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IAMURE Internaonal Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion
28
ABSTRACT
Dual loyalty refers to the common emotional experience of being pulled in two
dierent directions. It consists of a collective state of mind such that diasporas feel
they owe allegiance to both host country and homeland. e study explores the
theme of dual loyalties in an Arab American novel, Scattered Like Seeds, by Shaw
J. Dallal. e paper uses the qualitative research design involving literary criticism.
e results showed that dual loyalties can be usual in terms of their occurrence as a
diagnostic phenomenon, but they are unusual and melodic in terms of their eects
on the psychology and the social portion of the people aected. e study concludes
that dual loyalty as exemplied by afer, reaches a point where one belongs to both
and none; unable to entirely side with one, afer is not accepted by either. He is
viewed as an American by the Arabs and an Arab by the Americans. Dual loyalty is
like a hyphen, a portion that enables one to impartially see the deformities of each
culture.
KEYWORDS
Literature, dual loyalties, Arab American novel, literary criticism, USA
Vol. 3 January 2013
Print ISSN 2244-1530 • Online ISSN 2244-1549
Internaonal Peer Reviewed Journal
doi: hp://dx.doi.org/10.7718/iamure.ijlpr.v3i1.483
IAMURE Internaonal Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion is produced by IAMURE
Muldisciplinary Research, an ISO 9001:2008 cered by the AJA Registrars Inc.
Dual Loyalties in Arab American Novel:
A Case Study of Scattered Like Seeds
by Shaw J. Dallal
EBRAHIM MOHAMMED ALWURAAFI
ORCID No. 0000-0002-5537-7548
ebrahimwara@gmail.com
University of Mysore
Internaonal Peer Reviewed Journal
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INTRODUCTION
ough much has been written on diasporas’ identity, hyphenation, displacement,
in-betweenness, and so on, one issue has been largely neglected: that of diasporas’
loyalties. at neglect has in part been due to the social and political sensitivity of
the issue. Politicians have neither encouraged examination of issue nor provided
the information needed for such an examination. However, the rapid increase in
immigration over the past 30 years has caused some scholars and leaders to questions
both political loyalty and political adaptability of these new immigrants. Many
writers, whether creative or intellectual, started exploring the subject and instead
of using the term directly, these writers used euphemisms such as pluralism or
multiculturalism which have been seen to breed double consciousness—loyalty to
more than one country. e multicultural/assimilation literature is often about the
problem of dual loyalty. Before going further in this exploration, it is better to start
with the denitions of the terms ‘loyalty’ and ‘dual.’
e Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition denes loyalty as “allegiance to the
sovereign or established government of one’s country” (80). It traces the word loyalty
to the 15th century, noting that then it primarily referred to delity in service, in
love, or to an oath that one has made. Shklar sees loyalty to be “an attachment to
a social group” (184). In e Philosophy of Loyalty, Josiah Royce presents another
denition of the concept. According to Royce, loyalty is “the willing and practical
and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause” (51).e cause mentioned in
the denition may encompass principles, ideas, ideals, religions, ideologies, nations,
governments, parties, leaders, families, friends, regions, racial groups, in short,
anyone or anything one can feel attached to.
FRAMEWORK
Stephen Nathanson (1993) states that loyalty can be either “singleormultiple”
(107). People may have a single loyalty to just one person, group, or thing, or
multiple loyalties to multiple objects. Multiple loyalties can constitute adisloyaltyto
an object if one of those loyalties isexclusionary. However, Nathanson observes, this
is a special case. In the general case, the existence of multiple loyalties does not cause
a disloyalty. One can, for example, be loyal to one’s friends, or one’s family, and still,
without contradiction, be loyal to one’s religion, or profession. Nathanson’s notion
of multiple loyalties can be further explained with reference to immigrants who nd
themselves divided between two identities, two countries and two loyalties. In other
words, the identities of diaspora individuals and communities can neither be placed
IAMURE Internaonal Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion
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only in relation to some homeland to which they all long to return nor to that country
alone where they settle down in. ey, by all means, face the crisis of hybrid or dual
identity, which makes their existence all the more dicult. Immigrants’ hyphenated
identities have given birth to dual loyalties.
