malek Haddadin particular,but more likely on contemporaryAlgerian male authorsin general, as Mustaghanamisituates herself within the writing tradition.The second part of Algerie:femme et ecritures describes a later generationof women writers,in particular,Assia Djebar,and how theirwritingsalteredimages of women entrenchedin Algerianliterature.Mustaghanamidescribesa kind of writing that echoes Elaine Showalter'sdescriptionsof a nascent female literaturein VictorianEngland,when the novel moved "in the directionof an all-inclusive female realism, a broad, socially informedexplorationof the daily lives and values of women within the family and the community" (1999: 29). While Mustaghanamiembracesthis approachin Algerie:femme et ecriture, she does not employ it in Dhdkirat al-Jasad. Rather, the novel

emulates the style described in the first part of Algerie, reproducingher experience in reading the male authors.Because of his misrepresentations and dissimulations,the authordoes not capturehis audience, the supposed readerAhlam. 6 Mustaghanami (1993: 30) explicitly alludes to two of Haddad's works, both of which contain motifs that resurface within Dhakirat al-Jasad, the protagonist Khalid living in Paris in Le Quai aux fleurs ne repond plus (1961) and the dominant bridge trope in La Derniere impression (1958).

28

UNLOCKINGTHE FEMALE IN AHLAM MUSTAGHANAMI

Ahlam remains unresponsiveto Khalid, mainly because his art fails to "speak"to her. In the text, Khalidis a painterby profession,and Mustaghanami uses paintingto elaborateon his modes of expression.When Ahlam sees Khalid'sportraitsof her, she remarksthatthereis no "relation"(qardba) between herself and his representationof her. By using the word qaraba, Mustaghanamiintimatesnot only a certainrepresentational relationship,but also a kinshipand spatialrelationship.7Khaliddepicts Ahlam as a bridge,a figurethat reflectshis desire to bridgethe temporaland spatialgaps between them and establish a physical relationship.The temporaldivide between them is significant,with twenty-fiveyears separatingtheir ages. His failure to apprehendAhlam throughthe image of this bridge turnsher away from him, essentially severing their relationship.The bridge fails in its function as communication and linkage, becoming a symbol of Khalid's artistic

impotence,his inabilityto reachhis audience.8In this respect,Khalid'swork is partial and incomplete, aesthetically unconsummated,its parts left unjoined.9 This is representedmost forcefully in the text by the artist's inability to establish a viable dialogue with Ahlam. She remainsan object of address,withoutever becoming a subject. II. Romanticizing the Past

Khalid's perceptionof the present is governed almost exclusively through referenceto the past. The novel's title, Memory of the Body, evokes this temporalrelationship,of the past ingrainedinto the lived experienceof the body. Yet the title is purposefullyambiguous,intimatingboth "the body's memory"and the remembranceof a certain body, Ahlam's, as "memory 7 Qaraba can simply refer to closeness in the spatial sense. Qaraba can also intimate nasab, or relation by marriage, versus hasab, relation to the patriline, as indicated by one's name. Stafania Pandolfo discusses the different natures of these types of relation in her ethnography Impasse of the Angels (1997: 104-31), associating nasab with the feminine and hasab with the masculine. Khalid fails at joining the masculine with the feminine, his name with her name. 8 In the Al-Quds al-'Arabi article, an anonymous intellectual quotes the emir Khalid, a descendent of 'Abd al-Qadir, saying that "Algeria is a nation that castrates its Iliterary] stallions" (Al-Jaza'ir umma takhsi fuhfilaha) (Rib&hi, 1). The parallels between this image and the thematics of Dhakirat al-Jasad are striking, particularly the gender inversion and the assertion of literary impotence. The quote positions Mustaghanami among the stallions, her aim in writing in the male voice, but simultaneously equates the charge that the man wrote the novel with "emasculation," in accord with the image of Khalid himself. The similarities between the quote and Mustagha-nami's literary vision raise the possibility that it comes from the writer herself, or at least, someone who thinks in the same vein. 9 Architectonics is the study of "how entities relate to each other," of "joining," of which aesthetics is a subset. According to Mikhael Bakhtin, "Aesthetics concerns itself with the particular problem of consummation, or how specific parts are shaped into particular wholes." See Holquist (1990: 150).


29

incarnate," or Khalid's, before the amputation of his arm during the war of independence. These bodies are confused within the text's imaginative landscape: as Khalid projects his desires onto Ahlam, she begins to embody them both literally and figuratively. The temporal framework of the text is most succinctly expressed through Khalid's body itself, wounded and disfigured in the present, leading Khalid to nostalgically romanticize the past as a time of wholeness and harmony. The belief in the perfection of the past shapes not only his perception, but the way he represents reality, both in writing and painting. Mustaghanami uses Khalid's painting as a means of criticizing certain static approaches to writing that glorify the past at the expense of realistic treatments of the present, a subject she also addresses in Algerie: femme et ecritures. In Mustaghanami's estimation, this romanticization of the past is characteristic of masculine literature, while women writers seek renewal and change.10 In contrast to Khalid's repeated insistence on memory, hla)dm's own novel is entitled Mun'ataf al-Nisydn (The Bend in the Road of Forgetting), emphasizing her desire for change and a clean break with the past." Ahlam sees writing as a means of "finishing with those people that have become burdens on our lives... of emptying of them," while Khailid sees writing as a means of "immortalizing those we have loved" (1993: 18-19). The notion of the fullness of the past, versus the emptiness of the present, dominates the novel's imagery and is expressed through various kinds of nostalgia, for mother and childhood, for homeland, and for the high ideals and unity of purpose of the revolution. This longing is shaded by love (for mother, Ahlam, and Khalid's commander in the war Si Tahir), giving the nostalgia its corporal form, as emanating from the body. Khalid transposes each of these types of nostalgia onto the image of Ahlam, as she becomes associated with imagined perfection. The book progresses through a series of flashbacks leading further and further back into Khalid's past, with Ahlam as a chain of transmission through them, like a madeleine leading him back through time and space. The temporal and the spatial are superimposed in Khalid's perception, for he has been living in self-imposed exile in Paris for over a decade. For him, the past is a place, 10Khalidis eventuallywon over to her perspective,but not until the end of the novel (386). For a critical discussion of the novel as perpetuallynew, modem, and changing, see Allen (1994). This may be Mustaghanami'spointin makingAhlamprincipallya novelistand Khalid a painter. 11 Pandolfo observes that the Arabic roots for "women" and "forgetting" are similar, just

as the root for "male"is the same as that for "memory.""Nsa, nasya: to forget, to obliterate, to fall into oblivion. And nisd', women. Two different words, phonetically akin to each other.... Nasya, then, becomes the feminine root of oblivion, as against dhakara,the masculine root of memory.Dhakara,to remember,to be mentioned,to be male; dhakira,commemoration,dhakar,the masculinesex. Yet, perhaps(as for the oppositionhasab and nasab), any remembranceimplies a certainforgetting,anythingfound, a certainloss" (168).

30


Algeria, Constantine, his childhood home. His preoccupation with the bridges in his paintings represents his desire to traverse this breach in time and space. When he first meets Ahlam in Paris at an exhibit of his work, she is standing next to his earliest painting, Hanin (Nostalgia), depicting the view from his childhood home in Constantine. Ahlam is closely associated with this painting: she not only stands next to it during their crucial moment of connection at the exhibit, but was born around the same time it was executed. When Khalid paints her later, he reworks the Hanin painting, then goes on to renderher as a series of eleven paintings of the bridges of Constantine. Hanin represents the central juncture of the novel, between a whole and truncated body, between home and exile, between past and present, between ideal and real. While recovering from the amputation of his arm in Tunis, Khalid painted Hanin in an attempt to combat the depression that afflicted him, dreaming of escape from his pain, loneliness, and homesickness. In this sense, the painting is an imaginative transport, a spatial, temporal, and physical return to a more whole, harmonious world. In Body in Pain, Elaine Scarrywrites about the meaning of the body wounded by war as a temporal sign pointing both backward and forward. Just after war, the physical reality of injured bodies is complemented and explained by the rhetorical context of war, still seared on the minds of the nation and its citizens. As Khalid observes, the only time he felt unconscious of his amputated arm was just after the war. "Those were years of respect. You carried your memory on your body and that required no explanation" (1993: 72). As Scarry observes, wounds carried on the body commemorate the ideals fought for in war, "until there is time for the issues to be universally acted on and in this way made real." She continues: Injuries-as-signspoint both backwardand forwardin time. On the one hand they make an activity that is past perpetuallyvisible, and thus have a memorializationfunction.On the otherhandthey referforwardto the futureto what has not yet occurred,and thus have an as-if function.This might be called their 'fiction-generating'or 'reality-conferring'function, for they act as a source of apparentreality... until the postwarworld rebuildsthat world accordingto the blueprintsketchilyspecifiedby the war's locus of victory.(121) For Khalid, the beliefs fought for during the war have not prevailed; the blueprint was not executed. As the nation thus moves further away from the war in time, the explanatory context of his wound has faded and people have forgotten its purpose. Scarry similarly notes that without the rhetorical context of the war, injuries are mere deficiencies. Only when standing next to his paintings, Khalid says, is he again (like just after the war) unconscious of his handicap. His art completes him and renders him whole by recalling a vision of an idealized Algeria. His bridges similarly recall the context of his amputation, of the war, and of his first painting Hanin. His


31

art, through its reality-conferring and fiction-generating function, is a means of creating a blueprint for Algeria. However, Khalid's blueprints point exclusively backward in time, rather than forward. Through Khalid's painting, Mustaghanami is commenting on Algerian writers' preoccupation with and idealization of the war of independence that she observes in Algerie: femme et ecritures. The constant return to the war and its ideals is a means of recreating the rhetorical context of war, to provide an explanatory context for the wounds that continue to plague Algerian society. Ahlam is a living embodiment of Khalid's past, and her significance within his story derives primarily from this association with the various periods of his life. The principal temporal framework of the book is the period of the romantic relationship between Khalid and Ahlam and its anguished aftermath. Their first meeting ever, however, is twenty-five years earlier, in 1957, after Khalid was wounded in the war of independence and evacuated to Tunis to have his arm amputated. Upon departure from the front, Khalid's commander, Si Tahir, entrusted him with a name to be delivered for his daughter, newly born in exile in Tunis. After the amputation of his arm and the subsequent painting of Hanin, Khalid visits Si Tahir's family and holds the baby Ahlam on his lap. Born at the outset of the war, she is emblematic of the hopes and dreams for the new generation. It is no coincidence that her birth coincides with the breach in Khalid's life, since the gap is also between generations, between the old Algeria and the new. For Khalid, however, Ahlam is emblematic not of the dreams of the future, but the dreams of the past and of the period of the war. When he sees her at the opening, she is wearing the traditional bracelets of Constantine that his mother used to wear. He exclaims to himself, "0 child wearing my memory, wearing my mother's bangles on her wrist. Let me gather up all those I have loved in you. Looking at you, Si Tahir's features come back to me in your smile and the color of your eyes. How beautiful is the return of martyrs in your look. Hovwbeautiful is the return of my mother in the bangle on your wrist. And the nation returns in your arrival" (66-7). His nostalgia for Si Tahir and for the ideals of the revolution is intertwined with his nostalgia for his mother and childhood. Childhood, with the mother at its head, becomes the symbol of perfection in the past, and it is this period that is the root of Khalid's nostalgia. He tries to graft his hanin, the view from his childhood home and the image of his mother, onto Ahlam, a vision she ultimately rejects. Throughout the text, Mustaghanami uses names to spell out her characters' roles in the text. Tdhir, meaning "virtuous, righteous, unblemished, and blameless" epitomizes Khalid's idealization of the revolutionary virtues. Similarly, khdlid, meaning "eternal, undying, unforgettable, glorious," denotes the character's preoccupation with the past (Wehr, 1976: 254, 571). Mustaghanami most exploits the semantic and morphological value of "Ahlam."

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THEFEMALEIN AHLAMMUSTAGHANAMI UNLOCKING

This name is never articulated within the text, but is only spelled out and described. Her name is a "singular-plural" noun, being both the plural of dream (hulm), meaning "dreams," but also denoting "utopia" or "irreality" (Wehr, 1976: 202; Mustaghanami, 1993: 37). However, this name is not her "real"name in the novel. In her father's absence, her mother named her "Hayat," meaning "life." Although her official name is Ahlam, registered in the municipality, everyone calls her Hayat, and it is the name she uses as an author. The concreteness of this name starkly contrasts with the nebulousness of Ahlam, a contrast between the real and the ideal that is at the crux of the novel's thematics. Mustaghanami deconstructs and subsequently reconstructs Ahlam's name by spelling it out. Between the alif of pain and the mim of pleasurewas your name. The hd' of burningand the lam of warningdivided it. How could I not be cautiousof your name, a small blaze born among the first fires of that war? How could I not be cautiousof a name that begins with the 'ah' of both pain and pleasure?How could I not be cautiousof that singular-pluralnoun like the name of this nation (watan)?From the start I knew that the whole is always created in orderto be separated.(37) By joining the first and last letters of Ahlam's name, the alif and the mim, Mustaghanamiforms the word umm(mother, source, origin, foundation,essence, original version), recalling Khalid's association of Ahlam with his mother (Wehr, 1976: 25). The word also connotes an idealized original, while Ahlam is repeatedly described as a "copy" of Si Tahir, of Khalid's mother, of Constantine. This passage is essentially a birthing image, of the young Ahlam/Hayat being "born among the first fires of that war," the nation that is simultaneously the "watan" and the "umma," male and female.'2 Khalid's nostalgia is largely for the umma and the umm, an idealized community of the past, and an idealized woman of the past. By idealizing the mother and associating her with Ahlam, Khalid strives for a complete union with a woman, like that of child with mother, and through this image, a return to childhood and a return to the womb. Implicit in this image, too, is a relationship with a woman that is virtually sexless, an image of woman that Mustaghanamialso criticizes in Algerie: femme et ecritures. However, Khalid's images of unity, permanence, and stability contain within them their own fault lines, their own process of dissolution. Throughthese cracks, Mustaghanami dismantles these idealized, perfected images of women, and it is through

12 of the nationas the watan For a discussionof the embracingof a secularunderstanding versus the religious nationalismof the umma,see Sabry Hafez. To a certainextent, Mustaghanamialludes to these issues, disparagingthe nostalgiafor this idealizedreligiouscommunity of the past. This stance, relevantwhen she finishedthe novel in 1988, is even more so today, after nearlya decade of civil war over this very issue.


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these fissures that her own vision, however subtle, shines in the text. The word hall, formed from the middle two letters of the name A-hl-am, not only denotes dissolution and breakingup, but also freeing, liberation,and release (Wehr, 1976: 199). Throughthis birthingimage, she shows that the naturalprogressionis not of returnto the motherand the womb, but of separation.This separationis not just of child from mother,but of the present from the past. For women, this means liberation from the roles of their mothers,individuationand independence. III. The Veil of Metaphor

Ahlam not only embodies Khalid's memory,but also takes the shape of his personality,his hopes and dreams.This requiresthat the artist play god to a certain extent, as an omnipotent creator. There are allusions in both Dhdkirat al-Jasad and in Faw.d al-Hawdss to Pygmalion, the demi-god

who sculptedhis ideal woman (1993: 166, 1998: 275). This type of creation requiresthat she be malleable clay in his hands, a blank template,and an empty container, all of which are metaphorsused to describe her. As a writer in her own right, Ahlam is hardly the passive, blank page Khalid wants her to be. When Khilid sees her across the room at his exhibit in Paris, he contemplates(ta'ammala)her like a painting, identifying her as "the white color" because of her dress, a blank canvas on which he paints with his eyes (51-2). This whiteness and blankness is also essentially Ahlam'svirtualsilence in the text, requiredin orderfor Khalidto impose the entiretyof his vision upon her. When he begins paintingher, he says, "You were suddenlyclay that took the form of my masks (qinda'adt) with the form of my future ambitionsand dreams... [the painter]only presents to us a design of himself, revealing (kashafa) to us the broad strokes of his new features.You were my next design. You were my new features"(155-6). In Arabic, the juxtapositionof the masks or veils of qind'dtwith the revealing or unveilingof kashafais extremelyevocative,and alludesto the novel's principal theme of revealing and concealing. In Dhdkirat al-Jasad, Mustaghanami demonstrateshow the images of women drawn by male authors have the effect of veiling their subjects.What is ultimatelyrevealed (in the sense of unveiling,exposing, or baring)is simply what Khalidprojectsonto her-himself, his own image. When Ahlam visits Khalid's studio to see his portraitof her, she is disappointed,denying that this image has any relationto her. She says, "You are dreaming,"evoking the name Ahlam, as a utopia or irreality.She asks, "How can you find any relationbetween that bridge and myself... I would have preferred that you paint me and not that bridge" (167-8). At this pivotal scene in the book, Khalid's dreamscapeclashes harshly with the

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reality presented by Ahlam/Hayat. Through this injection of the voice of Hayat, of life and reality, the reader perceives the disjuncture between Khalid's perspective and Hayat's. Her rejection of this vision within the text is the most powerful assertion of her voice, a rejection that is also a refusal of Khalid himself, as she begins to turn away from him. By drawing this contrast between reality and irreality, realism and romanticism, Mustaghanami evokes a central debate in contemporary Arabic literature. The early impetus for innovation drew on romanticism as a poetic doctrine, especially in its elevated depictions of women. However, in the early nineteen-fifties, this romantic attitude was deemed inappropriate in the face of the political upheaval in the Middle East, the establishment of Israel, the revolution in Egypt, and the struggle for independence in the Maghreb. Instead, a new generation of critics called for political commitment through literary realism."3 Mustaghanami addresses the issue of realism in depth in Algerie: femme et ecritures, as she observes Algerian authors' preoccupation with the war of independence and its glorification. While these authors may perceive their romantic depictions of the war as politically committed, they are essentially false portraits, Mustaghanami asserts, that exacerbate the ills facing contemporary Algerian society. She quotes Nabile Fares who observes that Algerian literature "uses the theme of the war to mask current realities, preventing a viable reflection on the revolution" (114). In Dhdkirat al-Jasad, Khalid sees himself as committed, belied by the fact that he has completely withdrawn from Algerian political and cultural life, living in comfort in Paris. Khalid is contrasted to Ziyad, a Palestinian poet who rejects the comforts of Parisian life, returns to fight in the Intif.da, and eventually is killed. Through her allusions to Khalil Hawi, the Lebanese poet who committed suicide after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Mustaghanami implicitly compares the two. What is unique to Mustaghanami is her application of the notion of literary realism to political commitment to women's emancipation. Women must be depicted realistically, she asserts, in order for there to be a "viable reflection" on their status and position (1985:114). This realism includes reflections not only of an "informed exploration of the daily lives and values of women within the family and the community" in Showalter's sense (29), but frank depictions of their bodies, desires, and sexuality. At Khalid's exhibit, and again in his studio, Ahlam notices that there is only one realistic representation of a woman, that of Khalid's French lover Catherine. It is with such realism that Ahlam wants to be depicted, not with 13 Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi argues that the attitude toward women appropriate to poetry is adulation in Al-Khayal al-Shi'ri 'ind al-'Arab (1996: 60-82). For a discussion of literary realism and political commitment, see 'Abd al-'Azim Anis and Mahmfd Amin al-'Alim in Fi alThaqdfa al-Misriyya.


