Everyday nuclear histories and futures in the Middle East, 1945–1948

Abstract

This article examines nuclear imaginaries in the Arabic-speaking Middle East. It situates people from the Arab world into nuclear thought, looking at how the atomic age rapidly became part of everyday lives. Embracing the idea that reality and fiction are not only deeply intertwined but also co-constitutive, it analyses everyday engagements with the nuclear condition in the aftermath of the bombing of Japan, across a wide range of sources. The article argues that these semi-fictional historical sources—memoirs, pseudo-scientific predictions, speculative reports published in newspapers, popular science books and even rumours—capture an affective moment at the beginning of the atomic age, which was marked by hysteria, widespread speculation and exaggeration. Discussions on nuclear weapons, precisely because the extent of their destruction seems unimaginable, blur the boundaries between ‘real’ and ‘fictional’, offering a unique opportunity to reflect on stories of world politics and on the tensions within historical International Relations.