ABSTRACT
In the previous chapters, we have seen various examples of how spatial representations are manipulated to convey a development of personalities and an expansion of the Ego in space within a narrative logic. It is clear, however, that the deployment of individuality and the shaping of individual visions of the world are always related to societies and communities. The refusal of Qamar al-Zama-n to marry in accordance with his father’s wishes is not only an act of revolt marking his ‘birth’ as an individual, it also threatens the very survival of a dynasty and a community. The purport of the story is not only an interest in the Werdegang of one individual, it is the individual’s role in the context of social relations and the stability of the society as a whole that are at stake. In the end the balance is restored when the hero returns home, bringing a new spatial organization of the world in harmony with the requirements of the conventions of his society. In the words of Steven Hutchinson: ‘More and more, the way out leads back home, losses are restored, wrongs are righted, the youth lost to society find themselves in others and return transformed and ready to renew the social order. [...] The journey in these novels circumvents and escapes social institutions only to reaffirm them’.1
