Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih Read Free Book Online Page B

met me on the platform of Cairo’s railway station.
I was so close to her that, becoming aware of me, she turned to me suddenly. I
smiled into her face — a smile the outcome of which I knew not, except that I
was determined that it should not go to waste. I also laughed lest the surprise
in her face should turn to animosity. Then she smiled. I stood beside her for
about a quarter of an hour, laughing when the speaker’s words made her laugh —
loudly so that she might be affected by the contagion of it. Then came the
moment when I felt that she and I had become like a mare and foal running in
harmony side by side. A sound, as though it were not my voice, issued from my
throat: “What about a drink, away from this crowd and heat?" She turned
her head in astonishment. This time I smiled — a broad innocent smile so that I
might change astonishment into, at least, curiosity Meanwhile I closely
examined her face: each one of her features increased my conviction that this
was my prey. With the instinct of a gambler I knew that this was a decisive
moment. At this moment everything was possible. My smile changed to a gladness.
I could scarcely keep in rein as she said: “Yes, why not?" We walked along
together; she beside me, a glittering figure of bronze under the july sun, a
city of secrets and rapture. I was pleased she laughed so freely. Such a woman
— there are many of her type in Europe — knows no fear; they accept life with
gaiety and curiosity. And I am a thirsty desert, a wilderness of southern
desires. As we drank tea, she asked me about my home. I related to her
fabricated stories about deserts of golden sands and jungles where non-existent
animals called out to one another. I told her that the streets of my country
teemed with elephants and lions and that during siesta time crocodiles crawled
through it. Half-credulous, half-disbelieving, she listened to me, laughing and
closing her eyes, her cheeks reddening. Sometimes she would hear me out in
silence, a Christian sympathy in her eyes. There came a moment when I felt I
had been transformed in her eyes into a naked, primitive creature, a spear in
one hand and arrows in the other, hunting elephants and lions in the jungles.
This was fine. Curiosity had changed 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. "What race are
you?” she asked me. ‘Are you African or Asian?”
    "‘I’m like Othello — Arab—African," I said to her.
    "‘Yes,” she said, looking into my face. “Your nose is
like the noses of Arabs in pictures, but your hair isn’t soft and jet black
like that of Arabs.”
    ‘“Yes, that’s me. My face is Arab like the desert of the Empty
Quarter, while my head is African and teems with a mischievous childishness.” 
    ‘“You put things in such a funny way,” she said laughing.
    ‘The conversation led us to my family and I told her —
without lying this time — that I had grown up without a father. Then, returning
to my lies, I gave her such terrifying descriptions of how I had lost my
parents that I saw the tears well up in her eyes. I told her I was six years
old at the time when my parents were drowned with thirty other people in a boat
taking them from one bank of the Nile to the other. Here something occurred
which was better than expressions of pity; pity in such instances is an emotion
with uncertain consequences. Her eyes brightened and she cried out
ecstatically:
    ‘“The Nile.”
    ‘“Yes, the Nile.”
    ‘“'Then you live on the banks of the Nile?"
    ‘“Yes. Our house is right on the bank of the Nile, so that
when I’m lying on my bed at night I put my hand out of the window and idly play
with the Nile waters till sleep overtakes me.”
    ‘Mr Mustafa, the bird has fallen into the snare. The Nile,
that snake god, has gained a new victim. The city has changed into a woman. It
would be but