Read Season of Migration to the North for Free Online

though, I felt nothing whatsoever. I packed up my belongings in a small
suitcase and took the train. No one waved to me and I spilled no tears at
parting from anyone. The train journeyed off into the desert and for a while I
thought of the town I had left behind me; it was like some mountain on which I
had pitched my tent and in the morning I had taken up the pegs, saddled my
camel and continued my travels. While we were in Wadi Halfa I thought about Cairo,
my brain picturing it as another mountain, larger in size, on which I would
spend a night or two, after which I would continue the journey to yet another
destination.
    ‘I remember that in the train I sat opposite a man wearing
clerical garb and with a large golden cross round his neck. The man smiled at
me and spoke in English, in which I answered. I remember well that amazement
expressed itself on his face, his eyes opening wide directly he heard my voice.
He examined my face closely then said: “How old are you?" I told him I was
fifteen, though actually I was twelve, but I was afraid he might not take me
seriously “Where are you going?” said the man. “I’m going to a secondary school
in Cairo." “Alone?” he said. "Yes," I said. Again he gave me a
long searching look. Before he spoke I said, “I like traveling alone. What’s
there to be afraid of?” At this he uttered a sentence to which at the time I
did not pay much attention. Then, with a large smile lighting up his face, he
said: "You speak English with astonishing fluency."
    ‘When I arrived in Cairo I found Mr Robinson and his wife
awaiting me, Mr Stockwell (the headmaster in Khartoum) having informed them I
was coming. The man shook me by the hand and said, “How are you, Mr Sa’eed?"
“Very well thank you, Mr Robinson," I told him. Then the man introduced me
to his wife, and all of a sudden I felt the woman’s arms embracing me and her
lips on my cheek. At that moment, as I stood on the station platform amidst a
welter of sounds and sensations, with the woman’s arms round my neck, her mouth
on my cheek, the smell of her body — a strange, European smell — tickling my
nose, her breast touching my chest, I felt — I, a boy of twelve — a vague
sexual yearning I had never previously experienced. I felt as though Cairo,
that large mountain to which my camel had carried me, was a European woman just
like Mrs Robinson, its arms embracing me, its perfume and the odour of its body
filling my nostrils. In my mind her eyes were the colour of Cairo: grey—green,
turning at night to a twinkling like that of a firefly. “Mr Sa’eed, you’re a
person quite devoid of a sense of fun,” Mrs Robinson used to say to me and it
was true that I never used to laugh. "Can’t you ever forget your intellect?"
she would say laughing, and on the day they sentenced me at the Old Bailey to
seven years’ imprisonment, I found no bosom except hers on which to rest my
head. "Don’t cry dear child,” she had said to me, patting my head. They
had no children. Mr Robinson knew Arabic well and was interested in Islamic
thought and architecture, and it was with them that I visited Cairo’s mosques,
its museums and antiquities. The district of Cairo they loved best was al-Azhar.
When our feet wearied of walking about we’d take ourselves off to a cafe close
by the al-Azhar Mosque where we would drink tamarind juice and Mr Robinson
would recite the poetry of al-Ma’arri. At that time I was wrapped up in myself
and paid no attention to the love they showered on me. Mrs Robinson was a buxom
woman and with a bronze complexion that harmonized with Cairo, as though she
were a picture tastefully chosen to go with the colour of the walls in a room.
I would look at the hair of her armpits and would have a sensation of panic.
Perhaps she knew I desired her. But she was sweet, the sweetest woman I’ve
known; she used to laugh gaily and was as tender to me as a mother to her own
son.
    ‘They were on the quayside when the