A Sense of Alienation from Different Perspectives

Contemporary Middle East societies were shaped through urbanization, forced displacement, along with the structural scars left by colonialism. Throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, the fragmentation of Ottoman territories, mandate system and Western interventions changed the borders, but people were forced to abandon their countries and identities, which most importantly caused them to lose their sense of belonging. This situation induced uncertainty because they became unsure where they belonged or where they ought to belong. In that context, fast urbanization, which occurred especially in Türkiye and Arab countries in the 1950s, caused feelings of displacement, which is both spatial and cultural, for people who migrated from rural to urban. As a result of these, people were alienated from society and themselves. In addition, gender relations deepened the feelings of alienation because women were placed into society like a symbolic entity, but they were oppressed systematically. All these breaks are reflected in literary texts. One of the most important poems is Samih al-Qasim’s “The Clock on the Wall” which demonstrates the Palestinian exile with feelings of alienation for all humans by utilizing time as a framework. Another fundamental story is Nawal El Saadawi’s “She Has No Place in Paradise” which underlines patriarchalism and alienation of women. Third significant one is Oktay Rıfat’s “Freedom” which shows the alienation of freedom because of urbanization. This essay will argumentatively analyze these three pieces through the lens of alienation.
Samih al-Quasim’s “The Clock on the Wall” does not only depict individual suffering; it gives the fragmentation of Palestinian society, which has occurred over several decades, displacement and the loss of a sense of belonging to somewhere metaphorically. Samih al-Quasim repeatedly wrote “The clock was still on the wall”^【1】. It is both symbolically and historically significant. The clock is a witness to time, which records the collapses from the Nakba catastrophe of 1948 to the present day, but the clock never stops any of them. As Farsoun and Zacharia state that there were 1,400,000 people living there, and 840,000 of them were refugees following Israel's conquest of three-quarters of Palestine. Eighty-five percent of the Palestinian population in what is now Israel had to flee their homes due to the violence.^【2】 They were displaced. In Al-Qasim’s “My city collapsed / The clock was still on the wall” ^【3】 lines, there is a symbolic indicator for this great displacement. The fact that the clock does not move expresses the system’s silence, and even its complicity, despite the entire space changing, so humans become alienated from their humanity. Humans can put pressure on Israel, but they choose to live their life or to seek their benefits. Moreover, Palestinians who were born after 1948 grew up stateless, lived in refugee camps, and felt excluded from both their Arab brothers and universal system of justice. This emotion of displacement can be seen in these lines. Cities, streets, squares, houses, walls collapsed, but the time continued to work. It represents Palestinians who have been pushed outside of their own time, who exist but do not belong. The alienation of place is associated with the alienation of time. Time has continued to work, but the Palestinian conditions have remained unchanged.
This temporal alienation persists in the lived experience of displacement and diaspora rather than ceasing with the devastation of cities. Even if they can migrate to other countries, they cannot belong there. They often feel alienated in societies they migrate into. For instance, in The Child Soldiers documentary, there is a Palestinian man who went to Germany to study, but he could not say where he is from accurately because people bullied him, and he decided to fight for Palestine in Lebanon.^【4】 He felt displaced and humiliated within that society and decided to fight. The feeling can be seen in Al Qasim’s lines. The time continues, but the city collapses. It shows the alienation, and the helpless feeling of about the fact that Palestinian cannot stop what is happening to them. The man faced alienation by Germans, he realized that time was passing, yet nothing changed, and he could not even go to Palestine to fight, so he decided to fight in Lebanon. Even if people escape from persecution, they cannot escape from alienation because the clock is on the wall, and it gives the feeling of alienation for Palestinians. Therefore, “The Clock on The Wall” symbolizes a quest for justice frozen in history, a loss of belonging spanning generations, and its feelings of alienation.
