the Western frontier as benighted barabrians…” (qtd. in Syed 195). This supposed prejudice against the West, according to Lewis, prevented, and continues to prevent, the Middle East from properly adopting similar politics to those of Europe. Lewis claims that, “such a stubborn community is still waiting for a battlefield where an ultimate lesson will be taught.” (qtd. in Syed 195). Throughout his review, Professor Syed points out numerous instances in history where the Muslim world did in fact attempt to seek out knowledge from Europe and elsewhere, thus disproving Lewis’s points. However, the narrative of Muslims as aggressors persists despite these facts.
When speaking of the current conflict in Middle Eastern nations, Dr. Ghassan Salamé asserts that the Islamists of today seek to restore “-a highly idealized old order of things” (22), and that their actions are “driven in part by an alienation from the present world system, in which they consider the Muslim world’s position as unjustly marginal in light of Islam’s past glories.” (22). The key assumption that both Dr. Syed and Dr. Salamé both address but fail to state outright, and that underpins the entire European narrative of the Middle East, is the assumption that the core values of the Middle East and the West are too incompatible to overcome and absolutely cannot exist in close proximity to one another without violence. This assumption is directly challenged by both Martin Amis’s short story, “In the Palace of the End” and Yasmina Khadra’s novel, The Sirens of Baghdad. Both stories transcend the narrative of inevitable conflict between European and Middle Eastern values by exemplifying the human capability for empathy in spite of religious, political, and cultural …show more content…
differences.
Upon first reading “In the Palace of the End”, one might believe that author Martin Amis is essentially parroting European opinions on a weakening Iraqi government after the disposal of dictator Saddam Hussein. The government of Amis’s story masks its deteriorating influence by projecting an image of strength, similar to how many Middle Eastern governments thrown into chaos attempt to establish legitimacy by developing “obsession[s] with political independence and cultural authenticity.” (Salamé 22). The narrator of the story, one of Nadir the Next’s “doubles”, describes the difference between the layout of the palace’s Interrogation Wing during Old Nadir and Nadir the Next’s reigns. During Old Nadir’s reign, the Interrogation Wing contained “dripping passageways, clanking iron doors, rooms within rooms… with the howls and screeches of the suspects decently muffled or snatched or cut short.” (Amis 32). The layout is clearly closed off and secretive. The sentence simply hints at atrocities committed within the old Interrogation Wing’s walls, implying that they truly are terrible. It conveys the image of a governmental system that is internally sound, although perhaps outdated—the images of dripping passageways, iron doors, and mazes of rooms closely resemble what one might expect in the prisons of European medieval castles. The strong, closed-off internal structure of the past contrasts directly with the layout of the present: “One enters an anti-hospital, a vast factory of excruciation: there the strappado, here the bastinado, there the rack, here the wheel…” (Amis 32). The double takes great care to list several instruments of torture in his description, leaving little to the imagination. Unlike in the past, the brutality is openly displayed to both the reader and the citizens of the dictator’s country. However, like the old Interrogation Wing, the new Interrogation wing seems oddly antiquated. Every torture method the double lists was practiced in Europe during the Middle Ages. One infers that these methods were what was taking place in the Interrogation Wing all along. However, the government of Nadir the Next can no longer rely on simple hearsay to keep its citizens in check. It must rely on outward displays of brutality to inspire fear and maintain power. This hints at cracks in the government’s loss of effectiveness. This loss is further proved when the double states, “Guilt, innocence: this is not the way of the Next.” (Amis 36). The government of the Next has forgone government’s traditional role in the upkeep of society in order to maintain its tenuous grasp on power.
