CHICAGO: Award-winning author and journalist Hammour Ziada swoops in on Sudan in “The Drowning.”
As a military coup takes over Khartoum in 1968, the agricultural town of Hajar Narti awaits a bleak future while its residents fish out a dead body from the Nile.
Ziada’s book has been translated by Paul Starkey and tells the story of the residents of Hajar Narti who have built their lives around the heaven-sent Nile that rushes from the southern highlands to the northern lowlands, greeting people from all walks of life.
But the Nile has witnessed all kinds of injustice, as have the inhabitants of Hajar Narti.
The Nile has been ceaselessly flooding all summer and it is an inevitability that it will bring a body as it has in the past.
Abd Al-Razeq is the first to see it and yells to the customers at Fayit Niddu’s tea shack to come. Despite the news that another military coup has taken place, residents get the body to shore where they keep it for three days so someone can claim it.
Among those awaiting the fate of the dead woman are Ahmad Shigrib, communist and medical assistant, Fayit Niddu, a former slave, and Hajj Bashir, brother of the village leader and son of one of the largest land-owning families of Hajar Narti.
Despite the body, Abd Al-Hafez Al-Badri is having his henna party and the village is busy with preparation.
Between the politics, sectarian differences, strained and joyful relationships, Hajar Narti’s residents move at their own pace, sweeping away injustices with the Nile waters.
