The Other in Modern Meddle Eastern Arabic Novel

The Other
In Modern Middle Eastern Arabic Novel

Najim A. Kadhim Al-Dyni
Prof. of Criticism, Comparative and Modern Literature
University of Baghdad – College of Arts, Iraq
Visiting Professor – University of Exeter, UK

The Paper and its writer are sponsored and supported by
Iraq Scholar Rescue Project (ISR)/Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF)

The Other
In Modern Middle Eastern Arabic Novel
Najim A. Kadhim Al-Dyni

Preface: Personal Experiences
Firstly, I would like to thank everybody who have let the experience of being with others happened to me and accordingly tempted me to write on the subject. Starting with this personal feeling and experience, let us move to real personal experiences which relates to the controversial subject of my paper.([1])
When I decided to go back to my country, Iraq in 2003, and that was after seven years of being away from my folks and relatives, I felt something which I had never felt before. In the beginning, big questions arose inside me, which were: How will I bear the impact of seeing my country occupied by foreign forces? And what forces? They were the Agley Americans. How can I see those invaders there? What shall I do when I see any of them on my way home? Anyway, despite the fact that that aching feeling towards those invaders invaded my consciousness, and certainly my unconsciousness, I went through the unfamiliar experience of making my way back home. Then, as if fate wanted me to experience the pain and confusion very early, I glimpsed, in the very first of my steps on Iraqi soil, a military tank and not far from it an American soldier, like whom I had never seen a single one before but on TV and in films. I could hardly avoid looking at him. But again as if fate wanted me to confront the unconsciously unwanted reality, I found I could not help myself approaching the American soldier, because he was standing near the place where passports had to be stamped. When I was two or three feet from him he unexpectedly smiled at me and asked: Coming home? Hesitatingly, and trying to avoid anymore talk with him, I answered in an unfriendly cold and faint single word: Yes. In spite of my apparently impolite reply, the soldier then said: You are welcome home. I could hardly smile at him. But as if he was insisting on communicating with me, he went on asking many other questions, I found that I could not but respond and even make some comments. Then suddenly I felt that that enemy was just an ordinary person, an ordinary human being and perhaps even a very nice and shy young man, especially as he was seen by neutral eyes. Afterwards, during the next few months, I tried to keep myself from thinking of that experience and the contrasting images of the Americans, and of course to some extent the Westerners that I had, but I could not.
That experience made me recall two other similar experiences that I had had before. The image of Britain has been always that of the colonialist and imperialist, and the image of The United States of America has been always that of the big enemy of the Arabs. These images had always been in our minds, and frankly speaking, I could not and cannot say that they are wrong. However, in 1980 I went to Britain to study and spent four years which are still the happiest and most beautiful and profitable years in my life, especially in terms of academic career, and in 1989 I was invited to USA to spend five weeks in more than ten states where I met dozens of friendly American writers, scholars, artists, politicians, journalists and even ordinary people some of whom invited me for lunch, dinner, walking, evenings and even to spend days in their own homes.
Now when I come to the present day I find again the same contrasting images. Considering their dirty war in Iraq and personally experiencing what they have done in it, I cannot remember Tony Blair and his followed example Bush but as big lairs, criminals and barbarians, and I think that this is what so many Iraqis and Arabs think. This being said, I, again, cannot accept this apparent fact without considering the other living fact. That I have just received academic and scientific advantages and enjoyed the lovely days in some European countries of which one was Britain, with many who relate, in one way or another, to those who invaded my country. In some of my studies and researches, I have been also received remarkable supports from some American academics most of whom do not support that dirty war. In short, I am again in the midst of the unresolved confusion and intellectual and moral predicament.
During the last eight or ten years I have been thinking of the big issue that connect all these experiences, that is the confusing Arab-West relations and the contradictory images of the West and the Westerners which had been made in the minds of the Arabs, and all this as it is expressed in literature.

