al-mousa on the arabic bildungsroman

8/17/2019 Al-Mousa on the Arabic Bildungsroman

1/19

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Journal of

Middle East Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

The Arabic Bildungsroman: A Generic AppraisalAuthor(s): Nedal M. al-Mousa

Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (May, 1993), pp. 223-240Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/164664Accessed: 07-07-2015 16:19 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 141.211.4.224 on Tue, 07 Jul 2015 16:19:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/164664http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/164664http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/


2/19

Int.

J. Middle East Stud.

25

(1993),

223-240. Printed

in

the United States

of

America

Nedal M. Al-Mousa

THE

ARABIC BILDUNGSROMAN: A GENERIC

APPRAISAL

Does

the Arabic novel

exist? With this

provocative question,

Hilary Kilpatrick

begins an article entitled The Arabic Novel-A Single Tradition?, n which she

makes

clear that

her

question

has been

inspired

both

by

the established

regional

approach1

most critical studies

use in

dealing

with the Arabic

novel,

and

by

the

absence

of a continuous tradition of the novel

as a

genre

in

the

Arab world.

But,

while

underscoring

variety

in

form,

style,

and

subject,

Kilpatrick,

keen to

provide

an answer

to her

question,

concludes in

unequivocal

terms that the Arabic novel

as a

single

tradition

does

certainly

exist: It is written in one

language,

and

[has]

a shared

cultural

heritage

and recent

historical

experience

common to the

whole

area

[which]

provide[s]

novelists in different countries with similar material. In

this

respect

the Arabic novel

is

distinct

in its

subject

matter

from the

African

or

Germannovel, for instance. 2Although the conclusion is valid, it is based on his-

torical and cultural

generalizations

rather

than on a

thorough study

of

novels

from

the Arab world. Nor does

the

platitudinous

remark with which the

quotation

con-

cludes

help

Kilpatrick

make her case

in a

particularly

convincing

manner.

The

dis-

tinct

nature

of

the

Arabic

novel,

as this

study

will

demonstrate,

is best

exemplified

in what

might

be called the Arabic

Bildungsroman.

Its

definitive,

culturally

deter-

mined themes and

structure,

distinctive basic

tension,

and established

literary

con-

ventions

to

my

mind

suggest

the

presence

in the

Arab world of at least this kind of

novel.

In a

Bildungsroman,

action

hinges

on the

fortunes

of

an ambitious

young

hero

as he struggles to live up to his poetic goals against the negative forces of prosaic

reality.

Typically,

he

grows

up

in

a humble

family

in the

provinces,

but,

endowed

with an adventurous

spirit,

leaves home to seek

his

fortune and realize his ambi-

tions.

In the course of

his

adventures,

the

hero

falls

in

love with an aristocratic

lady

whose

inaccessibility

awakens

him

to the harshness and

complexities

of

life,

which is

part

of his

education.

His

adventures

bring

him

into contact with

various

guides

and mentors

who

volunteer

to initiate him into

life's realities and

a

series

of disenchantments

designed

to contribute to his internal

growth. Only

by

shaking

off all the traces

of his

romantic

orientation does he

come

to

accept reality

and his

apprenticeship

to life comes to its end.

Nedal

M. Al-Mousa teaches

in

the

English

Department

of Amman National

University,

P.O.

Box 337

Al-Jbaiha, Amman,

Jordan.

?

1993

Cambridge University

Press 0020-7438/93

$5.00

+

.00


http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/19

224 Nedal

M.

Al-Mousa

Comparable

themes can be found

in six

typical

Arabic novels:

Tawfiq

al-

Hakim's

CUsfuir

min

al-Sharq

(Bird

of the

East)

(1938),

Dhu al-Nun

Ayyub's

al-

Duktur Ibrahim

(Doctor Ibrahim) (1939),

Yahya Haqqi's

Qindil Umm Hashim

(Umm

Hashim's

Lamp)

(1944),

Suhayl

Idris's

al-Hayy

al-Ldtini

(The

Latin

Quar-

ter) (1958),

al-Tayib

Salih's

Mawsim

al-Hijra

ild

al-Shamal

(Season

of

Migration

to the

North) (1966),

and

Ghalib Hamzah

Abu-al-Faraj'sSanawdt

al-Daya'

(The

Lost

Years)

(1980).3

In

all

of

them the hero's

journey

is to the West rather

than to

the

capital city.

There he

undergoes

experiences,

inevitably

including

love

affairs,

which are

part

of his initiation into

life.

Exposure

to an alien culture allows him to view

things

from a

cross-cultural

per-

spective

and suffer culture

shock and

the

agonies

of

estrangement.

In

the

end,

how-

ever,

the

journey

allows

him to

understand

the

world and

to

gain insight

into his

native,

as well as the

foreign,

culture.Edward

Said

points

to the formative mechanism

in

the educational benefits of the

trip

to

the

West in

the Arabic

Bildungsroman:

The more one is able to

leave one's cultural

home,

the more

easily

is one able to

judge

it,

and the whole world as

well,

with the

spiritual

detachment

nd

generosity

necessary

or

truevision. The more

easily,

too,

does one

assess

oneself

and

alien cultureswith

the same

combination f

intimacy

anddistance.4

Bird

of

the East

provides

us with the earliest fictional dramatization

of Edward

Said's

principle

of

intimacy

and distance as an effective educational

instrument.Mu-

hsin,

its

hero,

goes

to Paris. His

initial

enlightenment

n the novel

comes at the

opera,

where he sees the

spiritual debility

of Western civilization when he realizes that the

opera

goers

are

preoccupied,

not

by

the

music,

but

by

what

everyone

is

wearing.5

In

another scene Muhsin and his French mentor

go

to a funeral:

Andre,

the

mentor,

re-

marks,

One

goes

into a church as one

goes

into a cafe.

.

. . What is the difference?

One

is a

public place;

the other is

a

public place.

One

has an

organ;

the

other,

an

or-

chestra. 6

Muhsin

regards

this

as evidence

of

a

loss of

spiritual

values;

his

disap-

proval

of this loss is

inspiredby

his fervent devotion to

al-Sayyida

Zaynab,

a faith

that

will

enable

him to retain his

spiritual ntegrity against

the

temptations

of the lib-

eral ideas

of the

West.

Muhsin then takes a

fancy

to

Suzy,

a

Parisian ticket

seller,

whom

he

idealizes

as

an

inaccessible

young

lady, though

she is

in

fact

selfish,

callous,

and

cold,

unable

to

comprehend

Muhsin's wholehearted

attraction or to

reciprocate

his

feelings.

Suzy

has

only

her

body

to offer. She

soon

jilts

Muhsin and

goes

back to

her

French

boyfriend

when

they

patch up

a

quarrel.

In his

disillusionment,

Muhsin

re-

alizes

that

Suzy

is

no

Saniya,

the

sublime,

inaccessible beloved of

his

uncle Sal-

eem,

a former

police

officer.

In his

long

letter to

Suzy

after the

rupture,

Muhsin

reaches

the

conclusion that Indian

girls

are more

faithful

than

French ones and

more

full of

warmth,

feelings,

and

spirit,

and his disillusionment

colors

his

atti-

tude

towards Western culture

in

general.

