In Search of a Middle Point: The Origins of Oppression in Tayeb Salih's "Season of Migration to the North" Author(s): John E.

Davidson Reviewed work(s): Source: Research in African Literatures, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 385-400 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3819172 . Accessed: 18/03/2012 14:23
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IN IN SEARCHOF A MIDDLEPOINT: THE ORIGINSOF OPPRESSION TAYEB SALIH'S SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH John E. Davidson This business never kills anyone. Bint Majzoub Sudan is a land in which northern Arab Africa has met and mingled with southern Black Africa. Though historically this has not always been a peaceful melding of culture and religions, it was seen as a homogeneous South by the British who came up the Nile in their gunboats in the 1890s. Tayeb Salih's first novel, Season of Migrationto the North, depicts a village at a bend in the Nile in the yearsafter the "independence" granted by the British when they finally leave and the problems of reseparatinglife into black and white, South and North. Unlike many African novels from the neocolonial period, Season goes beyond a simple rejection of the European invasion and legacy. It offers a stunning critique of cultural segregationist moods by exposing in Sudanese culture the oppression that predated the British intrusion. In a lecture at the AmericanUniversityin Beirut, Salih pointed to the influence of Joseph Conrad on this project: ". . . as far as form goes, I have been especiallystruckby . . . Conradin Heart of Darknessand Nostromo" (Amyuni 15). Certainly the overall subject matter of imperialism and neocolonialism do seem to echo in these two works, and telling similaritiesin form also are to be found in relation to other Conradian texts: LordJim, "The Secret Sharer," and, most significantly, Under Western Eyes.' The connection to Conrad is strongest in regard to this last text, and there are several indications that Salih is, consciously or not, "signifying" on that work.2 The "internal" character,Mustafa Sa'eed, is referredto by a classmate as "the black Englishman" (Season 53), just as Razumov, the central figure in Eyes, is called the "Englishman" because of his austere manner at the universityin St. Petersburg(Under 25). The narrators of both works are language experts: one holds a PhD in English poetry and teaches preIslamic literature, while the other earns his living as a translator.There is also a distinct metafictional aspect to these novels: Mustafa Sa'eed's repeated referencesto Othello ("I am like Othello, Arab-African"and "I am no Othello") echo Razumov's "I am not a young man in a novel,"3 in that they both serveto remind the readerthat they are indeed fictional creations, related in the story of another fictional character(cf. Szittya 824).
Researchin African Literatures,Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall 1989 ?1989 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713

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Season opens in truly Conradianstyle: "It was, gentlemen, after a long absence-seven years to be exact, during which time I was studying in Europe-that I returnedto my people" (1). While this resemblesthe opening of Under WesternEyes, there is a significant twist, for the audience of this address is posited in the text, yet remains absent and undefined. The apostrophe "gentlemen" invokes this absent audience, telling the reader that the text actuallyis delivered, as in LordJim and Heart of Darkness, by someone listening to the story.4As quickly as it is aroused, this question of audience fades, for the narrator moves directlyinto the storyhe has to relate. It will return, however, as the narratoragain will address "dear sirs" (61) and, at the end of the novel, when the question of audience will become crucialto unraveling the story of MustafaSa'eed from the events surrounding the narratorhimself and to understanding Salih's development of the Conradiantheme of betrayal. No examination of betrayal-"jumping ship," as it often appears in Conrad-in the works of these authors can be undertaken without a brief glance at biographicaland historicalinformation on their professionallives. It can be argued that Conrad continually is writing about Poland and his (potential) betrayalof the cause against Russiandomination, and hence he approaches the problem as a moral, existential one. Conrad himself has physically "jumped ship" and may even be directly implicating himself in, for example, LordJim (Patna = Patria). He does not go back to Poland to write; even Under Western Eyes does not take him home, though he undoubtedly is exorcisingsome demons from his past. His exile is physical, not intellectual. Though it is true, asJacqueline Bardolphsays, that "all writers who write outside their mother tongue are somehow in exile" (38), there is a vast difference between writing in exile and actively choosing your oppressor'slanguage. This is much closer to Salih's concernwith betrayal:the education one receivesfrom an oppressor,especially in the language of oppression, and the potential sabotage of native culture it entails. He realizes that almost certainbetrayalis at stake in a Britisheducation, and his characters struggle constantly with the idea that they have "jumped ship" at a time when there seemed to be no question that what they were doing was right.5 This concernabout education has alreadysurfacedas a majortheme in an earlierstory by Salih. "The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid" is a short dialogue in which a father tells a young strangerabout the danger he sees for his village: I mentioned to you that my son is in the town studying at school.... It wasn't I who put him there; he ran awayand went there on his own, and it is my hope that he will stay where he is and not return. When my son's son passes out of school and the number of young men

