False heroes: a study of Abd al-Rahman Majid al-Rubay'i's novel 'Al-Washm' (The Tattoo).

The post world war II history of Iraq has been characterized by continual strife. In 1958 the British-installed monarchy was toppled and was replaced by a republican regime headed by Colonel Abdul Karim Qasim. The new regime lifted some of the restrictions on individual liberties and introduced extensive social reforms designed to improve the conditions of the poorest sections of society. To many in the south of Iraq, the Qasim era represented a time of high hope, of high expectations. These were soon dashed, however, when Qasim's regime was overthrown in February 1963 by a faction of the Baath Party which rules Iraq at present. During their bloody seizure of power, the Baathists discontinued many of the reforms introduced by Qasim, clamped down on individual liberties, and carried out massive reprisals against opponents and perceived opponents. As a result of these events, the earlier sense of hope and confidence gave way to widespread despair and defeatism and led to a preoccupation with self-interest and individual survival. A number of writers have striven to portray that era. In the forefront of these writers is Abd al-Rahman Majid al-Rubay'i

Al-Washm, al-Rubay'i's first novel, appeared in 1972. Since its appearance, it has received a good deal of critical interest throughout the Arab World. This interest is due to the nature of the subject the work broaches and also to the innovative techniques the author employs in it. This essay will be confined to a thematic analysis of al-Washm, and will attempt to show that the work can be viewed as an exposition and ultimately an implicit indictment of defeatism and self-centeredness.

Al-Rubay'i, one of Iraq's best-known writers, started publishing his works in the Iraqi press in 1962.(1) Following the overthrow in 1963 of the Qasim regime, he was imprisoned for his leftist writings. He credits his imprisonment with inspiring him to later write the novel under review.

The protagonist's name, Karim al-Nasiri, is indicative of the background to the novel. Al-Nasiri refers to someone who hails from al-Nasiriyah, a town on the Euphrates in southern Iraq. The inhabitants of al-Nasiriyah, like the majority of the inhabitants of southern Iraq, are predominantly Shiites most of whom trace their ancestry to hut-dwelling farmers who had migrated from the countryside to escape poverty and the virtual servitude to which they had been subjected by feudal landowners. The narrator sums up the genesis of the town thus:

Al-Nasiriyah, our small quiet town to which our fathers one day headed, having cast aside their sickles and axes in search of a new type of work that would throw in the hungry mouths of their children a morsel of food which the land no longer provided.(2)

The theme of betrayal by the land, of being uprooted from homes and land, forced into internal exile in towns and cities, and of facing an uncertain future is a thread that runs through much of the fiction written in Iraq in this century. This forced internal exile is not an isolated case confined to the particular region the novel is set in but is in fact a broader phenomenon that has affected much of the country especially the south where poverty and social deprivation are especially rampant. The grievance of the inhabitants of al-Nasiriyah is reiterated in the novel:

If you look at the inhabitants of our town, you will find that they were bare-footed farmers who made al-Nasiriyah their abode after they had been betrayed by the land. None amongst them could afford not even one meal a day.... (23)

Such reiteration of the inhabitant's grievances serves to underline their deeply-felt sense of injustice. The sense of oppression is intensified by the graphic depiction of the conditions of the farmers: "bare-footed," and "not even one meal a day."

On another level, the land itself is metaphorically culpable for their condition. For there exists between farmer and land a kind of a pact whereby each sustains and nurtures the other. The land's withholding its bounty - it no longer provided the morsel of food - amounts to a breach of faith, a breach of the pact, indeed, as the narrator states, a betrayal. The farmers did not opt to migrate to the town, they did so only after "they had been betrayed by the land." Thus where they expected faithfulness, they were met with betrayal; where they expected plenitude, they endured barrenness. As will be seen later, images of barrenness permeate the entire novel. Moreover, allusions to betrayal by that with whom they had entered into a pact of loyalty foreshadow further betrayal and disillusionment.

However, the sought-after better life in towns and cities continued to elude these transplanted farmers through lack of opportunities and through their own lack of skills necessary to enable them to wrest a living in increasingly competitive environments. Most earned meager livelihoods as manual laborers. Predictably, their situation made them acutely conscious of the social injustices that were rampant in their midst, and of the disparity between the rich and the poor. In the passage quoted above, the protagonist states the origin of his involvement in politics thus:

If you look at the inhabitants of our town, you will find that they were bare-footed farmers who made al-Nasiriyah their abode after they had been betrayed by the land. None amongst them could afford not even one meal a day. Thus I believe that our zeal started from here, from our class consciousness of this situation.... (emphasis added)

This disparity between the rich and the poor, and this social inequality gave rise to an all-pervasive sense of discontent that found expression in the many insurrections that, since the turn of the Twentieth Century, have taken place in the south and have earned that region a reputation for being a hotbed of revolt. These insurrections were directed at successive regimes starting with the British colonial authorities, then the British-installed monarchy, and finally the Sunni-dominated regimes that have replaced the monarchy including the Baathist regime which has ruled Iraq since 1968. Especially susceptible to revolutionary ideas are the young, particularly students, a fact utilized by political organizations which focus their recruiting efforts on them.

