Oh, My Love, Isn’t he Abdullah!

By: Abdullah Ali Ibrahim

My mother, Hajja Jamal, passed away in Ramadan 2006. During my misfortune in my candidacy for the presidency in 2010, between boredom with the regime’s attacks on me and sickness with the petty-bourgeois left’s bullying, both of which were not happy with that candidacy, with reasons that contradict each other, I summoned the need and imagined what would be the impact of my new adventure on it, with what I know. from her mood, tone and style.
My mother lived my radical political and other adventures with equanimity. She even mobilized its cultural resources from the “fortified fortress rituals” to the protectives of our Sheikh Wad Ibrahim from Al-Arak, and her relative Al-Fath Al-Alim, the bicycles repairer and Sheikh Abdullah Kambo from Al-Wadi neighborhood in Nyala and others, to secure these emerging risks against their generation. Since my candidacy for the presidency, I have been imagining that the news would affect her. She will say, denouncing whoever reported the news to her:
-But he is Abdullah, isn’t that right?
Then she kept silent without a known link:
-By God, Omar Al-Bashir is also right!
The bearer of the news may say to her:
Fot the sake of serving the country.
You will say disapprovingly:
– Which country?
-Sudan.
And here came her moment of great emotion. Sudan is not necessarily known in this world. It is an illusion, and it is sufficient to “cover the stone” of illusions:
-What is this Sudan
Then she bends down on the ground lightly and wipes it several times:
-Sudan remains like this country.
Then her face became confused. She places her five fingers on her lips at a geometric angle. She says, beginning her favorite refrain:
-Eh, eh, eh. It’s not clear, what did you do? What is your guide? For God’s sake, by the Messenger, my sisters, why this genie target Sudan?
– How, Hajja? The man should not serve his country?
Here the transmitter of the nomination becomes like the filter: an infidel.
– Eh, eh. Serve his country! I think you are not advisable. Are you mistaken?
As long as I diagnosed the whole matter as a touch of the jinn, it came back to me:
-Aslo Abdullah is crazy.
After silence, she repeats this phrase in another way, so it appears to the listener as a complete conclusion.
-He’s crazy, we don’t know him?A13
Then she loosens the phrase a little, making it seem as if she is repeating herself:
-By God, he is seized by jinn that we don’t know?
“”Seized” is the term used to show that he is impersonated by jinn.
He was seized by the jinn, we did not know that?
Then she calm down. She comes to the absurd moment in which it slips, for no known reason, from the “tragedy” of its political generosity to humor with the presumption of the presidency in my adventure and in the subject of its anecdote. The key that exposes this absurd transfer to us is her smiling and then laughing at a presidential anecdote about the days of student demonstrations in the uprising against Numeiri, which she recalled without a statement:
-By God, the hopes of the school’s lining did not give Nimeiri pain. “Tut tut Numeiri Atoud, toot tut Numeiri Atoud.” And the two men said, O Mohammad, the Prophet. “Tut Tut Numeiri Atoud.” I swear to God, the talk of the school lining does not come over the nose twice.
-And Al-Bashir, Hajja?
-Who is this Muslim Brother?
-It is him.
-We were wronged
Then she fell silent with a terrible, strategic silence and said with great regret:
-Who else didn’t grieve us?
I am sure that whenever I win and appear on television accepting competitors’ concessions, you will see me and say:
-Eh, oh, my love, isn’t he Abdullah? .
My evidence for this is that she passed by the Hillat Koko Extension Mosque one day. And the ears heard. She raised her head and saw Tariq, the son of her daughter, Qamar Al-Qassoum, above the minaret. His heart was attached to the call to prayer at that time. She laughed and said:
-Oh, my love, isn’t Tariq!