“And here he was now, having married without telling anyone
except Marwan, as though he wanted to confront him with his conscience. But
what choice had he left him? Nothing except to leave the school, to plunge into
the frying pan and stay there from now until eternity."
I am struck by the enormity of this passage in "Men in the Sun" because it marks
a sort of acceptance on Marwan’s part that he must fling himself into exile, an
exile of identity for subsistence. The departure of his father and the break in
the supply of money from Zakaria forces Marwan not only to be stripped of his
educational aim of becoming a doctor (which is a large part of his personal
identity), but he is also willing to travel to Kuwait to earn money and fling
his National identity and become a refugee (in the technical sense) - suspended
in space. Does this not then, allow us to contemplate the varying importance of
identity, wherein men when pushed collectively begin to stoke the fires of
revolution, though they themselves may burn in the conflagration? And when they
have no means of living the life they desire and are pushed individually to the
corner of human existence, where primal instinct must dominate, fling it away? This
self imposed exile carries with it the palpable fear of the unknown and the
uncertain, yet it also offers hope. For Marwan, this is the only way to support
his mother and himself, and carve a new identity for from the vacuum he seeks
to embrace. Sadly though, he becomes a part of the vacuum itself.
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