Post-Arab Spring Narratives: A Minor

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LITERATURES AND CULTURES OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD

Post-Arab Spring
Narratives
A Minor Literature in the Making

Abida Younas
Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World

Series Editor
Hamid Dabashi
Columbia University
New York, NY, USA
The LITERATURES AND CULTURES OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD
series will put forward a critical body of first rate scholarship on the literary
and cultural production of the Islamic world from the vantage point of
contemporary theoretical and hermeneutic perspectives, effectively
bringing the study of Islamic literatures and cultures to the wider atten-
tion of scholars and students of world literatures and cultures without the
prejudices and drawbacks of outmoded perspectives.
 Abida Younas

Post-Arab Spring
Narratives
A Minor Literature in the Making
Abida Younas
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK

ISSN 2945-705X     ISSN 2945-7068 (electronic)

Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World
ISBN 978-3-031-27903-4    ISBN 978-3-031-27904-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27904-1

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 Acknowledgments

All praise is for Almighty—Lord of all worlds

I am indebted to numerous people for their support during the writing of

this book. I am deeply indebted to Professor Willy Maley for his continued
guidance, intellectual feedback, and constant encouragement. I would like
to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Sophie Vlacos and Dr. Helen
Stoddart for their insightful feedback. I owe particular thanks to Palgrave
editors, Marika Lysandrou, and Molly Beck, and Raghupathy Kalynaraman,
for their patient guidance.
I am particularly grateful to my husband, Adnan, who supplied me with
endless cups of coffee, and Haroon, my son, whose sweet smile was
enough to release my stress. I thank Dr. Saiyma Aslam, Dr. Amal Sayyid,
Dr. Djouher, Dr. Kawthar, and Zahida for their prayers. I would like to
extend my gratitude to my siblings, Muneeb, Naveed, Zahida, Haseeb,
Tayyeb, Alveena, and Husna for their love and support in every possible
way throughout this journey.
Finally, my deepest thanks go to my parents, the two most treasured
people in my life, who define me and without whose continued support
this work would not have been possible.
A part of Chap. 3 was published as “Magical Realism and Metafiction:
Narratives of Discontent or Celebration” in the British Journal of Middle
Eastern Studies (2018). A short version of a section in Chap. 2 was published
as “Configuring the Present for the Future: Personal Narratives of the Arab
Spring” in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2022). I am grateful
to Routledge for permissions to reproduce the copyright material.

v
 Abstract

Post-Arab Spring Narratives: A Minor Literature in the Making is a study

of contemporary Anglo-Arab writing, read through the critical-theoretical
framework of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s conception of minor
literature. I argue that Deleuze and Guattari derive their theory of minor
literature from an analysis of western writings. Applying the same theory
uncritically in the context of Anglo-Arab literature would be limiting and
restrictive, I believe. In my book, I use the concept of minor literature and
reformulate it to explore the writings of Ahdaf Soueif, Hisham Matar,
Karim Alrawi, Youssef Rakha, Yasmine El Rashidi, Omar Robert Hamilton,
Saleem Haddad, and Nada Awar Jarrar.
With their shared emphases on the Arab world, upon the lives of its
ordinary and minority peoples, and the respective revolutions of its
nations, the works of these authors can all be seen to manifest some of
the political and collective facets of minor literature envisaged by
Deleuze and Guattari. My book contends that they all exhibit a mode
of linguistic experimentation, one that is uniquely contemporary to the
field of Anglo-Arab writing. The selected novelists repudiate the use of
metamorphosis which is conventionally required for the successful
deterritorialization of the major language. Rather, as I argue, their
writings enact the minor practice of linguistic deterritorialization,
through their metaphors, through their adoption of modernist and
postmodernist strategies, and through their incorporation of

vii
viii ABSTRACT

contemporaneous modes of protest, including popular slogans, tweets,

and chants—customarily not associated with minor literature. In so
doing, the authors selected in this book contribute to a renewal of the
stylistic conventions of minor literature. They adopt this mode of
deterritorialization I claim, in order to foreground the experiences of
officially silenced voices. I propose “a revised conception” of minor
literature by specifically drawing attention to the stylistic choices made
by selected authors. While it is too early to discern definitively the
characteristics of Post-Arab Spring literature, this book is a contribution
to developing a critical-theoretical framework suited to its analysis.

Keywords
Minor literature; Deterritorialization; Arab Spring; Anglo-Arab writers;
Minority
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Writing
 the Present to Commemorate: Personal Narratives
of the Arab Revolution in Ahdaf Soueif’s Memoirs of
a City Transformed and Hisham Matar’s The Return 25

3 Magical
 Realism in Karim Alrawi’s Book of Sands and
Metafiction in Youssef Rakha’s The Crocodiles: Rethinking
Minor Literature 61

4 Post-Arab
 Spring Cairo in Yasmine El Rashidi’s Chronicles
of a Last Summer and Omar Robert Hamilton’s The City
Always Wins: Urban Narratives as Minor Literature 93

5 The
 Humanitarian Narrative of the Arab Spring in Saleem
Haddad’s Guapa and Nada Awar Jarrar’s An Unsafe
Haven: Further Toward Minor Literature127

6 Post-partum165

Bibliography171

Index183

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Creation takes place in choked passages … Your writing has to be liquid

or gaseous simply because normal perception and opinion are solid,
geometric.
—Deleuze, 133

In the above quote, Deleuze talks about writing in cramped spaces, which
enables writers to produce a new statement, a new object and a new lan-
guage. Such writings go beyond drawing on various disciplines but move
toward disciplinary deterritorialization—a term use for a spatial manifesta-
tion of changes under way in the relationship between social life and its
territory. This term has been adopted in humanities and social sciences
disciplines such as literature, language, geography, and others. Writing in
cramped spaces is not drawing from multiple disciplines, but about explor-
ing what Deleuze and Guattari describe as “the edge of the field or
woods … at the borderline of the village, or between villages” in a way
that deterritorializes the cramped spaces of various disciplines by discover-
ing a new language: a minor language and drawing the connections
between literatures (246). Writers in Middle Eastern countries work in
cramped mental spaces due to censorship. This may be one of the reasons
that these writers flout disciplinary conventions in their writings. Deleuze
and Guattari (1975) used the term minor literature to refer to such

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
A. Younas, Post-Arab Spring Narratives, Literatures and Cultures of
the Islamic World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27904-1_1
2 A. YOUNAS

writings that eradicate disciplinary conventions because of an experience

of being confined, constrained, and controlled.
This monograph, in its focus on the representation of the Post-Arab
Spring Arab world, specifically addresses the striking ways in which Post-­
Arab Spring literature describes the aftermath of Arabs’ spectacular twenty-­
first-­century revolt. I particularly focus on the minoritarian strategies used
by contemporary Anglo-Arab authors in their writings to deterritorialize
the major tongue, English, to present a collective enterprise. Through a
minor usage of language (by which I mean the experimentation with lan-
guage), I claim that contemporary Anglo-Arab authors do not only high-
light the socio-political context of their countries but also foreground
silenced voices. In this context, my aim throughout this book is to not
only highlight the mode of deterritorialization that these writers adopt to
represent marginalized voices but also propose “a revised conception” of
minor literature by specifically drawing attention to the stylistic choices
made by selected authors. My purpose in this monograph is to offer a criti-
cal evaluation of the so-called Arab Spring and to deconstruct the revolu-
tionary rhetoric that heralds a new era for the Arab world by producing a
counter-narrative. This book lies at the intersection of critical theory, liter-
ary studies, politics, arts, sociology, and the history of Arab lands and its
peoples, and seeks to establish, through these multiple perspectives, a
revised version of minor literature, outside of its limited western context
in order to apply this to a literature produced by postcolonial nations.

Post-Arab Spring Literature

At the end of 2010 and at the beginning of 2011, the world witnessed
massive protests across the Middle East, referred to as the Arab Spring. By
toppling the longstanding regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, the Arab upris-
ings seemed to initiate a democratic journey. However, the results were
rather disappointing because the outcome of Arab insurgencies proved to
be chaos, fragmentation, breakdown, and recurrent authoritarianism. The
strong determination of people to overthrow the regime turned into ill-­
starred reality when the military hijacked the revolution in different parts
of the Arab world and crushed it ferociously. Since then, an endless battle
has raged between totalitarian regimes and their civilians, which has pro-
duced uncertainty throughout the Arab world, especially in Egypt, Syria,
and Libya. This worsening situation of the Arab Spring has served as a
trope for socio-political activism in the work of Arab writers. The
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

unprecedented vigor and velocity of the Arab Spring has become an

empowering political aesthetic. In this way, a new generation of Arab writ-
ers has transformed the nature of Anglo-Arab fiction. From the traditional
notion of what Geoffrey Nash calls the “Anglo-Arab encounter,” a myriad
of themes and issues emerge (11). Tracing the domestic perspectives of
the Arab Spring, Anglo-Arab novels go beyond the demography of gen-
der, age, and space. Post-Arab Spring literature, published after the
momentous events of the Arab Spring, reflects the aftermath of recent
events; whether it is chaos, disintegration and mass repression, the transi-
tion of government, or war.
The purpose of my work here is not to trace the Post-Arab Spring
changes as such. Rather, I am particularly interested in the ways the emerg-
ing Post-Arab Spring literature intervenes into the politico-cultural sphere
of the Arab insurgencies and transforms Arab Spring narratives. Although
the events of the Arab Spring and its literature take place within the politi-
cal and the aesthetic spheres, the two are deeply interrelated. Jacques
Rancière’s notion of the distribution of the sensible is useful to emphasize
the aesthetic side of the Arab Spring. According to Rancière, politics not
only is the exercise of governmental power, but as such is the distribution
of what is sayable, visible, and thinkable: an order that thereby determines
which people are recognized as political subjects and those, conversely,
who should be silenced (The Politics of Aesthetics 12). I believe that the
Arab revolution disturbs this sensible order and brings to light the silenced
subjects. Post-Arab Spring literature partakes in the distribution of the
sensible by creating the space where the unseen and silenced subjects, for
example refugees, activists, prisoners, writers, and members of the
LGBTQ+ community can speak for themselves and can protest against an
authoritarian regime. This potentiality of literature, I argue, is political and
not just because the author and literary text itself is explicitly involved in
politics. Post-Arab Spring literature finds those who have no voices, no
names and who remain inaudible and invisible and thereby challenges the
prior aesthetic division between the sayable and the unsayable, the visible
and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible. In this context, I argue
that this literature is always in a continuous struggle against the ideologi-
cal veils of the state. In fact, it first resists the existing order and then seeks
to establish a new order. This is the move from critique to creativity. Post-­
Arab Spring literature works in the same manner, progressing from an
instance of critique to one of creativity. The first can be categorized as
parasitical as it depends entirely on the existing body of literature whereas
4 A. YOUNAS

the latter is germinal (the birth of the new). Post-Arab Spring literature
operates to upset the already constituted movements, criticizes them and
then goes on to produce new kinds of thoughts and new modes of subjec-
tivity. Dissent is thus a crucial element and there is an affirmation of a new
community in this literature, “a bastard community of the sick and the
frail, a hybrid and mutant collectivity always in progress, always open to
any and every one” who fail to “to ‘live up’ to the models offered (in fact
forced upon them) by the major” (O’Sullivan 8).
Having said this, I do not mean to negate the history of pre-revolution
counter-hegemonic aesthetics. Different generations of Arab writers across
the Arab world have offered public intellectual opposition to the repres-
sive structures of successive authoritarian regimes through their writings,
which have acted as a catalyst for change. They expose political and social
injustices that impact different spaces of their countries and thus power
“the popular imagination with visionary images of its revolutionary poten-
tial” (Sakr 6). This potential of literature works as a fuel to drive people to
the street as El Hamamsy and Soliman note (3). For example, many Arab
writers like Nizar Qabbani, Kamel Al-Riahi, Khaled Khalifa, and Alaa
Al-Aswany already foretold the revolution in their writings. They dared to
offer transformed political geographies. In this regard, looking back from
the present moment of the Arab revolution reveals anti-authoritarian and
postcolonial struggles in which Arab authors, for almost a century, have
shaped and influenced the imagination that brought change. Therefore,
when focusing on the Arab uprisings as a watershed moment in the history
of the Arab world, much of the cultural imaginary on which the recent
revolt is formed emerges from the previous few decades of literary
production.
Art has always been the handmaiden to the revolution because it is
impossible to prompt large masses of people without conveying the mes-
sages efficiently. Art, particularly literature, is the “weapon of the future”
in the struggle against repressive regimes (LeVine 1277). Literature proves
vital when civil society has little or no space for protest to challenge oppres-
sive regimes. There is a natural confrontation between critical literature
and an authoritarian regime since both compete in creating fictions. The
difference between the fictions of authoritarian regimes and the fictions of
dissenting authors, however, is that novelists tend to create their own
alternative realities to those presented by dictatorships and thereby present
direct challenges to political orthodoxy. Authoritarian regimes, on the
other hand, produce single-minded fictions that do not accept any
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

alternative views. Consequently, many writers are censored, banned, and

harassed in their own states especially in Libya and Syria.1 However, the
Arab revolutions democratize the “republic of letters by admitting previ-
ously unacknowledged, or little known voices of the various revolts” (Sakr
12). Not only do Anglo-Arab writers have taken on board creative narra-
tives about the Arab Spring, but also a boost has been seen in the produc-
tion of Arabic literary narratives by writers in the Arab world. Thousands
of authors, including immigrants as well as home authors, have attempted
to explain, depict, decry the movements and predict the future in the form
of poetry, novels, memoirs, short stories, and so on. Despite the severe
political repression, Arab writers respond to the rise and fall of the Arab
revolution in different narrative forms. They present bitter criticism,
denounce the dictatorial structure, and critically engage with the failed
revolution experiences in their writings written in standard Arabic. For
instance, Mohammad Rabie’s (Egyptian writer) Otared represents the
failed revolution in dystopian narratives. Dima Wannous (a Syrian author)
opts for psychological realism in her novel Al-Kha’ifoon (The Frightened
Ones), whereas, Samar Yazbek records the Syrian revolution in the form
of dairy entitled Taqatu’Niran: Min Yaumiat al-intifada as-Suriya (A
Woman in the Crossfire: Dairies of the Syrian Revolution).
Another interesting detail is that new publishing houses are established
that seek fresh work to challenge the state narratives and headlines.
Hoopoe publishing house is one such example in which fiction writers can
reimagine histories without the fear of being banned. In the same way,
some publishing houses such as Dar al-Adab, Dar al-Saqi, and many others
have provided a publication haven for those writers who were previously
banned and censored by their own states. Not surprisingly, a number of
old texts are republished and translated into English. For example, Khaled
Khalifa’ In Praise of Hatred, originally published in 2006, is translated into
English in 2012 and Manal Alsarraj’s As the River Must, originally pub-
lished in Arabic in 2002, is also republished in 2013. It is worth
mentioning here that both these texts were originally censored and banned
by the Syrian regime. The Arab Spring “provides an element of opportun-
ism to publishing industries as many texts are republished as the novel of

