This paper examines the upward social mobility of the Greek community in Egypt, after the implementations of Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s Nationalization Laws in 1961 until the launching of the infitah policies by Anwar al-Sadat in 1976. Both Greek and Egyptian historiographies fail to include and explore the activities of the Greek community of Egypt after its en masse departure in 1961, focusing instead on two main narratives: a cosmopolitan past and the community’s decline and departure. This paper deconstructs the narrative of absence, exploring the dynamics and mobilities of labor and citizenship within the Greek community that remained in Egypt after its demographic decline. The absence of the presence of the remaining Greek population in the dominant Greek and Egyptian national narratives attempts to preserve the nostalgic memories of a glorious past. Both historiographies instead focus mainly on the Greek benefactors who left the country and the important social and economic capital they provided in the beginning of the 20th century when the community was at its demographic peak. In addition, they conventionally focus on Nasser's policies, including the growth of Arab nationalism, massive spending in the public sector, and the implementation of the nationalization laws. This ignores the actual social mobility experienced by the lower and middle class Greeks who remained in Egypt, which in turn challenges the construction of a homogeneous social and economic post-colonial Egyptian state. At the same time, such positioning neglects the contribution and diversification of diasporic communities, including the Greeks in Egypt. The paper accordingly focuses on the activities of the remaining Greek population, including those owners of businesses that were not nationalized due to their small scale, and explores how they managed to access socioeconomic mobility, acquired higher social ranks, and continued to engage and participate in Egyptian society. Accordingly, this study reveals the multiple layers of economic and social mobility in post-1961 Egyptian society by its different actors, in this case by members of the Greek community. Based on interviews and research conducted in Egypt and Greece, this paper uncovers the continued, yet silenced, engagement of Greeks in Egypt following the departure of the majority of the community in Cairo, Alexandria, and Port Said. This narrative not only alters the dominant narrative of absence, but more importantly, also contributes to new histories and understandings of social and economic life in Egypt.

From 1948 onwards, memories about saints in Palestine have deeply changed and acquired new shapes in relation to the political situation. The creation of the Israeli State, the establishment of new political boundaries, the different kinds of Israeli military control in the Palestinian territories and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, have all, impacted the mobility of pilgrims that carry out the visitations (ziyārāt) to tombs (maqābir) and memorials (maqāmāt). Many of the thousands of holy places that were visited by Palestinians prior to 1948 have been abandoned due to the impossibility of movement, demolished, or claimed and appropriated by non-Palestinian Jewish communities. The restrictions and threats that continuous Israeli land expansion pose in the West Bank have impacted in the way many sites have gained in importance as spaces of—and for—political mobilisation. This paper will examine one such site, the maqām of Abū Laimūn in Bil’in. By exploring this phenomenon and its associated mechanics, this paper examines how the maqām's "recovery" in 2010, after a series of demonstrations, articulates the reformulation of the saint as an active participant against the occupation in stories that circulate among local inhabitants. Palestinian pilgrims combine their experiences with tear gas, military harassment, olive-tree burning, and unjustified arrests, with traditional-narrative elements such as the connection of Abū Laimūn with Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ayyubī, his own healing and protective power, and elements that highlight Abū Laimūn’s political involvement in the national struggle. This paper offers new dimensions to the study of Palestinian ritual sites and expands our understanding of the "everyday" for Palestinians. It shows how the maqām of Abū Laimūn has acquired a role in the struggle against the occupation with the political dimension interplaying with individual and communal engagements in addition to folkloric, historical and political stories of the saint. These new stories play a role in the way believers engage with the saint and its associate sacred space, and how the saint becomes an agent for social and political activities organised by the Committees of Bil’in against the occupation.

The configurations of the year 1948, and the loss of the land of Palestine have become normative spatial-temporal pillars in the writing and reading of modern Palestinian literature. This paper explores how the Palestinian author Ḥussein Barghoutī (1954-2002) challenges this normativity through minimizing this political moment as the primary element in the creation of the Palestinian narrative. Many of Barghoutī’s works have been criticized as incongruous with the larger, national, narrative of Palestinian literature, and critiqued for their focus on episodes of personal turmoil and marginal issues. By looking at the author's stylistic and thematic notions, this paper focuses on how Barghoutī’s works offer a form of fluidity that widen the understanding of the bounded spatial-temporal definition of “resistance” in the canon of Palestinian literature. The paper takes Barghoutī’s works as a starting point for reading beyond the political essentialization and, therefore, shows the multi-dimensionality and mobility of the Palestinian narrative. Trespassing the political entrenchment of the narrative opens the space for observing new literary, cultural, and social commonalities and ties between Palestinian literature and Arabic and World literature. Barghoutī uses implicit and explicit Sufi references in his writings (the first line of his most famous autobiography al-daw’ al-azraq reads: “I met him: a Sufi from Konya, Turkey, one of the Whirling Dervishes, the followers of Mawlānā Jalal al-Dīn Rūmi…” (2004, 5)). This paper focuses on the contestation, malleability, and moulding of these Sufi themes, figures, and narratives. It investigates Barghoutī’s invocation of “light,” “mirrors,” and “void” (all features of Sufi philosophies), and couples them with theoretical concepts like “the embroidered-time” and the “collage.” This examination shows how Barghoutī’s works highlight the transformative nature of past Sufi narratives, and trespass the boundaries of the seemingly inescapable politicization of Palestinian literature. Through a close reading of some of his fictional and critical works, this paper will show how Barghoutī does not discredit the creation of a politically driven narrative; but instead criticizes the essence of this creation, which aims to pre-fixate the boundaries, concepts, and aspirations of this narrative. In other words, it demonstrates how Barghoutī questions the assertion of the discovered nature of the political narrative as a given, and calls for the act of discovering new and experimental forms and angles of writings, which, in turn, create an alternative way of reading the Palestinian narrative.