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Will Saudi's 2030 Vision Raise the Students’
Awareness to National Literature? Saudi Literature
and Identity
1Mubarak Altwaiji, 2Majed Alenezi, 3Sajeena Gayathrri, 4Ebrahim Mohammed Alwuraafi,
5Maryam Naif Alanazi
1Head of English Language Skills Department, Northern Border University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8927-4494
2English Language and Translation Department, Northern Border University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
|3English Language Skills Department, Northern Border University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
4Department of English Language and Literature, Albaha University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
5English Instructor, Northern Border University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Received: March 28, 2021. Revised: May 7, 2021. Accepted: May 10, 2021. Published: May 17, 2021.
ABSTRACT- Forming national identity is placed on top of
the seven aspects of High-Impact Educational Practices
(HIEPs) in Northern Border University. Similarly, the
concept of academic awareness to national literature has
been one of the main challenges to national literature in
the Middle East. Just as the strong presence of national
identity in Saudi’s 2030 vision has initiated re-evaluations
of how national identity is shaped, Saudi novel has similar
concerns that inform social constructs of national identity
through overarching themes and comprehensive
representations of cultural issues. This study investigates
the ways in which two Saudi novelists interrogate the
intertwined issues shared by 2030 vision and national
novel which address the archetypal Saudi identity: first,
that the construction of modern identity requires much
cultural openness with the world; second, that
construction of Saudi identity needs exclusion of otherness;
and third, that national identity depends on the rich
history of two historical regions – Najd and Hijaz - that
binds identity to a unified territory. The study focuses on
how these novels give visibility to issues that are at the core
of 2030 vision’s social and cultural aspect such as life style,
appearance behaviours, attitudes, accepting differences
and willingness to work and volunteer. Drawing on this
narrative analysis, the study advocates for the utility of
introducing national novel for undergraduate students to
help them perceive identity as a position and support their
identity enactment.
Keywords- national identity, Saudi novel, society, students
I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
On 25 April 2016 Prince Mohammed bin Salman
announced the State’s Vision 2030 (The National
Transformation Programme) offering a great deal of national
reforms and ensuring the widespread recognition of individual
contribution to national development: “We are returning to
what we were before - a country of moderate Islam that is open
to all religions and to the world...We will not spend the next
30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas” (Akeel,
2017). Since 2016 the Vision 2030 has been the most
prominent social and cultural portfolio in the Kingdom that
built Prince Mohammed’s reputation and widespread
admiration among the citizens. The cultural aspect of the
Vision 2030 designed to enhance the influence of culture and
move the society away from radically-fostered thoughts
creating a strong schism between conservative thoughts and
the people in a very short time. He created Ministry of Culture
for the first time in the history of the state.
At the heart of our vision is a society in which
all enjoy a good quality of life, a healthy
lifestyle, and an attractive living environment.
Our goal is to promote and reinvigorate social
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development in order to build a strong and
productive society. We consider culture and
entertainment indispensable to our quality of
life…It is why we will support the efforts of
regions, governorates, non-profit and private
sectors to organize cultural events…We will
seek to offer a variety of cultural venues - such
as libraries, arts and museums - as well as
entertainment possibilities to suit tastes and
preferences. (Vision 2030, 2016)
In 2007, the Saudi anthropologist Madawi al-Rasheed
defined the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as “a state that is
politically secular and socially religious” (p. 57). The de facto
trends and structure of Saudi literature, al-Rasheed argues,
cannot be separated from religion as the ‘ulama’ council
(religious scholars) has full control over the social practices
and the people’s lifestyle, limiting the political institution to
run the country’s economy and external affairs: “The gap
between the social sphere controlled by religious scholars and
the political sphere controlled by royalty is responsible for
serious contradictions experienced at the level of the
individual and society” (p. 58). Therefore, the ‘conservative’
or ‘theocratic unitarian’ terminologies used by several critics
to describe the state are inappropriate. In this introductory
part, the study focuses on how Saudi novel grew and
represented social issues under this officially-protected union.
Literary attention dedicated to ‘national identity’ in the
context of social transformation captures an early stage in
Saudi novel (Altwaiji, 2017, p. 163). Saudi writers had been
vocal in addressing national identity and denouncing terrorist
acts and aggression, providing a counter-discourse to the
western perceptions that Arabs are terrorists (Alharthi, 2015,
p. 70). The question of identity is addressed through three
themes of national spirit, social freedom, and gender for which
novelists struggle to maintain a convergence of identity trends:
national identity, Arab identity, and Islamic identity (Altwaiji
& Muna, 2020, p. 320). However, the major challenge to
narrative reality of the Kingdom has long been the restrictive
practices of the religious authority - to be distinguished from
the political establishment that has a considerable liberal
margin – that aimed “at stopping the publication or distribution
of content deemed politically, morally, or religiously
sensitive” (Schwartz, et al. 2009, p.4). These restrictions have
profoundly affected the performance of writers and have also
posed serious challenges to the development of national
narrative.
Saudi novelists have always been from a relatively well-
educated background and have actively introduced social
issues and ideas in narratives, challenging the religious
authority and often arousing its wrath. While these novelists
were trying to represent national identity and major national
issues in fiction, there were several instances whereby
religious scholar criticized them and label them as kufar
(apostates), mulhideen (atheists) and almanyoon (secularists).
