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ABSTRACT
This article analyses three Arabic novels by prominent Tunisian women writers published in the decade preceding the mass protests of 2010: Mas‘ūdah Abū Bakr’s Ṭurshqānah (1999), Faḍīlah Al-Shābbī’s al-‘Adl (Justice, 2005), and Fatḥīyah al-Hāshimī’s Maryam tasquṭ min yad Allāh (Maryam Falls from the Hand of God, 2009). These novels are interpreted as alternative political discourses that work to expose the methods of regulation and normalisation in Tunisia under Ben ‘Ali. While each has a different focus, they share a number of common themes: the tension between the individual and the collective, the intersection of gender with class as a site of disenfranchisement, the effects of a politically oppressive environment on the autonomy of the physical body, and the way strategies of control effect the lived experience of urban space. Based upon the strongly voiced critique embedded in these texts, the writers’ notable positions within their own local literary contexts, and the neglect to which their work has been subject in the West and larger Arab world, I ultimately argue for more inclusive reading practices in modern Arabic literature.
Acknowledgement
Much thanks and gratitude to Amel Mili, the inspiration for this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Laylat al-ghiyāb, 1997; Ṭurshqānah, 1999; Wadā‘an … Ḥamūrābī, 2002; Jumān wa-‘anbar, 2005; and al-Alif wa'l-nūn, 2009.
2. The most well-known work in this regard is Massad’s (Citation2007), where he argues that the homo–heterosexuality binary was exported to the Arab world from the West as part of its larger imperial project. In this view, prior to colonialism, same-sex practices existed without an accompanying category of homosexual identity in the modern sense. Massad reads this local, pre-colonial, understanding of sexuality as a ‘cultural formation whose ontological structure’ is inclusive of homosexuality rather than one which figures it as an ‘other’, something institutionalised and universalised by the violence of Western hegemony to the detriment of the indigenous practices that existed before (Citation2007, 40). Similarly, El-Rouayheb (Citation2005, 6) demonstrates that ‘pre-nineteenth-century Arab-Islamic culture lacked the concept of homosexuality’ operating ‘instead with a set of concepts … each of which pick out some of the acts and actors we might call ‘homosexual’ but which were simply not seen as instances of one overarching phenomenon’.
3. The word Ṭurshqānah is a slang term used in Tunis. Considered vulgar in register, it refers to the passive participant in homosexual sex. On pages 12–13 in the novel, it is suggested that the boys in the al-Shawāshī house likely picked it up from the boys in the outside alley. They insist on taunting Murād with it despite his grandmother’s attempts to stop them. Because there is no easy equivalent to the word in English, I have chosen to use the transliterated form of the word rather than an English translation.
4. For most of the novel, the reader believes these letters chronicle Murād’s new life in France, where she now lives as Nadā after transitioning. It is only at the novel’s end that they are revealed to be a form of metafictional discourse; it was, in fact, an author and confidant of Murād’s who crafted the fictional letters that describe the difficulties Nadā later faces as a transgender woman. This fictional author plans to publish them as her next novel.
5. All of the chapters that take place in Tunis use the conventionally male pronoun ‘huwa’ to refer to Murād, presumably because he has neither begun his formal transition nor can he be said to present a female gender identity for most of the novel (instead, he expresses the desire to present as female). The chapters that chronicle his later life as Nadā (though they are later revealed as fictions) are consistent in gendering the character as female grammatically. Since my focus here is on the chapters set in Tunis where the character is called Murād, I will follow the Arabic text and use the English pronoun ‘he’.
6. As Hadeed has noted in ‘Homosexuality and Epistemic Closure in Modern Arabic Literature’, while gender oppression has consistently been treated as a critical dimension of the current political and social crises afflicting the Arab world, modern Arabic literature has been ‘less open to the spirit of radical critique, remaining in thrall to the weight of heteronormative binaries and their logic of complementary opposites’ (Citation2012, 272). Even when homosexuality is figured as a legitimate subjective reality, Hadeed continues, it is nevertheless marginalised and ultimately denied the right to social visibility (Citation2012, 272).
7. All translations from Arabic are my own.
8. On this, see Hadeed (Citation2012). He presents close readings of Sa’d Allah Wannus and Alaa al-Aswany to show the essentialist terms commonly employed in representations of homosexuality, the consequence of which is often death. The characters in these two works both meet tragic ends as a result of their sexuality, one commits suicide while the other is murdered.
9. This widely read novel features the character, Hatim Rashid, who has likely become the most discussed example of a literary depiction of homosexual identity in modern Arabic literature. Successful editor of Egypt’s French newspaper Le Caire, Hatim’s potential as a groundbreaking example of a (mostly) open homosexual character is undermined by the origin story of his sexual preference. Al-Aswany places the roots of his desire in a childhood rape perpetuated by his favourite household servant Idris. However sympathetic a character Hatim may be, his homosexuality is nevertheless figured as a psychological condition grounded in an early trauma (al-Aswany Citation2006, 74–76).
10. On the difficulties of writing under Ben Ali, see the anthology published shortly after the revolution, Rjiba (Citation2012).
11. See note 2.
12. In recognition of her importance to Tunisian literature, a collection of her complete works was published in five volumes by Dār Muḥammad ‘Alī li-l-nashr in November of 2013.
13. Ḥāfīyat al-rūḥ, 2005; Minnah mawwāl, 2007; Maryam tasquṭ min yad Allāh, 2009.
14. Since the revolution, the area has been a point of contention. In February of 2011, approximately 500 Islamists marched to ‘Abdullah Guèche street demanding that the brothels be shut down (The Daily Telegraph Citation2011).
15. These novels are primarily written in Modern Standard Arabic although the authors do incorporate dialect in some sections, particularly in their use of dialogue.
16. The novelist Abdul-Jabbar al-Maduri relates that this method of publishing to evade the censors became known as the Fellagah way. See Fleeting Words, ‘How Writing has become a Professional Crime’, 33–35.