|
|
 Re: اتحاد كتاب مصر فرع الإسكندرية يجمد عضوية الاديب النوبي حجاج أدّول !!! (Re: عاكف مختار)
|
Voice from the south
Cairo Magazine
http://www.cairomagazine.com/?modul...261&format=html
Voice from the south
Haggag Hassan Oddoul keeps Nubian heritage alive on stage and page
By Richard Woffenden
The newly published English translation of The Nights of Musk is a lovely work that is implicitly political yet deeply personal. Haggag Hassan Oddoul’s recreation of the humanity, lore and magic of a lost Nubian world is deeply moving even without considering that most of his homeland (and the setting for the stories) is now underwater.
Oddoul was actually born in Alexandria, where his father had moved looking for work in 1944. Employed on the High Dam project for five years, he didn’t start to write until the 1980s. By the 1990s he was well-known for both his award-winning books and plays, becoming the foremost literary chronicler and champion of Nubian culture.
“The environment of a people is essential to the nature of all civilizations,” he says. “If you take the people away from their environment you create a schism. Without a return to Nubia, the culture will dissolve; in fact the collective persona of the Nubian people is dissolving already. It began to blur with the start of the migration and is becoming worse. For example, my Nubian identity is less strong than that of my grandfather. The generation after mine is even weaker. Individual Nubians are of course evolving but the collective identity is fading away.”
The new collection of short stories that make up Nights of Musk depict not the Nubia of ancient history—though it looms in the background—but the Nubia of the not-too-distant past, where the impact of the High Dam built during the 1960s is ever-present. Oddoul never chastises or lectures. His beautiful stories, well-selected by translator Anthony Calderbank, gently illustrate the internal conflicts that arise from displacement and subtly describe the depths of tradition and culture.
Oddoul’s play Nas Al Nahr (The River People), which mourned and celebrated Nubian culture, was performed in Cairo in 1999. “Audiences were shocked and were asking: ‘Is there really a Nubian problem?’—even the intellectuals, who actually enjoyed the play!” says Oddoul.
“The Nubians who saw it in Cairo found it very interesting, particularly to see a play with a Nubian cast,” he adds. “They said they watched it with a mixture of sadness and great joy.”
The greatest challenge came, however, when the play was taken on the road down to Nubia itself.
“On the train on the way to Aswan, the director [Nasser Abdel Moneim] and the cast were all scared,” recounts Oddoul. “The saying goes that ‘you don’t take water to the road of fountains’ and as they were all Cairo-based Nubians they thought they might be laughed at when they were dancing and singing.”
“But it was the complete opposite,” Oddoul recalls happily, “The theater had a capacity of 400 people and was filled with over 600, with around 200 people trying to get in. They saw that this was the first respectable attempt to portray the problem.”
Similar in the precision of his style to writers like Tayeb Saleh and Chinua Achebe, Oddoul is a true post-colonial writer—but the colonial power has its capital in Cairo. Although his stories are not overtly political, when interviewed he speaks of the Egyptian government’s attempts “to dissolve the Nubian identity” and blames racism towards Nubians for the dilution of his culture.
“Compare our situation with that of the Canal Cities,” he says. “After the 1967 war, they sent [the inhabitants] back and restored all the cities. With the Nubians, they did nothing of the sort. It is racism. They have built on our land twice now. When they had the chance to make some agricultural land available with the Toshka project, they made sure the 15,000 feddans were sold to investors to make sure the Nubians didn’t return.”
The Nubian Museum in Aswan “was a UNESCO project,” says the writer. “The world celebrates Nubian culture. The Egyptian government wanted to call the museum the Aswan Museum, not the Nubian Museum. UNESCO had to insist it be Nubian.”
While he doesn’t call for a Nubian state—“the whole world would refuse it!” – Oddoul calls for a recognition of Nubian cultural identity and a plan to make it economically feasible for Nubians to return if they wish to. He remains optimistic. “I believe that humans have the capability to get over these differences and this will happen through a rendezvous of cultures.”
Nights of Musk, by Haggag Hassan Oddoul. AUC Press, 2005. LE70
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست