AISHA’S ENCOUNTERS WITH THE OTHER AS A CONFINED/LIBERATED WOMAN CASE STUDY: SOUEIF’S AISHA IN THE RETURNING

Throughout Aisha, her first collection of short stories, Ahdaf Soueif represented Aisha, the protagonist, as conforming to the portrait of the stereotyped Arab Muslim woman as a sex-subject, submissive, and maudlin character, confining her vision to the boundaries of her cocooned self-epitomizing a self-centered vision of the world. The main queries that were probed within the following investigation are: How did Aisha’s encounters with the other incarnated mainly in her male counterpart, time and space impede her ability to understand the other, herself and the world around? How did these very encounters allow her an enlightened vision of the set forth elements to forge a new start? The current investigation attempted answers to the set forth queries throughout The Returning, the first narrative in the collection.