Imaginaries of the north and south in three Egyptian plays

This chapter explores how the ideas of the north and south are articulated in Egyptian theatre. It addresses the issue of contested temporalities and threatened territorialities in three openly anti-imperialist plays, namely, Saad Eldin Wahba’s El Masameer (1967) [Nails], Mahdy Youssef and Mohamed Sobhi’s Mama Amrika (1998) [Mother America!], and Lenin El-Ramly’s Bel Araby el Faseeh (1992) [In Plain Arabic]. The chapter identifies the spatial positions constructed and imagined in the plays, in order to explore the polemic power of that positionality. It argues that through a divided paradigm, the postcolonial subject in all three plays looks at the north as a place to be dreamed of, as a potential friend and ally. This is complicated by the question of land and territory and brings about nostalgia to a lost past and a deep sense of injustice.