Yet however compelling the evidence is for a social-inequality-spawning-discontent-and-resistance explanation, Karim's zeal, his involvement in the cause of his people is, at a deeper level, attributable to more than just his "class consciousness" and his sense of moral indignation at the oppression of his people. Conversing with a prison inmate, Karim recalls: "I was suffering and constantly searching, I was reading books, participating in demonstrations and [joining] organizations, drinking alcohol, frequenting brothels. I wanted to be in fervent touch with life and to undergo renewal with it.... "(24) From this passage it becomes clear that Karim's involvement in the cause of his people is but a veil for his quest for an identity and for individual fulfillment. In other words, his championing the cause of his people is ultimately self-serving, a means among other means (drinking, frequenting brothels) to an end; that of self-fulfillment. It is telling that he should mention his involvement in the cause of his people in the same breath as (and gives it no higher status than) his drinking habit and his frequenting of brothels. Thus when Karim is thrown in jail for his political activities and his commitment to the cause of his people and to his principles is tested, the outcome of that test should come as no surprise to the reader.

Much of the novel is taken up by a graphic depiction of Karim's seven-month imprisonment in one of the jails of his hometown al-Nasiriyah. It should be pointed out that imprisonment as a means of suppressing dissent and thwarting any threat to the regime's hold on power is not uncommon in Iraq. Successive regimes have resorted to imprisonment or the threat of imprisonment of their political opponents with varying degrees of success. In fact, a number of detention centers notorious for their abysmal conditions and for the brutal methods used in them against detainees have been set aside for political prisoners by successive regimes. It is as he leaves one such prison that we meet the protagonist.

The protagonist's state of mind is best delineated by the third-person narrator as the novel begins:

Karim al-Nasiri breathed the street's air after total suffocation. Seven oppressive (ja'irah) months besieged him with their minutes and their horror, and pounded his blood, bones, and nerves.(7)

The traumatic effect of imprisonment is brought out through the use of the contrast between breathing the fresh air of the street, i.e. freedom, and total suffocation. Freedom, "the street's air," is resuscitating, nurturing and life-saving as opposed to lack of freedom, imprisonment, which is suffocating, life-threatening, and even deadly, taking a heavy toll not just on the body but on the mind as well. The use of the adjective ja'irah to characterize the seven months he spends in prison serves to define the protagonist's status as victim of jawr (tyranny, oppression, injustice) and places him within a broader category of subjects who are on the receiving end of jawr. This category includes those farmers who fell victim to the jawr of landowners and the regime that bolsters them. Karim's imprisonment is, therefore, merely a phase in an unbroken chain of jawr. This continuity of jawr is metaphorically stressed by the fact that the prison building in which Karim and his comrades were held was formerly a stable for the horses of the constabulary from which mounted policemen sprang to quell the frequent tribal insurrections prior to the introduction of modern methods of transportation which, in this context, should be read as modern methods of repression (9). The building's retention of its basic function, first to house the mounts of the constabulary that put down tribal rebellions and then as detention center where descendants of those tribal rebels are held and subdued is indicative of this uninterrupted process of jawr. It is this status of being a victim in a long series of victims of this process, of being at the forefront of those who strive to reverse this process that renders Karim's imprisonment/sacrifice ennobling.

Yet a close scrutiny casts doubt on the protagonist's title to such status. From his conversations with other inmates and from the interior monologues, the reader gains some insights into the protagonist's inner thoughts. These prove crucial to a realistic assessment of the protagonist's outward claims to being part of a tradition of resistance to oppression. In one of the numerous interior monologues, we read the following:

[While in prison] I felt a desire to touch Asil 'Umran's hand [Asil 'Umran being a woman he was in love with, and with whom he had a surreptitious albeit largely platonic relationship before being imprisoned] and together take a stroll on the bank of the Euphrates on the west side of town. [I felt] a deep urge to relive one of those evenings which imprisonment assassinated (27).

