DIFFERENCES IN THE PERCEPTION OF TIME BETWEEN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE WEST AS DEPICTEDIN AMEEN RIHANI’S ANGLOPHONE WORKS

Abstract

The bilingual and bicultural Arab emigration writer Ameen Rihani believed that his lifelong mission was cultural mediation between the Orient and the Occident, with the aim of reconciling, bringing together, and ideally merging the two entities, which he perceived as complementary, though traditionally opposed. Rihani used his extensive knowledge of the Western cultural canon to subvert prevailing stereotypes about Arabs and to negotiate his own competence as an expert on the Orient, thus presenting his ethnicity in a favourable, authoritative light. Accordingly, his Anglophone works contain examples of cultural translation of the Orient for American readers. The writer operates within the framework of existing preconceptions about Oriental societies, reformulating them in a more positive light and adjusting the interpretation of perceived facts to the attitudes of his intended audience. According to Rihani, one of the aspects in which the Orient and the Occident differ most is the perception of time and history as related to lifestyle and mentality. Thus, Rihani vividly describes the unhurried, deeply spiritual life in the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire in the shade of millennia of Middle Eastern history, comparing it to the hectic, rushed life of New York, which he portrays as the epitome of Western materialistic modernity driven by the lust for gain. A close analysis of Rihani’s Anglophone texts shows his deep understanding of the two culture-specific temporal frameworks, which appear as an integral part of the Orient and the Occident as distinct macro-constructs forming a binary opposition.