Mohammad Shaheen

E.M. Forster and the politics of imperialism

Foreword J.Beer Acknowledgements Abbreviations and References Introduction Person and Persona in the Portrait of Imperialism Hassan in England: A Western Room with an Oriental View Forster Writes to the Empire and Salutes Egypt Beyond the Mediterranean Human Norm: The Politics of Liberal Humanism in Retreat Burras Introduction and Beyond: A Detour Round the Floods Forsters Politics in Saids Culture and Imperialism: A Modern Debate Conclusion Appendices Notes Index

Abdullah Samsa in Waqwaq Island

In the beginning there was a people, and the people were free to die of hunger and silence or from the damp of prisons and secret concentration camps. When Abdullah Samsa woke from sleep one morning, after a disturbing dream, he found that he had not been transformed into an amazing insect, but that a thought had been imported into his head.

Forster’s Alexandria: the Transitional Journey

Forster’s sojourn in Alexandria was not less needed than his previous visit to India. The mixture of futility and exaltation generated by that earlier journey had subsequently been superseded by feelings of self-disgust and misery. Firstly, the domestic affairs of his female relations became too chaotic for him to deal with without becoming depressed. Secondly, Maurice, which Forster had just finished and which he had decided to leave unpublished, did not bring with it satisfaction, or the cure to his troubles which he had anticipated while writing it. Thirdly, there was the general mood of the war, in which he found a parallel to his own affairs.1

Abu-Zaid Surrenders

‘Only one strike with this hoe, and it’s all over,’ said Abu-Zaid to himself; but he was shaking as he said it, and so was the lion tattooed on his right arm. His moustache was moist with sweat. A raven croaked, pecked at a worm, spat it out and ruffled its wings. Its shadow lay on the waters of the irrigation ditch. It appeared dispirited.

The Situation of the Short Story

This chapter presents some aspects of the dilemma in which the Arab writer has found himself over the last two decades or so (and perhaps still does today). It particularly shows how little support authors of short stories had from their fellow writers (such as critics who were supposed to promote them).

The Blue Charm and the Return of Jubaynah

The young men were returning from their usual evening stroll and darkness had just begun to fall as our car approached the charcoal kilns of our Galilean village. The fragrance of the submerged wood in the kilns filled the air, and our guest exclaimed joyfully, ‘We have arrived’

Shatir Hassan and the Season of Drought

The sky would yield the people no rain … the trees and crops withered and the animals perished … the earth cracked as it thirsted for water, and the men sat and thought in bewilderment and impotence about how to irrigate their lands and provide their families with water … everyone relinquished the habit of bathing, and women invented new ways to distract their children. The heavens would not heed prayers for rain and urgent supplications and hot tears. After several weeks, hunger spread throughout the land from village to village, a terrifying monster that left its mark on faces, bodies, crops and the earth.

Shahrazad: The Eternal Perspective

The main motif of the story is apparently the Phoenix legend which seems to have inspired even the title of the story itself. The protagonist’s fierce longing to become a bird immediately suggests an analogy between him and the ancient Egyptian mythological bird, the bennu, whose name in Greek is Phoenix. The ‘great mass of red fire, blazing in the heart of the black night’ is an analogue of the pyre of flames on which the fabulous bird burnt itself when it reached the end of its life, which according to the legend is 500 or 600 years spent in the Arabian wilderness. Moreover the rising sun of a new day in the story points to the Phoenix, the symbol of regeneration.1 Even the fight in the city can be read as the symbolic death which precedes resurrection, and the sword may stand for the fanning wings of the Phoenix.

The Death of Sindbad

The curtain rises on one of the quarters of old Baghdad. Sindbad, an old man with back bent and clothes in tatters, returns from his voyage, all his wealth spent. He finds all his family dead and his house sold. Weakly, he mounts a stone which lies in front of the house which no longer belongs to him. The neighbours and the youth of the quarter gather around him: they bombard him with questions, half pitying, half mocking. The children pelt him with stones.

Spring in the Ashes

Once upon a time, there was a little town, built among wide green fields, which were irrigated by a river of abundant water. All the citizens carried in their pockets a piece of thick paper, on which was written a name.