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the abstractionof a bridge.When she expressesthis desire, Khalidis astonished, thinking,"Did I then paint a false copy of you? Is it true that there isn't any likeness betweenyou and that bridge?Isn't that bridgea copy conformingto the originalin my memory?In the end, your dreamis to become a copy of Catherine,to become an ordinarypainting, exposed (maf4duh)" (169). When talking about this painting,Khalid disparaginglyremarksthat Catherineis a woman "paintedonly with realism."The key words used to describe this realism are "completely exposing" (tafad.dahatammaman), metonymicallyrepeatingthe rootfadaha (93). Khalid uses the verbfadaha in the sense of disclosing or revealing,but there is also the implied meaning of dishonoring or shaming through such exposing, in the sense of a fadiha, shaming, degradation,debasement,or disgrace (Wehr, 1976: 717). Khalid associates the realistic depiction of ordinarywomen with compromised honor.The symbolizationof women is thus a means of elevating and protectingthem from their inherentlybase (sexual) nature.It also has the effect of concealing their bodies and sexuality. In Algerie:femme et ecritures, Mustaghanaminotes that only foreignwomen are depictedrealistically by male Algerian authors.As a result, she writes, "only the foreign woman is able to evolve" in Algerian literature.She discusses Algerian authors' difficultyin representingthe sexuality of Algerianwomen, due to what she calls "the quasi-generaltendency,due to the circumstancesof colonial occupation,to worshipthe body of the Algerianwoman, a factorthat contributed to placing the Algerianwriterin front of a practicallyempty feminine presence" (78). The literarydishonoringof Algerianwomen was consideredakin to exacerbatingAlgeria's alreadycompromisednationalhonor."Onedoesn't trifle with the honor of Algerians,"Mustaghanamiwrites (78-9). While the associationbetween nationalhonor and women's honor is an ancient political and literaryconcept, the linking of the two was particularlystrong in Algeria, for reasonstoo diverse and complex to be discussedin depthhere.'4 In the classical Arabic poetic tradition,the explicit naming of a woman was a way of bringingdisgraceto her, her family, and her tribe. The mere mentioningof her nameservedas a meansof effectingvengeanceon an enemy

14 The variousparametersof the associationbetweenwomen and land have been addressed in a numberof differentworks. For a generaldiscussionof the understanding of women, family, and home as the sacredpreserveof culturalvalues in colonized societies, see chapterssix "The Nation and Its Women"and seven "Womenand the Nation"in Chatterjee(1993: 116157). For a discussion of Frenchcolonial attemptsat gaining masteryof the nation by winning access to its women, see Lazreg (1994: 135) and Woodhull(1993: 16-20). For a discussion of the personalstatute(and women's status)as the definitionof Algeriancitizenship and culturalidentityundercolonialism,see Charrad(1996: 15-32), Borrmans(1971: 447), and Berque(1967: 357-8). For a discussionof the organizationof Algerianpower structuresand its conceptualizationof women's social roles, see Charrad,forthcoming.

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tribe throughexposure, and thus of shaming its women. In DhdkiratalJasad, neitherthe name Ahlam nor Hayat is articulateduntil the very end of the text. Khalid does not expose Ahlam, because he loves and respects her, as opposed to Catherine. He says, "I do not paint the faces of those that

I really love. I only paint somethingthat inspiresme in them, a look in the eye, the wave of the hair,a piece of a woman'sclothingor herjewelry.Those details that stick in the memoryeven after you have left her. Those things convey her without exactly exposing her; the painterisn't a photographer pursuingreality"(92-3). Laterin the book when Ahlam gives Khalida photographfrom which to paintanotherportrait,he remarksthat the photograph does not resembleher at all. In Fawdd al-Hawdss, Mustaghanamirewrites Khalid in accordancewith her own dreams and desires, he is a photojournalist, workingin the most realisticof the artisticmedia. While Dhikirat alJasad is primarilya treatmentof trendsin contemporaryAlgerianliterature, Mustaghanamidemonstratessome of its roots in the classical tradition.The novel itself opens with Khalidcontemplatingthe memoryof Ahlamover the ashes of an extinguishedcigarette ("nostalgia'slast cigarette"),much like the poet of classical tradition,mourningover the ashes of the abandoned campsite, carryingon a dialogue with the phantom(tayf al-khaydl)of his past (9). But Khalid,the representativeof the contemporaryAlgerianwriter, mostresemblestheclassicalpoetin his cloakingof womenin layersof metaphor. In the canon of pre-Islamicpoetry that served as a model for subsequent generations, the bodies of women were further and further abstracted throughlong stringsof similes and metaphors(as a camel, an oryx, a gazelle, a palm tree, a lightening bolt, etc.).'5 In this respect, Khalid conforms to these parameters,both social and literary, that protect the honor of the reflects femalesubject.ForMustaghanami, however,thismodeof representation social values that are no longer relevant,and are actually damagingto the conception of women and women's roles in society. In both DhdkiratalJasad and Algerie: femme et ecritures, she calls for a renewal of these forms

throughmore frank treatmentsof women's bodies. In her estimation,they are not to be hidden and disguised,but expressed. IV. The Exposure of Realism

Khalid mentionsDelacroix as an artistwho, like him, worked largely from memory (162). He resembles Delacroix in other key respects:in his exposure of Catherine,his romanticizationof Ahlam, and his desire for artistic immortality.Assia Djebar discusses these issues in her essay "Forbidden

1s See Sells' (1994) discussionof semanticoverflowand dissemblingsimile.

THEFEMALEIN AHLAMMUSTAGHANAMI UNLOCKING

37

Gaze, Severed Sound" to demonstratehow both exposure and romanticization dovetail in Delacroix's manipulations of image and perception. Djebar particularlycriticizes the artist's double position of dominance, as both conquerorand man, as he paintedthe women in his work Womenof Algiers in TheirApartment.This stance is both revealed and reified through his portrayals,his viewpoint enshrinedin his art. As conqueror,Delacroix moved into the inner domain of an Algerian household, penetratingand violating bordersjust as the French conquerorshad recently done to the Algerian nation. Yet his purposewas hardlythe liberationof these women, as colonialistrhetoricwould assert.Ratherhis purposewas subjugation,and his depictions of the submission and resignation of women of the harem gave expressionto his position of dominance.On one hand, his paintingis a kind of exposureof the inner life of the conquered.However, his romanticizationof the women, cloaking them in veils of orientalistexoticism, has the effect of furtherimprisoningthem in realms of differenceand strangeness. The heavy curtainsand exaggeratedlydecoratedwalls enclose and enframe them in the painting as "resignedprisonersin a closed place... a place without exit" (Djebar, 1992: 135-7).16 The painting emphasizes their

restrictedmovement,theirsubmissionandresignationsymbolicof theAlgerians, also prisonersin their own home. The principal images that express Khalid's perspective in Dhdkirat alJasad, those of nostalgia (hanin) and dreams (ahldm) appear in Djebar's characterizationof Delacroix as well. Describing Womenof Algiers, she writes:"Thedistantandfamiliardreamin thefarawayeyes of the threeAlgerian women, if we make an attemptto grasp its nature,makes us in turn dream of sensuality:a nostalgia or vague softness, triggeredby their so obvious absence" (137). This absence/presenceis exactly the role Ahlam plays in Dhdkiratal-Jasad, just as in Khalid's painting.Although she is the subject of the work, she is very obviously absent,describedas empty or blank (102). Khalid,like Delacroix, seeks to artisticallyimmortalize(khulud,takhlid)his subject,both in his paintingand in his writing (19, 295). Djebarwrites that Delacroix felt "the need to touch his dream, to prolong its life beyond the memory, to complete what is enclosed as sketches and drawings"(135). The painting'ssense of timelessnessfreezes the women in its frame,rendering them immobile and eternal. It is indisputablethat Mustaghanamihas a close familiaritywith Djebar's work. In her chapter"La Femme s'affirme"in Algerie:femme et ecritures, 16 For Mitchell,

"enframing"is the colonialistdesire to controland organize,limit and contain. Pictorialrepresentationsof the colonized had the effect of giving pleasureto the colonialist observer.In this way, they could "see without being seen," scrutinizewithout being scrutinized(1998: 26).

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she discusses Djebar's complex treatments of her women characters' coming to sexual and political consciousness. In her opinion, dealing with the body and sexuality is one of the most important first steps in women's literature and the "women's awakening." Her discussion of this subject opens the second part of the book, "La Femme en marche vers son majorit6" that deals with women's literature. Mustaghanami describes realistic depictions of women's bodies and sexuality as a literary unveiling. "Until then," Mustaghanami writes, quoting Franz Fanon, "'the body of the young Algerian woman was only revealed by her nubility and the veil.' Later, however, we witness an upheaval in the young girl's life. Her body is henceforth revealed by unveiling and no longer by veiling" (204). This quote recalls Khalid's discussion of the artistic process, whereby Ahlam is revealed (kashafa) only by the shape of Khalid's veils (qind'dt) (155-6). In the chapter "Forbidden Gaze, Severed Sound," Djebar contrasts Picasso's version of the Women of Algiers in Their Apartment to Delacroix's, observing how the stifled and imprisoned women are now "bursting out into an open space" (149). She portrays the painter as unveiling and liberating the women from the harem, "as if Picasso was recovering the truth of the vernacular language that, in Arabic, designates the 'unveiled' as 'denuded' women. Also, as if he were making that denuding not only into a sign of an 'emancipation,' but rather of these women's rebirth to their own bodies" (149-50). Djebar describes this unveiling as breaching the "law of invisibility, the law of silence" in painting and in writing. She urges an opening of the harem, of the secret, taboo domains of society: "only in the door open to the full sun... do I hope for a concrete and daily liberation of women" (150). Both Djebar and Mustaghanami embrace this kind of emancipation in both their critical and literary writings. Yet it is truly through their images of open doors and windows, of light streaming in, of exposure and revealing that they most eloquently and succinctly express their visions for this project. The idea of rescuing women's bodies from the obscurity of darkness and liberating them into the light is a recurrent motif in Dhdkirat al-Jasad. Khalid is repeatedly described as writing about Ahlam in the darkness, with the doors and windows shut (11, 13, 25, 41). When he begins writing in Constantine, the "habitual sounds" of the city wake him. The sudden brightness of the morning sun lights up my depths, despite myself... In that moment,I hate that inquisitive and embarrassingaspect of the sun. I want to write about you in the gloom. My story with you is a film (sharit musawwir)that I fear the light will burnup and erase, becauseyou are a woman who grew up in my secret antechambers... because you are a woman whom I possessedwith the lawfulness of secrecy (shar'iyat

al-sirriya)...

I must write about you after I

close all the curtains(sitd'ir), and lock the windows of my room. (41)


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This frame for the context of writing elucidates the themes of opening the doors that have been closed on women. Mustaghanami plays on the multiple significations of her words to elaborate on Khalid's stance. On the surface, musawwir refers to the camera film, yet it connotes "creator" in the sense of artist, but also in the grander sense of God. By shaping the figure of Ahlam in his own image, like Pygmalion, he is playing the role of Creator. The light discussed by Djebar and Mustaghanami threatens that fragile impression, like an exposed film picture, or like opening the door on a screening. Khalid's vision requires darkness, secrecy, and closed spaces. By using the word shar'iya (lawfulness), Mustaghanami refers to the shari'a, the code of Islamic law and contemporary debates over seclusion and veiling (with sitd'ir also denoting "veils"). This scene recalls Dela-croix's painting of secret, darkened chambers with heavy curtains, but it also evokes the debate about the nature of the literary canon. Khatibi and his followers, drawing on Lacan, refer to the Doxa or Law of the tradition of writing, passed on by the father through the patriline. In the Arabic literary tradition, this law has its origins in the language and eloquence (fasaha) of the Qur'an, making Arabic writing, in Khatibi's estimation, immutable and immune to change.17 Mustaghanami thoroughly disagrees with this assessment of Arabic writing. Within the text of Dhdkirat al-Jasad, she expresses this through Ahlam's understanding of the nature of writing, a perspective that radically differs from Khalid's. While he talks about the khuluhid (perpetuity, eternity, and immortality) of writing, she talks about killing off the dead weight in her life and opening the doors to let in some fresh air (18). When Khalid first begins to perceive her apart from his idealization of her, he is disappointed, considering her ugly, wearing the "clothes of ugliness" (thawb al-radda) (17). The etymological connotations of the word radda resonate with the themes of the novel. The diacritics are not marked in the text, leaving the word open to another reading, as ridda (apostasy), a turning from the lawfulness of religion. By linking ridda with "clothes," the author returns to the same sense of exposure, of shame and embarrassment, of lifting the curtains and the veil. In addition, the connotation of radd (rejection, reply, or answer) capitalizes on a number of the novel's motifs.

17 Khatibi considers writing in French a transgression of this Law, but also a space in which he is relatively exempt from its pressures, including its prohibitions on the feminine parole (an attitude with which French feminists would certainly disagree). He describes writing in French as oedipal, as usurping the law of the father and embracing the feminine (1983: 182). Charles Bonn asserts that although writing in French might have been "against the law" of Arabic letters, Kateb Yacine re-established that law, to a certain extent, by becoming the father of Algerian literature, "Et c'est en ceci que l'6criture rejoint la doxa, la parole paternelle de la loi... la Langue du Pere" (1988: 452).

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For Khalid, Ahlam has become ugly because she has rejected him, he considers her photograph on the jacket of her book ugly because of its ordinary realism. Her own book could be considered the reply or answer to Khalid's address. For him, this reply and her refusal of his representation of her are a kind of apostasy as she deviates from his established image of her and from the aesthetic standards he has set. Djebar refers to this as returning the gaze, of becoming a subject, rather than simply an object of the male gaze and an object of representation. The semantic range of radd also includes the "reflection of light" (Wehr, 1976: 334). As Mustaghanami writes in Algerie: femme et ecriture, this "reflection of light," in the sense of a response and a refusal, is a crucial first step in women's writing. With the awakening of the new generation, women writers "seek to discover their bodies long deprived of the light of the sun" (202). V. The Key to Emancipation Despite Mustaghanami's blueprint for a liberated women's literature outlined in Algerie: femme et ecritures, she herself does not fulfill her own suggested requisites. She is so preoccupied in Dhdkirat al-Jasad with portraying the image of women in male writing that Ahlam is never depicted with any realism. Her criticism is woven into the fabric of Dhakirat al-Jasad as she lays bare the literary process of veiling, enframing, and enclosing. In Fawdd al-Hawdss, Hayat is the narrator, and said to be the writer of Dhdkirat al-Jasad. At the novel's outset, she reflects on the writing of Dhdkirat al-Jasad (which she is said to have written in the second work), lamenting the "stealing" of her voice and vowing to rewrite the story according to her own measure. "At that time," Hayat reflects, "I had learned the lesson well. I tried to create a new language in accordance with his model ('ald qiydsihi)," a word that also has legalistic connotations as "analogy, example, scale, or measure" (Mustaghanami, 1998: 17; Wehr, 1976: 804). She later adds that "I found that I possessed no language except his language" (72). Fawdd al-Hawdss could even be seen as an attempt at rewriting Dhdkirat al-Jasad, but from Hayat's perspective. The two novels contain many of the same elements, including the same characters. The man that she meets and falls in love with in the course of the novel is Khalid Bin Tawbal, the narratorfrom Dhdkirat al-Jasad, transformed. In Fawdd alHawdss, she fashions him according to her own model, her own dreams and desires. In this novel, she shapes, rather than being shaped. While ruminating on writing (and implicitly on the writing of Dhdkirat al-Jasad) Hayat says, "The universe [of that story] did not correspond to my life (haydti) .. . Perhaps I secretly hoped that if that man were mine, he would be according to the shape ('ala qiyds) of my silence and my language, corresponding to the mood of my melancholy and my desire (shahwa)" (27). In a


