The Trojan Duck (2)

عبد الله علي إبراهيم

هذه مقالة عن كتاباتي عن نشأتي في بيئة للحداثة في مدينة عطبرة بسكك حديدها في محاولة للتعرف على حقيقة اجتماعية وسياسية جديدة هي المدينة. فنحن ما نزال في الغالب نحاكم أنفسنا ونتحاكم إلى القرية كأن المدينة طارئ بلا بصمات على خلق كثير منا. فكثيراً ما قلت لبعض أهل القرى من حولي ممن استنكروا ماركسيتي مثلاً أنهم لم يكونوا ربما في الحواضن التي نفذت لنا منها هذه النظرية ليتلقوها كما تلقيناها. ولا تخول لهم براءتهم من دمغ المدينة هذا وابتلاءاتها أن يظنوا أنهم على الهوية السودانية الحق وما عداها شغب أجنبي أدار رؤوس أمثالي. وهو السياق الذي طالبت فيه كثيراً أن يتواضع فيه هؤلاء القوم ويقبلوا ب"الحق في المدينة" عن طيب خاطر.
نشرت المقالة في مجلة تصدر عن معهد الدراسات الأفريقية والعالمية بجامة نورثوسترن بالولايات المتحدة في شتاء 1996. وعربتها ونشرتها في جريدة "الرأي العام" وهي من قلائل ما لا احتفظ به في أرشيفي. وتزول الغمة ونبحث عنها. وأهديها لشباب المهاجر الأمريكية ممن أتقنوا الإنجليزية ولم يجدوا ربما نصاً ميسراً عنا فيها.
In my play, Trains have Shortened Distance, and Very Much So (1974), I dramatize the precautions of this first generation of migrants against succumbing to the temptations of the town. An emigrant who works for an Egyptian, Coptic family brings a duck home to his village, a bird not traditionally raised by the Sudanese. His friends are amused by this slow-paced, wooden-structured, unproportional, beaked fowl. One friend, the village fanatic, asks him:
“What do you say to turn this bird away?”
“I don’t know.”
“You say you don’t know?”
“That is what I said.”
“Did I hear you correctly?”
“I am afraid you did.”
“Why didn’t you ask the Copt the thing they say when they want to turn this bird away?”
“I don’t know.”
(He turns to the others) “This is bad news. We say ham to pigeons, and they go away. We say haw to jackasses and they leave us alone. We say kar to chickens and they stop bothering us. We say tak to goats and they let go. (Turning to the one who brought the duck). And here you are allowing a bird in our midst, and you don’t have a clue to how you make it turn away.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“What if it bugs you?”
“I just didn’t think of that.”
“Oh God. Oh, my God. A thing you don’t know how to command is there to stay. Oh, my God. We are implicated in the world. We are done for.”
Women: Embracing Modernity
Women embraced city life. They wanted to join their husbands because village life was tough. They brought the water from the river or the well, they did the weeding, fed the livestock, milked the cows and goats. Worst of all, in the absence of her husband, a woman was dominated by her mother-in-law, who demanded to be respected and served. The songs of the women equate going to the cities with liberation from village chores:
O son of my aunt (my husband)
if you really want my comfort and happiness
send me the vouchers for a ticket to join you
I pour drinking water from the tap
cook in a pot that has a lid
go to Khartoum and rest
and every Friday we pay homage
to our Saint’s tomb
It was no surprise that women opted for the modernity of the towns. Women, amidst the amenities of electric lights and tap water, looked back at their villages in anger:
Our village
you son of a bitch
I adore Shendi town
that civilized us
Women liked marriage as a means of social and geographic mobility that could move them from the village to the town: but a marriage that did the reverse caused problems. In the village, the ideal marriage was the father’s brother’s daughter marriage, in which a woman married her paternal cousin. But city girls were loath to marry a cousin still in the village. A female relative of mine was forced to marry a paternal cousin back in the village. The marriage lasted less than two years because she was a city girl.

Women: Left Behind
Early on, most migrant workers left their women behind in the village. As late as 1961, the dominance of women in villages left a powerful impression on me when I returned for vacation. I drew on their fervent celibacy in creating the “village women’s chorus” in my play, The Wound and the Crown-Crane (1973). In the opening of the play, the chorus laments the catastrophic dimensions of their abstinence:
O catastrophe
Alas, your breath sucked out dew
Our farms are beds of greenery
Why do you negligently tread them
With vengeance
Our bodies are from the clay of the pure fallow earth
Why do the pimples of epidemics
blossom on them?
Our daughters and sons
have yet to understand
the grammar of desire and fulfillment
How did you tempt them into early widowhood?
In my village, a religious man named Sheik al Ijami did not like this celibacy either. The bodies of women, cracking under the burden of desire, were an open invitation to Satan, so Ijami gathered these women for religious teachings. If bodies could not be nourished, disciplining them would be the only alternative. He preached to the women about the Prophet and the piety of his wives, about loyalty and family ethics. This was very unconventional in a religion conceived to be a discourse addressing men.
Local members of a national religious brotherhood did not like Ijami’s reform movement. They accused him of associating with the women to satisfy himself. We grew up believing Ijami and his sect were immoral. We were told that their co-rituals climaxed with a call for putting off the light and “molesting the mermaids.” We used to follow the brotherhood’s youth group on their parades. When the group reached Ijami’s house, they would shout: “O unbelievers, beware!” We kids shouted too.
In 1981, I interviewed Ijami’s son and asked about the accusations launched at his father. He said his father was worried that the women had been left behind and that something should be done to help them. He added that his father’s movement had gathered momentum because of discussing religion directly with women. In fact, among his first recruits were the husbands of women who had attended his preachings. On return to villages, husbands were astounded by the religiosity of their wives

ibrahima@missouri.edu