The Dialectic of the Homeland Concept between Place and Trans-Place in Marafi’ al-Hubb al-Sab’ah (The Seven Love Ports)

Authors
Raziyeh Kargar 1
Mohsen Seifi 2
Rouhollah Siyadi Nejad 2
1 PhD candidate in Arabic literature of Kashan University, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, kashan, Iran
2 Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, Kashan University, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, kashan, Iran
Abstract
Migration has seen significant growth in recent decades. Despite the diversity of motivations, origins, and host countries, this phenomenon possesses recurring elements worthy of study, which has compelled researchers in various fields to examine these recurring elements from the perspectives of different disciplines, including literature. Consequently, in recent decades, an academic branch of literature known as “diaspora literature” has emerged, which studies the poetic and prose works of expatriate poets and writers as a genre of literature. The concept of homeland is of paramount importance in this literary genre, and diaspora scholars hold various viewpoints on this concept. This concept has recently expanded beyond the homeland-host society binary. The diasporic actor can re-represent the concept of homeland in a trans-local space through the manifestations of the host country, particularly religious manifestations, which have a high capacity for embracing the concept of translocality. This study examines the concept of homeland in the novel Marafi’ al-Hubb al-Sab’ah (The Seven Love Ports) by Ali Al-Qasimi, using a descriptive-analytical method. Ali Al-Qasimi (1942), an Iraqi writer living in Morocco, presents a distinct and unique perspective on homeland in his novel Marafi’ al-Hubb al-Sab’ah (2012), which researchers have not yet explored from this angle. Through the viewpoint of Salim, the story’s protagonist, he opens a new window onto the concept of searching for a homeland. In the stage of self-as-homeland and the other-as-foreign-country, he compares various aspects of different countries with his homeland in his quest for the meaning of homeland. However, he still cannot find his lost paradise in exile. When he contracts the “anguish of homeland” (nostalgia) in America, he realizes that as a diasporic actor, he must satisfy the desire for tawtin (settling/putting down roots) rather than yearning for a specific geographical homeland. Therefore, he travels to Morocco because Morocco, as an Arab-Islamic country, helps him fulfill his sense of belonging to a homeland, allowing him to find the concept of homeland within another geography. Among the most important findings of this research is that the search for the concept of homeland manifests in various emotional relationships in different ways, and the representation of this concept is found in the existence of a woman—in a place beyond a physical location—finding the ideal city (utopia) within her.
Keywords
diaspora literature
Arabic Narratology
Ali Al-Qasimi
Marafi’ al-Hubb al-Sab’ah
Translocality
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Studies in the Arabic Geosciences
Volume 7, Issue 3 - Serial Number 20
Winter 2026
Pages 103-123