1
For example, in Libya, Muammar Al-Qaddafi set up literary festivals and invited all young
writers around the country to attend. He then arrested them and threw them in a prison
where a whole generation of intellectuals spent a decade (“Hisham Matar on the Power of
Libyan fiction” npr.org, Apr, 2011).
6 A. YOUNAS

the Arab Spring or the novel that predicted the Arab Spring,” Khalid
Khamissi’s Taxi (2007), for example (Younas 2). The literary magazine
Banipal recently published several volumes of Syrian, Libyan, and Tunisian
literature. Considering this scenario, I argue that the Arab Spring empow-
ers and restores existing cultural forms.
Novelists play an important role in subverting authoritarian regimes
because literature has the capacity to express what is forbidden in unique
ways. In her study of Bedouin communities, Lila Abu-Lughod describes
how Bedouin women use poetry to express themselves in a conservative
society (which otherwise would not allow them to speak openly) by exper-
imenting with form (42). This is precisely the type of liberating fictional
space which Anglo-Arab novelists inhabit. Despite the limitations that
have been imposed on Arab literary writings, a strong contiguity is found
between the politics of the Arab world and Arab fiction. Arab writers, in
Caroline Rooney’s term, can be defined as being in the “vanguard of
democracy” in their mission to articulate and empower political activism
because they have called for the deconstruction of their society politically
and socially before the revolution (369). They do not write directly about
brutal realities, but work in the realm of symbols, allegory, and metaphor.
Not only do they experiment with a range of genres to inscribe uncer-
tainty within their narratives, but they also upset the boundaries between
literary genres and sociological essays in their writings. On the one hand,
they refer to the wider framework of critical social realism and on the other
they portray social reality using peculiar modernist and postmodernist lit-
erary aesthetics.
My main concern here is not to interrogate the portrayed social reality
surrounding the Arab Spring events. I instead examine the literary strate-
gies that are used to narrate the intense and enigmatic reality of the Arab
revolution. Although my chapters are led by thematic concerns, they
inform each other to support the overarching argument of my book: that
emerging Post-Arab Spring literature embodies the theory of minor litera-
ture thematically while also redefining the stylistic aspects of minor litera-
ture in order to represent marginalized voices justly. I do not confine my
analysis to events surrounding the Arab Spring; rather, I follow the trajec-
tory of peaceful demonstration to the point where it becomes a humani-
tarian crisis. Therefore, while contextualizing the events of the Arab
uprisings, I also consider the pre-Arab Spring scenario, the military inter-
vention in different parts of the Arab world, and the refugee crisis. While
it is too early to discern definitively the characteristics of Post-Arab Spring
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

literature, my book is a contribution to developing a framework in which

to do so.
With this context in mind, I limit myself to the work of those writers
who have a close affiliation with their home countries during and after the
Arab Spring. In so doing, I argue that emerging Post-Arab Spring litera-
ture conspicuously reveals that the Arab Spring becomes a means for polit-
ical intervention in the homeland for immigrant Arabs. Prior to the Arab
Spring, Anglo-Arab immigrant authors had developed a connection with
home through the lively imagination of the homeland. However, at the
outset of the Arab Spring, many writers went back to their countries to
participate in the revolution and to present an eyewitness account of the
revolution in their narratives. What connects these writers is their experi-
mentation with the form of the novel—often viewed in a western context
as a platform for examining individual consciousness—to present collec-
tive utterances. This book explores an exciting range of powerful novels
and memoirs from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Libya that, in the last
decade especially, unraveled the changing political geographies and the
popular discontent in their respective national contexts. Methodologically,
it emphasizes the interdisciplinary interaction among literature, cultural
and urban geographies, and human right discourse. In the following
pages, I set out the discussion of the minoritarian strategies used by these
authors.

Minoritarian Strategies in Post-Arab

Spring Literature
Since the Arab revolution is an evolving phenomenon, many writers
“admit their difficulty of writing about such dramatic changes, and cultur-
ally emotively intense events” (Buontempo 38). These authors find it dif-
ficult to transcribe the evolving revolution because of its changing
dynamics. For instance, Soueif and Matar choose to record the revolution
in memoirs rather than turning it into fictions because the hegemony of
realism is increased in memoirs. Both writers summon their storytelling
talents to trace the trajectory of their nations’ ongoing transformation in
their narratives. Soueif and Matar deterritorialize the major language and
push it to the limit to articulate disrupted present, non-hegemonic rela-
tions of space and time and envision the future of the revolution in their
personal narratives. Their attempts at witnessing and writing at the same
8 A. YOUNAS

time make their narratives flexible and open to revision. Some writers
adopt creative approaches to realism and reality such as magical realism
and metafiction. For instance, in his metafictional novel, The Crocodiles,
Rakha continuously reflects on the language of his narrative to show that
reality is constructed. Conversely, Alrawi uses magical realism to capture
the contested reality of the Arab world in his magical realist novel, Book of
Sand. Both writers forge a new language to express grim realities; a lan-
guage that does not seek a divorce from lived experiences but to capture
its struggles through magical realism and metafiction.
Internet technology also has a significant impact on Arab writers since
it played an important role during the revolution. Many Arab writers use
blogs for self-expression and literary experimentation. Therefore, a new
generation of writers who have emerged from the world of blogging use
internet technologies as a fictional device in their writings. For instance, a
peculiar kind of personal blog, in which an individual focuses on his/her
personal life, leads to the emergence of a new genre in Arabic literature
called the autofictional novel, a novel which deals with the author’s self-­
exploration. Autofictive writing practice “becomes a way of asserting one’s
voice and existing in society” (Pepe 11). For example, being concerned
with human rights and humanitarian representations, Jarrar and Haddad
push language further and place themselves in the position of those who
are absent from the world’s larger narratives, for example, refugees, exiles,
and LGBTQ+ people in their autofiction. Recently, it has been noticed
that people from other fields also contribute to the literary world; there-
fore, fictional genres have proliferated in parts and amalgamated with
other genres. For instance, many Arab journalists have gone on to become
successful novelists in recent times. These journalists-cum-novelists use
their journalistic techniques in writing fictions. For example, El Rashidi
blends fact and fiction to narrate real events by using storytelling tech-
niques in The Chronicles of the Last Summer. A filmmaker and media activ-
ist, Hamilton narrates the revolution cinematically in The City Always
Wins. El Rashidi and Hamilton bore holes in language to disclose the
silenced subjects and push it to its limit to say the unsayable. These strate-
gies and techniques aim to reveal a reality filled with horror, instability,
destruction, and hyper-violence.
The significance of Post-Arab Spring literature lies in its use of formal
experimentation to diagnose diabolical power in the Arab world.
Previously, Arabic literature was considered “the highest form of literary
writings, the closest possible to the ideals of literary aesthetics” (Allen 14).
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

However, against the background of the rise of nationalism, the conflict

between Islam and westernization and with the spread of secular educa-
tion, the traditional notion of literature as a display of “verbal skill” is
replaced by the view that “literature should reflect and indeed change
social reality” (Badawi, Modern Arabic Literature 15).2 Therefore, unlike
previous authors, contemporary Anglo-Arab immigrant authors believe
that aesthetics in writing should not be considered “as the cultivation of a
taste for the beautiful,” but rather should invoke the writer as a “producer
of form, and as a producer, in particular, of the form of himself through an
aesthetic labor” that transcends existing narrative modes and strategies
(Lloyd 6). For this reason, these writers emulate, but do not simply repro-
duce, the qualities of Arab canonical writings in accessible language.
Consequently, their writings are excluded from the canon of Arab litera-
ture for not committing to naïve realism, which confers on the status of
minor literature.3
In Nationalism and Minor Literature: James Clarence Mangan and the
Emergence of Irish Cultural Nationalism, David Lloyd is of the view that
the primary feature of minor literature “is its exclusion from the canon”
on the “grounds of purely aesthetic judgment” (Lloyd 20). Minor litera-
ture does not necessarily refer to literature produced by racial or ethnic
minorities, but literature that is written with the aim of dismantling pre-­
existent epistemological and ontological categories. The emerging Post-­
Arab Spring literature might be understood as a parallel form of cultural
production within the dominant culture. It does not occur separately from
major literature; on the contrary, I argue that it operates within the major
mode using the same elements in a different manner to “oppose, subvert,
or negate the power of hegemonic culture” (Mohamed 298). In Marxism
and Literature, Raymond Williams advances the same argument that lit-
erature establishes the changing meanings of the vocabulary that arises in
culture with the passage of time. He claims that in every society there is a
dominant group which comes to represent the norm of society as a whole
(Williams 121). In contrast to the dominant group, a residual group exists
sometimes alongside the dominant to reinforce it, and sometimes acts as
an oppositional or alternative to oppose the dominant group. Cultural

2
For details about nationalism, see the “Introduction” to Badawi’s Modern Arabic
Literature.
3
By naïve realism, I mean that Anglo-Arab authors do not take mimesis, as an imitation of
life, in literature in the naïve sense. Instead, their writings are innovative and experimental.
10 A. YOUNAS

emergence breaks the pre-determined limitation to move forward and

produce something real by incorporating new practices, new meanings
and new values. Thus, the residual includes those experiences, meanings,
and values that cannot be verified as dominant but live (as it contains past
elements); and emergent includes new meanings, values, and practices.
Post-Arab Spring literature contains both the residual and the emergent
because it consists of marginalized experiences that the dominant group
fails to acknowledge. Such minor writing is, in fact, a movement within
the major, as it calls for collective enunciation. Using Deleuze and
Guattari’s idea of minor literature, I argue that Post-Arab Spring litera-
ture, as minor literature, is both political and subversive as it calls for
another possible community—a democratic society of justice in which
minority groups like prisoners, activists, writers, protestors, refugees,
LGBTQ+ people are valorized and eventually cannot be a part of world
literature that has “limited itself to studying the literatures of a very few
major literatures” (“Major/Minor in World Literature” 29).4 A “minor
no longer designates specific literature” but what Deleuze and Guattari
call a “revolutionary literature” within the “heart of what is called great or
established literature” (Kafka 18). Therefore, I argue that Post-Arab
Spring novels as minor literature are writings of delegitimation: Anglo-­
Arab writers “reject not only the western imperium but also the nationalist
project of the postcolonial national bourgeoisie” (Appiah 353). And, so it
seems to me, that the basis of delegitimation is grounded in an appeal to
an ethical universal value which is an appeal to simple respect for human
suffering.

Minor Literature
Literature produced by immigrant authors is often known as minor litera-
ture. The expression “minor literature” is used by Deleuze and Guattari to
describe Franz Kafka’s writing in the German language as an example of
the Jewish literature of Prague. Following the same line, I assert that Post-­
Arab Spring literature in the English language, as immigrant literature,
falls primarily into the category of minor literature. Minor literature does

4
World literature seems to consist of only a few European and western literatures. This
practice has recently been challenged from the perspective of other non-European or non-­
western major literature; however, the question of the minor literature or minor authors is
still far from settled.
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

not come from a minor language; rather, it is the literature produced by

the minority in the major tongue, as is the case with English writings pro-
duced by Arab immigrant authors.
Literature produced by Arab immigrant writers remains marginal in
both Arabic and western societies. In Arabic societies, the writings of Arab
immigrants are not accepted by the various autocratic regimes because
they sit uneasily with the ostensible ideology of Arab Nationalism: an ide-
ology which celebrates and promotes the glory of Arab civilization and the
unity of Arab people. But in the West, these same authors are marginalized
as Arabs. The predicament for Franco-Arabic writers of the Maghreb is
similarly marginal. Like Anglo-Arab authors, Maghribi writers also seek to
deterritorialize the colonizers’ language. In Experimental Nations, or, the
Invention of the Maghreb, Reda Bensmaia examines the works of Maghribi
writers which have been reduced to “ethnographic evidence” (7). These
writers, he argues, occupy a place in the “transnational spaces”; therefore,
their writings should not be viewed in a narrow definition of writers’ affili-
ation which is based on geographical borders (125). Like Anglo-Arab
writers, Maghribi writers also experiment with the major language, French,
and create a French of their own suited to their experiences. In this study,
my focus is on Anglo-Arab writing, and the way in which such authors
reinvigorate the major language, English, to fit their experiences, con-
sciously bending and breaking conventions and linguistic codes, cross-­
fertilizing English and Arabic traditions and appropriating those traditions
to deconstruct the English language in its majoritarian usage. Joseph
Massad notes that Anglo-Arab novels are both English and Arabic novels
that transform “English into Arabic and Arabic into English in revolution-
ary ways” (75).
The use of the major language (English language in the context of my
research), as Deleuze and Guattari proposed, raised many issues. It is
argued that the use of the English language—a language having a colonial
attitude and replete with European values—may stereotype Arab cultural
norms and Arab political memory. However, the emerging Post-Arab
Spring literature used English “as a tool of resistance to colonial and neo-­
colonial codes” (Nash 24). Anglo-Arab writers are seen as aware of the
outlandish possibilities of the English language, as they fuse recondite dic-
tionary lexis with standard Arabic vernaculars. Just as Kafka “takes [his
Prague German] farther, to a greater degree of intensity, but in the direc-
tion of a new sobriety, a new and unexpected modification, a pitiless recti-
fication, a straightening of the head” (Kafka: Towards Minor Literature
12 A. YOUNAS

25–26), so contemporary Anglo-Arab writers Arabize English by “invest-

ing it with extravagant metonymic equivalences that deliver it into a deter-
ritorialized realm far beyond the bloodied terrain out of which it grew”
(Nash 28–29). For example, Soueif uses the Arabic word shabab, the literal
translation of which is “the youth” in Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed.
The word shabab refers to rebellious young men and they are usually ide-
alistic. The English word “youth” does not work in the context of the
revolution. This is perhaps the reason that Soueif uses the Arabic word
shabab because the connotations in Arabic are of esprit de corps, or cama-
raderie which is much more than the simple word “the youth.” Further,
Anglo-Arab authors’ choice of the English language “has contributed to
their position as public intellectuals with a wide readership and influence
on the revolutionary republic of letters inside and outside of the Arab
world” (Sakr 12).
Moreover, the selected authors spin out a different reading of the
hyphen in this book. Unlike previous Anglo-Arab literature for which the
hyphen designates cross-cultural mediation, my study of Post-Arab Spring
literature provides a different reading of the hyphen that links “Anglo” to
“Arab.” In the case of Post-Arab Spring literature, the hyphen functions
less as a linkage between the Arab and the West and more as an affiliation
of these writers with their home countries. Far from being deterritorial-
ized, it is clear that Post-Arab Spring writing is rooted in its place of origin
whereas hybrid Anglo-Arab writers interface with the upheavals of Middle
Eastern history as well as with the deterritorialized realities of life in the
western metropolises. Post-Arab Spring minor literature is practical by
nature and demonstrates that the “writer is a man of action” who
“participat[es] in the construction of the nation within which he will be
comprehended” rather than being a corpus responding to the demand of
exoticism, for knowledge of the Muslim and a response or writing back to
the West (Lloyd 72). Further, post in Post-Arab Spring Literature, like the
post in postcolonial, is heterogeneous and multifaceted. Like postcolonial,
the term Post-Arab Spring is often reducible to after the Arab Spring.
Instead, it is a whole new creation, one that is informed with new cultural
thought—as evident in the subsequent chapters. Post-Arab Spring is not
only concerned with the pre-Arab Spring era, but moving beyond it. It is
consciously taking routes in different locales and histories. Not only do
Anglo-Arab authors address political and cultural concerns of life in a
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

