The Ecological Bedouin: toward environmental principles for the Arab region.

Elmusa, Sharif S.

To the memory of Vanessa Korany

This article examines the figure of the "Ecological Bedouin"--a take on the "Ecological Indian" (the Native American in unison with Nature)--in three Arab "desert novels," and evaluates the significance of this figure for the formation of environmental principles for the region. (1) The Ecological Bedouin as depicted in these works upholds environmental ethos, is a conservationist, values the lives of non-humans for their own sake, sees creation as an interdependent whole, not as isolated components, and evokes with reverence the inheritance of the ancestors inscribed in rock art, stories, and place names. He--there is no ecological she in these novels--is a new figure in Arabic literature, forcefully portrayed in Endings (1977) by Abd al-Rahman Munif; The Bleeding of the Stone (1990) by Ibrahim Al-Koni; and Seeds of Corruption (1973) by Sabri Moussa. (2) He has not been explored before by scholars who have studied the Arab novel and no attempt has been made to introduce him into the environmental discourse of the region.

Overview of the Novels

Each of the stories takes place in a different Arab desert. The site of Seeds is in Egypt's Eastern desert bordering the Red Sea and Sudan, near the mountain of Darhib. The setting in Endings is a fictitious village, al-Tayyiba ("the Good One") (3) that marks the "beginning of the desert," according to the narrator, and, from its description, is similar to other villages in the dry land of the Fertile Crescent. Bleeding is set in the heart of the Libyan desert at the intersection of two wadis. The writers are familiar with the terrain and modes of life which they portray in their narratives. Moussa remarks in the preface that he visited the area that is the fulcrum of the novel twice, and then lived there afterward for a year; Al-Koni, who writes from outside Libya, grew up in the desert; and Munif hailed from Saudi and Iraqi parentage and grew up in Jordan. The novels, in other words, are productions of storytellers each with a double gaze: the non-native familiarizing himself with the landscape and culture of desert life, and the native writing from exile. This authorial double gaze is embodied--whether intentionally or not--in the native/non-native characters whose vision of, and expectations from, the desert stand in sharp contrast to each other, a contrast that adds to the novels' visual and sensual load and to the ideational differences in the dialogue.

Each story presents a central character whom we dub the Ecological Bedouin and who dies in an accident or a confrontation toward the end of the novel. The indigenous protagonists care deeply for, and are part of, the place; recall its history frequently; know experientially its geography, topography, and climate; and cherish its flora and fauna. They encounter, and are encroached upon, by greedy, insatiable outsiders equipped with modern weapons and technologies for a quick loot--animals, minerals, gold, whatever the desert has to offer--seldom contemplating the terrain in terms other than utility. The novels are by no means "pastoral," in the sense of idealizing rural--in this case desert--life at the expense of the urban. Yet, we have here a variation of a classic plot where the idyllic is suddenly disrupted and torn apart by the machine--the machine in the garden--and the corrupt power and wealth of the city. Moussa's Seeds goes further, bringing in members of the government, including the king, for a decadent party that ends with his majesty deflowering the adolescent daughter of Nicola, the Russian engineer who designed and maintained the mines. The molestation of the young woman is meant clearly to symbolize and intensify the idea of the "rape of the desert."

The three novels accord the desert fundamental significance, a feature that distinguishes them from other Arab fiction that employs the desert leitmotif. They do not treat it as a mere setting, a metaphor to express human emotions, or a background for the main events. They present it instead as a place with specific geographical details that molds its inhabitants, who, in turn, inscribe their identities and values on the landscape--a place that is under assault by often greedy outsiders intending to plunder its resources. Place and narrative intermingle in these novels, moving the story forward (Salih, Al-riwaya 374).

Munif, for instance, commences Endings with the words "Drought. Drought again!," and drought impinges on every chapter of the novel. The translator concurs in his preface that the "major aspect that distinguishes" it from Munif's other novels "is the role which place plays in the structure and impact of the entire work" (Munif vii). Critics are also of the opinion that The Bleeding of the Stone and Endings stand out among Arabic novels in their concern for desert ecology (see Hafez; Ghazoul). And, in a rich book about the desert and the Arab novel, Salah Salih dedicates a large segment to the aesthetics of the physical geography of the desert, singling out Seeds for a detailed analysis (see Al-riwaya; "Tajaliyyat"). It is to the credit of these critics that they stress the value of the desert as a place, for modern literary theory has been taken to task by ecocritics for downgrading nature by making it seem like a convenience or of secondary importance for literary writers who "render a faithful mimesis of the object world" (Buell 177).

Salih is concerned primarily with the structures of the novels themselves and their techniques of rendering the desert as strange, and even uncanny territory, which leads him to concentrate in his analysis of Seeds on Nicola, the outsider, who seems to be in a state of perpetual astonishment at his new landscape. He hardly gives space to the native characters themselves--their values, attitudes, or behavior toward the place. Nor are there, to the best of my knowledge, other studies that have tried to plumb desert literature for environmental insights. The present article seeks to redress such lack by unearthing ecological principles from the vision and action of the main Bedouin characters in the novels. It does not claim, however, that this is the only or the best way to construe them. The authors might be environmentally concerned, but not environmentalists. The idea here is to accent the reality of the environment and to discover critically ecological principles, even if resisted, or not intended, by the writers themselves (see Kern).

Why Desert Novels?

It may be asked: Why choose the desert and desert novels in particular for discovering environmental principles and not some other texts or genres? This is a legitimate question; numerous discursive sources other than novels could be, and some have been, tapped for the exploration of environmental ethos. Islamic scholars have explored the Quran and other primary Islamic documents to fashion an eco-theology. They spelled out ecological principles that could if heeded help rescue the environment in Muslim countries from its sorry state. Their work is not self-reflective, however; it presents Islamic ecology as sui generis, and seldom engages debates in contemporary environmental thought, to which they owe their themes and vocabulary (see, for example, Foltz et al.). The rest of the region's social sciences and humanities have yet to take a serious interest in ecology.

Other discursive references go as far back as the extant sources of the area's ancient civilizations, which viewed nature differently from the subsequent monotheistic religions (see, for example, Elmusa). Texts of early Arab/Muslim geographers, travelers, philosophers, and poets also contain rich material for environmental exegesis. Noticeably absent from the region's discursive traditions is the genre of "nature writing"--like, say, that of Henry David Thoreau, which has been inspirational for environmentalists in the United States and elsewhere--an absence that deserves to be revisited.

