Emotional Distance: Transnational Pleasure in Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the

North
Author(s): Rimun Murad
Source: Arab Studies Quarterly , Vol. 40, No. 3 (Summer 2018), pp. 213-232
Published by: Pluto Journals
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/arabstudquar.40.3.0213

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 EMOTIONAL DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL
PLEASURE IN TAYEB SALIH’S SEASON OF
MIGRATION TO THE NORTH
Rimun Murad

Abstract: Scholars in Arab post-colonial literature have spoken of the lure of the West for
immigrants in terms of the West’s superiority of education, technological development,
military prowess, political weight, and economic clout. Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih pres-
ents a different, but not inconsistent, narrative: his novel Season of Migration to the North
suggests that the lure of the West, in the case of England, consists in its accommodation
of emotional distance. Even though Tayeb Salih’s literary work acknowledges the role of
emotional detachment in undermining the notions of community, home, and integration,
Season asserts that emotionlessness is the source of gratification for the transnational pro-
tagonist Mustafa Sa’eed. In so doing, Season argues against the immigrant and transnational
notion of emotional apathy being a source of pain for diasporic subjects. Mustafa Sa’eed’s
lack of emotions allows him to interact with the fiction of West through embodying Oriental
and other performances. The protagonist’s emotional detachment from English society, its
women, and preconceived notions about the Orient, paradoxically, enables him to derive
pleasure from his physical trysts, nomadism, anti-colonial revenge, and pretend play.

Keywords: Arab immigrant literature, transnational literature, post-colonial literature

The topic of emotions has been largely overlooked in the scholarship on Tayib
Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1966), a novel which has attracted major
critical attention. The scholarly literature on Season has not methodically studied
Salih’s protagonist’s emotions, a figure who does not exhibit emotions as he gravi-
tates toward and interacts with the West, specifically England. The critical literature
has overlooked that it is precisely this emotional detachment which allows the pro-
tagonist Mustafa Sa’eed to exploit Western notions of the “Orient” for his own grati-
fication. More important, Mustafa Sa’eed’s emotional state, namely his unemotional
character, sheds new light on the post-colonial (and Arab post-colonial) notion of
the “lure” of the West. Arab post-colonial authors have frequently written about
the attractive image of the West in terms of superiority of education, technological
advancement, military prowess, political weight, economic clout, and so on.1 Salih’s
novel, however, presents a different, but not entirely inconsistent, narrative on the

Rimun Murad is Assistant Professor of English, Department of English, Temple University

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214 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

lure of the West. Mustafa Sa’eed is attracted to England because it accommodates

his emotionlessness, helping him attain a pleasurable and satisfying aesthetic expe-
rience. In effect, this emotional detachment enables Mustafa Sa’eed to embody the
fiction England authorizes about the “Orient,” among other roles.2
This concept of emotional detachment leading to pleasure is also significant
for the study of transnational, diasporic, and immigrant literatures more broadly,
inasmuch as the terms “transnational” and “immigrant” involve the crossing of
distinct national, linguistic, religious, economic, and cultural boundaries. While
scholar Madelaine Hron (2009) has argued that the lack of emotions or the lack
of their expression is a major source of pain for immigrants, Mustafa Sa’eed’s
case shows a different facet and effect of transnational and diasporic emotionless-
ness in the West. Salih’s novel offers a significant contrast to Hron’s claim since
Mustafa Sa’eed’s lack of emotional expression becomes a source of pleasure.
Tayeb Salih’s literary work, and Season implicitly so, recognizes the limitations
of emotional distance for consolidating the notion of home and integrating into a
community; however, Mustafa Sa’eed’s character proposes that England’s wel-
coming of his emotional detachment comprises the allure and magnetism of this
transnational experience. England’s receptiveness to his emotionlessness results
in a pleasurable, aesthetic, and gratifying experience as this receptiveness turns
England into a fictional space. In this fictional space, Season’s protagonist tempo-
rarily assumes certain cultural roles, Orientalist or other, showing simultaneously
that the reinvention of the self is gratifying in and of itself, regardless of the content
of the role played. In addition, the fictional text of the West allows for the pleasant
experience of nomadism, homelessness, and pursuit, where English women are
the symbolic and physical manifestations of the pleasant outcome of the fictional
experience of England. The allure and gratification of Mustafa Sa’eed’s English
experience goes beyond the simple notion of retaliation against the colonial West.
Mustafa Sa’eed, who was born and raised in the vicinity of Khartoum, the Sudanese
capital, is emotionless. Emotional detachment stands out in his character since he was
a child in Sudan, even before he leaves for England. Mustafa Sa’eed, whose character
piques the curiosity of the nameless narrator, informs the latter: “I was not affected by
anything, I did not cry when hit, was not glad if the teacher praised me in class” (Salih,
1966: 18). Salih’s protagonist lacks the emotional complexity and understanding that
his peers have; he is bereft of the simplest feelings such as fear, as he fears no punish-
ment or gratitude and humility, since he cannot appreciate the positive feedback he
receives from his teachers. Confirming his own emotionlessness, he contends,

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. (Salih, 1966: 21)

