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Jaime Puente

ENG 3340

Dr. Murray

May 2, 2010

Silence: The Gap and the Bridge of Modernity in Cities of Salt

Abdelrahman Munif's novel Cities of Salt (1989) is a look at the problems people

encounter when they are confronted with the abrupt change of capitalist development. Set in the

deserts of pre-modern Saudi Arabia, Munif crafts a narrative of a nomadic tribe that is untouched

by the ruckus of Western economic and technological advances. In Cities of Salt there are

moments of silence that are links to the pre-modern ways of the desert because they represent a

method of communication that transcends the superficial constructions of language in modern

culture. In these moments of vocal absence, the characters in Munif's novel are able to resist the

forces of development. The novel is ripe with the production, and necessary destruction, of

industry that accompanied the discovery of crude oil beneath what we now know as Saudi

Arabia in the 1930s. The historical setting is crucial to Munif's novel because the hunt for oil by

Western companies thrust the nomadic, tribal people of the Arabian Peninsula into a whirlwind

of modernization. The author uses this dynamic to illustrate the underlying forces of alienation

and commodification that are indispensable to an emerging capitalist culture. Miteb al-Hathal,

the patriarch of Wadi al-Uyoun, is confronted with changes being brought to his home and is

unable to use his words to describe or analyze the events going on around him, and because of

this, silence--through absence--is the only way to respond.

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Miteb's silence and disappearance are representative of the loss that the people of the

Wadi experience, and it becomes a signifier of imposed modernization because even those who

are supportive of such progress are unable to use their language to navigate the new

circumstances of their lives. Daham al-Muzil serves as a prime example of this because, as an

enthusiastic worker for Ibn Rashed, the Arabic-speaking person, rather than becoming free is

imprisoned by his lack of technological understanding and inability to adequately communicate

between the Arabic coworkers, and the American, English-speaking employers. The dramatic

change from a nomadic, Bedouin culture to one that is not only modernized, but also

Westernized creates as many problems as it attempts to solve. It is important to understand the

complexities of modernization in order to parse out the critiques Munif makes in the novel, and

social scientist David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity (1990) is an excellent place to

start unraveling the tangled web of meaning of the broadly used term, modernity.

It is important to know that while David Harvey's work is focused on giving the reader a

more nuanced and in-depth look at what he refers to as "the condition of postmodernity," he also

gives a detailed and researched explanation of its theoretical sibling, modernity, in the chapter,

"Modernity and Modernism." Drawing on the poet and philosopher Baudelaire (whom some

might call the father of modernity), Harvey places the thirst for development at the center of

modernity because it is the process of making something new while at the same time discarding

the past as irrelevant. Modernity "can have no respect even for its own past, let alone that of any

premodern social order" and because of this, there is no need to look upon objects or histories

with any form of nostalgia (11). The modern age is characterized by the continuous tearing down
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and rebuilding of structures, ways of life, and political networks, so that the "universal, eternal,

and the immutable qualities of humanity [can] be revealed" (12). This statement refrences

Baudelaire and reveals a paradox in this conception of modernism because one of its major

tenets is to step away from the confines of tradition, yet seeks to retain certain elements of the

past. Harvey uses this discussion to point out a key problem associated with the so-called

modernist project, and that is the danger of the modernist to develop him/ herself out of

existence.

Being open to the radical change of one's self, or way of life, is a key characteristic of the

modernist ethic. Harvey draws on the Communist Manifesto to further explain the tendency of

the modern person to willingly acquiesce their way of life for the creation of a something new.

Associating the advent of modernism with the rise of capitalism, Harvey asserts that the

"transformation in the experience of space and place is matched by revolutions in the time

dimensions. . . that ensure. . . a permanently revolutionary and disruptive force," (107). The

thrust of modernity is constant, and once in set in motion, the machines of progress cannot be

stopped just as the juggernaut of capitalism is unstoppable. The two ways of being are so jarring

that they took several hundred years to fully develop in Europe and the United States. The pre-

modern people of the two Western worlds had ample amounts of time to learn new ways of

being -- and new ways of understanding their world. Miteb al-Hathal and the people of Wadi al-

Uyoun, however, where given a handful of months.

When modernism and modernity arrive to the the desert oasis of Wadi al-Uyoun, the

people there have been living in the same manner as those who lived generations before them.
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The tribal and nomadic people survived by living life according the laws of the land to which

they called home. Miteb al-Hathal, Munif tells us, has a "special relationship, a rare passion"

with Wadi al-Uyoun that is based his ability to hear and communicate with the natural elements

that surround him. Because life in the desert is so dependent upon water and its saving grace,

people such as Miteb were invaluable to the community. When the Americans arrive in the Wadi

and start poking around, the strong-willed man of ancient ways resists the pressure to submit to

the destruction of his entire world. Even though Miteb is fully aware of the circumstances being

placed at his feet, he firms his grip, saying to the Emir, "As you know, your Excellency, . . .

money is not everything in this world. More important are honor, ethics, and our traditions,"

(Munif 85). If modernity's instructions are to raze before one can build, Miteb would have

nothing to do with it. Munif begins to carve out the crevice that will soon drive a wedge between

Miteb and his home because the man of old ways refuses to be forced into modernity.

