A Handful of Dates

“A Handful of Dates,” by the Sudanese author and journalist Tayeb Salih, is a classic work of modern Arabic Literature. It was first published in Arabic in 1964 as part of The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories, an eponymous novella with a collection of related short stories. The work was translated into English in 1968. The work gained significant attention in the Arab world and beyond, and has been republished numerous times and widely translated. A film of The Wedding of Zein was made in 1976, and a film short based on “A Handful of Dates” was awarded at Cannes in 2020.

Salih (1929-2009) draws much inspiration for his writings from his boyhood in rural northern Sudan. The stories in the collection, and Salih’s most famous work, Season of Migration to the North (1966), take place in Wad Hamid, a fictional realist setting in northern Sudan which draws on Salih’s own childhood, the everyday life of the Sudanese people in the mid-20th century, and the intermingling currents of traditional and modern life in North Africa. “A Handful of Dates” recounts the brief boyhood memory of an unnamed adult narrator, a moment when the boy realizes that life is full of difficult moral choices and shaped by adult tensions of which he has been unaware. Through this coming-of-age story, Tayeb Salih brings forth themes such as Disillusionment With the Adult World and the exploitation of people and land, which are common ideas in his body of work.

This guide refers to The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories published in the 2009 New York Review of Books Classics Illustrated Edition, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies. Citations refer to page numbers in this edition.

“A Handful of Dates” opens with the narrator reminiscing on his boyhood village: he recounts his success in reciting the Quran at the local mosque, swimming in the river, and his childhood invention of giants that remind him of his beloved grandfather. The boy idolizes his grandfather, and their relationship is the main subject of the story.

The boy asks his grandfather about their longtime neighbor, Masood. The grandfather reveals that Masood used to own most of the farmland surrounding their village and says that he is “lazy,” having inherited much of his land. The grandfather has over time purchased two-thirds of Masood's land and asserts that “before Allah calls to Him, I shall have bought the remaining third of his land as well” (92). The narrator begins to pity his neighbor, remembering his singing and laughing in the past. When he asks why Masood sold his land, his grandfather says it was because of women, stating that Masood was married many times and the expense caused him to sell. The boy can’t quite understand how this can be.

Later that day, Masood visits and says it is time to harvest the date palms. A great crowd gathers, and someone brings the grandfather a stool to watch. As they watch the harvest, the narrator remembers a conversation with Masood in which Masood compared palm trees to people, claiming they are capable of feeling. The narrator sees young children, his peers, gathering around the palm trees to collect and eat as many fallen dates as they can. His grandfather has fallen asleep.

His grandfather wakes as several other men approach Masood; some are local men known to the narrator, and some are strangers. The men inspect the dates and divide the sacks between them, according to who owns what share. Hussein the merchant takes 10; the other men, including the grandfather, take five, but Masood takes none. The grandfather says Masood is still in debt to him, implying that this means he can take Masood’s crops. The narrator feels compassion for Masood’s distress.

The narrator runs to his favorite place on the riverbank, ignoring his grandfather calling after him. The narrator remembers feeling that he hated his grandfather. He describes the moment of disillusionment and remembers making himself sick so that he vomited the dates.