Sidi Mohammed Bin Abdullah University

Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences

Cultural studies
Master Programme

The Portrayal of America in Arab

Travel Narratives

Khaled Ali Al-Quzahy

2008/2009

Dedication

To my wife and children:

Amjad & Majd

Acknowledgments
I am very indebted to Prof. Khalid Bekkaoui , whose supervision
has helped greatly in while producing this work . His constructive
comments have been of great use and help to me. I would like also to
thank him as the director of Cultural Studies Master Program for his
support and encouragement.
Thanks also go to other teachers namely, Prof. Sadik Raddad, Prof.
A. Khayatti , Prof. Mohammed Bennis , Prof. K. Sandy , Prof. Suzanne
Gauch and Prof. Fatima Mouaid for their tremendous efforts. Last but
not least, I thank my colleagues whose company has made me feel at
home.

Table of Contents
II
III
VI
4

Dedication
Acknowledgment
Table of contents
Introduction
Part I: Theoretical part
A. Deconstructing Orientalism: Orientalism and the Question of Differences

12
B. Disorienting the West: Beyond the West through Travel Writings
14
C. Anti-Americanization : a kind of resistance
Part II: Analytical Part: Comparative study of Images of America in an Arab Mirror
18
A- An Eastern Imagination of America
23
B- Disparagement and Negative Portrayal of America
30
C- Neutral and Ambivalent Image
33
Conclusion
34
Bibliography

Introduction
It has been ordinary to talk about how the Third World is misrepresented in
American and European narratives, literature and all sorts of media. Many
theorists have been and are still inventing new terms by which they describe the
Othering of the colonized to reflect the superego of the Self. In his
Orientalism, Edward Said explains elaborately how Arabs are mistreated in those
narratives and films that show them in a very negative and passive attitude. It is
too vague whether those representations reflect reality or just aim to distort the
portrayal of Arab natives for the rest of the world. Many claims say such colonial
writings aim mainly in legislating colonialism. Orientalists who visited Arab
countries managed their writings to glorify their nations, culture and lands by
means of subverting histories, cultures and religions of other nations. These people
succeeded in recommending their own cultures and civilizations as the idealized
examples from which others should learn.
In brief, they neglected the history and identity of the colonized as Daniel
Defoe does in his Robinson Crusoe by letting the storys European protagonist
give a new name and a new identity to the native Friday, as if the later was not
born except in the moment of being saved by the European hero.
Accordingly, people have started to believe in such stereotype. America is
drawn so beautifully to the rate that makes non-westerners dream of it as a
paradise on earth, the land of dreams and the heart of liberty and equality.
Hundreds of thousands of peoples from the so called the Third World started their
voyages to America to look for luxuries they had heard of and dreamt of. Whether
they found what they expected or not can be discovered in their reactions through
their diaries, anthologies and narratives. Their reactions, as explained in sections

of this study are varied. Some never liked what they saw. Others enjoyed being
there but did not notice all that exaggerated descriptions they had heard of.
In short, America is like any other place of the world where one has to work
hard to live, but even worse for reasons of materiality as explained in this study
when analyzing some Arab narrative writers about this spot of the world.

Why to hate America or why to admire it can be derived from within certain
interests of those who portrayed America in their writings, TV programs or
international press. However, because of time constrains, this paper focuses on a
number of Arab travelers narratives about the USA.

This paper is intended to analyze writings of some Arab writers who went to
America for various purposes and revealed what they felt during their visits in
their travel accounts. Their reactions depend on the purposes of their visits, the
image they had drawn and the religious perspective they owned. Accordingly I
will attempt to make a general but short detailed analysis of these writings.

Part I: Theoretical part

A. Deconstructing Orientalism: Orientalism and the Question of Differences

Why Orientalism was created is a question that occurs in ones mind as he

thinks of why the West always tries to impose its cultures and languages into the
non-Westerners minds. While being in schools, I used to hear the Arabic
translation of this term as Estishraq which of course had and still has a negative
meaning. It tells the story of how some Westerners came or were sent to study
Arabs cultures, life styles, religion and even language for the purpose of knowing
all about Arabs then they can write whatever can legitimize their colonization.
They did it quite well and succeeded in what they could not by their military
machines. When an ordinary Westerner reads this, he/she might deny this fact
asking about a reason. For instance, Rana Kabbani in her Imperial Fiction (2008)
gives a convincing one. In her book as well as in her article in The Guardian
(Tuesday 11 June 2002), titled Bible of the Muslim haters, she illustrates how
revenge controlled the Western mind as Islam succeeded

in earlier eras to

penetrate Europe forming a threat against the Christendom in its own lands. The
West started its violent invasions in all non-Western countries exploiting the lands
and trying to alter minds since 1900 until the 1960s. But as, such colonization
seemed only to assert the Arabic and Muslim identity, and created an increasing
sense of resistance among natives, post-colonialism and neocolonialism started to
continue what military forces initiated. By the later kind of colonial ideology, the
West presented what they call noble intentions of civilizing the indigenous people
of the East, creating several kinds of stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. Of course
this is not the concern of this study. However, I believe that this is a main reason
behind inventing the imaginary dichotomy between the West and the East. And
since that time, Orientalism started as a political ideology used by the West for

idealizing their cultures under the umbrella

of modernity and the process of

modernization.

Orientalism is an openly political work. Its aim is not to investigate

the array of disciplines or to elaborate exhaustively the historical or
cultural provenance of Orientalism, but rather to reverse the gaze
of the discourse, to analyze it from the point of view of an Oriental
to inventory the traces uponthe Oriental subject, of the culture
whose domination has been so powerful a fact in the life of all
Orientals1

Accordingly, in his Orientalism, Edward Said illustrates how the East

became a source of knowledge through the hegemony of the West.
Orientalismis the discipline by which the Orient was (and is) approached
systematically, as a topic of learning, discovery and practice2
From his side, Bernard Lewis in his The Question of Orientalism
describes this concept as a state of classicism. He uses Saids notions about
how the West has treated the East by means of prejudice and racism.
Building his argument on Saids binary division, Lewis states that the
Westerners look at others as people who are backward and unaware of their
own history and culture. He states that
Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced
between Britain and France and the Orient which until the early
nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands
(p.4).