Methodological Notes
Before moving to our theme, ‘the other in Middle Eastern Arabic Novel’ I want to illustrate three points about the other in Arabic literature in general from which my paper stems.
The First Point: Apart from the general linguistic or lexical use of the word ‘Other’; there are several uses of it as a term. One of them is that of so-called the Continental Philosophy “which includes thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida and Habermas, and is characterised by such movements as existentialism, hermeneutics and deconstructionism”([2]). and some others traditions and practices apart from the analytic ones. The second use is that of psychology which often means a person other than oneself. It has sometimes been used in social science to understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude ‘Others’ whom they want to subordinate or who do not, from those societies’ and groups’ point of view, fit into their society.
Now, to define our ‘Other’, which is different, to some extent, from all of those meanings, we need to define firstly who we are, as the ‘Other’, in the different Arabic discourses, is used as a contrast of one or more of three identities: Arabs, Muslims and East or Eastern peoples. When by ‘We’ I mean in my paper the Arabs of the Middle East, the ‘Other’, then must be all non Arabs. But because the West or Westerners are the most important and influential of all others in our life and, at the same time, the most different of all of them from us, the ‘Other’ has meant basically the West and Westerns, and this what we mean here. In this case and concerning the title of the paper, it is not inaccurate if may say, instead of ‘the Other’, ‘the West and the Westerns’.
The Second Point: Being about the West and the Westerns in the first place, the study of the novel in this paper concentrates not on the novelistic work as a whole but on the characters and the ways in which they are presented. Relating to this, I must admit that, on the contrary to what most of the critical theories of the second half of the twentieth century adopt, we allow ourselves to deal not with the a novel we are reading itself as an artistic work only, but with the atmosphere and the writer’s point of view. However, in the end we try to interpret everything mostly according to the special view point which the text provides.
The Third Point: It is said, especially by the Russian formalists, that there is a basic difference between poetry and prose in general and fiction in specific: that is, only the first is figurative. Though it is also said that the language of both of them could be figurative, it is still correct that there are differences between the two kinds of forms whether in their language or in the way by which each of them deals with things, subjects or the whole materials. Besides, there is another difference between them, and it is an important one as far as our study is concerned. That is, because the poetical discourse is of only the poet’s voice, it represents the subjective attitude and point of view of him/her. The novelistic discourse, on the other hand, being dialogic, multi-voices and to some extent neutral, presents different and objective voices, attitudes and points of view only one of which might be of the author. Therefore, I have found that studying the other in both poetry and fiction would not be a right methodological work, and subsequently I have decided to study the novel.

The Study of the Other in Arabic Novel
There have been many books, papers and essays written in the last four decades, about the ‘Other’ or ‘We and the Other’, in modern Arabic literature. In his famous book Orientalism and his other writing, Edward Said focuses on the images of the Arabs from the Western point of view, especially in the colonial period, more than those of the Westerns which are made by the Arabs. Apart from these Said’s works, perhaps the most important pioneer book is that of Jorge Tarabishi Sharq wa-Gharb Rijoola wa-Unutha, (East and West Virility and Femininity, 1979). This has been always a very remarkable and profound book despite the reservations made about his sexual vision of the relation and the East-West encounter.That is why praising one of the novels which deals with the East-West encounter, he says,
It was able to treat the cultural relation between the East and West appropriately through the sexual relation between the educated Eastern man and the Western woman.([3])
Among the latest of these studies is a book entitled Arab Representation of the Occident, East-West Encounter in Arabic Fiction, which is written in English by Rasheed El-Enany. In my opinion, this book is one of, if not the best and most important of works written about the theme in the last two or three decades. If there is any reservation that one might make about it, it is that it covers a very long period. From the critical point of view, this would be convincing as long as we are only concerned with the literary work itself and the inside literary world. However, aware of this, Prof. Rasheed divides this long period into four parts and deals with the novels and representations of each separately. Besides, he says,
Considering the substantial scope of this study covering two centuries of writing and the large number of authors from different periods of development and different geographical regions of the Arab world at different stages in their intellectual evolution; considering also that the bulk of the works examined comes from narrative genres, and particularly the novel, which emerged in Arabic letters only half way through the two centuries under study here, it is inevitable that the literary quality of the works studied and the creative talent behind them will vary widely.([4])
uch study, in my opinion, is not just a critical study. It, like any other similar study, deals with social subjects. Therefore, we must take into account the changing society from which the novels, and indeed all literary works we study stem, and therefore they subsequently change. Besides, I think that we often expect fiction, especially novel to give us the illusion of the ‘real’. As long as we deal with societies, historical and social phenomena and real people as they are represented in literary or artistic works, we cannot but consider the outside world. As the novelist’s version and point of view are based chiefly on his/her experience in real life, on what is going on in society, on the social and political events and on the relations between the East and the West, so such version and point of view are changeable according to the changes that take place in the world.
