Tayeb Salih
CVSP 204
A. Arasoghli
I. Introduction
The novel Season of Migration to the North (Mawsim
al-Hijra alal-Shamal, referred to as Mawsim) was
published in 1966, translated into English in 1969 is
a prose poem that deals with the conflicts of
modern Africa, such traditionalism versus
modernism, rural versus urban, men versus women
and the village (the specific) versus the Universal.
II. Tayeb Salih’s speech at AUB in 1980
I got stuck before Mustafa Sa’eed started his
confession….I fell under the influence of Freud and
read more than once Civilization and its Discontents.
I believe that if I have contributed anything to
modern Arabic literature, it is my constant plea for
toleration.
I created therefore a conflicting world in which
nothing is certain, and formalistically two voices to
force the reader to make up his/her mind.
The two voices in Season, already mentioned before- are
those of the narrator and Mustafa Sa’eed.
their relationship with the West/North is quite dissimilar.
The narrator considers the coming of the British was
neither a tragedy nor yet a blessing. Mustafa Saa’eed has
a relationship of defiance with the West, he poisons his
life trying to avenge the defeat of the Sudanese, the
colonization of the East, engages in sexual relationships
with English women, and kills one of them. Three
commit suicide, possibly because of him: Sheila
Greenwood: a waitress in a restaurant, Isabella
Seymour: wife of a successful surgeon and mother of two
daughters and a son, Ann Hammond: a university
student.
Jean Morris is the woman he falls in love with, marries and
kills with a sharp blade on a cold February evening.
III. The Colonial Context
It was in September, 1898 that the
forces of Imperialism, the British army
led by Herbert Kitchener invaded the
Sudan.
After his death, the Khalifa carried on
the state which was ended by the
British occupation in 1898. The
reforming and foreign governments
felt the fear of such religious
movements and attempted to oppose
or control them.
Kitchener
III. The Colonial Context
It was at Omdurman, on the banks of the Nile that
witnessed the East /West – South/North confrontation.
The battle was over in five hours and Kitchener remarked
arrogantly that “the enemy had been given a good
dusting.”
The Battle of
Omdurman
The Battle of Omdurman
In the novel Kitchener says to Mahmoud Wad Ahmad
after his defeat at the Battle of Atbara “Why have
you come to my country to lay waste and plunder?”
It was the intruder who said this to the person
whose land it was, and the owner of the land bowed
his head and said nothing.” P. 94.
Mustafa Sa’eed resumes the battle of OmDurman
more than three decades later- with the same
spears and swords, the victims being the British
women rather than the British army, he says “I
resumed the war with bow and sword and spear
and arrows….The city was transformed into an
extraordinary woman, and with her symbols and her
mysterious calls, towards whom I drove my
camels…” p. 34.
IV. Postcolonial Arab discourse:
traditionalism versus modernism
Impact of the West during the Nahda
The contact between the Arab world and the Western
one during the Nahda signaled the beginning of the
debate between traditionalism and modernism. The
term Nahda – literally means awakening or
renaissance, covers the period from the mid or late
nineteenth century to the present. During this
period the impact of the West became a major
factor in the Arab social and political life. Europe,
as the Self recognized itself as different from the
(nonmodern) Other.
“How could Arab Muslims…acquire the strength to confront
Europe and become part of the modern world?” Albert
Hourani, A History of the Arab peoples, p. 306
The Arab awakening can be seen as a struggle between two
standpoints: The first adhered to Islam as the source
legitimacy, and the second took the West as model to aspire
to. Many regarded modernity as uniquely and strictly a
European phenomenon.
The most prominent representatives of the Islamic modernists
or reformers like Rif’tal-Tahtawi Jamal eddin-Din al Afghani
and Muhammad Abduh were opposed to Western domination
but appreciated the Western scientific and cultural
achievements. They realized that living in the modern world
requires certain changes which could be carried out while
Muslims remain true to themselves and the purity of early
Islam.
the religious reformers aimed at the following:
1. Tried to reconcile tradition and modernity hoping
that the Muslim world can overcome the
challenges it was facing.
