I'm not quite at the suggested point of the book yet, so I'm going to have to comment on another aspect of it.
I completely relate to the nameless narrator and the way Salih articulates his return to his childhood home adds to the distance I feel within this character. I am almost taken by his narration, as it hits close to home.
There is a vast distance between what probably influenced the narrator's travel from the Sudan to Europe and back again and whatever he feels that he brought internally back with him - if he has improved some way, being a better person with something to contribute to his people.
I love how even in the present most of his time during the reconnecting with the atmosphere of his village is caught in remembering how it was like for him as a child. Childhood days under a specific tree and such. The is a picturesque quality in trying to experience all the sensations of the past, to remember what it as like before it all fell apart. I dig how there is a sense of wonder about his time in Europe and how much it may have changed him, yet there doesn't seem to be anything "new" about him.
There is something to be said about being caught between a huge distance. Anything you come across becomes memorable and vital to your being. The narrator has placed himself back in an old comfort, but with the new textures that time has brought. Then he notices something out of place - Mustafa. What I find interesting here is that the initial fascination about him gives way to an almost subtle judgement on himself.
Mustafa was another person with a similar experience - being out in the world possibly in Europe, and returning with something more than what he left with. Yet I think what what Mustafa represents is something bigger than the narrator's memories of his home and people, something bigger than the sum of himself. There was just something more commanding or acceptable about Mustafa.
Ever come across someone like that? Without even knowing them personally, seeing this almost unshakable drive they have and how people or things just naturally gravitate towards them. There is no sadness or distance for them. Only apparent belonging and shared space.
I think this is why Mustafa is so intriguing as far as where I'm at with the book. Where he and the narrator may have had a similar journey back to the Sudan, the narrator feels like someone . . . nameless. Just trying to find connection, but only having to settle for memories. Mustafa seems to be all about the present and the future. No matter what is background or history might be, there is no sense of emptiness that I get from the narrator.
Sorry for the late comments from all of us.With Blogger's "brain fart" some of us had to postpone it even longer. I hear that some members tried to comment Thursday night/Friday day but that is when the"disappearance" occurred. Moving on...
ReplyDeleteI agree with Zu that at the very beginning during the narrator's homecoming and his first remembrances of his village and the meeting of Mustafa, there is a distance and somewhat aloofness about his character. I wonder if Salih did this with intentions to make Mustafa appear even bigger and badder than he already does.
Did anyone else notice that the narrator is addressing a group of men with this story that he is telling us?
"It was, gentlemen, after a long absence--seven years to be exact, during which time I was studying in Europe--that I returned to my people (3)."
I keep trying to remind myself of this as I progress through the different scenarios. I ask myself, why is this an important detail to this men?
As one digs deeper into the story we come to the point where Mustafa divulges the "history" of himself to our cool and calm narrator. I put quotes around history because I am not quite sure what is truth and what is complete fabrication on Mustafa's part. He is a deviant and a liar, that we know. SO, how do we know that what he tells the narrator is truth? I am skeptical, but I do believe he drove everyone of those women to their death's, and his utter disregard to the heart and needs of human beings in general (and not just women) is nauseating. With such comments as, "There is a still pool in the depths of every woman that I knew how to stir" (27) and "Curiosity had turned to gaiety, and gaiety to sympathy, and when I stir the still pool in its depths the sympathy will be transformed into a desire upon whose taut strings I shall play as I wish" (33), he enrages me. Really? AH!
I really wish I have had the pleasure of reading Othello. There are many correlations to the Shakespearean drama that I cannot connect with. He (Mustafa) at one point even compares himself directly to Othello (33).
Another observation is that, as in Woman at Point Zero, there is much repetition of phrases throughout the novel so far, both in Mustafa's story (the getting off the train at Victoria Station and into the life of Jean Morris) and then in the narrator's remembrances of childhood (the waterwheels for example).
I am on page 51 and I am finding it hard to put the book down. It is intriguing that Mustafa has disappeared, and no I do not believe he is dead at all, and now our narrator has inherited his life. Yet the narrator is living in Khartoum as the Director of Education. I am at a point where the narrator is running into all sorts of people that are corroborating Mustafa's story (in that he was a prodigy at school and went to Europe on scholarship). He then begins to compare himself to Mustafa and question if he is just as much of a lie as Mustafa was himself! Why is that? Why did Mustafa really go to prison? Where is he? What is the narrator going to do with Mustafa's two sons, wife, "six acres, three cows, an ox, two donkeys, ten goats, five sheep, thirty date palms, twenty-three acacia, sayal, and harraz trees, twenty-five lemon, and a like number of orange trees, nine ardebs of wheat and nine of maize, and a house made up of five rooms and a diwan, also a further room of red brick, rectangular in shape, with green windows, and a roof that was not flat as those of the rest of the rooms but triangular like the back of an ox, and nine hundred and thirty-seven pounds, three piastres and five milliemes in cash" (47)??
