The death of the Sudanese poet Muhammad al-Makki Ibrahim.. Death in the time of diaspora and the departure of a poetic pyramid | culture
Yesterday, Sunday, the great Sudanese poet Muhammad Al-Makki Ibrahim died in a hospital in Sheikh Zayed City, west of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, at the age of 85 years, after a struggle with illness. A number of Sudanese writers and intellectuals wrote to mourn him with texts that fall within the literature of lamentation, which is considered one of the oldest and most important literary purposes. In the history of Arabic texts, it is a literary art in which the writer expresses his sadness and pain for the loss of a dear person, recalling the virtues of the eulogist and his good qualities.
The Arabic literature of lamentation remains a witness to the depth of human feelings and the ability of the word to commemorate memory. It is not just an expression of sadness, but rather a celebration of life and contemplation of its deep meanings.
Among the most prominent people who wrote in eulogy for the late poet Muhammad al-Makki Ibrahim are the Sudanese academic, the writer Wajdi Kamel, and Professor Ahmed Ibrahim Abu Shouk. Here are the two elegiac articles:
The departure of a poetic pyramid that speaks and is full of transcendence
And my grandfather is complete
They were not only great poets, but dear friends who shared a deep sixty-year-old friendship in which Wad Al-Makki resided for a period of time, and sometimes lived in the house of the Awad Al-Jazouli family.
Between (the Sudanese writer and jurist who died at the end of 2023) Kamal Al-Jazouli and Muhammad Al-Makki Ibrahim is more than a twin, a bond of strong friendship, shared memories, and a common love that brought them together, and hopeful hopes for a future that this proud people deserve.
It was, and when Muhammad al-Makki was absent during his many emigrations, according to the diplomatic position and the recent emigration to Uncle Sam’s country, correspondence and telephone calls would flare up, and his friend Kamal would wait for his arrival with the utmost of embers, and as soon as he landed, Kamal would perfume him in the gatherings and sessions, and they would travel with the honey of sociability from one place to another. To a place where Khartoum and the homes of intellectuals and artists shine.
I was happy to be a witness to this, and one of those whose homes I had the honor of visiting together, after a joint film viewing of my film (The Wounds of Freedom).
This was one of the many times I was able to recognize a man who was easy-going, kind, smiling, calm, gentle, and filled with great humility and love for others.
Muhammad Al-Makki was deeply saddened by the death of his lifelong friend Kamal Al-Jazouli, and his visit was to offer condolences in Cairo as soon as he arrived there. However, as Dr. Abi Kamal Al-Jazouli had confided to me a few days ago, and knowledge had grown to the point that our poet had died clinically since his admission to Al-Fouad Hospital, Wad Al-Makki, in his deep sadness over the absence of his friend, seemed busy during that visit to learn from my father the details of preparing the body. The dead person, his burial, and the procedures followed in Cairo for those rituals, as if he had chosen death, as if he had returned to die in a place closer to his homeland, which he loved and adored.
He returned to die and was mourned by those who recognized his cultural and humanitarian benefits upon us, after the torn and burning homeland refused to welcome him this time, and when there was no (his nation) that was scattered throughout the earth and displaced, but it is thankful that it retained the density of presence in Cairo Al-Muizz.
How I wish I could have been one of the depositors, had it not been for the obstacles.
Here I am, seeing faces wet with tears, and hearing the wailing and crying of those who knew you.
Here I see a solemn, huge farewell befitting your position and stature, O Muhammad Al-Makki, you who made us happy with your life and your distinguished, unique poetic contributions.
I say in your name and in the name of your friend and everyone who left us in these difficult circumstances. The war will stop, the people will be victorious, the great symbolic prison wall built by the historical and modern institutions of oppression and repression will be broken, and the fields will burn with wheat, promise, wishful thinking, and civility.
Your memory will remain immortal in us and in future generations, and your nourishment to our hearts and our memories will never cease.
Farewell, farewell, and I do not find in these sad moments more eloquent than your elegy for your sheikh, and the sheikh of our modern poets, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Majzoub, in your solemn farewell, wrote poetry upon his departure:
Of your beauty in death
The rose becomes its adornment
And the seasons are their henna
The birds leave their signature in your sand
With your departure
The gate of poetry has darkened, and the gates of Paradise have lit up.
With your departure, the embers will be separated from the sandal.
Death is approaching
He hears the sound of the call in the fourth quarter.
The alphabet is missing its nails.
The sky takes back its deposit (of pearls of poetry) from the world of
A disbeliever in the sky and its signs
The sky regains its childhood
Your lost childhood will return to you.
Muhammad Al-Makki Ibrahim.. Death in the time of diaspora
Professor: Ahmed Ibrahim Abu Shouk
In his introduction to Dr. Hassan Absher Al-Tayeb’s book, A View of the Love of the Homeland (Omdurman, Abdel Karim Mirghani Cultural Center, 2001), Muhammad Al-Makki Ibrahim (1939-2024) wrote about the generation of giving that belongs to me through the person of his student colleague at the University of Khartoum and his lifelong friend, Hassan Absher. Al-Tayeb said: “The author belongs to the generation of the sixties in Sudan. It is a generation that combines creative leadership, constant continuity, superior intonation, and abundant knowledge… and this book that is now in the hands of the reader is a testament to the validity of that saying. Here we have in our hands nearly 40 articles on various issues.” It deals with life and culture in Sudan, including its great figures: Al-Tayeb Salih, Al-Majzoub, Jamal Muhammad Ahmad, Al-Tijani Al-Mahi, and Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, as well as its people of art and creativity: Ahmed Al-Mustafa, Abdel Aziz Muhammad Daoud, and Laila Al-Maghribi Contemporary literature: “Season of Migration to the North,” “The Wrath of the Hibai,” and “My Nation.”
