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CVSP 204 A. Arasoghli Tayeb Salih
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 Kitchener 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.
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
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 Absolute-she 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 يحنّ إلى الشمال>>. هذا الحنين الذي انتهى به إلى الذوبان فيه والموت في أحضانه. جورج دورليان بعد ثمانين عاماً على ولادته في المديرية الشمالية في السودان في العام 1929.
