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Sheila Greenwood
Wad Rayyes is an elderly man nearing 70 and a citizen of the small Sudanese village of Wad Hamid. He is good friends with the narrator’s grandfather, Bint Majzoub, and Bakri. Handsome and vain, Wad Rayyes is renowned in the village for his sexual exploits and his many wives, and he takes pleasure in telling stories of his romantic conquests. He becomes obsessed with Hosna bint Mahmoud, Mustafa Sa’eed’s widow, and insists on marrying her after Sa’eed’s death, in spite of Hosna’s refusal (and the fact that she is forty years his junior). Hosna’s father forces her to marry Wad Rayyes. When Hosna refuses to sleep with him, Wad Rayyes attempts to rape her, and Hosna responds by fatally stabbing him and killing herself. Wad Rayyes’s murder and Hosna’s suicide are the most violent and shocking act that the sleepy village on the banks of the Nile river has ever witnessed.
Wad Rayyes Quotes in Season of Migration to the North
The Season of Migration to the North quotes below are all either spoken by Wad Rayyes or refer to Wad Rayyes. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
“You know how life is run here,” [Mahjoub] interrupted me. “Women belong to men, and a man’s a man even if he’s decrepit.”
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Chapter 8
Quotes
“A week or ten days after you went away [Hosna’s] father said he had given Wad Rayyes a promise—and they married her off to him. Her father swore at her and beat her; he told her she’d marry him whether she liked it or not.”
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“The red straw mat was swimming in blood. I raised the lamp and saw that every inch of Bint Mahmoud’s body was covered in bites and scratches…Wad Rayyes had been stabbed more than ten times—in his stomach, chest, face, and between his thighs”
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Wad Rayyes Quotes in Season of Migration to the North
The Season of Migration to the North quotes below are all either spoken by Wad Rayyes or refer to Wad Rayyes. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
“You know how life is run here,” [Mahjoub] interrupted me. “Women belong to men, and a man’s a man even if he’s decrepit.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8
Quotes
“A week or ten days after you went away [Hosna’s] father said he had given Wad Rayyes a promise—and they married her off to him. Her father swore at her and beat her; he told her she’d marry him whether she liked it or not.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“The red straw mat was swimming in blood. I raised the lamp and saw that every inch of Bint Mahmoud’s body was covered in bites and scratches…Wad Rayyes had been stabbed more than ten times—in his stomach, chest, face, and between his thighs”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