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with souls foreign to our own increases,then perhapsthe water-pump will be set up. (Wedding 19) It is not the knowledge, but the loss of soul that education might bring that the fatherfears.The narrator and MustafaSa'eed in Season both have allowed their minds and souls to be separated, and they fight feelings of betrayal of self and community. In the case of the narrator,the plight of the native intellectual is made more difficult because the foreign training that is questioned enables the native oppression to be seen and critiqued. In this short story, the water pump is a powerful symbol of the technological advance that will kill the sacreddoum tree in the dreamsof the people. Yet the father knows that this need not be so: "What all these people have overlookedis that there's plenty of room for all these things: the doum tree, the tomb, the water pump, and the steamer's stopping place" (Wedding 19). The water pumps also are found in Season, with this modified view that they need not be destructive.The narrator's grandfathercombines the propersoul with the use of the pumps, which irrigatethe parchedland. He is a marvel of longevity and strength, living in a house of mud at the edge of the wheat field "so that it is an extension of it" (71). Though a "good" and humane person, well versed in the knowledge and lore of his culture, the grandfatherdoes not recognize the injustice of the society, as reflected in the company he keeps. This group maintains "the old ways," which show the "colonized oppression" alreadyinherent in their culturenot of Britainbut of Islam and patriarchy.Of the grandfather's companions, Bakri represents the religious rigor of Islam, while Wad Rayyes and Bint Majzoub(the manly matriarch)symbolize the traditionalsexual discrimination against women that is so much a part of the culture. Wad Rayyesis foreshadowedby a characterin "The Wedding of Zein," Wad Reyyis, who is part of the ruling gang in a village resembling that in Season. It was he who was "deputed to deal with the women's problems" (Wedding 99), and Wad Rayyes in Season clearly personifies the objectifying and abuse of women as propertythat is traditionalto their culture. Islam is his excuse for this behavior (though he objects to the circumcisionof women on aesthetic grounds), as he confuses the maxim that "women and children" ratherthan "wealth and children" are the adornmentsof this earth. He gleefully recites stories of rape and abuse, which his fellows, including Bint Majzoub, find hilarious. Bint Majzoub is an old, outspoken woman, who has accepted the subjugation of women and decided to make the most of it. Her rebellious nature is assertedonly to the extent that it allows her to use the power (the wealth she has acquired by outliving so many husbands) granted her in the patriarchyand thus to perpetuate the misogynisticsocial structure.Her first words to the narratoron his return express gladness that he did not bring "an uncircumcisedinfidel for a wife" back from Europe (4). It is the in-

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teractions of these forms of oppression relating to the subjugation of women, and their relation to the neocolonial structure, that come under scrutinyin this novel. The question of the origins of such oppressionis provocativelyraised and eloquently left unanswered. There are, of course, problems that arisethrough conflating examinations of gender and racial (not to mention religious and economic) oppression. Reaction to Season often falls into one of two groups in relation to these issues, both groups mistakenly viewing Season as an attempt to reestablish the dominance of the emasculated, colonized male by attackingthe women of the colonizers. The groups split over approval or condemnation of such an approach, and thus they tend to center on Mustafa Sa'eed and his exploits in England. I find myself opposed to such interpretations as both willfully or unconsciously denying the text they are "reading," finding clear-cutoppositions where in fact there are none. The first group applauds Mustafa's tactics, seeing him not only as the main characterof Season, but as a (tragic) hero as well.6 This view ignores the fact that he has no effect on the colonial situation and, as an accomplished economist, should have known where the real power base was that needed to be attacked. Also, Mustafa made no defense at his trial, which is very telling. As Nadine Gordimerhas pointed out in Burger'sDaughter, if no place else, the dissident can speak his or her cause in court. It is the one forum that the oppressorsdare not cut off.7 Yet, as the power structure plays its game above him, Mustafasits as silent as LordJim at his trial, waitof his actionsfrom his shoulders. ing for someone to removethe responsibility His lawyer tries to create him in the image of a victim in the struggle between two worlds, which began "a thousand yearsago" (Season 33). It is a defense that Mustafamentally rejects, for he knows he has victimized himself. This reference to the crusades, however, will become more important as the parallels between the oppression of colonialism and that of Islamic patriarchyof the village on the Nile become more evident in the text. The second group, which objects to Mustafa Sa'eed's methods, also has a contingent which centers on the episodes in England. The objection that Salih's novel fails to acknowledge that the "world of Jean Morris" is not her own, mistakenly assumes that the text is a celebration of Mustafa's method.8 Furthermore, that premise is misguided within the framework of the novel, for it fails to take into considerationthe question of relativity within the colonialworld and, in a sense, showsthe Westernbias that informs this position. Perhapsan example from a different situation will be illuminating: take one from an "American" work-Black Elk Speaks-keeping in mind that we are still very much within a colonial framework.At one point several braves ride out to a battlefield of the day before, which the "wasichus" have abandoned.9 They come upon a mass grave which, along with others, contains the bodies of three "black wasichus." It would hardly

