The third version of the other

The Images of the West
In Modern Arabic Novel

Najim A. Kadhim
Prof. of Criticism, Comparative and Modern Literature
University of Baghdad – Faculty of Arts

Preface: Personal Experiences
Starting with the personal feeling and experience, let us start with real personal experiences which relates to the controversial subject of my book.([1])
The real experience
When I decided to return to my country, Iraq, in 2003, after seven years of being away from my relatives and friends, big questions arose within me, which were: How would I bear the impact of seeing my country occupied by the Americans? How could I see those invaders? What should I do when I saw any of them? Then, as if Fate wanted me to experience pain and confusion straightaway, I glimpsed, at the very moment of setting foot on Iraqi soil, an American soldier, just like the ones I had only ever [seen on television or in films. Again as if Fate wanted me unconsciously to confront an unwanted reality, I found I could not avoid approaching him, 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?” Hesitantly, and trying to avoid any further words with him, I brusquely uttered the single word: “Yes”. In spite of my apparently impolite reply, the soldier then said: “You are welcome home”, and as if he was insisting on communicating with me, he continued to ask various other questions. I found myself having to respond and even make some comments. Then suddenly I felt that this enemy was just an ordinary person, an ordinary human being and even a very nice and rather shy young man. For the next few months, I tried without success to stop myself thinking about that experience and the contrasting images of the Americans and the other Westerners that I had come across previously.
I recalled two other similar instances that I had encountered. The image of Britain has been always been that of the colonialist, and the image of America has always been that of the big enemy of the Arabs. And frankly speaking, I could not, and cannot, say that these images are wrong. In 1980 I went to Britain to study and spent four years which are still among the happiest years in my life, and in 1989 I was invited to the USA to spend five weeks visiting ten states where I met dozens of friendly American writers, scholars, artists, politicians, journalists and ordinary people. Obviously what is generally ‘known’ about the Americans and the British, and these very personal encounters and experiences give rise to contradictory images.
Now when I come to the present day I find again the same contrasting images. I cannot recall President Bush and Tony Blair who followed Bush’s example, without remembering their dirty war in Iraq. Again, this being said, I cannot accept this apparent fact without considering the other living fact; which is to say that I can now enjoy lovely days in America, the home of Bush, with many who, in one way or another, relate to those who invaded my country. In short, I am again in the midst of unresolved confusion and an intellectual and moral predicament.
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 wint 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, with what is called The World Visitor Program, 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. When I moved to the days after the experience of the American occupation of Iraq and امتداداً 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 again 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 fifteen or more 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.
Based on my previous research concerning the Arabic novel from the mid-twentieth to the beginning of the twenty-first century, this book concentrates specifically on Arabic novels published during two decades, i.e., the period that began in 1991 with the US and the West’s war against Iraq, and was followed by America’s overthrow and occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2010. However, I am not going to exclude the some novels that were published in the seventies and eighties of the last century. My intention here is to present a comprehensive over view of what I have already written on this topic, in addition to further notes and points of view.
When writing on the ‘Other’ in Arabic literature, I usually begin, as I have done here, by explaining that my motive for pursuing this subject is prompted by my personal experiences with the West and Westerners. In an academic writing I prefer to confine these encounters to an appendix; here, however, the main body of this article includes details and outcomes of such occasions. What are known as facts and believed by most Arabs about the Americans is mostly negative, and about the British is only a little less negative; whereas my mostly positive experiences, from personal contact with the West and Westerners, give contradictory images of the West. During the last ten years I have been thinking about the conflicting images forming in my mind and indeed in the minds of many Arabs, and studying them as they are expressed through literature. In fact, in my writing about the Other in general and the West in particular I have attempted to explain the contradiction between the negative images that are presented in literature and perhaps in all Arabic cultural discourse, and the experiences I have had with the West and Westerners which are mostly positive and happy, not excluding the experiences and writings of others.

Prefatory and Methodological Notes
Before moving to our theme, ‘the West in Arabic literature’, I want to illustrate three points from which my presentation stem.
