Brigitte GLASER * Mediating Cultures in the Classroom: Women Writers and their Postcolonial Approaches to History, Politics and Identity Abstract. The essay explores the ways in which the reading and discussion of recent Anglophone Arabic writing by female authors may contribute to the widening or change of perspective, and assist students and teachers to engage in a topical cultural debate. By concentrating on such categories as "social class", "public versus private life", "history, culture and identity", as weil as particular writing techniques, here especially the method of mixing languages, this study draws attention to aspects which may serve individuals as starting-points to become engaged in the debate of how societies learn to negotiate cultural diversity. In the process, the difference of perspective presented in the examined texts as weil as the innovative treatment of traditional topics associated with Oriental exoticism are revealed as constituting central ingredients of the novels' pedagogical potential. 1. Introduction When Samuel P. Huntington' s Clash of Civilizations was published in 1996 and met with mixed reviews (as well as harsh criticism from non-Westem nations), few could foresee that the debate opened up with this text would not die down within a few months. Quite the opposite: the issues somewhat polemically raised by HUNTINGTON gained in fervour after the terrorist attacks in the USA (2001), Europe (2003, 2005) and South EastAsia (2002, 2003, 2005), especially since the targets bad been symbols of Westem civilization or citizens of Westem nations. Over the last few years an awareness of new dangers, the discussion of their possible prevention, and the questioning as well as frantic assertion of national and cultural identities have taken centre stage in various media to the extent that in this country the "end ofthe multiculturalutopia" has been predicted, with many ofits pronouncers hardly knowing what they are talking about. Given the possibility that Westem nations regress into (neo)colonial ways of thinking when asserting, for example, "European" and the "Free World's" values or in fact their own cultural difference and frequently superiority, the texts of a handful of Arabic writers of fiction deliberately publishing in English and addressing topics that relate to history, politics and identity have suddenly become important and interesting. Korrespondenzadresse: Prof. Dr. Brigitte GLASER, Univ.-Prof., Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Seminar für Englische Philologie, Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3, 37073 GÖTTINGEN. E-mail: Brigitte.Glaser@phil.uni-goettingen.de Arbeitsbereiche: Postkoloniale Literaturen, Literatur und Naturwissenschaften, Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts. lFLuL 35 (2006) 122 Brigitte Glaser 2. Intercultural and Pedagogical Potential They become even more so when they are successfully employed in the classroom, not only because of the topicality of issues they raise but also because of their immediate appeal owing to generic, perspectival and stylistic peculiarities. The texts to be explored here, Leila ABOULELA's The Translator (1999), Samia SERAGELDIN's The Cairo Hause (2000) and Ahdaf SOUEIF's The Map of Love (2000), assist students and future teachers in their participation in the above-mentioned cultural debate. The novels present themes relating to cultural difference in accessible, because generically mixed and hence highly readable forms, in works which juxtapose East and West, historical times and the present, public and private lives, men and women. By proposing a different perspective on "East" and "West" and by shifting the emphasis somewhat when addressing topics usually associated with "the clash of civilizations", the novelists implicitly question the meaning of"truth" and the assertion ofknowledge conceming other cultures. Thus they help both students and teachers to engage in a more varied debate about pressing cultural issues. The three novels may be usefully employed in a teaching environment for the following purposes: • as starting-points for further research as well as discussion; • as tools to help students select and research topical issues and compare the results to what is generally known about them; • to draw readers' attention to the discrepancy ofperspectives and induce them to discuss ·a variety of positions, perhaps even to look at things in new ways; • as sources which provide students with new information on history, culture and traditions, their own as well as those of others. To give an example pertaining to language, the strategic postcolonial use of Arabic forms of expression, whether rendered in the original or "translated" into an English that imitates Arabic speech pattems, may well beyond its political objective have a twofold effect on readers: make them recognize linguistic possibilities of courtesy and ornamental articulation they themselves are deprived of and at the same time make them appreciate their own, more rational approach to language practice. In the following I will explore aspects that illuminate the interesting nature of these texts and moreover point to the novels' usefulness in the classroom. At the centre of my analysis will be, after an introduction of the authors' "in-between" situation as well as some characteristics of postcolonial writing, those categories which are particularly conducive to classroom discussion. 3. Narrative Perspective and the Question of Difference First, there is the question of perspective to consider, that is, the question of who is writing about Arabic cultures when, where, and for which audience. Ever since Edward SAID's important study Orientalism (1978) we are aware ofthe fact that for centuries Europeans have confronted Arabic cultures in a stereotyping manner, setting up binary FLulL 35 (2006) Mediating Cultures in the Classroom: ... 123 oppositions between "us" and "them" in scholarly works, juridical and political writing, as well as fiction. These dichotomies are particularly evident, as far as England is concemed, in colonial or so-called Empire writing, in which non-English cultures are traditionally presented as "other" and hence inferior. To manage Othemess colonizers tended to develop coping strategies in the form of homogenizing negative generalizations, for example, categories ofWest versus East, with the West defining the East as "other" and therefore lesser, effeminate, savage, monstrous, and expendable, as well as being sexually depraved, just to mention a few. Reacting to these discriminatory depictions ofthe past and the condescending attitudes implied in them, postcolonial writers consequently approach past and present with a frequently clear political agenda, focusing on racism and discrimination, and on a reversal of colonial structures while maintaining patriarchal structures and often describing public life in terms of aman's world (cf. B0EHMER 1995: 60-97; SARDAR 2002). There are only a few exceptions to the rule, among them writers like E.M. F0RSTER or Ruth Prawer JHABVALA, who could be described as being "inbetween" (as far as gender, race, class or ethnicity are concemed) and who at times choose to present open-minded, sympathetic female characters who display curiosity about other cultures and an interest in faimess and tolerance. More often, however, we encounter a tendency of depicting cultural difference and cultural conflict in the form of binary oppositions and later as reversed oppositions. Given this trend, the appearance over the past few years of Anglophone Arabic women writers is particularly interesting. What authors like Aboulela, Serageldin and Soueif share is the experience of displacementcultural, linguistic, and gender-related as well as the position ofthe outsider. All ofthem have lived for at least a decade in countries in which predominantly English is spoken, they are university-educated, and of an (upper) middle-class background. Since they have grown up in Arabic countries and have lived in Arabic cultural and linguistic settings, and since they have also come to know life in Great Britain or the United States respectively, they are able to compare and evaluate East and West. When they write about Oriental cultures, they write with the particular slant of looking at them from the outside while knowing them intimately. In addition, they bring to bear their female perspective on what is often regarded as a male-dominated society. When these women write in English about Arabic cultures while living in the West, the aspect of "translation" in a literal and metaphorical sense becomes important. All of them seem to feel the need to translate and transmit not only their particular linguistic but also their cultural and gender-specific experience ofbeing Arabic Muslim women (cf. AHMED 1992). In this endeavour, their female perspective, i.e. one that has in the West traditionally been considered a marginalized and suppressed one, is now given a central place. Thus, individuals who have for a long time been confronted with the cliches of having no voice, no rights, no education, hence no true understanding of culture or politics, now insist on having their voices heard, not only at home but also in faraway places and around the globe. By choosing to write in English Aboulela, Serageldin and Soueif deliberately address an extended readership and take part in an international discourse. They contribute to the kind ofhybrid literature which some call "world litera- JFLuL 35 (2006) 124 Brigitte Glaser ture" and, as is evident from their non-fictional writing and ofinterviews with them, to the mediation of cultures. The question may arise of whether these writers have wanted to produce a didactic literature in the form of history lessons or whether their intention was merely to entertain by presenting (more or less) romance literature. Ifthe former is the case, then the methods they use are worth looking at. 4. Identity, History, and Language in Postcolonial Writing The essay's title draws attention to terminology frequently employed in the analysis of postcolonial writing. Given the various ways in which these notions are used, a brief explanation oftheir present meaning and significance is required. "Identity" is generally regarded as a complex concept with shifting emphasis in the attempts to define it. In our particular context, it is not only the aspect of gender, that is, the already mentioned female perspective, which is important but also those of allegiance and choice. As Charles TAYLOR (1989) has established, what matters aside from what an individual is bom into and/ or told to be is what he/ she chooses to become, in short, the commitment, whether spiritual, political, or personal the individual chooses to make. This aspect of commitment should be kept in mind. Politics and history as factors that also ought to be considered do not come as a surprise, given the authors' Egyptian or Sudanese background and the history of cultural grandeur and decline, changing religious beliefs, and lengthy periods of shifting colonial occupations it implies. Especially among Muslims, there is a strong awareness ofhistory, as Bemard Lewis has pointed out: "Islamic history, for all Muslims, has an important religious and also legal significance, since it reflects the working out of God's purpose for His community" (LEWIS 2003: xviii). Egyptians in particular, as emerges also in Soueif's novel The Map of Love, are suffering because of their divided cultural heritage, as on the one hand they are immensely proud öf their ancient Pharaonic history, while on the other hand they are depressed about the long periods of foreign domination (which in part contributed to the Middle East now being in shambles and the future uncertain). In an interview Soueif drew attention to the importance ofhistory for her fellow countrymen and -women: We Egyptians are indivisible from our history. I don't know if this is particular to us as a people who have had so many wrenchings in their history, so many occupations followed by national resurgence then another occupation and so on. lt is this that gives us this compulsion to go back to find out who we are. (Quoted in Cairo Times, 30 April 1998) This quotation already indicates the close connection of history and identity and the implicit need to explore these aspects in fiction, hence also the usefulness of these novels for instigating respective debates. The novels are surprisingly accessible, mainly because of their generic peculiarities. All the selected texts deal extensively with private life, family, and personal relationships. Some ofthem are projected in the form oftraditional romance stories, and yet in all of them there is also the layer of history and politics. But does that already make them lFLuL 35 (2006) Mediating Cultures in the Classroom: ... 