I Have a Dream
writer: Nour
Amin
photographer: Karim Mohsen
"The dam deconstructed my life. I was
born in its year, and it was an evil omen for me. The dam
expelled Siyam from our village. Anxiety and eagerness swamped
me and I was painfully hit by deprivation. Oh people of the
river crash the dam and furiously erode its muscles... Be a
strong flood not only flowing on its sides but butting its
high walls turning them into thousands of small rocks. Carry
the remains and scatter them away... far away, and throw the
final rock there on their salty sea, in the palace where Siyam
serves, wearing his white galabiya and red waistband."excerpt
from The Departure to the People of the River, by Haggag Odoul
"Writing is like draining a cup and hoping it
will fill up again. For me, as a Nubian writer, the cup will
be ever abundant with dazzling ideas,"says novelist Haggag
Odoul with a warm smile. Although he had only experienced the
real old Nubia for three months as a child, his heart and soul
are inextricably bound to the ancient land of his forefathers.
When he was 10 years old,
Odoul, who lived his entire life in Alexandria, went with his
mother for the first time to visit their native village.
"There I went aboard el-bosta, the only means of transport
linking Nubia to the rest of Egypt. I remember being on board
the ferry and how I kept throwing a small steel cup tied with
a string into the Nile. I'd then pull it back and drink. I can
still taste the sweet water on my tongue," he reminisces.
"When we reached my mother's village, I stood there watching
naked children bathing in the Nile. Hesitating to imitate
them, I felt like a stranger in my own land. All I did with
children of my age was chase scorpions by throwing stones at
them. I was thrilled to find so much space to play. The whole
desert was my own property, my
playground."
It was this
overwhelming experience that shaped Odoul's artistic
temperament. One of four contemporary Nubian writers, Odoul,
58, began writing in 1984. Within the span of 18 years he
published four collections of short stories, three novels and
four plays, in addition to three books on the history of
Nubia. His first collection of stories Layaly El Misk El
Attiqa (The Ancient Nights of Musk, 1989) was well-received by
critics and in 1990, he won the State Incentive Award for
literature. The jury applauded Odoul's ability to resurrect
the ancient world of Nubia with its rich traditions. Here he
writes: "We ran on soft shining sands and inhaled the fresh
air into our chests. We counted the colors of the marvelous
Nile. It spread from the top of the mountain, spiraling its
way into the blue color of the sky, some parts appearing like
silver sheets reflecting the sun's rays. We approached it as
we descended. Its color darkened into mingled shades of grey.
We ran towards it on the green strip. It turned to brown silt.
We swam naked in it only to find it pure and transparent. God
bless you O Nile! Our river Nile! We got tired and lay down on
your banks. The sun received us with a warm embrace and its
hot and sweltering rays roused us."
Among the enthralling themes in this collection
is the portrayal of the Nile's creatures and their strong bond
with the Nubian people. In another of the stories, the heroine
symbolically submerges herself in the deep waters to live with
the river's creatures, which she calls Amoun Nutto in her
native language. In Odoul's oeuvre, the Nile is conspicuous as
a basic element through which all plots can be woven. "Common
to us all is the river's impact on our lives. The Nile ran
through our land and provided us with nourishment and water,"
says Odoul. But when most of the Nubian people were forced to
leave their land and settle in Komombo, an arid desert in
Upper Egypt, they lost faith in such legends. "However, I
still believe in stories about the Nile's creatures. My own
parents believed that there were evil beings called Amoun
Dugur living there. Such stories were inherent in their daily
lives. My parents used to throw pieces of bread into the Nile
to appease these evil beings. They never ate any fish, nor did
they throw any waste into the Nile," he explains.
 |
| The moment of ecstasy
for me as a writer is when I sit down at my desk and
feel that my ancestors are dictating their mysteries to
me. |
 | Odoul's
first long novel Thunaie'et El-Koshar (The Duet of El-Koshar,
2000) was commended for its unique spirit of nostalgia. It is
about how the migration of a group of people from their native
land came to destroy their identity. Here Odoul tackles a
common theme in Nubian literature. He portrays the submersion
of the land during the flooding season and the search for
el-koshar, that is, the ideal way to overcome the flood. The
interaction between the spirit of the ancestors and legendary
creatures with ordinary people, whose aim is to save the land,
is depicted as a natural phenomenon. The protagonist Samaseeb
has supernatural powers that reflect the strength of his
community. Inspired by the cult of the ancient Egyptian
goddess Isis - the devoted goddess of magical powers who roams
the earth in search of the corpse of her husband Osiris -
Samaseeb plays the role of the dedicated, untiring seeker of
el-koshar. To fulfill his mission, he throws himself into the
unfathomable river to consult the goddesses and priests.
El-koshar for Samaseeb finally emerges as a symbolic
manifestation of his own strength and that of his community,
which lies in their unity, faith and reason.
