Who am I? How do I fit myself into the fabric of the world around me?

Who am I? How do I fit myself into the fabric of the world around me?

Personal discovery takes a lifetime. To be completely comfortable in the world is to become bored; mankind craves discovery. At the same time, however, to be continuously uncomfortable in the world is to be nervous; mankind craves a niche, a place to call home. To discover oneself is to locate a personal median, then to maintain the existence of that median. The journey of personal discovery then becomes that of the effort to get to the median, for life’s changes and mini-evolutions cause the median to exist in a continuous state of transformation.

It is no surprise, therefore, that within literature there exists the coming-of-age and self-discovery motif. As a result, among the first details an author addresses within a novel is the characterization of the characters within the story line. An element that is less often seen, however, is a characterization of the narrator himself embedded within the introduction or preface of the novel. The preface of the novel “Leo Africanus” by A. Maalouf, is written in the first person. It is written as a letter to a son, a personal letter. It addresses the reader directly in a way that the rest of the novel does not.

The one page preface exists as a hook, an attention grabber, and sets the tone for the rest of the novel. It sets up the knowledge that no matter what may happen in the novel, the narrator makes it through alive, with enough wits remaining to eloquently and poetically scribe about his past to a son. It sets up a preconceived knowledge of the ending that the reader does not yet know, yet strips away any fear and allows the reader to perceive the novel unmolested by fear for the narrator.

It is a reflection on part of the narrator about his own life; as though he is seeing his life clearly for the first time and still wondering and discovering who he is and why he is as he is, why he ended up where he did. It reads as a contemplation of an known end on part of the narrator, an end which he never reveals to the audience. It is akin to a meditation on the narrator’s life and pursuit of happiness. It explores the little control he had over the destinations of his life and ponders the possibility that it was all preordained: “I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages”(1).