41

metonymicrepetitionof qiyds, Mustaghanamimoves from his measurement and his scale to her own, one that more closely correspondsto her life, and on a linguistic level, her name. Her new language is articulatedaccording to her life, her name, and her desire, expressedhere in the more carnalsense of shahwa, rather than hanin, which also denotes desire. In Fawda alHawdss, Khalidis a pianist,ratherthan a painter,with sensitive fingersthat have given pleasure to many women, and by profession, a photojournalist (176). Mustaghanamiselects these characteristicswith care, as emblems of a man who lives in the present, music and photographybeing media of immediacy.When he approachesHayat,it is with a nakeddeclarationof his desire, with little subterfuge.Hayatrespondsin kind, with frankprofessions of her own desire. With Mustaghanami,expressionof sexuality is a kind of political cause. In an autobiographicalessay on writing, she ruminateson her own courage as a young girl reading romanticpoetry at a 1973 poetry festival. At that time, she was also the announcerof a nightly radio programof romantic poetry called Whispers.She writes: In essence, this programwas a challenge to the Algerian nationalcharacter, which was used to neitherhearingnor reciting love poetry... In reality, we were a people suffering from lack of romance for complex historical reasons... I made love and the beautifulword my primarycause, believing that the Algerian characterwas sick and empty within, that the edifice and the revolutionaryslogans erected aroundit after independencewould not help to constructit. (82)

At the festival, she is both cheered and condemned"for my femininity," criticized for her lack of "politicalcommitment"to the national cause and especially the war of independence.In response,her father,a poet of French expression and an ex-mujdhid, stands to defend her (83). In Fawdd alHawdss, she plays with the lexicon of revolutionaryimages, bending them to her own "cause"of love. While she is on her way to meet Khalidfor the first of their secret meetings, in June of 1991, she must pass through a crowd of demonstratingIslamists to reach his apartment.To disguise and protect herself, she wears the traditionalaba with a shawl over her head, borrowedfrom her maid. Moving undetectedin the garb of piety, she passes by the Milk Bar, the caf6 that Jamila Bou Hayredfamously bombed. This incident,and others like it, is one of the most celebratedimages of the war of independence,describedand analyzed in Franz Fanon's essay "Algerian Unveiled" and portrayedin the film The Battle of Algiers. The "disguise" was Europeanclothes, as Bou Hayredinfiltratedenemy territory,leaving a bomb behind (Fanon, 1965: 58). Mustaghanamiuses the same image, but virtuallyinvertsit, as Hayat moves throughenemy territoryto carryout her mission, to visit her lover. In this scene, Mustaghanamisatirizesthe national preoccupationwith the war of independencethat she criticizes in Algerie:

42


femme et ecritures. "After forty years, here I am the legitimate heir of Jamila Bou Hayred as I pass by the very same caf6, undetected in the clothes of piety ... that disguise a lover, hiding a body ensnared with desire under an aba" (171). Just as in Dhdkirat al-Jasad, Mustaghanami meditates on the nature of revealing and concealing, though this time she controls the disguises and the masks, manipulating them to her own ends. In her essay "WritingAgainst Time and History" in In the House of Silence, Mustaghanami returns to the theme of opening doors to secret rooms with images that recall Khalid and Delacroix.18 When she reflects on the writing of Dhakirat al-Jasad, she realizes that she had not succeeded in opening her secret rooms, but had left them closed. But her image is not just of closed, but of locked rooms, intimating the sense of imprisonment suggested by Djebar. In the essay, she quotes Louis Aragon saying, "The novel is the key to forbidden rooms in our house." In writing Dhdkirat al-Jasad, I discoveredthat I had spent my life bypassingthose forbiddenrooms within me, believing that they did not concernme since I lived somewhereelse. In reality, I did live in otherrooms and it was they that inhabitedme and occupied the largestdomainof my innerspace and my space on paper.Thus their keys controlledme and their locks were the holes to my freedom and my servitude.(86) In this passage, the other rooms are the outer rooms, alluding to a more public persona, the outside image presented to the world. This external image is, to a certain extent, the socially acceptable persona that conforms to certain requisites. In writing Dhdkirat al-Jasad, it is this image and this persona that was put down on paper, although Mustaghanami expresses this as being "locked" in this particular room. In Aragon's formula, the novel is the "key," and Mustaghanami uses the word in this sense. Yet she refers to their keys and their novels as locking her up, denying access to the forbidden rooms. She uses Aragon's image, intended as a metaphor of opening and liberation, in its opposite sense, as closing and imprisonment. In order to open these doors, she needs her own key, her own novel. Dhakirat alJasad is not wholly her own in this sense, since she draws so heavily on the "master key" of her predecessors, keys which continue to lock her up, as evidenced by the quote. In Fawda al-Hawdss, another key metaphor opens up the meaning of Mustaghanami's repeated evocations of secret chambers and forbidden rooms. When Khalid and Hayat finally engage in intercourse, it is depicted through a single metaphor, as Khalid "inserts

18 This

essay was originallypublishedin Al-Katihamagazinein April, 1994. Fadia Faqir essays later translatedand edited the essay, includingit in her collectionof autobiographical by Arabwomen writers.

UNLOCKING THEFEMALEIN AHLAMMUSTAGHANNAMI

43

his keys into the secret locks of my body" (262).19 Mustaghanami finally uses her own novel to open up the female body, exposing it to the light of day, depicting the details of women's most intimate emotions and sensations. For her, only when the inner elements of women's lives are included within the literary corpus will it become more hospitable to their presence. To a certain extent, the accusations against Mustaghanami are merited, as she herself admits to the assumption of a male literary voice. However, the accusation that a man wrote the text is hardly an "exposure," since those are the very issues Mustaghanami repeatedly grapples with in both her fiction and criticism. DhAkirat al-Jasad is hardly a blueprint for women's writing; there are only glimmers of Mustaghanami's vision through the rubble of Khalid's ruin. Instead, it is a criticism of the masculine perspective, an exposure of its weaknesses, inefficacy, and impotence. Only with the tearing down of the walls of the master's house does Mustaghanami tentatively begin revealing the material concealed within. A woman cannot find refuge in the structures of social legitimacy forever, in the roles of mother, daughter, and unattainable lover. To truly express herself, she must open up, give of herself, exposing herself to the public. Columbia University

ELLENMCLARNEY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Accad, Evelyne and Rose Ghurayyib. Contemporary Arab Women Writers and

Poets. Beirut:Institutefor Women's Studies, 1985. Allen, Roger. The Arabic Novel since 1950: Critical Essays, Interviews, and

Bibliography.Cambridge:Dar Mahjar,1994. Anis, 'Abd al-'Azim, and Mahmfid Amin al-'Alim. Fi al-Thaqafa al-Misriyya. Cairo:

Dar al-Thaqafaal-Jadida,1989. Basfao, Kacem. "La Litteraturemaghr6bine:Une questionde langue."Annuairede l'Afriquedu Nord 24. Paris:CNRS, 1985, 379-84. Berque, Jacques. French North Africa: Maghrib Between Two World Wars. Trans.

Jean Stewart.New York: FrederickA. Praeger,1967. Bonn, Charles. "Le roman maghr6binel l'ombre du pbre. Ou: le desodre de la langue franqaiseet Kateb Yacine le Fondateur."Annuairede l'Afrique du Nord 27. Paris:CNRS, 1988. 447-68. Borrmans, Maurice. Status personnel et famille au Maghreb de 1940 a nos jours.

Paris:Mouton, 1971. 19 In In the House of Silence, she calls for transparencyin women's writings, saying that she wants to live in a glass house and not "hidebehindbooks of fortifiedcement."To achieve such an effect, she must "not hesitate to open secret doors before you; the novelist dares to invite you to visit the lower floors of the house and the cellars and locked places... and every corridorof the self where electricityis not yet installedand from where a suspicious stale smell emanates"(87).

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Charrad,Mounira."Formationde l'etat et statut personnelau Maghreb:Esquisse d'une analyse comparatoire et th6orique." Femmes, culture et societe au Maghreb II: Femmes, pouvoir politique et developpement. Ed. R. Bourqia, M. Charrad, and

N. Gallagher.Casablanca:Afrique-Orient,1996. 15-32.

States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and

Morocco. Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 2001. Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial His-

tories. Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1993.

Djebar, Assia. Women of Algiers in their Apartment. Trans. Marjolijn de Jager.

Charlottesville:UniversityPress of Virginia, 1980. Fanon, Franz.A Dying Colonialism.Trans. Haakon Chevalier.New York: Grove Press, 1965. Haddad, Malek. La Derniere impression. Paris: Julliard, 1958. Le Quai aux fleurs ne repond plus. Paris: Julliard, 1961. Hafez, Sabry. Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology of Modern Arabic Literature. London: Saqi Books, 1993. Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. New York: Routledge, 1990.

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Khatabi,Abdelkebir.Maghrebpluriel. Paris:Danoel, 1983.

Lacan, J. Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychoanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1973. Lazreg, Marnia. The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Woman in Question. New York:

Routledge, 1994. Mitchell,Timothy.ColonisingEgypt.Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1988. Mosteghanemi,Ahlem [Ahlam Mustaghanami].Algerie:femme et ecritures.Paris: L'Harmattan,1985. "WritingAgainstTime and History."In the House of Silence, Ed. Fadia Faqir. Trans.Fadia Faqirand Shirley Eber. London:Garnet, 1998, 79-90. Dhdkiratal-Jasad. Beirut:Dar al-Adab, 1998 [1993]. -

Fawda al-Hawdss. Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1998. Memory in the Flesh. Trans. Baria Sreih. Cairo: American University in Cairo

Press, 1999. Pandolfo.Stefania.Impasseof the Angels.Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress,1997. Ribahi,Tawfiq. "Ah.lamMustaghanamitarfa'uaktharamin da'wa qada'ihalihasmi ma 'uthirahawla Dhdkiratal-Jasad" ("AhlamMustaghanamiis raisingmorethan just a courtcase to settle the questionsposed aboutDhdkiratal-Jasad").Al-Quds al-'Arabi. 12: 3485 (July 25, 2000): 1. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New

York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1985. Sells, Michael. "Guisesof the Ghul: DissemblingSimile and SemanticOverflowin the Classical Arabic Nasib." Reorientations: Arabic and Persian Poetry. Ed.

SuzannePinckneyStetkerych.Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1994. al-Shabbi, Abf al-Qasim. Al-Khaydl al-Shi'ri 'ind al-'Arab. Tunis: Ceres, 1996. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronti

to Lessing. Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1999. Wehr, Hans. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Ed. J. Milton Cowen. Ithaca:

Spoken LanguageServices, 1976. Woodhull, Winifred. Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization,

and Literatures.Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1993. Zeidan, Joseph T. Arab Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond. New

York: New York Press, 1995.

POSTCOLONIALTHEORYAND MODERNARABIC LITERATURE: HORIZONSOF APPLICATION I. Introduction

One of the ironies of postcolonialstudies is that colonial discourseanalysis began with several theorists who studied colonialism in the Arab world: Albert Memmi (in Tunisia),FrantzFanon (in Algeria), EdwardSaid (in the Levant). However, the work of those critics led to the development,in the 1980's and 1990's, of a sophisticatedtheoreticalapparatusthat rarelytakes Arabic literaryand culturalproductioninto account. Rather,the latter has remainedlargely the provinceof MiddleEasternStudiesdepartments,rooted as they are in the kind of scholarshipcritiquedin Said's Orientalism(1978), the book which inauguratedthe field of "postcolonialstudies."'Theorists have since then paid considerableattentionto South Asian, African, and Caribbeanliteratures,and even to the literaturesof settler colonies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, while some have argued that mainstream American literature "is paradigmaticfor post-colonial literatures everywhere"(Ashcroftet al. 2).2 What those widely dispersed"emergent"or "new"literatureshave in common that is not sharedby Arabic literatureis that they are written in English and French, the languages of the former colonial powers, and are often designatedin ways that reinscribecolonial relations in terms of neocolonial cultural dependency ("Commonwealth," "New Literaturesin English,""Francophonie"). Symptomaticof this cooptation is the interestingfact that Arabic literatureof French expressionby Maghrebianand Levantinewritersis routinelyincorporatedin Francophone studies,housed as it is on the marginof the Frenchcurriculum(and is therefore part of "postcolonialism"),rather than in Arabic or Middle Eastern Studies, where literatureby their Arabophonecompatriotsis studied, often with little attentionto colonial history.3 ' See also Magdaal-Nowaihi'sdiscussionof some of the ways in which the field of Middle EasternStudies, and even the term "MiddleEast" itself, replicatecolonial assumptionsand serveneocolonialinterests(282-5). On the historyof the term"MiddleEast,"see Adelson22-26. 2 LawrenceBuell and Peter Hulme elaborateon Ashcroft et al.'s argumentfor the postcolonial status of canonical U.S. literature.The argumenthas been challenged by Vijay Mishraand Bob Hodge, Anne McClintock(293-5), Ella Shohat(102-3), Aijaz Ahmad ("The Politics"9), and Malini JoharSchueller(214-5). 3 This is partly a by-productof the structureof the area studies model of geopolitical C KoninklijkeBrill NV, Leiden, 2002

Journal of ArabicLiterature,XXXIII,1

46

POSTCOLONIALTHEORY AND MODERN ARABIC LITERATURE

In other words, postcolonial studies profess to make the balance of global power relations central to its inquiry, yet seems to inscribe neocolonial hegemony by privileging the languages (and consequently the canons) of the major colonial powers, Britain and France. Even the substantial colonial and postcolonial writing in other European languages such as Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, is no less excluded from postcolonial debates than texts written in the languages of the colonies: Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu, not to mention the oral literatures of Africa, Native Americans, and Australia's Aborigines, which pose a serious challenge to postcolonial theories based on contemporary notions of textuality. While the term "world literature"has been used in pedagogy more or less synonymously with "Western literature" (Hassan 40-3), the rubric of "postcolonial literature"has displaced "Commonwealth literature"and "ThirdWorld literature" as the dominant critical and pedagogical paradigm by which Anglo-American literary scholarship constitutes the cultural production of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. "Postcolonial literature"is distinguished from the older categories by affiliation with a specialized set of theoretical propositions that not only recognize the limitations of Western knowledge, but make of those limitations an object of analysis. Despite the limitations astutely exposed by Ann McClintock and Ella Shohat, among others, the term "postcolonial" has the merit of prioritizing the trauma of colonial history which is covered over in the hegemonic concepts of "Commonwealth" and "Francophonie," erased in phrases like "emergent literatures" or "new literatures in English," and by-passed in the politico-economic focus of the Three Worlds Theory.4 Without underestimating this distinctive merit, I shall be arguing that it does not follow that postcolonial theory as a critical and pedagogical prism enables the production of non-Eurocentric knowledge of Asian, African, and Caribbean literatures any more than the older paradigms. Indeed, in its very attempt to challenge Western epistemology, postcolonial theory sometimes homogenizes Asia and Africa in more subtle ways than the older paradigms or colonial discourse itself. In illustrating some of the conceptual limitations of postcolonial theory, especially with regard to modem Arabic literature, while attempting to resituate that tradition

groupings directly linked to U.S. strategic and foreign policy interests, on the one hand, and the traditional national language model organizing the study of European literatures on the other. Clearly, the uneasy fit of Fancophone Arabic literature challenges both models in a way that exposes the ideological assumptions of those academic structures. 4 Interestingly, like the Three Worlds theory, the term "postcolonial" also originated in the field of political economy, as Aijaz Ahmad points out ("The Politics" 1). On the category of "ThirdWorld Literature,"see Ahmad (In Theory 43-71,90-122). Bart Moore-Gilbert's Postcolonial Theory provides an excellent account of the emergence of the categories of "Commonwealth Literature" and "Postcolonial Literature" (5-33).


