Season of Migration to the North Read Free Page A

man lives with a
woman in sin?’
    As best I could I had answered their many questions. They
were surprised when I told them that Europeans were, with minor differences,
exactly like them, marrying and bringing up their children in accordance with
principles and traditions, that they had good morals and were in general good
people.
    Are there any farmers among them?’ Mahjoub asked me.
    ‘Yes, there are some farmers among them. They’ve got
everything — workers and doctors and farmers and teachers, just like us.’ I
preferred not to say the rest that had come to my mind: that just like us they
are born and die, and in the journey from the  cradle to the grave they dream
dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear
the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some
are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve
by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are
narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak. I did not say this to Mahjoub,
though I wish I had done so, for he was intelligent; in my conceit I was afraid
he would not understand.
    Bint Majzoub laughed. ‘We were afraid,’ she said, ‘you’d
bring back with you an uncircumcised infidel * for a wife.’ But Mustafa had said nothing. He had listened
in silence, sometimes smiling; a smile which, I now remember, was mysterious,
like someone talking to himself
    I
forgot Mustafa after that, for I began to renew my relationship with people and
things in the village. I was happy during those days, like a child that sees
its face in the mirror for the first time. My mother never wearied of telling
me of those who had died that I might go and pay my condolences and of those
who had married that I might go and offer my congratulations, and thus I
crossed the length and breadth of the village offering condolences and congratulations.
One day I went to my favourite place at the foot of the tall acacia tree on the
river bank. How many were the hours I had spent in my childhood under that
tree, throwing stones into the river and dreaming, my imagination straying to
far-off horizons! I would hear the groaning of the water-wheels on the river,
the exchange of shouts between people in the fields, and the lowing of an ox or
the braying of a donkey; Sometimes luck would be with me and a steamer would
pass by; going up or down-river. From my position under the tree I saw the
village slowly undergo a change: the waterwheels disappeared to be replaced on
the bank of the Nile by pumps, each one doing the work of a hundred water-wheels.
I saw the bank retreating year after year in front of the thrustings of the
water, while on another part it was the water that retreated. Sometimes strange
thoughts would come to my mind. Seeing the bank contracting at one place and
expanding at another, I would think that such was life: with a hand it gives,
with the other it takes. Perhaps, though, it was later that I realized this. In
any case I now realize this maxim, but with my mind only; for the muscles under
my skin are supple and compliant and my heart is optimistic. I want to take my
rightful share of life by force, I want to give lavishly; I want love to flow
from my heart, to ripen and bear fruit. There are many horizons that must be
visited, fruit that must be plucked, books read, and white pages in the scrolls
of life to be inscribed with vivid sentences in a bold hand. I looked at the
river — its waters had begun to take on a cloudy look with the alluvial mud
brought down by the rains that must have poured in torrents on the hills of
Ethiopia — and at the men with their bodies learning against the ploughs or
bent over their hoes, and my eyes take in fields flat as the palm of a hand,
right up to the edge of the desert where the houses stand. I hear a bird sing
or a dog bark or the sound of an axe on wood — and I feel a sense of stability;
I feel that I am