Panel #2B:

"Migrations & Displacements"

Displacement as Translation: A Tale of Three Audiences

Rebecca Lorins
University of Texas at Austin

In this paper, I will discuss the performances and practices of the Kwoto Cultural Center as a strategy of translation. Although the Center's primary audience consists of displaced southerners in Khartoum, they acknowledge a series of other audiences: northern Sudanese, diaspora Sudanese, and funders, sponsors and supporters abroad. This paper focuses particularly on the tension that exists between the work and its message as it is performed for indigenous audiences and as it is translated for the international circuit.

Many members of the Kwoto Cultural Center, an arts and culture organization in Khartoum, were born in 1983, the year of the formal institution of the September Laws, and the year, too, that marks the beginning of Sudan's second civil war. Kwoto, an organization dedicated to the invention and revivification of southern performing arts, is located in Khartoum, the capital in the North, and its very location may, from one perspective, testify to the failure of the state to unify the nation. Although long-term residents of Khartoum, many members of Kwoto perceive their residency as temporary and speak of themselves as operating in exile, away from particular and imagined homes in the South of Sudan. While in the North, they are defined by international law, and most importantly, by themselves, as "displaced persons" and most are Christian. Their status as non-Muslim confers on them second-class citizenship in Sudan and a hostile role vis a vis the state. Still, the theater they produce, and the identifications and associations that they create, are inextricably tied to their modern urban subjectivities. The Center itself rhetorically situates its art and performances as a series of border-crossing tactics; I argue these tactics entail translations: translations of the North for the newly arrived southerner, the southerner for the ignorant northerner, a "United Sudan" for audiences in Abu Dhabi, and the problems of Sudan for an NGO in the Netherlands.

Although I agree with recent calls by scholars for more precise applications of the term "displaced" and "displacement (Assal 2000; El Shazali 1995), I am more interested in this paper in when, how and why the term gets deployed amongst southerners in Khartoum, as both a mode of self-definition and a means toward self-determination. When do performances seek the city as "home" and when is "displacement" invoked? I argue that the employment of the vocabulary of "displacement" can be a means of entering, becoming visible to, and gaining currency in, ongoing international conversations

"A Herdsman's Migration to Khartoum in Ibrahim Shaddad's Film "Insan"

Andrea Flores Khalil
City University of New York

This paper will focus on the images of migration from the Sudanese rural areas to urban centers through the film Ínsan. This film-short entitled Insan (1987) by Sudanese filmmaker Ibrahim Shaddad is only 28 minutes in length. But in that compact filmic narrative, a major critique of a former government in the Sudan is communicated through the most brilliant combination of images. The film makes a considerable contribution to the small corpus of Sudanese films, most of which are not recent or produced by non-Sudanese filmmakers. The film tells the story of a prosperous cattle herder from the Western Sudan who, during the drought of the early 1980s, looses his wife, children and cattle. With one cow remaining, he migrates to Khartoum and winds up living on the streets with no employment. He leaves his cow tied up by the Nile while he wanders in the marketplace, and returns to find his cow has been taken to a lost animal shelter. Eventually he finds his beloved cow Aimera and sneaks her out of the shelter. He is arrested and his right hand is cut off as a punishment. Although this is an unrealistic punishment, the symbolism is clear. The errors of a government ruled by Sharia are capable of dehumanizing the herdsman and depriving him of his personhood. Through a powerful compression of images, the drought comes to represent the last three years of Numeiri’s rule in the Sudan (1969-1984). Both the drought and Numeiri’s rule (according to this film) brought misfortune and ruin to the people of the Sudan.
Khartoum is initially associated with water and thus prosperity, but this illusion is swiftly shattered when the herdsman arrives in the city and is cast out onto the streets. This is a poetic, smart and surprisingly subtle movie is a critique of Numeiri’s Sharia-ruled government. There is no dialogue, and there are no overtly political figures represented. The message is communicated through a poetic association of images.

Saving Souls: Querying the Macro-Political and Religiously Motivated Aid to Displaced Persons of the Sudan

Kevin M. DeJesus
York University

This paper will explore the intersections of religio-ethnic conflict, displacement and refugee protection and assistance in the context of the on-going war inside the Sudan. War-torn societies such as the Sudan are saturated with religiously inspired political projects. Such agendas are often played out through aid programs to displaced persons. Diversity found among Muslim and non-Muslim persons, as is the case with the people of the Sudan, provides for a shared sense of common religious identity among several ecumenical groups in the West. This imagined community of co-religionists inspires many religious activists to involve themselves within these societies, vis-à-vis protection and assistance schemes to displaced persons. Deconstructing such phenomena and exploring the nuances of displacement, religion and aid to those caught up in war are considered through a critical analysis of these dynamics as they relate to the Sudan and its uprooted people.