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be a considered judgment to dismiss the book because Black Elk does not discuss the racialrelations of American blacks and whites in the late 1800s. From Black Elk's point of view, the bullets of the black wasichusare just as deadly as those of the other soldiers who were hunting his people. If, however, one avoids a privileging of one oppressedgroup over another -women in England over the native Sudanese, for example-there is certainly a valid feminist critique to be made of Season. Evelyne Accad offers such a balanced critique, presenting valuable insights into the status of women in Arab/African literature in general. Yet, she too tends to misconstrue the relational representationsin this work because of two misleading assumptions. First, Accad falls into the familiartrap of positing Mustafa Sa'eed as "the centralmale characterof the novel" (58). Second, she asserts that "women remain the real victims" in Season (55, emphasis added). These in turn elicit the conclusion that Season follows the typical pattern in Arabic literature, in which the Europeanwoman is "symbolicallymurdered . . . because she representsWestern values which must be eradicatedbefore the East can find itself' (63). As we shall show, these are preciselythe patterns Salih exposes in their inadequacy: such symbolic slaughter is shown to be self-defeating, and the definite boundary between East and West proves no more than a reflection in ice or the shimmer of a desert mirage. Returningagainto the firstline of Season,we see that this is the projectfrom the onset. The native intellectual returning to his people-or rather the question of the possibility of such a return-is announced in the information related to the audience. The word "gentlemen" also evokes the specter of misogyny, which under the Westernizedeyes of the narrator contextualizes this problem. The stylistic motifs that will demarcatethese themes are also introducedin the firstpages: juxtapositionsof the icy North with the scorched South; prayers from the Koran; the villager/outsider split; and the difference between the devils of Europe and the folk of the village as reflected through sexual codes and conduct. In this respect there is a conscious attempt on the part of the narratornot to look things in the eye; not only does he refuse to see the British for what they are but also that his position in relation to the village is no longer what it was. As best I could I answeredtheir many questions. They were surprised when I told them that Europeanswere, with minor differences, exactly like them, marrying and bringing up their children in accordance with principles and traditions, that they had good morals and were in general good people. (3) This is the natural reaction of one who attempts to straddle two cultures, seeking to smooth out the differences in order to maintain the bridge more easily. It is important to note that his narrativeeventually will return the

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reader to the ironic truth in this statement: Season points out that there is far less difference than the narratorat first supposes. MustafaSa'eed's story by itself, as suggested above, is by no means equal to this task, for he (like Conrad)does not returnto his homeland to function as a native intellectual. The potential of his mind as a weapon against colonialism is made evident by the first Englishwoman he ever meets: Mrs. Robinson. She chides him and asks teasingly, "Can't you ever forget your intellect" (25), and this is what gives new significance to both the sexual desire she stirs in him and the cold knife of his mind.10 The Europeans, Mustafarealizes, want him to forget his intellect and thus remain a savage in their eyes; hence, his decision to stay abroad to wage war on the English by refusing to do so. Ironically,the next sentence foreshadowswhat happens when he does forget his intellect: "the day they sentenced me at the old Bailey, to seven years'imprisonment, I found no bosom except [Mrs.Robinson's] on which to rest my head" (25). Her smell is the smell of Europe, just as the narrator'sgrandfathersmells to him of the village: the mausoleum and the infant child. In London, Mustafa becomes a lecturer at the age of twenty-four and is also an integral part of the bohemian scene. He seduces women with the lure of the exotic, erotic South, then betraysthem by refusing to surrender to their need of a symbol. For the first victim, Ann Hammond, "I was a symbol of all her hankerings" (30). Her suicide note saysonly, "Mr. Sa'eed, may God damn you" (31); he drives these women to suicide by remaining Mr. Sa'eed, famous economist. By maintaining his grasp on his intellect, Mustafa defeats their objectification-"my mind was like a sharp knife" (31)-but at the same time places his intellectual powers in an adversarial position from which he is impotent to accomplish any real victories for Sudan. Though he is not turned into a savage, neither does he become a savior. In Jean Morris,Mustafafinds one who knows his game and can play it as well as he. Just as he has caused women to betraythemselveswithout allowing them the justificationof having objectified him, so doesJean go to work on him. He becomes obsessed with her, and freely hands over his work on raremanuscripts,treatises,and the preciousrelicsof Islam in orderto possess her. Her most potent weapon, he says, is to destroyhis work, the academic fruits of "Mr. Sa'eed's" intellectual labor. Finally, one bitter February night, "my blood was boiling and my head was in a fever." He has been reduced to a burning, southern devil in a hell which literallyseems to have frozen over.Jean finally allows him to objectify her by running his gaze over everypart of her body, and he has sealed his own fate. As he enters her, he presses a knife into her chest, finally having been reduced to the ultimate primal stage for which he has earlierrefused to become a symbol. He has let her turn him into a savage.

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The real knife he wields from his chest melts all the potential from the of his mind. Regardless calculations of the obvious ineffectiveness of his course of action since Mrs. Robinson posed her question, the potential for positive action on behalf of his homeland is never lost until Jean reduces him to the savage he is wanted to be. Yet, the story of his failure is the necessarycatalyst for the beginning of the narrator'sself-enlightenment. Specifically, Mustafa's blindness to the possibility of unconscious betrayalin being educated by the British surfacesin his account of the day he was first taken to school by a Englishman on a horse: "This was the turning point in my life. It was the first decision I had taken of my own free will" (21). Though Mustafasees this move as one of his own volition, the readeris never so sure, and despite the assuranceof Mustafa'spronouncement, this note of uncertainty will be struck repeatedly throughout the novel. It is here that the true extent of Salih's signifying on Conradianmodels begins to be apparent. In Conrad'sEyes, Razumov's story is the substance of the action, and speculationsabout the narrator,though valid, are secondactsnot only as a parallel ary;in Season the sequence is reversed.The narrator to the translatorwho relates Razumov's tale but also to Razumov, who tries to deal with the legacy left him by Haldin-a legacy of betrayal. Because of the way in which Mustafa'sstory is extended throughout the novel, it is easy to forget that this is nonetheless the narrator'sstory. The narratorbegins questioning himself after he leaves Mustafa'sat the end of his tale. He wandersthe village he knows so well, but sensessomehow that things are not as they once were. OverhearingWad Rayyeswith his wife in the early morning hours, the connection between the story of Mustafa in England and the cries from Wad Rayyes'shouse comes to the narrator's mind, in a way that strikes this reader as ironic. "I felt ashamed at having been privy to something I shouldn't have been" (47). He hears "pleasure" in the woman's cry, but this is the woman who will later ululate with joy at hearing of Wad Rayyes'sdeath, rejoicing in the passing of her oppressor. The narratortakes up his post in Khartoum in the Department of Education, significantly enough, and is not present the night Mustafa Sa'eed disappearsin the flood. He wonders if Mustafawere not a phantom, but he also begins to question himself: "he had said that he was a lie, so was I also a lie?" (49). Though he too had lived with "them" in England, he had neither loved nor hated them; Mustafahad done both. The narratormeets Mustafa'sghost in trains and at parties, as his name comes up with strangers and friends alike. Though Mustafa'sexistence is verified by these instances, they also turn him into a recurring phantom for the narrator.These episodes also remind the reader of the neocolonial frameworkwithin which Season exists. "Be sure," says the Mamur on the train, "that they will direct our affairsfrom afar. . . . They have left behind them people who think as they

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do" (53). Those who think like the Britishare those who have been brought up through the British educational system to take civil servicejobs, like our narrator.Yet, it is this training that distances that narratorenough from "our affairs" to see that there were alreadymany thinking as oppressors. Mustafa leaves his family under the care of the narratorbecause he contains a glimpse of his grandfather. Just what that glimmer is that makes him the proper guardian is never made clear, but one suspects it is his grandfather's uncompromisingability for unquestioning Faith. Also in the legacy is the key to Mustafa'sprivate room, which he says will serve to satisfy the curiosityhe knows the narratoris suffering from in regard to him. Unwillingness to know everything,of possible self-recognition,seems to be stronger than curiosity, for he stays awayfrom that iron door. Once again, the question of free will arises, with regard to Mustafaby the narratorand with regard to the narratorby the reader. "Whether it was by chance or whether the curtain was lowered of his own free will" (69), the narratormuses, but does not yet ask the same question of himself. A long section follows in which the various sexual exploits and religious fervor of Wad Rayyes, Bint Majzoub, Bakri, and the grandfather are depicted, capped by the news that Wad Rayyes wants to marry Mustafa's widow, Hosna Bint Mahmoud. Again the narratormakes the mental connection between Mustafa'sstory and the village, reminding the readerthat there is more than one kind of oppression at work here: I imagined Hosna Bint Mahmoud ... as being the same woman in both instances:two white wide-open thighs in London, and a woman groaning before dawn in an obscure village on a bend in the Nile under the weight of the aged Wad Rayyes.If that other thing was evil, this too was evil. (86-87) He is attracted to Hosna, but still is trying to get at the truth of Mustafa Sa'eed through her rather than by examining himself. She exhibits only one firm element of the Mustafalegacy, save the two children-an unwillingness to be with another man, which is emphasized by the sound of "her voice in the darknesslike the blade of a knife. 'If they force me to marry, I'll kill him and kill myself'" (96). The narratoris pulled away without a word by the call to evening prayer:"God is great, God is great." The comoppressionhangs ing clash between Mustafa'slegacy and Islamicpatriarchal in the air with dusk. Appeals to the other villagers to intercede on Hosna's behalf meet the resistance of archaic attitudes. Even Mahjoub, the socialist party leader, surprisinglycomes out on the side of tradition. "You know how life is run here. ... Women belong to men, and a man's a man even if he is decrepit' (99). He explains Wad Rayyes'sclaim to validity because he "hankersafter

