Tayeb Sahih (1929-2009)

Born in the town of Marawi, at a place where the Nile flows from east to west. Sent away from home at age 10 for schooling. When toUniversity of London, and while there made his living as a broadcaster. During his life he worked for the BBC, for the Ministry of Information of Qatar, and for UNESCO in Paris. For more than a decade wrote a column for the Arab language paper Al Majalla.

Essay Prompt of the day. In Several of the texts we have explored, particularly those set in Africa, the central issue has been the transformation of a culture, for better or for worse. In Tayeb Salih’s “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid,” the little village resists change with a will. What are the factors that might account for this culture of resistance, of stasis?

   In Tayib Salih’s short story, “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid,” a social climate of a village in a remote Sudanese village is described as inhospitable to outsiders. With its sand-flies in one season, horse-flies in another, and the oppressive boredom when the flies aren’t there to spice things up, the village seems to have little to recommend it. The story, told by a seasoned local to a young outsider who is destined to flee the plague of flies the next day, is a kind of history of the town through the title object. It is not a history in the conventional sense--origins for neither the village or the doum tree are known--but becomes an account of how the doum tree and it’s namesake Wad Hamid have come to be settled deeply into the consciousness of the villager’s dream life. The ties to the place are irrational, incredible, outside of time, and absolute, for people like the narrator. Because “[e]very new generation finds the doum tree as if it had been born at the time of their birth,” there is an unspoken injunction among the townspeople that further generations would be born into the same kind of timeless and mystical place--thus there is a fierce resistance to change among the local population (819).
    --Recount the miraculous origin of the town with Wad Hamid and the devout nature of his life
    --Recount the dreams, and the fact that they summon Wad Hamid for portents, relief from ills, etc.
    --the healing power of the tree
    --The resistance to change. We might make note of the fickle nature of authority in the real world with its many changes. We might also suggest the positive values for the people of introducing modern transportation, medicine, etc.
    --A final paragraph about the mix of triumph of the town in the last regime change but also the generational pull of he towns with their schools, etc., that may in several generations be sufficient to cast Wad Hamid out of the dreams of the townspeople.