Season of Migration to the North (16 page)

I turned the key in the door, which opened without difficulty.
I was met by dampness and an odour like that of an old memory. I know this
smell: the smell of sandalwood and incense. I felt my way with my finger-tips
along the walls and came up against a window pane. I threw open the window and
the wooden shutters. I opened a second window and a third, but all that came in
from outside was more darkness. I struck a match. The light exploded on my eyes
and out of the darkness there emerged a frowning face with pursed lips that I
knew but could not place. I moved towards it with hate in my heart. It was my
adversary Mustafa Sa’eed. The face grew a neck, the neck two shoulders and a
chest, then a trunk and two legs, and I found myself standing face to face with
myself This is not Mustafa Sa’eed — it’s a picture of me frowning at my face
from a mirror. Suddenly the picture disappeared and I sat in the darkness for I
know not how long listening intently and hearing nothing. I lit another match and
a woman gave a bitter smile. Standing in an oasis of light, I looked around me
and saw there was an old lamp on the table my hand was almost touching. I shook
it and found there was oil in it. How extraordinary! I lit the lamp and the
shadows and the walls moved away and the ceiling rose up. I lit the lamp and
closed the windows. The smell must remain imprisoned here: the smell of bricks
and wood and burning incense and sandalwood — and books. Good God, the four
walls from floor to ceiling were filled, shelf upon shelf with books and more
books and yet more books. I lit a cigarette and filled my lungs with the
strange smell. What a fool he was! Was this the action of a man who wanted to
turn over a new leaf? I shall bring the whole place down upon his head; I shall
set it on fire. I set light to the fine rug beneath my feet and for a while
watched it devour a Persian king, mounted on a steed, aiming his lance at a
fleeing gazelle. I raised the lamp and found that the whole floor of the room
was covered with Persian rugs. I saw that the wall opposite the door ended in
an empty space. Lamp in hand, I went up to it. How ridiculous! A fireplace —
imagine it! A real English fireplace with all the bits and pieces, above it a
brass cowl and in front of it a quadrangular area tiled in green marble, with
the mantelpiece of blue marble; on either side of the fireplace were two Victorian
chairs covered in a figured silk material, while between them stood a round table
with books and notebooks on it. I saw the face of the woman who had smiled at
me moments before — a large oil portrait in a gilt frame over the mantelpiece;
it was signed in the right-hand corner ‘M. Sa’eed’. I observed that the fire in
the middle of the room was spreading. I took eighteen strides towards it (I
counted them as I walked) and trod it out. Though I sought revenge, yet I could
not resist my curiosity. First of all I shall see and hear, then I shall burn
it down as though it had never been. The books — I could see in the light of
the lamp that they were arranged in categories. Books on economics, history and
literature. Zoology. Geology. Mathematics. Astronomy. The Encyclopaedia
Britannica. Gibbon. Macaulay Toynbee. The complete works of Bernard Shaw
Keynes. Tawney Smith. Robinson.
The Economics of Imperfect Competition
. Hobson
Imperialism
. Robinson
An Essay on Marxian Economics
. Sociology. Anthropology.
Psychology. Thomas Hardy. Thomas Mann. E. G. Moore. Thomas Moore. Virginia Woolf.
Wittgenstein. Einstein. Brierly. Namier. Books I had heard of and others I had
not. Volumes of poetry by poets of whom I did not know the existence.
The
journals of Gordon
.
Gulliver’s Travels
. Kipling. Housman.
The
History of the French Revolution
Thomas Carlyle.
Lectures on the French
Revolution
Lord Acton. Books bound in leather. Books in paper covers. Old
tattered books. Books that looked as if they’d just come straight from the
printers. Huge volumes the size of tombstones. Small books with gilt edges the
size of packs of playing cards. Signatures. Words of dedication. Books in
boxes. Books on the chairs. Books on the floor. What play-acting is this? What
does he mean? Owen. Ford Madox Ford. Stefan Zweig. E. G. Browne. Laski. Hazlitt.
Alice
in Wonderland
. Richards.
The Koran
in English.
The
Bible
in English. Gilbert Murray. Plato.
The Economics of Colonialism
Mustafa
Sa’eed.
Colonialism and Monopoly
Mustafa Sa’eed.
The Cross and
Gunpowder
Mustafa Sa’eed.
The Rape of
Africa
Mustafa Sa’eed.
Prospero and Caliban
.