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Emotional Distance 215

His relationship with the people around him is not based on mutual care and
love but on their utility for him. He is devoid of feelings toward people and sees
them almost exclusively as tools. Mustafa Sa’eed’s unaffectionate character fore-
shadows his violent and unsympathetic dealings with English women when he
later travels to England.
Scholars such as Saree Makdisi (1992: 811–812) and G. A. R. Hamilton (2005:
55) blame Mustafa Sa’eed’s violence and lack of empathy on the colonial vio-
lence and education under which Mustafa Sa’eed grew up. Mustafa Sa’eed who
was born in 1898, the same year Kitchener’s army completed its occupation of
Sudan, was affected by the violence and emotional apathy due to the presence of
the English colonizers. This line of thought is consistent with Frantz Fanon’s ideas
about the effect of colonial violence on the natives. Fanon (1963: 36) contends that
“the exploitation of the natives by the settlers—was carried on by dint of a great
array of bayonets and cannons.” By introducing violent practices into the colonies,
Fanon (1963: 38) explains, the colonial power becomes “the bringer of violence
into the home and into the mind of the native.” This violence, Fanon (1963: 42)
states, “dehumanizes” the native and “turns him [or her] into an animal.” Therefore,
it can be argued that the lack of emotions and empathy on Mustafa Sa’eed’s part
is due to his dehumanization by colonial power and its education. In addition, his
animalization by the English colonizer in Sudan is what leads him to later refer to
his English victims as “prey” (Salih, 1966: 32), where Mustafa Sa’eed not only
replicates colonial violence but also uses the metaphor of pursuing a prey, as if he
was a predatory animal.
Despite the fact that colonial England can partially account for Mustafa
Sa’eed’s violence and lack of empathy, Season can be understood beyond the
colonial contexts and in a transnational, diasporic framework. In reference to his
school performance and interaction with his schoolmates under colonial educa-
tion in Sudan, Mustafa Sa’eed says, “[m]y mind was like a sharp knife, cutting
with cold effectiveness, I paid no attention to the astonishment of the teachers, the
admiration or envy of my schoolmates” (Salih, 1966: 20). He adds, “the pupils
began seeking my friendship, but I was busy with this wonderful machine with
which I had been endowed [my brain]. I was cold as a field of ice, nothing in
the world could shake me” (Salih, 1966: 20). The protagonist asserts his lack of
consideration for others’ emotions, as well as his inability to form meaningful
relationships based on mutual sympathy; however, he also showcases his situa-
tion as an isolated, individual case. He does not generalize the assumption of the
negative influence of colonial education to his schoolmates. For example, we do
not hear of a school full of emotionless individuals or students, but rather we hear
about the protagonist who stands out in this sense. This is not to deny the role of
colonial presence on his character but to bring to the forefront the transnational

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216 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

and diasporic dimensions of Mustafa Sa’eed’s experience. Dramatizing Mustafa

Sa’eed’s emotionlessness as a child is an attempt to later show how England is not
only nurturing of and conducive to this trait but how it also attracts it.
Season is a transnational novel inasmuch as it involves crossing distinct
national, geographical, and cultural boundaries. The transnational in this sense
intersects with the diasporic as defined by Walter Connor (1986: 16), who argues
that diaspora is “that segment of a people living outside the homeland.” In addi-
tion, Mustafa Sa’eed engages with a diasporic experience more specifically where
James Clifford (1994: 304) associates diaspora with the notion of “(dis)identifica-
tion,” which is a recurrent theme for Mustafa Sa’eed in England as he does not
identify with the English for the most part. Yet, Mustafa Sa’eed is also an exilic
subject according to Madelaine Hron’s understanding of the concept in terms of
“alienation” (Hron, 2009: 12) from the host culture.3 This notion of alienation
from England is emphasized by Musa Al-Halool (2008: 36), who says that for
Mustafa Sa’eed, “alienation is inescapable and cannot be surmounted by cross-
ing the border between the alien North and the native South.” Alienation, in this
sense, implies the existence of a culture, practices, traditions, language, and so on
to which the diasporic or immigrant subject cannot relate. In the face of such an
alienation, the diasporic or immigrant subject might resort to performances as we
will see the case is with Mustafa Sa’eed. David Cowart (2006) argues along these
same lines when he states that immigrants or diasporic subjects “must somehow
wring substance from the decidedly un-ludic role-playing disguise” (56), indi-
cating that in the country of immigration, immigrants take up new cultural roles
to which they cannot relate emotionally. Immigrants manage to play these new,
unsatisfying cultural roles, without feeling connected to the differences, customs,
or personalities such roles reflect..
In other words, the transnational or diasporic experience can also be character-
ized by emotional distance from the host culture. The receiving culture is nurtur-
ing of emotionlessness. In fact, this lack of emotional expression is acknowledged
and emphasized by Madelaine Hron. Hron (2009) takes on the previously unex-
amined issue of pain and suffering in the literary production of Maghrebi, Haitian,
and Czech immigrant communities in Western countries. Relying on Frantz
Fanon’s French writings, Hron (2009: 65) claims that Maghrebi immigrants in
France suffer because they are “deprived of expressing their affectivity.” Citing
Fanon, she proceeds, “until they are allowed to express their affective experi-
ence, they will continue to somatize their suffering of immigration” (Hron, 2009:
65). Hron, in other words, subscribes to the notion that the immigrants’ inability
to express their emotions and affection in the host culture is a significant issue
in the lives of diasporic subjects, and that, in turn, leads to a great deal of pain.
Hron (2009) acknowledges the presence of emotional distance in immigrant and

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Emotional Distance 217

diasporic experiences regardless of a colonial context. Tayeb Salih’s literary work

initially acknowledges the limitations of the lack of emotional expression, but,
unlike Hron, Salih identifies this limitation in terms of the relevance of emotional
attachment to the establishment of home as is manifest when comparing Season
(1966) and The Wedding of Zein (1968b).
Mustafa Sa’eed’s characterization as emotionless provides a stark contrast to
Salih’s Zein in The Wedding of Zein (1968). While Mustafa Sa’eed is “cold,” intel-
ligent, and calculating (Salih, 1966: 20), Zein is described as a naive but passionate
person. Zein’s “tomfoolery” (Salih, 1968: 43) is a salient trait of his persona. Salih
(1968: 33) informs the reader that “no sooner did [Zein] come into this world than
he burst out laughing. And so it was throughout his life.” Zein is emotional and
loving, declaring his love for several women in the village. As Ami Elad-Bouskali
(1998: 72) states, “the figure of [Zein] brims over with love, and in that sense he
is . . . counterpoised to the demonic figure of Mustafa Sa’eed”—Mustafa Sa’eed
who kills and causes the death of several women. Ali Abdalla Abbas (1974) rightly
calls Zein “a harbinger of joy” and “a messenger of love” (57).4 Zein’s emotional-
ity and passion solidify the concept of home in his village in contrast to Mustafa
Sa’eed whose emotional void undermines the possibility of home.
Ali Abdalla Abbas (1974: 56) describes Zein as “a love-messenger, a go-
between, who brings young men and women together.” In this sense, Zein’s pres-
ence supports the collective life of the villagers and reinforces the concept of home
as defined by Samaa Abdurraqib (2009), where “home is not only a place, it is also
community; it is the relationships that we create and sustain in these places” (451).
In other words, Zein promotes strong ties between the village dwellers based on
passion and emotions. In fact, Zein’s love for and marriage to Ni’ma, a beautiful
woman and his cousin, reflects the conception of settling down in a place through
the maintenance of a long-lasting relationship in the village—the wedding is also
an apparent gesture of bringing people together, a gesture of community. Mustafa
Sa’eed’s emotionlessness, however, prevents him from sustaining strong ties with
people, thereby also encouraging him to cultivate a nomadic, homeless lifestyle.
In this respect, the figure of Mustafa Sa’eed offers not a revision but rather a
validation and confirmation of Zein’s trait for consolidating the notion of home.
Season advances the notion that the young Mustafa Sa’eed’s inclination to
travel is facilitated by his emotional distance. He is not emotionally attached to
people or places, not even the people closest to him such as his own mother. The
fatherless Mustafa Sa’eed stresses this idea in his description of the farewell scene,
where he prepares for his departure for Cairo. When he sees his mother off, there
are “no tears, no kisses, no fuss” (Salih, 1966: 21). Even his mother, to whom he
is supposed to look with an affectionate eye, does not elicit an emotional response
from him. He does not feel attached to his mother, which makes it easier for him