47

within the colonial context, my aim is to suggest how postcolonial studies and Arabic studies can expand one another's horizons. II. Postcolonial Theory Postcolonial theory has developed out of four European traditions of thought: Marxism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism,and feminism. Early anticolonial theorists such as Aim6 C6saire and Frantz Fanon found in the model of class struggle a useful paradigm for describing the relationship between colonizer and colonized. Thus in 1950 C6saire diagnosed European civilization as "decadent," "stricken," and "dying" because "it has been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule" which rendered it "incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem" (C6saire 9). Cesaire concluded that the "salvation of Europe... is a matter of the Revolution-the one which, until such a time as there is a classless society, will substitute for the narrow tyranny of a dehumanized bourgeoisie the preponderance of the only class that still has a universal mission... the proletariat" (61). Contra Cesaire, Fanon argued that while colonialism was a necessary stage in the development of capitalism, it did not necessarily follow that the European proletariat should make common cause with the colonized, for European "workers believe ... that they are part of the prodigious adventure of the Europeanspirit"(Fanon, The Wretched313). Withoutdiscarding Marxism, Fanon observed that the colonial system worked by conflating racial categories and their attendant structures of feeling (fear of and desire for the racial Other) with class structure: in the colony, "[t]he cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem" (40). For the trained psychiatrist, decolonization involved both a Manichean conflict between Europe and the wretched of the earth, as well as psychological liberation of the colonized from the inferiority and other complexes fostered by colonialism. It is noteworthy, however, that Fanon's critical approach to Marxism parallels his questioning of the Eurocentricity of psychoanalysis, and his sustained attempt to investigate the limits of its applicability in the colonial context (Black Skin 83-108, 141-209). A more scathing critique of Marxism came in Said's account of Orientalism. Said argued that classical Marxism was inadequate because of its monolithic conception of history which imposed the European model of class struggle on the colonies. For Marx, like Hegel before him, world history was coterminous with European history, into which other cultures and civilizations were to be subsumed. Said pointed out that despite his

48


abhorrence of colonialism, Marx argued that "England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating-the annihilation of the Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia" (qtd. in Orientalism 154).5 According to Said, such reasoning was enabled by Marx's "easy resource to a massed body of writing... that controlled any statement made about the Orient" (155). Employing Michel Foucault's notion of "discourse," Said undertook to analyze that "body of writing," thereby shifting the emphasis from Cesaire's and Fanon's critiques of the colonial system and its material practices to the critique of colonial discourse, a shift that entailed the methodological privileging of textuality. Yet this methodological shift did not, in Said's own writing, lead to a full appropriation of poststructuralist notions of textuality. Said's growing dislike for poststructuralismstemmed from its perceived failure to develop the "worldly" implications of textuality, of the kind he himself delineates in books like Covering Islam, The Question of Palestine, The World, the Text, and the Critic, and Culture and Imperialism. Therefore, for Said and a host of other critics-including figures as diverse as Gerald Graff (118-9), Frank Lentricchia (186), Terry Eagleton (Walter Benjamin 131-42), Barbara Foley (11334), Aijaz Ahmad (In Theory 34-42), and Jeffrey Nealon (22-49)poststructuralism is not only politically impotent, but it actually reinforces the dominant structures which its oppositional rhetoric professes to challenge (Said, The World 158-77). Notwithstanding, postcolonial theory after Orientalism came to be identified with the influential critics Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak, who relied much more heavily than Said on poststructuralism. Spivak offers no totalizing theory of colonial discourse, but rather an interventionist critical strategy that draws upon the discontinuous theoretical projects of feminism, Marxism, and deconstruction. This enables Spivak to carry out multiple, highly self-conscious critiques of several hegemonic structures all at once. In this way, Spivak has been able to introduce the category of gender into a field that had been dominated by male critics, and also to chart some of the horizons and limitations of feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralism. Her interest in pedagogy and her elaboration of notions 5 Aijaz Ahmad's strident attack on Said is motivated by what Ahmad considers to be Said's "anti-Marxism and [his] construction of a whole critical apparatus for defining a postmodem kind of anti-colonialism" (In Theory 222), and for the enormous influence that Said has exerted in this regard (15). Obviously, Ahmad's suggestion that to be "anti-Marxist" (which is not true of Said) is to be "postmodern" is, to say the least, problematic. For the most explicit statement by Said on his position toward Marxism, see "Interview with Edward Said" (Sprinker 258-63). See also Ahmad's "Marx on India: A Clarification" (In Theory 22142), which problematizes Said's reading of Marx.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORYAND MODERNARABICLITERATURE

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such as "epistemic violence," "vigilance," "responsibility," and the like restore a sense of urgency to postcolonial theory that is lacking in poststructuralism, while her notion of "strategic essentialism" mediates between political expediency and deconstructive anti-essentialism. This foregrounding of the politics of positionality has led her to advance the embattled thesis of the "silence" or the unreadability, within Western critical discourses, of the "subaltern."6For example, French feminism, according to Spivak, has created the stereotype of the "Third World woman" (Spivak, "Three Women's Texts" 262; In Other Worlds 134-53; "Can the Subaltern Speak?" 294-306), while psychoanalysis proposes transcendental categories that do not recognize cultural, historical, or class variables (In Other Worlds 80-2, 143; "Can the Subaltern Speak?" 296-7; The Postcolonial Critic 151). Thus both French feminism and psychoanalysis perpetuate epistemic violence. This argument has invited the charge of re-enacting the epistemology it seeks to dismantle, in that, as Benita Parry has argued, "Spivak in her own writing severely restricts (eliminates?) the space in which the colonized can be written back into history" (Parry 39). Consequently, it is argued that in Spivak the subaltern is silenced both in colonial discourse and in the counterdiscourse of "the postcolonial critic."7 By contrast, in Bhabha's theory of colonial discourse-a theory based on poststructuralism but without Said's and Spivak's skepticism toward the conceptual horizons and political limitations of French theory-the subaltern everywhere challenges colonial authority. But in full compliance with postmodernism's repudiation of what Jean-Franqois Lyotard calls "grand narratives," Bhabha's theory permits the subaltern no more than rhetorical acts of resistance that do not threaten colonialism's material hold on the colonies. Like Fanon, Bhabha draws on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis (yet again without Fanon's critical approach to the discipline) to clarify psychic operations of colonial discourse-such as anxiety, narcissism, fetishism, and so on-that betray its "ambivalence." For Bhabha, this 6 The categoryof the "subaltern"was borrowedfrom AntonioGramsciand used by Spivak and the Subaltern Studies Group to designate people of the colonies other than the Europeanizednative elite. But the term is sometimesalso extendedto encompassAsian and African socio-culturalphenomenathat escape Westernmodes of representation.E. San Juan offers the clearest elucidationto date of the uses and misuses of the term "Subaltern"(San Juan 85-99). 7 Spivak commentson this and similarchargesby Neil Larsonand Dipesh Chakrabarty as follows: "'Can the SubalternSpeak?'is not really aboutcolonialismat all. It is aboutagency: institutionallyvalidatedaction. To put it as simply as possible, I will quote a recentpiece... in India Abroad, a newspaperthat has no intellectualpretensions:'Spivak... argued that, unless validatedby dominantforms of knowledgeand politics, resistancecould not be recognized as such.' What kind of politics can emerge from this, asks Neil Larson.The politics of demandingand building an infrastructureso that when subalternsspeak they can be heard" (Spivak, "Foreword"xx).

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THEORYAND MODERNARABICLITERATURE POSTCOLONIAL

ambivalence undermines the intentionality Said ascribes to colonial discourse. Bhabha has argued that forms of native resistance such as "colonial mimicry," "sly civility," and so forth, contaminate imperial discourse in the colonial space of its implementation and frustrate the European subject's need for confirmation by the colonized (Bhabha 85-101). In this way, Bhabha suggests that colonial power is equally shared by colonizer and colonized. He also thereby shifts the focus of analysis from the material confrontation between colonizer and colonized, which was at the core of Cesaire's, Fanon's, and Said's work, to the textual ambivalences and contradictions of colonial writing; and from Fanon's interest in the psychic disorders of the colonized (throughout Black Skin and in The Wretched 249-310) to those of the colonizer.8 Abdul JanMohamed has accused this reading of colonial discourse of "repress[ing] the political history of colonialism" (JanMohamed 79), while Robert Young and Arif Dirlik have complained that Bhabha homogenizes what emerges in his writing as an always-already postmodern "condition" of "colonial discourse" and of "the postcolonial," a unitary category theorized

8 Bhabha's reading of Fanon is particularlyrelevant here: "The representativefigure of such a perversion[the "Manicheandelirium"of colonial and racial identities]... is the image man tetheredto, not confrontedby, his darkreflection,the shadowof of post-Enlightenment colonized man, that splits his presence,distortshis outline, breacheshis boundaries,repeats his actionat a distance,disturbsanddividestheverytimeof his being.Theambivalentidentification of the racist world... turnson the idea of man and his alienatedimage; not Self and Other but the othernessof the Self" (Bhabha44-Bhabha's emphasis).To rememberSartre'scomment that Fanon "speaksof you [Europeans]often, never to you.... [He] speaks to the colonized only" (Sartre10), is to realize that the revolutionaryimpulsebehindFanon'stheoryof decolonization as a Manicheanconfrontationbetween two opposing forces is completely deflated in Bhabha's readingof Fanon, which representsthe latter's discourseas though it were directed to the West and not to the colonized. In Bhabha's theory, the force of the Manicheanconfrontationis specifically and emphaticallynegated. One feels that Bhabha's answer to Fanon's question,"Whatdoes the black man want?"(Fanon,Black Skin 8) would white man to recognize be, contraSartreand Fanonhimself: to force the post-Enlightenment his "ambivalent[self-] identification."In this way, Bhabha's theory of colonial discourse, and drivenby psychoanalysisof the colonizer,domesticatesthe derivedfrom poststructuralism native in a strikinglysimilarmannerto the way Orientalismwas able to domesticate,contain, and in a sense to createits Other.Moore-Gilbertarguesthat in privilegingFanon'sBlackSkin WhiteMasksover The Wretchedof the Earth,Fanon'slatertext in which he developsthe theory of decolonizationas a Manicheanconfrontation,Bhabhais able to read Fanonnot as the committedrevolutionaryof the AlgerianWar of Independence,but as a semiotician(Moore(Parry31). Gilbert 138), or, in Benita Parry's apt phrase,as "a prematurepoststructuralist" Further,Bhabha'savoidanceof The Wretchedof the EarthignoresFanon'spreoccupationwith culturalnationalismas a necessary phase of decolonization,a phase which is fraughtwith difficulties, as Fanon was well aware, but which Bhabha would dismiss altogetheras yet anothercontradictoryand universalistconstructof the Enlightenment.Thus, as Bart MooreGilbertnotes, while professingto read the postmodernfrom the perspectiveof the postcolonial, Bhabha seems effectively to subsume the postcolonial into the postmodern(MooreGilbert 128). See also Neil Lazarusand Cedric Robinson.


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on the basis of a few examples taken from the archives of British India.9 As Young points out, Bhabha's claims to describe the conditions of colonial discourse-'mimicry is ...,'

'hybridity is...,'-seem

always offered as static concepts...

with no

referenceto... the culturesto which they are addressed.On each occasion Bhabhaseems to imply throughthis timeless characterization that the concept in question constitutesthe condition of colonial discourse itself and would holdgoodfor all historicalperiodsandcontexts.(Young,WhiteMythologies146) From this standpoint (and especially in the hands of the disciples of what Young calls the "Holy Trinity" of postcolonial theory, Said, Spivak, and Bhabha), postcolonial theory seems sometimes to deploy a sort of reverseEurocentrism. The almost complete reliance on the Western tradition of antihumanist critique of metaphysics-from Nietzsche to Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida-has meant that the "non-Western" Other remains inaccessible and unknowable. While poststructuralism has been able to unsettle the metaphysical basis of Eurocentrism, it has not provided an epistemological alternative for the production of non-Eurocentric knowledge. In fact, this is not even part of the poststructuralist project, as Spivak herself points out in her commentary on Julia Kristeva, Derrida, Lyotard, and Gilles Deleuze (we may also add Roland Barthes): "[i]n spite of their occasional interest in touching the other of the West, of metaphysics, of capitalism, their repeated question is obsessively self-centered: if we are not what official history and philosophy say we are, who then are we (not), how are we (not)?" (Spivak, In Other Worlds 137). The same can certainly be said about poststructuralist modes of postcolonial theory, in which the fetishization of colonial discourse relegates colonial history, anti-colonial discourses and practices, and 9 Arif Dirlik and RobertYoung rightly complainof the "noticeable geographicaland historical homogenizationof the history colonialism"in postcolonialstudies as a result of "the dominancein recent years of India as object of attentionamong those working in the field" (Young, Colonial Desire 164; Dirlik 329, 332-3, 339-41). Young reads this privileging of India as an ironic reinscriptionof colonial hierarchies: In Britain,work on Latin America,for example, tends to functionratherdistinctlyin isolation from much of the rest of colonial-discourseanalysis, largely because it is not an area where the Englishhave playedany greathistoricalrole, and thereforetends to remain the preserveof Latin Americanistswithin Departmentsof HispanicStudies.In comparison to the extensive work done on India, meanwhile,Africa remainscomparativelyneglected. In Britainthe reasons for this doubtlessbegin with the greaternumberof British Asians in higher education,as well as the differencein comparablenumbersof academics and graduatestudentsfrom Africa and Asia. Nevertheless,the greaterattentionaccorded to Indiastill seems to perpetuatethe differingevaluationsthatthe Britishaccordedto the various parts of their empire. It was always India that received the greatesteconomic, cultural and historicalattentionfrom the British.In the same way, today India quite clearly retainsthat positionof prideof place, the jewel in the crown of colonial-discourseanalysis. (Young, Colonial Desire 165-6)

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neocolonial realities to the shadows of negative epistemology. If humanism furnished imperialism with the enabling figure of the transcendental (European, male) subject-the Enlightenment's "Man"-anti-humanism, despite its deconstruction of Western metaphysics, has actually consolidated "Man's" discursive antagonist under the mark of the singular (the Lacanian "Other" who is now no more than a psychic "splitting" function), or otherwise ignored humanism's rendering of that Other as negative essence (the "non-West"). The project of poststructuralist strands of postcolonial theory, therefore, rests on the irreducible paradox of how to affirm the cultural and historical integrity of colonized societies from the decidedly Western-centered standpoint of anti-humanism. Yet the difference between postcolonialism and French theory proper is that while the latter inscribes the "non-West" as unknowable, the former renames it as the "postcolonial world" and claims to speak for it. But this is a claim that faces the same charge that Said leveled against Orientalism, namely that it creates in discourse the very object it displaces materially (Said, Orientalism 21); "the postcolonial world" is no more "out there" than the Orient. Take for example the concepts of hybridity, migrancy, and inbetweenness, which for Bhabha are the defining features of the postcolonial. Whence, one might ask, their current valorization, given the truism that all cultures have always been hybrid, and the fact that there were decisive migrations in India three thousand years ago, as well as in other parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe over the centuries? Hybridity and transculturation as such are old news, but they play such a pivotal role in postcolonial theory because they deconstruct the essentialist discourses through which colonial Europe defined itself by constructing a myth of pure racial and civilizational origin, and by defining its colonial subjects as quintessentiallydifferent from, and inferior to, itself. In the context of Western cultural and intellectual history, therefore, the postcolonial discourse on hybridity extends the poststructuralist interrogation of Eurocentrism. It is noteworthy, however, that such interrogation has not been the preserve of poststructuralism and its literary critical appropriations, as evidenced by seminal work in the fields of anthropology, classical studies, economics, geography, and history, by figures as diverse as Samir Amin (1989), Martin Bernal (1987), J. M. Blaut (1993), Johannes Fabian (1983), and Andre Gunder Frank (1998). Yet the celebration of hybridity has often led to a "prematureutopianism" (Eagleton, "Nationalism" 24) in which a postmodern sort of hybridity is superficially celebrated and commercialized without much attention given to material structures of inequality and oppression. This kind of hybridity becomes "a figure for the consecration of hegemony" (Shohat 110). If "[flixity of identity is only sought in situations of instability and disruption, of conflict and change" (Young, White Mythologies 4), we might also say that the opposite


53

is true, namely that the privilegingof hybridityin postmodernismbetokens the stabilityof neocolonialrelationsin the post-ColdWar era of U.S. military dominance,and the seemingly unstoppablespreadof global capitalism in the New World Order. III. Colonial History in the Arab World When consideringcolonial history in the Arab world, the anti-essentialist zeal of the discourseon hybridityobscuresthe pivotal role of culturalmemory both in colonial and anti-colonialdiscourses.Said has been criticizedfor suggesting that Homer and Dante could be read as Orientalists.No doubt, it would be theoreticallyinaccurateto advocatethat a single, monolithicdiscourse on the Orienthas reignedfor three millennia,but by the same token it would be naive to deny that many of the culturalrepresentationsproduced throughout that long history did not, in fact, pass on from one age to another,informing,and being assimilatedinto, differentmodes of discourse, throughthe agency of culturalmemory.Thus, for example,when the British army advancedon Palestine in October 1917, the campaignwas perceived in the British and Americanpress as the "LastCrusade,"and its leaderwas quite readily eulogized as "Allenbyof Armageddon."'°By the same token, the scene of a victorious Allenby standingat the tomb of Saladin in Damascus to vaunt Europe's triumphant"return"remains quite vivid in Arab

10 See

RaymondSavage, Allenbyof Armageddon,which contains numerouspassages animatedby the romanceand sentimentalismof the title. For example, the arrivalof the British army at Jerusalemis describedthus: Dawn was approachingwith no sound from the ancient city where Abrahammade the covenantwith Abimelech-the southerngateway to the Holy Landbefore which the silent hosts were closing in, 907 years after the destruction of Charlemagne's Christian Protectoratefirst roused the Crusaders'challenge, 'Deus vult...' for the Wars of the Cross. Resurgentwhen Saladin conqueredGalilee, the Crescenthad dominatedthe cradle of Christianityin unbrokensway for its destined span from that sanguinaryOctoberto October,1917, exactly seven hundredand thirtyyears. (217) By far less given to sentimentalismthan Savage, ArchibaldWavell, anotherbiographerof Allenby, invokes the same kind of culturalmemoryto suggest, even more audaciouslythan Savage, that the defeat of "Turks"by "Englishmen"seems to be a historicaldestiny fulfilled over and over again: on September18, 1918, the Britisharmy passed over a battlefieldwhere an English commanderhad won a notable victory more than seven hundredyears previously.At the battle of Arsuf (September7, 1191) Richard Cceur de Lion... had outmanoeuveredand outfought a worthy opponent in Saladin. Saladin's host had included a considerableforce of Turkishbowmen, while Richard's international[sic] force of Crusaderscontainedan English contingentof horse and foot. So that it was not the firsttime that the groundover which the cavalrynow rode had felt the victoriousrush of English cavalry in pursuitof Turks.(Wavell 274) On the reaction of British and U.S. media to the invasion of Palestine, see Lawrence James 144.

54


consciousness even today (Abfu Zayd, Al-Nass 23). We could certainly, in the interest of theoretical accuracy, speak of a medieval discourse of the Crusades as distinct from, though sharing much with, modern Orientalist discourse, but clearly in 1917 such distinctions were irrelevant, as they remain even today in the discourses of policy makers, political commentators, and media pundits." The Marxist privileging of class struggle, poststructuralist anti-essentialism, the universalism of psychoanalysis, and feminism's critique of patriarchy all effectively foreclose any consideration of the kind of cultural memory that marks colonial history in the Arab world with a unique character, which should neither be theorized in terms of a universal postcolonial condition, nor elided in a unitary conception of "the postcolonial world." Colonial discourses in the various contexts of Africa and Asia, especially India, which quickly became the primary focus of postcolonial studies, were less fraught with the perennial, recycled representations that Orientalism perpetuated about the Near East. In the case of Africa, for example, Patrick Brantlinger has demonstrated that "the myth of the Dark Continent developed during the transition from the main British campaign against the slave trade, which culminated in the outlawing of slavery in all British territory in 1833, to the imperialist partitioning of Africa which dominated the final quarter of the nineteenth century" (Brantlinger 185). Brantlinger points out that this development occurred in direct proportion to the changing nature of British imperialist interests. The new "myth," of course, replaced the earlier myth of the "Noble Savage," which had informed European perceptions not only of Africans (especially Ethiopians), but also of many diverse peoples from Native Americans in the New World (Montaigne's cannibals being a well-known example) to the Indians and the Chinese in Asia. In the twelfth century, for instance, India was believed to be the locus of "the legendary kingdom of Ethiopia" (Baudet 13-4). In fact, the fantasy about the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia gave rise to the belief, "until the sixteenth century, that contact with this natural ally was the key to the future triumph of Christianity over Islam" (15).12 In the fourteenth-century worldview of John Mandeville, the "Saracens" had a concrete and menacing presence in European consciousness, while the rest of the world beyond Persia, India, and Tartary was populated by legendary humanoid monstrosities-sciapodes, acephali, cynocephali, and so forth-none of which represented any real threat

11 Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis is but a recent example. See its refu-

tation by Said (Reflectionson Exile 567-90) and AnouarMajid(5-12, 22-3).

