In a luncheon, Julie uses Ibrahim to make a statement in front of the older and more conservative generation, attempting to show how different she is from her father's generation, and what a free spirit she is to befriend someone from a different ethnic and racial background. Ironically, Julie is not aware she is being used by Ibrahim for another purpose. She also thinks her identity depends upon the appearance of her companion, rather than tak ing es action to pursue her identity on her own initiative. In other words, the constituents of her identity are superficial and free-floating.

In order to fully understand how Julie's identity is superficially constructed, the social discourse in the L.A. Cafe must be explored. Julie spends most of her time at the L.A. Cafe with a group, including whites and blacks, who chat for hours about irrelevant issues. Indeed, in a post-apartheid society, boundary-crossing between different racial groups has become easier, as Gordimer comments in an interview that most whites are more prepared now to accept the relinquishing of many privileges defined by "the construction of whiteness" (Jeyifo 923). However, closer analysis shows that the group at the cafe are just fair-weather friends. When one of them is in serious troubles, the others either view him with alarm and caution, or avoid talking about his trouble. In a word, they refuse to be deeply involved. For example, when one of them announces that he is diagnosed with AIDS, instead of showing their concerns, the others in the group start to discuss the origin of AIDS. One of them refers to AIDS as "an ancestral curse", and another who is a Buddhist makes such a comment: "meat-eaters, breakers of the code of respect for creature-life" (Gordimer 24). The indifference is also indicated in the group's attitude toward Ibrahim. Even though the group is composed of various people, including whites and blacks, all of them treat Ibrahim as "the other". They refer to him as Julie's "oriental prince", and they consider him "an element like a change in climate coming out of season, the waft of an unfamiliar temperature" (Gordimer 20), implying the exoticism they imagine they see in Ibrahim. In another situation, Julie expresses her worries about the deportation order issued to Ibrahim, yet her friends at the table hesitate to sympathize with her: "Their reactions duplicated hers when it came to surface manifestations; the others, the depths of fear and emotions, they hesitated to approach. . . ." (Gordimer 57).

The above examples depict how the group of friends deliberately distance themselves from the serious issues related to their present lives. The way they hesitate to deal with the most relevant issues at hand makes it doubtful whether any meaningful boundary-crossing between different racial backgrounds takes place. In fact, the group at the L.A. cafe seems to form an epitome of a lost generation during the transitional period in post-apartheid South Africa ; they do not wish to follow the path of their father's generation, yet they do not know exactly how to bridge the gaps between people from different racial and cultural backgrounds. The group shares no strong bonding—"whatever you do, whatever happens, hits you, mate, Bra, that's all right with me [the group's creed] . People come and go among them; so long as they remain faithful among themselves: gathered at The Table" (Gordimer 23). While their creed implies they respect one another's freedom, it also implies they reject deep involvements. Even the name " L.A. cafe" suggests a displacement of time and space. Gordimer suggests that most people walking by the cafe do not know L.A. stands for Los Angeles, and that the cafe owner confuses Los Angeles with San Francisco, which is associated with the hippies in the 1960s, thinking the name offers "an imagined life-style to habitues, matching it with their own", whereas the habitues are composed of ageing Hippies, Leftist Jews, crazed peasants, and prostitutes (5). However, Julie chooses to identify with this group at the L.A. cafe. The paradox lies in the fact that Julie identifies outwardly with her friends whose identities lack substance.

What factors, then, prompt Julie to undergo a transformation in identity and differentiate her identity from those of her friends at the L.A. cafe? Julie's relationship with Ibrahim certainly plays a major role in her transformation, which leads to a process of boundary-crossing between spaces and cultures. As this paper argues previously, mutual incomprehension constitutes their mutual attraction, and the discrepancy in their beliefs has more impacts on Julie than on Ibrahim. Julie's belief is constantly challenged by her lover. Ibrahim asks why Julie chooses those friends instead of people like her family who prefer making progress than "just talking intelligent" (Gordimer 62). After the deportation order is issued to Ibrahim, Julie reluctantly seeks out a Senior Counsel for help. Nevertheless, the Senior Counsel severely criticizes the illegality of Ibrahim's status, eradicating any hope for Ibrahim to remain in South Africa . He also implies condescendingly that Ibrahim is the wrong guy for Julie. Immediately, Julie is full of resentment towards the Senior Counsel and the upper class he represents: "the famous lawyer is one of them, her father's people . . . it doesn't help at all that he is black; he's been one of their victims, he's one of them now" (Gordimer 80).

