Season of Migration to the North (5 page)

‘When I arrived in Cairo I found Mr Robinson and his wife
awaiting me, Mr Stockwell (the headmaster in Khartoum) having informed them I
was coming. The man shook me by the hand and said, “How are you, Mr Sa’eed?"
“Very well thank you, Mr Robinson," I told him. Then the man introduced me
to his wife, and 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. I felt as though Cairo,
that large mountain to which my camel had carried me, was a European woman just
like Mrs Robinson, its arms embracing me, its perfume and the odour of its body
filling my nostrils. In my mind her eyes were the colour of Cairo: grey—green,
turning at night to a twinkling like that of a firefly. “Mr Sa’eed, you’re a
person quite devoid of a sense of fun,” Mrs Robinson used to say to me and it
was true that I never used to laugh. "Can’t you ever forget your intellect?"
she would say laughing, and on the day they sentenced me at the Old Bailey to
seven years’ imprisonment, I found no bosom except hers on which to rest my
head. "Don’t cry dear child,” she had said to me, patting my head. They
had no children. Mr Robinson knew Arabic well and was interested in Islamic
thought and architecture, and it was with them that I visited Cairo’s mosques,
its museums and antiquities. The district of Cairo they loved best was al-Azhar.
When our feet wearied of walking about we’d take ourselves off to a cafe close
by the al-Azhar Mosque where we would drink tamarind juice and Mr Robinson
would recite the poetry of al-Ma’arri. At that time I was wrapped up in myself
and paid no attention to the love they showered on me. Mrs Robinson was a buxom
woman and with a bronze complexion that harmonized with Cairo, as though she
were a picture tastefully chosen to go with the colour of the walls in a room.
I would look at the hair of her armpits and would have a sensation of panic.
Perhaps she knew I desired her. But she was sweet, the sweetest woman I’ve
known; she used to laugh gaily and was as tender to me as a mother to her own
son.

‘They were on the quayside when the ship set sail with me
from Alexandria. I saw her far-away waving to me with her handkerchief then
drying her tears with it, her husband at her side, his hands on his hips; even
at that distance I could almost see the limpid blueness of his eyes. However I
was not sad. My sole concern was to reach London, another mountain, larger than
Cairo, where I knew not how many nights I would stay. Though I was then
fifteen, I looked nearer twenty for I was as taut and firm-looking as an
inflated waterskin. Behind me was a story of spectacular success at school, my
sole weapon being that sharp knife inside my skull, while within my breast was
a hard, cold feeling — as if it had been cast in rock. And when the sea
swallowed up the shore and the waves heaved under the ship and the blue horizon
encircled us, I immediately felt an overwhelming intimacy with the sea. I knew
this green, infinite giant, as though it were roving back and forth within my
ribs. The whole of the journey I savoured that feeling of being nowhere, alone,
before and behind me either eternity or nothingness. The surface of the sea
when calm is another mirage, ever changing and shifting, like the mask on my
mother’s face. Here, 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 and
tragedy.

‘Later I followed the same road on my return, asking myself
during the whole journey whether it would have been possible to have avoided
any of what happened. The string of the bow is drawn taut and the arrow must
needs shoot forth. I look to right and left, at the dark greenness, at the
Saxon villages standing on the fringes of hills. The red roofs of houses
vaulted like the backs of cows. A transparent veil of mist is spread above the
valleys. What a great amount of water there is here, how vast the greenness!
And all those colours! The smell of the place is strange, like that of Mrs
Robinson’s body. The sounds have a crisp impact on the ear, like the rustle of
birds’ wings. This is an ordered world; its houses, fields, and trees are
ranged in accordance with a plan. The streams too do not follow a zigzag course
but flow between artificial banks. The train stops at a station for a few
minutes; hurriedly people get off hurriedly others get on, then the train moves
off again. No fuss.

‘I thought of my life in Cairo. Nothing untoward had
occurred. My knowledge had increased and several minor incidents had happened
to me; a fellow student had fallen in love with me and had then hated me.
"You’re not a human being," she had said to me. “You’re a heartless
machine." I had loafed around the streets of Cairo, visited the opera,
gone to the theatre, and once I had swum across the Nile. Nothing whatsoever
had happened except that the waterskin had distended further, the bowstring had
become more taut. The arrow will shoot forth towards other unknown horizons.

