“I-I-I mean, I wasâ”
“You should not sleep so early before prayers. Remember to be there tonight.”
“I will.”
Something in the boy's voice made the father look up. John went away relieved. All was still well.
Evening came. John dressed like the night before and walked with faltering steps toward the fatal place. The night of reckoning had come. And he had not thought of anything. After this night, all would know. Even Reverend Thomas Carstone would hear of it. He remembered Mr. Carstone and the last words of blessing he had spoken to him. No! he did not want to remember.
It was no good remembering these things; and yet the words came. They were clearly written in the air, or in the darkness of his mind. “You are going into the world. The world is waiting even like a hungry lion, to swallow you, to devour you. Therefore, beware of the world. Jesus said, Hold fast unto ⦔ John felt a painâa pain that wriggled through his flesh as he remembered these words. He contemplated the coming fall. Yes! He, John, would fall from the Gates of Heaven down through the open waiting gates of Hell. Ah! He could see it all, and what people would say. Everybody would shun his company, would give him oblique looks that told so much. The trouble with John was that his imagination magnified the fall from the heights of “goodness” out of proportion. And fear of people and consequences ranked high in the things that made him contemplate the fall with so much horror.
John devised all sorts of punishment for himself. And when it came to thinking of a way out, only fantastic and impossible ways of escape came into his head. He simply could not make up his mind. And because he could not and he feared father and people, and he did not know his true attitude toward the girl, he came to the agreed spot having nothing to tell the girl. Whatever he did looked fatal to him.
Then suddenly he said: “Look, Wamuhu. Let me give you money. You might then say that someone else was responsible. Lots of girls have done this. Then that man may marry you. For me, it is impossible. You know that.”
“No. I cannot do that. How can you, youâ”
“I will give you two hundred shillings.”
“No!”
“Three hundred!”
“No!” She was almost crying. It pained her to see him so.
“Four hundred, five hundred, six hundred!” John had begun calmly but now his voice was running high. He was excited. He was becoming more desperate. Did he know what he was talking about? He spoke quickly, breathlessly, as if he was in a hurry. The figure was rapidly risingânine thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand ⦠He is mad. He is foaming. He is quickly moving toward the girl in the dark. He has laid his hands on her shoulders and is madly imploring her in a hoarse voice. Deep inside him, something horrid that assumes the threatening anger of his father and the village seems to be pushing him. He is violently shaking Wamuhu, while his mind tells him that he is patting her gently. Yes. He is out of his mind. The
figure has now reached fifty thousand shillings and is increasing. Wamuhu is afraid, extricates herself from him, the mad, educated son of a religious clergyman, and she runs. He runs after her and holds her, calling her by all sorts of endearing words. But he is shaking her, shake, shake, her, herâhe tries to hug her by the neck, presses ⦠She lets out one horrible scream and then falls on the ground. And so all of a sudden the struggle is over, the figures stop and John stands there trembling like the leaf of a tree on a windy day.
John, in the grip of fear, ran homeward. Soon everyone would know.
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â1975
(BORN 1929) SUDAN
Tayeb Salih (Al-Tayeb Salih) was born in 1929, in al-Debba, a main village in the Central Sudan, an area with which he continues to identify. “I still live there. I spent my childhood thereâuntil I passed the age of ten, and I am still rooted there ⦠. This village has many characteristics, because it lies within the region that, in my opinion, represents the center of civilization in the Sudan. I hope I am not just being prejudiced toward my region. It is connected by caravan roads to the Western Sudanâand the Valley of Milik flows into this area; because of that, it has characteristics of the stable society of the Nile Valley ⦠.”
Tayeb Salih's immediate background was agrarian and religiousâfarmers and Islamic teachers, who shaped his early intention to work in agriculture and become a teacher. He received his higher education at Khartoum University, followed by further work at British universities. He taught briefly in the Sudan before he became head of the BBC's drama programming in Arabic. His own writing began in 1953, though his first book,
The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories
, a slim volume of three stories, was not published until 1968. “A Handful of Dates” is from this volume.
Often described as one of the masterpieces of modern African fiction,
Season of Migration to the North
, a novel, was published in English in 1969. Donald E. Herdeck has described the story: “This work is a bizarre tale of a sexually talented African scholar, abroad in a violent London full of women who lust for exotic sensations. Both at home and abroad, the protagonist,
Mustafa Sa'eed, moves about in a dreamlike trance. The book is bitter and poetic. Every woman who wants Mustafa dies. In the end he is emotionally destroyed by the maddest of them all, a certain Jean Morris whom he labels âthe shore of destruction.'” Other critics have described
Season of Migration to the North
as a Sudanese
Arabian Nights.