Admittedly, imprisonment can be traumatic, and many prisoners feel distraught, disoriented, and experience a sense of helplessness and loss of control over their own destinies. Often they feel yearnings for the days of freedom, for the moments of peace and tranquillity they spent surrounded by the warmth of their friends and loved ones. Yet this passage (as are several others in the novel) is remarkable for its lack of any trace or reference to the cause for which the protagonist is imprisoned. Karim misses his lady friend but does not miss his comrades who carry on the struggle outside prison. He feels a strong urge to relive one of the fun-filled evenings but we learn of no similar desire to rejoin the revolutionary activities. Moreover, his use of the verb "assassinate" to refer to the fun-filled evenings he could no longer enjoy due to imprisonment is ironic. For while it is true that imprisonment metaphorically "assassinates" fun-filled nights in the sense of terminating them, making them no longer possible, a prison's capacity to "assassinate" is true in a literal sense: Prisons in Iraq are the places where political opponents, after being rounded up, are routinely interrogated, tortured, and in many cases assassinated. To lament, as does Karim, the "assassinated fun-filled nights" and not the assassinated comrades is to belittle those fallen comrades and their sacrifice and to raise serious questions about the legitimacy of his implicit claim to being heir to their tradition of struggle, indeed about the motives behind his involvement in the cause. Further confirmation of this is found in another interior monologue in which the protagonist bemoans the loss of his "political ambition"(81). That imprisonment impedes revolutionary change is not paramount, what is paramount is that it frustrated his own "political ambitions," i.e. his chances of securing a position of power in a new regime.

Further examination of the work lends more weight to the argument that Karim's involvement in the cause of his people is self-serving, even opportunistic. Karim is aware that a lot hinges on how he conducts himself in prison: "... my manhood is facing a huge test, that a mere moment of weakness I show will be sufficient to make me despised till the moment I die"(17). This passage must be understood as the protagonist stating his resolve not to be defeated by the prison experience, as his refusal to lose heart, and as his determination to remain loyal to the cause for which he is incarcerated. Moreover, the matter has taken a highly personal dimension; at stake is his very "manhood," which in a traditional Iraqi context is tantamount to his honor and his integrity. Yet this statement of resolve soon gives way to self-doubt and defeatism:

I will not change the world, and will not make the sun rise in the West, why then am I persecuted in this way? What if they release me from jail now? Do they think that I would bear arms against them? The first thing I would do would be to go to the nearest bar and drink till death (61).

Again, this revelation should not come as a complete surprise. Karim's incarceration by the authorities is based on their belief that he is engaged in "subversive" revolutionary activity that is detrimental to the security and permanence of the regime. To release him from prison would jeopardize the security of the regime, since as a revolutionary, he would resume his antigovernment struggle. But Karim, as has become more and more evident, is no revolutionary. To him the whole affair is no more than a "political ambition" that has been frustrated by the regime, an attempt to secure personal ends. He becomes more and more convinced that since the plot has been uncovered and the plotters are imprisoned, all is lost and there is nothing else for him to do but to salvage what can be salvaged, to disentangle himself from the situation. Karim asserts that when he is released from jail, he will not bear arms against the regime, but will pursue other avenues to achieve his objectives. It is only a matter of time before he communicates his intent to the authorities. But Karim has resolved not to be defeated by prison, by the authorities. At stake is his very honor and integrity. To rationalize the breaking of his resolution, he cites his inability, his powerlessness to affect change. To persist then in his attempts at change would be futile and foolish. As he watches his prison-mates and comrades leave prison one after another, having surrendered to the demands of the authorities, Karim becomes fully convinced of the soundness of his decision. His sense of self-doubt and defeatism reaches such an extent that he is now "willing to do anything in exchange for his release from prison" (87).

A few days following the release of some of his comrades, Karim reiterates: "Nothing mattered to me more than settling the issue in any way" (89). This he does: He confesses to his interrogators his involvement in the outlawed political organization, discloses the identities of the other members of that organization who are not known to the authorities and agrees to publish in a newspaper a repudiation of his comrades and organization. Upon doing this he is released from prison.

This defeatism is not confined to Karim; it is in fact displayed by virtually everyone of his imprisoned comrades. These include Hamid al-Sha'lan, a retired school teacher whose past involvement in politics has dogged him and ensured that whenever there is a crackdown on dissent, he is among those rounded up and imprisoned. Al-Sha'lan was once active in anti-government politics, and was a secularist who believed in the "absoluteness of science" (77), but is now a devout Muslim strictly observing the religious duties of Islam. Although scanty details are given about the trials of the once politically active secularist al-Sha'lan, it is implied that he, like Karim, had to contend with thwarted political ambitions which filled him with fear, anxiety, and despair (78). Al-Sha'lan's defeatism is manifested in his repudiation of his former beliefs and loyalties and in his locking himself in a safe and ordered world. He admonishes Karim not to listen to "the laqita calls which you hear or read" (77). "Calls" alludes to attempts by various political parties and organizations to enlist popular support for their anti-government activities. Al-Sha'lan characterizes these opposition groups to which he once belonged as laqita. The word laqit literally means "bastard," "born out of wedlock." It is used here metaphorically to denote the illegitimate nature of these opposition groups with their ideologies and orientation. Their illegitimacy derives from several factors; first, their ideological underpinnings originate for the most part in the West. They are therefore alien, unsuitable to Iraqi society and its needs. Second, as they have the West as their point of origin, it is implied that ultimately they are designed to serve the West's interests, and are detrimental to Iraqi interests. The third, and most important source of these groups' illegitimacy is that their Western or Western-inspired ideologies are at variance with Islamic doctrine; Islam being the authority that confers or withholds legitimacy on a group or a party depending on that group or party's degree of embracing or rejecting the tenets of Islam. Thus to al-Sha'lan these organizations are at best redundant and at worst malevolent. He characterizes his repudiation of his former political and ideological loyalties and his embracing Islam as "coming to his senses" (77). This implies that his former affiliations and ideological loyalties amount to insanity, an affliction from which he has been purged. By vilifying his former loyalties and associations, al-Sha'lan intended to rationalize his betrayal of his former allies. Having established that these organizations are illegitimate, alien, incompatible with traditional Iraqi values and mores, detrimental to Iraqi interests and at variance with Islamic creed, his disavowal of them is, therefore, understandable. It does not amount to betrayal, nor does it stigmatize him, nor compromise his integrity. On the contrary, it is a source of pride for him that after he had "gone astray," he found his way back to the true course of action, that of embracing Islam and leading a pious life.

Another of Karim's prison mates who undergoes a metamorphosis from a secular political activist to a devout Muslim is Hassun al-Salman. Al-Salman was once Karim's superior in the clandestine organization to which they both belonged. Together they took part in anti-government activities. From the few scattered remarks made by Karim about him, the reader can glean that al-Salman was once of a cheerful disposition who was nevertheless plagued by "the germ of anxiety," that, like Karim, he was constantly in search of an identity (25). The affect of prison on al-Salman appears to be especially painful. Toward the end of his imprisonment, "his cheerfulness waned and he became pale to a terrifying extent" (69). The waning of his cheerfulness denotes the death of his spirit; imprisonment has had the effect of breaking his spirit.

Unlike al-Sha'lan, Hassun al-Salman owns up to his defeatism. In a prison conversation with Karim in which they reflect on their lives, Hassun complains that "self-doubt and failure have disfigured us [shawwahana] (42). This disfigurement is of course to be taken in a figurative sense. The denotations of the Arabic verb shawwah are primarily those of someone or something transformed from a state of beauty, physical or moral, to a deformed, ugly state. In the case at hand, the transformation of Hassun brought about by self-doubt and frustration is from a state in which he is brave, resolute, and indispensable to a state in which he describes himself as "a coward, hesitant, redundant" (55). In a moment of utter dejection he addresses Karim thus:

Are you waiting for me to talk to you about heroism? Where is heroism here? How can I express our sorry condition? Are you waiting for me to fill my chest with air and deliver a bombastic speech on the masses, the sun, the future, and pour opium on the heads of my audiences as I used to do? (55)

This is the state of disfigurement mentioned above. It is a state in which Hassun searches for any trace of heroism within himself and among others but finds none, in which his past inspiring and charismatic speeches appear to him, through self-doubt, to have been devoid of any true value, mere opium in their affects on the people. This passage also marks the culmination of Hassun's transformation/deformation: It is a declaration of his defeat. From this point onward, Hassun follows the example of Hamid al-Sha'lan and takes refuge in religion. Reflecting on his former comrade's new condition, Karim addresses him thus:

You were able to belong to religion in which you sought protection as did Hamid al-Sha'lan before you. You are now capable of movement having killed the germ of anxiety that gnawed at your head before. Who would have thought that Hassun al-Salman would become like this? No winds, no storms, but invocations and prayers, exactly like an ascetic dervish! (25)

The likening of Hassun to an ascetic dervish indicates that his transformation amounted to a swing from one extreme to another; from a life of active political opposition to the regime, with the grave risks such activism entails, to a life comparable to that of an ascetic with its implication of complete passivity and withdrawal from worldly concerns.

As an indication of his total submission, Hassun makes the ritual pilgrimage to Mecca as required from every Muslim. Following his return from the pilgrimage, he writes Karim, his former comrade:

Two days ago, I and Hamid al-Sha'lan returned from performing the pilgrimage to the sacred House of God.... As a result of this, aman (peace, reassurance) returned to our hearts which were filled with fear, our faith increased and grew stronger after [our former] dalal (34).

