“Everyone starts at the beginning of the road, and the world is in an endless state of childhood.”
— Tayeb Salih · 1929 – 2009Source: Season of Migration to the North, p. 88 (Heinemann, 1991) · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- Verified as a line from Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North, spoken by the unnamed narrator and cited in the Heinemann English edition (1991).
- What remains uncertain
- Page numbers differ across English editions; the line is a narrator's utterance in the novel rather than a standalone authorial maxim.
Understanding the quote
In Season of Migration to the North the line captures a central ambivalence: travel opens learning and possibility, yet humanity remains unfinished—childlike, prone to repetition and misjudgment. It is spoken by the novel's unnamed narrator and carries the book's ironic tension about wanderlust.
The story behind it
Tayeb Salih worked for the BBC Arabic Service and UNESCO after growing up in rural Sudan—his life mirrored the cross-cultural movements his fiction explores.
Going further
- The era
- In the postcolonial decades after the 1966 Arabic publication, when Sudan confronted colonial legacies and modernity.
- The thinking
- The idea says: people and societies never finish learning; staying 'in childhood' means always adapting but also repeating mistakes—a call to balance curiosity with rootedness.
- Key word
- Wanderlust: the longing to travel that can free or unsettle a life.
- Who quoted it
- The sentence appears in literary commentary and quotation collections, often extracted from its novelistic context.
Three challenges to live it
In the app, you pick the one that fits your day, and in the evening you say how it went.
Write for 12 minutes about a time you had to start over; detail what you left behind and what you learned along the way.
The quote highlights that everyone begins again; focused freewriting helps surface lessons and makes the uncertainty of restarting more tangible.
Take a 10-minute mindful walk with no goal; notice five different sensations (sound, smell, temperature, posture, thought) and jot them down after.
The line frames the world as perpetually childlike; a goal-free walk cultivates awareness of vulnerability and the patterns we repeat while wandering.
Make a 20-minute visual collage representing 'the beginning of the road' using cutouts, words and textures; photograph your finished piece.
The quote evokes a childlike, unfinished world; a quick collage lets you embody that mix of wonder, mistake, and fresh starts through material imagery.
How does your urge to travel reveal what you avoid or keep at home?
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