1
2

To prove this point, Mr. Said makes a number of very

Edward Said, Orientalism (1978) p: 25

Ibid, p: 72

arbitrary decisions. His Orient is reduced to the Middle East, and his
Middle East to a part of the Arab world.3

Some might criticize Said on the dichotomy his writings show without
caring about the historical and philological aspects. I believe that the real
relation between the West and the East can not surpass certain borders even
if resistance or other types of relations between the colonizer and the
colonized occur. That is because that relation seems to be controlled by the
articulation that links dominance with submission. The heart of the matter
in understanding Orientalism is this power relationship and how the
Occident has used and continues to use and understand the Orient on its
own terms4
Nevertheless, when thinking of deconstructing Orientalism, one should
bear in mind why we should believe of the limitation that controls the
mentalities of the Easterners. Cant it be easy to just avoid this
conceptualization and think of defending the East against the negative
stereotypes of the Orient? This, of course, is not an easy matter, because
as history had drawn the reasons for the West to invade the East as
mentioned above, it has also recorded the submission and weakness of
Arabs in the last century by the Western military troops, and the romantic,
erotic and exotic stereotypes in the pre and post-colonial time.
Though Said did not take into his consideration history while writing
Orientalism, his own history can be a good reason behind making him
neglect history. His threatened life, his invaded country and even all he
passed by is enough to tell why history was not so important for him
compared to the reality he had experienced. However, not all he said can be
3

Bernard Lewis, The Question of Orientalism,

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~rel8/Dpndtdocs/General/Orientalism1.pdf
4

http://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/orientalism.htm

taken for granted because the imaginary geographical division between

ours and theirs or the West and the East is still imagined and created.
Saids homogeneity of this dichotomy is right when one thinks from the
point of comparison; who is dominant? And who is weak? Nevertheless,
Saids argument of Orientalism is created from thinking of what the West
says and never of what others might say. So, the formula here lacks the
voice of the other. The radical post-colonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak in her article Can the Subaltern Speak? uses Gramscis term The
Subaltern metaphorically to implicitly encourage unheard voices be more
and more heard. She states that even when they speak they might not be
heard. This could be a discouraging statement, but the aim here is urging
more voices and more demands of equality.
In fact what I like to show here is that Said himself was bias in his
writings. While writing, he used the eyes of the colonizer and his oriental
ideology. Khalid Bekkaoui states in his Signs of Spectacular Resistance
that the approach of Edward Said

does not try to articulate the voices of the oppressed so that the
colonial discourse appears to be possessed entirely by the colonizer.
The Oriental himself is reduced to a state of silence and
powerlessness. He is available to European scrutiny and amenable to
dominance and control. He can neither resist nor protest. Knowledge
and power are in Said totally under the control of the colonizer.5
According to this idea, Foucaults famous talk about resistance and
power would vanish; where there is power, there is resistance6 would
have no meaning here, because resistance is silenced in Saids Orientalism.
5
6

Khalid Bekkaoui, Signs of Spectacular Resistance, p. 29.

Michel Foucault The History of Sexuality, p. 95.

So I am totally with what Bekkaoui states in his Signs of spectacular

Resistance in stating that

whereas Said assumes that the oppressed resists from a position

outside the system of power, Michel Foucault demonstrates that
resistance to power is an integral aspect of the power network.
where there is power, he says, there is resistance, and yet or
rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of
exteriority in relation to power.7

Thus, several kinds of resistance emerge around the imagery Eurocentric

marginalizing of the Easts existence and ability to defend itself. In various
spaces and varied fields, the East has started showing its resisting power,
creating new concept of representation and achieving the right even to
represent the Self in place of the Other in their writings. I believe by this,
the formula might become biased too, because even those writings show the
West only from an oriental perspective and according to the fantasies and
individual experiences of the writers. Yet, some writers wrote in favor of
the occident; just as the Syrian poet, Nizar Qabbani who wrote:
We came to Europe
To rejoice in the freedom of expression;
To wash the dust off our bodies;
And to plant trees in the gardens of conscience.8
We notice, here, how Qabbani praises the west through criticizing his
own land. In this poem, we find a confirmation and perpetuation of the
Occidental stereotypes on the Orient as backwards. We also find him

7
8

Khalid Bekkaoui, Signs of Spectacular Resistance, p. 34.

Rasheed El-Enany, Arab Representation of the Occident ( quoted from Nizar Qabbani, 192398)

10

idealizing Eurocentrics image as an icon of freedom, knowledge and

modernity which the poet can not find in his homeland.

B. Disorienting the West: Beyond the West through Travel Writings

When talking about the discourse of disorienting the West, one should take into
consideration the reasons that lead Arab travel writers write about the West. By the
West here I put America as a symbol of the Occident, and for the Orient I would
restrict my work on some Arab writers. However, many writings in this discourse
seem ambivalent. This ambivalence is clear when we look at the descriptions used by
those writers. Some would describe America as a seductive female, land of dreams,
core of modernity and freedom. Others would show it as a source of danger,
immorality and materiality. That ambivalence is tackled by Rasheed El-Enani in his
Arab Representation of the Occident.

