The Socialist Romance of the

Postcolonial Arabic Novel

ELLEN MCLARNEY
Duke University
ellenmc@duke.edu

ABSTRACT
This essay examines the politics of love in the Arabic novel: how love is
used to envision a more just and egalitarian society. The marriage market,
courtship practices, and kinship ties—which propagate and calcify gender
and class hierarchies—prove formidable obstacles to the realization of the
Utopian vision of social equality. Love ideology becomes a means of defy-
ing these conventions, conceived of as a powerful force breaking down the
hegemony of the upper classes and male privilege, challenging their sense
of propriety and entitlement, and restructuring society according to more
egalitarian principles. This essay contests the dichotomization of romantic
and politically committed literature in Arabic literary criticism, and like-
wise, corresponding assumptions about the division between the personal
and political, private and public presumably coded in the novel.

THE SOCIALIST ROMANCE OF THE

POSTCOLONIAL ARABIC NOVEL

C
ontemporary Arabic literature has long grappled with the function of such
literary staples like love, sexuality, courtship, and marriage. Some have
considered the subject of love and romance as imports, an expression of
the pervasive influence of European values. In the twenties, a debate erupted in
Egypt between novelists Muhammad Husayn Haykal and Ibrahim al-M3zinî over
love's role in contemporary Arabic literature. For al-Mâzinî, "The belief that it is
desirable for the Arabic novel to be analogous to the Western novel is a mistake;
each community has the particularities of its life" (TarabTshT 10). In his opinion,
the Western novel takes as its subject love alone, although love is nof something
that encompasses the whole of life. He says, "Who claims that every novel must
revolve around this sentiment alone, and that love must be the novel's framework

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 ELLEN MCLARNEY * 187

and pivot? Don't people in fhis world have occupafions other than that of love, and
infenfions other than a woman's success with a man or a man's with a woman?"
The novel should be cured of ifs obsession wifh love, a cure unknown to Western
societies. His remedy is: "Egyptian life replete with traditions." In the context of
al-Mazinl's own work, these comments are profoundly ironic. His novel Ibrahim
al-Kâtib is preoccupied almosf exclusively wifh accounfs of the narrator's roman-
tic escapades and there is absolutely no description of what literary critic JOrj
Tarablshl calls "local color" (10).
In the European novel, detailed descriptions of love and courtship helped the
middle class conceptualize itself as a class. The novel established these practices
as normative, holding up the middle class lifestyle as a model of civilify, propriety,
and enlightened modernity. The romantic obsessions of the novel are associated
with the leisured distractions of bourgeois culture; their courtship dramas seem-
ingly oblivious to the political events raging around them.' Socialist realism was
conceived as an antidote fo these powerful tools of bourgeois culture. In the fiffies
and sixties, political commitment in literature appeared to be a remedy that would
cure Arabic literature of European cultural dominance.^ In the Arab world, nation-
alist and socialist movements initially coincided, with many countries achieving
independence though the activism of trade unions, workers, and the radicalized
intelligentsia. These groups combined class-consciousness with nationalist mobi-
lization, criticizing the complicity between indigenous elites and the imperialist
occupiers.^ Politicized literatures erupted in the midst of this revolutionary eupho-
ria, as did a critical debate over literary objectives. Socialist realism was conceived
as a more authentic representation of social realify, of the masses, the peasants,
and the laboring classes. For the dogmatic interpreters of Lenin—including Stalin
himself—romance had virfually no place in this politicized world, belonging only
to the libidinal indulgences of the bourgeois (Solomon 239). Yet even the propo-
nents of political commitment could not dispense with love, as it continued to be
a principal problematic in the novel.
This essay examines the politics of love in the Arabic novel: how love is used
to envision a more just and egalitarian society. The marriage market, courtship
practices, and kinship ties—which propagate and calcify gender and class hierar-
chies—prove formidable obstacles to the realization of the Utopian vision of social
equality. Love ideology becomes a means of defying fhese conventions, conceived
of as a powerful force breaking down the hegemony of the upper classes and male
privilege, challenging their sense of propriety and entitlement, and restructuring
society according to more egalitarian principles. This essay contests the dichoto-
mization of romantic and politically committed literature in Arabic literary criti-
cism, and likewise, corresponding assumptions about the division between the
personal and political, private and public presumably coded in the novel.
Two professed socialisf authors, Egyptian Latifa al-Zayyat (1923-1996) and
Algerian 'Abd al-Hamld Ibn Hadüqa (1925-1996), both use love in this way." In
the honeymoon period after independence, these writers romanticized social
harmony despite reigning problems of class conflict. Al-Zayyat's Al-Bâb al-MafttUi
(The Open Door, 1960) and Ibn HadOqa's Rih al-janUb (The South Wind, 1970)
were both published eight years affer independence. During fhis time, Egypt
and Algeria were struggling with a theoretical embrace of socialisf ideology and
the difficult reality of continuing poverty, severe economic disparities, enduring
188 » RESEARCH IN AERICAN LITERATURES ® VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3

colonial inñuence, and the rise of state capitalism.^ Ibn Haduqa arid al-Zayyat
criticize the practices of a class-based society by implicating traditional elites with
the colonizers, depicting them as vestiges of the colonial system. For al-Zayyät, it
is the aristocracy; for Ibn HadOqa, the large rural landowners. In both novels, love
promises to transform these old power structures at their most microcosmic level,
in the intimacy of desire, romance, and love.
Al-Zayyät and Ibn Haduqa situate their novels in highly charged political
situations—during the 1952 Free Officers' Revolution and 1956 the Suez Canal
crisis in Egypt and during agrarian land reform in Algeria—events that provide
the setting and ideological frame of the works. Their plots, however, revolve
around courtship scenarios and mating rituals. Both authors trencharitly criticize
existing class lines as they are drawn and reified through courtship practices and
marriage alliances. They propose alternatives grounded in an ideology of love, a
force breaking down hierarchies, rooted in a more organic form of communion
between the sexes. Both al-Zayyät and Ibn Haduqa parody the materialism of the
marriage market and the values governing its exchanges, values {qiyam) whose
ethics they expose in their double moral and economic sense. They criticize the
grounding of moral worth in material assets and the vilification of those who
cannot afford to maintain such values. This essay explores how economics dictate
the terms of engagement between the sexes, these authors' vision of socialism as
a path to equality and their interpretation of love and desire as instruments of
social transformation.
The later work of both al-Zayyät and Ibn Haduqa loses faith in the promise
of social and personal transformation. It belongs to a different historical moment,
when socialism had become little more than empty rhetoric in nationalist dis-
course. Their views of relationships between the sexes become increasingly cynical
and pessimistic, described as instrumental, mercenary, and possessive. Their later
novels, al-Zayyät's Sahib al-Bayt (Owner of the House, 1994) and Ibn al-HadOqa Ban
al-Subh (The Morning Shone, 1980), not only show signs of disappointment, but
a profound pessimism about the nature of human relationships. Another writer,
Nawäl al-Sa'däwT gives explicit voice to this prevailing mood in twp works pub-
lished in conjunction, Al-Wajh al-'Ärt lil-Mar'a al-'Arabiyya (The Naked Face of the
Arab Woman) and Imra 'a 'ind Nuqtat al-Sifr (Woman at Point Zero). Both books, one
a work of criticism and the other a novel, decry the commercialization of women's
bodies, sexuality as a commodity, and the marketing of desire. Al-Sa'däwT calls
for a return to a "consistent socialist agenda" and condemns the opening of Egypt
to foreign investment. Her first novel, published (like al-Zayyät and Ibn Hadüqa's
first works) in the euphoric aftermath of revolution, is infused with a sense of
possibility and hope for human partnership. But her later work dispenses with all
faith in the redemptive power of romance, as hope for egalitarian love is crushed
under an all-pervasive capitalism.