His

painful

love affair with

Suzy

does,

however,

in

typical Bildungsromanstyle,

contribute

to his maturation.

Love in

Bird

of

the

East is more than a stock-in-trade

fictional

theme;

it

is

used

to dramatize cross-cultural conflicts

to

sharpen

the tension between

East and

West,

which is the

pivotal

theme of an Arabic

Bildungsroman.

Love

as a medium

for

bringing opposed

cultural

values into dramatic

focus is

one

of the salient

fea-




4/19

The

Arabic

Bildungsroman:

A

Generic

Appraisal

225

tures that

give

the

Bildungsroman

its Arabic

flavor,

just

as

it does in the

European

Bildungsroman,

where

characteristically

the

young

hero from

the lower classes

falls in love with the aristocratic

lady

and the

pangs

of

unrequited

love are used to

heighten

the

readers' awareness

of

the definitive theme

of

class

struggle.

The

course

of events

in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's

Apprenticeship,

Charles Dickens's

Great

Expectations,

and Balzac's Lost

Illusions,

for

example,

bears out this con-

tention.

In each of these novels class barriers n the realm of

love,

where the

rela-

tionship

between

the

self

and

the outside world is

particularly

close,

are utilized

to

add

force to the

central theme of class

struggle,

much

in

the same

way

that love

between

the

young

Eastern hero and

a

Western

girl

is used

to

sharpen

the tension

between

East and

West in the Arabic

Bildungsroman.

Commentators

hold that al-Hakim's

major

concern in Bird

of

the East

is

to

un-

derscore

the

superiority

of the

spiritual

East to the materialistic West.7 That inter-

pretation

is based on the

Russian

emigre

Ivan's extreme anti-Western ideas and

his remarkable

infatuation

with the

spirituality

of the East. To

my

mind,

this is

hardly

a tenable

argument.

For,

taking

our cue from Ivan's romantic

illusions

about

the

East,

his

sentimentality,

and

his lack of

intimate

knowledge

of the

East

(Ivan,

al-Hakim

is keen to tell

us,

has

never been

there),

we

get

the

feeling

that

we

are

not meant to take

his views at face value.8

However,

much in

the

meaning

of a

novel lies

in

what

is

given

rather than what

is

interpreted.

Moreover,

even

Muh-

sin,

who is so often

identified with

al-Hakim,

does not

unreservedly

subscribe to

Ivan's

contention that

Muhsin is able to look into

things

more

rationally

than

the

Russian

emigre.

Muhsin's

awareness

of the

pros

and cons of both cultures

which

relates to his

gradual

cultivation of a true

vision,

as it

is

defined

by

Edward

Said,

enables

him even to draw Ivan's attention to the relative merits of Western civili-

zation: It seems

to

me,

Monsieur

Ivan,

that

you may

be

a

little too

harsh

in

your

judgment

of

the

West. No matter how bad the situation

is,

Europe

has still reached

heights

in

science

that have never before

been

achieved

....

9 In

another

place

in

the

novel,

Muhsin

refers

to

Beethoven's music'0 to add force to his

argument

as he

tries to awaken

Ivan to the

positive aspects

of Western culture. Muhsin's remark-

able

capacity

to see

through

Western culture seems to be a

fictional version

of

al-

Hakim's views on what the outcome of the cultural encounter between East and

West will be as it is recorded

in

Zahrat al-'Umr

(The

Flower of

Life).

In one

of

his letters

to Muhsin's

mentor, Andre,

al-Hakim

remarks,

It is

only

the shock

generated by

the encounter between East and West that will

contribute to

opening

closed

eyes

in both East and West.

Paul

Starkey,

in

his

recently

published

book,

From the

Ivory

Tower: A

Critical

Study of

Tawfiq

al-Hakim,

overlooks the fact that al-Hakim's

major

concern in

the

novel

is

to

depict

his hero's internal

development

rather

than to establish the

spiri-

tual

superiority

of the East to the West when he conceives of

Muhsin's

reluctance

to endorse

extremely

favorable

views of the

East as

being

a fault in

construction :

It has been possibleto read the novel as an exaltationof the East at the expenseof the

West.

Admittedly,

his idea has been

expounded

ntirelyby

Ivan;

but there

has,

nonethe-

less,

been a certain

presumption

hat

his

outlook s shared

by

the

young Egyptian....

the

change

of direction n the last few

pages

comes as

something

of a

shock,

and there

can be

no doubt

hat t mustbe counteda fault in

construction.12




5/19

226

Nedal M. Al-Mousa

But the

change

of direction towards the end of the novel in

fact

fits in

with

al-

Hakim's

preoccupation

with

depicting

his hero's internal

growth.

It culminates in

his final

acquisition

of

a true

vision,

which results from his

undergoing

a series of

educational

experiences.

A

spiritual

crisis is

another

typical

theme

in

the Arabic

Bildungsroman.

Muhsin is

attracted

o the

liberal ideas of Voltaire and Nietzsche in

chapter

10,

and as a result

his devotion to

al-Sayyida

Zaynab

is

undermined. But Muhsin's

spiritual

crisis

proves

to be

only

a

passing phase

in

his educational

journey.

Later

in

the

novel,

after

he

discovers

Suzy's

faithlessness,

he

regains

his

former devotion to

al-Sayyida

Zaynab.

In

the

wake of

this emotional

crisis,

Muhsin finds

himself

for

the first

time

able to recollect

his

heavenly

protector

and to seek her

help

and

guidance.

It

is cer-

tainly

his

recovered devotion to

al-Sayyida Zaynab

that makes

it

possible

for him

to

consider

setting

sail for

the East at the end of the

story,

when Muhsin

promises

his

Russian

friend

that he will

go

back

to the

East

equipped

with

a true vision.

S.

A.

Morrison,

n

his

book Middle

East

Survey,

in

defining

the

variety

of

attitudes

towards Western culture in the Middle

East,

writes:

Reaction to Western

culture

may

be classified under the

headings

of

adoption, rejection

and

reconciliation,

though

no

sharp

line of

distinction

can be drawn

between the three

groups. '3

As we

have seen

in

our

discussion

of Bird

of

the

East,

adopting

and

then

rejecting

Western

culture

figure

as

integral

parts

of

Muhsin's

education,

and towards the

end al-Hakim's

hero

develops

some sense of cultural

relativity

that

suggests

the

possibility

of

effect-

ing reconciliation between East and West. This interaction of all three attitudes in

Bird

of

the East

justifies

Morrison's

qualification

that

it

is difficult to draw a distinc-

tion between the various reactions to

Western

culture in the

Middle East.

Doctor

Ibrahim

presents

us

with a

completely

different case.

In

it,

adopting

Western culture

in a

distinct fashion is the central theme

of

the

novel;

Dr.

Ibrahim,

the hero

of Dhu

al-Nun

Ayyub's Bildungsroman

is

infatuated

with

Western culture.