The First Point: Dealing with the West as part of what we call “the other”, I need first to explain what the “Other” means in such kind of comparative study. Apart from the general linguistic or lexical use of this word; there are several uses of it as a term. One of them is that of the Continental Philosophy “which includes thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre. Foucault and Derrida, and is characterised by such movements as existentialism, hermeneutics and deconstructionism”([2]). 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 fit into their society.
Now, before we define our ‘Other’, which is different, to some extent, from all of those meanings, we must define 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. When by ‘We’ I mean the Arabs, the ‘Other’ 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 this what we mean here.
The Second Point: The study of the novel in my paper concentrates not on the novel as a whole but on the characters and on 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 sometimes allow ourselves to absorb the external atmosphere and point of view of a fiction we are reading, we try to interpret everything 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.

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 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 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])
Such 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.
In referring to these previous writings about the Other, particularly the West and Westerners and their images in Arabic literature, it should be pointed out that this literature, especially novels, presents both positive and negative images of the West, but with the latter predominant. This book’s research question arises from this phenomenon: when seeking the reasoning behind these positive and negative images, why does the second prevail, and is this dominance logical? My hypothetical answer is that Arabic novels that were mostly published during and after the second half of the twentieth century and that deal with the West, on the whole present negative images of the West. This suggests that the majority represent the post-colonial era and post-colonial theory and therefore aim to deconstruct the arguments of colonial theory and its West-centralism. Relating to all of what we have so far discussed, there are, I believe, five major factors which are responsible for the 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 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, 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-ninetieth century to the First World War. The novels of that stage were semi-fictional or 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 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 Muahmmad 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’ Ba’ida (1999), the Algerian Ahlam Mastaghanbi’s ‘Abir Sarir (2002) 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.

  1. Colonialism and Post-Colonialism
    Colonialism was represented most on the cultural level in the oriental discourse with which Said most often dealt, and which he attempted to analyze and deconstruct. According to Said, along with many scholars and intellectuals who, like Said, have come originally from Third World countries and live in the West, the most important things expressed, if not practiced, through the oriental discourse, were racism, dominance, and marginalization. All this was shaped into what has become known as Euro-Centralism, although I prefer to call it West-Centralism. As a reaction to colonialism and in countering colonialist argument, it had to be a complementary theory that rejected, stultified, deconstructed or responded negatively to that theory which was valid on the ground. Thus Post-Colonial Theory emerged to deal with this centralism which caused the West to impose marginality, exclusion and permanence in its varied forms, on the Others, specifically the Third World including the Arab World.
    In fact, according to Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (1995), post-colonial writing and studies appeared as a result of post-colonialism deconstructing the reading of colonial discourses (pp.291-292).It is agreed that it is more or less natural formations and states to try to export their culture and principles in order to dominate others (at least in their regions), and to practice the act of expansion, even though this theory does what it ought to do to colonial cultures and to the colonial states and nations. Thus early post-colonial theory appeared chiefly by way of its important and influential scholars and intellectuals, such as Edward Said. It is believed that while Edward Said, a Palestinian Arab, was the founder of post-colonial theory and studies, Frantz Fanon, who was originally from Martinique, was behind the way it attracted the attention of recipients, not forgetting the important enthusiasm and influential activities of many others, all of them originally from Third World countries and living in the West, such as the Indians Homi Bhabha, Spivak, and others.
    While post-colonial theory, as propounded by Said in Orientalism and various other writings, aims to deconstruct the Western discourse concerned with the Third World by analyzing and critiquing oriental discourse, including of course the Arab World, it finds that colonial discourse expresses the West as being the centre while the Other, namely the Third World, is at the periphery. When examining the oriental discourse, it appears that the West sees the world as a universe with the West at its centre. We may agree that the West, in some ways and to some extent, can indeed be a centre. Significantly however, if the world is like a universe surrounded by various galaxies and/or solar systems that means it is multi-centred rather than uni-centred as the West claims.
    It would seem that Arab writers, scholars and intellectuals who dealt with the West and Western thinking, found that to reject the Western discourse and the unaccepted colonial project meant rejecting West-Centralism. The result was that post-colonial writers who came originally from Third World countries, adopted what was termed a‘counter-discourse’, having rejected West-Centralism in all its aspects.