Our contributions are represented in three books, four papers and many essays. This paper is built on some of these previous contributions, not to say disregarding the other scholars and writers’ studies. However, I do not agree with some of these writers and scholars, who think that “the Arabs, in the modern age, have not made a real image of the West” ([5]). I think that they have actually made many various images most of which are based on changing facts and realities of the different historic and literary periods and eras. Relating to all of what we have so far discussed, there are, I believe, five major factors which are responsible for the those images of the West and Westerners which are found in Arabic novel and literature in general. They are as follows:
-Colonialism and foreign presence, particularly military forces, in the Arab World, such as the British, the French and the American presence.
-The Arab-Israeli conflict and the mostly pro-Israel attitudes of the Western states towards it.
-The prior and already established intellectual, cultural, political, social, ideological and doctrinal backgrounds of the novelists.
-The media, whether that of the West which mostly represents various lobbies, or that of the Arab World which mostly represents various governments and groups.
-The personal experiences of Arab novelists being with Westerners whether in these novelists’ countries or in the West itself.
Under the influence of these major factors, and perhaps of some others of less importance, the images of the Western Other in the Arab consciousness and unconsciousness must be changed from time to time. This is due to the historical, social and political changes in the different stages of the modern Arab World and in the nature of Arab-Western relations. As the West and Westerners have always been presented by modern Arabic literature in general and the novel in specific, I find that their representation in the Arabic novel has gone through three main stages. They are as follows:
Stage One: The stage of encounter and admiration: This stage lasts from mid-nineteenth century to the First World War. The works of that stage were semi-fictional or sometimes attempted to be just novels. However, they presented mostly personal impressions that reflected the first Arab-Western encounters and mainly with Arabic admiration and respect. Perhaps the most significant works that deserve to be mentioned here, and they are not but semi-novels, are Takhlis al-Ibriz fi Talkhis Bariz (1834), by Rifa’a al-Tahtawi, ‘Alam al-Din (1883), by ‘Ali Mubarak and the most important Layali Satih (1907), by Hafiz Ibrahim.
Stage Two: The stage of attempts of understanding and confrontation: The stage lasts from the First World War to the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. The novels of that stage reflect the continuing encounter accompanied sometimes by the mixture of the cultural and colonialist of the West. It is certain that the most important and mature of the novels of this stage are ‘Asfur min al-sharq (1938), by Tawfiq Al-Hakim, Qindil um Hashim (1944), by Yahya Haqqi, Al-Hay al-latini (1953), by Suhayl Idris and I prefer to add Al-Tayyib Salih’s Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-shimal though it was published in 1970.
