Season of Migration to the North

When the narrator meets Mustafa Sa’eed, he is a handsome man of about 50. He has “thick greying hair,” a broad forehead, and a face that shows “a strange combination of strength and weakness” (8). He grew up in Khartoum, and as soon as he began school discovered that he had a brilliant mind. His intelligence quickly took him to Egypt, where Mr. and Mrs. Robinson cared for him, and then to London. As he moved from place to place, he had very little feeling or affection for other people. 

In London, this lack of feeling led him to seduce British women through an elaborate act drawing on their racist fantasies. When he met Jean Morris, his skill as a “hunt[er]” (33) was tested, as she repeatedly rejected him. After three years of chasing her, they wed, but their marriage was also a chase: She refused to sleep with him, violently hit him, and constantly jeered at him. He oscillated between ecstasy and hate, which finally culminated when he killed her. They proclaimed their mutual love as she died.

Mustafa Sa’eed felt a sense of superiority at his own murder trial. While his lawyer seemed to pity him for failing to find his way at the heart of the empire, Mustafa felt himself to be the colonizer and the invader. However, after his imprisonment, he returned to the Sudan and lived anonymously, leaving all evidence of his former life in a locked room. A week before his death, he gets his affairs in order, leaving the narrator ad guardian of his children and this locked room. When he dies in the Nile, it is either by suicide or an accident that leads to his desired result.

The narrator’s paternal grandfather is an elderly man of incredible energy. In his nineties, he is both a relic of another age and a symbol of the good life. He lives in a house constructed of mud on the banks of the Nile, and it so much a part of the landscape that it becomes green when the field does and suffers drought when the land does. This house is a metaphor for Hajj Ahmed’s place in the village: He survives through seasonal and generational changes through his own constancy and devotion.

Mustafa Sa’eed’s wife has “a handsome face with wide black eyes” (75), naturally red lips, and white teeth. She has an air of sadness and shyness. Although she is a native of Wad Hamid, she seems more sophisticated and worldly after her marriage to Mustafa Sa’eed. She declares that if she is forced to marry against her will, she will kill her husband and herself. However, she is open to the prospect of marrying the narrator and asks his friends and family to communicate this to him. When her efforts fail, she is married to Wad Rayyes. Two weeks later, she stabs him and kills himself when he tries to have sex with her.

Mahjoub is the narrator’s good friend. Although he is intelligent, he chooses not to pursue a higher education, telling the narrator that he will be a farmer like his father and grandfather before him. As an adult, he has a place of respect in the village. He is the chairman of the Agricultural Project Committee. Although he does not necessarily agree with traditions that deny power to women like Hosna, he goes along with them. When he laughs at the narrator’s outpouring of emotion over Hosna’s death, the narrator strangles him. It is implied that he survives.

Wad Rayyes is a septuagenarian with brown skin that is strikingly framed by his white beard and white turban. He has “beautifully intelligent eyes” and a “thin elegant nose” (66). He was handsome in his youth and still retains the vestiges of that handsomeness. He has been a seducer of women since childhood, when his rape of a slave girl in a field led his father to marry him to his first wife. A polygamist, he seems to marry ever woman he wishes to sleep with. He divorces his wives whenever they prove troublesome. Although his friends suggest he is too old to marry again, he is determined to marry Hosna, even against her will. When he succeeds, she stabs and kills him.

Bint Majzoub is “a tall woman of a charcoal complexion like black velvet” (64). She is still beautiful as a woman in her 80s. As a young woman, she was married five times, and is famous in the village for her sexual appetite. Each of her husbands has died. A friend of Hajj Ahmed and Wad Rayyes, she smokes and speaks frankly about sex. She hears Hosna’s screams on the night of Wad Rayyes’s murder and goes to inspect the scene. She is the only person in the village willing to tell the narrator what transpired.

Mustafa Sa’eed’s first wife had a “long face” with “wide eyes and brows that joined up above them” (8), with a large nose and a too-wide mouth. For three years, she rejected and humiliated Mustafa Sa’eed before asking him to marry her. As a wife, she was cruel and manipulative, frequently rejecting her husband and then laughing at his pain and anguish. When he threatens to kill her, she tells him he doesn’t have the will to do so. Eventually, he stabs in the heart while they are having sex. At this moment, she affirms her love for him, and asks him to “come with her” (136).

A “country girl” (115) from Hull, Sheila worked as a waitress by day and pursued her studies at night. Mustafa Sa’eed seduced her when she was a virgin. She died by suicide.

Ann Hammond was a 20-year-old with a “lively face” (117) studying oriental languages at Oxford. She was in love with the idea of Africa, and when she saw Mustafa Sa’eed at a lecture and immediately came up to him, calling him “beautiful” in Arabic. From their first night together, she thought of their meeting as fated, and cast herself in the role of his slave. She killed herself with gas and left a note reading: “Mr. Sa’eed, God damn you” (121).

Isabella was the wife of a surgeon and a mother of three. She met Mustafa Sa’eed in Hyde Park, where he seduced her with stories of Africa and the Nile. She fell in love with him. She later killed herself, but she was ill with cancer, and her husband testified that she did not begrudge her for her affair nor blame her lover for her death.

Elizabeth Robinson and her husband cared for Mustafa Sa’eed during his time in Egypt. She loved him like a son, although she also found him to be unstable and incapable of either fun or happiness. She attended his murder trial and was the only person there to comfort him. After his death and the death of her husband, she plans to write a book about them.