125 historical novels? And when can one define a fictional text as a "historical novel"? From the many scholarly works on the subject, David Cowart's History and the Contemporary Novel proves tobe a suitable source für a definition that is not too restrictive and inclusive. According to COWART (1989: 6), historical fiction could be described as "fiction in which the past figures with some prominence", that is, "any novel in which a historical consciousness manifests itself strongly in either the characters or the action". Writers of contemporary historical fiction often combine public and private history and, in the process, are selective with regard to events, characters and situations from public history, using them mainly in order to emphasise their effect on private life. Furthermore, the aspects of self-reflexivity with its drawing attention to the text' s constructedness, subjectivity, and relativity, combined with the preference for hitherto marginalized narrative perspectives, have to be added as important ingredients of. contemporary historical fiction. With their focus on personal experiences in historically turbulent times and, for Westem readers, exotic settings, the novels of Anglophone Arabic women writers clearly participate in the contemporary fictional discourse of history. The above-mentioned authors - Aboulela, Serageldin, and Soueif share characteristics which readers will also discover in the lives of their female protagonists: they were bom and raised in Sudan (Aboulela) or in Egypt (Serageldin, Soueif), grew up in privileged circumstances and were provided with a good education before they left their homelands to obtain advanced university degrees in Great Britain, found work there or in the United States (usually as university teachers), married and raised families. All of them adjusted their lives and personalities to accommodate the requirements of being "inbetween" ofholding a transitional position between cultures and between worlds. In her novel The Cairo Hause, a semi-autobiographical text describing a woman's retum to her native country Egypt after more than a decade's absence, Samia Serageldin aptly describes the state ofbeing "in-between" as that ofbeing a chameleon: But the true chameleons are the ones who straddle two worlds, segueing smoothly from one to the other, adjusting language and body language, calibrating the range of emotions displayed, treading the tightrope of mannerisms and mores. If it is done well, it can look deceptively effortless, but it is never without cost. There is no hypocrisy involved, only the universal imperative underlying good manners: to do the appropriate thing, to make those around you comfortable. For the chameleon, it is a matter of survival. (SERAGELDIN 2000: 1 f) Interestingly, choosing the topic ofmoving between cultures and focusing on characters who, owing to circumstances or choice, could be described as migrant individuals endowed with flexible, perhaps hybrid idep.tities, Anglophone Arabic writers enable readers to encounter foreign places and also to move imaginatively between cultures. Moreover, they contribute to Westem readers' growing awareness of the different lives their fellow citizens may have led before arriving in their countries, often as a result of the West' s previous colonial involvement in the world of the migrants' ancestors. 1 An interesting example recently published in Germany to positive reviews and dealing with the same issues is Feridun ZAIMOGLU's Leyla (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2006). lFLlllL 35 (2006) 126 Brigitte Glaser The postcolonial dimension of Anglophone Arabic fiction emerges especially in the issues of "writing back" and language. All these texts, written in English and published in Great Britain or the United States, are clearly intended for a Westem audience to whom they introduce aspects of the East. A central motif of The Map of Love, for example, is that of the Oriental travelogue and the encounter of an exotic culture, with the Englishwoman Anna Winterboume visiting Egypt in the year 1900 and wishing to leam about the new country. At the same time, and importantly so, the central perspective is Eastem, as it is Amal al-Ghamrawi, Anna's Egyptian relative almost a century into the future, who pieces together the fragments from the past, adds her own experiences and life-story, and above all uses her imagination to fashion a compelling and engaging narrative. The issue of language should also not be underestimated in its importance for postcolonial considerations. Many years ago Ngugi wa Thiong'o already pointed out its significance when he stated that "[c]ulture is almost indistinguishable from the language that makes possible its genesis, growth, banking, articulation and indeed its transmission from one generation to the next" (quoted in CHILDS 1997: 196) and when he argued that the colonizer's language was a crucial tool for "the domination ofthe mental universe of the colonized" (ibid. ). Theorists of postcolonialism such as Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin have, however, found, .on the basis of primary literature they surveyed, that the colonizer' s language may indeed also be used subversively, for example through "the employment ofneologisms, altered syntax, [and] vemacular rhythms" (CHILDS 1997: 194). This aspect of language is of particular interest in Soueif's novel, as there the author, herself a trained linguist, imitates Arabic speech pattems in English, uses idiomatic expressions, and even inserts numerous Arabic words and phrases into her text. A good example ofSoueif's approach is the strange, semi-magical scene in which the present-day American Isabel meets in Egypt Umm Aya, an old woman from her ancestral past, who welcomes her at a shrine: 'Salamu 'aleikum ya Sheikh 'Isa,' she cries again as she hurries up to Isabel. 