Arabic Literature and the Postcolonial Predicament

Response to reading: "The 'Middle East'? Or ... / Arabic Literature and the Postcolonial Prediciament" by Magda M. Al-Nowaihi

In this paper on the Arabic Literature, Magda M. Al-Nowaihi starts with a statement on the difficulty of doing an overview of Literature of the Middle East and Orientalism. It was a powerful piece that cautioned his bias and voiced his intent in writing the main piece on Arabic Literature and the Postcolonial Predicament.

Getting into the paper, he describes some great works of Arabic literature that could provide a great starting point for reading literature from that area. As the literature developed, he gives a great overview of how the authors thought of themselves and their characters after several historical events.

I was moved by the synopsis of Mahmud Tahir Lashin's short story, "Village Small Talk." the story describes a visit by a son of an aristocratic landowning class and a narrator to a small village in Eygpt. The narrator is horrified by the conditions of the towns people who looked about as well kept as the livestock. The friend states that their lifestyle was suitable to this class, but the narrator tries to impart a lesson on free will and how they could better themselves. The natives respond dumb-founded, and finally ask their local shiek to basically repeat a story about a peasant who went to the city, based on the advice of a friend that ends in tragedy for the peasant. It becomes a tale of the American dream...Eygptian style...and ends leaving the reader feeling like the natives are almost too dumb to know what is good for them.

This tale made me reflect on something I had read recently. In David Walker's Appeal in Four Articles, Walker drones on about enslaved Blacks needing to free their minds from internalized racism and fight back against their masters. He would get heated over stories of slaves spoiling the revolts of other slaves. Walker even had an encounter with a Black shoe shiner. Stating to the man something to the effect that even in his work he is kind of the dirt under a white man's foot. The Black man responded, that shining shoes was one of his favorite things to do. So taken a back by this response, Walker could only reason that a person so beaten down by the ills of slavery could come out enjoying such lowly work.

What is the connection? There is a sort of perceived understanding in Lashin's story that a better life is only achieved through a believe in free will and ambition. The misundertanding of this signals an incompetence or inferiority in the impoverished peasants. This same sort of presumption could be said of Walker in regards to the shoe shine. Also, the view of slaves in some of the Abolishionist literature I have been reading is simular to the culture and the quality of the natives in some of this early post-colonial Arabic literature. Maybe others see it differently, I just think is interesting.

Why is success soley based on the Western ideal of it? In another book, Dhat, by author Son'allah Ibrahim, the story revolves around a middle-class woman "whose aspirations become progressively limited to the acquisition of more consumer goods than all her neighbors-the more foreign and unnecessary the goods the better." Sound like an American Suburban house wife you know of? Yet, where has that got us in America? Are we suffering from the overindulgence of such spending in this little recession of ours? Have you watched an episode of Hoarders? How much is too much?

The last thought I'll leave with you is a memory of a conversation I had with a friend of mine in Nicaragua almost 15 years ago. I was talking with a man name Hugo, and discussing with him the plight of many Nicaraguans. Many lived in shanty towns, in a horrible sort of poverty. Stabilty was not a constant in the city of Managua. He was discussing the desire for more foreign business development and investment in his country. Or maybe it was a discussion between him and some of the Americans we were with. That this influx of money could change the plight of the people there. My 17 year old mind thought to herself, yes...maybe. But, in some ways it would be sad to lose some of what Nicaragua is. I think I meant that with this acceptance of globalization and rush to assimulate to this new age, some cultures are giving up a lot too. This forced shift seems to have both positive and negative connotations, that don't always reveal themselves until the form self is extinct.