Reclaming Identity through Communal Voice: Narrating Self-Recognition in Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies

Abstract

This study provides a postcolonial narratological analysis of The Kindness of Enemies to explore different layers of identity formation for Muslim immigrants. The novel chronicles the dilemmas Natasha, a Muslim professor of history that teaches at a Scottish university and studies Imam Shamil’s jihad, experiences in maintaining an independent sense of identity far from a Westernized mindset. A stylistic axis whereby the author mirrors this complexity is the simultaneous utilization of the first-person verbatim narrative of Natasha and the third-person omniscient historical narrative of Shamil with three distinct focalizers. Such structure highlights the significance of spaciotemporality, narrator, focalizer, and communal voice. The study pinpoints that both parts of the novel are narrated by a single narrator (Natasha). As her supposedly assimilated identity of an exemplary university lecturer is tarnished, she realizes the futility of hybridity that has left her in state of adrift-ness. Narrating historical events through the focalization of three imperialized characters, she becomes the communal voice of those whose identity is besmeared by imperialism and those who attempt to resist, which in turn allows her to exercise agency.