In fact, dual loyalty can be used to refer to “the common emotional experience
of being pulled in two dierent directions” (Baron 1025). According to Sheer,
dual loyalty consists in “a collective state of mind such that diasporans feel they
owe allegiance to both host country and homeland” (226). It, therefore, involves
simultaneous obligations, express or implied, to two parties. A person with such
an experience is said to have “justiable yet opposing political commitments or
allegiances” (Baron 1030). Any person or group could face competing loyalties that
will cross class, religious, ethnic, familial, political and gender lines. e underlying
experience of holding competing and potentially contradictory loyalties is an
experience many people have in their personal and professional lives and has a history
that goes beyond the modern invention of immigration and citizenship. In medieval
political thought, dual loyalty was a problem, but it was also accepted as a basic feature
of the body/soul duality that characterizes human life. e Christian saying “render
unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” is an early indication of
the variations of the dual loyalty problem. However, as a modern political problem
dual loyalty is not about the body/soul or Caesar/God division but about potential
challenges to state authority and it is this aspect that the paper is primarily concerned
with exploring. In this sense immigrants’ dual loyalties can be dened as “competing
or conicting political allegiances between two states” (Baron 1025).
roughout the rst half of the twentieth century and well in the 1960s,
there continued to be a widely held opinion that dual loyalty was an undesirable
phenomenon detrimental to both the friendly relations between nations and the
well-being of the individuals concerned. Not surprisingly, then, this period saw a
number of attempts to root out the occurrence of dual loyalties. Yet this resistance has
undergone a considerable change in the last twenty or so years. In today’s world, dual
citizenship/loyalty is increasingly common, despite a global legal order nominally
hostile to such a status. e reality of the dual citizenship and by extension dual
loyalties is the result of many factors, but it is most commonly understood as a result
of globalization. is historical outline shows that while loyalty and allegiance were
central to legal understanding of the citizenship, the development in international law
of nationality has changed from rigid to more exible forms, and this development
has occurred in response to the changing structure of the international political
economy.
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Generally speaking, diasporas demonstrate ambiguous, dual, or divided loyalties
to their host countries and homelands. Of the three, the most common is dual
loyalty. Immigrants undergoing this experience do not see a substantial contradiction
between their two loyalties. us, they accept and comply with the general social,
political and economic norms and regulations of their host countries. At the same
time, they feel an anity for and maintain contacts with their families and other
groups in their homelands and are willing to promote their homelands’ interests
in host countries and elsewhere. Although in their host countries they may face
disparagement, false accusations, discrimination and persecution, core activists in
such diaspora communities are prepared to cope with these attitudes. As long as
relations between their homelands and host countries are friendly, most diasporans
will not face any diculties in balancing between their two loyalties. at will not
be the case, however, if disagreements arise between host countries and homelands.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
e present paper is an attempt to examine the impact of hyphenated identity on
promoting dual loyalties as well as the relationship between hyphen and loyalty. e
signicance of this study comes from two facts: rst it adds new dimensions to Arab
American literary body and second, dual loyalty is a concept that emerges in a variety
of literatures, including those dealing with diasporas, multiculturalism, immigration,
political obligation and foreign policy, and nally, the concept of dual loyalty is itself
signicant since it directly relates to the political foundations of the modern state
and citizenship, and to the way in which identity is often understood to function
both inside and between states. As such, this exploration may bring insights into the
normative assumptions that exist in relevant to identity politics. Above all, it casts
the light on an outstanding rubric in the body of the contemporary Arab American
identity as typically represented in Dallal’s novel Scattered Like Seeds.
METHODOLOGY
e study used the qualitative usual design involving literary criticism of the
novel, Scattered like Seeds, by Shaw J. Dallal.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Dallal in his debut novel attempts to give the reader a true portrayal of the
Arabs living in America where they are perceived as terrorists and enemies. ey are
IAMURE Internaonal Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion
32
always accused of loyalty to their natives and of raising money for terrorist groups
such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda. He shows how Arabs often struggle with
loyalties that are divided between their adopted country and native land. On one
hand, they feel the need to defend their cultures, nations of origin, and religion from
hostile media and political aronts in the United States. And, on the other, they are
committed to their new home of which they feel the part and parcel and therefore
worthy of their allegiance and protection.
