Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit t M nchen a u Department f r Anglistik und Amerikanistik u WS 2008/09 HS Travel and Migration in the Postcolonial World Prof. Dr.

Tobias D ring o

Postcolonial strategies of representation: narrative, space and identity in Tayeb Salihs Season of Migration to the North

Arian Kuschki Sch nstrae 26 c/o Gentz o 81543 M nchen u 0177 8682510 arian.kuschki@gmail.com Hf Engl. Literaturwissenschaft Nfr Komparatistik, Philosophie Fs 9

Contents
1 Narrative structure The narrative situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Identity 3 Bibliography 5 5 19 21

\section{Introduction} Tayeb Salihs novel \emph{Season of Migration to the North} has received thorough critical attention. Dozens of essays have analysed the novel mainly in its relationship to the European canon, in particular Joseph Conrads \emph{Heart of Darkness} and Shakespeares \emph{Othello}. Like those two books, it allows a wide range of -- even conflicting -interpretations concerning issues of colonialim, gender, desire, power relations, home, identity, ethics and more. Atef Laouyene for example demonstrates the novels deconstruction of the Orientalist exoticization of the Othello/Moor figure \autocite[216]{Laouyene2008}.

As a cultural translation of \emph{Heart of Darkness} and \emph{Othello}, and a to describe a culture from within instead of from the outside, the novel is a c of autoethnography, where colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that \emph{engage with} the colonizers own terms \autocite[7]{Pratt1992}. It is a great example of partial collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the conqueror, addressed both to metropolitan readers and to literate sectors of the speakers own social group \autocite[7]{Pratt1992}. But how exactly does the text appropriate the idioms of the conquerors? How does it try to avoid to misrepresent the subaltern? The reason why I want to write about \emph{Season of Migration to the North} is less because I hope to revise what all these people have said or provide an fundamentally innovative reading of the text. Rather, I feel that the novel achieves much of the impact is has undoubtedly had through its ingenious structuring of the textual world. And while of course the other critics are at least unconsciously aware of these structural features when they arrive at their readings of the text, I would like to put them in the limelight to show how exactly this text achieves its magic. At the outset is was my intention to analyse the book regarding the narrative strategies it deploys to achieve its effects. But it soon became clear that it was not possible to separate the strategies of narrative representation from the strategic impact of other structural elements in the novel -- most importantly the spatial organisation. For instance I found that one effect of the intricately fragmented temporal structure of the narrative is that its spatial poetics are foregrounded:

events are not reported chronologically according to a temporal logic, but often according to a spatial logic, when they are triggered by the narrators physical environment \autocite[as when the experience of being on the road triggers a memory of Mustafas twisted road in the narrators head, cf.~][111]{Salih2003}. The narrative structure of the novel only makes sense when analysed together with the system of spatial relations that are pervading the text. \newpage In the words of Susan Friedman: We need a topochronic narrative poetics, one that foregrounds topos in an effort to restore an interactive analysis of time with space in narrative discourse. (Friedman2005) (Bakhtin1981) This is also evident in the way that Mustafas journey to the north becomes an axis along which his story unfolds more than it follows any temporality: And the train carried me to Victoria Station and to the world of Jean Morris. \autocite[29]{Salih2003} This sentence through repetition becomes something of a mantra, driving the story forward and giving the unfolding of the events in Mustafas live a compelling logic. Despite the novels origins and topic I found the contributions to a specifically post-colonial narratology not very helpful in the course of my analysis. Although I took some hints from Gerald Princes proposal for a post-colonial narratology, I found its overall practical value to be limited. What it maybe needs is much more practical application to a variety of post-colonial texts, to validate and qualify its theoretical postulates. Hence the focus of this paper will be on the spatial relations in \emph{Season of Migration to the North}. Maybe the centrality of the spatial system to the text could be contested, although I am quite convinced it is rather important. But even assuming it is not one of the most important aspects, then it is still an interesting aspect. To come back to Princes essay once more: Besides, the narratological relevance of any number of features does not depend on their being integral to or even important in narrative

