what was mustafa's relationship with his mother like

Mustafa's relationship with his mother is distant, but they do get a long. They've been alone since his father's death, and his mother has been his primary caregiver. Regardless, Mustafa was an independent youth and often left to his own devices. Of this he said that as a child he had “a warm feeling of being free, that there were was not a human being, by father or mother, to tie me down as a tent peg to a particular spot, a particular domain” (Salih 19).

Later in his life, he sees Mrs. Robinson as a mother figure.