But literature and the arts are needed in any case because, as Neil Evernden remarks, values are "the coin of the arts" (103), and environmentalism without aesthetics becomes "merely regional planning" (101). Environmental values, to be sure, could be found in novels whose main site is the countryside or the city, and in some recent novels written by women (see Abou-Youssef Hayward). It may seem paradoxical then to opt for the desert when the rubric of environmentalism is "green," and when "desertification" connotes ecological disaster. The desert, however, is more complex and rich an ecology than the term "desertification" implies, and is depicted as such in the three novels. As a historical, cultural geography, it might be thought of as a "shadow" of civilization--analogous to the forest in Robert Pogue Harrison's insightful book Forests: the Shadow of Civilization. Harrison demonstrates that the forest has functioned as a shadow of Western civilization, in the sense that talk about civilization could not be done without thinking of the forest as its alterity. The forest is the beginning, culturally and even territorially; it appears in such genres as the myth of the establishment of Rome, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and many fairy tales. It attracted and repulsed; offered refuge and freedom; and was imagined equally as a site of peril and dread. People and governments constantly cleared it for agricultural purposes as well as for fuel; and for construction until it virtually disappeared. Once lost, the forest became an object of nostalgia. In the contemporary period, the forest, "the wilderness," has been central to the formation of Western environmental thought and practice, from Martin Heidegger's "dwelling" to the enclosures known as national parks (see Gauthier and Eubanks; McHugh).

It is possible to claim likewise that the desert is the shadow of Arab civilization. With all the attention it received in the West--from travelers, scholars, adventurers, photographers, and filmmakers--it could be argued that the desert functions as an extended shadow of Western civilization as well. This point will not be pursued further in the present essay, but it is telling that the desert novels themselves introduce a slew of such Westerners, chief among them is Nicola. Its geographic preponderance aside, the desert is a home of that region's cultural memory; its languages, poetry and sacred texts; monasteries and castles; camels and tents, palm trees and palm date fruit; triumphs and defeats on the battlefield. Even where ancient civilizations flourished on the river banks, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the watercourses were "exotic," or originating elsewhere; droughts were not infrequent and were devastating because the cultivated land lay in the midst of an obdurate desert. The desert made its presence felt also through the progress of caravans, invading armies, and powerful sandstorms. Like the forest in the Western imagination, the desert is also seen in Arab culture as a terrain of freedom and danger, of bravery and death. It may not be surprising therefore that the fourteenth century Arab polymath Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 AD) linked the rise and fall of the urban 'umran, or civilization, to what he considered as its "primitive" antecedent, the Bedouin. Today, as the desert is being stripped of its "desertness," novelists are trying to preserve its imaginative cultural value. What better place, then, to embark on the search for environmental principles than this predominant ecology and its inhabitants?

In order to accomplish this, I set up a conversation between the Ecological Bedouin and other figures: the Bedouin of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddima, the Ecological Indian, and the city interlopers in the novels themselves, especially Cain in Bleeding who represents the ultimate in human rapacity. (4) This conversation creates "alterity" for the Ecological Bedouin. Alterity, according to Michael McDowell, is a larger concept than intertexuality for M. M. Bakhtin, for it is the route by which "each creature defines himself and becomes a 'self' in every which way by interaction with other beings and things ... but interactions among entities are infinite, allowing for polyphony of voices" (374). The dialogue, comparison, and contrast in each encounter--the heterogeneous voices--serve to sharpen the portraiture of the Ecological Bedouin and lead to probing questions about him. Ibn Khaldun credited the environment with having a decisive role in shaping the social organization and traits of individuals, and drew enduring portraitures of the Bedouin personage based on such premise. The novelists do more or less the same. Besides what Ibn Khaldun said about the figure of the Bedouin, the fictional Bedouin's silences, which are apparent in the novels, also illuminate that figure equally well. The Ecological Indian has provoked much discussion in North American environmental discourse about the reality and political ramifications of such an essentialist construct, and his relevance for a modern complex society. This questioning is highly germane to the Ecological Bedouin and to the conclusion we draw. The third encounter, between the Ecological Bedouin and the outsiders in the novels themselves, considerably heightens differences in outlooks on, interests in, and ways of relating to the desert's physicality and animate life.

The ideas, suggestions, ambiguities, and questions generated in such a conversation are then brought together in a "round table discussion" for summation and conclusions about the Ecological Bedouin regarding such matters as the historical circumstances of his appearance in Arabic literature, his being solitary and male in all the three novels, and the empirical validity of the figure and his value for dwelling and for environmental principles.

First Encounter: Ibn Khaldun

As has often been remarked, modernity split nature and culture, relegating nature to the status of an object of scientific study and, ultimately, domination. A discussion of how nature molds human behavior has been absent, except perhaps in anthropology and human geography, which studied human adaptations to ecology. In reality, however, as Bruno Latour states in his provocative book title, We Have Never Been Modern, the natural environment, and the non-human in general, possess agency, not in the moral and intentional sense, but in the way they make us do things and think about phenomena. The relationship between humans and nature is one of reciprocal translation.

Neither Ibn Khaldun nor our novelists subscribe to the nature-culture dualism. Ibn Khaldun's analysis of both Bedouin primary culture and greater civilization is infused with explanations based on a human nature that is highly malleable, habit (which he calls second nature), the environment itself, and analogies with the life-cycle. Human nature, in his opinion, contains plant and animal nafs (soul) as well as 'aql (intelligence), and so needs nourishment and growth, and satisfaction of appetite and restiveness toward self-actualization. These drives, coupled with intelligence and ability to learn from experience, motivate humans to enter into associations with others, and cooperate in order to produce food, shelter, clothing, and other products needed for survival (Mahdi 171-87).

Environmental factors are paramount in Ibn Khaldun's explanatory edifice in the formation of human culture and character: "It should be known that differences of condition among people are the result of the different ways in which they make their living" (91). A region's latitude, temperature, air, moisture, soil types, and foods all have a bearing on society and set limits and open opportunities for societal action. The desert, with its harsh climate, open air, dearth of food, and need for direct defense against humans and beasts, fashions personality traits distinct from those of sedentary people, whether agriculturalists or urbanites. The Bedouin are healthier, less corrupt, more courageous, and exhibit greater fortitude than settled groups. Fortitude, for instance, is an outcome of self-discipline nurtured from within in response to the harsh desert conditions, rather than from obedience to the laws of the state (91-97).

The Bedouin, especially "camel nomads," are, however, "the most savage human beings that exist. Compared with sedentary people, they are on a level with wild, untamable animals and dumb beasts of prey" (Ibn Khaldun 93). Ibn Khaldun adduces for such singular "savagery" (wahshiyya) their deep penetration into the desert, as they opt for self-defense against, rather than succumbing to, the state's armed men.

