LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

the nation speaksdate of composition the year 1957. The poem is addressed to the Algerianfreedom fighter Jamila Buhayrid who achieved huge fame in the Arab worldwhen she was ruthlessly tortured by the French occupying authorities. 26 Thepoem is not, strictly speaking, a celebration of Jamila’s courage in the face ofFrench savagery, but a fierce attack on the Arab political system which failedher by substituting rhetoric and empty talk for effective action. Nazik accusesthis system of moral and national bankruptcy, and she reserves her sharpestattack for political leaders, songwriters, musicians and fellow poets who ‘cynically’and ‘brutally’ plucked their words and musical notes out of Jamila’s wounds.Nazik ends her poem by expressing her shame for this shameless behaviour (fawakhajalata min jirahi Jamila, 1979: 508). There is no doubt that Nazik thoughtshe was speaking for millions of Arabs, her subaltern constituency, who felt asangry as she had done but lacked the voice or the courage to express themselves.For these people, Nazik fulfilled the traditional role of the poet in Arab culture– albeit in reverse – as the spokesperson of her people. Traditionally the poet issupposed to broadcast the triumphs of his own people, not to publicise theirfailures. In Nahnu wa Jamila, Nazik turns this principle upside down.In nationalist terms, therefore, Nahnu wa Jamila is an ‘anti-poem’. It does notcelebrate the achievements of the nation, but criticises its shameful failures. It isanchored to the trope of the brave hero in the nationalist ‘age of struggle’, butsets this against another trope of this age: that of the despicable opportunist who,vulture-like, cynically and immorally appropriates the suffering of his fellownationalists for reasons of blatant self-advancement. But is not Nazik open tothe same criticism? Is not she also blatantly and hypocritically taking advantageof Jamila’s suffering to occupy a moral high ground from which she can proclaima ‘holier than thou’ attitude? And what makes Nazik’s sentiments of nationalself-flagellation more credible and worthy of respect than the celebratorysentiments of her rivals? Does not the nation in the age of struggle need tobalance the kind of self-critical attitude that Nazik adopts against the selfcongratulatoryposition of her rivals? Is Nazik’s act of remembering more crediblethan her rivals’ act of forgetting, when it is in the nature of nationalism for thetwo acts to co-exist in nation building? 27The answer to these questions is not easy, but the title gives us a few clues. Init, Nazik sets the Ænahnu’ (we, us) of the nation against the ‘them, she’ that isJamila. In this equation, Nazik is as distant and divorced from Jamila as herrivals are. Both Nazik and her rivals therefore belong to the Ænahnu’, thedespicable collectivity in the age of struggle, rather than to the figure of the bravehero which Jamila represents in that same age. The nahnu of the title is inclusiveof all that is not Jamila. If so, it makes little difference where Nazik positions hersubjectivity in relation to the people she criticises. She is as guilty of inaction asthey are. Like their pens, words and musical notes, her poetry is not mightier— 217 —www.taq.ir