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things" (emphasis added). Hankerings, we recall, were what did in Ann Hammond and company in England. Mahjoub suggests that the narrator marryHosna to protect her from Wad Rayyes, since it is within his right as guardian. Suddenly confronted with such a possibility, paralysisthrough the imagination sets in and he realizes that at some level he is in love with Hosna. He finally begins to wonder whether he is "not immune from the germ of contagion that oozes from the body of the universe" (104). This is a direct referenceto the defense at Mustafa'strial,"Ithe attempt to separate the whole of history into a binary struggle between North and South. In a sense this is the beginning of the narrator'strial. The irony is that he, like Mustafa Sa'eed, waits for relief from responsibility; the possibility that Hosna would become his (albeit very different) Jean Morrisimmobilizes him. He knows Mustafa's story; he has heard Mustafa's knife in Hosna's voice-still he does not act. He prays. In the desert trip that parallelsMustafa'swalk home in the ice of Februaryin London, he says his evening prayers, seeking answers to a question of sexual oppression in the very system that spawned them. There is a desperatefeast of revelerswho come out of the dunes at dusk and dissipate at dawn. He feels that the war against the sun is won at sunset and that the balance of the world he seeks is afforded him by the elements. He then rushes by the shortest route back to the safety of the civil service in Khartoum. It is at this time that Hosna is forced to marryWad Rayyes. In the private room of Mustafa Sa'eed, there is an oil painting of Jean Morris,painted and signed by him. In this secret room, the parallel of the harem room in London, a sham English drawingroom has been constructed, complete with a fireplace and library. Here is the strongest evidence of Conradian language in Season, and it serves both to draw the reader into the seduction and yet to make him wary: ... all that came in from the outside was more darkness. I struck a match. The light exploded on my eyes and out of the darknessthere emerged a frowning face with pursed lips that I knew but could not place. I moved towardsit with hate in my heart. It was my adversary Mustafa Sa'eed. The face grew a neck, the neck grew two shoulders and a chest, then a trunk and two legs, and I found myself standing face to face with myself.12 (135) The light goes out, and the next match revealsthe portraitofJean. Mustafa had idealized her-put her on a pedestal and deified her. The other women (victims) are objectified in photographs;she is idealized in a portrait.When Mustafamarried Hosna, he brought that same Western, bourgeois attitude toward women to their marriage by treating her well. While this may be another subjugation in Europeaneyes, it representsa vast improvement on,

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and liberationfrom, the traditionalways of the village. It is Mustafa'streatment that prevents the alreadyoutspoken Hosna from becoming like Bint Majzoub. Yet the question for both the reader and the narratoris why Mustafa is there in the village to "liberate" Hosna and awaken the consciousnessof the narrator.Is he sowing the seeds of sedition to advancethe cause of the land or to further enslave it in more subtle bonds by separating the soul of tradition from the body of the people? Those are questions that never can be answered in full, though we may speculate in a moment. What is clear is that Mustafa's meddling has irrevocableimplicationsfor the village. Hosna no longer will fulfill any man's hankerings,and she defies Wad Rayyesin a manner similartoJean Morris's. Her end, however, is not passive but active, as she strikes against the brutality of the abuse that Wad Rayyes represents. She accomplishes in the village what Mustafafailed to do in England: she changes the way the village can look at the world-she affects history. As Wad Rayyesis dying, he calls on the "old school"-Bakri, Bint Majzoub, and the grandfather-to save him, but they arrive too late. The only thing everyone is agreed upon is that this is unprecedented in the village and that nothing will ever be the same again. Though they try to act as if nothing had happened that the outside world (which includes the narrator)should be concerned with, the word spreads, for such categories no longer act as concrete boundaries. When the narrator goes to see his blood-brotherMahjoubafter hearing of the way Hosna and Wad Rayyesmet their fate,13he is working at the roots of a palm, to separate a shoot from the trunk. Just as Mustafatried to pretend that they did not speak the same language as he worked with his tree that produces both "lemons and oranges," so too does Mahjoub deny the likeness that stands before him. Like everyone else, he curses women, but then comes to the point: "why didn't you do something? Why didn't you marryher? You're only any good when it comes to talking" (131-32). The answer, not directlyoffered by the text, is that the narrator-like Razumov and LordJim-possesses an imagination that is able to possess and paralyze him. 4 Almost as evil as the murderin the minds of the village is that Hosna askedfor them to make the narrator marryher-they have come to the point where women are "wooing men."'5 The narrator, again in a Conradian moment, like Jim, does not know what he does. He tries to throttle Mahjoub for exposing him to his own betrayaland inaction, and it is then that he goes to the room of Mustafa Sa'eed. A photo on the shelf shows Mustafa next to Mrs. Robinson, with Mr. Robinson embracing them both. Colonialism, full of noble ideas that embrace all and squeeze to death. Mrs. Robinson is now writing a book, to rewrite history in her own (European) way: showing the favor Ricky (her deceased husband) did for Islam by "discovering" all those documents, and completely exonerating "Moozie," the noble savagewho knew not how

