Tayeb Salih and Freud: The Impact of Freudian Ideas on "Season of Migration to the North" Author(s): Yosif Tarawneh

and Joseph John Reviewed work(s): Source: Arabica, T. 35, Fasc. 3 (Nov., 1988), pp. 328-349 Published by: BRILL Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4057090 . Accessed: 18/03/2012 14:22
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TAYEB SALIH AND FREUD: THE IMPACT OF FREUDIAN IDEAS ON SEASON OF MIGRA TION TO THE NORTH
BY

YOSIF TARAWNEH AND JOSEPH JOHN

I about the meeting point between freedom and love in an interview, Tayeb Salih explicitly declared that, ((while writing Season of Migration to the North, I was under the influence of Freud. According to him, there is in life a conflict between Eros (love) and death. Love is the perfect expression of freedom)'. This admission is quite illuminating since it points to a crucial area of investigation-the affinity between Salih and Freud-so far unnoticed by the different commentators on Season. Although some critics have dealt with the themes of sex and death, for instance, they tend to overlook the specific bearing of Freud's ideas on Salih's delineation of these issues2. However, the overt acknowledgement of Freudian influence on Season must not be construed as Salih's statement of total acceptance and mechanical reproduction of Freud's views in the novel. We should guard against any academic suggestion of mindless borrowings in assessing the nature and extent of Salih's debt to Freud. Indeed, it can be safely asserted, even at the risk of anticipation, that the Freudian views subtly incorporated within
A
ASKED
I Huda Al-Husseini, ()Tayeb Salih in Beirut)) in Ahmad Sa'eed Mohammadiah, et al., Tayeb Salih, the Genius of the Arabic Novel (Beirut: Dar Al-Aoudah, 1976), pp. 214-15. We have translated the Arabic title. 2 Abdullah Ibrahim, <<The Theme of Death in Tayeb Salih's Novels,)) Al-Tali'atu al-Adabiyah, 6, No. 2 (1980), 21-33. In this article, Ibrahim tries to show that the idea of death in the works of Salih is the ultimate end. ))There is a bitter struggle ... to reach a specific end-that of death-that drives all his characters)) (p. 23). This view is not supported with any details from Season of Migration to the North at the end of which the Narrator chooses life instead of death. Again, the writer of this article fails to perceive Freud's influence on Tayeb Salih concerning his treatment of death. The theme of sex, on the other hand, is dealt with by Ahmad Al-Zu'bi in ))The Three Faces of Mustafa Sa'eed: A study of Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North,)) Ibda', 3, No. 1 (1985), 111-14. See also Raja' Al-Naqqash, ))Tayeb Salih: A New Novelistic Genius)) in Tayeb Salih, the Genius of the Arabic Novel, pp. 85-93.

Arabica, tome xxxv, 1988

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the framework of the novel must ultimately be evaluated in light of the novelist's overall governing moral vision. The main purpose of this paper is to trace the Freudian ideas that find expression in Seasonand the way they are dealt with by the novelist. Ideas such as the Freudian concept of fate, the shaping influence of early childhood experiences on later development of character, the Oedipal feelings towards the mother, the nature of man s instincts, the sado-masochistic tendencies of instinctual life, fantasy and the pleasure principle as opposed to the reality principle, the sense of guilt and the need for punishment-all are utilized by Salih to enhance our grasp of his moral vision which, in the final analysis, recoils from the absolute determinism of Freud as exemplified in Mustafa Sa'eed's destiny, and affirms spiritual regeneration, human freedom, and universal love as reflected in the Narrator's moral education. II In his response to the question about the convergence of freedom and love, Salih must have been struck by the inadequacy of Freud'd absolute determinism, which views man's destiny as the result of per-determining forces which deprive him of any innate urge to struggle for freedom from his inherited state. A passage in Beyond the PleasurePrinciple propounds this view:
What psychoanalysis reveals in the transference phenomena of neurotics [that the latter repeat in one form or another their repressed traumatic experiences] can also be observed in the lives of some normal people. The impression they give is of being pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some extraneous power; but psychoanalysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most part arranged by themselves and determined by early infantile influences3.

The early infantile influences and the experiences preordained by them, according to Freud, are inextricably bound to the structure of the Oedipus complex-the son's fixated incestuous desire for the mother and hatred of the father suturated with a sense of guilt because of the incest taboo. In his Totem and Taboo, Freud argues that the incest taboo is as crucial in the life of civilized individuals as it was in the life of primitive men. In his development, civilized
3 Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. James Strachey (New York: Liveright, 1950), p. 23.

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man goes through stages analogous to those in the historical evolution of the race, starting with the incestuous primal horde. Both the child and the neurotic, whose development is arrested at the level of the child, are in their inner life like the savage in his outer life. And since the infantile period of development corresponds to that of the savage, the Oedipal phase of it can be viewed as an inheritance from the physical past4. The Freudian idea of early infantile influences being alldetermining is dealt with sensitively by Salih in Season, especially in his conception of Mustafa Sa'eed's character. The novelist does not seem to accept this Freudian view in its entirety, for the experiences he communicates about Mustafa's childhood belong to a later period of development than the infantile. Mustafa is described by Mrs. Robinson as a ((tortured child>>5 whose ((soul contained not a drop of sense of fun>> (p. 30). Deprived of his father before birth, Mustafa was also alienated from his mother with whom he did not maintain a normal relationship. ((It was as if she were some stranger on the road with whom circumstances had chanced to bring me. Perhaps it was I who was an odd creature, or may be it was my mother who was odd-I don't know. We used not to talk much>>(p. 19). Mustafa admits that as a child he ((wasn't affected by anything ... I did not cry when hit, wasn't glad if the teacher praised me in class, didn't suffer from the things the rest did>> (p. 20). What makes up for this emotional dryness is his amazing brain <"cutting with cold effectiveness>>(p. 20). As a child at school, he was ((busy with this wonderful machine?) and <(coldas a field of ice>>(p. 20). A girl-friend of his at school in Cairo labels him a "(heartless machine>>because of his incapacity for love. Mustafa's dehumanizing heartlessness is evident not only in his relationship with his mother but in his basic inability to love others. Despite the love showered upon him by the Robinsons during his school days in Cairo, Mustafa is not able to reciprocate it because of his self-centeredness. <<At the time I was wrapped up in myself and paid no attention to the love they showered upon me>?(p. 26). His egoism has rendered him totally incapable of appreciating
4 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, trans. A. A. Brill (1918; rpt. New York: Vintage, 1946), pp. 3-26, 130-206. 5 Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, trans. Denys Johnson-Davies (London: Heinemann, 1969), p. 147 All citations are from this edition with page numbers given parenthetically within the text.

