Ben Jelloun also uses the body of Ahmed/Zhara as an allegory of national colonization. This character’s conflict to achieve the definition or acquisition of “self” is highly indicative of those nations which seek to find their own understanding of who they are essentially in separation from the colonizing or intruding culture. However this conflict creates an unanswerable question: At what point does given identity end and true identiy begin? Ben Jelloun’s character Hajji Ahmed, the tyrannical patriarch, plays the pseudo-god who chooses to defy his given reality and manufacture his created reality (Abdel-Jaouad 36). His decision to “
make” his female child a son is indicative of the context of colonization. Just as a colonizing culture assumes ownership over a space which belongs to another, so Hajji Ahmed takes ownership over the body, mind, and surroundings of Mohammed Ahmed/Zarha thus preventing him/her from ever truly understanding him/herself. In an internal monologue, Ahmed/Zahra reflects on the duplicity of his/her existence saying, “I have small breasts…but a man’s voice…a delicate face, but my beard grows” (Ben Jelloun 119). His/Her inability to decipher which part of him/her make him a woman and which part makes her a man, allegorically describes the identity left in the colonized nation once attempts at re-identification begin.
The Body and Allegory
Ben Jelloun also uses the body of Ahmed/Zhara as an allegory of national colonization. This character’s conflict to achieve the definition or acquisition of “self” is highly indicative of those nations which seek to find their own understanding of who they are essentially in separation from the colonizing or intruding culture. However this conflict creates an unanswerable question: At what point does given identity end and true identiy begin? Ben Jelloun’s character Hajji Ahmed, the tyrannical patriarch, plays the pseudo-god who chooses to defy his given reality and manufacture his created reality (Abdel-Jaouad 36). His decision to “