but, instead, on their capacity to be linked with or to raise narratively interesting questions. (Prince2005) So much has been said already about this book that it can be worthwhile to focus on specic elements if some worthwhile insight may be gleaned this way. Another element that has not yet been exhaustively analysed is the role of the frame narrative. Many critics focus on the story of Mustafa and neglect the role of the anonymous narrator. Others, like Laouyene, who do acknowledge the frame structure, still fail to fully grasp the implications of the blending of Mustafa and the narrator that the text employs to such great effect. Obviously, these critics manage to produce challenging and profound readings anyway, and I am not setting out to belittle what they have achieved (not that I could anyway). I just want to add an additional layer on top of what criticism has already achieved. It follows that I will presuppose the knowledge of the influential readings by Spivak and others that this novel has received, its location in the framework of post-colonial literature, its relationship to \emph{Heart of Darkness} and \emph{Othello}, and an awareness of the issues that are negotiated in it. Unfortunately there is just not enough space to refer to all issues explicitly.

The central theme of the novel then, according to this essay, is the question that the narrator articulates in the novel as well: Where lies the mean? Where the middle way? \autocite[108]{Salih2003}. \emph{Season of Migration to the North} poses this question as a fiction of identity, an imaginative (re)construction of ones life in response to current intentions \autocite[58]{Neumann2008b} as it continually confronts both the protagonist and the reader with the question not only of who he is, but also shows how this question relates to issues of location: Instead of ask where we are, and allow for the possibility that the answers may not cohere into a single plot. \autocite[11]{Neumann2008a}

1 Narrative structure
The narrative situation
The action of the novel is presented by an extradiegetic nameless frame narrator, who remains anonymous throughout the novel. He is addressing an audience he refers to as gentlemen \autocite[1]{Salih2003} anddear sirs (Salih2003) in what seems to be an oral monologue. It does not become clear who this audience might be, but we can assume that they are somehow his equals and he is talking to them in an informal setting (as opposed to giving an account before court for example). His diegesis serves as the narrative frame for a multiplicity of intradiegetic voices, whose hypodiegetic stories and monologues make up the majority of the novel most notably the voice of Mustafa Saeed. The focalisation of all these narratorial voices is internal (bound to their character). They know what we would expect a normal human being to know, not more and not less. The important fact to note is that all the other narrators stories are subordinate to the frame narrative and hence do not enjoy the same kind of authority. The signicance of the frame narrative can hardly be overstated. Many critics do not seem to fully appreciate how the novels whole structure depends on the narrative setup. Even Spivak in her otherwise impressive reading and although she acknowledges that the anonymous narrator of this first-person narrative is so strongly focalised that it reads like a frame narrative \autocite[56]{Spivak2003} - does not go into detail to show the effects of thisstrong focalisation.

All metadiegetic narrators are filtered by the encompassing frame narra Spivak calls it they are ostentatiously layered in multiple reportage \autocite[60]{Spivak2003}. This is especially important because it becomes clear from early on that the anonymous frame narrator can not be trusted entirely. At many points in the novel there are clear signals in the text that by the implied authors standards, the narrator is often not able to render a truthful account of what is happening. As just one example: for a long time the narrator does not admit his emotional involvement with Hosna, Mustafas widow, even though the events he describes clearly show his affection. Almost half of the book is narrated by intradiegetic narrators. Much of the sexuality and passion and violence is narrated by

Mustafa or Bint Majzoub. Also it is striking that the subject of Mustafas narration is entirely his time in London, while the anonymous narrator does not talk about his time in London at all even though he spent 7 years there as well: but thats another story. The important thing [\ldots] \autocite[1]{Salih2003}. Thus Mustafas and the narrators story have to be understood at the same time as one unified whole and as two distinct entities. Often, the narrator spontaneously uses Mustafas words to express his feelings, for example his repressed desire for Hosna, Mustafas widow: Ravish me, you African demon \autocite[106]{Salih2003}. Like a repressed trauma Mustafas experiences in London haunt the narrator, who himself does not talk about his experiences up north. Just as the narrator does not like to talk about his past, he also tries not to judge whenever possible. Even after the gruesome end of Hosna and Wad Rayyes he tries to be objective, effectively suppressing his feelings for her \autocite[cf.~][131]{Salih2003}, while all the other villagers are voicing their opinions \autocite[cf.~][123, 128]{Salih2003}. In general, there is a multitude of other villagers, government employees and others who get a chance to voice their views in unmediated speech -- sometimes commented on by the narrator and sometimes not. A good example for this is the character of Bint Majzoub. She is very outspoken, strong and sits together and jokes with the men as their equal. She is also the only person who is willing to talk to the narrator about what had happened to Hosna and Wad Rayyes and even dares to openly confront her daughters husband and doubt his virility. But at the same time she is not emancipated in the modern sense, which becomes clear from her opinions on female circumcision and the causa Hosna\autocite[cf.~][128--129]{Salih2003}. This polyphony creates a rich picture of life that often surprises with its contradictions and that could not have been achieved with a stronger, more judgemental kind of narrator.