Something has to happen in that room that the narrator so dutifully describes exactly the same way for a third time. Why is it worth mentioning in detail so much...
My turn next week to lead the pack...Get Reading!! ;P
Ugh! I had to split this up because it was too long. Wow.
ReplyDeleteTo Zu: I had a slightly different impression of how the narrator and Mustafa differ. They are set up as similar characters in the beginning, both being prideful of the status and power that their education grants them. This only emphasizes how completely different they are. I didn’t get the sense that the narrator was so much empty as he is grounded and contented with the solid cultural tradition of village life. He sets out to study like Mustafa does, but the whole time he is in England, he’s wishing that he is home. Mustafa however, as you point out, is constantly striving toward that next “mountain” (Salih 22). I think the difference in how the journey impacts them has something to do with how the two of them relate to their country and culture. The narrator takes great pride in his village and his fellow countryfolk and thinks his world is perfect the way it is: “I hear a bird sing, or a dog bark, or the sound of an axe on wood – and I feel a sense of stability, I feel that I am important, that I am continuous and integral…. I go to my grandfather and he talks to me of life forty years ago, fifty years ago, even eighty, and my feeling of security is strengthened” (6-7). Mustafa, on the other hand, never really connected to anyone or any place, except perhaps Mrs. Robinson. This free-floating state allows him to take in things that the narrator wouldn’t, because his mind isn’t full of pre-existing ideas. One of the ideas he takes on is the belief that the Sudan needs to be modernized (9). Also, being independent of others, he draws strength and security from his own extraordinary intellect, and this self-reliance leads him to act on/make judgments about things based on his own interests/ideas rather than those of any particular culture. I don’t know if I’m making sense… He’s just very isolated in how he goes about things. Everyone’s always looking at him from afar as he just glides through everything. I do know what you mean about people like that. I wish I knew how they did it. I just don’t have that kind of vision.
To Victoria: I also found the history a bit strange. Mostly it was just how it was told. It was so convoluted and he didn’t come out and say something directly. Instead he used weird metaphors and said everything completely out of order. I don’t really know what exactly happened. But I think that’s the way he wants it.
ReplyDeleteI TOTALLY agree with you on the next point. I actually wrote on page 35, “This man disgusts me.” He’s a monster. The things is, I don’t even know WHY he drove those women to kill themselves and then killed his wife. What was he trying to accomplish? To rebel against the European powers that had previously ruled over him? Or was he trying to turn their conceptions of him into a weapon he could use against them? I don’t know…. I have to reread that part and see if I can come up with anything else. Another thing that I didn’t get about that part were all the references to “disease.” It comes up so much (30, 34, 50, 56, 79), and the narrator (86) uses it later as well. I can’t find the common thread between all the times it’s used that will give me a hint as to what the author means by it. I feel like it has something to do with contact between cultures and that this is conflated with sexual contact in some cases. It’s hard to follow.
I have read Othello. Essentially, Othello is tricked by his “friend” (who secretly hates him with a burning passion) into killing his wife after he is led to believe that she was unfaithful to him. Othello is a Moor (black Muslim from North Africa) who is married to a white woman (who happens to be the daughter of a senator) and that’s where a lot of Iago’s (the villainous trickster) anger comes from. What Mustafa could be saying is that, like Othello, he is not the stereotyped brute that he appears to be, but rather it was circumstances that were outside of him that drew him to kill. Like Mustafa, Othello is a well respected man that is loved by many and is in a high position of power in the military. Or maybe he is saying that the lie was the success because then he was acting to impress the English (at least partly; he wouldn’t have been there if hadn’t been for all those English professors), as Othello had to do to succeed in his society. By killing Jean, Mustafa broke the illusion that he was under their influence and reestablished his identity as a Sudanese. I don’t think Othello wanted to stop doing what he did, but at the end of the play he does say something about racism and prejudice.
I also noticed certain phrases repeating, one being the references to disease and contagions, another being the mind that can cut through anything, and the men (and one assertive woman) who say “I will divorce if…” for the smallest of things, implying that it doesn’t take much to get divorced. I’m noticing lots of things that make me wonder if they would still be in the book if it was written by a woman. You already picked up on one of them with the book being addressed to “gentlemen.” Another is the horrendous way that Mustafa talks about the women he seduces – “this was my prey” (32); “The critical moment when it was in your power to refrain from taking the first step has been lost” (37), as though a woman’s choice is a privilege that she loses if she acts incorrectly. Yes, it is definitely infuriating and is laced with the assumed superiority of male privilege.