Ibn Khaldun thus renders Bedouin persons as noble/ignoble savages: healthy, courageous, untamable, and free. Their culture is primary, characterized by simple social organization and means of livelihood. If such description could be thought of as a state of nature, it differs radically from the state of nature hypothesized by both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. In both thinkers' hypotheses, man in the state of nature is solitary. In Rousseau's imaginary, he is happy, becoming corrupted only once he joins a social group. Hobbes's lone man lives a wretched, dog-eat-dog life, a condition of being that he can be saved from only by coming together with others under the authority of the sovereign, or the state. Ibn Khaldun thinks, to the contrary, that cooperation is natural because man cannot produce all he needs for basic survival, and so must enter into mutual-aid relations with other humans, although the need for defense eventually might lead to the sovereign (Ibn Khaldun 45-48), as postulated by Hobbes. Nonetheless, the desert forges a Bedouin who is to an extent a combination of Rousseau's and Hobbes's creature, free and at the same time aggressive toward others. Ibn Khaldun's more nuanced, though problematic, characterization of the Bedouin may be attributed to the concreteness of his object of observation, whereas for Rousseau and Hobbes the state of nature was more of a bench mark, if not a straw man, for their theses on society and the state.

In a Khaldunian manner, the novels picture the desert and climate as deterministic ecology. Munif's novel opens with the words "Drought. Drought again!," as remarked earlier. The whole story then tells of what happened in this climate, including the decline of land prices and food supply, unwavering loyalty of the villagers who migrated and came back to the village laden with supplies, and the increase of empathy among the villagers when one might expect scarcity to promote strife. The narrator's evocations of the effects of the desert on the human heart pepper the novel, for example:

   The all-enveloping sense of darkness made all creatures,
   especially human beings, feel puny and transient. This
   feeling is always stronger in the desert than anywhere
   else; to an inconceivable extent one gets the feeling of
   being abandoned and alone. This loneliness triggers sensations
   of fear, terror and anticipation, a desire to hide, to
   shout out, to be united with something or other. (54)

Likewise, the opening sentences of Moussa's Seeds inaugurate the mountain of Darhib, where the mine is excavated, as the catalyst of the entire story, situating Nicola in relation to it, putting him in his place, as it were:

   If it were possible to look down on the Darhib like a bird
   flying high, careful not to collide with the mountain's
   rocky crests, like a meteor that had fallen from its place
   in the heavens long ago and landed on earth, shattered
   and petrified. The huge arms of the crescent would
   embrace an arid valley scarred with crevices and craters,
   formed by winds and the erosion of a thousand years.

   Perhaps that bird aloft, if it were to focus on one spot,
   would see Nicola. (3)

In fact, the literal translation of the Arabic title of Seeds is the "Corruption of Places," and the seeds of corruption, the narrator says, grow in the belly of the place. The meaning of living in the desert is captured further in a mawwal (a wistful and wise solo song) by Asouf's father at the outset of Al-Koni's Bleeding: "The desert is a true treasure/for him who seeks refuge/from men and the evil of men./In it is contentment,/in it is death and all you seek" (18). Or, "Salvation and freedom meant the desert, and the desert merely meant death" (36). In the desert, the Bedouin acquired many virtues, Issa says, and he "brandished those virtues like weapons in the face of the dangers in their daily lives" (39). In contrast, the city meant congestion, and congestion meant competitiveness, barbarism, and anarchy. Whereas the men of the city were blinded by their own transgressions, the Bedouin was able to maintain a clear, piercing vision so that he could see approaching dangers (39).

So, for the Bedouin, the desert is freedom and contentment; a giver of virtues; and a haven from the evil of men; yet it is also death. Bedouin life is determined by the conditions of the desert and by the Bedouin's own mind. There is no savagery here, mainly goodness, unlike in Ibn Khaldun.

The desert does not allow the Bedouin to develop well-organized political and social life, necessary for making a civilization, argues Ibn Khaldun. They remain bound together through 'asabiyya, which has been translated as group feeling or social solidarity (Ibn Khaldun 97; Mahdi 191)--a sort of social capital in today's parlance. In its fundamental form, 'asabiyya arises among members of small collectives who are closely-knit or are blood-related, but can expand to include heterogeneous groups that live under the same sovereignty. The desire for wealth and power--rooted in human nature--drives some Bedouin tribes to come together and form a state, or conquer an already established one, to instate a new dynasty and create a new civilization. Such groups usually enjoy strong social solidarity, apart from the other earlier said attributes, such as courage. State and civilization are essential for one another; neither can exist without the other (Ibn Khaldun 45-48; Mahdi 199).

Once established, many other groups come under the rule of the new dynasty; and 'asabiyya spreads throughout the new social fabric, facilitating the progress of a new, urban civilization. At first, the civilization flourishes and new styles of buildings and crafts appear and consumption increases. With the passage of time, however, the original group expands, and wealth, power, easy life, and luxuries all lead to stasis and erode group feeling. This process goes on until it brings down the dynasty and with it the once-vibrant urban civilization. What we have here is a socio-political cycle of rise and fall, similar to that of human life (Ibn Khaldun 285-90). The view of the city in the novels is much more constricted than the one described by Ibn Khaldun, represented largely by unsavory characters, as will be discussed subsequently.

The novelists part company with Ibn Khaldun not just in their more salutary representation of the character of the Bedouin. While he historicized the greater civilization, Ibn Khaldun did not do the same for the social organization of the Bedouin; nor did he cite their poetry or lore; and he did not take seriously how they perceived themselves and what they valued. What seems to interest him the most is that Bedouin society enabled him to draw hardy images of its members and develop the concept of 'asabiyya, the negation of which in the larger civilization led to its downfall. The novelists, in contrast, picture the Bedouin as having history, memory, reflective feelings for their habitat, and refined senses and sensibilities.

The differences in representations by Ibn Khaldun and the novelists correspond particularly to the different historical epochs in which he and they lived. The technology of his times did not wreak massive degradation on the natural environment, and he was not compelled to inquire, as the novelists have done, into how the desert inhabitants viewed the natural environment and their cultural heritage, or what they did to, or for, it. Furthermore, the bulk of Bedouin population in the present era have come under the rule of, and/or been co-opted by, a central national state. Reasons of state and technology have meant that the "invasion" has taken place in the opposite direction from that of Ibn Khaldun's era; that is, from the city to the desert. Whereas the older encroachment brought about civilization, the second inflicted the ills of the city on the desert, according to the novels. The novel's themes--the Bedouin as persons with history and culture; their stance toward the natural environment; and their unsuccessful resistance to the conquest and depredation of their territory by outsiders- are the subject of the following discussion.

