The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beyg: Building a Nation Through Alienation

Abstract

Alienation is a concept that dates back to the Old Testament to define idolatry where man worships idols and kneels in front of his own creation, thus alienating himself from his potential and his true self-worth. The modern usage of the term identifies the individual as alienated and this can occur between any group of people, as long as there is some person(s) or thing(s) alienated from some other(s). In this paper, I use the concepts of self, other and alienation to look at The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beyg, a fictional travelogue in Persian, often credited with creating a national consciousness among Iranians at the beginning of the 20th century, awakening the nation to the terrible conditions of the time and making the people aware of the need for political change. The main protagonist, Ebrahim, is an expatriate Iranian, born and raised in Egypt, who loves and adores his homeland. On his first ever trip to the country, however, he is disappointed with the state of the country and goes on to create images of self and other. I identify this process in the way he projects Iran as a country against all the other countries in the world.