His

reaction

to it

typifies

another attitude

resulting,

according

to Ibrahim Abu-

Lughod,

from

an

individual's

exposure

to a culture

superior

to

his

native one. Abu-

Lughod

writes

in

Arab

Discovery of Europe:

A

Study

in

Cultural

Encounters,

Mere

acknowledgement

of

the

superiorqualities

of

another

culture, however,

may

lead to varied reactions. Observers may react by abandoning their entire cultural

heritage

in

an

attempt

to

emulate

what

they

deem to be

superior

culture. 14

In Dhu al-Nun

Ayyub's

novel

the

young

hero makes no secret

of

his

repugnance

or

his native

culture and his

urgent

need

to

adopt

Western

ways

lock, stock,

and

barrel:

I believe that

they

[the

Britons]

have the

right

to do whatever

they

like. Haven't

they

ruled

a

large

part

of the

world? Haven't

they subjected

stubborn

and

intractable

peoples

to

their

rule? Haven't

they

so humiliated

us,

the

Arabs,

that we hate

them

and

hold

them

in

con-

tempt?

Merely

this

signifies

that

we are at the lowest

stages

of

barbarism,

and that

they

are

at

the

highest stages

of

progress.

And since it is

my

ambition to travel the road

of

progress,

I feel that

I

should

adopt

their manners and

pay respect

for

their habits and

traditions,

no

matterhow alien they may seem to me.15

So intense is the

Westerly

pull 16

n

Dr. Ibrahim's

life

that

he

sets

his heart on

becoming

a

gentleman

in

the traditional

English

sense of the

term,

that

is,

to in-

tegrate

himself

fully

into

English society:

he is even

ready

to embrace

Christianity




6/19

The Arabic

Bildungsroman:

A

Generic

Appraisal

227

to

achieve

this

goal.

The

more

Dr.

Ibrahim assimilates

himself

to Western

culture,

the

more he alienates

himself from his native one. In the

phrase

of Abdallah

Laroui,

Dr.

Ibrahim's

powerful

attraction to Western culture

signifies

an aliena-

tion,

a

way

of

becoming

other. 17Little

wonder,

then,

that

Dr. Ibrahim derives

great

satisfaction

from

being

referred to

by

his

fellow

English

students as a

gen-

tleman. His

fellow Arab students

began

to shun him

because of

his

keenness to

cultivate Western

tastes and

manners.

Dr. Ibrahim's enslavement

to

his Western sentiments is

emphasized by

his as-

sessment

of the

church

and

mosque: Upon entering

the

church

for

the first time

in

my

life,

I

was

struck

by

its

beauty,

impressive

organization,

and clean

terraces.

Also

I

was fascinated

by

the

chanting

of

hymns

with an

organ

accompaniment;

I

stood

by Tomy

moved and

amazed, recalling

the

image

of the

dark, filthy

dome of

al-Wali

mosque

at

home. '8

His attitude towards the

mosque

and

his

readiness

to

be converted

from Islam to

Christianity

is

traced

to his

early

education at

secular

schools

in

Iraq

where his

faith,

as he

himself

admits,

had been

powerfully

under-

mined.

The

point

is

important

as it

accounts for the

spiritual

distinction between

Muhsin,

whose

deeply

rooted

devotion to

al-Sayyida

Zaynab helps

him retain his

faith

in

his

struggle

against

the

temptations

of

Western liberal

thought

in

Paris,

and

Dr. Ibrahim's

lack of solid

faith,

which contributes to

his

spiritual

disorienta-

tion in

England.

In

this Dr.

Ibrahim

also

stands in

sharp

contrast

with

Ismacil,

the

hero

of

Yahya Haqqi's

Bildungsroman

Umm

Hashim's

Lamp,

who,

during

his

stay

in England, has a spiritualcrisis, but manages by virtue of his faith to maintain his

religion against

all

odds.

Dr.

Ibrahim

also

distinguishes

himself from his

Egyptian

fictional

relatives,

and for

that

matter,

rom all the other

Arab

heroes

in the novels under

consideration

by

his cal-

culations

in the

sphere

of

love.

Dr.

Ibrahim

makes no

bones about

his

plan

to use

Jinny,

an aristocratic

English girl,

as a

stepping

stone towards

furthering

his ambitions:

My

love for her

[Jinny]

has

been motivated

by,

on the one

hand,

my

awareness of her

father's

high

position

and

great

influence

which

might

be

beneficial towards the advancementof

my

ca-

reer.

And,

on the other

hand,

by

the

respect

I

pay

for her

nationality

and

her brilliantmind which

would

make of

my marriage

to

her a

great

victory beyond

the reach

of

any

Iraqi

or

Arab.'9

This

line of

thought

is

worthy

of an

ambitious

young

man,

and in this Dr.

Ibrahim

appears

to be a close relation

of

the

young

ambitious heroes in

the

European

Bil-

dungsroman,

who

rely

on

winning

the heart

of an

aristocratic

lady

to

climb the

so-

cial

ladder.

Wilhelm

Meister,

for

instance,

sets

his

heart

on

marrying

the

aristocratic

lady

Natalia,

with an

eye

to the social

prospects

of

such

an

alliance;

Lu-

cien Chardon

(in

Balzac's Lost

Illusions)

disowns

his

humble

family

to

marry

the

aristocratic Mme

de

Bargeton,

hoping

in so

doing

to

improve

his

social

position.

By

marryingJinny,

as

the

quotation

also

suggests,

Dr. Ibrahim

hopes

to

bridge

the

gap

between himself and

the

Western world. This

impression

is

emphasized by

the reference to RudyardKipling's Ballad of East and West at the head of the

chapter

from which the

quotation

is taken.

Despite

his

apprehensions

that he will

not succeed

in

carrying

out

his

plan,

Dr.

Ibrahim,

deploying

all of his

inner

re-

sources,

manages

to

bridge

the

gap

and

marryJinny.

In

fact,

Jinny

has

designs

on




7/19

228 Nedal

M.

Al-Mousa

Dr.

Ibrahim;

she wants to

indulge

her

passion

for the

exotic

East,

exactly

as the

British

girls

succumb

to

Mustafa

Sacid

in

Season

of Migration

to

the North.

Up

to

a point, Sacid sharesDr. Ibrahim's

attempts

to build

bridges

between East andWest

through marriage.

The

theme recurs

in

Ghalib

Hamzah

Abu-al-Faraj's

The

Lost

Years where the

hero,

Dr.

Hamdan,

marries an

American

girl

named Helen. This al-

lows

Sonya,

Dr. Hamdan's

Chilean

mentor,

to comment on the

marriage by

refer-

ring

to

Kipling's

contention that the twain shall

never meet.

But,

whereas

in

Season

of Migration

to the North and

The Lost Years the death of the wife

comes

to

symbolize

the

impossible

task

of

bridging

the

gap

between

East and

West,

in

Doctor

Ibrahim

the

undertaking

succeeds,

as

if

to

deny

Kipling's

famous

dictum.

Further

analogies

can be

drawn between Doctor Ibrahim and

The Lost Years. In

each case the

young

hero's

marriage

to

a

foreign girl

marks his

complete

assimila-

tion into Western culture.

