The (Un)homely and Migratory Literature in Alia Yunis’s The Night Counter

The concept of home carries with itself an emotional and secure weight which usually gives one a sense of belonging and stability; however, for the migrant or the colonized subject the world is “unhomely”. Using the theories of Homi K. Bhabha concerning the unhomely, the present research attempts to focus on the dislocated state experienced by Fatima, the protagonist-narrator, in Alia Yunis’s novel, The Night Counter (2009), and the plurality that comes with being caught in the space of unhomely. In this research, the major question is that is there hierarchal privileges in cultural hybridity or not? Bhabha holds that hybridity is free from hierarchal privileges; while attesting to the wide range of practicality Bhabha's concept of unhomely enjoys in regard to the postcolonial diasporic communities, the researcher argues that there are such cases, as that of Fatima, in which the migrant manages to move beyond his or her geographical displacement and live a fully articulated cultural life in a Eurocentric culture via recourse to his or her native religio-cultural heritage. This proves the priority of one culture over the other rather than its absence as Bhabha claims since the passage of years do not prevent Fatima from following her native culture.