ALIENATION OR INTEGRATION OF ARAB YOUTH BETWEEN FAMILY, STATE AND STREET

Introduction

Roel Meijer

The subject of Arab youth has become the focus of growing concern in the Arab world and Europe and has been represented in the most alarmist terms. The facts seem to speak for themselves: the present generation is proportionally the largest in Arab history, its unemployment rate is the highest and the cultural circumstances in which its identity is to be defined are perhaps the most bewildering. The future prospects for contemporary Arab youth seem bleak indeed. While a general sense of alienation is growing among the young, their chances for social, economic and political integration seem to be declining.

The theme of this volume, alienation or integration, is framed within the triangle of the main factors that bear upon youth and help form it: the family, the state and the street. It is within this triangle that the contemporary Arab youth has to construct its identity and map its future. Each of these elements has its own specific role to play with regard to youth. While partly enhancing each other, they are also in severe competition, often gaining their authority over youth at each other's expense. Traditionally, the family is the central focus of social life in the Middle East. It fulfils the essential tasks of socialisation and transmission of basic values and norms, as well as providing security and economic protection. However, during the past decades the position of the family has declined. After independence the state usurped many of family's responsibilities in the fields of culture, politics and employment through its ambitious educational programmes and its massive interference in the economy. The 'street', meaning alternative lifestyles and modes of thought and action falling outside the family and the state, was in this period relegated to the margins of society. It only embarked on its march against the established pillars of society when the state and the family started to lose their authority in the 1970s and 1980s.

These are the general trends in youth history of the past half century since independence. But how can they be specified further? What has been the influence of the family and how has it been eroded? The same questions apply to the state. What is the critique of contemporary youth of their governments, and what political alternatives has it developed? Finally, how does the street manifest itself and what influence does it have on the Arab youth? The contributions in this volume will delve into the problems associated with these questions. They will partly confirm the gloomy picture, partly modify it, and in some cases challenge the image of economic and social deprivation and marginalisation and cultural and political alienation. Above all, the contributions will show youth to be more versatile and creative than is usually deemed possible. Although certain trends are visible, the future is still uncertain.

The introduction to this volume concentrates on the most important factors that influence the formation of youth in the Arab Middle East. Some preliminary conclusions can be drawn from the contributions to this volume.

First Published in 2000

by Curzon Press

Published 2013 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Demography

Demography is one of the most important determining factors in the life of the present-day youth. Youth below the age of 25 form 65 percent of the total population in Arab countries. In Algeria twothirds of the population in 1990 was under nineteen years old. In Morocco, a country that witnessed an earlier downward trend in population growth, two-thirds of the population is below 35 years old, while in Egypt, 13 million of the 65 million people are teenagers between the ages of 10 and 19. Never will the number of young people be so high as at the present time. The reason for this demographic explosion is that the Middle East had one of the highest population growth rates in the world until the 1980s. As a result, the population of Morocco nearly doubled during the last quarter-century.

Predictions of future disasters are, however, as Youssef Courbage demonstrates in his essay on demography, unlikely to come true. During the past two decades population growth has declined in the region from 3.2 percent in the mid-1980s to 2.7 percent in 1992. In general, fertility rates have dropped from 8 in the 1980s to 4 in 1995 and are expected to reach 3 percent in 1999. In the same period, the population growth in Egypt declined from 2.8 percent to 2.1 percent. Most surveys predict it will decrease in the region as a whole to 1.6 percent during the next decade.

Courbage directly relates changes in demographic growth rates to shifts in economic resources and alterations to the economic situation of families. He shows, for instance, how the start of the decrease in fertility in Morocco in 1975 is related to the decline in income from phosphate exports, and the ensuing rise in taxes, both of which forced women to work to supplement family income. As a result, the percentage of Moroccan women between the ages of 20 and 34 (the main childbearing age) who work outside the house has quadrupled from less than 10 percent to 37 percent in the period from 1960 to 1995. Courbage ascribes the fact that the decline in fertility rates in other Arab countries occurred in Morocco over a decade later to the fall in the oil prices after 1985.