However, Muhammad al-Makki Ibrahim describes the homeland at the beginning of the third millennium as “going through its worst days, its most misery and misfortune, and in the last years of the twentieth century the series of exit from Sudan to escape political oppression, economic misery, the absence of freedom, and the darkness and barrenness of intellectual life had been completed. At the beginning of its rule, the authority wanted to empty the country of people with intellect and opinion, so it was extremely cruel to them, until they left the country in their thousands. Then the cycle of terror expanded and affected those who did not belong to that category of citizens, so the birds panicked and the Sudanese came out in their millions, between those calling for freedom and those demanding a world that would be enjoyed by them. Or the security he desires… And in the voluntary exiles to which the Sudanese flocked, Sudan turned in the souls of its fellow immigrants into a bad memory and a cause for grief, despair, and pain. The news that comes from it does not bring to the immigrant community anything other than news of loss, bereavement, and the continuing decline in the quality of life, and the deadly repetition of all the mistakes of the past. And before their eyes, Sudan’s bright reputation was turning into bad fame, and its honorable name was wallowing in the mud.”
Now Muhammad Al-Makki Ibrahim has departed to the afterlife on Sunday, September 29, 2024, in Cairo Al-Muizz, and in a time of diaspora that Sudan has never witnessed before, and the state of the country is worse than it was at the beginning of the third millennium, as the war of April 15, 2023 transformed… The reality of its people is an unbearable hell, after the Rapid Support Forces occupied most of the citizens’ homes in the triangular capital, Wad Madani, and other cities, looted their valuables, and made the incubators of their memories and heritage relics after an eye, and forced them to do two things: either migrate to safe states in Sudan, or Asylum to neighboring countries and immigrants of relatives.
Regarding the repercussions of war and the complexities of its continuity, the golden truth presented by Dr. Hassan Absher Al-Tayeb is true: “The cannon does not build a house, it does not heal the sick, it does not plant a field, and it only reaps destruction. Homelands are built with love, empathy, mutual respect for each other’s opinion and opinion, and continuous endeavor.” To maximize the elements of agreement, to reject the causes of division, and to rise above immediate personal benefits to the interest of the nation, by celebrating all the creative people of the nation in various fields, in appreciation of genius and the embodiment of distinguished role models, and with intelligent and insightful openness to contemporary human data and experiences.”
The question of the poet Muhammad Al-Hassan Salem (Hamid) is also true when he chanted, “The last excavator opens a hole and piles up the rubble *** Or is the tank that rolls over the roaring snoring of death? ** A trail of blood that leads to a war that is cursed by a forbidden war *** Remove and remove a map This is the end “The last two are defeats.”
When Hassan Absher Al-Tayeb felt the sympathy of the Sudanese Democratic Movement opposed to the Salvation regime at the time with some of the acts of destruction and sabotage affecting the oil export pipeline, he wrote an article entitled “This is crooked talk.” The crookedness of this is represented by the distance of its efficacy from the higher values that demand that politicians work to make people happy. All people, as long as people’s happiness is embodied in preserving the sources of their daily livelihood and escaping the bottleneck of suffering, because destroying them is considered a political tyranny over the state’s economic capabilities. Any unreasonable politician or military man who destroys people’s sources of livelihood and displaces them from their safe homes, then promises them civil rule and democracy, is laughing at their minds with arrogance, pride, and lack of shame, because the basic priorities of life are based on housing, food, drink, and public freedoms, and all other priorities are deferred perfectionism that are not right. Its only mark is the straightness of the lines of basic priorities.
So, gentlemen, let us combine the saying “land is a weapon”; Because stopping the war does not mean exempting those who committed crimes and atrocities against the poor people from punishment, nor does involving those who caused the war mean being part of the solution. But stopping the war contributes to preserving the country’s infrastructure that has not been destroyed, preserving the nation from division and making it plunder the interests of regional and global countries, and preserving the lives of its sons and daughters who dream of a better tomorrow. Stopping the war, gentlemen, means preserving state institutions and restoring the monopoly of legal violence to a single professional army and qualified police forces. It means getting rid of armed militias, and submitting to a system of government in which power is transferred through sound democratic methods. This can only be achieved with the consensus of the national ranks. Evidence of this is the words of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who lifted his country from the rubble of brutal civil war and ethnic hostilities to construction and reconstruction, when he declared, “The progress of our country is due to you Rwandans, especially the youth and women among you, who took the initiative to decide the fate of Their country through the spirit of work, innovation and patriotism as the key to progress and development (…), this is not because of the presence of the Vatican, the Kaaba, the White House, the Elysee, or the Taj Mahal in our country.