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218 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

to move on to another place. In a conversation with the narrator, he describes his

relationship with his mother as that with a “stranger” (Salih, 1966: 18), once again
demonstrating the lack of feelings toward his mother.
Salih’s Season shows that Mustafa Sa’eed is conscious of the connection
between the attachment to people, on one hand, and the commitment to land
or a place, on the other. He explicitly articulates this connection when he tells
the narrator that in his childhood, “there was not a human being, by father or
mother, to tie me down as a tent peg to a particular spot” (Salih, 1966: 22).
In this statement, Mustafa Sa’eed reiterates the notion that he does not have
anyone in his life, including his own parents, who would compel him to stick
to a place, a town, or a country. It is not that he is not surrounded by people,
but that the boy feels connected to none of them and can therefore muster up
the desire to leave his native Khartoum for Cairo and later for England. For the
emotionless, and consequently wanderlust-prone, Mustafa Sa’eed, it is only
natural to act upon his impulses. In the process of pursuing accommodation
for these attributes or urges (emotionlessness and wanderlust), Mustafa Sa’eed
finds himself drawn to England.
Although wanderlust sends him wandering overseas, there is another force that
is practicing its pull on him. Beyond the seas lies a magnetic power, England, that
attracts Mustafa Sa’eed to London. The roots of emotional distance which surface
in Mustafa Sa’eed’s childhood find a calling in England. The European country
serves as a magnet for his coldness, to later grow and facilitate it. Mustafa Sa’eed
leaves for England at the age of 15. On his way to England, traveling by sea, he
feels that “[h]ere, too, was a desert laid out in blue-green, calling me, calling me.
The mysterious call led me to the coast of Dover, to London . . .” (Salih, 1966:
24). Even though he describes that pull as a “mysterious call,” this force is not
completely enigmatic. England attracts him for what he stands for and what he is
made of: emotionlessness.
The draw England is practicing on Mustafa Sa’eed is not inconsistent with
the pull the West has had on the Arab world for quite some time. Ibrahim Abu-
Lughod (1963) points out that modern Arab awareness of the West began in 1798,
with the arrival of the French in Egypt (v). According to Abu-Lughod (1963:
84), the new military, diplomatic, and commercial influence exerted by Europe
in the eighteenth century led to a new image of Europe in the Arab world. It led
to a “favorable image” (Abu-Lughod, 1963: 157). In other words, the fascination
with the West and borrowing from its major powers had been well-established by
the time Mustafa Sa’eed’s was born in 1898. In fact, Rasheed El-Enany (2006)
confirms Abu Lughod’s notion of the “favorable image” of the West. He says,
“Arab intellectuals have displayed a very rational and appreciative attitude toward
Western culture” (El-Enany, 2006: 2) and concludes,

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Emotional Distance 219

much of the Occidentalist images explored [in his book] will be seen to have been
about the idealization of the [Western] other, the quest for the other, the desire
to become the other, or at least to become like the other. (El-Enany, 2006: 7)

This admiration for the West accounts, in part, for Mustafa Sa’eed’s immediate
reason for traveling to England: superior education. Mustafa Sa’eed’s pursuit of
education in England conforms also to Robbert Woltering’s (2011: 40) notion of
the “benign West” or “the perception of the West as an exemplary region.”
This fascination with England as an important part of the European West helps
Mustafa Sa’eed project his desires and dreams onto this space: the desire for a
place that can accommodate what he stands for, namely his emotional detach-
ment. Accommodating emotionlessness for Mustafa Sa’eed is part of the draw
of England as one of the West’s most prominent centers. This “favorable image”
influences Mustafa Sa’eed in a “mysterious” way because he was born into an
Arab world that takes it for granted, albeit not wholesale, and hence the invis-
ible origin of this pull. The unconscious pull he does not understand initially
will become apparent later when he acts out his near psychopathic desires to use
English women.
But how does London accommodate and facilitate Mustafa Sa’eed’s emotional
apathy? London provides the fictional environment in which Mustafa Sa’eed can
temporarily reinvent himself or role-play, actions for which a certain amount of
emotional distance is essential. In its likeness to fiction, London is reminiscent of
the view which Keith Oatley (2011) holds, where works of fiction are much like
works of art: “they can prompt emotions at a certain distance—called an aesthetic
distance—neither too close so that they overwhelm us nor too distant so that they do
not affect us” (125). Oatley, in other words, believes that the experience of fiction
reading can be characterized by a relative emotional distance. Mustafa Sa’eed takes
this emotional distance to an intense level. London allows for an aesthetic experi-
ence, whose outcome is pleasure, even though (for Mustafa Sa’eed) it is predicated
on the absence of emotions such as sympathy and empathy—inasmuch as empathy
and sympathy suggest strong emotional attachments to and feeling for people.
Sa’eed’s scheming character resurfaces in England. To interact with English
women such as Ann Hammond, Sheila Greenwood, and Isabella Seymour, Salih’s
character uses his London apartment to (re)construct a stereotypical, fictional
world, an image to which English society subscribes. Mustafa Sa’eed meets Ann
Hammond at Oxford University. In describing his room in London, Mustafa
Sa’eed says, “the room was heavy with the smell of burning sandalwood and
incense, and in the bathroom were pungent Eastern perfumes, lotions, unguents,
powders, and pills. My bedroom was like an operating theater in a hospital” (Salih,
1966: 27). In addition, his apartment contained “ostrich feathers and ivory and