The Types of Images of the Other

  1. The Negative Images of the West
    Most examples of negative images are those which present Western individuals, groups and communities as colonialist, hostile, racist and unfriendly. Due to their closeness to the colonial era, the typical images of colonization and colonists are usually found in the very early novels, as well as in the late novels because of the bloody wars in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Because colonialism ceases to exist in some countries does not mean that it is no longer present in some of them; nor does it mean that the people in these countries have forgotten about it. These countries can still be regarded as colonized but in different ways. Some critics argue that innovation and modernity brought by colonialism are clear such as education, railways, hospitals, reviving local cultures and breaking taboos. Here one could also claim the bringing of liberty, spreading democracy and ending dictatorships.
    The fact that colonialism stays in the minds of the people of the colonized countries is expressed in novels such as that by the Algerian author Ahlam Mustaghanemi,‘Abi rSareer A Crosser of a Bed,in which the French character, Françoise, says about a painting by an Algerian artist:
    This was painted by Zian as a tribute to the (Algerian) victims of the protests of October17th, 1961 who went out on peaceful protests. The French police threw a large number of them, tied up, into the River Seine. Many of them drowned…the bodies whose shoes floated on the surface for days [died] as a lot of them did not know how to swim (‘Abi rSareer, pp.58-59).
    It is only to be expectedthat many of the Arabic novels that have dealt with the colonialists in the last decade are by Iraqi writers, including Maysalun Hadi whose novels include Al-hudud al-Barriyya The Land Border, Nubu’t Fir’awn Pharaoh’s Prophesy, Hulum Fatih al-Lawn A Rosy Dreamand Shay al-‘Arus The Bride’s Tea.Other Iraqi writers are Najim Wali, whose novel is entitled Mala’kat al-Junub Angels of the South, Zuhair Al-Hiti withAl-Ghubar al-Amriki American Dust, and ‘Awwad ‘Ali with Halib al-Marins The Marine’s Milk. ‘Ali presents a character who is fully aware of false Western, and particularly American claims that liberation and the spread of freedom and democracy were the reasons behind the war. In the novel, he says:
    The Marines did not enter Baghdad carrying a torch of freedom, and America did not go to war in Iraq to breast-feed its people, but to give them asinister Pandora’s Box (Halib al-Marins, p. 63).
    In some ways these images, characters and behaviours in the Arabic novel are an expression of the rejection of colonialism in both its old and new forms. Hostile Western individuals, groups or communities are seen or confronted by the Arab protagonists who have usually had unpleasant experiences in the West while living therein most of the cases as students or as refugees. In the novels, incidents, which usually take place in the post-colonial era, appear, in a way, to be a continuation of previous colonial practice. Among the novels which present these images are Al-Rihla, Yawmiyyat Taliba Misriyyafi Amrika The Journey: Diary of an Egyptian Student in America by the Egyptian writer Radhwa ‘Ashur;Al-Riqs ‘ala al-Ma’Dancing on Water by the Iraqi Mahmud Al-Bayyati; Sun’ Allah Ibrahim’s Amrikanli An American; and May salun Hadi’ sal-Hudud al-BarriyyaThe Land Border.(1)
    The most extreme case of this negative image of the West in the novels examined is, however, one that is not concerned with the West and Western countries and populations in general, but instead deals exclusively with the United States and the Americans, who are depicted as extremely hostile and ugly (which is why in my studies I call this image ‘The Ugly American’). In these images, American characters really do look ugly, whether in their personalities, in their behaviours or even in their ways of speaking. Examples of such images are to be found, for example, as minor characters in Radhwa ‘Ashur’s Al-Rihla, in the Jordanian Muhammad Azzuqa’s novel Al-Thaljal-aswad The Black Snow, in MaysalunHadi’s Al-Hududal-Barriyya,and most importantly and obviously in the novel Al-Shahidawaal-Zinji The Witness and the Negroby another Iraqi writer, Mahdi ‘Isa Al-Saqr’. Although this does not connect directly to reactions towards the colonial discourse as do the other novels mentioned, the implications are there as long as it is against the West.