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people's help. ((This is a fact in my life: the way chance has placed in my path people who gave me a helping hand at every stage, people for whom I had no feelings of gratitude. I used to take their help as though it were some duty they were performing for me>> (p. 23). This extreme ego-worship becomes a landmark of his future life in England, for behind all the masks he invents to lure his women victims there is only one face: that of the self-infatuated Mustafa Sa'eed. He denies the existence of love between one human being and another, resolving to pursue his (<twisted manner,>>as he calls it, <<untilthe meek inherit the earth, until the armies are disbanded, and the lamb grazes in peace beside the wolf ... until that time of happiness and love comes along>>(p. 41). Leading Isabella Seymour to his bedroom he mocks her simplicity and optimisim: <I knew that the short road along which we walked together to the bedroom was, for her, a road of light redolent with the aroma of magnanimity and devotion, but which to me was the last step before attaining the peak of selfishness>>(p. 43). Mustafa's egomania, a dominant feature of his childhood, can be understood in light of Freud's concept of ?(narcissism>> as the ego takes ?(itselfas an object>> and behaves ?(asthough it were in love with itself))6. Mustafa's narcissistic self-regard, stressed in his childhood, is augmented by the early awakening of sexual desires within him that are given incestuous overtones. Especially significant in this respect is his sexual yearning toward Mrs. Robinson who assumes the role of a surrogate mother. Meeting Mrs. Robinson for the first time at the Cairo railway station, Mustafa experiences a sudden effulgence of sexual feelings-<<all of a sudden I felt the woman's arms embracing me and her lips on my cheek. At that moment, as I stood on the station platform amidst a welter of sounds and sensations, with the woman's arms round my neck, her mouth on my cheek, the smell of her body-a strange, European smell-tickling my nose, her breast touching my chest, I felt-I, a boy of twelve-a vague sexual yearning I had never previously experienced>) (p. 25). Although Mrs. Robinson is as tender to him ?(as a mother to her own son)>(p. 20), he says, he would ?look at the hair of her armpits and would have a sensation of panic)) (p. 26).
6 Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey. eds. James Strachey and Angela Richards (London: Penguin, 1964), II, 135.

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This mother-son relationship is suggested in Mustafa's recollections about his trial at the Old Bailey forJean Morris's murder. <I found no bosom except hers on which to rest my head. 'Don't cry, dear child,' she said to me, patting my head. They had no children)) (p. 25). Similarly, in her letter to the Narrator, Mrs. Robinson wants Hosna Bint Mahmoud, Mustafa's widow, to think of her <(asa mother)> (p. 148). This surrogate mother attracts the foster child sexually, displacing the original mother in the child's affections. The creation of a substitute mother figure for Mustafa Sa'eed constitutes Salih's variation on the well-known Freudian Oedipus complex, a variation that is perhaps dictated by the political circumstances surrounding the child's birth and growth. Mustafa was born in 1898, the year in which Kitchener reconquered the Sudan and subjugated it to British rule. Consequently, the surrogate mother is closely associated with the surrogate culture of the invaders, a culture that he seeks to revenge himself upon through <<sexualconquests.)> It is this substitute culture that, like a mother, adopts him from his early childhood, grants him a scholarship, takes him to London to complete his education, and makes him a lecturer in one of its universities. It is this surrogate culture that not in its own language but breeds only seeks to teach him to say ((yes)> who themselves as substitute ((gods)) of the conpeople appoint quered land and its people. More importantly, it is this culture that transmits to him the germ of violence and destructiveness. Shaped by this heritage, his destiny evolves in the form of a sexual <(counter-invasion>> of the North that smacks of the ironic and the mock-heroic. Mustafa's erotic fixation on Mrs. Robinson, especially on the sexually potent odour of her body, permeates all his sexual encounters in England where even ((the smell of the place is strange, like that of Mrs. Robinson's body)) (p. 27). His first attraction to Isabella Seymour, for instance, is enhanced (he tells us) by his alertness to the intoxicating smell of her body strangely analogous to ((that odour with which Mrs. Robinson had met me on the platform of Cairo's railway station>)(p. 37). Again, as Isabella appears to him as a <(cityof secrets and rapture>)(p. 37), so Mrs. Robinson is identified with Cairo, ((a city of laughter)) (p. 28). Like Mrs. Robinson, all the English women who figure largely in his all-out sexual war-Isabella Seymour, Sheila Greenwood, Ann Ham-