BODY POLITICS
The Open Door unfolds from 1946 and 1956, a key period of Egyptian socialism: the
mobilization of the unions and student groups against the British presence, the
Free Officers Revolution of 1952, and the nationalization of the Suez Canal. The
novel opens on February 21, 1946, also known as "Evacuation Day," a massive
 ELLEN MCLARNEY ö 189

strike and demonstration against the British (Beinin and Lockman 341). It closes
during the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 and the resulting tripartite aggression (of
Britain, France, and Israel) against the government of Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir. These
events are steps in the struggle for complete independence from the British,
political events mainly articulated through a girl's coming of age, and her own
struggle to assert her independence. Like in Flaubert's L'éducation sentimentale the
novel's protagonists are swept up with longing and desire as the nation passes
through revolution. Unlike L'éducation sentimentale, though, the historical events
do not take place on the sideline of the novel; they convulse the inner world of its
characters. The Open Door does not function to articulate the private as a realm
distinct from the public, or the personal as distinct from the political.' Instead,
historical events shake the protagonists to their core, emotional upheavals that
lead to tumultuous change in body and politics. This is Egypt's own coming of
age, as she struggles against an overbearing protectorate that had taken the form
of an economic paternalism (British ownership of the Suez Canal and control of
natural resources like cotton). New alliances—with the masses, the workers, the
freedom fighters—replace old infatuations with wealth and the West. In this sense,
the body becomes the very field for articulating the political economy.
As general secretary of the National Committee for Students and Workers,
al-Zayyât was one of the principal organizers of "Evacuation Day." In her memoirs,
she describes her activism as transforming her body: "From the cloak of contact
with the masses I was born and from their warmth and stability I was transformed,
from the girl who bore her womanly body as if it were a sin into that tough, liber-
ated young woman, so full of vigorous protest" (104). In The Open Door chronicles
Layla's simultaneous political and sexual awakening, as she becomes aware of
the power of her body and its newfound passions. As she demonstrates against
the British, she finds herself responding physically to the collective motion of the
crowd, as she melts into the other bodies rising and falling in unison.
She felt an embarrassed shyness about her full body and was sure that every
pair of eyes on the street was focusing on her. They rhythmic yells surged like
waves and abated, the first wave chased by a second, the pair coming together
in one swell. Applause, the watching women's zagharid,^ all of those hands . . .
bodies everywhere rising and falling in mad leaps. Mouths open wide to shout,
drops of sweat glinting on a broad forehead, feet pounding, flags and banners
fluttering, tears streaming down, and always the pushing, the pushing, on and
on. Blood pulsed into Layla's head and she felt a surge of energy (44-5/ 50-1).'

As Layla merges into "the collective being of these thousands of people," she feels
"herself melting into the whole . . . everyone surrounding her, embracing her, pro-
tecting her . . . a voice that joined her whole self to them all." The intense emotion,
feeling of aliveness, and sense of bodily communion becomes a transformative
experience as she seeks to recreate this feeling in other human relationships. In
the scene immediately following the demonstration, she finds this kind of inspi-
ration through a romantic spark. It gives her a feeling that "light coursed deep
within her," "an intense concentrated beam of light pierced her body to settle
inside," and "a light shone from her eyes, lips, and cheeks" (53, 54, 55/ 59, 60, 62).
This sense of vital connection becomes an intuitive compass as Layla navigates
her nascent passions.
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Balanced against this desire for a transformative experience of human con-

tact are the rules of propriety that dictate social interaction. Like the English word
propriety, the Arabic word usai refers to both the conventional rules of behavior
(especially between the sexes) as well as property, proprietorship, and financial
assets.' Al-Zayyät illustrates how propriety becomes intimately tied up in ideas
of ownership that inform the marriage contract. She also demonstrates how class
concerns dictate specific ideas about decorum and manners, becoming a means
of controlling the mating process and bending it towards econornic concerns.
Layla's education in the principles of usül begins at puberty when she enters the
marriage market. Her rich and aristocratic aunts assess Layla's wqrth, apprais-
ing her marriageability as if she was at auction in the market. They handle her
haunches, comment on her features, and inspect her budding breasts. One of the
aunts emphasizes that beauty is a selling point, a virtue that can be increased
through certain clothes and products. "The girl has to have a proper dress, one
that reveals her shape, and she needs a corset to lift her breasts and keep her
middle in . . . This girl's on the brink of marriage now. And like any girl—if she
doesn't dress right, she won't bring any sort of price in the market" (36/41). Layla
later fumes that she is being sold like a slave at market and dressed up to attract
the highest bidding customer. Clothes and cloth become central to the dynamics
of the marriage market, intrinsically linked not just to propiety, but also to the
politics of British textile manufacturing.
For al-Zayyät, a certain class of Egyptians sold out, shifting their alliances
to the wealthy whatever their origin. The word usül also denotes "origins" and its
etymological root can be used to connote asóla (authenticity or purity| of origin) or
astl (being native, indigenous, or genuine). With the trope of usül, asâla, and asTl
permeating the text, al-Zayyät suggests that the reigning propriety is imported,
or at least, of dubious origin. The symbol of this is an uncouth, uncultured, nou-
veau riche upstart who proposes marriage to Layla's cousin Gamlla. Her aunt
emphasizes, "Ar-ragil ma ya'Ibûsh illa gîbO" ("a man's only shame is his pocket"),
a quasi-phallic image equating poverty with sexual impotence, and correspond-
ingly, wealth with sexual power. Although initially repelled by the match, Camila
eventually capitulates, swayed by his handsome assets: a Ford, a Frigidaire, a villa,
a diamond solitaire, a Butagaz, and some French Gibère lace from the department
store Cicurel. Through al-Zayyät's use of these foreign words in the original Arabic,
she underscores the invasion of foreign commodities and values irito Egyptian
culture. GamTla's mother augments the pressure on the girl by talking about
"so-and-so, that girl who'd married for love but then had failed in her marriage,
because after all, material security was the foundation of every successful union
. . . I just want you to have the finest automobile in town, the best dresses; you're
so pretty ... what a loss if such beauty goes to waste" (53-54; 59-60). Money, a car,
and pretty dresses are the usül of the new bourgeoisie, a propriety constructed
out of imported commodities.
Al-Zayyät particularly hones in on the role of imported textiles in exacerbat-
ing Egypt's economic dependency. Clothes, imported cloth, and expensive textiles
play a pivotal role in the courtship process—reflections of status, indicators of
affluence, and determinants of value. By injecting these into the courtship process,
al-Zayyät illustrates the encoding of the political economy into the mating process.
Al-Zayyät criticizes wealth as the most "desirable" characteristic in a potential
 ELLEN MCLARNEY « 191

