LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

writing the nationon an affair ‘safe from the judgement of men’, the curious way in which they actout those positions in their relationship permits Hamid to reaffirm his own classdistinction from Zainab through his exploitation of her beauty. Hamid himselfseems half-conscious of the fact when he attempts to justify his desire forZainab: ‘As a result he found that he could kiss her from time to time withoutbeing shaken by shame, saying to himself: “Isn’t it natural for a boy to kiss a girlwhose beauty pleases him?”’ (Haykal: 1989 17). Natural perhaps but, for Haykal,undesirable in this case because the relationship is not one of love but passion.At this point Hamid is seemingly too consumed by his passion to recognise thedifference, and it is Zainab, rather, who almost instinctively senses the problem:‘Zainab enjoyed listening to Hamid and conversing with him but she neededsomeone to whom she could give herself. Her aimless love needed somewhere torest, in the heart of another to whom she could devote her life’ (Haykal 1989:29). The narrator then quickly intervenes to define, in no uncertain terms, thenature of this longing:As though the human heart, in its search for love, strives to find a partner of equalstatus so that the compatibility between the two may assist their chances of happiness… A relationship exists between us and them which we do not experience withpeople from a different class … So it was from among the workers that Zainab wouldfind the companion she wanted. Indeed, she had been feeling for some time that shehad already discovered her partner in Ibrahim. (Haykal 1989: 29–30)Thus, Hamid’s predicament becomes apparent as well: while passion mayindeed be natural among individuals of different classes, love is only naturalamong members of the same class.To a great extent Zainab is the story of Hamid’s struggle to understand andcome to terms with the narrator’s argument here. 24 If Hamid is to find love,according to this argument, his natural choice should therefore be his cousinAziza, to whom he does indeed return at this point. But his desire for Aziza isnow further complicated by the effect of those very conventions that led him toseek out Zainab in the first place. For as the narrator informs us at the start,Hamid is a romantic dreamer:In this Egyptian environment and with an upbringing such as Hamid’s, it is notuncommon for young men to grow up with a false view of life. They often live in aland of fancy, creating their own happiness and suffering while painting the presentand future with their own desires. Relying on such imaginings to get them throughtheir work, many boys colour the outside world in a contradictory manner. Althoughtheir senses may belie their imaginings, the power of their fantasies is strong enoughto overcome them, making them disbelieve what they see or distorting theirjudgement and estimation of what stands before them. (Haykal 1989: 13)And with Aziza now standing before him, we learn that Hamid has alreadyconstructed a false image of her: ‘Stirred by his dreams, Hamid imagined Aziza— 141 —www.taq.ir