Leila Ahmed on Becoming Arab

August 23, 2007

At numerous points in her autobiography Crossing Borders Leila Ahmed notes her dislike of Egyptian president (1954-1970) Gamal Abdel Nasser. Her family was clearly on the losing side of the social changes that came to Egypt in those years.. and she had a viscerally hostile response to his rhetorical excesses. In one of her last chapters Ahmed wrestles with Nasser's most enduring contribution to the Middle East: identity as an Arab. The chapter mixes scholarship with personal memories.. and winds up being a standout example of the way identity commitments can be investigated.

Identity is usually taken as a given. People just are women or gays or working class or Irish. But these terms have long histories and develop through time. When reading literature from another period one must keep in mind the way identity commitments.. the very words by which we define ourselves.. are always shifting. "Arab" is an identity which arose and gained influence in a remarkably short period. Ahmed tries to give a sense of what this word sounded like to her:

Imagine what it would be like if, say, the British or French were incessantly told, with nobody allowed to contest, question, or protest, that they were now European, and only European. European! European! European! And endless songs about it. But for us it was actually worse and certainly more complicated. Its equivalent would be if the British or French were being told that they were white. White! White! White! [244]

When you think about it, "Arab" is a very strange grouping. It elides the obvious national and local identities that mark the Middle East. Ahmed asks: "Was I, for instance, really likely to feel more kin, more at home, with someone from Saudi Arabia than with someone, say, from Istanbul?" (254-5). The answer to that question is of course No.

Ahmed writes eloquently about her personal response to the hammering rhetoric of Arabness.. but then turns to an investigation of the historical construction of this identity. It is a complex history which I won't recount.. but the term was always politically charged. T.E. Lawrence and the British want the "Arabs" to throw off Ottoman rule.. so there was clear utility in pushing this identity. Then with the increasing strength of the Zionism and the creation of Israel, being "Arab" was a counter definition to Jewishness. To make things even more confusing, the West imposed its own vision of what it meant to be an "Arab" on people living in these countries. So for Leila Ahmed.. whose family just considered itself Egyptian and accepted the diversity of religions and languages within that identity.. the idea of suddenly being "Arab" was traumatic and wrenching. This is exactly why the chapter is so valuable: it shows the way identity can shift right out from under you at certain points in history.

The climax of the chapter comes when Ahmed, after piecing together the history of "Arab" as an identity, tries to decide where her parents fell in this drama of words and perceptions. She believes that her parents would have been on the side that opposed war against Israel in 1948.. and which generally wanted to stay separated from the Palestinian issue.. although she has no specific memories that this was the case. Her method is to identify the terms by which her parents saw the world and then to reason on that basis about their responses to historical events.

The concept of being "Arab" may seem fixed today.. and it is reinforced by satellite news channels and institutions such as the Arab League.. one would go seriously wrong if Egyptians in the 19th century were understood to be operating with these same commitments. As we push further back in time, the nature of those commitments only shifts further. One interesting angle of scholarly pursuit would be to endeavor to discover the identity commitments of various historical individuals. This would proceed in a manner similar to that exemplified by Ahmed.. and if done well it would lead to a similar re-imagining of the world as perceived and experienced by another person.