e novel tells the story of afer, an Arab American, who was uprooted by
Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948. e story opens in 1967. afer and his wife,
Mary Pat, are discussing the full-scale war in the Middle East. e war forces him to
remember his own history as a victim of Israeli aggression. It triggers ashbacks of
his boyhood in Jerusalem during 1938, when the British troops searched his family
home. “Why do they want to search our house, Mama?” he asks. “ey want to
give our country to the Jews,” (4) she answers. It is also through these ashbacks
that afer’s early life is revealed. afer Allam was born in Jerusalem. He is the
son of a celebrated Palestinian resistance ghter who fought the British occupation
of Palestine during the period between 1936 and 1939. In 1949, at the age of 14,
afer leaves the war-torn Jerusalem for the safety of Kuwait. Two years later, with
the help of an American priest, he moves to the U.S. and attends Cornell University
at Ithaca. Before graduation, he marries Mary Pat, an Irish-American woman with a
baby daughter. During their marriage they have three children––Andrew, Katherine
and Sean––in addition to Colleen, afer’s stepdaughter. In 1967, the year in which
the novel opens, he is a successful lawyer with a degree in nuclear physics. In America,
afer, as Salaita says, “is introverted about his family’s past, and, like nearly all Arab
immigrants of the fties and sixties, works to make sure his family has a life free of
conict in the United States by downplaying revolutionary attitudes and assimilating
into American life” (47). With the outbreak of the 1967 war, afer “undergoes a
catharsis” (Salaita 48). He becomes aware to the realities taking place in the Middle
East. In other words, afer has been able to suppress his attachment to Palestine for
twenty years. Now, surely because of the war, his allegiance to the other side of the
hyphen surfaces and therefore, he starts contemplating going back to his motherland.
In fact, Dallal’s choice of 1967 war to highlight afer’s awareness is salient.
is is the year generally cited by historians as the point when Arab Americans
abandoned their assimilationist attitudes and took various forms of political action.
afer, like many Arab Americans, starts contemplating going back. Mary Pat’s death
and the Arab defeat bring past losses––loss of homeland, loss of family and loss of
identity which are undercurrent themes in the novel––to the surface. Following the
death of his American wife, he is oered a position in Kuwait as chief counsel to
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the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC). He accepts the
oered job hoping to “light a few res of hope for his people” (37). Feeling guilty for
leaving to America, he now wants to do something that might compensate for his
guilty feelings. “I want to give something of myself to the Arab people. I guess it’s
to compensate for the feeling of guilt I’ve had, rightly or wrongly, for leaving” (72).
Such feeling of guilt is not exclusive to afer only. e Lebanese-French writer,
Amin Maalouf, states that people leave their countries because there are things they
“have rejected––repression, insecurity, poverty, lack of opportunity. But this rejection
is often accompanied by a sense of guilt” (38). is sense of guilt shows afer’s
loyalty to his homeland.
When afer arrived in the United States in 1951, he was a young man. He
was confused about the kind of person he wanted to be. He was ashamed of his
own people, who were defeated badly by the Israelis. After his marriage to Mary
Pat, he began to have “a burning desire to be an American” (277). Despite these
feelings, he “also continued to feel guilty about having them” (277). afer at his
arrival internalizes the feeling of inferiority and sees his own people as unworthy of
aliating himself with. is yearning for being American is the main reason behind
his disappearance for twenty years in the American society.
Despite being part and parcel of the American society in which he vanished for
two decades and despite being impressed and engaged with his new life in America,
he is still emotionally tied and misses the familiar sights and sounds of his Palestinian
past. As an immigrant he is unable to uproot himself entirely from his origin and,
therefore, he is caught by divided loyalties to his present home in America, and his
former home in the Middle East. afer himself is astonished by his own feelings:
“I’m also surprised and alarmed by my own feelings. I just hadn’t realized that after
living so many years in the United States, married to you and with four Yankee
children, I would still have these passionate feelings about my homeland and my
people” (11). afer’s loyalty to his motherland was dormant. Indeed, the war
rekindles those feelings inside him. is highlights one of the important facts that in
time of war and competition between nations, demands for allegiance are heightened
and suspicion of betrayal by those with lesser allegiance grows. is has been stated
by Shain and Wittes as they state that among disaporic peoples divided loyalties can
be sharp when the interests of the homeland they have lost conict with those of
their host state.