'Marhab ya Sett, welcome! ' Isabel scents a whiff of orange blossom as she is folded against the woman's warm, substantial breast. 'Welcome and a hundred times welcome,' she cries again. 'Sit down, my darling, sit down, lady ofthem all, why are you standing like this? Shouldn't you ask your guest to sit down, ya Sheikh 'Isa? Nevermind, my darling, don'thold itagainst him. We don't getmany visitors. Apart from those who come to visit Sidi Haroun - [...] they come in nations. Of course they don't come in here, but they bring light for us too as you see. But you have brought us light and honour. Welcome, welcome! Shall I make you some tea, or what would you like? Will you drink tea, ya Sheikh 'lsa? ' (S0UEIF 2000: 294) This scene serves to establish an Oriental setting, convey the warm-hearted hospitality of the local population, and indicate peculiarities ofthe Arabic language, such as the association of a visitor' s arrival with the positively charged notions of "light" and "honour". Language here, and repeatedly in the novel, functions as a means of rendering Arabic dignity and politeness and is meant to suggest good manners and (surprisingly? ) civilised conduct. Another recurring and typically postcolonial aspect is the question of identity, which writers of the New English Literatures traditionally approach in various ways, often lFLuL 35 (2006) Mediating Cultures in the Classroom: ... 127 juxtaposing different notions of postcolonial identity. Among the most frequently recurring representations of identity are those emphasizing universalism, difference, and hybridity. Thus readers may be introduced to characters who hold the view that "all people and human societies share fundamental cognitive, emotional, ethical and other principles" (HoGAN 2000: xv) and act accordingly. A typical example ofthis universalist approach would be people's tendency to "fall in love", that is, to have the same kind of feeling all around the globe. The similarity of emotions then allows for communication between unlikely partners while at the same time also permitting individual uniqueness. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, for example, has stressed the compatibility of universalism with cultural particularity and diversity. The opposite ofuniversalism is the authors' emphasis of difference, which often manifests itself in the form of nationality-based stereotyping, in our texts usually in the contrast of colonizers and colonized or, on the present-day layer, neo-colonial powers versus postcolonial (or formerly colonized) countries. Hence events and experiences of the past form the background against which present-day problems are explained and they constitute sources ofhostility, nationalism, violence and hatred. The third possibility, the option of presenting characters with hybrid identities, has become a favourite choice ofthose who themselves are migrant writers in a globalized world. While they depict some of their characters as being happily able to move between countries and continents, cultures and languages, they show others as being affected by the disadvantages of globalization, that is, by permanent dislocation, loneliness, distance from and discontinuation of family traditions. Examples of all of these identity-related manifestations may be found in the works of the mentioned writers and make for suitable aspects contributing to class discussion or further research into cultural differences. A number of topics that lend themselves to learning about the mediation of cultural difference will now be explored in a comparative analysis of the three novels (see summaries in the appendix). Concentrating on categories such as "social class", "public and private life", "writing techniques", and "history, culture, and identity", I hope to draw readers' attention to the implicit political layer ofthese texts and thus point to the usability of these categories for classroom discussions. 5. Mediating Cultural Difference through Fiction: Useful Categories for Classroom Discussion 5.1 Social Class In all three novels the female protagonist belongs to the privileged segment of Arabic society, hence lives the kind oflife her respective creator is familiar with. Other segments of society are consequently referred to or taken notice of only in a limited way. Aboulela's Sammar, the translator, is an educated woman with marketable skills who has quickly learned to make her living in Aberdeen and has become financially independent. In the contrasting Khartoum sections, however, the relative poverty and supposed backwardness ofthe people there emerge as well as the effects of globalization on Sudan. But since we are introduced to Sammar's relatives as privileged Sudanese living in the lFLulL 35 (2006) 128 Brigitte Glaser capital, using the latest technology imported from the West, and providing their children with a university education, we are only shown a small slice of that country' s reality, which leaves out completely the devastating effects of the Civil War and the immense poverty of the rural population. Serageldin's The Cairo Hause describes the effects of changing politics on a privileged family of property and influence. With the introduction ofNasser's "Arab Socialism" in the early 1960s, the members ofGigi's family are ranked with "the enemies of the people" and are discriminated against. Later, after Sadat's