12 See Henri Baudet's account of the medieval European myth of the noble savage, which almost always contrasted with Europe's perception of a hostile Islamic world (10-22).


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to Europe."3Even with greatly improvedknowledge of the world from the Renaissanceto the eighteenthcentury,Europeanstereotypesof distantpeoples in general vacillated between, on the one hand, utopian variationson the theme of the Noble Savage (as in the myth of Eldoradoor the Abyssinia of Samuel Johnson'sRasselas), and on the other hand, demonizationsthat served to justify the colonizationof the New World,the Africanslave trade, and nascent imperialismin Africa and Asia.14 But none of those demonized peoples representedthe kind of threatposed by the Arab presencein Spain until 1492, or by the Ottomansiege of Vienna in 1683, and which, together with geographicalproximityand historicreligious rivalry,explains the keen interesttaken by Enlightenmentwritersin the "Orient." Naturally,therefore,when colonial discoursesdeveloped in the late eighteenth century, they could not have conceivably taken a singular form, as postcolonialtheory tends to construethem, because of the differentcultural memories embeddedin each colonial context. The situationbecomes even more complex when we consider the radically different roles of religion today in western Europe and the U.S. on the one hand, and in the Arab world, on the other. Take Islamic fundamentalism.As amply documented, in Westernmedia generally the phenomenonof Islamic fundamentalismis interpretedmore or less as a sick manifestationof Islam's demonic essence, somethingthat is never said about Jewish, Christian,Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist fundamentalisms.'5Western cultural memory here clearly deploys representationsfrom the discourseof the Crusades.The Islamic world generally tends to be seen as medieval, caught in an epochal lag, several centuries "behind"the West. Such representations(which rely on the linear temporalityat the heart of the Enlightenmentdoctrineof Progress)obscure the fact that Islamic fundamentalismtoday is a form of political resistance bothto despoticArabgovernmentsandto neocolonialism,especiallyas Western powers sponsor many repressive and corrupt Arab regimes. As MooreGilbertremindsus, "while the West rushes to condemncontemporaryseparatist figures like Louis Farrakhan,or the 'fundamentalism'of the Iranian clergy, it all too easily forgets its own responsibilityfor creating the contexts of extreme exploitation and discriminationwhich produce the anger and despair out of which such 'rejectionism' emerges" (Moore-Gilbert 197). This is particularly salient in the prototype of all contemporary 13 Shakespeare's Othello famously recounts his encounter with such creatures during his life as a wandering mercenary soldier (Othello I.iii. 142-44), before rising to prominence in Venice for defeating the Muslim Turks. 14 See Michael Palencia-Roth's investigations into the discourses on monstrosity and cannibalism, and the changing European perceptions of the inhabitants of the New World. 15 See, for example, Edmund Ghareeb (1983), Michael Hudson and Ronald Wolfe (1980), Jack Shaheen (1984, 1997, 2001), Edward Said (1997), and Mohammad Siddiqi (1997).

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fundamentalist movements, Sudanese Mahdism of the late nineteenth century, which was quite explicitly a nationalist anti-colonial movement as well as a religious revival. The same dual character gave impetus to the Iranian Revolution, which ousted the U.S.-sponsored dictatorship of the Shah. Contemporary fundamentalist movements in Arab countries have emerged since the 1970's to fill the ideological void created by the failure of secular official projects like socialism and the pan-Arab nationalism, or Nasserism, of the 1950's and 1960's, and the continuing political disenfranchisement of the masses in countries where participatory democracy is virtually absent. And like extremism in other religions, Islamic fundamentalist discourse is nostalgic, hegemonic, patriarchal, often misogynistic, and essentialist in its conception of Islamic identity and Islamic society as sharply distinguished from non-Moslem-particularly Western-norms. It is a reactionary discourse that reinscribes the Orientalist Us/Them divide, although "Them" extends to secular Arab governments and intellectuals. Yet fundamentalism is only one form of resistance with which poststructuralist strands of postcolonial theory could not and would not engage; what engages fundamentalist discourse is a small group of Arab secular intellectuals and religious reformers, who offer progressive interpretations of the religious texts to challenge canonical interpretations embraced unquestioningly by traditional clerics and by fundamentalists."6Those innovative interpretations advocate reforms in the areas of women's rights, social organization, and political institutions. And those progressive intellectuals also see themselves as actively committed to resisting neocolonialism as well as political despotism at home. Events like the execution of the Sudanese theologian Mahmoud Muhammad Taha by Numeiri in 1988, the assassination of Farag Foda in 1992 by radical fundamentalists in Egypt, and the persecution of Nasr Abu Zayd in 1994 and Nawal el-Saadawi in 2001, both by the religious Right (which secular authorities feel compelled to appease from time to time) and most astonishingly by the Egyptian judiciary system in Abu Zayd's case, begin only to hint at the complexities of the cultural politics in the Arab world, and the ease with which such events are sensationalized and misappropriated in Western media, often without any serious attention to their context. In its narrativizing of the "postcolonial world," postcolonial theory-derived as it is from Western secular anti-humanismis in no better position to offer any deeper insights into the Arab world's "cultural wars" than the Western media, since those wars are fought over the interpretation of Islam, not its decentralization or its deconstruction. 16 See, for example, the books by Nasr Abu Zayd, MuhammadSa'id al-'Ashmawi,Farag Foda, and MahmoudMuhammadTaha listed in the WorksCited. CharlesKurzman'sLiberal Islam:A Sourcebookis an excellentanthologyof selectedtexts spanningthe twentiethcentury.


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IV. Arabic LiteraryScholarshipand Postcolonial Studies In the meantime, traditional literary scholarship in the field of Middle EasternStudies, both in Euro-Americanuniversitiesand in the Arab world, has tended to ignore or to severely bracketthe role of colonial history and anti-colonialresistancein modem Arabic literature,in spite of the fact that modem Arabic literatureis conventionallysaid to begin in the nineteenth century in response to the colonial encounterwith Europe. What is often stressed,however, is that duringthe precedingthree centuries,Arabic literature languished in decadence and stagnation within the stifling cultural milieu of the OttomanEmpire.17Some scholarshave furthersuggested that exposure to European,especially British and French,literaturebenignly, as it were, revitalizedArabic letters. One result of this narrativehas been the unquestioningapplicationof Western periodizationand interpretiveprocedures to modem Arabic literature. It was not simply Arab intellectuals'fascinationwith modem European civilization but also, and more urgently,its colonial threat that led to the movementknown as Nahda (or "revival")in the mid-nineteenthcentury.In the wake of the short-livedFrench occupationof Egypt, MuhammadAli's first aim was to build a modem army,and thereforethe purposeof the educational missions he began sending to Francein the late 1820's was to borrow Europeanscience and technology. Those missions eventually exposed Arab intellectuals to Europeanculture, thought, and literature.The nineteenth-centurydisciples of Rifa'a al-Tahtawisaw their task as one of selective borrowingfrom Europewhile at the same time preservingArab cultural identity,and that explains the renewedinterest,in the latterpartof the 19th century, in classical Arabic poetry, the cultural product of the perceived Golden Age of Arabicliterature(5th-llth centuries).Not surprisingly,therefore, poetry,which Arabs have always consideredto be one of their greatest culturalachievements,was restoredto its function as the expression of social values and aspirations,as well as an importantorgan of social and political mobilization.Classical Arabic poetrywas a powerfulform of public discourse in which the poet assumed the role of spokesman for the community.It is precisely such a role that MahmoudSami al-Barudi,the pioneer of what came to be describedas "neo-classical"poetry, played in the 1860's, when he began to voice opposition to the policies of Egypt's Turkishruler Khedive Isma'il, policies which led to the British occupation in 1882, after which the poet was sent into exile by the British, along with 17 Roger Allen has questionedthis narrative"in view of the almost total dearthof knowledge about the literature"of what "has been dubbed'the period of decadence'" (Allen 14). Bridget Connelly's Arab Folk Epic and Identityattemptsto redress some of that "dearthof knowledge"in the area of vernacularnarrativepoetry.

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the revolutionary leader Ahmad 'Urabi. In the following decades, other "neo-classical"poets, notably the EgyptiansAhmad Shawqi (who also suffered exile) and Hafiz Ibrahim,the IraqisMa'rufal-Rusafiand Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, and the Palestinian Ibrahim Tuqan, likewise wrote "poemsof occasion"which respondedto political events in ways that often galvanizedpublic opinion against colonial powers.18 Faced with the consolidationof colonial rule after WWI, many so-called Arab "Romantic"poets rejected the conventions embracedby their "neoclassical" predecessorsand insteaddrew inspirationfrom EuropeanRomanticism. The Romanticsneverthelesssaw themselves as actively engaged in cultural resistance. In addition to writing poems of occasion, many poets now took aim at Orientalistdiscourse in ways that emphasizedcultureas the arena of contestation.Thus the Romanticpoet and critic 'Abbas Mahmoud al-'Aqqadarguedthat by using the inorganicform and conventional desert imageryof the classical ode, "neo-classical"poets were simply reinforcing colonial stereotypes about the incoherenceand ahistoricityof the "Orientalmind." In this way, as Terri DeYoung argues, the shift from the neo-classicalto the Romanticmode was itself motivatedby the need to constructa cohesive Arab self that defied such stereotypes(DeYoung 176-81). Further,the revolutionaryzeal of EuropeanRomanticismappealed to the Arab Romanticswho came to see in it a reflectionof their own rebelliousness against colonial domination (151-85). Likewise, argues DeYoung, despite the devalorizationof narrativein classical Arabic poetry,the narrative tendencyin the poetryof the pioneerof ArabicmodernismBadr Shakir al-Sayyab during the 1950's is part of this attempt to constructa poetic postcolonial narrativethat challenges Orientalist discourse (221-53).'9 In these and other ways, Arab Romanticand modernistpoets were selectively appropriatingfrom Europeanliterary history those paradigms,forms, and styles which served their own anti-colonialends. In the absence of any considerationof the colonial context, critics have tended hastily and unquestioninglyto use Westernperiodizationto describe the developmentof modernArabicliterature,thus reducingit, in DeYoung's words, to "an inexorable sequencing not of its own making,"as if those phases of modem Arabicliterature(romanticism,realism,modernism)"were simply repetitionsof their Westerncounterparts... that had to be 'gotten through'so that one could arrive at the teleologically determinedendpoint 18 The anti-colonial fervor of Nahda intellectuals, including al-Barudi,Ahmad Shawqi, Qasim Amin, and Muhammad'Abduh,is movingly capturedin Ahdaf Soueif's semi-historical novel, The Map of Love. See also Hussein Kadhim'sdiscussionof Shawqi's anticolonial

poetry. 19 See also Hussein Kadhim'swork on al-Sayyab'srevisionof T. S. Eliot.


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of modernism" (159). Thus Western and Arab critics alike have usually been content to posit a straightforward "influence" of Wordsworth on Arab Romantic and of T. S. Eliot on modernist poetry. A similar tendency is found in the conventional division of Naguib Mahfouz's lengthy career into phases that replicate the history of the European novel: from historical to realistic, modernist, and postmodernist fiction.20 Consideration of colonial history takes us beyond such reductive readings, which have tended to assume (and have, therefore, succeed only in demonstrating) unproblematic imitation of European canonical writers. Such assumptions obscure "the activity of resistance" and of "identity formation as they oscillate in a dialectic of power... between colonizer and colonized" (160). V. Conclusion Postcolonial studies and Arabic literary studies have much to offer each other. Postcolonial studies can add valuable dimensions to Arabic literary scholarship-interdisciplinary inquiry, theoretical sophistication, and historical contextualization-that are lacking in older modes of Orientalist scholarship and the current area studies model. The enduring significance of postcolonial theory, to my mind, is that it has propelled issues of colonialism and imperialism to the forefront of critical and intellectual debates in the West, and succeeded in changing the assumptions of several fields of inquiry within the humanities and social sciences. Said's achievement in this respect was possible not so much because of the novelty of the central thesis in Orientalism, for Arab intellectuals since the nineteenth century have been all too aware of the tainting of Orientalist knowledge by anti-Arab racism, religious prejudice, and colonial interests.21It was Said's prominent location within the Western academic establishment and his use of French theory that forced the postcolonial perspective onto the scene, and coincidentally rescued English studies in the U.S. from its crisis of the mid 1970's (which has led one critic irreverently to suggest that English departments should erect statues to Said [Harootunian 142]). Likewise, Bhabha's and Spivak's theories drew their prestige and authorityfrom their reliance on French theory's currency and novelty in the 1980's. Neither Cesaire's condemnation of humanism three decades earlier, nor other varieties of Marxist critique (which has never been fashionable in Anglo-American universities to begin with) were effective in this regard. 20 While making an argument for multiple literary "modernisms" emerging within distinct historical contexts, Stefan Meyer rejects the use of the term "postmodernism" to describe Arabic fiction of recent decades (255-79). 21 See, for example, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani's responses to Ernest Renan and Qasim Amin's reply to the Duc d'Harcourt.

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In that sense, postcolonial theory has been able to provide conceptual and ethical frameworks for Western readers in which to interpret European colonial literature and certain kinds of postcolonial texts that address colonial history along a number of specific trajectories charted by poststructuralist and postmodernist theory. Postcolonial theory unveils the limitations, as well as the persistence, of hegemonic discourses, and is therefore a healthy reminder of the existence of other worlds outside of Western modes of thought and representation. But this is also where postcolonial theory can be the most mystifying, for the moment it pretends to stand for or to subsume those other worlds, it begins to re-enact the limitations of Marxism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. By the same token, the vast majority of Asian and African literary texts produced since the onset of modern European colonialism simply do not fall into any homogenous category. Even if we limit ourselves to the twentieth century, we realize that the number of works that fit within the paradigms of resistance privileged in postcolonial theory is scant. This emergent canon of postcolonial-literature-as-world-literature privileges texts written in English and French at the expense of enormously varied literatures written in other, especially non-European, languages. It also inscribes "writing back," Diaspora, migrancy, border-crossings, in-betweenness, and hybridity as the defining features of the "postcolonial condition." While such issues are important, without a doubt, they are extremely limited when we remember that the vast majority of African and Asian populations are not Diasporic, migrants, or bilingual, and may, indeed, have never even traveled beyond the borders of their native countries. The current impasse in postcolonial studies may therefore be overcome by opening the field to comparative literary studies and to comparative critical methodologies that rigorously interrogate the limits of postcolonial theory's founding discourses from the multiple perspectives of Arabic, African, and Asian philosophies, realities, cultural worldviews, and cultural memories. This would safeguard against postcolonial theory's current reinscription of the model according to which the West furnishes theoretical paradigms while the rest of the world yields the objects of analysis. Resisting that theoretical imperialism may well mean, in the final analysis, that postcolonial theory needs to theorize its own limits and its own horizons. Arabic studies in particular can play a crucial role in this regard. Illinois State University

WAILS. HASSAN


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Adelson, Roger. Londonand the Inventionof the Middle East: Money, Power, and War, 1902-1922. New Haven and London:Yale UP, 1995. Al-Afghani,Jamal al-Din. "L'islamismeet la science."Journal des Debats 18 May 1883. .Al-radd 'dla al-zdhiriyyin.Cairo, 1903. Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory:Classes, Nations, Literatures.London:Verso, 1992. . "The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality." Race & Class 36.3 (1995): 1-20.

Allen, Roger. The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction.2nd ed. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1995.

Amin, Qasim. Les Egyptiens:Reponsed M. le duc d'Harcourt.Paris, 1894. Amin, Samir. Eurocentrism. Trans. Russell Moore. New York: Monthly Review P,

1989. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory

and Practice in Post-ColonialLiteratures.London:Routledge, 1989. Al-'Ashmawi, MuhammadSa'id. Usul al-shari'a al-isldmiyya. Cairo: Dar Sina, 1979. .Al-isldm al-siydisi.Cairo:Dar Sina, 1987. . Al-khildfa al-isldmiyya. Cairo: Dar Sina, 1990.

Baudet, Henri. Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughtson European Images of NonEuropean Man. Trans. Elizabeth Wentholt. New Haven: Yale UP, 1965.

Bemal, Martin.Black Athena:The Afro-AsiaticRoots of Classical Civilization.New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 1987. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. 1994.

Blaut, J. M. The Colonizer's Model of the World:GeographicalDiffusionismand EurocentricHistory.New York: GuilfordP, 1993. Brantlinger,Patrick."Victoriansand Africans:The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Continent."In Gates, 185-222. Buell, Lawrence."AmericanLiteraryEmergenceas a Postcolonial Phenomenon." AmericanLiteraryHistory4:3 (Fall 1992): 411-42. Cesaire,Aim6. Discourse on colonialism.Trans.Joan Pinkham.New York:Monthly Review P, 1972.

