The Republic of Sudan was a state set up by the British for continued British-American interests. It has nothing to do with a higher culture, or a new religious resurgence, or a nationalistic fervor. It is a state whose institutions were built by the British government for the now-demised British empire.
On independence, what happened? The state institutions were given to the Jallaba on a silver platter. Kitchener built Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum, which taught the Jallaba, the Egyptians and the British alike. Out of the universities came political parties and groups, without which the political parties of today would not have existed. The political parties were spearheaded and consisted by university students who came to study in Khartoum, most of whom were Jallabi or Halabi, with a minority from the Dinka or Nuer.
They were Marxist, they were the front party of the neo-Mahdi caliphate project, they were the front party of the Khatmiyya Sufi sect, they were national socialists…but were they democratic – did they represent the people? Were they nationalist – did they belong to the nation and its people?
What is nation? Is it dozens of ethnic groups, each in its land, or co-inhabiting a common land by different patterns of settlement? How could you be patriotic to something that does not exist, or is not properly understood? Who are the people? Dozens of nations and peoples; African and Arabs and Afro-Arabs; or Jallaba and marginalized people?
What is the Sudan? I have no answer. I’d leave the answer completely blank. So…why should the Sudan exist? It has no reason to exist! In fact, its continued existence ruins everybody, as the most craven and most oppressive ethnic group of all – the Jallaba – plunged it straight into hell.
So, the Republic of Sudan should cease to exist, and anyone who is Sudanese, and who is not Nubian, Fur, Zaghawa, or of any other ethnic group, would be in deep trouble. Sudanese was and is another word for Jallabi. If you’re Sudanese today, you’ll be nothing but Muslim tomorrow. So good luck to the Jallab – I hope you wake up sooner.
What comes in place of the Republic of Sudan? The state of Darfur, the state of South Kordofan, the state of Blue Nile, the state of Jallabistan, the state of Makuria, and the Beja sheikhdoms. Just as it was in AD 1504.
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The Republic of Sudan was an idea based in Khartoum, and could have only developed in Khartoum. The Sudanese people were the Khartoumite people. Khartoum is a multi-ethnic city with a narrow Jallabi majority, and it was built by Egyptian occupiers for administering their empire properly, populated by Egyptian officers and Levantine and Jewish businessmen; and without Egypt, it would not have existed at all!
The people of Khartoum are not the people of Sudan – they are something different! They live lives that the Khartoum-named “people of the regions” do not live. They think differently and have different goals for the Sudan. And most of all, the people of Khartoum call themselves ‘the Sudanese people’.
What are the people of Khartoum? Spoiled oversized children, who go through the motions of education, reading newspapers and magazines, university, high-paying profession and honorable retirement, all while thinking highly of themselves as educated and sophisticated people, representing Sudan like a lighthouse at midnight, and carrying the burden of its ‘honor’.
When that happens smoothly, as it did until the 1980s, then everyone is happy and fine. Otherwise, the Khartoumite people are cringing in discontent with moments of forgetful bliss, still convincing themselves that they’re great people all over.
Post-colonial Sudan was an idea that was based in Khartoum and could only exist in Khartoum. In fact, it was a set of clashing ideas, it was a struggle of multiple parties and ideologies, by pulpit and press, for control of the Sudan; or it was a fun way to pass time by intellectuals. The process was either significant, that is coming to power; or insignificant, that is to prove one’s own cleverness to his friends, his foes and the girls nearby.
The neo-Mahdist Ummah party had plans for the Sudan, the Communist party had plans for the Sudan, the National Socialist party had plans for the Sudan, the wahhabi National Islamic Front had plans for the Sudan. All thoughout the 60s, the Sudan was an exciting project for the people of Khartoum, and it was yet to mature – give it time – as the sentiment was back then.
The Republic of Sudan did mature, in 1989, when the contest was won by the Wahhabis. To this day, they rule the Republic of Sudan from Khartoum.
The intellectual is a pariah, whose looks and presentation are more important than his ideas, and who has no other objective but to appear smart and eloquent. He writes lengthy and unnecessarily complex articles, he discusses issues and solutions with sophistry. He has no passion, he doesn’t really care for the problems of the Sudan. He cares first and foremost for himself, then everybody else comes along, that is, those who could help him to get his selfish desires.
The people of Khartoum never see a military coup happening – it just happens. They go out into the streets only after it is safe to do so, and only after they’ve been mobilized into action by self-serving political parties. The cycle of democracy and military rule goes thusly: military rule grows weak, the leaders of political parties, professional guilds and trade unions mobilize “the people” – most people in Khartoum, including students – and the military leader either steps down, or is caught by a surprise coup from a lower-ranking officer. Then elections, then back to democracy.