Hence,

it is not accidental that the reversal in Dr. Ham-

dan's

life,

namely,

his

regained

sense of

belonging

to Arabic Islamic

culture,

is

triggered by

the death of his

wife,

whereas Dr.

Ibrahim's

marriage

prospers

as he

becomes

completely

divorced from his native

culture,

even after his return

to

Iraq

with his

newly

won

doctorate.

Encouraged by

his

wife,

Dr. Ibrahim

finally

decides

to turn his back on his

country

once and for all and

head

for

America.

Dr. Ibrahim's brief

stay

in

Iraq

is marked

by

a different

struggle.

Given his un-

scrupulous

machinations

against

his

enemies,

the

intrigues

and

counterintrigues

in

which he

is involved in the third

part

of the

novel,

one

has

the

feeling

that the the-

matic conduct of the novel is

here borrowed

from

picaresque

conventions.

Dr.

Ibrahim becomes the

typical

picaresque

hero who tries to live

by

his

wits,

but with

the fundamental

difference that

in

the

picaresque

novel we

encounter a nondevel-

oping

central

character

who

is launched on his

adventures as

an

already

established

picaro.

Doctor

Ibrahim,

on the other

hand,

dramatizes the hero's

gradualdevelop-

ment until he

emerges fully

equipped

to fend

for

himself in a

picaresque

fashion.

That the action

in

Doctor Ibrahim

hinges

on the

upbringing

of

the hero

is

repre-

sented

by

the titles of the

first

two

parts,

Childhood and

Youth.

The alienation

experienced by

Dr. Ibrahim after his return

to

Iraq

parallels

Is-

ma'il's

estrangement

from his

fellow

countrymen

and his own

family upon

his

homecoming

in

Haqqi's

Umm Hashim's

Lamp.

To

symbolize

Isma'il's sense of

de-

tachment,

Haqqi

uses the

image

of the

bird,

The first

sign

of life

from

his

home-

land he met was a creature whose

homeland

is

the entire

universe,

a

lonely

white

bird

that

hovered

round the

ship,

spotlessly

clean,

free and

lofty. 20

The

identifica-

tion

between

Isma'il

and the

bird

becomes more obvious later on

in

the

novella:

He then fell

asleep

for

a

little

while and his

thoughts

became

confused. He felt

like a

bird

that had

fallen

into a

trap

and

had

been

put

into a

cage

from

which it

was

trying

to

escape. 21

But if

under the

pressure

of the

powerful

Westerly

pull

in his

life

Dr.

Ibrahim fails to

reintegrate

himself into his

society

and

eventually

leaves for

America,

Isma'il does not

go

beyond toying

with the

idea of

going

back

to England at a time when his soul has been completely engulfed by alienation.

This

gradually

recedes and towards the end of the

novella,

he

again accepts

his

na-

tive

environment.

This distinction relates to the

difference

in

the

dominant

emotion

in

each

of

the

two works.

Adoption

of

Western culture

is

the theme

in

Doctor

Ibrahim;

effecting




8/19

The Arabic

Bildungsroman:

A

Generic

Appraisal

229

reconciliation between

East

and

West is the

theme

of

Umm Hashim's

Lamp.

This

reconciliation

results from

Isma'il's

outgrowing

his

self-division and his

acquiring

a true vision, the ultimate

goal

of his

Bildung.

That the action in

Umm Hashim's

Lamp

is

geared

towards

broadening

Ismacil's

horizons and

extending

the

scope

of his vision

is

suggested by

the first lesson

he

is

made

to learn at the hands of

his Scottish

mentor

Mary. Upon

first

meeting

Is-

macil,

she

tells

him,

Life is

not

a

fixed

plan

but an

everchanging

series of

pros

and

cons. 22

Receptive

as he

is, Ismacil

imbibes this

general

truth,

adopting

some

sort of

a

dialectical

approach

which

proves

to

be of

great

value in his

struggle

to

overcome

his inner conflict

between

East and

West.

Perhaps

owing

to

his

develop-

ment

of a

dialectical

approach,

Ismacil

finds

himself

able,

in

harmony

with

the

cultural tension

in

the

novella,

to

cultivate

a

sense of cultural

relativity

as

an inte-

gral part

of his education.

As is the case

in

Bird

of

the

East,

cultural

relativity

links with

intimacy

and

dis-

tance

to become the main

dynamic

force

contributing

to

Isma'il's

better

under-

standing

of

the

two

opposed

cultures as well as

his eventual clear vision of

things.

To illustrate the

point,

two

passages

can

be

compared:

He lost

himself

naturally

n

the crowd ike a

raindrop

n

the waters

of

the

ocean.

He was

so

accustomed

o

the

recurring ights

and

soundsof the

square

hat

they

met with

no

response

within

him.

They

aroused

neither

uriosity

nor

boredom n him. He

was neither

pleased

nor

angry,

or

he

was

not

sufficiently

etached romthem

to be

aware

of them.Yet who

would

say thatall thesesoundsandsightswhich he heardandsaw,withoutrealizing heirmean-

ing,

could have this

strangepower

of

movingstealthily

nto

the

depths

of his

heart,

and bit

by

bit

becoming

an

integralpart

of

him?For the

moment,

s was

only

normal,

he looked

at

everything.

His

only purpose

was to

look.23

After his return to

Egypt

we read:

When

Ismacil

ame

to

the

square

he found t as

usualcrowded

with

people,

all

lookingpoor

and

wretched

nd

their eet

heavy

with

the

chainsof

oppression.

hey

could

not

possibly

be

human

beings

iving

n an

age

in

whicheven the

inanimatewas endowedwith

ife.

They

were

like vacantand

shattered

emains,

ieces

of stone rom

ruined

illars

n

a

waste and:

hey

had

noaimother hanstandingn thewayof a passerby.And whatwerethoseanimalnoisesthey

madeand

hat

miserableoodwhich

hey

devoured?

smacil

xamined

heir

aces,

buthe

could

only

see the

marks of a

profound torpor,

as if

they

were all

the victims of

opium.24

The

different attitudes towards the

square

and

the crowds

expressed

in

these

two

passages

provide

us with a

measure

of the

change

wrought

in

Ismacil

as a

result

of

his

trip

to

Europe.

Before his

departure

for

England,

as the

first

passage

makes

clear,

Isma'il

was so absorbed with his

surroundings

that he

could

not see

things

clearly;

His

only

purpose

was to

look. But

when he

returned,

according

to

the

second

passage,

he is able to

look into

things

more

deeply.

The

word

examine in

the second passage underlines Isma'il's newly acquired capacity to see through

things

and

people,

to arrive

at a wiser

assessment of the

world

around

him.

Isma'il's

remarkable

and

growing

attentiveness and his

sociological

discov-

ery,

so to

speak,

could

be

interpreted

in

terms

of culture

shock,

as it is

defined

by Berger

and Kellner:




9/19

230

Nedal

M.

Al-Mousa

I'm

likely

to suffer

from

acute

culture

shock.

It

is

important

to

point

out,

though,

that

such

culture shock has some useful side effects. It forces me to be

fully

attentive

to

everything

that is going on, precisely because it is all so shockingly unfamiliar. By contrast, much in

my

own

society

ongoingly escapes

my

attention

because

it takes

place

within a

structureof

familiarity.