Of the origins of his own writing career, Tayeb Salih has stated: “[Writing] came by mere chance. I used to write when I was a student. I had linguistic ability. It was not an ambition. But sometimes a man discovers basic things which he should have done earlier, though he may discover these things by chance. The first story was written in 1953 in LondonââPalm Tree on the Brook.' ⦠Then, after a time, I wrote âA Handful of Dates.' ⦠Had I been in the Sudan, perhaps I wouldn't have become a writer, because the society's values were against writing at that time. I would have experienced great psychological obstacles ⦠. Moreover, the questions of art and literature did not command respect in the society of that time, because it believed in influence. I might have written but not published; or perhaps I might have written articles.”
Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies
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I must have been very young at the time. While I don't remember exactly how old I was, I do remember that when people saw me with my grandfather they would pat me on the head and give my cheek a pinchâthings they didn't do to my grandfather. The strange thing was that I never used to go out with my father, rather it was my grandfather who would take me with him wherever he went, except for the mornings, when I would go to the mosque to learn the Koran. The mosque, the river, and the fieldsâthese were the landmarks in our life. While most of the children of my age grumbled at having to go to the mosque to learn the Koran, I used to love it. The reason was, no doubt, that I was quick at learning by heart and the Sheikh always asked me to stand up and recite the
Chapter of the Merciful
whenever we had visitors, who would pat me on my head and cheek just as people did when they saw me with my grandfather.
Yes, I used to love the mosque, and I loved the river, too. Directly we finished our Koran reading in the morning I would throw down my wooden slate and dart off, quick as a genie, to my mother, hurriedly swallow down my breakfast, and run off for a plunge in the river. When tired of swimming about, I would sit on the bank and gaze at the strip of water that wound away eastwards, and hid behind a thick wood of acacia trees. I loved to give rein to my imagination and picture to myself a tribe of giants living behind that wood, a people tall and thin with white beards and sharp noses, like my grandfather. Before my grandfather ever replied to my many questions
he would rub the tip of his nose with his forefinger; as for his beard, it was soft and luxuriant and as white as cotton woolânever in my life have I seen anything of a purer whiteness or greater beauty. My grandfather must also have been extremely tall, for I never saw anyone in the whole area address him without having to look up at him, nor did I see him enter a house without having to bend so low that I was put in mind of the way the river wound round behind the wood of acacia trees. I loved him and would imagine myself, when I grew to be a man, tall and slender like him, walking along with great strides.
I believe I was his favorite grandchild: no wonder, for my cousins were a stupid bunch and Iâso they sayâwas an intelligent child. I used to know when my grandfather wanted me to laugh, when to be silent; also I would remember the times for his prayers and would bring him his prayer rug and fill the ewer for his ablutions without his having to ask me. When he had nothing else to do he enjoyed listening to me reciting to him from the Koran in a lilting voice, and I could tell from his face that he was moved.
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One day I asked him about our neighbor Masood. I said to my grandfather: “I fancy you don't like our neighbor Masood?”
To which he answered, having rubbed the tip of his nose: “He's an indolent man and I don't like such people.”
I said to him: “What's an indolent man?”
My grandfather lowered his head for a moment; then, looking across at the wide expanse of field, he said: “Do you see it stretching out from the edge of the desert up to the Nile bank? A hundred
feddans.
Do you see all those date palms? And those treesâ
sant,
acacia, and
sayal?
All this fell into Masood's lap, was inherited by him from his father.”
Taking advantage of the silence that had descended on my grandfather, I turned my gaze from him to the vast area defined by his words. “I don't care,” I told myself, “who owns those date palms, those trees or this black, cracked earthâall I know is that it's the arena for my dreams and my playground.”
My grandfather then continued: “Yes, my boy, forty years ago all this belonged to Masoodâtwo-thirds of it is now mine.”
This was news to me, for I had imagined that the land had belonged to my grandfather ever since God's Creation.
“I didn't own a single
feddan
when I first set foot in this village. Masood was then the owner of all these riches. The position has changed now,
though, and I think that before Allah calls me to Him I shall have bought the remaining third as well.”