mate, but mostly insofar as this striving for material comfort reproduces inequali-
ties within the context of the couple. The inequalities created—and the resulting
relationship of dependency and subservience—are compared to Egypt's economic
dependency and subsequent subservience to the British. By focusing on the issue
of expensive fabrics and clothes, al-Zayyât touches a key nerve in the Egyptian
political economy: British control of textile manufacturing, textiles produced with
Egyptian cotton (Rizk).
Al-Zayyat was highly conscious of the role of the textile workers in nationalist
mobilization. They were a major force in "Evacuation Day," the demonstrations
of February 21st 1946, the scene that opens the novel and the historical event that
al-Zayyât herself helped orchestrate (Beinin and Lockman 310-362). Interwoven
into these economics are ideas about usUl as authenticity, usül as property, and ulti-
mately, usfíl as propriety, or the proper relationship between the sexes. As Gamrla
shops for her trousseau, Layla overhears a man remark, "Da mish al-'umâsh
al-aslî, dâ taqlîd," "that's not original cloth, it's an imitation" (103). His wife hisses
back, "Shhh . . . it's original English cloth!" In this case, the original, the "asl" is
the English and the imitation, the Egyptian. The Egyptian cloth is reduced to
being a mere imitation, mimicry of the European product that is the measure of
all value. Gamîla's pervasive use of foreign words in describing the materials she
has bought, Gibère, dentelle, simple, chiffon, modèle, drapée, etc. further emphasizes the
role of these imported commodities in bourgeois propriety. Al-Zayyât plays on the
politics of purchasing as the customers joke that the "occasion" ("sale" in French) is
like a war, and the shoppers like guerrillas (fidâ'iyym, fighters who sacrifice their
lives). The lighthearted reference to guerrilla fighters gives the shopping scene
a tinge of the macabre. In the historical time of the novel, it alludes to the guer-
rilla fighters in the Suez Canal zone, but is also an allusion to the Algerian war of
independence, still being fought when The Open Door was published. Al-Zayyat
extends the dark mood into the next scene. As GamTla tries on her wedding dress,
the Cairo fire breaks out—retaliation for the British massacre of Egyptian police-
men in 1952. The ñames frame Gamila's lace. She stands "motionless as a statue
in her white dress, her back to the sky, a portrait framed in the ropy, ugly masses
of smoke" (150/ 155).
For Gamrla's class of girls, desire cheapens their value. Passion may lead to a
choice of mate based on feeling, and not on worth. Desire, in this sense, threatens
propriety; accordingly, the rules of social interaction denigrate desire as something
shameful, something to be hidden. When Layla's cousin 'Isâm is attracted to her,
he associates these feelings with "a cheap woman in the street," an appraisal
that reduces the object of his desire to the status of a common woman (62). His
observations intermingle connotations of both a working class woman and a
prostitute. It makes Layla into "a cheap thing" according to "moral values . . . the
moral values that he had been taught and that he believed in" (63). In this market
logic of supply and demand, the worth of a commodity diminishes in proportion
to its increasing availability. If a woman's body is a commodity to be consumed,
then withholding it from the market increases its value. One who freely gives
her body loses value in the market. For this reason, 'Isâm concentrates on Layla's
body as an object to be possessed. The reference to the girl as a thing (shai') or a
prey (said) is maintained in its masculine neutral sense throughout the narration
of his thoughts, dehumanizing the sexual object. Through this imagery, al-Zayyât
192 S RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES ©VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3

interweaves connotations of not just private property that needs to be safeguarded,

but of territory. When the parameters of usül are first outlined in the novel, the
author repeatedly returns to the image of boundaries and borders, a word (hudad)
she repeats eight times in one paragraph.'" This spatial delimitation of a person
intimates the self and body as a kind of territory whose borders must be jealously
guarded and defended to maintain its integrity and worth. The violation of "the
bounds of polite conduct... the fundamentals—the rules, the right way to behave"
is a similar compromise in value (22).
'Isam's desire to possess Layla begins to have violent overtones and his over-
tures to resemble blows (111, 114,117,118-19). Layla says to him, "Today you were
looking at me as if I was your enemy, as if you wanted to win some victory over me"
(114). 'Isam's war-like images define the object of his desire as quarry or booty. His
jealousy reaches a peak one evening, at Gamîla's engagement party, culminating
in an attack and a twice-repeated threat to kill her (128, 131). He shouts at Layla,
"You belong to me! You're mine! My property [milkî]\" (130/135). The reiteration of
the body/land trope emphasizes the self-proper and the proper self as property to
be guarded, protected, and sealed off. His final solution to the problem is to take
out his sexual frustrations on the servant girl, affirmed as an acceptable expression
of sexuality within the rules of usûl. (She is "cheap.") This "principle" effectively
confirms that the proper sexual relationship is one of ownership, of a master over
a servant and a man over a woman.
Al-Zayyat plays on the idea of usül as traditional foundations of social inter-
action (which the word connotes), but shows that they have been appropriated by
foreign interests, a colonization of values that has turned Egypt into a class based
society and the relationship between the sexes into one of inequality. The desire
for possession of property and territory is coded into the relationship between
the sexes. Al-Zayyat's criticizes the bourgeoisie for their conception of the female
body as a property value, and the corresponding understanding of the marriage
relationship as one of possession. For al-Zayyat, love promises to break down the
hierarchies between the sexes by injecting desire, attraction, and human compat-
ibility into what has been reduced to a financial transaction or a relationship of
possession. When Layla and their friends talk about their future, they imagine love,
inspired by the novels they read and the films they see (68, 111, 202). Their educa-
tion gives them access to these ideas, planting the dream of companionate mar-
riage in their heads. In Between Marriage and the Market, Homa Hoodfar interviews
a white-collar worker Sadia that echoes their sentiments nearly verbatim:

When I was a teenage schoolgirl in the 1960s we were told about dreams of
modern Egypt, not the Egypt of the rich, but our Egypt. Women were going to
be educated and free themselves from traditional binds. Like all my classmates
at the time, I took that to heart. I believed in love and wanted to marry the man
I chose (63-4).