I really want to respond to this week’s actual prompt but it’s ridiculously late now, so I think I’ll have to come back to it. But I really want to know what others people’s thoughts are! It’s a good question.
Just F.Y.I. for everyone, the prompts have come from the NYRB reader's guide for Season (the group that published this book). We will see more of these prompts at the meeting. Great comments Alyssa! I can't wait for the meeting too, it should be good.
ReplyDeleteA couple of people have mentioned the repetition of words and phrases. I hadn't noticed it all in North. I noticed it a lot in Woman at point Zero. I thought it might have to do with the fact that it's an Arabic-English translation.
ReplyDeleteI've heard over and over from people that Arabic is the finest language in the world for poetry (and poetic prose), and that it is impossible to really translate. Some of the repeated words and phrases, within a phrase or description, from Woman at Point Zero (rough exaggerated paraphrased example: "But where I thought the brick wall was alive, it was not, it was only a lifeless wall, with no life, and no motion, and no soul, only bricks and mortar") could have been lifted directly from other translated Arabic authors I've read (not that there have been many. I'm thinking of Kahlil Gibran in particular here). I've wondered if this repetetive quality comes from some flowery nuance of the Arabic language, that we can't really represent in English - and which becomes repetition when we try to do so. Does this make sense? I wonder what other people think. Do we have any Arabic speakers in the group? (maybe we should recruit some) or anyone who's read other translations of North African/Near Eastern authors?
I could be wrong, and I could certainly be wrong as this applies to North, because, as I said, I haven't noticed what people are talking about. It sounds like people might be referring to repeated words and themes throughout the book, and not within single passages? Help me out here.
I'm also thinking about the contrast between the narrator and Mustafa. I think the narrator is there largely to show what a big deal it is that Mustafa is as accomplished as he is. I mean, the narrator went away for seven years to become a doctor of English poetry, then he comes home, and he's big shit. Everyone is proud, and everyone wants to hear his stories. Then we have Mustafa, who is mellow and sits off to the side - but he is obviously cut from a different cloth from the other village folk, and when he talks, they shut up and listen. Turns out, he did everything the narrator did and more, and he did it decades ago, without seeming to expend much effort in the process. While becoming a known intellectual, and lecturer in economics, he mastered the English language and its poetry (the narrator's great accomplishment), basically in his spare time. In other words, it all came naturally to him, and he doesn't view it as anything special. As a reader, it really helps me to understand just how rare and special Mustafa's accomplishments have been, to see how the narrator's lesser accomplishments are taken by his countrymen.
Of course, I agree with Victoria and Alyssa that Mustafa is kind of a turd. I really hope we get more into his psychology as the book goes on. Unfortunately, I already know a few major plot points to come, because the introduction told me them without warning (I was like, "screw you, introduction. I didn't want to know that. You're getting skipped from now on"). I have to disagree with Alyssa about the author using "weird metaphors and [telling] everything completely out of order." I mean, I agree that this happened, but I like it. I say the author used foreshadowing brilliantly, giving us a piece at a time, in a very similar way to El Saadawi in WapZ. Anyway, it has really kept my attention.
Now I wonder if that (heavy foreshadowing of major events) is a convention of Arabic fiction. It has certainly been a tactic common to every Arabic work I've read.
I agree with Victoria, that we haven't seen the last of Mustafa. But I'm seriously dying to find out how he'll make his return.
What to people think?
Cheers,
-Kevin
I've read more in your comments than in the book itself. What Alyssa says about Mustafa's character I suspected, but haven't gotten far enough in the book myself to confirm, when I saw the narrator's description of M's smile (somewhere before page 20): Creep. Arrogant, self-righteous, misogynist. Like Kevin, I eschewed the introduction after a few pages...although it's hard not to read all the way through a text by someone named Laila (dark beauty?). For me, thus far, two passages stick in my craw: (5) Bint Majzoub laughingly commenting that the town was worried our narrator would return with an "uncircumcised infidel for a wife" (this moment of a woman's voice in contrast to the third person presence of women otherwise); and the line (12) "there was not the slightest doubt that the man was of a different clay...." and the presumption that he should, therefor, be the President of the Committee. Why, because he's "deep"? So, foreign education bears so much weight that it gives a man status regardless of his nefarious doings (murder), but the very presence of an uncut woman will taint a man's reputation? Somehow in the midst of my crowded mind that contrast found purchase and the phrase "uncircumcised infidel" rattled incessantly around my cage.