afer’s attachment to his motherland is seen in many places in the novel. During
the six-day war of 1967, afer does not go to work. Instead, he connes himself to his
home. He stays up nights listening to the news, hoping to hear something reassuring,
but to no avail. “Privately, he hopes and prays for an Arab victory” (6). However, it
IAMURE Internaonal Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion
34
is clear that Israel has the upper hand. e Arabs have suered a stunningly quick
defeat. Bitterly disappointed, he watches the evening news on television the day after
Israel’s victory “while thousands of Jews stamp and swirl the hora on street corners in
New York and in Washington. Arm in arm, they march through the streets singing.
ey embrace and kiss” (13-4). For afer, news of war brings rst and foremost
heartfelt worries for his Arab people. He thinks of his mother and wonders where she
is. He imagines her depleted and exhausted, clutching a few belongings in a sack or
suitcase, helplessly walking on the hills of Palestine, “thirsty and hungry under the
blazing June sun” (14) with nowhere to go. is feeling grows as he is shocked by
reports of Israel atrocities.
afer’s allegiance to his motherland culminates in his decision to go back
home. He sees the job oered by OAPEC as a chance to reattach with his origin.
He understands that his journey back is not because of the job but of his desire
to reattach with the land “where his heart and soul belong” (31-2). He does not
know why he wants to return. “Why do I want to go to the Middle East? It’s an
almost irresistible impulse. Something keeps making me want to go…. Something
within me urges me to return to the Middle East not to visit, but to live there” (34).
However, something inside him keeps telling him not to go back. He starts thinking
of his career and children in America. He is torn between the two impulses. Harcourt
in his foreword to the novel writes:
Shaw seems always to have been straddling two worlds, two worlds in an uneasy,
perhaps irreconcilable, tension. His novel crackles with these two tensions. Writing it
was not only a catharsis, but also a struggle to understand the fullest implications of
his own life’s underlying contradictions; each revision gained in understanding of the
human concerns that transcend partisan loyalties. (xii-xiii)
afer’s feelings represent the confusion that many Arab Americans experience
when evaluating whether they should stay in America or return to their origin. is
ambivalent nature of Arabs’ experience in America remains a constant preoccupation
throughout Dallal’s novel. afer in the beginning of the novel can be pictured
reecting on his life in America, when suddenly, involuntarily, his thoughts shift
back to past experience in Palestine. is is the phenomenon of ‘here’ and ‘there’
that Dallal regards as an inescapable part of the subject of his writing—an almost
Jungian predilection for thoughts and ideas welling up from one’s racial or cultural
subconscious and mixing freely with one’s current thoughts.
In Middle East, “the novel’s tone,” writes Salaita, “changes considerably. e largely
provincial scenes to which readers were rst introduced are replaced by liberationist
political discourse disclosed in lengthy dialogues” (48). ere afer sees, to his
astonishment, how Arabs, whether ordinary people or those in high governmental
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ranks, are obsessed with the idea of obtaining the nuclear bomb. Arabs, due to the
massive aggression of Israel, think that only by obtaining the nuclear weapon they
can get back their land and dignity. He also discovers the miserable life that his fellow
Palestinians are leading in the refugee camps. afer’s tour in the refugee camps is the
greatest shock of his journey. He is haunted by the sight of the blackened buildings,
by the faces of the Palestinian women behind their veils as they walk with their
children through the silent narrow streets littered with garbage. e stench makes
him queasy. He starts reproaching himself for being so indurate. “It’s good for me,
he tells himself. I’ve lived in an auent suburb in central New York. I’ve become a
callous American. I’ve forgotten my roots. Now I know how my people live” (49).
“He is uncomfortable with himself. He feels badly about seeming insensitive” (49).
afer’s journey, therefore, can be considered as a journey to the self in which he
rediscovers himself. He starts to understand the depth of the suering inicted on his
fellow Palestinians. is understanding turns him another man, a changed man. His
journey reinforces his love and allegiance to his people and land.