Sadia, much like Layla or al-Zayyat, associates "traditional binds" with Egypt of
the rich, in contrast to a modern Egypt and a nationalist Egypt, "our Egypt." Hood-
far herself observes that material wellbeing may serve as a source of social security,
but women who marry men of a higher social or economic standing continually
reproduce gender inequality in socioeconomic terms (78). Al-Zayyat understands
 ELLEN MCLARNEY « 193

this kind of relationships as traditional, in addition to associating them with

foreign influence. Although this may seem contradictory, it is not. The traditional
ruling class, the monarchy and aristocracy, made key capitulations to the British,
prolonging their presence long after independence was asserted in both 1919 and
1952. In addition, the industrial bourgeoisie often moved to thwart nationalist
mobilization because it coincided with the workers movement and unionization.
Layla's climactic romance is ultimately with a soldier fighting against the
British in the Suez. The novel culminates in their union under fire, surrounded by
a series of couples joined by love. These epitomize Egypt's new alliances of class
and gender, as they join together against colonial dominance and the hierarchies
it has fostered in Egyptian society. Ironically, it is one of Layla's working class
friends who is the most militant enforcer of usUl in the novel. "She was realistic...
She would always say that love was how the leisure class wasted time... Life was
no rosy dream, nor was it romance. Life was an unvarnished fact: open mouths
demanding nourishment, education; and a meager pension" (199-200/ 208-9). This
perspective contrasts with anther girl, Sana', who is materially well off; appreci-
ates fine poetry, music, and literature; wears beautiful clothes and sweet perfume;
and is "in love with love" (201). She becomes the real model of the novel, vibrant
and glowing with love for Layla's brother MahmOd. She is present in the novel's
final scene, whereas 'Adila fades out of the narrative. Committed couples preside
over the birthing pains of the independent nation, with neither the working class
'Adila nor the bourgeois Gamlla anywhere in sight. It is the moment of middle class
liberation and of its own self-determination. Layla's fiancé writes to her:

Social rules . .. made our class, as a class, stand motionless for so long, on the
sidelines, merely observers to the nationalist movement... Let go, my love, run
forward, connect yourself to others, to the missions of others, to that good land,
our land, to the good people, ours. Then you find love, a love bigger than you and
me... a love that makes one grow: love of the nation, love for its people (210/ 218).

This moment in Egyptian history was this class' moment to move center stage,
a transition that would be effected only through the support of the masses.
Al-Zayyat's socialist ideology criticizes existing social hierarchies, especially the
dominance of the bourgeoisie, with the aim of paving the way for the rise of a new
kind of nationalist middle class.
The Open Door—and her role in the student and workers' movements—
earned al-Zayyat her nationalist credentials. Al-Zayyat's nationalist commitment
would be rewarded with both political and academic posts, culminating in her
assignment to head the "Committee for the Defense of National Culture" in 1979
(in the wake of the Camp David accords). Shortly before her death, a conference
"Literature and the Nation" was convened in al-Zayyat's honor, bringing together
some of the most celebrated luminaries of the Egyptian literary establishment."
But in an interview "On Political Commitment and Feminist Writing," al-Zayyät
describes her own subsequent alienation from the masses in the post-revolution
period, as she lost contact with the workers' movement and became a "woman
who had once thrived on identifying herself with the masses" (250). Beinin and
Lockman describe this process as typical of the radicalized intelligentsia in post-
colonial states. After independence, they distance themselves from the workers
194 « RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES ©VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3

to lay the foundafions for their own ascendancy (16-7). This rise was ultimately
thwarted, though, as 'Abd al-Nasir tightened his grip on power and later, Anwar
Sadat worked to eliminate any vestige of socialist policy from the national stage.
After the triumphant reception of The Open Door, al-Zayyät did not publish
another creative work for over twenty-five years. Although she wrote a play Al-Bay'
xua'l-Shira' (Buying and Selling) in 1966, it did not come out until just before her
death in 1994. The work is a critique of 'Abd al-Nasir as an ailing man on his death-
bed, beholden to the materialist interests of his family. Affer Egypt's spectacular
defeat in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, al-Zayyät comments that the play was "on
the theme of love versus possession. Beside the horror of defeat, the play's subject
seemed trivial... My only political commitment in the field of creative writing is
my preference to keep quiet rather than to send the reader a message of despair"
(256-7). Al-Zayyät's only other novel Sahib al-Bayt (Owner of the House, 1994)
was published in the same year and sends a similar message of despair. In this
work, marriage becomes like a prison, sexuality is mechanical and cold, the nar-
rator becomes paralyzed, a captive. This novel is also partly autobiographical, an
account of her life as a fugitive with her communist husband in 1948. This union,
like the political commitment that informed it, turned out to be a disappointment.
"Did she love Muhammed as an equal, or love being lost in the other and losing
her self? Would she be able some day to bring back by love what she had lost in
love?" (79).

THE ROMANCE OF THE PEASANT

Algerian 'Abd al-Hamîd Ibn Haduqa's Rih al-janüb (The South Wind) similarly vili-
fies the mercenary practices of the marriage market. Published in 1970, the novel
touches on debates about agrarian reform. The story is structured by a plot line
common in the Arabic novel: a girl, pursuing her studies in the capital, returns
home for the summer, only to find a world radically different from the one she has
come to know in the city. In South Wind, Nafîsa's father has decided to marry her off
to shaykh al-baladiyya, the head of the municipality. His reasons are based wholly on
materialistic self-interest: he wants to maintain his considerable land holdings in
the face of impending agrarian reform. The father reflects: "As for the future, there
were his lands [amlakahu] that filled hearts with envy. If the land reform resolved
itself, then his land wouldn't remain his own... The only solution was to get close
to the shaykh al-baladiyya, get his help, something that wouldn't be possible without
a solid bond that tied them, a bond that he discovered when Nafrsa ret:urned from
Algiers" (45). The reforms to which the father refers were in the process of being
formulafed at the time of the novel's writing. The Charter of the Agrarian Revolution
of 1971 "proposed that land owned or expropriated by the government tfrom the
colons] be redistributed to poor and landless peasants" (Farsoun 17). Ibn al-QadT,
Nafrsa's father, is a member of the class that benefited from these expropriated
lands, thanks to his ties to the FLN during the war of independence.
Ibn al-Qädfs use of the word amlak, which can equally refer to lands as well
as colonies, suggests the connection between these landholders and the former
colonizers. One of the most virulent aspects of French colonialism in Algeria was
the confiscation of the most fertile and well-irrigated lands. After independence,
these were converted to state farms, fheoretically operated according to a principle
 ELLEN MCLARNEY « 195

