‘Till that place become(s) yours’: narrativising the Gulf phenomenon in the novels of Benyamin

The paper attempts to examine the literary modes and narrative strategies in Benyamin's Goat Days, Jasmine Days, and Al-Arabian Novel Factory to understand the phenomenon of migration to the ‘Gulf.’ These novels will be explored through a framework grounded in ‘plurality’ that examines identities as ‘embodied’ experiences of human subjects to understand the articulation and silence of migration as a phenomenological experience expressed through language. Instead of fitting literary texts into theoretical categories to arrive at generalised conceptions of singular human experiences, the paper explores how literature attempts to ‘understand’ human emotions rather than uncover ‘facts’.