However, his allegiance to his adopted country is not shaken. afer, in spite of
his understanding that America is the sole enemy of Arabs in general and Palestinians
in particular, remains faithful to the oath he once took. Despite his understanding of
America’s foreign policy in the Middle East, its support for Israel, its racist attitude
towards Arabs, its hatred for and xenophobia of Arabs and Islam, his feelings of
attachment and loyalty to it do not change. is fact has been noticed by his relatives
in Beirut. Adnan, who just spent only one day with him, realizes that afer will
never live in the Arab world. He tells afer “you’ll never settle in the Middle East.
You’re too attached to the United States” (55). But afer asserts that he is “attached
to both, to the land of my birth and of my ancestors, and to the United States, the
land where my children were born” (55). However, this declaration seems hollow to
Adnan. Here, afer is expressing the unique position that diasporic subjects nd
themselves in. He is not fully American, nor fully Arab. He is a marginal subject that
still enjoys the privileges of living in two cultures and at the same time suers the pain
of marginality in both.
Another example that reveals afer’s allegiance to his adopted country is seen
when two Arab countries oer him citizenship. After he is red from his job in
OAPEC under the pretext that his position should be reserved to people who are
citizens of the members of OAPEC, two countries oer him citizenship but he
refuses saying:
I am also an American. Except for these past few months, I’ve spent all my adult
life in the United States. My children are all native Americans. Because of my national
origin, I may be unhappy about the policies of the United States in the Middle East,
IAMURE Internaonal Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion
36
but I am a U.S. citizen. I took an oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of the
United States of America, which I have no intention of breaking. I am grateful for
the generous oer made by these two states, but I cannot accept it. I would not want
to pledge allegiance to a ag other than the U.S. ag now. Perhaps one day I’ll be
allowed to hold dual citizenship. at other allegiance will have to be to the land of
my ancestors, my native Palestine. (284)
is makes it clear that whatever policy America may practice in the Arab world,
his faithfulness and allegiance will never shake. is does not suggest that he aligns
more with America. ough he has assimilated enough to accept and to be proud of
his Americanness, his attachments and loyalties are double, as he always asserts his
Palestinianness. It also reveals his understanding that the more citizenships he has,
the more his loyalties will be shattered. is in turn will create a kind of conict for
him. It also points out that people may have many loyalties during the course of their
lives but these will most likely come into conict at various points in their lives. He
feels grateful for the oer but does not want to bring more trouble for himself. “You
have no idea how grateful I am. I am honored and heartened by the gesture of the two
states, but I shouldn’t put myself in a situation that will create conicts of allegiance
for me. I am, of course, proud of my Arab heritage. I will always be emotionally
attached to it. Yet I feel that I must be careful” (284).
afer attempts to reconcile both sides of the hyphen but he fails. Instead of
winning the two sides, he loses them. Being in the Middle East, afer thinks of
visiting his mother who still lives in occupied Palestine. When he reaches the Allenby
Bridge, he stands on the queue preserved for foreign nationalities. But he is singled
out by Israelis and ordered to stand on the Palestinian queue. en recognizing his
father name, he is stripped naked by the Israeli soldiers. Feeling himself nude in the
dark room, he murmurs, “Look at me….Naked came I out of my mother’s womb”
(132). afer feels humiliation as the Israeli soldier points his light at his private
parts. After the tough experience, afer is denied entry for “security matters.” e
episode shows that afer, despite his American passport/nationality, is not seen as
an American. His faithfulness to America does not help him to pass as an American.
Indeed, afer does not experience an overt rejection in America like most Arabs for
two reasons: comfortable economic circumstances may have eased his acceptance
and his white complexion. However, he is not looked at as an American. e act of
stripping him naked by the Israelis is a metaphorical act of boiling him down to his
Arab raw material. No matter how his heart feels loyal, whatever is added to Arabness
is too vulnerable to stand the Israeli measures that divide the world into two camps.
afer is also rejected by his own people for his tolerant feeling regarding
America. is is seen in many places in the novel. Adnan accuses him of siding with
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America and, therefore, diminishes him: “If all Palestinian youth were to do what
you did, then Palestine would lose its best-educated people at a time when it needs
them most. ere are thousands like you in the United States. It doesn’t need you.