    In most of these and other novels, the protagonists are confronted by unfriendly or racist Westerners, whether in the United States as in the first novel, or in Sweden as in the second, or elsewhere. The following example from Al-Bayyati’s novel Al-Riqs ‘ala al-Ma’ is a dialogue between the main character, an Iraqi refugee, and a Swedish man who says to him:
    You are terrorists, the most violent nation… Do you not think that immigrants are a dangerous threat to our democracy? (Al-Riqs ‘ala al-Ma’, p. 134)
    This Arab discourse marks a clear counter-colonialist Western discourse which was described by Edward Said as racist. Sometimes, however, it is not known whether the discourse conveyed by the novelist through a narrator or a fictional character is a racist attitude or behaviour, or whether it is perceived as racist by the novelist him/herself. For example, in Mahmoud Said’s Al-Mawt al-Jamil [The Sweet Death](1998], the Iraqi scientist, Isma’il, remarks, while proposing a scientific theory before a scientific assembly in a Western country:
    There is a group of professors who hate people from the East, Arabs particularly, and they are being represented by one who is racist and fanatic (Al-Mawt al-Jamil, p.80-81)
    While this is not direct and clear in novels like Naji Al-Tikriti’s Nura [Noora], (1981), the protagonist in Radhwa Ashur’s Al-Rihla [The Journey] does not hide her prejudiced ideas against the West when she goes to America. She has a racist Westerner or American in her mind even before she actually goes to America and meets Americans – and her prejudice proves correct after she has arrived there. We do not know whether it is actually racism that she experiences or whether her prejudice guides her to picture something that is not actually true,
    My roommate Louise left the room two weeks after her arrival. The Southern white girl was very conscious of my skin color, my religious background and my nationality. She was simply afraid of me and of the fact that I exist in this world… However, what matters is that she departed from the university… and I’m free of her (Al-Rihla, pp. 23-24).
    Another image that portrays the West and Westerners is that of the Western woman. In the Arabic novels he is very often presented negatively. If not immoral, from the point of view of the Arab characters, she certainly does not possess any kind of decency. Clearly the Arab novelists, by depicting Western women in this way, wanted to undermine the image of the West. Some feel that, as Eastern novelists and even as people, they are victims of their prejudiced views of the Western woman, which are subjective and biased towards the West. Therefore, in some Arabic novels the Western woman appears indecent whether or not she is married. In the Iraqi ‘Ali Khayyun’s novel Al-‘Azf fi Makan Sakhib [Playing Music in a Loud Place], (1987) the main character describes his uncle’s English wife:
    Mary 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 was looking at her underwear through her thin clothes. (Al-‘Azf fi Makan Sakhib,p.85)
    In another part of the novel, the protagonist says:
    I opened the door. She entered and invited me to come in. She disappeared into a room… and came back after a minute in a see-through shirt with no bra underneath it. I could not see anything underneath that shirt but her little white panties.(Al-‘Azf fi Makan Sakhib, p.85).
    At the end of the novel, the English wife leaves her Iraqi husband in order to elope with an American. In this way, the writer justifies the Iraqi protagonist’s description of this woman.
    Even though this is a clear distortion of the image of the Western Woman which is either made up or based on personal experience, it is still a counter-response to how the Western oriental discourse has depicted the Eastern woman, and in particular the Arab, as explored by Edward Said. In similar examples of the negative images of the Western woman, this woman is, in one way or 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.
    Another kind of image of Westerners, especially of women, that is presented in some novels cannot be said to be negative, though it is not positive. I believe that this image expresses the ambivalent attitude towards the West represented by the Western woman who passionately loves an Arab. This beloved Arab, who is of course the protagonist, very often appears to be the Arab prince or knight that women have dreamed of all of their lives.(2) To me, this protagonist seems to be the author himself, as a dreamer, as the Arab who has such an idea, rightly or wrongly, about the Western Woman, or as the Arab intellectual who practices a kind of self-revenge for what the colonial West has done to his/her people. This is clearly reminiscent of the relations of Said (the protagonist) with Western women in the famous novel by the Sudanese Al-Tayyib Salih, Mawsim al-Hijraila al-Shimal[Season of Immigration to the North], (1970) which is not included in this study. However, such images appear in Azzuqa’s Al-Thalj al-Aswad, and in Misk al-Ghazal [The Musk of the Gazelle], (1988) by the Lebanese writer Hanan Al-Shaykh.