ReplyDeleteOnce again I am impressed by the poetic language used from the very beginning... "I felt as though a piece of ice were melting inside of me"... and I feel that the translator deserves praise. The repetition you mention could be the norm for arabic literature; I wouldn't be surprised to learn that other cultures have a less distinct line between poetry and prose as we do in English, because in any culture, the farther back you go in history the line between storytelling, history, and poetry all begin to blur, and arabic is an older language than ours so maybe the tradition of telling stories in a poetic fashion has remained more pure.
ReplyDeleteAs for the story itself, I think it's a very interesting portrait of two different perspectives branching from a similar starting point; Mustafa's life could have been the narrators, and vice versa. Somehow they are opposites of each other yet the same, and it makes me think that the narrator is intrigued by Mustafa perhaps because he represents a part of himself that could have been-- think Tyler Durden-- a manifestation of the shadow self, not what the narrator wishes to be but what he fears he may be inside. Of course Mustafa and the narrator are not the same person, but one could have been the other. It seems to me almost like Mustafa intended from the start to reveal his story to the narrator, the way he sat quietly and smiled as if he knew something... the way he blurts out an english poem in the narrators presence, knowing he would recognize it, it doesn't really seem in character for Mustafa to accidentally slip into poetry-- I think he intentionally gave himself away so he would have a reason to tell his story to someone. He selected the narrator for this perhaps because he is the only one there who has been to europe, and perhaps because of what I mentioned, that the two characters are connected in some essential way.
I think it's really effective reading this after Woman at Point Zero; the books compliment each other in an odd way in their vision, and lack of vision, of culture and gender roles. Together they reveal the ironic rift between east and west, male and female, mystified by each other and each catching glimpses of the fact that the other is also human, but locked in an abusive relationship based on miscommunications and assumptions. This is what I think is meant by the references to disease that Alyssa pointed out. Mustafa's lawyer attempts to make a case that the womens deaths were the result of a sickness caused by a misunderstanding between two cultures. Mustafa disagrees, saying
"It was I who killed them. I am the desert of thirst. I am no Othello. I am a lie" (29).
Mustafa is the manifestation of the disease; he was not a victim of deception, tricked into killing like Othello was, he is the deception. He is an expression of the frustration of a divided world. Perhaps the narrator returned home to avoid this frustration, this sickness-- his years of education maybe had begun to wear on his arabic soul, and sensing the emergence of some murderous lunatic in himself, retired from his studies and attempted to return to his old life, only to find out that the lunatic had been unleashed anyway.
...anyway. Well that sounds pretty good to me; what do you think?
I got a bit of a late start of the book. Far enough to know some of who Mustafa is. I'm having trouble reading into the meaning of who he is beyond what he has told. I wasn't given a sense of strong dislike towards the character while reading it. I thought his mother was interesting. The many layers of 'masks' she wore. To me it is clearly a metaphor for how she could not show emotion. I think who his mother was shaped who he became. He could not feel, he saw no emotion. He turned himself into a machine because he was so talented at learning, and it seemed like he would consider emotions to be a bothersome blockade. He did what he wanted, and succeeded. It seemed that his success was his downfall. He was happy when he succeeded, and that seemed to be the only time he mentions having emotions. But the education was too easy. He needed a challenge, excitement.. a hunt. He was not challenged by school, and being devoid of emotions, he had no remorse and only looked for the next mountain to climb. Women to him were a challenge, he learned of how to create the perfect circumstances to gain the trust of a female. Like a poor person obsessed with climbing the social ladder, he was determined to prey on the woman who disliked him most. "Who is this female?" kind of showed to me how he did not connect women with anything but a challenge. He didn't care if a woman he was with lived or died, he seemed to view it as just a natural occurrence with the spread of his.. disease.. thing. It showed a sense of arrogance that he considered himself to be able to so easily destroy women, and that he considered it to be a part of him and being with him. I noticed also the quote about him being a thirsty desert. He seems to consider himself a natural source of destruction. Which is not his fault in his opinion. I thought it was interesting that he called himself a lie, and wanted them to 'kill the lie'. His character is likable and mild mannered (which may be because he is also so talented with masks), but something about him enrages the narrator. Mustafa has an interesting connection with the narrator, and I wonder if it will awaken a bad part of him to meet this man. Maybe something that is the same between them that has been hidden. I also wonder if our narrator can see the arrogance in his eyes despite his mildness because he has some of it himself.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great observation about Mustafa's mother and his personality, Tanya!
ReplyDeleteDoes everyone know that they can subscribe to the comments feed and you will get an email with the new comment every time someone posts?