Ambivalence has indeed characterized Arab perceptions of the West in

modern times, and it still does in the new American age the world is living
today. This ambivalence should not be difficult to explain. It is as old as the
first encounter between Arabs and modern Europe.9

In later parts of his introduction, El-Enani shows how some Arab writers say their
hatred for the British at the time they enjoy their literature and consider it the best
among other literatures. Through books like Arab Representation of the Occident,
America in an Arab Mirror, and Arab Insight, one can be sure of certain facts
concerning why such ambivalence is found. Unlike the purposes of the Western
travel narratives about the Orient in legitimizing colonialism, Arab writers

Rasheed El-Enany, Arab Representation of the Occident, p. 13

11

distinguish between the American government and people there. The aim of these
writings is not the same.

Some respondents made a conscious effort to establish that public

perceptions in Arab countries distinguish between elite decision-makers in
the United States on the one hand and the American people on the other.
While the majority of responses fell short of a categorical denial that some
hostility exists toward American people as a result of what Arabs view as
harmful American actions in the region, there was always a reminder that
the American people are not responsible for such policies. Although other
responses were more implicit in drawing the distinction between America
as a society and as a world power, the grievances cited were always focused
on American policies and not the American way of life: the Iraq War,
Arab-Israeli conflict, and double-standards in democracy promotion.10
Even if we come to look at certain depicts of the Americans, there are varied
perceptions of Arab about Americans. They mix in their understanding between
America as a nation and as an administration. The image of America is mostly
depicted as a result of the policy of the American government rather than by
American nation.
Despite the signicance of the above realities, the image of the United
States among the Arab lower and middle classes is problematic.
Mainstream Arab political consciousness does not distinguish between the
United States and the American administration. It also does not
differentiate between the American people and the policies pursued by its
government. Moreover, the prevailing Arab view does not examine the
United States in a comprehensive way. This view portrays America not as a

10

Arab Insight, a collection of Arab Responses on Why do we hate America, Introduction . P. 6

12

world leader in the realm of economic and technological advancements, but

rather as a mere military empire seeking political tyranny.11

C. Anti-Americanization : a kind of resistance

It is no exaggeration to say that United States of America has been recognized
as an icon for knowledge, change and advance in technology. During the last
decades, the name of America signifies superiority and unquestionable power. For
some people it is the land where ones ambitions and dreams can come true.
However, as much as people admire America, there are still those who feel
irritated when such a name comes to their ears. Edward Said states that:
I don't know a single Arab or Muslim American who does not now feel that
he or she belongs to the enemy camp, and that being in the United States at
this moment provides us with an especially unpleasant experience of
alienation and widespread, quite specifically targeted hostility.12
The hate and love for America has been mixed and associated with its foreign
policies especially to a spectrum of issues of conflict in the Middle East. In this
sense, one can argue that traveling to the United States is a blessing and a curse. In
other words, those who had the chance to travel and live in America are divided
into two camps. The first group of people is those who idealize the Americans as
they have been impressed by their knowledge and the life style that they lack in
their own countries. The second camp contains those who could not be influenced
by their living there. The two discourses can be attributed to a set of reasons which
will be explained in the next few paragraphs.

11
12

Majed Kayali, Arab Insight, Its Israil stupid!A Source of Anti-Americanism, 2007, p. 77
Edward Said, Counter Punch, outboard magazine: Thoughts About America, March 5, 2002

13

Why do Arab people travel to America? What are the motivations that oblige
them to depart their countries and leave behind their families and memories of the
past? Perhaps, answering these queries would provide a justification why some
Arabs romanticize the life in United States and thus reflect that in their own
writings as they come back to their homes. The secrets behind peoples admiration
for America are linked to a group of cultural, political and economical factors that
affect their mentalities and living conditions a great deal.

Unlike many western countries, America is the place where job opportunities
and chances of work are available. Part of Arab peoples dreams is to get a job in
any USA company as they are tempted by the high remunerations and the bonuses
they offer. By working in the United States, Arabs aspire for building fortunes and
living in a seemingly luxurious life. Additionally, America is believed to provide
shelter for all those homeless Arabs who live in abject poverty. Obviously, this
material success is not necessarily the ultimate goal why Arabs travel to America.
However, it could be said to be one of the major reasons behind Arab people's
admiration for the United States.

Another different but interrelated reason is that a large number of Arabs come
to realize their dreams and celebrate their ideas. The United States offers a third
space for marginalized Arabs to express themselves. Since America is thought to
be the " ideally democratic country " , some Arabs are tempted by the illusion that
they can lead a more democratic and free life which is different from that they live
in their countries . When living in their Arab countries, some people especially
intellectual ones are vulnerable and subjected to oppression and muting. In this
case, they think that United States is the inevitable destiny to which they can
escape so as to feel the importance of themselves. For them, America is the
country that offers education and knowledge in its true meaning. Apart from this,

14

it is the site where class, race and gender all meet and interact with each other in
such marvelous and harmonious way.
The 11 September attacks represent a land mark and a shift in the wests
perception of the Arabs in general. The association of terrorism to Islam and Arabs
was a factor that could but worsen and complicate the relationship between Arabs
and the Americans. Such deadly and terrorist acts changed the way Americans
including criticizes and decision makers deal with Arabs. It seems that they no
longer tolerate the fact the majority of foreigners in USA are Arabs and Muslims.
Therefore time has come when Americans can express their intolerance for Arabs.
This prejudice has been brought to the fore with the beginning of the twenty first
century that is marked by those bloody acts of having murdered thousands of
Americans in the World Trade Centre. On the basis of the already stated
assumption, one can predict a more complex relation between Arabs and
Americans, a relationship that is characterized by mistrust and tension.