decolonized nation (after the colonization), but they also refer to a com-
plex grounding or in other words, the political and cultural context in
which the book is set.
According to Deleuze and Guattari, minor literature has three main
characteristics, which are shared by Post-Arab Spring minor literature:
first, “the deterritorialization of language”; second, “connection of indi-
vidual to political immediacy” and third, “the collective assemblage of
enunciation” (Kafka 19). The first and foremost characteristic of minor
literature is “that in it language is affected with a high coefficient of deter-
ritorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka 16). In the context of minor
literature, deterritorialization represents the various ways through which
minor writers subvert a major language by using that language for grant-
ing validity and agency to the marginalized communities that he or she
represents. I argue that the major tongue, or in other words the global
language of English, in the hands of contemporary Arab immigrant writ-
ers, has been deterritorialized and transformed to meet the cultural speci-
ficity of Arab people; to help find their “own point of underdevelopment,
[their] own patois, [their] own third world, [their] own desert” (Deleuze
and Guattari, Kafka 18). For this reason, they appropriate the English
language by using more localized lexicons, glossing, and also disregarding
syntactic rules. Knowing that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the
master’s house” (Lorde 99), Anglo-Arab writers still struggle to dismantle
the English Language anyway “to rebuild an alternative with a different
set of tools” as evident in the subsequent chapters (Katz 487). Reflecting
on the uncertain future of the Arab world requires a language that could
best describe the prevailing chaos and disintegration in the Arab world; “a
deterritorialized language” which celebrates obscurity and insignificant
characters that rebel against the totalitarian regime. In his writings, Kafka
deliberately kills all metaphors, symbols and signification to mark “the
impasse that bars access to writing for the Jews of Prague and turns their
literature into something impossible” (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka 16).
In the same way, I believe contemporary Arab writers adopt different strat-
egies to foster an appreciation for marginalized experience and also make
it possible to speak of injustices and social taboos. This deterritorialization
of the English language also calls into question the orientalists’ assump-
tions. These writers “accept the kind of representational burden implied in
Deleuze and Guattari’s second and third features of minor literature” by
14 A. YOUNAS

rejecting the orientalist’s dichotomy altogether (Hassan 6).5 In so doing,

Anglo-Arab authors escape the capitalist logic that Graham Huggan calls
as strategic marginalization; instead, their literature can be reclaimed as
body of work that opens up a space of a becoming-minor for English.
In the brief essay, “Literature and Life,” Deleuze describes the function
of literature in terms of stuttering, becoming, fabulation, and visions/
auditions (225). To achieve these functions, Deleuze claims that language
(medium of literature) must escape the dominant linguistic system. In line
with this view, contemporary Anglo-Arab writers experiment with lan-
guage and “activate lines of continuous variation immanent within lan-
guage” (Bogue 108). In so doing, these writers fashion their speech within
a dominant language by engaging a mode of creative deformation that
various minorities utilize. This kind of linguistic experimentation is directly
political because it makes possible the inclusion of marginal literature
within the category of minor literature and thus calls for the collective
enunciation of a minor people who find their expression only through
writing.
Given this context, contemporary Anglo-Arab writers displace the liter-
ary convention of the global language, English, by making it stutter.
Stuttering in the language does not mean “some form of the impediment
of speech or pronunciation”; rather, it refers to “a way of speaking and
writing in the language that is always emergent, hesitant, and taking new
forms” (Gale 304). They stutter the English language by incorporating a
range of vocabulary. For example, mathematical formulas in Book of Sands,
and words borrowed from science (such as energy, motion, and evolution)
in The Crocodiles. In some cases, these writers mix the languages of Arab
and English to show that the English language is not adequate to express
the identity and cultural heritage of Arabs; therefore, Anglo-Arab authors
indigenize the English language to convey their Arabic experiences. For
instance, in the selected texts, the male protestors are shown as wearing
kaffiyeh—a square-shaped scarf worn by Arab men fastened by a band
around the crown of the head. This is significant because Anglo-Arab nov-
elists domesticate the English language in order to fit with the Arabic
5
The writings of Anglo-Arab authors are normally refracted through the prism of
Orientalism. According to Wail S. Hassan, contemporary Anglo-Arab texts resist orientalist
discourse by enacting cultural translation. These writers accept represent the burden of being
a representative of their own people by deliberately deterritorializing English. This can take
the form of the infusion of the English language with Arabic or linguistic and stylistic deter-
ritorialization in favor of experimentation with the English language.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

culture in this context. In the same way, the word Habibi is used in almost
all the selected texts. Habibi is an Arabic word that means my love, my
dear or beloved and Arab writers use this word in different contexts. For
instance, Haddad uses this word for his beloved Taymoor in Guapa, and
Tariq in Book of Sands uses it for his daughter Neda in Book of Sands. It is
worth mentioning here that the word Habibi is the most prevalent Arabic
word with many uses as evident in the selected texts. They also use sensory
language to convey an impression of the familiar environment of the Arab
world. Moreover, they also incorporate Arabic myths (the myth of Ghoul,
for example) and the direct translation of Arabic proverbs in their writings.
Throughout my study, I discuss how these writers take a major tongue
away from the dominant system, fashion the same language in their own
tongue and thus minoritize a major language. I believe that these writers’
attempts at linguistic deterritorialization entail the reorientation and trans-
formation of the major tongue and the creation of a new tongue in the
same language; one which they use to portray their Arabness—people who
live in Arab countries and share cultural characteristics, notably Arabic
language and traditions—their society and their culture.
Through linguistic stuttering, I suggest that these writers induce a
becoming-other of language which is central to the function of literature.
A becoming is always an in-between or as Deleuze and Guattari define it
“a passage between things” (“Literature and Life” 225). To become is not
to attain a form of identification but to find the zone of undifferentiation
where one can no longer be distinguished as a singular entity. Unlike
major literature that views the author as a superior individual with a unique
identity, minor literature embraces the anonymity of an author who places
him/herself in the position of others to make them audible and thus acts
as a collective enterprise. And when a minor writer enters into a process of
becoming, I contend he/she invents those people who are missing,
thereby enacting or realizing a fabulative function of literature. A minor
writer must therefore invent a people that is lacking, or create a subject
who could decode a binary power relation. I argue that minor writers
must invent a subject of the collective, which decodes or unravels its exter-
nally enforced identity. For instance, Rasa, an autofictional character, is a
voice from the homosexual community in the Arab world who unravels his
fake identity and celebrates his gay identity at the end of the novel, Guapa
(discussed in detail in Chap. 5). Deleuze claims that as a seer and a hearer,
the minor writer pushes the language to its limit to seek to describe the
ineffable. Accordingly, Anglo-Arab writers puncture language to reveal
16 A. YOUNAS

silences. They embellish their writings with color and sonorities to paint
and sing the silenced reality. For instance, the style of Post-Arab Spring
literature is characterized by pictures, painting, and graffiti to render visi-
ble invisible forces, music to render sonorous nonsonorous sounds, and
cinema not only to render visible the invisible but also to disclose a speech
that was once unspeakable. According to Deleuze, there are certain “veri-
table ideas which writers could see and hear in the interstices of language”
(Essays Critical and Clinical 16). They are sounds, colors, and sights
proper to language but at the same time, they render the language silent.
My reading of Post-Arab Spring literature informs me that contempo-
rary Arab writers attempt to make palpable the invisible, the unsayable, the
insensible, the inaudible (people whose demands and needs are ignored)
through various devices—the use of sensory language, metaphors, sym-
bols, imagery, and through strategies of narrative-camera technique or
cinematic narratives,6 magical realism, metafiction, journalistic technique
and so on—primarily through evocative and incantatory chants (e.g., slo-
gans used by protestors).7 At times this rhythm becomes muscular and
rough, while at other times it becomes very quiet and self-effacing as evi-
dent in my analysis.8 Certainly, I believe that Anglo-Arab authors deterri-
torialize the major western traditions, that is to say, modernist and
postmodern practices, for new forms of representation and new signifying
regimes. They dismantle not only their autocratic regimes but also their
western-backed policy by standing against them practically and figuratively
in their writings and by using traditions of western art (e.g., magical real-
ism and metafiction). Richard Jacquemond stresses the continuity of west-
ern art traditions in Arabic literature. However, at an analytical level, I
argue that the narratives of the Arab uprisings unsettle generic boundaries
while seeking rupture and continuity both with the narrative strategies
and modes characterized by contemporary and earlier generations of
writers as illustrated in the proceeding chapters. These narratives refer to
the wider framework of what is called “new humanism” and “critical real-
ism” and to the peculiar ways in which modernist and postmodernist

6
Using different film techniques in narrative to tell the story. For example, attention is paid
to light, sound and music, and so on.
7
It is through this capacity of their writings that these authors gamble on the performative
potential of creative fiction.
8
The examples throughout in this book are not simply instances of experimentation with
form. I also illustrate how the inculcation of slogans, the mixing of Arabic and English and
glossing create the environment of the Arab revolution.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

literary traditions develop in Arabic literature. I argue that these narratives

express the present time’s uncertainty without proposing a radical depar-
ture from many of the earlier strategies that have been adopted in Arab
literature. Building upon interrogatives, on rupture and continuity, my
research suggests that Post-Arab Spring narratives hack the frame of refer-
ence in which they are written using different strategies and at different
levels by recurring techniques and tactics such as reversion of languages
and literary modes and their replication.
Minor literature is not political in the sense that it does not necessarily
involve the politics of what Deleuze and Guattari term molar organization
(molar refers to organized, single, punctual organization). Rather, it con-
nects different aspects of life, be they individual or social (indeed non-­
human, like the city), for the production of molecular revolution. The
molecular is incessant, vital, and unruly; molecular movements constitute
the potential to transverse and undermine the molar organization. Unlike
major literature where “the social milieu serv[es] as a minor environment
or a background,” in minor literature, the individual concern is connected
with the larger juridical, commercial, bureaucratic, and economic social
milieu (Deleuze and Guattari Kafka 17). For example, minor practices are
mostly self-organizing. Coming into the streets against their government,
sitting in Tahrir Square, chanting and singing a song against corrupt
autocracy, graffiti, and lectures at Tahrir Square, these are all minor prac-
tices that ultimately lead to a molecular revolution. This is the essential
feature of Post-Arab Spring literature; that it carves out a space that is not
yet distinctly disciplined.
Given this context, literature produced by Anglo-Arab authors can be
understood as writing in-between disciplinary spaces in a way that consid-
ers the intersection between environment, social movements, politics, and
the arts. It is neither singular nor a separate discipline; hence, borrowing
from Deleuze and Guattari, I refer to it as a series of plateaus. Deleuze and
Guattari define a plateau as “a multiplicity connected to other multiplici-
ties by superficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a
rhizome,” suggesting that Post-Arab Spring literature establishes connec-
tions between different organizations and arts and literature (A Thousand
Plateaus 2). Like the diverse society of the Arab world, the political hori-
zon is also rhizomatic (a concept that accommodates connectivity and
multiplicity). The rhizome assumes “diverse forms, from ramified surface
extension in all directions to concretion into bulbs and tubers” (Deleuze
and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus 7). Horizontal practices such as
18 A. YOUNAS

graffiti, lectures, and singing, common during the Arab Spring, produce
rhizomatic issues that cannot be categorized into a single unifying form;
rather, they “proliferates along different lines of growth” (Sarnou 68).
Therefore, their works resemble what Deleuze and Guattari describe in
the context of Kafka’s work as crabgrass: a “bewildering multiplicity of
stems and roots which can cross at any point to form a variety of possible
connections” (Kafka 14). For instance, one of the common features of
the selected works is that all actions are to be read as potentially politically
engaged.9 Therefore, the characters and their actions are entangled in a
network, an endless pattern in which “everything is linked to everything
else” (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka 27).
Minor literature involves collaboration, networks of collectives rather
than individual talent or position, and thus calls for “an active solidarity in
spite of scepticism” (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka 17). In such literature
“what each author says individually already constitutes a common action”
because he/she speaks on behalf of a whole ignored community (Deleuze
and Guattari, Kafka 17). The marginal or excluded position of a writer
allows him “to express another possible community and to forge the
means for another consciousness and another sensibility” (Deleuze and
Guattari, Kafka 17). In this sense, minor literature invents a new mode of
existence and creates a concept for “a new earth, a new people” by resist-
ing the present (O’Sullivan 5). It does not talk about new people and a
new earth in the literal sense but people who are already present and who
decide to change their lived reality by challenging the hierarchical struc-
ture of their lands and the totalitarian regime that maintains such
inequalities.
This concept of minor literature interacts with the specific ethos of
Post-Arab Spring narratives. Not only does it deterritorialize the global
language by making it stutter, but it also dismantles the hegemonic struc-
ture of its own society. Rather than existing on the margins of their society,
Anglo-Arab authors voice the perceptions of minor subjects and thus fore-
ground collective utterances, grievances, and plights of minorities in their
narratives, eventually adding diversity in themes, narratives, and styles to
their writings. However, I think this definition of minor literature is too
narrow to be applicable to other works produced by minor writers.
Deleuze and Guattari claim that Kafka’s style of writing, or rather his pro-
cess of writing, is specific to what they describe as a particular writing

9
The example of such system is given in Chaps. 3 and 4 (pg.76).
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

machine. Consequently, I would argue that Kafka’s writing cannot be

exemplary of minor literature in general. They derive their axiom of inter-
pretation that “only expression gives us the method” after the detailed
analysis of Kafka’s literary machine: for example, they define its compo-
nent parts and its connections and describe the whole process of how it is
assembled, which make it so specific and rigid that it is not applicable to
other writings (16). Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari work within the
western context and propose their theory of minor literature with refer-
ence to western writings, namely Kafka and Beckett. Using the same the-
ory in the context of Anglo-Arab literature without some pruning and
grafting would be to limit and potentially distort its significance which is
in itself vastly diverse and complex. A productive tension emerges when
the concept of minor literature is read alongside Post-Arab Spring litera-
ture. This literature calls for a new framework that enables the exploration
of the particular events of the Arab Spring as well as the different strategies
and techniques to transcribe those events and experiences. Attempting to
address this lacuna, my book revisits Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of
minor literature and reformulates it according to the emerging literature.
Keeping in view Kafka’s mode of expression, Deleuze and Guattari argue
that a minor writer must assert him/herself through the use of metamor-
phosis and must reject conventional metaphor for the successful deterrito-
rialization of the major language. Metaphor and metamorphosis function
as opposites because metaphor signifies the form, subject to the readers’
individual interpretation, whereas metamorphosis is characterized by
structural experimentation, and thus direct the readers while reading.
Deleuze and Guattari prefer metamorphosis because in this case, a reader
does not need to interpret; rather, he/she discovers the meaning as the
text leads him/her. Without ever approaching metamorphosis, Post-Arab
Spring literature is characterized by the use of metaphor, as well as mod-
ernist and postmodernist literary strategies, as set out in the chapters that
follow. I argue that the use of metaphorical form and other modernist and
postmodern strategies (e.g., magical realism and metafiction) does not
necessarily compromise the deterritorialization of a major language.
Rather, in the case of Post-Arab Spring literature, metamorphosis exempts
itself as a prerequisite for the successful articulation of minor literature so
that readers can participate in making connections and meanings while
they read. Considering the experimentation with form and language in the
selected novels, I demonstrate that Anglo-Arab immigrant writers drift
20 A. YOUNAS

away from Deleuze and Guattari’s original notion of minor literature and
thus expand and redefine it.

