81 pages • 2 hours read
Tayeb SalihSeason of Migration to the North
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1966A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
The narrator stays in the village during Hosna’s son’s circumcision ceremony. He thinks of marrying her and drinks too much. With Mahjoub, he goes to Mustafa’s house to finally use his key and look at Mustafa’s private room. He tells Mahjoub that “Mustafa Sa’eed was a lie,” and his friend responds that Mustafa was “in fact the Prophet El-Kidr” (89). They both wake up at home, unsure of what happened. The narrator leaves, journeying through the desert to Khartoum with thoughts of Hosna, his uncle’s black donkey, and the coercive effects of heat. He wonders if any men are as they appear to be, and laments the sun: “Where, O God, is the shade?” (90). On his journey, he encounters a broken-down government car and hears the story of a woman who has killed her husband. He realizes straightaway that they refer to Hosna. Thinking of Mustafa, who was described by the judge at his own trial as in “intelligent fool” (92), he decides to write to Mrs. Robinson.
As the sun sets in the desert, the narrator’s driver begins to sing. Other passing vehicles join in until they form “a huge caravanserai of more than a hundred men” (94) eating and drinking. They begin to sing and dance together, and eventually, women join in. The resulting event is “a feast without meaning, a mere desperate act” (95). They part in the morning.
Chapter 8 Summary
After hearing of Hosna’s death, the narrator returns immediately to his village. He has been gone for only 32 days and must leave a conference about organizational educational methods across the African continent. Mahjoub greets him riding the narrator’s uncle’s black donkey. The digs for information about what has happened. On the ride back from the port, he thinks about the conference, at which African leaders espoused the need to “tear out [the] disease” of capitalism by its roots while wearing expensive suits, furs, and jewelry (99). These ministers reminded the narrator of Mustafa Sa’eed, and he, in fact, discovered that one has been the man’s student. Back at home, the narrator’s mother reveals that Hosna had shown up and asked his father to persuade the narrator to marry her. Still, she won’t give him any more details about Hosna’s death, and neither will his grandfather.
After three days, the narrator goes to see Bint Majzoub. She tells him the story: after evening prayer, she heard screaming that made her think Wad Rayyes had finally been able to seduce Hosna. However, soon, she heard her friend calling for help. She ran into the house and found Hosna with a knife plunged through her heart, covered in bites and scratches. She had stabbed Wad Rayyes “more than ten times” (105). Upon finding out, Wad Rayyes’s eldest wife stated that her husband had brought his own death upon him. At the end of the tale, the narrator feels that he has no place in the village: “[N]othing astonishes these people” (107). He speaks to Mahjoub again, who reveals that he knew Hosna wanted to marry the narrator. Mahjoub tells the narrator that he cannot blame himself: Hosna was merely mad. The narrator protests that she was “the sanest woman in the village” (109) and strangles his friend. Before he can kill Mahjoub, someone strikes him in the head, causing him to pass out.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
These chapters show Hosna as well as the narrator duplicating Mustafa Sa’eed’s path. The parallel between Hosna’s actions and her husband’s is clear: Mustafa killed his first wife Jean Morris, and Hosna kills her second husband Wad Rayyes. Mustafa’s trial was seen as a result of the collision between African and European values and lives, and he was given only seven years for murder. Hosna’s murder-suicide would seem to be a result of a similar collision. After years married to Mustafa, she is seen by other villagers as “worldly,” and she seems to have adopted a very Western belief in women’s autonomy. She is unwilling to go along with the wishes of her father and brother, and she boldly states that she will kill the man who tries to defy her will. It turns out that this is not an idle threat. Although she never knew her late husband’s secret, she thus seems “infected” with both his ideas and his violence.
The narrator, however, also finds himself following Mustafa’s path. Although the narrator tried to put Mustafa out of his mind for several years, he finds himself increasingly embroiled in the man’s affairs. After becoming guardian to Mustafa’s children and falling in love with his wife, he finally finds himself wandering the desert confusedly, contemplating man’s place on earth, the insufferable heat, and the legacy of colonialism. The narrator first felt a sense of belonging and rootedness on his return to the Sudan; now, he feels purposeless and confused.
Upon returning to the village after Hosna’s death, the narrator in fact no longer feels he belongs in his village. Although it was “his” village rather than Mustafa Sa’eed’s, he no longer understands the ways of his people. That his friends and family would let Wad Rayyes marry Hosna against her will violates his sense of right and wrong. Mustafa’s sense of separation and isolation eventually led to his murdering Jean Morris. Now, the narrator’s isolation from his community leads him to strangle his good friend Mahjoub.