I do not know why it was I felt fear at my grandfather's wordsâand pity for our neighbor Masood. How I wished my grandfather wouldn't do what he'd said! I remembered Masood's singing, his beautiful voice and powerful laugh that resembled the gurgling of water. My grandfather never laughed.
I asked my grandfather why Masood had sold his land.
“Women,” and from the way my grandfather pronounced the word I felt that “women” was something terrible. “Masood, my boy, was a much-married man. Each time he married he sold me a
feddan
or two.” I made the quick calculation that Masood must have married some ninety women. Then I remembered his three wives, his shabby appearance, his lame donkey and its dilapidated saddle, his
galabia
with the torn sleeves. I had all but rid my mind of the thoughts that jostled in it when I saw the man approaching us, and my grandfather and I exchanged glances.
“We'll be harvesting the dates today,” said Masood. “Don't you want to be there?”
I felt, though, that he did not really want my grandfather to attend. My grandfather, however, jumped to his feet and I saw that his eyes sparkled momentarily with an intense brightness. He pulled me by the hand and we went off to the harvesting of Masood's dates.
Someone brought my grandfather a stool covered with an oxhide, while I remained standing. There were a vast number of people there, but though I knew them all, I found myself for some reason watching Masood: aloof from that great gathering of people he stood as though it were no concern of his, despite the fact that the date palms to be harvested were his own. Sometimes his attention would be caught by the sound of a huge clump of dates crashing down from on high. Once he shouted up at the boy perched on the very summit of the date palm who had begun hacking at a clump with his long, sharp sickle: “Be careful you don't cut the heart of the palm.”
No one paid any attention to what he said and the boy seated at the very summit of the date palm continued, quickly and energetically, to work away at the branch with his sickle till the clump of dates began to drop like something descending from the heavens.
I, however, had begun to think about Masood's phrase “the heart of the palm.” I pictured the palm tree as something with feeling, something possessed of a heart that throbbed. I remembered Masood's remark to me when he had once seen me playing with the branch of a young palm tree: “Palm
trees, my boy, like humans, experience joy and suffering.” And I had felt an inward and unreasoned embarrassment.
When I again looked at the expanse of ground stretching before me I saw my young companions swarming like ants around the trunks of the palm trees, gathering up dates and eating most of them. The dates were collected into high mounds. I saw people coming along and weighing them into measuring bins and pouring them into sacks, of which I counted thirty. The crowd of people broke up, except for Hussein the merchant, Mousa the owner of the field next to ours on the east, and two men I'd never seen before.
I heard a low whistling sound and saw that my grandfather had fallen asleep. Then I noticed that Masood had not changed his stance, except that he had placed a stalk in his mouth and was munching at it like someone sated with food who doesn't know what to do with the mouthful he still has.
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Suddenly my grandfather woke up, jumped to his feet, and walked toward the sacks of dates. He was followed by Hussein the merchant, Mousa the owner of the field next to ours, and the two strangers. I glanced at Masood and saw that he was making his way toward us with extreme slowness, like a man who wants to retreat but whose feet insist on going forward. They formed a circle around the sacks of dates and began examining them, some taking a date or two to eat. My grandfather gave me a fistful, which I began munching. I saw Masood filling the palms of both hands with dates and bringing them up close to his nose, then returning them.
Then I saw them dividing up the sacks between them. Hussein the merchant took ten; each of the strangers took five. Mousa the owner of the field next to ours on the eastern side took five, and my grandfather took five. Understanding nothing, I looked at Masood and saw that his eyes were darting to left and right like two mice that have lost their way home.
“You're still fifty pounds in debt to me,” said my grandfather to Masood. “We'll talk about it later.”
Hussein called his assistants and they brought along donkeys, the two strangers produced camels, and the sacks of dates were loaded onto them. One of the donkeys let out a braying which set the camels frothing at the mouth and complaining noisily. I felt myself drawing close to Masood, felt my hand stretch out toward him as though I wanted to touch the hem of his garment. I heard him make a noise in his throat like the rasping of a
lamb being slaughtered. For some unknown reason, I experienced a sharp sensation of pain in my chest.
I ran off into the distance. Hearing my grandfather call after me, I hesitated a little, then continued on my way. I felt at that moment that I hated him. Quickening my pace, it was as though I carried within me a secret I wanted to rid myself of. I reached the riverbank near the bend it made behind the wood of acacia trees. Then, without knowing why, I put my finger into my throat and spewed up the dates I'd eaten.
â1968