Prominent novelists like Ghazi al-Qusaybi, Abdulrahman
Munif, Abdullah al-Qasimi, and Turki al-Hamad who first
addressed national identity were criticized by religious figures
for adapting liberal language which does not suit a Muslim
reader (Al-Rasheed, 2007, p. 40). These writers were
excommunicated and forced to live abroad under the patronage
of senior Saudi princes. This complex context of Saudi
novelists’ interest in identity issues is important for
understanding not only the development of these issues in
narrative work but also the international context in which
Saudi identity is perceived and represented.
The relationship between religion and the political regime
has remained pretty pleasant and fluid for decades in Saudi
Arabia. This greater convergence of religious ordinances and
states’ politics provides “the dominance and superiority of the
state religion” and the “national security policies” in several
countries including many Eastern European countries (Bar-
Maoz, 2018, p. 39). This has been especially true in Saudi
Arabia in which policymakers institutionalized the
involvement of the religious foundation in domestic priorities
and decision-making. However, this strategic relationship
witnessed a dramatic change with the coming of Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman who challenged the religious authority
and ended its partnership with the state describing it as “not
normal” and that does not fit into Saudi socio-cultural reforms
he is leading (Chulov, 2017). He promises to destroy the
state’s relationship with the religious entity and return the
country to normality: “Now is the time to get rid of
it…[H]onestly we won’t waste 30 years of our life combating
extremist thoughts, we will destroy them now and
immediately” (2017). The authority of MBS gave impetus for
liberal thoughts of the young generation who were pleased that
the Prince ‘spoke their minds’ and targeted the greatest
challenges facing the modern state.
Several Saudi critics of the social construct have been
blaming the pre-2030 vision's dominant religious-based system
for suppressing the liberal voices and engendering the
phenomena of Islamist revivalism, extremism and
moral/epistemological relativism (Thompson, 2017 a;
Thompson, 2017 b; Jawadi et al., 2018; Cochran, 2019;
Aboalshamat, 2020). Similarly, the novels of liberal voices are
officially banned because these writers break the taboos by
criticizing socio-cultural issues of oppression, women’s
sexuality, and discrimination against women or targeting
influential religious lobbies and clergymen. Despite the fact
that several novels were banned, they succeeded in attracting a
broad readership in regional and international marketplace,
following their translation into English and French (Algahtani,
2016). The selected novels for this study are three. The study
employs the principles of deductive research by putting these
novels on par with world narratives that have the same
concerns about identity, extremist thoughts and human rights.
However, several factors such as the rapid oil-based
economic growth, the two gulf wars, the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
the advent of technology and the recent major social reforms
have played significant roles in the formation of national novel
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and inspired the people to “write, share and publish works and
ideas” and “engage in political participation in Saudi Arabia,
spreading ideas about human rights and freedom of
expression” (Algahtani, 2016, p. 27). These factors provided
opportunities for Saudi writers to represent several issues in a
much broader freedom than they have experienced before and
allowed them to deal with some cultural sensitive issues. Abdo
Khal whose novel Spewing Sparks is banned in the Kingdom
says that lifting the ban on Al-Gosaibi’s novels will pave the
way for several novels to be allowed inside the country: “My
books and all other banned books are like migrating birds.
These books are written for a local audience” (Sidiya, 2010).
As evidenced in the significant rise in the number of published
novels, the social reforms and the widespread of technology in
the country have facilitated discussions in virtual space and
encouraged dissemination of novels.
Fig. 1. The publication of Saudi novel 1930-2018.
Saudi novel has been the best aesthetic manifestation of
identity reforms that questions the canonical assumption that
national identity is the outgrowth of fixed beliefs in the
institution of Islamic theology. This significant surge was first
witnessed in women novelists in 1980s and 1990s in which
educated women novelists developed a deeper critique of the
religious measures against women’s education and higher
degree of mobility inside the country: "the voices of women all
combine to boost state legitimacy at a critical moment in its
quest for new recognition" (Al-Rasheed, 2013, p. 209). The
common trend in these works is their critique of religious
institution and its practices which has a profound effect on the
public: “It has to do with their ‘perception’ of their
conservative society's reception of the potentially unsettling
‘alternative intentions’ of novels that deal with sensitive issues
in that society” (Shboul, 2007, p.204). Amal Shata, Samira
Khashugji, Raja Alem and Huda al-Rashid are the pioneer of
women's novel and its liberal voice that emerged outside the
country “when the dominant patriarchal cultural and social
context was not conducive to the emergence of female
novelists” (Algahtani, 2016, p. 27). From the early 2000s
women novelists have been exerting considerable national and
international pressure on the state to change the male-
dominated attitudes and perceptions about the female:
In this respect, women novelists and literary
figures do not create their own agendas but
are co-opted into political projects that are
set up by more powerful agents in society,
from individual kings and princes to media
institutions, education, and dialogue forums.
They hope that their enlistment will
eventually lead to women gaining more
rights and enjoying fewer restrictions in their
own social, personal, and professional lives.
(Al-Rasheed, 2013, p. 210-218)
One of the main objectives of this study is to highlight the
growing cohort of women novelists’ success in forming
contemporary Saudi identity from a liberal perspective. By a
liberal perspective, the authors mean how women novelists
represent female characters from a secularist and anti-theist
and “reducing religion to a kind of medieval form of
knowledge; or considering religion to be against the
emancipation of mind and gender relations; or regarding it as
an instrument for oppressing the society” (Kanie, 2017, p.