With this view in mind, some Arabs living in the United States will happen to
be direct victims for the untimely change in the American policy towards Arabs
and Muslims. Consequently, such Arabs will have to express their uneasiness and
resentment to the discriminatory approach that Americans have lately come to
adopt when dealing with Arabs. Even the Americans themselves can no longer
hide their inferior look at Arabs as primitive and terrorists. Arab people in general
are targeted by the western media in which Arabs are portrayed as the exotic and
the others. In his influential book, Reel Bad Arabs, Jack Shaheen mentions the
unfair and negative portrayal of Arabs in most of Hollywoods films. On the other
hand, as a means of resistance, there have emerged some Arab films and video
clips that tend to counter this negative portrayal of Arabs. These are headed by
some Egyptian films namely, America Shika Bika and some other clips that are
mostly posted on tubes and some other chat forums.
15

From their side, Arab writers who lived in the United States express their
dislike for America by means of their writings. Their literary works reflect the
injustice and discrimination that they have undergone during their period of living
in USA. However, their hate for America has been intensified by some other
reasons. These are based on their remarks on the Americans as human beings as
well as their exaggerated modern life style. For instance, some Arabs are
astonished by the fact that Americans have to work for many hours during the day
time. In this way, these Arab writers describe Americans as machines who are
detached from emotions. Unlike many Arabs, work and business occupy the bulk
of the Americans attention as they give high priority for performing their daily
duties. Such a fact represents a shock for many Arab people who have happened to
work , study and live in the United States.

For many conservative Arabs, living in America is such an amazingly strange

experience. The seemingly absolute freedom one enjoys in America is perceived
differently by religious and conservative Arabs who are guided by religious
instructions and principles. Therefore, America is a heaven for liberal and openminded people while the case is not true for conservative ones. Such religious
people think of America as a place where one gets corrupted. He /she is surprised
by the immorality and the corrupt life that the vast majority of Americans are
leading. In short, for religious Arab people, to live in America is to risk losing
your religion as well as your principles and morals.
In the last years, the U.S. image in the Arab world has plummeted. Just as
the United States sought to consolidate the principles of democracy and
political reform in the region as an embodiment of American values
images of bloodshed and destruction in Iraq and Palestine and torture in
Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib became prominent. This disparity between

16

ideals and reality has spread a negative image among the public, an image
that the Arab media has played a key role in spreading.13

The complexity of Arab - American relation has reached its climax during the
last few years. The USA invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan has revealed the
barbarity of Americans who, in the name of democracy and liberty, have come to
kill thousands of innocent women and children in different parts of Arab and
Muslim countries. The images of causalities and dead bodies of Iraqi people made
the majority of Arabs and Muslims feel offended to the extent that some think that
the war against Iraq is undeclared war against Islam and Arabs in particular. Worst
of all, the one-sided and biased USA policy toward Arab-Israeli conflict in
Palestine is the kind of one that deepens Arab and Muslim people hate for
America. Based upon these facts, one can realize that the hatred for USA is
associated with its unfair foreign policies.

Hopefully, the Americans have come lately to figure out that they are not liked
by most of Arab and Muslim nations. This creates the need for them to adopt
certain policies that can change the gloomy and distorted image that Arab and
Muslim people have in mind about America. One of those ways that have been
proved to be effective is the offering of scholarships for some Arab intellectuals to
come and study in the United States. By traveling to America, these Arab scholars
come to be impressed by the American knowledge and modernity. Therefore,
when they write their experiences they work to change peoples perception of the
United States. However, not all those wrote according to the American
expectations. There writings might have idealized the American democracy and
knowledge, but that idealization is full of ambiguity and ambivalence. The next
chapter will be dealing with some of these writings.
13

Hosam Mohamad, Arab Insight, Media Matters: The Arab Portrayal of the United States, p. 33

17

Part II:
Analytical Part: Comparative study of Images of America in an Arab Mirror
D-

An Eastern Imagination of America

In this part, I attempt to analyze the ways America has been portrayed in some
Arab travel narratives. Kamal Abdulmaliks anthology America in an Arab Mirror
will be my concern here, because it includes several depictions of America in
various fields of life and for a good period of time. The book is organized in such
a way that shows both the negative as well as the positive portrayal of Americans
in these writings. This diversity in views is what makes analyzing those texts a
worthwhile task.

A. The Positive Depiction of America: Idealizing America

In the third part of his book, Abdul-Malik presents for the reader a number of
writers who wrote their accounts in favor of America. He titled this part as
America: the dream and the reality, the American as an example to emulate.
In his account, America in the Eyes of an Easterner, Philip K. Hitti, an
American academic of Syro-Lebanese origins, starts his account by The first
thing that attracts your attention as a visitor to America is how extremely lively

18

Americans are. This sentence, to a great extent, shows how the writer wants to
deliver a strong message showing to the reader a great idealization of America.
You will then realize that you are not in a country like others, and
you are not among a people like others, but rather among a people
superior in their qualities, distinguished in their vitality, and unique
in their abundance of energy.14
Such idealization comes from ones feeling of belonging rather than an ordinary
portrayal. Regardless of what his origin is, Hitti is influenced effectively by his
American identity. His writing shows that Americans are unlike other people; they
are full of energy and love for work. What is unfair here is not the depiction of this
nation of good qualities, but what is noticed is negating other people in the world.
For him, none is like the Americans. The last sentence is a good example that
shows that negation. As he glorifies the creative ability of Americans and their
inventing mentalities, he depicts the Easterner as romantic. As for the Easterner,
he would probably sing a traditional song in honor of the beautiful falls.

Amir Boqtor is another writer who makes a very positive image of Americans.
In a comparison he makes between the East and America, it seems as if Arab
nations in general are portrayed as trivial and careless people who care about
nothing. This seems a perpetuation of the Western stereotypes of the Orient. As I
am only concerned here only with dealing with the image of America, Boqtor uses
every good word for showing America in the best image but unfortunately on
account of defacing his own country.
Here in our country we cherish the past and follow in the footsteps of our
ancestors and for this reason our actions are unchanged and unvaried; in
America, they respect that which from the past may help them in building

14

Philip K. Hitti, America in the Eyes of an Easterner. Cited in America in an Arab moirror: p. 49

19

the present and benefiting the future, but at the same time they detest things
old and worn out.15

Muhammed Labib Al-Atuani, an Egyptian agriculturist could find no words

to describe the beauty of New York. He stands stunned by such city and all he
can say is And New York is a city famous for its Brooklyn Bridge. The same
discourse of fascination of the architecture, skyscrapers, roods and infrastructure
is dealt with by the prominent
Short story writers in Egypt Mahmoud Taymour.

