سبق @@صحفى لجريدة كردفان@@ قبل نصف قرن

During my early childhood at my hometown Bara in Kordofan, I used to come to my father's shop in the market place every day after school and stay there until late afternoon. On Saturday and Tuesday of each week, I used to read the Krodofan newspaper to an audience of elderly relatives who gathered regularly under a mighty niem tree in front of my father's shop discussing past and new issues, praying, and laughing gingerly. But they always follow their laughter by a murmur and unreservedly one after the other end by their favored term istagfaru Allah (May God forgive us). Twice a week I took the same paper home and also read it to an audience of women who included my mother, grandmother, some relatives, women neighbors and friends. One day I read a strange story that was reported by a person nicknamed Abu Nadarah (the spectacled person, or a person with eyeglasses). The story alleged that the Sharia Qadi of the city sexually molested some of the women who visited his house seeking baraka (or blessings). The Qadi was from a very famous family with a strong political presence and influence in Omdurman and a historical religious power base and fellowship in al-Obied, where the paper was published and enjoyed a high degree of respect in Bara (the city where the Qadi assumed a high status and a leading position in a relatively short time.) For some people in the city at that time that person was an extraordinary character whose baraka could be sought.
The story describes in details how the reporter and one of his friends disguised themselves as women and accompanied a group of females who visited the Qadi's house one night and how one of the females rushed out of the room shocked and horrified. The trembling lady and her company left the house and in their way home that woman described to her company what happened from the Qadi.
My male audience was stunned, outraged and agitated in a manner I had never witnessed before. I was instructed by those old relatives not to take the paper home for that day and not to talk to anybody about that particular story. The next day the city was divided among itself. Some accused the communists and their disrespect for anything religious for inventing the story. Others, furious that al-Fatih al-Nur, the owner and editor of the paper, acted irresponsibly by publishing such a story. A third group kept speculating about the character of Abu Nadara, and whether he was a true or a fictional character. Very few people believed the story.
On Friday the Qadi took to the main Mosque in the city which was more than usually full of curious, bewildered and a clearly disturbed audience. The Qadi recited a long poem in which he threatened Abu Nadara with combustion in fire. His angry words were in many ways not convincing to the skeptics and the cynics of the city whose numbers started to grow. Abu Nadara wasted no time to respond with more details to his basic story adding more to the already brewing feelings of doubt, anger and confusion. And when the situation became very tense in the city the judicial authorities immediately called the Qadi back to Khartoum putting an end to that episode, and the state of semi-standoff that started to develop between the Qadi and some of the citizens who were no longer satisfied by his intimidating poems. For Bara and its close-net community things were never the same since that day Abu Nadara broke that story, because the events he described were perceived as harmful and damaging to the bonding of trust in long held beliefs in the adherence to righteousness of such people as the Qadi. On the one hand, and for some old people in particular, that tale was one of the signs of the end of the time. On the other hand, it was clear to most people that such an old style of "[g]ossip is no longer the source of the idle and the vicious, but has become a trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery." (Peters 1999).
But why this particular event, seems today, and perhaps was even then, so important for introducing Kordofan the Journal and al-Fatih al-Nur, the journalist?
Al-Fatih, who was born in al-Obied in 1923 and died last year (2000), brought to our attention that his approach to journalism was ijtihadi (self-made) and he did what he did as a passion rather than a profession to be pursued for money or fame. As Peters argues, communication is "a registry of modern longings," I would like to look at the man and his legacy within my own longings. For me, al-Fatih's biggest accomplishment was that he tried to the best of his ability to provide through his writings and his newspaper some kind of "fellowship of thought” within the boundaries of Western Sudan: Kordofan and Dar Fur. Secondly, the man was faithful to the themes and beliefs of the type of journalism he prefigured through his ijtihad. Thirdly, the style he created and followed was contemporaneous with the development of events in his region, and for that reason, it might remain challenging and intriguing to revisit the archives of the paper and the writings of the man every now and then. Much can be learnt by looking at the evolution of the paper issue by issue and year by year. In the heart of Kordofan—the paper—through-out its journalistic activity, when can easily identify a certain type of national consciousness in, at least, four diverse ways. First, that Kordofan the space or Kordofan al-gara um kharan bra, (Kordofan the plentiful whose wealth is at reach) has been and might continue to be the base for a unified field of action and an example of social integration for different Sudanese ethnic groups. So, those groups of Kordofanis, the jallaba, and other Sudanese ethnic groups who already took advanced steps in that direction, through their different patterns of socialization, have reached a higher degree of understanding and integration by the help of such a journal. And by that they formed a prototype of the new Sudanese social order. Second, Kordofan the region, which was a major contributor to the national income, has always received less than it should have. Third, to overcome such problems, a certain type of decentralization needs to be established for the whole country. Fourth, Kordofanis and Darfuris should raise their voices and make their cultural contribution known outside the boundaries of western Sudan. Of course, the potential of the newspaper was limited and therefore its stretch and influence to make such a project a program of action was also limited. But for the legacy of a remarkable communicator and a journalist and the influence of a specialized institution of communication to become clear, two things have to be considered:
