“불명예는 피로만 씻어낼 수 있다”

“Dishonour can only be wiped off with blood”: Reclaiming a Nomadic Name and Homecoming towards Death in My Name is Salma by Fadia Faqir

Following Rosi Braidotti s notions of nomadic theory and feminist subjectivity, this paper explores Jordanian British writer Fadia Faqir’s My Name is Salma. This postmodern, feminist, nonlinear narrative revolves around the story of a Muslim woman who is pregnant out of wedlock and sentenced to death by her traditional Bedouin tribe and family. In the face of this threat of honor killing, leaving her baby behind, Salma is smuggled to a convent in Lebanon and then exiled to Exeter, Britain. There, as a migrant Muslim, Salma is renamed Sally and goes through a process of making a new identity. Nonetheless, Salma/Sally is not only haunted by past experiences in the old country, the Levant, but also suffers cultural assimilation, racial discrimination, and religious conflict in the new country, Britain. Eventually, as a British citizen, Sally returns home and reclaims her lost daughter Layla, synonymous with her lost name in the Levant; as a Bedouin Muslim, Salma cannot escape her cultural fate and is shot by her brother in the name of family honor. Considering Salma/Sally s experience in-between the East and the West, this paper focuses on her as a nomadic feminist subject - a focus on her becoming which is incomplete yet unyieldingly in its progression.