Post-Arab Spring Narratives as Minor Literature

While the foregoing provides significant details about minor literature, I
am particularly interested in the ways in which contemporary Arab writers
deterritorialize the major tongue, English. I thus draw attention to the
stylistic choices made by contemporary authors and show how this con-
tributes effectively to my study because it helps to review and reconsider
the stylistic aspect of the theory of minor literature. My readings confirm
Deleuze and Guattari’s claim that with revolutionary literature “expres-
sion must break forms, encourage ruptures and new sproutings,” as
throughout my study, I assert that the Arab Spring engenders diverse nar-
ratives: personal narratives, postmodern narratives, urban narratives and
humanitarian narratives, among others (28). After an analysis of Post-Arab
Spring narratives with reference to the concept of minor literature, I con-
clude that these narratives are more of a process rather than a finished
product. Therefore, I believe that it is more accurate to call it minor writ-
ing rather than minor literature, although Deleuze and Guattari use both
terms interchangeably. Post-Arab Spring literature as an example of minor
writing pushes up against the edges of representation and forces it to the
limits for a new form of representation.
In the light of these paradigms, I discuss the idea that Post-Arab Spring
narratives have a propensity toward being minoritarian. Deleuze and
Guattari argue that “what in great literature goes down below—here takes
place in the full light of day, what is there a matter of passing interest for a
few, here absorbs everyone” (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka 17). Therefore,
streets, jungles, libraries, bookshops, universities, journalism, informal
sectors, museums, schools, and all the governmental institutions and their
mechanisms which are typically rendered are brought to the light as the
“central telos” of the narrative. The individual tales are tied to the terri-
tory of the whole nation with which they are affiliated. Since the revolu-
tionary experience holds transformative potential for absolute
deterritorialization, Post-Arab Spring narratives point toward linguistic
deterritorialization by default. With this context in mind, I demonstrate
that the global language, English, is taken “farther in the direction of
deterritorialization, to the point of sobriety—arriv[ing] at a perfect and
unformed expression, a materially intense expression” (Deleuze and
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

Guattari, Kafka 19). I argue that Post-Arab Spring narratives are com-
prised of a revolutionary language which is a collection of slogans, chants,
tweets, and speech acts—directives, declaratives, commissives, and
assertives. In a nutshell, it is simple and plain language which minimizes
the figurative sense in order to maximize the survival of the collective. Yet
this language is political because it strives for freedom, justice, and rights
as Jan Mohamed argues that minor literature is positively charged “with
the role and function of collective, even revolutionary utterances” (296).
Unlike canonical Arab writings, which follow a “vector that goes from
content to expression,” I claim that Post-Arab Spring literature begins by
expressing itself. My objectives have been to highlight ways in which
Anglo-Arab authors carve a “new space within cramped conditions” for
those who are invisible (Piotrowski 83). My reading of Post-Arab Spring
literature suggests that these writings, in both aim and process, are anti-­
essentialist and emerge as counter-narratives that serve to undermine the
revolutionary rhetoric elsewhere proclaimed by new rulers. In The Arab
Spring: The End of Postcolonialism, Hamid Dabashi suggests that the Arab
Spring “marks the end of postcolonial ideological formations” which is
characterized by its oppressive nature and its subjugation (17). On the
contrary, the Arab uprisings demonstrate the persistence of authoritarian-
ism, re-autocratization in some regions like Egypt and the resilience of
monarchy in Morocco, Jordan, and the Gulf states. The emerging Post-­
Arab Spring literature presents this critique of old and new orthodoxies.
Though my main focus is on fictional rather than journalistic representa-
tions of the Arab revolution, I occasionally refer to the depiction of differ-
ent aspects of the Arab uprisings in mainstream journalistic reportage in
order to contextualize my debate on the different aspects of the Arab
uprisings.

Chapter Overview
Chapter 2 focuses on the memoirs of Hisham Matar and Ahdaf Soueif, in
which they narrate revolution from the ground up by using a cinematic
narrative technique. Soueif and Matar draw links between writing and
revolution while exploring how the act of witnessing/writing can produce
narrative memory. The first half of the chapter highlights the Egyptian
revolution in Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed (2014). In her memoir,
Soueif writes that it was “impossible to sit in a corner and write about the
revolution” (1); therefore, she flew to Cairo “to revolute and write at the
22 A. YOUNAS

same time” (2). Written in the form of a diary, she provides snapshots of
the revolution by inserting dates and times in her memoir. In the second
half of Chap. 2, I discuss the Libyan revolution with special reference to
The Return: Father, Sons and the Land in Between (2016). Hisham Matar
went back to Libya when the revolution broke out there. The Return
(2016) is an account of his journey and presents a detailed eyewitness
account of events. It is noteworthy that all three of Matar’s novels are
inspired by his personal life. His other two novels—In the Country of Men
and Anatomy of a Disappearance—are written before the Arab uprisings
and are based on his own idea of Libya and his childhood memories of the
country. In those two novels, he has fictionalized the account of his absent
father whereas in his third book he presents his illuminating journey to
Libya, both psychological and physical, in search of his father, and presents
the on-the-ground scenario of the unfolding revolution. While focusing
on the stylistic aspects of both memoirs, this chapter centers on the discus-
sion of how each author, as a minor writer configures the immediate his-
torical, social, and political dimension of the revolution. What is particularly
distinctive about these memoirs is the way Soueif and Matar use diverse
strategies to historicize the present and to ensure the representation of the
marginalized people.
In Chap. 3, I explore the writings of Karim Alrawi and Youssef Rakha.
Like Soueif and Matar, Alrawi and Rakha also participate in the revolution
and represent the Arab Spring and the Post-Arab Spring scenario of the
Arab world in their novels. They inform the world about the doomed
2011 revolution by using postmodern strategies of magical realism and
metafiction. Many writers around the world have long used magical real-
ism to criticize totalitarian regimes, and given the inherent unreliability of
language to portray reality a metafictional strategy is used to portray the
uncertain scenario. Using magical realism in Book of Sands, Alrawi fore-
grounds the corruption, recurrent authoritarianism and despotism in the
Arab world whereas in The Crocodiles Rakha employs a metafictional strat-
egy to exhibit precarious scenarios of the Arab world. In so doing, I argue
that they capture the contested reality of the Arab world. I posit that their
narratives are postmodern narratives because the stories in both novels
refuse to be narrated chronologically, but rather play out in a postmodern
self-reflexive manner on several different levels of narration, place,
and time.
The above writers present the Arab revolution, the mass upheaval
against the totalitarian regime and the uncertainty in the Post-Arab Spring
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

Arab world using different literary strategies. However, the Arab Spring
does not end with the mass outbreak and the toppling of regimes in
Tunisia and Egypt. Rather, it worsens in many parts of the Arab world
with the passage of time. The Arab Spring becomes an urban phenome-
non when Arab security forces, whose job is to secure and protect their
own people, in different parts of the Arab world turn the home front into
a battleground, converting all major cities of the Arab world into military
targets. Chapter 4 charts this transition of the Arab revolution from peace-
ful demonstration to urbicide. This chapter deals with the urban narratives
produced by Yasmine El Rashidi and Omar Robert Hamilton. El Rashidi
and Hamilton discuss the changing dynamics of the urban landscape in
the wake of the Arab Spring and counter the state’s narrative of military
protection for the revolution and revolutionaries.
Like other writers, El Rashidi and Hamilton also went back to their
countries and sat in Tahrir Square to protest against the autocratic regime
with others. Being journalists themselves, they blend fact and fiction in
their novels and produce creative non-fiction. They explore the transfor-
mation of the Cairo landscape through neoliberal policies and the security
forces’ violence, posing the question of how Cairo subsequently emerges
as a revolutionary space of dissent. Their decision to write urban narratives
helps them to reveal the silenced voices of those who are living unknown
lives in the streets of Cairo, such as street hawkers. Owing to its immediacy
and “close connection with the street” I consider this literature as distinct
from previous cultural production (13). Bearing in mind this historical
context, my aim is to highlight that the Arab Spring was not just a social
movement held in the city; rather, the city is the main site of the Arab
revolution. I suggest that as minor writers, they represent the unrepresent-
able spaces to highlight those people that are spatially off-limits. The first
part of the chapter focuses on El Rashidi’s portrayal of pre-Arab Spring
Cairo in which she reveals those urban practices which have made revolu-
tion inevitable. She represents the city’s progression in detail to reveal its
political history. The second half of the chapter concentrates on those
spatial practices that revolutionaries adopt to assert their right to the city.
The chapter ends with the discussion of how El Rashidi and Hamilton’s
writings create minor space for all those who participate in the revolution
in their writings.
Chapter 5 considers the fabulative function of minor literature. I argue
that writers like Saleem Haddad and Nada Awar Jarrar embrace the dis-
course of human rights and work as humanists as well as novelists. With
24 A. YOUNAS

the help of minor literature, these novelists invent those people who are
missing from the world’s larger narratives. For example, in the Arab world,
migrants, and refugees, as well as gay and lesbian people, have been widely
discriminated against. These groups are subjected to severe persecution
based on their political beliefs and sexual orientation. The latter constitute
a group particularly vulnerable to human rights abuse in Arab counties.
However, after the Arab Spring, these marginalized groups are now incor-
porated in the mainstream group of “the people,” all cognizant of and
demanding their rights. Like other subjugated groups of the world,
LGBTQ+ communities and refugees also find sanctuary in literature in
which they explore their identities, grieve their losses and celebrate their
joys. This chapter focuses on the ways in which Post-Arab Spring fiction
speaks of migrant, refugee experiences and sexual identities with special
reference to Haddad’s Guapa and Jarrar’s An Unsafe Haven. I suggest
that these writers assert their voice and carve a space for Arab refugees,
exiles, and gay people through autofictions.
The novels studied in this monograph differ significantly from one
another in style, subject matter, and setting. However, all of these texts are
dominated by the theme of political struggle, which eventually gives cour-
age to people to find their voices. The early Post-Arab Spring literature is
emotionally charged and euphoric in tone, and is followed by disillusion-
ment. However, the distinction between the first period of optimism and
subsequent disenchantment is not clear considering that the Arab revolu-
tion involves vastly different systems of governance. Perhaps, literature
produced immediately after the Arab Spring adheres to the euphoric
account of Tahrir; however, with the passage of time, literary optimism has
disappeared; my book is organized accordingly around the timeline of the
Arab Spring. Starting from initial eyewitness narratives in the first chapter,
the selected novelists transcribe every stage of the cultural and political:
from excitement to disillusionment, optimism to despair, and hope
to trauma.
 CHAPTER 2

Writing the Present to Commemorate:

Personal Narratives of the Arab Revolution
in Ahdaf Soueif’s Memoirs of a City
Transformed and Hisham Matar’s The Return

In Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggles, Tahia Abdel

Nasser argues about the historical significance of autobiographical writing:
“Arab writers chronicled life and experience within vast networks of
cultural-­
historical relations; they explicitly or obliquely revisited the
national landscape that shaped them” (3). Nasser’s view that life writing
provides insight into the place, time, and culture in which it is produced
becomes the starting point for this chapter. Herein, I consider the impact
of the Arab revolution on Arab life writing since 2011. In doing so, I
argue that the socio-political reality of the Arab revolution influences writ-
ers’ creative decisions. Unlike previous life writings, the Arab spring mem-
oirs “replicate a revolution in the making, so that it does not simply
record—but form parts of the events” (Nasser 131). Indeed, Soueif writes,
“the revolution is not an event but a process, a process we’re all going
through, and this book is going through it with us, fitting itself to the
altered forms of the revolution” (xiv–xv). Conscious of the historicity of
the moment, Anglo-Arab minor writers are endeavoring to produce nar-
rative memory. This chapter focuses on the narrative configuration of
revolution, primarily in Ahdaf Soueif’s Memoir of a City Transformed
(2014) and Hisham Matar’s The Return (2016), which I call as the per-
sonal narratives and journalistic memoirs of the Arab Spring. I argue that
these writers combine their observation with eyewitness testimony in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Switzerland AG 2023
A. Younas, Post-Arab Spring Narratives, Literatures and Cultures of the
Islamic World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27904-1_2
26 A. YOUNAS

which they perform an act of memory-making by storying the present for

the future. I avoid a reductive approach that would view each text as an
autobiography which is highly impressionistic. However, the claim that
they combine memoirs with testimony and create a future history is sup-
ported by the writings of both writers to whom I devote the most atten-
tion, Ahdaf Soueif (an Egyptian novelist and a political and cultural
commentator) and Hisham Matar (British-Libyan author). The use of
journalistic reportage, interviews, human right reports, and the excerpts
from their emails and blogs supports my argument of journalistic mem-
oirs. Rather than representing only the on-ground scenario of the Arab
revolution, it is striking to note that these writers “establish a peculiar
relationship” with “the past and (perhaps also) with the future” to diag-
nose and unveil the oppressive regimes of the Arab world and thus offer
prospective as well as retrospective narratives (Agamben, What is an
Apparatus? 49–50). Given this context, both writers exemplify what
Giorgio Agamben calls “contemporaries” who “firmly hold [their] gaze
on [their] own time so as to perceive not its light, but rather its darkness”
(What is an Apparatus? 44). The contemporary is a person who can per-
ceive the obscurity and who could write about that obscurity. Like con-
temporaries, these writers perceive the darkness of their epoch and seek to
articulate and preserve it in their narratives. Perceiving the darkness means
that the contemporaries do not merely represent the given state of affairs.
Since the Arab revolution is an evolving phenomenon, writers face dif-
ficulties in articulating disrupted present, incoherent, non-hegemonic
relations of space and time, and envisioning the future of the revolution.
The unpredictability of what revolution could bring is clearly reflected in
diverse forms of the narratives of revolution. The two memoirs, Cairo:
Memoir of a City Transformed (2014) by Ahdaf Soueif and The Return:
Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between (2016) by Hisham Matar, that I
discuss here represent an on-ground scenario of the Arab revolution. Both
writers participate in the revolution and their narratives offer a unique
perspective on the Arab revolution and what it means to be caught up in
a moment of change. Their attempt at witnessing and writing simultane-
ously make their narratives flexible, provisional, and open to revision.
Owing to the evolving nature of revolution, the process of recording it is
necessarily open-ended. In this regard, an inconclusive technique can cap-
ture the revolutionary spirit of such narratives. This is of great significance
because the narrative of the revolution is closely related to the revolution
itself. It largely focuses on registering the revolutionary scene accurately
 2 WRITING THE PRESENT TO COMMEMORATE: PERSONAL NARRATIVES… 27

and to reflect the social tensions during the revolution. Therefore, the nar-
rative of the revolution comprises divergent narrative techniques that are
necessarily not related to one another. The participants (protestors) of the
revolution belong to different strata; something which necessitate differ-
ent levels of discourse. This has resulted in “heterogamous narrative dis-
course” which clearly illustrates the differences among those who support
the revolution and those who oppose it. For example, the protestors’
adherence to peaceful demonstration is rendered through signposts, dia-
logue, slogans, tweets, and posters throughout the narratives. This also
represents these narratives as counter narrative discourses to the govern-
mental discourse of the revolution.
The focus of this chapter is to examine the narrative discourse of the
revolution. I prefer to use the term discourse because it comprises both
the mode of narration and the style of technique. Discourse here repre-
sents diverse narrative techniques employed by the selected authors that I
discuss in the first part of the chapter with reference to Cairo: Memoir of a
City Transformed and The Return. Moreover, I call it discourse because
both writers fuse social, historical, political, and poetical narratives, which
stand as more than just mere texts but discourses. In her narrative, Soueif
incorporates radio and TV scripts, her written emails and many newspaper
articles, revolutionary songs and anthems and maps of Cairo. For instance,
she incorporates full poems which revolutionaries sang during the protest.
Similarly, Matar combines his past research about his father’s absence,
many of his written articles and reports about the human rights violations
in the different newspapers, his father’s written scripts and poems, prison-
ers’ testimonies together in the form of a memoir. For instance, he incor-
porates long excerpts from his father’s prose fiction when one of his uncles
presented to him.