Democracy leads straight into military rule. Sectarianism between the Ummah party and the Khatmiyya sect's front party – the Democratic People’s Union – means that nothing gets done, the economy slips into recession, conflict breaks out somewhere unbeknownst to Khartoum, and then riots and massive protests in the major Jallabi cities. Of course, the press is free and the judiciary fiercely independent. Soon enough, amidst the weakness and chaos, a group of officers chosen and mobilized by one of the political parties overthrows the government, and proceeds to shut down newspapers, ban civil societies and imprison any kind of opponent.
The cycle is over, as 25 years of Wahhabism has sent the best minds abroad, brought refugees torn from their homes and families, and retarded the new generation by education and the culture that the Wahhabis allowed. Now, the republic of Sudan has matured – thank God! It became an Islamist hellhole.
Those who did not agree with the Islamists – Mohammed Wardi, Mohammed al-Ameen, Mustafa Sid-Ahmed and most of the Republican brothers – left the country. When the country was taken by Islamists, they did not stick around and fight back, or endure. In my opinion, they did not belong to the Republic of Sudan in heart, but for them, it was their own idea that did not mature. Nevertheless, all three returned, Mustafa Sid-Ahmed in a casket.
However, Mahjoub Sharif (the people’s poet), al-Kabli, Osman Hussein and abdul-Aziz Baraka Sakin stayed. This is a sign of true patriotism – the willingness to stay despite all else, and the likes of such patriots will be the heirs of the future.
What’s left now, is a new occupier – either the US or Egypt – or rule by militia. The Janjaweed are in South Khartoum, but soon they might be in the Republican Palace.
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The core is the center of the spirit. It is the refuge that nourishes the soul. The core is not necessarily materialistic: it is a song, it is a symphony, it is a painting, it is a sacred place, it is a critique of society in a paper, it is blocks and corner-shops and neighbors, but it is home.
There is no Nubian core. Nubia is divided, by blood and by borders. Nubia is too diverse to be ever reunified naturally from the Nuba Mountains to Aswan. It must either have its peoples mixed together, or it must be ruled as a unified empire viz a viz Prussia.
Nobatia, the land, is drowned and under Lake Nasser. The people, the disparate Nubian tribes of that region, had to leave their ancestral land. They were happy to, as Nobatia was a desert whose blessing was the passing by of the Nile River. The Nile, however, stretched narrow and flowed fast, leaving nothing for the soil around it. And thus, Nobadia was an improvident land inhabited by an anxious people.
The Nobatians were happy to leave their ancestral land as it was being drowned. They left for urban centers all throughout Egypt. Now, their culture is on the verge of disappearing. Like the Alodian Nubians – the Jallaba – they have become nothings and pariahs. Soon, like the Jallabis, they will be dangerous to their surroundings.
Makuria, the valley of the Nile between al-Dabba and Old Halfa, is improvident, its people silent by difficulty of reach, and unknown to the world. The life of the Makurian Nubians - the Danagla, Mahas and Jabäbra - is routine and obscure and esoteric.
Alodia is the great tragedy. Its people have assumed for themselves, an Arabian lineage that goes back to Muhammad's family, but in reality: beyond the 1500s is unknown or mystified. Its people, for centuries, have asserted their Arabian blood and lineage. Its people speak a creole version of Yemeni and Hejazi Arabic, infused with Nubian words, grammar rules and pronunciations; and insist on proper grammar and pronunciation. Its people are Muslims, and fanatically so. They revere the Sheikh more than anybody else, they value the Quran and Hadith more than all other books. They live on their land, but their blood has been infused with too much Arabian blood, and they have adopted the culture-destroying and soul-retarding Arabian mindset. No one likes them, but the Saudis and a few others; and everybody else either resents them or hates them with a burning passion.
The South Nubians are the true Nubians, with very little mixture from outside. They are a people with a land, pure-blooded since thousands of years ago. Nobatians are a people without a land; the Makurians are people with a land; the Alodians have a land, but they’re not a people, they’re a void; the Sennarians & Butanians are not a people: they are a disparate group of ink-in-water Arabian tribes, but they have a land.
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The Nubian has no proper idea of home. To him, home is a dream, a mirage, of distant memories or lovely imaginations. It is a way of playing music, it is a story about a village, it is rules and manners, and it is ceremony of joy and tragedy, and etcetera.
It is an idea that takes a simple and confused concrete form; that is not loyal to a land, but in fact loyal to wealth and prosperity. It can be reenacted anywhere and everywhere, with slight environmental modifications.
If the weather is hot, if the weather is cold, if the food is strange or the food is familiar, if the people are warm or the people are cold, it does not matter! What matters is family and culture.