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to accept or recognize happiness when it was given to him. She never liked Jean Morris,who could only see things as black and white; Mrs. Robinson had to color things in with lies about the good she was doing. Yet Mustafa discoversthat bothJean and Mrs.Robinson intend the same thing with him, the difference lies in the method. Mrs. Robinson played according to the "nice" colonial rules, which Mustafaknew so well, and which continue to be so seductive to the native intellectual working as a civil servant. Mrs. Robinson sends word that Mustafa has written books on his homeland to sell in England, where he is still receiving royalties-where would the narrator like the money sent? Mustafa has left the narratorhis next book to write himself, the story of Sa'eed's life, the interpretation open to the author. He revisits in his mind the last battle of Mustafa Sa'eed, not able to comprehend that he has never fought, and never thought to fight, such a battle. Mustafa returned to this obscure Sudanese village, but was it to create the chance of action, or to secure his (the narrator's)complicity in inaction? He does not know, and so he cannot burn the room. His feet take him to the river, and he enters "naked as when [his] mother bore" him (166). All those to whom that descriptionhas been applied in Season have come to violent ends. He swimsfor the northernshore. As he moves through the water, he begins to forget the thought process that has kept him in limbo until now. The narratorswims until the sound of the water pumps and the percussion of the river have leveled out, and he finds himself halfway between North and South, seeing and blindness. He feels the destructiveforces of the river pulling him down, and he floats as best he can in midstream, though the natural current takes him slightly toward the southern shore. He has become limbo, his body being pulled to the bottom of the river, his soul and mind travelingwith a flock of grouse northward.Then "a piercingly loud roar and at the very same instant there was a vivid brightnesslike a flash of lightning" (168). He has passed a threshold, but if it leads to life or death or something else one cannot say. He comes to himself through the "violent desire for a cigarette... a hunger, a thirst." Cigarettes have appeared four times previously in the text: the evening Mustafa tells his story; the night of the feast in the desert, where the Bedouin gobbles down cigarettes, and packs of them float around; when he goes to see Mahjoubat the palm tree (one is proffered and rejected, a second accepted after the shoot has been separated from the stem-a new birth, or perhaps merely a successfulseparation);and when he communes with himself in the secret room of MustafaSa'eed. Smoking is alwaysa communal act in Season, and like life itself, it is a communal act that leads to death. But community alone is not enough, for as often as not reliance on community securesthe structures of oppression. It is self-reflective, enlightened, and self-willing tendency to community which holds the key. Though inextricablylinked with

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colonizers now departed, smoking is in a sense a way of controlling one's destiny: "I thought if I died at that moment, I would have died as I was born-without any volition of mine. All my life I had not chosen. ... Now I am making a decision. I choose life" (168). As the narratorflounders, crying for help, one is reminded again of the Conradianframeworkand audience. Is he telling his story to his rescuers? A jury? Colleagues at the Department of Education? The members of an There is no certainty, but the device of doubling English club in London?16 the earlier structuraldetails as well as charactertraits help to put the final overall work into perspective. The weapon Mustafa forges to fight the imperialistsis his mind, but he loses sight of the real goals and objectivesand hence has no real effect. He returnsto Sudan, apparentlyin the serviceof the "world ofJean Morris"(Hosna sayshe calls "jeena-jeeny" in his sleep), to lay snares for those like the narratorand Hosna. Here he is successful, but in the long run does more to liberate than ensnare. The narrator,as he floats in the river, lets go of his intellect andfeels things. Any smoker (and most assuredlyany recent nonsmoker)will attest that the sudden awareness of desiring a cigarette is a function of body, not of intellect. The craving for community and life are two things the narratorhas denied throughout the novel, until the last pages. If he has unconsciouslyjumped ship in the course of his education, he now begins to reassessjust where he has landed, and what the next steps might be. The first step has been taken in the sharing of his tale. The old oppressiveorder that had been in place since Islam came to the region has been disrupted: Wad Rayyesis killed; Bint Majzoub has talked of the unmentionable; the grandfatherapproachesone hundred and will not live much longer. The British have been there and left their marks, for the room of Mustafa Sa'eed and the water pumps cannot be denied, nor can they be uprooted. In themselves they are not particularlydangerous, but they do represent temptations with dire consequences to those who think they can possess or use them without care and retrospection. Hosna is dead, but no longer can a woman be looked on merely as property or raped without second thought. Tayeb Salih does not present a completely optimistic picture, for the neocolonial bloodsuckers are entrenched in Khartoum; the villagers are loath to speak of Hosna and her actions; and the effects of oppression, whether it predates the coming of the British or developed afterward,are visible throughout the Sudan. But it is precisely this that differs so significantly from the Conradian model and thus presents hope of change. As EdwardSaid points out: All Conrad can see is a world dominated by the West, and-of equal importance-a world in which every opposition to the West only