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220 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

ebony figurines” along with paintings of “camel caravans wending their way
along sand dunes” and drawings of “naked girls from the tribes of the Zandi”
(Salih, 1966: 121). Wail S. Hassan (2003) points out that Mustafa Sa’eed’s room
is a reflection of his Africanist, Arab, and Oriental performances and that most of
“the articles [he possesses in his room] belong to very different cultural, histori-
cal, and geographical contexts—from ancient Egypt to tropical Africa, medieval
Arabia, Persia [, etc.]” (96–97). In other words, these items do not necessarily
come from Mustafa Sa’eed’s own culture. The apartment in which Mustafa Sa’eed
lives has been arranged in a calculated manner to serve a certain purpose: to entrap
English women. He refers to these women as “prey” (Salih, 1966: 26), implying
his inability to feel for them. Mustafa Sa’eed calls his apartment in London a “den
of lethal lies that I had deliberately built up” (Salih, 1966: 121). In the end, he
knows that such settings appeal to English women, except that such arrangements
reflect fiction not reality.
Mustafa Sa’eed’s room in London embodies what Doreen Maitre (1983) would
call a “possible non-actual world” (14). Maitre (1983: 14) identifies “possible non-
actual worlds” or “pnaws” in textual works of fiction. These “possible non-actual
worlds” are non-existent for the reader but are not logically or physically impos-
sible to exist (Maitre, 1983: 15). Even though a “pnaw” is non-actual, the reader
can nevertheless logically imagine or envision it being a real one (Maitre, 1983:
15). Since the reader of a novel, for example, is not necessarily aware of every
possibility out in the world, a “pnaw” or the world described or narrated might
be perceived as non-existent even if it represented some other person’s world in
actuality. In other words, in a work of fiction, a world that does not conform to
or represent the reader’s world or society can count as possible but non-actual
for the reader. By the same token, Season’s protagonist’s apartment represents a
fictional, “possible non-actual world” for Mustafa Sa’eed. His room is a “pnaw”
inasmuch as it does not embody his upbringing as a child in Sudan. It represents
a world to which he neither belongs nor relates. Mustafa Sa’eed is a reader, and
England, which endorses Orientalist views, is a novel that authorizes a fictional
narrative about the protagonist’s world. It is the fictitious world he builds, along
with the incredible stories he tells English women, that helps him temporarily
reinvent himself.
Mustafa Sa’eed is on the prowl when he meets Isabella Seymour in Hyde Park
in London. The narrator informs us that Isabella is 15 years older than Mustafa
Sa’eed. She is happily married to a physician, and with him, she has three children
(Salih, 1966: 116). To entice Isabella Seymour, Mustafa Sa’eed relates to her

fabricated stories about deserts of golden sands and jungles where non-existent
animals called out to one another. I told her that the streets of my country teemed

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Emotional Distance 221

with elephants and lions and that during siesta time crocodiles crawled through it.
Half credulous, half disbelieving, she listened to me, laughing and closing her eyes,
her cheeks reddening . . . There came a moment when I felt I had been 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 jungle. (Salih, 1966: 32–33)

In this passage, the protagonist goes beyond just the fictional non-actual and
describes a fictional world that is physically impossible. The “deserts of golden
sands” and the “non-existent animals” are flat out impossible. This story makes
Isabella Seymour give in to Mustafa Sa’eed’s sexual advances. Even though
Isabella finds such a story preposterous, she wants to believe it to live this fiction
by listening to and sleeping with Mustafa Sa’eed who stands for this stereotypical
fiction. The protagonist is well aware that Isabella sees him “as a symbol rather
than reality” (Salih, 1966: 37). It is these fictional worlds that Mustafa Sa’eed (re)
constructs which contextualize his character and his identity in the eyes of his
English audience. Once he presents this world to Isabella Seymour, he turns into a
“naked, primitive creature” that corresponds to an imaginative Orientalist stereo-
type. Invoking this imaginative world incurs on him a certain performance in the
minds of his English audience. This “naked, primitive creature,” however, is an
Orientalist, Africanist figment of the English imaginary. That fictional character is
non-actual for Mustafa Sa’eed, the Oxford-educated individual.
Mustafa Sa’eed’s fictional masquerades also allude to the phenomenon of (‫الغريب‬
‫ )الحكيم‬or “the wise stranger.” Season offers a transnational commentary on the invalid-
ity of this legendary figure for integration in the West, in light of the absence of emo-
tions of sympathy for or identification with the Western other. Muh·ammad al-Mahdī
Bishrī (2004) explains Tayeb Salih’s employment of the figure of (‫—)الغريب الحكيم‬or
“the wise stranger”—in his literary work.5 He says that the legend of the wise stranger
exists mainly in African cultures, particularly the ones that have intermingled with
Islamic cultures (Bishrī, 2004: 135).6 General characteristics of the wise stranger’s
phenomenon include “‫ ”مصاهرة الغريب للجماعة التي يفد اليها‬or “the stranger’s marriage into
the community he arrives at” (Bishrī, 2004: 135), “‫ ”قدوم الغريب من مكان مجهول‬or “the
stranger comes from an unknown place” (Bishrī, 2004: 138), and the notion that the
stranger gains the trust of the receiving community due to the reforms he introduces
into that group (Bishrī, 2004: 138).7 The contribution of the stranger to the well-being
of the adoptive community and his integration into it resonate throughout Bishrī’s
analysis of this legendary character.8 The wise stranger is, in essence, a reformer. This
major contribution to the development of the receiving society implies the potential
for identifying with and caring for the host community. It is this emotional attachment
to the host community that earns the wise stranger the right to integrate into the group
through marriage.

