readerships. It is only when this metaphor is cited as representative of a
cultural scene at large that qualifications need to be made. Even when writers
and academics like Homi Bhabha see this excess of belonging as part of global
cultural multiplicity, or its symptom, involving the immigrant intelligentsia
in its very formation, behind the scene there is greater subordination to a
monopolizing consuming culture that makes use of all—nations, narratives,
and intellectuals. Personal records of writers could testify to these, whenever
they are not “celebrity exiles” (Gass 130). Nevertheless, let us listen to Homi
Bhabha’s often-quoted passage on cultural globalism, transnational dimen-
sions, and disintegration of space-bounds: “America leads to Africa; the
nations of Europe and Asia meet in Australia; the margins of the nation
displace the centre; the peoples of the periphery return to rewrite the history
and fiction of the metropolis.”^37
There is so much testimony to support the lucid summation of the state of
global culture that it tends to dissuade readers from further discussion. In the
face of such sweeping images, however, much warrants attention. The global
village is real, but you need to work your way through, with valid passports,
“respectable” documents, and recognition of some sort before you become a
citizen of this world. The global context is one of coercion and power, with
serious damage to cultures and quality of life. On the other hand, any incident
or coincidence may unleash images, attitudes and scenes of hatred and discrim-
ination, based on race, religion, and color. The poetry of the Palestinian
Ma.mnd Darwlsh problematizes the meaning of exile even further, for the poet
and his people are forced away from the land and the life that is theirs. “Is there
a sword which hasn’t yet been sheathed in our flesh?”^38 Yet the whole effort,
vicious and inhuman, acts against nature: “Nowhere is the place/ that distances
its soul from its history” (Ibid.). The poet’s personal record of exile may be
worth mentioning. He was born in 1942 in the village of Birwe, a district of
Acre. In 1948, he was driven out of his village and home when he was 7 years
old, finding himself alone in Lebanon, knowing then nothing of the fate of his
family. The family stole back into their homeland, but they were treated as
strangers. Between 1961 and 1969, he was imprisoned or under house arrests a
number of times. In 1971 he left to settle in Cairo, and joined the PLO in 1973
and resigned in 1993. He was in Beirut with the PLO when Israel attacked
Beirut in 1982. He left Beirut and settled in Paris in 1985.^39 His poetry evolves
as an exilic inventory, with traces of pain, dislocation, and anxiety. Yet, it is also
one of exquisite lyricism and dialogue with a rich Arab tradition. In “A Horse
for the Stranger” addressed to an Iraqi poet (1991), he says:
I have a moon in the region of Al-Rusafa,^40
I have fish in the Euphrates and the Tigris,
I have an avid reader in the South,
a sun stone in Nineveh,
A spring festival in Kurdish braids to the north of sorrow,ENVISIONING EXILE