A nation that is found on ideas, reveres the ideas to the exclusion of everything else. Blood, keeping blood pure, land, holding on to it and distrusting all foreigners, is completely irrelevant. All are welcome and all are a part of the society, so long as they accept the ideas of the…
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The Alodian Nubian has no home. He is a form without essence. The soul in him is mute, the philosophy of life in him is not whole. He is a simpleton who bows down to his oppressor, who will defend his molester in court and will curse the one who speaks against his molester. He is a simpleton who believes the advertisement, who believes the promise of the demagogue, and when he is disillusioned, he forgets that he ever praised the demagogue.
The Alodian Nubian’s core is a void that must be filled, and the the Alodian Nubian goes out in search of filling the void. He consumes the culture of the Arabians, and reads the book of Westerners. He takes up the Palestinian cause, the #free_whoever and #save_whatever causes, the unification of the Ummah and etcetera. Yet on the Darfur war, the South Sudan wars and the Blue Nile state war, he is conspicuously silent. Whenever they are brought up, he tries to silence the discussion and portray himself as the victim of a Western conspiracy.
A jigsaw puzzle is a whole picture made by way of several pieces, not important in themselves, but having their place and deriving their importance only in relation to others. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle, where two jigsaw puzzle-pictures are trying to be converged into one picture, and there is a half-hearted rearrangement of the pieces, not even put in their right places. This is the confused and jumbled picture of the Alodian Nubian. He is a confused and conflicted Nubian.
He dares not say this out loud, but there is a civil war within him, whose peace is only maintained by an enemy outside of him. Solidarity is a cooperation of two dissimilars in united action against a common enemy. When the common enemy disappears, the solidarity is broken overnight. He wages wars on rebels, on America, on Israel, on communism, on everything else that is not him. This keeps the two opposing selves within him in common action, but not necessarily in peace.
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The people of void will be infiltrated by a foreign people, whom will soon overpower them, and whom will soon be at their mercy. The foreigner will either exterminate them, expel them like Palestinians, enslave them, or rape their women and mongrelize them for the umpteenth time.
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The soul must dare to express itself. If it does not, it is mute; and there is no core, there is no culture, and there is distress and fear and hatred.
The soul that is mute does not express itself. The soul is an immaterial, intangible force that can be conceived as a concept by the mind – which is the bridge between body and soul – but can communicate itself.
It does so by music, the manipulation of sounds; by storytelling, the abridgement of a long event into a series of significant events, and its telling in spoken or written words with flow and charisma; by theater, the reenactment of real-life, actual or typical, onto a confined setting with the emphasis on real-life doubles aka actors and etcetera.
Music, theater, and storytelling: these are essential tools; and the tools needed to fulfill music, from the stage to instruments to scales, are existential tools. The true essence is the soul expressing itself.
If the soul is mute, there is no culture. If the soul is servile, it will serve its master. It will express, using the tools available to it, the praise of its master, and will advocate on his behalf: it will defend his honor in the face of his enemies, it will take up his causes and his hatreds; while denying itself its very right to expression, and its right to its biological disposition.
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The orientation is either towards the core, or outside of it. The core is the refuge, and just as it nourishes the self, it must be nourished by the self.
I envy the Egyptians: they have a core that stretches back thousands of years, that incorporates ancient greatness, Christian refinement and Islamic sublimity. When they want introspection, they have Taha Hussein, Sayyid al-Qimni, Mohammed al-Ghazali, Naguib Mahfouz, Pope Tewodros, and many more. If they want high culture, they have abdul-Halim Hafiz and al-Mutanabbi. If they want history, they have it. They have a core.
The core creates a strong government, fervent patriotism, devotion to the needs and interests of Egypt, and gives dignity to the educated Egyptian. This core goes back and back: the Aryans who inhabited the narrow stretch of the desert along the Nile, and built a civilization that may be unrivaled by any other; the Byzantines who brought Christianity along with them, and brought Christian refinement; the Arabians who brought Islam with them and Arabian sublimation; the French and British who modernized Egypt to some extent, and the rule-by-military, who got a lot of things done, despite choking Egypt's literary tradition and highbrow culture.
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99% of Nubians are natural slaves. This means that, even if they were freemen and free women, they would still seek a master. The master is either someone they revere, or someone who commands them whether they like it or not.
The master they hate, they cannot choose; the master they like and admire, if he came about by fate, they wouldn’t have chosen him. If they chose their master, they’d choose an Arab man or a famous Islamic scholar.
The best master for Nubians is a Nubian. A Nubian scholar on Islam, an Orthodox priest, a cultured gentleman or a lovable average Joe. This Nubian would more likely to be female than male, as our long and proud history attests. The Kendäke – the Nubian queen – is the mother and father: she was Cleopatra before there was a Cleopatra.
But where will religion come from? Outside. Where will the tools of analysis come from? Outside. And to whom will the devotion go to?
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