“For years I had longed for them, had dreamed of them, and it was an extraordinary moment when I at last found myself standing amongst them. They rejoiced at having me back at made a great fuss, and it was not long before 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 shown.”

Upon returning to his village, Wad Hamid, the narrator shares his feelings. We learn that he feels a deep connection with his people, and that being amongst them again reacquaints him with his true self. This quotation introduces a recurring metaphor that associates the Sudan with the sun and England with ice.

“I preferred not to say the rest that had come to my mind: that just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak.”

When the other villagers question the narrator about his time in Europe, he does not share all their similarities. Here, we see his view of human nature and human commonality. It is not necessarily an optimistic view. He sees life as a futile endeavor that increasingly demands strength to endure.

“I was furious—I won’t disguise the fact from you—when the man laughed unashamedly and said: ‘We have no need of poetry here. It would have been better if you’d studied agriculture or medicine.’ Look at the way he says ‘we’ and does not include me, though he knows that this is my village and that it is he—not I—who is the stranger.”

The narrator describes a moment of conflict with Mustafa Sa’eed. As a student of poetry, he is offended when the man seems to make fun of the topic of his thesis. Moreover, as a native of the village, he resents being excluded from Mustafa Sa’eed’s “we.” This foreshadows the role that poetry will play in their relationship and contributes to the motif of poetry throughout the book.