LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:4 April 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Aziza Abdullah’s Taif Walia (Phantom of Walia):
A Critical Reading

Dr. Redhwan Qasem Ghaleb

Abstract

Most of Arab women novelists, if not all, have been addressing feminist issues for ages. Interestingly enough, Aziza Abdullah reverses the norms in Taif Wilaia (Taif) giving priority to the homeland issues. The narrative tackles expatriation, a long standing issue that has been monopolized by Arab male works. Besides being treated from the female prospective point of view, the expatriate exterminates his life and youth in quest for an alternative homeland. The treatment of the encounter between Arab and the west is different from that of Arab writers both in characterization and theme. It concentrates on the topic of the colonizer and colonized and the possibility of reconciliation. Through the narrative, the novelist raises questions of an immigrant dilemma inside and abroad, social problems, ignorance, illusion and class within the Yemen context. The choice of this narrative stems from the fact that it deals with unflinching epidemic on the displacement and dispossession of people who turn to emigration as their only venue of hope. The current situation of Yemen has recently witnessed a tremendous uprooting that has surfaced to the foreground, as well as the premonition of the writer about Yemen impel me to investigate this castle abandoned, if not forgotten by readers and researchers not only at the local context, but also on both contemporary Arabic and world literature using an elective theoretical frame. The narrative is a cry against the permanence of regressive situations that fragmentize the country, emigration and a call to encounter reality and to liberate ourselves from the past and to instill patriotism.

Keywords: immigration, homeland, encounter between east and west, past.

1. Introduction

A reader or a witness of the Yemeni history, its political and economical events through different historical stages comes out with the impression that the history of Yemen is a record of immigration and immigrant. In fact, Yemen is primarily known as “a sending country” (Regt 2), as history has never witnessed immigration in a huge abundance as it happens in Yemen: “the Yemeni immigration has surpassed that of any other country in the Middle East” (Alzouebi 53). The phenomenon of expatriation or immigration is not newly born, but a long standing and persisting problem that has become synonymous with Yemen. Wahab Romea states: “Emigration is past and present issue of Yemen, an issue suffered by each Yemeni home and every family especially in the country side …from almost every home, the village, strongest youth have been taken away by emigration” (qtd. in Khasback 21). It is dated back to the 5th B.C. while the modern Yemeni immigration is dated back to the 18th century with the occupation of Aden by the British colonization, and it increases after WWII. The biggest immigration took place in the 20th century to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Redhwan Qasem Ghaleb
Assistant Professor of English & Head of English Department
Faculty of Education & Languages
Amran University
Amran
Yemen
redhwan@auye.ac
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