HOPE IN THE MOST UNLIKELY SPACES: Thawra and the Contemporary Arabic Novel By Roula Salam A thesis submitted to the Department of English in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen‟s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (September, 2011) Copyright © Roula Salam, 2011 Abstract In the early to mid-twentieth century, many novelists in the Arab world championed Arab nationalism in their literary reflections on the social and political struggles of their countries, depicting these struggles primarily in terms of spatial binaries that pitted the Arab world against the West, even as they imported Western literary models of progress and modernity into their own work. The intense experience of national awakening that infused their writing often placed these authors at a literary disadvantage, for in their literature, all too often the depth and diversity of Arabic cultures and the complexity of socio-political struggles across the Arab world were undermined by restrictive spatial discourses that tended to focus only on particular versions of Arab history and on a seemingly unifying national predicament. Between the Arab defeat of 1967 and the present day, however, an increasing number of Arab authors have turned to less restrictive forms of spatial discourse in search of a language that might offer alternative narratives of hope beyond the predictable, and seemingly thwarted, trajectories of nationalism. This study traces the ways in which contemporary Arab authors from Egypt and the Sudan have endeavoured to re-think and re-define the Arab identity in ever-changing spaces where elements of the local and the global, the traditional and the modern, interact both competitively and harmoniously. I examine the spatial language and the tropes used in three Arabic novels, viewing them through the lens of thawra (revolution) in both its socio-political and artistic manifestations. Linking the manifestations of thawra in each text to different scenes of revolution in the Arab world today, in Chapter Two, I consider how, at a stage when the Sudan of the sixties was both still dealing with colonial withdrawal and struggling to establish itself as a nation-state, the geographical and textual landscapes of Tayeb Salih‟s Season of Migration to the North depict the ongoing dilemma of the Sudanese identity. In Chapter Three, I examine Alaa ii al-Aswany‟s The Yacoubian Building in the context of a socially diseased and politically corrupt Egypt of the nineties: social, political, modern, historical, local, and global elements intertwine in a dizzyingly complex spatial network of associations that sheds light on the complicated reasons behind today‟s Egyptian thawra. In Chapter Four, the final chapter, Gamal al-Ghitani‟s approach to his Egypt in Pyramid Texts drifts far away from Salih‟s anguished Sudan and al- Aswany‟s chaotic Cairo to a realm where thawra manifests itself artistically in a sophisticated spatial language that challenges all forms of spatial hegemony and, consequently, old and new forms of social, political, and cultural oppression in the Arab world. iii Acknowledgements I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Chris Bongie. His continuous encouragement, dedication to my schedule, detailed feedback, and meticulous revisions have not only prompted me to work harder in the face of mountainous challenges, but have also kept me optimistic and cheerful throughout this journey. He has been a great source of knowledge and inspiration to me; his keen involvement in my study of Arabic literature, although it took him to much less familiar scholarly terrains, has been both heroic and adventurous. Working with him has made me a far better scholar. I would like to thank my wonderful mother, whose visits from Lebanon during difficult times have been a source of great comfort and support. Writing this dissertation while I was away from Queen‟s and raising my daughter for long solitary intervals during my husband‟s deployment overseas has been a great challenge in my life that she has made bearable. I can never begin to repay you, mom. I want to thank Nour, both for being the light of my life and for being such a mature, patient, and understanding daughter while mommy spent long boring days and nights labouring at her computer instead of being fun and entertaining. I am grateful to my one and only dear big brother and his beloved family: Marwan, Abir, and “the three Ks”. You have always believed in me and encouraged me to take this giant step to Canada for my Ph.D. Over these years, my extended family and friends in Lebanon have continuously transmitted their care and concern for me from overseas; I wish you could all be here to celebrate the completion of this project. I will also always warmly remember the friends I made during my stay in Kingston; we shared many laughs and I will not forget the love and support you showed my family and me in good times and bad. I hope our paths will cross again in the future. iv Finally, the step that took me to Canada also brought me to my wonderful husband, Ibrahim. Thank you, Abe, for being such an important part of our lives, and for always believing I could do this. In addition to introducing me to exciting adventures and experiences, the unfaltering love and support you provide have made me grateful to have you as my soul mate. v Table of Contents Abstract........................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents.........................................................................................................................vi Chapter One Introduction......................................................................................................................1 Chapter Two „Denial‟, the Desert, and the Text: Spatial Metaphors in Tayeb Salih‟s Season of Migration to the North..................................................................................................... 57 Chapter Three The Bey, the Servant, and the Group: Spatial Networks and Movements of the Political in Alaa al-Aswany‟s The Yacoubian Building....................................................................135 Chapter Four Overwriting the Past: The Transgression of Pyramid Spaces in Gamal al-Ghitani‟s Pyramid Texts.................................................................................................................222 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................295 Works Cited................................................................................................................................302 vi Chapter One Introduction Part 1. Between reality and metaphor: Thawra in the Arab world Through the streets and like a virus across the internet and media channels, major socio- political changes are taking place in many parts of the Arab world today. Even as Arab intellectuals are scrambling, as a recent article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm puts it, to “rearrange their brains for a new stage of cultural production” that would be in keeping with the enormity and speed of the unfolding socio-political events (Serajeas ¶ 18), the Arab people‟s revolts are toppling governments, and despots who have oppressed and looted their countries for years are fleeing their havens to watch or intervene from a distance as the people struggle for regime changes, regardless of how these changes will turn out. While Arab intellectuals have been participating in these demonstrations by the hundreds, some sceptics have wondered, as the same article states, whether these “intellectuals [are] vanguards of change or parasites upon it” (¶ 17). Nonetheless, people from all walks of life are uniting across Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Algeria, Qatar, Oman and perhaps more countries to come; a steady tsunami of protest has engulfed the Arab socio-political and cultural arenas, and while the voices are not always on the same wave length, they have in common a deep frustration with situations that have been allowed to remain unchanged for far too long. We must be vigilant in following these developments across the Arab world, for the metaphors used to communicate the news about the Middle East region are often misleading, especially as the West struggles to locate a new vantage point from which to redefine and reassess its relationships with different Arab countries. My aim in presenting several of these Western metaphors here at the outset of my dissertation is to pave the way for a more complex 1 discussion about revolution and spatial metaphors in contemporary Arabic novels hailing from Egypt and the Sudan. On numerous occasions, experts on the Middle East have criticized the condescending tone used by Western intellectuals in describing revolutionary uprisings in the Arab world, the work of Edward Said serving as perhaps the most prominent example of this critique. In Orientalism (1978), Said challenges Bernard Lewis‟s definition of the term thawra (Arabic for revolution) as the latter, a bona fide Orientalist, presents it in his 1972 essay “Islamic Concepts of Revolution.” According to Said, Lewis purports that in Arab countries the term thawra comes from the classical Arabic root “th-w-r,” meaning “to