Religion, whether Islam or Christianity, as well as communal pressure exercise daily influence over Arab citizens’ thoughts, language, and actions. Religion shapes their ideas on fatalism and the individual’s existence, while community dictates social norms. Many Arab literary works have highlighted the effect of this dual system on the limitations of Arab citizens’ active role in society and their will to create change under repressive regimes. This abstract aims to analyze Libyan-American novelist, Hisham Matar’s, In the Country of Men, where he subtly pinpoints this correlation through the narrative told by a 9-year-old, Suleiman, who grows up under Gaddafi’s regime in the 1970s, exposed to a belief system espoused by his family, friends, and neighbors, who await God’s salvation to bring justice to citizens, manipulate others under a hierarchy of power, divided between supporters and opponents to the regime, but where also some are ambivalent about dissent and loyalty. The novel traces Suleiman’s upbringing and development, observing the regime’s and society’s fluid and erroneous definitions of treason and heroism, elimination of individuality, and consciousness of the danger associated with an individual’s name. In this paper, I shall argue that the child’s monologues and implicit use of analogies such as Sheharazade and Shehrayar’s story and slavery, question the fluidity and societal conflation of such key terms as “betrayal,” “traitor,” and “faithful,” and insinuate a longing for authority and revenge vis-à-vis the hegemony of religious beliefs and societal perception of “treason,” “loyalty,” and “faith,” terms molded by the ruling power and used daily by most citizens. He questions his faith in a higher authority, overcomes the hierarchy of power, redefines heroism and treason, and breaks with the culture of submissiveness to fatalism and with an incapacitating social belief system, all in favor of the rise of the individual as an active agent against religion and community.

Though the 1967 war lasted for six days only, its legacies are still unfolding. What has been written about it takes the form of historical accounts that explore the origins and the aftermath of the war, always in the context of diplomacy, military, and regional politics, particularly, the Arab-Israeli conflict, but rarely from a social or cultural perspective, let alone from a cinematic viewpoint. But, how can one write such a history? What sources could one use to depict the emotional state of Egyptians following Egypt’s defeat? This paper hopes to fill this lacuna in the literature dealing with the 1967 War. Specifically, it aims to explore the significance of such a devastating loss onto Egyptian society through the lens of post-1967 cinema, itself an overlooked subject. By focusing on three films, The Land (al-Ar?, 1969), The Choice (al-’Ikhtiy?r, 1971), and The Sparrow (al-‘Usf?r, 1973), all directed by the highly acclaimed Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, this paper seeks to tackle the following questions: how did the Egyptians perceive, address, and react to the defeat? What were the socio-political, cultural, and intellectual experiences and conditions that prevailed in post-1967/pre-1973 Egypt? And, what new dimensions can the focus on film add to our understanding of not only the defeat but its legacies as well?

The image of Mamluk building craftsmen which depicted in literature reflects how this group was perceived by their society. This social perception that appears in Mamluk literature, especially the genre of artisan literature, for building practitioners complements the image emerges from other sources, documentary and chronical narratives, and pieces together elements of their identity. When trying to closely study and analyse the social and professional identity elements of the members of building craft, we face scarcity of direct pieces of evidence. Nonetheless, employing literature analysis could reveal its potential, thus improving our understanding of the social standing of building craftsmen in Mamluk society. What special about Mamluk literature is its popularity as appears in two meanings. On the one hand, it was becoming widely spread among society. And on the other, had a strong influence of colloquial dialect on the presentation of literary works. Both features represent distinctions in the perceived identity of selected building craftsmen who frequently appear in literature representing craftsmen: architect (muhandis), carpenter (najjar), and mason (banna’). Mamluk literati developed two sub-genres that represent various societal strata, among whom artisans belong to different crafts. The first sub-genre is ‘social assembly’, which belongs to the art of maqamah. The plot of this genre is a social gathering of artisans, each of whom is alternately asked to deliver a few rhymed verses (from two to four) followed by short prose employing jargons of his craft or job. The other sub-genre is a poetic form known as ‘dubit’ (a couple of poetic verses) devoted mainly to describe people of variant names, ethnicities, jobs, crafts, and even deformities. Although the declared purpose of these literary genres was humorous, they represent the essence of the identity of building craftsmen from a contemporary social perspective.

