Tayeb Salih

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CVSP Mission Statement The mission of the
Civilization Sequence Program is to provide
undergraduate courses in the humanities that
support the American University of Beirut's goals
in general education and the advancement of
knowledge. CVSP is committed to engaging students
from all the faculties of the University in the
study of primary texts. The three major goals of
the Program are to develop critical skills and
creative, flexible thinking to promote an
awareness of different civilizations and to
uphold dialogue as an essential skill for life.
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Tayeb Salih

• CVSP 204
• A. Arasoghli

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• 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.

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• II. Tayeb Salihs speech at AUB in 1980
• I got stuck before Mustafa Saeed 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.

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• The two voices in Season, already mentioned
  before- are those of the narrator and Mustafa
  Saeed.
• 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 Saaeed 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.

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Kitchener
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.

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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
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The Battle of Omdurman
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• 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 Saeed 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.

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• 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.

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• How could Arab Muslimsacquire 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 Riftal-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.

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• 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.

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• 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 Saeed were not able to lead.

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• 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 elses. 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 oursp.49.
• I too had lived with them. But I had lived with
  them superficially, neither loving nor hating
  them.p.49.

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• No sooner does he find that the love he wants to
  flow from his heart has tuned into rage and
  anger. Mustafa Saeed disappears one day, by
  drowning or more possibly suicide, we dont 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.

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• The crisis of and internal migration
• South/South conflict
• Two reasons for the narrators alienation
• A. Patriarchy and tragedy.
• B. Neocolonialism The corruption of the
  new rulers of Africa.

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• 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 decreesshe 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.

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• 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
  dont 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.

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• 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.

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• VI. Mustafa Saeed
• Mustafa Saeeed 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.

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• 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 Ziyads army. The connection in
  Mustafa Saeeds 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.

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• A. The divided self of Mustafa Saeed
• 1. The Freudian level
• The distant call still rings in his ears Its
  futile to deceive oneself. That distant call
  still rings in my ears, I thought that my life
  and marriage here would silence itp. 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.

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• 2. South/North dichotomy
• Mustafa Saeeds 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• B. The contradictory selves of Mustafa Saeed
• Mustafa lives and becomes a lie
• Hassan , Charles, Amin, Mustafa and Richard.
• Im like Othello, Arab African., addresses the
  jury and prosecutors in the courtroom saying
  Im no Othello, I am a lie. Why dont you
  sentence me to be hanged and so kill the lie.
  p.95.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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