MohamedSalmawy's Butterfly Wings is setpredominantly in Egypt and Italy. In these macro spaces, thecharacters create and recreate themselves as they evolvefrom innocence to awareness. The narrative is focused on theprinciple of self-discovery with all the characterssearching for themselves. This becomes more intriguing asSalmawy careful crafts this individual search to be includedin the search for the Egyptian nation. The purpose of thisessay is to underscore the fact that travelling out of the‘home’ context begins the transformation process of theprinciple characters whose quests are carefully linked tothe search of the Egyptian nationness. Thetransformation process, as perceived in this essay, ties inwith Bill Ashcroft's interpretation in which he discussesthe postcolonial people and cultures in the process of‘adapting’ and not being destroyed. He writes: ‘Many criticshave argued that colonialism destroyed indigenous cultures,but this assumes that culture is static, and underestimatesthe resilience and adaptability of colonial societies’(Post- Colonial Transformation: 2).This polemics is relevant as it highlights differentpositions and responses to the colonial process. However,though adaptation has come to be the best option forcolonial societies today because even resiliency is highlycontested, it does not undermine the fact that many of thecultural values of people from Africa and many more of theAfrica diaspora were destroyed. And so, adaptability,defined from a different temporal/spatial context cannot gowithout the feeling of loss or some void that is hard tofill. Salmawy's characters undergo transformation as theybegin to define themselves as time/space becomes the‘addresser’ that gives them the opportunity to be‘addressees’ of their quest. Working within the framework ofthe postcolonial theory, therefore, this essay dwells onGeorge Lamming's essay ‘The Occasion for Speaking’ and othersalient tenets to defend the fact that with the politicaldilemma that dominates the Egypt that one finds in thenarrative, both nation and citizens, as seen in thenarratives, are in the search for themselves. This becomespossible, as the narrative programme suggests, only when oneleaves the ‘home’ context. This means that evennationness is better constructed in the‘elsewhere’.