It

may

be true

that

familiarity

breeds

contempt;

more

relevantly

for the

inter-

preting

social

scientist,

familiarity

breeds

inattention.25

On

the basis of

the

two

quotations

from

Umm Hashim's

Lamp,

it

would

seem

that

Isma'il's

exposure

to an

alien

culture,

together

with

his

seven

years

of

absence

abroad,

has

estranged

him

from his

environment,

allowing

him

to reexamine

it

as

if

he were an outsider. But

no matter

how

painful

his

insider/outsider26tatus

(Isma'il

can neither

go

native,

nor

go

alien ),

it

helps

him

to

comprehend

things.

Coupled

with his

attentiveness and

his

culture

shock

is

Ismacil's

growing

sense

of

cultural

relativity.

Here

again

Berger

and

Kellner's

general

observations on

the

interrelationship

between

culture

shock and

the

concept

of

cultural

relativity

have

bearing

on

Isma'il's

transformation

and

moral

development:

All forms

of

culture

shock,

Berger

and

Kellner

maintain,

are

also

ipso

facto

relativizing.

Indeed,

at

the core of

the

shock is the

insight

that

perception

and

norms

previously

taken

for

granted

are now revealed

to be

highly

relative in terms

of

space

and time. 27

Isma'il's remarkable

sense

of

cultural

relativity,

his

recognition

of the

relative

merits of

East

and

West,

comes

to the fore

in the

final

parts

of the

novella.28As a

result of his cultivation of

this sense

of

cultural

relativity

Ismacil

shakes

off

all the

traces

of

chaos, confusion,

and

spiritual

dislocation

with

which his

soul

was

plagued

in

the

early stages

of

his education. He now comes

to realize

that

there

can be no

science

without

faith. 29

This

is,

of

course,

a far

cry

from Ismacil's

early

skepticism,

which led to

his loss

of faith

when he

first

arrived in

England.

Isma'il's

internal

harmony

contributes

to

his cultural

adjustment

that culminates

in his

marriage

to Fatima. The narrator

says,

It

was

as if

his love

of

women

was

a

manifestation

of

his love

and devotion

to

the

whole

of

mankind, 30

ut

in

fact a

closer look

would reveal

that it

is

through

love

of women

that

Ismacil

has learned

to extend

his

emotions outward.

I am

referring

here

to

Isma'il's

relationship

with

Mary,

as

a

result

of

which he succeeds

in

getting

rid of

his

penchant

for

with-

drawal, his sense of detachment, and his introspection. The narratorsays:

The

strange

phenomenon

which I could

not

account for

was

that Isma'il recovered from

his

love for

Maryonly

to find himself once more

in

love. Was

it because

his heart could not

re-

main

empty

for

long?

Or

was

it that

Mary

had

awakened

his once

slumbering

heart? Isma'il

used

to have

only

the

vaguest feelings

for

Egypt.

He felt

like a

grain

of sand that

merged

with other

countless

grains

and

was lost

in

them:

although separate,

it

could

not be

distin-

guished

from

them.

Now,

however,

he

began

to

feel

himself

like a

link in a

long

chain that

tied and

pulled

him

towards his

country.31

IsmaCil could

not

have more

powerfully

established

his

sense of

oneness

with

his

environment than

by marrying

Fatima.

Insofar

as it is

meant to underline Is-

maCil's

integration

into his

society,

marriage

in Umm Hashim's

Lamp

has the same

symbolic implications

as

the

central

character's

revived

emotional

attachment

to

Nahida in The Latin

Quarter,

Mustafa Sa'id's

marriage

to

Hosna

in

Season

of

Mi-

gration

to the

North,

and

finally,

Dr.

Hamdan's

marriage

to

Sucad

in

The

Lost




10/19

The Arabic

Bildungsroman:

A

Generic

Appraisal

231

Years.

All of these

examples

of

love

and

marriage

could be

compared

with

Pip's

restored

attachment

to

Biddy

(the

symbol

of

reality

in

Great

Expectations),

which

marks

his

eventual

reconciliation with his

origins.

Ismacil's

acquisition

of

true vision

after

being subjected

to

a

series of initia-

tions-especially

during

his

stay

in

England-justifies

the

narrator's

comment,

Not for

nothing

had

he lived in

Europe

and offered

his

prayers

to science and sci-

entific

logic. 32

Similar

remarks are made

by

Subhi,

one of the

hero's intimate

friends

in

The Latin

Quarter.

The

hero's detachment from

his

surroundingsweighs

heavily

on

his

heart,

and he seems to be unable

to

cope

with the

agonies

of

culture

shock

in

Paris,

but Subhi

tells him: You are now

in

Paris,

and

this in

itself is

something

worthwhile.

You

made

your

way

here out of

your

free

choice,

and,

therefore, you

will have to bear

the

consequences

of this decision.

However,

don't

let

reflection

ruin

your experiences

here . . . lead a

bohemian

life and when

even-

tually you

return to

your country, you

will come to realize the reasons for

the

un-

dertaking. 33

These remarks

come in the first

chapter

of

the novel and set the tone

by pointing

out

the educational

advantages

of

detaching

oneself

from

one's native

culture

and

transplanting

oneself

into

an

alien one.

In

Paris,

liberated

from the traditions of his

native

culture,

the central character

sets

out to

live

his

life at the

highest

pitch,

an

undertaking

central to his

education,

his

quest

for self. One

is

tempted

to

suggest

that The Latin

Quarter

is not the Bil-

dungsroman only

of

the

central

character,

but of almost all

the

Arab characters

studyingin Paris. Thatis implied by the hero'sbeing given no name as well as by the

remarksmade

by

Fuad,

the central character'smentor.

Annoyed by

the

vulgar

behav-

ior of the

Arab students

in

Paris,

the

hero

decides

to avoid

them,

but Fuad tells him:

No,

my

dear,

I think

you

are mistaken.

They

are

not

repulsive,

and

you

will

not shun

them

if

you

realize hat

hey

aredistressed

oung

men

searching

or their

dentity.

We are all

dis-

oriented

Arab

young

men

engaged

n

[a]

quest

or self. It is inevitable hatwe commit ome

follies before

we find

ourselves.34

The nameless

hero holds the

spotlight by

virtue of his remarkable

sensitivity,

receptivity,

and

urgent

need

for

self-definition. He is found

in

the center of the re-

lations

formed

by

all the

characters

in the

novel whose main function

is

to

give

the hero

an excuse to talk about the difficulties

besetting

his

quest

for

self,

as well

as

to

provide

him with counsel as he strives towards self-definition.

An

instructive

analogy

can be drawn between the hero in

The Latin

Quarter

and

Wilhelm Meister

in

Goethe's

novel. In the course of

his

educational

adventures,

Meister comes across a number

of

characters

who

contribute to

his

internal devel-

opment,

either

by

telling

him their

life stories

in

the

hope

that he

might

benefit

from their

experience,

or

by correcting

his

views

on life

and art to

put

him on the

right

track.