2. They stressed the need to return to the original
sources of Islam.
Taha Hussein (1889-1973), a famous novelist and
prominent literary figure took the second position,
the West should be taken as a model to imitate,
he asserted that “We must follow the path of the
Europeans as to be their equals and partners in
civilization-in its good and evil, its sweetness and
bitterness, what can be loved or hated, what can
be praised or blamed.”
V. The Narrator
A storm-swept feather in the North: the Other in England.
A storm-swept feather in the South: the Other in the Sudan.
He rejoices leaving the coldness of England and returning to
the warmth of his people in a small village at the bend of the
Nile.
“I felt not like a storm-swept feather, but like that palm tree, a
being with a background, with roots, with a purpose.”p.2.
The grandfather stands for the traditional immutable man who
has the secret of life and it is to live simply and die simply, a
simple and traditional life that both the narrator and Mustafa
Sa’eed were not able to lead.
“Over there is like here, neither better nor worse.
But I am from here, just as the date palm standing
in the courtyard of our house has grown in our
house and not in anyone else’s. The fact that they
came to our land, I know not why, does that mean
that we should poison our present and our future?
Sooner or later they will leave our country ….The
railways, ships, hospitals, factories and schools will
be ours…”p.49.
“I too had lived with them. But I had lived with them
superficially, neither loving nor hating them.”p.49.
No sooner does he find that the love he wants to flow
from his heart has tuned into rage and anger.
Mustafa Sa’eed disappears one day, by drowning or
more possibly suicide, we don’t know and he leaves
his wife Hosna and his two boys in the care of the
narrator. The narrator falls in love with Hosna Bint
Mahmoud, yet he does nothing, he does not let love
flow from his heart as he as he claims as the
beginning of Season “...I want to give lavishly, I
want love to flow from my heart, to ripen and bear
fruit.”p.5.
The crisis of and internal migration
South/South conflict
Two reasons for the narrator’s alienation:
A. Patriarchy and tragedy.
B. Neocolonialism: The corruption of the new
rulers of Africa.
A. Patriarchy:
Wad Rayess, a seventy year old man, much
married and much divorced wants to marry
Hosna who is very decisive when she says that
she will go no man and threatens to kill him and
kill herself if they force her to marry him. In that
small village at the bend of the Nile, we see the
same duality between the Self and the Other that
Simone de Beauvoir refers to in The Second Sex,
a woman “is simply what man decrees…she is
the incidental, the inessential as opposed too the
essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absoluteshe is the Other.” The Second Sex, p.3.
B. Neocolonialism : The corruption of the new rulers of Africa
The alienation of the narrator multiplies.
The conference is held in the Independence Hall (notice the name
of the Hall) in a hotel in Khartoum.
The cost of the Hall (One million pounds) and the wealth of the
ministers stand in sharp contrast to the poverty of the Sudanese
who lack schools and hospitals. The minister in his speech
considers the Bourgeoisie as being more dangerous to the future
of Africa than imperialism. It is the same minister who leads a
Bourgeois life, he is known to be corrupt and has amassed a
fortune from the sweat of the poor, wretched, half naked people
in the jungle.
The narrator starts considering going back to the North, he says
“There is no room for me here, why don’t I pack up and
go?”p.130.
The migration that appears in the title of the book involves not only
geographic migration to the North but also the internal migration
of the narrator.
The narrator feels bitterness and hatred, the
unfaithful wife is defended by her husband while
the faithful Hosna suffers a tragic fate in that
small village at the bend of the Nile, “I feel
bitterness and hatred, for after all those victims
he crowned his life with yet another one, Hosna
Bint Mahmoud, the only woman I have ever
loved.”p.141.
VI. Mustafa Sa’eed
Mustafa Sa’eeed was born in Khartoum in1898, the
same year of the battle of Omdurman. He
decides to avenge the colonization of the Sudan
under his own terms. He conceives his
relationship with the English women as a battle,
inflicting pain and suffering on them and treating
his victims as Kitchener treated his native people.
