11 - 17 January 2001
Issue No.516
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 11 - 17 January 2001 Issue No.516 |
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London indeed
Innaha London ya Azizi (This Is London, My Dear), Hanan Al-Sheikh, Beirut: Dar Al-Adab, 2000. pp408
Hanan Al-Sheikh's latest novel begins with a rocky Arab flight to London, like a symbol of the precarious state of suspension in which its protagonists (a range of Arab expatriates) have lived.
illustration: Najah Taher
Hanan Al-Sheikh's latest novel begins with a rocky Arab flight to London, like a symbol of the precarious state of suspension in which its protagonists (a range of Arab expatriates) have lived. Cross-cultural, multifarious and mildly provocative, in its capacity as a contemporary (postmodern) Arabic text, Innaha London wields unprecedented literary authority in the arena of Europe from the Arab (fictional) perspective. Arabs like Ahdaf Soueif and Amin Maalouf have successfully depicted a variable and contentious Arab-centred experience of the West -- in the (European) languages of the dominant culture; modern Arab fiction has dealt with the West as an object of fascination/infatuation, and as an other (place, personage, time) often perceived critically as superior or at least in a better position.
But while deploying an impressive array of myths and life narratives, neither literary current has dealt so fully with contemporary Arab life in the West -- a state of being so historically laden and so culturally complex that the mere contemplation of it, let alone its literary depiction, is an endeavour verging on the superhuman. Al-Sheikh's own historical and cultural situation (notably the Gulf Arab legacy that is brought to bear on each of her novels) has its limitations, of course. But while other, formally educated expatriate writers content themselves with the middle- to upper-class realm, Al-Sheikh contrives to remain outside such predetermined and ultimately restrictive boundaries, positing instead a more encompassing vision that reaches of the Abdel-dispossessed, offering a direct line to the world of illegal (Arab) immigrants (prostitutes, street-dwellers, impostors) as well as keeping track of the life led by the rich, and the Arab woman-European man connection.
It took Al-Sheikh almost a decade of living in the city before she could write about it, and her choice of characters reflects her ability to observe over time. A Moroccan prostitute seeks money among wealthy Arab tourists by pretending to be a princess. In her endeavours she is aided by a married Lebanese man who, accompanied by his monkey (formerly a vehicle for smuggling jewellery into the country) rediscovers his sexuality on the streets of London. There are Egyptian entertainers-cum-prostitutes, too, and an Iraqi woman who has recently departed the world of the rich after divorcing her husband, and who experiences an erotic awakening with an Englishman.
Most of these people entered the country in the 1970s, when immigration laws were more slack, and their almost three decades' experience of the city has turned them into unique creatures of a peculiarly multicultural clandestine realm. Perhaps the most poignant expression of this predicament is Al-Sheikh's description of the Egyptian prostitute's funeral. Christians bury their dead in coffins, but in the Muslim cemetery the rain causes pandemonium, and "the body, the only thing that had served her well," has to be covered in rubbish bags, the grave repeatedly filling up with water. This, too, seems an appropriate metaphor for the predicament the novel depicts.
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