Arab Spring Memoirs: Keeping the Discourse

of the Revolution Alive in Minor Literature

As I have stated earlier, my aim in this book is not to foreground the por-
trayed reality surrounding the Arab Spring events. My aim instead is to
examine the narrative strategies used in both memoirs and the way it con-
tributes in revising the concept of minor literature. My focus here is to
highlight the various narrative techniques employed by both authors in
their memoirs. Interestingly enough, many writers have spoken about the
28 A. YOUNAS

difficulty of writing fiction during uprisings and the need to participate

actively in the revolution. Ahdaf Soueif addresses this issue in a piece of the
Guardian magazine in August, 2012 saying that artists must perform
“the responsibility of citizenship” at the time of crisis and as a citizen, her
duty is “to be present, there, on the ground, marching, supporting, talk-
ing, instigating, and articulating” (Soueif “In Times of Crisis”). She
believes that as an artist her gift “is narrative”; she does not want to escape
but rather “to be part of the great narrative of the world” and thus con-
structs the present for a future generation (Soueif “In Times of Crisis,
Fiction Has to Take a Back Seat” theguardian.com, Sept. 2018). Likewise,
in his talk at the Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias, Matar says that in the
wake of the Arab Spring in Libya, he “wants to be close to the earth and
wants to understand the complexity of the present” (“Podcast: Hisham
Matar Speaks About His Memoir, ‘The Return: Father, Sons and the Land
in Between’ at Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias 2017,” britishcouncil.
org, Sept. 2018). Therefore, he returns to Libya and starts recording his
experience in his memoir, The Return: Father, Sons and the Land in
Between.
Given this context, it is noteworthy that both writers start their mem-
oirs with the outbreak of the revolution, the moment they decide to go
back to their country. For example, when the revolution broke out in
Egypt, Soueif was “in India” to attend “the Jaipur Literary Festival”
(Soueif 5). When she heard the news of revolution in Egypt, she decided
to go back to her country, noting that “what transfixed me so completely
was that the picture on the [TV] screen was from Tahrir” (Soueif 7);
therefore, next day she “caught a plane that put [her] in Cairo on the
evening of Thursday the twenty seventh” (Soueif 10). Likewise, when
“Tripoli fell, and revolutionaries took control of Abu-Salim” Matar
decided that he “wanted to be there” (Matar 11). This illustrates that for
both writers, revolution becomes a mean of re-establishing and strength-
ening their connection with their countries. It also indicates political
awareness of both writers, as they are alert to the problems that their soci-
eties have been experiencing and at the same time play their roles at the
time of crisis, in their capacity either as writers or as political or literary
activists. For instance, when the revolution erupts, Soueif is seen to be
involved in the protest while writing about the revolution as she proclaims
that we (Soueif along with so many other Cairenes) are “taking part in the
events that are shaping our lives and our children’s future as I write”
(Soueif 6). During all this time, she writes inside stories of Tahrir square
 2 WRITING THE PRESENT TO COMMEMORATE: PERSONAL NARRATIVES… 29

for different national and international press media on the one hand and
provides “blankets, bottles of water, medical supplies” and “mobile charge
cards for the people in the sit-in” on the other hand (120). During the
initial days of the revolution in Libya, Matar was not present on the revo-
lutionary ground yet he lent his hand indirectly to revolution even before
the rising began. He belongs to a human rights group of activists and writ-
ers “who have their own histories of being victims and who write seeking
to redeem themselves from their losses, pains, and grieves to attain approx-
imate catharsis for their sufferings” (Mirdha 24). In this way, they situate
“themselves as world citizens in an international civic sphere” (Mirdha
24).1 This evidence shows that in the wake of the Arab revolution, both
writers honor their responsibility as citizens to their countries and fulfill
their duty as writers by preserving the present for the future in the form of
their memoirs.
Soueif’s Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed presents an illustration of
Cairo during the Egyptian revolution in 2011. The title clearly illustrates
that it is a portrait of a city, Cairo, with its resonant history. The word
memoir in the title shows that this book merges the past and the present
of Cairo. Soueif tells us a story of a conversation that happens in the streets
of Cairo. She creates a poetic personification of her city in which Cairo
emerges as a dynamic and evolutionary entity. History in her memoir is
twofold: personal and political. In fact, her personal is political because the
personal events of her life, her relatives, and her home, even the hospital
in which she is born, are all intricately tied to the politics of her country.
The events that precede January 25 and February 11, 2011, and those
that succeed make Soueif particularly conscious of the fact that history
does not only record the past in books but is also a living reality of every-
day life. Violence and massacre, the loss of fellow humans and the constant
insecurity of existence are features of this everyday life. Soueif attempts to
historicize the haunting and oppressive reality with which Egyptians
grapple and wrestle every day. In so doing, she conceptualizes the history
of her city Cairo and reconstructs it in meaningful categories. She captures
the initial euphoria of Tahrir square protestors and their struggles to end
1
The process of storytelling is generally marked as the beginning of a healing process for
the victims. In this regard, Matar also inscribes the grief of his “absent-present” father
through his writings. It has been noticed that he is motivated to map the disruptive effect of
stunting life choices in a repressive regime through writing. Thus, his texts are personalized
as a statement of injustice and to address the denial of human rights to himself and his father
as well as to the Libyan population.
30 A. YOUNAS

three decades of Hosni Mubarak’s US-backed police state. She informs

the world about the strong determination of Egyptians who form a human
chain around their country’s assets (museums and antique souvenirs, for
example) to protect those assets which have been sold out by the Egyptian
government. She also tells how this moment of national unity is snuffed
out by the military. Since she is trying to capture unfolding political events,
the structure of her book is confusing. She starts with revolution then
pauses in the middle and goes back to reveal all those causes that make the
Egyptian uprisings inevitable. She herself acknowledges that to keep pace
with writing the revolution is impossible. She tries, however, to do so and
even publishes an updated version of her memoir with an addition of 100
more pages to show the aftermath of the revolution in 2014. In her
updated version, she also introduces a forward momentum to show what
happened after the revolution.
The Return is a story about a writer investigating his father, Jaballa
Matar’s fate at the hand of the brutal autocratic regime and a son’s effort
to come to terms with the death of his father. The sense of living with an
“absent-present” burdens him to the extent that he decides to return to
Libya with the hope of releasing the uncertainties that constrain his life
(Matar 39). All his life, he feels trapped inside “a room, barely high enough
for a man to stand and certainly not wide enough for him to lie down”
(Matar 15). He says that “no matter how hard [he] tr[ies], [he] could not
find a trapdoor, a pipe, anything leading out” (Matar 15). Therefore, he
decides to return to Libya to face the ugly truth of his “father’s unknown
death and silence” (Matar 34–35). The story of the pursuit of his father
turns out to be a tale of a disturbing depiction of the brutal regime, abso-
lute power, and people on the cusp of change. He goes back to Libya
when “justice, democracy and the rule of law [a]re within reach” during
the 2011 revolution (Matar 140). Even before the revolution, he spends
his entire life as an activist, and he opposes the Qaddafi regime through his
writings and through continuous struggle against the regime from out-
side Libya.
Unlike Soueif, Matar never takes part in protest physically but remains
an observer of the protest. He writes The Return with emotional detail
and gives us an authentic account of place and time. It would be an injus-
tice to call this memoir a family saga; it is also a portrait of Libya. Matar
links the personal story of his father’s abduction with the political history
of his homeland and reveals the brutality of Qaddafi’s regime. Through
the inclusion of his grandfather’s story, he gives an account of colonial
 2 WRITING THE PRESENT TO COMMEMORATE: PERSONAL NARRATIVES… 31

Libya—a time when the country is exploited emotionally and economi-

cally by Italy. The story is not told chronologically; instead, the narrative
jumps from present to past and vice versa. One reason may be that the past
of Libya is intermingled with the present as part of the country’s current
uncertain scenario: the cycle of fears and hope is writ in the country’s past.
Faced with the anarchy of his fragmented country, Matar’s memoir intro-
duces the scenario of the Arab Spring in Libya, when “the entire country
was poised on a knife-edge” (140). It reports that Matar has “never been
anywhere where hope and apprehension are at such a pitch (Matar 50).
He writes that “anything seems possible and nearly every individual met
speak of his optimism and foreboding in the same breath” (Matar 50). He
also shows how the military seizes control of the different parts of Libya
and the civil war destroys the hope of the Arab uprisings.
It is important to consider that both writers end their texts at an arbi-
trary point. Neither text has a clear sense of closure because the revolution
in their countries is on-going which keeps on affecting writers’ stylistic
decisions throughout their narratives to produce complete/incomplete
texts. These decisions involve the choice of tense, the use of pronouns, the
shift between public and private self. Using little or no fabrication, both
texts deal with the actual events of the Arab uprisings. They merge the past
with the present and the personal with politics. While observing demon-
strations unfolding and people’s aspirations for the uprisings, both writers
choose to record these grand historical events in memoirs rather than
turning them into fiction for which they would need more time. Soueif
argues that writing fiction at the moment of revolution is not possible as
“the immediate truth is too glaring to allow a more subtle truth to take
the form” (Soueif, “In Times of Crisis”). She acknowledges that she may
turn to fiction later using stories of revolution for writing a novel. Similarly,
in an interview given to Fiction Writers Review, Matar admits that he will
probably write a novel one day on the subject of the Libyan revolution but
not at the time of revolution because fiction “responds slowly” (“The
Trouble with Talking: An Interview with Hisham Matar,” fictionwritersre-
view.com, Sept. 2018).
For the reasons outlined above, I argue that both writers distance
themselves from writing fiction and produce personal narratives, a repre-
sentative of a zeitgeist at this particular juncture. It is argued that a memoir
is “an attempt at setting the record straight, of telling the facts” (Nesher
259). In this respect, these writers attempt to record the real events of the
Arab uprisings by casting themselves as the witness and narrator of their
32 A. YOUNAS

narratives to produce journalist memoirs. It is worth noting that in their

narratives, they appear as journalists and as well as the main characters,
reporting about the Arab revolution rather than contemplating their per-
sonal lives. Their narratives are a reflection of real events seen through the
eyes of real-world people; therefore, these writers choose to write memoirs
as the hegemony of realism is increased in memoirs (Elaskary and El-Gabry
3). They reconstruct the historical situation by rewriting and correcting
past events. Hindsight enables readers to see the emerging narratives as
bearing witness to the grand historical moment all too often “denied and
disfigured” in the words of Egyptian writer, Radwa Ashour (88). Moreover,
the writers’ attempts at writing memoirs can also be seen as an effort to
provide a healing catharsis to the victims of revolution and thus make
audible the inaudible like protestors and activists. Kay Schaffer and Sidonie
Smith claim that memoirs and personal narratives are a powerful literary
genre for the highlighting of human rights violations for helping to gain
“both local and international audiences” (13) for the “voices of dissent”
(15). In these works, “the pressure of memories of traumatic past and the
hopes for an enabling future are held in balance” (Schaffer and Smith 8).
In line with the same thought, Whitlock argues that memoirs can “make
powerful interventions in debates about social justice, sovereignty, and
human rights” because it foregrounds those people whose experiences are
frequently unseen and unheard (Whitlock 3).
These personal narratives can be positioned as minor literature on the
basis of the three interconnected characteristics of that form.2 I argue that
as a retrospective exploration of the Arab Spring, these personal narratives,
as in minor literature, do not only intertwine the individual concern with
the broader social milieu, but also highlight broader interconnected socio-­
political issues, such as the history of violence, corruption, and even pre-­
colonial time. The writings of both writers demonstrate that in their
countries “the family triangle connects to other triangles—commercial,
economic, bureaucratic, juridical—that determine its value” (Deleuze and
Guattari, Kafka 17). People in the Arab countries are entangled in the
wrecked system and they are complicit in the general state of corruption
and bribery and so on. In so doing, these writers force “each individual
intrigue to connect immediately to politics. The individual concern in
minor literature, thus, becomes all the more necessary, indispensable,
magnified, because the whole story is vibrating within it” (Deleuze and

2
As described in the Introduction, page number 21.
 2 WRITING THE PRESENT TO COMMEMORATE: PERSONAL NARRATIVES… 33

Guattari, Kafka 17). Considering the stylistic aspect of both memoirs, I

also demonstrate that both writers use different strategies to historicize
the present and to ensure the representation of the marginalized people
such as protestors, activists, writers, prisoners, and so on, which eventually
expand the concept of minor literature.
To begin with an elaboration of the first attribute of minor literature, as
listed in the introduction, that serves as the foundation for what follows,
minor literature is constructed by a minority “in a major language” within
a major system (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka 16). Despite their minor
status, Anglo-Arab authors choose to articulate their social reality as well
as the reality of marginalized communities that they represent through a
major tongue, as exemplified by Franz Kafka who does not write in his
native language Czech but rather in German. According to Deleuze and
Guattari, “since the language is arid,” a minor writer “make[s] it vibrate
with a new intensity” (Kafka 19). Therefore, Arab immigrant writers pur-
posefully use the English language as a medium for discourse and com-
munication to integrate their Arabness within the socio-political sphere of
English language and culture. They extend the language to its very limit
to discover, as Paul Ricoeur states, a “new resonance within itself” (3).3
Using peculiar strategies to portray the fractured and cryptic realities of
their countries, the selected authors push the language “farther in the
direction of deterritorialization, to the point of sobriety”—in short to uti-
lize the word in an unexpected intensities—and articulate a political cri-
tique—the second defining feature of minor literature (Deleuze and
Guattari, Kafka 19).
Minor literature is a property of people who make and consume it. This
literature is not burdened with greatness; rather, it is political in immediate
sense. By linking their personal stories with the politics of their countries,
both writers substantiate Deleuze and Guattari’s assertion that “its
cramped space forces each individual intrigue to connect immediately to
politics” (Kafka 17). The social milieu in their narratives is no doubt “a
mere environment or a background” as in the case of major literature, but
“every piece of personal property, display of idiosyncrasy, and various ter-
ritorialities” they discuss in their narratives is utilized as public property.