America is a vast tract of earth through which lengthy highways run, with
blackened asphalt, on which speeding automobiles steal across. We
experienced going up and down through enormous bridges, as if we were
flung back and forth from bridge to bridge. What kind of bridges were
these? Were they suspended over water, or built on the ground? I could not
tell.16

This kind of fascination elevates the American ability and creativity. It invites the
readers to dream of seeing such places. Though it tells nothing about people there,
but it depicts them as unordinary people when thinking of constructing such
views. In one instance the power and greatness of America becomes manifest. In
their magnificence, these tall skyscrapers expose the obvious (and not so obvious)
truths about America: its civilization, wealth, genius, dynamism, and ambition.
These skyscrapers are like the pyramids of Egypt.17 The fact here lies in two
things. The first skyscrapers stand for the present and future whereas the pyramids
of Egypt just remind us with the past. This picture makes the orient away from any
kind of development as all they do is only glorify their past and forget what they
15

Amir Boqtor, The World in America. Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p. 55

Mahmoud Taymour, The Flying Sphinx [in America]. Cited in America in an Arab Mirror p. 61
17
Ibid, p. 62
16

20

should do in the present. Unlike Americans who look for the future, Arabs always
are proud of what their ancestors had done.
Though Zaki Khalid, an Egyptian bacteriologist, describes America as
abnormal, he shows it as the place where one can succeed and get whatever
he/she wants if he/she works hard.

First, in America one is given the opportunity to reach the top. Even if you
start from scratch, you can become a millionaire, an ambassador, or even
the president of the republic. The only condition you have to satisfy is to
work hard and on your own, no one will help you. It is your own task and
you alone will have to carry it out.18

He negates any social classes in America and illustrates lots of details about
how Americans invest their time, money and efforts. However, such depiction is
related more with materiality and has no relation with humanity. However, another
account by Zaki najib Mahmoud, prominent Egyptian scholar and a professor of
philosophy at the University of Cairo, defends this notion and depicts Americans
as so human and very kind and helpful. In his diary that he titled My Days in
America (1955), he brings us to a general understanding of Americans by saying
I had talked so far with three people, the priest on the plane, the volunteer at the
airport, and this policeman. If this was a sample of the nation I had come to visit, it
must be a friendly, generous, good-hearted, and helpful nation.19 In more than
one situation, Zaki Mahmoud gives a very positive depiction of the Americans as
people who are so generous and ready to help at any time. He also deconstructs
what other scholars and writers had said about America by saying that
psychologist back in Egypt once told me that his American counterparts are
superficial, even though he himself could only be found reading American
18
19

Zaki Khalid, America Under the Microscope. Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p. 64
Zaki najib Mahmoud, My Days in America, Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p.71

21

references.20 And to deconstruct what others said about the materiality and
mechanism of this nation he tells I looked at the people in the streets but did not
find the signs of hurried busyness that I had expected. 21
In his The Land of Magic, Shaifiq Jabri, a Syrian academic and author, visited
the United States in 1953 upon an invitation from the U.S. government, shows
how Americans are suffocated in their environment. They are content of the
rabid life they live for no reason except they have no alternative; thats the only
way they have. He states: The Americans are satisfied with their lives because
they dont know any other.22 Factually, Jabri presents America in a very natural
way. Though he praises the American mentality and elevates it to an excellent rate
especially when he quotes some features of the American Dream, he simply
shows how America is like any other place in the world where one finds problems
of all kinds.
There are a lot of problems in America that he pointed out. One is
the economic power, which is concentrated in a few hands. Another
is the political power, which is in the hands of the Republicans or the
Democrats. What prevents the masses from revolting is the
extraordinary luxury of life in America, which has no equal in the
whole world. Yet people still complain.23
On the other hand, Jabri presents another depiction of the Americans as people
who have no unified spirit in spite of the high ability to exploit the nature by all
means. He tells that America has reached the highest level a materialistic
civilization can offer. In fact, while reading this account, one finds clear
ambivalence. I think that such ambivalence is so natural in a place like America
where great numbers of ethnicities gather in one place. It becomes unclear whether
these people would believe in their imagined national identity or just in their
20

Ibid, p. 73
Ibid, p. 73
22
Shaifiq Jabri, The Land of Magic, Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p. 85
23
Ibid, p. 85
21

22

ethnic identity in this wide place. Shafiq Jabri gives the reader a short aesthetic
summary at the end of his account saying that: America is like a group of mosaic
pieces, each piece standing alone. It is not like a building where each component
supports the other. Regardless of whether this information is true or no, we know
how people in power can make it true three their ideological representations that
can persuade nations of believing in what people in power impose on others, and
surely the American nation can not be excluded from this game.
The depiction portrayed by the Palestinian intellectual, Yusuf Al Hasan
reminds me with the way Frantz Fanon treats racism in his book Black skins,
White Masks. The irony used in Fanons representation of racism is highly noticed
here. A confession mixed with absolute rejection of the situation is used by Al
Hasan in his The Washington Memoirs (1986).
Americans dont understand the workings of history, especially
when they deal with foreign affairs. For this reason they fail to
understand the logic behind events and the sequence in which they
occur. Either now or never characterizes their attitude. When things
go wrong and a crisis faces them, they rush to solve it with whatever
is expedient. Outside America things are fine as long as America is
not affected.24
One might see this discourse as a bad depiction of America especially when
observing it in a biased way, however if we come to see it according to the
modernist approach we find a great rationality in how America seeks to make her
nation not affected by the many problems found in its outside. I believe this is a
perpetuation of the American materialism and narcissism that draw its image in
the readers imagination. Al Hasan ends his account saying:
The American doesnt really care about the bloodletting of hundreds
of people in the Arabian Gulf, nor the ruin of the economic

