“I love you”,and he said
“I believed her, and said I love you”This implies two people’s love for one another without consideration of any racial or historical barriers that separate black from white- Saeed accepts her death only as a sign of rejection to her racial superiority and as an expression of her humanity. The act of killing Jean Morris realized equality between Mustafa and Jean. And this is what Mustafa does
when he responds to her call“come with me, comewith me”, to join her in the other world.
A couple of open questions:
Why does Sa’eed select female characters as his victims instead of male characters who are the extension of the colonizer?
Why does Sa’eed remain imprisoned to Jean’s calls?
Why does
he wait until he leaves London,
the arena of struggle, to express his crisis in the river?
Why does he cancel his love for Hosna?
How can we explain the narrator’s attempt of suicide by the end of the novel?
Why doesn’t the narrator tell us anything about his life in London?
Why doesn’t he tell us about the sex scenes in the novella and the act of killing both Sa’eed and
Hosna?
-Salma Tedjini