ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 12, 2020 HOME OF THE DISPOSSESSED: A STUDY OF THE CONCEPT OF HOME AS PRESENTED IN RANDA JARRAR’S A MAP OF HOME AND HALA ALYAN’S SALT HOUSES

Salma Khanam Barbhuiya.

M.A. (English), Aligarh Muslim University. Email: [email protected]

Received: 14 March 2020 Revised and Accepted: 8 July 2020

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the issues of alienation, immigration from homeland, exile and identity crisis blooming out in Palestinian diaspora writing. The focus is on a variety of representations with respect to identity, dislocation, cultural hybridity and belonging. My aim is to discuss the concepts of „home‟, „cultural identity‟, and „diaspora‟ in Randa Jarrar‟s novel The Map of Home and Hala Alyan‟s novel Sault Houses. Lack of home brings the feeling of rootedness and homelessness which create a sense of lifelong discomfort for the dispossessed people of . Arab American writer Randa Jarrar discusses the concept of home in her 2008 novel A Map of Home. The protagonist of the novel offers a new dimension on diaspora by offering her own concept of home. As a diasporic person living between homes and identities, she finds her way home in the novel through a process of awareness consisting of three phases. The first phase is the quest of home as a result of non-belonging. The second one is the realization and the acceptance of her diasporic state, thus reconciliation with having no home. The third step brings out her celebration of non-belonging to any particular home.

KEYWORDS: Homeland, diaspora, displacement, identity, rootlessness,

I. INTRODUCTION:

Homeland which is chiefly associated with exile is put in question in course of colonization and people struggle for their identities. When one is forcefully exiled or dislocated from their homeland, the concept of diaspora comes. According to thinker like John McLeod, Salman Rushdie, home can be imagined in diaspora communities as a' mythic place' or ' an imaginary homeland'. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin define diaspora as " the voluntary or forcible movements of the people from homelands into new regions, is a central historical fact of colonization... the wide spread effect of this migration... continue on a global scale".(key concept in post-colonial studies, 1998,68).

Diaspora has been used to describe the status of Jews during the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century B.C. Historically, the word diaspora was used to refer to the involuntary mass dispersion of a population from its indigenous territories, in particular the dispersion of Jews. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) defines Diaspora as anybody of people living outside their traditional homeland. The term diaspora refers to those people or ethnic population who are either forced or induced to leave their traditional homelands, the dispersal of such people, and the resulting developments in their culture. The people having arrived in a new environmental and cultural situation, they try to negotiate two cultures: one which they possess and the other the new one. The diasporic culture is essentially mixed and a unification of the two cultures.

Diaspora is defined by Stuart Hall, as one “defined not by essence or purity, but by recognition of heterogeneity and diversity, by a conception of identity which leaves with and through despite difference.” Diasporic literature deals with the uprooted people who are in a quest for identity after being culturally displaced. Terry Eagleton in The Idea of Culture, remarks that the word „culture‟ contains a tension between making and being made. Jhumpa Lahiri comments, “The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially, for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are who grow up in two worlds simultaneously”. It deals with the immigrant‟s loss and nostalgia. As Rushdie once remarked, in Imaginary Homelands that they are obliged to deal in broken mirrors, some of the fragments of which have been lost. An immigrant, even though westernized always faces identity crisis, where his native culture unconsciously clashes with alien culture.

Diasporic writers are always haunted by memories which are coloured by imagination and nostalgia. The issue of „Displacement‟ or „Dislocation‟ is very important in diaspora that is used not only to express the physical movement of an individual from one place to the other but it also shows how with the movement a person

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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 12, 2020 carries the culture of his native land. Dislocation leads to cross-cultural emergence that have always affected the lives of immigrants and there is constantly the possibility of rejection, confusion and tension when people from different cultures intermingle.