Second Encounter: The Ecological Indian

A close reading of the three novels yields a Bedouin with an ecological core manifested in his rootedness in the desert; respect that borders on reverence for its history, memory, and unique places; affinity with the wild animals for their intrinsic value, although he may hunt them out of necessity; and an overall sense of responsibility and caring for his natural environment, which he does not think of as a separate entity, like moderns do. Such rendition makes the Bedouin a twin brother of the Ecological Indian in the North American environmental imagination. It may not be accidental that both appear on the scene at the very moment when they both were diminished as social groups. The Ecological Indian is a generalization of the Crying Indian, whose picture was unveiled in 1971 by Keep America Beautiful Inc, with the caption: "Pollution: It's a crying shame.... People start pollution. People can stop it" (Krech III 15). By that time, the native population had been decimated, from arguably 7-10 million down to one million.

The Bedouin have not been liquidated physically like America's natives; they have been "resettled," or migrated to the city, and their pastures and hima (commons) intercepted by roads and residential areas, and largely altered. The desert itself has been converted into mines, quarries, tourist destinations, highways, and waste dumps. The tent now is an architectural symbol, the camel an athlete on the race track followed by men riding in cars and jeeps. Many of the desert's wild animal species have become threatened or extinct. Munif's Endings enumerates some of these environmentally degrading uses of the desert, and dates the conquest to the construction and operation of the railway and trains during the Ottoman period.

There is an intriguing difference, however, between the Bedouin and the American Indian. On one hand, Native Americans lived, for the most part, amid bountiful nature, with extensive forests and savannah, and tens of millions of bison and other animals. The Bedouin, on the other hand, persisted under conditions of desert scarcity. This difference invites further reflection. All that can be said here is that, whereas the necessity born out of scarcity can be expected to engender virtuous environmental behavior, plenty would be expected to encourage wastefulness, as occurred apparently among some American Indian communities (see Krech III 212-13)

The Ecological Indian has been the subject of scrutiny, however, as to whether he aligns with the historical, or even current, practices of Native Americans. He was found to be an idealization, but with a kernel of empirical validity. In general, American Indians possessed vast knowledge about their environment and connections among its components, including knowledge about animal behavior and population dynamics (Krech III 211). They expressed deep respect for the animals, which they deemed part of their "relations," and would speak of someone who acted in a disagreeable manner as having "no relations" (Garrard 127).

Yet not all Indian nations acted in a conservationist or preservationist fashion, and not all of their knowledge was correct, according to modern science (Krech III 211-12). Furthermore, to posit an unchanging natural environment over long periods of time in the domains of different tribes amounts to "essentializing" the indigenous people and denying them normal human history with foibles, errors, and despoliation. Some find the putative dwelling--or the "long-term imbrications of humans in the landscape of memory, ancestry and death, of ritual, life and work" (Garrard 109)--of the American Indians also too simple and unrealistic for meeting the massive environmental degradation of industrial society. Greg Garrard relays a witty example from the work of novelist Louise Erdrich to illustrate a type of dwelling more germane to the contemporary world, through an exchange between mother and son. In one scene, the son mocks the primitivism of his mother, who had adopted the ways of the civil rights organization, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and brought buffalo to the reservation. When she muses: "Creation was all connected in olden times," the son rejoins: "It's pretty much connected now. As soon as my plumbing's hooked in I'll be part of the great cycle of life" (Garrard 130). Equally problematic, in recent disputes between environmentalists and natives, the former excoriated the latter for betraying their own heritage (Krech III 214-16). (5) Still, irrespective of critique, the Ecological Indian persists in American fiction and film, harping at us to envisage an alternative way of life (see Dreese).

Issues concerning the historical facticity and political meaning of the Ecological Bedouin will be addressed subsequently; for the moment, we elaborate on his attributes. The Ecological Bedouin, according to the three novelists, considers the desert, or the part he lives in, his trust, and himself its guardian and the rightful heir to its natural and historical gifts. When Asouf's son, for instance, receives an offer for a monthly stipend from an indifferent government official, who appears with two Italian archeologists to care for the rock art found in the area's mountains and caverns, he turns down the offer, for he does not seem to know what to do with the money and has always taken being a custodian of this art for granted. Nor does he seem at first to understand the value of these rock paintings, which attract European archeologists and tourists; his mother, however, referring to a couple of rocks with drawings of a priest, gazelle, and waddan, intones that they were "the first ancestors" (Al-Koni 4).

His counterpart in Seeds, Issa, "steals" the first gold bar forged from the mine and runs away with it into the deep desert; not to confiscate it permanently, but as a protest against its extraction by outsiders. After a four-day trek, he and his companions reach Mount 'Ulba, which Issa's tribe believe harbored the spirit of their great ancestor Koka Lanka. Native Americans countenanced similar beliefs about unique spots, typified by the mountain that Lakota Sioux had originally called Six Grandfathers, and which the Euro-Americans changed to Rushmore. In spite of protests by the Sioux that the mountain was part of the Black Hills which they considered sacred ground, the American government financed the sculpting of four United States presidents' busts atop one of the peaks (see "People & Events" n. pag.). Going back to Issa, he hails from the Bashariyya [sometimes spelled "Bishariyya"] tribe, whose legends held that Koka Lanka had prayed and worshipped before the mountain until his body morphed into a rock. As if to reassure their ancestor that his progeny continued to wield power over the region, Issa and his companions place the gold bar on the rock (Moussa 27-28), for he has no intention of keeping the trophy. When he delivers it back to the mine--to eschew potential retaliation by the state's security--he has to undergo the ritual "ordeal by fire," that is, he walks on hot coals, to prove his innocence. Issa believes in the mountain's "power and myth" and, at sunset, he perceives it as "flesh and blood" (27). The mountain holds for him what environmentalists call "intrinsic value," not the utilitarian one of businessmen: "Among the awesome masses of rock had grown a multitude of ores, each of which Issa saw and touched and respected for its own characteristic color and life" (18). The novel thus weaves times of myth and history, of calendar and clock, into one moment, and knots them with specific places to fix one of its key episodes.