24

Yusuf Al Hasan, The Washington Memoirs, Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p. 91

23

infrastructure and the national wealth of countries in the region. His

only concern is to safeguard the flow of oil. That is all.25

B. Disparagement and Negative Portrayal of America

In this section , I deal with some other views about America that are
different from the ones presented above .For instance , the portrayal of
America from Sayyid Qutbs perspective demonstrates the peak of
advancement and the depth of primitiveness which Qutb found while staying
some years in America in his academic study. In The America I Have Seen: In
the Scale of Human Values, Qutb gives a heavy account that dehumanizes
Americans and gives them the descriptions of materiality, immorality and
emptiness of human natural characteristics.
He starts glorifying the expansion of the land that stretches from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. Qutb first description of America seems very much
impressive. He attracts the reader to what the next is. He honestly pictures
America as a factory of all treasures where one can dream and fulfill that
dream by hard work. His focus in this description is meant mainly for the land
rather than people. When he talks about people, he illustrates how well they
exploit their land and nature.
The beauty that is manifested in its landscape, in the faces and
physiques of its people is spellbinding. America conjures up
pleasures that acknowledge no limit or moral restraint, dreams that
are capable of taking corporeal shape in the realm of time and
space.26
Then by some means he starts separating America as a land from its people. He
expresses his astonishment by illustrating:

25
26

Ibid, p.92
Sayid Qutb, The America I Have Seen, Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p. 10

24

I fear that a balance may not exist between Americas material greatness
and the quality of its people. And I fear that the wheel of life will have
turned and the book of time will have closed and America will have added
nothing, or next to nothing, to the account of morals that distinguishes man
from object, and indeed, mankind from animals.27
Thus he starts depriving the American man from the humanly features
depicting him as a machine; man cannot maintain his balance before the machine
and risks becoming a machine himself. He fiercely attacks Americans by linking
them to primitiveness. Through his Islamic conservative attitude he makes
America unique of being in this fluidity of talk. The separation of the land and
people might not be accepted in anthropological works, but Qutb tries his best to
overcome this condition by deploying reasons for that separation. For him in
America there is a phenomenon that exists nowhere else on earth. It is the case of
a people who have reached the peak of growth and elevation in the world of
science and productivity, while remaining abysmally primitive in the world of the
senses, feelings, and behavior. Such kind of dehumanization can be considered
writing back to the several stereotypes and misrepresentations that the West has
ideologically employed in distorting the image of Arabs and Muslims. They might
have done that because they believed they are in place of power and authority, so
their representations of realities have been distorted and altered. In a documentary
about Representation, Stuart Hall explains such representations as hegemonic
ideologies imposed on nations by people who have the power of media. However,
can we treat the representations of people like Sayid Qutb and others as revenge,
writing back or just a mere writing of personal opinion? I am debating this
question because of the feeling that even if the subaltern could speak , do they
have the power and authority to say their opinion or the do this only as a kind of
resistance?

27

Ibid, p. 10

25

In fact, though the skillfully used varsity of topics that Qutb uses in his
account, I feel his conservative talk about Americans is so influenced by his biased
attitude. His attempts to utilize every word to distort America make him full in the
trap of generalization. He makes no distinction of people in the government and
nations; he talks about all in the same sense of aversion and disgust to the rate that
makes him put knowledge away from morality and humanity.
in the case of America, primitive man is armed with science, with which he
was born, and which guided his steps. And science in itself, and especially
applied science, plays no role in the field of human values, or in the world
of the soul and feelings. And this narrowed his horizons, shrank his soul,
limited his feelings, and decreased his place at the global feast, which is so
full of patterns and colors.28

Explicitly, Qutb gives the term" primitive" for every thing he tells us about in
his narrative. He adds by depicting the Americans as lascivious and sensual and
makes a description of the American girl as calling for sex wherever she has the
chance. When she does not find it from her husband she goes somewhere else to
satisfy her primitive need for sex. He claims that the American people see women
as objects for attractions who should attend churches only to bring more people to
those places regardless of the values and religious aims of these places. When we
come to see how Sayid Qutb depicts America , one might not need to read every
word in his tempting account, it is enough to have a look on the titles he gives for
each topic. Here are some of these titles:
28

The Secret of the Deformed American Character

The American Primitiveness
Primitiveness in Athletics
American Love for Peace An Illusion
The American and the Hunger for War
Americans Joke About the Injured
The Drought in American Life

Ibid, p.13

26

- The Feelings of Americans

- toward Religion Are Primitive
- A Hot Night at the Church
- Sexual Primitiveness in America
- The Americans Are Free of Humanity
- Artistic Primitiveness in America
- Primitiveness in Tastes and Preferences
A look on these few titles of what Qutb wants to show is clear for the reader.
Qutb gives a primitive meaning for each single thing about America. This
depiction is so radical in attitude. Regardless of its truth or not, such portrayal in
my opinion, is so biased because of the overgeneralization of topics and the
exaggerating deprivation of any sort of values that people in America might enjoy.
The attempt of Qutb to redeem this flaw can not cure what that account lacks to
have credibility. All this does not mean that Americans are a nation devoid of
virtue, or else, what would have enabled them to live? Rather, it means that
Americas America in Arab Mirror virtues is the virtues of production and
organization, and not those of human and social morals. Americas are the virtues
of the brain and the hand, and not those of taste and sensibility.
Feminizing America is another topic dealt by many writers in the anthology of
Arabs in an Arab mirror. The same way Tayeb Salih feminizes Britain and
articulates revenge to the protagonist Mustafa Said in Season of Migration to the
north, who conquers the West by seducing and enticing the European girls to his
bed. Kamal Abdul-Malik describes one of the cover pages image in the 1972
account A Love Tour, of Mahmoud Awad, an Egyptian journalist who has worked
for many years for the daily al-Akhbar, saying :
On the title page there is a drawing of a naked woman lying down and a
miniature drawing of a man with a suitcase in hand walking on her body.
The man is presumably the writer and the reclining figure stands for the
women he came to know and with whom he had sexual liaisons.29