Stage Three: The Stage of the struggle and attempts of assimilation: This stage lasts from the Arab-Israeli war in 1967 the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 or may be to the present day. There are many examples available, such as the Saudi Abdulrahman Munif’s Sibaq al-Masafat al-Tawila (1979), the Egyptian Radhwa ‘Ashur’s Al-Rihla (1983), the Jordanian-Palestinian Layla Al-Atrash’s Wa-Tashruq Gharban (1987), the Iraqi Mehdi ‘Isa Al-Saqr’s Al-Shahida wa-al-Zinji (1988), the Jordanian Muhmmad Azzuqa’s Al-thalj al-Aswad (1988), the Palestinian Sahar Khalifa’s Al-Mirath (1990), the Iraqi Batul Al-Khudhayri’s Kam Badat al-Sama’ Qariba (1999), and the Iraqi Maysalun Hadi’s three novels, Al-Hudud al-Barriyya (2004), Nubu’t Fir’awn (2007),and Hulum Wardi Fatih al-Lawn (2008). While these and other novels of this stage, with which our paper is concerned, present relatively different images of the West and the Westerners, the dominant of them are those which depict them negatively, as we will see in the following sections.

The Negative Images of the West
In most of my books and long studies which are concerned with the (Other) theme, I tabulate the images of the other according to the differentiated particularity of every small group of images, and some time even to every single image, and deal with them in detail in separate chapters, sections or other research unites. Now, while I have, in such works, enough space for such separated detailed groups, I feel that I do not in this paper. Therefore, I have to deal with them in it in a different way. However, despite so many categories that one can put the images of the West in, and due to the limited space I have here, I would prefer to narrow them down to two major parts. It is logical and natural to divide them as they are reflected into two parts according to the way they are depicted and presented in the Middle Eastern Arabic novel. The first is of those which present the other negatively and the second is of those which present it positively. I am going here to dwell upon each of the two groups in general. I have, though, to mention the minor images within to which I am thinking to go back sometime later, in order to find out how the Arabic novels and Arab novelists, particularly in the Middle East, look to the West and Westerners. In the end we will evaluate this and sum up the vision of the present and potential future Arab-West relationship from what is supposed to be, to some extent, the Arab point of view at least as it is represented in literature.
I prefer to start with the negative images simply because they are more numerous and diverse. It might be unexpected to say that we can hardly find any novel that deals with the West, which does not present negative image of the West and the Westerns. This includes even those which principally present positive images. In fact, of the thirty or more novels which I have examined, there are very few novels that completely glorify the West or the Westerns.
Most of the examples of the negative image are those which present Western individuals, groups and communities as hostile and unfriendly. These hostile individual, groups or communities are seen or confronted by the Arab protagonists who usually have such unpleasant experiences in the West, while they are staying there as students or refugees in most of the cases. Among the novels which present this image is Nura (Nora, 1981), by the Iraqi Naji Al-Tikriti, Al-Rihla: Ayyam Taliba Misriyya fi Amrika (The Journey: Days of an Egyptian Student in America, 1987) by the Egyptian Radhwa ‘Ashur, Al-Riqs ‘ala al-Ma’ (Dancing on the Water, 2000) by the Iraqi and Al-Hudud al-Barriyya (Land border, 2004), by the Iraqi Maysalun Hadi([6]). In all these novels, the protagonists are confronted by unfriendly or racist Westerners, weather in Britain as in the first novel, or in the United States as in the second, or in Sweden as in the third or elsewhere. Let us give one example, and it is from Al-Bayyati’s novel. It is a dialogue between the main character who is an Iraqi refugee and a Swedish man who says to him:
You are terrorists, the most violent nation… Do not you think that immigrants are a dangerously threat to our democracy? (p)
