Acknowledgment

To the aspiring, young film critic, Omar Abu El Majd: peace be upon your mind
illuminated in art’s light, you soul blazing with the fury of passion for both your country and its
art, and, above all, your helping hand that never rejects a seeker of knowledge. Thank you for
helping me and inspiring me with this research, and I dedicate this piece of work to you.

Bassant Ayman
 “Bemoan, Oh Raven, For What’s Lost in Diaspora”:

A Comparative Study of the Concept of Diaspora and Identity in Arthur Miller’s Play Broken
Glass and Radwan El Kashef’s Movie Date Wine (Araq El Balah)

There used to be a time when some critics viewed comparative literature as a threat to the
literary discipline. Featured in Charles Bernheimer’s report titled “Comparative Literature at the
Turn of the Century”, these critics regarded comparative literature as an alien force that could
alter the orthodoxy of the literary discipline’s methods and choice of texts. Comparative
literature, to critics such as Levin and Green, threaten to rattle the foundations of what is
considered canonical literature; rather, what is considered literature to begin with. Comparative
literature’s dictation of interdisciplinarity and its usage of translation in these critics’ opinions
“involve a relaxing of discipline" and a transgression of “linguistic purity” (American
Comparative Literature Association,1993). Bernheimer refutes these arguments that demean
comparative literature by explaining the approach by which literature is approached in this day
and age. In his words, “literary texts are now being approached as one discursive practice among
many others in a complex, shifting, and often contradictory field of cultural production”
(American Comparative Literature Association,1993). These contradictions within multiple
cultural products only serve to enrich the discipline and give a deeper insight into the concepts
that constitute the conscience and the minds of different parts of the world. Bernheimer proceeds
to explain that comparative literature challenges the idea of “discipline” and comparatists, in a
way, reject the idea of defining each and every cultural product in “manageable territories of
professional expertise” (American Comparative Literature Association,1993). Comparatists,
therefore, contribute to reshaping and remapping the boundaries that separate different genres
and cultural productions from being literary, thus “making the production of "literature" as an
object of study {that could be} compared to the production of music, philosophy, history, or law
as similar discursive systems” (American Comparative Literature Association,1993). In other
words, comparative literature enables a literary critic to transcend beyond what is “canonical”,
printed and, ultimately, what is Eurocentric. This leads to the contributions of Edward Said in the
field of comparative literature. According to Robert J.C Young’s article titled “The Legacies of
Edward Said in Comparative Literature”, Said theorized the notion of crossing and questioning
of what is canonical “after which he stepped outside the rarefied theory world of American
Comparative Literature into the wider world of politics and culture” (Young, 2010). Said
encouraged approaching texts of the Orient and the Occident side by side “show the consistency
of the discursive perspective that can be discerned across them”, thus reinforcing the oneness of
the human experience that constitute the conscience that construct a literary work. In this sense,
comparative literature has allowed the researcher to bring the Orient and the Occident together
and explore their unity in undergoing a rattling human experience such as Diaspora and the loss
of identity. It has also given the researcher the privilege to equate drama to the silver screen in
their literariness, thereby conducting an interdisciplinary, comparative study between an
American play and an Egyptian film. In this light, this study aims to compare and explore the
manifestation of the concepts of diaspora, in its physical and psychological sense, and identity,
or the loss of it thereof, in Arthur Miller’s play Broken Glass and Radwan El Kashef’s movie
Date Wine (Araq El Balah). This study will utilise the concepts of Stewart Hall regarding
diaspora and identity in order to analyse the two texts while applying elements of comparative
literature theories of Charles Bernheimer and Edward Said.