The first thing to notice about this letter is that Hassun performs the pilgrimage (a symbol of his disavowal of his former beliefs, loyalties and sins) not alone but accompanied by another former prison mate, Hamid al-Sha'lan. This provides an indication that defeatism is not an isolated case confined to an individual but occurs on a collective scope; it permeates the ranks of the organization. Another important point to notice about the letter is Hassun's use of the word dalal to refer to his former beliefs and loyalties. In its general sense, the word dalal [from the triliteral root d-l-l] denotes, inter alia, losing one's way. But dalal is also a key Qur'anic concept with a number of significations. In the Qur'an, it is often juxtaposed with another key term, al-huda. Of the numerous occurrences of these two terms in the Qur'an, the following will serve to elucidate their significations. The concept of al-huda relates to God's Revelation through His Messengers and Prophets. Chastising Adam and his spouse for succumbing to the whisperings of Satan, God addresses them,

He said, "Get down from it [the Garden of Eden] both of you together, some of you will be enemies of others. If there comes to you guidance from Me, then whoever follows My guidance shall not go astray nor shall he suffer" (20: 123).

In this verse the word al-huda refers to the Revelations that would later be sent to Man which were concluded by Islam, the last Revelation delivered by Muhammad. Following the Revelations would protect Man from dalal, from going astray and would ensure his salvation. The use of the term dalal in connection with Hassun's former involvement in secular politics serves to conjure up images of Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin. Hassun's disavowal of that involvement and his performing of the ritual pilgrimage amount then to an act of repentance.

Another occurrence of the term dalal in the Qur'an suggests a further parallelism:

It is He who has sent amongst the unlettered [the Arabs of the Peninsula] a Messenger from among themselves who recites to them His verses, purifies them, and teaches them the Book and wisdom although they had indeed been in manifest error before (lafi dalalin mubin) (62: 2).

The use of dalal to refer to Hassun's previous state suggests a parallelism between that state and that of the pre-Islamic Arabs. The pre-Islamic Arabs were consistently portrayed in the Qur'an as wading in ignorance. In al-Jahiliyah (the Pre-Islamic period), they worshipped idols, led voluptuous lives, engaged in self-destructive behavior; they were in dalalin mubin (clear, manifest misguidance, error). It was from this state that God's Revelation rescued them and elevated them to a higher status as vehicles of a divine message. To do that they disavowed their former polytheistic beliefs and practices and rescinded their former allegiances. Similarly, Hassun's disavowal of his former beliefs and his severing of his former affiliations amount not to an act of betrayal or disloyalty but to disavowing dalal and receiving God's huda, an act that has divine sanction and is therefore fully legitimate, nay, ennobling.

A third point to note about the letter is that Hassun signs his name as al-Hajj Hassun. He also refers to Hamid al-Sha'lan as al-Hajj Hamid al-Sha'lan. Hassun's search for identity, a search fraught with danger which led him down political blind alleys is now at an end. By "embracing Islam" and performing the pilgrimage, he acquires the honorific title Hajj as does any Muslim who performs the pilgrimage to Mecca. On a symbolic level, his acquisition of the title Hajj amounts to his acquisition of an identity that eluded him in the realm of politics.

Unlike Hassun al-Salman and Hamid al-Sha'lan, Karim, the central character of the novel, leaves prison without being able to resolve the conflict within himself. Following his release, his defeat and his betrayal continue to haunt him.

At this juncture, it is important to look at the title of the novel, al-Washm. The word al-Washm possess multiple significations; on the one hand it can refer to the practice, common among Iraqi women of rural background, to apply geometrical lines of tattoo on their bodies as a means of adornment. The use of the tattoo in this case is a mere indication of rural background and carries no particularly negative connotations. Another significance of the tattoo is a sign the most striking aspect of which is that it is indelible, permanent and carries connotations that it is a stain, a symbol of a misdeed, a fall, an unforgivable act. In this sense it is similar to the "Scarlet Letter" in Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous novel. However, the fact that in Iraqi rural society a tattoo is generally made of soot, i.e. black, intensifies its negative connotations as the color black is identified with evil, the reprehensible, and the malignant. Moreover, the word washm is closely associated with another word; wasm. The two words are related phonologically and semantically. Phonologically both words are derived from triliteral roots:/w-sh-m/and/w-s-m/. The first radicals of each are identical, so are the third radicals. Moreover, the middle radicals are also related in that both are unvoiced palatal fricatives. Semantically, the two words are closely related. The verb wasama means to disgrace, to tarnish, to blemish someone's name or honor. The noun wasma, especially in the common phrase wasmat 'ar, signifies a mark of disgrace, a stain, a blot, or a flaw in one's character. The close phonological and semantic affinities of the word washm with the more common word serve to reinforce the negative connotations of the former and broaden its range of meanings.

