I received the following message from Professor Dr.
Haidar Ibrahim Ali; head of the Sudanese Studies Centre. I knew the honorable
man more than thirty years ago. He is a prestigious Sudanese professor and
thinker. I do not exaggerate when I say that he is a human thinker whose
thought and human composition exceed limits of nationalism.
Professor Dr. Haidar comments in his message or it’s
better to say he gives evidence in his message for what I wrote in a previous
article about Sudan. In that article, I called upon “Almasry alyoum” newspaper
to hold a seminar about the Sudanese-Egyptian relations and invite Sudanese figures
to this seminar. However, the editing management omitted the newspaper’s name
from the article’s heading without prior permission from me. I actually thank
them for such change as it’s more convenient this way since “Almasry” will not
respond to the initiative and in this case, this would have been embarrassing
for both parties; the writer and the publishing institution. Though, I did not
pay attention to this as there are other things more important than discussing
ethics of the relationship combining the publisher and the writer.
Now we come to the message I received from the
Sudanese polymath Dr. Haidar Ibrahim Ali:
Dear Brother Ahmed Elgammal,
I wish you are doing fine. I also wish you a happy new
year in which all your long-awaited wishes can come true. I thank you for your
initiative aiming at pushing away this mode of political depression prevailing
on both sides. Such thing is well seen through the bad language heard, gross discussions
adopted, the inability to conduct an objective dialogue, also in giving green
light for media outlets using vulgar language; the thing that contributes to
messing with the awareness of the masses. Such vulgar and bullying-like
discussions moved to TV studios that became more like spots for consuming
drugs.
I couldn’t believe what I read in the papers and saw
over the screen wondering: Have we really reached this limit of cultural and
political deterioration? As I belong to that generation which has an image of
Egypt in his mind totally different to what takes place on the ground or what
we see and hear. As I witnessed when I was still young prior to independence
the slogans chanted defining the kind of mutual relations with Egypt saying:
“Long live the unity of the Nile Valley.” Such unity was perceived by some as
the unity of the two peoples under the Egyptian royal regime. The Left,
meanwhile, used to say: “Long lives the common struggle;” that was the struggle
against occupation.
At that time, the Egyptian universities were teeming
with Sudanese students. Also tens of brilliant students were dispatched in
“As-Sanhouri study mission” at the end of the forties to France. Later, they
came back to lead the national patriotic movement and some of them even assumed
important positions in the national governments. Sudanese border guards,
meanwhile, were patrolling the Egyptian borders defending their second
homeland. They also made neighborhoods inside Cairo like Ain Shams and Al-Gabal
Al-Asfar look like Sudanese ones. Tens of marriages between Sudanese and
Egyptians took place.
During that period of time, Sudanese poets like Gaili
Abdel-Rahman, Tag as-Serr al-Hassan, Muhammed al-Fitouri, Mohie ed-Din Saber,
Mohie ed-Din Fares, Gemaa’ and Abdullah ash-Sheikh al-Bashir were shining stars
in Egypt’s gatherings of literature people. Before them, al-Akkad encouraged
novelist Mu’awiya Nour to write in As-Siyasa newspaper and he did. Also at
establishing Al-Masa’a newspaper at the beginning of the sixties, Gaili
Abdel-Rahman was assigned the task of supervising the culture page.
As to Sudan during that period of time, Cairo
University – Khartoum branch was considered an academic, intellectual and
cultural enlightening institution. Khartoum University does not forget Dr.
Abdel-Aziz Ishaq who, upon coming back to Egypt, established “the African
League” giving the opportunity for shining stars interested in Africa and Sudan
like Muhammed Fa’eq, Abdel-Malek ‘Ouda, Helmi Sha’rawi and Botros Ghali to
appear.
The best of what was written about Sudan in Arabic was
written by Egyptians; atop of them is Abdel-Magied Abdeen who wrote “History of
Arab culture in Sudan”, also in mid history the reference was Mustafa Musa’ad’s
writings, later were Shawqi al-Gamal, Muhammed Fou’ad Shokri and Nasim Maqar,
in literature were ‘Abd Badawi, Ezz ed-Din Ismail and Muhammed an-Nuwaihi. I
myself have studied in the High Institute for Teachers – later the faculty of
education – at the hands of Dr. Muhammed Zaki al-‘Ashmawi who introduced me to
modern poetry. He used to wander in the lecture hall with his ancient roman
stature reading to us in his sonorous melodic voice poems of Abdel-Mo’ati
Hegazi “The way to the lady” and those of Salah Abdel-Sabour “Hanging Zahran”
and plays like “Oedipus the King”.
I also studied Al-‘Arud or the study of Arabic
prosody and snippets of Semitic Languages at the hands of Dr. Khalil ‘Asaker. Writings
of Dr. Sa’ad Maher Hamza were of the early contributions in economy, also
writings of Dr. Kamal Desouqi in socio-psychology, Salah ed-Din ash-Shami in
geography, Dr. Muhammed Awad Muhammed who authored the copious reference:
“Northern Sudan and its tribes,” also book of Dr. Abdel-Qader Mahmoud titled
“Sufi thought in Sudan” which was the first attempt in this academic branch. We
cannot forget Dr. Muhammed Mohie ed-Din ‘Awad in the branch of Law and Dr.
Tolba ‘Owaida who opened his heart and Zagazig University which he established
for the Sudanese when he came back to Egypt. Many of those who love Sudan
specialized in authoring books about Sudan; such writings were marked by both academic
impartiality and lovingness as well. Atop of them are Mr. Helmi Sha’rawi who
studied in Juba University, late Mr. Youssef ash-Sherif and Mr. Ahmed Hamroush,
and Mrs. Amina an-Naqqash.
We belong to a generation who knows well how blood and
souls of both Egyptians and Sudanese were shed in prisons of Ibrahim Abdel-Hadi
during the royal era. In such regard, Ahmed ar-Refa’i wrote in his biography
titled “Distinguished Leftist” the following: “Few days after I was released, one
of my companions came knocking the door exclaiming: “do you know that Salah
Beshri is dead? And that today is his funeral?” I felt very sad. Salah was my
colleague during my imprisonment time; the Sudanese engineering student diagnosed
with Tuberculosis and who was deprived of medication in order to make him kneel
and surrender,” page 128. A protest holding the corps of the Sudanese patriot
swept Cairo – that was the relation between Egypt and Sudan you Ahmed Moussa
and Tawfiq Okasha. The government sent his body in a military plane to be
buried in his hometown Atbara in an attempt to appease the anger.
At that time, dogmatic groups like muslim brotherhood
and communists used to have common membership in the two countries. For example,
“HADITU” movement had decided that the communist Sudanese becomes automatically
a member of the Egyptian group when he comes to Egypt and vice versa; the
Egyptian member of HADITU becomes automatically member of the Sudanese
communist party when he goes to Sudan.
We shall continue the message and article next week.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in
Almasry alyoum newspaper on January 17, 2018.
To see the original article,
go to:
#almasry_alyoum
#ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #Sudan #Haidar_Ibrahim_Ali #history
