ABSTRACT
Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif grew up in a culture that humanizes time and collectivizes space. Even after several decades living in England, she could not locate the familiar markers of comfort in this different environment – one that mechanizes time and individuates space. Basic principles of ecology use the language of nature and its relation to culture within a new framework. Before Islam, Arabian Arabs marked time and space by the happenings of specific events. In South Arabia, some calendars apparently were lunar, while others were lunisolar, using months based on the phases of the moon but intercalating days outside the lunar cycle to synchronize the calendar with the seasons. In central Arabia, the course of the year was charted by the position of the stars relative to the horizon at sunset or sunrise, dividing the ecliptic into twenty-eight equal parts corresponding to the location of the moon on each successive night of the month.