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confirms its wicked power. What Conrad could not see is life lived outside this cruel tautology. He could not understand . . . that places like Latin America (and India and Africafor that matter) also contain people and cultures with histories and ways not controlled by the (70) gringo imperialists. Salih celebrates the precolonial culture, but also exposes its evil, just as he sees the potential benefit that comes with the British gunboats. Conrad's tensionsinvariably devolveinto an existentialproblemof locatingthe Western self in a fixed position; ultimately the self turns awayfrom the social to the phallic, bourgeois representationof the Individual. The narratorof Season of Migration to the North cannot place himself in such a way, for Salih is calling for tolerance, not mastery.17 "Hankering" for mastery is the great failure of the differing sections of this neocolonial world: economic mastery of imperialism; the misogynistic mastery of Islam; and, the mastery of one culture over another, whether seen inter- or intranationally. It is what allows Mustafa Sa'eed and his like to prey on those who would "see with one eye, speak with one tongue and see things as either black or white, either Easternor Western" (150-51).18 To deceive oneself that things can ever be separated thus again is to play into the hands of the oppressors, or to become one of them. Origins no longer are clearly definable, and everything is of necessity a midpoint. The narratorasks whether the birds are migrating or just in casual flight: the difference lies in the illusion of destination and end point. The narrator calls for help to find an anchor, not an identity; he seeks help from his village, from the heartbeat of the pumps, and from the reader so that, with Zein at the wedding feast, he may jump and sing, "Make known the good news!" without having to forget his obscure English poets. NOTES 1. This essay owes much to Peter Nazareth, who has led the field in analyzing Conrad's connection with contemporaryThird World literature. The bibliographyof his "Out of Darkness:Conradand Other Third World Writers" provides an excellent survey of early attempts in this direction. For comments on the connection between Salih and Conrad, see his essay in Amyuni, ed. Season: A Casebook. See also Mohammad Shaheen, who offers an excellent explication of the similaritiesbetween Marlowand Salih's narratorand Kurtz and Mustafa Sa'eed. However, his naive interpretation of this intertextuality-for example, that Salih fails in his "attempt to integrate the Conradian elements into his fiction," or that "a major flaw in Season . . . is that the narrator'sopposition to life either in the North or in the South is never put to any test" (168)-is woefully inadequate to the

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complexity of this novel. Formore recent workin this areafocusing on other authors, see the entries under Jacqueline Bardolph and EdwardSaid. 2. "Signifying is a trope that subsumesother rhetoricaltropes, including metaphor, metonymy, synecdocheand irony (the 'master' tropes) . . . Signifying is a rhetoricalpracticeunengaged in information-giving. Signifying turns on the play and chain of signifiers" (Gates 285-86) and allows the signifiers to wreak havoc on the signifieds. 3. For an interesting examination of the Othello references,see Barbara Harlow (Amyuni, ed., Season: A Casebook 75-80). 4. In this sense it is actually the narrator(in the sense of text deliverer) and not the audience who is left undefined in Season. Forthe sake of clarity, and the "gentlemen" I shall continue to refer to the speakeras the narrator as the audience. 5. It is interesting to note that Salih worked for the BBC in the Arabic Drama Serviceafter he returned to Sudan. Though he writes in Arabic, he must feel verystronglythat he is in dangerof helping to supplant his culture in a way Conrad would never have dreamed possible. 6. Cf. Seikaly 136, 141. Ali Abdallah Abbas ironically (and unintentionally) illustrates this problem. In his first paragraph, Abbas points out the misconception that "Mustafa Sa'eed is the main figure," saying that this may be responsiblefor the lack of attention to the "central role of the narrator"(Amyuni, ed., Season: A Casebook27). He then devotes his entire paper to an examination of Mustafa's interaction with the Englishonce women, evoking Fanon and Bastide, and only mentioning the narrator culmination again, and that parenthetically!Abbas also equates the violent of "the confrontation in Season" with the death of Jean Morris. 7. See Gordimer 24-28. Given the recent increasein racist, politically repressivemeasuresin South Africa, it might be wise to stressthat this right in the courtroom only applies when the oppressed are allowed the luxury of a trial, which often is not the case. 8. This was first brought to my attention by Nany Reincke in a discussion of Season. 9. "Wasichu": "A term used to designate the white man, but having no reference to the color of his skin" (footnote in Neihardt 7). 10. For an exhaustiveJungian analysisof these elements, see Muhammed Siddiq. Such an exposition, however, patently fails to do justice to the concrete historical and cultural context of Salih's work. 11. "These girls were not killed by MustafaSa'eed but by the germ of a deadly disease that assailed them a thousand years ago" (33). 12. Cf. Nazareth (Amyuni, ed., Season: A Casebook) for a contrasting of this passage with one from "The Secret Sharer." 13. Hosna had been viciously bitten all over her body and had retaliated

