Season Of Migration

The University of Jordan Arabic Texts in Translation Prof. Mohammad Shaheen Tasneem M. Jweifel Season of Migration to the North: A Novel of Writing Back -

Historical Context:

The writing of Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North was first published in 1966, that is some years after the independence of the Sudan from the British colonialism. The postcolonial condition is probed with stunning insight and candor in the novel. Prof. Muhammad Shaheen, in his Tahawwulat Al-Shawq fi Mawsim Al-Hijraila Ela Al-Shamal, calls Season "a wonderful literary documentary that takes into account the dubious relationship between the two [Arab and Western] worlds" (Shaheen 143). Returning to his home village in Sudan after seven years of study in Europe, the novel’s young narrator becomes fascinated by a new member of the community, the brilliant but mysterious Mustafa Sa’eed. On a sweltering summer night, Mustafa tells the young man the story of his own European sojourn many years earlier, during which he was a celebrated lecturer in economics at the University of London, as well as a cruel and voracious philanderer, responsible, in one way or another, for the deaths of several British women. Mustafa suddenly disappears during a time of severe flooding, but the young man’s obsession with him, and his enigmatic life story, only grows. Soon an aged villager obstinately fulfills his determination to marry Mustafa’s widow, whom the narrator had been asked to care for.

Narration and Style: The narrative in the novel is in the traditional form told from first point of view. Though the narrator is anonymous, in fact he plays an important role in the plot development for he works as an observer who tells his and other’s tales. Some critics argue that this shadowy narrator figure could be considered the actual central figure of the text, but he is greatly overshadowed by the man Mustafa Sa’eed who imposes his strange story on the narrator and makes of him a sort of heir. After reciting, in fluent and impeccable English, some lines of verse about World War 1 in a drunken night, Sa’eed becomes the narrator’s central focus in digging deep into his past to unfold his secrets. What is distinctive about this novel is this transition in focus from the narrator, thinking he is the main protagonist, to another character who seems to be absent and silent throughout the first ten pages, believing that he is just a minor character. The reader in this case would notice this shift in narration when we hear the story of Sa’eed at the time we expect to know more about the narrator himself. Nevertheless, the narrator is not given a name which may help shift the reader’s attention to another character. Style and diction are also important in creating deep look beyond words on page or events. Starting with the title, in fact the reference to the ‘north’ gets beyond its being just a direction, referring to Europe. Actually it is used in a way to refer more to and ‘ideology;’ “[i]n her eyes I was a symbol of all her hankerings. I am south that yearns for the north and the ice” (Salih 30). The two aspects, north and south, are present together in this passage dealing with a woman, “… a southern thirst being dissipated in the mountain passes of history in the north” (Salih 42). In this case, Mustafa was longing to be one

with the north and leave the south behind, but with the presence of Jean Morris scandal, he retreats to Sudan. However, he never truly divorces himself from the North and this is evident when the narrator enters Sa’eed’s room after his death and finds a shrine to the North within the brick construction and the items within, including the extensive collection of books and photographs. The presence of this room proves that Sa’eed was still enticed by the North even though he could no longer physically live there and the recreation of it in his room in Sudan serves as a tribute to his past. The word choice that the author utilizes and how he refers back to the same phrases throughout the novel is crucial to understanding it. Salih’s writing style is mysterious and not complete at times, specifically with regards to Jean Morris, but he does draw the reader back each time he repeats something. A phrase like “[a]nd the train carried me to Victoria Station and to the world of Jean Morris,” (Salih 29) repeats the same on pages 31 and 33. What is the point of repetition when Sa’eed doesn’t even offer a first-hand account of the interactions with Jean Morris? All we know is from little bits of court reports, random interactions at parties, and these repetitive thoughts, but this is an indicator which informs us that Jean is of importance to the novel’s development. Salih also refers to a bow tightening, to keep the reader involved and uses it as a gauge so that we know how the story is progressing as the bow keeps becoming more tightly drawn.

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Post-colonialism:

Postcolonialism consists of a set of theories in philosophy and various approaches to literary analysis that are concerned with literature written in English in countries that were or still are colonies of other countries. For the most part, postcolonial studies excludes literature that represents either British or American viewpoints and concentrates on writings from colonized or formerly colonized cultures in places that were once dominated by, but remained outside of, the white, male, European cultural, political, and philosophical tradition. Referred to as “third-world literature” by Marxist critics and “Commonwealth literature” by others, postcolonial theorists investigate in them what happens when two cultures clash and one of them, with its accessory ideology, empowers and deems itself superior to the other. Colonial discourse theory has been primarily built upon the pioneering work of Edward Sa’eed, Orientalism. In his book, Sa’eed examines a range of literary, anthropological and historical texts in order to illuminate how the West attempted to represent the Orient as ‘Other’ through Orientalist discourse. By portraying the East as culturally and intellectually inferior, the West was simultaneously able to construct an image of western superiority. These opposing representations of East and West enabled the West to justify their process of colonization as a ‘civilizing mission’ (Sa’eed 5-25). In one of his important interviews published in Diacritics in 1976, Sa’eed made it plain that there was a degree of militancy behind the writing of this book: I feel myself to be writing from an interesting position. I am an Oriental writing back at the Orientalists, who for so long thrived upon our silence. I am