of self-management, envisioned as a kind of socialist communalism (Clegg 121,

Stone 86). In reality, the state technocrats who managed the estates largely repro-
duced the system as it had operated under the colon settlers (Entelis 140-41). The
result was severe socio-economic disparities that forced large scale emigration to
the cities, setting the stage for a major social crisis—in population, housing, educa-
tion, and public services (Bennoune 21, Pfeifer 19-29). The government's emphasis
on the development of heavy industry and technology, at the near total expense of
agrarian reform and social programs, further exacerbated the problem.
The name of fhe shaykh, Malik, meaning proprietor, master, or owner inti-
mates this character's place in the power hierarchy within the novel. Malik, a
former commandant of the local wilâya (a military division) during the war of
independence, has now become a local leader. Ibn Haduqa holds back from overtly
criticizing Malik. (There are intimations of censorship in the novel, as a café
conversation is tailored for government "spies.") The author's characterization of
Malik ambivalently wavers between implicating him with Ibn al-Qadl and pitting
him against the landowner. The name "Malik" associates the character with amlak,
suggesting a tie with Ibn al-Qädl's possessions, wealth, and lands, including his
daughter as chattel. Under agrarian reform, the redistribution of the land was to
be administered by the municipality, the baladiyya, of which Malik is the shaykh, a
kind of mayor. By giving his daughter in marriage, Ibn al-Qädr hopes to safeguard
his lands and to join his interests to those of the new administrative elite as in one
family. This subverts the interests of both Nafîsa and the landless peasants, using
them as mere cogs and tools in the accumulation of more power.
Malik belongs to the class of fighters from the war that ascended to positions
of power after independence. The ambivalence associated with this character
refiects the uncertain position of the FLN in the post-war period. The mujahidln
fought against the colonizers to liberate the country and its people, yet assumed
the colonizers' place as the rulers of the land. The novel deals with the hopeful and
highly symbolic moment of land reform. It was the chance for the government to
break the iron grip of the landowning elite on agriculture, providing a means of
subsistence to the rural poor. The implications of these reforms were broader, how-
ever. Because of the entrenched system of sharecropping, there was widespread
resistance to modernizing the means of production. As a result, Algeria became
increasingly dependent on imported foodstuffs, increasing the national debt, and
making the country once again beholden to foreign governments (Entelis 132-40,
140-48; Bennoune 22). In The South Wind, Ibn Haduqa hopes that the Mäliks will
help break the cycle, projecting onto him a goodwill and commitment to reform.
In the end, however, it all comes out as empty rhetoric, with his abandonment
of the village. This may have been Ibn HadOqa's most apt prediction, since the
agricultural reform did little to change the organization of the rural hierarchy.
Nafîsa's desires lie elsewhere, however, entertained by the sound of the
shepherd'sfiute.'^As she lies in bed dreaming, reading novels, and listening to the
distant music, she touches herself, "gently and tenderly, feeling the strange plea-
sure Bowing through the parts of her body ... murmuring to herself, 'I'm about to
explode in this desert!'" (8). Ibn Hadüqa's descriptions of the shepherd amount to
a virtual paean to the landless peasant, full of innocence and goodness. "He is the
good simple prince of the gentle, peaceable country [mamlaka], the kingdom [mam-
laka] of sheep, the realm [mamlaka] of horizons, of light, of air, of openness, and of
196 « RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES ©VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3

freedom." (90) Mingling romantic notions of the noble peasant with his socialist
commitment, Ibn HadOqa combines what are considered two antithetical liter-
ary movements. The return to the m/ 1/ k root of possession, ruling, dominance,
and ownership in the word mamlaka refers to a natural kingdom, a twist on Ibn
al-Qâdr's amlâk (12). Nafîsa's lusty and vigorous attraction to the good shepherd
will help break the bonds of material exploitation, bringing harmony to the land.
Nafrsa's fantasies reach a pitch at night, lying naked in bed, again listening
to the melody of the flute. The sensations "flowing through her chest, a pain in the
depth of her loins and a spasm in her upper thighs and a part of her belly" make
her long for the hands of the shepherd, though she knew there was "no possibility
of reaching this strange body." This intense scene establishes a close identification
between peasant and woman transcending and violating the class hierarchies
and gender divisions that structure structuring their interactions. This "animality
breaks down all moral shackles, and with it, the efficacy of rational criteria, and
consideration of ideals and values" (96). Like Layla in The Open Door, she "thinks"
with her heart, with an organic (and romantic) absence of inhibitions and vitality
associated with animality. The imaginative breaking down of barriers is acted out
as Rabih the shepherd literally scales the wall of Nafrsa's family home. Penetrat-
ing into the inner sanctuary of the house, he enters the girl's room, catching sight
of her naked body. As she awakes, though, reality intrudes, and she calls him a
criminal (twice), a dirty, filthy shepherd, using the same word (qidhr) that 'Isâm
in The Open Door uses to denigrate his own sexual fantasies. While the pollution
has sexual overtones in this passage, it also speaks of the "social position" of the
shepherd, the "shame from which he cannot escape" (119).
Ibn HadOqa's novel ends with primordial imagery of the garden: running
away, Nafîsa is bitten by a snake in the woods. The shepherd rescues her, caring
for her as he did for Ibn al-Qâdl's sheep (231). "His life as a shepherd trained him
to help the weak. In this case, what was the difference between Nafîsa and a slen-
der sheep, an ewe born in the open country, or a lamb, bitten or stung? She is in
need of help and assistance like any lamb" (237). In this scene, Ibn HadOqa shifts
from the father, the owner of the sheep, to the shepherd who tenderly nurtures
and cares for them, without possessing them. Yet the author still reproduces the
natural hierarchy of man over animal, man over woman. Nafîsa, vulnerable and
weak, is in need of protection. Her "lack of knowledge about the right path" makes
him feel his "manhood and strength anew" (234). Stripped of her class status, the
natural hierarchies of gender reassert themselves, and Rabih takes her home.
Ibn al-Qâdr, robbed of one of his most valuable possessions, is thus reduced
in status. Shamed by his new position, his fall is both moral and economic. "All
esteem had fallen far . . . All the work that he had done all his life to build this
honor and this name, to earn this prestige and respect, destroyed in a moment.
He began to feel shame and to feel humiliation . . . he became an ordinary person
without power or stature or voice . . . This was because the land that he defended
all his life had slipped out of his hands, becoming common property . . . common
property among the ranks of the poor" (242). Nafîsa's flight, her revolt against
her father, is an attempt to claim her right of ownership over the property in her
person. Symbolically, this property is then imparted into the hands of the landless
peasant, who nurtures her back to her original health. Through these images, Ibn
 ELLEN MCLARNEY « 197

