Contaminated double identities in Salihs Season of Migration to the North - Assignment Example

? Contaminated Double Identities in Salih’s Season of Migration to the North 20 November In postcolonial societies, intellectual local people tend to be torn between clinging to the traditional past and building a “white” identity, while others want to combine the two, though they are not always successful in their efforts. In Season of Migration to the North, Salih (1969) described the dichotomies that riddled postcolonial Sudan. The Sudanese narrator is attracted to Mustafa because he is his future. After knowing the darkness of Mustafa Sa’eed’s past and personality, the narrator tries to battle away the darkness that consumed Mustafa, the same darkness that threatens his cultural roots too. Like Mustafa, he aims to find a middle-ground to his hybrid cultural identity. Mustafa and the narrator fight a psychological battle that devours their sanity and hope. The battle is against Europeanization, where Mustafa can no longer return to being a Muslim African because he is contaminated as a cultural hybrid. Mustafa undergoes fate and destiny because he cannot control the Westernization of the world and his identity, but he, nevertheless, chooses to be more European in his attitudes and actions, which ensures that he can no longer be a Muslim and an African. Returning from exile is not only a physical act, but a psychological process that ruined the narrator and Mustafa. Velez (2010) studied the role of the language of place in Season of Migration to the North in his article, “On Borderline between Shores.” He argued that Salih used space and geography to parallel the conflicts between migration and exile and between finding a home and losing the attachment to a person’s cultural identity. When the novel began, Salih used a recognizable literary trope, “the exile’s return” (Velez, 2010, p.192). The Sudanese narrator goes back to his village “after a long absence—seven years to be exact, during which time [he] was studying in Europe—that [he] returned to [his] people” (Salih, 1969, p.3). In relation to this exile, Mustafa does not return to his actual homeland, but he finds a home in the narrator’s village. When he saw the village, he felt that he belonged to it. The problems of coming back, however, introduce conflicts between man versus man and man versus society. Their sense of place, or the idea of coming back to something that they can call their home, is ruined. Post-colonial Sudan is no longer the same place for them. The narrator romanticizes his homeland Khartoum, “at the bend of the Nile,” but the bend represents change (Salih, 1969, p.3). Inside, similar to Mustafa, he is more intelligent, but more paradoxically at loss. They are lost because they cannot accept the reality that their communities have changed, and that they, too, have significantly changed. The narrator sees his native village as if it did not change at all, where “life is good and the world as unchanged as ever” (Salih, 1969, p.3). Providing an idealistic notion of his community represents the illusion that his world is “untouched by Imperial space” (Velez, 2010, p.192). Soon enough, the narrator realizes that his surroundings have changed. For him, the “strange thoughts” assault his being (Salih, 1969, p.3). The changes indicate that the world is becoming more westernized, and this affected the relationship between the narrator and his community. Somehow, the changes outside him disclose the anxiety that cuts him inside. For Mustafa, these changes produce a desire for wanderlust because of his hardship in feeling that he does not belong anywhere. Both he and the narrator cannot find happiness anymore in the same place, where they grew up. For when they grew up, they changed more than the place they once called home. The psychological break of a cultural hybrid ensures the insanity of the protagonist and his foil, where fate and destiny destroy Mustafa’s identity and happiness. Mustafa is the narrator’s foil because he cannot control the psychological effects of having a double identity. What happens to him depicts fate, because it is fateful that he has a headmaster who believes in his intelligence and that other factors facilitated Mustafa’s journey to London. Somehow, fate powerfully manipulates the opportunities that promoted Mustafa’s intellectual development. Furthermore, Mustafa is destined to be the new colonizer. He takes his fate by his arms and wrestles to control it. Mustafa is not a passive servant of European power because he has been an active participant in the acquisition of English knowledge and culture. In the article, “Cultural Hybridity and Contamination in Tayeb Salih's Mawsim Al-Hijra Ila Al-Shamal,” Geesey (1997) explored how the interaction between Great Britain and Sudan resulted to cultural “contamination” for culturally hybrid black people (p.129). The hybrid impact of cultural contact embodies the “shifting forces and fixities” (Geesey, 1997, p.129). Mustafa cannot fight the Europeanization that consumes him, and instead, he uses his whiteness and Oriental identity to influence other Europeans too. Through his indifference to people, his sexual escapades, and the murder of Jean Morris, he characterizes the invader. Mustafa tells the narrator about his destiny: “I, over and above all else, am a colonizer, I am the intruder whose fate must be decided…I came as the invader into your very homes” (Salih, 1969, p.79). He empowers himself through sex and violence, not because he simply wants to conduct vendetta against the British, but to regain his power. Fighting the domination of the white side of himself, however, destroys him. He goes from one place to another because he is in a journey of finding his identity that he can never find, when he is already broken into pieces. The psychological domination of the oppressor is reversed and undercut through the physical and sexual domination of the oppressed. In “The Empire Renarrated,” Makdisi (1992) argued that Mustafa is the narrator’s foil because while the latter wanted to stay in the past, the former insists in binding the past and present. In other words, he is willing to be the hunter, whereas before, his people have been the customary quarry of the British. Makdisi (1992) described the sexual conquests of Mustafa: “Just as imperialism had violated its victims, Mustafa violates his, and his unwitting lovers become sacrifices in his violent campaign” (p.812). Mustafa is prepared to be the unfeeling conqueror that the British colonizers have been. He compares his sexual escapades with the exploits of Tarik ibn-Ziyad, the commander of the Arab army that defeated Spain in the eight century: “I imagined the Arab soldiers’ first meeting with Spain. Like me at this moment, sitting opposite Isabelle Seymour, a southern thirst being quenched in the northern mountain passes of history” (Salih, 1969, p.36). He