In the case of Palestinians, people are forcefully uprooted from their own homeland. The Nakba of 1948 or the destruction of Palestine is a painful history. This is a turning point in Modern Arabic literature. The Palestinian literature mostly flourished in exile. Their writings are an attempt to preserve a threatened identity. Franz Fanon in his Wretched Of The Earth (1961) talks about cultural resistance. He argued that first step for the colonized people in finding a voice and identity is to reclaim their own past. The Palestinians who are exiled from their land became conscious of their identities and wanted to regain what they have lost. Their angst and frustration toward the Israeli is depicted through their writings.

The dispersion of Palestinians from their homeland is one of the harrowing catastrophes of the twentieth century. The creation of Israel in 1948 resulted in an exodus of Palestinians, rendering them displaced on their homeland and refugees in some neighbouring countries. Many of them are until today categorized as stateless, and they are denied their legitimate right to return to their villages and houses. Many also immigrated to North America and countries in Latin America, and recently some found Europe as a prime destination either as refugees or diasporas. The United Nations has failed to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the Jews, once traumatized and tortured in Europe, have been inflicting the same on Palestinians. Palestinian diaspora has carved a space for itself as a victim diaspora. The literature that the Palestinian diaspora writers produce mostly depicts the anguish, the suffering, and also the dream of independent state-Palestine. Their novels, short stories, and memoirs narrate the experience of the Palestinian individual in the host land. Thus, the sense of place for Palestinian diasporas is central in articulating their identity and claiming their homeland.

Many authors like Randa Jarrar and Hala Alyan cross borders and transcend cultural borderlines. As a Palestinian American they define their existence and determine their belongings through fiction writing.

In the Palestinian case, place is of greater significance as the Palestinian identity is usually described as out of place and lacking centrality. Randa Jarrar is a Palestinian American whose fiction transcends space and time. She is one of the young Palestinian diaspora writers who champion the Palestinian national cause and also defy the stereotypical images of the Middle Eastern women. Her first novel, A Map of Home (2008), was a grand success, acclaimed and translated into six major languages. In this connection, it is viable to say in general terms that the Palestinian diasporic and exilic writing is vibrant and highly acclaimed.

These writers are adding more to diaspora and world literature. Their literary output occupies the section of victim diasporas, narrating the personal and the collective trauma of people who have been subjugated for decades. In the words of Nadia Sirhan, the very act of narrating gives credence and existence to the displaced and dispossessed Palestinians (Sirhan, 2014). It is filled with anguish and despair, yet it communicates a voice of resilience. Memoirs, short stories, and novels that continue to emerge from different diaspora societies undoubtedly give the Palestinian political question a soul and spirit; substance that the political rhetoric lacks. Asmaa Naguib (2011) in this regard observes that the Palestinian novelists have assumed the task of remembering and narrating the entire collective experience to save the story of Palestine from oblivion. This has been the crux in most of the Palestinian diaspora writing since 1948 which is marked in the Palestinian history as the beginning of al-Nakba (catastrophe).

II. ANALYSIS:

There is a close link between one‟s identity, sense of belonging and the concept of home. Belonging and rootedness are significant ways of relating to one‟s surroundings. But for people who have no place or more than one place to call their home, it is difficult to find a solution. Contemporary Arab American writer, Randa Jarrar tried to discuss the concept of home in her 2008 novel A Map of Home. The protagonist of the novel offers a new dimension to diaspora by offering her own concept of home. As a diasporic person living between homes and identities, she finds her way home in the novel through a process of awareness.

A migrant without a home creates a constant loss and pain for the individual. William Safran defines the basic norms of the term diaspora, in his article “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return” (1991). He mentions six characteristic features of diasporic communities. These are: Dispersal from center to periphery, a creation of a collective memory, non-belonging to or indeed non acceptance by the host country, a strong wish to return to the ideal homeland, a belief that the homeland will be peaceful, secure and prosperous and lastly a continuous relationship with the home country and its people (Safran, 1991: 84). According to Ahmed, migration is “a process of becoming estranged from that which was inhabited at home” (1999:343).