\begin{comment} Is aN an unreliable narrator? \autocite[1]{Salih2003} \autocite[3]{Salih2003} \autocite[5]{Salih2003} \autocite[8]{Salih2003}, \autocite[17]{Salih2003} 44+141, 54-55?, \autocite[63]{Salih2003}

\autocite[89]{Salih2003} 93?, \autocite[103]{Salih2003} 105-106, \autocite[108]{Salih2003} 150-151 (aN chasing the secret), \autocite[154]{Salih2003} he keeps adding to Mustafas story as he sees fit, and he retells the same bit slightly differently \end{comment}

The narrative is ordered only loosely according to temporal progression. The frame narrative more or less progresses chronologically, but the events of Mustafas life are not ordered tempo cause and effect in the narrators retelling, but rather according to the (emotional) logic of the narrators life. Thus his narration is interspersed with the pieces of Mustafas discourse becoming known to the reader not when Mustafa tells the narrator, but rather whenever the narrator is in a situation that triggers the memory of something Mustafa told him. This anachronous, elliptic, repetitive narrative style full of prolepses and analepses diminishes the importance of time as the ordering principle of the story and foregrounds the spatial relations instead.

In Mustafas narration as well the temporal order is neglected, thus causing the spatial relations to be foregrounded: The two pages where Mustafa describes how he made love to Isabella Seymour follow no clear chronology but are filled with allusions to geography: Isabella is a Andalusia and Mustafa can think of nothing but the peak and the summit \autocite[42--44]{Salih2003}. Of course this is not too unexpected for a description of a sexual act per se. But what is remarkable is how this foregrounding of spatial relations defines the w text outside Mustafas bedroom as well. This foregrounding becomes possible because the narrative structure in its non-linearity and fragmentariness guides our attention away from temporality towards the semantics of spatiality. \subsection{Blending}

Right on the first page of the novel the narrator announces that he will not tell his listeners about his time in Europe, thats another story \autocite[1]{Salih2003}. The reader of course expects to hear more about that later, but as a matter of fact, s/he wont, even though later in the novel seems to imply that he had already talked about his

years abroad \autocite[cf.~][63]{Salih2003}. This potential narrative, exactly because nothing is being said, keep the text, opening up a space for speculation about the narrators past. \autocite[cf.~][376]{Prince2005} It facilitates the identification of Mustafa with the narrator, because the gaps in the latters life are filled in by the details of the former. Their experiences, thoughts and identities are two complementary entities that blend together in the process of narration.

There are many instances throughout the novel where it is suggested that Mustafa and the narrator are more or less blended into one person: against my will, become a part of my world, a thought in my brain, a phantom that does not take itself off \autocite[50]{Salih2003}. When the narrator is on a train journey and talks to a retired civil servant, the old man all of a sudden remembers Mustafa for the first since he left school \autocite[50]{Salih2003}. Why would somebody not think of the most well-known student \autocite[50]{Salih2003} f not because he was reminded of that person by something or someone, in this case by the anonymous narrator. Another instance is when a young lecturer for a moment believes Mustafa might be the narrat father \autocite[cf.~][56]{Salih2003} \autocite[also cf.~][120]{Salih2003}.