Wilhelm's

apprenticeship

to life is

constantly supervised by

the

people

of the tower who

run him

through

a

sort of

pedagogical program,

whereas in The

Latin Quarter, although, technically speaking, Fuad figures as a mentor whose

sole function

is to

guide

the

hero,

initiation is not so

systematic.

The same holds

true

for Bird

of

the

East,

Umm

Hashim's

Lamp,

and The Lost

Years,

in

which,

as

in Great

Expectations

or

Lost

Illusions,

we encounter a mentor

ready

to initiate

the

young

hero

into life's

realities.




11/19

232

Nedal

M.

Al-Mousa

The central

character'senthusiasm for self-definition

in

The Latin

Quarter

is un-

derlined

by

the title of the first

film

that he sees

in

Paris,

Life Begins

Tomorrow,

which

might

be

applied

to his own

attempt

o forma new self. Whatattractshim most in the

film is the role

played by

the

well-known naturalistJean

Rostand,

a staunch

believer,

we are

told,

in

the

individual's

capacity

to mold

his

own life

according

to

his natural

bent

and

desires.35This is

exactly

what the

central charactersets out to do.

Jean

Rostand's

biological

views coincide with the

existential

precepts

of

Sartre,

another

participant

in

the

film

whose

philosophical

ideas had a

tremendous

impact

on the formation of the author

Suhail

Idris's social

vision,36

which informs

his

central character's

quest

for self in

the

novel. There is even a

strong suggestion

that Suhail Idris voices

his

attraction

to

Sartre's

philosophical

views

through

his

central

character

who,

on several

occasions,

reveals his

familiarity

with Sartre's

writings

and his admirationfor his views. In his

book,

Existentialism and Human-

ism, Sartre,

in a remark

pertinent

to the hero's

attempts

at

self-definition,

main-

tains,

Man is

nothing

else but what he

purposes;

he exists

only

in so far as he

realises

himself,

he

is

therefore

nothing

else but the

sum

of his

actions,

nothing

else

but

what

his life is. 37

The central character's

eagerness

to realize

himself

receives further

emphasis

in

the

recurrence

of

the

phrase

life

begins

tomorrow

in

connection with his first

amorous adventure

in

Paris,

which is

comparable

to

Muhsin's

relationship

with

Suzy

and Isma'il's

possession

of

Mary;

in

each case

physical

love is an

integral

part

of the

young

hero's

initiation, but,

given

the

conservative Eastern

upbringing

of Idris's

young

hero,

his

physical

love

relationships

with

Marguerite

and Lilian

arouse

in him

feelings

of

disgust

and disillusionment with Western

culture

that re-

call Muhsin's

reaction

to

Suzy's

unfaithfulness. And

just

as cross-cultural consid-

erations come into

play

in

bringing

about

Muhsin's

disillusionment,

so

Idris's

young

hero succumbs to

comparing

his

physical

relationship

with

the Parisian

girls

to his sublime love for Nahida.

His more

self-fulfilling

love

relationship

with

Janine,

an

elevated

version of

Marguerite

and

Lilian,

awakens

him

to new cross-cultural

facts.

He

comes

to

real-

ize

the

compatibility

of

body

and

soul;

he is now even inclined to believe that it is

only by our recognition of the sanctity of the body that we can achieve spiritual

love:

Indeed,

he hated

some

of those bodies either

on

account

of their defective-

ness,

or

because

of a defect in his

own nature. But hasn't

he loved

Janine's soul

by

loving

her

body

and loved

her

body by loving

her soul.

She

has

recognized

the

sublimity

of

the

soul out

of her

awareness

of the

sanctity

of

the

body. 38

These

cross-cultural assessments

result in

his

acquisition

of a new vision of

things

and the

young

hero turns to

reconsidering

the nature of his

relationship

with

Nahida.

She

is in

love

with

him,

but out of

her

fear

of the

tyrannical

force

of

conservative social

conventions,

she

suppresses

her

emotions,

and this has

led

to

their erosion and to the effacement

of her

personality.

The

hero

of The Latin

Quarter is in a good position to see throughNahida's moral plight because his ex-

periences

in Paris have revealed

to him the

tyranny

of tradition

and cultural sanc-

tions that

prevent

the individual

from

becoming

himself

in

the

East.

However,

the

hero's

exasperation

is

tempered by

his cultivated

patriotic

sense. He

succeeds in

bringing

himself to

readjust

to his

environment,

but

is

determinedto

en-




12/19

The

Arabic

Bildungsroman:

A

Generic

Appraisal

233

rich his

life

by adopting

some elements of the other culture.Evidence of this is the

hero's

attempt

to

persuade

Nahida,

his

prospective

wife,

to read Sartre's

writings.

In terms of the novel's existentialist superstructure,the hero's cultivation of a

patriotic

sense and

his commitment to national

ideals interact with his efforts at

self-definition.

Man,

Sartre

writes,

makes

himself

by

the choice

of his

morality,

and

he cannot but

choose a

morality,

such

is the

pressure

of

circumstances

upon

him. We define

man

only

in

relation

to his commitments. 39

Morality

and

commit-

ment

also

underlie

the hero's decision

to

marry

Janine,

despite

his

mother's

strong

opposition

to an alliance

with a

foreign girl,

but Janine

rejects

his

proposal, keep-

ing

his wholehearted

enthusiasm

for

serving

his

country

intact. Does

not

Fuad,

a

staunch

advocate

of

the

national

cause,

teach

the

hero

that

marriage

to a

foreign

girl

is

incompatible

with

patriotic

orientation? Nor does the hero's

marriage

to Ja-

nine fit in with his final decision

wholeheartedly

to

reintegrate

himself into his so-

ciety

to

begin

a new life

guided by

a

new

vision.

In The Latin

Quarter

the action revolves around cultural

interaction between

East and

West,

just

as

it does in

Umm

Hashim's

Lamp,

and

to a lesser

extent,

in

The Bird

of

the East.

But this

can

hardly

be

said

of

Season

of

Migration

to

the

North.

In this work the confrontation between

East

and West

(or

between

North

and

South,

in

this

case)

takes the form of

encounter

and

challenge, 40yielding

to

retaliatory

violence 41and

aggression

very

different

from the cultural clashes in

the other

Arabic

Bildungsroman.

However,

it is not for

nothing

that

Salih,

in an

interview,

draws

a distinction between his novel and the other three works

in

which

the

confrontation

between

East and West

acquires,

to use Salih's

words,

a

romantic,

gentlemanly 42

dimension

reflecting

the

historical infatuation

with

the West in the Arab world.

To a certain

extent,

Mustafa

Sa'id shares with his

fictional Arab

characterstheir

infatuation

with

Western

culture,

but his

reactions towards it are

more

compli-

cated

than

theirs. Salih

depicts

the clash between

his hero and

Western culture on

a

larger

scale than the other

Arabic

Bildungsroman

writers do. In the

main,

in

the

other Arabic

Bildungsromane

it is based on

purely

cultural

differences,

whereas in

Season

of

Migration

to the North it is

also

given political,

cultural, racial,

and

psychological

dimensions. Sa'id's diverse set of

attitudes towards

Western

culture

in Season

of Migration

to the North seems

to flesh out Mansour

Khalid's

conten-

tion in

speaking

of

Arab and American

cultures:

Generallyspeaking,

attitudes to-

ward the

outside world are not

necessarily

rational since

they depend

on

traditions

derived

from cumulative

historical

legacies.

