Tayeb Salih's Mustafa Sa'eed: The Southern Invader in Icy Battlefield.

Résumé

Mustafa Sa’eed says that he is an invader in icy battlefield. This implies that he is already aware of the destined battle he is fighting. What makes the battle interesting is the energy with which Mustafa Sa’eed fights despite his pre-ordained awareness of the doomed defeat in perspective. It is apparently this awareness of the discrepancy between action and consequence which leads Mustafa Sa’eed to realise that he is a lie himself in the sense that he is not known to the public (first in the north, then later in the south
after his return to his homeland) as a man wearing a fighting mask.
Like Othello, Mustafa Sa’eed is an Arab African who fights a battle in the north; yet the motive for their fighting is different. Tayeb Salih remarks in an interview that the conflict in Othello is comparatively groundless because, on the one hand, Othello was warmly received in the court of Sicilia and his merits were not denied in the north. Mustafa Sa’eed, on the other hand, fights a battle whose origin lies in the confrontation between the north and the south, and this battle is deeply rooted in the western history of colonisation and imperialism, which seems to breed a kind of infection in Mustafa Sa’eed, and with this infection, he invades the north.
The lack of a political dimension in Othello makes the conflict limited enough to call Othello a lie; yet Mustafa Sa’eed calls himself a lie as well because of the discrepancy he always realizes between the desire and achievement in his invasion. Tayeb Salih believes that Othello is a lie because he is not aware of his limitation, but Mustafa Sa’eed calls himself a lie because he is quite aware of his limitation and its show he plays with great energy.
Also, Mustafa Sa’eed knows that his fight in the north is a seasonal migration. On his return home, he carries the infection with him, and as he finds no battlefield for the show, he fights himself.
It is here that Tayeb Salih differs from his fellow Arab writers, who lead the protagonists of their novels home to settle and start afresh with a perspective (characterised by sentimentality) which counters the negation of reality in the north.
However, the point of view in The Season of Migration to the North is confused as well as confusing, because the reader doesn’t know whether to sympathize with or withdraw his sympathy from the invader. This is, I believe, a major flaw in the novel which I have studied in some detail in a forthcoming publication.