Definition: Guest
Professor Katie Logan
Arab Literary Travels
Due Date: 2/10/2016
Guest – D’aiif
What does it mean to be a guest? Is it something someone looks forward to in life? Or dreads? Do you feel more comfort when you are the guest or the host? Because of my Arab roots, I immediately think of hospitality when I think of a guest. I reflect on my childhood, when my family found out we were having guests over the coming week, my father would rush to the market to get the freshest meats, while my mother would tidy up the house until it was spotless. My family had to make sure that our guests felt the warmest welcome and that they were satisfied in every way possible.
In Arab culture, the host is very proud of hospitality and must be kareem and go out of their way to make everything perfect for the D’aiif. In Margaret Nydell’s, Understanding Arabs: A Contemporary Guide to Arab Society, she quotes an Arab woman giving a description of this hospitality, and the woman states, “For Arabs, hospitality is at the heart of who we are. How well one treats his guests is a direct measurement of what kind of a person he or she is. Hospitality is among the most highly admired of virtues” (Nydell 133). Thus, it is easy to see how it can be quite insulting to not be treated with the most gratifying hello when arriving somewhere. Because of the way Arabs have learned to treat their guests, they expect to be treated the same.
When comparing this connotation of what it means to be a guest in the Arab world to the circumstances that many Arab refugees are in today, it can show how these horrible conditions they’re living in are even worse in their hearts than it is from the western eye. When these people fled from their homes, they are potentially guests in every new nation they attempt to enter, however, many of their hosts are rejecting them. If not rejected, then they are definitely not being treated with the hospitality and welcoming that they usually associate with being a guest. They are not feeling at ease and comfortable. They have to adapt and learn about a completely foreign place with no one to hold their hand.
In Lisa Marchi’s article, “Ghosts, Guests, Hosts: Rethinking ‘Illegal’ Migration and Hospitality Through Arab Diasporic Literature,” Marchi takes the works of contemporary Arab diasporic writers as a starting point to explore the relationship between migration and hospitality. One way that Marchi defines the term, guest, is based on a person’s mother tongue in comparison to the language that they write and speak in present day. When reflecting on this, one could ask if this means that a foreigner will always be a guest? If this is the case, then it contradicts the Arab idea of hospitality, because it’s not realistic for the host to always go out of their way and drop everything for the guest, after all, part of the significance of a guest is that they rarely visit.
Because of my upbringing, I will always define a guest with this idea of hospitality in mind and I don’t think that a guest needs an invitation to come over. Regardless of the situation, I believe a guest should always feel welcome by their host, especially when the guest is put in unfortunate circumstances and has no choice but to ask the host for an invitation. I am aware of the difficulty that my definition can bring to countries that are worried about hosting foreign guests, but if the host tries to put trust for the sake of humankind, I believe the guest can slowly transition out of this stage and eventually become a crucial part of the community.
Works Cited
Marchi, Lisa. “Ghosts, Guests, Hosts: Rethinking “illegal” Migration and Hospitality Through Arab Diasporic Literature”. Comparative Literature Studies 51.4 (2014): 603–626. Web...
Nydell, Margaret. Understanding Arabs : A Contemporary Guide to Arab Society. Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2012. Ebook Library. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.