The most dramatic consequence of the past demographic upsurge is growing unemployment. Today, the annual rate of young job seekers in the Middle East is among the fastest growing in the developing world. The unemployment rate in most Arab countries is around 20 percent, and improvement is not likely to occur so long as structural adjustment plans still have to translate themselves into employment. Not before 2015 in Tunisia, 2020 in Morocco and 2025 in Egypt will the numbers of those leaving jobs and those acquiring new jobs be matched. The Economist (20 March 1999) has computed that the Egyptian economy must grow by 7 to 8 percent a year to be able to absorb the 500,000 young who will be entering the labour market each year for the next 10 to 15 years. Courbage has calculated that the highest point for the Moroccan job market will be reached between 2005 and 2010, when 350,000 young people will be looking for a job, as opposed to a marked decrease between 2020 and 2025, when this number will decline to 200,000.

Especially the urban, better educated youth, and within this category particularly women, suffer from high rates of unemployment. In Morocco an astonishing 45 percent of the youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are out of work. As appears from several contributions to this volume, many of these are university graduates. The complaint that 'a diploma has absolutely no value in Morocco' is one of the most discouraging comments made by the young in Mounia Bennani-Chralbi's extensive research on Moroccan youth. Bennani-Chralbi's and Mark Tessler's research results confirm the view that the growing army of unfortunates with the wish for participation in society is 'a time bomb ticking away'. Economically, it has led to an explosive increase of the informal and semi-criminal sector.

Courbage, however, ends his contribution on demography on a note of optimism, pointing out that the demographic transition has several immediate, positive effects. As a result of the decrease in the growth rate of the newest generation, the state can concentrate on the improvement of the quality of education instead of building new schools. And even a moderate economic growth of 2 percent means an improvement in the standard of living when the population growth falls to 1.6 percent.

The State

The state has had a tremendous impact on contemporary youth, as most contributors stress. Youth was the hope of the new nations after they gained independence. In the enthusiasm of the new era, the state built for the first time on a grand scale schools, universities and other facilities for what became the first mass generation of adolescents, which was created by the extension of the intermediate age between childhood and adulthood from 13 to 25. Whereas previously the majority of youth had immediately entered adulthood with early employment and marriage, now its opportunities for forming its own opinions and gaining personal experiences during this intermediate age were much larger. 

For a long time integration and disciplining of this new category of youth by the state was successful, and its authority remained unchallenged. Dents in the state's armour appeared only when young people started to resist restrictions on their freedom to express themselves and define their own identity, and demanded the right to criticise official politics. In Egypt, the first youth revolts occurred after the defeat in the June War in 1967; in Algeria and Morocco, youth became restless in the 1980s and 1990s. The rise of the Islamist movement, almost completely a youth phenomenon, has been the most conspicuous sign of the decline of the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of the nation's young. At the same time, other, less ideological, less organised and more specifically cultural forms of protest of the 'street' manifested themselves, the most famous example being Ra"i music in Algeria. On a personal level, as several essays in this collection demonstrate, alternative and hidden forms of resistance were created which can eventually lead to a new type of politics.

Youthful resentment against the authorities has become all the more outspoken due to the dismantling of the welfare state and the growing discrepancies between rich and poor after the implementation of the IMF's structural adjustment programmes. As Mark Tessler shows in his study on youth in Morocco, the crisis of the state's legitimacy is the result of the anger felt by young adults against the state for blocking the chances of upward mobility that should have been provided by education. However, the hopes of the young which were pinned on the idea of meritocracy have been dashed, not just because the state has been unable to create enough jobs but also because of widespread corruption. Delegitimisation of the state is further deepened by the totally inadequate manner in which it has dealt with criticism. As Gema Martin Munoz points out, the weakness of the Arab state is that it has 'ample muscles but little intellect'. The past decades have shown that the state is structurally unable to respond properly to economic and political crises, while neglecting and repressing demands for more democracy and accountability, which are voiced especially by youth.

Estrangement from the state has led to two different reactions. According to Bennani-Chraibi's research on Moroccan youth, the first attitude can be described as cynicism and the feeling that parties and politicians, even oppositional ones, only pursue their own interests. Jokes, nukat, express the lack of credibility of parliament and the political class as a whole, and a new fictional universe is created in compensation. This 'elsewhere' is erected as a safe abode to express the wishes, expectations and frustrations of the young. The second reaction can be seen in riots, such as those of December 1990 and the demonstrations during the Gulf War in 1991. On those rare occasions, the excluded of Morocco invaded the public space, occupied the limelight and destroyed the symbols of their marginalisation, such as governmental buildings, hotels and shops.

