Bidūn Poets and Kuwaiti Literary History

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Bidūn (stateless) poets negotiate and contest their placement within dominant narratives of national literary history in Kuwait. The article offers an analytical overview of the dominant modalities in which national literary history in Kuwait has been conceived as it relates to questions of national beginnings, periodization and the placement of stateless poets. Read against the existing modalities, the article analyzes the Bidūn poet Saʿdiyya Mufarriḥ’s The Cameleers of Clouds and Estrangement (2007) as a revisionist account of national literary history that opposes the exclusion of Bidūn writers. This is achieved by an emphasis on the inclusivity of literary and cultural affiliation over the exclusivity of limiting notions of official national belonging. A critical analysis of the arena of national literary history writing in Kuwait aims to offer a novel perspective on how notions of national belonging are being renegotiated from the margins.

Keywords:

• Kuwait
• Gulf
• Literary history
• Bidūn
• stateless
• literature

Notes

1 Al-Ḥaddād, Iṭlālah ʿalā sayf Kāẓima [A View into the Sword of Kaẓima] (2002), p. 137.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., pp. 137–8.

4 Perkins, Is Literary History Possible? (1993), p. 5.

5 Ibid., p. 182.

6 Eagleton, Literary Theory: an introduction (1996), p. 25.

7 Appiah, “Race”, Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Lentricchia and McLaughlin (1995), p. 285.

8 Prior works on Kuwaiti literary history were restricted to brief articles in cultural magazines. See: ʿAbdullah, Al-ḥaraka al-adabiyya wa-l-fikriyya fī al-Kuwait [The Literary and Intellectual Movement in Kuwait] (1973), p. 116.

9 Al-Ḥaddād, Iṭlālah ʿalā sayf Kāẓima, p. 26.

10 Al-Zaid, Udabāʾ al-Kuwait fī qarnayn [Kuwaiti Writers in Two Centuries], vol. 1 (1967), p. 35.

11 Ibid., p. 42.

12 ʿAbdullah, Al-shiʿr wa-l-shuʿarāʾ fī al-Kuwait [Poetry and Poets in Kuwait] (1987), p. 10; Al-Wuqayyān, Al-thaqāfa fī al-Kuwait: bawākīr-ittijāhāt-riyādāt [Culture in Kuwait: Beginnings-Currents-Pioneers] (2011), p. 341; Al-Wuqayyān, Al-qaḍiyya al-ʿArabiyya fī al-shiʿr al-Kuwaiti [The Arab Cause in Kuwaiti Poetry] (2012), p. 30.

13 ʿAbd al-Fattaḥ, ʿAlām al-shiʿr fī al-Kuwait [Notable Poets in Kuwait] (1996); Al-Ṣabāḥ, Al-shiʿr al-Kuwaiti al-ḥadīth [Modern Kuwaiti Poetry] (1973).

14 Al-Zaid, Udabāʾ al-Kuwait fī qarnayn, p. 34.

15 Al-Ḥijji, Al-Shaikh ʿAbd al-Aziz al-Rushaid [Shaikh ʿAbdulaziz al-Rushaid] (1993); Al-Zaid, Udabā al-Kuwait fī qarnayn [Kuwaiti Writers in Two Centuries] (1967), pp. 95–6.

16 Al-Zaid, Udabāʾ al-Kuwait fī qarnayn, p. 35.

17 ʿAbdullah, Al-ḥaraka al-adabiyya wa-l-fikriyya fī al-Kuwait, p. 116.

18 ʿAbdullah, Al-shiʿr wa-l-shuʿarāʾ fī al-Kuwait, pp. 9–10.

19 ʿAbdullah, Al-ḥaraka al-adabiyya wa-l-fikriyya fī al-Kuwait, p. 120.