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mond, and Jean Morris-are quixotically transformed into cities to be ravished by the self-absorbed Mustafa just as the cities into women to be as Cairo and London-change themselves-such desired and destroyed in his make-believe world. His early erotic as a surrogate mother, feelings toward Mrs. Robinson-who, epitomizes the substitute culture of the North-have mapped out the course of his future life of sexual aggressiveness. III In addition to the idea of foreordaining infantile influences, Freud's deterministic theory of the nature of man's instincts has been specifically most influential in Tayeb Salih's delineation of Mustafa's character and fate. Freud divides the human instincts into two main groups: <the erotic instincts, which seek to combine more and more living substances into ever greater unities, and the death instincts, which oppose this effort and lead what is living back into inorganic state. From the concurrent and opposing action of these two proceed the phenomena of life>>'. These two kinds of sexual and the destructive-<seldom-perhaps instincts-the never-appear in isolation from each other, but are alloyed with each other in varying and very different proportions,,8. Not only are these forces inseparable but they are conservative in nature since they tend to return to an earlier state of existence and ultimately to the inanimate or death. Consequently, the defeat of the life forces by the death forces is inevitable. Because of the sheer fatalism of Freud's view of the instincts, man, in this view, is deprived of freedom or any hope of rebirth or renewed life. It is this bleak determinism that Tayeb Salih dramatizes in Mustafa Sa'eed's life and death. The novelist, however, manages to interweave the primacy of the sexual and aggressive instincts, as propounded by Freud, within a highly saturated context of political, cultural, and historical (<confrontation))9between North
7 Ibid., p. 140. For similar statements on the nature of instincts, see Freud, The Id and the Ego, trans. Joan Riviere, ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton), p. 30-37; and his Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton), pp. 64-9. 8 Freud, Civilization & Its Discontents, p. 66. 9 The theme of <<confrontation,) has been dealt with by Issa Boullata, ,Encounter Between East and West: A Theme in Contemporary Arabic Novel) in Critical Perspectives on ModernArabic Literature,ed. Issa Boullata (Washington, D.C.:

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and South, a confrontation whose crushing poignancy forces individuals either into the irredeemable position of worthless selfdestruction and destructiveness, or makes them recoil into a make-believe or fantasized world as a substitute for the prevailing sinister realities. Salih's unique blending of sexuality and aggressiveness, permeated with profound ironies, constitutes his powerful transmutation of Freud's ideas about the nature of man's instincts. To begin with, Mustafa Sa'eed's long career in England-lasting over a period of thirty years-can be construed as a record of sexual conquests of English women, accompanied by mindless aggressiveness which, in turn, is heavily loaded with the mock-heroic imagery of war. In none of his relationships with Isabella Seymour, Sheila Greenwood, Ann Hammond, and Jean Morris does he assume the role of a lover but that of a <<conqueror)> or <<invader)> or <<intruder.))Sa'eed's <<invasion>> of the North, however, is not without its ironies, being almost a parody of its European counterpart. Mustafa's sexual aggressiveness ironically constitutes his personal answer to European military & political violence. Mustafa's awareness of European aggression is too intense to be suppressed. Indeed his own birth in 1898 is punctuated with Kitchener's reconquest of the Sudan. During his trial for the murder of Jean Morris, Mustafa recalls the irony embedded in Kitchener's question to Mahmoud Wad Ahmad after the latter's defeat in the battle of Atbara, <<Whyhave you come to my country to lay waste and plunder?>> (p. 94). More importantly, during the trial scene, Mustafa bitterly realizes that the English <<ships at first sailed down the Nile carrying guns not bread, and the railways were originally set up to transport troops; the schools were started so as to teach us how to say 'Yes' in their language. They imported to us the germ of the greatest European violence, as seen on the Somme and at Verdun, the like of which the world has never previously known>> (p. 95). Similarly, at the age of fifteen, Mustafa sailed <<to London and tragedy>>(p. 27) in 1913, a time in which Europe was preparing to sound the call for battle in one of the most destructive wars in the history of mankind-World War I. He also witnessed <<the
Three Continents, 1980), pp. 55-60. See also AbdJallab, ((Season of Migration to the North,,) in Tayeb Salih, the Genius of the Arabic Novel, pp. 137-43.

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troops returning, filled with terror, from the war of trenches, of lice and epidemics. I saw them sowing the seed of the next war in the treaty of Versailles)) (p. 34). Soon enough, Mustafa did witness the next war-World War II-with its unprecedented violence and destruction. The whole span of his life is plagued with upheavals in the national and international arenas. These are the sinister realities that reverberate in Mustafa's world, the wrongs of which he seeks to right by wielding, as it were, his conquering phallus. He was once quoted as saying, <I'll liberate Africa with my penis>>(p. 120)-a weird plan for national liberation, with vengeance to boot. Thus, the sexual act is conceived of as an act of war and aggression with all the pomp and circumstance attending the latter. Describing his aching desire to <<possess>> Isabella Seymour, a ((fertile Andalusia>>(p. 42), apparently because of her Spanish mother, Mustafa finally comforts himself with the near prospect of winning her as the Arabs won Spain. <<Mr. Mustafa, the bird has fallen into the snare. The Nile, that snake god, has gained a new victim. The city has changed into a woman. It would be but a day or two before I would pitch tent, driving my tent peg into the mountain summit?>(p. 39). The sexual climax is depicted as the attainment of victory after which the warrior plants his banner in the conquered territory. Imaging his sadistic subwhen, puffing, I jugation of Isabella Seymour, Mustafa says: <<And reach the mountain peak and implant my banner, collect my breath and rest-that, my lady, is an ecstasy greater to me than love, than happiness. Thus I mean you no harm, except to the extent that the sea is harmful when ships are wrecked against its rocks...that the lightning is harmful when it rends a tree in two?> (p. 41). This blending of eroticism with amoral destructiveness, essentially Freudian, becomes a defining feature of Mustafa's attitude toward other English women. Following a lecture he delivered on Abut Nuwas-an Abbassid poet notorious for his erotic poetry-he met Ann Hammond, a student of Oriental languages at Oxford, who proved to be <<an easy prey?>(p. 142), to use his words. Eventually, he ((took her and she accepted>?but then she was found <<dead in her flat in Hampstead, having gassed herself? (p. 146). Similarly, Sheila Greenwood, a simple waitress in a Soho restaurant, entered Mustafa's bedroom a ((chaste virgin and when she left it she was carrying the germ of self-destruction within her?)(p. 35).

