Listen to Najlaa Eltom and Mayada Ibrahim’s bi-lingual reading of “An Exercise in Creative Writing” on 128 LIT’s Spotify Channel.

Mayada Ibrahim: Let’s go back to the beginning and talk about how we started working together. I think the very first text of yours I read was your essay about the band al-Balabil on your blog. I was just beginning to dabble in translation and was immediately drawn to your work as the kind I wanted to translate. I was given your phone number and after some hesitation I got in touch. You immediately ushered me in, sent over some of your work, called me Mido, which happens to be my family's nickname for me. Later whenever I would defer to you on translation decisions you would say it’s my work, I’m its writer, and I should feel some freedom in that. That’s really encouraging to hear at the outset, I think. It takes a while to really internalize it as a new translator. 

Najlaa Eltom: Yes, I recall the early days when I started calling you Mido. I think I was coming from a place of vulnerability. I needed to feel safe, maybe that’s why I was distancing our interaction from formality. Formal language, to me, is a mechanism for exerting power. I try to challenge those kinds of implicit barriers. 

As for translation, it is truly the translator’s adventure—yours in this instance. I must learn to step back from it. From the first translations you attempted of my work, I found myself pondering the complex space between us. As a writer inherently skeptical of my texts, which always seem unfinished, I had to hand over a “final” version I didn’t truly possess. What exists are multiple iterations, each as tentatively valid as the original. Sometimes, a long-forgotten poem draws me back, demanding immediate edits, but I often find that I've already modified that same poem elsewhere—in a notebook or digital file—creating various versions attempting to salvage the original, all while weaving it into a maze of twin texts. Ultimately, the “original” becomes elusive; instead, all texts become mutable originals. Like a mirror shattering inward. This complexity is magnified in translation, where a text, once untethered from its origin, navigates new cultural and political terrains. Upon translation, a version is crystallized in its new guise, outliving the author, both preserved and petrified.

M: I hadn’t been thinking about it this way but I think your skepticism about a final version of the text could be quite generative for your translator. To me it really does feel like an adventure each time. Especially since I have primarily translated individual poems and short stories but not a novel, say, or a cohesive set of texts. I’m imagining what it would look like to embrace and adopt that ethos as a translator. What if your translators fractured that mirror further? With other writers’ work I would be very reluctant to do something like that, especially once we have already gone through the processes of editing and different versions have been looked at by multiple people and a final version was established. 

In some ways it’s been a baptism by fire to begin with such philosophical and politically engaged work. It has had me pondering the complex space between us too. What does it mean that I’m translating into the colonial language? It feels like there’s an element of risk involved. And that seems appropriate to the work since it’s so concerned with how language is wielded and the danger inherent to that. “An Exercise in Creative Writing” is a good example of that.

N: The themes of danger and survival weave persistently through my writing. Every action and step we take is fraught with the inherent risk of veering into peril. Think about how reading a book can fundamentally shift your worldview. In this short story, there are encounters between the narrator and various philosophers and authors. These figures are brought into the narrative somewhat like  allies to the narrator. They are presented through his interpretations and perspectives. Here, we observe how the authority and intellectual rigor associated with these figures are recontextualized within specific learning environments and become part of power structures as the narrator uses them to explain his line of thought.  

Consider the scene where a girl is attacked by a crocodile and a farmer attempts her rescue; there's little room for intellectualization. The situation is stark: a girl was attacked, and a man tried to save her. However, the narrator’s analysis reframes the incident, casting it under a specific ideological light. Ideology is not an optional lens we can choose to adopt or discard at will; it's a pervasive influence that colors our interpretation of every event. This is precisely what I'm getting at when I say that reading a book is truly a perilous endeavor. Often, we categorize reading as a form of entertainment, a leisurely pursuit, overlooking the profound risks that knowledge imposes on our minds. 

This sense of vulnerability resonates deeply with me each time I engage with a significant book. Crime and Punishment, for example, has reshaped my perspective twice at different junctures of my life. Raskolnikov, Dostoyevsky's protagonist in Crime and Punishment is an intelligent man who thought of himself as exceptional, and his ethic is based on his exceptionalism. It is that sense of superiority that makes him capable of murder. Knowledge  influences not only the way we perceive life but also the way we perceive ourselves in relation to people around us. 

The architecture of violence, refined through centuries of what can only be described as laboratory experiments in the Global South, has evolved into sophisticated techniques—this is knowledge that is honed on our lands. When people start to question the system, these tactics are there to subjugate those at the lower rungs of the power hierarchy. This machinery of oppression will inevitably turn against you because it requires constant fuel; you and I are merely neighbors in its path. When my house burns, yours is next in line—fire does not discriminate by color; it simply needs to be fed. The absence of empathy is lethal—not only for the victims, who inhabit a different plane of awareness, but for those unable to envision themselves in the victim's position. In "An Exercise in Creative Writing," I was thinking about the philosophical and ethical dimensions of empathy.

In Sudan, a country whose past is full of war, we needed to forge a collective comprehension of violence and its ramifications when overlooked by society. It is evident that the failure to build social discourse on war crimes and extreme forms of violence exercised in Darfur, Nuba Mountains, and South Sudan empowered unchecked state violence. 