29

Kamal Abdul-Malik, America in An Arab Mirror, p. 29

27

In this account Awad describes his sexual adventure with an American girl who
is depicted as sexually seductive and calling for sensuality.
Why dont you hug me? she asked.
I hugged her.
Why dont you kiss me?
I kissed her. Her lips tasted a bit salty but they were full of desire and much
tension.30

Talking about such adventures might be considered a taboo in the Eastern

countries, but what comes to mind when reading more than one account of those
who go to West and come back carrying with them and desiring to tell about such
adventures is their belief that they have done something against the West. As the
West has raped and exploited the East, this action in many of these accounts is for
these writers a kind of ravenous victory. Thus, they become not caring about its
being a taboo, because they believe it is only revenge in two ways. The first is the
act of having raped the European girls and portraying them as prostitutes and
lascivious as shown also in the account of Yusuf Idris, New York 80. Secondly, by
this description the writer aims at feminizing the whole West. Similar to this
discourse is Tayyeb Salehs feminizing of the West through personifying British
cities and dealing with them as women. .
Another depiction of Americans is mentioned by Muhammad Hasan Al-Alfi,
an Egyptian reporter who lived for a year and a half in the United States. In his
America: The Jeans and the Switchblade (1989), he dehumanizes young people in
America when doing some satanic rituals in streets of some American cities.
A boy and a girl wore horror masks that concealed their beautiful human
features. The boy wore a mask of a blood-sucking vampire, and the girl

30

Mahmoud Awad, A Love Tour, Cited in America in An Arab Mirror, p. 30

28

wore a mask of the princess of darkness with blood oozing from both sides
of her blue-colored mouth.31
In this account, the writer tells the reader about these rituals and how these young
people stripe off all their human features.
The Egyptian-American, Mahmud Amari degrades America in his America for
Sale account. I think Amari strengthens the depiction of the American materialism
in this account. For money, he says, Americans can think of selling everything,
Everything in America is for sale. With the dollar you can buy
anything: railway stations, airports, churches, cemeteries with the
dead buried in them. Everything! Everything except wives and kids.
But wives in America can sell their husbands.32
From his side, Kamal Abdel-Malek, in The Sabeel in America (1999), gives a
very satirical account on America. He depicts American people as ones who know
no waste of money for the sake of God. The project done by sheik Mustafa in this
story becomes a nightmare. At the time Sheik Mustafa wants to make something
good for the sake of Allah and not for profit. He wants to distribute some water
jars in certain places for thirsty people as it is the case in many Arab countries.
Americans suspect that act and start to bargain with him sharing this affair. Some
American companies contacted Sheikh Mustapha and suggested marketing the
sabeel water jars as a new American drink la Coca-Cola. They added that they
could market also a diet brand.33 Abdul-Malik shows how these people think only
of how to benefit from anything. Nothing is done for the good. In another
discourse we might get how the idea that anything from Arab must have a certain
ideology. Media plays a great role in fighting any thing coming from Arab side.
Like fire in dry grass, the news of the sabeel traveled all over Rhode Island.
Sensational headlines such as ARAB WATER SHEIKS FLOOD OUR
31

Muhammad Hasan Al-Alfi, America: The Jeans and the Switchblade (1989), Cited in America in An
Arab Mirror, p. 43
32
Mahmud Amari, America for Sale, Cited in America in An Arab Mirror, p.45
33
Kamal Abdel-Malek, The Sabeel in America, Cited in America in An Arab Mirror, p. 150

29

STATE,WATER FAUCETS, ARAB STYLE, STUN RI SHOPPERS,

appeared in the local newspaper. Time magazine ran a special issue on
THE SPREAD OF ARAB-FUNDED HYDRAULIC PROJECTS IN NEW
ENGLAND.34
Such fear troubles media. I believe that Abdul-Malik wants to present a very
critical discourse. He argues ironically by this discursive spreading news about the
sabeel that those people think we have ideologies like theirs; ideologies that carry
within them Gramscian hegemony. They believe in that because they practise it.
They impose their thoughts on ours, their ideas on us and their goods in our
markets. They do that to dominate our economy and our mentalities, and
unfortunately we, Arabs, think, so innocently, that such ways are only done for our
luxury. Here, we can remember Edward Saids words ideologies are not
innocent.
C. Neutral and Ambivalent Image
I use the term "neutral " to express how some writers try to be unbiased at the
time most of what they say is a confirmation of their ambivalence. To make a
distinction between man and nature is ambivalence and to separate man from what
he does is also an inconsistency. What I find in Qutbs account is a kind of biased
negation of certain facts he himself practiced in his academic career in America.
He admits the availability of knowledge and infrastructure, but he claims of no
morality or humanity and starts dehumanizing people depicting them as machines.
His attempts to be honest in his account lead him not to be able to determine
whom to criticize in America.
Americas productivity is unmatched by any other nation. It has
miraculously elevated life to levels that cannot be believed. But man cannot
maintain his balance before the machine and risks becoming a machine