We don’t have anyone like you, and we need you” (55). It can be seen also when
his fellow countrymen reject his ideology of nonviolent struggle for independence.
afer’s high education has convinced him that violence never brings freedom, and,
therefore, attempts to persuade his people that the best way to retain their country
is through peaceful methods. ey refuse his suggestion under the pretext that he
proposes American solutions to Arab problems which will never do. In OAPEC,
moreover, he is suspected of being working for CIA. Another example is when his
two daughters are dressed up in Palestinian dresses. Uncle Muneer asks them “Are
you Americans or Palestinians?” Kathleen answers without hesitation “Both.” “Can’t
be,” replies Uncle Muneer (272). e examples cited here have only one explanation:
immigrants, especially during wars, have to take side. is has been stated by Zev
Chafets in an article entitled “It’s War Now: Divided Loyalties Aren’t Acceptable”
published in Daily News in September 16, 2001 in which he writes that Arab should
choose between siding with terrorists or Americans and if they choose the latter
they have to stop supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and Ben Laden and also stops their
anti-American preaching in the American mosques. is brings to forth one of the
toughest experience immigrants encounter as a result of their fragmented identities
and loyalties––their rejection by both countries.
Meanwhile, afer’s dual identity has left him torn between the two countries.
Each side of the hyphen pulls him in one direction. His wife, Mary Pat, tells him to
forget his roots because now after twenty years he has become an American. When
he announces that he wants to go back to the Middle East, she questions him, “What
are you saying, afer? What about your family here? What about your career, your
practice, your teaching, your life? You’re emotional and upset now, dear. We need
you here. Stop thinking like that. You’re an American now. I mean a real American.
is is your home, your town, and your country” (11). When he reaches the Middle
East, his relatives try to pull him towards them. Adnan informs him that “e land of
your birth is calling you. It needs you. It needs you more than the United States. You
should give a part of yourself to it and to your people” (56). Elsewhere in the novel,
Suhaila tells him: “Everyone, rightly or wrongly, expects something of you because
of your father. ey feel that…you belong to the homeland that you’re its property
and that the homeland has a right to claim you. You’re therefore expected to respond
to its call” (177). All this shows afer’s dilemma. His love for the two sides of the
hyphen has left him torn. He wants to help his people liberate their homeland but he
does want to dismiss his American side. He does not want to side with his people on
IAMURE Internaonal Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion
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the expense of America and at the same time he does not want to side with America
at the expense of his people. is left him in-between. afer’s divided identity and
loyalty make him uncomfortable with himself because he feels that he is unable to
fulll the expectations of either side. e situation “troubles me. It makes me uneasy.
I’m also annoyed with myself for the discomfort I’m feeling” (176).
afer’s divided loyalty is reected in his children. afer arranges for his children
to visit him in Kuwait. His aim of bringing them to the Middle East is to nd the
Arab side of their family and to see the miserable life their relatives are leading so that
one day they may help them go back home. He wants them to “see hungry people,
miserable people, people who are victims of man’s inhumanity” (50). However, he
“doesn’t want his children to be warriors. He wants them to be messengers of peace…
to carry the torch…to bring justice and equality to their people, who still live under
occupation and in refugee camps. eir grandfather carried it on a sword and a shield,
but he wants them to carry it on a wreath of olive branches” (225). At the end of the
novel two of his children go back to America but the other two, Kathleen and Sean
decide to stay in the Middle East. Kathleen wants to be a freedom ghter and Sean
wants to join PLO in Egypt. e division among his children is nothing more than a
reection of afer’s inner division. Suggestively, the inner divided loyalty of afer
gets externally embodied by the equal division of his children between two identities
and two types of ideals. When all his attempts of reconciling both sides of the hyphen
reach an impasse, afer’s case develops into a split with one part departing and the
other staying.
afer’s dilemma grows as the novel progresses. He becomes unable to understand
the situation properly. Despite his unhappy attitude towards his people regarding
violent resistance, he could not dismiss them entirely. After all they are still “his
people, who love him” (108). His dilemma arises from his desire to satisfy his people.
ese people expect something from me that I will be unable to give. ey want
me to be as crazy as they are. ey want me to share their passions without hesitation
or reservation. And they want me to stop being an American
I’m already as crazy as they are, he assures himself. I do share their passions
without hesitation or reservation. And they’ll like the American in me.