Totem and Taboo
. Doughty. Not a single
Arabic book. A graveyard. A mausoleum. An insane idea. A prison. A huge joke. A 
treasure chamber. ‘Open, Sesame, and let’s divide up the jewels among the
people.’ The ceiling was of oak and in the middle was an archway, supported by
two marble columns of a yellowish red colour, dividing the room in two; the
archway was covered by a faience with decorated edges. I was standing at the
head of a long dining-table; I don’t know what wood it was made of but its
surface was dark and glistening and along two sides were five leather-upholstered
chairs. On the right was a settee covered in blue velvet, with cushions of — I
touched them: of swansdown. On both sides of the fireplace I saw various
objects I had not noticed before: on the right was a long table on which was a
silver candelabrum holding ten virgin candles; on the left was another. I lit
them candle by candle, and the first thing they cast their light upon was the
oil painting above the mantelpiece: the elongated face of a woman with wide
eyes and brows that joined above them. The nose was a shade too large and the
mouth tended to be too wide. I realized that the glass-fronted bookshelves on
the wall opposite the door did not reach to the ground and ended at the two
sides of the fireplace with white-painted cupboards that projected two or three
feet from the bookshelves. It was the same along the left-hand side. I went up
to the photographs ranged on the shelf: Mustafa Sa’eed laughing; Mustafa Sa’eed
writing; Mustafa Sa’eed swimming; Mustafa Sa’eed somewhere in the country; Mustafa
Sa’eed in gown and mortar-board; Mustafa Sa’eed rowing on the Serpentine;
Mustafa Sa’eed in a Nativity play a crown on his head, as one of the Three
Kings who brought perfumes and myrrh to Christ; Mustafa Sa’eed standing between
a man and a woman. Mustafa Sa’eed had not let a moment pass without recording
it for posterity. I took up the picture of a woman and scrutinized it, reading
the dedication written in a flowery hand. ‘From Sheila with all my love.’ Sheila
Greenwood no doubt. A country girl from the outskirts of Hull. He had seduced
her with presents, honeyed words, and an unfaltering way of seeing things as
they really are. The smell of burning sandalwood and incense made her dizzy. She
really did have a pretty face. Smiling in the picture, she was wearing a
necklace, no doubt an ivory one; her arms were bare and her bosom well-developed.
She used to work as a waitress by day and pursue her studies in the evening at
the Polytechnic. She was intelligent and believed that the future lay with the working
class, that a day would come when class differences would be non-existent and
all people would be brothers. ‘My mother,’ she used to tell him, ‘would go mad
and my father would kill me if they knew I was in love with a black man, but I
don’t care.’ ‘She used to sing me the songs of Marie Lloyd as we lay naked,’ he
said. ‘I would spend Thursday evenings with her in her room in Camden Town and
sometimes she would spend the night with me in my flat. She would lick my face
with her tongue and say “Your tongue’s as crimson as a tropic sunset.” I never
had enough of her nor she of me. Each time she would gaze at me as though
discovering something new "How marvelous your black colour is!” she would
say to me — “the colour of magic and mystery and obscenities.”’ She committed
suicide. Why did Sheila Greenwood commit suicide, Mr Mustafa Sa’eed? I know
that you are hiding away somewhere in this Pharaonic tomb which I shall burn
over your head. Why did Hosna Bint Mahmoud kill the old man Wad Rayyes and then
kill herself in this village in which no one ever kills anyone?

I picked up another photograph and read the dedication which
was in a bold, forward-slanting hand: ‘To you until death, Isabella.’ Poor
Isabella Seymour. I feel a special sympathy for Isabella Seymour. Round of face
and inclined to plumpness, she wore a dress which was too short for the
fashions of those days. She was not, as he had described her, exactly a bronze
statue, but there was manifest good nature in her face and an optimistic
outlook on life. She smiles. She too is smiling. He said she was the wife of a
successful surgeon, the mother of two daughters and a son. She had had eleven
years of happy married life, regularly going to church every Sunday morning and
participating in charitable organizations. Then she met him and discovered deep
within herself dark areas that had previously been closed. Despite everything
she left him a letter in which she said, ‘If there is a God in Heaven I am sure
He will look with sympathetic eye upon the rashness of a poor woman who could
not prevent happiness from entering her heart, even if it meant a violation of
convention and the wounding of a husband’s pride. May God forgive me and may He
grant you as much happiness as you have granted me.’ I heard his voice on that
night, darkly rising and falling, holding neither sadness nor regret; if the
voice contained any emotion, then it was a ring of joy. ‘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 midst
of the desert. When her husband took the stand as a witness in the court, all
eyes were on him. He was a man of noble features and gait; his grey head had
dignity while his whole bearing commanded respect. He was a man who, placed
against me in the scales, would outweigh me many times over. He was a witness
for the defense, not the prosecution. “Fairness demands,” he said to the court,
over which reigned utter silence, “that I say that my wife Isabella knew she
had cancer. In the final period before her death she used to suffer from severe
attacks of depression. Several days before her death she confessed to me her
relationship with the accused. She said she had fallen in love with him and
that there was nothing she could do about it. All through her life with me she
had been the model of a true and faithful wife. In spite of everything I feel
no bitterness within myself; neither against her nor against the accused. I
merely feel a deep sadness at losing her.”

