Yahya Hakki’s The Lamp of Umm Hashim is a tale embedded in colonialism where the Egyptian protagonist Ismail goes to Europe for higher studies. It is a quintessential tale of ‘colonized meets colonizer.’ Egypt was under colonial rule and throughout the text, there are strong current of stereotypical representations f differences that had come to characterize the dichotomy of East vs. West. While in Europe, Ismail is exposed to the scientific way of thinking as he goes about learning ophthalmology. As scientific enlightenment piles on, his traditional and religious beliefs begin to wean away. Alienation in a foreign country notwithstanding, when Ismail returns home to Cairo to serve his community, the ‘culture shock,’ and the measure of despair he faces inspires sympathy in readers. However, it is clear that he has begun to think like his colonizers, more so when he says ‘the Beauty of the Forest, sent into sleep by a touch from the magic wand of a wicked witchwhen will she wake? When?’
His disbelief knows no bounds when he discovers that his cousin and betrothed Fatima is suffering from Trachoma, and his mother puts oil drops from The Lamp of Umm Hashim in her eyes. Umm Hashim is the revered Saint in Ismail’s community and the oil from her Lamp was considered to have miraculous healing properties. Having ‘worshipped’ for seven years in ‘Temple [of Science]’ in Europe, Ismail furiously defied the oil from the Lamp as superstition, and rejected the powers of the Saint.
However, when he failed at curing Fatima and instead turned her blind, Ismail’s disillusionment was complete. He receded into a constant mode of introspection, often wandering near the shrine of Umm Hashim. On the 27th day of Ramdan, the colloquial spirit of the Saint visited him and ignited his mind to the miracles of faith. Ismail realized that Science and faith will work together in healing, and he borrows the oil from the lamp and begins Fatima’s treatment again. Fatima’s eyesight is restored and so is Ismail’s faith in spirituality. He marries Fatima, opens a clinic in the community, and serves his people for the rest of his life.
The juxtaposition of science with religion, and modernity with traditions run through the text. The symbols of colonialism are rampant still: Egypt is shrouded in darkness (Fatima’s blindness) and Europe (Ismail’s education) sets out to provide light. As Rasheed El-Nany in his analysis of The Lamp of Umm Hashim points, ‘Western civilization is the active one, the initiator, the penetrator of the hymen of ignorancewhile Eastern culture is the recipient of action, who submits and learns.’
Season of Migration to the North
In Season of Migration to the North, the author Tayeb Salih presents a powerful landscape of Sudan mired in decades of colonization. The English colonizers have not only plundered the land, and robbed the people of what is rightfully theirs; they have also distorted their personalities and emotions in ghastly ways. The narrator of the novel is an unnamed Sudanese youth who went abroad to pursue higher education. During his time there, he looked for parallels between the two cultures, the colloquial East and the West. He remarks, “that just like us [the Europeans] are born and die, and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated.” The plight caused by colonization is there at the back of his mind and is reflected when he says, “How strange! How ironic! Just because a man has been created on the Equator some mad people regard him as a slave, others as a god. Where lies the mean? Where the middle way?
In the later passages, he is shown ruminating about how he could be of service to his country, “The fact that they came to our land, I know not why, does that mean we should poison our present and future?”
Another Sudanese, Mustafa Sa’eed also went abroad to study and mastered his hold on colonial economics, enjoying special favors of the English administrators back home. However, the narrator is not as embittered by the colonization as Sa’eed who ‘substitutes sexism for colonization.’ He victimizes English women by first seducing them, enjoying sexual favors, and abandoning them. This was his way of exacting revenge from the English who he thinks treated his country in the same way, figuratively speaking. In his legal defense, Sa’eed’s attorney Professor Maxwell Foster – Keen says, “These girls were killed not by Mustafa Sa’eed but by the germ of a deadly disease that assailed them a thousand years ago.” This is a reference to alienation and disillusionment that Sa’eed suffered at the hands of his colonizers. They had sponsored his education so that he could be of use to them. But they ruined him to the extent that he was rendered useless to even his own people.
Tayeb Salhi talks about the economic disparities between the natives of Sudan and the English rulers who exploited the natives for their own economic gain. He understands the dynamics of colonization quite well, and through his mouthpiece (the narrator) calls for finding a middle way for harmony and reconciliation. The narrator says, “Sooner or later [the British] will leave our countryThe railways, ships, hospitals, factories, and schools will be ours.”
Men in the Sun
Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun deals with the disastrous effects of colonization on the people of Palestine who have been rendered homeless in their own land. Following the rebellion of 1948, the situation in Palestine turned grimmer. There was a threat of Israeli terrorists who were ready to unleash a second wave of colonization in the Palestine, that was already under British colonizers. Kanafani’s novel is classified under narrative of resistance and chronicles the tale of three men who try to migrate to Kuwait inside a barrel. The three men belong to different generation – young, middle aged, and old. They have undergone the miseries spawned by their colonizers and had to face the trauma of being separated from their families. The redrawing of political maps is nothing but a devious outcome of colonization that affects people on the both sides of the borders.
The Israeli colonists set up ‘barbed wires’ within the cities and neighborhoods in Palestine, so much so that it was difficult for people to go to their houses. They were scattered as refugees, either in their own land or across multiple cities in different countries. The love of the land and a house is the most passionate emotion that runs across the text. The first line sets the colonial tone,
“His chest upon the moist earth. The ground began to beat under him: tired heartbeats pulsating from the grains of sand to the smallest particlesEvery time he threw his chest onto the ground he felt the same beat, as if the earth was still [] trying to forge an arduous route towards the light emanating from the depths of hell [..], there, upon the earth which he abandoned ten years ago.”