opening up of Egypt to capitalist ventures, their situation improves again but they have already lost their political influence and by then are about to lose also their family estate in Cairo. The end of the novel presents an Egypt in which corruption rules and in which at best economic entrepreneurs of a questionable background have a chance of doing well. The initially celebrated Egypt characterised by great hospitality, Mediterranean lifestyle, and comfortable living has gone, with many of the formerly privileged trying their luck abroad. Soueifs The Map of Love is the one text in which Egyptian society is rendered in a balanced way, as it includes representatives from all walks oflife. While Soueifs focus on the 1900 layer is on the prosperous intellectuals ofthe country, among them foreigneducated lawyers, doctors, and politicians, there are abundant references to members of the servant-classes as well as the rural population, the fellahin. The latter are particularly shown in the context of the effects colonialism has had on them. All segments of society on both time layers are depicted as very politicised, the implication being that they are that way because one colonial system has simply replaced another. The period around 1900 concentrates on members of the upper and middle classes who have been exposed to Western values and are therefore open-minded towards and interested in Europe, especially France and Italy, while simultaneously supporting Egyptian nationalism. Egypt in the 1990s, in contrast, is portrayed as a country marked by the growing gap between rich and poor, concems about the unresolved question of Palestine, the problem of an expanding population, wide-spread anti-American sentiment, recurring terrorist attacks, and increased Islamist influence. Although the dominant perspective is that of privileged individuals, the general future outlook all three texts provide is a sceptical if not disillusioned and gloomy one. 5.2 Public / Private Life Especially Serageldin and Soueif establish in their novels clear connections between public and private life. Gigi, the narrator of The Cairo Hause, describes the time inwhich she was nine as "the year 1 became aware, for the first but not the last time, that my life was susceptible to being caught in the slipstream of history, that a speech broadcast over the radio could change my life forever" (SERAGELDIN 2000: 3; italics in the original). President Nasser's 1961 speech on television, announcing a drastic change in politics, leads to the sequestration of her family and the confiscation of their estate, putting an enormous pressure on friendships and marriages. A few years later her uncle Ali, then Nasser's personal physician and suspected of disloyalty, is poisoned. The young Gigi lFLuL 35 (2006) Mediating Cultures in the Classroom: ... 129 mainly agrees to marry Yussef Zeitouni, an upcoming businessman who is largely indifferent to her, because she does not want to disappoint her ailing and politically disillusioned father. Divorce, separation from her son, and exile will result from this combination of politically difficult times and mistaken personal decisions. Her many years in France and the United States lead to the alienation from her son and her homeland, and to the realization that an eventual return to Egypt would be futile, as the home she once knew no longer exists. Ahdaf Soueifs novel The Map of Love begins and ends with references to a child waiting for her father: "The child sleeps. Nur al-Hayah: light of my life. [. . .] I have tried, as weil as I could, to tel! her. But she cannot or will not understand, and give up hope. She waitsfor him constantly" (SOUEIF 2000: 4,510; italics in the original). What we do not know when we first read the passage is that the dead father the little girl is waiting for is the novel's male protagonist Sharif Basha al-Baroudi, one of the central characters ofboth the romantic and the political plot on the 1900 time layer. Throughout the years the two lovers Anna and Sharif spend together, their relationship, marriage and family life are deeply affected by politics. SharifBasha's involvement in the nationalist cause and later his decision not to connect himself with any particular side or political group eventually render him isolated and exposed, a perfect target for the assassin whose identity will never be established. Aside from the topic of British colonialism and its fostering of Egyptian nationalism Soueif at length deals with the so-called ''woman question" which, as she shows, has both public and private reverberations. In Egypt, aspects of the "woman question" debated by politicians and intellectuals and followed with interest by upper class females included women's access to education, the segregation of the sexes, and the wearing of supposedly proper clothing, that is, the veil. Soueif certainly contributes to the mediation of cultures through her exceptional representations of the harem and the veil: at least twice the Englishwoman Anna Winterbourne is depicted as experiencing her wearing of the veil as liberating and protecting, for example when she travels by train dressed as an Egyptian woman: "While I was wearing it, I could look at wherever I wanted and nobody could look back atme" (SOUEIF 2000: 195). A comparable situation of freedom she only senses when she cross-dresses as a man and sets out on her own for a trip to the desert. Furthermore, the image of the harem conveyed to us in this novel is that of a place of political activity, hence quite the opposite of conventional Orientalist depictions emphasising leisure, exoticism, and lasciviousness. In The Map of Love the harem becomes the site in which women meet in order to promote female education, launch a ladies' magazine focusing on educational and political issues, and engage in editorial and translation work for husbands and male relatives. In her memoirs Layla Hanim al-Baroudi describes her sister-in-law's activities as follows: "Anna jokes that the harem had made a working woman