NAM Venezuela Summit: Sudanese Memoirs
04 September, 2016KHARTOUM (Sudanow.info.sd) - It is all set for the summit conference of the member states of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), in the Venezuelan island of Margarita, called the most beautiful island in the Caribbean, during 17-18 September.
The Movement was launched in 1955 as one of the repercussions of the 2nd World War that polarized the nations of the World in two major blocs and ideologies. America and its allies grouped together under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO) and the then socialist bloc came together under the Warsaw Pact.
Many ambitious young nations saw it necessary to distance themselves from either bloc and stand independent.
Among these were the Republic of India under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt under the strong leadership of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Indonesia under its independence leader Ahmed Sukarno, Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, Ghana under its leader for independence Kwame Nkrmah.
The group members chose to hold their first conference in the Indonesian city of Bandung, that saw the birth of the organization.
Coincidentally, that conference that saw the birth of the Non-Aligned movement, also saw the first signals for the birth of the independent Republic of Sudan.
Representing Sudan in the NAM founding session was Premier-elect Ismael al-Azhari who, then, ruled Sudan under the terms of the self-rule agreement consented to by the former colonial powers Great Britain and Egypt that conquered Sudan in 1900 and continued to run its affairs under what they called the condominium rule.
By definition of his being an interim leader of a nation under self-rule, Azhari was called by Gamal Abdel-Nasser to come along and sit with the rest of the Egyptian delegation. But the proud Azhari was not a man to accept such a position. He argued that he was a head of state and should be treated thus. But the Egyptian side replied that all free nations had their own flags and Sudan hadn’t got one yet. Here the shrewd Azhari produced a white piece of cloth from his Jacket pocket, wrote his country's name "Sudan" on it and placed it in front of him to the appreciation and consent of the podium and the gathering.
Surprisingly, recent visitors to the NAM museum in Bandung found that the Sudanese flag was a white one as chosen by the Sudanese leader at that time, instead of three-color flag adopted on the 1st of January 1956 when Sudan attained independence.
The Bandung summit had laid the movement and its ten principles. They are:
1- Respect of fundamental human rights and of the objectives and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
2- Respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations.
3- Recognition of the equality among all races and of the equality among all nations, both large and small.
4- Non-intervention or non-interference into the internal affairs of another -country.
5- Respect of the right of every nation to defend itself, either individually or collectively, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.
6- A. Non-use of collective defense pacts to benefit the specific interests of any of the great powers.
B. Non-use of pressures by any country against other countries.
7- Refraining from carrying out or threatening to carry out aggression, or from using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any country.
8- Peaceful solution of all international conflicts in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.
9- Promotion of mutual interests and of cooperation.
10- Respect of justice and of international obligations.
At the time NAM group was hailed with utmost acclaim and respect by many nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, some of whom were still struggling for independence. For these nations the grouping meant a true path to real political, cultural and economic independence. The group leaders names flashed around the World as leaders of freedom and change.
Here in Sudan the nation looked with admiration towards the movement and its leaders. Poets and musicians raced to compose songs in praise of the movement and its leaders. The Sudanese media still replays the song “Asia and Africa”, composed by poet Taj al-Sir al-Hassan and performed by artful melodist Abdel-Kareem al-Kabli. Performing the song at the Sudan National Theatre in Omdurman in 1960, Kabli obliged visiting Egyptian Leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser to stand up and continue to clap for the verse and the melody for over ten minutes.
In the song the poet has recounted the names of the movement leaders and the leaders of the freedom movements in Asia and Africa.
On this august occasion Sudanow publishes an English translation of the song. The translation was written by Mr. Adil Babikir, a Sudanese translator living and working in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirate.
Babikir has produced excellent translations of many Sudanese works of art. Some of the novels and poems he had translated were published by respectful publishing houses in the West.
THE POEM:
AN AFRO-ASIAN SONG
By: TAG ELSIR AL HASSAN
Translated by: Adil Babikir
When I play our ancient songs, O my heart,
As dawn lands on my chest aboard a winged cloud,
I’ll serenade the closing stanza to my beloved land;
To the dark shades in the jungles of Kenya and the Malay;
To the iconic beacons built by the First of May;
To the green glee nights in the new China,
For which I play, out loud, a thousand hearty poems;
To my comrades in Asia;
To the Malay and the vibrant Bandung.
O Dien Phu,
Our land is craving for light and blooms.
The scene of the castle is still fresh in my eyes;
Dead bodies of the enemy hanging down from the blue rocks.
O Dien Phu.
I‘ve just seen a soldier embroidered in blood,
His rose-red heart lying in the open-
A Parisian who met a humiliating end,
In Dien Phu.
Little I know, comrades;
For I haven’t been to Indonesia-
The land of Sukarno.
Nor have I seen Russia.
Yet from the luminous heart of the new Africa,
Where darkness is sipping trickles of light from distant stars,
I can see the people in the heart of the Malay,
Like the iconic beacons built by the First of May;
Just as vividly as I can see Jomo,
Rising up as genuine as dawn light.
O flowery forests of Kenya;
O stars looming as beacons;
O Algeria;
Here the triumphant arch takes its proud shape.
From each home, each alley,
We converge like the Asian winds,
Like the war chants of the Maghreb armies.
O Egypt: my country’s full sister,
As sweet as your springs, luxuriant as your verdant meadows;
What an eternal truth you are.
O Egypt: mother of Sabir [1].
My heart is so full of you, o sister of my motherland.
Let’s wipe off the enemies from our valley,
Our friends are stretching hand:
The face of Ghandi and resonant echoes of the fathomless India.
The voice of Tagore, the chanter,
His verse flying around an art grove.
O Damascus:
We are all united in aspiration [2].
********
O vanguard comrades, leading my people to glory,
Your candles are soaking my heart in green light.
Haven't you heard the voice of "Taiwan" from afar coming?
Giving new life to the people,
Or seen the face of "Joudeh"?[3]
Faces to us returning from prison,
Faces shaking hands with us,
Faces returning to live anew
In Gezira, their mother island.
The souls of "Joudeh" are surely not dead.
O my comrades:
To Wahran our friends are marching.
And in my blood the Canal [4] is running –
Free as a bird.
In the heart of Africa I stand in the vanguard,
And as far as Bandung my sky is spreading.
The olive sapling is my shade and courtyard,
******
O my comrades:
O vanguard comrades, leading my people to glory,
Your candles are soaking my heart in green light.
I’ll sing the closing stanza,
to my beloved land;
To my fellows in Asia;
To the Malay,
And the vibrant Bandung;
***************************
[1] An old Egyptian woman who used to supply Egyptian resistance fighters with ammunition, hidden in her dress, during the British rule.
[2] An antithesis of a famous poem by prominent Arab poet Ahmed Shawqi, lamenting the division of ranks of Arab countries (the Orient). Shawqi’s wording was: We, as people from the Orient, are united in sorrow and grief.
[3] Refers to the Joudeh massacre in 1956, when around 200 peasants protesting for their rights were arrested at gunpoint and held in a poorly ventilated 20 m2 building used as a store for agricultural pesticides, where they died of suffocation
[4] The Suez Canal (referring to President Nassir's bold decision to nationalize the strategic waterway).
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YH/AS
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