pushes these tarnished women to their violent deaths, where he reasserts his power over his colonizers. In essence, their oppression stands for the hopelessness of the colonized people who have been seduced, used, and lied to also. Like these white women who killed themselves, the novel suggests how powerlessness kills the identity of colonized societies, until they too, are forced to die in the process of being westernized. The integration of the north and the south has produced a son with no roots, where the intellect disservices Mustafa for it makes him more painfully aware of who he is, a man with no identity, and without identity, the future is meaningless. When Sa’eed faces the trial for the murder of Jean Morris, a professor defends him. He argues that Sa’eed was “a noble person whose mind was able to absorb Western civilization, but it broke his heart,” and “[t]hese girls were not killed by Mustafa Sa’eed, but by the germ of a deadly disease that assailed them a thousand years ago” (Salih, 1969, p.29). Sa’eed reveals to the narrator that he should have answered to that professor, “I am no Othello. I am a lie. Why don’t you sentence me to be hanged and so kill the lie?” (Salih, 1969, p.29). He is a lie because as a hybrid, he has become a walking contradiction. He wants to become more than the usual rural African with no educational background. Furthermore, he desires to become the powerful European. Mustafa’s greatest secret is revealed. He wants to be white and black, but he cannot be both. His secret room preserves his European self. For the narrator, this room is a: “a graveyard. A mausoleum. An insane idea. A prison. A huge joke” (Salih, 1969, p.114). It is a graveyard of the dreams of being a successful hybrid. It is a mausoleum that celebrates dead dreams. It is an insane idea to be black and white. It is a prison of the past. It is a huge joke to be black, and yet so white inside. Makdisi (1992) underscored that Mustafa is not white or black, and as a person in the gray of life, they are in a perpetual trap: “[Mustafa does not] become entirely European or entirely Arab, but by becoming both, but never at the same time, in the same place, or with the same people” (p.814). This author talked about the ambiguity of existing with a double personality. Mustafa can hope to be a better person, but he cannot attain anything solid in his life. He is water that strives to go with and against the currents of his cultural identities. He is defeated; he is forever lost. The meaninglessness of a hybrid identity is derived from the absurdity of being two and yet being none. Nassaar (1998) compares Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Salih's Season of Migration to the North. He argues that Godot and the narrator of Salih are similar because they are waiting for positive changes, especially happiness, that will never come for them. When the narrator leaves Sudan, he believes that he is going to learn something in Europe that can help him contribute meaningfully to his local community. Upon his return, however, he realizes that he is a changed person. When he jumps into the Nile, he does so because he “had to do something” (Salih, 1969, p.137). Action makes himself an actor of his life, as if he has a better destiny. Nevertheless, the reality of his fate removes his ability to hope. In the middle of the waters, between north and south, he is “unable to continue, unable to return” (Salih, 1969, p.138). Apparently, he cannot both be African and British. He is somewhere in between, which signifies that he has lost his roots. The alienation of Mustafa is his destiny too. He craves for the “feminized Other” (Velez, 2010, p.194). He thinks that by conquering European women, he becomes fulfilled. Sex can be his source of power. His intellect is also a sword against the whites. By being intelligent, they cannot take him for a fool. Unfortunately, the more that Mustafa insists on being smart, the duller he becomes. The “sharp knife” inside his skull becomes a knife to his morality and insanity (Salih, 1969, p.24). When he falls for Jean, she represents the elusive source of happiness, the ever stronger north. He pursues her and marries her, but sexually, he never conquers her. In the end, she conquers him. When he kills her, the sexual fantasy merges with the socioeconomic and political realities of Mustafa. He cannot win against the whites for he is a white man too. He is in London to learn about the whites and to defeat them through intellect and sex. However, the reverse happens, his fate is to be the conquered. His conquests are superficial because his people remain under the colonial rule, with or without the actual white presence. The only freedom he feels is when he plunges a knife into Jean for it signifies that he has no destiny, that he has free will. Mustafa realizes that he does this because Jean wants to. He remains a slave to his colonizers. Ashamed, he cannot live in London anymore. In Sudan, he exists, but he stops living. He knows that he cannot be free from his tormented hybrid soul. He runs away again from Sudan, because by action, change seems to happen. Everything is superficial, nonetheless. The movement outside him does not match the lack of changes inside him. Mustafa is dead inside. His death is the only way to stop feeling guilty for being white and black at the same time. Contaminated souls refer to hybrid identities. Mustafa cannot escape his fate of being thrown into the white world because of his intellectual abilities. He claims his destiny too and turns it into an opportunity of mastering his oppressor. He becomes a hunter of white women and through his conquests; he kills the powerful and becomes the powerful. Nevertheless, Mustafa cannot escape the reality of his shame. By being black and white, he can never return to being black and being a moral Muslim. The meaning of life slips from his grasp. As a hybrid, Mustafa is dead for he is not one or two; he is nothing to both communities for he has fallen to disgrace by not allowing himself to be who he is. By choosing to be two, he becomes nothing, a man with no roots, a man with no future and happiness. References Geesey, P. (1997). Cultural hybridity and contamination in Tayeb Salih's 'Mawsim al-hijra ila al-Shamal' ('Season of Migration to the North'). Research in African Literatures, 28(3), 128-140. Makdisi, S.S. (1992). The Empire renarrated: Season of Migration to the North and the reinvention of the present. Critical Inquiry, 18(4), 804-173. Nassaar, C.S. (1998). Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Salih's Season of Migration to the North. Explicator, 56(2), 105-4. Salih, T. (1969). Season of migration to the North. (D. Johnson-Davies, Trans.). New York: New York Review of Books. Velez, M. (2010). On borderline between shores: Space and place in ‘Season of Migration to the North.’ College Literature, 37(1), 190-203. Read More