Nasser Youssef, Messenger of Humanity
Khaled Al Baloula
I met the professor, director and actor, Nasser Youssef Hassan Al-Toum, for the first time at the institute, and I lived with him when I lived in the Jazli boarding house in the Bant district of Bamdurman, which is the boarding house for students of the Higher Institute of Music and Theater.
Nasser Youssef belongs to the batch that is three batches ahead of us in the Drama Department, and it is considered one of the distinguished batches in my opinion, and since I got to know them, since they were students, I felt that they were one family, as if they came from one womb, and I knew their precious metal after I accompanied some of them in the three branches, and witnessed his authentic attitudes. With each other, the batch of the head of its late resident hump, our uncle Al-Sir Mahjoub, may God have mercy on him, and Jamal Hassan Saeed, Al-Yasa Hassan Ahmed, Atef Al-Bahr, Abdel Moneim Ibrahim Awadiya Makki, her husband Abdel-Azim Muhammad Al-Tayeb, Nahid Kassala, and the mother of the batch, Afaf Al-Nujoumi, Muhammad Ali Makhawi, and Adeeb Muhammad Hassan, may God have mercy on him. And Alfred is tired and Suzy is beautiful…etc.
It seems that Nasser’s mother breastfed him with the milk of humanity, so he grew up carrying the concerns of his fellow human being, doing his utmost to check on his brothers whom his mother did not give birth to. Nasser carries his camera as he wanders between the farms and barns, checking on his colleagues in his profession and the members of his class who grew up with him in the three neighborhoods, despite the whizzing of bullets in Omdurman. And the cannons roared, and he began by visiting our colleague and the princess of our batch, Nahid Hassan, and the great actor Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Fadni. He then headed to the north, where Abd al-Rahman al-Shibli in Damer al-Majzoub, Qasim al-Ilah, Qasim Abu Zaid, and Awad Batran in Atbara, and the artist Ahmed Shawish, and proceeded to Shendi, where Altaf Ibrahim and her husband resided. She is one of the daughters of our batch and the batch that Nasser’s batch follows.
Nasser, instead of cursing the darkness, lit a candle that illuminates the path for everyone, and presented an eloquent lesson to the media outlets with high capabilities and to those sitting on the sidewalk complaining to the bricks of the earth of their helplessness and lack of resourcefulness. He presented a lesson in will, determination, and persistence, and that will is the secret of life.
He did with Dr. Saleh Abdel Qader, the artist and professor of drama at Al-Nilein University, held a number of training workshops in the field of theater and drama during the war, and they confirmed with their actions that theater is the tip of the spear in the desired change, that life goes on despite the woes, and that “life is more beautiful” and deserves to be lived with dignity, will, and determination.
