Fathers and Sons in the Arab Middle East

243 Pages·2013·3.92 MB·English

by  Dalya Cohen-Mor (auth.)

FATHERS AND SONS IN THE
ARAB MIDDLE EAST
Also by the author
Yusuf Idris: Changing Visions
An Arabian Mosaic
A Matter of Fate
Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories
Mothers and Daughters in Arab Women’s Literature:
The Family Frontier
Fathers and Sons in the
Arab Middle East
Dalya Cohen-Mor
FATHERSANDSONSINTHEARABMIDDLEEAST
Copyright © Dalya Cohen-Mor, 2013.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-33519-7
All rights reserved.
Parts of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 appeared in my previous work,
Mothers and Daughters in Arab Women’s Literature: The Family Frontier.
Leiden: Brill, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden,
The Netherlands. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of
the publisher.
First published in 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-46294-0 ISBN 978-1-137-33520-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137335203
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: November 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Zivv ,
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
Thomas Carlyle
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 1
Introduction: Why Fathers and Sons? 1
The Legacy of Abraham 1
Conceptual Considerations and Underlying Assumptions 7
Defining Basic Terms 12
Sources, Methods, and Approaches 1 4
Organization 18
Chapter 2
The Voyage to Manhood: The Elusive Quest 21
Insights into the Making of Men 2 1
Growing Up Male in Arab Families 28
Traditional Patterns 29
Modern Trends 3 8
Family Dynamics: Mothers and Others 4 0
The Mother-Son Relationship 4 1
The Sibling Relationship 45
The Kin Group 46
Contradictions in Arab Masculinity 47
Chapter 3
Fathers and Sons in Personal Histories 55
Cross-Generational Echoes: Grandfathers, Fathers, Sons 5 5
Jurji Zaydan’s Autobiographyy 56
Ahmad Amin’s My Lifee 60
Nurturing Fathers: Bonds of Love 66
Mikhail Naimy’s Seventy: A Life Storyy 66
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s The First Welll 71
Authoritarian Fathers: Conflicted Ties 77
Edward Said’s O ut of Placee 77
Tawfiq al-Hakim’s The Prison of Lifee 83
viii CONTENTS
Abusive Fathers: The Scars of Neglect and Battering 89
Hanna Mina’s F ragments of Memoryy 90
Mohamed Choukri’s For Bread Alonee 93
Absent Fathers: Efforts to Fill the Void 99
Halim Barakat’s “Childhood Memories” 100
Yusuf Idris’s “A Sketch of My Life as a Child” 1 01
Conclusion 104
Chapter 4
Fathers and Sons in Works of Fiction 1 07
Paterfamilias: Naguib Mahfouz’s Trilogyy 108
The Authoritarian Father: Yusuf Idris’s “The Journey” 111
The Martyr Father: Yahya Haqqi’s The Saint’s Lampp 116
The Alienated Father: Zakaria Tamer’s “The Family” 118
The Failed Father: Fathy Ghanem’s The Man WhoLost
His Shadoww 119
Living Vicariously: Mu’nis al-Razzaz’s “Abu Richard” 122
Child Neglect: Alaa al-Aswany’s The Yacoubian Buildingg 123
Child Sacrifice: Yusuf al-Qa‘id’s War in the Land of Egyptt 125
The Lost Father: Ibrahim al-Koni’s Anubiss 130
Conclusion 133
Chapter 5
Fathers and Sons in Poetry and Politics 139
The Father-Son Nexus 139
The Ethos of Masculinity 1 41
The Child Is Father of the Man 1 44
The Quest for Freedom 1 48
The Master-Disciple Dialectic 153
The Demigods: Arab Leaders, Rulers, and Despots 1 60
Conclusion 169
Chapter 6
Conclusion: Embattled Selves and the Dream of Liberation 173
The Trap of Masculinity 1 73
The Rap That Sparked a Revolution 181
The Changing Landscape of Men’s Relation to Men 1 85
Notes 191
Bibliography 213
Permissions 223
Index 227
Acknowledgments
WWW
hile working on this research project, I was fortunate to have
received assistance from several sources. First and foremost, I thank
Professor Paul Poppen, chair of the Department of Psychology at
George Washington University, where I have been a research fellow
since 2006, for welcoming me to his department and facilitating my
efforts to bring this project to fruition. This work would not have
been possible without his continuous interest and support.
This study was informed by my stay as a Peace Corps volunteer in
Jordan. I lived with a large Bedouin family who treated me as a mem-
ber of their household. This gave me a unique opportunity to observe
from close quarters their family life and patterns of interaction. My
host family was related to one of the biggest families in the village,
and I was introduced to many of their relatives, friends, and neigh-
bors. During this period, I taught English at the village girls’ school
and interacted with the teachers, all of whom were extremely open
and eager to exchange information with me about family life, family
values, and cultural norms in Jordan and America. My stay in the vil-
lage, as well as my visits to the capital city of Amman, to Al al-Bayt
University in Mafraq, to Mu’tah University in the province of Karak,
and to the village of Taybeh that overlooks the magnificent rocks of
Petra, has given me invaluable insights into contemporary Arab life
as manifested in Jordan. I was especially amazed to see the effects of
the rapid social change currently underway in the village and the city.
The march to progress in Jordan, as in varying degrees throughout
the Arab region, is incontestable. I hope that the aspirations of the
many Arab men and women who have anonymously contributed to
this work will be realized in the near future.
This study is my second exploration into Arab family life. As with
the first volume, Mothers and Daughters in Arab Women’s Literature:
The Family Frontierr (Leiden: Brill, 2011), I am greatly indebted to
the work of others in Middle Eastern studies; without this extensive