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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 12, 2020 Home is sometimes an obscure land, a utopia, a nonfixed geography where nobody can prosper. Salman Rushdie mentions about a loss which exiles and immigrants have as a result of their experiences. This loss creates fiction with imaginary homelands. Diasporic people cannot feel at home in the countries they left behind and also in the country in which they live now. The place where they call home is the place of memory, language and therefore of translation. They do not have anywhere to call home so they cling to common memories and histories as their homelands.

III. A MAP OF HOME:

Randa Jarrar as a Palestinian-American has been one among the young writers whose fiction transcends geographical boundaries, rejects fixation, defies stereotypes, and portrays the daily struggle of the Palestinian individual. Her debut novel A Map of Home is a transnational piece of literature characterized by its engagements with the Palestinian history and culture. It is about a small family; the father Waheed, a Palestinian displaced after 1967 war into Egypt, and the mother, Fairuza, an Egyptian of Greek mother. They have two children; Nidali the protagonist and Gamal who has a minor role in the novel. The novel depicts the life of such family first in Kuwait and their movement to Egypt and finally to the United States. Nidali is the narrator of the novel, recounting her family‟s struggle and also reflecting her own experience of crossing borders and encountering other cultures.

Nidali Ammar, the protagonist of the novel A Map of Home bears a multi-ethnic background like Jarrar. She was born to an Egyptian Greek mother and a Palestinian Jordanian father. The Arabic meaning of Nidali is „struggle‟ or „strife‟, which is indicative of the life struggle Nidali and her family encounter. In the Arabic language, the proper name Ammar indicates the labels „builder‟ or „constructor‟, which suits the father‟s attempt to build a future for his Palestinian family in diaspora. The novel begins in the United States when Nidali is newly born and ends also in the United States when she is 16. In the beginning, Nidali‟s family moves from the United States to Kuwait during 1990s, when the Palestinians are not welcomed in Kuwait due to Yasser Arafat‟s failure to condemn Saddam Houssein‟s invasion of Kuwait. In part two, the family migrates to Egypt, where they live in a resort apartment in Alexandria and lack stability. In part three, they immigrate to the United States because of serious economic reasons. For a long time, they live in a mobile home, which in the larger context of the novel emphasizes their unstable diasporic identity. It is not until the end of the novel that they settle down in a regular house. Nidali, a trickster par excellence constantly adapts her survival strategies to shifting spatial and temporal contexts.

Using language games and mind tricks throughout the novel, Nidali questions cultural associations between „being‟ and „doing‟. She addresses the age-old question „Who Am I?‟: “When I‟d tricked my mind, it would float away, and I could see that I am just I. I‟d see myself from outside my own mind: my life, my body, and I was not half something and half another, I was one whole, a circle. (Jarrar, 2008: 58)

Jarrar is questioning the authority through character Nidali. Accepting multisexual modalities is one of Nidali‟s trickster schemes for overcoming sexual, as well as cultural, displacement. Her trickster discourse is not an escape from reality; it offers her a means to see reality in new ways that elude victimization.

Nidali demonstrates that coming-of-age is universal and that Arab women are not different. Opposing her father and resisting his conventional regulations for her own good, Nidali displays the ideal image of an Arab feminist. Indeed, her projection of feminism ideals does not mean negating the role of her father in shaping her personality. The tension between him and Nidali is rather looked at as a technique to advance the plot of the novel. In the novel Waheed, the father, is seen genuinely exerting effort toward his daughter‟s intellectual advancement. He attempts to push her to do well in school and he consequently nurtures her budding talent in creative writing. This makes him a significant factor in her identity construction even if she sometimes detests him. When asking her about what she wants to be, he recommends:

“…singing is not bad, but you can do better. You can be a doctor! A big professor of literature! Write poetry like I used to do. Write poetry and teach in English. Show those bastards the greatness of our literature”(65).