Julie's resentment is unjustifiable in that she again ignores the fact that it is Ibrahim who breaks the immigration law in the first place, just as she naively despises the high circulation of capitals among the upper class. Since Julie detests bribing the officials to gain a legal status for Ibrahim, it is self-contradictory that she has presumed the Senior Counsel would help her lover because she comes from a prominent family, and because the Counsel is a non-white, like Ibrahim, notwithstanding that Ibrahim is Arabic. Here she simply rejects an oblique means, and then turns to another oblique means. Julie is still naive about the social construction of identities – the Senior Counsel is a South African citizen, while Ibrahim is an illegal immigrant, and being non-whites does not mean they speak or think on the same premise.

The meeting with the Senior Counsel has an impact on Julie's identity in that for the first time, Julie feels alienated from her friends at the L.A. cafe. The humiliation and the resentment she experiences in the Counsel's office is something her friends would not dare to share with her. The physical involvement to save Ibrahim is contrary to mere "talking intelligent" and to Julie's previous aimless attitude. The alienation is important because it marks a turning point in which Julie rejects her identification with those friends and moves towards a new identity: "The struggle stays clenched tightly inside her. It possesses her, alien to them, even to those she thought close; and makes them alien to her . . . They are the strangers and he is the known". (Gordimer 91-92).

However, Ibrahim is not "the known" for Julie, for Julie's conception of the Other is still grounded in fantasy. Gordimer continues to draw on their mutual incomprehension to criticize that Julie over-romanticizes the movement to the Arabic country. Julie insists on accompanying Ibrahim to his country, being ignorant that he uses her as an object, a trophy, to show that he is not a complete failure in the western country; at least, he possesses something from the western world – this white woman. Julie is also ignorant that her lover views her as the cause of his pain, and thinks about her in aversion: "I please her, my God how I please her. And no visas for me"; what Ibrahim really wants to tell Julie is that "her purpose in his life was ended" (Gordimer 152, 174). In fact, he does not even bother to tell Julie that every day he goes to the capital to seek opportunities to enter another western country.

Since the mutual incomprehension remains strong long after they move back to the Arabic country, it is not Ibrahim who helps Julie cross the boundary between her previous identity as an aimless person to an identity with substance and meaning. Other factors, such as intersubjective relationships, religious factors, and the shift in spaces, contribute to the alteration in Julie's identity. Julie forms a strong bonding with her sister-in-laws, and she starts to teach them English in exchange for lessons in their language. She insists on going on a fast during the Ramadan and participating in the house chores (Gordimer 143, 152). In the effort to assimilate herself into the local life, she consciously observes that "there was another construction—perception of herself formed in this village that was his home". (Gordimer 197). Julie discovers a sense of belonging in the village on the edge of a desert. Despite Julie's efforts to identify with the local culture, Ibrahim intentionally thwarts her efforts, implying his rejection of his own culture and an illusionary aspiration for the western. For instance, he becomes furious seeing Julie in a Muslim robe, and he refuses to talk to Julie in his mother tongue. While Julie attempts to cross the boundary of the self and the other, Ibrahim still perceives her in his stereotyping of western women.

Eventually, Julie sees through Ibrahim and rejects his manipulation. This rejection signifies a new phase in her identity. After Ibrahim and Julie obtain the visas to enter the U.S. with the help from Julie's mother in California, Ibrahim demands that Julie should go with him to the U.S., but not living with him. Ibrahim urges Julie to live with her mother because "her husband got the letters from important people so easy . . . It can be he will find something good for me, he'll put me in with the right connections" (Gordimer 238). This is the moment when Julie finally wakes up. She finally sees that she is used again by Ibrahim, just as Ibrahim uses her to avoid deportation. A new awareness arises in her – "something temptingly dangerous, too: The Suburbs; The Table; a third alternative" (Gordimer 239). "A third alternative" implies that this time, Julie consciously chooses to identify with the local culture, with more involvements in the daily activities. As she declares to Ibrahim that she is not going with him to the U.S., nor is she going back to South Africa – she will stay in his home, Ibrahim becomes furious for in the Islamic society, a wife should obey what her husband wishes. The discrepancy between their perceptions shows that for Julie, the boundary between two cultures can be crossed, as she thinks that she has never worked like this before, without reservations of self. As for Ibrahim, he holds on to the traditional Islamic notion of dominant men and subordinate wives, while he despises his impoverished hometown. The boundary crossing between the world he comes from and the western world he adores remains difficult.

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