The title of the novel al-Washm is an allusion to Karim's defeatism. His collapse under the regime's pressure, his confession to his involvement in an anti-government clandestine organization, his disclosing the identities of his fellow conspirators/revolutionaries, his publishing in the press of a statement disowning his former comrades and renouncing any connection with them that might stigmatize him, these amount to a metaphorical washm that is indelible, permanent, and will torment him for the rest of his life. Karim may have left prison physically unhurt, but "something inside him had been shattered" (7). In his hometown, he searches in vain for that warmth of feeling he once felt toward the town and its people. Instead, "... the heat of estrangement seared him and he could hear an inner voice calling him to carry his mortal remains and depart..." (7). The effect of Karim's fall on him is primarily spiritual, psychological. He leaves prison hoping to find intimacy, closeness and belonging in his community but realizes that he is now alienated from that community. The use of the noun rufat (a dead man's remains) to refer to himself indicates that he now views himself as dead.

Faced with a situation in which he finds himself a stranger in his own community haunted by the ghost of his defeat, Karim decides to go into self-imposed exile to Baghdad where he hopes to make a fresh start and find peace of mind. But the sought-after peace of mind continues to elude him in the capital.

It is important to recall, at this point, that while in prison Karim warns himself that at stake was his very manhood, his honor and integrity, that "a mere moment of weakness I show will make me despised till the moment I die" (17). To Karim prison was a test which he failed miserably. The ghost of his defeat haunts him in his new abode, Baghdad. Unlike his other comrades who successfully rationalize their defeatism, Karim harbors no illusions about the reality of his defeat. He acknowledges that he is now "a failed renegade" (43). Yet this recognition does not lead to an honest reappraisal of his strengths and weaknesses nor does it spur him into taking constructive action that would redeem himself. Instead, as is consistent with a defeatist attitude, he seeks refuge in alcohol: "Wakefulness is my torment, remorse is still punishing me and stinging my present. Therefore I decided never to wake up, this head of mine shall remain numb till the last breath" (9).

A preoccupation of Karim in Baghdad is to pursue other avenues that would compensate for his political failure. Although he pursues relationships with women, he is reluctant and hesitant. This reluctance stems from his lingering doubt that such relationships could compensate for his failure in politics, and from his fear of failure, from his anxiety that if he became involved in such relationships he would risk "another stumble" that would prove fatal, another test which he would fail, too (16). He does become involved emotionally with Miriam, a female co-worker who is married but carries on an affair with another man. Oddly enough, despite the fact that she is openly promiscuous, Karim appears to idealize her and hopes that his largely platonic relationship with her would purge him of his rijs (79). The use of the noun rijs in this context is significant. Classical lexicographers provide a number of significations of this noun, the most frequently given denotations are the following: uncleanliness, a dirty thing or act, a noun that denotes a thing or an act that is reprehensible.(3) However, the most common signification of the noun rijs carries specifically religious connotations. In the Qur'anic context, rijs denotes an act that is unlawful (haram), a reprehensible act (makruh), an act the committing of which amounts to unbelief in God (kufr), an act that provokes God's damnation and torment of the doer. Among the number of occurrences of this noun in the Qur'an in which these connotations find expression is the following verse addressed to the Prophet's wives: "It is God's earnest desire to remove from you the rijs, O members of the [Prophet's] House, and to purify you completely" (33: 33). Another occurrence of the noun rijs in the Qur'an is in a verse in which God warns the Believers against committing certain acts which He deems reprehensible: "O Believers [know] that wine, the games of chance, idols, and divining arrows are a rijs of Satan's work, so shun it [this rijs] that you may prosper" (5: 90).

In modern Arabic, the use of the noun rijs evokes almost exclusively such religious connotations. Karim's fall, his betrayal of cause and comrades, amounts to rijs; it is reprehensible, unlawful and is therefore certain to lead to perdition in the Hereafter. In other words, what makes his fall so excruciating is that it provokes not only man's censure but also God's wrath. It also brings torment on him not just in this life but also in the Hereafter. Thus his largely platonic relationship with Miriam can be seen as an attempt by him to purify himself of rijs through denying himself the sensuous pleasure of consorting with her. It is a kind of penance, an atonement for his sin.

