Self and Other between the Lost and the Hoped-for in the Narrative Imaginary of Khawla Hamdi’s Novel Ayna al-Mafar

Abstract

This study explores how Ayna al-Mafar by Khawla Hamdi constructs a fragmented self through the shifting relationship between Self and Other, and how the narrative imaginary mediates this tension between the lost and the hoped-for. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic framework in Oneself as Another and his notion of narrative identity, the research argues that narrative functions as an active strategy to rescue the self from existential rupture and reorient it toward ethical coherence. The narrating self, Layla, is read as a “wounded cogito,” whose discovery of the lost (her twin Hanan and the absent father) triggers a quest for the hoped-for forms of belonging and completeness. The study shows that the Other, in its historical and social dimensions, is a necessary condition for the self’s fulfilment and operates as an intimate alterity that must be interpreted and integrated. By mobilizing key binaries—past/present, homeland/exile—and temporal shifts through analepsis, the novel organizes inner chaos and culminates in a moment of catharsis that empowers Layla to leave her liminal state and make a conscious, decisive choice, asserting that a coherent self is inherently a choosing self.