3
Recognizing the fundamental power of language in constructing the world, the works of
these writers demonstrate that there is not just political and epistemological imagination, but
also, a linguistic imagination that generates and regenerates meaning through the power of
metaphoricity.
34 A. YOUNAS

Every individual tale and act are tied to the politics of their countries as
evident in both memoirs. While the context and content are important
aspects of their work, my focus is on their experimentation with the form
to “concentrate on the need of the whole minority” (“What is Minor
Literature” 2) and this defines the third aspect of minor literature—“the
execution of collective utterances” (Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka 17).
The final characteristic of minor literature works to tie all three charac-
teristics together. Deleuze and Guattari argue that in minor literature
“there are no possibilities for an individuated enunciation that would
belong to this or that ‘master’ and that could be separated from a collec-
tive enunciation” (Kafka 17). To speak on behalf of the whole commu-
nity, both authors themselves become the narrator—the voice of the
common people—of their narratives. They use various documents like
journalistic reports, images of martyrs, human rights reports and testimo-
nies of prisoners to incorporate divergent experiences and collective utter-
ances. In Archaeologies of the Future, Fredric Jameson talks about a new
type of subjectivity in which individuality is completed by collectivity. He
claims that collectivity neither means that individual lost his/her distinc-
tive individuality nor means that he is lost in a communal individuality but
all of us are “indeed a single experiencing individual, yet at the same time,
we [are] in a very important and delightful manner distinct from one
another” (Jameson 8). A pioneer of cultural memory, Jan Assman, also
speaks of collective memory, that writing “social groups constitute a cul-
tural memory, from which they derive their collective identity” (qtd. in
Erll 29).
Given this context, Soueif and Matar both write in relation to the alter-
ity to the official narratives of the totalitarian regime. In comparison to all
those decisions, identities, and meanings that make a reservoir of the
authoritarian regime, in the writings of Soueif and Matar, a new political
subjectivity emerges that holds the potential to reflect the social group’s
life world and its own self-image. They are in the words of Bromley “pro-
leptic and prefigurative: scripting a socially shared, and shareable, future
through mnemonic potential and iconic augmentation” (223). They
incorporate many voices in their narratives of revolution—characteristics
that make it a potential work of minor literature. The Arab revolution
does not have any prominent figure or head who can lead a group of
people; in fact, a group of people together march and anticipate that they
would be successful. This is illustrated in their narratives where collective
heroism replaces the individual leadership. All the protestors equally
 2 WRITING THE PRESENT TO COMMEMORATE: PERSONAL NARRATIVES… 35

participate and play a significant role in shaping the course of the revolu-
tion and both writers engage all of these voices when transcribing it. This
polyphony of voices makes the narrative more plausible and representative
of the revolution as they incorporate the collective utterances of all those
who participate in the revolution. Soueif and Matar consciously use the
major language to create “alternative subjectivities, spatialities and tempo-
ralities” in their writings (Katz 490). To achieve this goal, both writers use
diverse literary strategies, for example, the use of metaphor, proverbial
expressions, foreshadowing, visual memories, imagery, sensory language,
and so on. which alter the existing understanding of minor literature and
extend it. In doing so, they deconstruct the available range of meanings
not only to create future history but also to build a new reflexive analysis
of the revolution. Perspective, language, tense, and tone: all these factors
together contribute to what Bromley terms “we-narrative” for “collective
refiguration” (224).

The Reconfiguration of the Revolution

Soueif and Matar attributed new meanings to the events through writing
memoirs. They made their writing bespeak about the events of the Arab
Spring. Their narratives present the first-hand experience of the people
who believe in taking the “country’s affairs in hand” and renouncing the
centuries old authoritarian regime (Badiou 109). Thus, these stories
become an emblem of a unique narrative structure that combine time with
iconic and mnemonic properties as these narratives become preserver of
Arab history. By recording these narratives in aesthetic form, Soueif’s and
Matar’s narratives speak about both collective and individual memory.
According to Ernst Van Alphen, memory and experience are “shaped
and structured according to the parameters of available discourses” (96).4
The most challenging task for the writer is to take into consideration
today’s needs and to produce a new form of text that is mentioned as
“prosthetic” texts by Alison Landsberg, which “emphasize the bodily
experiential, sensuous and affective” dimension of testimonial writing
(qtd. in Erll 133). By doing so, a writer would be able to acclaim his

4
This implies that those who have lived through extreme experiences sometimes cannot
represent anything more to themselves than having lived through events. Hence, it was dif-
ficult for both writers to represent the events. Van Alphen calls this phenomenon the failed
experience which needs discursive construction.
36 A. YOUNAS

­ resence in texts, and simultaneously it will make his/her texts receptive

p
to the readers. A writer is a means through which the link between event
and recording could be maintained as he/she “sutures himself or herself
into a larger history” (Erll 133). Due to the unavailability of historical
accounts, both writers seem to rely on their experiences and imaginations
in shaping their narratives.
By recording the present and encoding the future, these texts emerge
as a first-hand account of place, time, and experience of revolution, which
questions the relationship that exists between the text and the sociocul-
tural surroundings in which it is produced. In Time and Narrative, Paul
Ricoeur claims that “time becomes human time” when it is organized in a
“narrative” pattern and narrative becomes significant when “it portrays
the features of temporal experience” (qtd. in Erll152). Human time is
defined as the tension between the “horizon of expectations and the space
of experiences” human beings foresee the future while keeping in view the
present circumstance (Grethlein 316).5 They are either disappointed or
fulfilled by new experiences, “which in turn not only forms the back-
ground for new expectations but also retroactively transforms the memory
of previous expectations and experiences” (Grethlein 316). This definition
of human time is crucial in exploring the temporal configuration of narra-
tive as the tension between experience and expectation is established in the
narratives as well.
This tension is evident at the level of action in the texts of the Arab
uprising as in both memoirs, it can be noticed that the expectations of the
people regarding revolution are either fulfilled or the people face disap-
pointment in the end. In the narratives of revolution, the revolutionary
perception is embedded in a field of what Edmund Husserl terms “re- and
pro-tensions, in which previous perceptions continue to resonate and
coming perceptions are anticipated” (qtd. in Grethlein 315). The pro-­
tension is plausibly unknown and thus it can either be presaged or remains
open to revisiting. For instance, Soueif foresees the future of revolution as
“No More Torture!” “We have entered the new phase” (Soueif 150),
“We’ll get married/We’ll have kids—Lift your head up high, you’re Egyp-­
tian” (Soueif 152). Her utopian expectation about the future depends on
the successful toppling of the Egyptian regime which she rebuts in the
later version of her memoir.

5
This tension between expectation and experience provides the ground on which we can
explore the narrative configuration of time.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 « Et j’entends un homme qui hurle :
« — Tiens bon, confiance et patience, voilà les autres éléphants
qui arrivent.
« — Sainte Mère de Grâce ! que je dis, vais-je devoir monter à
cru toute l’écurie ? Venez me mettre à bas, tas de capons !
« Alors une paire d’éléphants femelles accompagnés de mahouts
et d’un sergent de l’intendance débouchent en tapinois du coin des
casernes ; et les mahouts d’injurier la mère et toute la famille de
notre vieux Putiphar.
« — Vois mes renforts, que je lui dis. Ils vont t’emmener à la
boîte, mon fils.
« Et cet enfant de la calamité mit ses oreilles en avant et dressa
la tête vers ces femelles. Son cran, après la symphonie que je lui
avais jouée sur la boîte crânienne, m’alla au cœur. « Je suis moi-
même en disgrâce, que je lui dis, mais je ferai pour toi ce que je
pourrai. Veux-tu aller à la boîte comme un brave, ou résister comme
un imbécile contre toute chance ? » Là-dessus je lui flanque un
dernier gnon sur la tête, et il pousse un formidable grognement et
laisse retomber sa trompe. « Réfléchis », que je lui dis, et : « Halte ! »
que je dis aux mahouts. Ils ne demandaient pas mieux. Je sentais
sous moi méditer le vieux réprouvé. A la fin il tend sa trompe toute
droite et pousse un son de cor des plus mélancoliques (ce qui
équivaut chez l’éléphant à un soupir). Je compris par là qu’il hissait
pavillon blanc et qu’il ne restait plus qu’à ménager ses sentiments.
« — Il est vaincu, que je dis. Alignez-vous à droite et à gauche
de lui. Nous irons à la boîte sans résistance.
« Le sergent de l’intendance me dit, du haut de son éléphant :
« — Êtes-vous un homme ou un prodige ? qu’il dit.
« — Je suis entre les deux, que je dis, en essayant de me
redresser. Et qu’est-ce qui peut bien, que je dis, avoir mis cet animal
dans un état aussi scandaleux ? que je dis, la crosse du mousqueton
élégamment posée sur ma hanche et la main gauche rabattue
comme il sied à un troupier.
 « Pendant tout ce temps nous déboulions sous escorte vers les
lignes des éléphants.
« — Je n’étais pas dans les lignes quand le raffut a commencé,
que me dit le sergent. On l’a emmené pour transporter des tentes et
autres choses analogues et pour l’atteler à un canon. Je savais bien
que ça ne lui plairait pas, mais en fait ça lui a déchiré le cœur.
« — Bah, ce qui est de la nourriture pour l’un est du poison pour
l’autre, que je dis. C’est d’avoir été mis à transporter des tentes qui
m’a perdu moi aussi.
« Et mon cœur s’attendrit sur le vieux Double-Queue parce qu’on
l’avait également mal traité.
« — A présent nous allons le serrer de près, que dit le sergent,
une fois arrivés aux lignes des éléphants.
« Tous les mahouts et leurs gosses étaient autour des piquets,
maudissant mon coursier à les entendre d’une demi-lieue.
« — Sautez sur le dos de mon éléphant, qu’il me dit. Il va y avoir
du grabuge.
« — Écartez tous ces gueulards, que je dis, ou sinon il va les
piétiner à mort. (Je sentais que ses oreilles commençaient à frémir.)
Et débarrassez-nous le plancher, vous et vos immorales éléphantes.
Je vais descendre ici. Malgré son long nez de Juif, c’est un Irlandais,
que je dis, et il faut le traiter comme un Irlandais.
« — Êtes-vous fatigué de vivre ? que me dit le sergent.
« — Pas du tout, que je dis ; mais il faut que l’un de nous deux
soit vainqueur, et j’ai idée que ce sera moi. Reculez, que je dis.
« Les deux éléphants s’éloignèrent, et Smith O’Brien s’arrêta net
devant ses propres piquets.
« — A bas, que je dis, en lui allongeant un gnon sur la tête.
« Et il se coucha, une épaule après l’autre, comme un glissement
de terrain qui dévale après la pluie.
« — Maintenant, que je dis en me laissant aller à bas de son nez
et courant me mettre devant lui, tu vas voir celui qui vaut mieux que
toi.
« Il avait abaissé sa grosse tête entre ses grosses pattes de
devant, qui étaient croisées comme celles d’un petit chat. Il avait l’air
de l’innocence et de la désolation personnifiées, et par parenthèse
sa grosse lèvre inférieure poilue tremblotait et il clignait des yeux
pour se retenir de pleurer.
« — Pour l’amour de Dieu, que je dis, oubliant tout à fait que ce
n’était qu’une bête brute, ne le prends pas ainsi à cœur ! Du calme,
calme-toi, que je dis. (Et tout en parlant je lui caressai la joue et
l’entre-deux des yeux et le bout de la trompe.) Maintenant, que je
dis, je vais bien t’arranger pour la nuit. Envoyez-moi ici un ou deux
enfants, que je dis au sergent qui s’attendait à me voir trucider. Il
s’insurgerait à la vue d’un homme.
— Tu étais devenu sacrément malin tout d’un coup, dit Ortheris.
Comment as-tu fait pour connaître si vite ses petites manies ?
— Parce que, reprit Térence avec importance, parce que j’avais
dompté le copain, mon fils.
— Ho ! fit Ortheris, partagé entre le doute et l’ironie. Continue.
— L’enfant de son mahout et deux ou trois autres gosses des
lignes accoururent, pas effrayés pour un sou : l’un d’eux m’apporta
de l’eau, avec laquelle je lavai le dessus de son pauvre crâne
meurtri (pardieu ! je lui en avais fait voir) tandis qu’un autre extrayait
de son cuir les fragments des carrioles, et nous le raclâmes et le
manipulâmes tout entier et nous lui mîmes sur la tête un
gigantesque cataplasme de feuilles de nîm [8] (les mêmes qu’on
applique sur les écorchures des chevaux) et il avait l’air d’un bonnet
de nuit, et nous entassâmes devant lui un tas de jeunes cannes à
sucre et il se mit à piquer dedans.
[8] Nom d’une plante de l’Inde.

« — Maintenant, que je dis en m’asseyant sur sa patte de

devant, nous allons boire un coup et nous ficher du reste.
 « J’envoyai un négrillon chercher un quart d’arack [9] , et la femme
du sergent m’envoya quatre doigts de whisky, et quand la liqueur
arriva je vis au clin d’œil du vieux Typhon qu’il s’y connaissait aussi
bien que moi… que moi, songez ! Il avala donc son quart comme un
chrétien, après quoi je lui passai les entraves, l’enchaînai au piquet
par devant et par derrière, lui donnai ma bénédiction et m’en
retournai à la caserne.
[9] Eau-de-vie de riz.

Mulvaney se tut.
— Et après ? demandai-je.
— Vous le devinez, reprit Mulvaney. Il y eut confusion, et le
colonel me donna dix roupies, et le commandant m’en donna cinq, et
le capitaine de la compagnie m’en donna cinq, et les hommes me
portèrent en triomphe autour de la caserne.
— Tu es allé à la boîte ? demanda Ortheris.
— Je n’ai plus jamais entendu parler de mon malentendu avec le
pif de Kearney, si c’est cela que tu veux dire ; mais cette nuit-là
plusieurs des gars furent emmenés d’urgence à l’ousteau des Bons
Chrétiens. On ne peut guère leur en faire un reproche : ils avaient eu
pour vingt roupies de consommations. J’allai me coucher et cuvai les
miennes, car j’étais vanné à fond comme le collègue qui reposait à
cette heure dans les lignes. Ce n’est pas rien que d’aller à cheval sur
des éléphants.
« Par la suite je devins très copain avec le vénérable Père du
Péché. J’allais souvent à ses lignes quand j’étais consigné et
passais l’après-midi à causer avec lui : nous mâchions chacun notre
bout de canne à sucre, amis comme cochons. Il me sortait tout ce
que j’avais dans mes poches et l’y remettait ensuite, et de temps à
autre je lui portais de la bière pour sa digestion, et je lui faisais des
recommandations de bonne conduite, et de ne pas se faire porter
sur le registre des punitions. Après cela il suivit l’armée, et c’est ainsi
que ça se passe dès qu’on a trouvé un bon copain.
— Alors vous ne l’avez jamais revu ? demandai-je.
 — Croyez-vous la première moitié de l’histoire ? fit Térence.
— J’attendrai que Learoyd soit de retour, répondis-je
évasivement.
Excepté quand il est soigneusement endoctriné par les deux
autres et que l’intérêt financier immédiat l’y pousse, l’homme du
Yorkshire [10] ne raconte pas de mensonges ; mais je savais Térence
pourvu d’une imagination dévergondée.
[10] Learoyd.