‘I looked at the smoke from the engine vanishing to where it is
dispersed by the wind and merges into the veil of mist spread across the
valleys. Falling into a short sleep, I dreamt I was praying alone at the
Citadel Mosque. It was illuminated with thousands of chandeliers, and the red
marble glowed as I prayed alone. When I woke up there was the smell of incense
in my nose and I found that the train was approaching London. Cairo was a city
of laughter, just as Mrs Robinson was a woman of laughter. She had wanted me to
call her by her first name — Elizabeth — but I always used to call her by her
married name. From her I learnt to love Bach’s music, Keats’s poetry; and from
her I heard for the first time of Mark Twain. And yet I enjoyed nothing. Mrs
Robinson would laugh and say to me, “Can’t you ever forget your intellect?”
Would it have been possible to have avoided any of what happened? At that time
I was on the way back. I remembered what the priest had said to me when I was
on my way to Cairo: “All of us, my son, are in the last resort traveling
alone.” He was fingering the cross on his chest and his face lit up in a big
smile as he added: "You speak English with astonishing fluency." The
language, though, which I now heard for the first time is not like the language
I had learnt at school. These are living voices and have another ring. My mind
was like a keen knife. But the language is not my language; I had learnt to be
eloquent in it through perseverance. And the train carried me to Victoria
Station and to the world of Jean Morris.

‘Everything
which happened before my meeting her was a premonition; everything I did after
I killed her was an apology; not for killing her, but for the lie that was my
life. I was twenty-five when I met her at a party in Chelsea. The door, and a
long passageway leading to the entrance hall. She opened the door and lingered;
she appeared to my gaze under the faint lamplight like a mirage shimmering in a
desert. I was drunk, my glass two-thirds empty. With me were two girls; I was
saying lewd things to them and they were laughing. She came towards us with
wide strides, placing the weight of her body on the right foot so that her
buttocks inclined leftwards. She was looking at me as she approached. She
stopped opposite me and gave me a look of arrogance, coldness, and something
else. I opened my mouth to speak, but she had gone. "Who’s that female?” I
said to my two companions.

‘London was emerging from the war and the oppressive
atmosphere of the Victorian era. I got to know the pubs of Chelsea, the clubs
of Hampstead, and the gatherings of Bloomsbury. I would read poetry talk of
religion and philosophy discuss paintings, and say things about the
spirituality of the East. I would do everything possible to entice a woman to
my bed. Then I would go after some new prey. My soul contained not a drop of
sense of fun — just as Mrs Robinson had said. The women I enticed to my bed
included girls from the Salvation Army, Quaker societies and Fabian gatherings.
When the Liberals, the Conservatives, Labour, or the Communists, held a
meeting, I would saddle my camel and go. "You’re ugly” Jean Morris said to
me on the second occasion. “I’ve never seen an uglier face than yours." I
opened my mouth to speak but she had gone. At that instant, drunk as I was, I
swore I would one day make her pay for that. When I woke up, Ann Hammond was
beside me in the bed. What was it that attracted Ann Hammond to me? Her father
was an officer in the Royal Engineers, her mother from a rich family in Liverpool.
She proved an easy prey. When I first met her she was less than twenty and was
studying Oriental languages at Oxford. She was lively with a gay intelligent
face and eyes that sparkled with curiosity. When she saw me, she saw a dark
twilight like a false dawn. Unlike me, she yearned for tropical climes, cruel
suns, purple horizons. In her eyes I was a symbol of all her hankerings. I am
South that yearns for the North and the ice. Ann Hammond spent her childhood at
a convent school. Her aunt was the wife of a Member of Parliament. In my bed I
transformed her into a harlot. My bedroom was a graveyard that looked on to a
garden; its curtains were pink and had been chosen with care, the carpeting was
of a warm greenness, the bed spacious, with swans-down cushions. There were
small electric lights, red, blue, and violet, placed in certain corners; on the
walls were large mirrors, so that when I slept with a woman it was as if I
slept with a whole harem simultaneously. 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 theatre in a hospital. There is a still pool in the depths of every
woman that I knew how to stir. One day they found her dead. She had gassed
herself. They also found a small piece of paper with my name on it. It
contained nothing but the words: “Mr Sa’eed, may God damn you.” My mind was
like a sharp knife. The train carried me to Victoria Station and to the world
of Jean Morris.

‘In
the courtroom in London I sat for weeks listening to the lawyers talking about
me — as though they were talking about some person who was no concern of mine.
The Public Prosecutor, Sir Arthur Higgins, had a brilliant mind. I knew him
well, for he had taught me Criminal Law at Oxford and I had seen him before, at
this court, in this very same room, tightening his grip on the accused as they
stood in the dock. Rarely did anyone escape him. I saw men weeping and fainting
after he had finished his cross examination; but this time he was wrestling
with a corpse.