First: historically speaking, Kordofan newspaper was established in 1945, almost half a century after the Khartoum Arabic press, by a self-educated young businessman, with very modest journalistic training, and who was not interested at the beginning to be its editor. Nevertheless, it was outstandingly successful, perhaps because it tried to build its own tradition and to develop its distinguishing journalistic practice. One of the very important factors in this respect was the strong relationship between the newspaper and three sectors of the population of the two provinces: (1) the elementary and middle schools teachers, lorry drivers, telephone and telegram operators, and other government clerks who made most of its sixty seven correspondents spreading across the cities and villages of Kordofan and Darfur. (2) the rising numbers of Kordofani and government educated elite in al-Obied the capital of Kordofan province, and later along with the Khor Taqqat High school teachers and students who found in the newspaper a forum ready to mirror and disseminate their intellectual, literary and political and expressive activities beyond the school sphere. Through time, a core group of friends circled around the paper and its editor and acted as news sources, columnists, advisors and editors. (3) Finally, it was the business sector which was part of the nationwide Jellaba networks and who found in the newspaper a good source of information about crops, its production and prices.
It was from that structuring of the newspaper that a new approach of journalism and communication came into being, which was more effective than the traditional face-to-face modes of communications were. The topics of the newspaper were focused to serve the Kordofan and Darfur communities as imagined or represented by these diverse groups that served the paper as reporters, correspondents and writers. The sum and substance of what the newspaper carried were current news reports, short and long article addressing everything understood to be of interest to its readers in Kordofan and Darfur, and opinion. Its simple style popularized news from different cities and villages, crop production, prices and markets, medical, electrical, and water supply services, arrival and departure of government employees and businessmen, poetry, sports, women issues and criticism to different types of practices. For the ordinary Kordofani the paper was kisrat al-beat (home lunch) as opposed to other papers that represent a different type of fast food.
Within this approach to communication and journalism, it is easy to see the fundamental changes that had taken place in the modes of recognition, appreciation, acceptance and rejection of the western Sudan world and its surroundings. The characteristic feature and the motto of the newspaper were: Al-islah min gaidat al-harm ila gimathi. That is to say reform should be carried out from the bottom of the pyramid to its top. Within this context, the role of the newspaper within the reform process was two folds. In one sense, one of the major responsibilities of the paper was to support and speak for the voiceless. Stories in the paper through its lifetime emphasize that pattern and had been repeated successfully. Al-Fatih al-Nur has been citing his paper's support for the Nuba Mountains cotton farmers' right for fair treatment as a prime example in this respect. The paper published fifteen articles, reports and interviews revealing the injustices those farmers were subjected to and demanding fair treatment, better prices, and a union that could speak for those farmers. In many ways, other stories addressing different issues of inequality, injustice and abuse were part of the paper's preoccupations for most of its lifetime.
On the other hand, another major practice of Kordofan and its editor was the mechanism through which human relations developed. Ahmed Yousif Hashim, (Abu al-suhuf: the father of Sudanese press and the founder of al-Sudan al-Jadeed), wrote an article after visiting his friend al-Fatih al-Nur in al-Obied titled: Is it a House of a Journalist or a bail Provider? It was al-Nur's way to use his good offices to resolve conflicts, solve some problems and suggest solutions instead of publishing the stories that captured the attention of the dean of Sudanese journalism.
It is important to know that, Kordofan succeeded in building different levels and structures of correspondents, reporters and friends most of whom including the editor were volunteers. At each instance, we need to remember the high estimation of teachers and educated elite—at that time--in Sudanese culture and the status allocated to them as social agents in the shaping and formulation of public opinion. In this process readers, writers and editors found a new common ground to "explore the outer limits of human connection and to weigh the demands we place on one another" (Peters 1999). But as Peters maintains, communication is "a sink into which most of our hopes and fears seem to be poured" (Peters 1999). A situation that brought growing numbers of "people to think about themselves to others, in profoundly new ways" (Anderson 1983).
I wonder whether it was a coincident that person in my hometown at that particular time called himself Abu Nadara?