284). This major transformation in narrative reality implies a
profound effect on both national identity and national novel in
the country. In this phase, a new generation of women
novelists, according to Al-Rasheed, is a product of the writers’
continuous efforts in challenging the patriarchal norms and
religious traditions: “[T]he new young Saudi woman novelist
is focused on this world: her body, desires, career aspirations,
and personal advancement...These heroines are living bundles
of passions and desires, whose satisfaction is described in
great detail in this fiction” (Al-Rasheed, 2013, p. 218).
Significantly, the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 which introduces
lots of social reforms and promises much freedom, has raised
the young female writers’ contributions and increased their
participation. The novels of these young writers like Fairouz
Shabana’s Searching myself (2018), Rehab Saad’s Thousand
Women in my Body (2019) and Malak Alageli’s When
Awareness is Pierced (2019) reflect the active participation of
women in building contemporary identity of Saudi woman and
provide an opportunity to discuss social realities, women’s
education and national identity in the light of the better
governance declared by the Crown Prince in 2016. This rich
participation of women novelists lends a new perspective and a
strategic means of expressing new reality in history; allowing
them to share their vision and ideas on national identity.
Fig. 2. The publication of Saudi men and women novelists
2004-2017.
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Through tracing the consistent focus of Saudi writers on
national identity, it is important to note that the political
context in Saudi Arabia has given a noticeable support for
writers to reflect on national identity in narrative writing of
each era. As has been noted, writers of the new millennium
showed a remarkable interest on national identity, defining it
and digging for its roots, a fact that allowed them to come out
of the shadows. This generation of writers usually represents
characters as middle class, intellectuals, and social reformists
whose nationalist zeal enables them to liberate the readers
from tribal and religious constrains. These writers not only
succeed in enhancing social changes and taking part in
creating the national identity with postmodern characteristics,
but also achieve a significant progress both in quantitative and
qualitative terms. These writers have gained widespread
readership and indeed appreciation for some of reasons,
including the focus on national identity, the representing
several social issues the society was not ready to discuss and
the exposure of many contradictions within classic Saudi
identity.
II. IMPLICATION FOR WRITERS’ ASPIRATION
The Vision has set forth the roadmap for the young writers
to represent their present and future concerns in freedom and
contribute to the country's leading position in the Middle East:
“Our geographic, cultural, social, demographic and economic
advantages have enabled us to take a leading position in the
world…Our status will enable us to build on our leading role
as the heart of Arab and Islamic worlds” (Vision 2030, 2016).
These plans envisioned future atmosphere will be better for all
Saudi writers and talented individuals who experienced less
freedom before the Vision 2030. Certainly, for narrative
writers such as Abdo Khal and Umaimah Alkhamees this was
a “transformation from regional to international” for Saudi
novel that “lives its golden era and has the largest readership in
both Gulf countries and the Arab world” (Sollywood. 2019).
According to Alkhamees, “Saudi readers and intellectuals have
become producers of all forms of narrative work in the four
years after the unveiling of Vision 2030 instead of being
consumers” (2019). In fact, as the two authors emphasize,
Saudi writers have been used to hearing promises of social
reforms from the 70+ generation who however well-meaning
are almost out of touch with the way that young writers think.
Therefore, in order for awareness of the social and cultural
aspects of the Vision to reach a larger circle of young writers,
these aspects should be promoted on social media in order to
reach the vast majority of young writers. Vision 2030,
according to Nader Alenazi, is multi-dimensional as it
encompasses all aspects of national culture and identity and
stresses the importance of assisting young people to participate
their thoughts and ideas
After a long-waited decision for encouraging
young writers of narrative work in the
Kingdom, the Vision 2030 came to ensure
full support for talented writers, authors,
publishers and artists. It is a roadmap and a
platform through which narrative work will
flourish. Intellectuals and writers believe
that Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vision
will provide autonomous space and
contribute greatly to the development of
national culture…The Vision 2030
announces its support for cultural
associations which will facilitate achieving
the cultural aspect of the Vision. If this is
done, national literature will see a ‘quantum
leap’ across all genres. (2016)
The Kingdom's Vision 2030 has posited several points on
national identity that Saudi novelists have been expecting from
the social and cultural perspectives of the vision. Nadia
Alfawzan, fiction writer, says “the Visions provides a special
opportunity for narrative writers…Fiction and nonfiction
publication in the country has become huge; it is a positive
phenomenon that that reflects a determined public ambition
towards returning the country to its position among the
nations” (2020). Saudi writers perceive these cultural changes
as a potential opportunity for lifting restrictions on
representing issues in national literature. These changes in the
“socio-political reality of the Kingdom” have been reflected
“in the radical transformation of the Saudi novel” and have
“also profoundly affected both Saudi national identity and
cultural production in the Kingdom” (Algahtani, 2016, p. 28).
The socio-cultural reforms implemented after the Vision
agreeably have both a positive impact for literature.
Whichever way some critics consider the reforms as political,
narrative writers find it a fact that they and their literary
thoughts are of strong relevance.