Architecture in Asghar Farhadi’s 2016 The Salesman is not a mere passive backdrop to an otherwise unaffected narrative; it is an autonomous agent that takes part in the events that unfold, complicates the narrative, and even occasionally defies the ideological position of the film. By analyzing architectural spaces, elements, infrastructure, and maintenance practices, I suggest that, 1) The fluid visual boundaries of Farhadi’s architectural settings are instrumental in blurring the borders of truth and morality—themes that are central to his film. 2) The ontological study of architecture, from the moment of excavation to its ultimate fracture/failure serves as a pathological medium to study the troubled masculinity of contemporary Iranian society. 3) Architectural infrastructure, as the materialized memory of the Film’s determinism, prophetically hints at the inevitable tragedy that awaits. The Salesman offers a cross-section of masculinity in Iran. The same ontological section that crosses through Iranian masculinity has been applied to the architectural setting of the film. The death of one building is shown next to and because of the birth of another, as the excavation of the neighboring lot leads to the crumbling of the couple’s apartment. And in this process, we witness an architecture of becoming—one that, like life itself, is never static, complete, or perfect. The spatial settings of The Salesman inevitably register as sites of unrest. Spaces endlessly undergoing reconstruction and maintenance all attest to an architecture that is alive, active, and requires constant attention and attendance. It is as if the determinism of Farhadi’s world is captured in the memory of its architecture. The spaces try to warn us from the beginning about the inevitability of the tragedy. The shattering window is “a metaphor for an upcoming disruption of domestic tranquility,” the large cracks above the couples bed hint a future fracture in their relationship, the explosion of the light bulb in the bathroom signals that the space is doomed with disaster, and the creepily swinging door of the apartment indicates intrusion. The architectural analysis of The Salesman empowers the audience with additional tools to reflect upon questions of masculinity and determinism. Architecture-as-a-reflection personifies the social filth that cannot be decontaminated through vain beautification strategies. Architecture-as-a-stage reflects the temporality of space and its incidental existence vis-à-vis the dominating presence of infrastructural facilities. Architecture-as-a-confinement embodies the oppressive nature of a society in which restriction, surveillance, and control are imposed upon its residents.

Tangiers, Casablanca – in the pages of Hamdouchi’s detective noir fiction these iconic Moroccan cities are no longer tourist destinations or the backdrop of Hollywood movies. Instead, they have become settings in which the novelist and his Moroccan audience can safely explore some of the nation’s most troubling contemporary social issues: police corruption, poverty, harragas, religious radicalization and neo-liberal globalization. While social critique is not new in Moroccan literature, the move to the noir genre, a phenomenon that Alghureiby (2015) argues is growing generally in Arabic literature since the Arab Spring, suggests a new critical tone and experimental narrative style(s). It is less poetic or literary and more cynical and realistic, which more accurately reflects a post-Arab Spring ambiance and attitude of protest and disgust with the status quo. While Mohamed Choukri’s For Bread Alone (originally published in Arabic in 1973) introduced readers to the dark underbelly of Tangiers through poverty and prostitution, Hamdouchi’s novel White Fly goes further by exploring these topics (and contemporary issues such as harragas and tensions with Spain over fishing and the Spanish autonomous cities of Sebta and Melilla) through the character of the police detective Laafrit (whose nickname translates as “Crafty”). Casablanca, the setting of Bled Dry, as well as several other films and novels in the noir genre, introduces a reader to police detective Hamash, an unsympathetic and deeply corrupt character. Smolin’s Moroccan Noir (2013) traces the rise of police-infused writing and visual production (from tabloids through television serials to novels) exploring ways in which a state-led more sympathetic version of the police is constructed in the post Years of Lead era, a form of “soft power” described by Nye, in which technology, information and culture (rather than military force) is used to create “a generally positive disposition.” The 1990s also saw a “soft power” approach being used by civil society (such as women’s organizations and other liberal intelligentsia) through their use of film and literature combined with more direct political action to promote reforms to the Moudawana. Yet this emerging noir literature of the 21st century, punctuated by Arab uprisings of 2011, as will be demonstrated, is doing different work, exposing the country’s political malaise and challenging ideological assumptions and hierarchies (class, language) through the protection of the “welder’s mask” of noir literature, allowing us “to draw close to the flame of our culture's evils without [for now] actually getting burned” (Nickerson).