MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | PERSONHOOD | FALL 2023

Barzakh as a Paradigm for Life

A. George Bajalia • Wesleyan University 

September 25th @ 6pm • Russell House  

In the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar lies an underwater isthmus known as the Camarinal Sill. This sill separates the high salinity water of the Mediterranean Sea from the less saline-dense Atlantic Ocean and allows these waters to flow in two different directions at two different underwater altitudes. This threshold between seas is known as al-barzakh in Tangier. In Islamic eschatology, al-barzakh is the separation between life and the Hereafter. In the Quran, this time is likened to the productive firmament that separates salt and sweet water, two types of seas, just as the Camarinal Sill. In the borderlands of northern Morocco, West African im/migrants use phrases like "doing al-barzakh" to describe the temporal stance of waiting in Tangier before continuing their journeys to Europe. How is this notion viable as a paradigm for ongoing life, and not just an ephemeral in-between limited to liminal periods between border crossings?

Personhood
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