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Most important of all is Mustafa's ((murderous war>> (p. 160), to use his phrase, with Jean Morris, a war in which he never tastes victory. His helpless involvement with Jean Morris is portrayed with an almost tragic fatalism from beginning to end. As he puts it, (4 pursued her for three years. Everyday the string of the bow became taut.. .the arrow's target had been fixed and it was inevitable the tragedy would take place>>(p. 33). After this tireless chase by <the savage bull>> (p. 33), Jean gets married to him but she refuses to fulfill his sexual demands as her lawful husband. Frustrated with her obstinacy, he feels that his bedroom has theatre of war; and my bed a patch of hell. When I changed into <<a grasped her it was like grasping at clouds... I would stay awake all night warring with bow and sword and spear and arrows, and in the morning I would see the smile unchanged and would know that once again I had lost the combat>>(pp. 33-34). The conqueror is conquered; the hunter is changed into a quarry. Mustafa is no longer <<consciousof anything but this catastrophe, in the shape of a woman, that fate had decreed>>for him, and he adds, <<she was my destiny and in her lay my destruction... I was the invader who had come from the South, and this was the icy battlefield from which I would not make a safe return. I was the pirate sailor and Jean Morris the shore of destruction>) (p. 160). The alloy of sex and death, as suggested in Freud's theory of the instincts, is carried out brilliantly in Season in the scene of Jean Morris's murder during which the kill and the kiss become indistinguishable:
Here are my ships, my darling, sailing towards the shores of destruction. I leant over and kissed her. I put the blade-edge between her breasts and she twined her legs round my back. Slowly I pressed down. Slowly. She opened her eyes. What ecstasy there was in those eyes! She seemed more beautiful than anything in the whole world... I pressed down the dagger with my chest until it had all disappeared between her breasts... I began crushing my chest against her... We were a torch of flame, the edges of the bed tongues of Hell-fire. The smell of smoke was in my nostrils as she said to me <I love you, my darling,)> and as I said to her <I love you, my darling,,) and the universe, with its past, present and future, was gathered together into a single point before and after which nothing existed (pp. 164-65).

In this fascinating scene, the scorching desire as well as the death drive, the sexual consummation as well as the fury of destructiveness merge in one climactic moment in which space and time are annihilated. Richardson's Lovelace in Clarissa may rape his

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desired Clarissa only after drugging her and Browning's lover may take possession of Porphyria only after strangling her, but Salih's Jean Morris is very much alive and stark naked, awaiting Mustafa with his piercing dagger to consummate their sexual union. Later the whole drama is re-enacted when Hosna bint Mahmoud, Mustafa's widow, relentlessly refuses to give in to the aged Wad Rayyes's sexual demands after being forced to marry him. Hosna stabs him to death and then commits suicide, thus scandalizing everybody in the Sudanese village. The Wad Rayyes-Hosna episode reinforces the significance of the Jean-Mustafa experience in which the ritual killing ambivalently blends intimacy with animosity, and nuptials with funeral. The Freudian implications of this episode should be obvious to the perceptive reader.

IV
The influence of Freud's theory of the instincts can be detected further in Salih's manipulation of the two related concepts of sadism and masochism in Season. According to Freud, sadism is a (<component instinct of sexuality>) in which aggression is directed outward, whereas masochism is a ?union between destructiveness directed inwards and sexuality))10. Freud believes that in sadism ?the death instinct twists the erotic aim in its own sense>>))and that ?the satisfaction of the instinct is accompanied by an extraordinarily high degree of narcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfilment of the latter's old wishes for om.12 nipotence>>

Sadism can be glimpsed in Mustafa's <<twistedmanner>))3 which imparts to him an ecstasy greater than love or happiness, an ecstasy which derives from the suffering and destruction of his female victims, enhancing his narcissistic joy with the delusion of ?(omnipotence.)> For him, the sexual climax, symbolically suggested by
10 Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 66; see also New IntroductoryLectures on Psychoanalysis', II, 137-38. "' Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 68. 12 Ibid., p. 68.
13 In her, The Study of the Text in Literary Criticism (Beirut: Dar Al-Afaq AlJadeedah, 1983), Hikmet Sabbaq Al-Khateeb studies Season of Migration to the North at length-the most perceptive discussion of the novel to date-and deals with the issue of sadism without, however, perceiving any Freudian influence at work (pp. 255-56). We have translated the Arabic title.

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the ascent of a mountain, is the <(peak of selfishness.)) Mustafa revels in turning Sheila into a harlot, Ann into a bewitched slave girl, and Isabella into a worshipper-all being victims of his unparalleleld ego-cult. His life, he claims, <<achievescompletion)) after killing Jean Morris. They are not women to be loved but prey to be destroyed. The <?satanicwarmth under [his] diaphragm)> upon being in control is unmistakably sadistic. The lack of motherly love in his early days is perhaps responsible for the coldness with which he violates his victims without any qualms of conscience. Mustafa's sadistic ecstasy, a derivation of the Freudian idea that the statisfaction of the instict fulfills the ego's old desire for omnipotence, is clearly indicated in his ravishment of Isabella, following which he says: ?(At the climax of our pain there passed through my head clouds of old, far-off memories)> (p. 44). Mustafa's sadistic manipulation of his female victims has its counterpart in their own masochistic tendencies, their selfdestructive drive. Masochism, according to Freud, is clearly related to the regressive nature of the instincts-i.e., the ?(effortto restore an earlier state of things)>14. This restoration is the way back to the inanimate or death. Moreover, self-destructiveness is generally increased when satisfaction of aggressiveness in the external world is impeded15. Thus Ann Hammoud, Sheila Greenwood, Isabella Seymour, and Jean Morris-all are said to have been ?<seeking death by every means and that they would have committed suicide whether they had met Mustafa Sa'eed or not>) (p. 33), as professor Maxwell Foster-Kean insists in his defence of Mustafa Sa'eed for the murder of Jean Morris. According to disease ... had stricken these women a thousand Mustafa, a <?fatal years ago)>(p. 34). These women have their own escapist fantasies, being renegades from Western ?civilization and its discontents,)) and the tyranny of the superego. Their suicidal end testifies to their masochistic urges. Most importantly, sado-masochism is blended in Season in the climactic relationship of Mustafa and Jean which seems to be comprehensive of all the relationships prior to it. The sado-masochistic aspect of the complex involvement of Mustafa and Jean is presented with dramatic poignancy by Tayeb Salih. Marshalling all his <?armies>> to subdue Jean, Mustafa for the
14 15

New Introductory Lectureson Psychoanalysis, II, 139. Ibid., p. 138.

