ميسلون هادي والدكتور نجم عبدالله كاظم موقع الكاتبة العراقية ميسلون هادي و الدكتور نجم عبدالله كاظم
The Personal Experiences about the Other
Preface: Personal Experiences
Firstly, I would like to thank the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the University of Exeter and professor Gerd Nonneman for the opportunity they have made for me to be in this wonderful institute as visiting professor. Believing that this little participation is a continuation and extension to my previous experiences, I find and feel that this last experience meets with the core of what I have been dealing with in my comparative studies for more than ten years, I mean (the other).
Starting with this personal feeling and experience, let us move to real personal experiences which relates to the controversial subject of my paper.[i]
When I decided to go back to my country 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? What shall I do when I see any of them on my way home? Anyway, despite the fact that that aching feeling towards the 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, an American 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 the 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 even a very nice and shy young man. 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 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. In 1980 I came to Britain to study and spent four years which are still the happiest and most beautiful and profitable years in my life, and in 1989 I was invited to USA to spend five weeks in 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 homes. Obviously what are known about the Americans and the British and these experiences give contradictory images of them.
Now when I come to the present day I find again the same contrasting images. I cannot remember Tony Blair and his followed example Bush and their dirty war in Iraq but as big lairs, 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 is I am now receiving the academic and scientific advantages and enjoying the lovely days here in the home of this Blair, with many who relate, in one way or another, to those who invaded my country. In short, I am again in the midst of the unresolved confusion and intellectual and moral predicament.
During the last 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.
[i] 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.
