Another Dimension of Loss

By Sara Elnagar

Another dimension of loss 

With war and alongside the death, destruction and displacement of humans and their possessions and homes comes the inevitable loss of a nation or community’s cultural heritage. This can be tangible heritage, in the case of Sudan we are talking of 1000-year-old artefacts at Sudan’s National Museum, to the poignant murals of martyrs of the 2019 revolution that decorated public spaces around the capital, and intangible heritage or the things we do within our communities that make us Sudanese. 

In a 2009 American film Attack on Darfur, which I recently came across on YouTube, the pillaging, murder and torching of homes committed by the Janjaweed in the early 2000s against Darfur villages is graphically re-enacted. What struck me about these scenes was the gut-wrenching similarity to the Sudanese people’s experience of the war currently being fought in Sudan. These parts of the film were extremely powerful, overtaking the significance of the American saviour narrative at the core of the production. In one scene, a Darfuri man shows one of the American journalists, who was there to document the atrocities, a bundle of parchments which he explains lists his lineage and his place within the local community and hence his existence. Later in the film we see the Janjaweed attacking the camp and torching straw huts setting the parchments alight. The implication is that even if the man and his family survive, they have been cut off from their past and have lost an integral part of their identity. 

In a recent discussion with a friend, we were talking about how people form sentimental attachments to ‘things’ which they surround themselves with and which make them feel like who they are; a particular ring, a certain scarf, or a coin. These things can include experiences and involve wider groups like for example the way traditional perfumes are made for Sudanese weddings. This process, in the case of my own family, is an extremely long and arduous one but which is such an important social gathering, from breaking up the scented wood into small twig sizes, roasting a special kind of shell in sand before crushing and adding it to the mixture, squeezing dozens of oranges, and sitting over a coal stove stirring it all with sugar, adding small doses of perfumes and scented oils for hours on end. 

On a personal level, I have lost forever items of my own tangible heritage, like a couple of bashari bowls, the sturdy old ceramic bowls with blue patterns, given to me by my grandmother who told me they had been used to hold the henna for all the family’s celebrations since the 1930s. Or the beautiful brass tray with intricate motifs and Arabic calligraphy which was a present from my mother-in-law, whose father was trader and who had brought it back from his travels in the 1920s. Today there is no sign of the bowls while the mangled remnants of the tray can just about be distinguished amongst the black rubble that remains of our blown out living room. 

To be cut off so abruptly from the items and experiences that were at once, familiar and comforting, is painful. However, there is some comfort in knowing that I, and those around me, still have these memories so that although the tangible items are gone, our experiences can be recreated albeit in a different place and maybe one day back in Sudan. 

Sara Elnagar is a freelance journalist and cultural critic currently residing in the United Kingdom. She was living in Khartoum.

*This is an original piece written exclusively for PeaceofSudan.Space and has not been published elsewhere.