There is no justice or moderation in the world. I feel
bitterness and hatred, for after all those victims he crowned his life with yet
another one, Hosna Bint Mahmoud, the only woman I have ever loved. She killed
poor Wad Rayyes and killed herself because of Mustafa Sa’eed. I picked up a
photograph in a leather frame. This was clearly Ann Hammond, despite the fact
she was wearing an Arab robe and head-dress. The dedication under the picture
was in shaky Arabic writing: ‘From your slave girl, Sausan.’ It was a lively
face exuding such exuberant good health that the picture could hardly contain
it. There was a dimple in each cheek and the lips were full and relaxed; the
eyes glowed with curiosity. All this was apparent in the picture despite the
years that must have passed since it was taken. ‘Unlike me, she yearned for
tropical climes, cruel suns, purple horizons. In her eyes I was a symbol of all
these hankerings of hers. I am South that yearns for the North and the ice. She
owned a flat in Hampstead overlooking the Heath which she would go to from Oxford
at week-ends. We would spend Saturday night at my place and Sunday night at
hers — and sometimes she would stay on over Monday sometimes for the whole
week. Then she began absenting herself from the University for a month at a
time, then two, until she was sent down. She used to bury her face under my
armpit and breathe me into herself as though inhaling some narcotic smoke. Her
face would be puckered with pleasure. “I love your sweat," she would say
as though intoning rites in a temple. "I want to have the smell of you in
full — the smell of rotting leaves in the jungles of Africa, the smell of the
mango and the pawpaw and tropical spices, the smell of rains in the deserts of
Arabia.” She was an easy prey. I had met her following a lecture I gave in Oxford
on Abu Nuwas. I told them that Omar Khayyam was nothing in comparison with Abu Nuwas.
I read them some of his poetry about wine in a comic oratorical style which I
claimed was how Arabic poetry used to be recited in the Abbasid era. In the
lecture I said that Abu Nuwas was a Sufi mystic and that he had made of wine a
symbol with which to express all his spiritual yearnings, that the longing for
wine in his poetry was really a longing for self-obliteration in the Divine —
all arrant nonsense with no basis of fact. However, I was inspired that evening
and found the lies tripping off my tongue like sublime truths. Feeling that my
elation was communicating itself to my audience, I lied more and more
extravagantly After the lecture they all crowded round me, retired civil
servants who had worked in the East, old women whose husbands had died in
Egypt, Iraq and the Sudan, men who had fought with Kitchener and Allenby, orientalists,
and officials in the Colonial Office and the Middle East section of the Foreign
Office. Suddenly I saw a girl of eighteen or nineteen rushing towards me
through the ranks of people. She put her arms around me and kissed me.
"You are beautiful beyond description,” she said, speaking in Arabic, “and
the love I have for you is beyond description.” With an emotion the violence of
which frightened me, I said: “At last I have found you, Sausan. I searched
everywhere for you and was afraid I would never find you. Do you remember?”
“How can I forget our house in Karkh in Baghdad on the banks of the river Tigris
in the days of El-Ma’ moun,” she said with an emotion no less intense than
mine. “I too have followed your footsteps across the centuries, but I was
certain we would find each other — and here you are, my darling Mustafa,
unchanged since we parted.” It was as if she and I were on a stage surrounded
by actors who were performing minor roles. I was the hero and she the heroine.
The lights went down, darkness reigned all round us, and she and I remained
alone in the middle of the stage with a single light trained upon us. Though I
realized I was lying, I felt that somehow I meant what I was saying and that
she too, despite her lying, was telling the truth. It was one of those rare
moments of ecstasy for which I would sell my whole life; a moment in which,
before your very eyes, lies are turned into truths, history becomes a pimp, and
the jester is turned into a sultan. Still in the exuberance of that dream, she
took me to London in her car. She drove with terrifying speed and from time to
time would let go of the driving wheel and put her arms round me. “How happy I
am to have found you at last!" she shouted. “I’m so happy I wouldn’t care
if I died this very instant." We stopped at pubs on the way; sometimes
drinking cider, sometimes beer, red wine, white wine, and sometimes we drank
whisky, and with every glass I would quote to her from the poetry of Abu Nuwas.
I quoted: