The Wedding of Zein
| Author | Tayeb Salih |
|---|---|
| Original title | عرس الزين |
| Translator | Denys Johnson-Davies |
| Country | Sudan |
| Language | Arabic |
|
Publication date
|
1962 |
The Wedding of Zein (Arabic: عرس الزين) is a contemporary Arabic novel by the late Sudanese author Tayeb Salih. It was published in Arabic in 1962 and translated into English in 1968. Within the realm of Arab literature, the book is considered a classic and was republished as part of the influential Heinemann African Writers Series.
The story is set in the fictional village of Wad Hamid, the same setting as Salih's famous Season of Migration to the North.
The story opens with the village hearing the news of Zein's upcoming nuptials. Because Zein is regarded as the village idiot, the people as a whole are greatly surprised that any family agreed to give their daughter to him.
The rest of the story unfolds non-linearly. The first section is an account of Zein's childhood and young adulthood, focusing on his strange ability to draw attention to village girls by falling in love with them. After he sings their praises, other people notice the girls, resulting in their advantageous marriages. Because of this, the other villagers invite him over in hope of his falling in love with their daughters. Zein is also distinguished by his friendship with Haneen, a Sufi holy man who did not associate closely with anyone else in the village. He is also close to many of the socially shunned, such as Mousa the Lame, a disabled former slave.
The turning point of the story is an encounter between Zein and Seif ad-Din, a local man of bad character. Seif ad-Din attacks Zein while he is standing talking to Mahjoub's gang, a group of local men who run the village. Zein retaliates with unexpected strength, but before he can actually kill Seif ad-Din, he is stopped by Haneen, who blesses both men and the village as a whole. In the following year, which is referred to as Haneen's year, the village experiences multiple miracles, which they attribute to Haneen's blessing. The story climaxes with one of these miracles, the wedding of the fool Zein to the most handsome, intelligent, religious girl in the village, Ni'ma.
Zein: Zein is an unconventional man from the moment of his birth, when he entered the world laughing rather than crying. He also has a non-traditional physical appearance, which Salih describes at length: he has a long face with prominent bones, with only one tooth on his bottom jaw and one on the top, a long neck and long arms, which are described as resembling those of a monkey, broad shoulders, and prodigious, unsuspected strength, which becomes dangerous when he gets in fights. Notably, Zein is completely hairless, lacking even eyebrows and eyelashes. He has an enormous appetite that leads him to attend as many social events as he can, where he inevitably irritates his hosts by eating too much. Kenneth Harrow argues that Zein's outsized appetites are "signs or metaphors for other, higher appetites," because he is meant to represent the perfect Sufi saint. Areeg As-Sawi Mohammed Ballag argues that Zein's name is meaningful, because it literally refers to decoration, which is ironic, because Zein himself is physically unattractive, although he still decorates the village with his spiritual excellence.
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