New Short Fiction from Sudan: ‘The Drunken Donkey’

The Drunken Donkey

Dr. Abuelgasim Gour

Translated by Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour

Among all the donkeys, my aunt Um Makhayan’s donkey was the one that enjoyed gnawing on the Saheb tree, which flourished to the west of our neighborhood. The tree was green in all seasons: green in summer, and green at the peak of the rainy season, too. Hers was a gray donkey with a thick neck, the kind of donkey that’s called adubalwi in western Sudan. The donkey would head off every day to gnaw the Saheb tree until its front teeth had engraved a donkey-sign on the tree’s trunk—no other donkey could have matched it.

Once a day, my aunt’s daughter Jangoody threw out the alkajanah brewing waste behind the hut. It was a decent enough place to toss the waste of the local brewery, and the birds would enjoy such leftovers. On that day, the remaining brewer’s waste had congealed into a porridge. Another of my aunts, al-Dhabia, had missed her visit to my grandmother Tarfanah, who had been dying for almost a year. My grandmother had turned a hundred fifty years old, and she’d been living in a straw-built cottage south of the river. Her death was an exceedingly slow and monotonous one, as she had been completely unconscious for a year. But, at the same time, she’d been drawing signs with her right hand to indicate the shape of her grave. She thought that the grave should be a long one, placed under a poppy tree. That, according to her African beliefs, was how the souls of the dead could settle. My aunt Um Makhayan’s donkey had become the only means of transport from our house on the north side of the river to my grandmother’s house on the south side.

Our donkey walked that way often enough that it had learned its way by heart. As it happened, on that day, the donkey had drunk too much of the brewing sludge mixed in with a great pile of mushk. My aunt al-Dhabia had just mounted the donkey; her skinny legs dangled on either side of the donkey’s flanks, her feet shod in Um Chenk sandals made of cow leather. The donkey brayed and ran off, kicking its hind legs, which was strange for this kind of donkey, which was famous for its calm stupidity. Our donkey was expected to walk directly to our grandmother’s cottage on the southern side of the river. At the spot where the donkey crossed the river, the flocks of birds would fly off. When it reached the southern bank, the leaves of Um Gato trees that floated in the river would be stuck to our donkey’s belly, and it would shake off its ears like a skilled swimmer.

It wasn’t just a river in the usual sense; rather, it was a swamp filled with insects, mosquitoes, and some African weeping turtles. There was a reason the swamp had been here for thousands of years. An old legend had it that, in the past, this river had been what separated the world of goodness from the world of evil. A tribe of Firshani had lived along the southern bank, and a battle took place between the tribe and a monster with seventy heads, after which our ancestors went to live north of the swamp.

Except for my grandmother, who preferred to stay in her straw cottage south of the river. Her cottage was a strange one. It looked like it was barely wider than a hut, and it was built on tree roots. There was a rope ladder, and one couldn’t get to the hut without having to sweat one’s way in. She often said that, in this world, nothing could be done without sweating. In fact, there was nothing that had bothered my grandfather except my grandmother’s refusal of the agony of death. She resisted dying, sometimes by singing loudly with her throaty voice that she would never die. My grandfather said this often, as he covered his gray head with a big hat made of doum palm fronds and embellished with strands of hair from our donkey’s tail.

That day, the donkey didn’t go south to the swamp. Instead, it unfurled its ears toward the east and brayed as loudly as a horse. At that moment, our donkey shot off like wind, and my aunt al-Dhabia and her daughter Jangoody tried to calm it down, without success. At the beginning, it seemed to be a kind of joke, but gradually the donkey disappeared from sight—it disappeared with my aunt and her daughter on its back.

This wasn’t a simple matter, to be ignored by the men of our village, and they called for an emergency meeting. Usually, an emergency meeting was announced by blowing a big horn until all the men gathered in a state of readiness for war, armed by spears and axes. The aged village Sheikh, with his weathered black teeth, said: What has happened proved that this wasn’t a donkey. It was a ghost in the shape of a donkey. Some men shot back that this wasn’t true. They said that my aunt’s donkey, a real donkey descended from a thoroughbred mother, had mated publicly. It was only that my aunt’s donkey had drunk a huge amount of brewer’s waste, and then it got drunk and lost control.  The differences between the two parties intensified. The first party called itself the Party of the Drunken Donkey, and the second party called itself the Party of Ghost Donkey. After the donkey’s disappearance, having shot off with my aunt and her daughter like a smart missile through the wilderness, the people of the village were changed. We tried to resolve the conflict with a vote, but that turned up more differences. That night, our village slept free of donkeys’ braying.

Dr. Abuelgasim Gour is a Sudanese professor of criticism and philosophy. His international fame as a public figure is for his substantive contributions in the real of Peace Studies and negotiations. As a scholar, he has written extensively in the fields of theater and literature from critical and anthropological perspectives. He has published critical, creative, and academic writings both in English and in Arabic books. Dr. Abuelgasim Gour works as a visiting professor and international consultant for many international agencies and think-tanks, including United Nations University in Kenya.

Nassir A-Sayeid Al-Nour is a critic, author, and translator.

With art by Sudanese artist Osama Ahmed Ali.