This paper deals with the concept of Al-Waṭan, or ‘the homeland’, in Arabic in The Shell by Muṣṭafā Khalifa and Men in the Sun by Ghassān Kanafānī. Analysis of how alienation from this concept has affected both Khalifa's and Kanafānī's characters is carried out through the lenses of Deleuze and Guattari's theories of rhizomatic associations and minor literature, as well as through the lens of affect theory. The paper also examines parallels between definitions of Al-Waṭan/the homeland in Ibn Manẓūr's classical (...) dictionary Lisān al-ʿArab and Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of the war machine and the apparatus of capture. (shrink)