He is described as isolated, arrogant, his mind is
like a sharp knife and his heart is as cold as a
piece of ice, nothing in the world could shake
him.
“The mysterious call led me to the coast of Dover, to
London and tragedy.”p. 27.
He uses terms of Arab military campaigns every time he
goes out to find a new victim “By day I lived with the
theories of Keynes and Tawney and at night I resumed
the war with bow and sword and spear and arrows. I saw
the troops returning, filled with terrors ….”p.34
He saddles his camels, refers to the Arab army conquering
Spain in the eighth century, and claims that one of his
forefathers was a soldier in Tarik ibn Ziyad’s army. The
connection in Mustafa Sa’eed’s mind between sexual
conquest and his war on British colonialism is very
evident, the description of his sexual conquests are similar
to the description of a military conquest “yes, my dear
sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes; a drop of
the poison which you have injected into the veins of
history.”p. 95.
A. The divided self of Mustafa Sa’eed
1. The Freudian level
The distant call still rings in his ears “It’s futile to deceive
oneself. That distant call still rings in my ears, I thought
that my life and marriage here would silence it”p. 67.
he obeys the pleasure principle, decides to stay with her,
completely cotroled by his id, given in to his desires. His
love to her is the icy battlefield from which he would not
make a safe return. He is the sailor and she is the shore
of destruction “I was in torment, and, in a way I could not
understand, I derived pleasure from my suffering.” p. 59.
2. South/North dichotomy
Mustafa Sa’eed’s relationship with the West is one
of defiance and yearning.
South that yearns for the ice.
His love to Jean Morris unfolds the same
dichotomy: love, defiance and hatred.
3. Conqueror/conquered
Modern/traditional
“I have come to you as a conqueror.”
“I seek not glory, for the likes of me do not seek glory.”
P.42
The two halves of Mustafa represent the Sudanese
traditional man and the modern London intellectual, the
economist and university lecturer. Nowhere does he
emerge in the novel as fully traditional or fully modern.
He is not a truly modern individual, nor a genuinely
traditional one, because of the impact of both forces: his
past identity and Western education.
“Opening a note book, I read on the first
page: (My Life Story). On the next page
was the dedication “To those who see with
one eye, speak with one tongue and see
things as either black or white, either
Eastern or Western.” p. 151.
“The ships sailing down the Nile were
carrying guns not bread. And the railways
were set up to transport troops. And the
schools were started to teach the Sudanese
how to say ‘yes’ in English.” P. 95
B. The contradictory selves of Mustafa
Sa’eed
Mustafa lives and becomes a lie
Hassan , Charles, Amin, Mustafa and Richard.
“I’m like Othello, Arab African.”, addresses the
jury and prosecutors in the courtroom
saying “I’m no Othello, I am a lie. Why
don’t you sentence me to be hanged and so
kill the lie.” p.95.
Othello is the Moor of Venice, the tragic man, a hero with a
flaw. Following his instincts and irrational desires, believes
that his loyal wife Desdemona is a whore on the slightest
of evidence, smothers her with a pillow on their marriage
bed.
“Speak of me as I am…..Then must you speak of one that
loved not wisely, but too well...” Shakespeare, Othello, V,
ii.
Conclusion:
“All my life I had not chosen, had not decided. Now I am
making a decision. I choose Life… Like a comic actor
shouting on a stage, I screamed with all my remaining
strength, ‘help, help!”pp.168-9.
‫مات مصطفى سعيد‬
‫مات الطيب صالح في لندن ليحقّق ربما أمنية‬
‫بطله مصطفى سعيد‪ <<:‬أنا جنوب ّ‬
‫يحن إلى‬
‫الشمال>>‪ .‬هذا الحنين الذي انتهى به إلى‬
‫الذوبان فيه والموت في أحضانه‪.‬‬
‫جورج دورليان‬
‫بعد ثمانين عاما ً على والدته في‬
‫المديرية الشمالية في السودان في‬
‫العام ‪.1929‬‬