Another route the writers take to illustrate the rootedness of the Bedouin in the desert is by enumerating place names, such as those of wadis, mountains, wells, and archeological sites, which also adds a "reality effect" to the novels. The names are often those of animals, ancestors, or some natural or social phenomenon--such as Gazelles Wadi, Hunters Path, and Herdsmen Plain (AI-Koni 4). On their way to Mount 'Ulba, Issa and company pass by, among other spots, the Valley of the Camels, the Shalatin well, and the ruins of the city of Baranis built by Ptolemy-the-Flute-Player more than a thousand years earlier. The geography of the journey through the desert is from one specific location to another and close-up observation of the landscape, unlike modern travel by car or train where the passenger thinks mainly of origin and destination, beginning and end, with no middle, and sets his sight on fast-moving panoramas of landscape. By conferring names on their dominion and repeating them, members of the tribe lay claim to it, establish nearness and intimacy, inscribe their identity, form a mental Atlas of seemingly incomprehensible terrain, and augment the fund of communal knowledge, history, and solidarity.

A most salient aspect of the consciousness and actions of the Ecological Bedouin is in his dealings with animals. The novels depict him as being sensitive to their life cycle, breeding patterns, and interdependence with other parts of the desert's fragile, if complex, ecosystem. The human-animal relationship has been debated perennially in philosophy and ethics, owing to the common substance (theirs and ours) and distinctive forms, the animals' utility for humans for labor and food, and the seeming impossibility of ever penetrating their "consciousness." The two novels that describe the interface between their characters and animals, Bleeding and Endings, present both realistic and mythic dimensions of this interaction. These are conveyed by the narrators themselves and/or directly by the protagonists. The protagonists have different cognitive maps from the rest of their community. They are solitary and unsociable, especially Asouf's father, who thinks that people are evil. They save their sympathy for the world of non-humans.

The Ecological Bedouin herds animals, but also hunts them. Ironically, empathy with the animals is often manifested during the hunt, in the very act of killing them. Asouf's father hunts gazelles and waddan, a wild horned goat that the reader is told became extinct in Europe in 1627, and which is still extant in the Libyan desert. The historical reference, apart from lending credence to the story, announces a foreboding about the fate that awaits this noble beast. In general, the scarcity of the animals in the desert and the threat to them drums up the reader's sympathy for their plight and accentuates the necessity, hence the rationality, of a conservationist ethic. The Ecological Bedouin, the novels tell us, hunt the animals, even if reluctantly, and eat their meat. They go for game meat out of necessity: Assaf, for example, only hunts during the drought and for the poor. Asouf, who takes after his father, hunts birds, especially sand-grouse and partridges; he has stopped chasing waddan and gives up on its meat altogether in his simple diet. He does so as a reaction to what has happened to his father in a face-off with a waddan. The father, who once vowed not to hunt the waddan after being saved by one he was battling with, breaks his oath when his wife, Asouf's mother, becomes ill, only to be killed by another waddan later on, as if nature were avenging itself.

All three characters seem to have devised the same hunting rules: not to hunt pregnant females, or females at all, and not more than absolutely necessary, for example, not more than one gazelle at a time. The hunting strategies reflect some understanding of the breeding patterns of the fauna, although not shooting at a pregnant waddan is thought of as a religious taboo, as abjuring a sinful act (39). Assouf's father, who seems adept at blurting epigrammatic statements and is not short on instructions, summarizes the conservation principle to his son succinctly: "A man in the desert must be sparing with two things: water and bullets" (24). Elsewhere, he admonishes Asouf: "Patience is the secret word" (55). Patience, modesty, and self-perception are explicitly mentioned also in Endings as human qualities "which come out bursting from within" in the desert (Munif 54-55).

For a modern reader, the novels might seem to be suffused with anthropomorphism, if not animism. Still, an ecocritic may not find it objectionable that once the environment is felt as an extension of the self, it can be imbued with life and regarded as animate. Metaphoric language, accordingly, indicates that the speaker feels he is a part, has a sense, of place. Evernden cites Northrop Frye as maintaining that the motive for metaphor arises out of "a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with what goes on outside it, because the only genuine joy you can have is those rare moments when you feel that although we know in part ... we are also a part of what we know" (101).

In addition to the selective hunting practices, the protagonists study the behavior of the animals and birds closely, taking pleasure and pride in relating their observations. They express their affection in various ways, from praising the animals, to teasing them and admiring their intelligence. "Don't think the animals don't understand, just because they don't talk; they are cleverer than us" (Al-Koni 43), Asouf's father informs his son when he enquires as to why he talks to the piebald camel day and night and around prayer times, and why he fawns on the camel endlessly.

Munif's novel has animistic moments too, but not as pronounced as Al-Koni's. Munif's lyrical narrative tends toward the socio-political; in it, Assaf's profound affinity with the animals does not assume mystical or mythical dimensions: The "insuperable boundary" between human and animal remains within the bounds of realism. Al-Koni's work, by comparison, is steeped in myth and mysticism and the uniting of human and animal. It includes, for example, a deer recounting to her kid a long tale about how they migrated to Algeria because their habitat in Libya had been disrupted, and returned only when it began to go back to normal. Al-Koni continues a tradition that goes back to Kalila waDimna and Hesiod in the Western tradition of animal-told tales; the flashback by the mother deer, however, is necessary, for the time span of the novel is too short for this kind of ecological disruption and recovery. The novelist still goes further in removing the barrier between animal and human. When Asouf's father is killed by the waddan, his son believes he became one with the animal and the animal one with him. During his lifetime, the father does not recognize the border between himself and the waddan, which he thinks of as the bearer of the spirit of the mountain (the gazelle of the plain) and even the spirit of God--a sacred animal. We notice here a "chain of being" linking man, other sentient beings, the inanimate domain, all the way to divinity.

This unity of being touches on the ancient debate as to which aspect is more vital than the other: substance, "the stuff," or form, "the structure." It is relevant that Al-Koni favors substance over form, eliminating barriers between human and animal, which he further emphasizes by the inclusion of a chapter titled "Transformation" and an epigraph from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid's strategy, however, is different, a one-way transformation, from human into plant or animal. For Al-Koni, with his dialectical method and multiple dualisms, the transformation is reciprocal. Both Ovid's and AlKoni's metamorphoses privilege substance, underscoring the "kinship of all creation," yet, as Harrison explains, by de-anthropomorphizing the human, Ovid humanizes the animal or the plant, and we as readers suffer its fate as if it were human (26-29). Al-Koni appears to ground the transformation in mystical speculation, indicating how, in Sufism, for the spirit of God to enter Man he has first to become an animal. Nonetheless, he demonstrates, as Ovid had done, through mythos, not logos, that "All things, whatever their formal nature, arise from a more primordial unity" (Harrison 26). This perception is not unlike the American Indians' belief that humans are part of greater communities, joined in relations, that encompass both the inanimate and sentient worlds.

