Season of Migration to the North (14 page)

The steamer swung round on itself
so that its engines
would not be working against the current. Everything happened as it always did:
the raucous whistle and the small boats from the opposite shore, the sycamore
trees and the bustle on the quay of the landing-stage. Except for one great
difference: I stepped ashore and Mahjoub shook me by the hand, avoiding me with
his eyes; this time he was the only one who had come to meet me. He was
embarrassed, as though feeling guilty about something or as though he were
putting the responsibility on to me.

Hardly had I shaken hands with him than I said, ‘How did you
let this happen?’

‘What has happened has happened,’ said Mahjoub, fixing the
saddle of the tall black donkey which belonged to my uncle Abdul Karim. "The
two boys are well and are at my place.’ I had not thought of the boys during
the whole of that ghastly journey. I had been thinking of her.

Again I said to Mahjoub: ‘What happened?’

He was still avoiding looking at me. He remained silent,
adjusting the sheepskin cover on the saddle and tightening the girth round his
donkey’s belly. He pushed the saddle slightly forward, seized hold of the reins
and jumped on. I remained standing, awaiting the reply that did not come; then
I too mounted. Urging the donkey on, he said to me: ‘It’s as I told you in the
cable. There’s no point in delving into the matter. In any case we weren’t
expecting you.’

‘I wish I'd done as you advised and married her,’ I said to
him, encouraging him to speak. All I succeeded in doing, though, was to drive
him into a deeper silence. He was clearly angry for he dug his heel sharply
into his donkey though it had done nothing to deserve such treatment. ‘Ever
since I got your cable,’ I said to him, chasing after him but without quite
catching him up, ‘I haven’t slept or eaten or spoken to a soul. Three days
traveling from Khartoum by rail and steamer I’ve spent thinking and asking myself
how it happened and I find no answer.’

‘You’ve never spent such a short time away from the village,’
he said kindly, as though feeling sorry for me.

‘No,’ I said to him. ‘Thirty-two days to be exact.’

‘Anything new in Khartoum?’ he said.

‘We were busy with a conference,’ I said to him. Interest
showed on his face, for he liked to have news of Khartoum, especially news of
scandals and stories of bribery and of the corruption of those in power.

‘What were they in conference about this time?’ he said with
evident interest.

I was upset that he should have so quickly forgotten the
matter in hand.

‘The Ministry of Education] I said to him wearily, wishing to
cut it short, ‘organized a conference to which it invited delegates from twenty
African countries to discuss ways of unifying educational methods throughout
the whole continent — I was a member of the secretariat of the conference.’

‘Let them build the schools first,’ said Mahjoub, ‘and then
discuss unifying education. How do these people’s minds work? They waste time
in conferences and poppycock and here are our children having to travel several
miles to school. Aren’t we human beings? Don’t we pay taxes? Haven’t we any
rights in this country? Everything’s in Khartoum. The whole of the country’s
budget is spent in Khartoum. One single hospital in Merawi, and it takes us
three days to get there. The women die in childbirth — there’s not a single
qualified midwife in this place. And you, what are you doing in Khartoum?
What’s the use in our having one of us in the government when you’re not doing
anything?