Connelly, Bridget.Arab Folk Epic and Identity.Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1986. DeYoung, Terri. Placing the Poet: Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Postcolonial Iraq. Albany: SUNY P, 1998. Dirlik, Arif. "The PostcolonialAura: Third World Criticismin the Age of Global Capitalism."Critical Inquiry20 (Winter 1994): 328-56. Eagleton, Terry. WalterBenjamin,or Towardsa RevolutionaryCriticism.London: NLB, 1981. . "Nationalism:IronyandCommitment." Nationalism,Colonialism,and Literature by TerryEagleton,FredricJameson,and EdwardSaid. Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1990. 23-39. Fabian,Johannes.Time and the Other: How AnthropologyMakes Its Object. New York, ColumbiaUP, 1983.

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Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove P, 1967. . The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. Foda, Farag [ffuda,faraj]. Qabi al-suquit. Cairo, 1985. Foley, Barbara."The Politics of Deconstruction." In Rhetoric and Form: Deconstruction at Yale. Ed. Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer. Norman: U of Oklahoma P. 1985. 113-34. Frank, Andr6 Gunder. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1998. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ed. "Race," Writing, and Difference. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. Ghareeb, Edmund. Split Vision: The Portrayal of Arabs in the American Media. Washington, D.C.: American-Arab Affairs Council, 1983. Graff, Gerald. Literature Against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979. Harootunian, H. D. "Postcoloniality's Unconscious/Area Studies' Desire." Postcolonial Studies 2.2 (1999): 127-47. Hassan, Wail S. "World Literature in the Age of Globalization: Reflections on an Anthology." College English 63.1 (September 2000): 38-47. Hudson, Michael and Ronald Wolfe, eds. The American Media and the Arabs. Washington, D.C.: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1980. Hulme, Peter. "IncludingAmerica." ARIEL:A Review of InternationalEnglish Literature 26.2 (January 1995): 117-23. JanMohamed, Abdul R. "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature." In Gates, 78-106. James, Lawrence. Imperial Warrior: The Life and Times of Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby 1861-1936. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993. Kadhim, Hussein. "The Poetics of Postcolonialism: Two Qasidahs by Ahmad Shawqi." Journal of Arabic Literature 28:3 (October 1997): 179-218. . "Rewriting The Waste Land: Badr Shakir al-Sayyab's 'Fi al-maghrib al'arabi."' Journal of Arabic Literature 30:2 (July 1999): 128-65. Kurzman, Charles. Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Lazarus, Neil. "Disavowing Decolonization: Fanon, Nationalism, and the Problematic of Representation in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse." Research in African Literatures 24.4 (1993): 69-98. Lentricchia, Frank. After the New Criticism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. Majid, Anouar. Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World. Durham: Duke UP, 2000. McClintock, Anne. "The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term 'Post-Colonial.'" Social Text 31/32 (1992): 84-98. Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Trans. Howard Greenfeld. Boston: Beacon P, 1991. Meyer, Stefan. The Experimental Arabic Novel: Postcolonial Literary Modernism in the Levant. Albany: SUNY P, 2001. Mishra, Vijay and Bob Hodge. "What is Post(-)Colonialism?" Textual Practice 5.3 (1991): 399-414. Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics. London: Verso, 1997.


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Nealon, Jeffrey T. Double Reading: Postmodernism after Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. Al-Nowaihi, Magda. "The 'Middle East'? Or.. /Arabic Literatureand the Postcolonial Predicament." In Schwarz and Ray, 282-303. Palencia-Roth, Michael. "Enemies of God: Monsters and the Theology of Conquest." Monsters, Tricksters and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities. Ed. A. James Arnold. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1996. 23-50. . "Mapping the Caribbean: Cartography and the Cannibalization of Culture." A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 3: Cross-Cultural Studies. Ed. A. James Arnold. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1997. 3-27. Parry, Benita. "Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse." Oxford Literary Review 9.1-2 (1987): 27-58. Robinson, Cedric. "The Appropriation of Frantz Fanon." Race and Class 35.1 (1993): 79-91. Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Peregrine Books, 1978. . The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage, 1980. . The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983. . Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993. . Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. Revised ed. New York: Vintage, 1997. . Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000. San Juan, E. Beyond Postcolonial Theory. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Preface" to Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. 7-31. Savage, Raymond. Allenby of Armageddon. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926. Schwarz, Henry and Sangeeta Ray, eds. A Companion to Postcolonial Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Shaheen, Jack. The TV Arab. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green UP, 1984. . Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture. Washington, D.C.: Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, 1997. . Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Northampton,MA: Interlink, 2001. Shakespeare, William. Othello. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. Shohat, Ella. "Notes on the 'Post-Colonial."' Social Text. 31/32 (1992): 99-113. Shueller, Malini Johar. U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790-1890. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1998. Siddiqi, Mohammad. Islam, Muslims, and the Media: Myths and Realities. Chicago: NAAMPS Publications, 1997. Soueif, Ahdaf. The Map of Love. New York: Anchor Books, 1999. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism." In Gates 262-80. . In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 1988. . "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana: U. of Illinois P, 1988. 271-313. . The Postcolonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym. New York: Routledge, 1990. . "Foreword:Upon Reading the Companion to Postcolonial Studies." In Schwarz and Ray xv-xxii. Sprinker, Michael, ed. Edward Said: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.

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Taha, Mahmuid Muhammad. Al-risdla al-thdniya min al-isldm. London: Sudanese Human Rights Organization, 1996. Wavell, Archibald. Allenby: A Study in Greatness. New York: Oxford UP, 1941. Young, Robert. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London: Routledge, 1990. . Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995.

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J.A. ABU-HAIDAR. Hispano-Arabic Literature and the Early Provencal Lyrics.

Richmond:CurzonPress, 2001. Pp. x + 266, bibliography,index. J.A. Abu-Haidar'srecent contributionto the ongoing scientific debate over literary relationshipsbetween stanzaicAndalusiPoetry and ProvenqalLyrics providesreaders with a good summaryof this scholar's positions and achievementsin the field. It shouldbe pointedout from the outset that this book is really a collection of previously publishedarticlesratherthan a completelynew work offeringnew perspectives. On p. viii the authorgives thanksto the editors of the publicationsin which the articles originally appeared for granting permission for their reproduction. However,he fails to give exact referencesfor these previousworks (journals' numbers, dates of publication,pages). Moreover,a reference should really have been includedto indicate that Chapter10 has been previouslypublishedin the Proceedings of a Conference entitled Poesia Estr6fica, Actas del Primer Congreso Internacional sobre Poesia Estr6fica Arabe y Hebrea y sus Paralelos Romances (Madrid, diciem-

bre de 1989), Madrid:ed. by F. Corrienteand A. Sienz-Badillos, 1991, pp. 11-21. Such a compilationof articleswrittenat differenttimes and for differentjournals lends itself to repetition,which althoughperhapsunavoidable,is irritatingnonetheless. To mention but one case, chapters8 and 10 overlap with, and are surpassed respectivelyby chapters9 and 11, which offer, from a similarangle, a more elaborate discussion of the same questions.It also makes it difficultto updatethe bibliography or to revise some of the ideas in line with the new developmentsin the field in recent years. AlthoughI will endeavourto presenthere some examples of these inaccuracies,I would, however, from the outset, like to emphasisethe intrinsic worth of this work which successfullyachieves its objectivesof clearly presenting a series of particularideas. As for the title of the book, I remainslightly disappointedwith the termHispanoArabic,for it comes to emphasizethe Hispanicingredientof this literature.It seems obvious from the author'srepeatedstatementsthat he does not consideral-Andalus literaturea distinct form of literature,but rathera continuationof Eastern ideas, themes and forms, with nothingto do either with presumedearlierHispanicLyrics or with the local milieu. Instead of Hispano-Arabic, the term Andalusi or Andalusi

Arabic seems more appropriate,so as to bring the title in line with one of AbuHaidar's main ideas, namely, that stanzaic Andalusi Poetry is not an inventionof HispanicAndalusisbut an extension of previousEasternmodels. The book is divided into three majorparts:I, "PopularLiterature"(chapters1-4); II, "The Muwashshahdt:An IntegralPart of Classical Arabic Literature"(chapters 5-9); and III, "No Arabic Echoes in the ProvenqalLyrics."The introductorychapter ("Whatthis work is about")includes two interestingand sensible remarks:first, that we should not turn the printedword into an object of reverence;and second, that literarytheoriesmust not be viewed as the focus of attention.Instead,attention should be paid to the literaturein its own right. With these importantpremises in mind, Abu-Haidarattempts to show that Andalusi Literature,including stanzaic poetry (muwashshahand zajal), has nothing to do with any pre-existingRomance literatureor with Provenqallyrics. The pointhere, convincinglystatedby the author, is that Andalusiliteratureis deeply rooted in the mainstreamof Arabic literature. © KoninklijkeBrill NV, Leiden, 2002

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Chapters 1, 2 and 5 deal with the literary function of the zajal and the kharja. A clear-cut distinction is established between hazl genre (burlesque, entertaining, vulgar and also piquant) and jidd genre (serious, classical). Zajal and kharja patently belong to the former. The kharja is thus an element of hazl introduced into the highly elaborate muwashshah. It is the condiment, the salt, but not the base upon which the muwashshsah was constructed. The lack of kharjas in the zajal is precisely due to the fact that, "being the zajal totally hazl, it has no need and no place for an appended kharja" (p. 116). About the language of the zajal, Abu-Haidar prefers to view it as a mixed language, made of the vernacular Arabic on the one hand and some classical vocabulary and syntax on the other (p. 39). This is true, as proven by close examination of Ibn Quzman's work, but it should be noted that any written piece of Arabic, let alone literary pieces, includes classical features. It is hard to find samples of Arabic letters or poetry completely free of these classical elements. For instance, practically all of the sources used by F. Corriente to reconstruct the Andalusi Arabic dialect contain classicisms, albeit to varying degrees. Although it is true that Ibn Quzman sometimes employed classical Arabic, the language of the zajals stands, in my view, as a valid testimony of the Andalusi dialect of the twelfth-century Cordova. Chapters 3 and 4 are focused on Ibn Quzman's diwan. Some critical comments are put forward on the interpretation of several points by Garcia G6mez and Corriente in their editions. Some of them are well founded, and others are perhaps more dubious. However, this is not the place to discuss Abu-Haidar's proposals in detail. The author states that the "diwdn should be treated with great care, and no changes or emendations should be introduced on the single manuscript we have of it, unless they are the kind of changes which, as Emerson says, constitute their own evidence" (p. 79). Needless to say, deciding which changes are "evident" and which are not depends on the criteria of each editor. What for one scholar is an "evident" emendation may not be so clear for another. Common sense and a profound knowledge of the Arabic literary background are indeed powerful tools, but I think that another powerful tool has been underestimated by Abu-Haidar, namely, an acquaintance with Andalusi Arabic dialect, which led F. Corriente to introduce a host of sound linguistically guided emendations to the Ibn Quzman manuscript. It is beyond doubt that many of the "vagaries" (to use Abu-Haidar's term) of Ibn Quzman's language are closely connected to the vernacular Andalusi Arabic, which stands as an important key for a correct interpretation and edition of the diwdn. To undervalue this fact, as the author sometimes seems to do, is to overlook one part of the whole picture, a complex picture in which all elements need to be considered before reliable judgements can be made. Pages 60-63, for instance, devoted to the use of an "anomalous" tanwin, reveal that the author is somewhat misled, for he relates this tanwin to an accusative case ending whereas Andalusi sources clearly show that it acts as a connective form between a noun and its attribute, irrespective of case inflection. It is clear that great caution must be taken when proposing emendations, but it is precisely the effort displayed in these proposals that contributes to an improved acquaintance with the original text. Thus, although there are inherent dangers when editing problematic passages, the potential gains seem to outweigh the possible risks of mistakes. Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9 discuss, among other points, the origins and settings of the muwashshah. The main ideas of the author may be summarized as follows: Eastern rhymed prose, mainly the maqamdt, took al-Andalus by storm. In a milieu where difficulty of execution passed for merit, the muwashshsah developed as an extension

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of the permutationsof rhyme (basically fetteredrhyme) in Arabic prose to Arabic poetry. In doing so, technical difficulties made Andalusi poets feel less inhibited about using poetic licence and modifying syntax and metre, which became more irregularor deviated from classical standards.As the main concern of Andalusi poets was the rhyme,they were inclinedto sacrificemetreand syntax for its benefit. The kharja,which is the use of anotherlanguage (Romance)or anothervariantof the same language (AndalusiArabic) at the end of the poem, could be viewed as anotherchallenge, a proof of virtuosityand sophistication.There are two types of muwashshah:one which scans (al-muwashshahas-siri) and anotherwhich simply does not scan (al-muwashshahgayr as-si'ri). Attemptingto scan the latter is tantamount to trying to squarethe circle. AlthoughI agree with most of these ideas, I still considerthat scanningdifficultmuwashshahdtor analysingtheir syntacticpeculiaritiesis not a fruitlesstask, especially when applyingsolid linguisticcriteria,like, for instance,the substitutionof quantityby phonemicstress as the ruling principle in the rhythmof the muwashshah,as suggested by the study of Andalusi dialects championedby F. Corriente. Chapters 10 and 11 deal with the lack of parallels between Arabic Literature, especially Andalusi poetry and the poetry of the troubadours.A continuousline is drawn from Pre-IslamicArabic poetry to the muwashshsah.Motifs, language and rhetoric remain basically the same. Similes, metaphors, flora and fauna in the muwashshahreflect the most beloved environmentof the Arabiandesert ratherthan the contemporarySpanishenvironment.There is no equivalencebetween Provenqal Lyrics and Arabic poetry. The basic terminologyof love poetry and the very concept of love itself reveal an importantgap betweenthe two literatures.Whereas,for instance, Proven9allove is ennoblingand makes the lover gain in worth or excellence, Arabic love is not so metaphysicaland not so celebrated.Themes also differ considerably.For example, there are no wine songs at all in the poetry of the troubadours,and courtlylove is not really presentin the muwashshsah.Anotherimportant differencecan be found in the language itself: while the language of Arabic poetry is classical Arabic, bearingthe weight of an enormousliterarytraditionand distant from everyday language, the troubadourswere writing in a vernacularlanguage with practicallyno literaryantecedents.The literarypurportand the style also prove to be different:Arabicpoetryhas a classical studiedstyle, whereasthe poetry of the troubadoursapproachesthe emotions of everyday life. We find thereforeno loanwordsfrom the lexicon of Arabic literaturein ProvenqalLyrics. To sum up, in Abu-Haidar'sown words: "the language of Arabic love poetry and the language of the Proven9al love-songs, the cansos, are simply two immiscible quantities" (p. 229). Chapter12 aims to prove that the famous Andalusitreatiseon love, Ibn Hazm's Tawqal-hamdma,is not a treatiseon courtlylove, as some scholarshave suggested. Abu-Haidarconvincinglyargues that Ibn Hazm's treatmentof love is realistic and by no means platonic and thereforeunrelatedto the concept of love as treatedby the troubadours.The final remarkis worthyof a textualquotation:"Hispano-Arabic literatureand the poetry of the troubadoursshould each be studied for their own sake, and not for the purposeof determiningthe influenceof either literatureon the other"(p. 257). As for the bibliographicalreferences,althoughgenerallywell chosen, two points should be made. First, as I have already indicated, the exact references of the author'spreviousworks are left uncited,especially those which are republishedin this book. The second criticism is that many interesting references, particularly

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recent books and articles, are absent. To give but two salient samples: 0. Zwartjes, Love-Songs from Al-Andalus: History, Structure & Meaning of the Kharja, Leiden: Brill (1997), is a very interesting work including a detailed comparison of motifs and topics in Romance and Arabic kharjas, which leads the author to state that no substantial differences exist between them. This means that even Romance kharjas are an integral part of the mainstream of Arabic literature. A second important missing reference is F. Corriente, Poesia dialectal drabe y romance en Alandalus, Madrid: Gredos (1998), which includes many valuable insights into the question. To sum up, Professor Abu-Haidar's book is a significant contribution to the much debated field of literary relationships between Andalusi stanzaic poetry and Provenqal Lyrics. The author makes judicious use of the literature itself, preferring not to depart from theoretical preconceived ideas. The shortcomings and oversights which this review has alluded to (mainly the absence of an updated re-elaboration of most of the chapters) do not, however, detract from the highly interesting insights, suggestions and thought-provoking ideas which are based on common sense and a critical perspective of previous scholarship. The courtly love debate has indeed been much enriched by J. Abu-Haidar's research during the last twenty years as reflected in the work under review. University of CAdiz

IGNACIO FERRANDO

MENAHEMMILSON.Najib Mahfuz: The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo. New York: St. Martin's Press and Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1998. 304 pp. THE CRITIC AS CRYPTO-BIOGRAPHER MAHFOUZ AND HIS NAMES Most books of criticism in Western languages dealing with Naguib Mahfouz-probably due to the absence of a published full-length biography-include a summary of his life in an early chapter before shifting emphasis toward his works. This is the first book of Mahfouzian criticism in English that, though far from a standard biography, attempts to consistently link literary analysis to events in the writer's life. In most cases Milson hits the mark, sometimes in freshly insightful ways. Even his misses are closer to reality than can be expected from a scholar whose purpose is not an actual biography of his subject. To understand what he has done, it is vital to place Milson's work within the huge and ever-growing stream of published studies on Mahfouz. I will concentrate here on books devoted entirely to him. The list is certainly not exhaustive, and many other fine works, plus articles and chapters of books, etc., are necessarily excluded from this brief survey. In his own chapter on Mahfouz's origins and personal development, Milson correctly points out that, "information on the personal life of Mahfouz is rather scanty." He adds, "This may seem an odd comment to make about the most famous twentieth-century Arab writer." Indeed, Mahfouz has been especially guarded about his private life, one of his best-known traits. The two main sources available in book form are both works of what might be termed "assisted autobiography," which really are collections of interviews conducted by a single person, transcribed with commentary by the interviewer. These are Jamal al-Ghitani's Najib Mahftuz... yatadhakkar (Naguib Mahfouz... Remembers, Beirut 1980, revised Cairo 1987), and © KoninklijkeBrill NV, Leiden, 2002