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first time acknowledges defeat. <I derived pleasure from my suffering>> (p. 159). The second time they meet, she insults him by saying, <I've never seen an uglier face than yours>>(p. 30), while he resolves to <(make her pay for that>>(p. 30). Standing seductively naked in front of him, Jean tears up a rare manuscript and destroys precious objects as stipulations for her surrender and Mustafa consents to these conditions only to be kicked by her in the stomach, lose consciousness, and wake up after her disappearance. The (<ghoul>) is ravished by the (<phoenix)); the victimizer is victimized. The ritual killing of Jean Morris, moreover, throbs with sado-masochistic implications as Mustafa plants his dagger between her breasts and she twines her legs round his back whispering, <<I thought you would never do this. I almost gave up hope of you>>(p. 164). Similarly, the Hosna-Wad Rayyes episode echoes the sado-masochistic fusion of the Mustafa-Jean experience. Wad Rayyes insists on marrying the widowed Hosna despite her overt refusal of his proposals. His murder and her suicide reiterate what happened with Mustafa and Jean in London, but the difference lies in Mustafa's survival. However, Mustafa's fate is glimpsed not so much in physical death as in death-in-life, a characteristic feature of his world after Jean Morris's demise. V In the trial scene at the Old Bailey, Mustafa's condition of death-in-life is articulated in his total indifference to Sir Arthur Higgins' cross-examination. The latter is <<wrestlingwith a corpse>> (p. 32) because Mustafa actually wants to be condemned to death. His statuesque surrender at the Old Bailey-<<listening to the lawyers talking about me-as though they were talking about some person who was no concern of mine>)(p. 31)-indicates his need for punishment and death. This <<needfor punishment>) is actually Freudian in its essence. Freud defines this concept as a portion of (<theinstinct towards internal destruction present in the ego)>)6, illustrating its masochistic nature. While Sir Arthur Higgins and Professor Maxwell Foster-Kean argue the pros and cons of the case, Mustafa wants, though he does not, to shout in the court, <<ThisMustafa Sa'eed does not exist. He is an illusion, a lie. I ask
16 Civilization

and Its Discontents, p. 85.

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of you to rule that the lie be killed)) (p. 32). He wants the court to accomplish for him what he has failed to do-i.e. commit suicide as Hosna Bint Mahmoud later did. His death-wish is to remain unfulfilled:
But, as he said, they conspired against him, the jurors and the witnesses and the lawyers and the judges, to deprive him of it. 'The jurors.' he said, saw before them a man who didn't want to defend himself, a man who had lost the desire for life. I hesitated that night when Jean sobbed into my ear, ((Come with me. Come with me.>>My life achieved completion that night and there was no justification for staying on. But I hesitated and at the critical moment I was afraid. I was hoping that the court would grant me what I had been incapable of accomplishing. It was, as though, realizing what I was after, they decided that they would not grant me the final request I had of them (pp. 67-68).

In short, Mustafa's wish for punishment fails to be fulfilled through the human institutions of law and authority responsible for enforcing justice. The failure of external man-made authority in administering justice-an authority extolled by Freud for its punitive power-is quite significant in Season because it points to Salih's sense of the inadequacy of such authority. In Mustafa's case, the flooding Nile-<<where things begin and things end>>(p. 69)-and not the Old Bailey imposes the desired punishment, thus erecting its own natural justice. For one thing, Mustafa has failed to grasp the old natural wisdom of the Nile in its long journey to the North. The Nile (<flows northward, pays heed to nothing; a mountain may stand in its way so it turns eastwards; it may happen upon a deep depression so it turns westwards>) (p. 69). Conversely, Mustafa's whole journey from Khartoum to Cairo to London, from one woman to another, is articulated as a movement from one mountain peak to another. The old river devours Mustafa's body thereby granting him (<the very end he would have wanted for himself. Imagine: the height of summer in the month of fateful July; the indifferent river has flooded as never before in thirty years; the darkness has fused all the elements of nature into one single neutral one, older than the river itself and more indifferent. In such manner the end of this hero had to be>> (p. 67). Mustafa's need for punishment, essentially a psychological necessity, is fulfilled as his body-never recovered among the drowned-fuses with the natural elements,-thereby, returning to elemental nature. Therefore, his <(death-by-water)> can be construed as an articulation

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of the defeat of the life-forces by the destructive forces, a definitive feature of Freud's absolute determinism. Indeed, a dominant sense of inevitability resonates in Mustafa's London and world as he keeps reiterating the idea of being led <<to tragedy.)> Later, Mustafa speculates <<whetherit would have been possible to have avoided any of what happened)) (p. 27). In his triumph over Isabella, he also suggests a sense of oppressive doom whose sweeping power is incontestible:
When we were at the climax of the tragedy [the act of love-making] she cried out weekly. (<No. No.)) This will be of no help to you now. The critical moment when it was in your power to refrain from taking the first step has been lost. I caught you unawares; at that time it was in your power to say <<No.)> As for now the flood of events has swept you along, as it does every person, and you are no longer capable of doing anything. Were every person to know when to refrain from taking the first step many things would have been changed (p. 43).