‘“Were you the cause of Ann Hammond’s suicide?”

‘“I don’t know”

‘“And Sheila Greenwood?"

‘“I don’t know"

‘“And Isabella Seymour?"

“‘I don’t know”

‘“Did you kill Jean Morris?”

‘“Yes.”

‘“Did you kill her intentionally?”

"‘Yes.”

‘It was as though his voice came to me from another world.
The man continued skillfully to draw a terrible picture of a werewolf who had
been the reason for two girls committing suicide, had wrecked the life of a
married woman and killed his own wife — an egoist whose whole life had been
directed to the quest of pleasure. Once it occurred to me in my stupor, as I
sat there listening to my former teacher, Professor Maxwell Foster- Keen,
trying to save me from the gallows, that I should stand up and shout at the
court: "This Mustafa Sa’eed does not exist. He’s an illusion, a lie. I ask
of you to rule that the lie be killed." But I remained as lifeless as a
heap of ashes. Professor Maxwell Foster- Keen continued to draw a distinctive
picture of the mind of a genius whom circumstances had driven to killing in a
moment of mad passion. He related to them how I had been appointed a lecturer
in economics at London University at the age of twenty-four. He told them that
Ann Hammond and Sheila Greenwood were girls who were seeking death by every
means and that they would have committed suicide whether they had met Mustafa Sa’eed
or not. “Mustafa Sa’eed, gentlemen of the jury; is a noble person whose mind
was able to absorb Western civilization but it broke his heart. These girls
were not killed by Mustafa Sa’eed but by the germ of a deadly disease that
assailed them a thousand years ago.” It occurred to me that I should stand up
and say to them: “This is untrue, a fabrication. It was I who killed them. I am
the desert of thirst. I am no Othello. I am a lie. Why don’t you sentence me to
be hanged and so kill the lie?” But Professor Foster-Keen turned the trial into
a conflict between two worlds, a struggle of which I was one of the victims.
The train carried me to Victoria Station and to the world of Jean Morris.

‘I
pursued her for three years. Every day the string of the bow became more taut.
It was with air that my waterskins were distended; my caravans were thirsty;
and the mirage shimmered before me in the wilderness of longing; the arrow’s
target had been fixed and it was inevitable the tragedy would take place.
“You’re a savage bull that does not weary of the chase,” she said to me one day
“I am tired of your pursuing me and of my running before you. Marry me.” So I
married her. My bedroom became a theatre of war; my bed a patch of hell. When I
grasped her it was like grasping at clouds, like bedding a shooting-star, like
mounting the back of a Prussian military march. That bitter smile was continually
on her mouth. 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. It was as though I were a slave Shahrayar
you buy in the market for a dinar encountering a Scheherazade begging amidst
the rubble of a city destroyed by plague. By day I lived with the theories of
Keynes and Tawney and at night I resumed the war with bow and sword and spear
and arrows. I saw the troops returning, filled with terror, from the war of
trenches, of lice and epidemics. I saw them sowing the seeds of the next war in
the Treaty of Versailles, and I saw Lloyd George lay the foundations of a
public welfare state. The city was transformed into an extraordinary woman,
with her symbols and her mysterious calls, towards whom I drove my camels till
their entrails ached and I myself almost died of yearning for her. My bedroom
was a spring-well of sorrow, the germ of a fatal disease. The infection had
stricken these women a thousand years ago, but I had stirred up the latent
depths of the disease until it had got out of control and had killed. The
theatres of Leicester Square echoed with songs of love and gaiety, but my heart
did not beat in time with them. Who would have thought that Sheila Greenwood
would have the courage to commit suicide? A waitress in a Soho restaurant, a
simple girl with a sweet smile and a sweet way of speaking. Her people were
village folk from the suburbs of Hull. I seduced her with gifts and honeyed
words, and an unfaltering way of seeing things as they really are. It was my
world, so novel to her, that attracted her. The smell of burning sandalwood and
incense made her dizzy; she stood for a long time laughing at her image in the
mirror as she fondled the ivory necklace I had placed like a noose round her
beautiful neck. She entered my bedroom a chaste virgin and when she left it she
was carrying the germs of self-destruction within her. She died without a
single word passing her lips — my storehouse of hackneyed phrases is
inexhaustible. For every occasion I possess the appropriate garb.