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即将作别埃及，福楼拜感到心烦意乱。“何时我才能再见到棕榈树？何时我才能再次骑上单峰驼……”他黯然自问，而这以后，毕其一生他都只是在梦、想之中频频眷顾这个国度。1880年，福楼拜溘然辞世。在临终的前几天，他还对他的侄女卡罗琳说：“两周来，我一直都盼着能看到蓝天下傲立的棕榈树，盼着能听到光塔顶上鹳雀咂嘴的声音。”

When the time came to leave Egypt, Flaubert was distraught. 'When will I see a palm tree again? When will I climb on a dromedary again? … ' he asked, and for the rest of his life, he was to return constantly to the country in his mind. A few days before his death in 1880, he told his niece Caroline: 'For the past two weeks I have been gripped by the longing to see a palm-tree standing out against a blue sky, and to hear a stork clacking its beak at the top of a minaret.'

福楼拜与埃及的一世情缘似乎在鼓动我们珍视，并加深我们对某些国家的迷恋。从年少时起，福楼拜就坚持认为自己不是法国人。他对自己的国家和自己的国民的憎恶是如此之深，以至于他的法国公民的身份近乎是一种嘲讽。他也因此提出一种新的方法来确定一个人的国籍：不是按照一个人的出生之地，亦非依据他家庭的归属来决定其国籍；一个人的国籍因取决于他所喜爱的地方。（对他而言，把这个尚不确定的概念从“喜欢的地方”延伸到“性别”和“种族”也许更合逻辑；他曾经在某个场合宣称，不可以貌取人，他其实是一个女人、一只骆驼和一只熊。“我想给自己买一只漂亮的熊，我说的是画上的熊，把它装裱好，挂在我的卧室里，并在画的下面写上‘古斯塔夫·福楼拜的画像’，以此来表明我的道德取向和社交习惯。”）

Flaubert's lifelong relationship with Egypt seems like an invitation to deepen and respect our attraction to certain countries. From his adolescence onwards, Flaubert insisted that he was not French. His hatred of his country and its people was so profound, it made a mockery of his civil status. And hence he proposed a new way of ascribing nationality: not according to the country one was born in or to which one's family belonged, but according to the places to which one was attracted. (It was only logical for him to extend this more flexible concept of identity to gender and species and for him to declare on occasion that, contrary to appearances, he was in truth a woman, a camel and a bear. 'I want to buy myself a beautiful bear, a painting of one, frame it and hang it in my bedroom, with written beneath it Portrait of Gustave Flaubert to suggest my moral disposition and social habits.')

还在学生时代，福楼拜刚从科西嘉度假回家，就在一封信里第一次表达了他是属于法国以外的另一个地方的想法：“回到这个鬼国家，我感到很恶心，这里你常能看到太阳悬在天上，像是一颗钻石镶在猪的屁股上。我才不管什么‘诺曼底族’和‘可爱的法兰西’……我想一定是风将我吹到这个泥淖之邦；我敢肯定我生在别处——我一直都有一种对飘香的海岸和蔚蓝的大海的感觉，像是记忆，或者说是直觉。我生来本是交趾支那的皇帝，吸着100英尺长的烟管，娶有6000名妻妾，还有1400个娈童，拥有努米底亚的好马和大理石铺成的水池，还佩戴着短弯刀，可以随时用它们割下那些我认为长得难看的人的头颅……”

Flaubert's first development of the idea that he belonged somewhere other than France came in a letter written as a schoolboy on his return from a holiday in Corsica: 'I'm disgusted to be back in this damned country where you see the sun in the sky about as often as a diamond in a pig's arse. I don't give a shit for Normandy and la belle France … I think I must have been transplanted by the winds to this land of mud; surely I was born elsewhere-I've always had what seem like memories or intuitions of perfumed shores and blue seas. I was born to be the emperor of Cochin-China, to smoke 100-foot pipes, to have 6,000 wives and 1,400 catamites, scimitars to slice off heads I don't like the look of, Numidian horses, marble pools … '