The Missing Links: Ancient Relations between the Sudan and the Western Frontiers

Ahmed Elyas Hussein
Dept. of History
International Islamic University
Malaysia

The roots of the people of the Sudan date back to a very ancient time. These people established close and continuous relations with the frontiers of the Nile, particularly the western frontiers, where the climatic conditions were completely different from their present-day state. These frontiers at that time were much wetter and green.

The early rise of the Sudanese population and their ancient civilization cannot be interpreted or understood without studying the relations between Sudan and these frontiers. Such study will be the answer to several missing links in Sudanese ancient history, for example:
o    Were the early people of Khartoum and the early people in the Sahara and North Africa, about 15 000 years ago, of the same origin? From where did they come?
o    What were the relations between the culture of early Khartoum and early cultures of the Sahara and North Africa?
o    What was the role of the Saharan center Al Nabta, 100 km west of Abu Simbel, on the early history of Nubia and the rise of the Pharaoh Civilization?
o    Who were the founders of the A Group in Nubia? From where did they come?
o    What is the origin of the word Napata? Does it relate to Al-Nabta of the western frontiers?
o    When did the present-day population of northern Sudan (the Nubians) settle along the Nile? When did the Bija move east?

Such questions cannot be answered without studying the old relations between the Sudan and the western frontiers that extended between the Egyptian oases and Tibesti in the north, and Lake Chad and Darfur in the south. This study suggests a very close link between the early people of Khartoum and the western frontiers thousands of years before the rise of the Egyptian civilization. These contacts developed along the coast of lakes, shores of rivers and the grassy land to the west of Khartoum. It is also suggested that A Group people came from Al-Nabta towards the end of the 4th millennium BCE. If this suggestions proves to be correct then we would be able to originate and identify the Sudanese people to these western frontiers.

Permeable Borders: Their Role in Populating and Moulding Sudan's Culture and Politics

Abdelrahman Al Bashir
(Independent Scholar

Migration has long been an outstanding feature in the history, demography,cultural and political life of the country. The Nile and its tributaries, the great sandy and clay plains in the east, centre and west, have attracted multitudes of people to infiltrate and settle. The Red Sea was no barrier to the influx of tribal Arabs to cross and spread the new faith. As part of the great Arab exodus, tribal groups crossed into Egypt, to North Africa and southwards to enter the Sudan through Darfur and Kordufan. Intermingling took place with the indigenous populace, and by the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Nubian Kingdom became Arabized and Muslim.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a West African migratory movement towards the Sudan was triggered through the notion of the hijra in the face of European occupation and severe cycles of draught and famine. The meaning of "home" was conceived to engulf Muslim land along the Savannah Belt. Muslim and animist Fulani groups revived their legend of an "utopia" in the land between two Niles. Pilgrims using the overland routes crossed the Sudan on their way to Makkah. On return, many were inclined to stay and join former immigrants. The need for agricultural labor brought in migrants who came in order to stay. The result is the presence of the largest minority group of West Africans exceeding three million in number.

The Tuko-Egyptian invasion in 1812 brought southern and northern Sudan under one centralized system of government. The "eternal" relationship with Egypt had to be clearly defined. By the time of independence in mid 1950, The "Unity of the Nile Valley" was dropped to be replaced later by "integration" between the two countries. Economic cooperation has never entailed any transfer of Fellahin to settle and help develop land in the Sudan. Some thinkers in both countries believe that would be a logical step towards development, and a realistic approach to population explosion in Egypt. Integration however, has provided a compromise ( temporary? ) to the thorny problem of Halayeb.

The geographical fact the Sudan is adjoining nine countries is a blessing for asylum seekers fleeing from persecution, gross human rights violation, civil wars and discrimination. Refugees from some neighboring countries began to flock towards Sudanese borders since 1960. The Sudan is having a refugee problem of its own. Beginning in 1955, and intensified during years of military rule, repatriation of around a million refugees had to await the conclusion of the Addis Ababa Agreement which granted the South autonomous rule. However, failure to resolve the "root causes" of the conflict has led to crossing and re-crossing of borders, and caused consequently a lingering problem of refugees and displacement.

Besides international borders, Sudanese have continued to cross "internal" borders, from the "deep" South to the "deep" North, and from West and East to other places all over the country. The result of all this is a multi-racial, poly-ethnic and culturally diversified nation in search for mutual acceptance and national reconciliation.