of her, for she was constantly occupied in preparing for her classes, writing for the magazine and translating from and into English for my brother" (SOUEIF 2000: 435). Rather than assigning to her household responsibilities, SharifBasha increasingly involves Lady Anna in his political deliberations and makes use of her language skills and her connections in Britain to spread his ideas abroad. She in turn takes up the Egyptian nationalist cause as her own, even relFLuL 35 (2006) 130 Brigitte Glaser garding her three-piece tapestry as her personal contribution to the Egyptian renaissance. Interestingly her woven picture shows a family and at the same time central figures of ancient religious beliefs, the Goddess Isis, her brother consort the God Osiris, and their child Horus. Thus she brings together both private and public life. 5.3 Writing Techniques Another important aspect the three writers share is the employment of narrative techniques that link the stories to female perspective as well as the histories and cultures of Egypt and Sudan. Serageldin and Aboulela use the more conventional means of firstperson narrative or third-person limited perspective with a focus on the female protagonist, and both include shifts between past and present on the basis of memories being triggered by journeys back home. Soueif, however, presents a complex text combining different generic fragments, time layers and perspectives, and in fact employs several techniques usually associated with postmodern "historiographic metafiction" (cf. HUTCHEON 1988). Through the use ofthe central narrator Amal al-Ghamrawi, who not only pieces together remnants ofthe past like diaries, letters, andjournals, but also adds to and embellishes them with the help ofher imagination, Soueif emphasises the element ofsubjectivity. Working on what she calls her "Anna project", Amal repeatedly stresses her fiction-making activities: "But then I know how the story ends. I don't think that matters. We always know how the story ends. What we don't know is what happens along the way" (SOUEIF 2000: 74). This "along the way" she, Amal, as well as Soueif provide for us. With the story gradually unfolding, taking place on two time layers, and including recurring and interlinking aspects, readers may be rerninded of a mosaic slowly revealing its image or, to stay within the context of the novel, a tapestry in which different strands are woven together to produce the desired picture or message. The metaphor of weaving is in fact used by Amal to describe her rendition of Sharif Basha al- Baroudi as "the man I imagine he must have been" (SOUEIF 2000: 251 f). Soueif furthermore presents with The Map of Love a hybrid text in which different languages are used alongside each other. This becomes evident from the varieties of English employed and interspersed with Arabic words and phrases, rendered intelligible only through a glossary at the end of the text. What may sound like "incorrect" or "funny" English is a language developed deliberately to convey national and class differences. Hence Soueif does not content herselfwith indicating her characters' communication in English, Arabic or French through different typesets but she also tries to meet, as she says, "the need to fashion an English that will express an Arab reality" (quoted in SHANNEIK 2004: 58), thereby creating linguistically a narrative which reflects the colonial and postcolonial contexts ofthe stories it tells: English here accords a liberating lexical storehouse and semantic sanctuary. While the hybridized English provides this idiomatic advantage, it maintains the distinctiveness of the composite culture, ethos, and predilections involved. [...] the reader feels that the English text is actually a translation whose original, once existing in the author's mind, is now non-existent. This palimp- FLuL 35 (2006) Mediating Cultures in the Classroom: ... 131 sestic process indicates at once erasure, reconstitution, and reorientation, thus straddling cultures, interfacing texts, and re(de)fining enunciation to fit the requisites of the reinscribed version in English. (MALAK 2000: 161) Most often, this hybridized English is rendered in the dialogues, usually in order to convey casual conversations among family members or to show the devout, and yet at other times also ironic, attitudes of Arabic servants towards their masters. Furthermore, the Arabic language itselfoccasionally becomes a subject of reflection, for example when the word "mirror" is etymologically reconstructed for Lady Anna who is leaming the new language (SOUEIF 2000: 375), or when she a little later ponders in her joumal the eight Arabic words for "love" she knows by then, each of them denoting a carefully nuanced form of the sensation (SOUEIF 2000: 386 f). The author here clearly uses language as a liberating force, suitable to convey her feminist ideas and progressive political notions. 5.4 History, Culture and Identity In all three novels we find the interplay of history and individual life story. Frequently, the connection of personal identity and historical events is influenced by the degree of curiosity about the "other" an individual is able to display. In Aboulela's The Translator, for example, the eventual relationship between the Scottish academic Rae and the Sudanese translator Sammar would not have been possible without the man's long-standing interest in the Middle Bast. Rae's extensive knowledge ofthe colonial histories of Arabic countries and his openness towards Sammar' s particular background and experience help them overcome cultural differences. The female protagonist and first-person narrator Gigi ofSerageldin's The Cairo House clearly states retrospectively that she considers her life as having been moulded by the history of her country. She even presents herself as a victim of history, realizing in the end that there is no chance for happiness in her life because the Egypt she once knew no longer exists. Unfortunately, we encounter in this novel also a woman who appears