Border Crossing and Transculturation in Tahir Shah’s The Caliph’s House

Kamal Sbiri

doi:10.1515/culture-2020-0002

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the construction of transcultural identity as it results from the process of border crossing in Tahir Shah’s The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca (2007. London: Bantam Books). Whereas mobility is mostly characterized by the movement from north to south, The Caliph’s House describes an inverted motion from England to Casablanca in search for belonging. With his roots in Afganistan and historical ties with Morocco, Tahir Shah provides new narrative lines that delve into questions of alterity, mobility, and negotiating difference when crossing borders. With this in mind, I aim to show how alterity is refracted within the migrant’s identity. In so doing, I seek to clarify how this refraction helps in producing forms of selves that recognize all notions of silences and transform them metonymically into moments of conversation. With the help of Stephen Clingman’s theory on transnational literature, I will show that integration can be achieved successfully when difference is negotiated as part of the process of bordering.

Highlights

This article examines the construction of transcultural identity as it results from the process of border crossing in Tahir Shah’s The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca
This article sets out to read for alterity as it operates in literature of migration and mobility
In addressing the experience of border crossings, this article aims at discussing the implications of transculturation, borderscapes, and bordering on identity construction in the recent published autobiography written by an immigrant writer, Tahir Shah

Summary

Introduction

This article sets out to read for alterity as it operates in literature of migration and mobility. The intention is to show how alterity is refracted within the migrant’s identity and in so doing, I seek to clarify how this refraction helps in producing forms of selves that recognize all notions of silences and transform them metonymically into moments of conversation. These considerations offer new ways of viewing identity as transitive and mobile by the agencies of border-crossings. The main concern is to think of metonymy in terms – not of representation and substitution but – of its functions as combination and contiguity This process allows for a notion of becoming that includes ‘transition, navigation, mutation, alteration, a whole morphology of meanings’ (Clingman 14-5) on border. My discussion of transition and transculturation is, to vector towards the importance of crossing borders in creating a border(e)

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Conclusion

Works Cited