EWANA Center

Menu
Menu
L » Love, Lust, and Relationships » Inter-religious and ethnic (romantic) relationships » Between Arabs and Westerners

Between Arabs and Westerners

By /

For more on relationships / experiences between the Arab-majority world and the West see different countries in W: Outside the Arab World.

 
  • Fāṭimah Yūsuf al-ʿAlī (1952-, Kuwait) – Wujūh fī al-Zaḥām (‘Faces in the crowd’, 1971). This novel deals with several social issues in Kuwait, among them marriage between Kuwaiti nationals and foreigners and marriage traditions (reference). The ambitious young Muḥammad plans to obtain his university degree and marry his fiancé, who is also his niece. He travels to London to study, where is life is turned upside down when he meets Līzā. Rather than returning to his fiancé, he marries Līzā. As a result, his niece is shattered and suffers both socially and psychologically.
  • Fatima Gallaire’s (1944 – 2020, Algeria) play Princesses, ou ah! Vous êtes venus – là ou il y a quelques tombes (1988, English trans. You Have Come Back, 1988). Protagonist of this novel, Lella, returns to her ancestral home in Algeria after 20 years, where she is received with her family’s criticism of her marrying a French man (reference). The villages’ condemnation of her ‘turn away from Islamic law’ leads to a tragic ending for the protagonist (reference). The play uses theatrical methods from both the Algerian and European cultural context. The English translation is to be found in Plays by women: and International Anthology (1988) (also in F: Children and Family Life: Marriage).
  • Hachemi Baccouche (1917 – 2008, Tunisia) – Ma foi demeure (‘My faith remains’, 1958). This partially autobiographical novel portrays an interracial marriage during the final years of the French protectorate (reference).
  • Anṭwān al-Duwayhī (1948-, Lebanon) – Gharīqat Buḥayrah Mūrayah (‘Drowning in Lake Morez’, 2014). Narrator of this novel, a Lebanese man, falls in love with a French woman, Lūrā. Their relationship is characterized by turbulence and extremes, as the narrator during the relationship relives the period of the Civil War and cultural differences between the two come to the fore (reference).
  • Sulaymān Fayyāḍ (1929 – 2015, Egypt) – Aṣwāt (1972, English trans. Voices, 1993). Tensions arise in an Egyptian village in the Nile delta when Ḥāmid, who became a wealthy real-estate owner in Paris, returns to his impoverished hometown bringing his French wife, the journalist Sīmūn, with him (reference). Ḥamīd had not been in the village since he was a boy, and his family members, who long-waited him, each have their own reaction to the couple: from the mother who worries about her grandchild’s religious upbringing, to the brother who flirts with Sīmūn. Sīmūn sees the village from the perspective of the naïve outsider. Some villagers, especially women, are not so keen on her, leading to the novel’s shocking ending (also in V: Village and Rural life).
  • Mouloud Feraoun (1913 – 1962, Algeria) – La terre et le sang (‘Earth and Blood’, 1950). When Amer returns to Algeria after having worked for many years in a French coal mine, he takes his young French wife Marie with him (reference). Marie, who was brought up in miserable conditions and had several humiliating experiences, now counts herself lucky to have left France and shows adaptability to Algerian life. After Amer’s catastrophic death, however, the pregnant Marie becomes the Algerian family’s only hope.
  • Ṣunʿallāh Ibrāhīm (1937 – 2025, Egypt) – Najmat Aghusṭus (‘August star’, 1974) and Sharaf (‘Honour’, 1997).

Najmat Aghusṭus is narrated by a journalist who visits the construction site of the Aswan Dam in Egypt, which, he notices, caused little reported on death and devastation (reference). The novel simultaneously describes the construction of the dam and the development of the narrator’s relationship with a Russian girl. The inflexible language of the novel and its complex structure reflect the construction of the High Dam (see for more information: 1970 Aswan Dam).

 

In Sharaf, the poor, young Egyptian Sharaf sees his city Cairo overflow with Western products that he is unable to obtain. One day, he is looking at a movie poster with Arnold Schwarzenegger when he encounters the Australian Jūn, who insists on seeing the movie together and eventually invites Sharaf to his apartment. There, Jūn attempts to rape Sharaf, who defends himself, a move that ends with Jūn’s death and his own imprisonment, where he is again humiliated and subjected to rape (reference) (also in and P: Police novels, Thrillers and Crimes: Rape and Sexual Abuse).