Hadüqa sustains the metaphor of woman as tilth, as emblem of a country shackled

by feudal landlords.
In Min Suwar al-Mar'a ft al-Qisas wa al-Riwäyät al-'Arabiyya (Some of the
Images of Woman in Arabic Stories and Novels, 1989), Latîfa al-Zayyat discusses
woman as "personal property" {milkiyya fardiyya) in The South Wind, noting the
father's consideration of his daughter as a possession, like land and livestock.
When she refers to the agrarian reform, however, she erroneously assumes that
the charter entailed the "nationalization" (ta'mim) of the lands. She writes, "Per-
sonal liberation is impossible without collective liberation" (20). Her use of ta'mtm
(to refer to nationalization) from the root umm, mother, or umma, community, is
juxtaposed with her discussion of Nafrsa's shackled mother. This likening of the
liberation of the land to the unshackling of woman makes it nearly impossible to
escape from the land/woman teleology. Al-Zayyat uses a powerful image in the
feminist rhetoric of both Algeria and Egypt: that collective liberation is impossible
without personal liberation.
The novel closes with a tragic, Shakespearean bloodbath. The sudden incur-
sion of Ibn al-Qâdî—who attacks Räbih with a knife—destroys the bucolic bliss
of the shepherd's household. Seized by a kind of shame {khajal), diffidence, and
fear, the shepherd refuses to fight back, instead "submitting like a sheep" (252). In
a final coup de grace, the father puts his foot on Rabih's stomach, "and pointed his
knife toward the boy's neck, resolved to slaughter him in revenge for his 'honor-
able' goods" (252). In defense of her son, the shepherd's mute mother attacks the
landowner, smashing his head in with a hoe. This sacrifice of both rural landowner
and the landless peasant signals Algeria's self-destruction. In the end, NafTsa is
stranded and her destiny undetermined. She returns home in resignation, the
romantic dream of love, the hope of liberation from feudal tyranny, and the prom-
ise of the city all thwarted. In the movie version, however, Räbih and Nafîsa ride
off in a bus to Algiers, outstripping Ibn al-Qâdî, pursuing them on horseback. The
message is: companionate love is the vehicle of modernity.
Ibn Haduqa's later work loses faith in love. In Ban al-Subh, (The Morning
Shone, 1980), desire is vilified, equated with lust and degeneration, losing all pos-
itive association with social equality (68, 76). Instead, it becomes associated with
the decadent pleasures of the "filthy" rich. Ibn Hadüqa describes the hammSm
(the public bath) as a "meat market," also using another word for a second hand
market sûq lil-'awârt that has connotations of nakedness and shame (67,82). This
is where girls' worth on the marriage market is assessed. The novel's heroine
Na'îma is the daughter of a peasant and former mujahid, fighter in the revolu-
tion. She is a paragon of virtue and chastity, proven when a doctor confirms her
virginity. She is an idealized peasant, worker, and activist, purged of her libido,
a near reversal of the premise of The South Wind. Now, work, rather than love,
promises to liberate. Her antithesis is Dalîla, meaning symbol or symptom, a
girl who is only attracted to wealth. The social realism of this novel is a portrait
of social decay, of poverty on one side and the depravity of the wealthy on the
other. It is a document on the failed socialist policies of the Algerian govern-
ment, an inability to either promote social equality or save the nation from its
slide into economic decline. Needless to say, the novel was neither a critical nor
a commercial success.
 198 « RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES ©VOLUME 40 NUMBER3

CAPITALISM'S VENAL, MERCENARY LOVE

Like al-Zayyät and Ibn Haduqa, the feminist critic, novelist, and physician Nawal
al-Sa'dâwî puts her faith in love as a means of overcoming material inequalities
and forming the basis of an equal exchange between the sexes. In her opinion,
love transcends hierarchies, forming a true communion between the sexes, the
foundation of a sound, cooperative community. Simultaneously, she draws an
analogy between economic and sexual exploitation, class and gender inequality.
Her critical work Al-Wajh al-'ÄrTlil-Mar'a al-'Arabiyya (The Naked Face of the Arab
Woman, 1977) extensively explores the economics of sexual exchange.''

The values that we have inherited . . . related to women, sex and love . . . are
no more than reflections of patriarchal and class society, where one class rules
over another, and where man rules over woman. One of the first principles of
honor and love is that no one should be able to subjugate another. If a rich man
oppresses a poor man, this oppression goes against what is considered honor-
able. If a man owns a woman as though she were his property, this relationship
cannot, in its essence, be described as honorable. Honor is justice and equality...
Honorable love is love built on such justice and equality. One of the coriditions
of true love is an exchange, and a necessary condition for exchange is a balance,
an equality between the two partners. Exchange cannot take place between a
master and a slave . . . Real love cannot therefore be based on a relationship
characterized by exploitation of any kind (182).

The idea of love as somehow beyond the market and an element of a more egalitar-
ian, selfless, almost Utopian society appears to be crucial to its own ideology. It is
like a force powerful enough to break down social hierarchies (between master
and slave, rich and poor, man and woman) and establish justice and equality.
Al-Sa'dawT employs the imagery of justice, of an equal balance, but also of equal
exchange.
This idealistic picture of a society founded on real love contrasts with the
materialistic, exploitative reality that al-Sa'dawT sees all around her. Al-Sa'dâwî's
first novel Mudhakkirat Tablba (Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, 1958) holds out hope
for love, eventually being rewarded through hard work and perseverance. By
1977, though, her writing takes on a distinctly pessimistic tone. The novel Imra'a
'ind Nuqtat al-Sifr (Woman at Point Zero, 1977) is clearly a companion piece to
The Naked Face of Eve, treating similar motifs through the medium of fiction. The
novel decries sexuality inflected by consumerism and marriages contracted along
economic lines. Flashes of love become the saving grace, the modicum of hope,
harbored in the face of mercenary values. Both Woman at Point Zero and The Naked
Face of Eve grapple with the implications of Sadat's infitâh policy—the opening of
Egypt to foreign investment—and the food riots that started off 1977, the year both
works were published. Much of Woman at Point Zero is about Egypt as a hungry,
impoverished woman, forced to sell herself for survival. In the novel, women sell
themselves cheaply, trading their bodies for a meal, a sweet, a chicken, an orange
or tangerine (47, 64, 65). Receiving little in return, they remain famished, needing
more. The narrator Firdaus compares the workers in a corporation to prostitutes,
exchanging their bodies for:
 ELLEN MCLARNEY S 199

A mere rise in salary, an invitation to dinner, a drive along the Nile in someone's
car... the price I was supposed to pay in order to gain my director's good will...
the other girls... were guileless enough to offer their bodies and their physical
efforts every night in return for a meal, or a good yearly report, or just to ensure
that they would not be treated unfairly, or discriminated against . . . All of us
were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices (75-6).