    In Azzuqa’s novel, in a scene set in a public place in Jordan, Janet, the American woman, says to Said, the Jordanian protagonist,
    Let’s go back to the car before the last cells of logic in my head collapse and I rape you.
    Said replies,
    Take it easy, dear. I know that I am so sexy, handsome and smart that I am irresistible… (Al-Thalj al-Aswad, p.40).
    Looking at this example, the Eastern/Arab man is portrayed as the centre of the novel’s world around which Western women gather and want.
    As far as life in the West is concerned, some novels present only its defects and negative aspects as perceived by the novelists and their Arab characters and including crime, racism, materialism, the weakness of social relations, and feelings of loneliness. The main novels that follow this mode are Sibaq al-Masafat al-Tawila [The Long-distance Race], (1979) by the Saudi author ‘Abdulrahman Munif, as well asAl-Bayyati’s Al-Riqs ‘ala al-Ma’, ‘Ashur’s Al-Rihla, and Azzuqa’s Al-Thalj al-Aswad. When the protagonist of this last novel is visiting an American city, he is told by a friend that:
    Most of the people here do not know each other, and the high crime rates make them cautious and careful with strangers. (Al-Thalj al-Aswad, p.110)
    If this negativity in most of the Arabic novels is presented in this way on purpose, as a distorted, criminal and materialistic world, it is in a way the response of Arab intellectuals to the way the West presents the East as irrational, oppressive, and backward, and whose people are narrow-minded and sex-maniacs, as depicted in the oriental discourse. In other words, if the Arabic novel and other types of cultural discourse deliberately present the West in such a distorted way, this can be considered a response to the way the oriental discourse has distorted the East and the Arab world.
    Edward Said emphasized how, when the West presented the East in the oriental discourse, it did not present the real East. Rather, it was a vision of it that the West had in mind or maybe wanted. Conversely, a lot of the images that the Arab cultural discourse, including novels, presents about the West are not factual either. Instead they offer a distorted version of the West that they have in mind or have even deliberately depicted in this way in order to criticize or attack it.
    The Types of Images of the Other
    The Positive Images
    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 one single novel which is ‘Imarat Ya’qubyan, by ‘Ala’ Al-Aswani. However this can be found, but not in a big deal, in another few novels such as the Iraqi Al-Taw’am al-Mafqud (The Lost Twin, 2002) by Salim Matar and Shufuni Shufuni (Watch Me Watch Me, 2001) by Samira Al-Mani’ and the Egyptian Wahat al-Ghurub (Sunset Oasis, 2006) by Baha’ Tahir. On the other hand, there are again only very few of these novels 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 made by the novelist 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 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. (p82)
    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 is found, in one way or another, partly in Azzuqa’a Al-Thalj al-Aswad, and in great deal in the Egyptian Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love (1999),([6]) 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 waiting for days, and that is throughout the whole novel, around their Iraqi friend as she lies sown 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. Such image shows us that “the West for the Arab individual is no longer an oppressor but a saviour, a place of refuge from repression at home, a space of freedom with the promise of prosperity”.([7]) 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 surrounding… having no friends, there is no club and there no any place where I can be in touch with people. (p135)
    In another place and 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 forgotten the whole people. She remembers nothing but America. Let us see what America has that is better than here. (p256)

Results and Conclusion
Experiences of social change are commonly communicated through a variety of representational means, among which are fine arts and literary genres. We believe that “in contemporary globalized and mediated culture, experiences of social change are commonly communicated through a variety of representational means, and the reach and influence of mass communication increases the possibility that representations can be used to create social change as well as to reflect it.”(4)Here we must draw attention to two facts relating to this statement. First, to be in novels, this content or phenomenon must certainly and naturally occur in other fields of Arabic writing, such as drama, short story, and poetry. The second is that it must exist in the lives of many Arabs and in their personalities and awareness. But this does not mean that people who appear not to like the West are terrorists, as certain Western governments, politicians, and leaders like George Bush have described them. The negative images of the West and Westerners are, in fact, seen or made by ordinary Arabs who are represented by characters in the novels, as much as by the intellectuals who are represented by the writers of these novels.
