Man or woman? The cross-dressed body in Rajā’ ‘Ālim’s Ḫātim

Rajā’ ‘Ālim’s novel stages the problematic body of the eponymous character, divided between male and female. Forced to cross-dress to hide a secret and live a hybrid identity, the character is established, page by page, as a metaphor for a compartmentalized society in which those who deviate from the dominant order are not tolerated. Ḫātim’s body thus creates disorder, but a disorder that fails to give rise to new identity values in the represented universe.