20 Ibid., p. 109.

21 Al-Wuqayyān, Al-qaḍiyya al-ʿArabiyya fī al-shiʿr al-Kuwaiti, p. 26.

22 Ibid., p. 21.

23 Ibid., p. 26.

24 Born in Kuwait, the poet and musician ʿAbdullah al-Faraj moved to Bombay at a young age where he was educated. He later lived between Basra and Kuwait. See: Al-Zaid, Udabāʾ al-Kuwait fī qarnayn, p. 58; Al-Faraj, Dīwān ʿAbdullah al-Faraj [The Poetry Collection of ʿAbdulla al-Faraj] (2002), pp. 16–17.

25 Al-Wuqayyān, Al-qaḍiyya al-ʿArabiyyafī al-shiʿr al-Kuwaiti [The Arab Cause in Kuwaiti Poetry] (1977), p. 30.

26 Al-Wuqayyān, Al-thaqāfa fī al-Kuwait: bawākīr-ittijāhāt-riyādāt.

27 Ibid., p. 319.

28 Ibid., p. 334.

29 A potential site of further investigation relates to a comparative view of the modalities of national literary history writing and the historical biographical genres of ṭabaqāt and tarājim of religious scholars. Refer to Aamir Mufti’s Forget English: Orientalism and World Literatures (2016) for a rigorous comparative methodology of national literary history and the tazkira genre within the context of Urdu language. Similarly, a comparative analysis of printed anthologies and selections of nabaṭī or vernacular poetry in Arabia, a genre established in the mid-twentieth century would shed more light onto the shifts relating to questions of temporality, belonging, and authorship.

30 The national appropriation strategies of early poets in the Gulf are best exemplified in the cultural skirmishes over the publication of al-Ṭabṭabāʾī’s diwan titled Rawd al-khil wa-l-khalīl [The Garden of the Beloved and the Companion] (1883). Al-Ṭabṭabāʾī’s diwan was first published in Bombay by al-Ṭabṭabāʾī grandson Musaʿad Ahmad al-Ṭabṭabāʾī 1883 (1300 AH). In 1964 (1384 AH), the diwan was reprinted by the Ruler of Bahrain, Shaikh Salmān bin Ḥamad Āl Khalīfa. Simultaneously in 1965 (1385 AH), the diwan was reprinted under the patronage of the emir of Qatar Shaikh ʿAlī bin ʿAbdullah. A fourth edition, published in Damascus in 1964, reprinted the diwan from the original 1883 Bombay manuscript. Finally, in 2011, the Diwan was edited and printed by Muhammad al-Ṭabṭabāʾī, one of al-Ṭabṭabāʾī’s great grandsons in Kuwait.

31 Al-Zaid, Udabāʾ al-Kuwait fī qarnayn; Idris, Shuʿarāʾ Najd al-muʿāṣirūn [Contemporary Najdi Poets] (1960); Al-Ḥaddād, Iṭlālah ʿalā sayf Kāẓima (2002); Ḥalibi, Al-shiʿr al-ḥadīth fī al-Aḥsāʾ [Modern Poetry in al-Hasa] (2003); Al-Ansari, Lamaḥāt min al-Khalīj al-ʿArabī [Glimpses from the Arabian Gulf] (1970).

32 Al-Ḥaddād, Iṭlālah ʿalā Sayf Kāẓima, p. 52.

33 Al-Shaṭṭi, Al-shiʿr fi al-Kuwait [Poetry in Kuwait] (2007), p. 7.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., p. 401.

36 Born in the Ḥamād desert in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula al-Flayyiḥ (1951–2013) lived in Jordan and later joined the Kuwaiti army in the late 1960s. He continued to live stateless before being granted citizenship from Saudi Arabia in 1999. His poetry collection titled Singing in the Deserts of Sorrow published in 1979 is considered the first work to be published by a Bidūn writer.

37 Born stateless in 1971, Al-Nabhan left Kuwait to Ontario, Canada in 1995 to seek asylum. He currently resides in Bahrain as a Canadian citizen where he established the publishing house Dar Masʿa.

38 Mona Kareem (1987) left Kuwait in 2011 to New York where she established bedoonrights.com. In 2017, she completed her PhD in comparative literature from the Binghamton University, SUNY.

