The Representation of ‘Home’ and ‘Identity’in the documentary Film,The English Sheikh and the Yemeni Gentleman

General Overview:

This film introduces us to Bader Ben Hirsi, a British-born Yemeni living in London after his parents’ exile from Yemen. Bader returns to Yemen to re-discover his country, its people and traditions. Under the guiding hand of an Englishman Tim Makintosh-Smith, who has been living as a Yemeni in the ancient city of Sana'a for the past 16 years, Ben Hirsi travels throughout his ancestral homeland. The 2000-documentary film The English Sheikh and The Yemeni Gentleman is a documentary film made by Ben Hirsi in an attempt to counter the highly damaging publicity to which the death of Western hostages in Abyan 1998 had exposed Yemen. The presence of the westerner Tim Mackintosh Smith who plays a crucial rule as commentator and guide is very significance because the film is produced for people in the west.

Before studying the construction of the notion of home, I deem it relevant to briefly shed light on theorizing this concept.

Theorizing the Notion of ‘Home’:

‘Home’ … this word plays a significant function in everyone’s life. Everyone desires to have a ‘home’ and enjoys the sense of belonging to a stable ground that gives one a sense of stability and comfort. But let us pause to rethink the meaning of this concept… what is home? Where is home? In his essay ‘Home and Identity”, Madan Sarup raises this inquiry, What makes a place home? Is it wherever your family is, where you have been brought up? The children of many migrants are not sure where they belong. Where is home? [...]Is it the place from where you have been displaced, or where you are now? […] What exactly does the word ‘home’ mean?[1]

In his book Beginning Postcolonialism, John MCleod discusses the connotation of this concept problematizing the conventional meaning of this word. He puts a similar inquiry as he writes “home acts as a valuable means of orientation by giving us a sense of our place in the world. … but what happens to the idea of home for migrants who live far from the lands of their birth.” [2] Home can be imagined by the children of migrants (the second generation) since they lack ‘the interior knowledge’ of their parents. But they may experience the sense of the absence of ‘home’, e. i. “home-sickness”. In this case, they are as Homi Bhabah referred to “unhomely”. He discuses this notion in his article “The World and The Home” arguing that “to be unhomed is not to be homeless” and to illustrate the problem of the ‘unhomely’, he quotes Toni Morrison’s song “whose house is this?’ which says Whose house is this? Whose night keeps out the light in there? Say who owns this house? It is not mine… the house is strange […] Say tell me, why does its lock fit my key?[3]

Thus, the conventional way of conceptualizing home as a physical place appears not sufficient since home can be also a mental space; the meaning of home becomes mutative and varied. Indeed, the notion of home is complex and deeply ambiguous concept. Since the meaning of this concept is mutative, let’s see how it is constructed in the film.

The Notion of ‘Home’ in Ben Hiris’s Documentary Film, The English Sheikh and the Yemeni Gentleman (2000)

In fact, ‘home’ can be seen in this film in two meanings, a physical place as well as a mental space. Ben Hersi opens the documentary speaking nostalgically about his father’s home, Yemen (which he chooses to be his ‘home’). This is clearly articulated by the sound editing: the sad music, the sad tone of his voice, the use of sound effects that make viewers aware of the experience he feels being elsewhere and ‘home’ seems far-removed.

As a physical place, Yemen is constructed as the land that is rich in history and which Bin Hirsi is very proud of. He glorifies it throughout the film depicting the magnificent nature of its landscape. He starts describing home presenting us the Old Sana’a as the paradise of the earth and then moves to another region called Raymah describing its rich landscape as “the blessed land gifted by God”. Moving to the south of the country, he introduces us Shibam Hadramout describing its historical and architectural uniqueness. He concludes the description of his homeland as “the happy Arabia”. In this sense, home appears in its concrete sense as physical place.

It is clear in the film that, Ben Hirsi is preoccupied with homeland therefore his representation of it tends to “emphasize boundlessness and timelessness, and it is cathected by means of […] nostalgic longing to the homeland’s natural landscape, mountains, monuments and souvenirs.”[4] However, this meaning is not the only one that can be seen in this film. One can also see ‘home’ as mental or imaginative construction. Before paying any visit to the homeland, Ben Hersi draws an idealized picture for it in his mind. He is obsessed with ‘home’ and this is reflected through his constant search for more information about it. His dissatisfaction with all what he reads or sees in western media is due to the idea that they do not fit the ‘mental’ picture of his home that he is proud of. This answers the question that “how does he make the judgment that whatever he has read about Yemen is not accurate as he has never been to? When he finds a book that depicts his homeland positively, he appreciates it, believing that the book draws a true picture for Yemen. The point I attempt to make ,here, is not to argue that the documentarist’s presentation of Yemen is neutral or biased / positive or negative but to contend that Yemen for Ben Hersi being a descendant of immigrant parents is an imaginative or to put it in Salman Rushdi’s words “imaginary homeland” because he lacks his parents’ “interior knowledge”.

In the scene that shows his first visit to a Yemeni house in old Sana’a , he states that he feels “innocent’’. But for him every thing is strange, so like a child he opens his eyes widely looking at every element of the house around him. This is manifested technically through the successive series of close-ups and the slow movement of the camera that is his eyes. Not only Yemen appears to be a strange home for him but he also feels like a stranger. After visiting his parents’ villages (homes), with a sad tone he states clearly that when he is in his father’s home which is in the north he feels more southern and when he is in his mother’s home which is in the south he feels more northern, so he can’t lay claim to either place to be a ‘home’. In another scene, where he is in a Qat session in his mother’s ‘home’ he sadly expresses his feeling of being like a stranger. This is also noticed in different scenes of the film and this is what homi Bhabha refers to as the “the unhomely moments that creeps steadily to the heart of the unhomely.” In this sense, ‘home’ is not necessarily a physical place.