As we have said, fragments of Mustafas life story flash up in the narr mind as if Mustafas discourse was an integral part of his psyche. This has the effect of suggesting that Mustafas experiences somehow apply to the narrator as well, as if it was his past, not Mustafas, he is recounting. Consider the end of the novel when he rewrites part of a poem Mustafa had written but not finished \autocite[153]{Salih2003}; or the way the narrator first mentions his long absence \autocite[cf.~][1]{Salih2003}, then disregards its importance (but thats another story) only to fill the gap with Mustafas complementary long story a bit later. Later in the novel the narrator openly acknowledges I begin from wher had left off \autocite[135]{Salih2003}.

Another way of looking at it would be to say that while the anonymous n

roots in the novel, he is grounded by his family, the structure of his village (symbolised by the palm tree \autocite[2]{Salih2003}) etc., Mustafa as his complement stands for th routes \autocite[cf.~][36]{Clifford1997}. As the narrator says:my was very knowledgeable about the genealogy of everyone in the village and even of people scattered up and down the river. But my grandfather [\ldots] knew nothing about him [Mustafa] \autocite[6]{Salih2003}. Although Mustafa tries to settle down, to acquire roots: a stranger [\ldots] who had bought himself a farm, built a house \autocite[2]{Salih2003}, in the end he can not resist his wanderlust. This impression is supported by the fact that Mustafa grew up without a father, with no brothers or sisters and no relatives. His mother was to him like some stran on the road, there was not a human being, by father or mother, to tie [him] down as a tent peg to a particular spot \autocite[19]{Salih2003}.

So far critics have more or less disregarded the aspect of blending in this novel and thus sometimes misunderstood the nature of the narrative. Thus while some call the narrator naive \autocite[cf.~][70]{Caminero-Santangelo2004}, others ascribe to him a transhistorical awareness, which in fact is precisely a function of t blending of the narrator with Mustafa: \begin{quote} The transmission of a transhistorical awareness is assigned [\ldots] to the Marlowesque frame narrator, whose experience reflects the East-West rift in the identity of many European-educated Arab intellectuals. \autocite[215]{Laouyene2008} \end{quote} But it is their combined experience that we need to look at to understand the East-West rift, not just the frame narrator. It doesnt really matter how exactly the reader is to understand this blending \footnote{Just as for example it doesnt matter how exactly the lives of the two male protagonist in

David Lynchs film \emph{Lost Highway} are blended together (to cite particularly impressive and effective instance of this kind of blending/doubling). Unless the recipient completely refuses to suspend his or her disbelief, the blending will achieve its effect. }. As Spivak notes in reference to Mustafas bodiless voice \autocite[I left him talking and went out cf.~][166]{Salih2003}: How much a reader will contrive a so-called logical explanation for this [\ldots], depends on how practised or at ease the reader is with the fictive, how much she or he has of what is often called literary competence \autocite[63]{Spivak2003}.

What is important is that by understanding the narrator and Mustafa to be complimentary characters, we can understand their combined experiences as transgressing the limits of personal experience, enabling us to see a richly layered and multidimensional portrait showing the problems of id post-colonial world that could hardly have been achieved otherwise.

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\section{Spatial structure} \subsection{Lotman} Everybody is aware of course that there are spatial relations in the majority of texts. Most narrative texts contai at least some kind of description of the setting in which the story unfolds --- be it landscape, the interior of a building or the underworld. It should certainly be possible to tell a story that does not imply any kind of spatial structuring, but such a text would, as we will see, lose a whole dimension of potential signification. Often space is neglected in the reading of a literary text, regarded as just the backdrop against which the narrative unfolds. Jurij Lotman has developed a way of looking at how texts use space as more than just a setting. In his view, space can be supercharged with meaning: \selectlanguage{ngerman} [\ldots] die Struktur des Topos [\ldots] als Sprache, die die anderen, nicht\-rumlichen Relationen des Textes ausdrckt a u \autocite[532]{Lotman2006}. \selectlanguage{english} The \emph{topos}, the sum of spatial relations in a text, expresses other-non spatial relations through its structure. This is because humans have always already made sense of the world in spatial terms: \selectlanguage{ngerman} \begin{quote} Die Begriffe hoch -- niedrig, rechts -- links, nah -- fern, offen -geschlossen, abgegrenzt -- unabgegrenzt, diskret -kontinuierlich, bilden dabei das Material fr den Aufbau von u kulturellen Modellen mit keineswegs rumlichem Inhalt und a erhalten die Bedeutung: wertvoll -- wertlos, gut -schlecht, eigen -- fremd, zugnglich -- unzugnglich, a a sterblich -- unsterblich und dergleichen mehr. Die allgemeinsten sozialen, religisen, politischen und moralischen o Modelle der Welt, mit Hilfe derer der Mensch in den verschiedenen Etappen seiner Geistesgeschichte das ihn umgebende Lebens begreift, sind stets mit rumlichen a Charakteristika versehen [\ldots]; die Gleichsetzung des Nahen mit dem Verstndlichen, Eigenen, Verwandten, und des a Fernen mit dem Unverstndlichen und Fremden - all dies wird a zu Modellen der Welt zusammengefgt, die mit eindeutig u rumlichen Merkmalen versehen sind. a \autocite[530--531]{Lotman2006} \end{quote}

