Season of Migration to the North (4 page)

‘What an extraordinary thing? I said, deliberately speaking
in English.

He looked at me in astonishment and said, ‘What?’ When I
repeated the phrase he laughed and said, ‘Has your long stay in England made
you forget Arabic or do you reckon we’ve become anglicized?’

‘But last night,’ I said to him, ‘you recited poetry in
English.’

His silence irritated me. ‘It’s clear you’re someone other
than the person you claim to be,’ I said to him. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you
told me the truth?’ He gave no sign of being affected by the threat implicit in
my words but continued to dig round the tree.

‘I don’t know what I said or what I did last night,’ he said
when he had finished digging, as he brushed the mud from his hands without
looking at me. ‘The words of a drunken man should not be taken too seriously.
If I said anything, it was the ramblings of a sleep-talker or the ravings of
someone in a fever. It had no significance. I am this person before you, as
known to everyone in the village. I am nothing other than that — I have nothing
to hide.’

I went home, my head buzzing with thoughts, convinced that
some story lay behind Mustafa, something he did not want to divulge. Had my
ears betrayed me the night before? The English poetry he had recited was real
enough. I had neither been drunk, nor yet asleep. The image of him sitting in
that chair, legs spread out and the glass held in both hands, was clear and unequivocable.
Should I speak to my father? Should I tell Mahjoub? Perhaps the man had killed
someone somewhere and had fled from prison? Perhaps he — but what secrets are
there in this village? Perhaps he had lost his memory? It is said that some
people are stricken by amnesia following an accident. Finally I decided to give
him two or three days and if he did not provide me with the truth, then I would
tackle him about it.

I
did not have long to wait, for Mustafa came to see me that very same evening.
On finding my father and brother with me, he said that he wanted to speak to me
alone. I got up and we walked off together.

‘Will you come to my house tomorrow evening?’ he said to me.
‘Id like to talk to you.’

When I returned my father asked me, ‘What’s Mustafa want?’ I
told him he wanted me to explain a contract for the ownership of some land he
had in Khartoum.

Just before sunset I went to him and found him alone, seated
in front of a pot of tea. He offered me some but I refused for I was impatient
to hear the story; he must surely have decided to tell the truth. He offered me
a cigarette, which I accepted.

I scrutinized his face as he slowly blew out the smoke; it appeared
calm and strong. I dismissed the idea that he was a killer — the use of
violence leaves a mark on the face that the eye cannot miss. As for his having
lost his memory this was a possibility Finally; as Mustafa began to talk, I saw
the mocking phantom around his eyes, more distinct than ever before, something
as perceptible as a flash of lightning.

‘I shall say things to you I’ve said to no one before. I
found no reason for doing so until now I have decided to do so lest your
imagination run away with you — since you have studied poetry.’ He laughed so
as to soften the edge of scorn that was evident in his voice.

‘I was afraid you’d go and talk to the others, that you’d
tell them I wasn’t the man I claimed, which would — would cause a certain
amount of embarrassment to them and to me. I thus have one request to make of
you — that you promise me on your honour, that you swear to me, you won’t
divulge to a soul anything of what I’m going to tell you tonight.’

He gave me a searching look and I said to him: ‘That depends
upon what you say to me. How can I promise when I know nothing about you?’

‘I swear to you,’ he said, ‘that nothing of what I shall tell
you will affect my presence in this village. I’m a man in full possession of my
faculties, peaceful, and wanting only good for this village and its people.’

I will not conceal from you the fact that I hesitated. But
the moment was charged with potentialities and my curiosity was boundless. The
long and short of it was that I promised on oath, at which Mustafa pushed a
bundle of papers towards me, indicating that I should look at them. I opened a
sheet of paper and found it to be his birth certificate: Mustafa Sa’eed, born
in Khartoum 16 August 1898, father Sa’eed Othman (deceased), mother Fatima Abdussadek.
After that I opened his passport: the name, date and place of birth were the
same as in the birth certificate. The profession was given as ‘Student’. The
date of issue of the passport was 1916 in Cairo and it had been renewed in London
in 1926. There was also another passport, a British one, issued in London in
1929. Turning over the pages, I found it was much stamped: French, German,
Chinese and Danish. All this whetted my imagination in an extraordinary manner.
I could not go on turning over the pages of the passport. Neither was I
particularly interested in looking at the other papers. My face must have been
charged with expectancy when I looked at him.

Mustafa went on blowing out smoke from his cigarette for a
while. Then he said:   