III. IDENTITY IN FICTION: RELIGION AND IDENTITY
Al-Mohaimeed’s Where Pigeons Don’t Fly (2014) is a
critique on the negative influence of religious extremism and
radicalism on youth and how religious fundamentalists use and
manipulate religion to achieve personal goals. This is clearly
seen in the story of Suleiman, who was born in Buraida.
Suleiman was a bit ‘troubled,’ due to his conservative and
overbearing father, Ali, and the superstitious family in which
he was born. In his teenage, Suleiman was recruited by a
fundamentalist group and was caught by the police while
participating in handing out religious pamphlets which were
critical of the Saudi leadership in August 1979 just two months
before the Siege of the Grand Mosque. He landed in jail for
four years. After being released, and due to the stigma of the
jail, he left Buraida for Riyadh where he lived until his death.
Suleiman is not only a victim of wrong teachings of
religious fundamentalists but also a victim of his family.
Because he was born in a night in which there was a lunar
eclipse, Suleiman was considered as an ill omen. He was
treated poorly by his father and sometimes his father wished
his death: “Ali [Suleiman’s father] was miserable, distraught
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and full of foreboding. An eclipse of the moon as a child
entered the world! For a newborn to arrive accompanied by the
wrath of God was terrifying; the baby’s whole life and future
was in doubt” (Al-Mohaimeed, 2014, p. 17). Throughout his
life, Sueliman hears his father say: “I said he was defective
from the day he was born” (p. 17). Suleiman’s “childhood
became filled with injustice and misfortune and he lived all his
days with a sense of guilt for what had befallen his family” (p.
17). When Mohammed, Suleiman’s younger brother, was
infected by measles and passed away, Suleiman’s father says:
“If death let me choose between them, I would ask he take the
bird of ill omen” (p. 18). Suleiman, feeling unworthy and
being hated, wants to prove himself. So he joins the
fundamentalists just to tell his father “Here I am! Here I am.
The one you mocked and whose fate you saw in the moon!” (p.
20). Suleiman joins the terrorist group because he finds
acceptance, belonging, and a sense of purpose which he lacks
at home.
Where Pigeons is a warning especially for youngsters
against religious extremism and radicalism. Youth are the
primary target of voluntary and forced recruitment by
extremist and terrorist groups. There are different reasons why
youngsters are favored targets of recruitment such as poverty,
ignorance and weak family ties which can create a fertile
ground for the terrorist ideas. The religious clerics have been
able to manipulate the youth mentality through the break of
traditional identities, nullifying the national identity and
patriotism and violation of human rights. Thus, those affected
adversely by their teachings are turned from good citizens into
time bombs. The push of the young men into medieval
practices by religious sheiks poses a challenge to communal
harmony and perpetrates the backwardness of their societies.
Youngsters are filled with wrong ideas such as western policy
in the Middle East is unjust, some government are wrong etc.
and are radicalized by the flawed interpretations of Quranic
teachings. Where Pigeons denounces Islamist extremism and
fundamentalism and exposes the looming threat of extremist
religious groups and the deviant religious discourse.
The religious groups that we meet in Mohaimeed’s fictional
world are working against the larger national and political
agendas. The setting of the novel in a crucial moment in the
history of Saudi Arabia, the rise of militant religious
fundamentalism in the 1970s, and the re-narration of the siege
of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979 which is a seminal
event in modern history of KSA, highlights the serious threat
that these groups pose to the stability and legitimacy of Saudi
regime. For this reason, Suleiman, once a member of these
groups, was afraid that his son, Fahd, may join extremist
groups “his fear that his son might become embroiled in the
activities of extremist groups and that he might not stop at
distributing pamphlets in the court of the Grand Mosque, as his
adolescent father had done back in the dying days of Ramadan
in August 1979, but take up arms or strap an explosive belt to
his body” (p. 14). In his diary, which Fahd reads many years
later after the death of his father, Suleiman writes: “You keep it
safe after I am gone and remember that the ultimate destiny of
the political parties and religious groups that vex the
government is extinction, failure and psychological torment.
While your contemporaries are seizing their opportunities and
succeeding, you will have wasted the best years of your youth
chasing after lost dreams” (p. 17). This is the message of Al-
Mohaimeed himself in the novel to all youth of Saudi Arabia:
they have to work for their future and be cautious of any
ideology that may lead to their destruction.
Al-Mohaimeed’s critique of religious extremism and
fundamentalism highly corresponds with 2030 Saudi vision
announced on 25 April 2015 by the Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman, who was very clear about the need for change.
Referring to the conservative changes that occurred after the
Grand Mosque of Mecca siege, he stated that “the post 1979
era was over” and that
Saudi Arabia was not like this prior to 1979.
Saudi Arabia and the entire region had the
awakening project spread after 79’… We only
want to go back to what we were, the moderate
Islam that is open to the world, open to all the
religions. 70% of the Saudi people are less than
30 years old, and quite frankly, we will not
waste 30 years of our lives in dealing with
extremist ideas. We will destroy them today.
We want to live a normal life, a life that
translates our moderate religion, our good
customs… I believe that we will eradicate the
rest of extremism very soon. (Wayne, 2018, p.
