Sudan PEN: A Window into a Nation that Suffers and Writes

Nizar Osman Al-Samandal: PEN International's recognition of 'Sudan PEN' comes at a time when the Sudanese voice is in dire need of solid ground to stand upon. Two years of tireless work have brought together men and women of literature and knowledge from inside the country and from distant lands, culminating in a seat for Sudanese within one of the world's most prestigious movements, which has elevated literature and freedom of expression to the rank of a cross-border humanitarian cause. The story is many years older than the current war. Since the 1989 coup, Sudan's writers, journalists, and intellectuals have been scattered in exile, carrying their homeland in their language just as a drowning person clings to a piece of driftwood. A nation torn from its geography seeks refuge in the word, making the text the last piece of territory remaining. When this war erupted, it found the old exile wide open, drawing in new exiles and writing chapters of displacement, fear, and loss into the biographies of creators. Yet, the country itself remained inhabited by pens that did not leave. Writers, journalists, and poets stayed between walls struck by shelling, writing by dim light amidst communication blackouts and displacement, preserving the text's foothold in the land from which others had departed. Those who stayed carried the homeland in the place just as the others carried it in the language; both remained faithful to the word from their respective positions. The membership of 'Sudan PEN' holds more than just a beautiful cultural headline in a time burdened by death. It is a space where a Sudanese person places their text alongside the texts of the world, presenting a face of their country that has been absent from news bulletins. The Sudan of poetry and novels, the memory of mothers, the names of villages, the scent of homes, and the songs of the road. This Sudan has seen its people pay price after price whenever they sought to make writing a home for freedom. PEN International has a long history in this field, as freedom of expression and the protection of writers are at the heart of its mission, and Sudan is present in its records through the cases of journalists and writers and the impact of wars on cultural life. At this threshold, the voice of 'Sudan PEN' emerges beyond the borders of the battlefield into a wider space, telling the story that the tragedy began long before the last bullet, and that defenders of knowledge and peace have a long history with restriction and exclusion. The idea was planted in two soils: the soil of exile and the soil of the homeland. Sudanese abroad carried it across distant cities, and Sudanese at home watered it from the heart of the war; the planting and the watering met on a single tree. Its harvest is for everyone—for those who left and those who remained, for those who wrote yesterday and those who will write tomorrow. Some of those who conceived the idea have carried Sudan for decades, while others were driven by the war to a new distance, yet they met on one idea: that Sudan should retain a voice that writes in its name, and that its children should find a platform from which to tell the world what news alone cannot convey. The newspaper that was closed, the writer who left, the manuscript that remained trapped in a drawer, and the journalist who searched for a safe city—these are small details in the calculus of war, but great in the balance of humanity. Nations are preserved by what survives of their memory when faces and places change, and the writer carries this memory in a sentence, a poem, or a testimony, then sends it to a reader who may have known nothing of Sudan but the sound of cannons. 'Sudan PEN' is a window opening onto the world and onto Sudan at the same time. The world sees through it a country that suffers and writes, and Sudanese, at home and abroad, find one another through it, after being scattered by exiles and wars. The first thing to cross it is the human voice. The voice of one who remained loyal to the paper and carried it into exile, and the voice of one who stayed in the country writing under a collapsing sky. The voice of a female writer writing from a remote city about her steadfastness amidst defeats, the voice of a journalist chasing truth between fear and survival, and the voice of everyone who believed that Sudan deserves to be heard by its own children, and to remain present through their voice after being merely news arriving from afar. This, in my opinion, is the meaning of recognition. No matter how wide the diaspora spreads, it cannot confiscate the right to write, and the distance that separated the people of the pen from their homeland remained short before their pens. They have carried the light in their hands all these years, and today they find a home that can hold it. A tree planted by two distant hands, its shade extends over everyone.