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wa-adwd'jadldah 'aid Raja' al-Naqqash'sNajib Mahffiz:safahdtmin mudhakkirdtih adabih wa-haydtih (Naguib Mahfouz: Pages from His Memoirs and New Light Thrown upon His Literatureand Life, Cairo, 1998). Both are highly useful, but incomplete,non-chronological,and occasionally inaccurateaccounts of Mahfouz's life. It is worth noting that al-Naqqash'sbook, the more detailed, systematic and helpful of the two (which nonethelesshas significantproblemsof its own, including the amalgamationof Mahfouz'sdisparateresponsesto questionsinto single flowing statements),had not yet appearedwhen the presentwork was published. Milson's book is superficiallyclosest in spirit to two highly-acclaimedcritical appraisalsof Mahfouz's output,by his fellow Israeli scholars Sasson Somekh and (thelate)MattityahuPeled.Somekh'sTheChangingRhythm:A Studyof NajibMa.hfiz's Novels (Leiden, 1973) and Peled's Religion,My Own: The LiteraryWorksof Najib Mahfuz(New Brunswick,N.J. and London, 1983) both presentmainly analyses of techniqueand subject matterin Mahfouz's oeuvre. Both Somekh and Peled spend considerabletime establishingMahfouz's characterand recountinghis intellectual liminalitiesbeforewading into his works. But, as the title of his book suggests, Milson makes the author himself the subject of inquiry. In some ways Milson's approachresemblesa reversalof that of RichardEllmannin his classic biography of James Joyce. Though hardlya book of literarycriticism,Ellmannrelied largely on readings of the subject's works (buttressedby twelve years of interviews and other research)to comprehendthe life of a man whom he had never met and who was notoriouslyguardedand enigmaticabout himself. But Milson's real purposeis to understandMahfouz's fiction-the author'spersonalhistory is only a source of clues in this complex task of literarydetection. The opportunityfor personalacquaintancewith the living subject,while an enormous advantageoverall, can also presentunexpectedperils.One aspect of Somekh's success in The ChangingRhythmwas that he createda largely accurate,if necessarily sketchy and incomplete, portraitof Mahfouz the person not only without meeting the man himself, but without having visited Egypt or interviewing his friends and associates. Such contactswere impossiblebefore the Camp David era. (And they are getting harderagain now-see the Egyptian Writers' Union's unprecedentedMay 2001 expulsion of playwrightand satirist Ali Salem for having visited Israel and maintaining contacts with Israelis, and its subsequent threats against Mahfouz if it found that he had signed translationcontractsfor his works with Israelipublishers.)Peled had the benefitof Somekh'spioneeringwork (the first major study of Mahfouz in a Westernlanguage) and insight into Mahfouz's backgroundand production(which Mahfouzhimself said was profoundand penetrating). Nonetheless,Peled tried to breakthroughthe political barrierssurroundinghis subject by writing to him during his research.This attemptedcrossing of the thenofficially unbridgeablegulf betweentwo warringsides providesan early illustration of the principle behind Milson's most original contribution in the work under review-though this particularcase does not appear in it. That principle is the importanceof personalnames in Mahfouz'sfiction(often paralleledin his own life). Yet it comes in a completelyunforeseen-that is to say, in a wholly Mahfouzianmanner.And, to throw more irony in the fire, it happensin an effort to obtain that Holy Grail of biographers(ratherthan textualcritics)-the direct cooperationof the (still-living) subject. While at Princeton in the early 1970s, Peled addressed a letter to Mahfouz, saying that he was preparinga doctoral thesis on his work, asking the Egyptian authorto provideinformationabout his birth,upbringing,educationand intellectual

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development. He evidently signed the letter M. Peled, and did not refer to his own Israeli identity. Had he known of it, Mahfouz probably would not have answered him-which, in fact, he did, promptly supplying the data requested. Of course, the authorities were watching, and an intelligence officer soon asked a shocked Mahfouz, "Did you know that you have been corresponding with an Israeli general?" (Peled, who later became a militantly dovish member of the Knesset favoring creation of a Palestinian state, apparently played a key role in persuading his fellow members of the Israeli General Staff to launch the fateful preemptive war on the Arabs in June 1967.) Luckily for Mahfouz, who had more than one crisis with the Nasser regime over his writings, and who would soon have trouble with Sadat for his views regarding the state of "No War, No Peace" with Israel, nothing further came from this infraction. If the regime had not already been demoralized by the 1967 defeat and had retained its earlier vigilance against dissent (and, perhaps, if Nasser were still alive), Peled's personal contact might have sent his subject for a trip "behind the sun"-in the dark, faintly Pharaonic euphemism then current for exile to Nasser's Western Desert camps. (In ancient Egypt, the West, the land beyond the sunset, was the abode of Death.) At any rate, Mahfouz-who provided the story above-survived to praise his unexpected admirer for identifying the more Muslim-than-Marxist sensibility in his novels, something even the Egyptian critics, most of whom were (and still are) leftists, for the most part did not themselves perceive. Milson, like Somekh and Peled, was able to meet and speak with Mahfouz in person after Sadat's famous trip to Jerusalem (during which he served as the Egyptian president's escort and interpreter). It is unclear just how much this direct human acquaintance helped him grasp the inner forces that shaped Mahfouz the writer. And despite the fact that he presented a copy of his book to his subject in Cairo in June 1998, by that time Mahfouz was no longer physically capable of reading it for comment. Still, after having spent a number of years myself working on Naguib Mahfouz's biography-with his cooperation-Milson's achievement strikes me as highly commendable. For context, some semi-biographical critical works by Egyptians also deserve mention. These are Ghtli Shukri's pathbreakingnear-polemic, al-Muntami(The Loyalist, Cairo: 1964, last reprinted 1987) and his later Najib Mahfuz: Min al-Gamaliyah ila Nubil (Naguib Mahfouz: From Gamaliyah to the Nobel, Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1991), MahmuidAmin al-'Alim's Ta'ammuldtfi-adab Najib Mabhfiz(Reflections on the Art of Naguib Mahfouz, Cairo: al-Hay'ah al-Misriyah al-'Ammah lil-Kitab, 1970, the late Fu'ad Duwwarah's Najib Mahfuz: Min al-qawmiyah ila al-'alamiyah (Naguib Mahfouz: From National Fame to Global Acclaim, Cairo: al-Hay'ah alMisriyah al-'Ammah lil-Kitab, 1989), (Rasheed El-Enany's magnum survey of the Nobelist's novels, Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning (New York: Routledge, 1993) and his compendium of articles, Najib Mahfiuz:Qira'at ma bayna al-sutur (Naguib Mahfouz: Readings between the Lines, Beirut: Dar al-Tali'ah, 1995), al-Naqqash's own anthology, Fi Hubb Najib Mahfiz (For Love of Naguib Mahfouz, Cairo: Dar al-Shurfq, 1996), and Husayn 'id's Najib Mahfiz: Sirah dhdtiyah wa-adabiyah (Naguib Mahfouz: His Autobiography in His Writings, Cairo: al-Dar al-Misriyah al-Lubnaniyah, 1997). Of all these, despite the presence of much biographical background in the others, only 'Id systematically examines Mahfouz's character by breaking down his life into stages of intellectual and personal development and persistently threading these phases through his literary works. His approach, technically closer to Milson's than to those of either Somekh or Peled, features extensive quotation from

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Mahfouz's many published interviews back to back with passages from his stories. These are grouped by theme, such as "Death at Age Four" (on how the loss of a playmate traumatized the young Naguib), "The Migration to Abbasiyah" (regarding his family's move from Gamaliyah in the early 1920s), and "A Woman" (on his first experience with a prostitute). For all his efforts, 'Id provides little more than a generally accurate framework from which to divide Mahfouz's life stages in direct connection to his work of diverse periods. Ultimately, his only source for examining Mahfouz the person is Mahfouz himself (and his books), and thus his work falls far short of actual biography. Yet as another Egyptian, the late 'Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, pointed out in his own major contribution to this genre, Najib Ma.hfuz: alru'yah wa-al-ddah (Naguib Mahfouz: the Vision and the Device, Cairo, 1978), "the critics have not spoken about the writings of Naguib Mahfouz as well as Naguib Mahfouz himself has discussed them." Also worth noting is a 1991 monograph in the edition text+kritik series published in Munich, Hartmut Fahndrich's Nagib Machfus. Once again, this is a book of literary criticism. It resembles a biography in that it follows the writer's career chronologically. But, though backed by some details of Mahfouz's life, Faihndrich's book is mainly about his subject's artistic development, what he produced, and when. Again, though all these books are full of useful raw material for a biography, they (including Milson's) lack the tumult of life. They do not tell a story, full of local color, a cast of vivid characters, dialogue, and rising and falling action. They are not, as Virginia Woolf said in her 1927 essay, "The New Biography," what the art of life-writing (at least in the West) is all about: a fiction-like narrative, (traditionally) constrained by research: "the novel of fact." (Well, at least until Edmund Morris's novelly narcissistic biography of Ronald Reagan in 1999-in which the author himself, and others, appear in make-believe roles. This adds new meaning to the taunt, "Get a life!"-for both biographer and subject.) Yet Milson does differ from the others cited above by trying to present his subject's personality, albeit from a purely intellectual perspective. Even with this limitation, he could not have chosen a greater challenge. As the late Iraqi poet 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati, a member of Mahfouz's former nadwah at the (recently reopened) Cafd Riche, told me, "Najib came every day by taxi, and left every day by taxi, and no one ever knew where he was coming from, or where he was going to." For Mahfouz, who guards his sources of inspiration as jealously as his personal adventures, discretion is an art form of which his mastery is matched by very few. Milson's single greatest contribution is his analysis of Mahfouz's method of naming his characters. He also attempts to parse Mahfouz's own name. In the former can be seen the greatest virtue of his approach; in the latter, a certain weaknessthough, for his purposes, not a fatal one. Milson examines the names of characters in his discussion of each piece of Mahfouz's fiction, and devotes the fourth and fifth (final) sections of his book to the importance that his subject himself assigns to his choice of names. As he says at the opening of Chapter 19, "Names and Rememberance [sic]," "It is evident that personal names are of great significance to Najib Mahfuz" (253). Milson is not the only critic to focus on this subject, but he takes it further than anyone else. Turning to Mahfouz's crypto-novel, al-Maraya (Mirrors, 1972), in which the characters are introduced in alphabetical order, Milson observes, simply but acutely, that its "organizing principle... is that of medieval Arabic biographical dictionaries" (254). This is also true of later works such as the novel .Hadith al-sabah wa-al-masd' (Tales of Morning and Evening) and the novelette Sabdh

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al-ward (Morning of Roses), both published in 1987. (In the latter, families-not individuals-appear alphabetically.) One might add that since these three books are each largely about Mahfouz's own life and the lives of those around him, the principle was aptly chosen. To understand the role that names play in the Mahfouzian psyche, it is best to quote Milson at length: Privatememoriesof one's life and nationalhistoryrevolve aroundnames;hence, consciousnessand identity,individualand collective alike, dependon the remembranceof names. To forget the names of people one has known is, therefore,to lose one's grip on reality, and in some sense, part of one's identity.Mahfuz puts this idea in high relief in the figureof Mutawalli'Abd al-Samad,the local "holy man" in the trilogy. The stages of his physical and mentaldeteriorationare markedoff by this increasing inabilityto rememberthe namesof the peoplehe once knew. Viewed conversely,those whose names are no longer rememberedmight never have existed. This notion had a powerfulinfluenceon Mahfuzfrom his earliestyears: it reinforcedhis resolve to write and publishso that his name would not be forgotten.(254-55) One might add here that Mahfouz was aware, from his extensive readings in Egyptology during his early "historical" period, that in Pharaonic-age belief, to lose one's name was to cease to exist. Hence, when someone died, it was common for the affluent to hire priests to recite the deceased person's name daily at the grave, lest their soul perish, as well. This idea, I believe, had a profound impact on the forming writer, so struck by Egyptomania in his youth-the era of King Tut's discovery-that he inevitably returned to it forty years later, again as a vehicle to write about the present. See especially such works as his 1983 novel-in-dialogue Amama al-'arsh (Before the Throne), in which he uses the Osiris Court to vindicate Sadat's peace treaty with Israel and to attack Nasser's dictatorship. Also, his 1985 novel al-

'A'ishfi-al-haqiqah(He Who Lives in the Truth,publishedin Englishas Akhenaten:

Dweller in Truth), in which he uses the ugly attacks by the priests of Amon against the controversial prophet-pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty to slam the religlious intolerance of late 20th-century Egypt. The obsession with names also has a deeper and broader linguistic origin. Without invoking Structuralism, Deconstruction, or even the ideas of Wittgenstein (or needing to), Milson presents Mahfouz's early and lasting fascination with the

natureof language and the relationof word to object, as well as name to person. On pp. 266-67, he traces this back to an essay that Mahfouz,who had graduated the previous year from Fu'ad I University with a B.A. in Philosophy, published in al-Majallahal-jadidahin 1935. The article describedthe debates between Hermogenes (whose side in the argument, Milson detects, Mahfouz has wrongly ascribed to Democritus), and Cratylus, as related by Plato, over the connection between what de Saussure called the Signifier and the Signified. Hermogenes asserted,in Milson's words, that language is "a matterof conventionand arbitrary invention,"while Cratylusclaimed that "there is a naturalconnection between a name and thatwhich is named."Milson concludesthat Mahfouzapprovesof Plato's rejection of Hermogenes' view, while simultaneously failing to endorse that of Cratylus,thus implying that language is neither completely arbitrary,nor does it reflect reality absolutely. "His article on language makes clear," Milson says on p. 267, "thatwhen he embarkedon his literaryenterprisehe was fully aware that the writer'stool-language-is no less fluid and ambiguousthan reality itself."

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Milson demonstrates that Mahfouz, as part of his pursuit of this elusive principle, has written his most dangerous work in allegorical form. For example, in his third published novel-Kifdh Tibah, or The War for Thebes, which appeared in 1944Mahfouz used the story of the ancient Egyptians' struggle to rid themselves of the occupying Asiatic Hyksos tribes as a veiled attack on both British and TurkishAlbanian rule in modem Egypt. But discovering the relative permissiveness of the censor, while tiring of history as a vehicle, Mahfouz then moved to a series of realistic novels set in contemporary society, whose peak was the Trilogy. Milson notes that Mahfouz's autobiographical character, Kamal 'Abd al-Jawad, is asked by friends how he can succeed as an author if people don't want to hear what he is trying to say. "Kalila wa-Dimna," he replies, referring, of course, to the famous collection of allegorical morality tales from the eighth century A.D. Though Mahfouz could not have known it when he wrote these lines in the early 1950s, they predicted the method used his next published novel, Awldd hdratina (available in English as both Children of the Gebelawi and Children of the Alley). Serialized over great religious protest in al-Ahrdm in 1959 (which ultimately led to his attempted murder by Islamist militants 35 years later), Awldd hdratind would be an allegorical attack on the dictatorial failures of the Nasser regime. Mahfouz's preference for dissent by stealth is as much a result of his basic personality (which, Milson points out, instinctively avoids confrontation) as it is the result of shrewd calculation. (My own experience with Mahfouz supports this conclusion.) At any rate, as Milson indicates, Mahfouz uses names as allegorical devices, even in works that are utterly realistic. An example is the above-mentioned Shaykh 'Abd al-Samad ("servant of the abiding one"), the oldest surviving character in the Trilogy, whose longevity and creeping amnesia for names symbolize permanence and decay, familiarity and forgetfulness-the ironically complex themes of these novels. At the very least, Mahfouz seldom seems to name his characters at random. Milson's score in the name game is only slightly diminished in Chapter20, "Mahfouz's enigmatic name." Here Milson examines how the writer has manipulated his own name for literary ends at different times in his life. And he correctly relates the tale of how Mahfouz's first name, the compound Naguib-Mahfouz, was actually coined in honor of the famous Coptic obstetrician who delivered him, Dr. Naguib Mahfouz (later made a pasha, evidently for delivering King Faruq's only son in 1952). He then recounts an incident that Mahfouz has often described in which this name, with its connection to a famous Copt, prevented Mahfouz from gaining a scholarship to study in France because the committee chairman took him for a Christian. In reciting this story, he quotes Mahfouz's lifelong friend, Dr. Adham Rajab, who says that Mahfouz's family name is "al-Sabilji" ("the fountain-tender"). In a footnote (p. 257), Milson explains that Mahfouz revealed this last name to be actually based on a joke. He told the magazine al-Musawwar shortly after his Nobel in October 1988 that one of his grandfathers (actually, his paternal grandfather, Ibrahim) had been a teacher at a sabil-kuttdb, where he also looked after the fountain (sabil). To tease him for undertaking such lowly duties, his colleagues called him "al-Sabilji." Apparently, not until he was asked to give his full name on a radio broadcast in 1977 did he reveal the much more exalted-sounding al-Basha, with its factually humble roots, as his actual family name. The al-Basha, from which Ibrahim descended, are from a poor farming-and-fishing village near Rashid. Mahfouz has since provided al-Basha as his official family name for cataloguing purposes to the Library of Congress, and twice gone to Rashid and environs (in the 1950s, and

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again in 1994) to trace his relatives in the al-Basha clan. But otherwise this surname has received little public notice. Given the relative obscurity of this detail, Milson cannot be blamed for omitting it. But it says much about Mahfouz, and his persistent sense of privacy, that he evidently chose to keep even this seemingly harmless fact from his friends-and to do so for several decades. That he did not use the name "al-Basha" to concoct a glorious past for his family (especially when he was trying to woo an upper-class girl in Abbasiyah during his youth) says something about his still-obvious sense of modesty, as well-as does his self-deprecating alternative, al-Sabilji. Milson's mining of Mahfouz's use of names is a richly productive method largely ignored by his numerous predecessors. His deep and sympathetic grasp of Mahfouz's works, broad resort to published interviews, and many years' direct interaction with the subject have helped him to write a fresh and important new assessment of this difficult and deceptively familiar author's vast output. (He does not, however, quote material that he has gained from personal contact with Mahfouz.) A full-scale biography may (one hopes) provide the basis for a further understanding of both Mahfouz the man-so carefully self-encrypted-and his works, as well as the relation between them. In the meantime, one can only admire Milson's brilliant and well-informed effort to analyze this ever-more widely appreciated writer's awesome achievement by reading the ingeniously elusive mind behind it. University of Pennsylvania

