"Home in Exile" in Leila Aboulela's Fiction

1. IntroductionScottish-Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela has become well-known in the English-speaking world as a cultural translator of otherness for a mainly Western audience. Herself an emigree, she is now famous for the nuanced and non-stereotypical ways in which - in her fictional works - she has represented immigration, dislocation, and related searches for identity and belonging. Intriguingly, she avoids the sense of alienation that usually accompanies such situations, for her characters have the capacity meaningfully reinvent themselves in the host country, while still drawing on their old homelands for inspiration. I shall illustrate Aboulela's unusual depiction of what might be termed alternative (alternative rootedness), by focusing on her best-known pieces so far: the short-story collection, Coloured Lights (2001) and the novel The Translator (1999), which have earned her prestigious prizes and wide recognition. I shall conclude by briefly pointing her two other novels, Minaret (2005) and Lyrics Alley (2010).But before I proceed, a few general comments on the notion of exilic identity as anchored in imagined spaces. I shall use this term in the sense suggested by Bill Ashcroft (2010), for whom the trans-national is not simply a synonym for the (the latter term being generally used in a more limited, sociological sense). Instead, trans-nation is pointing the complexity of the subjective, individual experiences of journeying, the spaces in-between the categories by which subjectivity is normally constituted (Ashcroft 2010:73). There is an increasingly powerful conviction in current debates on diaspora regarding the fact that critics need go beyond the various orthodox dichotomies, such as home versus exile, in order embrace a lull and unbiased understanding of otherness. Such an understanding also challenges mainstream perceptions of identity as firmly associated fixed categories or social/ national spaces.If detached from the fixed, stereotypical understandings of belonging, the experience of exile need not always necessarily result in diasporic people being permanently scarred by dislocation and loss; rather, diasporic processes get a chance be translated into rootedness through unexpected interpretations of one's self. Furthermore, via such acts of cultural/ spiritual translation of life's challenges - as, for example, when drawing on one's creative capacity re-invent oneself against all odds - individuals have the chance discover a freshness of purpose and meaning amidst dislocation. According Thomas Tweed (2006: 54), religion offers one way towards achieving this goal, by helping believers make homes and cross boundaries - in and through faith. This is an emotional/ spiritual journey whose final aim is that of building a mental space, a mental homeland, through a process that necessitates human inventiveness under extreme circumstances. It is an inventiveness that - as James Clifford (2000: 97) puts it - might require one to rehook one's tructure something that had either been blown off, forgotten, or had been taken off for tactical reasons, for example, certain aspects of tradition or religion. Such an orientation is particularly useful for making sense of recent writings that combine the theme of exile with religious articulations.2. Fictional representations of home and exileAboulela's works - whether short-stories or novels - are coloured by a sense of melancholy, which inevitably accompanies dislocation in the diasporic experience. Yet, her fictional works simultaneously invoke the possibility of regaining some lost ground through re-assessing and re-inventing one's sense of identity and belonging, against all odds.2.1 Home and exile in the Coloured Lights short-story collectionIn Coloured Ligts (2001), Aboulela offers memorable representations of the exile's fractured identity when relating people and situations in the host country. …