Thus, it is implausible to simply think of ‘home’ concretely but one should go beyond that, seeing how ‘home’ is a complex concept. It seems useful here to invoke Avtar Brah’s words that “home is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In the sense it is a place of no return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as the place of origin.”

The Construction of Identity

In fact the concept of identity is very complex and interrelated with the notion of 'home'. It is "discursively produced" as Homi Bhabha notes; it is possible to be made and remade in new or innovative ways. Madan Sarup in his article, "Home and Identity" suggests that "identity is a construction of a process of interaction between people, institution and practices"(p. 102 Travellers' Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement ). To explain this point it could be said that identity is fluid but not an essence, Sarup refers to Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation in which she shows how "she is becoming a hybrid creature" whose identity is remade fragment by fragment" and explains that "identity is changed by the journey". And in this presentation, we will see Bin Hirsi's "journey of discovery" into his homeland and how his identity undergoes a process of becoming but it needs time to be remade fragment by fragment.

Sarup suggests that, "Identity is not to do with being but with becoming." Identity is a matter of becoming and identification rather than a pure essence. Bearing this short theoretical framework in mind this presentation attempts to investigate the construction of the concept of identity in Bin Hirsi's documentary film, The English Sheikh and the Yemeni Gentleman. In this presentation, I am going to apply this theory of diasporic identity on two characters in the film—Bin Hirsi, the Yemeni gentleman as the title of the film indicates and the British travel writer, Tim Mackintosh Smith, the English sheikh.

Tim Mackintosh Smith who has been in Yemen for 16 years is the one who helps Bin Hirsi to explore his first journey into his homeland. The idea of an identity as "flux" and changing is traced through both the English sheikh and the Yemeni gentleman. However identity appears more changing with Tim Smith than Bin Hirsi. Tim Smith's ability to invent a new identity appears through mastering Arabic Language and Sana'ani dialect, he wrote and dedicated his book, to one of his friends in Old Sana'a establishing healthy relationships with the Sana'ani community; Smith also enjoys eating Yemeni food: he states that he "can't stay 3 days without eating saltah."; he is also adopting some Yemeni customs such as chewing qat and wearing Yemeni traditional clothes. However, Bin Hirsi is traced only one time throughout the whole film wearing a traditional dress. He keeps away from eating saltah or chewing qat. Hirsi states, "To my relief there is no sign of Saltah" and rejected to eat some lamb.

Bin Hirsi keeps his Britishness throughout the film in terms of eating food and wearing local dress. The following part of a scene shows the changing identity of Tim Smith who succeeds to cope completely with the Yemeni community, and the little changing identity of Bin Hirsi who is to some extent keeping himself apart from the community since this is his first visit to Yemen and does not know people. It is only the English sheikh who interacts and mingles with the community, and seems to be the spokesman of Bin Hirsi. In the qat market in old Sana'a, this part of a scene shows Tim Smith greeting, shaking hands and speaking friendly with people using the Sana'ani dialect, while Bin Hirsi is remaining silent. In the qat market, the dialogue takes part only between Tim smith and the qat sellers. Bin Hirsi is reluctant to accept Tim's invitation to chew qat. Though he takes it but never seen chewing.

The postcolonial critics such as Homi Bhabha criticize the idea that identity is fixed. In his "Forward: Remembering Fanon", Bhabha writes, "Identification…is always the return of an image of identity." What we have seen in the film shows the flexibility of the English sheikh to identify with the different elements of the Yemeni community. However, Bin Hirsi's changing identity only appears verbally when describing the greatness of the land, heritage and history, but, then he is unable to cope practically with the different elements such as customs and traditions. Tim smith finds routes for himself that make the Old City of Sana'a a home for him, so one cannot speak with certainty of the notion of "rootedness" and pure identity. These images show the significant difference which constitutes what both the English sheikh and the Yemeni gentleman really were and what they have become. This demonstrates that they are in the "process of becoming". They are the subject to the continuous play of history, culture and power as Stuart Hall argues about the construction of diasporic identities in his article, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora".

Hence, to put in John Mcleod's words, it is difficult to form "roots" but rather "routes"/ru:t/ since identity is not essential essence, not fixed, but rather "flux". Mcleod writes it is important to realize that the possibility engendered by rethinking identity in terms of fluidity and hybridity (routes rather than roots) have the propensity to alter the ways in which identities are formed for all people in all location, not just those who are constructed as 'diaspora communities'. (George Robertson, 1994, pp101-102)

The ending scene is so important that Tim Smith talks about the possibility of becoming a Muslim and establishing a family in Yemen. Bin Hirsi hold a comparison between the complexity of the "magnetic west," to use Hirsi's words, and the simplicity of Yemen, stating that Yemen "is all about giving and appreciating, it is about selflessness and finding happiness in the simplest of things". The in-betweenness of Bin Hirsi is revealed very clearly especially when he states, "I know now who I am and what I am, where I belong is no longer relevant, may be that is because I don't need to belong anywhere, or perhaps I belong everywhere."

Works Cited:

[1]George Robert ,Travelers’ Tales : Narratives of Home and Displacement (London: New York, 1994), p.94.

[2] John Mcleod, Beginning Postcolonialism (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2000),p.210

[3] Homi Bhabha, “The World and the Home.” in The Social Text :Third World Postcolonial Issues (Duke University Press: 1992), p. 141.

[4] Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 5.