Independence blues: the palace and the doe
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By Magdi El Gizouli
January 3, 2014 - President Bashir’s head bobbed in rhythm from right
to left reflector as he read out his Independence Day speech on 31
December in the gardens of the Republican Palace in Khartoum. To his
audience were invited the grand and prominent of the capital in
preserved colonial fashion, seated neatly row after row by order of
significance. The president ‘s face, photoshopped to glamorous
infinite youth, looked down on the audience from the height of the
palace front, to the left and right extended the colours of the
Sudanese flag. Erected at an angle from the podium was a theatre for
the musical performance, its background Meroitic figures carved in
steel and flashed generously with colours. Some money was spent on
fireworks but obviously the contractor had slashed off a hefty cut.
The president and his deputies sank into their over-comfortable
armchairs, fingers tapping along with the ‘national’ songs intercepted
by a compere overwhelmed by the excess of authority, senior military,
police and security officers in their best uniforms, ministers and
ruling party high priests, and Hassan al-Turabi. The elderly sheikh
told the press the day after that he took the opportunity to
contemplate on power and its trepidations, and obviously the fifty
nine years of national government. Turabi’s right hand man, Kamal
Omer, said the president’s speech was positive but lacked “depth”
regarding efforts to bring the armed movements on board the promised
‘national dialogue’. The president had, following established habit,
reiterated his invitation to rebel groups to come and join the
roundtable of dialogue after an excursion into Islamic theology
declaring ‘dialogue’ a principle of divine providence.
Last year it was Sadiq al-Mahdi, now in self-exile, who was the star
of the president’s show. He was duly decorated with the first class
order of the republic together with Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani. In the
president’s mind, the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli
Mossad wooed Sadiq into alliance with the Sudan Revolutionary Front
(SRF) with the promise of waging a Libya-style campaign beginning with
declaration of a Sudanese Benghazi in al-Fasher. Sadiq al-Mahdi went
even further in his strategic ‘thinking’. He told the London-based
al-Araby al-Jadeed in an interview timed with the anniversary of
Sudan’s independence that Israel plots to divide Egypt into three and
Sudan into five statelets, but the US and the international community
reject these devises because fragmentation would offer terrorist
movements golden opportunity to expand. The Americans and the British
did not even want South Sudan to secede, he declared.
Dedicated opponents of Sadiq al-Mahdi ignored their basic criticism of
the imam and his religious authority to declare the twice former prime
minister once again a flag bearer of imminent democracy. Sadiq
al-Mahdi and Yasir Arman personalities of 2014, it was declared. The
79 years old Sadiq told supporters in a touching birthday message (the
imam was born on Christmas day and his superstitious inclinations are
no secret) that he intends to step down from leadership of the NUP and
in the same sentence affirmed that he will continue to lead it. Sadiq
promised to transfer his property to his daughters and sons in the new
year and withdraw to a life of scholarship. He made it clear that his
son Abd al-Rahman remains an Ansari by faith and a member of the NUP
despite his decision to serve as President Bashir’s assistant. Nobody
can strip Abd al-Rahman of his Ansari skin or exclude him from the
NUP, said the revolutionary father ‘in exile’.
Sudan’s liberal literati bemoaned independence as a sorry history of
deterioration from a golden era of colonial endowment, naming of
course the usual list of wasted assets: University College Khartoum,
the Gezira Scheme, Sudan Railways and the mythically efficient civil
service. The wailing was loud across political and ideological hues; a
former Turabist, a declared follower of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a former
Salafi and effendis of sorts echoed each other in the annual mockery
of independence extending to national loathing. In this palace history
there are no nas (people), only effendis and officers deadlocked in a
cycle of failures told and retold ad nauseam.
Khalil Farah, a poet of profound gift, feminised the notion of freedom
from colonial hegemony in his timeless Azza, a classic of early
Sudanese nationalism turned blunt by repetition and bastardisation.
Nada Wanni translated a portion of the text in a critical study of
Khartoum’s poetry:
Azza, in my heart
Your magic is sacred
The fire of your love
A healing force.
Azza, I have not forsaken
The home of beauty
Nor have I desired anything
Other than Perfection.
Azza, in your love
We rise like the mountains
And to him who dares
Desecrate your purity
We turn into spears.
This year, I celebrated independence by translating Azza’s
contemporary parallel, a love song from the Kordofani master Mastoor
Bakheit. Here is a fragment:
The doe of Um Ganafa
And her kohl eyes
She fled her abode leaving her lovers to perish
The doe of Um Ganafa
Her eyebrows rounded
Her skin brown and her cheeks blossom
For you I cry and my tears flow
Sheikh of the gubba I seek your help
Fix my heart it is about to fly out of my chest
Perplexed I am
My food worries and my drink cigarettes
She abandoned me, closed her mobile
Forget missed calls, not even text messages pass through
The doe of Um Ganafa
And her kohl eyes
She fled her abode leaving her lovers to perish
Lady of my passion, how can I forsake you?
I will pursue you with the firearm I carry
I grab it, oh people, aiming to hit
I pull the trigger but up goes the barrel
And taw...taw…taw… my bullets miss.
The author is a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. He publishes
regular opinion articles and analyses at his blog Still Sudan. He can
be reached at [email protected]
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