also writing to them, as it were, by dismantling the structure of their discipline, showing its meta-historical, institutional, anti-empirical, and ideological biases. In other words, Sa’eed stresses the significance of writing back to the empire in an attempt to set the truth of colonialism and the false representations created by the imperialists about the orient. With regard to Salih’s Season, Sa’eed finds in the novel a form of writing back to the center, where the colonized avenges from the colonizer but in a different way. Mustafa Sa’eed, metaphorically speaking, conquers the West, coming from the Sudanese countryside. Thus, it is imperialism enacted on stage, but this time it is in London. Edward Sa’eed makes it clear that "The post-imperial writers of the Third World therefore bear their past within them __ as scars of humiliating wounds ….as urgently reinterpretable and re-deployable experiences in which the formerly silent native speaks"(212). In the novel, Mustafa Sa’eed seems to imply a causal relationship between his distorted emotional relationships with English women and the economic, cultural and psychological violence perpetrated by the British colonial rule. In this sense, Sa’eed and Jean Morris represent the clash or struggle between the colonized and the colonizer which brings a sense of violence between the two. Sa’eed thinks of himself as a conqueror to England, a ‘hunter.’ “there came a moment when I felt I had transformed in her eyes into a naked, primitive creature, a spear in one hand and arrows in the other hunting elephants and lions in the jungles” (38). In this sense, Salih seems to arm his character with a distinctive mental ability on one hand but with an emotionally empty heart on the other, a weakness point in Sa’eed that leads his life to a tragic end by the end

of the novel. Even European women’s attraction towards Sa’eed is very much similar to that of their ancestors towards Sa’eed’s land. Sa’eed’s response to colonialism illustrates the extent to which colonialism damages the self-image of the colonized native and expresses metaphorically his desire to be his own master. Therefore, the protagonist appears to the reader as the product of imperialism through whom Salih tends to dramatize the colonial past. However, the novel seems to be more informed by the sexual revolution in the west and the decolonization of the Third World in the 1960s than by the colonial period it claims to depict. -

Sexual Symbolism in Colonialism:

Throughout the development of European civilization, the West has continually sought to define the Orient, the East, all "primitive" lands outside Europe, as its erotic Other. An inherently sexist dynamic is manufactured: the rational, masculine West pursues and attempts to control the sensual, feminine East. Edward Sa’eed points toward this historically and culturally created tension as evidence of Orientalism. In Orientalism, Sa’eed describes sex and sexual imagery as a tool for colonialism. The "Orient" is infused with a sexual identity which justifies and aids in Western domination. The East has been orientalized to represent Western sexual fantasies, forbidden exotic "Oriental" pleasures (Sa’eed 5-6). The harem, the ornamented and veiled woman, the well endowed virile native are all stereotypical sexual images conjured by the West's idea of the Orient. Sa’eed goes on to state, "the Orient seems still to suggest not only fecundity but sexual promise (and threat), untiring sensuality, unlimited desire, deep generative energies"(Said 188).

Tayeb Salih presents the power of sexual politics in a paradoxical context. In the novel, this vengeful sexuality appears within a postcolonial context where Salih imagines this sexual response of a misguided intellectual towards his colonizers. Within this context, history functions in Mustafa Sa’eed’s exploitation of ancient East-West conflicts to justify his own sexual conquests of the women of his British colonizers. In other words, the novel attests to a conceptualization of colonialism as rape, and of anti-colonial struggle as sexual revenge. Mustafa Sa’eed practices sexual colonialism on a personal level. He exploits the same Western exotic and erotic stereotypes to seduce European women. He embraces his image as "a naked, primitive creature, a spear in one hand and arrows in the other, hunting elephants and lions in the jungle" (Salih 38). Submerged rage against the totalizing, dehumanizing effects of stereotypes promoted by Orientalism, as well as selfish physical gratification motivate him to enter relationships with four different women. Rather than stage an open revolt, Mustafa attempts to subvert his colonizers; “I am a colonizer” (Salih 94), using methods he has learned from them. Sex is his weapon and women are the means of achieving his revenge (Sa’eed 41). Mustafa harvests the love of four women; he becomes the hunter, the women his prey (Salih 142). Their love gives Mustafa the power to destroy them. He states, "My bedroom had become a theatre of war; my bed a patch of hell" (Salih 33-4). All three women commit suicide. Mustafa empties them emotionally and then casts them aside. "The infection had stricken these women a thousand years ago, but I had stirred up the latent depths of the disease until it had got out of control and killed" (Salih 34). Implicit in this statement is the suggestion that the women are forced to see past imbedded

Oriental images manipulated by Mustafa Sa’eed. It is this discovery of falsehood and manipulation which ultimately drives them to their deaths. What prevents the novel from having a sense of reconciliation is that each part of the conflict stands within a certain frame of reference that creates this clash. The everlasting struggle between East and West is considered to be the main cause of the conflict appears between Sa’eed and Jean. Therefore, revenge doesn’t seem to take place from the other specific part, but from external surroundings to which these parts belong or relate.

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Works Cited:

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http://www.postcolonialweb.org/diasporas/salih/raun2.html

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Edward Sa’eed, “Interview”, Diacritics (Fall 1976) 47.

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Said, Edward. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin.

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Shahin, Muhammad. Tahawwulat al-Shawq fi Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal. Beirut: Al-Mu'assassah al-'Arabiyyah li al-Dirasat wa al-Nashr, 2006.