{"id":51817,"date":"2025-07-23T18:26:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T15:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=51817"},"modified":"2025-07-23T18:26:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T15:26:56","slug":"a-night-with-nadima-mashghoul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/23\/a-night-with-nadima-mashghoul\/","title":{"rendered":"A Night with Nadima Mashghoul…"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I See<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adil El-Baz<\/strong><\/p>\n

1
\n(Nadima Mashghoul was present that evening, a queen on her high seat from which she could observe the activity of her caf\u00e9 without having to bend forward. She wore her red blouse with orange-embroidered edges. In truth, Nadima Mashghoul was generous in everything\u2014her luscious laughter she shared with all, her speech poured out unreservedly, and she was generous even in her debauchery. In a public poll conducted by trend lovers to identify the most frivolous yet beloved woman in the city, conducted right in her caf\u00e9, she was unanimously crowned the sweetheart of every heart.)
\nThe caf\u00e9 of Nadima Mashghoul\u2014crafted by the storyteller Amir Tag Elsir in his captivating novel The Copt\u2019s Tensions\u2014was a hub of news and shady deals. That evening, the caf\u00e9 buzzed with whispers and rumors swirled in every corner. Patrons whispered about an impending catastrophe that was bound to strike the country, and that \u201cAl-Mutqaa,\u201d who had appeared in the village of \u201cAbakheet,\u201d was threatening to annihilate and enslave the cities. This, perhaps, explained Nadima Mashghoul\u2019s foul mood that night.
\nNews of Al-Mutqaa and his rebellious army had spread throughout the land, especially after dozens from the city\u2014and even some of Nadima\u2019s caf\u00e9 boys\u2014had defected to him.<\/p>\n

2
\nAfter that night, the events of the novel took on a surreal turn. Al-Mutqaa, the leader of the revolution and author of the Abakheet manifesto, was no longer a rumor. He was now besieging Nadima Mashghoul\u2019s city, shattering her hopes for stability. Amidst the chaos, Nadima married Bakbashi Sabeer\u2014a man the narrator described as: (She married a man harboring thirty chronic diseases that raged within his body).
\nThe novel did not take long to reveal what had occurred in the village after Al-Mutqaa\u2019s men stormed it. The tragedies and disasters that befell the village were but a microcosm of what the entire country suffered due to Al-Mutqaa\u2019s revolution.<\/p>\n

3
\nNadima Mashghoul, her caf\u00e9, and its patrons were merely a model of the state of decay, corruption, and societal breakdown that had engulfed the nation\u2014where all values had been squandered.
\nWhen Amir Tag Elsir contrasts this degenerative condition with the killings, torture, and chaos that followed Al-Mutqaa\u2019s revolution, he paints Nadima Mashghoul\u2019s era\u2014her caf\u00e9 and her debauchery\u2014as a rose-tinted golden age by comparison.<\/p>\n

4
\nThe symbolism employed by Amir Tag Elsir through his engaging narrative structure did not manage to conceal the historical underpinnings of the novel. It would not be difficult for any Sudanese reader to detect its intimate connection to a specific historical period\u2014despite the author\u2019s denial that the novel is based on actual history.
\nI do not understand why Amir Tag Elsir tried to distance the novel from its historical roots, even though he drew on real events and effectively rewrote history through fiction\u2014an entirely legitimate literary act.
\nStrangely, the previous year\u2019s International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Booker), awarded to Youssef Ziedan for his novel Azazel, was entirely grounded in the history of Christianity.<\/p>\n

5
\nThe narrator\u2014whose Coptic protagonist, Mikha\u2019il, recounts events in which he is both a witness and central figure\u2014uses an enjoyable storytelling technique to reveal how the post-revolutionary world was constructed and how it began to unravel. He exposes the squandered values that Al-Mutqaa had dedicated his life to restoring.
\nAmir depicted both the dream-like atmosphere before the revolution and the tragic aftermath in striking contrast. But the dreams of revolutionaries and the harsh truths of reality are worlds apart.
\nAmir Tag Elsir masterfully wove in small, dazzling stories of many characters, infusing the novel with vivid life through minor but highly compelling roles. Characters like Bakbashi Sabeer, Mikha\u2019il\u2019s beloved Halima, and the poet all contributed richly to the text, despite their peripheral presence.<\/p>\n

6
\nThe surrealist style used in crafting this mesmerizing novel (The Copt\u2019s Tensions) did not emerge from it alone, but developed amid Amir Tag Elsir\u2019s vast literary production. We\u2019ve seen this same delightful approach in The Fire of the Zaghareet and The Bride Price of the Cry, among others.
\nAmir Tag Elsir\u2019s literary project is ascending in a unique form within the Arab novelistic scene, introducing itself to the world with a distinctive narrative style and a voice that is unmistakably his own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I See Adil El-Baz 1 (Nadima Mashghoul was present that evening, a queen on her high seat from which she could observe the activity of her caf\u00e9 without having to bend forward. She wore her red blouse with orange-embroidered edges. In truth, Nadima Mashghoul was generous in everything\u2014her luscious laughter she shared with all, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51818,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51817\/revisions\/51818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}