Diaspora is among the many human experiences that shaped the very existence and
identities of multiple peoples of both the orient and the occident. Diaspora is a term that was
once used to describe the expulsion of the Jews from the promised land of Israel. Later, it
became a term that describes the struggles of scattered peoples whose origins lie in a land other
than that they live in. However, as Joanna Story and Iain Walker’s book The Impact of
Diasporas: Markers of identity explains: over the past two decades, “diaspora” has evolved to
trespass its restricted physical and sociological meanings to be a defining word “used to refer to
anyone not at home” (Story and Walker, 2015). This new definition gives diaspora a new
psychological and existential dimension, making it a state of mind and being rather than a simple
geographical or a postcolonial state. Stewart Hall explored the notion of cultural identity that
constitute people of diaspora in his article titled “Diaspora and Cultural Identity”, explaining it as
a mingle between oneness and difference; being and becoming. More specifically, Hall explains
that there are two different ways of thinking about “cultural identity”. The first tends to coin
cultural identity as “one, shared culture, a sort of collective 'one true self', hiding inside the many
other, more superficial or artificially imposed 'selves', which people with a shared history and
ancestry hold in common” (Hall, 1994). This one true self provides the people of diaspora with a
state of “being” that is “stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning,
beneath the shifting divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history” (Hall, 1994). The second
definition gives more focus on the idea of “becoming” rather than only “being”. “This second
position recognises that, as well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical points of
deep and significant difference which constitute 'what we really are'; or rather 'what we have
become’” (Hall, 1994). Hall admits the significance of oneness for people of diaspora as a point
of reference and a connection with one’s “being”, but also stresses the significance of the
diasporic identity’s “becoming”. Diasporic identity has a basis and a foundation in the past, but
also is a biproduct of the present and the future. It undergoes a series of “ruptures and
discontinuities” that alter its being to construct a whole new identity (Hall, 1994). The key,
according to Hall, is for the diasporic individual to achieve a state of dialogue between this
oneness and difference, to give themselves a name that has roots in their past. Yet there are times
when these identities collide rather than be in dialogue. And so is the case with Broken Glass and
Arak El Balah (Date Wine).

Broken Glass is a 1994 play by Arthur Miller. It is set in late 1930s New York. Philip
Gellburg is the only Jew working at a Brooklyn mortgage bank. His wife, Sylvia, becomes
mysteriously paralyzed from the waist-down after seeing the photos of old Jewish men scrubbing
the pavement with toothbrushes in Nazi Germany. The couple resort to Dr Hyman, a man as
invigorated and empathetic as Philip is repressed. Dr Hyman confirms that Sylvia’s paralysis is
due to psychological factors rather than a physical ailment, and attributes it, primarily, to Philip
and Sylvia’s sexually and psychologically tensed marriage. The play goes on as Sylvia tries to
come in terms with Philip’s repression, her repressed identity as a Jew and as a woman, and her
new passion and longing for Dr Hyman. All this tension weakens Philip’s heart. In the end of the
play, Philip and Sylvia have a confrontation, and the curtain draws with Sylvia standing up for
the first time as Philip dies.

