Words of Sudan’s great writers still echo over conflict

Saleh, who died in 2009, consistently warned against the dangers of handing power to the military. His words could provide the Sudanese with the foundations of an intellectual and political project to find a way forward.

Al-Fayturi, who died in 2015, called for the hanging of tyrants in a rallying cry made in Sudan, for Sudan. But it is also one that transcends borders and could yet become an effective global weapon.

Saleh: Acclaimed observations keep their cutting edge

Tayyeb Saleh (1929-2009) was the author of Season of Migration to the North and The Wedding of Zein. He also wrote for Al Majalla in the 1990s, and his observations on the realities in Sudan then ring just as true today:

"What brought these people upon us? Have they clouded the clear skies of Sudan with the smoke of their lies? Do they still boast of prosperity and security to their hungry, frightened people? Do they still claim restitution while the country is in shambles?"

"Is the Khartoum airport still buzzing with hordes of displaced people, looking for somewhere – anywhere – to flee their misery? Even that vast land is no longer accommodating. I imagine they have been waiting since that day I left in '88. Nobody calls them to board a flight. Nobody speaks to them. Nobody cares about them."

In that article, Saleh was speaking out about the rule of Islamists, which prioritised stability above everything, including security. But in reality, a deafening calm in the county was not stability. It was death, reaching every aspect of life in Sudan.

Read more: Where did these people come from?

Another astounding description of a pained Khartoum written back then reflects the current situation in the capital almost perfectly:

"The beautiful Khartoum is like a little girl put to bed against her will and locked away in her room, her tears staining her ragged clothes. Empty streets, lightless windows, joyless hearts. No sound of laughter. No water, no bread, no sugar, no gas, no medicine. The city is secure in the same way the dead lie still.

"The Nile flows, ever so wise, but the new 'masters' don't seem to hear or understand a thing. They think they found the keys to the future, the solution. They think they know everything. They crowd our televisions and radios with their dead talk. But the country is not dead; it is alive and well, even if they wish to kill it to enforce their so-called security. What brought these people upon us? Have they no soul?"

Understanding the impact of colonial heritage

With these writings, Saleh was completing a project he had started in the early days of his career, exploring the roots of colonialism.

Looking into Sudan's history, he found a heavy colonial heritage that dismantled state institutions, reinforced tribal conflicts, prevented progress and modernity, and split the country into siloes.

The acclaimed article resurfaces with every national crisis. In it, Saleh describes a foundational relationship between foreign colonialists and home-grown tyrants. He says that the latter are merely extensions of the former.

While the tyrants claim authenticity, they also act as if the country only came into existence the moment they took control. The authorities that emerge after a country's destruction often ignore its history and culture, so how can they possibly represent it?

He crafted a picture of the true Sudanese individual as a person who wholly connects with the soul, culture, climate, and individualities of his country. He contrasted it to newcomers in power who impose repressive ideological contexts that dim all hopes for the future.

Saleh's was, in effect, asking, "who are these people?", words that seem more relevant now than ever before. They pose a simple challenge to the sense of belonging held by the country's rulers. He urges them to either translate it into good practice within politics culture and morals, or to renounce it altogether. 

Military control of Sudan was one of Tayyeb Saleh's primary intellectual concerns throughout turbulent times for the country.

Perpetual conflict and brief hope

Ever since Sudan's independence in the first half of the 1920s, it has been riven with successive clashes, conflicts, and coups. The current bloody clashes between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are a tragic extension of the this history of perpetual conflict.

After the uprising that ended Omar al-Bashir's hold on power, the civil side of the political spectrum became stronger. For the first time, Sudan was thought to have finally caught its breath. It was short-lived, however.

Kandakas, once the title of ancient Sudanese queens, came to signify the crucial role of female revolutionaries in the uprising, which hoped to see Sudan transition to a democratic, civil, participatory country. The Kandakas stood their ground, loud and proud, and made a stark contrast with the patriarchal, rude military.

Sudanese women were portrayed as leaders and became a primary driving force of the uprising, promising structural changes in the society and heralding the end of the bloody history and the beginning of a modern, democratic, civil state.

But it did not last. Soon after, a deal that effectively gave the military the reins of power dragged the country into more trouble, as another wave of internal military conflicts destroyed the revolution's achievements and shattered the dream of a modern civil state.