The political allegory remains implicit in the novelistic narrative, but becomes
more explicit in The Naked Pace of the Arab Woman. Al-Sa'dâwî argues that with the
opening of Egypt's doors to capitalism, women's bodies have become commodified
in the media and cheap sexuality and female nudity are used to sell products. The
solution to this is a consistent socialist agenda and economic legislation "aiming
at insuring real social justice." Only then can women exercise the same "economic,
social, moral and personal rights enjoyed by men" (75-7)."
Echoing Engels and Lenin, al-Sa'däwl theorizes marriage as a "property right
or property contract," marriage as a feudal system, and money as the "foundation
of morals" (61,123,140,143).'^ "The lowest paid body is that of the wife," she writes
in Woman at Point Zero, "All women are prostitutes of one kind or another" (91).
Her argument is not far from Carol Pafeman's in the Sexual Contract, a similar com-
parison of fhe marriage contract to selling the body for financial recompense. Both
Pateman and al-Sa'däwi agree, though, that the prostitute is better compensated
(Pateman 190). Not only are corporate relationships—and the relationship between
employers and employees, managers and workers, men and women—sexualized,
but the marital relationship becomes corporatized and commercialized. In the
novel's climactic scene, al-Sa'dâwI takes this fiscal conception of sexual exchange
to its logical extreme: identifying flesh as a kind of currency. Ripping up a sexual
client's 3000 Egyptian pounds cash, Firdaus feels fhaf she is tearing away the flesh
of her fingers, leaving nothing but the bone (98). She says that she is destroying
all the money she "had ever known," as well as all the men she "had ever known,"
trying to destroy the money dictating these relations.
The novel climaxes with a final allegorical scene where Firdaus tries to take
final control of the instruments of her dominafion. All along, she asserts the power
she feels of money in her hands. She tries to take control of her body and her profits
by seizing her pimp's knife and fuming it on him. Plunging the knife deep into
his fiesh, into his neck, chest, and belly, it becomes "a reversal of the male act of
penetration," as al-Sa'däwT critic Fedwa Malfi-Douglas observes (49, 59). In the
novel, Firdaus's eyes are described as "two killer eyes, like a knife, penetrating,
deep" (6). Another critic, Jûrj Tarabîshl, comes to a similar conclusion, although he
implicates Firdaus's desires with those of al-Sa'däwT. Sex roles are inverted as the
author attempts to appropriate—and usurp—the tools of male power (including
such instruments as eyes,fingers,needles, scalpels, and the pen) (26, 29). Although
Tarabîshî stresses the phallo-centrism of this reversal, he does not refer directly
to the knife, but to money as the locus of male power. "Money is a symbol," he
declares, "money = penis" (28). As evidence, he quotes extensively from a scene
where Firdaus receives her first ten-pound bill in return for her services. Clutching
the banknote in her hand, she feels a pleasure described in sexualized images.
200 Ä RESEARCH IN AERICAN LITERATURES ® VOLUME 40 NUMBER3

The sudden contact sent a strange tautness through my body, an inner con-
traction as though something had jumped inside me and shaken my body . . .
something was pulsating out from a wound buried deep in my guts . . ^ I could
feel it rise up to my belly like a shiver, like blood beating strongly through the
veins. The hot blood ... [became] a flow of warm rich saliva, bringing with it a
savor of pleasure, so strong, so poignant that it was almost bitter (65).

When Firdaus rips up the money, he interprets the scene as a castration, "accom-
panied by a 'massacre' on the level of values. In the same way as the notion of
'value' in human society (patriarchal since the beginnings of recorded history)
is a male, father-oriented value" (30). The massacre of the value system, however,
leads to Firdaus's own self-destruction, negating her own value, reducing her to
nothing. She even loses her claim to her own body as property. At the novel's finale,
she is executed as punishment for her crime. This execution is the inversion of
al-Sa'dâwî's first novel, which ends with what Malti-Douglas calls a "metaphori-
cal birth" (34). This "birth" is brought about through partnership and cooperative
labor between the sexes. With the transition to a capitalist society, this nascent
hope for human relations is extinguished with the finality of death.

CONCLUSION

In Masculine Domination, Pierre Bourdieu echoes these authors' understanding of

the transcendent quality of love. He goes so far as to refer to love as an "'enchanted
isle,' a closed and perfectly autarkic world."

In the economy of symbolic exchanges ... the supreme . . . gift [is] of the self, and
of one's body, a sacred object, excluded from commercial circulation. [Such]
durable and non-instrumental relations ... are diametrically opposed ... to the
exchanges of the labor market, which are temporary and strictly instrumen-
tal relations between indifferent, interchangeable agents—of which venal or
mercenary love represents the ultimate case (110-11).

The illusion of a separate, autonomous private world has always been an essential
illusion of capitalist society. The private realm has been perceived as distinct
from the political: untouched, feminine, emotional, imaginary, romantic, unreal.
Bourdieu assumes that the body is somehow outside of commercial circula-
tion, and yet like al-Sa'dâwî, he cannot escape from the economic terminology
that structures his discourse. His use of the word autarkic, intimating national
economic self-sufficiency, to describe the "loving dyad," echoes al-Zayyat's
understanding of love as autonomous from foreign influence.
The early works of al-Zayyat, Ibn HadOqa, and al-Sa'dawT demonstrate an
idealistic and Utopian faith in the power of love. Such an honorable loye of justice
and equality, as al-Sa'dawI calls it, has the potential to overcome the capitalist idea
of ownership and possession in sexual relationships. Desire plays a precarious
and powerful role in motivating the disinterested gift of the self, the voluntary
communalism of the couple, and the commitment implicit in the dedication of the
body. Each of the authors is acutely aware how easily the balance of this exchange
can shift, transforming into jealousy, possessiveness, and a sense of ownership
of property. Al-Sa'dawT pessimistically reduces male/female relationships to
 ELLEN MCLARNEY « 201

exploitative and purely material transactions, what Bourdieu calls "instrumental

relations," "the icy waters of calculation, violence, and self-interest" (110). Each
of the authors draws close parallels between class and gender inequalities. Their
criticism of male dominance becomes a simultaneous criticism of the British over
the Egyptians, the Palace over the people, the aristocracy over the middle class,
the industrial bourgeoisie over the workers, the landowners over the peasants,
capitalism over socialism. As al-Sa'dâwî observes in The Naked Face of the Arab
Woman, there will be no justice between the sexes without larger social justice (140,
180). She then calls for a socialist policy legislating, in addition to economic reform,
"the relationships between men and women, abolishing the dominion of men over
women in all spheres of life, ensuring for women the exercise of all the economic,
social, moral and personal rights enjoyed by men" (181).""
Theory of the novel has struggled to understand the relationship between
the European novel and its non-Western counterparts. Arab critics have asked:
Is it a borrowed genre, an adapted one, or does it have its own indigenous roots?
What kind of values may have been transmitted on the heels of this literary form
(Hafez 22-3)? Romance is one of them, although adapted to the specific political
ends of the Arabic novel. These works function like nationalist romances, a genre
described by Doris Sommer in the context of Latin American literature. But these
postcolonial Arabic novels grew out of the Algerian (1954-62) and Egyptian (1952)
revolutions. Not only do they belong to a completely different historical moment
and political context, but they are inflected with the socialist ideology that perme-
ated the cultural scene at the time. Ibn HadOqa, al-Zayyât, and al-Sa'dâwî roman-
ticize unions with the masses, with the workers, the peasants, and the prostitutes.
But the continued reality of class conflict compromises their Utopian visions. Their
desire to transform social hierarchies is thwarted, becoming lost dreams of an
idealistic, heady youth.