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\selectlanguage{english} Hence it is no coincidence that when the narrator returns home in the beginning of the novel and experiences a feeling of assurance at the sight of the palm tree standing in the courtyard , he notes the roots that strike down into the ground \autocite[2]{Salih2003}. Spatial characteristics like proximity to the ground, earth and roots are charged with the semantics of home,assurance and purpose and, as we will see, are part of a larger semantic field of spatial oppositions in Salihs text. So far we only have a tool for describing the static spatial relations in our novel, but the really interesting bit of Lotmans approach is the definiton of the narrative event: \selectlanguage{ngerman} \begin{quote} Aus dem oben gesagten folgt, dass als notwendige Elemente jedes Sujets auftreten: 1. ein semantisches Feld, das in zwei komplementre Untermengen a aufgeteilt ist; 2. eine Grenze zwischen diesen Untermengen, die unter normalen Bedingungen impermeabel ist, im vorliegenden Fall jedoch (der sujethaltige Text spricht immer von einem vorliegenden Fall) sich fr den die Handlung tragenden Helden u als permeabel erweist; 3. der die Handlung tragende Held. \autocite[542]{Lotman2006} \end{quote} \selectlanguage{english} In other words, the semantic field of a narrative text, being built as it is from binary oppositions (like near -- far) must have a border somewhere that separates one sphere from the other. The narrative event (which constitutes the sujet) then is defined by Lotman as the transgression of this normally impermeable border by the hero of the story. This is not the place to discuss the universal validity of Lotmans model in its entirety; also we will not be able to impose it one-to-one on \emph{Season of Migration to the North}, because as I will argue the structure of the novel is too complex for that kind of simplistic approach. This kind of analysis works beautifully for texts from earlier epochs, especially early modern texts (Shakespeare, Cervantes and others), as these texts often feature very clear cut and unequivocally semanticised

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spatial relations. But just as the world has become more complex, fragmented and unstable in modern times, so a novel like \emph{Season of Migration to the North} cannot help but reflect this increased complexity in its internal structure (as is typical for many post-colonial texts). Hopefully it will become obvious nonetheless that Lotmans approach can aid us when we look at how metaphors of space, body and power are inscribed into each other in the novel.

\subsection{North -- South} The primary semantic field in \emph{Season of Migration to the North} -- as the title of the novel already suggests -- is marked by the opposition of North and South.

South is home, it is the palm tree standing in the courtyard of our house, its roots that strike down into the ground. Here the narrator felt [\ldots] like that palm tree, a being with a background, with roots, with a purpose \autocite[2]{Salih2003}. While the narrator values the groundedness, the proximity to the soil, Mustafa is the exact opposite: he desires being free, [\ldots] not a human being [\ldots] to tie me down \autocite[19]{Salih2003}. He yearns for the north, which is characterised as being elevated: Mustafa imagines Cairo, which was an intermediary stop for him on his way to London (the centre/metropolis), as another mountain, larger in size, after which I would continue the journey to yet another location \autocite[24]{Salih2003}, namely to London, another mountain, larger than Cairo \autocite[26]{Salih2003}. The north is not only elevated, it is also bleak, a land whose fishes die of the cold.~ \autocite[1]{Salih2003}, an icy battlefield \autocite[60]{Salih2003}, while the South is all desert and sun, a land where the narrator can regain his humanity aft years in the north like some frozen substance on which the sun had shone \autocite[1]{Salih2003}. Mustafa says of himself: I am South that yearns for the North and the ice \autocite[30]{Salih2003}; he is a southern thirst being dissipated in the mountain passes of history in the