The "indelible scar" of violence

As one of Sudan's leading intellectuals, Saleh's distrust of military rule was consistent. He had warned in an interview:

"Out of principle, and based on my intellectual knowledge, I don't see much good in the military. They are good people, but that does not mean they can simply come back from military training in Moscow and start experimenting with how to run a country.

"I don't know what makes someone believe they can run a country. Being in power is not easy; most people fear it. But the military believe that if they can drive a tank, they can rule a country. With this mentality, they brought us a great deal of pain."

He also points to Sudan's repeated misstep of handing over power and administration to non-specialised people, which deeply hinders political processes as well as any foundation of or transition to a modern civil state.

"Violence leaves an indelible scar," Tayyeb Saleh often warned, underlining its impact on shaping people's characters and emotions – the deep pain and rage and the repressed desire for retaliation – which, in turn, creates more hatred and bloodshed. 

Such patterns also stem from colonial heritage, which are also explored in significant parts of Saleh's writings, which intellectualised the country's roots.

Al-Fayturi: A timeless voice, raging against history

The poet Muhammad al-Fayturi (1936-2015) gave Sudan an outlet for feelings of rejection and rage.

His writings became mantras for revolutionaries and offered a linguistic framework to understand uprisings and revolutions just like the current clashes. The poems often seem timeless, having set the tone for many of the major moments and movements in Sudan's history.

The 2018 revolutionaries revisited many of his poems, which were written over a half a century before. Today, many of al-Fayturi's writings are making the rounds on social media, as his compatriots continue to lean on his language of resistance and rebellion.

Songs of Africa, al-Fayturi's first collection, was published in 1995. In it, the poem African Resurrection says:

 "Let the corpse of our history rise,

Let the statues of our hatred be erect.

It is time this isolated black,

Who once disappeared into the darkness,

Defies mankind and the universe.

Let the sun bow down to our towering figures.

Let the earth kneel in silence to the sound of our voices.

For we will fill it with our joys,

Just as we filled it with our sorrows.

Yes! Our turn has arrived,

Africa.

Our turn has arrived!"

The rage written into this poem is a clear call for the shackles of history to be left behind. With its commanding tone, the poem reads like speech intended to be made in the future. It portrays victory as definitive as long as there is a will.

It addresses its audience with a first-person pronoun ("we", "our"), as if setting up the poet as a driver of the revolution, with the readers to carry it out, in language that sets out its objectives.

In the 1964 collection African Harvest, al-Fayturi promises that the time for harvest will come now that the seeds are sown:

"Morning has come, and finally we have met.

The generation of champions meets the generation of sacrifice.

Every martyr who conquered injustice and died

Meets a comrade who is still watering the seeds of memories.

Morning has come, and after you, o morning of the harvest,

A thousand mornings await that we wove with the lights of our eyes.

We await your glorious coming,

O, harvest of our bloody sweat and fruit of our labour,

O crown on the heads of my people and my country.

Oh, how wonderful you are today on their foreheads!"

Al-Fayturi structured his poem as an anthem. Its convergence of heroism and sacrifice creates a beam of hope. It retains its relevance to generational struggles.

While he always sought harmony between the meaning of his poems and their form, al-Fayturi also insisted that they mean exactly what they say, without leaving room for interpretation, which he thought inevitably led to the death of his poetry.

He defended poetry's attachment to the land and the people, saying it shared in their daily struggles and helped write their history.

His work is being recalled today, just as it has been at every junction in Sudan's story. It has acquired permanent relevance and remains a vital gateway into any exploration of the country's political and social change.

In Sacred Soil from the 1989 collection Lovers Come to You, al-Fayturi writes:

"Just as the star breaks off orbit,

Yesterday a tyrant passed here,

blowing his horn under the dark skies.

And where he passed,

The sound of bullets was deafening

As they fell over the city and its people.

There was blood in the universe,

And hunger in the land,

And despair in the hearts.

One night a tyrant passed here.

He came on top of a tank,

Climbed a glory that is not his,

And besieged the people.

Then he melted into his own body,

And faded away."

In al-Fayturi's eyes, tyranny is a temporary defect in existence and living which disappears after a while, and then things return to order.

The primary objective of tyrants is destruction via distortion and terror. They cannot produce something original, no matter how minimal. This is why they do not really attain glory, but instead climb onto the achievements of others.

Al-Fayturi's understanding of why tyranny exists and what happens to it still resonates clearly. The poet shows it relies on two factors: its activity, which is captivating and suffocating but also inescapable; and its urgency, which is constantly intensifying until it finds a way to destroy itself.