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222 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

Despite the fact that Bishrī traces this mythic figure in three works by Tayeb
Salih—“The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid” (1968a), Bandarshah: Dau Al-Beit
(1996), and Season of Migration to the North (1966)—he emphasizes its presence
in the character of Dau Al-Beit: “‫أما ضو البيت فهي أكثر أعمال الطيب صالح إقتراباً من اسطورة‬
‫( ”الغريب الحكيم‬Bishrī, 2004: 145)—“Dau Al-Beit is Tayeb Salih’s closest work to
the legend of the wise stranger.” Bishrī (2004: 146) explains that Dau Al-Beit,
much like the wise stranger, is a stranger who comes from an unknown place but
soon becomes part of the village community in Wad Hamid through settlement
and marriage. According to Bishrī (2004: 146), the foreignness of Dau Al-Beit
is clear in his difference from the village community in both language and reli-
gion. Dau Al-Beit contributes greatly to the well-being of the village community
through adding to their knowledge of agriculture, architecture, food, and cloth-
ing (Bishrī, 2004: 147).9 Bishrī (2004: 147) adds that the contribution the wise
stranger makes could also be spiritual, where the stranger can also be considered
a spiritual leader. By being the opposite of the wise stranger, Mustafa Sa’eed’s
fictional performances in England, however, offer a critique of the possibility of
the wise stranger in England, where this mythic figure is hard to replicate in an
environment that welcomes emotional detachment.
Bishrī misses the presence of the wise stranger in Mustafa Sa’eed who dwells
in England. Mustafa Sa’eed’s masquerades incorporate the fake wise stranger, the
imposter. Season’s protagonist is a stranger who comes from a place only vaguely
known to the English, as evident in their misrepresentation of his Arab, African cul-
ture of origin. Much like Dau Al-Beit, his origin is mysterious and unknown. Also, he
resembles Dau Al-Beit in the sense that he looks different from the English host cul-
ture in language, looks, and the religion of the country of origin. However, unlike Dau
Al-Beit who introduces reform and useful knowledge to the host community, Mustafa
Sa’eed the lecturer at London University deliberately spreads false, Orientalist knowl-
edge in England, when that serves his purpose of performing the exotic, African Arab
to use the English. For example, after he gives a lecture on the Arab, Abbasid-era poet
Abu Nuwas (‫)أبو نواس‬, he describes his own lecture as “lies tripping off my tongue”
(Salih, 1966: 118). While Dau Al-Beit has the good of the community in mind, Mustafa
Sa’eed propagates false information and knowledge to abuse English women such as
Ann Hammond who falls for his fictional performance of the wise stranger. In his own
words, Mustafa Sa’eed says, “Yes, my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very
homes” (Salih, 1966: 79). This statement by Mustafa Sa’eed serves as a confirmation
for the belief that “Sa’eed’s education has not taught him how to challenge the process
of empire but how to repeat it” (Hammond, 2007: 84). He does not come as a reformer,
but rather he seeks to undermine English society and its people, indicating a deep
emotional gap between himself and the people for whom he has no feelings of sympa-
thy, empathy, care, or identification.

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Emotional Distance 223

The spiritual reformer who figures in the character of the wise stranger turns
into a destroyer of spiritual life in the character of Mustafa Sa’eed. Unlike the
wise stranger who seeks to better the spiritual life of the host community, Mustafa
Sa’eed damages the spiritual lives of his English women. Isabella Seymour, the
Christian woman who goes to church on a regular basis (Salih, 1966: 116), ends
up committing adultery and, eventually, suicide because of Mustafa Sa’eed,
two sins that irreparably undermine her spiritual life. Isabella Seymour “was
a believer when she met him. She denied her religion and worshipped a god
[Mustafa Sa’eed] like the calf of the children of Israel,” calling Mustafa Sa’eed,
“O pagan god of mine” (Salih, 1966: 89). The wise stranger who is endowed
with spiritual powers—powers occasionally tantamount to sainthood—appears
in Mustafa Sa’eed as a phony deity who leads Seymour to suicide.
If the wise stranger, including Dau Al-Beit, integrates into the host community
through marriage and genuine relationships, Mustafa Sa’eed remains on the fringes
of society since he deliberately keeps pursuing private affairs, with no possibil-
ity of marrying into English society. In fact, the only time he marries, he ends up
killing his wife Jean Morris, whose relationship is highly problematic and reflects
anything but care and sympathy or the need to integrate and settle down. Serving
a prison sentence for killing Jean Morris is a figurative and literal embodiment of
the notion of exclusion as Mustafa Sa’eed is secluded from English society.
In literary terms, it is important to consider how Mustafa Sa’eed, the reader,
participates in the fiction of the West and what strategies he uses to partake in
these unreal narratives. Also, it is useful to look into how emotions or the lack
thereof allow(s) him to participate in the fiction of the West. Season’s protago-
nist Mustafa Sa’eed resorts to variations of two strategies, problematically named,
sympathy and empathy. These two terms could be problematic if understood to
imply strong emotional attachment to and identification with fictional characters
and/or people. Maitre (1983) states that while “sympathy” in fiction reading nor-
mally involves “putting oneself in the place of another, [or a character],” with one’s
own “concomitant attitudes and beliefs” (16), “empathy” can refer to the process
of “becoming another [or a character]” (45). The reader, in other words, in empa-
thy, temporarily acquires the attitudes and beliefs of the fictional characters he or
she reads about. Keith Oatley (2011) confirms Maitre’s conception of empathy.
For Oatley (2011: 116), empathy entails “put[ing] aside our own goals and plans,
and . . . insert[ing], instead, the goals, plans and actions of a character . . . into our
own planning processor.” Sympathy, however, involves understanding the “emo-
tion-producing events” befalling the characters and “feeling for someone in their
predicament” through appraisal patterns (Oatley, 2011: 118) while simultaneously
choosing to keep a distance from those characters (Oatley, 2011: 119). In sympa-
thy, in other words, the reader feels “immunized from harmful effects of the events

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224 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