566)
He, further, spoke about restoring the true, more tolerant
and more open Islam: the ‘Islam of love not fear.’ His speech
was followed by work. A new authority was established to
scrutinize hadiths, many clerics who espoused radicalism were
dismissed. The government has also established centers: The
Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology and the
Ideological Warfare Center to combat, expose and refute
extremist (Solomon 2020, p. 181). Other changes include
lifting the ban on cinemas, limiting the powers of the Virtue
Police, lifting the ban on women driving and many others
(Solomon, 2020, p. 181).
The two-identity sets which the novel addresses are the
religious/Islamic and the national; both are understood as
collective identities. That is, our understanding of identities in
relation to others with whom we feel some allegiance. They
are often used to differentiate ourselves from others. The novel
demonstrates that one’s alignment with a religious community
or group makes one lose his sense of national loyalty or
solidarity and the outcome is an identity with fractioned
loyalties. Of course, these two identities are contrived and
imaginary categories. They are strongly related to each other
in the Saudi community and repeatedly present in many Saudi
literary discourses particularly since 2000 and the events of
9/11. If loyalty is the overarching feature of one’s love for
home, the ‘center’, as examined by Jacques Derrida, seems to
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have been decentred by the Saudi religious groups. They have
directed loyalty not to the State as an abode for all but to the
group. The novel provides a perspective for understanding the
relation between the two identities and how the national
identity has been overcome or eclipsed by the religious one.
This provides the rationale for the exploration of the identities
as represented in this text as well as an approach to explore
whether the integration of religious and national identities in
the novel is encouraged or discouraged.
Actually this study is proposed to understand the religious
and national identities in Saudi novel and to examine how such
identities emerge, converge and compete with one another. As
a fact both national identity and religious identity are imagined
and constructed; they are not natural and ‘real’. Religious
identity is a socially constructed identity. The identification of
oneself as Muslim and more precisely Salafi, Sufi, Ikhwan,
Muslim Brothers etc. allows membership and divides the
community into closed groups with private political and social
agendas and goals. The perspective that membership in those
identity categories is productive and serves certain agendas is
significant for this study.
Further, these religious groups have never explained to
youngsters what it means to be ‘proper’ citizens, or taught
them notions about nationhood and patriotism because they
have been busy with preparation to for receiving Al-Mahdi or
for fighting the governments. The question to be answered in
this study is whether the religious identity might now be
overlaid by the national renaissance and the concerns of the
Saudi nation. It is hoped that Saudi youth as readers of these
fictions will be able to develop an entirely new identity which
is national by nature and which can compete with other
identities and able to add a new understanding to other
identities particularly the religious one because, as the centre
of Islam, it is impossible to entirely separate the two in the
Saudi society.
Fiction like Where Pigeons contributes to the formation of
the national identity in modern Saudi. Stuart Hall (1996)
discusses the importance of myth and narrative in developing
national identity. He contends that it is in discursive
representation of a identity that people learn how to become
national and social actors. According to him: “National
cultures construct identities by producing meanings about ‘the
nation’ with which we can identify; these are contained in the
stories which are told about it, memories which connect its
present with its past, and images which are constructed of it.
(p. 612). Hall claims that identities, being unfixed, are both
incidentally and intentionally produced and created. They are
subject to historical, institutional and political factors. What
people experience highly influences the way they position
themselves in the world (p.48). Thus, the teachings of the
religious clerics and sheiks are influential on youngsters. This
is what the religious groups exploit; they target youngsters and
then reshape their identities and loyalties in a way that serves
their agendas.
The novel reveals the tremendous influence of social forces
and surroundings on the formation of identity and the
transformation of one’s character. Actually, identity is flexible
and contingent. It is constantly under revision, and shifts
according to a range of political, social and historical
circumstances. Two examples can make this point clear: the
first is Suleiman and the second is his daughter, Lulua.
Suleiman was born in a joyless and superstitious family and a
religious and conservative society and the result is he becomes
a terrorist landing in jail. But when he leaves his village in
Burayda and goes to Riyadh, he meets Abu Essam, the
Palestinian-Jordanian accountant and gets acquainted with
him. Abu Essam helps him and shows him how to develop
himself and so he attends night classes and then university and
becomes a general manager. This shows how family and
friends can be a source of success or a source of failure.
However, his daughter goes the opposite side. Lulua is a clear
example of the power that these extremist groups can do on the
youth. When her father is alive she has a dream of becoming a
television presenter or a singer. But after the death of her
father and the coming of her uncle to their home as her step
father, everything changes in her life. Commenting on the
change of his sister, Fahd Says:
Everything has changed so much. Our life has
turned completely upside down. Lulua’s
childhood has been brought to an end; now
she’s a woman who wants only to be a good,
pious little wife when once she dreamed of
being a television presenter…Now she dreams
of being a corpse washer, or one of those
female preachers, doing the rounds of
gatherings and get-togethers and delivering
Islamic lectures, telling women to fear God and
the torment of the grave, to set aside the sinful
habits of those who have fallen by the way, to
invite them to organise themselves. Sometimes
I imagine her joining some militant Islamist
group. If the terrorists changed the way they
worked and brought in women as partners and
operatives, they’d be enthusiastic fighters for
the cause, strapping on bomb belts to blow
away anything they regarded as sinful and
become martyrs, flying straight to Paradise.
(Al-Mohaimeed, 2014, p. 82)
Where Pigeons describes the imminent formation of
national identity and the factors that influence such formation.
