The "Circus of Cultures" and Culture as Circus in Rafik Schami's Reise zwischen Nacht und Morgen

Nur die Erfahrung der Vergangenheit kann unsere Schritte in die Zukunft leiten. Ein Prophet, der die Vergangenheit vergißt, wird von der Zukunft vergessen.

(Rafik Schami, Der brennende Eisberg 11)

The 1990s were a decade of dramatic transitions for Germany and for Europe. The newly unified Germany was preoccupied by a wish for normalization as a nation and by the discourse of normality. This wish and discourse were shared not only by conservative groups but also by mainstream culture in general. In this discourse, the "successful" West German history between 1949 and 1989 was seen as "the 'norm' from which a united Germany might derive its identity and socio-political stability" (Taberner 1). A "normal" Germany for conservatives, however, has always meant fostering the ideas of cultural and ethnic homogeneity within Germany. This image and self-understanding have been much criticized throughout the last three decades, and especially in the 1990s, with the move of the capital to Berlin and with the political changes in the government since 1998. The new Germany of the Berlin Republic is now more inclined to define itself by ideas of multiculturalism and cultural heterogeneity than was previously possible.

The intense political debate about the new changes in Germany's immigration law in 2002 (and 2004) reflects the country's continuing social, political, and cultural struggle centred around the relationship between national identity, ethnicity, and citizenship (Eshel 259). Diverging views on crucial matters of minorities and racism in contemporary Germany, the country's Nazi past and its legacy, and Germany's national self-perception in a globalized world raise relevant and challenging questions that the country must confront for a consensus about multiculturalism that is yet to emerge. However, in the literary and artistic arena, writers of heterogeneous ethnic, national, and religious backgrounds are not only contributing to a (growing) culturally diverse literary activity but also leaving "a unique mark on the German present" (Eshel 262) by broadening the view of Germany's past, present, and future in their recent literary production.

This article examines the novel Reise zwischen Nacht und Morgen (1995) by Rafik Schami – the prize-winning and bestselling Arab-German writer and storyteller of the Federal Republic of Germany since the early 90s – in the context of the 1990s and the literary discourse on hybrid identities in a German context, transnational writing, exilic memory, and the difficult relationship and cultural mediation between the Orient and Occident, Arabs and Germans. In this novel, Schami uses images of the circus to explore alternative cultural ways of living together and living in another culture that continue to be vibrant despite attempts by official political discourse and state politics to undermine them. This analysis also investigates how Schami portrays the circus as a magical and utopian space where cultural alternatives are tested out and as a place of struggle and resistance in the face of external political difficulties, state repression, and internal challenges.

To weave his web of tales and memories, connecting Germany and a fictive Orient, Schami uses the metaphor of travel and of circus as an arena that is able to link all the elements of the story: the identity and family history of the main character, the art of narration, life in "Arabia," and the intercultural interactions between the characters from the Orient and the Occident, as in circus life, intricate and interconnected, yet dynamic and open. Schami says that the image of the circus best expresses his soul as a writer:

Ich suchte noch dringend ein Bild, das die Arbeit des Autors in der Fremde deutlich machen sollte und plötzlich fiel mir auf, daß der Circus tatsächlich eine Metapher für die Seele eines Autors in der Fremde ist. Das Wandern zwischen den Städten gleicht dem Wandern beim Schreiben zwischen den Welten und Zeiten, Kulturen und Orten.

(Der brennende Eisberg 15)

He then emphasizes how life under the circus tent is enriched and, at the same time, complicated by the different cultures that meet, work, argue, and influence each other there and how it is similar...