The three men Abu Qais, Marwan, and Assad are aided in their journey by Abu Khirzan who agrees to take them across the border in the water tanker. Kuwait was the dreamland where they hoped to get everything they were deprived of. On their way, there are checks at the border and the threat of being discovered is always looming. At one point, they decided to just die due to suffocation, because death seemed to be the best liberator.
The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist
Emile Habibi in his novel The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist presents a fictional scenario where a Palestinian Arab recounts his life in the State of Israel under the Military Government. The work is dark and satirical in nature. Palestine’s tryst with colonization was rather absurd; the case of those who remained within the Israeli borders couldn’t believe that ‘overnight they became strangers in their homeland and a targeted minority’ (Seraje, 2013)
The expansion of military control in the region resulted in an oppressive regime that involved ‘ethnic and economic segregation, land appropriation, and restrictions on movement, political, and intellectual activities’ (Seraje, 2013) It is a landmark novel that employs the imageries of an outer space to show the homelessness of the protagonist Saeed, a fool. A man from outer space visits him with whom he corresponds through letters and tells him about the secrets of his life. The concept of outer space is also shown to challenge the hegemonic structure of the military rule because no boundaries and guns can demarcate the sky/space.
The story is Saeed’s tale of survival and the gimmicks he employs to ensure that he remains alive in his occupied homeland. He prostrates before the powers that be and even consents to become an informer. Can he be called a coward? No, because not every tale can be about heroism. Nowhere does Saeed blame Israel or the military government for his predicament. What more, he doesn’t even consider it to be so. For him, the life is like that, and his version of life adds to the repository of mainstream stories on the alienation of Arab Israelis.
In his clumsy and foolhardy ways, Saeed is doing all he can to get Yuaad back to Palestine. He is not ready to sacrifice his life and go with his son and his wife Baqiyya. Despite his loyalty to the State of Israel, Saeed is captured by the Israeli forces and put in prison where he realizes the extent of Israeli terrorism.
Miramar
Naguib Mahfouz in his novella Miramar was published in 1967 and revolves around the life of a peasant girl Zohra. She is smart and hard working, and comes to the city of Alexandria to earn a living. There the mistress of the house, Mariana, employs her at the Miramar Pension. Zohra hopes to make a decent living and marry a good man who values her for her virtues. However, the men she comes across at Miramar, who are Mariana’s guests, often treat her as a lowly peasant. Some of them look upon her condescendingly as if she is not capable of thought and action. Zohra deals with male guests such as Amer Wagdi, Tolba Bey Marzuq, Mansour Bahy, Hosni Allam, and Sarhan el-Beheiry smartly and stands for her conviction and dreams.
Zohra falls in love with Sarhan el-Beheiry, a socialist revolutionary, and a corporate accountant, who exploits her sexually. Instead of a marriage proposal, Sarhan offers Zohra to be his mistress. Zohra is still hopeful that Sarhan would confess true love, and allegiance. However, her hopes are dashed when he deserts her for the daughter of a rich doctor. Sarhan, after leaving Miramar, gets into trouble when his corrupt actions at work are discovered. He ends up committing suicide. Others in the house also meet a not-so-glorious fate, and Zohra is also thrown out of Miramar.
When studied in context of the political situation of Egypt in the 1960s, it is easy to understand that Zohra is a personification of newly independent Egypt. Like Zohra, Egypt is strong willed, smart, and very hard working. It has hopes to fulfill its dream but has no suitors – political parties, candidates and supporters – who actually cherish its true worth and work hard for its success. As Dean Scotty McLennan in his sermon had explained, “Mahfouz has made Zohra stand for the redeemed Egypt of the future, beyond all of its current economic corruption, class warfare, ethnic and religious conflict, and lack of unified vision.” The men she comes across represent “different national factions and classes” who want to gain control over her (Egypt) in order to achieve their own selfish ends. The most striking is the example of Sarhan who personifies the corporate sector that just wants to reap profits. He just wants to treat Egypt just as a man treats his mistress.
A few days had brought us nearer to one another. The sense of companionship had gotten the better of the old political differences as well as the deeply rooted aversion of two opposed temperaments, though occasionally the buried differences would drift up to the surface, reawakening an ugly antagonism.
The four narrators tell the story from their own perspective, denying Zohra/Egypt, the central character the right to tell her own story. Even though the country is free, and is heading towards democracy, it is still haunted by the repressions of the colonial era.
Works Cited
Assi, Seraje. "Memory, Myth and the Military Government: Emile Habibi’s Collective Autobiography." Jerusalem Quarterly (2013): 87-97.
Badawi, M. M. "" The Lamp of Umm Hāshim": The Egyptian Intellectual between East and West." Journal of Arabic Literature (1970): 145-161.
Barthet, Stella Borg, ed. A sea for encounters: essays towards a postcolonial Commonwealth. Vol. 117. Rodopi, 2009.
El-Enany, Rasheed. Arab representations of the occident: East-West encounters in Arabic fiction. Routledge, 2006.
McLennan, Dean Scotty. "FOOD THAT PERISHES IN MAHFOUZ’S MIRAMAR." Stanford Memorial Church, 5 August 2012.
Sabry, Mushira Salah El-Deen. Unveiling (Hi) stories: Colonial Dispossession in Emile Habiby’s The Pessoptimist and Caryl Phillips’ Crossing the River. Diss. The American University in Cairo, 2013.
Selim, Samah. "Literature and Nation in the Middle East." (2008): 108-110.