Third Encounter: Outside Interlopers

The Ecological Indian was amplified by contrasting him with the Euro-American in the above-cited caption of the Crying Indian: "People [white man] start pollution. People [Indians] can stop it." On matters concerning the environment, he is pure and white people are degrading:

He cries because he feels a sense of loss, as (he silently proclaims) other American Indians do also. And if he could cry because he and others lived in nature without disturbing its harmonies (or throwing trash on it), then he possessed authority to speak out against pollution. (Krech III 21)

The novels sharpen their portraiture of the Ecological Bedouin by counter images of interlopers from the city and elsewhere, and descriptions of adversarial encounters between the antagonists. Al-Koni gives us the maniacal carnivore Cain, while Munif offers guests from the city who come for game, but are clueless as to how to do it properly, if at all. A more diverse set appears in Moussa's work: Egyptian and foreign investors and technicians; a lustful woman and an innocent teenage girl; and representatives of the state who come to party, headed by none other than the king himself. The encounters end tragically for the desert natives and not entirely without a price for the encroachers.

Seeds pits members of the Bashariyya, a branch of the overarching Baja, tribe (as exemplified by Issa) against the owners of a mine who start by extracting gold. The mine is later harnessed for talc, which is processed in Cairo for the production of cosmetics. The mining operations flourish as a consequence, to the point where a small town is built next to it. The principal investor in this enterprise, Khawaja Antun Bey, seizes on his success and invites the king and his entourage for an extravagant stay, during which the monarch, known for his debauched lifestyle, violates Ilya, the young daughter of Nicola, impregnating her in the act. The king is abetted by the promicuous Iqbal Hanim. The fifteen-year old Ilya is on vacation from school in Cairo, while her mother is alienated from her father in Italy where the couple first met. Antun also lusts after the girl and marries her knowing full well she bore the king's child. With the exception of Nicola, a kind of Hamlet figure who "does not learn from experience" (Moussa 40), the newcomers show hardly any genuine interest either in the Bashariyyas or in their surroundings.

The Bashariyya men themselves "by nature shunned strangers" (16). They refuse to dig into the mountains when foreigners ask them to. Some, who are curious, work as guides. Issa himself is one of the guides who "sell their intuitive knowledge to foreigners," and "lead Nicola's camel to the Darhib" (16-17). Still, Issa is dumbfounded by a mode of life that relies on explosives, hammering tools, and heavy machinery. What astonishes him the most, however, is "the predatory attitude toward the mountain itself' (18). These strangers, as he sees it, make the belly of the mountain "free-for-all," when for him it is "as inviolable as eternity itself' (17-18). The impact of this indifferent infringement on Issa is profound: as soon as he encounters a foreigner (for him Egyptians from Cairo are also foreigners) or sees a caravan loaded with ore on its way to the sea, a great anger wells up inside him (27).

His wariness of strangers does not mean Issa is a xenophobe; he develops close rapport with Nicola, who seems to him different, more appreciative of Issa and his people. True to character, Nicola finds in the Bedouin, despite their poverty and uncouthness, god-like qualities (69). Both Issa and Nicola perish. Issa drowns while trying to save two tribesmen who fall into a water well, turning the original source of life into its opposite, apparently a recurrent incident in desert stories (Hafez, "The Novel" 61; Salih, Al-riwaya 188). Whereas Issa's death occurs without introductions and without existential affliction, Nicola's happens after a protracted ordeal involving a dream that makes him suspect it is not the king but he himself who defiled his own daughter. This complication in the story of Nicola--the engineer of the convoluted tunnels of the Darhib--reinforces the inference that in the writer's mind the "rape" of the mountain and of Ilya, who also meets her end along with her father, are not morally different from each other.

Endings, although simpler in plot than the other two narratives, is no less rich with revelation about the imposition of city residents on the villagers, especially on Assaf himself. Assaf accompanies the visitors for the hunt, acting as their guide. He is reluctant to go along at first, but they are guests and local customs do not allow him to decline their request. They are eager to go after their prey, armed with powerful rifles and jeeps, and at first speak with bravado. As they move deeper into the desert, however, fear and anxiety take over:

   In the desert a person can feel completely alone even
   when he is with other people.... Even those among them
   who had an overwhelming desire to hunt under any circumstances
   began to feel scared.... Lurking down inside
   them were veiled misgivings: "What happens if we get
   lost? ... Why couldn't these birds find somewhere else
   to live beside this desolate spot? (54)

Fear of vast empty spaces, according to Salih, is not an unusual theme in Arabic novels (Al-riwaya 153-55), providing another instance in which the desert functions as a "shadow" of Arab culture.

Assaf keeps reminding the arrivals from the city how hunters like themselves came to the village before and killed too many birds and animals indiscriminately, without regard to their life cycle, and how the animal population thinned out as a result. He feels a great urge to back down, but cannot on this particular day. Then he is ready to despair and surrender and do what others want him to do, perhaps as an obligation to guests, or a result of disorientation caused by the wine they brought and he drank, or out of a sense of resignation: "an invisible force, maybe a wise one, seemed to decide everything" (61). The guests decide they want to continue hunting the next day; and, as on the previous day, they ride in their cars, and Assaf moves on foot, in the company of his dog. As the day advances, the heat turns more oppressive and game becomes scarcer, and a powerful sandstorm takes everyone by surprise. The storm overwhelms Assaf, and his body is found next to his dog by a desert patrol (67). After his death, the novel unexpectedly changes form. The village organizes a wake in which mourners honor him by recounting animal stories that occupy the rest of Endings (78-130). In some of the tales, hunted animals weep before they die; in others, people observe inexplicable animal behavior, such as a long-running feud between a dog and two crows. Many of the stories bemoan human ignorance and cruelty; only one is about love, detailing the devotion of two birds to each other. Two are directly taken from Kitab al-hayawan (The Book of Animals) by the celebrated ninth-century Arab writer alJahiz, which connects Endings to its literary forbears, paralleling the recollection of the desert people of their ancestral lore. Assaf's death galvanizes the people of the village to start constructing a dam which the government promises to build, but never does.

Asouf's end is harsher and more menacing. A man by the name of Cain barges in on him as if out of nowhere, like fate, or a plague. He is impatient, insisting that Assaf fetch him a waddan, there and then: "I can't sleep without meat," he demands (Al-Koni 13). Cain arrives with his sidekick Masoud, also in a jeep armed with lethal guns which he obtained from an American, John Parker, who is stationed at the American military base in Libya and who developed an interest in Eastern religions, including Sufism, while a student. Cain is an extreme version of Assaf's visitors in Endings. He appears once in the opening part of the novel, and is left haunting the reader without direct reference, only to show up later on a fateful day for Asouf.

