“As much as I belong”: Space, Affect, and Identity in Isabella Hammad’s The Parisian

Atmosphere, as theorized by Gernot Böhme (1993), has both mental and physical connotations, connecting people and places in mutually constitutive and transformative relations. Investigated from the aspect of emotional geography’s concern with the spatiality of emotions (Davidson et al. 2007), the atmosphere of places and spaces may be inextricably linked to bodily experience, affect, and affective human relationships, and may play a vital part in one’s sense of belonging and self.  With a specific focus on these interconnections, my paper offers a close reading of Isabella Hammad’s debut novel, The Parisian or Al-Barisi: A Novel (2019), mapping the protagonist, Midhat Kamal’s emotional geographies through his physical journey from Nablus to Montpellier, Paris, and back, as well as his concomitant journey of the self from immigrant to flâneur, tourist to “the Parisian.” I shall argue that the protagonist’s bodily and lived experience and the atmosphere of the places/spaces he inhabits greatly determine his affective relationships, as well as his sense of home, belonging, and self, contributing to his identity (re-)construction as a transnational subject and creating the emotional geographies of his life.