The novel is Al-Mohaimeed’s contribution to the creation of a
national consciousness in Saudi and to the promotion of a
future reality in which all Saudis are part of the same nation
and share the same destiny. The novel speaks of people’s
worries and the kind of state they dream of. Novels such
Where Pigeons demonstrate the importance of narrative in the
political and social change initiated by the 2030 vision. The
Saudi novelists have extensively used fiction to promote the
future of the Kingdom. It expresses the wishes of many Saudi
to become a strong nation looking for the future and held back
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by the outdated thoughts of religious clerics. Al-Mohaimeed
does not denounce or attack religion itself; rather he is against
the misuse of religion and the multiplicity of allegiances and
loyalties.
Al-Mohaimeed’s novel celebrates personal freedom which
is a crucial matter for building one’s identity. The novel opens
Fahd, with the protagonist, on a train in England going to
Great Yarmouth. This ‘green and pleasant land’ is the place he
has chosen as a refuge in his self-exile. The year is 2007. As
the story unfolds, the readers come to know why Fahd is living
in exile rather than living at home ‘where the pigeons don't
fly.’ At home, in spite of the ubiquitous and intrusive eyes of
the Virtue Police, Fahd, a young, liberal man, manages
to rendezvous with a couple of girlfriends in rented rooms or
in his car. Once, when Fahd and his girlfriend Tarfah are at
Starbucks café to have coffee together, they were caught
and are detained by the Virtue Police simply because they are
drinking coffee together in public while they are unmarried.
With the help of his uncle Saleh, he is released. After the death
of his parents and the suffocating vigilance of the Virtue
Police, Fahd decides to leave the country. No doubt that one of
the main catalysts for Fahd's exile is lack of personal freedom
in Saudi. One morning he and his beloved Turfa meet in a
coffee shop in the families section of the shop. But to his
astonishment they are arrested by the Religious Police known
in Saudi as “Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the
Prevention of Vice.” Expressing his sadness over the power
that the guardians use to control others’ lives, he says: “I, too,
have known happiness for fleeting moments. But in this
country they’re too sharp to let joy bloom unchecked. The
guardians of twisted virtue, the guardians of the imprisoned
breeze, leapt to pluck out my joy in its first year of life. I
wonder, why do these severe and grim-faced men invade the
precious privacy you have with your beloved?” (p. 29).
Where Pigeons is a critique of the invasive religious police
or Virtue Police, “severe and grim-faced men” who are “too
sharp to let joy bloom unchecked,” (p. 29) and their black
beards, whom the readers meet throughout the novel patrolling
the streets, and spying in coffee shops, malls, restaurants etc.
for secret trysts. The Kingdom has a religious policemen
called The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the
Prevention of Vice. Other names such as mutawa, mutaween
are also used to refer to members of the committee. The task of
this group is to “monitor public behavior to enforce strict
adherence to conservative Islamic norms” (Cordesman, 2009,
p. 119). This committee is organized under the regime in
conjunction with Islamic Ulema (clergy). But they are known
for their ubiquitous and intrusive eyes and are understood to
overuse "their authority with both Saudi and expatriates alike
by undue harassment of both men and women in public places
and trespassing into private homes” (p. 286). They can
intimidate abuse and detain Saudi citizens and also foreigners
of both sexes. However, Al-Mohaimeed believes that the
religious police has never done anything that help the internal
security of the Kingdom. They’ve never paid a good efforts in
in reducing the practices of the extremists and "defending the
core values of Islam against extremism" or any “role in
defending religious values while aiding modernization and
reform (p. 288). They, as Cordesman says, “have been a
“gentler and kinder” Taliban (p. 296).
IV. MODERNITY AND IDENTITY
While Al-Mohaimeed’s Where Pigeons tackles the
destructive power of misinterpreted religion on societies and
its negative impact on national identity, Al-Atiq’s Life on Hold
demonstrates the coming of a new mechanism of national
identity which is shaped by modernity. It signifies the
importance of the past, history and traditions for cultivating
and nurturing the national identity among youth. Al-Atiq’s Life
on Hold (2012) critiques the project of modernity for
denouncing the traditional and placing the foreign cultures as
the center of Saudi civilization as well as the materialistic
impulse that accompanied it. It focuses on memory and
rehabilitation of the tradition and the old which has been
destroyed by modern and emergent cultures and their impact
on the identity formation of Saudis. The loss of the past is a
loss of the nation itself as Isabel Caldeira writes that the
memory of any nation "is an artifact nurtured by rituals and
traditions” (2016, p. 75). This cultural and economic
transformation has resulted in a fast development of the post-
oil Saudi Arabia. This economic boom and overall
development have given a convincing case to discuss the
cultural break that is referred to or reflected in Saudi novelists’
rendition of national identity and alienation which invaded the
Saudi society due to modernization and demonstrates that
alienation is the outcome of loss of identity.