little in control ofher own destiny, who has intemalised the patriarchal structures she grew up with, and who repeatedly places her own needs second. As a consequence, Gigi's eventual decision to retum to the US to an unhappy marriage and an indifferent husband will, as she knows, render her an emotionally paralysed person, culturally alienated and displaced. The reconstruction in Soueifs novel of Anna Winterboume's Oriental experience begins with the effects ofthe Sudan affair on her family, that is, her first husband's death and her father-in-law's growing bittemess about the Empire. lt is her curiosity about the "other" which leads Lady Anna to travel abroad. Soon after her arrival in Egypt, the gradual process ofher cultural adaptation is set in motion: her first-hand experiences of fellow English expatriates displaying condescending, even jingoist attitudes towards Egyptians induce her to distance herself from them and develop her own ideas. What starts out as sympathy with Egyptians and their plight and a wish to leam about the real Egypt tums into the decision to stay on and become personally involved in the country's fate. The initial problem of communication is solved through a recourse to the French lFLuL 35 (2006) 132 Brigitte Glaser language, later deliberately maintained to ease the cultural gap between husband and wife, as Sharif Basha points out: "lt makes foreigners of both of us. It's good that I should have to come some way to meet you" (SOUEIF 2000: 157). The aspect of cultural difference is one Amal imagines to have weighed heavily on Sharifs mind when she renders imaginatively his dividedness about a relationship with Lady Anna: "Could she ever know him? Could he ever know her? Or would they always hold fast to what they imagined of each other so that life together would for each be more lonely than life alone? " (SOUEIF 2000: 272). Towards the end of the novel, at a time when Amal's imaginative and emotional involvement in Lady Anna's story is much advanced, the author Soueif, sharing of course with her female characters the experience of moving between cultures, has Amal ponder the possibility of somehow bringing diverging cultural backgrounds together in one's life: [...] I find myselfwondering ifthere is some sense in which this, Anna's Egyptian life, will only be fully real to her once it has been linked with her older one, witnessed by someone she has known and cared for from her earliest days? She never says this, or even hints at it, in letters or in her journal. In Egypt she met a man she could love and married him, she had his child, she found a place within his family. She also found a cause. But she cannot speak her own language, cannot see her own people and they cannot, or will not, see her. Does this cast a doubt over her life make it seem provisional? And is this part ofthe reason why she adopts Egypt's cause with a more or less relentless fervour? (SOUEIF 2000: 465) What Amal describes here is an individual's need tobe part öfthe society and culture of her choice, while being able to maintain previous loyalties. Being affiliated with the sides of both colonizer and colonized creates an unbearable pressure, the novel suggests, as well as a tension that is only eased through political involvement. 6. Conclusion Exactly this political involvement is also noticeable on the part ofthe three Anglophone Arabic women writers here. With their texts successfully mediating difference, they have made it their objective to familiarize readers in the West with the histories and cultures of their native countries. Themselves sharing the experience of dislocation, transition and alienation, they have projected characters who also know about exclusion, linguistic disorientation, political turmoil, and exile. With the help of their female protagonists, these authors succeed in providing new, women-centred perspectives and at the same time subverting stereotypical perceptions Westemers may have had about the East (as does, for example, Ahdaf Soueif in her rendition of the harem and the "woman question"). By making their readers aware ofthe places they themselves have come from and by pointing again and again to the legacies European colonial powers have left behind in their ·homelands, they clearly endow their texts with a political dimension, one that frequently shows the respective country as being caught in a vicious cycle of colonialism, neo-colonialism, globalization, and home-made problems. These complex, at times disheartening issues are, however, incorporated in highly readable texts. lt is in fact the FLuL 35 (2006) Mediating Cultures in the Classroom: ... 133 authors' choice of genre that greatly facilitates their proj ect of cultural mediation. Making use of the romance tradition or the first-person confessional memoir, diary and travelogue, they have produced appealing narratives verging on popular literature, yet never suppressing their serious historical and political dimensions. The perspective they bring to bear on the subject matters presented in their texts is (still) an unusual one, that ofthe educated Arabic woman of a privileged economic background who is free to move around geographically and express her opinion. Merely the acknowledgement of such a perspective goes a long way towards overcoming stereotypical projections of cultural difference. All three texts are suitable as teaching material used in discussions on contemporary migrant realities, since their authors raise issues worth exploring in detail. For example, they depict characters of different cultural backgrounds trying to live together, not merely in a larger community but also in family situations. Tensions arising from differences in language, historical experience, and traditions are addressed in the portrayal of problems of understanding each other and of attempts at communication. The three novelists are evidently critical of seeing the solution to cultural conflict in full-scale assimilation, that is, in the need of the minority representatives