My donkey had passed him, so I pulled at the reins till he
caught up with me. I chose to keep silent, although if it had been any other
time I would have shouted at him — he and I had been like that since childhood,
shouting at each other when angry; then making it up and forgetting. But now I
was hungry and tired and my heart was heavy with grief. Had the circumstances
of our meeting this time been better I would have roused him to laughter and to
anger with stories about that conference. He will not believe the facts about
the new rulers of Africa, smooth of face, lupine of mouth, their hands gleaming
with rings of precious stones, exuding perfume from their cheeks, in white,
blue, black and green suits of fine mohair and expensive silk rippling on their
shoulders like the fur of Siamese cats, and with shoes that reflect the light
from chandeliers and squeak as they tread on marble. Mahjoub will not believe
that for nine days they studied every aspect of the progress of education in
Africa in the Independence Hall built for the purpose and costing more than a
million pounds: an imposing edifice of stone, cement, marble and glass,
constructed in the form of a complete circle and designed in London, its
corridors of white marble brought from Italy and the windows made up of small
pieces of coloured glass skillfully arranged in a framework of teak. The floor
of the main hall was covered with fine Persian carpets, while the ceiling was
in the form of a gilded dome; on all sides chandeliers hung down, each the size
of a large camel. The platform on which the Ministers of Education in Africa
took it in turns to stand for nine whole days was of red marble like that of
Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides, its vast ebony surface smooth and shiny. On
the walls were oil paintings, and facing the main entrance was a vast map of Africa
fashioned in coloured mosaic, each country in a different colour. How can I say
to Mahjoub that the Minister who said in his verbose address, received with a
storm of clapping: ‘No contradiction must occur between what the student learns
at school and between the reality of the life of the people. Everyone who is
educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an
air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American
car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we
shall have with us a  bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality
of our life, which is more dangerous to the future of Africa than imperialism
itself’: how can I say to Mahjoub that this very man escapes during the summer
months from Africa to his villa on Lake Lucerne and that his wife does her
shopping at Harrods in London, from where the articles are flown to her in a
private plane, and that the members of his delegation themselves openly say
that he is corrupt and takes bribes, that he has acquired whole estates, has
set up businesses and amassed properties, has created a vast fortune from the
sweat dripping from the brows of wretched, half-naked people in the jungle?
Such people are concerned only with their stomachs and their sensual pleasures.
There is no justice or moderation in the world. Mustafa Sa’eed said: ‘But I
seek not glory for the likes of me do not seek glory.’ Had he returned in the
natural way of things he would have joined up with this pack of wolves. They
all resemble him: handsome faces and faces made so by comfortable living. One
of those Ministers said in the closing party of the conference that Mustafa had
been his teacher. The first thing he did when they introduced me to him was to
exclaim: ‘You remind me of a dear friend with whom I was on very close terms in
London — Dr Mustafa Sa’eed. He used to be my teacher. In 1928 he was
President of the Society for the Struggle for African Freedom of which I was a
committee member. What a man he was! He’s one of the greatest Africans I’ve
known. He had wide contacts. Heavens, that man — women fell for him like flies.
He used to say "I’ll liberate Africa with my penis", and he laughed
so widely you could see the back of his throat.’ I wanted to put some questions
to him but he disappeared in the throng of Presidents and Ministers. Mustafa no
longer concerns me, for Mahjoub’s telegram has changed everything, bringing me
worries of my own. When I first read Mrs Robinson’s reply to my letter I had a
feeling of immense joy. I read it in the train a second time and tried, though
in vain, to banish my thoughts from the spot that had become the pivot round
which they revolved.

The donkeys continued to toss up the stones with their
hooves. ‘Why so silent, as though you’ve lost your tongue? Why don’t you say
something?’ said Mahjoub.

‘Civil servants like me can’t change anything,’ I said to
him. ‘If our masters say “Do so—and—so”, we do it. You’re the head of the
National Democratic Socialist Party here. It’s the party in power, so why not
pour out your anger on them?’

Mahjoub said apologetically ‘If it hadn’t been for this… this
calamity… On the day it happened we were preparing to travel in a delegation to
ask for the building of a large hospital, also for an intermediate boys’
school, a primary school for girls, an agricultural school and ...’ Suddenly he
broke off and retired into his angry silence.

I glanced at the river on our left gleaming with menace and
reverberating with mysterious sound. Then, in front of us, there came into view
the ten domes in the middle of the cemetery; and the recollection it called
forth cut into my heart.

‘We buried them without any fuss, first thing in the
morning,’ said Mahjoub. ‘We told the women not to mourn. We held no funeral
ceremony and informed no one — the police would only have come along and there
would have been all the scandal of an investigation.’

‘Why the police?’ I asked in alarm.