39 TV programme, “Salām ya Kuwait” [Hello Kuwait], Al-Kut TV, 13 Aug 2011.

40 Al-Flayyiḥ, “Mujarrad ʿitāb” [A Reproach], Al-jarīda newspaper, 8 June 2008.

41 The title can also be translated to the Urgers or Guides of Clouds and Estrangement. The word ḥādī refers to the lone cameleer who both sings to and guides the camels in a desert journey.

42 The introduction titled “Reading the Memory of Poetry in Kuwait” is a developed version of a conference paper titled “The Influence of Intellectual Progress on the Poem in the Gulf: Kuwait as a case study” presented at a conference on the Poetry Movement in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh 2002.

43 It is worth noting that a struggle of placement within national literary history, discussed in this article is but one way of situating Bidūn literature. Rather, it is situated within wider fluid, multileveled terrains and textualities; overlapping with wider topographies, namely, national literature, regional (i.e. Gulf literature), a wider Arabic literature, and a broader thematic categories of exilic, diasporic, migrant and minority literatures.

44 Mufarriḥ, Ḥudāt al-ghaym wa-l-waḥsha [The Cameleers of Clouds and Estrangement] (2007), p. 10.

45 Ibid., p. 9.

46 Ibid., p. 19

47 Al-Ansari, Fahad al-ʿAskar: ḥayātuhu wa shiʿruhu [Fahad al-Askar’s Life and Poetry] (1997 [1977]).

48 Ibid., p. 85.

49 Ibid., p. 75; Mufarriḥ, Ḥudāt al-ghaym wa-l-waḥsha, p.18. The claim that al-ʿAskar’s relatives burnt his poetry is rejected by Nuriyya al-Rumi. See: Al-Rumi, Shiʿr Fahad al-ʿAskar: dirāsa naqdiyya wa taḥlīliya [The Poetry of Fahad al-Askar: A Critical and Analytical Study] (1978).

50 Mufarriḥ, Ḥudāt al-ghaym wa-l-waḥsha, p. 20.

51 Similarly, Mufarriḥ in her work has always been keen on decoupling belonging from acquiring official documentation. Despite her status as Bidūn, she regards herself as a Kuwaiti poet:

Whether others like it or not … I am a Kuwaiti in my existence, belonging and inclinations. This truth is unrelated to that paper called “passport” … whether I gain citizenship from Kuwait or any other country, or if I never gain citizenship, Kuwait will remain my first, last and eternal homeland, simply because it is my only homeland [Aziz “Saʿdiyya Mufarriḥ: la ʿilāqa li-l-awrāq bi-ḥaqīqat jinsiyyati” [Saʿdiyya Mufarriḥ: Papers Are Unrelated to My Real Citizenship], Al-Watan Online (2012)].

52 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, “Al-ightirāb fī al-shiʿr al-Kuwaiti [Alienation in Kuwaiti Poetry], Annals of the Faculty of Arts 14.94 (1994), p. 172.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid., p. 171.

55 Ibid., p. 172.

56 Al-Rumi, Shiʿr Fahad al-ʿAskar: dirāsa naqdiyya wa taḥlīliya [The Poetry of Fahad al-Askar: A Critical and Analytical Study] (1978).

57 Mufarriḥ, Ḥudāt al-ghaym wa-l-waḥsha, p. 24.

58 Ibid., pp. 37–8.

59 Ibid., p. 40.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., p. 51.

62 Ibid., p. 64.

63 Ibid., p. 41.

64 Ibid., p. 66.

65 Ibid.

66 Al-Baṣīr, Al-Khalīj al-ʿArabī wa-l-ḥaḍāra al-muʿāṣira [The Arabian Gulf and Modern Civilization] (1986), p. 117.

67 Currie, Difference (2004), p. 77.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tareq Alrabei

Tareq Alrabei is an Assistant Professor at the Gulf University for Science and Technology, Block 5, Building 1, Mubarak Al-Abdullah Area, West Mishref, Kuwait.