Echoes of the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Muhsin Al-Ramli's Dates on My Fingers (2014)

Abstract

         This paper explores the themes of memory and nostalgia in Saleem, the protagonist displaced by war in Muhsin Al-Ramli's novel Dates on My Fingers (originally published in 1967, translated in 2014). The novel highlights how memories of a distant homeland shape individual and collective identities in exile and dislocation, and linking to boarder discussions of postcolonial identity. Thus, this study aims to analyze how the novel works with memory and nostalgia by applying Homi J. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994) that concern postcolonial theories of identity, displacement, and the ambivalence of memory; more specifically, how characters struggle with identity and belonging are impacted by memories (both personal and inherited) of a homeland. This study hypothesizes that, within the narrative, nostalgia and memory function as dual forces: comfort and reminiscent of loss simultaneously reminding the characters of their identity through the complex interaction of memory and identity. This paper seeks to contribute to understanding memory as playing a role in the formation of postcolonial identity in contemporary literature by investigating these dynamics.