Abstract :
This article discusses some aspects of the ‘problem of identity’ explored in the novel
al-Rı¯sh (1990) by the Syrian-born Kurdish writer Salı¯m Baraka¯t (b. 1951), against the
background of the typology of history suggested in Bernard Lewis’s History: remembered,
recovered, invented (1975). As a member of a minority community denied their full
cultural and political rights, Baraka¯t is arguably particularly sensitive both to the
constructed nature of history and identity, and to how the processes of remembering,
discovering/recovering and inventing work. The article presents a detailed analysis of
al-Rı¯sh, concluding that the ‘problem of identity’ is never solved in the work: rather, the
novel presents us with an array of partly conflicting, partly complementary identities,
while the characters remain caught in a quest for a stable identity that disintegrates like a
mirage as they approach it.