"She Has No Place in Paradise" by Nawal El Saadawi is a critique of the social, religious, and cultural structures that prevent women from being considered inherently as worthy of paradise. It is more than just the tale of a woman who was denied entry to paradise. Throughout her life, the woman lives in silence in a world that was structured around her and in which no one questions the order around her. She does not belong in this world, in heaven, in marriage, in society, or even in her own body, which demonstrates a series of forms of alienation. The story depicts patriarchal structures in Middle Eastern societies. Women exist in society, but they do not have a place. They are pushed out of society by male hegemony and patriarchal norms. According to Pappé, modernizing initiatives during the late Ottoman era and the establishment of Arab nation-states incorporated the ideas of women's emancipation. However, rather than women’s own voices, these discourses are primarily centered on men’s visions. Once more, women are treated as symbols rather than subjects.^【5】 El Saadawi illustrates this exclusion in “She Has No Place in Paradise.” The author writes that although the woman touched the earth beneath her, she was unable to feel the soil. Because she lacks a mirror, she is unable to see her own face, and she is likened to an houri.^【6】 The soil gives a sense of belonging, life, and roots, yet she could not feel it. She is alienated from her own life on sensory and existential levels. Moreover, she cannot even have a mirror to look at herself, which implies her sense of self is fundamentally fractured. She was likened to an houri, which shows the fact that she cannot make her own decisions. She was likened to a sexual figure or a fantasy of paradise for her husband. She was never allowed to develop an identity of her own. She was alienated from the possibility of thinking freely. For example, she grabs a handful of wild grass from the side of the road and chews it like an animal when hunger becomes unbearable. ^【7】 This demonstrates a dehumanizing form of alienation. When taken as a whole, these images demonstrate how the woman's alienation starts with her body and senses, showing how she is deprived of both a cohesive sense of self and social belonging.
Beyond the physical world, this physical alienation penetrates relationships in society, sexuality, and even the idea of paradise. She could not have a say over her own sexual life, and it was framed solely around her husband’s needs without real love, and the woman is unable to recognize it as abnormal, so she was alienated from her own sexual needs. In society, she works in the fields, but she cannot have the right to think freely, and she was working under harsh conditions. She was seen to be included in society, yet she did not have right to speak, which implies that her inclusion is symbolic rather than substantive, and she imagines paradise as an escape. Death was presented as a form of salvation to escape this alienation; therefore, she was alienated from life. She intensely imagines paradise to escape labor that harms her body and dignity, so she was alienated from the value of life. In addition, paradise was portrayed less as something for the woman and more as something that serves her husband. She does not even have agency over her husband, and she has no place in paradise as the story suggests through her racialized body. In Middle Eastern societies, women were excluded from society, and the women raised children in the same patterns through which they themselves were raised, like the mother-girl relationship in the story. The children do not have a say against their fathers, just as women do not have it against husbands because the structure of family, economic life, and even paradise was shaped by men. The women experience learned helplessness, which is a condition in which persistent powerlessness makes resistance appear impossible, so they are often unaware that they have been excluded from society and alienated from everything that could belong to them. Therefore, El Saadawi demonstrates through this story that the woman’s alienation is not only a social but also a physical and existential separation, and this alienation persists even in the discourses of death and paradise.
Oktay Rıfat demonstrates that Turkish individuals are alienated from notions, society and their own bodies because of rapid urbanization and its result which might be class struggle. When one reads “Freedom”, it might be seen as a discourse that glorifies freedom, but there is a cynical structure in the poem that undermines the discourse of freedom. The discourse of freedom was developed because all Middle Eastern countries attempted to industrialize, and they needed labor, but they made promises that were unsuitable for the peasantry. According to Keles, the urbanization process in Turkey, which accelerated especially from the 1950s onwards, was triggered by factors such as mechanization, rural unemployment, and inadequate public services. This process brought about a massive migration from rural areas to cities; however, since cities lacked the infrastructure to accommodate this migration, slum areas became widespread, urban space expanded irregularly, and individuals struggled to settle in their new living spaces.^【8】 Oktay Rıfat demonstrates the discourse of freedom in Yenişehir, in Kavaklıkdere, inside freedom, outside freedom.^【9】 He might have wanted to convey that people or the country offered freedom in Yenişehir or Kavaklıdere, which are neighborhoods for economic migrants. However, peasants did not see the opportunities that were offered when they arrived. This led to deep sense of alienation where poverty and class conflict fostered a competitive struggle among the poor. If they wanted to live better in urban areas, they must work harder than others because the infrastructure of Middle Eastern countries had not been developed yet in terms of basic living conditions, such as health, housing, and transportation. In order to deal with it, some people became detached from society and alienated. In addition to exacerbating class differences, this structural collapse of urban life led to people losing their feelings of purpose and social connection.