Moreover, it is unfair and unwise for Western governments, politicians and leaders, especially the Americans, to claim that the Others are against America and the West because they do not like the Western and American way of life. I think this is a simplification of a serious phenomenon. If I do not like the American way of life and pray that most of its values and aspects will never come into my life, does that necessarily mean that I hate the American people and American technology, literature and culture? The novels themselves answer this question by this time presenting positive images of Western characters, as if to say: ‘Certainly no, we don’t hate the West, but the West must understand us – Muslims, Arabs and Middle Easterners in general – and respect our way of life’. In my opinion, Westerners must look for the real reason or reasons that cause the Others such as the Arabs to perceive them in this way. However we must not excuse the Arabs themselves from doing so.
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, most of these prospects, 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 by the Iraqi Maysaun Hadi.
In this novel, the protagonist, Khalid, accepts the other when he immigrates to this other’s land, 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, later 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. In the end 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. (p141)
1-This last scene and Khalid’s last act means, to me, represent the other level of the prospect of the Arab-West relations. However, relating to this multidimensional point of view of this novel 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:
2-The images of the West and the Westerners which have appeared in the Arabic novel of the last three decades are completely or partly different from those which were represented in those of the previous historical and literary periods.
3-Many of Arabic novels among those which represent the other written by women are, in our opinion, a phenomenon that needs to be studied.
4-The images of the West and The Westerners which are presented in the Arabic novel of the last three decades are divided into two main parts. The first is of the negative images, and the second is of the positive.
5-There have been many completely or partly different images of the West and the Westerners within each of the two parts.
6-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 the Western characters. Being extracted from imagined worlds, which are of the novels, means that these results could be applied to real world.
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, is almost a forgotten page of history. However, I think we must not let it forgotten completely, as it is true that 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.
Experiences of social change are commonly communicated through a variety of representational means among which are fine arts and literary genres. We believe that “the reach and influence of mass communication, fine arts and literary genres increase the possibility that representations can be used to create social change as well as to reflect it.” Here we must draw attention to two facts relating to this result. The first is that to be in novels, this content or phenomenon must certainly and naturally be in the other kinds of Arabic writings such as drama, short story and poetry. The second is that it must exist in the life of many Arabs and in their minds and consciousness. But this does not mean that these people, who appear as if they do not like the West, are terrorists as they have been described by some Western governments, politicians and leaders such as George Bush. The negative images of the West and the Westerners are, in fact, seen or made by ordinary Arabs who are represented by characters in the novels, as much as by intellectuals who are represented by the writers of these novels. Moreover, it is unfair and unwise for those Western governments, politicians and leaders, especially the Americans, to claim that the others are against America and the West because they do not like the Western and American way of life. I think this is a simplification of the serious phenomenon. Now, I do not like the American way of life and I pray that most of its values and aspects will never come into our life. But does that necessarily mean that I hate the American people and the American technology, literature and culture? The novels themselves answer this question by presenting, this time, positive images of Western characters as if to say: Certainly no we do don’t hate the West, but the West must understand us, Muslims, Arabs and Eastern in general, and respect our way of life. In my opinion, the Westerners must look for the real reason or reasons that make the others such as the Arabs look at them in this way. However we must not excuse the Arabs themselves from doing so.

Bibliography:
Novels:
oAl-Ahmadi, Kadhim: Ams Kana Ghadan, Dar al-Shu’un al-Thaqafiyya al-‘Amma, Baghdad, 1992.
o‘Ashur, Radhwa: Al-Rihla: Ayyam Taliba Misriyya fi Amrika, Dar al-Adab, Beirut, 1983.
oAl-Aswani ‘Ala’: ‘Imarat Ya’qubian, Maktabat Madbuli, Cairo, 2005.
oAl-Atrash, Layla: Wa-Tashruq Gharban, al-Mu’ssasa al-‘Arabiyya Lildirasat wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, 1987.
oAzzuqa, Muhammad: Al-Thalj al-Aswad, al-Mu’ssasa al-‘Arabiyya Lildirasat wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, 1988.