  • Yūsuf Idrīs’ (1927 – 1991, Egypt) novel al-Bayḍāʾ (‘The white woman’, 1970) and short stories ‘Al-Sayyidah Fiyinā’ (‘Madame Vienna’, 1959) and ‘Nīw yūrk 80’ (‘New York 80’, 1980).

al-Bayḍāʾ is narrated by a young Egyptian doctor, Yaḥyā, who falls hopelessly in love with a married Greek woman, Sāntī. This results in a troubled relationship in which Yaḥyā embarks on a soul-searching journey both on the political and personal level, in which he discovers that he is self-centred and stubborn (reference). He also heavily criticizes the leftist movement in Egypt, of which he is himself a part (also in 1954 Nasser comes to power in Egypt).

 

In ‘Al-Sayyidah Fiyinā’, the Egyptian protagonist, a married civil servant on a few days mission to Austria, meets an also married woman on his last night in Vienna. Though he needs to travel for work, his real mission is to sleep with a European woman. Both lacking English language skills and a deep understanding of each other’s culture, the two embark on a superficial erotic journey (reference).

 

In ‘Nīw yūrk 80’ an Egyptian writer and an American sex-worker who has a PhD and is also a sex therapist, meet in a bar in New York. The writer rejects the prostitute’s sexual advances, resulting a polemical exchange and her eventual breakdown as she leaves the bar unsatisfied (reference). The two short stories were translated to English and can be found in the collection Tales of Encounter which was published in 2002.

  • Abdelkebir Khatibi (1938 – 2009, Morocco) – Amour bilingue (1983, English trans. Love in Two Languages, 1990). Centering a love affair between a bilingual Moroccan man and a less bilingual French woman, this novel uses “the vehicular restriction of French to represent a polylingual reality and moment of indecision between French and Arabic languages and cultures as it plays itself out in the mind of the Maghrebine protagonist/narrator” (reference). The novel explores the relationship between language, translation, and intimate relationships.
  • Mayādah Khalīl (1971-, Iraq) – Niskāfiyyah maʿ al-Sharīf al-Raḍḍī (‘Nescafé with al- Sharif al- Raddi’, 2016). Set between Baghdad and Amsterdam, this novel portrays the story of Amīnah, who migrated to the Netherlands, and Dāvīd, who falls in love with the Iraqi Salmā, who he eventually marries. Both live in the same building. The story is narrated by Amīnah after Dāvīd commits suicide years after his wife’s death, and she finds in his apartment a poetry collection by the Iraqi poet al-Sharīf al-Riḍḍī. She discovers Dāvīd relationship with Salmā which embodies the encounter and clash of their respective cultures and civilizations (reference) (also in W: Outside the Arab world: Europe: The Netherlands).
  • ʿIṣām Khuqayr (1927 – 2018, Saudi Arabia) – Al-Sinyūrah (‘The signora’, 1980), centers Ḥusayn, who, while studying music in Rome, marries one of his classmates, the Italian Mariyānnā (reference). Ḥusayn and his family are Muslims, and upon return to Saudi Arabia, his family is divided in their response to the non-Muslim daughter-in-law. Yet she soon converts after giving birth to their son.
  • Albert Memmi (1920-, Tunisia) – Agar (1955, English trans. Strangers,1960). Like the author, the male narrator of this novel, Agar, is a Tunisian Jew who has spent many years in France studying medicine. After his graduation he returns to Tunis with his French wife Marie. Marie, being brought up in a Catholic middle-class family finds it difficult to adapt, suffering from the Tunisian climate, food, and especially social customs. After building their house in the suburb of Tunis, the couple moves away from the husband’s family and tries to have a baby to make a new start. These attempts eventually end in an abortion which confirms their decision to separate, and Marie returns to France (reference).
  • ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim (1934 – 1990, Egypt) – Muḥwālah lil al-Khurūj (‘An attempt to get away’, 1980). Set in Egypt, this novel deals with the love affair between an Egyptian, Ḥakīm, and a European girl, Elsabīth, a visiting tourist. While the Egyptian narrator shows Elsabīth around Cairo and takes her to his village, the Egyptian society in the 1970s is examined, as is its cultural and religious heritage. Both the characters learn more about Egypt as Ḥakīm is confronted with the harshness of his country (reference).

  • al-Ṭayyib al-Ṣalīḥ’s (1929 – 2009, Sudan) Mawsim al-Hijrah ilā al-Shamāl (1966, English trans. Season of migration to the North, 1969) and his short story ‘Risāla ilā Aylīn’ (‘Letter to Aylien’, 1960).

