Introduction

Transnational Identities 311
Both characters are thus engaged in transnational ways of being but at first but
do not make the deliberate choice of belonging. Indeed, Anil appears to have even
moved beyond emotional attachments to countries and national cultures altogether
and lives in the postnational space of science without any interest in being
transnational. However, both characters change their ways and set out on very
different return journeys, running towards their country of origins in Ondaatje’s
case or starting to hesitantly move in its direction in the case of Anil, which is
symbolized in a number of border crossings.
For Ondaatje, the incentive to return is a dream about his father in which he
sees him in the jungle surrounded by barking dogs (RF 21). Waking up, the
“bright bone of a dream” still lingers and has long-lasting effects on the narrator:
The noises [of the barking dogs] woke me up I sat up on the uncomfortable
sofa and I was in a jungle, hot sweating. Street lights bounced off
the snow and into the room through the hanging vines and ferns at my
friend’s window. […] Tense, not wanting to move as the heat gradually left
me, as the sweat evaporated and I became conscious again of the brittle air
outside the windows searing and howling through the streets and over the
frozen cars hunched like sheep all the way down towards Lake Ontario. It
was a new winter and I was already dreaming of Asia. (RF 21-22)
The passage is marked by strong contrasts between heat and cold which are associated
with Asia and Canada respectively and point out differences between the
countries (see also Pesch 58; Ray 41). It also locates the narrator in a symbolic
transnational space in which aspects of Asia and Canada are simultaneously present.
After all, the narrator does not remember having been in a jungle in his
dream, but in the instance of waking up he “was in a jungle” and with the vines
and ferns at the window the jungle appears to invade the Canadian winter. Places
which are geographically far apart as well as mutually exclusive elements are suddenly
united in the space of the friend’s living room.
The moment affects the narrator profoundly and functions like an epiphany
that makes him suddenly aware that these contrasts are united in himself as well.
As Joanna Saul observes, the passage shows that “[t]he here and there are in constant
dialogue, so that the often naturalized relationship between self and place is
interrogated. Ondaatje discovers that he is neither ‘Sri Lankan’ nor ‘Canadian’ in
any straightforward way” (43). I slightly disagree with her on this, however, since
the fusion of time (the father’s past), place (Sri Lanka and Canada) and contrasting
elements (fire, ice) in the familiar space of the living room of all rooms, seem to
indicate that the narrator encompasses both. The dream therefore turns into an
indicator of his transnational self, which transcends geographic spaces and national
boundaries. It is this discovery that starts the narrator’s “running” to Asia
(RF 22) and in doing this the decision to reconnect with previously neglected
aspects of his transnational identity. The passage accordingly not only marks a