Abdo Shanan

Personal identity is not a stable, unequivocal, or permanent entity. In contrast, the idea of a nation demands from us a strict and immutable allegiance. The idea of a nation asks the same of all of us: to fit in, to feel as one, and to place what makes us unique under the umbrella of a shared history. The problem is that our identity is not a block of stone; it is rather a map in constant motion, made of journeys, intermingling, and roots that do not understand borders or passports.

 

The sociologist Benedict Anderson defines the nation as an imagined community. It is imagined because, regardless of actual inequalities and divisions, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship; a mental construct in which the vast majority of its members will never know, see, or hear of their fellow compatriots, yet in whose minds lives the image of their communion.

 

Dry is about people who, like Abdo Shanan, are suspended between places, identities, and expectations. It is about the silent negotiations made to belong, and the distance that remains even when one believes they have arrived.

 

Shanan was born in Algeria to an Algerian mother and a Sudanese father. When he was nine years old, his family moved to Libya, where he spent the next 18 years convincing himself he was Algerian, while his father insisted he was Sudanese. At age 28, he decided to make Algeria his home. Only then did he begin to question his sense of belonging. He felt like an island in the middle of a society he had assumed he was part of, only to realize they had less in common than he thought.

 

Dry is about all the islands the author has found over the years. People who, like him, are suspended between places, identities, and expectations. It is about the silent negotiations made to belong, and the distance that remains even when one believes they have arrived. It is about the tension of being in the middle, of being shaped by more than one place, but fully claimed by none.