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THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF LANGUAGE USE In hindsight, the code-switch also predicts two traumatic events that Midhat 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 Midhat 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 mental 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 trespassing 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.”*? Venting 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 Jewish 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. + 35 +
