ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the motif of greening in contemporary Arabic literature by giving selected examples of how the motif carries with it a regenerative subtext and a critique of the present collapse of environmental health. The socioeconomic structure of the Arab World until recently has been based on rural village life and desert oases, with farming as a major source of livelihood, thus making green emblematic of growth and life-giving forces. There has been no shortage of works on the environment in recent years in Egypt and the Arab world as long as the question is social, political, or anthropological. Recent works in prose and poetry deploy or invoke mythic motifs of greening, literally and metaphorically, to point to degradation of the environment or/and the hope for a greener future. A country like Ireland evokes greenness; in fact it is referred to as the Emerald Island. The precolonial mythic motifs are submerged in postcolonial discourse.