Jews are primarily the people for whom came the term diaspora. The article “Diasporas
and The State: From Victims to Challengers” by Robin Cohen associates the term to the Old
Testament’s warning to the Jews that “scattering to other lands” shall only result in the
punishment of exile, separation and estrangement (Cohen, 1996). Philip and Sylvia are no
different than their ancestors, for Philip is originally from Finland while Sylvia is Polish.
Therefore, Philip and Sylvia are, from the beginning, people of diaspora in America. However,
their responses to this diaspora and their identity were completely different. Philip adapts Hall’s
notion of taking a “point of reference” in his heritage, and yet he is eager to isolate himself from
this heritage, thus making himself a stranger to his own “being” in order to “become” the identity
of an American. Will May’s article “'It's hard to be anything: Arthur Miller's Broken Glass'”
states that “Phillip is eager to differentiate himself from other Jewish people, taking pride in the
fact that he is the first Jewish employer of Brooklyn Guarantee and that his son will be one of the
first Jewish general in the American army” (May, 2008). On the other hand, there are several
signs of Philip’s denial and self-consciousness of his being a Jew. For example, When Margret,
Dr Hyman’s wife, mistakenly pronounces his name as “Goldburg”, which is obviously a Jewish
surname, he makes it a point to emphasize and respell his name more than once to “Gellburg”
which is more of a generic, white name. May also explains Philip’s dissociation with his
linguistic origins. Throughout the play, Philip is presented with Yiddish vocabulary, a language
derived from Hebrew used by Ashkenazi Jews, and yet Philip is careful to always translate them
into English in his replies or at times ignore them completely (May,2008). He was careful not to
use the Yiddish word for “ghost of a dead person” that is “dybbuk” and ignored Hyman’s remark
in Yiddish “Tuschas offen tisch” completely, and only responds to the English calling that
followed (Miller, 1994). Interestingly, Frantz Fanon in his book Black Skins/ White Masks
highlights the fact that “to speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the
morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the
weight of a civilization” (Fanon, 2008). Therefore, Philip’s sole usage of the language of the land
of his diaspora is a state of “becoming”, but not in the form of a dialogue or a mingle, but rather
as an erasure of his original cultural identity as a Jew. As a matter of fact, Philip assumes the
identity of the white race so much that Miller alludes to comparing him to a Nazi. When talking
to Hyman in his sickbed, Philip says that “{He} could almost kill {Jews}. They infuriate {him}.
{He is} ashamed of them and that {he} look{s} like them” (Miller, 1994). This detest for the
Jewish race is extremely likened to a Nazi’s attitude towards Jews, who regard them as a lower
race: An “Other” to their “Selves”. Margret refers to Philip as a “dictator” which associates him
with Hitler, ironically (May, 2008). As Tanya Tomasch in her article “Evil as a Man-made
Phenomenon: Denial, Humour and Sex In Arthur Miller's "Broken Glass" explains it: “Hitler is
demoted from monster to “one of us”, albeit a very sick one, and described by Dr. Hyman of “the
perfect example of a persecuted man" to point out the dangers of fear, anger and denial
(Tomasch,2013). Regarding this behaviour, Hall quotes Said and Fanon’s notions of Otherness.
He states that “Not only, in Said's 'Orientalist' sense, were we constructed as different and Other
within the categories of knowledge of the West by those regimes. They had the power to make us
see and experience ourselves as 'Other’”(Hall,1994). In his diaspora, Philip internalized his
Otherness and thus became haunted by it. His “becoming” and “difference” became a collision
of his diasporic and original identity rather than a dialogue. And upon internalizing his
Otherness, he became an oppressive force to his wife. It is only on his deathbed that he
acknowledges and admits his heritage, and in fact dies when he becomes one with. He admits to
Dr Hyman that “there are some days {he} feel{s} like going and sitting in the schul with the old
men and pulling the talles over {his} head and be a full-time Jew the rest of {his} life (Miller,
1994). This was the only time Philip used Yiddish in his speech, thus signifying his final
awareness of his “being” as a Jewish. He also admits to Sylvia before he dies that he had been
“more afraid than {he} looked…of Germany…of what could happen to {them} here (ie: in
America) …meantime there are Chinese Jews for God’s sake” (Miller, 1994). His rejoicing in
there being Chinese Jews is, according to Stewart Hall, returning to the idea of “the reference”;
the “'one true self', hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed
'selves'”. He discovered that there are so many more other than him in hiding, haunted by the
aroma of their Jewishness. He embraced his oneness with an American with the Chinese in their
one shared identity as Jews, and only then was the Old Testament’s curse of estrangement and
diaspora was levitated.

Sylvia approaches her diasporic identity in a completely different light. Rather than
escaping it, she longs for it, and yet is repressed afar from it by Philip. This is shown in her
empathy towards the photographs of the Jews scrubbing the pavement in the newspaper. In fact,
this oneness that Sylvia feels towards Jews in her diaspora is to be likened to Halls’ reference of
oneness of the Negritude, “the heart of the black identity”; the experience which constitutes the
diasporic people’s oneness and identity of being (Hall, 1994). Thus, unlike Philip, Sylvia is very
much in touch with her identity of being. This identification, however, as May clarifies, is
interrupted by Philip. “Phillip tries to brush off the growing tide of anti-Semitism, remarking
early on in the play that American newspapers ought not to publish the pictures, but through
Sylvia’s increasing obsession with the images we come to understand Phillip’s attitude as one
that leads to self-denial and self-hatred” (May, 2008). Therefore, in this wave of his denial and
self-loathing, Philip denies Sylvia of her “being” as a Jew, and yet, as opposed to Philip, she
does not become white either. Having no “reference” or “history” to hold on to, she basically
becomes nothing, hence the symbol of paralysis becomes a symbol of “her anxiety about her
place in the world” (May, 2008) and also a form of deformity resulting from being a cultural
null. In fact, Sylvia says that she is in America only “for {her} mother’s sake, and Jerome’s sake
and everybody’s sake except {hers}” (Miller, 1994). This contributes to Hall’s description of
Edward Said’s Otherness, for when a diasporic individual becomes self-aware of his Otherness
and is powerless to overcome it “fixes {them}…to the ambivalence of {their} desire” (Hall,
1994). This makes Sylvia unable to understand what she actually desires in her diaspora, so she
no longer knows why she is in diaspora to begin with. She is reduced to the role of daughter and
mother, noting that she did not say that she was there as a wife, which leads to the next point.