He looked at me for a while, then fell silent. A long time
later he said: A week or ten days after you went away her father said he had
given Wad Rayyes a promise — and they married her off to him. Her father swore
at her and beat her; he told her she’d marry him whether she liked it or not. I
didn’t attend the marriage ceremony; no one was there except his friends: Bakri,
your grandfather, and Bint Mahjoub. For myself I tried to deflect Wad Rayyes
from his purpose, but like someone obsessed he insisted. I talked to her
father, who said he wouldn’t be made a laughing-stock by people saying his
daughter wouldn’t listen to him. After the marriage I told Wad Rayyes to go
about things with tact. For two weeks they remained together without exchanging
a word. She was — he was in an indescribable state, like a madman. He
complained to all and sundry; saying how could there be in his house a woman
he’d married according to the laws of God and His Prophet and how could there
not be between them the normal relationship of man and wife. We used to tell
him to have patience, then ...’

The two donkeys suddenly brayed at the same time and I almost
fell out of the saddle. For two whole days I went on asking people about it,
but no one would tell me. They all avoided looking at me as though they were
accomplices in some dire crime.

‘Why did you leave your work and come?’ my mother said to me.

‘The two boys,’ I said to her.

She looked at me searchingly for a while and said: ‘The boys
or the boys’ mother? What was there between you and her? She came to your
father and her very words to him were: “Tell him to marry me!" What an
impudent hussy! That’s modern women for you! That was bad enough, but the
terrible thing she did later was even worse.’

My grandfather too vouchsafed me no information. I found him
seated on his couch in a state of fatigue I’d never seen him in before, just as
if the source of life inside him had suddenly dried up. I sat on and he still
did not speak, only sighed from time to time and fidgeted and called upon God
to grant him refuge from the accursed Devil. Every time he did this I would
feel twinges of conscience as though the Devil and I were in some sort of
league together. After a long time, addressing the ceiling, he said: ‘God curse
all women! Women are the sisters of the Devil. Wad Rayyes! Wad Rayyes!’ and my
grandfather burst into tears. It was the first time in my life I had seen him
crying. He cried much, then wiped away the tears with the hem of his robe and
was so long silent that I thought he had gone to sleep. ‘God rest your soul,
Wad Rayyes,’ he said after a while. ‘May God forgive him and encompass him with
His mercy’ He muttered some prayers and said: ‘He was a man without equal —
always laughing, always at hand when one was in trouble. He never said
"No" to anyone who asked anything of him. If only he’d listened to
me! To end up like that! There is no power and no strength save in God — it’s
the first time anything like this has happened in the village since God created
it. What a time of affliction we live in!’

‘What happened? I asked him, plucking up courage.

He took no notice of my question and became engrossed in his
string of prayer-beads. Then he said: ‘Nothing but trouble comes from that
tribe. I said to Wad Rayyes, “This woman’s a bringer of bad luck. Keep away
from her.” However, it was fated.’

On
the morning of the third day, with a bottle of whisky in my pocket, I went off
to see Bint Majzoub. If Bint Majzoub would not tell me, then no one would. Bint
Majzoub, pouring some whisky into a large aluminium cup, said: ‘No doubt you
want something. We’re not used to having such fine city drink here.’

‘I wish to know what happened,’ I said to her. ‘No one wants
to tell me.’

She took a large gulp from the cup, gave a scowl, and said:
‘The thing done by Bint Mahmoud is not easily spoken of. It is something we
have never seen or heard of in times past or present.’

She stopped talking and I waited patiently till a third of
the bottle had gone, without it having any effect on her except that she looked
more animated. ‘That’s enough of the heathens’ drink,’ said Bint Majzoub,
closing the bottle. ‘It’s certainly formidable stuff and not a bit like date arak.’

I looked at her pleadingly ‘The things I’m going to say to
you,’ she said, ‘you won’t hear from a living soul in the village — they buried
them with Bint Mahmoud and with poor Wad Rayyes. They are shameful things and
it’s hard to talk about them.’ Then she gave me a searching look with her bold
eyes. ‘These are words that won’t please you,’ she said, ‘especially if ...’
and she lowered her head for an instant.