LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

gender and the palestinian narrative of returnMaryam. We are reminded that Maryam, like her brother, is also trying tofollow the example of a parent in their absence, and to provide for herself therole for which she was prepared, and to which her desires lead her. Like Hamidin his quasi-erotic encounter with the Desert, Maryam too experiences apotential loss of autonomy in her own erotic encounters. Her experience ofsexual intercourse is depicted as the mirror-image of Hamid’s fears on enteringthe Desert. For her, the sensation of being ‘squeezed, kneaded, and soaked inwater in a terrifying mélange of heat and cold’ (Kanafani 1990: 16/185) – is asfearful as Hamid’s sensation of being swallowed by the Desert. Shaking underZakaria’s hands, Maryam is reminded of Hamid’s hands in childhood, shakingher shoulders in a small boat off the Jaffa shore, and explaining that theirmother will follow them later. But, shaped by historical circumstance and thenecessity of male return, it is Maryam’s desires that are ultimately designated asdangerous. All That’s Left to You leaves off not only with a renewed sense ofnational consciousness for Hamid, but with a renewed value attached to thedomestication of female desire.Kanafani’s novels suggest that the association of woman with land, althoughit may be an old one, is also mobilised in specific ways depending on the socialand political context. The construction of territorial loss in masculine termsafter 1948 sets the stage for the enactment of masculine return in the early1960s. Both the narrative of loss and that of return indicate the interdependenceof masculine and feminine symbols in structuring national narratives. Ananalysis of masculine narratives may help produce new answers about whyassociations between land and woman have such enduring and powerful resonance,both within and beyond literature. Such analysis requires recognition, inthe first place, that gender refers to men and masculinity as much as it does towomen and femininity, as well as to the relations between them. At the sametime, recognising that the relationship between masculine and nationalidentity is constructed in specific historical contexts raises new questions aboutthe mutual exclusivity of masculinity and femininity in shaping nationalidentity.Kanafani’s novels are good places to explore these questions. His influentialnarratives provide answers that are relevant to both the specific circumstancesof Palestinian national identity after 1948, and to the broader circumstances outof which territorial nationalism emerged. The struggles of men in his novels toassert national identity are played out on other Arab and on Israeli nationalterritories, and in the presence of the political and military might of other men.Yet the implicit context in which dominant and subordinate masculinities vieto assert presence are explicitly displaced onto interactions between men andwomen in which women and femininity are perceived as powerful, threateningand in need of subordination. The assumptions about feminine desire and— 73 —www.taq.ir