Again, the haunting note of determinism appears on a scrap of paper-in his rectangular room in the village-which states, <It was inevitable that my star of destiny should come into collision with hers and that I should spend years in prison and yet more years roaming the face of the earth chasing her phantom and being chased by it. The sensation that, in an instant outside the bounds of time, I have bedded the goddess of Death and gazed out upon Hell from the apertures of her eyes))17 (p. 153). It is important to note, however, that his fate-perceived along the line of Freud's theories-is clearly decided by his devotion to instinctual life. Mustafa's absorption in instinctual gratification has rendered him imcapable of appreciating the refinements of Western civilization-oblivious of its formative influences of beauty in music, art, drama, poetry or nature. ((For thirty years,)) he says, (I was a part of all this, living in it but insensitive to its real beauty, unconcerned with everything about it except the filling of my bed each night>> (p. 36). He associates with Fabian groups, Quaker societies, the Salvation Army, and haunts Bohemian circles for the sole purpose of enticing women to his bed. His dedication to instinctual satisfaction makes his ego the slave of his id, while the authority of a superego, in the Freudian sense, is absent from his world'8. The
17 An exhaustive list of these references to Mustafa's preoccupation with his predetermined fate would blow this paper out of proportion simply because they permeate the novel. 18 TheId andEgo, pp. 18-29.

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absence of a supervising and censoring superego can be assigned to two interrelated reasons. First, Mustafa not only has lost his father before his birth but also has been estranged from his mother in his early childhood-the two most important figures whose influence shapes the moral and spiritual development of a child. Besides, he has failed to grasp the cunning wisdom of the Nile-its avoidance of obstacles that stand in its way. Second, the adoptive mother, Mrs. Robinson and the adopted culture have failed in effecting this needed moral adjustment in Mustafa. Professor Maxwell FosterKean complains with irritation: <<You, Mr. Sa'eed, are the best example of the fact that our civilizing mission in Africa is of no avail. After all the efforts we've made to educate you, it's as if you'd come out of the jungle for the first time>>(pp. 93-94). The little he acquires from both worlds-the culture of the South and the culture of the North-is distorted into fantasies. These fantasies in Season are Freudian in the way Salih envisages them. VI Freud believes that fantasies, like dreams, are (<wish-fulfillments; like dreams, they are based, to a great extent, on impressions of infantile experiences; like dreams, they benefit by a certain degree of relaxation of censorship. If we examine their structure, we shall perceive the way in which the wishful purpose that is at work in their production has mixed up the material of which they are built, has re-arranged it and has formed it into a new whole>>19.Some critics of Season have already detected its dream-like quality but these critics have failed to point to Freud's influence and Salih's specific dexterous weaving of fantasies into the fabric of his novel 20. Fantasy as wish-fulfillment appears persistently in Mustafa's tendency to transform history into histrionics bordering on the asburd. For example, learning that Isabella's mother is Spanish, he invokes the Arab conquest of Andalusia to fantasize his own ancestral past. (<Doubtless one of my grandfathers was a soldier in Tarik ibn Ziyad's army. Doubtless he met one of your ancestors as
19 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretationof Dreams, trans. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1965), p. 530. 20 See, for instance, Mona Takieddine-Amyuni, <<Tayeb Salih's ,Season of Migration to the North: An Interpretation,,, Arab Studies Quarterly,2 (Winter, 1980).

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she gathered in the grapes from an orchard in Seville. Doubtless he fell in love with her at first sight and she with him. He lived with her for a time, then left her and went off to Africa. There he married again and I was one of his progeny in Africa, and you have come from his progeny in Spain)) (p. 42). Moreover, Mustafa continues, <I imagined to myself the Arab soldiers' first meeting with Spain: like me at this instant sitting opposite Isabella Seymour, a southern thirst being dissipated in the mountain passes of history in the north)) (p. 42). The most striking instance of Mustafa's mode of revealed in fantasizing-of distorting history into histrionics-is his ecstatic encounter with Ann Hammond, following a lecture of his on Abu Nuwas as a <<Sufimystic)> whose references to wine symbolize a ((longing for self-obliteration in the Divine>>(p. 143). Hypnotized by his impressive performance, she submissively assumes the role of his slave girl, Sausan, and he, her Arab master. (<Isearched everywhere for you and was afraid I would never find you. Do you remember?)> (p. 143) Ann says, and he responds, <<Howcan I forget our house in Karkh in Baghdad on the banks of the river Tigris in the days of El-Ma'moun>> (p. 143). Clearly, Mustafa and Ann are acting their roles <<ona stage,)) as he says, ((surrounded by actors who were performing minor roles>)(p. 144). The whole experience is thought to be <<one of those rare moments of ecstasy for which I would sell my whole life; a moment in which, before your very eyes, lies are turned into truths, history becomes a pimp, and the jester is turned into a sultan>>(p. 144). In order to <<take>> her, he weaves for her <(intricate and terrifying threads of fantasy)) (p. 146), as he confesses. These flights by Mustafa have been misinterpreted as indications of the so-called <<collectiveunconscious))21 . On the contrary, there is nothing <<collective))about his make-believe world calculated to serve his own erotic and aggressive drives. History does indeed become a pimp, a Sa'eedian blunt confession that does not warrant any stretching to the range of a collective unconscious at work. If anything, his fantasies constitute avenues of escape from his truly degrading present represented by Kitchener in the Sudan or Allenby in Jerusalem, into the golden ages of past Arab glory
21 See Muhyi-al-Din Subhi, ((Season of Migration to the North between Othello and Meursault>> in Tayeb Salih, the Genius of the Arabic Novel, pp. 49-51. This commentator does not seem to know what the term (<collective unconscious?, means or even who first introduced it.