The second negative image is what I call the ‘Suspicion-Raising Westerner’. I mean by this that there are, in many novels, Western characters who, living for some reasons in Arab countries, behave strangely or look, according to Arab characters, untrustworthy. Such characters are, very often, seen in the images of the West in general or of specific Western countries such as the United states in the Egyptian Sun’ Allah Ibrahim’s novel Al-Lujna (The committee, 1980). Among the other novels are Amsi kana Ghadan (Yesterday was Tomorrow, 1992) by the Iraqi Kadhim Al-Ahmadi and Wa-Tashruq Gharban, (Sun Rises from the West, 1987) by the Palestinian-Jordanian Layla Al-Atrash. The events in this last one take place near Jerusalem before it was occupied by the Israelis in 1967. The main character, who is a teenage girl, meets an assumed American tourist lady who is looking for places which are off the tourist track. As suspicion arises in the teenage girl, she discovers, in the end and after she has gone back to America, that the lady is not an innocent tourist.([7])
The most extreme of these negative images is one which is not concerned with the West or the Western countries and peoples in general. It is concerned exclusively with the United States and the Americans who are depicted as extremely hostile and ugly. That is why I call this image, in my studies, (The Ugly American) which is originally the title of a political novel by Eugene Burdick (1918-1965) and William Lederer (B. 1912), published in 1958. In such images, American characters really look ugly, whether in their personalitie, in their behaviours or even in their ways of talking. Among examples of such image, there are minor characters in Radhwa ‘Ashur’s previous novel Al-Rihla, in the Jordanian Muhammad Azzuqa’s novel Al-Thalj al-Aswad (The Black Snows, 1988), in Maysalun Hadi’s Al-Hudud Al-Barriyya and the most important and obvious in the Iraqi Mahdi ‘Isa Al-Saqr’s novel Al-Shahida wa-al-Zinji (The Wetness Girl and the Negro, 1987). In his personality and behaviour, the American appears, in this last novel, offensive, bad, wicked and ugly. He is seen and felt so especially by Najat, the Iraqi naive female witness of a murder with whom he is investigating throughout the novel. Though she is only a witness, she always finds the American colonel offensive and cruel with her:
She heard him mumbling…
-So, this is the pitch?
She did not understand his words. However, she realized from the tone of his voice that he had said something bad about her. (p25)
Because the Western woman appears so widely among the Western characters of this category, some of whom are main ones, I find that the Western female characters deserve to be studied separately. ([8]) However, this Western woman is, very often, presented in Arabic novel in general negatively. If not immoral, she is certainly, from the Arab characters’ points of view, not of any kind of decency. Let us see how the main character of the Iraqi ‘Ali Khayyun’s novel Al-‘Azf fi Makan Sahkhib (Playing Music in a Noisy Place, 1987) describes his uncle’s English wife:
Marry came back from work. I was surprised by her sexy appearance, wearing clothes that did not cover her white underwear… (Following her), I went in as I am looking at her underwear through her thin clothes. (p.85)
Of the other women who are presented in such image, in one way or another, there are Janet, the protagonist’s mistress in Al-Thalj al-Aswad by Azzuqa and the Iraqi father’s English wife in Batul Al-Khudayri’s Kam Badat al-Sma’ Qariba (How Close the Sky appeared!, 1999).(See p.77). In some of such examples of the negative image of the Western woman, this woman is, in a way of another, the dominant side of the West-East encounter, and the (male) Eastern protagonist will normally have ambivalent feelings for the Western woman, feelings of both attraction and caution, fascination and doubt. The female other will normally be characterized as a doer, an initiator of action, a leader and educator in relation to the male Easterner, whose traumatic, sobering encounter with her leads him eventually to self-discovery both on the individual and allegorical levels”.([9])
There is another image of the Western woman which is presented in some novels. That is the woman who passionately loves an Arab. This beloved Arab, who is of course the protagonist, very often looks as if he was the Arab prince or knights the women dream of all of their lives.([10]) To me, this protagonist looks as if he is the author himself as a dreamer, the Arab who has rightly or wrongly has such an idea about the Western Woman, or the Arab intellectual who practises a kind of self revenge for what the colonial West has done to his/her people. Obviously, this reminds us of Said’s relations with Western women in the very famous novel of the Sudanese Al-Tayyib Salih Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-shimal (The Season of the immigration to the North, 1970) which is not included in our study. However, such image appears in Azzuqa’s Al-Thalj al-Aswad, the Lebanese Hanan Al-Shaykh’s Misk al-Ghazal (Musk of Gazelle, 1996).