on [their own] person or on loved ones” (Oatley, 2011: 119). The first three defi-
nitions presented above—namely sympathy and empathy by Maitre and empathy
by Oatley—entail the notion of walking in the shoes of a character or being in
his or her place. One way for the reader to interact with a work of fiction and its
characters is to tread in its characters’ shoes, which is what Mustafa Sa’eed does.
It is worthwhile going back to Mustafa Sa’eed’s role of the “naked, primi-
tive” African to illustrate how he partakes in the fiction the West presents through
empathy and sympathy. What he does, when weaving fantastic tales, corresponds
more convincingly to Maitre’s conception of sympathy, “putting oneself in the
place of another,” while at the same time committing to one’s own “concomitant
attitudes and beliefs” (Maitre, 1983: 16). The protagonist deliberately treads in
the shoes of a primitive African. Isabella Seymour does not explicitly communi-
cate the thought that she sees him as a primitive person, but he is mindful of this
perception of himself because he is consciously catering to (such) an Africanist
stereotype. Mustafa Sa’eed places himself in the place of this primitive creature
for a specific purpose: to have a tryst with Isabella Seymour. He walks in the shoes
of this fictional character with his own attitudes, actions, plans, and purposes in
mind (and not that of the primitive character, things about which we hear nothing
in Season). What makes this fictional performance possible is Mustafa Sa’eed’s
emotional distance.
Mustafa Sa’eed is no stranger to using people as tools or means for his own
convenience, a trait he has had since childhood due to his lack of affection toward
people. His emotional detachment in this example is twofold: from his victim,
Isabella Seymour, on one hand, and the fictional character whose place he takes,
on the other. Mustafa Sa’eed does not feel connected to his victims at all, which
is why he keeps referring to them as “prey” (Salih, 1966: 32). He does not display
any sense of remorse while planning to use her. He does not sympathize with her,
in the sense that he does not feel for her in her sorrow and predicament to come.
Simultaneously, he does not feel for his primitive character. Mustafa Sa’eed can-
not emotionally relate to the life of a primitive person. At no level does he iden-
tify with the fictional, primitive, naked character whose shoes he treads in. As an
Oxford graduate and London University lecturer, he does not know what it feels
like to take on the challenges the “lion hunter”—as he refers to the primitive man
earlier—would encounter: fear, excitement, anger, or disappointment, and so on.
Neither is he a “jungle” dweller, and, as a result, nor does he know the emotions
such a dwelling would illicit in a “primitive” person. Yet, he chooses to tread in
this figure’s shoes since he does not try to understand or empathize (in Oatley and
Maitre’s sense of the word) with or emotionally relate to the primitive characters
through the adoption of their thoughts, plans, attitudes, lifestyle, and so on. In
Oatley’s characterization of sympathy, Mustafa Sa’eed feels “immunized” from

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Emotional Distance 225

the hardships of being a jungle dweller and, accordingly, cannot relate emotionally
to such a dwelling.
Mustafa Sa’eed does not feel connected emotionally to either character or vic-
tim, yet he puts himself in the place of a fictional character partly for the same
reason a person reads a work of fiction. According to Oatley (2011: 115), in some
measure, we read fiction “to be moved.” The experience of interacting with fic-
tion brings about a sense of pleasure. Salih’s protagonist wants to be moved as
well through pleasure and gratification. The English women he pursues represent
part of the pleasurable outcome of the fiction of the West both symbolically and
physically. Saree Makdisi (1992) says, “Mustafa carries out this self-appointed
mission [of throwing back colonialism on the colonizers] by inflicting pain and
suffering on British women” (811). Leonie Windt (2014: 82) concurs by contend-
ing that Mustafa Sa’eed is “acting out a kind of anti-colonial revenge by seducing
and afterwards abandoning European women.” According to Makdisi and Windt,
role-playing is gratifying for Mustafa Sa’eed because it enables him to exact his
revenge on colonial Britain by using English women.10 Despite the validity of
Makdisi and Windt’s perspective, it downplays the role of personal pleasure and
gratification from the sexual encounter with English women. In fact, G. A. R.
Hamilton (2005) explicitly tones down the exhilaration of the sexual intercourse
by claiming that “by projecting [colonialism] back onto the (educated) female
population of London, the reader is made most aware that something other than
the gratification of personal desire is being acted out by Sa’eed” (55). Hamilton
exaggerates the detachment between the heterosexual Mustafa Sa’eed and his
sexual desire and enjoyment of sex. He enjoys his sexual encounters so much;
he says, “I would do everything possible to entice a woman to my bed” (Salih,
1966: 26). To say that Mustafa Sa’eed enjoys the fictional experience of England
through sex and striking back against the West is not to say that these are the only
two ways he enjoys his English fiction.
The protagonist is well capable of and does relish his trysts, actively seek-
ing and taking delight in them. Mustafa Sa’eed’s sense of gratification exceeds
the notion of anti-colonial revenge. After all, it is English women—not English
men—who are victimized by the protagonist since sexual pleasure cannot be
obtained from men for the heterosexual protagonist. Mustafa Sa’eed’s sexually
charged language underscores the prominence of sexual pleasure to his experi-
ence. In his suggestive language, for example, he tells Isabella Seymour, “[a]nd
when, puffing, I reach the mountain peak and implant the banner, collect my
breath and rest—that, my lady, is an ecstasy greater to me than love” (Salih, 1966:
35). In this statement that simulates the sexual act, Mustafa Sa’eed shows that it is
not enough for him that Isabella Seymour gives in to his advances or fall in love
with him; he needs to consummate the act to derive his “ecstasy.” Also, it is not the

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226 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

journey leading up to the “mountain peak” or “ejaculation” that satisfies him but
rather the ejaculation itself that exhilarates him—a male, heterosexual trait that is
essential for sexual pleasure. In addition, to emphasize that the sexual act has a
significant personal side, he calls his intercourse with Isabella Seymour, “the peak
of selfishness” (Salih, 1966: 37). The notion that having sex with her is a selfish
act highlights its personal rather than collective nature. Mustafa Sa’eed is pursuing
his desires for his personal reasons as well.
The emotional detachment from the host country England leads to materialistic
attachment to its women for Mustafa Sa’eed, which is different from the spiritual
attachment to the doum tree in Tayeb Salih’s short story “The Doum Tree of Wad
Hamid” (1968a), where the opposition to the removal of the tree brings the people
of Wad Hamid together. The tree which is considered by the villagers a “holy
place” (Salih, 1968a: 18) due to its association with Wad Hamid, the saint who
founded the village, is spoken of with “emotion” (Salih, 1968a: 17). Emotion and
spirituality are tied together in this instance in Salih’s “The Doum Tree” since the
spirituality of the tree is what elicits in the villagers strong emotions of reverence
and respect toward it—emotions of love and respect for Wad Hamid the saint
himself. As Constance E. Berkley (1983: 5) states, the doum tree is “the traditional
source of psychic—spiritual security” for the people of Wad Hamid, and that is
why they are emotionally attached to it. The tree brings them together and consoli-
dates the village as their home in Samaa Abdurraqib’s previously discussed sense
of the word, where home is a place, a community, and the relations that people
sustain within this community (2009: 451). This spiritual, emotional dimension
is absent from Season and its protagonist Mustafa Sa’eed. Yet, it is partially the
absence of home (resulting from this absence of emotions) that gives Mustafa
Sa’eed a sense of pleasure.
The pleasure of England goes beyond the materialistic ecstasy of the sexual
desire and the satisfaction of revenge. This fiction and role-play are also gratifying
in their allowance for the aesthetics of the pursuit and constant movement. Mustafa
Sa’eed’s language about his procurement of English women is entrenched in the
language of pursuit. When looking for new women, he says, “I would saddle my
camel and go” (Salih, 1966: 26); he would prepare his “caravan” (Salih, 1966: 29)
in his chase of women. “It would be but a day or a week before I would pitch tent”
(Salih, 1966: 34), he continues to explain, in his chase for Isabella Seymour. It is
the language of wanderlust, the wanderlust he found attractive as a kid. Edward
Said (2000: 181) states that “the exile’s new world, logically enough, is unnatural
and its unreality resembles fiction.” Citing Georg Lukács (1971), he contends that
both experiences are comparable in terms of their “transcendental homelessness”
(Said, 2000: 181). While Lukács (1971: 92) defines the transcendental nature of
fiction in terms of the “freedom of the writer in his relationship to God,” Said

