Episode (2)
Dalqo Al-Mahas built the Sudanese Embassy in Jeddah, regarded as the most beautiful building in the city at that time.
This is an opportunity to salute the towering engineer Mohammed Al-Hassan Abu Ali, whom I will discuss later and from whom I learned this information.
The article seems to have caught fire from the beginning. I received dozens of messages about episode one, which was still only an introduction. I salute everyone who responded—some from numbers saved in my phone and others from numbers not saved—and thank Professor Haider Abdel-Shafi Abdel-Rahman, Professor Saif Al-Din Faqir Mohammed, Dr Abu Dhar Mohammed Ali, and brothers Abdeen Mohammed Adam Qarti and Hamdi Musa Osman, who was fortunate to lead the campaign to develop Dalqo Hospital. I thank the doctors, engineers, technicians, everyone who loves the homeland, its people, and its soil, and everyone who contributed money, effort, or a kind word to the hospital’s development. The hospital will be one of the most important ports where the article’s ship will anchor in detail.
I must also mention that for a long period in Makkah and Jeddah I corresponded with the poet Sayyid Ahmed Mohammed Abdu, who had studied at Wadi Sidna with Dr Mansour Khalid, Al-Tayeb Salih, Dr Hussein Sayyid Osman, engineer Mohammed Ibrahim Badr, Osman Ali Shamiq, Abdel-Latif Dahab, international referee Al-Naeem Suleiman, and their classmates. What is striking about Sayyid Ahmed’s poetry collection is that most of its poems were written in Dalqo Al-Mahas, Abri, and later Saudi Arabia at the end of the 1960s. Each poem has its own story and the events surrounding it. Sayyid Ahmed was deputy headmaster of Dalqo Amiriya Intermediate School under Mohammed Fadl Al-Mawla, during whose tenure unforgettable events took place, including the historic visit of the artist Mohammed Wardi to Dalqo Al-Mahas—a visit remembered by the students of that era for the great stir it caused.
In addition to writing poetry in Arabic and Nubian, Sayyid Ahmed Mohammed Abdu was an encyclopaedia of fascinating detail. He told me how he and Mohammed Wardi helped create one of Wardi’s famous songs in Dalqo Al-Mahas, ‘Ika Ay Jila, Ika Mishka’. Sayyid Ahmed said they wrote the line ‘Noran qirka jaqamuni’, literally meaning: ‘You fear no one except the God who created you.’ Sayyid Ahmed did not know how it became the later Nubian passage that begins ‘Nogol weka jaqamoni’.
This masterpiece brought genuine musical joy to Nubian and non-Nubian speakers in the golden era, during the nights of the gifted nightingale Mohammed Wardi.
Because the poet Sayyid Ahmed Mohammed Abdu was also a successful teacher, it is fitting to honour Dalqo’s teachers, including the loyal Yusuf Khidr, Fadl Bashir, and Ezz Al-Din Idris as shining examples. It is difficult to mention all Dalqo’s teachers here, but Yusuf Khidr deserves a great salute for carrying out his mission with transparency and mastery of English, for which he earned a British qualification. Yusuf did not see himself as merely performing a profession; he believed fate had placed him in a major responsibility and he was worthy of it. When the school and boarding house faced serious challenges, he brought the matters before the parents, including Uncle Mohammed Saeed Al-Desouqi, who will be one of the stars of this story, and his brother Sheikh Idris, who endured the hardship of travelling to Al-Damer to solve obstacles facing the students’ education. Yusuf Khidr and the respected Ezz Al-Din Idris, his right hand in Dalqo Intermediate School, felt a father’s responsibility toward every student and a local son’s responsibility for the success of his mission. May God preserve Yusuf Khidr and grant him health and well-being.
May God have mercy on the noble Fadl Bashir, who set an extraordinary example for generations when he rejected the temptations of the May regime, preserving lessons of dignity, selflessness, integrity, and patriotism by refusing to side with it. I will later discuss Osman Abu Shayba and Officer Sayyid Farah fairly and in detail. Fadl Bashir also refused the position of president of the Sudanese Socialist Union, a position that offered a luxury car and an attractive salary at that time. The people of Dalqo have always been aware and have set the finest examples of awareness.
As for the respected Ezz Al-Din Idris, I believe the lines I am writing now are indebted to him. He taught me much and made me president of Dalqo’s literary society, using my composition notebook as a model for my classmates. However much we speak of Ezz Al-Din Idris, we must pause before his undying spirit of struggle. His love of the homeland ran through his blood.
Let us not forget how Dalqo Al-Mahas built the Sudanese Embassy—or perhaps the Sudanese mission—in Jeddah. Engineer Mohammed Al-Hassan Abu Ali said that engineer Badr Al-Jundi designed and built the embassy. My memory does not fully confirm the details, so I say ‘perhaps’, because I can include in my article only facts that are firmly established.
Engineer Mohammed Al-Hassan Abu Ali was a rare and powerful personality. Though he spoke little, a listener never forgot his words; they settled in the memory. He was organised and serious, summarising situations precisely in measured words, so that anyone speaking after him either repeated his words or went around in circles.
Mohammed Al-Hassan Abu Ali is a source of pride for Dalqo Al-Mahas and for all Nubians. He took noble personal stands with me and distinguished Nubian stands with Professor Ali Dahab Hasanein, including their celebrated effort to save the Nubian Club in Port Sudan from disappearing. Jaafar Nimeiry was known for dissolving clubs such as Al-Hilal, Al-Merrikh, and Al-Mourada, and everyone remembers the era of mass sport, which harmed Sudanese football and drove many Sudanese players abroad.
When the Nubian Club was dissolved, engineer Abu Ali refused to accept the dictator’s injustice. Today, praise be to God and thanks to them, the new Nubian Club is safe and secure. One of Abu Ali’s virtues was that he found additional work for Nubian engineers in their fields; his Abu Ali Engineering Office was a home for all Nubians in Port Sudan. Railway director Fathi Abbas valued engineer Abu Ali as a close friend and used to tell us amusing stories about him.
Among engineer Abu Ali’s sayings, shared on a private occasion, was: ‘Marriage is partnership and mutual agreement between a man and a woman to form a life and a family.’
To be continued. The third episode will be full of events.