NOTES
1. For "the consolidation of bourgeois power" in the English novel, see Mary
Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). For the novel's role in constructing the
private domain as outside the political, see Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic
Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
2. There was a wave of critics calling for political commitment in literature, or
iltizâm. Among the most important are: 'Abd al-'A:zîm Anís and Mahmud Amîn
al-'Alim's Fr al-Thaqäfa al-Misriyya [On Egyptian Culture] (Cairo: Dar al-Thaqäfa
al-Jadîda, 1989 [1955]), ChâlîShukrî's Adabal-MuqSwamah [Resistance Literature] (Cairo:
Dar al-Ma'ârif, 1970) and Al-Markûsiyya wa al-Adab [Marxism and Literature] (Beirut:
Al-Mu'ssasa al-'Arabiyya lil-Dirâsa wa al-Nashr, 1979).
3. For a discussion of the countries of the Maghrib, see Elbaki Hermassi, Leader-
ship and National Development in North Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1972). For Egypt, see Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: National-
ism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class: 1882-1954 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1987).
4. Ibn HadOqa's name is commonly transliterated (and recognized) as Abdelhamid
Benhedouga. Similarly, Nawal al-Sa'dâwî's name is more commonly spelled as Nawal
El Saadawi. Because this article deals with these works as manifestations of Arabic lit-
erature, their proper Arabic transliteration will be retained. This is important because
202 « RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES® VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3

of the linguistic struggles that have characterized Algerian literature in general and
the Algerian novel in particular. For reference purposes, the common transliterations of
Ibn HadOqa and al-Sa'dâwî's names are included in brackets in the list of Works Cited.
5. For a discussion of growing privatization and state capitalism in the face of a
consistent claim to "Islamic socialism," see Marnia Lazreg, The Emergence of Classes in
Algeria: A Study of Colonialism and Socio-Political Change (Boulder, CO: West view, 1976).
On the case of state capitalism in Egypt, see Mahmoud Abdel-Fadil, The Political Econ-
omy ofNasserism: A Study in Employment and Income Distribution Policies in Urban Egypt
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) and Joel Beinin and Ellis Goldberg,
"Egypt's Transition under Nasser," MERIP Reports (July-August 1982): 23-6.
6. For an alternative reading of this dominant interpretation, see Peter Smith,
Public and Private Value: Studies in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984) 50-1.
7. The zagharld are "shrill, long-drawn and trilling sounds (as a manifestation of
joy by Arab women)" (Wehr 439).
8. Page numbers from Marilyn Booth's English translation of The Open Door are
cited after a slash. All other translations from the Arabic are mine (indicated by only
one page number).
9. Usül, plural of asl, "principles, fundamentals, rudiments, elements . . . code
of conduct; guidelines; ancestors . . . real estate, landed property; assets (financial)
. . . capital assets" (Wehr 19). Propriety refers to both "private ownership" as well as
the "standard of what is socially acceptable in conduct, behavior, speech: DECORUM;
often: prudent regard for or fear of offending against conventional rules of behavior
especially as between the sexes . .. plural: the customs and manners of polite society:
conventionally correct behavior (Webster's).
10. "She grew to the realization that to reach womanhood was to enter a prison
where the confines Qiudüd) of one's life were clearly and decisively fixed. At its door
stood her father, her brother, and her mother. Prison life, she discovered, is painful
for both the warden and the woman he imprisons. The warden cannot sleep at night,
fearful that the prisoner will fly, anxious lest that prisoner escape the confines (hudud).
Those prison limits (hudud) are marked by trenches, deeply dredged by ordinary folk,
by all of them; by people who heed the limits (hudud) and have made thernselves sen-
tries. Yet the prisoner feels in her bones that she is strong, that she has powers within
her, ones she has never before sensed; she knows the abrupt and shocking strength of
a body developing, growing . . . She sees forces in her body that those border trenches
work to enclose and contain [encircle her with borders] (hudud); and she knows pow-
ers in her mind that the confines (hudud) themselves work to impound. For they are
insensible limits (hudud) that neither hear, nor see, nor perceive. Layla's father had
outlined those confines (hudud) as the family sat around the table for lunch" (21/24).
11. For biographical elements of al-Zayyat's life, testimonies, literary criticism, and
the relationship between her engagement with Egyptian nationalism and socialism
and her writings, see the collection of essays from the conference LatTfa at-ZayySt, Al-
Adab wa al-Watan [Latifa al-Zayyat, Literature and Nation] (Cairo: Nur, Dar al-Mar'a
al-'Arabiyya lil-Nashr, 1996). The literary magazine Adab wa Naqd [Literature and Criti-
cism] also published a special issue commemorating al-Zayyat's seventieth birthday.
LatTfa al-Zayyat: Min al-Darüra Ha al-Hurriyya [Latifa al-Zayyat: From Corrimitment to
Freedom] 106 (June 1994): 31-95.
12. The nay, the reed flute, evokes romantic poetry, epitomized in Jibrän KhalTl
Jibran's classic poem 'Atînî al-Nay ("Give Me the Flute"). It sings of the simple joys of
nature, like sleeping under the stars: "Has the grass been your bed at night and the
cosmos your cover?"
 ELLEN MCLARNEY « 203

13. In the English translation of The Naked Face of The Arab Woman, al-Sa'dawi's pub-
lisher renders the title as The Hidden Face of Eve, a complete inversion of the original's
meaning. The latter title negates the sense of candor and exposure of the original, and
also superimposes the orientalist sense of the Arab woman's veiled face.
14. In the English version of this work, the chapter on "Arab Woman and Socialism"
was cut, perhaps to enhance the work's saleability on the international market. Amal
Amireh criticizes al-Sa'dâwî's popularity in the West and her "emergence into visibility
. . . over-determined by the political-economic circumstances of first-world—third-
world relations of production and consumption" (215). She argues that al-Sa'dawT has
produced stereotyped images of oppressor Arab males for consumption in the West, an
audience not sensitive to the author's subtle criticisms of foreign influence. Amireh also
notes that an introductory chapter in support of the Iranian revolution was similarly
removed from the US edition.
15. In Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels observes that "the
woman was degraded and reduced in servitude; she became the slave of [the man's
lust] and a mere instrument in the production of children" (165). In The Emancipation of
Women, Lenin writes, "The female half of the human race is doubly oppressed under
capitalism. The working woman and the peasant woman are oppressed by capital
. . . and the law does not give them equality with men . . . they remain in 'household
bondage,' they continue to be 'household slaves,' for they are overburdened with
drudgery" (83-4).
16. Egyptian novelist Salwa Bakr, however, has criticized al-Sa'dâwI for focusing
too much on sexuality rather than women's inferior economic status (al-Ali 65).

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