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Season of Migration to the North QUOTES

Season of Migration to the North QUOTES

1 " Everyone who is educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we shall have with us a bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality of our life... "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

2 " The blood of the setting sun suddenly spilled out on the western horizon like that of millions of people who have died in some violent war that has broken out between Earth and Heaven. Suddenly the war ended in defeat and all-embracing darkness descended and pervaded all four corners of the globe, wiping out the sadness and shyness that was in her eyes. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

3 " You are entitled to wonder and to doubt - you're free. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

4 " Wad Rayyes, you're a man who talks. rubbish. Your whole brain's in the head of your penis and the head of your penis is as small as your brain. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

5 " I heard Mansour say to Richard, ‘You transmitted to us the disease of your capitalist economy. What did you give us except for a handful of capitalist companies that drew off our blood — and still do?’ Richard said to him, ‘All this shows that you cannot manage to live without us. You used to complain about colonialism and when we left you created the legend of neo-colonialism. It seems that our presence, in an open or undercover form, is as indispensable to you as air and water.’

They were not angry: they said such things to each other as they laughed, a stone’s throw from the Equator, with a bottomless historical chasm separating the two of them. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

6 " The day here is a something without value, a mere torment suffered by living creatures as they await the night. Night is deliverance. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

7 " We teach people in order to open up their minds and release their captive powers. But we cannot predict the result. Freedom - we free their minds from superstition. We give the people the keys of the future to act therein as they wish. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

8 " I entered the water as naked as when my mother bore me. When I first touched the cold water I felt a shudder go through me, then the shudder was transformed into a sensation of wakefulness. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

9 " I want to take my rightful share of life by force, I want to give lavishly, I want love to flow from my heart, to ripen and bear fruit. There are many horizons that must be visited, fruit that must be plucked, books read, and white pages in the scrolls of life to be inscribed with vivid sentences in a bold hand. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

10 " Over there is like here, neither better or worse. But I am from here, just as the date palm standing in the courtyard of our house has grown in our house and not in anyone else's. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

11 " As best I could I had answered their many questions. They were surprised when I told them that Europeans were, with minor differences, exactly like them, marrying and bringing up their children in accordance with principles and traditions, that they had good morals and were in general good people.

"Are there any farmers among them?" Mahjoub asked me.

"Yes, there are some farmers among them. They’ve got everything—workers and doctors and farmers and teachers, just like us." I preferred not to say the rest that had come to my mind: that just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the  cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak. I did not say this to Mahjoub, though I wish I had done so, for he was intelligent; in my conceit I was afraid he would not understand. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

12 " By the standards of the European industrial world we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

13 " Though floating on the water, I was not part of it. I thought that if I died at that moment, I would have died as I was born — without any volition of mine. All my life I had not chosen, had not decided. Now I am making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are a few people I want to stay with for the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning. If I am unable to forgive, then I shall try to forget. I shall live by force and cunning. I moved my feet and arms, violently and with difficulty until the upper part of my body was above water. Like a comic actor shouting on a stage, I screamed with all my remaining strength, ‘Help! Help! "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

14 " By the standards of the European industrial world we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe. He is no towering oak tree with luxurious branches growing in a land on which Nature has bestowed water and fertility, rather he is like the sayal bushes in the deserts of the Sudan, thick of bark and sharp of thorn, defeating death because they ask so little of life. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

15 " Has not the country become independent? Be sure, though, that they will direct our affairs from afar. This is because they have left behind them people who think as they do. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

16 " The ships at first sailed down the Nile carrying guns not bread, and the railways were originally set up to transport troops; the schools were started so as to teach us how to say "Yes" in their language. They imported to us the germ of the greatest European violence, as seen on the Somme and at Verdun, the like of which the world had never previously known, the germ of a deadly disease that struck them more than a thousand years ago. Yes, my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes: a drop of the poison which you have injected in the the veins of history. "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

17 " ذاك دفء الحياة في العشيرة, فقدته زماناً في بلاد ((تموت من البرد حيتانها)). "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

18 " كنت افكر وان اري الشاطئ يضيق في مكان ويتسع في مكان اخر شأن الحياة تعطي بيد وتأخد باليد الاخري "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

19 " إنك يا سيد مصطفى سعيد رغم تفوقك العلمي رجل غبي، إن في تكوينك الروحي بقعة مظلمة، لقد بددت أعظم طاقة يمنحها الله للناس : طاقة الحب "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North

20 " ياللسخرية .. الإنسان لمجرد أنه خلق عند خط الاستواء ،بعض المجانين يعتبرونه عبداً وبعضهم يعتبره إلهاً .أين الاعتدال؟! أين الاستواء
؟! "

― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North