Write a close reading that explores these moments in the novel, exploring how the concept of Orientalism works in Season of Migration to the North.

At the end of Salihs novel we find in Mustafa Saeeds room a journal/diary dedicated to those those who see with one eye, speak with one tongue and see things as either black or white, either Eastern or Western. This makes sense: the tragedy of Mustafa Saeed is that of a postcolonial Sudan unable to reconcile its tragic (and forced) relationship to the West, one that was experienced as a metaphorical (and sometimes) literal rape of the East by the West. Saeed chooses to deal with his tragic hybridity by embracing and selling his exotic, stereotypically eastern identity to seek a metaphorical revenge against white British women (who to him are symbols of British empire in the same way as Africa and other colonized countries/continents were, in the British imagination, metaphorical women to be invaded and conquered, as in virgin territory. As we know, this doesnt end well for either side, yet the Sudan still needs to come to terms with its identity after its victimization by the West. This is the goal of the unnamed narrator, who is constantly seeking to find an authentic, individual identity and also avoid engaging in Orientalism (the negative or positive stereotyping of the east vs. the west for a particular goal). That is, he is always seeking to avoid the same tragic fate as Mustafa (in much the same way, in fact, that Marlowe fears he will become Kurtz). Write a close reading that explores these moments in the novel, exploring how the concept of Orientalism works in Season of Migration to the North.

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