— Il y a encore une autre partie, dit Mulvaney. Ortheris en était,

de celle-là.
— Alors je croirai le tout, répondis-je.
Ce n’était pas confiance spéciale en la parole d’Ortheris, mais
désir d’apprendre la suite. Alors que nous venions de faire
connaissance, Ortheris m’avait volé un chiot, et tandis même que la
bestiole reniflait sous sa capote, il niait non seulement le vol, mais
qu’il se fût jamais intéressé aux chiens.
— C’était au début de la guerre d’Afghanistan, commença
Mulvaney, des années après que les hommes qui m’avaient vu jouer
ce tour à l’éléphant furent morts ou retournés au pays. J’avais fini
par n’en plus parler… parce que je ne me soucie pas de casser la
figure à tous ceux qui me traitent de menteur. Dès le début de la
campagne, je tombai malade comme un idiot. J’avais une écorchure
au pied, mais je m’étais obstiné à rester avec le régiment, et autres
bêtises semblables. Je finis donc par avoir un trou au talon que vous
auriez pu y faire entrer un piquet de tente. Parole, combien de fois
j’ai rabâché cela aux bleus depuis, comme un avertissement pour
eux de surveiller leurs pieds ! Notre major, qui connaissait notre
affaire aussi bien que la sienne, voilà qu’il me dit, c’était au milieu de
la passe du Tangi :
« — Voilà de la sacrée négligence pure, qu’il dit. Combien de
fois vous ai-je répété qu’un fantassin ne vaut que par ses pieds…
ses pieds… ses pieds ! qu’il dit. Maintenant vous voilà à l’hôpital,
qu’il dit, pour trois semaines, une source de dépenses pour votre
Reine et un fardeau pour votre pays. La prochaine fois, qu’il dit,
peut-être que vous mettrez dans vos chaussettes un peu du whisky
que vous vous entonnez dans le gosier, qu’il dit.
« Parole, c’était un homme juste. Dès que nous fûmes en haut du
Tangi, je m’en allai à l’hôpital, boitillant sur un pied, hors de moi de
dépit. C’était un hôpital de campagne (tout mouches et pharmaciens
indigènes et liniment) tombé, pour ainsi dire, tout près du sommet du
Tangi. Les hommes de garde à l’hôpital rageaient follement contre
nous autres malades qui les retenions là, et nous ragions follement
d’y être gardés ; et par le Tangi, jour et nuit et nuit et jour, le
piétinement des chevaux et les canons et l’intendance et les tentes
et le train des brigades se déversaient comme un moulin à café. Par
vingtaines les doolies [11] arrivaient par là en se balançant et
montaient la pente avec leurs malades jusqu’à l’hôpital où je restais
couché au lit à soigner mon talon, et à entendre emporter les
hommes. Je me souviens qu’une nuit (à l’époque où la fièvre
s’empara de moi) un homme arriva en titubant parmi les tentes et
dit : « Y a-t-il de la place ici pour mourir ? Il n’y en a pas avec les
colonnes. » Et là-dessus il tombe mort en travers d’une couchette, et
l’homme qui était dedans commence à rouspéter de devoir mourir
tout seul dans la poussière sous un cadavre. Alors la fièvre me
donna sans doute le délire, car pendant huit jours je priai les saints
d’arrêter le bruit des colonnes qui défilaient par le Tangi. C’étaient
surtout les roues de canons qui me laminaient la tête. Vous savez ce
que c’est quand on a la fièvre ?
[11] Civières.

Nous acquiesçâmes : tout commentaire était superflu.

— Les roues de canons et les pas et les gens qui braillaient, mais
surtout les roues de canons. Durant ces huit jours-là il n’y eut plus
pour moi ni nuit ni jour. Au matin on relevait les moustiquaires, et
nous autres malades nous pouvions regarder la passe et contempler
ce qui allait venir ensuite. Cavaliers, fantassins, artilleurs, ils ne
manquaient pas de nous laisser un ou deux malades par qui nous
avions les nouvelles. Un matin, quand la fièvre m’eut quitté, je
considérai le Tangi, et c’était tout comme l’image qu’il y a sur le
revers de la médaille d’Afghanistan : hommes, éléphants et canons
qui sortent d’un égout un par un, en rampant.
— C’était un égout, dit Ortheris avec conviction. J’ai quitté les
rangs par deux fois, pris de nausées, au Tangi, et pour me retourner
les tripes il faut tout autre chose que de la violette.
— Au bout, la passe faisait un coude, en sorte que chaque chose
débouchait brusquement, et à l’entrée, sur un ravin, on avait
construit un pont militaire (avec de la boue et des mulets crevés). Je
restai à compter les éléphants (les éléphants d’artillerie) qui tâtaient
le pont avec leurs trompes et se dandinaient d’un air sagace. La tête
du cinquième éléphant apparut au tournant, et il projeta sa trompe
en l’air, et il lança un barrit, et il resta là à l’entrée du Tangi comme
un bouchon dans une bouteille. « Ma foi, que je pense en moi-
même, il ne veut pas se fier au pont ; il va y avoir du grabuge. »
— Du grabuge ! Mon Dieu ! dit Ortheris. Térence, j’étais, moi,
jusqu’au cou dans la poussière derrière ce sacré hutti. Du grabuge !
— Raconte, alors, petit homme ; je n’ai vu ça que du côté hôpital.
Et tandis que Mulvaney secouait le culot de sa pipe, Ortheris se
débarrassa des chiens, et continua :
— Nous étions trois compagnies escortant ces canons, avec
Dewcy pour commandant, et nous avions ordre de refouler jusqu’au
haut du Tangi tout ce que nous rencontrerions par là et de le balayer
de l’autre côté. Une sorte de pique-nique au pistolet de bois, vous
voyez ? Nous avions poussé un tas de flemmards du train indigène
et quelques ravitaillements de l’intendance qui semblaient devoir
bivouaquer à tout jamais, et toutes les balayures d’une demi-
douzaine de catégories qui auraient dû être sur le front depuis des
semaines, et Dewcy nous disait :
« — Vous êtes les plus navrants des balais [12] , qu’il dit. Pour
l’amour du Ciel, qu’il dit, faites-nous à présent un peu de balayage.
[12] Sweeps. Injure courante. Si ce n’était pour
conserver le jeu de mots, on pourrait traduire : « Ballots. »
 « Nous balayâmes donc… miséricorde, comme nous balayâmes
tout cela ! Il y avait derrière nous un régiment au complet, dont tous
les hommes étaient très désireux d’avancer : voilà qu’ils nous
envoient les compliments de leur colonel, en demandant pourquoi
diable nous bouchions le chemin, s. v. p. ! Oh ! ils étaient tout à fait
polis. Dewcy le fut également. Il leur renvoya la monnaie de leur
pièce, et il nous flanqua un suif que nous transmîmes aux artilleurs,
qui le repassèrent à l’intendance, et l’intendance en flanqua un de
première classe au train indigène, et l’on avança de nouveau
jusqu’au moment où l’on fut bloqué et où toute la passe retentit
d’alleluias sur une longueur de trois kilomètres. Nous n’avions pas
de patience, ni de sièges pour asseoir nos culottes, et nous avions
fourré nos capotes et nos fusils dans les voitures, si bien qu’à tout
moment nous aurions pu être taillés en pièces, tandis que nous
faisions un travail de meneurs de bestiaux. C’était vraiment ça : de
meneurs de bestiaux sur la route d’Islington !
« J’étais tout près de la tête de la colonne quand nous vîmes
devant nous l’entrée du défilé du Tangi.
Je dis :
« — La porte du théâtre est ouverte, les gars. Qui est-ce qui veut
arriver le premier au poulailler ? que je dis.
« Alors je vois Dewcy qui se visse dans l’œil son sacré monocle
et qui regarde droit en avant.
« — Il en a un culot, ce bougre-là ! qu’il dit.
« Et le train de derrière de ce sacré vieux hutti luisait dans la
poussière comme une nouvelle lune en toile goudronnée. Alors nous
fîmes halte, tous serrés à bloc, l’un par-dessus l’autre, et voilà que
juste derrière les canons s’amènent un tas d’idiots de chameaux
rigolards qui appartenaient à l’intendance… ils s’amènent comme
s’ils étaient au jardin zoologique, en bousculant nos hommes
effroyablement. Il y avait une poussière telle qu’on ne voyait plus sa
main ; et plus nous leur tapions sur la tête plus les conducteurs
criaient : « Accha ! accha [13] ! » et par Dieu c’était « et là » avant de
savoir où on en était. Et ce train de derrière de hutti tenait bon et
ferme dans la passe et personne ne savait pourquoi.
[13] Hé là !

« La première chose que nous avions à faire était de refouler ces

sacrés chameaux. Je ne voulais pas être bouffé par unt [14] -taureau :
c’est pourquoi, retenant ma culotte d’une main, debout sur un rocher,
je tapai avec mon ceinturon sur chaque naseau que je voyais surgir
au-dessous de moi. Alors les chameaux battirent en retraite, et on
fut obligé de lutter pour empêcher l’arrière-garde et le train indigène
de leur rentrer dedans ; et l’arrière-garde fut obligée d’envoyer avertir
l’autre régiment, au pied du Tangi, que nous étions bloqués.
J’entendais en avant les mahouts gueuler que le hutti refusait de
passer le pont ; et je voyais Dewcy se trémousser dans la poussière
comme une larve de moustique dans une citerne. Alors nos
compagnies, fatiguées d’attendre, commencèrent à marquer le pas,
et je ne sais quel maboul entonna : « Tommy, fais place à ton
oncle. » Après ça, il n’y eut plus moyen ni de voir ni de respirer ni
d’entendre ; et nous restâmes là à chanter, crénom, des sérénades
au derrière d’un éléphant qui se fichait de la musique. Je chantais
aussi, je ne pouvais pas faire autrement. En avant, on renforçait le
pont, tout cela pour faire plaisir au hutti. A un moment, un officier
m’attrape à la gorge, ce qui me coupe le sifflet. Alors j’attrape à la
gorge le premier homme venu, ce qui lui coupa aussi le sifflet.
[14] En hindoustani : chameau.

« — Quelle différence y a-t-il entre être étranglé par un officier et

être frappé par lui ? demandai-je, au souvenir d’une petite aventure
dans laquelle Ortheris avait eu son honneur outragé par son
lieutenant.
« — L’un, crénom, est une plaisanterie, et l’autre, crénom, une
insulte, répondit Ortheris. De plus nous étions de service, et peu
importe ce que fait alors un officier, aussi longtemps qu’il nous
procure nos rations et ne nous procure pas d’éreintement exagéré.
Après cela nous nous tînmes tranquilles, et j’entendis Dewcy
menacer de nous faire tous passer en conseil de guerre dès que
nous serions sortis du Tangi. Alors nous poussâmes trois vivats pour
le pont ; mais le hutti refusait toujours de bouger d’un cran. Il était
buté. On l’acclama de nouveau, et Kite Dawson, qui faisait le
compère à toutes nos revues de caf’conc’ (il est mort pendant le
retour) se met à faire une conférence à un nègre sur les trains de
derrière d’éléphants. Pendant une minute Dewcy essaya de se
contenir, mais, Seigneur ! c’était chose impossible, tant Kite faisait le
jocrisse, demandant si on ne lui permettrait pas de louer une villa
dans le Tangi pour élever ses petits orphelins, puisqu’il ne pouvait
plus retourner au pays. Survient alors un officier (à cheval d’ailleurs,
l’imbécile) du régiment de l’arrière, apportant quelques autres jolis
compliments de son colonel, et demandant ce que signifiait cet arrêt,
s. v. p. Nous lui chantâmes : « On se flanque aussi une fichue
trépignée en bas des escaliers », tant et si bien que son cheval
s’emporta, et alors nous lui lançâmes trois vivats, et Kite Dawson
proclama qu’il allait écrire au Times pour se plaindre du déplorable
état des routes dans l’Afghanistan. Le train de derrière du hutti
bouchait toujours la passe. A la fin un des mahouts vient trouver
Dewcy et lui dit quelque chose.
« — Eh Dieu ! répond Dewcy, je ne connais pas le carnet
d’adresses du bougre ! Je lui donne encore dix minutes et puis je le
fais abattre.
« Les choses commençaient à sentir joliment mauvais dans le
Tangi, aussi nous écoutions tous.
« — Il veut à toute force voir un de ses amis, dit tout haut Dewcy
aux hommes.
« Et s’épongeant le front il s’assit sur un affût de canon.
« Je vous laisse à imaginer quelles clameurs poussa le régiment.
On criait :
« — C’est parfait ! Trois vivats pour l’ami de M. Dugrospétard.
Pourquoi ne l’as-tu pas dit tout de suite ? Prévenez la femme du
vieux Hochequeue, et ainsi de suite.
 « Il y en avait quelques-uns qui ne riaient pas. Ils prenaient au
sérieux cette histoire de présentation, car ils connaissaient les
éléphants. Alors nous nous élançâmes tous en avant par-dessus les
canons et au travers des pattes d’éléphants (Dieu ! je m’étonne que
la moitié des compagnies n’aient pas été broyées) et la première
chose que je vis ce fut Térence ici présent, avec une mine de papier
mâché, qui descendait la pente en compagnie d’un sergent.
« — Vrai, que je dis, j’aurais dû me douter qu’il était mêlé à une
pareille histoire de brigands, que je dis… » Maintenant, raconte ce
qui est arrivé de ton côté.
« — J’étais en suspens tout comme toi, petit homme, écoutant
les bruits et les gars qui chantaient. Puis j’entends chuchoter, et le
major qui dit :
« — Laissez-nous tranquilles, à réveiller mes malades avec vos
blagues d’éléphants.
« Et quelqu’un d’autre réplique tout en colère :
« — C’est une blague qui arrête deux mille hommes dans le
Tangi. Ce fils du péché de sac à foin d’éléphant dit, ou du moins les
mahouts disent pour lui, qu’il veut voir un ami, et qu’il ne lèvera pied
ni patte avant de l’avoir rencontré. Je m’esquinte à lui présenter des
balayeurs et des coolies, et son cuir est plus lardé de piqûres de
baïonnettes qu’une moustiquaire de trous, et je suis ici par ordre,
mon bon monsieur le major, pour demander si quelqu’un, malade ou
bien portant, ou vivant ou mort, connaît un éléphant. Je ne suis pas
fou, qu’il dit, en s’asseyant sur une boîte de secours médicaux. Ce
sont les ordres que j’ai reçus, et c’est ma mère, qu’il dit, qui rirait
bien de me voir aujourd’hui le plus grand de tous les idiots. Est-ce
que quelqu’un ici connaît un éléphant ?
« Pas un des malades ne pipa mot.
« — Vous voilà renseigné, que dit le major. Allez.
« — Arrêtez, que je dis, réfléchissant confusément dans ma
couchette, et je ne reconnaissais plus ma voix. Il se trouve que j’ai
été en relations avec un éléphant, moi, que je dis.
 « — Il a le délire, que dit le major. Voyez ce que vous avez fait,
sergent. Recouchez-vous, mon ami, qu’il dit, en voyant que je
cherchais à me lever.
« — Je n’ai pas le délire, que je dis. Je l’ai monté, cet éléphant,
devant les casernes de Cawnpore. Il ne l’aura pas oublié. Je lui ai
cassé la tête avec un flingot.
« — Complètement fou, que dit le major.
« Puis, me tâtant le front :
« — Non, il est normal, qu’il dit. Mon ami, qu’il dit, si vous y allez,
sachez que ça va ou vous tuer ou vous guérir.
« — Qu’importe ? que je dis. Si je suis fou, mieux vaut mourir.
« — Ma foi, c’est assez juste, que dit le major, Vous n’avez
toujours plus de fièvre pour le moment.
« — Venez, que me dit le sergent. Nous sommes tous fous
aujourd’hui, et les troupes attendent leur repas.
« Il passa son bras autour de moi pour me soutenir. Quand
j’arrivai au soleil, montagnes et rochers, tout tournoyait autour de
moi.
« — Voilà dix-sept ans que je suis à l’armée, que me dit le
sergent, et le temps des miracles n’est pas passé. La prochaine fois
on va nous augmenter notre paye. Pardieu, qu’il dit, cet animal vous
connaît !
« A ma vue le vieil Obstructionniste s’était mis à gueuler comme
un possédé, et j’entendis quarante millions d’hommes qui braillaient
dans le Tangi : « Il le reconnaît ! » Alors, comme j’étais sur le point de
m’évanouir, la grosse trompe m’enlaça. « Comment vas-tu,
Malachie ? » que je dis, en lui donnant le nom auquel il répondait
dans les lignes. « Malachie mon fils, vas-tu bien, toi ? que je dis, car
moi ça ne va guère. » Là-dessus il trompeta de nouveau et la passe
en retentit, et les autres éléphants lui répondirent. Alors je retrouvai
un peu de force. « A bas, Malachie, que je dis, et mets-moi sur ton
dos, mais manie-moi en douceur, car je ne suis pas brillant. » A la
minute il fut à genoux et il m’enleva aussi délicatement qu’une jeune
fille. « Maintenant, mon fils, que je lui dis, tu bloques la passe. En
route. » Il lança un nouveau barrit de joie, et sortit majestueusement
du Tangi, faisant cliqueter sur son dos ses accessoires de canon, et
derrière lui s’éleva la plus abasourdissante clameur que j’aie jamais
entendue. Alors la tête me tourna, une grande sueur m’envahit et
Malachie me paraissait devenir de plus en plus grand, et je dis, d’un
air bête et d’une petite voix, en souriant tout à la ronde :
« — Descendez-moi, que je dis, ou bien je vais tomber.
« Quand je revins à moi j’étais couché dans mon lit d’hôpital, mou
comme une chiffe, mais guéri de la fièvre, et je vis le Tangi aussi
vide que le derrière de mon crâne. Ils étaient tous montés au front,
et dix jours plus tard j’y allai moi aussi, moi qui avais bloqué et
débloqué tout un corps d’armée. Qu’est-ce que vous pensez de ça,
monsieur ?
— J’attendrai pour vous répondre d’avoir vu Learoyd, répétai-je.
— Me voici, dit une ombre sortant d’entre les ombres. J’ai
entendu également l’histoire.
— Est-ce vrai, Jock ?
— Oui, vrai, aussi vrai que la vieille chienne a attrapé la gale.
Ortheris, tu ne dois plus laisser les chiens approcher d’elle.
 BRUGGLESMITH