Algeria is undoubtedly the most extreme, yet instructive example of what estrangement between the state and youth can lead to. In the suburbs of Algiers, as Luis Martinez shows in his analysis of youth and violence, alienation has brought about a complete rupture between youth and the authorities. While under president Boumedienne (1965- 1979), youth was still regarded as the flower of the nation, this idyll turned into its opposite under his successor, and youth became '/es classes dangereuses', which in the end aired their frustration in riots. The outrage against the security forces, which were responsible for hundreds of deaths among the youth during the riots of October 1988, expressed itself in massive support for the Islamist movement during the elections of 1990 and 1991. Luis Martinez shows how the FIS succeeded in canal ising the anger and hope of the youth, mobilising its feelings of defiance and vengeance. In these extreme circumstances, even those sections of the youth usually regarded as passive and apathetic, the' hittistes', supported the FIS against the regime.

The extent of the violence that erupted in Algeria after the disbanding of the FIS in March 1992, demonstrates the intensity of the frustrations and hate felt by a wide portion of youth against the state. This violence was the result of 'a demand for justice and indignation' and the 'inability to express their denunciation in a way that was acceptable to others, to have it recognised and to have it shared.' The dissolution of the municipal assemblies that had been elected in April 1992 promoted a further 'desire for dissidence'. In particular the youth of the suburbs were arrested on suspicion of being informers. According to Luis Martinez, these youths formed the recruiting grounds for the Armed Islamic Movement and the GIA at a later stage. In their youthful enthusiasm, they believed that victory would be theirs.

The Family

Traditionally the family is the supreme source of socialisation, education and security in society, but it is clear from the different contributions to this volume that due to far-reaching economic, political and cultural developments and increased means of communication, the position of the family is changing. The demographic transitions will have a dramatic effect on the structure of the family, and it seems that the authority of the family will diminish, despite the weakened position of the state and the economic crisis, which have temporarily enhanced the family 's central role. Gema Martin Munoz argues that even if the collapse of the labour market and the failure of social mobility mean that the family recovers its former protective role in taking care of the unemployed, it seems unlikely that it will regain its former hegemonic character since it works nowadays only as a security net during periods of social crisis.

Bennani-Chraibi also regards the revived role of the family as a temporary development that should be ascribed to the tasks it has in times of crisis as the only source for financial support, social security 'and other benefits of closeness.' She points out that, judging from the resentment dependency provokes among the youth, it is clear that the 'construction of the subject' and the process of individualisation has reached a point of no return.

In their study on Upper Egyptian youth, Barbara Ibrahim and Hind Wassef discern a similar trend, although the younger age of their interviewees (who are between 10 and 19 years old) and especially the remoteness and poverty of the rural region they studied, explains in part why these young people have found it more difficult to overcome family restrictions and traditions. Their conclusions, however, confirm the general picture: changes in youthful attitudes are taking place and received opinions are increasingly being challenged, but the bleak economic situation does not allow the young to gain greater freedom. In rural Egypt parents still choose the partners for their children, arrange their marriages and provide most of the financial means for getting their children started in adulthood.

Not surprisingly, the highest degree of estrangement from the family has occurred in Algeria. If in other countries the street has made some inroads on traditional and state authorities, in the outskirts of Algiers, which Luis Martinez has studied, the street has temporarily replaced both. The now famous hittistes, who 'live in the street and from the street', are, he claims, completely free from family constraints. That some joined the guerrillas can be considered an attempt literally to conquer the street from the state.

Identities

The contributions to this volume clearly indicate that the construction of youth identities will be one of the major issues of the 21st century in the Arab Middle East. Several developments will enhance the importance of this topic. First, as we have seen, youth has become demographically, socially, culturally and politically a force to be reckoned with since its mass emergence in the 1960s and 1970s. Second, the traditional pillar of stability and accepted opinion, the family, is being severely eroded, while the modern, alternative source of education, employment and security, the state, has proved unable to fulfil its tasks and has lost a great deal of its legitimacy. Third, during the past decades, the influence of the street on youth has greatly expanded, whether in the form of the Islamist movement or alternative cultural expressions. As a result of these developments the issue of identity has come to take centre stage, and as the number and the diversity of competing authoritative models and sources of identification for youth have increased so dramatically, the formation of identities has become a highly complex and conflicted process. It seems that the identities of the modern youth are in constant flux.

