What type of man is Mustafa?

Mustafa Sa'eed looms in the narrator's thoughts throughout the novel. In his forties, Mustafa moved to Wad Hamid and remained a mysterious figure there, marrying a village woman, Hosna bint Mahmoud, but never speaking to anyone about his past. The narrator eventually learns that Mustafa is quite similar to himself––both men were highly intelligent as children, and attended university in the United Kingdom. However, while the narrator returned to Sudan and pursued a benign (if ineffectual) life of civil servitude, Mustafa Sa'eed tried to be an academic in the United Kingdom. His career was ruined after a series of sordid love affairs that culminated in Mustafa murdering his English wife, Jean Morris.