Being in a public place in Jordan, Janet, the American woman, says to Said, the Jordanian protagonist of Azzuqa’s novel,

• Let us go back to the car before the last of the cells of logic in my heads collapses and I rape you.
  Said replies,
• Take it easy, dear. I know that I am so sexy, handsome and smart that I am irresistible… (p. 40)
  As far as the life in the West are concerned, some novels present only the defects and negative aspects in it, as seen by the novelists and their Arab characters namely crime, racism, materialism, the weakness of social relations, and the feeling of loneliness. Among the main novels which do this is the Saudi Abdulrahman Munif’s Sibaq al-Masafat al-Tawila (The Long-Distance Race, 1979), Al-Bayyati’s Al-Riqs ‘Ala al-Ma’, ‘Ashur’s Al-Rihla and Azzuqa Al-Thalj al-Aswad, in which the protagonist is told that:
  Most of the people here do not know each other, and the high crime rates make them cautious and careful with strangers. (p)

The Positive Images of the Other
Although the negative images are dominant compared with the positive ones, the latter are still found in most of the novels which present the West. I think that this apparent contradictory statement needs to be explained. That is the positive image is not dominant or relating to main characters except in a single novel which is ‘Imarat Ya’qubyan by ‘Ala’ Al-Aswani. However this can be found, but not in a big deal, in few novels such as Al-Taw’am al-Mafqud (The Lost Twin, 2001) by Salim Matar and Shufuni Shufuni (Watch Me Watch Me, 2001) by Samira Al-Mani’ and Wahat al-Ghurub (Sunset Oasis,). On the other hand, of the other Arabic novels there is again no one which does not present the West or the Westerner positively but through allusions and minor characters. To me the positive image in most of the cases is presented not as representation of the novelists’ points of view, but for three main reasons: artistic, realistic and subjective. For the work to be artistically perfect, the writer tries his/her best to be or to appear objective in dealing with the delicate and ill-defined subject, the West and Arab-West relations. We know that there is, in real life, no absolute good or absolute bad. The writers are certainly aware that the same is rightly said about the people. Therefore, they try to transfer this fact into their novels. In the terms of realistic, the novelists cannot ignore the Arab-West relations in real life, as there are always friendship and hostility between every Eastern or Arab country and the West. I mean by the subjective reason the personal experience like that with which this presentation started.
Within the positive Images, the other who is, in our study, the Westerner, is presented mostly as friendly, nice, likeable and with a desire for communication with Arabs. In one of those images, he/she is presented as a humane person especially in his/her relations with the others or in his/her feeling towards them in a certain matter. Being apparently presented from the Arab protagonist’s, or shall we say the novelist’s, point of view, it must be pointed out to the fact that such Western is presented by this point of view only when he/she is a minor character in the novel. In such image, the writer focuses on the feelings and all that makes one human being close to another. Though it is a very short scene, the Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifa gives us, in her novel Mudakkarat Imra’a Ghayr Waqi’yya (Memoir of an unrealistic Woman, 1992) a very beautiful, touchable and deeply moving description of what arises between the female Palestinian protagonist and an Irish lady sitting beside her on a plane. This Palestinian character tells us here that she and the Irish lady find themselves, with their backgrounds, experiences and life, very close to each other. In the end the Irish lady says to her
Both our peoples have similar stories and I and you are alike.
The image of friendly Westerner is not much different from that of the human. However, it especially means that the relationship between Westerners and Arabs are deepened and developed and it, very often, becomes friendship. Such image are found, in one way or another, partly in Azzuqa’a Al-Thalj al-Aswad, and in great deal in the Egyptian Ahdaf Woueif’s The Map of Love (1999),([11]) and the Iraqi ‘Alya Mamduh’s Al-Mahbubat (The Beloved Women, (2003). In this last one, a group of women of different nationalities, Iraqis, Arabs and Westerners gather in waiting for days, and that is throughout the whole novel, around their Iraqi friend as she lays on her sickbed in the hospital. The natural differences between the nationalities of these women just disappear.
