Oldal 37 [37]
THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF LANGUAGE USE
In hindsight, the code-switch also predicts two traumatic events that Mid¬
hat will experience in an office and that will change his life drastically. The
first one is the shocking discovery of Molineu’s secret anthropological notes
on him." As already mentioned above, this causes Midhat to leave the Molineus
for Paris, abandoning medical school altogether. The second one is when Mid¬
hat discovers Jeannette’s letter to him that his father kept hidden in his office,
together with what is probably a charm made by the Samaritans, in order to
keep Midhat from returning to France and marrying Jeannette.*’ The blow is
so heavy that Midhat completely collapses and needs to be admitted to a men¬
tal hospital, an important twist in the plot on which I will not elaborate.
On another level, the code-switch not only draws attention to the office as
an important locus for key developments in the plot, it also highlights the room
as a threshold that is connected to the closely interrelated cultural notions of
hospitability and trespass mentioned above. Entering his father’s office, as well
as Molineu’s office, without their explicit permission somehow feels as tres¬
passing to Midhat, but also as a way to claim his space and independence: “The
last time Midhat had entered Docteur Molineu’s study was in that furtive
search for inkwells. It was not a room they [Midhat and Jeannette] chose on
their secret mornings; it was implicitly out of bounds. And yet standing now
in the centre; the woman he loved reading before him, he experienced a new
sense of entitlement.”** Another occasion on which Midhat, after his father’s
death, claims his space, is when he enters Haj Taher’s study in Cairo, the place
where he passed away just a couple of days before Midhat’s engagement to
Fatima. The office “held the smell of his father, the musk, the tobacco.”*? Vent¬
ing his sorrow, but mostly his frustration and rage over his father’s coercive
grip on him, Midhat’s knocks over his desk:
Rage flooded his body. He had done everything for this man. For this man’s opinion,
every choice. And he had succeeded! He was engaged to the Hammad girl! And
where was his father? Midhat’s whole life, stripped down to feeble reeds. They
collapsed without him. He punched down, knuckles first. His fingers felt the ache,
and, maddened by it, he pounced with the side of his fist, hammered a rhythm
time keeping. The tension between modernization and traditions was a seriously debated issue
at the end of the 19" and the beginning of the 20" century in the Ottoman Empire, including
its Arab provinces. The Ottoman watch then hints at a world marching at two different paces.
Moreover, Midhat gives this precious gift to Laurent when he leaves to the front and Midhat
imagines at some point that this watch could endanger his friend because it could be perceived
as a marker for the “Ottoman enemy.” Finally, in the mental hospital Midhat attacks his Jew¬
ish roommate because in his delirium he thinks he stole his watch.
56 Hammad: “The Parisian or Al-Barisi”, 127.
57 Ibid., 423-429.
58 Ibid., 127.
5 Ibid., 340.
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