Le navire sombra ce jour-là, et tout l’équipage

fut noyé, sauf moi.

Clark Russell.

Le second du Breslau m’invita à dîner à bord, avant que le navire

s’en allât à Southampton embarquer des passagers. Le Breslau,
mouillé en aval de London Bridge, avait ses écoutilles d’avant
ouvertes pour le chargement, et son pont jonché de boulons et
d’écrous, de vis et de chaînes. MacPhee, le « pied-noir [15] », venait
de donner le dernier coup d’astiquage à sa machine adorée, car
MacPhee est le plus soigneux des mécaniciens principaux. Si une
patte de cafard se prend dans l’un de ses tiroirs à vapeur, tout le
navire en est averti, et la moitié de l’équipage est employée à
réparer le dégât.
[15] Surnom des officiers mécaniciens, dans la marine
française. Les Anglais disent, de façon équivalente :
« The Black. »

Après le dîner, que le second, MacPhee et moi nous mangeâmes

dans un petit coin du salon désert, MacPhee s’en retourna à la
machine surveiller l’ajustage d’un coussinet. En attendant l’heure de
retourner chez moi, je montai avec le second sur la passerelle, où
nous fumâmes en considérant les feux des bateaux innombrables.
Durant les silences de notre conversation, je crus percevoir un écho
de sonores beuglements, et reconnaître la voix de MacPhee qui
chantait les joies du foyer et des amours domestiques. Le second
me dit :
— MacPhee a ce soir un ami à bord… un homme qui était
fabricant de chaudières à Greenock quand MacPhee était élève
mécanicien. Je ne lui ai pas demandé de dîner avec nous parce
que…
— Je comprends… ou plutôt j’entends, répliquai-je.
Nous causâmes encore quelques minutes, et MacPhee remonta
de la machine en donnant le bras à son ami.
— Permettez-moi de vous présenter ce monsieur, me dit
MacPhee. C’est un grand admirateur de vos œuvres. Il vient
justement d’en apprendre l’existence.
MacPhee n’a jamais su faire un compliment agréable. Son ami
s’assit brusquement sur un gabillot, en disant que MacPhee restait
au-dessous de la vérité. Personnellement l’homme au gabillot
estimait que le seul Shakespeare soutenait la comparaison avec
moi, et que si le second voulait le contredire, il était prêt à se battre
avec le second, sur-le-champ ou plus tard, garanti sur facture.
— Ah ! grand homme, si vous saviez, ajouta-t-il en hochant la
tête, combien de fois je suis resté dans ma couche solitaire à lire la
Foire aux Vanités [16] en sanglotant… oui, en pleurant à chaudes
larmes par pur émerveillement de ce livre.
[16] Vanity Fair, ouvrage bien connu de Thackeray.

En confirmation de sa bonne foi il versa un pleur, et le second se

mit à rire. MacPhee réaffermit le chapeau de l’individu qui lui était
tombé sur le sourcil.
— Cela va disparaître dans un instant. Ce n’est que l’odeur de la
machine, dit MacPhee.
— Je pense que je vais moi-même disparaître, glissai-le à l’oreille
du second. Est-ce que le youyou est paré ?
 Le youyou attendait au passavant, lequel était abaissé, et le
second partit à l’avant chercher un rameur pour me transporter à
quai. Il ramena un lascar tout endormi qui connaissait le fleuve.
— Vous vous en allez ? me dit l’individu au gabillot. Ma foi, je vais
vous reconduire jusque chez vous. MacPhee, aide-moi à descendre
l’échelle. Elle a autant de bouts qu’un chat-à-neuf-queues, et…
fichtre !… il y a des youyous à ne pas les compter.
— Mieux vaut le laisser aller avec vous, me dit le second.
Muhammed Djenn, tu mettras d’abord à terre le sahib saoul. Le
sahib qui ne l’est pas, tu l’emmèneras à l’escalier suivant.
J’avais déjà un pied sur l’avant du youyou, et la marée remontait
le fleuve, lorsque l’individu tomba sur moi comme une bombe,
refoula le lascar sur l’échelle, largua l’amarre, et l’embarcation partit,
la poupe la première, le long de la muraille du Breslau.
— Nous ne voulons pas de races étrangères ici ! proclama
l’individu. Je connais la Tamise depuis trente ans…
Ce n’était pas l’heure de discuter, nous dérivions alors sous la
poupe du Breslau, dont je savais que l’hélice était à moitié hors de
l’eau, parmi une ténébreuse confusion de bouées, d’amarres
affleurantes et de bâtiments à l’ancre entre lesquels clapotait le flot.
— Que vais-je faire ? criai-je au second.
— Tâchez bien vite de trouver un bateau de la police, et pour
l’amour de Dieu donnez un peu d’erre au youyou. Gouvernez avec
l’aviron. Le gouvernail est démonté, et…
Je n’en pus entendre davantage. Le youyou s’éloigna, heurta un
coffre d’amarrage, pirouetta, et fut emporté à l’aventure tandis que je
cherchais l’aviron. Assis à l’avant, poings au menton, l’individu
souriait.
— Ramez, scélérat, lui dis-je. Sortez-nous d’ici, et gagnez le
milieu du fleuve…
— C’est un privilège que de contempler la face du génie.
Laissez-moi méditer encore. Il y avait Le petit Barnabé Dorritt et Le
Mystère du Druide blême. J’ai navigué jadis sur un bâtiment qui
s’appelait Le Druide… le bien mal nommé. Tout cela me revient si
agréablement. Oui, tout cela me revient. Grand homme, vous
gouvernez de façon géniale.
Nous heurtâmes un autre coffre d’amarrage, et le choc nous
envoya sur l’avant d’un bateau norvégien chargé de bois de
construction : je distinguai les grandes ouvertures carrées de chaque
côté du taillemer. Puis nous plongeâmes dans une file de chalands
et leur échappâmes en y laissant la peinture de nos bordages.
C’était une consolation de me dire que le youyou diminuait de valeur
à chaque choc, mais le problème m’inquiétait de savoir quand il
commencerait à faire eau. L’individu regardait devant nous dans les
ténèbres opaques, et il sifflotait.
— Voilà un transat de la « Castle », me dit-il ; ses amarrages sont
noirs. Il évite en travers du courant. Maintenez son feu de bâbord sur
notre tribord avant, et passez au large.
— Comment puis-je maintenir quelque chose n’importe où ? Vous
êtes assis sur les avirons. Ramez, l’ami, si vous ne voulez pas
sombrer.
Il prit les rames, en disant avec suavité :
— Il n’arrive jamais de mal à un ivrogne. C’est pour cela que j’ai
voulu venir avec vous. Mon vieux, vous n’êtes pas en état de rester
seul dans un bateau.
Il fit contourner le grand navire par le youyou, et pendant les dix
minutes qui suivirent je me délectai… oui, positivement, je me
délectai… à voir mon compagnon manœuvrer en virtuose. Nous
nous faufilâmes à travers la marine marchande de la Grande-
Bretagne comme un furet s’enfile dans un terrier de lapin ; et nous
hélions, ou plutôt il hélait jovialement chaque bateau, où les matelots
se penchaient aux bastingages pour nous invectiver. Quand nous
fûmes en eau à peu près libre il me passa les rames et dit :
— Si vous savez ramer comme vous écrivez, je vous honorerai
malgré tous vos vices. Voilà London Bridge. Faites-nous-le traverser.
Nous filâmes comme un trait sous la sombre voûte retentissante,
et ressortîmes de l’autre côté, remontant rapidement avec le flot qui
chantait des hymnes de victoire. A part mon désir de rentrer chez
moi avant le jour, je commençais à me réconcilier avec la balade. On
apercevait quelques étoiles, et en tenant le milieu du courant il ne
pouvait nous arriver rien de grave.
L’individu se mit à chanter à pleine voix :

Le plus fin voilier que l’on put trouver

Yo ho ! Oho !
C’était la Marguerite Evans de la ligne de l’X Noir,
Il y a cent ans !

— Mettez ça dans votre prochain bouquin, ce sera merveilleux.

Et, se dressant, à l’avant, il déclama :

O tours de Julia, antique opprobre de Londres,

Nourries par tant de crimes affreux et nocturnes…
Chère Tamise, coule sans bruit jusqu’à la fin de ma chanson…
Et là-bas c’est la tombe aussi petite que mon lit.

— Je suis poète, moi aussi, et je sens pour les autres.

— Asseyez-vous, lui dis-je. Vous allez nous faire chavirer.
— Bien, je m’assieds… je m’assieds comme une poule.
Il se laissa retomber lourdement, et ajouta, me menaçant de
l’index :

— Sache que la volonté prudente et avisée

Est le commencement de la sagesse.

Comment un homme de votre talent a-t-il fait pour être ivre à ce

point ? Oh ! c’est honteux, et vous pouvez remercier Dieu à quatre
pattes de ce que je suis avec vous. Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce
bateau là-bas ?
Nous avions dérivé très loin en amont, et un bateau monté par
quatre hommes qui ramaient d’une façon régulière à souhait, nous
avait pris en chasse.
— C’est la police fluviale, m’écriai-je à pleine voix.
— Ah oui ! Si le châtiment ne vous rejoint pas sur la terre ferme, il
vous rejoindra sur les eaux. Y a-t-il des chances qu’ils nous donnent
à boire ?
— Toutes les chances. Je vais les héler.
Et je hélai. On me répondit du canot :
— Qu’est-ce que vous faites là ?
— C’est le youyou du Breslau qui s’est échappé, commençai-je.
— C’est un grand ivrogne qui s’est échappé, beugla mon
compagnon, et je le ramène chez lui par eau, car il ne tient plus
debout sur la terre ferme.
Et là-dessus il cria mon nom vingt fois de suite, et je sentis le
rouge m’envahir le corps, à triple couche.
— Vous serez sous clef dans dix minutes, mon bon, lui dis-je, et
je doute fort qu’on vous mette en liberté sous caution.
— Chut, chut, mon vieux. Ils me prennent pour votre oncle.
Il empoigna un aviron et se mit à éclabousser le canot qui se
rangeait sur notre bord.
— Vous êtes jolis tous les deux, dit enfin le brigadier.
— Je suis tout ce qu’il vous plaira, du moment que vous me
délivrez de ce sacripant. Remorquez-nous jusqu’au poste le plus
proche, et vous n’aurez pas à regretter votre temps perdu.
— Corruption, corruption de fonctionnaire ! beugla l’individu, en
se jetant à plat dans le fond du canot. L’homme est pareil à un
misérable ver de terre. Et pour l’amour d’un vil demi-écu me voir à
mon âge arrêté par la police fluviale !
— Ramez, de grâce ! lançai-je. Cet individu est ivre !
Ils nous remorquèrent jusqu’à un ponton… un poste d’incendie
ou de police : il faisait trop noir pour distinguer lequel des deux. Je
sentais bien qu’ils ne me considéraient pas sous un meilleur jour que
mon compagnon. Mais je ne pouvais pas m’expliquer, car j’étais
occupé à tenir l’autre bout de l’amarre, et je me sentais dépourvu de
tout prestige.
En sortant du canot, mon fâcheux compagnon s’abattit à plat sur
la figure et le brigadier nous posa brutalement des questions au
sujet du youyou. Mon compagnon se lavait les mains de toute
responsabilité. Il était, à son dire, un vieillard ; il s’était vu attiré dans
un bateau volé par un jeune homme… probablement le voleur…
avait préservé le bateau du naufrage (ce qui était rigoureusement
exact) et à cette heure il attendait le salut sous les espèces d’un
grog au whisky bien chaud. Le brigadier se tourna vers moi. Par
bonheur j’étais en habit de soirée, et possédais ma carte de visite.
Plus heureusement encore, le brigadier connaissait le Breslau et
MacPhee. Il promit de renvoyer le youyou en aval dès la prochaine
marée, et ne crut pas au-dessous de sa dignité d’accepter mes
remerciements sous forme d’argent monnayé.
Ceci réglé à ma satisfaction, j’entendis mon compagnon dire
avec irritation au commissaire :
— Si vous ne voulez pas en donner à quelqu’un de sec, vous en
donnerez du moins à quelqu’un de mouillé.
Et d’un pas délibéré, franchissant le bord du ponton, il tomba à
l’eau.
Quelqu’un piqua une gaffe dans ses habits et l’en retira.
— Maintenant, dit-il d’un ton triomphant, de par les règlements de
la Société royale de Sauvetage, vous devez me donner un grog au
whisky bien chaud. Quant à ce petit gars, épargnez-lui la tentation.
C’est mon neveu, et un brave gamin au fond. Mais je ne comprends
pas du tout pourquoi il s’en va sur mer faire son petit Thackeray. Ah !
vanité de la jeunesse ! MacPhee me l’avait dit, que tu étais
orgueilleux comme un paon. Je me le rappelle à présent.
— Tâchez donc de lui donner quelque chose à boire et de
l’emballer pour la nuit. Je ne sais pas qui c’est, dis-je en désespoir
de cause.
On obéit à ma suggestion. Et quand je vis l’individu occupé à
boire j’en profitai pour filer, et m’aperçus alors que j’étais proche d’un