His amity with Miriam turns into hostility and loathing toward her when she offers herself to him: "She wants to defile my feelings and degrade and end them in a cheap intercourse which we would steal from her husband, time and the people!" (79) At the heart of his outburst is that Miriam's act of unfaithfulness (to her husband) mirrors his own unfaithfulness to his Party. What she proposes amounts to a re-enactment of his own disloyalty. His burst of anger is, therefore, directed as much against himself as against Miriam.

Nor is Miriam the only woman who reminds Karim of his stained past. In a brothel he visits, the prostitute who offers to consort with him is described by the third-person narrator thus: "... she was as fat as a cow, on her back dangled long hair treated with cheap oil, on her ample neck a column of tattoo.... She sat beside him revealing her tattooed legs ..." (36). As is apparent from this passage, the prostitute is described in terms designed to evoke revulsion and disgust. Her ugly outer appearance represents a manifestation of the ugliness of her inner soul. When applied to a woman's body as a means of adornment, the tattoo normally carries no negative connotations, acquires totally negative undertones in this context; it becomes an extension of her body (and thus ugly too). In particular, the tattoo becomes in this context an outer symbol of inner repulsiveness and depravity.(4)

The fact that the word al-Washm forms the title of the novel whose central character is Karim al-Nasiri and whose main theme is his fall, and also occurs in the text of the novel exclusively in describing the prostitute is clearly intended to suggest a parallelism between Karim and the prostitute. Her washm is prostitution as symbolized by the indelible tattoo on her body; his washm is his prostituting of cause and comrade, and is symbolized by the marks he makes on a piece of paper (his renouncing his affiliations and disowning his comrades which he publishes in a newspaper: "I, Karim al-Nasiri, hereby affirm that I have no connection with [so and so], that I shall be loyal to [so and so])" (75). What is implied is that there is an analogy between these ink markings which appeared in the newspaper and the soot markings on the prostitute's body. Karim and the prostitute are thus united in a commonality of shame - the acts they have committed are equally reprehensible, irreversible and indelible. The nausea which Karim feels when he comes close to the prostitute (so severe that he does not have intercourse with her, but spits and leaves) is also the same nausea which he feels when he ponders his own act. Thus when he spits, it is as much from self-loathing as from the repulsiveness of the prostitute.

A minor character, Yusra Tawfiq, provides yet another example of Karim's defeatism and his inclination to flee from confrontation. Yusra is a pretty Baghdad girl whom Karim chases relentlessly and offers to marry. Although reluctant at first, Yusra gradually responds to his advances. Yet when she "calls his bluff' by inviting him to ask her family for her hand in marriage, he cowers and declines protesting that he does not want her to tie her life with "a vagrant like me, cast on the shores as a piece of wood is tossed about by the waves ..." (80). Yet this vagrancy is partly of his own making and is due to his defeatist attitude, especially his inclination to flee from confrontation. Upon severing his relationship with Yusra, he decides to leave Iraq and heads to Kuwait "to live or to die there, it makes no difference"(88). Perhaps nothing epitomizes Karim's defeatism more than his inclination to flee from confrontation. This inclination becomes a pattern discernible throughout the novel; first he "flees" from his confrontation with the authorities by agreeing unconditionally to all their demands in order to secure his release from prison; second, he flees his hometown al-Nasiriyah and heads to Baghdad to escape possible censure by the people; third, in Baghdad he flees from reality by taking to heavy drinking and by resolving to stay numb; fourth, when Yusra challenges him to prove his good intentions toward her, he flees from this symbolic confrontation offering an unpersuasive explanation; and finally he flees Iraq for Kuwait.

This mood of defeatism is intensified by the preponderance of images of barrenness and death throughout the novel. One such image relates to Karim while he works in Baghdad as a journalist. Struggling to finish an article to meet the paper's deadline, Karim is described by the third-person narrator thus: "He searches among words for his mubtaghah but finds them [the words] all castrated and incapable of progeny" (15). The first thing to notice about this passage is the word mubtaghah (that which he seeks). On the surface, it means the right idea needed to finish up the article. However, on a deeper level it carries allusions to his search for identity and self-expression, a search that led him to become involved in political activism. The medium of writing thus becomes an alternative to the medium of politics. Like his search for identity in politics, his search "among the words," i.e. in writing, proves unsuccessful too, and ends in frustration and disappointment. The description of the words as castrated and incapable of progeny clearly reveals Karim's stagnation of thought and serves as a reflection of his own state. It is Karim who is ultimately castrated and unable to procreate.