Waheed contributes to Palestinizing Nidali and connecting her to the „historic Palestine‟. This has been his primary goal, to raise his children with love and attachment to their father‟s homeland. Nidali recounts her experience by saying:

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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 12, 2020 “Baba dictated history to me. I found about the Suez Canal…and how my geddo was a fighter called a „free officer..Baba treated him a historical figure. He told her about his family in the Palestinian side, the connection to land, and how Palestinians fought all along…” (67).

In terms of culture, Waheed cannot tolerate Nidali‟s attempts to assimilate. He seems to be against assimilation and integrating into the host society. Even in the United States, Waheed Ammar himself persists any changes. He does not want his children to get exposed to the American culture. He rather advices his daughter to only take the best of America, education and money. Nidali is frustrated by his regulations and she tries to run away twice. Rejecting her father‟s plans, Nidali murmurs:

“We are not here to make a friend”. This is your Baba‟s mantra the entire time you are living under his roof. This is why he is in America but not you. You want a life, a concept you have just learned of (234).

It is easily observed that Waheed is afraid of losing Palestine as an idea. He therefore curtails Nidali‟s attempts for re-rooting herself. He already knows that her sense of home is fractured and this would weaken the Palestinian spirit and attachment to the eternal homeland-Palestine. Nidali and her mother have plans to settle down in the United States after years of movements and border-crossing. Nonetheless, Waheed does not seem interested in capitalizing his chances of re-sprouting and regrowth. He remains steadfast as the Palestinian olive tree.

IV. SALT HOUSES:

Hala Alyan is an Arab American writer, was born in the US of a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. Her displaced family moved from Palestine to Kuwait, Lebanon, and United Arab Emirates, before finally settling in the US. Alyan has published three collections of poetry: Atrium (2012), winner of the 2013 Arab American Book Award; Four Cities (2015); and Hijra (2016), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Award. Her debut novel Salt Houses traces the chronological displacement of a Palestinian family, the Yacoubs. In the novel Salt Houses, Hala Alyan tells the intergenerational story of an evolving Palestinian family. The novel Salt Houses (2017) is based upon the tragic events that have shaped the Palestinian collective consciousness. The novel depicts the collective experiences of a Palestinian family that has endured four major political upheavals: the Nakba (the 1948 exodus), the Naksa (the 1967 setback), the (1990), and the . These cataclysmic events complicate the definition of home and homeland for Palestinians and render them impermanent. As Edward Said (1979) states:

“Every Palestinian achievement is flawed by this paradoxical truth, that any survival outside Palestine is ruined in a sense by its impermanence, its groundlessness, its lack of a specifically Palestinian sovereign will over the future”.

Starting with the Naksa, and working through flashbacks, the novel goes back to the Nakba that caused Salma and Hussam, and their children Widad, Mustafa, and Alia, to leave Jaffa and live in . The family‟s tragic displacement results in an internal wound manifested in intrusive, disturbing flashbacks. After Hussam‟s death, Salma takes care of her family until the 1967 Six-Day War. Her son Mustafa is reported missing – possibly killed in the war. She moves to while her daughter Alia relocates with her husband to Kuwait. In Kuwait, Alia gives birth to three children: Riham, Kareem, and Souad. With the outbreak of the Gulf War and because of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)‟s stance on the Iraqi invasion, the Yacoubs are expelled from Kuwait. Destined to and haunted by a permanent unsettledness, the family scatters across different countries. Alia moves to Amman with her daughter. Souad moves to Paris to study, marries Elie, a Lebanese man, and gives birth to Manar and Zain. Finally, Karam relocates to the US and marries Budur, a Kurdish Iraqi woman. They have one daughter, Linah. This extended diasporic family never finds home and is constantly displaced. Yet, like many Palestinians, their memories of displacement, though excruciating, become a line of defence against misrepresentations and distortions. Living in exile reminds this Palestinian family of their temporariness and otherness, and motivates them to fight for their right of return.