Sexuality plays a vital role in the play. Sexual frustration and inability acts as a symbol
for loss of identity. According to May, “their sexless marriage comes to typify the stultifying
sense of isolation and stasis present throughout the play” (May, 2008). Philip and Sylvia’s
isolation from each other mirrors their separation from their cultural identities. Just like Philip
assumes the identity of a white man, he assumes the identity of a sexual being. He tells Dr
Hyman that he actually had an intimate relationship with Sylvia “the other day” and yet she
forgot it. Subconsciously, Philip associates the identity of the white with that of a sexual being.
When he gave a reference to a famously sexual being, he referenced “Rudolph Valentino”, an
Italian-American, white actor. It turns out, however, that just like his whiteness, Philip’s
sexuality is only an assumption, for Sylvia tell Hyman that their marriage had been sexless for 20
years. Sylvia’s lust and sexual interactions with Dr. Hyman, on the other hand, seem to empower
her. It is when Dr Hyman touches her that she gains some power to at least lift one knee up. She
makes efforts to move only for him, to hold his hand, or when she “draws him and kisses him on
the mouth” (Miller, 1994). May states that “{Sylvia’s} enforced paralysis comes to represent her
own ambivalence about herself as a sexual being” (May, 2008). Therefore, it is after she kisses
Hyman on the mouth that she “takes a step off the edge of the bed in a hysterical attempt to reach
Hyman and the power he represents” (Miller, 1994). Not only is Hyman’s a Jew in total
reconcilement with his Jewishness, stating that he “never pretended {he} wasn’t a Jew” (Miller,
1994) unlike Philip, but also he is an sexually active man who is capable of reviving Sylvia’s
dead identity as a wife and as a woman, thus shattering this “ambivalence” she has as a sexual
being and as a Jew, hence the “power he represents”. Therefore, Hyman has become an identity,
a desire and a home. This confusion of her identity and that of Hyman, Philip and her Jewish
heritage is evident in her cry “What will become of us” (Miller, 1994). In this cry it is ambiguous
whether she is referring to Jews, her and Philip or her with Hyman, thus, as Hall states,
ambivalent to her desire and of her being, thus becoming null. It is only when Philip himself
admits and reconciles with his Jewishness, that Sylvia rises up to her feet. The moment he
allowed her to reassume her Jewishness, Sylvia felt empowered enough by her original diasporic
identity, and rose up to her “becoming”. In this light, Broken Glass, the title of the play, comes to
signify several elements. As Ed Rampell’s article ““Broken Glass”: What it means to be a Jew in
America” states, not only is Broken Glass a reference to “Nazis’ 1938 night of terror called
Kristallnacht or “the Night of Broken Glass.” When Nazis shattered the glass windows of Jewish
shops (a reason behind Jewish diaspora to begin with), but also the “Jewish wedding custom of
the groom stomping on a drinking glass wrapped in a cloth, which may represent deflowering”,
thus hinting at Philip’s sexual inability and, more importantly, his shattered identity in his
diaspora.

Leaving the curtain to set on Broken Glass and moving on to the silver screen, Radwan
El Kashef’s Egyptian movie Arak El Balah or Date Wine, was produced in 1998. It narrates the
story of a village in upper Egypt that some unknown strangers from city visit, promising the
villages men with future prospects, jobs and heaps of money and gold. Thus, all the men in the
village leave to work for the strangers, leaving only their women behind, along with a young
man, Ahmed, and the “Grandfather”, the old, mute, wise man of the village. The women adapt
themselves to living alone with only two men present among them. Little by little, the women
come to trust Ahmed, and regard him as their sole provider of food from their palm trees and
protector. Loneliness and sexual frustration distort the women’s characters, making them turn to
heinous things such as smoking, adultery, and attempts of rape and suicide to quench their thirst
and longing. Months later, the men come back, longing to quench their thirst, only to find their
women rejecting them, unable to deal with them anymore. They blame young Ahmed for the
distortion that befell their women. The men of the village lure Ahmed to climb the highest palm
tree at night, cut the tree, letting Ahmed fall to his death amidst the wailing of women.

