© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/�570064x-� �34�33� Journal of Arabic Literature 47 (�0 �6) �60-�77 brill.com/jal The Ambivalent Émigrée: Mayy Ziyādah’s Rhetoric of Nationhood Boutheina Khaldi American University of Sharjah bkhaldi@aus.edu Abstract This paper reflects on the idea of exile in relation to the fractured intellectual land- scape of identity formation as pronounced in a series of conceptualizations of home- land, nation, and nationhood in early twentieth-century Egypt. Where there is strong anti-colonial feeling and a need to forge a clear understanding of belonging, the con- ceptualization of homeland assumes paramount importance, with prominent Arab intellectuals and littérateurs like Mayy Ziyādah sharing in the ongoing discussion. Ziyādah was ambivalent toward mainstream applications of national identity at the time, not only because of her multilayered, fluid personal identity, but also because, under the impact of Enlightenment thought, she believed in world citizenry. Keywords Mayy Ziyādah – Nahḍah – identity – identitarian politics – waṭan – ambivalence – exile – Rifāʿah Rāfiʿ al-Tahṭāwī – Buṭrus al-Bustānī – Adīb Isḥāq – ʿAbdallāh al-Nadīm – Muṣṭafā Kāmil – Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid – Salāmah Mūsā In 1928, in a lecture delivered at the American University in Cairo and published in Al-Ahrām newspaper entitled “Mā hiya al-waṭaniyyah?” [What Is Nation- ness?],1 Mayy Ziyādah (1886-1941) revisits the terms “waṭan” and “waṭaniyyah.” 1  Mayy Ziyādah, Kitābāt mansiyyah, ed. Antje Ziegler (Beirut: Muʾassasat Nawfal, 2009), 82-91. This lecture was originally published in Al-Ahrām newspaper in October, 1928 and later in her book Ẓulumāt wa-ashiʿah, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Muʾassasat Nawfal, 1985), 115-121; Ziyādah dealt with the concept of waṭan in another short speech that she delivered at her house on the