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represented by the conquest of Andalusia or the flourishing Abbasid empire in the days of El-Ma'moun. Having failed to face these solid historical realities, Mustafa erects a frail fortification of illusion upon illusion in a mirage-like structure. His own room in of lethal lies>> London becomes a <<den (p. 146), according to him, with all its exotic oriental atmosphere, its deadly sandalwood perfume, its Persian carpets but, above all, its manifold mirrors to multiply his ?<warring>> image during his sexual orgies. Furthermore, his own stock of <<hackneyed phrases is inexhaustible>) (p. 35), and his Protean figure never settles into a final shape-Amin, Hassan, Richard, Mustafa; a university professor, or an egoist ?in quest of pleasure>>(p. 32). This cona <(werewolf,>> stantly shifting ground in Mustafa's world derives from the one grand illusion of his ?(military campaign>>-his erotic <?countercrusade>> against the North, the mock-heroic nature of which nullifies its significance. Just as Mustafa erects his self-defeating illusions, so the other characters in Seasonreveal a tendency to fantasize. Ann Hammoud, for instance, would tell Mustafa that she <<sawthe shimmer of mirages in hot deserts>>in his eyes, and ?(heard the screams of ferocious beasts in the jungles>>in his voice (p. 145). She is ?taken>> by Mustafa, he says, ?(while in the throes of fantasy, intoxication, and madness>>(p. 146), a slave girl obeying the will of her master and gassing herself in the end. Similarly, Isabella Seymour, rejecting the Christian notion of sin, calls upon her newly embraced black African god to burn her in the fires of his temple (p. 108). Again, Sheila Greenwood is attracted by his world ?<so novel to her)> (p. 35). She, like Isabella and Ann, yearns for tropical climates and purple horizons of the South. Sa'eed's coldness finds its counterpart in the natural coldness of the North inasmuch as the flaming desires of these women yearn for the natural exhuberance of the South under the warm sun and in glowing deserts. They die on the sacrificial altar of their idol while Jean Morris, meting out measure for measure, would settle for no less than burning together with that idol, Mustafa Sa'eed. Hence, the sense of completion in the longing for self-obliteration is achieved by her in her ritual slaying by her <lover.>> The English women, dissatisfied with their lustreless world, unhappy with the inadequacies of their civilization, and besieged by an oppressive supergo, erect their own evasive fantasies that eventually lead them to suicide. Civilization

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takes its terrifying toll in the impressive number of deaths in Season-including Wad Rayyes and Hosna in addition to Mustafa himself and his women victims. Mustafa's propensity to fantasy, geared toward sheer instinctual satisfaction to the total neglect of the refining influences of civilizait be his own civilization symbolized by the imtion-whether memorial wisdom of the Nile or that of the North with its rich the dominance of the tradition of humanistic values-shows (<pleasure principle>) over the <<realityprinciple,>> an unmistakable Freudian influence on Salih's conception of Sa'eed's character22. There is indeed no ((reality-testing,)> to use Freud's words, when the pleasure principle dominates, because this testing would mean a checking force that balances the demands of the inner world against the restrictions of the outside23. Mustafa's moral anarchy derives from his having been driven by the primordial instincts in the absence of a censoring superego. Hence, his subservience to the pleasure principle is responsible for his amoral destructiveness, his lust, and hate, evident in his sado-masochistic tendencies. Equipped with all the paraphernalia of premodern warfare-tents, pegs, pursues the camels, swords, spears, bows, and arrows-Mustafa mirage to quench his thirst througout his long migration from the real world to that of fantasies, from his original mother to his surrogate mother, from the Nile to London and thence to the different corners of the earth. However, his hot pursuit of the mirage, a dominant metaphor in his world, leads him ultimately to the waters of the Nile which receive him in a catastrophic embrace that simultaneously quenches his sempiternal thirst and puts an end to his ill-starred life. Consequently, the Freudian sense of determinism is enacted in the death of Mustafa whose return to the inorganic state is brilliantly executed by Salih. But Mustafa's must, in the final analysis, carry another mean<<death-by-water>) ing if only because of the death-dealer, the Nile, since it is simultaneously a life-dealer, containing the possibility of rebirth and mythic release. VII With this suggestion of renewed life, Tayeb Salih parts company with Freud's fatalism so vividly portrayed in Mustafa Sa'eed's
22 23

Civilization and Its Discontents, pp. 23-36, 87-8. See New Introductory Lectureson Psychoanalysis, II, 108.

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destiny which has more room for suffocating doom than freedom, for self-seeking than self-giving, for hatred than love, for <<anarchy)) than <<culture>>-in short, for the death-forces than the life-forces. Depicted as such, Mustafa is a negative exemplar of the novelist's moral vision in Season at the heart of which is the Narrator who, as its positive exemplar, finally picks up the splinters of Mustafa's chaotic world and tries to reconstruct them into a meaningful world-view, more reconciliatory than condemnatory, more forgiving than rancorous, and more self-renouncing than self-serving. But the Narrator achieves his moral education through experiencing the Sa'eedian ordeal vicariously. Returning to his native village in the Sudan after an absence of seven years in England where he was studying poetry, the Narrator, a young man of twenty five, first meets Mustafa Sa'eed who is in his fifties. A series of inquiries and unexpected revelations about the stranger, especially his recital of poetry in English at Mahjoub's drinking session, bring the Narrator and Mustafa together in the privacy of the latter's house where he engages in secret-airing, whereas the Narrator in secret-sharing. His gradual involvement in Sa'eed's well-treasured past, so far unknown to anybody in the village, is accompanied by a heightening of selfprobing and self-knowledge. His intimacy with Mustafa is further complicated by hostility towards him, ambivalently absorbing the Sa'eedian visitation and loathing it at one and the same time. The Narrator's initial sense of stability, continuity and changelessness is disturbed through his vicarious participation in Mustafa's Protean changeability and unsettling <<wanderlust.>) His naive and childish self-complacency is shaken as Mustafa pokes fun at his futile pursuit of poetry instead of engineering or agriculture. The Narrator's early hopes for ((the fruit of love)) to ripen in his heart are countermanded by his perception of Sa'eed's spiteful past. The <<black thoughts stirred by the story of Mustafa Sa'eed)> (p. 48) make the Narrator see his village suspended rootless <(between earth and sky>)(p. 48), unlike the palm tree in his father's house whose rootedness he cherishes as a symbol of his own roots in the traditions of his village. Through contact with Mustafa's erotic past, the Narrator loses his innocence as the image of the ((two thighs, opened wide and white>)(p. 48) haunts his imagination and as he reproachfully becomes privy to the love-play of Wad Rayyes and his wife (p. 47). Internalizing Mustafa's experiences of fan-

