Analysis of place belonging in the novel “Enni ashtaqho elayk” by Sana Abou Sharar

Sense of belonging of a person to an emotional and meaningful place makes that place valuable and distinctly interesting for him or her. This sense is associated with psychological, physical, and even social contexts. So far, most pieces of research on fictional locations have been on descriptive aspects, but dealing with a location in the light of sense of belonging justifies various psychological, emotional, and physical attachments of the characters and their mutual engagement with the story setting. In this regard, the text goes away from being a mere description of a place. The place in the novel “Enni ashtaqho elayk” has a very colorful meaning for Abou Sharar. The corresponding descriptions are based on the approach of environmental psychology that focuses on the place and its relationship with the individual. This fictional phenomenon can be analyzed in such a way so as to indicate the artistic features of the location in the story. This research seeks to explore the formation of a sense of belonging to place in the novel by a descriptive method. The sense is so strong that the characters of the story cannot feel alive without it. From the psychological point of view, there are three dimensions of sense of belonging found in the story including interpersonal and spatial and structural. Of these, the spatial dimension better accounts for the formation of the sense of belonging to the place.