LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

jeff shalanto be everything he wanted’ (Haykal 1989: 14). But what is crucial to theirrelationship is the manner in which Aziza’s seclusion is itself implicated in theconstruction and maintenance of the image Hamid nurtures: ‘[U]pon becomingsecluded at home something awakened in the soul of one of her relatives[Hamid], who had always been kind to her as a child’ (Haykal 1989: 14).Hamid’s romantic image of Aziza is allowed to flourish precisely because thesocial conventions of veiling and seclusion preclude the kind of intimatecontact that might otherwise dispel such an image. And like Zainab before her,it is Aziza herself who, in a series of letters, must now awaken Hamid to thereality of her own condition:Brother Hamid, do you believe that girls like me are happy in this outmoded prison ofours? You might think we are content but God alone knows the vexation of our bitterexistence which we are forced to put up with and become accustomed to as a patientgets used to her illness or sick bed … Don’t remind me of the veil for the verymention of it ruins me. I cannot even think about it without suffering intolerableanguish so I have grown accustomed to ignoring my situation, accepting my fate as itis … However much our hearts are kindled by the fire in our breast we are forced toconceal and repress it until finally it dies, having eaten away the dearest and mostbeloved part of our lives. (Haykal 1989: 134–6)This confession comes as a revelation to Hamid who, like ‘everybody else’,had ‘believed that veiled women were quite content to stay at home’ (Haykal1989: 135). But the subversive potential that thus opens for Aziza in thisclandestine correspondence is undercut by the resignation of her words, whichecho, in no uncertain terms, the fatalistic outlook of the peasantry. And after asingle brief encounter where the fantasy of love that each has construed in theabsence of the other clashes with the awkward reality of their sudden intimacyAziza resigns herself to fate: ‘Forget me Hamid … leave me in my cell. I amcontent with my life or at least I am forced to be … I am not cut out for love norhas love anything to do with me’ (Haykal 1989: 140). Then, as if to underscorethe helplessness of her situation, a final letter arrives a few weeks later in whichshe announces that a marriage has been arranged for her.With Aziza condemned to the fate of social convention, Hamid’s desire mustremain unfulfilled, and Haykal’s vision for the nation remains but a vision:marriage based on a love naturalised in terms of class is unattainable in thissocial climate, no more possible for Hamid and Aziza than for Zainab andIbrahim. With Zainab’s arranged marriage to Hassan, she too has since fallenvictim to the same tradition. And so, like Ibrahim, both women are consignedto a customary fate and rendered powerless to oppose it. Only Hamid is free todepart and continue his search elsewhere; and after a vain attempt to return toZainab, he quite literally vanishes from the sterile terrain of the novel’s purview.But in the letters to his parents that follow his departure, Hamid establishes— 142 —www.taq.ir