Exile and the Failure of Fatherhood

Rootedness of any kind is linked to belonging to a concept of home and home, for most, is intrinsically connected to family. In our patriarchal society family almost always means the traditional family unit with a father as the head of the household--this unit, once disrupted may be the cause of an individual's exile or, alternatively, once persons are forced into exile the traditional family unit can no longer maintain its integrity further aggravating the state of exile. We can see an example of each in Salih's Season of Migration to the North and Kanafani's Men in the Sun respectively. 

In Salih's novel, Mustafa Sa'eed, in the absence of a father exacerbated by the indifference of his mother, develops no connection to the land in which he is born and has no one to hold him back when he chooses to leave. It could be said that he is doomed to his lifelong state of unbelonging because he never had the chance to learn what belonging feels like as he had no roots since the day he was born, his father having died before his actual coming into this world. In Kanafani's short story, we see that for refugees in forced exile the duties and relations of the family unit are thrown into anarchy. This is very clear in the case of Marwan whose father no longer acts as the head of the household (because he no longer has a house to head) abandoning the responsibility of breadwinner first at the feet of his elder brother which is then passed along to him as his brother soon abandons that responsibility as well. Both of the patriarchal figures in Marwan's life abandon their roles which means, in turn, had Marwan survived, he would not have an example to follow and so may have continued the cycle of failed patriarch in his own time as his brother already has. What's interesting is how the exile in this case is actually exacerbated by each successive failure, when Marwan's father abandons them Marwan's brother is forced to leave his family to yet another strange land, and when his brother also abandons them, Marwan himself is forced to leave the last vestige of belonging he has left within his family to go all alone into another strange land that is not and can never be his homeland. 

In each case we see that fatherhood has a strong link to belonging and so the failure of fatherhood leads to exile or exacerbated exile. The reason, I think, fatherhood has such a strong link to belonging is that, in our patriarchal societies, fatherhood has a huge influence over identity and the legitimacy of identity. We see this in the way our names come from our fathers and in the way those without fathers are shunned in society as outcasts. So as communities reject those without fathers, those like Mustafa learn to not belong to those communities. Those without fathers have no place in the structural setup of community and fathers seem to lose their important role when there is no community left to begin with.