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tasy, the Narrator gets involved in strange erotic fantasies about Hosna Bint Mahmoud, imagining her as possessing ((a foreign type of beauty)) (p. 89), or as a woman with whom he feels a ((sense of hazard and constraint)) (p. 89). Her intoxicating perfume pervades his consciousness even after her death. The Narrator's heritage of fantasy sweeps through his later unexpected encounters with the phantom of Mustafa Sa'eed, now mythologized by people all over his vast country, ranging from the simple Mamur on the train, to Mansour, the university lecturer in Khartoum, to African ministers of education conferring on educational needs, to Mahjoub, the young man of rustic integrity, and to the immutable grandfather of the Narrator. Whenever the subject of Mustafa Sa'eed is broached suddenly a feeling of unreality prevails in the Narrator's consciousness. The illusion becomes so powerful that the Narrator upon entering Mustafa's rectangular room-so far untouched by anyone except him-mistakes the reflection of his own face in the mirror for that of the dead Mustafa Sa'eed. And most of all, through absorbing Mustafa's past of sexual aggression, the Narrator, in love with Hosna Bint Mahmoud, nearly kills his life-long friend, Mahjoub, for having denounced her slaying of Wad Rayyes and herself as indicative of her evil nature. And while admitting his love for her, he perceives simultaneously that he, like Mustafa and Wad Rayyes, is not ((immune from the germ of contagion that oozes from the body of the universe)) (p. 104). With his inclination toward violence displayed against his dearest and nearest friend, the Narrator's ((world has turned suddenly upside down)) (p. 134) and new beginnings are in demand for him as his self-interrogation and self-confrontation surface together with self-accusation. <<Love? Love does not do this. This is hatred. I feel hatred and seek revenge; my adversary is within and I needs must confront him. Even so, there is still in my mind a modicum of sense that is aware of the irony of the situation. I begin from where Mustafa Sa'eed had left off)) (p. 134). Illusions and fantasies cannot protect him from this awakening of moral indignation, for, as he says, ((there is no escape, no place of refuge, no safeguard. Outside, my world was a wide one; now it had contracted, had withdrawn upon itself, until I myself had become the world, no world existing outside of me. Where, then, were the roots that struck down into times past? Where the memories of death and life? What had happened to the caravan and to the tribe?... Love? Love does

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not do this>>(p. 134). Moreover, Mustafa has <<atleast made a choice>>of his own death in the Nile, whereas the Narrator has <<chosennothing>>(p. 134), as he asserts, and he is going to make that choice by a similar immersion in the river but this time the lot falls on life whether or not it possesses a meaning. The watery tomb of Mustafa Sa'eed becomes the watery womb for the Narrator who, in righteous indignation against the Sa'eedian legacy, himself seeks self-obliteration in the Nile. <<I entered the water as naked as when my mother bore me>>(p. 166), the a state between life and death,?>he adds, <I felt Narrator states. <<In myself submitting to the destructive forces of the river, felt my legs dragging the rest of my body downwards. In an instant-I know not how long or short it was-the reverberation of the river turned into a piercingly loud roar and at the very same instant there was a vivid brightness like a flash of lightning>>(p. 168). The baptismal immersion and the surrender to the destructive forces, detailed in the context of rebirth and spiritual regeneration of the Narrator, seem to be an enactment of Stein's famous pronouncement on the in Joseph Conrad's LordJim: experience of <<birth>>
Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns-nicht war? ... No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exersions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So you ask me-how to be?24

The renascence of the Narrator, from the womb of the mothering river, signalled by the coming of dawn, is accomplished as his mind clears and his relationship to the river, now one of separation, is determined. <<Thoughfloating on the water, I was not part of it?> (p. 168). Furthermore, his renewed life begins with an act of freedom and dedication to love and duty. <I thought that 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, 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>>(p. 168). The cardinal virtues, the free choice of life devoted to self-giving love and constructive duty, utterly missing in the Sa'eedian world governed by self24 Joseph Conrad, LordJim, ed. Thomas C. Moser (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), p. 130.

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serving and doomed to death and harakiri, coalesce in the Narrator's newly born identity. In conclusion, Tayeb Salih's manipulation of Freud's views in Season reveals his antithetical moral vision as can be perceived in the respective destinies of Mustafa Sa'eed and the Narrator, an antithesis that is reinforced by the Nile's role as a destructive and baptismal force simultaneously. On the one hand, Mustafa, an embodiment of Freud's ideas, exemplifies the negative aspect of the novelist's moral perspective. In him we witness an individual totally concentrated upon himself and inflexibly guided toward irreversible doom. Ironically, the only free choice he makes is an act of self-destruction, thus evincing his moral defeat. Freehanded with death, he shows no magnanimity toward others. He is an incarnation of the Freudian deterministic view of man. The Narrator's destiny, on the other hand, illustrates Salih's positive moral vision which in the end celebrates the triumph of life rather than the triumph over life. Despite the Narrator's vicarious <<journeywithin)) the Sa'eedian world of moral chaos, he manages to achieve a moral regeneration. He renounces hartred and egoism to affirm love and duty. Most importantly, the Narrator's rebirth and baptism in the Nile directly oppose the dark and destructive world of Mustafa Sa'eed where there is no renewed life. While Mustafa is silenced for ever, the Narrator is reborn to new beginnings as he cries <<Help! Help)> and opts for life in which love becomes ((the perfect expression of freedom.>) The Narrator's ((world-view,)) which envisions the possibilities of freedom, otheroriented love, and self-abnegating duties, provides an alternative to Mustafa's morbid and <(self-centered view)) of life. Even though Mustafa's experience is relevant, it is inadequate for the purposes of Salih who, as a moralist, cannot accede to its defeatism. In the rebirth of the Narrator, however, Salih redeems the life-forces from the death forces. And in this lies the whole differences between has his unique answer to Stein's Freud and Tayed Salih-each question, (<howto be?)) Faculty of Arts, Irbid, Jordan