Season of Migration to the North

The narrator's return to his native village is initially difficult for him. The instant he arrives, he feels as though he is no longer really a part of his own home because he had been gone for so long, "I felt as though a piece of ice were melting inside of me, as though I were some frozen substance on which the sun had shone - that life warmth of the tribe which I had lost for a time" (1). The ice represents a barrier between him and his culture, as if any form of connection and similarity had a frozen barrier between them that would take time to be removed, or melt. This idea is further reinforced by the use of, "something rather like fog rose up between them and me the first instant I saw them" (1). "Fog" symbolizes the haziness that grew between him and what he used to be, meaning that the connection has been blurred. Any difference he may have felt between him and his origins are eventually dispersed as he, "felt not like a storm-swept feather but like that palm tree, a being with a background, with roots, with a purpose" (1). As the narrator comes to this realization rather quickly, he no longer feels distant, rather he feels rooted in his culture once again, but with a meaning; indicating that there is a specific reason or reasons as to why he has gone "north" and returned.