Luis Martinez' analysis of the role of the youth in lower class suburbs of Algiers gives a fascinating, if harrowing insight into the ways youth identity constantly changes and is being fought over by the state and the Islamist movement. His research seems to confirm the general conclusions of surveys on contemporary Arab youth, that its members join the Islamist movement mainly on account of sociological issues, and not from greater religiosity. The FIS played on the youth's longing for integration by providing a specific style of dress, physical appearance (beard and kamis, the long shirts) and a distinctive discourse. By reinventing the cordiality, the mutual support and equality of 'brothers', it integrated the youth into a new community and gave it a new sense of belonging.

This did not mean that a change in youth identities was pervasive. As Luis Martinez explains, hittistes supported the FIS despite their opposite culture because it was the only organisation that opposed the government. But as the war grew more virulent, and the young were increasingly forced to take sides, this casual support gradually became more difficult. At first a daytime hittiste could still very well be a night-time fighter, while an indoor sports fan could act as an operational member of the special unit of the security forces. With the brutalisation of the war, the opportunities for choices of identity were reduced. The contending parties, the Islamist movement and the state, tried to recruit the young and incorporate them into their ranks. For instance, having youths carry out assassinations with a bare face was intended to leave them with no choice but to join the guerrillas. Nevertheless, even then, opportunism remained widespread and there were miraculous conversions of delinquents into 'true moudjahids' who, as soon as the security forces regained the upper hand in the neighbourhoods, just as easily dissociated themselves from the Islamists and adopted their former identity or a new one.

Hadj Miliani's study of youth and Rai music confirms the general view of the fluidity of youth identities. He shows how these identities adapt to the circumstances in which the young find themselves. His main argument is that Rai music is not an overt rejection of the social order or the expression of a well-reasoned rebellion. It is first and foremost an authentic expression of the street. By stressing individualism and personal feelings of despair and love, Rai music constitutes a rejection of the hollow socialist ideology of the state. Hadj Miliani calls Rai music legitimate subversion because it challenges society and seeks to create new forms of social cohesion and identities in the desperate urban landscapes that have supplanted the old neighbourhoods.

Bennani-Chraibi too underlines the fluid and transient character of youth identities. The picture she evokes of modern youth in Morocco is of a pragmatic generation. As a sign of growing individualism, young people, she argues, borrow from the different cultural resources available to them. In the more relaxed circumstances of Morocco, where the young are not immediately forced to take sides or adapt their identity in order to survive, they are able to piece their identity together eclectically, unperturbed by the contradictions between Michael Jackson, Rai music and Qur'an recitations. The existence of several truth systems side by side, each with its own specific logic and world view, she calls 'cohabitation'. But if these inherited standards and traditions are breached, the process of reinvention of identity is far from complete, and transience and tension predominate.

The importance of identity is, finally, also stressed in the research carried out by Barbara Ibrahim and Hind Wassef in rural Assiut in Egypt. There the state is also losing its grip over the nation's youth. Special youth programmes in the media, which through their moralistic and didactic conservatism attempt to correct 'deviation', are out of touch with the reality of youth. Neither does the school curriculum address the issues which preoccupy modern Egyptian youth, in particular unemployment and emotional, personal concerns, such as sexuality and marriage. This does not mean that the family is any more successful in providing an adequate answer to such questions.

As Barbara Ibrahim and Hind Wassef convincingly demonstrate, girls take the lead in challenging the accepted, conservative norms imposed by the family. More education together with greater mobility and more possibilities to acquire experiences outside the house, enable girls to contest accepted norms and values that have kept them in their restricted positions. On several crucial matters affecting the position of women, the national surveys and the in-depth interviews conducted by both researchers show that young women are consistently more 'liberal' than their male peers. On the other hand, young women are more aware of the norms of the family and their present and future dependence on it. According to this penetrating analysis, this is what keeps young women in Assiut from rebellion.

Generations

The concepts of generations and generation conflicts are essential to the study of the connections between certain age groups. Researchers who concentrate on generation conflicts take a broader, more historical view of the question of identity and the formation of the characteristics of a specific generation. For instance, according to Martin Munoz, the battle between present youth and the state is basically a generation conflict. The question arises which generations can be discerned in the Arab Middle East, how they were formed and what impact they have had. Especially relevant for the present volume is the question of the burdens past generations have placed on the shoulders of the present generation. From essays in the collection it immediately becomes apparent that the impact different generations have had in the Arab Middle East has varied considerably.

