(Meta)Physical Homelessness In Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But The Mountains

Abstract

Abstract Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish-Iranian writer who was detained on Manus Island, in northern Papua New Guinea, for more than four years. During these years of detention, he wrote a book in WhatsApp messages on his phone: No Friend but the Mountains (2018). Although understandably sold as non-fiction and therefore marketed mostly as a testimony, Boochani’s interweaving of different genres renders the book resistant to classification, just as its author is difficult to define and ‘categorize’ in our world of nation states and borders. This article explores an important nucleus of Boochani’s book, a motif that runs through his narrative, both explicitly and figuratively: home and homelessness. I argue that the loss of home is normatively and performatively repeated in Manus Prison, presenting the prisoners with a form of discipline and violence both physical and metaphysical. After losing the right to their place, the detainees gradually lose their ability to conceive of a different world that includes the homeless.