These

attitudes

may

take the

shape

of

hostility, jealousy,

emulation,

suspicion, affinity

or

cultural and

ideological

exclu-

siveness. 43The

dramatization of some

of these attitudes

or variations on

them

in

Season

of

Migration

to the North

come into

play

in

the dramatic

confrontation be-

tween

Mustafa Sa'id and

Western

culture,

which

gives

Salih an

opportunity

to

dramatize the

confrontationmore

comprehensively

and

with a

greater

measure of

intensity

than in

the other Arabic

Bildungsromane.

Hostility

towards the West

figures

as the

foremost

passion

in

Sacid's

life,

and

the

key

to his

hostility

can be

found in his

self-imposed political

role of

settling

the

score,

so

to

speak,

with the

colonizers of his

country.

Sacid's

single-handed

campaign

to

conquer

the West

acquires

an

irrational

quixotic

dimension.44His




13/19

234 Nedal

M.

Al-Mousa

bedroom in London turns into a battlefield where

he

can

conquer

the hearts

of his

English

female

victims.

The

intensity

of

the war is such that it claims the

lives of

four women (one is killed by Sacid; three commit suicide on his account).

The

military metaphors

with

which

Season

of Migration

to the North

abounds

recall the

frequently recurring images

of

war

in the

French

Bildungsroman.

In

Balzac's

Lost

Illusions,

for

instance,

the

young

bourgeois

hero, Lucien,

wages

war

against society

in

postrevolutionary

France,

and on

several occasions in the

novel

he

describes

in

military

terms his

struggle

for self-realization

under unfavorable

social circumstances.

But it is Julien

Sorel,

the hero of Stendhal's novel

The

Red

and the

Black,

who strikes us as the most

impressive

fighter.

Julien sets

out to

achieve

in the social

field what

Napoleon

has achieved on the battlefield.

For

Julien,

as for

Lucien,

the

battlefield shifts to the salons of the

aristocrats where the

invasion of the hearts of aristocratic ladies

may yield

rewarding

social victories.

On

the moral

level,

the defeat of

aristocratic ladies

in

the

French

Bildungsroman

fits

in with the

attempts

of

the

bourgeois

hero

at

undermining

the social

structure

of a

rigidly

stratified

society

that makes it difficult for him to

improve

his

position

by

climbing

the

social ladder.

In all these

respects comparison

and contrast can

be drawn

between

Sacid

and his

Frenchfictional kinsmen.

Like Lucien and

Julien,

Sa'id chooses women as his chief

targets

of attack

inspired by

the hidden motive of

dealing

a disastrous blow to the

moral fabric of

English society.

Thus,

to

my

mind,

it is

by

no means

accidental that

Sa'id

chooses

respectable

women-because

they symbolize

moral

integrity-to

carry

out his destructive

campaign

against English

society:

The women I enticed

to

my

bed included

girls

from the Salvation

Army,

Quaker

societies

and Fabian

gatherings. 45

And in the case

of Ann

Hammond,

in

particular,

Sa'id derives

great

satisfaction

from

turning

this

lady

of

respectable family

into a harlot.

Just

as the

young

hero's

aggressive

attitude

towards aristocratic

ladies

fits in

with the definitive theme

of class

struggle

in

the French

Bildungsroman,

so in

Season

of

Migration

to

the North the

hostility

towards women harmonizes with

the

typical

theme of the confrontation

between East and West

in

the

Arabic Bil-

dungsroman-the equivalent

of the

characteristic

theme of class

struggle

in

the

European

Bildungsroman.

As

many

commentators46

have

pointed

out,

racism

joins

forces with

politics

to

keep

normal emotional

relationships

between Sa'id and

English

women from

developing.

In

addition,

Sa'id's

problematic

relationship

with

English

women

could

in

part

be ascribed

to what

Salih

describes

as the

illusion-based

relationship

between the

Arab Islamic world and

European

civilization.47This contention

is

conspicuously

articulated

in

the

mechanics

of

the

love

relationship

between Sa'id

and

the

English girls: they

are

all at one in

conceiving

of

him as a lustful

figure

em-

bodying

the exotic

mysterious

world

of the East.

For

Ann

Hammond,

Sa'id

steps

directly

from the fanciful

world of the Arabian

Nights;

she could even act out

a

role

with him

inspired by

that fictional

world,

You are

Mustafa,

my

master and

my

lord,

she

said,

and

I

am

Sausan,

your

slave

girl. 48

His

bedroom,

which has

the

atmosphere

of the Arabian

Nights,

also has a

dazzling

effect on Sheila Green-

wood,

who,

in her

turn,

is attracted

to the exotic element

in his

personality.

The

English girls'

illusory image

of

Sa'id-or,

in the

terminology

of Edward

Said,

their




14/19

The Arabic

Bildungsroman:

A

Generic

Appraisal

235

textual attitude 49

owards

him-seems

to

have

affected

his

image

of

himself,

and

he

identifies himself with

Shahryar,

It

was as

though

I

were a slave

Shahryaryou

buy

in the market for a dinar

encountering

a Sheherazade

begging

amidst the rub-

ble

of a

city destroyed by

plague. 50

Caught

up

in this

situation

Sacid

goes

on to act

out

the

role of

a lustful

figure

turning

the

seduction

of women

into

a

mythical

act

having

its

special

rituals.

It

is

perhaps

on account

of his

entanglement

in this web

that

Sacid,

at

one

stage

in the course of

his amorous

adventures,

complains:

But

there

was

nothing

I

could do.

Having

been

a

hunter,

I had

become the

quarry. 5'

The Othello

theme in

the

novel could also lend itself to

interpretation

n

terms

of Salih's

concept

of

the illusion-based

image

of the East in the

West. Sa'id's

keenness

to distance himself from

Othello,

I

am

no

Othello. Othello was a

lie, 52

represents

an

attempt

on his

part

to

shatter the

image imposed upon

him

by

the

others.

He

suffers

from a

sort of

identity

crisis that contributes to his role

playing,

represented

by

his

assumption

of

different

names-Hassan,

Charles,

Mustafa,

Amin,

and Richard.

The

Arabic

and

English

names assumed

by

Sa'id also

point

to

his

being

torn be-

tween

the two

cultures,

a

typical

theme in

the

Arabic

Bildungsroman.

His self-

division

is

stressed

by

his nickname

of the

black

Englishman, 53

s

well as

by

the

Oriental

decorations of

his room

in

London,

which also

represent

his

attempt

to

protect

his cultural

ego

in

a hostile environment.

In

the

phrase

of

Albert

Hourani,

Sacid's

defensive

clinging 54

to native culture is a means

of

preserving

his

ego

against attemptsby

others

to

label

him,

to efface his

personality.

It is because

of this threat

to

his

ego

that Sa'id chooses to settle

down

in

a

vil-

lage

on the

banks of the Nile where cultural

traditions are intact. As

Frank M.