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north \autocite[42]{Salih2003}. The buildings and rooms of the village inspire confidence in the narrator, the room whose walls had witnessed the trivial incidents of my live in childhood and the onset of adolescence \autocite[1]{Salih2003} (Similarly his grandfathers house serves as a metaphor for the static, unstructured and sometimes chaotic but still stable life of the village). The Nile serves a similar function: I looked at the river [\ldots] and I feel a sense of stability, I feel that I am important, that I am continuous and integral \autocite[5]{Salih2003}. Flowing ever northward as it is, it also serves as a powerful metaphor for Mustafas uncontrollable yearning for the north: the river but for which there would have been no beginning and no end, flows northward, pays heed to nothing [\ldots] in its irrevocable journey towards the sea in the north. \autocite[69]{Salih2003} The Nile is like a backbone that structures the entire novel. The narrators village as well is defined in a very important way by its location at the bend of the Nile \autocite[1]{Salih2003}. \begin{comment} SM p 26, Mustafa loves the sea, Deleuze, glatter Raum \end{comment} \subsection{Territorial bodies} Another interesting semantic effect is the metaphorisation of bodies as spaces and spaces as bodies. Thus Isabella is described as a city of secrets and rapture \autocite[37]{Salih2003} and at the same time London has become her: The city has changed into a woman \autocite[39]{Salih2003}. Territory becomes sexualised for Mustafa, and female bodies are territories to be invaded by him. For Mustafa the intruder and colonizer \autocite[94]{Salih2003}, invading British territory becomes inextricably linked with the cause of invading female bodies, and both are coded in his yearning for the icy mountains of the north: the act of conquering Isabellas body is spatially coded as an ascent: It would be but a day or a week before I would pitch tent, driving my peg into the mountain

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summit. \autocite[39]{Salih2003}

Spatial metaphors are sexualised through phallic imagery to a point where the conquest of territory and female bodies becomes one and the same: And when, puffing, I reach the mountain peak and implant the banner, collect my breath and rest --- that [\ldots] is an ecstasy greater to me than love, than happiness \autocite[41]{Salih2003}. After Mustafa has successfully climbed London, the highest mountain and centre of the world at the time of the story, it seems the only way he can keep ascending is to remap female bodies as territory to be invaded. Thus his essentially unmotivated drive to conquer and the patriarchal blending of territory and female bodies as objects to be dominated debunks, in the form of grotesque parody, the equally grotesque logic of European colonialism by exposing the nihilism underlying all colonialist ambitions and the desire for territorial conquest. \subsection{Heterotopia}

\begin{quotation} Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society.[\ldots] There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist [\ldots] - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias. \autocite[24]{Foucault1986} \end{quotation} Using the concept of heterotopia as our heuristic, a couple of special places immediately come to mind. The secret room in

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Mustafas house in the village and his bedroom in London are sites where the construction of identity is performed. The London bedroom stages an excessive performance of Orientalist stereotypes: it deceives and seduces the women who are already victims of their own clichd imagination and hence susceptible to faux oriental splendour. e But in the end, when Mustafa has found his equal (if not superior) in the not easily bedazzled Jean Morris, the bedroom became a theatre of war; my bed a patch of hell \autocite[34]{Salih2003}, a stage for the final struggle between North and South that ends in Jean Morris death (though by no means her defeat). In Foucaults words, the bedroom represents a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted, a space where Orientalist preconceptions, colonialist will-to-power and the self-conception of the colonised make their stand.