to abandon their culture(s) and adopt without reservation the cultural conventions of the host country. Rather, they project images of culturally diverse communities in which individuals are respectful of and curious about each other's background and thus create in their fiction what they themselves are practising in their lives and now propose to others as an option to consider. By paying attention to the above-mentioned analytical categories of "social dass", "public and private life", "writing techniques", and "history, culture, and identity" in representative examples of postcolonial writing such as the selected texts of Anglophone Arabic female authors, teachers and students will gain new insights into the problems and particularities of contemporary migrants' lives and thus acquire skills facilitating their involvement in the increasingly important debate about the pros and cons of living in a culturally diverse society. References Primary Texts: ABOULELA, Leila (1999): The Translator. Edinburgh: Polygon. SERAGELDIN, Samia (2000): The Cairo House. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. SOUEIF, Ahdaf(1999; rpt. 2000): The Map of Love. London: Bloomsbury. Secondary Literature: AHMED, Leila (1992): Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. BOEHMER, Elleke (1995): Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature: Migr.ant Metaphors. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CHILDS, Peter/ WILLIAMS, R.J. Patrick (1997): An Jntroduction to Post-Colonial Theory. Padstow: T.J. Press. lFLuL 35 (2006) 134 Brigitte Glaser COWART, David (1989): History and the Contemporary Novel. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southem Illinois University Press. HOGAN, Patrick Colm (2000): Colonialism and Cultural Identity- Crises ofTradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean. Albany: State University of New York Press. HUNTINGTON, Samuel P. (1996): The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World. New York: Simon & Schuster. HUTCHEON, Linda (1988): A Poetics of Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge. LEWIS, Bemard (2003): The Crises of Islam - Holy War and Unholy Terror. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. MALAK, Amin (2000): "Arab-Muslim Feminism and the Narrative of Hybridity: The Fiction of Ahdaf Soueif'. In: GHAZOUL, Ferial (ed): The Hybrid Text. Arab Creative Authors Writing in Foreign Languages. Cairo: American University Cairo Press, 140--165. SAID, Edward (1978; rpt. 1987): Orientalism. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. SARDAR, Zaiddin (2002): Der Fremde Orient: Geschichte eines Vorurteils. Berlin: Wagenbach. SHANNEIK, Sardar (2004): Transkulturalität und euro-arabische Literatur von Migrantinnen. Würzburg: Würzburger Geographische Manuskripte. TAYLOR, Charles (1989): Sources of the Seif: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. fLuL 35 (2006) Mediating Cultures in the Classroom: ... 135 Appendix Leila ABOULELA, The Translator: The central character Sammar is a young Sudanese widow who works as an Arabic translator in Aberdeen, grieving for her lost husband until things change when she falls in love with Rae, a Scottish academic. He differs strongly in his values from Sammar, however: he is divorced, a self-proclaimed cynic, and a non-Muslim. The novel is set in two contrasting cities, Aberdeen and Khartoum, as a result of which we find the protagonist Sammar at pains with the contradictions that exist, not just in location, but also in religion and culture. Since religion is the dominant force in the young woman's life, she returns to Khartoum tobe reunited with her son rather than staying with a non-believer. Hence she is heartbroken for a second time. In the end she is reunited, however, with the man she loves who has unexpectedly converted to Islam. Samia SERAGELDIN, The Cairo House: The novel tells the story of a prominent Egyptian family's struggle to survive the turmoil ofpost-WWII Cairo. The female protagonist Gigi grew up in a wonderful house in Cairo, which was home to a large, extended family. The men of the house were involved in politics and business, cotton and trading, and the women visited and gossiped, shopped and arranged marriages and other family matters. The house was always open to visitors, political associates, and family, hence the centre of the traditional Egyptian hospitality that mixed easily with a cosmopolitan style. W e encounter here an opulent world that seemed unchangeable. But the time of privilege was ending with the change in politics. Many of the pashas were forced into exile, and for those who remained in Egypt there was an uneasy mix of new expectations and old traditions. Gigi, a modern woman from a patrician background, is faced with the conflicts between a traditional marriage and the loss of farnily, between exile and the need to create a new life while striving to stay in touch with her roots. The novel thus presents to us a family and culture in transition. Ahdaf SOUEIF, The Map of Love: This novel constitutes a massive family saga that draws its readers into two moments in the complex, and troubled, history of modern Egypt. The story begins in New York, in 1997: Isabel Parkman discovers an old trunk füll of documentssome inEnglish, some in Arabic-in her dying mother's apartment. Omar al-Ghamrawi, a man with whom she is falling in love, directs her to his sister, Amal, in Cairo. Together the two women begin to uncover the stories embedded in the joumal ofLady Anna Winterboume who travels to Egypt in 1900 and falls in love with SharifBasha al-Baroudi, and they learn about the unusual connections between their two families. British colonialism, Egyptian nationalism, the clash of cultures in the Middle East in 1900 and the present day: the different narratives of The Map of Love weave a subtle, and reflective, tale of love between culture and conflict, and are suggestive ofthe ways in which relations between individuals may (or may not) make the difference. FLuL 35 (2006)