‘Sudan’s poet of the people’ Mahjoub Sharif died

The famous Sudanese poet and writer, Mahjoub Sharif, died at his home in Omdurman on Wednesday 2 April, at the age of 66. Thousands have accompanied the body of the ‘poet of the people’ being brought to a cemetery, baraka. In his career, he has been repeatedly detained by several rulers in Sudan, including during the time of former President Gaafar Nimeiry and current President Omar Al Bashir. The first detention was during 1971-1973, following an abortive coup mounted against Nimeiry by the communists. The second time was in 1977-78 when Mahjoub was arrested while on honeymoon on the Red Sea coast and spent 18 months in prison. A year later he was again detained for nearly three years. After the military coup in 1989, Mahjoub was arrested on 20 September 1989 and taken to Port Sudan prison. He had not been charged, but it was believed that he was being held because of his secularist views in opposition to the Islamic regime of Al Bashir. His last imprisonment in Kober prison has been blamed to be the cause of his lung problems. After Mahjoub Sharif left prison in August 2008, he wrote an invitation for a thank you party to many people who sent him cards for his total of 17 years of imprisonment. In memoriam The writer Magdi el Gizouli describes Mahjoub Sharif as a ‘secular prophet’. “Throughout decades of poetic passion he managed to refashion the colloquial Arabic of the Sudanese town and chant it back at its speakers enriched with emancipatory themes. Mahjoub wrote poems for freedom, crisp, pregnant with music, witty, agitating, but always didactic”. Mahjoub was initially teacher in Omdurman, El Hara “10” primary school after he graduated from Shendi Teacher Training College. Mahjoub’s wife, Amira el Gizouli, was also a teacher. She was dismissed from her job after the June 1989 coup and started to work for Khartoum University Press. Sharif was, according to Magdi al Gizouli, a ‘secular prophet’ who spoke truth to power. “Like scores of Communist Party members he was dismissed from government employment during the extensive purges of the civil service in the 1990s. No prison however could blunt the sharp blade of Mahjoub’s poetry. His joyful compositions cut through the fallacious fat of official propaganda to bare the bone of daily existence as experienced by the naaz (people), the toiling women and men who came out to honour him on Wednesday”, Magdi al Gizouli writes. “Mahjoub Sharif wrote and Mohamed Wardi sang; the perfect duo produced songs that became over time part of the politically erotic repertoire of opposition congregation whenever opportunity allowed. Many overlooked their subversive root: the taxing commitment of an exemplary counter-effendi. That said, Mahjoub survives not in the gushes of individual eulogy but in the indecipherable hum of the masses that carried him to his grave”. ‘Poems that give will, hope’ Mahjoub Sharif used his poems for commenting on current affairs, like the killing of students in Nyala by the security. He felt deeply sad about the separation of South Sudan from the North in 2011. He wrote a poem with the title ‘The trees have passed’:  It’s a painful scene for me Where are you going? Mary I will miss you I am shedding tears Yet we are citizens by our marks In drawing we are neighbors The trees have passed (Sharif, 2011)  Political detainees have said that the poetry of Mahjoub Sharif was one of the main things that inspired them and gave them hope while they were in prison. The following description was given by a detainee held with Mahjoub (quoted from Bullets Aren’t the Seeds of Life-Africa Watch): “Mahjoub and I were going round to the depressed detainees. He made it into a song. That changed the whole atmosphere of the prison and a whole new feeling of hope and determination prevailed instead of the one of pessimism that had gone before. (..) Mahjoub, with his poems, gives to the prisoners will and hope”. Mahjoub Sherif wrote a poem called ‘Buffoon’, about a despotic ruler frantically clinging to power and developing a security apparatus.  Hey buffoon, cling, beware falling apart, beware and be all alert and lend your ears to every move and look as well to your shadow and when the leaves rustle seclude yourself keep still, it is so dangerous you buffoon   Fire on everything, shoot on anything every word uttered every breeze passing without your permission Mr Buffoon Teach the sparrows, the village lanterns, the towns’ windows to report to You Make the ants infiltrate, and join the security ask the rain drops, to write its reportsYou buffoon (Translations by Africa Watch, 1990)  He has also written love poems and songs for children. Mahjoub’s work has not been published in English. In the past few years he was interviewed several times by Radio Dabanga, that aired also some of his poems. File photo: Mahjoub Sharif (Amnesty International)