The first novel breaks away from previous romantic literature on the West by depicting the North-South encounter as one of conflict, violence, and aggression. Muṣṭafā Saʿīd, the Sudanese hero of the novel, comes from a small village and moves to England to study before he returns to the Sudanese village life. During his years in England, he teaches at a British university and becomes part of the Western culture. At the same time, he has a private political agenda which is revenging colonialism by exploiting his exoticism though a series of destructive relationships with British women (reference) (also in: W: Outside the Arab World: Europe: England).

 

‘Risālailā Aylīn’, is written as a letter that the narrator addresses to his wife in which he wonders how his British wife could love a Black Muslim Arab who bears in his heart the anxieties of a whole generation. The letter can be found in Ṣāliḥ’s collection of short stories titled Dūmat Wad Ḥāmid (‘The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid’, 1960).

  • Ḥabīb al-Sālimī (1951-, Tunisia) – Rawāʾiḥ Mārī Klīr (2008, English trans. The Scents of Marie-Claire, 2010). Maḥfūẓ, a Tunisian immigrant who teaches Arabic literature at a university during the day, and roams the streets of Paris at night, meets the Parisian Mārī Klīr in a cafe in Paris, and they fall in love. But their relationship fails as their cultural and personality differences seem insurmountable, in addition to their personal issues (reference).
  • Ahdaf Soueif (1950-, Egypt) – The Map of Love (1999). The Map of Love includes two stories, the first is set in the early twentieth century when Egypt was under British occupation. In it, the English lady Winterbourne meets the Egyptian nationalist Sharif al-Baroudi, and they fall in love. The second, set primarily in the 1990s, is about the American divorced journalist Amal who is left a suitcase full of lady Winterbourne’s documents (reference). In search of her history she travels to Egypt, where she falls in love with an Egyptian and unravels the secrets of the documents (also in Colonial rule of Northern Africa: 1882 British Occupation of Egypt).
  • Bahāʾ Ṭāhir’s (1935-, Egypt) – Al-Ḥubb fī al-Manfā (1995, English trans. Love in Exile, 2005). This novel centers a middle-aged Egyptian journalist who goes into exile following his disillusionment with political and nationalist ideologies following al-Sadat’s normalization policies and Israeli expansion in Lebanon (reference). His love-affair with the Austrian journalist Brījītta seems to provide him some solace from his feeling of loss, and his relationship with a European woman is pathologized as an attempt to conquer (reference) (also in 1977 Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel).
  • Aḥmad al-Tawfīq (1943-, Morocco) – Gharībah al-Ḥusayn (‘The stranger of al-Husayn’, 2000). This novel is set during the period of Morocco’s national struggle for independence from France, which it connects to a love story between a Moroccan man and a French woman (reference). The title of the novel refers to an Andalusian musical form called Nuwbah Gharībah al-Ḥusayn (also in 1956 Independence Morocco).
  • Shahlā al-ʿUjaylī (1976-, Jordan / Syria) – Ṣayf Maʿ al-ʿAdū (2018, English trans. Summer with the Enemy, 2020). In this novel, the narrator, Lamīs, talks about her live in Raqqa, Syria, and recounts the stories of her grandmother, mother, and her own childhood adventures, before she is forced to flee to Cologne, Germany, when the Syrian war breaks out. She specifically recalls the romantic relationship her mother developed with the Germany Nikūlās, an astronomer who spent a summer with her family while doing research in Raqqa, who helps her when she arrives in Cologne (reference). The novel was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2019 (also in F: Children and Family Life: Genealogies and inter-generational stories).

Refrences:

In order of appearance

  1. ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Fatāḥ, 2017. “Al-Adībah al-Kuwaytiyyah Fāṭimah Yūsuf al-ʿAlī.” www.alwatanvoice.com, 17 July 2017 https://pulpit.alwatanvoice.com/articles/2018/07/17/468674.html (last accessed 8 August 2020)
  2. Lalita Pandit. 1992/1993. “Multiculturalism as Text and Context: Teaching Fatima Gallaire-Bourega’s ‘You Have Come Back’.” College Literature 19/20(3/1): 201-206, p. 202, 203
  3. Tahar Bekri and Richard E. Morris. 1992. “On French-Language Tunisian Literature.” North African Literature 23(2): 177-182, p. 178
  4. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ḥabīb. 2021. “Riwāyāt al-Jawāʾiz … Anṭwān al-Duwayī Yarwī Qiṣṣat ‘Gharīqat Buḥayrah Mūriyyah’.” www.youm7.com, 21 December 2021 https://www.youm7.com/story/2021/12/21/%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%B2-%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%B7%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%87%D9%89-%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%89-%D9%82%D8%B5%D8%A9-%D8%BA%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%82%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D8%AD%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9/5586629 (last accessed 3 November 2023)
  5. EAL, p. 228
  6. Ali Chibani. 2007. “Retour au pays natal: L’impossible reconciliation avec la mère.” www.la-plume-francophone.com, 2 June 2007 https://la-plume-francophone.com/2007/06/02/mouloud-feraoun-la-terre-et-le-sang/ (last accessed 3 November 2023)
  7. Tasnim Qutait. “Sonallah Ibrahim: August Star.” www.arabhyphen.wordpress.com, 4 April 2013, https://arabhyphen.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/star-of-august/ (last accessed 3 November 2023)

  8. Hanadi al-Samman. 2008. “Out of the Closet: Representation of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature.” JAL 39: 270-310, p. 290

  9. Hilary Kilpatrick. 1992. “The Egyptian novel from Zaynab to 1980.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 223-270, p. 252
  10. Rasheed El-Enany. 1997. “The Western encounter in the works of Yusuf Idris.” Research in African Literatures 28(3): 33- 45, p. 33, 37
  11. T. O. Beebee. 2012. “Abdelkébir’s Love in Two Languages”, in Transmesis: Inside Translation’s Black Box. Palgrave Macmillan: New York, p. 177
  12. ʿAlī Kāẓim Dāwwud. 2016. “Naḥnu wa al-Ākhir fī Riwāyah ‘Niskāfiyyih maʿ al-Sharīf al-Riḍḍī’ lil-ʿIrāqiyyah Mayādah Khalīl” www.alquds.co.uk, 4 March 2016 https://www.alquds.co.uk/%EF%BB%BF%D9%86%D8%AD%D9%86-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A2%D8%AE%D8%B1-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%86%D8%B3%D9%83%D8%A7%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%87-%D9%85%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B1/ (last accessed 14 April 2019)
  13. Sultan S.M. Al-Qahtani. 1994. The novel in Saudi Arabia: emergence and development 1930-1989: an historical and critical study. (doctoral dissertation University of Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom) Retrieved from http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8131/ (last accessed 4 May 2021) p. 142

  14. Suzanne Enderwitz. 1995 “The Foreign Woman in the Francophone North African Novel” in Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Roger Allen, Hilary Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor. London: Saqi Books, 116- 122, p. 118-9

  15. Hilary Kilpatrick. 1992. “The Egyptian novel from Zaynab to 1980.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 223-270, p. 264

  16. EAL, p. 634

  17. Nedal M. Al- Mousa. 1993. “The Arabic Bildungsroman: A Generic Appraisal.” IJMES 25 (2): 223-240, p. 233
  18. Yūsif Ḍamrah. 2009. “‘Rawāʾiḥ Mārī Klīr’ li-Ḥabīb al-Sālimī: Basāṭat al-Bināʾwa al-Lughah.” www.alrai.com, 11 September 2009, https://alrai.com/article/352297/%D9%85%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AD%D9%82/%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AD-%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A-%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A-%D8%A8%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%B7%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%A9 (last accessed 3 November 2023)
  19. Clarissa Burt. 2001. “The Map of Live by Ahdaf Soueif.” Feminist Review, The Realm of the Possible: Middle Eastern Women in Political and Social Spaces 69: 153-156, p. 153
  20. Somaya Abdul Wahhab. 2021. “The Subaltern Resurrected: A Study of Bahaa Taher’s ‘The Sunset Oasis’ (2007) and ‘Love in Exile’ (1995).” Transcultural Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences 1(2): 64-70, p. 65, 67
  21. Aida A. Bamia. 2003. “At-Taqfiq Ahmad.” in Encyclopaedia of African Literature. eds. Simon Gikandi, Routledge: New York, p. 48
  22. Ibrāhīm ʿĀdil. 2019. “Riwāyat ‘Ṣayf mʿa al-ʿAdū’: min Ḥikāyāt al-Nisāʾ wa al-Ḥarb.” www.ida2at.com, 10 March 2019, https://www.ida2at.com/summer-enemy-novel-review/ (last accessed 24 May 2023)
 

Leave a Recommendation

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top