oAl-Bayyati, Mahmud: Al-Riqs ‘ala al-Ma’, electronic copy, 2004.
o———-: Al-Taw’am al-Mafqud,
oHadi, Maysalun: Al-Hudud al-Barriyya, al-Mu’ssasa al-‘Arabiyya Lildirasat wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, 2004.
o———-: Nubu’t Fir’awn, 2007,
o———-: Hulum Wardi Fatih al-Lawn, 2008
oIbrahim, Sun’ Allah: Amrikanli, Dar al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabi, Cairo, 2004.
o———-: Al-Lujna, Dar al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi, Cairo, 1997.
oKhalifa, Sahar: Al-Mirath, Dar Al-Adab, Beirut, 1997.
o———-: Mudakkarat Imra’a Ghayr Waqi’yya, Dar al-Adab, Beirut, 1992.
oKhayyun, ‘Ali: ‘Azf fi Makan Sakhib, Dar al-Shu’un al-Thaqafiyya, Baghdad, 1987.
oAl-Khudhayri, Batul: Kam Badat al-Sama’ Qariba, al-Mu’ssasa al-‘Arabiyya Lildirasat wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, 2003.
oMamduh, ‘Alya: Al-Mahbubat, Dar al-Saqi, Beirut, 2003.
oAl-Mani’, Samira: Shufuni Shufuni, Mu’ssaat al-Intishar al-‘Arabi, 2002.
oMatar, Salim: Al-Taw’am al-Mafqud, al-Mu’ssasa al-‘Arabiyya Lildirasat wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, 2001.
oMunif, Abdulrahman: Sibaq al-Masafat al-Tawila, al-Mu’ssasa al-‘Arabiyya Lildirasat wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, 1979.
oSalih, al-Tayyib: Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shimal, Dar al-‘Awda, Beirut, 1969.
oAl-Saqr, ‘Isa: Al-Shahida wa-al-Zinji, Dar al-Shu’un al-Thaqafiyya al-‘Ama, Baghdad, 1987.
oAl-Shaykh, Hanan: Misk al-Ghazal, Dar al-Adab, Beirut, 1988.
oSoueif, Ahdaf: The Map of Love, First Anchor Books Edition, London, 2000.
oTahir, Baha’: Wahat al-Ghurub, Dar al-Hilal, Caito, 2006.
oAl-Tikriti, Naji: Nura, Dar al-Rasheed Lilkashr, Baghdad, 1981.
Secondary References:
oBailey, Andrew (ed.): First Philosophy, Fundamental Problems and Readings in Philosophy, Broadview Press.
oEl-Enany, Rasheed; Arab Representations of the Occident, Routrledge, Oxon, 2006.
o‘Id, Raja’: “Liqa’ al-Hadharat fi al-Riwaya al-‘Arabiyya”, Fusul, No. 4, 1998, V.2, p56-77.
oKadhim, Najim A.: Al-Akhar fi al-Shi’
o———:“Nahnu wa al-Akhar fi al-Riwaya al-‘Arabiyya al-Mu’asira”, Majallat Kulliyyat al-Adab, No.5,2005, p71-109.
o———-: Al-Riwaya al-‘Arabiyya al-Mu’asira wa al-Akhar, ‘Alam al-Kutub al-Hadith, Irbid, Jordan, 2007.
oSaid, Edward: Orientalism,
oTarabishi, Jorge: Sharq wa-Gharb Rijoola wa-Unutha, Dar al-Tali’a, Beirut, 1979.
oTawfiq, Zuhayr: ‘Surat al-Gharb ‘Inda al-‘Arab fi al-‘Asr al-Hadith’, Awraq, No. 16&17, Amman, 2003, p11-20.


[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 El-Enany: Arab Representations of the Occident, Routledge, Oxon, 2006, p14.
[5] ) Zuhayr Tawfiq: ‘Surat al-Gharb ‘Inda al-‘Arab fi al-‘Asr al-Hadith’, Awraq, No. 16&17, Amman, 2003, p12.
[6] ) The novel written in English and publish in 1999, and translated into Arabic by Fatima Musa and republished in 2001.
[7] ) El-Enany, P186.

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