Despite his success, Odoul
does not have a pretentious bone in his body. He is a serious
man who refuses to take himself too seriously. The product of
his emotional state of mind, his work is pregnant with myths.
"I only write myself as a Nubian," he maintains, which is,
however why he was sometimes criticized for advocating the
formation of an independent Nubian ghetto. But he refuses the
implication. "My concentration on Nubian themes does not
insinuate that we are separate from Egyptian society.
Moreover, the Nubian race is wrongly thought of as a pure one.
My mother had nearly white skin. My tribe's name is Al
Muradab, that is, the family of Murad, who was the son of
Abdel-Galeel whose corpse is buried in Isna in Upper Egypt. It
is said that he came from the Arabian Peninsula. In my village
Tomas Wa Afiya, a tribe came from West Africa, settled in our
land and mixed with our own tribe. We are a mixture of races,"
he notes.
Odoul was also
attacked for his prolific use of legends. Some intellectuals
argued that this only served to perpetuate the pervasive image
of Nubia as an illusion, a lost story that has been dropped
from the national memory. Again he defends his position. "My
use of legends only happens unconsciously," he states. "It has
a lot to do with the fact that I come from a culture in which
legends and myths are rife. The moment of ecstasy for me as a
writer is when I sit down at my desk and feel that my
ancestors are dictating their mysteries to me."The way Odoul
utilizes these legends is, in fact, one of the most
fascinating elements in his work. Especially in The Duet of
El-Koshar, the Nubian landscape too shares the role of
protagonist, setting the stage on which a diverse number of
historical legends - whether Pharaonic, Coptic or Islamic -
are intermingled. His juxtaposition of chants from the ancient
Book of the Dead with old Nubian songs and verses from the
Bible and Quran further enhance his style and underline the
cultural melting pot from which he draws his inspiration.
Yet even though Odoul's writing is feverish with
myths, his mother never had enough time to tell him any
stories about old Nubia. "She was always unhappy, preoccupied
with problems with her new neighbors, and sharing the troubles
of my more-often-than-not jobless father. But sometimes she
would get together with her female relatives, sit on a big
carpet on the roof, chat and recount tales of their lost land.
They talked about their pain, their yearning to go back to
their homes, and how much they suffered from living in such a
crowded city," he recounts. Odoul lived in a poor district in
Alexandria whose inhabitants were all Nubians. "People from
adjacent areas called our district Ezbet El-Barber, [The
Monkeys' District,]" he remembers. "In my adolescence, I was
always reminded of my black skin. People used to call me
Sambo, a derogatory term referring to any black man who speaks
the Nubian language."
|
| People acquire their
identity through existing in a certain place, if the
place loses its people, there is no place and no
history. |
| The
place where they lived in Moharram Bey overlooked El-Hadra
prison. This triangular area was much like a fortified zone,
Odoul recalls painfully, explaining how much his parents felt
isolated in their new exile. He describes how he witnessed his
father suffer for years working as a watchman. "My father was
proud to be a Nubian. He didn't accept being insulted or
discriminated against on account of his language or color so
he quit many jobs because of that. He learned some French,
Italian and English and used to read the papers every morning.
Unfortunately this man, who bubbled over with intellectual
vitality, led an extremely monotonous existence as a
watchman," he adds. Also etched in his memory is the image of
his mother, in her moments of extreme anxiety, muttering
Nubian songs, daydreaming of a lost land. "Although it wasn't
easy for a child my age to understand what made her look sad
all the time, I realize now that she resented her inferior
position in the city. She was looking back in anger, longing
to go home," he says.
This
persistent dream of return was the subject of Odoul's first
screenplay. The newly released documentary film The Nubian
Train, directed by Attiyat El-Abnoudy, documents the moment of
departure to the Nubian homeland as a rare moment in the
history of Nubians who live in Alexandria. The 35-minute film
depicts the mixed emotions of thousands of Nubians throughout
their journey from the Alexandria train station to new Nubia
in Komombo north of Aswan. Thousands of people are filmed
carrying luggage and presents to their relatives, while others
are there to say goodbye. Recording such unforgettable moments
in the modern history of Alexandria, Odoul says, fills him
with pride at the feeling that he achieved something
extraordinary by preserving a small part of the history of
Nubians in the mind of all Egyptians. The film, produced by
the National Council of Cinema, also illustrates the trip
itself, which takes place every year before El-Adha feast and
lasts for more than 18 hours. Scenes of people recounting
their memories or singing old Nubian songs to celebrate the
union of a newly married couple are the most intimate parts of
the film.
This preoccupation
with the theme of returning to the homeland has been a running
motif in Odoul's fiction since he first began writing.
