LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

syrine c. houtlonger be replaced by those of presence and gain except through reconstructivememory (1998: 376). In underscoring the positive aspects of what he calls‘nostalgic memory’, Spitzer cites French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, whoviews nostalgia as the mechanism which frees individuals and groups from theconstraints of time by allowing them to transcend its irreversibility and thusfocus on the positive in their traumatised past. Nostalgic memory is crucial forthe reconstitution and continuity of individual and collective identity of allkinds. By contrast, critical memory, according to Spitzer, incorporates ‘thenegative and bitter from the immediate past’. But this type of memory is equallysignificant to the retrospective act of self-definition (384).Alameddine weaves both forms of memory – nostalgic and critical – into hisliterary collage. Sweet and bitter memories exist side by side. Interestingly,unlike all other fragments whose narrators may be determined upon a secondreading, those expressing nostalgia for happier times remain anonymous, articulatingperhaps the covert homesickness of the Lebanese characters abroad. Inone segment, pining for the scent of pine is triggered by either imagining orencountering its smell, which ‘calls the [narrator] home’ (Alameddine 1998:83). As Margaret Morse explains, the memory of home can be evoked by certainsensory experiences, the olfactory one being the most prominent. Thus, parts ofhome ‘can be chanced upon, cached in secret places safe from language’ (1999:68). Elsewhere, the nameless narrator declares: ‘Lebanon is a piece of land …but it’s our land, our home (even if actually we are not living there). It’s ourSweet Home, and we love it. So we are called Lebanese’ (Alameddine 183). Theunidentified voice seems to speak for those Lebanese exiles whose love for theircountry is genuine and inclusive, that is, free of any political and/or religiousbias.In a letter excerpt posted on the internet, Wayne Kasem, a Lebanese-American, writes: ‘I agree with many of the writers that Lebanese are free to beArabs if this is their cultural identity, and they are free to be Western if that istheir cultural identity, or even Aramaic. This is the point. In Lebanon, oneshould be free to be different. This is the essence of being Lebanese and theessence of being American’ (Alameddine 71–2). One of these writers, I believe,is Alameddine himself. In his acknowledgements, he describes himself as ‘anerrant non-conformist’ (viii). While he may be referring to his homosexuality,this self-labelling may also be understood as a lack of commitment to aparticular religious sect and/or political ideology.According to Kasem and Alameddine, cultural identity is different fromnational identity in two ways: first, it is inculcated in the maturing Lebaneseindividual by his or her immediate social milieu; second, it should be secondaryto, albeit larger than, that individual’s inherited nationality. Therefore, whilecherishing one’s acquired cultural identity, including one’s religious beliefs,— 194 —www.taq.ir