fugitives. “How could someone who is being sought stay in one place?” said
one Sufi.^10 In Islamic culture, there is traditionally a positive response to
different concepts of migration, for, according to another version of the
abovementioned .adlthby the Prophet, this world is a passing station: “Be in
this world as if you were a stranger or an ‘mbir sabll” (traverser of the road).^11
The concept lent itself to non-Sufi directions as well, for roaming the
universe becomes another alternative to gain knowledge and renewal. The
.adlthgave perhaps some credit to later articulations on the need to travel to
derive rejuvenation and joy. Thus, the pre-Islamic poet ‘Urwah Ibn al-Ward,
the ‘Abbmsid AbnTammmm (d. 846), the jurist al-Shmfi‘l(d. 820), and others
made mention of this need. AbnTammmm, for instance, says: “A man’s
prolonged stay in the tribe slowly ruins / His stamina and beauty. So go
abroad to find renewal.”^12 Al-Shmfi‘llists five merits for travel: “Relief from
worries, gain of a livelihood, / knowledge, education, and keeping company
with good men.”^13
While these aspects enrich Arabic poetry with cultural specifics, they do
not deter its negotiation with other exilic writings. Moreover, both totalitar-
ianism at home and the neoimperialist onslaught have driven so many
Arab writers to exile that some Arab poets identify themselves as poets of
the world,^14 as if subscribing to George Steiner’s claim that “a whole genre
of twentieth century Western literature” is “extraterritorial.”^15 To Te r r y
Eagleton, extraterritorialism is usually synonymous with regeneration, reju-
venation, and invigoration. Pitted against cynicism, “futility and disintegra-
tion,”^16 and the negative categories of modernity, this extraterritorial mode
avowedly brings life to a wasteland scene. Enlisting on its side a large num-
ber of dissidents, self-exiles, and émigrés, this appropriation is bound to
gather support, especially in view of the current vogue of global culturalism.
Contemporary writers like Terry Eagleton focus on familial and social
discontinuity as regenerative, a position that was accepted in classical Arabic
culture as well, for Ibrmhlm Ibn ‘Abbms al-Xnll(d. 857)^17 was reported as
saying: “Whenever you take up residence, you’ll meet places/ folks and
neighbors/ friends to replace the old ones.”^18 Disorientation becomes another
motivation for improvement and growth. Accounting for this regenerative
power, Terry Eagleton sees it emanating “... from the subtle and involuted
tensions between the remembered and the real, the potential and the actual,
integration and dispossession, exile and involvement” (Exiles and Émigrés,
18). Foreignness is invoked to develop this argument. It is confused, however,
with exile proper, for, working within a larger tradition such as the one that
T. S. Eliot usually recalls and claims, extraterritorialism is invoked as equiv-
alent to expatriatism, which becomes in turn another legacy of the West and
its acclaimed long tradition of fusion, appropriation, and tolerance. Especially
when confused with exile, expatriatism is invoked in modernist texts in such
a way as to blur distinctions in an area that calls for clear-cut assessments that
include, and make use of, contributions from people who have been passing
ENVISIONING EXILE