Remarkably, he only started writing in his early 40s. "At 20,
when I had completed my studies in high school, I joined the
construction works of the High Dam. I spent almost five years
there to support my family. The place was much like a small
colony where we led a very harsh life. At first I had no
hostile feelings toward the Dam because I believed in Nasser.
But when I realized that the government was deceiving Nubians,
promising them greener pastures which never existed, I started
to hate the rocky Dam which killed the Nile and consequently
killed us," he recalls bitterly. The construction of the Aswan
Dam in 1902 had forced thousands of Nubian peasants, whose
land was submerged under the Nile waters, to either flee to
the mountains or migrate to larger cities. The second wave of
migration was caused by the construction of the High Dam in
the 1960s, when the forced displacement of nearly 1 million
Nubians in 1964 took them first to Komombo in Aswan. Later
thousands of them moved to Alexandria, Cairo or
Suez.
 |
| The Nubian dream to return to
their homeland is the subject of Haggag Odoul
and Attiyat El-Abnoudy's documentary The Nubian
Train, where thousands of Nubians in Alexandria
prepare to take their much-anticipated annual
trip back to their land (above and right).
| | | After the Six-Day War in 1967, Odoul completely
lost faith in Nasser, who, he says, threw the whole country
into dramatic havoc. "I joined the army that year and stayed
there for another seven years. It was an abnormal life. I lost
many friends," he recounts. He felt alienated and unfit for
any job when he ended his service in the army in 1974. It was
at this point of utter despair that he decided to become a
writer. "Writing has been my passion since I was a child, but
I remember that I lacked confidence as a teenager. When I
began writing, I was afraid of writing about Nubia because I
never really lived there. So I started by [exploring] general
human themes until I mustered enough courage to write my first
Nubia-related story, Al-Raheel Ila Nas el Nahr (The Departure
to the People of the River)."
Encouraged by two veteran Nubian writers, Abdel
Wahab El-Aswany and Ibrahim Fahmy, Odoul embarked on his
literary career. "I used to read a lot," he says, "especially
the work of Naguib Mahfouz and Sudanese novelist El-Tayeb
Saleh, whose novel Ors El-Zayn [El-Zayn's Wedding] which
greatly influenced my novella Khali Ga'alu El Makhad [My Uncle
is Attacked by Labor Pains]." Reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
in the light of old Nubian legends - made him more adamant
about the extensive use of legends in his work, he explains.
His exposure to both classic and modern Western currents of
thought was invaluable. "Anton Chekhov, for example, taught me
how to understand and appreciate the weakness of human nature.
I learned how to love the characters of my stories no matter
how weak or evil they were," he says. His recently published
novel Ma'touk El-Kheir (Ma'touk, The Good Man), which was
released last month, is a 1,200-page tome and the product of
three years of continuous work on the history of old Nubia and
other primitive communities. The epic novel, which appears in
two volumes and was published by the Higher Council of
Culture, discusses the transition from agricultural
communities to the emergence of cities and capitalism. In this
novel, Odoul plays the role of the observer, refusing to pass
judgment on either state.
 |
| In The Nubian Train, director
Attiyat El-Abnoudy captures the primitive,
virgin stillness of the new Nubia as it rests
majestically in the middle of the ancient river.
| | | Odoul attributes the recent resurgence of
interest in Nubian culture firstly to the success of the two
internationally recognized Nubian singers Mohammed Mounir and
the late Ahmed Muneeb. The second major reason is the
publication of Nubian literature in Arabic. The first
collection of Nubian poems by the late Mohammed Ibrahim Idris
entitled Zelal El-Nakheel (The Shade of the Palm Trees) paved
the way, encouraging other Nubian authors to write in Arabic.
The migration of Nubians to big cities persuaded some to
become more actively involved in their new communities. Hence
the emergence of Nubian idols like novelists Yehia Mokhtar and
Mohammed Khalil Kassem, and singer Mohammed Hammam who played
a political role as leading members of the communist party and
were imprisoned for years for their political beliefs and
their call for the liberation of Egypt. "But Nubian people are
very peaceful. Even when we were forced to move after the
submersion of our land, we did not show any acts of aggression
or violence against the government at the time," Odoul
adds.
In the final scene of
The Duet of El-Koshar, everything departs the Nubian land:
people, animals and even palms trees. Does this metaphorically
imply the departure of Nubia itself from history? "After 1964
we lost our land, and now we are losing our language and most
of our traditions. Generally speaking, I believe that any
cultural specificity is based on two pillars: the race and the
environment that creates the language and traditions. The
Nubians acquired many bad habits from the cities to which they
emigrated, and this has impaired our authenticity," he says
bluntly. "People acquire their identity through their
existence in a certain place, therefore if the place loses its
people, there will be no place and no history. The soil can
feel its people and, sadly, both were in a state of
departure." But although he strongly believes that Nubian
culture is slowly disintegrating, his ardent hope for return
will forever be reflected in his
works.et
![]() |