Haggai Erlich describes with all the erudition of a historian the rise of the 'generation of 1935- 6' in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Palestine. He does this in minute detail, demonstrating its common traits and its formative international and national experiences. He analyses how this generation was formed politically by the failure of the notables to establish a true democratic system, achieve national independence and implement the necessary economic and social reforms. Through the student demonstrations of 1935- 6 in Egypt, the revolt of 1936- 9 in Palestine, the ideological developments in Syria, and the military coup d'etat in 1936 in Iraq, this generation posed the first challenges to the old guard and gave a foreboding of the time it came to take over power. This generation was the only one that came to power when it was still young - for instance the Free Officers in Egypt were still in their thirties when they assumed power.

The generation of 1935-6 has undoubtedly been the most influential of this century because it was able to construct a new society after the collapse of colonialism. Rising during the turbulent 1930s in revolt against foreign domination, it acquired power in the 1950s, which it consolidated through authoritarian governments that implemented centrally led growth, based on a huge public sector, and established the welfare state. The legitimacy of this generation has been unparalleled and sustained for a remarkably long period. Basically, subsequent generations have done little else than to challenge its legacy and attempt to demolish and replace the ideological, political and economic foundations it laid down. Perhaps only the present generation will succeed in this purpose, in spite of the unpromising prospects it faces.

The 'generation of 1967' in Egypt was the first subsequent generation that took upon itself the arduous and unenviable task of challenging the generation of the 1930s and the political and economic structure it had built in the 1950s and 1960s. Its history was the complete opposite of its predecessors. Totally unprepared for its task, having benefited from mass higher education and still indoctrinated by Arab socialism and pan-Arabism, the new generation was rudely awakened from its dreams by the devastating military defeat of the June war. Ahmed Abdalla, himself a prominent student leader at the time, claims that to the young generation, in its relatively privileged position, the defeat was 'a psychological shock that shattered their world view and the ideas and concepts that they had been brought up on.' Suddenly the state ideology had been exposed as propaganda, and any attempt at critique was immediately repressed by a state flexing its 'muscles'.

Tragically, the generation of 1967 was unable to fulfil its promise as a pathfinder, a torchbearer that could lead the way to a new beginning. Ahmed Abdalla points out that the new generation forced the government to uphold its promise of fighting the October War - a promise that in itself kept this generation tied up in military uniform until it exhausted its radicalism. Yet, he argues, it also made the mistake of falling back on the unsuccessful political movements of the previous generation of the 1930s, the old leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Communist movement, who now provided guidance to the youth. Divided, radicalised, frustrated and unable to formulate a new project, the generation of 1967 disintegrated and lost its sense of purpose; eventually none of its ideals materialised.

Hardly any direct influence of the 1967 generation remains among the present young generation. That it seems in many ways to be fighting more with the economic, political and cultural legacy of the previous generation of the 1930s and than with that of the generations of the 1960s and 1970s, becomes apparent in the struggle in Algeria between the 'October generation' of 1988 and the 'November generation' of 1954, which had led the struggle for independence. Born after independence, the present young Algerian generation regards the old slogans as stale, only serving the purpose of justifying the retention of power of the present authorities.

The collapse of the old order of the generation of 1935- 6, at least in the different Arab republics, under pressure of structural adjustment, privatisation and political delegitimisation, has both drawbacks and advantages. On the one hand, it leaves the present generation defenceless and vulnerable; on the other, it gives it a chance to establish a new beginning on the ruins of the past. Whether this will be done on authentic cultural grounds, as Martin Munoz argues, is as yet undecided. The survey of young adults in Morocco analysed by Mark Tessler seems to confirm the open character of the future. It appears that the higher educated among the present younger generation are more oriented towards European languages, media and cultural forms than the previous one. They are also less religious and attach more importance to democracy. The eclecticism and pragmatism of the modern youth give reason to believe in its capacity to provide surprises.

