Season of Migration to the North (6 page)

‘“Is it not true, by way of example, that in the period
between October 1922 and February 1923, that in this period alone you were
living with five women simultaneously?”

‘“Yes."

"And that you gave each one the impression you’d marry
her?"

"‘Yes."

‘“And that you adopted a different name with each one?"

"‘Yes."

"‘That you were Hassan and Charles and Amin and Mustafa
and Richard?"

‘“Yes.”

"And yet you were writing and lecturing on a system of
economics based on love not figures? Isn’t it true you made your name by your
appeal for humanity in economics?"

"‘Yes.”

‘Thirty
years. The willow trees turned from white to green to yellow in the parks; the
cuckoo sang to the spring each year. For thirty years the Albert Hall was
crammed each night with lovers of Beethoven and Bach, and the presses brought
out thousands of books on aft and thought. The plays of Bernard Shaw were put
on at The Royal Court and The Haymarket. Edith Sitwell was giving wings to
poetry and The Prince of Wales’s Theatre pulsated with youth and bright lights.
The sea continued to ebb and flow at Bournemouth and Brighton, and the Lake
District flowered year after year. The island was like a sweet tune, happy and
sad, changing like a mirage with the changing of the seasons. For thirty years
I was a part of all this, living in it but insensitive to its real beauty
unconcerned with everything about it except the filling of my bed each night.

‘Yes. It was summer — they said that they had not known a
summer like it for a hundred years. I left my house on a Saturday sniffing the
air, feeling I was about to start upon a great hunt. I reached Speakers’ Corner
in Hyde Park. It was packed with people. I stood listening from afar to a
speaker from the West Indies talking about the colour problem. Suddenly my eyes
came to rest on a woman who was craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the
speaker so that her dress was lifted above her knees exposing two shapely
bronzed legs. Yes, this was my prey. I walked up to her, like a boat heading
towards the rapids. I stood beside her and pressed up close against her till I
felt her warmth pervading me. I breathed in the odour of her body, that odour
with which Mrs Robinson had met me on the platform of Cairo’s railway station.
I was so close to her that, becoming aware of me, she turned to me suddenly. I
smiled into her face — a smile the outcome of which I knew not, except that I
was determined that it should not go to waste. I also laughed lest the surprise
in her face should turn to animosity. Then she smiled. I stood beside her for
about a quarter of an hour, laughing when the speaker’s words made her laugh —
loudly so that she might be affected by the contagion of it. Then came the
moment when I felt that she and I had become like a mare and foal running in
harmony side by side. A sound, as though it were not my voice, issued from my
throat: “What about a drink, away from this crowd and heat?" She turned
her head in astonishment. This time I smiled — a broad innocent smile so that I
might change astonishment into, at least, curiosity Meanwhile I closely
examined her face: each one of her features increased my conviction that this
was my prey. With the instinct of a gambler I knew that this was a decisive
moment. At this moment everything was possible. My smile changed to a gladness.
I could scarcely keep in rein as she said: “Yes, why not?" We walked along
together; she beside me, a glittering figure of bronze under the july sun, a
city of secrets and rapture. I was pleased she laughed so freely. Such a woman
— there are many of her type in Europe — knows no fear; they accept life with
gaiety and curiosity. And I am a thirsty desert, a wilderness of southern
desires. As we drank tea, she asked me about my home. I related 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 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. Sometimes she would hear me out in
silence, a Christian sympathy in her eyes. 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 jungles.
This was fine. Curiosity had changed to gaiety and gaiety to sympathy and when
I stir the still pool in its depths the sympathy will be transformed into a
desire upon whose taut strings I shall play as I wish. "What race are
you?” she asked me. ‘Are you African or Asian?”

"‘I’m like Othello — Arab—African," I said to her.

"‘Yes,” she said, looking into my face. “Your nose is
like the noses of Arabs in pictures, but your hair isn’t soft and jet black
like that of Arabs.”

‘“Yes, that’s me. My face is Arab like the desert of the Empty
Quarter, while my head is African and teems with a mischievous childishness.” 

‘“You put things in such a funny way,” she said laughing.