RAYMOND STOCK

MIRIAMCOOKE,Hayati. My Life: A Novel. N.Y., Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 2000. pp. x + 152. . Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature. New York: Routledge, 2001. Pp. xxix + 175. Miriam Cooke's recently published works, Hayati and Women Claim Islam deserve special attention not only because they can be included under the rubric of "Arab American Writing," but mainly because they develop their own strategies in dealing with Arabic war literature. In this field, Miriam Cooke has already offered Women and the War Story (1996) and War's Other Voices (1996). On many occasions, she still draws on her earlier works, but her contributions to the field grow in pace with the growing vogue of postcolonial discourse and postmodernist poetics. While this combination could promise many rewarding readings, it could also involve analysis into theoretical problems that we, in the field of Arabic literature, need to face and challenge. Metropolitan poetics and politics may not offer solutions to our problems, but they surely raise questions and provoke further analysis. Miriam Cooke's two books may well lead us into some strategies that ask for investigation and analysis. Both are wholeheartedly engaged in these theoretical terrains, and both move easily between history and narrative, memoirs and analysis. History undergoes enormous transposition, transference and displacement. Hayati as pseudo-autobiographical sketches, diaries and monologues dupes the reader into taking it as journalistic recording. Yet its fragmented textuality, its ironic substructure, mirroring, pseudoidentification and historiography belie the assumption. It is there, nevertheless, as a text of multiple voices, a "familial" text that uncovers a web of social, national and © KoninklijkeBrill NV, Leiden, 2002

Journal of ArabicLiterature,XXXIII,I

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political and cultural issues that make up the life of a society whose diaspora never ends and whose brutally forced uprootedness both enriches and poisons, uplifts and damages its own people and their surroundings. There is both the achievement and the trauma, the gain and the pain that political or anthropological studies cannot grasp. A situation rife with tension and confusion, one of conflict and war, and human suffering and human love, cannot be encapsulated in other than corresponding texts, fractured and fragmented to the core. And there is no core in Hayati, unless we take Afaf as such, for Assia, the mother, suffers a reversal of roles, as she is forced by wars and conflicts to give up her early rule of guidance, ending up instead with the role of the subservient, the paralyzed, whose state of mind cannot be accommodated by Lacan's "imaginary phase" reading, nor can it be appropriated by postmodernist poetics. Her human predicament is ridden with fear, confusion, damage, and the possibility of sweeping annihilation. This is much beyond psychoanalysis, no matter how useful this might be for postmodernist politics. A cultural group buttressed with a broad reading and knowledge of literary criticism and current methodologies could untie Miriam Cooke's texts and relocate them within both Arabic literature in its ever-growing prospects, and comparatist concerns. This is the most conspicuously salient feature in these two books, for while they highlight human issues that relate to a whole society, they also strongly suggest underlying ironies. While war, dislocation and human suffering challenged any peaceful and cultural interaction, the intellectual scene of Jerusalem in 1948 was offered as one of quasi-bourgeois concerns, reminiscent of Eliot's "Love Song of A. Prufrock," and "The Hollow Men." Assia says, "I remember magic evenings with guests sitting around the living room sipping their drinks and arguing about whether T.S. Eliot was a great poet" (Hayati, p. 14). Against this scene, the narrative attempts to encapsulate the trauma, the confusion and the misery. It is through Afaf, the muted fragile and beautiful child, that memoirs and tableaus intersect and diverge to draw up a cycle of mutilation and ensuing anger. No wonder her drawings in those years of family disruptions, political anger, and pending uprootedness, depict tents supervised by weeping eyes, looking upon the "ground that was painted, as though vertical was littered with bodies" (Hayati, p. 35). As narrative strategies, irony and drawing fit well into postmodernist poetics. They do no less for postcolonial discourse. The text makes use of the calligraphic and the discursive to forward a political sense of injustice which is never absolute. It is not truth-claiming, but a focused engagement that belies its very postmodernist rupture. Assia, Basil and the grandmother could evolve as dynastic in peaceful and stable societies. But not here. Here they serve as textual citations and reminders of a castrated history. Dislocation imprints itself, on their recollections and the outcome is as traumatic as the text itself, with its markers of personal encounters, substantiation, and meticulous referentiality.As anti-exilic strategies, these narrativesignifications betray some recognition that exile is ruinous first, for it begins with a willful drive not to remain "fettered to the past by chains of nostalgia" (20). Especially for Palestinian intellectuals, exile assumes a complexity of its own, and Hayati tries to cope with some of its aspects. Indeed, the intellectual and cultural life of 1949 might sound effete for "artists and poets gathered in our home and the air filled with smoke and talk," as Assia recollects (20). Nonetheless, these very bourgeois societies were to suffer dislocation and were forced to carry the scar of the past.

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MirriamCooke's masterlycreationis Afaf, a would-beartistwho passes through stages of location, uprootedness,adaptation,and subsequentialdislocation.She may but she is a summationof many identities,a repositoryof not be representational, memories. Muted by a tacit agreement,she is a child with no childhood whose fatheradoresher not "as the child, the baby, that I was but was not allowed to be" (p. 22). She ends up as his archive,for he "pourshis heartout, telling me what he's thinking"(23). What is of relevanceto Arabic literaturein Hayati is also the allegoricaldimension in Afaf's musings. The depositedrecollectionacts as a catalyst, for it incites and provokesother narrativeand details. Its reflexive and reflectingmirrorsare not in the line of Mahfuz' Miramar. It is there to highlight and undermine, as it exchanges places with the discursivespace wherebydiscoursesvie for supremacy. The conciliatorypatternof the grandparentsis not in line with that of the uprooted parents. The latter are not in tune with the ramificationsof currentmultiplicity among the young. The young subsumea varietyof discourseswhich MiriamCooke picks up in her two books. Many of these are taken from chroniclesand speeches in the Arab world. Some remindthe readerof MahmudDarwish's"The Dictator's Rhythmical Orations."But the purpose of these citations (131, 144, 151) is to uncover the tactical use of nationaldiscourse in postcolonialpolitics, a topic that deserves greaterattentionin our currenteffortto revive interestin Arabicliterature. Charactersin Hayati find themselves quoting or arguingwith or against this discourse. The whole drive is to survey the impact of discourseon humanbehaviour. Aziz Salih admits that life is "a maze" (150), but he cannot liberatehimself from its labyrinthineweb. Hibba recognizes this as a fact, and she knows that the Afaf of 1990 resists thinking beyond the present, for the "futurewas that place she didn't dare to imagine"(125). Charactersare driven into the schizophrenic,and art becomes a release or a way out, for Afaf pushes herself into an imaginaryhomeland, anotherexilic domainwhich-for theoristsof exile-rejuvenates art and literature, albeit by default. Afaf says, "And so I painted.I paintedcloseness and happiness and terrorand a world of friendswith whom I could speak"(129). While a rejuvenatingfactor, exile is not a smooth experience.Its power fluctuates, and its metaphorsof floatingimages or an unraveledmaze are rampant,but in Hayati there is also the customarysight of characterspartakingof some Oedipal complex. Aziz Salih falls under the impact of dictatorialrhetoricand empties his anger against the fatherfigureon the old man in the IraqiWar with Iran.Afaf, on the other hand, undergoesa reversal of roles to mother her paralyzedand griefstrickenmother. Recreatingconfusionand disarrayis not synonymouswith the media gloss over human misery, its impersonal,non-humansurvey of what is depicted intentionally as fireworks.It is there to engage the humanin its many facets. There is no claim to cover every detail or to be involved in every dispute. It is meant to shock and disruptcomplacency.Hence its significance,and also its omissions. But the latter can be bettergraspedin view of Cooke's WomenClaim Islam, especially in its discussion of both war literaturein Arabicand in Arabwomen's literaryhistory.These two preoccupationsare among MiriamCooke's dearestconcerns,and their presence in Hayati is not a passing reference,for, excluding Aziz Salah and the dictator's speeches, the outpouringsof Afaf's fatherare never pronounced,and the male presence is minimal. As if balancingthe long-time neglect of women writers, Miriam Cooke takes revenge and relegates the male audience (perhaps deservedly!) to a bunch of schizophrenicor effete men.

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Surprisingly,or unwittinglyperhaps,JacquesDerrida,Albert Mimmi, Abdelkebir Khatibi,FranzFanon and Paul Gilroy occupy a betterspace in the frame of reference. Perhaps so because they provide, albeit with a mixture of perspectives, a workable methodologyfor MiriamCooke's reading of differentwomen's agendas regardingtradition,humanspace,currentaffairsandrightsof women.Thedrivethroughout is to developa women's critiquewhich arguesthat Islam never neglects women's place and rights and that patriarchyand hegemonic discourse emasculatetradition and appropriateit or fabricateits bases to forwarda garbledand opportunisticviewpoint. The writingsof Assia Djebar,FatimaMernissi,Zaynabal-Ghazaliand Nawal El Saadawiare reviewed,and autobiographical and anecdotalwritingsof otherslike the Kuwaiti Layla a-Uthman are analyzed (see Women Claim Islam, 17). What MiriamCooke cites in this book overlapswith her narrativeHayati, for historyand narrativeexchangeplaces, and every piece of writingor speech forwardsa position. She argues that "some Arab women have used their stories to change conceptions of modem Arabic literature"(Women1). A furtherjustificationfor this concernlies in what Miriam Cooke takes as a change in perspectives and prospects. In full agreementwith metropolitanpostcolonialtheorists,she finds the seeds for this shift in feminism itself, for "Arabwomen intellectualsnavigateamong and throughmultiple identifications,with a purposeof projectingtheir voices as public intellectuals calling for justice and freedom"(xxix). Cooke's women are no mere dreamers,as Afaf is meant to demonstrate.In their understandingof debacles,wars, and conflicts,they are the very productof the diaspora (25). E. Nasrallah's Sleeping Embers (26), for example, depicts how Arab intellectualsundergoa seriouschallengein the very context of their Islamic culture. Fiction as such is looked upon by Cooke as more rewardingthan anthropological researchwith its chosen informantsor culturalreviews with their stereotypes.Even home andexile show differentparametersand meaningin narrativesby Arab woman writers.The tendencyis to care for the specific, not the general."The gap between home and diasporacannot be bridged.Each is its own world with its own rules and behaviorsthat grow increasinglydistinctwith time" (27). Certainlythe case is not applicableto every Arab or ethnic identity. Responses vary, and ethnic backgroundsare quite detectablein these writings,especiallywhen thereis an intentional politicizationof issues. Hence, I suggest that Assia Djebar'sFantasia or A Sister to Sheherazadeborrow from existentialist French thought while catering to specific agendasof a Francophoneinitiation.Theirunderpinningsmay not completelysquare with other mainstreamdrives in women's writings. The ethnic is foregrounded,to be sure.But MiriamCooke is awarethat to sustainthe practiceof "multiplecritique" (137) is not an easy task,for it involves the challenge of working "across very different allegiances and agendas"(150). While accepting the good intentions, scholarship and articulate argument for Arabic literature,its culturalsubtext, and the place of women writers in the postcolonial scene, I also feel that a numberof women writershave not found theirright place here. Some are already there in the author'sother books, but in mattersof theoreticdiscourse,we also need to include, for instance,Nazik al-Mala'ikain her lecture of 1952 on women and their place, (al-Addb, 1953: 1-3, 66-69), Naziha alDulaymi in her 1952 book on the problems of Iraqi women (1952), and Radwa 'Ashfirin her recreationof Andalusianwomen to argueagainsthegemonicdiscourse at large. The Derrideanspectrummay not be quite viable in this respect, but postcolonial methodologiescan build on metropolitanand "ThirdWorld"intellectualsto make furtherachievementsin theory and practice.

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Having said this, it is worth emphasizingthat MiriamCooke's two books open new inroadsand direct attentionto emerging areas of interestand methodologies. Both foregroundthe significanceof narrativeand highlightits varietiesas worthyof furtheranalysis to grasp the achievementand value of women's writing. American Universityof Sharjah

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The Middle East and the Islamic World EDITORS: SHERIFA ZUHUR, CHAIM HERZOG CENTER FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES AND DIPLOMACY, BEN GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV, ISRAEL MARGOT BADRAN, CENTER FOR MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON DC, USA Interest and controversy have arisen from debates and investigations of women and their roles in the modern Middle East and Islamic world. Research on both historical and contemporary aspects of women and gender has brought many previously unknown facts and facets of gendered existence to light. These have important implications for Middle Eastern and Muslim societies today. The new series Womenand Gender:The Middle East and the Islamic World will provide a venue for monographs and edited collections dealing with women and gender in the Middle East and the Islamic world from all disciplinary perspectives. Works that study Muslim women or women of other religions within the commonly recognized Middle East and traditional regions of Islam from all disciplines will be considered. Those focused on gender issues affecting Muslim societies elsewhere in the world will also be considered, as well as masculinity and men within a gendered framework. While the primary focus of the series is on contemporary issues, the editors also welcome manuscripts dealing with the pre-modern period.

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_ B R I L L

Olaf Kondgen SeniorAcquisitionsEditor Islam - Middle East Brill Academic Publishers Plantijnstraat 2 P.O.Box 9000 2300 PA Leiden The Netherlands Tel: 0031.71.5353581 Fax: 0031.71.5317532 email: [email protected]

P.O. Box 9000 2300 PA LEIDEN THE NETHERLANDS TEL +3I (0)71 53 53 566 FAX+3I (0)71 53 I7 532 [email protected] FROM YOURUSUAL ORORDER LIBRARY SUPPLIER ORBOOKSELLER

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MUSLIM MINORITIE EDITED BY PROF. J0RGEN S. NIELSEN (UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM), PROF. FELICE DASSETTO (CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE, BELGIUM) AND PROF. AMIRA SONBOL (GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON DC, USA)

The situation of Muslim communities outside the traditionally Islamic regions of the world has attracted increasing attention in the last decades of the 20th century. The new series Muslim Minoritiesprovides a forum for monographs and collections of scholarly papers reporting the results of research relevant to this topic. The editors and publishers are particularly interested in the situation of Islam and Muslims in world regions characterised by long-term European settlement: Europe from the Atlantic through the Russian Federation, the Americas, southern Africa and Australasia. However, proposals concerning other regions will also be considered. Work in all disciplines is welcome. The series is concerned with both historical and contemporary perspectives, ranging from the history and development of religious thinking and the history of Muslim presence and its interaction with its environment, through issues of society, politics, law, education, health and community, to culture and the arts.

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i BR I LL OLAF KONDGEN SENIOR ACQUISITIONS EDITOR ISLAM - MIDDLE EAST BRILL ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS PLANTIJNSTRAAT 2

P.O.Box 9000 2300 PA LEIDEN THE NETHERLANDS TEL: +31 (0)7I FAX: +31 (0)7I EMAIL:

535 358I 531 7532

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NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS Contributions Contributions to the journal should be sent to: Editor for Islamic Studies, Brill Publishers, P.O. Box 9000, 2300 PA Leiden, The Netherlands. Contributions should be original work which has neither been simultaneously submitted for publication elsewhere nor published previously. Although the primary language of the journal is English, submissions are also accepted in French and German. Manuscripts should be submitted in duplicate, double-spaced throughout (including quotations, notes, bibliography), with notes at the end, and all pages consecutively numbered. They should be accompanied by a disk in WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, or ASCII formatting. The full address of the author should appear at the end of the manuscript. Manuscripts should be submitted in final publishable form. Full and consistent bibliographical annotation is required (suggested systems are the Chicago Manual of Style and Modern Language Association) and consistent and appropriate transliteration of Arabic names and terms (suggested systems are International Journal of Middle East Studies and Library of Congress). Authors will be required to supply camera-ready copy of any Arabic texts to be included in their articles. In accordance with standard academic practice, articles submitted for publication in JAL are subject to a process of peer review. Regrettably, manuscripts that are not accepted for publication cannot be returned. Authors of articles receive three complimentary issues of the journal (for multi-authored contributions issues are sent to the first-named author). Authors of book reviews receive one complimentary issue. Production Authors of accepted contributions receive two sets of proofs for proofreading. These should be returned promptly within the period requested, with no corrections marked other than those made in the conversion process. In the event of a multi-authored contribution, proofs are sent to the first-named author unless otherwise requested. For more information please contact JAL by email or visit our web-site at: Email: [email protected] Internet: http://php.indiana.edu/-jal Now enjoy free online access to this journal with your print subscription. Visit the Brill-Website at HTTP:/WWW.BRILL.NL and enter the e-journals section. ISSN 0085-2376 (Print version); ISSN 1570-064x (Online version)

CONTENTS 1 NATHALIEKHANKAN,Reperceiving the Pre-Islamic Nasib ................ ELLENMCLARNEY,Unlocking the Female in Ahlam 24 Mustaghanami ........................................................ WAIL S. HASSAN,Postcolonial Theory and Modern Arabic Literature: 45 Horizons of Application ......................................................... Reviews J.A. ABU-HAIDAR,Hispano-Arabic Literature and the Early Proven(al Lyrics (Ignacio Ferrando) ......................................................... MENAHEMMILSON,Najib Mahfuz: The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo (Raymond Stock) ......................................................... MIRIAMCOOKE,Hayati, My Life. A Novel (Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi) .....................................................................

ISSN 0085-2376

65 68 74

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