Miteb al-Hathal is part of a long line of strong-willed patriarchs, and his refusal to shed

his life as the ancestral steward of the Wadi is jarring to those around him. Even more so, is the

self-imposed silence that he uses to make his point. When he is turned away by the Emir, and the

enthusiastic modernist Ibn Rashed, Miteb realizes that his words are no longer useful to the

people he once knew because, "No one understood him or stood by him, and nothing he could

say would do any good" (99). The divide between Miteb and his people was already too great to

overcome. In an almost prophetic manner, Miteb raged against the destruction of his ancestral

home by going into exile. Rather than try to rationalize and justify the uprooting of their entire

lives, he "looked quietly through his tears at the whole wadi and shook his head," (107). There
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was nothing to say or do. Miteb, unlike the others in his tribe, realized that he had not just been

defeated, but decimated. Everything he understood about the world around him had been pulled

out of the sand by the monstrous yellow machines, and the words and phrases that were once

able to tell the stories of generations past could no longer be used to describe what was going

on.

Miteb's disappearance, like the destruction of the wadi, is indicative of the modernizing

forces at work in the desert. An article published in the journal Economic Geography in July of

1949, describes the rapid and extreme changes occurring in the Saudi Arabian desert. Writing at

the time, author George Stevens says, "Fourteen years ago, no one surmised that oil existed

beneath the hot sands of Arabia. Today 58 wells produce an average of nearly 300,000 barrels

daily. A 140 million dollar industry now exists in a region recently a wasteland," (225). While

Munif's novel is a work of fiction, the subject matter is based on real events, and Stevens's

description of the oil industry reveals how fast the industrialization of the desert was, and exactly

how much tolerance there was for Miteb's traditions. The Americans who ripped the trees from

Wadi al-Uyoun, and pumped oil from the ground, were taking more than petroleum, they were

taking the blood from the Bedouin people by not even acknowledging their existence. Miteb's

silence, and ultimate disappearance, are Munif's way of articulating the almost instantaneous loss

of an entire culture.

Long after Miteb leaves the wadi, and is lost to the unknown desert, the remnants of his

culture remain intact through the lives of his children. Fawaz al-Hathal, a young and eager son of

Miteb made his way to the port city of Harran to work for Ibn Rashed and the American oil
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prospectors. In a scene that exemplifies his fathers resolve, and the lasting elements of the old

ways, Fawaz is chosen to be the mediating voice between Naim, the American's translator, and

his co-workers. The Arabic workers had just suffered the humiliation of not understanding the

directions being given by Naim, and in a meeting Fawaz is skeptical of the translator's words,

and he practices "one of the lessons [he] had learned from his father, . . . to look in the face of

whomever he was talking to, for when a man's tongue was silent his eyes spoke," (204). Relying

on the tools his father provided him, the ability to read, write, and do arithmetic, but even more

importantly the ability to assess through silence the intentions of another person, Fawaz begins to

negotiate his a new role for the men of the al-Hathal klan. Rather than being the leader of a

nomadic, pre-modern tribe, Fawaz al-Hathal assumes the role of a leader among his people as

they are drug along the path of industrialization. Harnessing the silence that his father was able

to use only in the most extreme manner, the young leader begins to bridge the gap that gutted

Miteb and Wadi al-Uyoun.

Progress is relative. For the people of Wadi al-Uyoun, and Miteb especially, the

industrialization of the desert was not progress, but a regression to a state of technological

infancy. Miteb al-Hathal was not able to reorganize his thinking structure to embrace the utterly

foreign machines and events going on around him. His ties to the land were so deeply ingrained

in his being that when the trees of Wadi al-Uyoun were destroyed, he was destroyed with them.

The disappearance of both the place and the man are indicative of the unyielding drive for

modernization that David Harvey discusses because once set in motion the quest for more and

more production, such as oil in Munif's novel, leaves no room for the traditions of a non-
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industrial society. It is, however, through moments of silence that the ties to the al-Hathal

ancestry are kept alive. The son of Miteb al-Hathal, Fawaz is a clear example of the power

silence can still have in the modern age. Unlike his father who chose to express his silence

through self-imposed exile, the young head-strong Fawaz uses the tools of the desert to negotiate

the ever-changing conditions of the oil industry. Despite the seemingly unending banter from the

likes of Ibn Rashed, Fawaz used his reservations to quietly assess the situations he found himself

in and was ultimately able to do what his father was not, carry the family line into the modern

age.
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Works Cited

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Print.

Munfi, Abdelrahman. Cities of Salt. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print

Stevens, George, Jr. "Saudi Arabia's Petroleum Resources," Economic Geography 25.3 (1949):

216-225. Print