Mohajirs: Metaforele migraţiei
Mohajirs: The Metaphors of Migration

Summary/Abstract: This study draws a parallel between the concepts of “metaphor”, “translation” and “immigrant”. The Arabic word “mohajir”, as it is used by Salman Rushdie in Shame, is used in the paper to underline the similarities of the word to the lexical meanings of the Latin originated term “translation” and the Greek originated term “metaphor”. It is argued here that all immigrants are translations since they have to translate themselves. All immigrants also lose some of their original meanings as they acquire new meanings as the result of migration. While their new homes give them new meanings, they still try to comply with their cultural values. However, these cultural values do not conform to their new dwelling place, which deepens their nostalgia. The present paper studies the situation of immigrants who are translated as metaphors in the novels of Salman Rushdie, Timothy Mo, and Hanif Kureishi, and argues that this narrative strategy brings new themes and literary characters into British fiction in the late twentieth century.

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