While Mustafa is aware how he uses stereotypes to deceive and ensnare his western audiences (women, students etc.) both in his bedroom and outside of it, he does not seem to understand how he is deceiving himself with his secret room in the village. Just like he constructed an oriental identity with the bedroom, he here constructs an English (or western) identity. The difference is that here, the only audience is he himself. What did he do during all the nights he was spending in that room? \autocite[91][cf.~]{Salih2003 It must have been a space for him to engage with his English side, his desire for the colonising countrys culture. As Maurizio Calbi notes, the rectangular room is the site of the colonization of the mind \autocite[cf.~][353]{Calbi2008}. While in his London bedroom Mustafa skillfully avails himself of cultural stereotypes to achieve what he desires, his Sudanese room shows him rather as the victim of an unquestioning desire to be English. It has been decided for Mustafa what he is capable of imagining by the colonial past of his country. His imagination and desires have been irreparably colonised. But is there a different choice? What would an authentic identity untainted by colonialism look like? This is the question that Mustafas two heterotopic rooms pose. Although there is no answer to this question in the text, it dares

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to dream of a potential answer with the depiction of another heterotopic space. The resting place on the road to Omdurman becomes the site of an impromptu celebration of lorry drivers and Bedouins, men and women alike. It is a night that makes the narrator fe that we are all brothers [\ldots] and you are able to rise up to the sky on a rope ladder and that This is the land of poetry and the possible. \autocite[112]{Salih2003}. It is a feast without a meaning, a mere desperate act \autocite[114--115]{Salih2003}, that nonetheless stands for the hope and the possibility of an authentic, humane togetherness that the narrator has neither found in the village where he grew up nor (via Mustafa) in the North.

Arguably the most interesting site of heterotopia is the narrators village itself, and specifically the river bank right next to it. Considering the important role that the Nile plays as an axis in the novel, running from south to north, it is curious that the village is situated exactly at a river bend where th Nile suddenly turns almost at right angles and flows from west to east \autocite[62]{Salih2003}. It is located at a in-between spot that makes it sit peculiarly between East and West. \begin{comment} bhaba third space, derrida espacement \end{comment} It is a location that is not fixed, that does not conform to the norm. Thus the spatial position of the village presages the bitter an violent conflict between East and West that will soon happen here and will ultimately cost the life of Hosna and Wad Rayyes, and taint the lives of many others. Specifically on the last pages, when the river itself becomes the scene of the action at good last, the in-between nature becomes evident. Although the narrator claims he just enters the water to dispel [his] rage by swimming \autocite[166]{Salih2003}, he keeps swimming further and further out, in a kind of trance resolved to make it to the northern shore. He is conscious and not conscious not sure if he is alive or dead

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\autocite[167]{Salih2003}. He lingers for an indeterminate time in this peculiar boundary experience, until the text takes a turn towards a comical ending when he all of a sudden feels the desire for a cigarette and decides that he does not want to die like this without any volitionof his \autocite[168]{Salih2003}, and starts crying for help. This scene mirrors Mustafas vanishing earlier in the book, which, even though it is suggested in many readings (\autocite[cf.~][221--212]{Said1993} and \autocite[cf.~][230]{Laouyene2008}), is not to be equated with his death. Considering that this part of the river, by virtue of its location, demarcates the border between the two subsets of the novels topography (in Lotmans sense), it becomes clear that it is a place whose metaphorical meaning is much stronger than its factual one. It is another heterotopic place, a vast echoing hall \autocite[167]{Salih2003}, in which the larger topics of the novel become apparent. Hence while the narrator at first is determined to make the northern shore and risk his own life, at some point half-way between north and south \autocite[168]{Salih2003} he stops, reconsiders and then decides to choose life and to return to the southern shore. It is easy to picture Mustafa in the same situation, also trying to make it to the northern shore. Maybe he made it to the other side, giving in to the mysterious things in [his] soul and in [his] blood [that] impel [him] towards faraway parts [that ]cannot be ignored \autocite[67]{Salih2003}. Maybe he drowned dying, his uncanny death-drive finally triumphing over him. The only thing we know is that he did not return to the southern shore of the river. It would be tempting to conclude with a clear Lotmanian judgement on as to whether the hero Mustafa/narrator has transgressed the border in the end or not. But as I said earlier I think the structure of the text is not that straightforward. Although it constructs many semantically charged spatial relations and plays with their transgression, in the end it is more about struggling with and thus exposing the power relations inherent in colonialism, sexual desire and desire for authentic identity than about actually restoring or subverting a certain understanding of the world.

