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
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Historical Context:
The writing of Tayeb Salihs 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
novels young narrator becomes fascinated by a new member of the community, the
brilliant but mysterious Mustafa Saeed. 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
mans obsession with him, and his enigmatic life story, only grows. Soon an aged villager
obstinately fulfills his determination to marry Mustafas 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 others 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 Saeed 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, Saeed
becomes the narrators 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 Saeed 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 readers 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 Saeeds 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 Saeed 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. Salihs 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 Saeed doesnt 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 novels 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.
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 Saeed, Orientalism. In his book, Saeed 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 (Saeed 5-25).
In one of his important interviews published in Diacritics in 1976, Saeed 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, Saeed 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 Salihs Season, Saeed 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 Saeed, 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 Saeed 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 Saeed 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, Saeed and
Jean Morris represent the clash or struggle between the colonized and the colonizer
which brings a sense of violence between the two. Saeed 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 Saeed that leads his life to a tragic end by the end
of the novel. Even European womens attraction towards Saeed is very much similar to
that of their ancestors towards Saeeds land.
Saeeds 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 Saeed points toward
this historically and culturally created tension as evidence of Orientalism. In Orientalism,
Saeed 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 (Saeed 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. Saeed 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 Saeeds 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 Saeed 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 (Saeed
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 Saeed. 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 Saeed and Jean. Therefore, revenge doesnt seem to take place
from the other specific part, but from external surroundings to which these parts belong
or relate.
Works Cited:
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/diasporas/salih/raun2.html
Edward Saeed, Interview, Diacritics (Fall 1976) 47.
Said, Edward. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin.
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.

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The University of Jordan

Arabic Texts in Translation

Narration and Style:

Postcolonialism consists of a set of theories in philosophy and various approaches

also writing to them, as it were, by dismantling the structure of their discipline,

Sexual Symbolism in Colonialism:

Throughout the development of European civilization, the West has continually

Oriental images manipulated by Mustafa Saeed. It is this discovery of falsehood and

Edward Saeed, Interview, Diacritics (Fall 1976) 47.

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

Shahin, Muhammad. Tahawwulat al-Shawq fi Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal.

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