Of those novels that present the friendly Westerner, ‘Imarat Ya’qubyan (Ya’qubyan Building, 2000) by the Egyptian ‘Ala’ Al-Aswani is, in my opinion, bizarre. Making this clear and justified, I would say that according to their manners, and moral conduct, I divide the characters of this novel into two parts. The first includes all characters except one, and the second includes this one only who is Kristin Petholas. Apart from her, all of the rest of the characters are morally or sexually perverted, criminal, corrupt, or, at least, misled. Now, to know why I say that this novel is bizarre, I need to mention that all of these characters, except Kristin, are Egyptian. This Kristin, who is Western, is not only, on contrary to the others, a good and noble person, but she is also very kind, generous, helpful, beautiful, attractive and a loving person, in fact she is almost an angle. This is to say that Egyptians are completely bad and the Westerns are good, or to say, at least, that Egyptians are nothing without the West. To me it is as simple as that.
The last of the positive images is that which presents the West as a place of attraction which makes it a magical dream for some Arabs. This image glorifies the West as a world of hi-tech, modern thoughts, beauty, flourishing economy, easy life and freedom and democracy. However, the West is presented, in some of these novels, from this apparently positive point of view, not to confirm it, but to say so in the beginning and to refute it later. We may find the two faces of this image in the same novels, such as Al-Mirath (The heritage, 1990), by Sahar Khalifa. Talking to herself, one of its characters, Fiyulit says:
I want to run away to America in order to forget all these surroundings… having no friends, there is no club and there no any place where I can be in touch with people. (p135)
While the protagonist, who is the narrator, comments by saying:
It is obvious and even certain that America has become for Fiyulit, as for many here and there, a place of escaping a world in which they have changed but it has not. (p223)
Another character, Mazin says later;
Miss Fiyulit has forgotten herself and forgetten the whole people. She remembers nothing but America. Let us see what America has that is better than here. (p256)
Results and Conclusion
Before summing up the results that my studies and I hope this paper give, I would like firstly to have a look at the prospects of the Arab-West relations according to the previous images presented by the novels I have examined. Those novels obviously suggest completely or partly different prospects according to the different aspect of the West and points of view they present. However, there is one single novel that presents, I believe, a panoramic and of multi-prospects version, so I find it would be necessary to briefly dwell upon it in the very end of my survey and analysis. This novel is Al-Hudud al-Barriyya (The Land Border, 2004), by the Iraqi Maysaoon Hadi.
In this novel, the protagonist, Khalid, accepts the other when he emigrates to this other, the United States of America, to escape the conflicts and the many difficulties he faces in his country. More than that, he agrees even to merge with this other by marrying an American woman while he is waiting for the green card. However, in the end he does not agrees to carry out this merging when he discovers that it means that he must get rid of his (self) or identity and be like a property of his American wife. This refusal of the merging would be expressed by the symbol of the birth of deformed child. He divorces her and goes back to his Iraq. Returning back to his country, he is shocked by the way which the West chooses to deal with it and with his beloved Baghdad after the American-Western invasion of 2003:
O, my God! What this mess?! What this smoke?! It is ruined more than ever. (p)
However, relating to this multidimensional point of view and to all the others which the different images of the West and the Westerners and the novels suggest, the results which I conclude are as follows:
1-The images of the West and the Westerners which have appeared in the Meddle Easter Arabic novel of the last three or four decades are completely or partly different from those which were represented in those of the previous historical and literary periods.
2-Many of those Arabic novels which represent the other were written by women, a phenomenon which, in our opinion, needs to be studied.
3-The images of the West and The Westerners which are presented in these novels are divided into two main parts. The first is of the negative images, and the second is of the positive.