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Emotional Distance 227

(2000) completely brushes aside the notion of religious transcendence. Assessing

Said’s statement shows how he limits the similarity between the experiences of
exile and fiction to figurative homelessness. The fiction Mustafa Sa’eed is liv-
ing in the West is characterized by homelessness; Mustafa Sa’eed becomes an
exilic subject in this sense, except that this exile is voluntary. Mustafa Sa’eed is
homeless as he does not have a constant home, a person or a woman to anchor his
movement and life.
The nomadic, homeless, young boy resurfaces in England. The nomadism
caused by lack of affection toward people emerges again, but this time in search
of new women. The nomadic protagonist who does not feel for women chases
them as figurative, temporary, and disposable sites. Earlier on, in reference to The
Wedding of Zein, emotional detachment showed homelessness as a limitation. For
Mustafa Sa’eed, however, homelessness and nomadism constitute desirable out-
comes from emotional distance. This cycle of constant pursuit and arrival provides
him with a sense of gratification and pleasure: “I would do everything possible to
entice a woman to my bed. Then I would go after some new prey” (Salih, 1966:
26). Mustafa Sa’eed does not settle for one or permanent home but rather seeks
temporary rest sites/women, thereby activating and keeping going the cycle of
pursuit and arrival. Unlike a nomad, Mustafa Sa’eed chooses this pursuit, as the
absence of an anchor spurs pleasure.
Season also emphasizes the pleasure of the reinvention of the self in this
English fiction regardless of the content of the role played. In Mustafa Sa’eed’s
encounter with Ann Hammond, there is something different about his theatrical
performance. Whereas in past performances, he categorically denies any identi-
fication with the characters he embodies, in this instance, he temporarily empa-
thizes and identifies with an ancient Arab character. Mustafa Sa’eed meets Ann
Hammond after a lecture he gives at Oxford on Abu Nuwas, an ancient, eighth-
century Arab poet—a lecture full of inaccuracies (Salih, 1966: 118). She rushes
to meet him after the lecture and tell him, “the love I have for you is beyond
description” (Salih, 1966: 118). Having seen her enthusiasm, he gives her an
Arab name, “Sausan” (Salih, 1966: 118), as an invitation for her to role-play.
This invitation to perform transports her to Baghdad, to the days and times of
Abu Nuwas. She says, “How can I forget our house in Karkh in Baghdad on the
banks of the river Tigris in the days of El-Ma’moun [an eighth-century, Abbasid
Arab king]” (Salih, 1966: 118–119). Here, too, we are dealing with a non-actual
world, a setting that does not reflect the times or places in which Mustafa Sa’eed
grew up and lived. He participates in a performance authorized by the West. Part
of the fictional nature of his performance derives from Edward Said’s famous
criticism of Orientalism as a phenomenon that views the “Orient” as static:
“Orientalism assumed an unchanging Orient,” Edward Said (1978: 96) says.

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228 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

After all, “Sausan,” or Ann Hammond, tells Mustafa Sa’eed, “I too have followed
your footsteps across the centuries . . . and here you are, my darling Mustafa,
unchanged since we parted” (Salih, 1966: 119). In the eyes of the Western indi-
vidual Ann Hammond, Mustafa Sa’eed has an unchanging essence that is true of
an eighth-century Arab from Iraq just as much as it is true of Mustafa Sa’eed, the
twentieth-century, Sudanese national. Despite the fact that this theater is clearly
fictional to Mustafa and Ann, they both choose to participate in it.
In describing his performance with Ann Hammond, Mustafa Sa’eed states,
“Though I realized I was lying, I felt that somehow I meant what I was saying”
(Salih, 1966: 119). Unlike with the previously discussed notion of sympathy, in
this statement, Mustafa utilizes empathy. Mustafa Sa’eed in this instance “becomes
the other.” He temporarily becomes the eighth-century Iraqi Arab, whereas in
the previous examples, he only walks in the primitive character’s shoes while
entrapped in Mustafa Sa’eed’s own attitudes. His feeling that he was telling the
truth or “meant what [he] was saying” indicates that he is not lying—at least not in
that very moment—despite the fact that in the overall scheme of things he does not
identify with this Iraqi fictional character. For the first time in the novel, Mustafa
Sa’eed is momentarily absorbed by the actual performance. More importantly, this
momentary identification or empathy leaves him greatly moved and ecstatic: “it
was one of those rare moments of ecstasy for which I would sell my whole life”
(Salih, 1966: 119). What is different about the protagonist’s sense of pleasure in
this instance is that it is induced by the very act of role-playing through empathy.
In this performance, he finds this pretend play gratifying in and of itself. The
ecstasy Mustafa Sa’eed feels by the very virtue of pretend play leaves very little
doubt that it is actually the notion of pretend play itself that provides this sense of
ecstasy. It happens once he steps into the performance. Lisa Zunshine (2006) pro-
vides an insight into the delight of interacting with a work of fiction. She contends
that engaging in fiction reading involves “pretend play,” which in turn is a form of
mind reading or “theory of mind.” Relying on theory of mind or mind reading—
the ability to explain a person’s behavior through their mental states (Zunshine,
2006: 6)—she argues that the pleasure of interacting with fiction comes in part
from “pretend play,” since “pretend play” involves “trying on mental states poten-
tially available to us but at a given moment differing from our own” (Zunshine,
2006: 17). For Zunshine (2006: 6), mental states consist of “thoughts, feelings,
beliefs and desires.” The reader or participant, in empathy, tries on the perceived
mental states of the fictional characters. In this sense, empathizing with a fictional
character (as defined by Oatley and Maitre) is a form of pretend play, where a
person assumes the mental states of the fictional characters. Zunshine (2006: 17)
also believes that there is a basic and fundamental need for “cognitive adapta-
tions” through the ability to experience a variety of mental states. The pleasure