He hesitates. Maybe I’m as crazy as they are, maybe I share their passions without
hesitation or reservation, but they’ll resent the American in me. (61-2)
Any reader will perceive this passage as a hallucination. e debate takes place
in afer’s mind. In his attempt to embrace the two sides, afer undergoes a
struggle, an inner war. He seems to be frustrated as he attempts to reconcile his
loyalties. He is an Arab-American hybrid and his divided loyalties between the two
cultures leave him psychologically destroyed. is scene demonstrates the ambiguity
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Dallal develops concerning afer’s cultural loyalties. e scene mirrors the mental
suering he is enduring. Eventually the internal struggle afer experiences, causes
him to have a mental breakdown. is breakdown demonstrates that he needs to
nd internal acceptance of his hybridity rather than external validation. Caught in-
between the binary, he suers psychologically. e issue is not now between his love
of his country of origin or adopted one, but rather the psychological fragmentation
that aicts his psyche.
afer’s dual loyalties provide him with the critical powers to assess each of the
two countries from a detached, more objective vantage point. He criticizes America
for its biased policies in the Middle East and its constant support for Israel. He also
criticizes America’s permission for Israel to acquire nuclear weapons in the region.
He exposes America’s intentions behind such policy. America wants Arabs to live in
constant fear so that America will be able to sell its weapons to them and milk them
to the last penny. He also criticizes Arab treason toward the Palestinian cause as well
as the tyrannical regimes of the Arab leaders. He also criticizes Arab for not uniting
in making their voice heard by the world who only knows one side of the story. In
short, it can be said that far from being torn apart by divided loyalties or competing
passions, afer appears to mediate between America and Palestine, and the result is
one of detached deep look through which he becomes able to assess each one of them.
Finally, by emphasizing the dual loyalties of diaspora, Dallal’s novel can be
seen to repudiate both statism and cosmopolitanism. Statism demands loyalty to
a single sovereign. e statist theory disfavours the recognition of any community
that does not order its aairs according to state borders. It claims that allowing
people dual citizenship would encroach upon the strict territorial ideal, as the dual
citizen would be subject to the commands of two sovereigns and would experience
feelings of dual loyalty. In other words, the statist model favours a singular loyalty.
An alternative approach to statism is cosmopolitanism that denies any commitment
to one country or two countries. One could say instead to be, to use Kant’s words,
“Weltbürger,” (Munzel 36) a citizen of the world. Philosopher Jeremy Waldron
has described the “cosmopolitan” person as one who “refuses to think of himself
as dened by his location or his ancestry or his citizenship or his language” (Qtd in
Lichtenberg 172). As an opposite of statists, cosmopolitans deny that the state is
a crucial component of identity. Moreover, cosmopolitans favour individual moral
commitments that transcend national borders. Dallal seems to reject both theories on
the basis that immigrants can never uproot themselves entirely from their past. ey
also can never live in a land without feeling attached to it. ey, moreover, can never
commit themselves to the cosmopolitan nation as that may dissolve their identity
entirely. Instead, he proposes a “diaspora model,” which accepts the dual loyalties of
IAMURE Internaonal Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion
40
diasporas and even allows them some level of autonomy. Hence, the novel proposes
an alternative to the established statist and cosmopolitan models of citizenship, an
alternative that reconciles globalization with people’s desire for a sense of rootedness.
CONCLUSIONS
It can be said that as long as the hyphen remains, the dual loyalties persist. In fact,
dual loyalties can be usual in terms of their occurrence as a diasporic phenomenon,
but they are unusual and maladic in terms of their eects on the psychology and
the social position of the people aicted. afer’s journey begins with a hope that
the hyphen will allow him to be committed to two cultures he loves and ends with
a failure assuming physical as well as psychological split. A man who thinks he can
serves two masters ends up like Derek Walcott not knowing to which one he is
supposed to turn: “Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?” (18). Like Walcott,
afer reaches a point where he simultaneously belongs to both and to none. Unable
to entirely side with one, afer is not accepted by either. In America he is an Arab
whereas in Arab region an American. He, therefore, becomes the hyphen itself, a
position that enables him to impartially see the deformities of each culture.
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