‘The conversation led us to my family and I told her —
without lying this time — that I had grown up without a father. Then, returning
to my lies, I gave her such terrifying descriptions of how I had lost my
parents that I saw the tears well up in her eyes. I told her I was six years
old at the time when my parents were drowned with thirty other people in a boat
taking them from one bank of the Nile to the other. Here something occurred
which was better than expressions of pity; pity in such instances is an emotion
with uncertain consequences. Her eyes brightened and she cried out
ecstatically:

‘“The Nile.”

‘“Yes, the Nile.”

‘“'Then you live on the banks of the Nile?"

‘“Yes. Our house is right on the bank of the Nile, so that
when I’m lying on my bed at night I put my hand out of the window and idly play
with the Nile waters till sleep overtakes me.”

‘Mr Mustafa, the bird has fallen into the snare. The Nile,
that snake god, has gained a new victim. The city has changed into a woman. It
would be but a day or a week before I would pitch tent, driving my tent peg
into the mountain summit. You, my lady, may not known; but you — like Carnarvon
when he entered Tutan-Khamen’s tomb — have been infected with a deadly disease
which has come from you know not where and which will bring about your
destruction, be it sooner or later. My store of hackneyed phrases is
inexhaustible. I felt the flow of conversation firmly in my hands, like the
reins of an obedient mare: I pull at them and she stops, I shake them and she
advances; I move them and she moves subject to my will, to left or to right.

‘“Two hours have passed without my being aware of them,” I
said to her. “I’ve not felt such happiness for a long time. And there’s so much
left for me to say to you and you to me. What would you say to having dinner
together and continuing the conversation?"

‘For a while she remained silent. I was not alarmed for I
felt that satanic warmth under my diaphragm, and when I feel it I know that I
am in full command of the situation. No, she would not say no.

“This is an extraordinary meeting,” she said. ‘A man I don’t
know invites me out. It’s not right, but —" She was silent. "Yes, why
not?” she then said. "There’s nothing to tell from your face you’re a
cannibal."

"‘You’ll find I’m an aged crocodile who’s lost its
teeth," I said to her, a wave of joy stirring in the roots of my heart. “I
wouldn’t have the strength to eat you even if I wanted to." I reckoned I
was at least fifteen years her junior, for she was a woman in the region of
forty whose body — whatever the experiences she had undergone — time had
treated kindly. The fine wrinkles on her forehead and at the comers of her
mouth told one not that she had grown old, but that she had ripened.

‘Only then did I ask her name.

‘“Isabella Seymour," she said.

‘I repeated it twice, rolling it round my tongue as though
eating a pear. "And what’s your name?"

‘“I’m — Amin. Amin Hassan."

"‘I shall call you Hassan."

‘With the grills and wine her features relaxed and there
gushed forth — upon me — a love she felt for the whole world. I wasn’t so much
concerned with her love for the world, or for the cloud of sadness that crossed
her face from time to time, as I was with the redness of her tongue when she
laughed, the fullness of her lips and the secrets lurking in the abyss of her
mouth. I pictured her obscenely naked as she said: “Life is full of pain, yet
we must be optimistic and face life with courage."

‘Yes, I now know that in the rough wisdom that issues from
the mouths of simple people lies our whole hope of salvation. A tree grows
simply and your grandfather has lived and will die simply. That is the secret.
You are right, my lady: courage and optimism. But until the meek inherit the
earth, until the armies are disbanded, the lamb grazes in peace beside the wolf
and the child plays water-polo in the river with the crocodile, until that time
of happiness and love comes along, I for one shall continue to express myself
in this twisted manner. And 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, than happiness. Thus I mean you no harm, except to the
extent that the sea is harmful when ships are wrecked against its rocks, and to
the extent that the lightning is harmful when it rends a tree in two. This last
idea converged in my mind on the tiny hairs on her right arm near to the wrist,
and I noticed that the hair on her arms was thicker than with most women, and
this led my thoughts to other hair. It would certainly be as soft and abundant
as cypress-grass on the banks of a stream. As though the thought had radiated
from my mind to hers she sat up straight.

“Why do you look so sad?” she said.

‘“Do I look sad? On the contrary I’m very happy"

‘The tender look came back into her eyes as she stretched out
her hand and took hold of mine.