 ‘
It’s a long story, but I won’t tell you everything
.
Some details won’t be of great interest to you, while others… As you see, I was
born in Khartoum and grew up without a father, he having died several months
before I was born. He did none the less leave us something with which to meet
our needs — he used to trade in camels. I had no brothers or sisters, so life
was not difficult for my mother and me. When I think back, I see her clearly
with her thin lips resolutely closed, with something on her face like a mask, I
don’t know — a thick mask, as though her face were the surface of the sea. Do
you understand? It possessed not a single colour but a multitude, appearing and
disappearing and intermingling. We had no relatives. She and I acted as
relatives to each other. 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 maybe it was my mother who was odd — I don’t know. We used not to
talk much. I used to have — you may be surprised — a warm feeling of being
free, that there was not a human being, by father or mother, to tie me down as
a tent peg to a particular spot, a particular domain. I would read and sleep,
go out and come in, play outside the house, loaf around the streets, and there
would be no one to order me about. Yet I had felt from childhood that I — that
I was different — I mean that I was not like other children of my age: I wasn’t
affected by anything, I didn’t cry when hit, wasn’t glad if the teacher praised
me in class, didn’t suffer from the things the rest did. I was like something
rounded, made of rubber: you throw it in the water and it doesn’t get wet, you
throw it on the ground and it bounces back. That was the time when we first had
schools. I remember now that people were not keen about them and so the
government would send its officials to scour the villages and tribal
communities, while the people would hide their sons — they thought of schools
as being a great evil that had come to them with the armies of occupation. I
was playing with some boys outside our house when along came a man dressed in uniform
riding a horse. He came to a stop above us. The other boys ran away and I
stayed on, looking at the horse and the man on it. He asked me my name and I
told him. “How old are you?” he said. "I don’t know" I said. "Do
you want to study at a school?” "What’s school?" I said to him. “A
nice stone building in the middle of a large garden on the banks of the Nile.
The bell rings and you go into class with the other pupils — you learn reading
and writing and arithmetic.” “Will I wear a turban like that?” I said to the
man, indicating the dome-like object on his head. The man laughed. “This isn’t
a turban,” he said. “It’s a hat.” He dismounted and placed it on my head and
the whole of my face disappeared inside it. “When you grow up,” the man said,
“and leave school and become an official in the government, you’ll wear a hat
like this.” “I’ll go to school,” I said to the man. He seated me behind him on
the horse and took me to just such a place as he had described, made of stone,
on the banks of the Nile, surrounded by trees and flowers. We went in to see a
bearded man wearing a
jibba
, who stood up, patted me on the head and
said: "But where’s your father?” When I told him my father was dead, he
said to me: “Who’s your guardian?” “I want to go to school,” I said to him. The
man looked at me kindly; then entered my name in a register. They asked me how
old I was and I said I didn’t know; and suddenly the bell rang and I fled from
them and entered one of the rooms. Then the two men came along and led me off
to another room, where they sat me down on a chair among other boys. At noon, when I returned to my mother, she asked me where I’d been and I told her what had
happened. For a moment she glanced at me curiously as though she wanted to hug
me to her, for I saw that her face had momentarily lit up, that her eyes were
bright and her lips had softened as though she wished to smile or to say
something. But she did not say anything. This was a turning-point in my life.
It was the first decision I had taken of my own free will.

‘I
don’t ask you to believe what I tell you. You are entitled to wonder and to
doubt — you’re free. These events happened a long time ago. They ate, as you’ll
now see, of no value. I mention them to you because they spring to mind,
because certain incidents recall certain other ones.

‘At any rate I devoted myself with the whole of my being to
that new life. Soon I discovered in my brain a wonderful ability to learn by
heart, to grasp and comprehend. On reading a book it would lodge itself solidly
in my brain. No sooner had I set my mind to a problem in arithmetic than its
intricacies opened up to me, melted away in my hands as though they were a
piece of salt I had placed in water. I learnt to write in two weeks, after
which I surged forward, nothing stopping me. My 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. The teachers regarded me as
a prodigy and the pupils began seeking my friendship, but I was busy with this
wonderful machine with which I had been endowed. I was cold as a field of ice,
nothing in the world could shake me.

‘I covered the first stage in two years and in the
intermediate school I discovered other mysteries, amongst which was the English
language. My brain continued on, biting and cutting like the teeth of a plough.
Words and sentences formed themselves before me as though they were
mathematical equations; algebra and geometry as though they were verses of
poetry. I viewed the vast world in the geography lessons as though it were a
chess board. The intermediate was the furthest stage of education one could
reach in those days. After three years the headmaster — who was an Englishman —
said to me, "This country hasn’t got the scope for that brain of yours, so
take yourself  off. Go to Egypt or Lebanon or England. We have nothing further
to give you." I immediately said to him: “I want to go to Cairo.” He later
facilitated my departure and arranged a free place for me at a secondary school
in Cairo, with a scholarship from the government. 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.

‘When the headmaster informed me that everything had been
arranged for my departure to Cairo, I went to talk to my mother. Once again she
gave me that strange look. Her lips parted momentarily as though she wanted to
smile, then she shut them and her face reverted to its usual state: a thick
mask, or rather a series of masks. Then she disappeared for a while and brought
back her purse, which she placed in my hand.

“Had your father lived,” she said to me, "he would not
have chosen for you differently from what you have chosen for yourself Do as
you wish, depart or stay it’s up to you. It’s your life and you’re free to do
with it as you will. In this purse is some money which will come in useful.”
That was our farewell: no tears, no kisses, no fuss. Two human beings had
walked along a part of the road together, then each had gone his way. This was
in fact the last thing she said to me, for I did not see her again. After long
years and numerous experiences, I remembered that moment and I wept. At the
time, though, I felt nothing whatsoever. I packed up my belongings in a small
suitcase and took the train. No one waved to me and I spilled no tears at
parting from anyone. The train journeyed off into the desert and for a while I
thought of the town I had left behind me; it was like some mountain on which I
had pitched my tent and in the morning I had taken up the pegs, saddled my
camel and continued my travels. While we were in Wadi Halfa I thought about Cairo,
my brain picturing it as another mountain, larger in size, on which I would
spend a night or two, after which I would continue the journey to yet another
destination.

‘I remember that in the train I sat opposite a man wearing
clerical garb and with a large golden cross round his neck. The man smiled at
me and spoke in English, in which I answered. I remember well that amazement
expressed itself on his face, his eyes opening wide directly he heard my voice.
He examined my face closely then said: “How old are you?" I told him I was
fifteen, though actually I was twelve, but I was afraid he might not take me
seriously “Where are you going?” said the man. “I’m going to a secondary school
in Cairo." “Alone?” he said. "Yes," I said. Again he gave me a
long searching look. Before he spoke I said, “I like traveling alone. What’s
there to be afraid of?” At this he uttered a sentence to which at the time I
did not pay much attention. Then, with a large smile lighting up his face, he
said: "You speak English with astonishing fluency."