The Implications of Opposites: Season of Migration to the North
In Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih creates characters that narrate experiences that may or may not be entirely real to show his readers the relationship between ideas or things on different ends of the spectrum. This can be summed up in Mustafa Sa’eed’s “book”, “My Life Story,” which was dedicated “To those who see things as either black or white, either Eastern or Western.” Interestingly, the rest of the book was blank. I think many of the statements made in Season of Migration to the North can be reflected upon this.
First, just as the empty autobiography was dedicated to people who categorize things binarily, the book addresses several juxtaposed, contrasting ideas: “black or white,” “Eastern or Western,” man or woman, innocent or guilty, love or hatred, intellect or fun, colonizer or colonized, Sudan or England. I can’t cover all of these in just one paper, but I’d like to explore the roles of love and hatred in this book. On page 111, upon learning of Husna’s death, the narrator says, “The world has turned suddenly upside down. Love? Love does not do this. This is hatred. I feel hatred and seek revenge; my adversary is within and I must confront him.” Then, just a few pages later, on 125, he reads what Mustafa wrote in his notes, perhaps about Jean Morris: “It was not hatred. It was a love unable to express itself. I loved her in a twisted manner. She too.”
The narrator wants to take revenge on his own self for being passive, while Mustafa, being already in a relationship with a British woman when he wrote his notes, felt like he was in the process of getting revenge (or perhaps already got revenge) on the colonizers for their crimes in Sudan. This shows two differing views of the Sudanese perspective on the colonizers: the first, younger and less mature view is represented by the young Mustafa Sa’eed, who wants to take revenge on the British through his relationships with British women. The second view is that of the older narrator, who sees the fault in his own people’s culture and his own actions that allowed injustice to happen. One is from love, the other is from hatred. Perhaps Salih’s message is that there should be a balance between the two.
This brings me to the second part of Mustafa’s “My Life Story”: all the blank pages. If this is the message to those who only see black or white, what does it say? Does it represent the balance between the two extremes? That perhaps there is no reason to dramatize one end over the other — East over West, colonized over colonizer? While listening to a debate between a British and Sudanese intellectual about the effects of colonization, the narrator thinks to himself, “But their [the ‘white men’s’] own coming too was not a tragedy as we imagine, nor yet a blessing as they imagine. It was a melodramatic act which with the passage of time will change into a mighty myth.” (page 50). Clearly, not everyone agrees with this — especially not the expected audience of the both Season of Migration to the North and Mustafa’s “My Life Story”. The tone here about the colonizers is very ambivalent, or perhaps even neutral. The message seems to prompt the readers to look at it from a different angle, one that doesn’t take the colonizers too seriously.Perhaps that is a form of rebelling against the colonizers, who believe that, as Richard says, “[the Africans] cannot manage to live without us.”
Elaborating on the conversation between the two intellectuals, Richard displayed some attitudes that may be categorized as racist towards the Sudanese. By showing us Richard’s attitude towards the Sudanese, Salih shows us one of the symptoms of colonialism that perhaps needs to be managed. Richard’s statement here is particularly about the colonized people’s dependency upon the colonizers, but the argument of the book is more general. As Mahmoud Mamdani described in Saviors and Survivors: “The colonial political objective involved more than just redefining the colonial subject; it involved reshaping the very self-consciousness of the colonized, how they thought of themselves, their self-identity.” This can be reflected in Mustafa’s identity conflict with the women in England. He tended to romanticize his African-ness, by sugar-coating, exaggerating, comparing himself to African characters in classical English literature, and basically becoming the orientalist image, as Edward Said termed it, that the British women expected.
With the last of these relationships, Mustafa admits that he was lying, saying, “Though I realized I was lying, I felt that somehow I meant what I was saying and that she too, despite her lying, was telling the truth” (page 119). Building on the theme of truth and falsehood, the narrator also says, just a few page prior to this, about Husna, “If only I had told her the truth, perhaps she would not have acted as she did” (page 111). Both knew they were lying to their love interests, but one (Mustafa) was okay with it, while the narrator regrets it. Perhaps Salih’s point is that the colonized Sudanese people should be honest with their own “self-identities” as Mamdani would call it, but also not to over-dramatize the colonizers’ roles in this.
I’d like to conclude by noting that throughout all these messages, the underlying metaphor seems to be the representation of the post-colonial relationship between Sudan and England through Mustafa’s relationships with English women. It is interesting that Salih does not show Sudan as playing the role of the victim — in fact, if I am correct about Mustafa and the women being a metaphor of Sudan and the English, it is the opposite. Mustafa himself, while trying to seek revenge, gets emotionally confused and hurt. Perhaps Salih’s message is that instead of being stagnant and fixated on the corruption from colonialism (which would only cause further identity crises, like those experienced by Mustafa), the Sudanese should take the good, however little it was, move on, and grow. Maybe Mustafa came to this conclusion as well — in the end, he settled back home and used the knowledge he learned from the colonizers to benefit his people.
Yet it still seems like Mustafa is not the best or most hopeful vision Salih sees for Sudan, since he ended up dying (or perhaps killing himself). Is this a symbol of giving up? The contrast, however, is shown by the narrator, who seems to think about dying, but changes his mind at the end. On the very last page of the book, he says, “All my life I had not chosen, had not decided. Now I am making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are a few people I want to stay with for the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning. If I am unable to forgive, then I shall try to forget. I shall live by force and cunning.”
I think the passivity is what Salih seems to see about Sudan under colonialism, and the narrator’s decision to ignore the philosophical, debatable questions (the meaning of life) and instead focus on life and practicality (“duties to discharge”) and rebuilding strongly (“by force and cunning”). Salih seems to call for reclaiming one’s identity, focusing on the nearby things that matter, taking action by making decisions, and avoiding useless discussion. Above all, he forces readers to question their perceptions and ideas — whether or not they result from colonialists — and to be truthful to their people and their own selves.
Work Cited
Mamdani, Mahmood. “Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror”. Human Sciences and Research Council, Random House. 2009.
Said, Edward. “Orientalism”. Pantheon Books. 1978.
Salih, Tayeb. “Season of Migration to the North”. New York Review Books. 1969.
