Exile can mean losing one’s homeland to change rather than longing to return

Evidence

BUT EXILE is usually characterized as the terrible longing to return home, “an unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place,” in Edward Said’s words. Yet this isn’t true for Lina. Since I have known her, I have always been struck by how proud Lina is of her Iraqi roots but also by how she also talks about Iraq the country mostly in the past tense. Yet is it really any surprise? Lina simply no longer recognizes the nation she sees on television. Iraq’s sectarian strife in particular overwhelms her. Before the war, she explained to me, “there was no such thing as Shi’a and Sunni in Iraq.” Two of her uncles, both Sunni, are married to Shi’a women. Her father’s sister is Sunni, and her husband is Shi’a. “So there was none of that before,” she said, as we sat in Denny’s rear dining room. “We never differentiated,” she said, shaking her head. “Even in Lebanon, Shi’a and Sunni are separated much more than we ever were.” She paused, then sighed. “It’s haram.” — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 688

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the idea that affective displacement can come from the homeland transforming beyond recognition, not just physical removal — parallels the immigrant-not-recognizing-homeland theme in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. — connects to: Self-exile imposes accountability to the present readership where exile does not — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 512; A basket’s fragmentation and reweaving mirrors a people’s exile and return — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 939
• QUESTION: Lina claims sectarian identity didn’t exist in pre-war Iraq — worth chasing whether this reflects lived reality, the Baathist erasure of sectarian identity, or retrospective idealization.