34

Ibid, 149

30

himself. He is unable to shoulder the burden of exhausting work and forge

ahead on the path of humanity, he unleashes the animal within.35
Another case of ambivalence is Layla Abu Zeids account; Americas Other Face.
My focus here is on how America is portrayed in comparison with Saudi Arabia.
A Saudi once said to me:Next time you come to Saudi Arabia bring with
you an American male so if the Saudis ask you Where is your male
guardian? you can say,Here he is! I said to the Saudi,I have no desire
to go back [to Saudi Arabia]; thanks to the Americans, these lands are no
longer sacred.36
Though the last sentence of the last quote gives irony to what Abu Zeid means,
that irony is not clear. They are either Americans or Saudis who are negatively
portrayed. Through the context we can be sure that they are Saudis whom Abu
Zeid attacks because of their demanding her with a male guard to accompany her
to pilgrimage. So she uses a very satirical way by thanking Americans for their
violating the Holy places in Saudi Arabia when they brought Western women to
those places. Abu Zeid falls in ambivalence by this irony because she blames
Saudi Arabia for bringing American soldiers to defend their lands in Gulf war and
at the same time she thanks Americans for defacing the sacred lands only as a
reaction of the way Saudis had treated her. The ambivalence here is doubled; she
sees Americans as dirt and thanks them. Then she criticizes Saudis for bringing
Americans and fall in the same action by thanking Americans for revenging her
from those Saudis. The last point can be argued as mimicry.
Mahmoud Al-Sadani was a popular Egyptian satirical writer and journalist. In
his account, America, You Cheeky Devil (1990). Kamal Abdul-malik gives a
description of the cover image of this book saying: The cover shows a drawing of
the Statue of Liberty but with a mans face wearing a crown studded with fountain
pens and holding instead of the torch a match in one hand and a matchbox in the
35
36

Sayid Qutb, The America I Have Seen, Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p. 11
is Layla Abu Zeid, Americas Other Face, Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p.122

31

other.37 This image tells how Al-Sadani thinks of America as so dominant. By

using fountain pens , he draws the portrait of knowledge and wisdom and the
use of a match in the statues right hand shows danger and threat. Al-Sadani , who
has come from a patriarchal society does not think a woman can have this
authority and power so the image is altered by a male face that resembles power
and hegemony. Though his account is satirical, he starts his writing in a very
contradictory way; America is the greatest, largest, and most obnoxious empire in
history.38 The superlative use of these adjectives is a kind of exaggeration. He
idealizes America as the greatest. He elevates it as the largest but then he degrades
it to the worst rate as obnoxious.
In fact what makes me think of this account as ambivalent is the way this author
puts America at the peak of every success and the supreme in each field and at the
same time he calls it as obnoxious. I may think this way is biased to his
emotions with how America treats Arab countries. His bias can not prevent him
from glorifying and idealizing America but at least helps him say it is not liked.
Basically America is not a country but a continent. America is not a part of
the human race but it envelopes all of humanity, with its greatness and
depravity, its justice and injustice, its excess and moderation, its wealth and
poverty, and its generosity and avarice. As opposed to previous empires, if
she falls, the entire world will fall with her, because her economy affects
the entire world. Her dollar is the official currency of the globe. A dollar
deposited in a bank anywhere in the world will be recorded in the ledgers of
the American Federal Reserve.39
Thus, America is idealized as the core of democracy, economy, science and all
other things except people, whom are represented by some writers as primitive and
emotionless. In general, Arab writers make their writings with no preconceived
ideologies. So their representations of America are individual and are based on
37

Mahmoud Al-Sadani, You Cheeky Devil, Cited in America in an Arab Mirror, p. 135
Ibid
39
Ibid p. 36
38

32

their own experiences. Owing to this assumption , we find a diversity of

descriptions. Unlike the aim of the Western writings about Arabs in legislating
colonialism, Arabs writings are either a kind of writing back, revenge or mere
diaries that are affected by the individual experience. So, ambivalence becomes
clear when having a general look at these writings.

Conclusion
It is prevalent that the portrayal of America in Eastern travel narratives
seems to gain tremendous presence in Eastern writers imagination. This has been
seen bluntly through the examples discussed in this research paper. More
importantly; these writers differ in their depiction of American people. This
emanated from the fact that some were every much critic of Americans; while
others tend to exalt those people in their travel narratives. This ambivalence in the
way Americans were portrayed in the narratives done by both groups was one of
most important issues that this paper has endeavored to disseminate as one can see
clearly through the above discussion.

The paper has shown that Arab travel writers differ in the way they have
registered their experiences and views on America. Some of them tend to idealize
not only the American lands but also its people due to their education and
commitment to their works and duties. On the other hand, some other Arab writers
have expressed a sense of dislike toward Americans as human beings. American
people have been labeled by some Arab writers as primitive human beings who
are enslaved by their sexual desire and the materiality of their life.

33

This diversity of opinions about America in Arab travel writings shows the
complexity of the topic of Arab portrayal of America. The love and dislike for
America is associated not only with the Arab writers personal satisfactions but
also with some other factors of conflict between the West and the East as two
opposed forces. Therefore, any further study for the depiction of Americans needs
to take into accounts the points of conflict between the west and the oriental
people.

Bibliography
Primary Resources
Abdel-Malek, Kamal(Ed). America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in
Arabic Travel Literature. New York, St.Mattins Press, 2000.

Secondary Resources
Arab Insight, Do We Hate America? The Arab Response, World Security Institute, 2007.
Bekkaoui, Khalid Signs of Spectacular Resistance,Najah El Jadid , Casablanca ,1998.
El-Enany Rasheed., Arab Representation of the Occident .Routledge, 2006.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality (New York: Pantheon 1978).
Lewis, Bernard. The Question of Orientalism .New York review of books, 1982
Said, Edward. Counter Punch, outboard magazine: Thoughts About America, March 5,
2002

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