‘Voices from Nubia’: On a New Look at Nubian Literature in Egypt

By ArabLit Staff

The collection Voices from Nubia: Critical Essays on Contemporary Nubian Literature from Egypt, ed. Amal Mazhar, Faten I. Morsy, and Mona M. Radwan, was recently published by Punctum Books, and an ebook version is available free on their website. The collection contains both scholarly essays and interviews with Egyptian Nubian writers.

Editor Mona Radwan answered a few questions about the collection via voice notes; her remarks have been edited slightly for clarity and length.

Can you tell us a little more about how this collection came about? Of course we know from the introduction that it began when you were working on a research paper on Dongola by Idris Ali, who brought you to the Nubian Club, where you also met the Nubian poet Mohy el-Deen Saleh, among other Nubian writers and members of the Egyptian Nubian community. You called the visit an eye-opener. Can you talk a little more about that?

Mona Radwan: This collection, Nubian Voices, came about when I was working on a paper about Idris Ali’s Dongola, when I noticed the scarcity of books and articles on Nubian literature, even in Arabic.

I was also fascinated by the literary production. The Nubians’ plight in the 1960s under forced dislocation from their homes in over 40 villages — to build the High Dam in Egypt — cost them a lot of hardship, to say the least. And this was hardly discussed or spoken about publicly.

I became engrossed in reading about their losses and suffering, and Idris Ali was also very helpful, and gave me most of his novels and reviews written about his work. Then he took me to the Nubian Club in Abdeen and introduced me to some of the Nubian people who were there at the time, and Mohy el-Deen Saleh, the Nubian poet, was one of them. He was wearing the Nubian white gallabeya and headdress, which was truly enchanting.

Later on, I realized that working on one paper was not enough to represent the literary output. Therefore, the idea of an edited book, with a number of chapters, began to surface in my mind. The editors and I tried to cover the main grounds of Nubian literature in this collection: the short story, novel, poetry, and drama are represented in our book. We also tried to cover the major Nubian writers, but we could not include all of them, unfortunately.

Many Nubians live in Abdeen, which is a lower-middle-class area where the Nubian Club was. I admired their kindness and their willingness to help me in my project. The club was a sign of their need to preserve their traditions — it was a very humble flat, and yet it was where they would hold seminars regularly and meet there to socialize with other Nubians.

Where do we start a story of Nubian literature, if we were going to tell it chronologically? What are the major pivot points, in addition to the forced relocations that came as a result of the Aswan Dam and the “Nubian awakening” of the 1980s, and how do they relate to what you’ve called the three waves of Nubian literature?

MR: The story of Nubian literature began in 1948 with the publication of a collection of poems, ظلال النخيل (Under the Shade of the Palm Trees), by Muhammad Abdul Rahim Idris. Then there was, in the 1960s, the publication of the first novel, which was called الشمندورة (The Buoy), by Muhammad Khalil Qassim.

As for the Nubian Awakening, it occurred in the 90s, according to Haggag Oddoul and Christine Gilmore, a researcher on Nubian literature, when a number of Nubian writers aspired that their writing, as Gilmore writes, constitute a distinct form of literary regionalism within the broader field of Arabic literary production, rather than a mere subsection of the Egyptian literature. It was Oddoul and Mara Naaman who noted the three distinct waves of Nubian literature. Our edited collection tackles works from the second and third waves only, as there was only one poetry collection published from the first wave, as I said in 1948.

Can you talk about the controversy around the term “Nubian literature” and the focus on it as distinct from Arabic literature? 

MR: There was indeed a lot of controversy about the term Nubian literature, as most Egyptians are against secessionist ideas, and any calls for the separation of Nubia, or Nubian literature, from Egyptian literature is — for most Egyptians — absolutely unimaginable. Even within Nubian writers, there those who approved of calling it Nubian literature, like Haggag Oddoul, and there are those who were against calling it so, as Yahya Mukhtar. For the latter, it was simply Arabic literature.

This book gives the impression that Nubian literature is a male-dominated space, more than Egyptian literature. Women scholars dominate the collection — and there is your interesting look at ecofeminist issues in novels by Idris Ali — but outside of Zeinab Alkordy’s زهرة الجنوب and Samar Nour’s محلك سر , I can’t remember other works by women being mentioned?

The fact that Nubian literature is, as you say, a male-dominated space is a result of the fact that many Nubian families, in the past, were against educating their girls. And I discussed this issue in my chapter. When Ghada, one of the characters in the novel Playing on Nubian Mountains, started teaching Nubian girls how to read and write, her Nubian grandmother stopped this project and circumcised Ghada by force. But when Nubians moved from Nubia to other cities in Egypt, things began to change. Yet there are still few women writers. The only two Nubian women writers I know of are Zeinab Alkordy and Samar Nour.

If we were to list off off the Egyptian Nubian literature available in translation, what should we add?

Idris Ali’s Dongola, translated by Peter Theroux (1997)

Idris Ali’s Poor, translated by Elliott Colla (2005)

Haggag Oddoul’s My Uncle Is In Labor! translated by Ahmed Fathy (2008)

Haggag Oddoul’s Nights of Musk: Stories from Old Nubia, translated by Tony Calderbank (2009). 

Yehia Mokhtar’s short story “Kawila,” translated by Nivin El-Asdoudi (2013) 

Yasser Abdellatif’s The Law of Inheritance, translated by Robin Moger (2018)

Samar Nour’s short stories “A Room of Sabry’s Own,” translated by Enas Eltorky (2019) and “The Sarcophagus Maker’s Daughter,” translated by Enas El-Torky (2019)

MR: I believe these are the only Nubian works in translation. I hope to see more Nubian works translated into English and other languages.

What other Nubian literature would you like to see in English translation, or indeed in translation in other world languages?

MR: To name but a few: Haggag Oddoul’s novel الكشر, which is Nubian for “the key.” And he is a prolific writer, so I believe his other works should be translated, too. There is also Hassan Nour’s بين النهر والجبل  (Between the River and the Mountain). Indeed, I hope all their literary writings will be translated into various languages, and I hope our book gets translated into Arabic soon.