M: Yes, the slogan of the revolution in 2019 was the imperative verb, “Document.” There is a sense that if history is not recorded by the people it’s irretrievably lost. So much of the violence going on today feels like it barely registers. That’s why I resonate with the urgency to interrogate how we think, what makes up our knowledge, how it influences the way we relate to ourselves and the world, our positionality as individuals and as part of a collective.

I was struck from the beginning reading your work by the sense that you’re never speaking to an outsider. You’re not addressing a reader you assume doesn’t understand you or needs you to provide context. I think that makes for a gaze that’s intimate. Reading you I have the feeling that I am with someone I feel kinship with and they’re whisking me away on a journey, brief but eye-opening, destabilizing in a good way. 

N: I don't think about the form, I think in the form, from within the form, working my way upward, downward and sideways. But the question of the form has its undercurrent psychology. I think my writing captures the chaos of a destabilized center, and I approach it from the perspective of an outsider. 

For me, writing poetry and short stories has never felt familiar. In Sudan, writing poetry in classical Arabic is steeped in its own conflicts as a discourse of high culture that distinguishes itself from what is often termed popular poetry—a rich cultural expanse that included my aunts—Hawa, Nafisa, Rawda and Asha Mohamed Saad Hidirbi—who chronicled their lives in song. I wish I resonated with them more, but I was shackled by this colonial dichotomy. I felt I didn't belong to that official discourse, not just in terms of creative output but also in how I was expected to navigate social dynamics. As a woman, I was uncertain about how to present myself as a writer, what political and social dynamics I needed to navigate, who my foremothers were in this tradition, and how they managed to integrate into a male-dominated sphere where much of the intellectual and literary debate occurs in spaces not welcoming to women. I came late to the understanding that I didn’t need to look for foremothers because I already had a bunch of them in my family. 

The archetype of the modern writer in Sudan has been clearly defined over the decades. Particularly from the 1930s onward, the quintessential intellectual was typically male, having received his education within the colonial systems of Sudan or Egypt. Typically urbanized, or having migrated to urban centers, these individuals were erudite, well-versed in Western liberal values, occupied with the question of nation formation and national identity, they generally held the Arabic language in high esteem as a bastion of great culture and dominant discourse. They disseminated their works through burgeoning periodicals, with some engaging in anti-colonial resistance, while others remained entrenched in sectarian politics or aligned with colonial rulers. Despite diverse political leanings, these intellectuals were unified by their foundational education under colonial rule, each carrying the mandate to elevate and “civilize” their societies—a role exemplified by the Effendi archetype. Within this archetype, however, existed significant undercurrents of resistance. These dissenting voices actively engaged in the deconstruction of colonial narratives, challenging cultural hegemony and critiquing the traditional intellectual, in the Saidian sense. Springing from the ethos of the anti-colonial White Flag League, whose founders were active between 1920 and 1924, these factions cultivated a respected tradition of leftist intellectualism. They sought not merely to critique but to deeply understand the social and political fabrics of their culture, fostering a nuanced engagement rather than outright condemnation.

The dominant archetype of the Effendi persisted until it was confronted by the emergence of the visionary rebel intellectual in the late 1970s. This new archetype was also male but harbored a disdain for formal education systems. Often they doubled as a journalist, cultural and political activist or the like. This figure was a maverick, rooted in rural traditions yet in tension with them, existing on the margins of society while simultaneously garnering accolades within literary circles, always keen to work in groups and associations, fascinated by subculture, urban music, pan-africanism, deconstruction philosophy, and distrusted political institutions. An avid reader with a complex relationship to the Arabic language, this rebel intellectual represented a departure from the traditional Effendi, embodying a synthesis of dissent and reverence within the cultural and literary landscape.

As a woman, I was lacking a community that resonated with my experiences, and I faced profound isolation, exacerbated by the disconnect a colonial education created between my cultural heritage and me. This type of education tends to cultivate resentment and self-loathing among its subjects, a division that is palpable across Sudan due to the incomplete process of decolonization. This profound sense of alienation fractured the core of my personal and artistic life. As a writer, I was frequently compelled to justify my existence, to moderate my language and tone in social interactions, adopting a demeanor that often bordered on apologetic. Since I was unable to take up space up in the way the rebel poet did, I think I had no choice but to write, to create a world where I could rebel more fully, where I could control the narrative and the tone, and in that world I refused to compromise, soften or dilute my expressions, passion, or anger. That required a certain level of vulnerability and capacity to expose the fragility of my existence. Perhaps it is this sense of alienation and exposure that resonates with you, Mido.

M: Yes, I think there is something to that. 

Well, thank you for sharing these thoughts with me. It’s invaluable to me going forward and hopefully continuing to translate your work. Can you talk a bit about what you’re working on next?

N: I’m in the very early stages of sketching out a novella. I’d like to write more short stories too. You and I are also working on a bilingual collection of poetry and stories with trace press. 

M: Yes, I have a stack of your poems on my desk, and I look forward to the next time I spend time with them.