Life on Hold centers on Khaled, a young fellow, who was
born in the city of Riyadh, where he spends his childhood. At
that time, Riyadh is being rapidly transformed due to the oil
boom and, like tens of Saudi families, Khaled’s family is
uprooted and moves to the new Riyadh where Khaled gets his
“dream job, but it turned into monotonous drudgery” (p. 3)
and where “days are all much the same, bringing nothing
new” (p. 8). Life in the new Riyadh is different. Khaled has “a
deep sense of alienation” (p. 12). Nothing has a meaning to
him and to defeat the boredom that he feels, he goes “through
a youthful incoherent form of rebellion,” but recognizes as—a
feeble effort to feel something different and to “distance
himself from the monotony of their neighborhood”—and finds
it just replacing one form of unsatisfying boredom with
another (p. 75). In his search for meaning in this vast and
boring world, Khaled also makes an attempt in writing and
instead of writing he stares at the blank page: “Whiteness
seeking the secret of meaning” which he cannot provide (p.
44).
Khaled feels isolated in his society and from himself as well.
He expresses this sense of unbelonging through his reluctance
to form any ties with his colleagues at work or neighbors.
What Khaled should understand is that there is no return to the
past, there is no going back to live in the way he used to. What
this means is a dialectic of dispossession as a constitutive
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element of modernity, a fact the Khaled and his people have to
learn to live with. The feeling of unbelonging creates nostalgia
and reverence for cultural manifestations of the past and
because Khaled is unable to understand the social and cultural
surroundings, he is unable to locate his place within the new
cultural and social context. He loses interest in life and days
become monotonous: “The days were much the same in this
city, which did not know if it was pious or decadent” (p. 12).
This aimlessness is not exclusive to Khaled alone as many of
his colleagues are also lost like him. He feels that everyone
was also running "but they didn’t know where they were going.
Young men chased breathlessly after business with no
guarantee of success” (p. 96). It seems that everybody is
running but the directions are blurred and the destination is
uncertain. Khaled ponders the loss of his self, hoping to the
awakening of a perspective inside him which may render a
meaning to his own existence and the chaotic world in which
he finds himself. He struggles first to find himself and second
to establish an equilibrium that balances man not only with
himself but also with his fellow man. The self-destructive
confusion and the psychological ambivalence make him
succumb to his whims and the mounting temptation of his
friends and starts a new life of wine and women.
The resultant impact of this economic boom and wealth is
that life which was once based upon habit and tradition has
become terribly mechanical and ritualistic. Khaled’s habitual
handling of his situation and life is mechanistic and superficial.
He tries drinking, debauchery and prostitution as possible
cures for his boredom and loneliness. Khaled’s apparent
disintegration is the result of his lack of will and internal
strength to reject the habit and the tradition and to confront the
reality—the recognition that his life is at loss and that between
tradition and modernity he himself opted for neither but
swaying in-between the two not knowing the meaning or the
right choice. The central theme of Life on Hold is undoubtedly
the existential struggle of Khaled—his idealism and alienation;
the narrative pointedly centers on his loss of and search for
identity, his true self. The Khaled's story is a story of the loss
of modern man and his alienation—his continuous struggle to
conquer alienation and achieve some forms of stable identity
with the object-world.
The novelist explores the Saudi society through Khaled, the
protagonist, whose life, though monotonous, is rich with
memories which bridge the gap between the old pauperized
Najd and the consumerism that follows the oil boom. This
movement of the Saudi society is symbolized by the family’s
move from the mud streets of the old Riyadh to the new villa
in the new suburbs of the city. In this sense, Life on Hold is a
compelling novel about the metamorphosis and contradictions
of contemporary Riyadh, the “city of masks,” and Saudi
Arabia in general (p. 2). The new Riyadh city is totally
different from the old city that Khaled knew as a child. He
finds that “Riyadh had changed into something else, something
like the sterile concrete house that they had recently moved
into and that they called a villa” (p. 12). The new city is “like a
pressure cooker about to explode” (p. 12). It is a city where
“Real neighborhoods are dead, real society is dead, real people
are dead” (p. 32). It is a place where everything’s gone to
pieces. Relationships between people have gone to torn pieces
and similarly work-place has gone to torn pieces "and family
relationships have gone to pieces. We’re sunk in huge
religious, political, and economic contradictions. Real
neighborhoods are dead, real society is dead, real people are
dead, and we can no longer pull ourselves together again to get
out of this giant mess” (p. 32). Expressing his astonishment
with the change in the Saudi community, Khaled says: “Thus
the winds of change swept them away: silence, monotony, and
boredom replaced the hustle and bustle and the visits with
neighbors and relatives, not just because the new suburbs were
so far apart, but because people’s lives had changed, not on the
inside but on the outside” (p. 96). However, Khaled knows
that it is an empty change as he found that Riyadh became a
hive of activities that does not produce anything useful things
and a city "without the most basic elements of real life.
Everyone was constantly running but they didn’t know where
they were going” (p. 96). It is a journey from a close-knit
community living in mud huts to new and concrete villas
where people are sealed into loss and alienation.
The novel demonstrates the coming of a new mechanism of
national identity which is shaped by modernity. Identity is not
a passive entity; it is determined by many external factors and
influences and individuals, in forging their self-identities, are
affected by the social and global influences which have dire
consequences and implications in shaping their identities.
Saudis are not different. The novel shows how the Saudis’
identity is transformed by modernity inaugurated by
capitalism. Writers such as Al-Atiq feel the need to question
and challenge modern rationalities that have changed not only
Saudis’ life but also their culture, perceptions and imaginaries.