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by stabbing Wad Rayyesrepeatedly, castratinghim, and then plunging the dagger into her own heart. 14. Mustafaalso has noticed this and commentson it in a most condescending fashion. (cf. note 17). 15. Salih's attitude on this point is in no sense ambivalent. Women asking men for their hand invariablyrepresentsa positive breakfrom tradition. "The Wedding of Zein," a delightful story of a village misfit (in both the good and bad sense), centers around his being asked, almost being told, by the village beauty (who resembles Hosna in both attitude and appearance) to marryher. 16. PeterNazareth, in a privateconversation,pointed out that the foreign student in England learns quickly that the British do not take kindly to being referred to as Europeans. Thus the narrator,were he addressing a group of Englishmen, would have known to say that he was studying in England (or Great Britain) rather than in Europe. 17. "I believe if I have contributed anything to modern Arabicliterature, it is in my constantplea for toleration" (TayebSalih in Amyuni, ed., Season: A Casebook 16). 18. Though the opposite is commonly taken for granted, the evidence in the text points to Mustafa's being alive: the timely settling of affairs; the letter of the day before his disappearanceto the narratorin which he speaks of wanderlust;the lack of a body in combination with repeated referencesto Mustafa'sstrength and swimming abilities; and, less directly, the murderof a husband by a wife shortly before Hosna's death. All these seem to indicate that Mustafa Sa'eed is still abroad in the service of Jean Morris. WORKS CITED Abbas, Ali Abdallah. "The Father of Lies: The Role of Mustafa Sa'eed as Second Self in Season of Migration to the North." In Amyuni, ed., Season: A Casebook27-38. Accad, Evelyne. "Sexual Politics:Women in Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North." In Amyuni, ed., Season: A Casebook 55-64. Amyuni, MonaTakienddine, ed. Season of Migrationto the North: A Casebook. Beirut: American U of Beirut, 1985. Bardolph,Jacqueline. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood as Readings of Conrad's Under Western Eyes and Victory." Conradiana12 (May 1987): 32-50. Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Sharer and the Heart of Darkness. Chicago: Signet, 1983. . Under WesternEyes. New York: Penguin, 1984. Gates, Henry L. "The Blacknessof Blackness:A Critique of the Sign and

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the Signifying Monkey." Black Literature and Literary Theory. Ed. Henry L. Gates. New York: Methuen, 1984. 285-321. Gordimer, Nadine. Burger'sDaughter. London: Penguin, 1979. Harlow, Barbara. "Sentimental Orientalism: Season of Migration to the North and Othello." In Amyuni, ed., Season: A Casebook 75-80. Nazareth, Peter. "Out of Darkness: Conrad and Other Third World Writers." Conradiana14 (Dec. 1982): 173-87. . "The Narrator as Artist and the Reader as Critic in Season of

A Casebook to the North." In Amyuni,ed., Season: 123-34. Migration

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks. New York: Pocket Books, 1959. Said, EdwardW. "Through Gringo Eyes:With Conradin LatinAmerica." Harper's Apr. 1988: 70-72. Salih, Tayeb. Season of Migration to the North. Trans. Denys JohnsonDavies. Washington, DC: Three Continents P, 1985. .The Wedding of Zein. Trans. Denys Johnson-Davies. Malta: St. Paul's Press, 1969. Seikaly, Samir. "Season of Migrationto the North: History in the Novel." In Amyuni, ed., Season: A Casebook 135-42. Literature Shaheen, Mohammed. "Tayeb Salih and Conrad." Comparative Studies 22 (1985): 156-71. Siddiq, Muhammed. "The Process of Individuation in Al-Tayeb Salih's

Novel Seasonof Migration to the North."Journalof ArabicLiterature

9 (1978): 67-104. Szittya, Penn R. "Metafiction: The Double Narration in Under Western

48 (1981):817-40. Eyes."EnglishLiterary History