Bir-

balsingh

has

pointed

out,

the

point

is

underlined

by

the

crypticphrases 55

sed

by

Salih

in his

description

of the

villages,

The

houses were

houses,

the

trees,

and

the

sky

was clear and

far

away. 56

Sa'id's intense sense of

belonging

to the

village

has

excited the

envy

of

the

narratorwho himself is

plagued

with

ambivalence to-

ward East and West.

To

reintegrate

himself

fully

with his

environment,

Sacid marries

Hosna,

Mah-

moud's

daughter.

His

marriage

contrasts

with his

marriage

to

Jean Morris: the

former

having

been

undertakenas a

means towardsestablishing his powerful sense

of

belonging, according

to

the

conventions

of

the Arabic

Bildungsroman,

and the

latter

inspired by

Sa'id's hidden motive

to

bridge

the

gap

between East and

West,

another common

theme.

But Sa'id does

not find

it

as

easy

a task to

eliminate the

culturaldifferences between East

and West as Dr.

Hamdan does under similar cir-

cumstances. The

futility

of Sa'id's

undertaking

s

symbolized by

his

failure to have

children

by

Jean Morris in the

three

years

the

marriage

lasted.

The

sterility

of this

marriage

contrasts with his

productive

marriage

to

Hosna,

the

symbol

of

cultural

traditions

within

the

scope

of which

Sacid,

and,

for that

matter,

the

majority

of his

Arab

fictional relatives come to realize

that full self-realization

is

possible.

Yet, as is suggested by the Western atmosphereof his private rectangularroom

(which

has the

same

symbolic

function as his room in

London),

Sa'id

is

not

wholly

cured

of

his internal

division.

And it

is this incurable

duality

that

underlies

his

complaint,

I was the invader who

had come from the

south,

and this was the

icy

battlefield from

which

I

would not make

a safe return. 57

ubsequent

events




15/19

236

Nedal

M. Al-Mousa

prove

this to be a

prophetic

remark:

Sa'id's

mysterious drowning

in

the Nile is the

outcome

of

his failure

to

come

to

terms

with his

chronic ambivalence.

Sa'id's

tragic

end seems to be

incompatible

with the

designation

of the novel as

a

Bildungsroman,

which

usually

ends

with a

new

starting

point

in the life

of the

hero. But

in

the

light

of

the established line

of

interpretation

hat

Sacid

is

only part

of,

in the words of

Roger

Allen,

the

subconscious

of the

narrator,58

t is

possible

that Season

of Migration

to the North

presents

us with the

Bildung

of the narrator

who himself is conscious that his

life

begins

where

Sacid's

life

ends,

I

begin

from

where Mustafa

Sacid

had left off. 59Here

the

narratorcomes a

long way

from

his

mental state

in

the

early

parts

of

the

novel where he

expresses

his

apprehensions

that

he

could have met

Sacid's

destiny:

Was

it

likely

that what had

happened

to

Mustafa

Sacid

could have

happened

to me? He had said that he was a

lie,

so

was I

also a

lie? I am

from here-is

not

this

reality enough? 60

The narrator's

apprehen-

sions derive from

his

identification with Sacid

in

terms of their

common self-

division. But

if

self-division has

proved

to

be a

fatal

malady

in

Sacid's

case,

the

narrator s cured of it

by

the death of

Sacid,

his alter

ego.

The river

scene towards

the end

may

illustrate the

point:

I

heard

the reverberationof the river and the

puttering

of the water

pump.

Turning

to left

and

right,

I

found

I

was

half-way

between north

and

south.

I

was unable to

continue,

unable to re-

turn.

I

turned

over on to

my

back and

stayed

there

motionless,

with

difficulty moving my

arms

and

legs

as much as

was

needed to

keep

me afloat....

Then

my

mindclearedand

my

relation-

ship to the river was determined.Though floatingon the water,I was not partof it. I thought

that if

I

died at that

moment,

I would

have died as I was

bornm-without

any

volition of mine.

All

my

life I

had not

chosen,

had

not decided. Now I am

making

a decision.

I

choose

life.61

It will

not have been

lost on the reader that

this scene of

struggle

and survival is

meant to

remind us

of

Sa'id's death

by drowning.

And one need

hardly

labor the

point

that the narratorowes his survival to

striking

a balance between

North and

South

(which

has

kept

him

afloat),

helped

in

doing

so

by

the lesson embodied in

Sa'id's

tragic

end,

the outcome of

his

acute

ambivalence.

Yet,

as the dedication

to

Sa'id's life

story

reveals,

the

message

embodied

in

it

is in

fact addressed to all

those who suffer from dichotomous orientation,especially by being caught up be-

tween

two cultures:

Opening

a

notebook,

I

read

on the first

page: 'My

Life

Story-by

Mustafa

Sa'id.'

On the next

page

was

the dedication: 'To those who see

with

one

eye, speak

with one

tongue

and see

things

as either

black

or

white,

either

Eastern

or Western. '62

Sa'id's dedication

is

particularly applicable

to

Dr.

Hamdan,

in Ghalib Hamzah

Abu-al-Faraj's

The

Lost

Years,

who is

acutely

infected with the

malady

of

seeing

with

one

eye,

as he is

torn

between two cultures, East

and West. We are first intro-

duced to

Dr.

Hamdan

in

a

nostalgic

mood at his beautiful

villa in Los

Angeles:

he

is

recalling

his

happy

childhood

in his

native

village

of

Qibaa

in

Saudi Arabia.

Nostalgia, a constant theme in the novel, gives measure to Dr. Hamdan'sstrong at-

tachment

to his native culture and

therefore-to

anticipate

the end of

the

novel-

his

eventual

decision to turn

his

back

on the West

and return home.

In

the

mean-

time,

he

is

subjected

to a series

of

educational

experiences.

Once

his education

is

over,

he

emerges

as

a

totally

different

person.




16/19

The Arabic

Bildungsroman:

A

Generic

Appraisal

237

Detached

from

his native culture and

exposed

to

an alien

one,

Dr.

Hamdan,

as is

often the

case in the

Arabic

Bildungsroman,

indulges

in

reassessing

it

according

to

the norms of the alien culture, which is in turn examined from a cross-cultural

perspective.

Likewise,

in a

typical

manner,

Dr. Hamdan

falls

under

the

spell

of

Western

civilization;

he

is,

though,

repelled by

the materialistic

values in

the

West,

which Dr. Hamdan

believes have turned Westerners into slaves. Within the

framework

of his reflections

on the relative merits of East and

West,

Dr.

Hamdan

arrives at

the conclusion that

the individual

in

the East

enjoys greater

freedom

than the Westerner

simply

because

he has

fewer

materialistic needs.63

Constant

cross-cultural assessment

in The Lost

Years is established as the cardi-

nal fact

of

daily

experience

in the life of Dr. Hamdan. One

is

given

the

feeling

that,

as

Dr.

Hamdan's attraction

to Western

culture

intensifies,

so does

his

defen-

sive

clinging

to native traditions. Commenting on what the confrontationbetween

East

and West

might produce

in the

al-mousa on the arabic bildungsroman

Documents