By concentrating on both structural alienation and the psychological and physical pain of those bound in these false promises of freedom, Rıfat expands on this criticism. He might show the dilemma where Black Mehmish is free from his fever and lice. ^【10】 Despite their freedom, people endure physical and social suffering. A lice-ridden, ill, starving, and helpless person's freedom is but a notion. Freedom turns into an idea that is inconsistent with real-world experiences. Peasants come from rural areas, and they get used to living there; thus, they are alienated not only from the system but also from words, notions, and language due to rapid urbanization. The adaptation is even harder if the government is not ready to satisfy their needs. Moreover, Rıfat demonstrates the difference between rich people who have capital and poor people who migrated from rural by writing Ali Bey and Black Mehmish.^【11】 They are free in the notion, but Ali Bey has a capital, and they have to face a different notion of freedom. The difference created more alienated people. They forgot their needs in the notion of freedom. In cities, they are free, but the government does not have the capacity to fulfill their needs. Thanks to this, people are alienated from their bodies. They believe that they are free and they can work harder, but they forget they are humans, which causes the loss of individuality and emotional complexity. They became ordinary workers in industries. Furthermore, they are excluded from production relations. They have to learn new jobs in poor conditions. The author criticizes that this notion of freedom is not freedom, and he sarcastically desires true freedoms like “the landlord’s oxen” and “a bride’s breasts”.^【12】 Landlords like Ali Bey represent capital and ownership in the system with the discourses of oxen and bride’s beasts. People who migrated for economic conditions could not see the actual freedom. They do not know what actual freedom is, so they are alienated from the system. The system wants to force them to work harder, but they lost in poor conditions, to find a reason to live amid the broken promises of industrialization in Middle East. Thus, Rıfat’s poem ultimately reveals that when freedom loses its grounding in lived reality, it becomes a source of alienation rather than liberation.
In conclusion, a variety of factors which include displacement, gender inequality, and rapid urbanization, have influenced the historical transition processes of modern Middle Eastern cultures. This change has not only affected physical space, but it has also impacted individuals’ identities, sense of belonging, and even how they view their own bodies and minds. In al-Qasim’s poem “The Clock on the Wall”, the relentless passage of time symbolizes both the persistence of societal tragedies and the system’s inaction in the face of them, while also emphasizing the sense that people are excluded from history. Nawal El Saadawi’s short story “She Has No Place in Paradise” demonstrates how women's identities are socially excluded while simultaneously being diminished on a sexual and physical level. The woman's incapacity to fit in anywhere is a critique of the way the male gaze constructs life, death, and even paradise. Oktay Rıfat’s poem “Freedom” shows how a concept as universal and positive as freedom becomes meaningless in the context of urbanization and class inequality, and it even alienates the individual from their own body. According to all these literatures, alienation is more than just a person’s sense of being cut off from their surroundings. Additionally, it is a complex struggle with time, concepts, social roles, and oneself. While the authors address these conflicts through different narrative forms, they articulate a common reality, which is that individual is often both shaped and excluded from social structures in Middle Eastern societies. In this context, literature does not only tell individual stories, but it also becomes a carrier of historical memory and a space for critical thought. Though they drew from different geographies and themes, Al-Qasim, El Saadawi, and Rıfat point to the same human condition which is to exist without feeling a sense of belonging. This situation causes people to become alienated in every aspect of their lives.