This image of Karim as barren, unable to procreate is echoed in another image. Rebuking his friends and former comrades, and blaming them for his fall, Karim addresses them thus: "Why do you leave me like this, a dabah 'ajfa' abandoned by the caravan. Close by lurk stray dogs waiting for it to die, looking to it with eyes that suppress their severe hunger?" (85)

Prior to the introduction of modern methods of transport, the most common one in Iraq was the use of animals. A file of these animals together with their riders/passengers forms a caravan. It often happened that along the way some beasts, especially old ones, became unable to continue the often arduous journey and collapsed through exhaustion, hunger, and disease and were left to die. The basis of this image is the perceived similarity between the condition of such a beast and that of Karim. To begin with, the notion of the beast contains the implicit charge that Karim was used by his former comrades, by the political party to which he once belonged as a beast of burden. Furthermore, this beast is 'ajfa', it is old, emaciated, diseased, and barren. Likewise, Karim is now old, having "wasted" his prime in political activism, with the result that he is now a'jaf on the physical and symbolic levels (42). Physically he is barren due to the toll his involvement in politics took on his health, especially his imprisonment and also due to the onset of old age. On a symbolic level, he is barren as the activities for which he ruined his health and wasted his youth came to no issue, produced no result neither in terms of acquiring self-identity nor in securing any material gain. Instead, he ended up forlorn, invalid and disillusioned.

Yet another image which evokes barrenness and death relates to the Euphrates River. Recalling an afternoon excursion he took in his hometown with his lady friend Asil, Karim says: "The Euphrates was lying before our eyes like a huge, dying serpent slithering from al-Muhiyah down to the new park founded by the town municipality" (28).

Traditionally the Euphrates River is associated with fertility and plenitude. Its waters have, for thousands of years, been harnessed to irrigate the vast plains of the Mesopotamian depression, producing the crops that nourish and sustain the people. It is a paramount symbol of khayr (well-being, prosperity). In traditional Iraqi culture, the serpent is a symbol of sharr (evil, also betrayal, treachery). Thus the image of the Euphrates as a slithering serpent connotes that the river gives not life and sustenance but death and barrenness (barrenness being a major manifestation of sharr in a polity that relies for its very survival on land fertility). What this image alludes to is that as far as the south of Iraq is concerned, the Euphrates is no longer what it used to be/what it is supposed to be, i. e, a source of life and sustenance. Given the connotations of the serpent, the Euphrates as serpent implies that, like the land, the river has also betrayed the farmers, has turned against them, and has denied them its life-giving sustenance. It is, therefore, equally implicated in their uprooting, in their life of forced exile, in their suffering.

The story of Karim's fall has its origin in an impoverished town in southern Iraq whose inhabitants are descendants of hut-dwelling farmers driven from their land by poverty and oppression. Karim makes claims to being heir to those transplanted farmers' heritage of resistance to oppression. He becomes involved in anti-regime political activity ostensibly to redress the oppression of his people. However, as the foregoing analysis has shown, Karim's involvement in politics, his championing the cause of the oppressed is self-serving. It is merely a veil for his quest for an identity and for personal fulfillment. Thus when he is put to the test, he fails miserably, he betrays cause and comrades. His betrayal and defeat stigmatize him and alienate him from his own community. He flees "the scene of the crime," but the ghost of his defeat continues to haunt and torment him. Karim's flaw lies in his reluctance to face the true motives behind his involvement in politics until he is forced by imprisonment to do so. Moreover, following his defeat he is unable to make an honest appraisal of his situation, nor does defeat spur him into any redeeming action. Instead, he compounds his situation by brooding over his defeat and by fleeing one confrontation after another. Nonetheless, Karim must ultimately be seen as a victim of an unjust socio-economic system which forces the subject to pursue legitimate aspirations through questionable means.

The Tattoo occupies a special importance in the evolution of the political novel in Iraq. The events of 1963 in Iraq may have inspired it, but the novel transcends its immediate topic and the historical period it portrays and raises such universal questions as hope, faith, freedom, the human condition, and the moral dilemmas inherent in making choices. This may explain why the work has provoked so much critical comment throughout the Arab World and has become the most discussed Iraqi novel.

NOTES

1. In 1964 al-Rubay'i became the literary editor of an Iraqi weekly, al-Anba' al-Jadidah, which became an important outlet for the writings of younger Iraqi writers some of whom would later be known as the Sixties Generation of Writers and represent an important development in the history of modern Arabic literature in Iraq.

2. Abd al-Rahman Majid al-Rubay'i, Al-Washm (Beirut: Dar al-Awdah, 1972) 13. All further citations are to this edition and appear in the text.

3. Rijs, Lisan al-Arab, n. d.

4. Apart from the novel's title, this passage contains the only two occurrences of the word al-washm in the entire work.

Hussein Kadhim is a doctoral candidate in Arabic literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. His publications include translations of modern Arabic poetry and articles on Arabic literature.