4-There have been many completely or partly different images of the West and the Westerners within each of the two parts.
5-Of the two main parts or categories and the many minor images, the negative images are undoubtedly dominant.
Of these results, the one which I think is the most important is the last one. I find that most of the novels I deal with in my study present the West and the Westerners, especially the Americans, in almost the same negative image. As a result of this most of the Arab characters and heroes of the novels cannot usually be in harmony with most of the Western characters.
It is indisputable that the quote, “The West is the West and the East is the East, and they can never met”, which was said by the British author Joseph Kipling about one hundred years ago, seems as if it is a forgotten page of history. However, I think we must not let it forgotten completely, as the truth is the West is the West and the East is the East, but they meet. Coming to our novels, it is obvious that the fictional characters, the novels in general, the novelists and indeed the real people whom, I believe, that those characters, novels and novelists represent, want to say or suggest that there are things which are going wrong in the East or Arab-West relations. This is undoubtedly a very important result, which the West, especially its governments, politicians and intellectuals, in my opinion, must take seriously.

Bibliography:
Novels:
oAl-Ahmadi, Kadhim: Ams Kan Ghadan, Dar al-Shu’un al-Thaqafiyya al-‘Amma, Baghdad, 1992.
o‘Ala’ al-Aswani: ‘Imarat Ya’qubian, Maktabat Madbuli, Cairo, 2005.
oAl-Atrash, Layla: Wa-Tashruq Gharban, al-Mu’ssasa al-Arabiyya Lildirasat wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, 1987.
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oAl-Bayyati, Mahmud: Al-Riqs ‘ala al-Ma’, 2004.
oHadi, Maysalun: Al-Hudud al-Barriyya, al-Mu’ssasa al-Arabiyya Lildirasat wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, 2004.
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oKhayyun, ‘Ali: ‘Azf fi Makan Sakhib, Dar al-Shu’un al-Thaqafiyya, Baghdad, 1987.
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o“Nahnu wa al-Akhar fi al-Riwahya al-‘Arabiyya, Majalat Kulliyyat al-Adab, Jami’at Baghdad, No.5, 2007, p71-109.
oTarabishi, Jorge: Sharq wa-Gharb Rijoola wa-Unutha, Dar al-Tali’a, Beirut, 1979

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[1]) I must admit that this paper may not be connected directly with Edward Said and what is called Saidism. However, there are certainly many things which are common between Said’s writings and what this paper is concerned with. While Said and his writings are concerned mostly with the Westerns’ version of the East and the Eastern peoples, the papers and indeed all my studies in this field are concerned with the Eastern or, to be more specific, with the Arab’s version of the West and the Westerns.
[2]) Andrew Bailey (ed.): First Philosophy, Fundamental Problems and Readings in Philosophy, Broadview Press, 2004, p.vii.
[3] ) Jorge Tarabishi: Sharq wa-Gharb Rijoola wa-Unutha, 1979, p71.
[4] ) Rasheed, p14.
[5] ) Zuhayr Tawfiq: ‘Surat al-Gharb ‘Ind al-‘Arab fi al-‘Asr al-Hadith’, Awraq, Amman, 2003, p12.
[6]) Maysalun Hadi’s would continue presenting such negative images of the West of the Western in her all following novels, Nubu’t Fir’awn (2007), Hulum Wardi Fatih al-Lawn (2008) and Shay al-‘Arus (2010).
[7] ) See Najim A. Kadhim:
[8] ) In fact, I have done this in my onger studies, but it is unfortunately impossible to do the same in this relatively short one.
[9] ) Rasheed P12
[10] ) Perhaps this image of the Western woman appears in other Arabic literary forms, particularly the short story and poetry, more than it does in the novel. Behind this there are, I believe, reasons which are to be discussed in essay or paper other than this.
[11] ) The novel written in English and publish in 1999, and translated into Arabic by Fatima Musa and republished in 2001.