找个地方来替代“可爱的法兰西”也许不切实际，但这封信里所潜含的要旨，即是风将他吹到这个国家的信念在他长大成人后仍被重复提及，并得到了更合理的解释。埃及之旅结束后，福楼拜试图向路易斯·科莱（“我的苏丹”）解释他的国家身份的理论（但与种族和性别无涉）：“至于说祖国，也就是可以在地图上找到的、用红色或蓝色界线分隔出来的一小块地方，这种观念是不对的。对我来说，祖国是我热爱的国度，换言之，是一个给我梦想，让我舒畅的国度。在我身上，中国人的特性并不比法国人的特性少，而我们战胜了阿拉伯世界的事实并不能让我高兴，相反，我为阿拉伯世界的失败而悲伤。我热爱那些粗犷、韧毅、刚强的国民——他们是最后的原始人。中午，他们躺在骆驼肚皮下的阴凉里，一边吸着长长的烟管，一边取笑我们所谓的优秀文明，他们的取笑让‘优秀文明’里的人震怒不已……”

The alternative to la belle France may have been impractical, but the underlying principle of the letter, the belief that he had been 'transplanted by the winds', was to find repeated and more reasoned expression in his maturity. On his return from Egypt, Flaubert attempted to explain his theory of national identity (but not of species or gender) to Louise Colet ('my sultan'): 'As for the idea of a native country, that is to say, of a certain bit of ground traced out on a map and separated from others by a red or blue line: no. My native country is for me the country that I love, that is, the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well. I am as much Chinese as French, and I don't rejoice about our victories over the Arabs because I'm saddened by their defeats. I love those harsh, enduring, hardy people, the last of the primitives, who at midday, lie down in the shade under the bellies of their camels, and while smoking their chibouks, poke fun at our good civilization, which quivers with rage about it … '

路易斯在回复中表示，把福楼拜视为中国人或阿拉伯人是荒谬的。几天后，我们的小说家在给路易斯的回信中作了回应，坚持和强调了自己的立场，并显得有些不耐烦：“与其说我是现代人，不如说我是古代人；与其说我是法国人，不如说我是中国人。祖国的观念，亦即一个人必须生活在地图上用红色或蓝色所标示的一小块土地上，并且仇恨那些生活在用绿色或黑色标示的地块上的人们，在我看来，这是狭隘、蒙昧和极端愚蠢的。我是所有活着的生物的兄弟，是人的兄弟，同样地，也是长颈鹿和鳄鱼的兄弟。”

Louise replied that she found it absurd to think of Flaubert as being either Chinese or Arab, and so, in a letter a few days later, the novelist returned to the charge with greater emphasis and irritation: 'I'm no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid. I am a soul brother to everything that lives, to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man.'

我们，所有的人，都是因为风而四散各地，然后在一个国家出生，我们无法选择自己的出生之地；但是，和福楼拜一样，我们长大成人后，都有依据内心的忠诚来想象性地重造我们的国家身份的自由。如果我们厌烦了自己正式的国籍（在福楼拜的《成见词典》中，“法国”的解释是“看着旺多姆纪念碑，人们一定会因为自己是法国人而无比自豪”），我们可以回复到真正的自我，不再是诺曼底人，而更像是一个贝都因人 [15] ，在干热的南风中快乐地骑着骆驼，坐在快餐店里用餐，毫不忌讳身旁有驴子拉屎，也乐于参与爱德华·莱恩所谓的“淫秽而放肆的谈话”。

We have all, without choosing, been scattered at birth by the wind on to a country, but, like Flaubert, we are in adulthood granted the freedom imaginatively to re-create our identity in line with our true allegiances. When weary with our official nationality (from Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas : FRENCH 'How proud one is to be French when one looks at the Colonne Vendôme'), we may withdraw to the parts of ourselves that are more bedouin than Normand, that delight in riding on a camel through a khamsin, in sitting in cafés beside shitting donkeys and in engaging in what Edward Lane called 'licentious conversation'.

有人问苏格拉底他从哪里来，苏格拉底回答说，他来自世界而非雅典。福楼拜生于鲁昂（在他年轻时的记述中，鲁昂有如地狱，在那里，中规中矩的公民们在星期天因为太过无聊，只好“可笑地手淫”），但他的另一面，阿布·尚纳卜，胡子之父，也许会回答说，他，福楼拜，也有理由属于埃及。

When he was asked where he came from, Socrates said not from Athens but from the world. Flaubert was from Rouen (in his youthful account, a place drowning in 'merde' and where the good citizens 'wank themselves silly' on a Sunday from boredom), and yet Abu-Chanab, the Father of the Moustache, might have answered, perhaps a little from Egypt too.