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2 Identity
Mustafa says: I am no Othello, I am a lie \autocite[33]{Salih2003}. Unlike Othello and thanks to Othellos example, Mustafa decides to construct his Moorish/hybrid identity himself instead of allowing Western culture to define him. According to Laouyenes reading, Mustafa rejects the comparison with Othello because unlike Othello, he is not ahelpless Moor (Laouyene2008) but on the contrary came to England as a coloniser, an invader \autocite[cf.][94-95]{Salih2003}. But I think there is more to that. In my understanding Mustafa calls himselfa lie because he thinks he is lacking authenticity. While Othello was a victim of his Moorishness, at least he was assured of his identity as an Arab-African. Mustafa thinks that he is is not in the same (somewhat quaint) sense authentic, because he chose exactly how to construct himself (as we saw in the analysis of his heterotopic London bedroom), because he played the role of a Moor. This is beautifully exemplified in the passage where Mustafa and Ann tell each other stories about their imaginary east-western identities: she and I were on a stage surrounded by actors \autocite[144--145]{Salih2003}. From our postmodern perspective one might be tempted to argue that Mustafa is at least as authentic as everybody else, that our sense of continuous identity is a fiction, the primary fiction of all self-narration \autocite[Eakin qtd.in][53]{Neumann2008b}. Maybe he is evenmore authentic because he is aware of what he is and how he made himself into it. After all, None of us succeed totally. We keep at it. What we are doing is telling and retelling, to ourselves and to others, the story of what we are about and what we are \autocite[Carr qtd.in][57]{Neumann2008b}. This is how the narrator keeps telling and retelling bits of Mustafas life story, because he too feels thatidentities do not exist prior to the process of narrating the past, but that they are constituted by the active creation of self-narrations (Neumann2008b). The fact that Mustafa is shaped by forces outside of his control in his desire for northern mountains, for western culture does not detract from that; everybody is always already shaped in what they are able to imagine and desire by forces outside of their control, because power relations are everywhere, not just in colonised countries. This ubiquity of power relations shaping our desires and identities is also the reason why \emph{Season

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of Migration to North} has such great appeal. We are all inserted as individual subjects into a multidimensional set of radical discontinuous realities \autocite[Jameson qtd.in][309]{Bhabha1994}. Everybody with an open mind should find plenty of material to reflect on in this novel, regardless of his or her interest in so-calledpost-colonial studies.

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\section{Conclusion} Looking back on what we covered, we can see that there are two main axises structuring the novel. These can not always be separated in the text, but they can still be posited abstractly to further our understanding of how the text works. The first is the axis of groundedness, of stability, of that which is known. It provides meaning and coherence. It is realised in the text mainly through spatial metaphors and structures. It is the place where meaning and identity are constructed. The second is the temporal/ narrative axis. It is destabilising, fractured, disorienting. It is realised in the text through peculiar interaction and blending of the frame narrator and Mustafa as the most important intradiegetic narrator; furthermore through the unreliable narration, the prolepses and analepses, the multiplicity of (contradicting) voices and perspectives. It would be a worthwhile project to investigate other texts also dealing with questions of colonialism and identity to see how their specific configuration of the above factors differs from this novel, and which strategies they find to pose similar problems. \newpage

3 Bibliography

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Plagiatserklrung a
Von Plagiat spricht man, wenn Ideen und Worte anderer als eigene ausgegeben werden. Dabei spielt es keine Rolle, aus welcher Quelle (Buch, Zeitschrift, Zeitung, Internet usw.) die fremden Ideen und Worte stammen, ebenso wenig ob es sich um gr ere oder kleinere Ubernahmen handelt oder ob die Entlehnungen w rtlich oder o o ubersetzt oder sinngem sind. Entscheidend ist allein, ob die Quelle angegeben ist a oder nicht. Wird sie verschwiegen, liegt ein Plagiat, eine T uschung vor. In solchen a F llen kann keine Leistung des Studierenden anerkannt werden: Es wird kein Leisa tungsnachweis (auch kein Teilnahmeschein) ausgestellt, eine Wiederholung der Arbeit ist nicht m glich und die Lehrveranstaltung wird in der Institutskartei als nicht o bestanden (P) registriert. Ich erkl re hiermit, diesen Text zur Kenntnis genommen a und in dieser Arbeit kein Plagiat im o.g. Sinne begangen zu haben.

20.04.2009, Unterschrift

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