In contrast with Broken Glass, Date Wine tackles the diaspora of not those who, in the
word of the Old Testament “scattering to other lands”, but actually those who stayed within their
soils, yet still were affected by the repercussions of their people leaving. Radwan El Kashef
initiated the film by establishing the notion of diaspora, starting with the “dedication” that the
film starts with. The film starts with a dedication (see figure 1) which translates to “To the man
of the south haunted by his secret. Peace be upon you the day you die, and peace be upon you the
day you rise from the dead” (my translation). Egyptian film critic Omar Abu El Majd, in his
explanatory video titled “Explaining the Movie Date Wine from My Perspective”, explains that
“Al Khabi’a” (ie: the crypt) is something that is hidden or concealed within one’s self. Those
who leave their countries always have the remains of their country buried deep within them. You
could call it patriotism, identity or guilt” (Abu El Majd, 2018). This is Radwan El Kashef’s way
of showing that wherever a diasporic individual may go, he would still be haunted by their
identity and cannot escape it, for it’s his “secret” buried within his being. This is further
emphasized with the first scene in the film. The film starts with a lone male traveler, a
descendant of the men who left the village, returning home. When he finally found his home
village, he is greeted by one of the old women in the village. When he asked her how she knew
he was coming, she answers him in modern standard Arabic: “Your essence, if you do not follow
it, you die suffocating by it, just like your fathers, uncles and cousins” (my translation) (Arak El
Balah, 1998). Radwan El Kashef compares one’s identity with an essence that follows one
wherever he goes, and if one does not embrace this essence, he dies suffocating by it. Ironically,
Philip of Broken Glass died “suffocating” with his essence, with the essence of his Jewishness
that he long tried to escape. Therefore, Radwan El Kashed sheds light on the significance and
incapableness of “being” and even by “becoming”. The sense of loss and diaspora is also
portrayed in the very first shot of the film. The film starts with an Extreme Long Shot (see figure
2) of a desert, a mountain and the sole traveler who is the last man remaining of the village.
According to Timothy Heiderich’s article “Cinematography Techniques: The Different Types of
Shots in Film”, Extreme long shots “convey the relative insignificance of the character struggling
against their environment”, thus making the traveler without his people, without connecting to
 his “being”, insignificant and lost in a vast nothingness (Heidrich, 2013). Another way Radwan
El Kashef portrays the loss of identity and “being” when one chooses diaspora is with the scene
of the men leaving the village. In this scene, the strangers are shown robbing the men off their
identity cards one by one, which symbolizes them robbing them off their identity. Just as Philip’s
attempt to avert Sylvia from gazing into the Jews in the newspaper deprived her of a “reference”
of who she was and to whom did she belong to prior to her diaspora, taking the men’s identity
cards in Arak El Balah, a card that actually documents people’s residence, family and name,
deprives them from their history and reference as well. Interestingly, death in the movie is
featured not as death, but as an action of “departure”. Thus, when the grandfather died, he is seen
riding a horse and departing, so did Ahmed when he fell off the high palm tree (Abu El Majd,
2018). Therefore, Radwan El Kashef sees the very concept of departure and leaving one’s soil as
a form of death, which is similar to the Old Testament’s view on Jewish diaspora as a form of
punishment, and similar to how Sylvia regards her presence in America, for her mother’s sake
and for her son’s sake and “everyone’s sake except {hers}” as a punishment and a confoundment
just like her presence on a wheel chair (Miller, 1994)

Figure 1: Dedication
 Figure 2: First shot in the film

As established earlier, Radwan El Kashef chose to focus and portray the repercussions of
diaspora for those who stayed behind in their land rather than those who left. The first
repercussion that the women faced in the absence of their men was a loss of the sense of
belonging. Yet, in order to comprehend this sense of loss of belonging, one has to analyse how
El Kashef symbolized for this belonging. In the movie, it is said that the village was found by a
man and a woman who sought refuge from the sun in this land, and thus planted their palm trees
there and took it for home (Abu El Majd, 2018). This makes palm trees a symbol for belonging,
home with everything that it represents including identity, and providence. In this sense, the
women of the village often equate the absence of their men to the loss of “the palm’s shade” (my
translation), and the sun becomes a symbol for danger. When faced with a gang of bandits,
Salma, one of the young women of the village, bemoans “Woah Ya Shams” (Arak EL Balah,
1998) or “Woe be to the sun” (my translation); meaning woe be to anything that could threaten
our unity. She continues “We zeranaaki ya shams delek, we in ghab rajelna ma yegheeb delek”
which translates to “We have planted shade to protect us from the sun, and if our men shall
leave, no shade shall leave us” (my translation). In this sense, Salma calls for the women to
reunite and gives them a reference to resort to in face of “the sun”, that is “their men”, who left,
but their “shade”, which symbolizes for their home and the identity associated with it still
remains. This, as Halls quotes Fanon to say, is the process of “rediscovery of essential identity”
(Fanon qtd in Hall, 1994), which is recalling one’s original diasporic identity and oneness with
his people in face of those who want to alter this identity. However, just like Broken Glass, the
loss of oneness and “being” resulting from diaspora resulted in only becoming a distorted
“difference” where identities collide. This distortion of identity of belonging is, exactly like
Broken Glass symbolized in the women’s sexual frustration. The first signs of this frustration
were during a circumcision ceremony the village women held for a new born baby, where a band
of men came to play songs for the ceremony. Just like Sylvia of Broken Glass gained power from
residing for her desire for Hyman, Shefa (whose name means Healing), found her healing as she
succumbed to her desire for a male drummer in the festival. This is portrayed in her actions
during the playing of the song. Shefa is portrayed in a medium-shot, according to Heidrich
“engages with the characters on a personal level”. It portrays the upper body of a character, thus
making the connection more emotional (Heidrich,2013). She is seen taking off her veil and
dancing in close proximity to the drummer, chanting “El Nakhl Rah Dello” (Arak El Balah,
1998) which translates to “The palm tree lost its shade” (my translation) (see figure 3). This
echoes the symbol of the palm tree as identity and home, which means Shefa is declaring her
resigning to her desire for she had already lost the sense of her “being”, her safety and belonging
and is now “becoming” something else she no longer knows, but is still empowering her, similar
to Sylvia. According to Sigmund Freud, dancing as a “rhythmic action”, stands for an act of
sexual drive and desire, so is liberating one’s self from clothes (Freud, 1921). There is a drastic
contrast between Shefa’s expression of drive and liberation (in figure 3) and another woman’s
expression with no man (see figure 4), thus stressing the association of womanhood with cultural
identity that was also featured in Broken Glass with Sylvia’s deprivation of sexuality and
womanhood and Philip’s assumption of a white man being in association with his assumption of
the identity of a sexual being. Another scene that portrays the sexual frustration in Arak El Balah
and where the camera speaks of the oneness of the human experience that Bernheimer refers to is
the scene where the women are seen passing around a glass of date wine. According to Abu El
Majd, the panning movement of the Camera (ie: moving in a linear way to follow a unified
action of the characters) brings the expressions of sexual frustration and diaspora of being into
one, shared experience. As they drink, they sing “Safert Ya Mahboobi waseit alayaa meen”
(Arak El Balah, 1998), which translated to “you have left me, my beloved, whom have you left
me to?” (my translation). Yet again, this stresses the idea of diaspora and departure from
homeland in association with sexuality and sexual frustration (see figures 5 and 6). A close-up on
 one of the women, Abla Kamel, as she moved her hands in a motion similar to the motion of
sexual intercourse confirms this frustration (see figure 7)

Figure 3: Shefa Dancing with the drummer

Figure 4: One of the women (Abla Kamel) during the circumcision ceremony, expression of loss.
Figure 5: Drinking date wine