Literature

Arab literature throws a different light on the role of the youth, the family and generation conflicts. Fiction can highlight certain features of society that are lost in social science and historical research, which abstract from personal experiences. Autobiographies and novels, the two genres dealt with in this volume, give insight into the highly individual experiences and psychological backgrounds of a generation. They also map the often tortuous road towards liberation from familial and especially patriarchal restrictions which accompanies the process of discovering the one's identity and artistic creativity. Stated somewhat boldly, autobiographies mix fact with the inaccuracies of memories and myth, while novels are often set in historical time and circumstances. Frequently, the latter leave more room for depth and creativity while the former adhere more closely to history and provide a picture of the 'life and times' of the artist. Both supplement each other and are sources of information on lived and imagined experience in time and place.

Richard van Leeuwen concentrates on power relations between generations in the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, Alia Mamdouh, Abd aI-Hakim Qasim and Sahar Khalifa. He is especially interested the transItIons of power and cultural norms between generations in different periods and different Arab countries. In his complementary analysis, Tetz Rooke compares the autobiographies of Ahmad Amin, Tawfiq ai-Hakim, Bint al-Shati and Fadwa Tuqan.

In light of the current youth's struggle with the older generation, it is interesting to note that one of the main features of Arabic literature, both in the novels and the autobiographies, is the overwhelming presence of patriarchy and the dominating position of the father in the Arabic family. In the novels that Richard van Leeuwen analyses, the father is the symbol of authority. It is the father who imposes traditional values and acts as an intermediary between his children and society. Revolt against the authority of the father figure is the only way to liberation, or in the case of the authors themselves, to artistic and social liberation. For Ahmad Amin the father figure is the representative of 'despotism' and 'sterile education' versus the forces of modernity. Tetz Rooke points out that the family house is often presented metaphorically as a prison, in which the author is locked up as a child and with which the author continues to struggle as an adult, attempting to break down the walls of convention and tradition. Art was the only way out for Tawfiq ai-Hakim and Fadwa Tuqan. In the case of Bint al-Shati, religion provided an escape from the tyranny of her father.

If in the autobiographies the authors managed to liberate themselves from their own background by overcoming the main obstacles to achieving individual fulfilment and artistic excellence, in the novels the generation conflict is not resolved as decisively. It is fraught with ambivalence and a uncertainty about the future. The feelings of victory and success in the end are mixed and filled with a sense of loss once the patriarch has been vanquished. With the defeat of the pater familias in The Trilogy of Naguib Mahfouz, for instance, the protection of traditions and the capacity to contain both the past and the present, tradition and modernity, is also lost. Revolt, as Richard van Leeuwen notes, leads to new tensions because the central, integrative figure is gone. Seldom are these sons or daughters able to succeed their fathers, and rarely do they have the same capabilities. Surprisingly if one looks at the present generation and the weight of the past, there is no continuity between Arab generations in the literature analysed in the contributions to this volume. Disruption, the inability to hand down traditions and norms from one generation to another, is a central theme in most novels from the 1950s. As Richard van Leeuwen correctly remarks, power was transferred largely from the old patriarchal families to the state. Interestingly, the generation of the 1930s, which revolted against the father figure, as Tetz Rooke so well describes, was also the generation responsible for building the authoritarian state.

Contents

Acknowledgements    vii

List of Contributors    viii

Preface    xi

Introduction    1

Roel Meijer

Part I Background to present day youth problems

1. Arab youth today: The generation gap, identity crisis and democratic deficit    17

Gema Martin Munoz

2. The demographic inflection of the southern Mediterranean: Reasons for optimism    27

Youssef Courbage

Part II Political generations

3. Youth and Arab politics: The political generation of 1935-36    47

Haggai Erlich

4. The Egyptian generation of 1967: Reaction of the young to national defeat    71

Ahmed Abdalla

5. Youth, the street and violence in Algeria    83

Luis Martinez

6. Morocco's next political generation    107

 Mark Tessler

Part III Constructing new identities

7. Legitimate subversion and the symbolism of integration in Rai music in Algeria    135

Hadj Miliani

8. Youth in Morocco: An indicator of a changing society    143

Mounia Bennani-Chraibi

9. Caught between two worlds: Youth in the Egyptian hinterland    161

Barbara Ibrahim and Hind Wassef

Part IV Generational conflicts in Arabic literature

10. The lost heritage: Generation conflicts in four Arabic novels    189

Richard van Leeuwen

11 . Escape from the family: A theme in Arabic autobiography    207

Tetz Rooke