In their humanist inquiry, these writers attempt to investigate
into the social contradictions and injustices, and understand
these metamorphoses so that they may find a way to resist this
cultural and social dispossession; they also may choose to
actively revive traditions in order to give back to their
communities the lost sense and feeling of belonging and
identity.
Al-Atiq is of the opinion that Saudi identity is in danger of
globalization and modernity and that, due to these rapid
changes, the Saudi culture will be lost together with their
identity and that they should preserved their old traditions
along with their identity, an identity uncontaminated by
modernistic and global concepts and images. For him,
modernity contributes to the disenchantment of the society
through isolation and alienation. Though it enchants people
through its richness and technologies, people who were born
before this boom feel a nostalgic yearning for the old days
especially to family gatherings, simplicity of life and sense of
belonging.
The novel is set in the 1970s, a crucial period in the history
of Saudi Arabia during which Saudi Arabia witnessed an
economic boom that changed the Saudi society forever. New
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desires, dreams and fears entered the lives of Saudi people,
entirely altering their sense of longings and perceptions, and
triggering new imaginaries and beliefs. People started running
for materialistic gains and competing to acquire new products
to show that they are civilized. This development is
characterized, besides the economic boom; by new
technologies such new forms of transportation, and
information transmission including satellites, and computer
networks, which changed people perception and thinking.
Moreover, the growing flow of people of various origins,
religious and cultural backgrounds and political loyalties to
Saudi Arabia have changed the Saudi cultural landscape and
turned the ethnically, homogeneous state into a multiethnic and
multicultural society. This and other factors have brought new
dimensions to the making of national identities in Saudi
Arabia. So, when dealing with modernity and its effect on the
Saudi community, we have to consider the fluid, multi-layered
identities of the contemporary global world. This modernity
which sprung from the encounter with alien cultures, mores
and religions is the outcome of ‘traveling cultures’ to use
James Clifford’s words. Roots which are always used as a
predominant metaphor for traditions and culture are replaced
by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s “rhizome” (2013, p. 3).
Hence, Saudi writers such as Al-Atiq write against these
notions of universalism and globalization. They address in a
critical and a creative manner the dangers that Saudi identity
encounters and what are the possible ways to protect it. These
writers are prone to rehabilitating and reviving traditional
values and practices. Their writing is a resistance to the
dispossession of the Saudi community’s collective identity.
They are aware of the danger of the fragmentation of Saudi
identities in the contemporary modern world, and hence their
intervention highly contributes to a sense of solidarity and
coherence often looked for in the past.
In Life on Hold, Al-Atiq deals sensitively with Saudis’
struggle to find a foothold in the modern world. Deeply
involved in Saudis’ quest for order and identity, he makes
these issues central to his novel. He is attempting to help
young generations of Saudis identify with their own cultural
heritage by giving them fictional but unmistakably familiar
landscapes and by promoting the national aspects of their
culture and by warning against losing oneself completely in
‘imported’ or ‘borrowed’ cultures. This economic boom and
the indulgence in consumerism will disconnect the coming
Saudi generation from their past; they will no longer be able to
identify with their lost cultural heritage and therefore lose their
national identity. As Mohan (2004) writes:
The social identity of people is rooted in their
culture while at the individual level, it is
determined by personal achievements. In order
to experience a ‘Wholeness,’ it is necessary to
fuse the individual and the social
consciousness. However, the paradox of the
modern predicament lies in the fact that owing
to the fragmentation of the societies, the
affinity that was once felt between the two has
now been broken. (p. 47)
This explains the fragmentation of the Saudi society and the
alienation that its subjects feel. Finally, Al-Atiq introduces a
much more pessimistic view of life. As a narrative of
estrangement, Life on Hold summons forth a point of self-
awareness which Edward Engelberg describes as “a moment of
reckoning, a turning back to survey what has been left behind,
a synchronic confrontation with one’s memory-chamber—with
the past (1989, p. 3). Narratives such as Life on Hold, usually
depicting times of transition, are “about people caught at
precisely the moment when their old lives no longer suffice
and their new lives seem as yet unrealizable” (Engelberg,
1989, 124).
V. CONCLUSION
Vision 2030 is an ambitious project of social and cultural
transformation of Saudi society aiming to promote national
identity through social, educational and cultural means. The
study finds that the construction of contemporary Saudi
national identity requires considerable focus on promoting
scientific research related to national literature. The
implementation of the Vision 2030 in Northern Border
University has successfully started implementing literary facets
for attracting the students’ attention to the importance of
national literature. The study finds that national novel has a big
concern in informing social constructs of national identity
through social and cultural themes and comprehensive
representations of national issues.
This study finds that the ways in which Saudi novelists
interrogate the national identity issue shared by 2030 vision
and national novel address the archetypal Saudi identity in
three ways: first, that the construction of national identity
requires much cultural openness with the world; second, that
construction of Saudi national identity needs exclusion of
otherness; and third, that national identity depends on the rich
history of two historical regions – Najd and Hijaz - that binds
identity to a unified territory. Further, the study recommends
that national literature should be introduced to all the
departments of literature in order to give visibility to issues
that are at the core of 2030 vision’s social and cultural aspect
such as life style, appearance behaviours, attitudes, accepting
differences and willingness to work and volunteer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors extend their appreciation to the Deputyship for
Research & Innovation, Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia
for funding this research work through the project number
“IF_2020_8989”.
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