"Cain son of Adam," inflicts his carnivorous self on the hapless Asouf, insisting that he show him and Masoud the whereabouts of the waddan. A tug of wills ensues, with Asouf rebuffing Cain. The meat-monger rages in anger and ends up exposing Asouf to a horrendous crucifixion, pulling his legs and arms wide apart: "His [Asouf's] body was thrust into the hollow of the rock, merged with the body of the waddan painted there" (134), the very rock with the drawing of priest and waddan that he and his forebears assume custody of. Al-Koni finishes the story with drops of rain falling on the windows of Cain's jeep, washing away the blood of Asouf spilled on the rock.

Who is Cain? Where does he come from? The novel does not tell us. Is he the dark side of our ancient human nature? Will he always be with us? Ibn Khaldun would not be surprised by Cain; he explains the fall of civilization as the outcome of the moral and physical decline engendered by wealth and luxury. Is this a Malthusian prophecy, Cain being the product of modern scarcity? Modern technology creates a new form of scarcity: social scarcity. The more goods there are, the greater the scarcity; need and desire become indistinguishable. As Nicholas Xenos puts it: "For us, the denizens of this world of desire, it is no longer a question of episodic insufficiency: out of our affluence we have created a social world of scarcity" (5), to which might be added, an economic man with infinite wants.

Through Cain, the common association of rapaciousness with animals is also inverted and tagged unto a civilization equipped with fast transport and efficient killing machines, a negation of the negation. Cain is, of course, the first human murderer who kills his brother Abel in the Biblical story. For Al-Koni, he represents the sedentary people and Abel the nomads: vice and slavery to materialism, as opposed to virtue and freedom. The difference is symbolized in God's acceptance of the sacrifice of Abel and the rejection of Cain's (Hafez, "The Novel" 69-70). (6) It may be said that the figure of Cain reifies the unquenchable drive for game, lust for human flesh, and greed for gold--all that is anti-environmental and anti-aesthetic.

The Three Encounters: Roundtable Discussion

The desert is at once a home of the primary culture of the Arab region and the shadow of its civilization. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that novelists have begun to plumb this preponderant ecology in search of dwelling that differs from the one textured by destructive technology and impossible-to-satisfy material desires. Although the writers may not have intended their work to be read through an environmental lens, taken together, their three novels present a consistent, although not identical, figure: an Ecological Bedouin. This figure is a twin brother of the Ecological Indian, resembles and transcends Ibn Khaldun's Bedouin, and appears diametrically opposed to the settled city resident in pursuit of wealth and power. He embodies the desert's geography, history, and imaginative inheritance. The desert is his freedom and death. Whether he treks the expanse or hunts, he evinces profound understanding of his abode and relishes the observation of its physical features and its birds and animals. It is possible to "translate" the words and deeds of the Ecological Bedouin in the novels into the language of environmental ethics. Like a radical environmentalist, he believes in the unity and equality of creation, without assuming human superiority over other species; values the animate and inanimate to the greatest possible extent for their intrinsic value, rather than for utility to humans; understands, even if only intuitively, the interdependence of the various parts of the ecosystem; exhibits humility toward nature; is willing to take responsibility for conservation; and advocates environmental justice.

The novels, however, are fluid, sometimes hesitant, open-ended, and contain subtle differences that induce the reader to grapple with many questions. Why do the authors choose death as endings for their "ecological" characters? Does death signify the final defeat of a way of life, or just an inevitable logical conclusion in a place characterized as freedom or death? Is it possible, nonetheless, to infer that the death of ecologically-minded characters is not entirely an indication of hopelessness on the part of the writers? The death of Assaf in Endings is followed by a wake during which villagers memorialize him fondly, tell animal stories often through his own eyes, drawing lessons about how to live with other creatures, and start laboring on a dam. After Issa perishes in the water well, Seeds introduces his son Abshar (whose meaning in Arabic would be "good tidings") who, as would be anticipated, is his father's likeness in looks and outlook. Finally, Asouf's crucifixion, like Jesus's, may not signal the end, and is to be followed by resurrection, as suggested by the drops of rain in the Bleeding's final sentence. Perhaps, by sacrificing himself and showing us how to live, Asouf is meant to save us by saving the animals.

Why do the novels render these exemplary characters, with the exception of Issa, solitary, almost anti-social? While their standing apart morally is understandable as rebellion against the prevailing power, it is problematic in opposition to their own communities, especially when the novels themselves are permeated with recollections of communal stories, memories, and ancestors. Shouldn't Asouf's father, for example, be quite sociable since he and his son take on the responsibility of being custodians of the cultural heritage in their area? Or do Munif and Al-Koni believe that humans cannot develop strong simultaneous bonds with their kind, and with animals or nature in general? Does solitude engender a kind of inner, happy state of nature, like that of Rousseau in his reveries when individual things escape him and he can see only the unity of all things? (Bates 41) Literary and nature writing include eminent names who seem to thrive in nature while being "social misfits": D. H. Lawrence, John Clare, Henry David Thoreau, and Rousseau himself all come to mind. But if humans cannot have enough empathy for others of their own species, and for animals at the same time, are we condemned to foul our nest? We may not have to despair. Issa (in Seeds) provides an alternative: He acts as part of his community and establishes a strong relation with a stranger from a totally different culture--Nicola--without in anyway compromising his strong affinity with the mountains and the forebears. Asouf (in Bleeding) seems to get along also with the two sympathetic Italian archeologists, whom Al-Koni unfortunately allows only a cameo appearance and does not develop them as characters as Moussa does with Nicola. It would seem, at least according to Seeds, that it is possible for a person to combine solidarity with other humans and with the world of nature, and so extend Ibn Khaldun's 'asabiyya, or group feeling, to include other species.

We cannot but observe that the novels have male figures who are gentle and sensitive--not the usual vision of the Bedouin--and hardly any female character of note. There are no women in Munif's Endings. Asouf's mother and Cain's divorcee are the only women in Bleeding; and they are given no names and only fleeting, inconsequential presence. Asouf's mother says precious little, except to complain to her husband about the family's isolation from the community. Perhaps Al-Koni would have extended the reach of the novel had he listened to her voice and taken Asouf and son back to the tribe. But the writer has entrenched views about the primacy of the father in the family and would not have had the husband follow the wishes of the wife. In Seeds, there is a lustful woman, Iqbal Hanim, and her mirror image, the victimized Ilya. They are used as instruments--not for their "intrinsic value"--in the novel to highlight the greed of power and the power of greed, of capitalists and a decadent regime.

