LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

syrine c. houtBoth novels exemplify the Borgesian post-modernist notion that ‘historicaltruth is not what took place; it is what we think took place’ (Alameddine 12),making it ‘possible [that] everyone was right’ (190). The truth is indeedsubjective and consequently multiple, contradictory and shifting. Humanexistence, as Nabokov maintains, ‘is but a crack of light between two eternitiesof darkness’ (122). How bright or dim our lives are, however, depends on ourdecisions and actions. Perhaps no one is fully responsible as no one is fully exempt.But one thing is certain. Deconstructing myths of religio-ethnic superioritiesbidding for political supremacy would be the first step towards reconstructingthe fragmented nation and fostering what Miriam Cooke calls humanistnationalism. Unlike statist nationalism, which is absolute, inherently violent,and ‘requires a binary framework of differentiation and recognition, positing thenation out there from time immemorial and awaiting discovery by those whonaturally belong to it, humanist nationalism construes the nation as a dialectic,as both produced and productive’ (1996: 270–2). The latter is not predicated ona collective ideology but is the expression of individual states of mind (290).Indeed, various expressions of individual states of mind with regard toLebanese nationalism are presented in Koolaids and Unreal City. As I have argued,neither novel portrays exile and the nation as antithetical entities but asrealities co-existing within the individual, the nation and the host country.Nonetheless, the general impression that until Lebanon emerges as a democratic,tolerant, peaceful and just nation, contemporary Lebanese exilic literaturewill continue to be, for many Lebanese writers and readers everywhere, theirsubstitute nation is quite unshakable.notes1. Hammoud was born in 1963, Hanania in 1964 and Najjar in 1967. Alameddine is inhis early to mid-forties.2. See I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters (2001), Koolaids: The Art of War (1998)and The Perv: Stories (1999) by Alameddine, Homesick (1997), Unreal City (1999)and Eros Island (2000) by Hanania, L’Occidentaliste (1997) by Hammoud, andL’école de la guerre (1999) by Najjar.3. Between 1975 and 1989, approximately 40 per cent of the multi-sectarian Lebanesecitizenry, representing different socio-economic classes, found refuge abroad. Aboutone half left for North America, Europe, Africa and Australia, while the other halfwent to oil-producing Arab countries as well as Syria and Jordan. In 1989, as a resultof the declining Lebanese pound and the continuing civil unrest, the rate ofemigration went back to its 1975 level, when 15 per cent of the population fled thewar (Labaki 1992: 607–9, 621). Currently, the ratio of Lebanese abroad to those inLebanon is five (or six) to one (Cooke 1996: 269).4. She cites, for example, Samuel Hazo, Gregory Orfalea, Elmaz Abinader and RonDavid.— 206 —www.taq.ir