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Emotional Distance 229

of engaging with fiction comes from the awareness that “our crucial cognitive
adaptations are in good shape” (Zunshine, 2006: 17). Thus, the pleasure of pretend
play comes from our (awareness of our) ability for mind reading. Engaging with
a work of fiction through the empathy with one or more of its characters provides
that awareness of the participant’s ability to engage in mind reading or the trying
on of different mental states, the fictional characters’ mental states. In this respect,
role-playing gives the participant a sense of pleasure regardless of the role being
played, Orientalist or not.
This mind reading, empathy or identification as a source of pleasure in and of
itself is what we see with Mustafa Sa’eed, who feels a great deal of pleasure by
merely stepping into this absorbing performance. He momentarily assumes the
mental states of the eighth-century Iraqi man. It is certain that Tayeb Salih does not
elaborate on the content of the mental states of the eighth-century, Abbasid-era,
Baghdad character, but it is also certain that by temporarily identifying with this
fictional character, as Mustafa Sa’eed states, he forgoes his own attitudes, beliefs,
and thoughts—since identification is a form of empathy that requires the assump-
tion of others’ beliefs, plans, and attitudes. Mustafa Sa’eed knows and explicitly
states that this temporary performance or identification is not consistent with his
own character. The fact that Tayeb Salih (1966) does not elaborate on the content
of the Iraqi, fictional character’s mental states is a testimony to the idea that it is
not the content that matters but rather Mustafa Sa’eed’s ability to empathize or
take on different states of mind, though temporarily. It is important, however, to
not lose sight of Mustafa Sa’eed’s emotional detachment: he does not feel for Ann
Hammond. Even when he assumes the Baghdad fictional character’s feelings, he
does so only temporarily because this identification in terms of feelings is only a
lie in the bigger picture as Mustafa Sa’eed explicitly declares. It is London that
allows the protagonist to assume such fictional roles.
Tayeb Salih’s work acknowledges the shortcomings of emotional detachment for
establishing and integrating into a community or home, but Season complicates this
treatment or perceived limitation. In Season, Mustafa Sa’eed’s case provides a partial
answer to the question of why endure the pain of a diasporic experience in which the
immigrant or diasporic subject cannot express his or her emotions or affection, a lack
that comes, in part, from the inability to emotionally relate to the host culture’s prac-
tices, people, values, and so on. Season offers a different angle: emotional detachment
is a source of pleasure and enjoyment as emotionlessness allows Mustafa Sa’eed to
interact with the fiction of the West. Emotional apathy, in effect, turns England into
a fictional space, where role-play, nomadism, and pursuit become pleasant, admis-
sible outcomes of this fictitious life. Women are mostly a symbolic representation of
the satisfying outcome of such a fictional presence. The deliberate exaggeration of
Mustafa Sa’eed’s detachment, even as a child, has the purpose of showing how this

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230 ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY

emotional detachment guides his life and movement to England. It is deliberate to

make it clear that the transnational experience of England draws Season’s protagonist
for what he stands for. In addition, Mustafa Sa’eed’s example raises and addresses
questions about the enjoyment of temporarily adopting prescribed or un-prescribed
cultural roles for (Arab) transnational subjects in the West.

Notes
1. Several historians and post-colonial authors have made and confirmed this point. Examples
include Rasheed El-Enany’s Arab Representations of the Occident, Robbert Woltering’s
Occidentalisms in the Arab World, Albert Hourani’s (1962) Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age,
1798–1939, and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod’s The Arab Rediscovery of Europe, amongst other works.
2. I rely in part on Keith Oatley’s conception of fiction in establishing the parameters of the term,
where he views fiction as “based in narrative, which is a distinct mode of thought and feeling
about us human beings” (7). According to this conception, Oatley equates novels with theater,
where they both count as good examples of fiction.
3. Note that there is a certain amount of overlap between the categories of immigrant, exilic,
diasporic, and transnational, where the terms can be used interchangeably. For example,
Madelaine Hron and James Clifford agree that it is difficult to define these categories sharply and
that the boundaries between them can often be blurred.
4. Ahmad Nasr (1980) concurs with Ali Abdalla Abbas and Ami Elad-Bouskali, stating that “the
image of [Zein] . . . is connected in the people’s mind with happiness and joy. Whenever [Zein]
appears, there is laughter” (89).
5. The book is available only in Arabic as (‫ دراسة نقدية‬:‫ )الفلكلور في ابداع الطيب صالح‬by author ‫محمد المهدي‬
‫بشرى‬. It was published by ‫ دار جامعة الخرطوم للنش‬in 2004. Translation of the selected ideas is my
own. Also, to my knowledge, the discussion of the phenomenon of the “wise stranger” is absent
from the English language scholarship on Tayeb Salih’s literary work.
6. In the Arabic original the claim appears as follows: ‫تسود اسطورة الغريب الحكيم بشكل جلي في الثقافات‬
‫االفريقية خاصة تلك التي تالقحت مع الثقافة االسالمية عبر مختلف المراحل التاريخية‬
7. In the Arabic original, the idea appears as follows: ‫يكسب الغريب ثقة زعيم الجماعة وذلك بفضل االصالحات‬
‫التي يقوم بها في الدولة والمجتمع‬
8. For further discussion of the figure of the wise stranger refer to Bishrī (2004: 135–155).
9. In Arabic, Bishrī states, ‫ويمكن تلخيص المجاالت التي أثرتها أو أغنتها معرفة ضوالبيت الهل ود حامد في الزراعة و‬
‫البناء و أسلوب األكل و الشرب إضافة الستخدام أنواع جديدة من الثياب و العطور‬.
10. In “Reflections on the Excess of Empire in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North,”
Benita Parry (2005) corroborates Makdisi and Windt’s viewpoint. For further discussion, refer to
pages 74, 81, and 82.

References
Abbas, Ali Abdalla. (1974). Notes on Tayeb Salih: Season of Migration to the North and the Wedding
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