Nonetheless, the introduction of the prurient Iqbal Hanim together with the male Ecological Bedouin makes more complex the dualism of male/female and culture/nature. Ecofeminists have argued frequently that the domination of nature is intimately tied to the subordination of women, through a "logic of domination." Women are first equated with nature and the irrational, and then these two categories are devalued and treated as inferior to their opposites, culture and rationality--presumably male attributes. Ecofeminists reject both the dualism itself and the diminishment of the value of the non-human as arbitrary (see Warren; Plumwood). So, we are not asking here for the creation by the novelists of a female Ecological Bedouin who would replicate the male one, although what Val Plumwood classifies as "Cultural Ecofeminists" would be comfortable with such a move. (7) What is needed is a deep, elaborate examination of the kind of relations that the male Ecological Bedouin would forge with women. Such an exploration could demonstrate, for example, whether the Ecological Bedouin, who cherishes the unity of all creation, is willing also to live equitably with women. ff not, on what grounds then would he justify thinking that women are inferior, since he respects nature and wildness?

Is the Ecological Bedouin--like his Indian counterpart--only a fictional figure? Or does he correspond to empirical observation? This question needs a separate treatment; and the empirical evidence is likely to be mixed, showing that some communities are conservationist and preservationist, while others degrade their ecosystems. Is the "distortion" of the real by the novelists, even if it is toward idealization rather than demonization, a kind of Orientalism practiced by urban or urbanized writers who have become nostalgic for a bygone way of life? ff so, it shows that the Bedouin, like the Ecological Indian, is denied the full range of human drives and diversity. Are there no ignorant, domineering, and greedy Bedouins who destroy their localities? It may be said in reply that cultures do differ in the way they conceive of nature and animals and how they act toward them. Imaginative writers frequently reach for the outer limit of experience to make their work have an impact. For, although these novels may "overcorrect" the Khaldunian image of the Bedouin as a "savage" and marauder, they propose an ideal for the rest of us to live by in our relation to place and to other species. The overcorrection is not sentimental or merely nostalgic; it is rendered in a harsh context, even if it is a utopia of freedom and rootedness.

The last, but not least, critical question is: Are the beliefs, behavior, and response of the Bedouin to the external onslaught, like those of the American Indian counterpart? Are they simplistic for a technological, sociologically complex, interlinked world? Without doubt, the novels present indigenous characters who maintain stringent beliefs and behavior and do not advance a successful resistance strategy. Nonetheless, they open the desert to technology and to the outside world, and the Bedouin protagonists strive to keep their autochthony without being xenophobic. Although Seeds is ambiguous, it makes clear that Issa, in his objection to mining, questions the rights of the outsiders to expropriate the wealth he believes belongs to his community, adding a political dimension to the moral one. There is also a moment in which the novel seems to be critical of the natives' attitudes toward the mining enterprise. An uncle of Issa's, who moves to the city and becomes a "link between the desert and urban centers," wishes to have members of the tribe take part in mining and learn the trade, and even lures some of them "by ruse, promises, or threat to leave the bondage of custom and tradition" into working for the company (Moussa 68). This "third voice" gets muted throughout, and the tragedies that occur in the novel discredit his stance, leaving the reader with the Ecological Bedouin as a guide.

The other native characters in Endings and Bleeding kill animals, but the difference between them and the Cains of this world lies in the why, what, when, and how of hunting, and how much game is considered sufficient. It is an allegory against modem consumption which is increasingly held as the culprit of environmental degradation. Furthermore, Issa's anger about mining the sacred mountain, like the protest of the Lakota Sioux against carving presidential busts on Mount Rushmore, underlines the value of certain places, what Finn Arler dubs "unique" resources:

   These resources make up the cultural and natural heritage
   that is fundamental to the way we understand ourselves and
   that we are proud to pass on to our descendants. In a physical
   sense we can live without them, but we may be losing
   some basic part of ourselves once we begin to sell out. (175)

A unique resource--as opposed to, say, an "exchangeable" (8) one like fossil fuels--is thus associated with core cultural values. People could survive without it economically, but would become impoverished culturally and, in the case of Issa and the mountain, spiritually as well.

To close, while the desert novel has been the subject of study from various angles, the current article departs from these readings in that it offers an environmental interpretation that has aimed at discovering environmental principles. We hope to have demonstrated that there is much to be learned from the indigenous characters of these novels for sustaining the natural environment. Even if the Ecological Bedouin does not entirely accord with the historical record of the desert inhabitants, it would seem important to keep him in both the imaginative work and in our minds. This fictional Bedouin may counter images from advertisements, the locus of which is consumption and disregard for the non-human world. We can think of this figure as the "conscience of nature," nagging us to tread gently, without expecting to chance on him in flesh and blood somewhere in the desert. The writers are not asking that we go back to the desert; they have brought the desert to us, to experience it, to bond with it and its inhabitants, to expand our awareness. This is the job of poets and artists. They propose for us here how to dwell, to extend our 'asabiyya to "our relations," and to heed the words of Asouf's father to his son, that in the desert he must be sparing of water and bullets. And perhaps not just in the desert.

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Notes

(1) The article is based on a presentation at the colloquium "Tents in the Desert: The Literary Imagination of lbrahim Al-Koni," Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, April 28-29, 2011. I would like to thank the anonymous Alif reviewers for their helpful comments.

(2) I kept the transliteration of the names of the authors as they appear in the English title pages of their respective books.

(3) The translator of the novel renders it al-tiba ("goodness"), though it is altay yiba in the original.

(4) These are not the only encounters there are; it is possible to link the Ecological Bedouin to pre-Islamic poets; the book of animal stories Alhayawan (The Animal) by AI-Jahiz, some of which were re-told by Munif in Endings; and others. But this must await a longer work.

(5) Krech III recounts a number of cases where American Indian communities seemed not to be environmentally correct, such as the Hopi Indians favoring strip mining, explaining this as being part of their "guiding philosophy and prophecy to 'know how to use the gifts of Mother Earth'" (215).

(6) From a personal conversation with Al-Koni at the conference "Tents in the Desert" (see note 1 above).

(7) Cultural Feminists accept the dualism, and argue that men have been also damaged because they distanced themselves from the spheres of nature and nurture (Plumwood 443).

(8) The distinction between these two types of resources is made by Arler himself.