Hala Alyan is concerned about identity in diaspora which is something that always concerns the displaced, especially those who are reluctantly forced out of their homelands. The characters of the book are from our generations: Salma, the mother of the family who earlier in 1948 fled the city of Jaffa with her husband due to Arab-Israeli conflict; her three children; her three grandchildren; and her four great-grandchildren. The novel presents how different characters see the world, one through a daring eye and another conservatively. It portrays how different generations react to change. As one reluctantly refuses to let go of the past, the other one is willing to embrace the change.

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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 12, 2020 Salt Houses describes how distance deprived people from being part of their loved ones‟ life, including Riham, Salma‟s granddaughter:

“All she knows of her siblings are her memories of them as children and then, abruptly, snapshots of adults whom she sees every couple of years.”

The constant search for home is something that rings throughout the novel. Alia, who is forced out of Nablus in 1968, refuses to accept Kuwait as her new home and seeks refuse in the Jordanian capital of Amman whenever she gets a chance. Her daughter Souad is also disoriented. After living in Kuwait, Amman, Paris and Boston, she eventually decided to reside in the Lebanese capital . And while to some home is “somewhere familiar, somewhere people look like us, talk like us”, others even can‟t describe what home is anymore.

Home is in the imagination of he dispossessed. By analogy, the repeated experiences of dispossession and displacement suggest that Palestinian houses, like salt, are dissolvable and can be washed away by the waves of politics and catastrophes. Atef sadly captures the memories of the makeshift houses he left behind:

“The houses float up to his mind‟s eye like jinn, past lovers. The sloping roof of his mother‟s hut, the marbled tiles in Salma‟s kitchen, the small house he shared with Alia in Nablus. The Kuwait home. The Beirut apartments. This house, here in Amman. For Alia, some old, vanished house in Jaffa. They glitter whitely in his mind, like structures made of salt, before a tidal wave comes and sweeps them away. (Alyan 2017, 273)

V. CONCLUSION:

In her novel, Randa Jarrar attempts to define what „home‟ means to a Palestinian growing up as a diaspora. She vehemently advocates the Palestinian national cause, but she also cultivates her conception of home. In its essence, A Map of Home is a transnational text, and Randa Jarrar views herself as a cosmopolitan citizen. Though she upholds what constitutes Palestianness, „home‟ for her exists in many places. In her characterization of Waheed Ammar, Jarrar attempts to represent the ideal Palestinian diaspora who remains faithful to his homeland. Moreover, Jarrar‟s fiction is very essential as narrative evidence that validates the story of Palestine, depicting the experiences of border-crossing, moving across countries as displaced, and living in the diaspora as stateless. Though the novel is often designated as a bildungsroman or a coming-of-age story, it brilliantly represents the condition of the contemporary Palestinian diasporas. It is full of humour and wit, yet it is satirical in its intent. Jarrar is not so much preoccupied with the notion of the romanticized home; she rather highlights the individual Palestinian experience. She even infuses feminist thoughts throughout the book.

VI. REFERENCES:

[1] Naguib, Asmaa. 2011. Representations of „Home‟ from the Setting of „Exile‟: Novels by Arab Migrant Writers. [2] Safran, William.1991. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return”. [3] Alyan, Hala. 2017. Salt Houses. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. [4] Alyan, Hala. 2018. “Conversation with Contributors: Hala Alyan [Interview by John Stintzi].” The Adriot Journal, March 30. https://theadroitjournal.org/2018/03/30/conversations-withcontributors hala- alyan-fiction-poetry/ [5] Ball, Anna. 2012. Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective. New York: Routledge. [6] Jarrar, Randa. 2008. A Map of Home. Penguin Books. [7] Al Maleh, Layla. 2009. Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives on Anglophone [8] Arab Literature. Rodopi.

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