Show also plays an extremely important role in the palace’s Recreation Wing. The Recreation Wing, like the Interrogation Wing, is described both in the context of past and of the present. In the past, the doubles, “consort[ed] with the women of the Jezebel type.” (Amis 37). The Recreation Wing’s past purpose appears to closely align with its title. During the reign of Old Nadir, when the government’s strength went unquestioned, the Recreation Wing’s space was utilized only for entertainment. The doubles’ purpose as perpetrators of brutality was carried out even then, “snarling sodomizings” and “raucous ‘squad bangs’” (Amis 37) occurred on a regular basis. However, in the present, the Recreation Wing’s purpose has completely shifted. Instead of the “Jezebel type”, the doubles now deal with respectable “ladyfriends” chosen from the citizenry. Instead of brutalizing these women, the doubles focus on making them orgasm. The radical shift from the Recreation Wing’s past to its present purpose occurs alongside Nadir’s physical change in appearance and health. The double states that he, the other doubles, and Nadir “were once beautiful”. This beauty reflects an inherent appeal the government once had towards its citizens. Their hearts and minds were already willing to submit to its rule. However, once Nadir lost his beauty after sustaining a multitude of injuries, so did his government lose its appeal to the people. Thus, the doubles intent to cause the women to orgasm reflects the government’s futile attempts to maintain its civilians support. This “policy change”, according to the double narrator, “began when Nadir was shot in the leg, and became radical when he was shot in the face.” (Amis 37). The link between Nadir’s physical injuries and his policy changes in both the Interrogation Wing and the Recreation Wing is explained by the psychological theory of collective guilt resulting from self-harm. Collective guilt is described as the feeling that occurs “when one’s group is perceived as responsible for illegitimately commit[ing] harm against another group.” (qtd. in “Self-Harm” 574). Collective guilt usually occurs most strongly, and can be most beneficial, when combined with self-harm, which “is often perceived to be less justifiable and more severe than harm that the self has caused others.” (“Self-Harm” 574). If we take the character of Nadir the Next to symbolize a Middle Eastern government, then it is no wonder that his injuries have resulted in a change of policy in the Recreation Wing. He feels the physical pain done to himself and his citizens done by adversaries, and as a result he feels a sense of guilt. This internal guilt—this empathy—drives him to reduce the amount of direct harm he himself causes his citizens. However, he simultaneously refuses to relinquish his power. Thus, he forces the brunt of the guilt onto his doubles, who also are unable to sustain it. In psychology, doubling refers to “the division of the self into two functioning wholes so that the part-self acts as an entire self.” (qtd. in Kuper 176). The doubles in the story allow Nadir to inflict horrific harm upon others in order to maintain power, as they are essentially separate entities under his command. When Nadir enacts the policy change in the Recreation Wing, he essentially forces the doubles to confront both brutality and humanity themselves, forcing them to double as well to mentally accommodate these entirely different functions. The narrator explains that the past, when the doubles’ only duty was to harm others, both in the Recreation and in the Interrogation Wings, life was easier. In the present, though, the doubles “are always breaking mirrors,” (Amis 41) because they are unable to look at themselves and cope with the guilt brought on by their actions. This guilt ultimately stems from empathy, as they feel the harm done to themselves by their actions as well as the harm they do to others. Thus, like Nadir, they transfer their guilt to others, “But ever since Nadir was shot in the face, and the Recreation Wing was refurbished for romance, no double will have anything to do with the ‘squad bangs’ on the scaffolds. We leave all that to the bucket-boys and the poker-warmers and the other, humbler torturers of the Interrogation Wing.” (Amis 43). Similar to “In the Palace of the End”, the cycle of violence in The Sirens of Baghdad dissolves with a gesture of human empathy.
In the novel, the Iraqi main characters struggle with their perceived adversary, the West. This conflict is explained by yet another psychological theory, the contact hypothesis. The contact hypothesis states that “direct, positive contact between members of different groups has the potential to reduce intergroup hostility and aggression under the right circumstances…Yet negative contact experience may actually increase intergroup hostility and even provoke intergroup aggression.” (“Psychological Factors” 794). The multiple misunderstandings between U.S. soldiers and the villagers of Kafr Karam, such as the bombing of a wedding, ultimately lead to the characters fighting as rebels and the narrator’s eventual commitment to an act of
terrorism.