Who Writes for Sudanese Writers?

alt: finding solace in soundcloud because I can't get a visa

Sometimes, it feels like we’re explaining something to the world while we’re still trying to understand it. In this way, every Sudanese artist is also an inventor. We’re coming up with sentences that have never been said. We’re translating concepts that have never existed before. This is a natural response to the perpetual threat of being erased. If we can put this moment and memory in a poem, a photograph or a song, it will be ours forever. This is important because so little lasts forever and even less is still ours.

I listen to Haqeeba music in general and Igd AlJalad in specific for comfort. Sensory comfort. These are songs that can transport me back to the 2000s, to the backseat of a car one of my parents is driving while the other curates the music and flips the cassettes. Sometimes, they’d sing along, doing increasingly theatric exaggerated vocals until one of them starts laughing. As we got older, they’d often pause the music and explain the lyrics of their favourite songs to us. Only one of my parents is musically inclined but both of them have a deep appreciation for language. I loved it most when we were all buzzing with conversation and jokes and the music became a backdrop for our laughter. I’d often doze off in the backseat and wake up when I could feel the car pull into our driveway. I knew what home felt like even with my eyes closed. When a song was good, we’d stay in the car until it finished.

Throughout my 20s, whenever I’d feel disoriented or stressed or heartbroken, I’d go stay with my grandparents. It is often exactly what I need. They live slowly, they pray on time, they’re serious about me eating well and they’re generous with their answers to my notoriously incessant questions. The stories they tell me about their chaotic 20s make me laugh and help me see past my own. Even when I don’t tell them about the sources of my distress, they offer me reminders and advice that are suspiciously relevant. Maybe they felt the same way when they were my age. Maybe they can see what they felt back then in me even if I don’t say it. I guess none of the ways I am are really unique to me. I’m a mosaic of all my elders. I inherited their temperaments. Who is better placed to give me an instruction manual on how to handle it?

Lately, it’s been harder to see family. We can not go home. Most of us have found shelter behind borders that refuse the rest of our families entry. They accept us in parts as part of a larger promise of impermanence. But my 20s are still chaotic. And I still need advice from someone who recognises their younger self in me and knows about the kinds of challenges that come with leaving home and surviving this kind of world.

So now, whenever I’m disoriented or stressed or heartbroken, I listen to AlTambara wal Ghanai. Sometimes, I play the 18-minute song twice in my ear on my way to work. Sometimes, I sit and watch the choir performances. Lately, I’ve been watching videos of Al Gaddal reciting the poem to a crowd of people who knew the words so well they were reciting it along with him.

When I memorised this song in the backseat of my parents’ car, I didn’t know that I’d one day become the young traveller Al Gaddal was writing to. But I did. And now, the song is not just a source of comfort. It is a reference I return to whenever I need advice, whenever I need to be told things I didn’t realise I needed to be told.

Sometimes, the song reminds me that I need to choose one path and stick to it because anyone who tries to follow multiple paths only gets lost. Sometimes, I hear ‘what is yours is your back and not any of your saddles,’ and remember to only count on my own strength to sustain me. Some days, I need the reminder that responsibility cycles through us the way the moon cycles through nights. And that today, I must carry the burden that shields the children because tomorrow, they’ll carry it for me while I carry what today’s elders are shielding me from. I often need to remember to not backtrack; to chew patience and remember that I cannot swallow it nor spit it out. To not be blown away by what the wind brings. To remain sturdy in my stance, rooted in my feet. To be aware that any flame I try to put out could burn me. And that some paths are worth the pain of burning.

And some days, what I need is not advice. I just need to be reminded of the tenderness of a grandparent calling me by their own name. A tenderness I can’t access right now but have not stopped being worthy of. I need to remember what it feels like when you return from travels and your grandmother hugs you and inhales, engaging as many of her senses as possible. I need to remember that in love poems where I’m from, a human lover is indistinguishable from a motherland you long for. We strive for both in the same way. We yearn for both in the same way. We know that each kind of love only amplifies the other.

Lately, I’ve been carefully listening to the last half of the song. It describes a promised day. A day of return. A return so grand that we awaken with hearts that had never known sorrow. We begin to wonder why we ever felt any despair at all. We look at our scrolls of sad poems and begin to question why we are carrying them along. Why? When we are back and our sun is setting and rising in the same way it always did? When the autumn breeze is so, so delightful?

I listen carefully because I’m afraid of being hopeful. It’s much more practical to focus on building where we are. Hope is dangerous. It’s impractical to long for a return that is so unlikely, to plan based on potential. I learned this the hard way. It serves no purpose to admit that what we had is worth rebuilding from rubble. Still, sometimes, I stay up late and let myself delight in the image. I imagine the grand return Al Gaddal described. I imagine the autumn breeze across my face. I imagine inhaling the smell of the earth after rain and feeling so distant from the sorrow. I allow myself to consider the possibility that perhaps, maybe, just maybe, there might still be time to fall in love by the Nile.