On the Exoticism of the Orient

Since my arrival to China, I have observed many similar traits that transcend the borders of what has come to identified as the Orient. These traits have been observed, imagined, and recorded by Western Orientalists. Through my readings of oriental works ranging from Gustav Flaubert to Edward Said, I have come to the conclusion that there is a intricate entanglement between fact and fiction of the Oriental world. During my readings of my part of the world and that of the Far East, which I have been trying to familiarize myself with even more, I was astounded to see that there is a truly exotic flavor to what the orient truly is. Through my literary journeys with Flaubert, Delacroix, Voltaire, Defoe, Goethe and even Pamuk, I have come to identify some sources of this multifaceted identity of the Orient that has come to intrigue some of the greatest philosophes to walk this earth.

Before divulging into my findings, I would like to make two points clear. Primarily, my investigation of the Oriental world should not be confused with Edward Said's criticism of Western stereotypes of the Arab and Muslim world, but is an embracement of the literary and artistic achievement of Western philosophers in emulating the virtues they witnessed on their travels to the region. The second point is that although I will aim to extend my investigation to reach the furthest corners of the Oriental World, from Turkey in the Far West of the Orient and China in the Far East of the Orient, my bias will tend to drift to a focus on the center of the Orient, Egypt.

It is in this spirit that I will strive to romanticize the land of the Orient by exploring the various avenues that it has led to occupied in the fantasies of Orientalists for many centuries. First and foremost, Orientalism is a result of the mutual cultural exchange between the West and East and the apprehensions each of of sides had of the other. Various artistic and literary emulations of the East have ranged from Turquerie to Chinoiserie, which respectively are imitations of Turkish and Chinese art forms in the West. I can divulge about Montesquieu's Persian Letters or Van Gogh's emulation of Japanese art, which both seem tremendously exotic to me, but instead I choose focus on land that, although dubbed oriental, doesn't seem to exotic in my eyes, mostly because of my ardent familiarization with it. Although the exotism of Egypt "as a distant land" doesn't quite appeal to me, its ancient history is one that boggles my mind. How could single land have hosted some of history's renown men and women, face so many cultural changes, influence the world and be influenced in so many ways and yet retain such a firm identity. This mere notion excites me with the exoticism of my homeland and fills me with expansive, lovely, glorious, poetic dreams of a land that seems so exotic even though I can claim right to calling it my own. These are the stimuli that exoticism have on one!

Flaubert was once quoted by characterising the orient with a single phrase:
"Long live the sun, long live the orange trees, palm trees, lotus flowers, and cool pavilions paved with marble and wood-panelled chambers that talk of love! the Orient with her burning sun, her blue skies, her golden minarets, her caravans through the sand, the tanned, olive skin of Asiatic women-the Orient!"

The imagery of this single quote is what fills my imagination like a pot filling a cask of cool mint tea on a sunny day in the desert. Reading of the orient quenches my thirst for exoticism, for the desire to continue living and traveling in oriental lands.

Now the Orient isn't just the beauty that the European romanticists depict to be, it is also the dreggy slums and backstreets of Cairo and Istanbul, but I have come to admire the dust and filth as a characteristic that defines the Orients modern day melancholic condition as Pamuk recounts in his memories of Istanbul. I could sit in the midst of the chaos in Khan El Khalili bazaar for hours on end and embrace and appreciate the shouting of the sales bakaals, the multilingual bargaining of merchants with what seem to us as exotic blonde foreigners, the Athan broadcasted above the minarets of El Huessain Mosque, the various aromas of the spice market, the colors of the various Chinese silk and Egyptian cotton garments, the moaning of donkeys, the sparkling lights of the Sufi night shows. Isn't this the colorful clamor that defines the Orient? Isn't the legendary Silk Road the bond that defines the fraternity of the Eastern cultures?

I understand that you may be wondering where this entry is going to take me... but that is another trait of the orient: the fluid, non-structured, and eclectic stream of conscious that might seem heretic to the orthodox mind. The chaos that defines the orient is the natural tendency for life to be all over the place, to be natural, free from the man-made structures and systems that we constrained the freedom of life to flow. Orientalism is the realization that life is the water that flows with volatility when shattering a glass filled with water. Tidiness and neatness disgust the orientalist as he seeks the natural tendency of life! We cannot deny that humans are not the divine, G0d-made creatures that we always envision them to be in their best light, but they are also animals that can be reckless and wild, and the Orient is the epitome of the jungle that defines the freedom for their imagination to flow. This best evident in the arts of Tunisian tiles where flowers, fruits, and nature are intricately intertwined to produce master pieces of art. Moreover, Persian poetry, which is so light and free flowing is what paints these images in words that can allow each individually to paint such imagery with his or her own imagination.

Moreover, the orient is a land where duality is defines the nature of people with an acceptance of the glorious palaces while the witness of the poor and filthy, a history of several milenia while the latest trend setting sky scrapers of the modern cities, the sexual fantasies of the harem and the purity and sacredness of religion, and so on and so forth. It is this duality that makes the Orient so bewildering to the Western mind. How could a culture have such diametrically opposite directions of aims.

To this day, the orient boggles our mind with a vast array of historical novels, films, photos, paintings, etc... Fortunately I can relive this exotic world of the orient through my readings and travels and see what remains of what truly fascinated the Western travelers that came to be known as the Orientalists. I sincerely hope that my fortune to travel and read such an expansive array of works will enlighten me and allow me to carry the torch that has shed such positive light on the Orient in what seem to be the Orient's dark times of today.