“Do you know that my mother’s Spanish?” she said.

“'That, then, explains everything. It explains our meeting by
chance, our spontaneous mutual understanding as though we had got to know each
other centuries ago. Doubtless one of my forefathers was a soldier in Tarik ibn
Ziyad’s army. Doubtless he met one of your ancestors as she gathered in the
grapes from an orchard in Seville. Doubtless he fell in love with her at first
sight and she with him. He lived with her for a time, then left her and went
off to Africa. There he married again and I was one of his progeny in Africa,
and you have come from his progeny in Spain." ‘These words, also the low
lights and the wine, made her happy. She gave out throaty gurgling laughs.

"‘What a devil you are!" she said.

‘For a moment I imagined to myself the Arab soldiers’ first
meeting with Spain: like me at this instant sitting opposite Isabella Seymour,
a southern thirst being dissipated in the mountain passes of history in the
north. However, I seek not glory for the likes of me do not seek glory. After a
month of feverish desire I turned the key in the door with her at my side, a
fertile Andalusia; after that I led her across the short passageway to the
bedroom where the smell of burning sandalwood and incense assailed her, filling
her lungs with a perfume she little knew was deadly. In those days, when the
summit lay a mere arm’s length away from me, I would be enveloped in a tragic
calm. All the fever and throbbing of the heart, the strain of nerves, would be
transformed into the calm of a surgeon as he opens up the patient’s stomach. I
knew that the short road along which we walked together to the bedroom was, for
her, a road of light redolent with the aroma of magnanimity and devotion, but
which to me was the last step before attaining the peak of selfishness. I
waited by the edge of the bed, as though condensing that moment in my mind, and
cast a cold eye at the pink curtains and large mirrors, the lights lurking in
the corners of the room, then at the shapely bronze statue before me. When we
were at the climax of the tragedy she cried out weakly; “No. No." This
will be of no help to you now. The critical moment when it was in your power to
refrain from taking the first step has been lost. I caught you unawares; at
that time it was in your power to say "No". As for now the flood of
events has swept you along, as it does every person, and you are no longer
capable of doing anything. Were every person to know when to refrain from
taking the first step many things would have been changed. Is the sun wicked
when it turns the hearts of millions of human beings into sand-strewn deserts
in which the throat of the nightingale is parched with thirst? Lingeringly I
passed the palm of my hand over her neck and kissed her in the fountainheads of
her sensitivity. With every touch, with every kiss, I felt a muscle in her body
relax; her face glowed and her eyes sparkled with a sudden brightness. She
gazed hard and long at me as though seeing me as a symbol rather than reality I
heard her saying to me in an imploring voice of surrender “I love you,” and
there answered her voice a weak cry from the depths of my consciousness calling
on me to desist. But the summit was only a step away after which I would
recover my breath and rest. At the climax of our pain there passed through my
head clouds of old, far-off memories, like a vapour rising up from a salt lake
in the middle of the desert. She burst into agonized, consuming tears, while I
gave myself up to a feverishly tense sleep.’

It
was a steamingly hot ]uly night
, the Nile that year having experienced one
of those floodings that occur once every twenty or thirty years and become
legendary — something for fathers to talk to their sons about. Water covered
most of the land lying between the river bank and the edge of the desert where
the houses stood, and the fields became like islands amidst the water. The men
moved between the houses and the fields in small boats or covered the distance
swimming. Mustafa Sa’eed was, as far as I knew an excellent swimmer. My father
told me — for I was in Khartoum at the time — that they heard women screaming
in the quarter after the evening prayers and, on hurrying to the source of the
sound, had found that the screaming was coming from Mustafa Sa’eed’s house. Though
he was in the habit of returning from the fields at sunset, his wife had waited
for him in vain. On asking about him here and there she was told he had been
seen in his field, though some thought he had returned home with the rest of
the men. The whole village, carrying lamps, combed the river bank, while some
put out in boats, but though they searched the whole night through it was
without avail. Telephone messages were sent to the police stations right along
the Nile as far as Karma, but Mustafa Sa’eed’s body was not among those washed
up on the river bank that week. In the end they presumed he must have been
drowned and that his body had come to rest in the bellies of the crocodiles
infesting the waters.