Figure 6: Panning of the Camera: Drinking date wine

Figure 7: Motion of the hand mimicking that of sexual intercourse -two fingers and an open palm
 In the words of Michel Foucault, quoted in Hall’s article “{the} inner expropriation of
cultural identity cripples and deforms. If its silences are not resisted, they produce, in Fanon's
vivid phrase, 'individuals without an anchor, without horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless - a
race of angels' (Foucault, qtd in Hall, 1994). While Sylvia was literally crippled with this “inner
expropriation of cultural identity”, and Philip lost sight of who he really is, the women of the
village in Arak El Balah were deformed in multiple senses. First of all, the women lost their
ability to refigure what makes them upper Egyptians. In this sense, both Shefa and Salma
committed adultery, losing themselves to their desires. The woman who was making signs of
sexual frustration with her hands in figure 7 (played by Abla Kamel), unable to contain herself,
attempts to rape Ahmed, the last man remaining in the village. As for the rest of the women, their
inability to rejoice or engage intimately with their men whom they longed so much for is another
sign of deformity. Nothing was left of their original identity. They have “become”, literally, and
in the most ironic way “a race of angels”, unable to rejoice in physical pleasure nor
psychological pleasure. While Sylvia had the chance to heal and reconcile with her Jewishness
and, ultimately, overcome her cripple, the women in Arak El Balah failed to do so, becoming
forever “colourless, stateless, rootless”.

In conclusion, both Arthur Miller and Radwan El Kashef regard diaspora as a loss of meaning
and identity, be it to those who leave their homeland or those who stay. In both texts, sexuality was used
to reflect the feeling of loss and lack of belonging. In Edward Said’s words, the comparison and
the exploration of two dissimilar texts belonging to different cultures and different narratives of
media only proved the oneness of experience between the Orient and the Occident, for both can
lose themselves to the world, and both need to achieve a dialogue between what they truly are
and what the world had made them become. “Nooh Ya Ghorab Alaa Eli Gataleto El Ghorba”
(Arak El Balah, 1998), so did a woman wail in Arak El Balah: “moan, Oh Raven for what’s lost
in diaspra” (my translation). Wherever one may go, human experience in the east and the west is
but one, and wherever one may go, a Raven shall moan for what’s lost in diaspora.
Works Cited:

1- Abu El Majd, O. (2018). ‫الكاشف | من عنيا‬

" ‫البلح "لـرضوان‬
" ‫( شرح فيلم"عرق‬Explaining the Movie
Date Wine from My Perspective). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=G_RXIQGgz3g [Accessed 30 Apr. 2019].

2- AMERICAN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE ASSOCIATION (1993). Comparative

Literature at the Turn of the Century. Washington, DC: AMERICAN COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE ASSOCIATION.

3- Cohen, R. (1996). Diasporas and the nation-state: from victims to challengers.

International Affairs, 72(3), pp.507-520.

4- Arak El Balah. (1998). [DVD] Directed by R. El Kashef. Egypt: Misr International Films.

5- Fanon, F. and Markman, C. (2008). White Skins/Black Masks. London: Pluto Press.

6- Freud, S. (1921). A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, by Sigmund Freud : TENTH

LECTURE. [online] Ebooks.adelaide.edu.au. Available at:
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/f/freud/sigmund/general-introduction-to-
psychoanalysis/chapter10.html [Accessed 30 Apr. 2019].

7- Hall, S. (1994). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial
Theory: A Reader, [online] pp.227-237. Available at: http://ls-tlss.ucl.ac.uk/course-
materials/ELCS6088_74357.pdf [Accessed 30 Apr. 2019].

8- Hall, S., Williams, P. and Chrisman, L. (1994). Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial
Theory: A Reader. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp.227-237.

9- Heiderich, T. (2013). Cinematography Techniques: The Different Types of Shots in Film.

[online] Oma.on.ca. Available at: https://www.oma.on.ca/en/contestpages/resources/free-
report-cinematography.pdf [Accessed 30 Apr. 2019].

10- May, W. (2008). 'It's hard to be anything: Arthur Miller's Broken Glass'. The English
Review, [online] 18(3). Available at:
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/67579/1/WillMayMiller.pdf [Accessed 30 Apr. 2019].

11- Miller, A. (1994). Broken Glass. New York: Penguin Books.

12- Rampell, E. (2011). “Broken Glass”: What it means to be a Jew in America. [online]
People's World. Available at: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/broken-glass-what-it-
means-to-be-a-jew-in-america/ [Accessed 30 Apr. 2019].

13- Story, J. and Walker, I. (2018). The Impact of Diasporas. Oxon: Taylor and Francis.

14- Young, R. (2010). The Legacies of Edward W. Said in Comparative Literature.

Comparative Critical Studies, 7(2-3), pp.357-366.