Return to Sinnar

Poetry: Dr. Mohamed Abdel Hai

The poem "Return to Sennar", by the great poet Dr. Mohamed Abdel Hai, is one of the most segnificant poems that discuss the issue of Sudanese identity. It was part of the formation of the "Forest and Desert" movement, which began in the sixties of the last century. A group of great poets contributed to the formation of this poetic and cultural movement. Some of the most notable poets were Al-Nour Othman Abkar, Muhammad Al-Makki Ibrahim, Dr. Youssef Aidabi, and Abdullah Shabo.

We have chosen this poem among many written about ancient Sudanese cities and kingdoms, dating back to 1963 AD, and it is also considered one of the leading poems within the currents of modern poetry in Sudan and even in the Arab world.

Extract from the poem

Tonight my people welcome me:

The spirits of my ancestors emerge from

the silver of river dreams, and from

the night of names

They take on the bodies of children.

They breathe into the lungs of the holy Maddah

and with a forearm

strike across the drummer's arm.

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Tonight my people welcome me:

They gave me a rosary made of the teeth of the dead

a skull jug a buffalo-skin prayer mat

A symbol that shines between palm and ebony tree

A language that rises like a spear

from the body of the earth

and across the sky of the wound.

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Tonight my people welcome me.

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The forest and the desert were

A naked woman asleep

on a bed of lightning waiting for

Her divine bull that visits in the darkness.

The horizon of the face and the mask were one.

Blooming in the sultanate of innocence

and the sludge of beginnings

On the border of light and darkness between waking and sleeping.

(1963)

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Cover picture © Zainab Gaafar, children on a roundabout, Sinnar City, 2018