Hassan Ibrahim traces a path from anarchy to despair in his collection of short stories, writes Hala Sami Hassan Ibrahim, Hekayat Al-Bayt Al-Maskun: Mashahed min Om Durman (Stories of the Haunted House: Scenes from Om Durman); illustrations by Hassanein (Cairo: Afaq, 2005) Sudanese writer Hassan Ibrahim sets an anarchic tone in the prefatory note to Stories of the Haunted House: Scenes from Om Durmam, a collection of short stories that calls for treading new territories and a veering away from the familiar. He considers figures such as Al-Hallaj and Che Guevara as models to be emulated. To him they are among the characters who empathised with the wretched of the earth, feeling for the child's tear and the helpless old man, frustrated and furious as they witnessed the manslaughter of thousands. The preface is followed by the first story, a quasi-prologue that establishes momentum for the rest of the pieces which form a political allegory that highlights political conditions in Sudan and sharply criticises them. The protagonist is leading a carefree existence among his fellow men when he suddenly awakens to find himself endowed with supernatural powers and attributes that place him on the same footing as the venerable prophets. He is granted the ability to observe the world and anticipate its future through eyes that speculate from the hereafter. What he sees and will later relate, in three separate long stories, is atrocious. In the first person narrative prologue the protagonist testifies that he is a "by-product of a despicable age, one redolent with the odour of gun powder, oil and dead corpses". It is only the recurrent attempts of figures such as Patrice Lumumba, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein etc, that he believes can help us question and resist fossilised ideas and mentalities. Ibrahim's volume consists of three stories set in Sudan, and particularly Om Durman. The latter appears in the subtitle of the whole volume so as to emphasise its metonymy for Sudan. The setting, in this context, does not evoke a sense of patriotism but points to a site that is hollow and rotten to the core. Om Durman is, in short, a ghostly abode. The collection's first story, "Beshr", tells of a man who used to live in Baghdad, the seat of a great Islamic civilisation. The protagonist suddenly wakes up to find himself in a different time and place. He has landed in contemporary Sudan. Beshr wakes up in Om Durman to a world of fear, destitution, great torment and hopelessness. He witnesses the squalid conditions in which people live. He comes upon a concentration camp, ironically called "Dar Al-Salam" (The House of Peace). He is outraged that one of the lands on the great Nile River should have fallen into such a condition, where the community in which he finds himself is prey to squalor and brainwashing, and where the atmosphere is awash with propaganda, something which is further highlighted in the title story. The title story itself provides a variation on the theme of corruption, hypocrisy and despotism cloaked in the garb of piety. The haunted house is inhabited by "dogs", the blind followers of the government's "civilising project". They merely implement orders and lack any identity of their own. Those who implement the "civilising project" are ghosts because they are totally devoid of humanity. The haunted house allegorically represents a distressed nation currently inhabited by seemingly disembodied spirits. They are there to torture whoever objects to their project or thinks differently. The citizens are prisoners within the haunted house. The protagonist of third story, "Walking in the Midst of the Shade", is called Ayoub Saber ("Patient Job"). His existence is a kind of living death. The story throws a spotlight on the hypocrisy of the whole system and employs sharp and bitter criticism against the establishment as the bleak depiction of an oligarchy unfolds. This time the "haunted house" is represented by a cultural institution (the Ministry of Culture), the "ghosts" (employees) of which propagate the ideals of the "civilising project" and lead the nation to imbibe them. The stories are sketches that portray a monstrous regime, which seeks to overpower and manipulate every individual. This final story ends the whole volume on a very pessimistic note. One wonders at the author's choice of the village of Om Durman, and not Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, for the subtitle of his volume. Om Durman, as well as being an iconic site of Sudanese nationalism, is also the native town of the renowned religious leader Al-Mahdi, considered the most influential personality in the history of modern Sudan. He led a national revolt against the ruling Turks and sought a revival of Islam; it is, however, the contemporary proponents of such a revolution and its distorted outcome that Ibrahim attempts to portray. Ibrahim's Arabic vocabulary is rich, powerful and persuasive. The author vividly depicts dire conditions in Sudan in a style loaded with hyperbole that lends itself to parody and in doing so accurately renders the futility of life in such a destitute spot. The volume is replete with intertextual references, particularly an adoption of the language of the Quran that creates an anachronistic effect. Ibrahim makes use of the sublime language of the Quran to foreground the vulgarity and ugliness of life in Om Durman; it is part of a strategy of subversion in a work that seeks to disclose the corruption of a totalitarian regime that constantly and ruthlessly manipulates its subjects. Ibrahim exposes a dystopic world in which the "ghosts" of the "project" follow in the footsteps of Niccolo Machiavelli, a historical figure completely at odds with the teachings of Islam that they claim to embrace. The final story attempts to convey the political manipulation exerted by the "ghosts" of the disintegrating regime. It is reminiscent of George Orwell's celebrated 1984. As in the latter's Ministry of Truth, Ibrahim's cultural institute aims to police thought and acts to preclude citizens from airing their views. The stories are Orwellian in nature in the sense that they shed light on values that are misleading and become tools for political manipulation. The House's "civilising project" is simply propaganda for an autocratic ruling system. Although Ibrahim hails all those who "rebelled against ugliness and despotism" in the opening page of his volume, his final piece ends on a note that does not hold out optimism but rather strikes one of utter surrender. There is an obvious contradiction between the zealous anarchic tone reflected in the Rabelaisian style of the early pages and the protagonist's cynical and subservient attitude towards the oligarchic regime at the end. Despite the collection's macabre literary mood, enhanced by Hassanein's illustrations, it is worth reading for its boldness, as well as its substantial and varied intertextuality. It is a tour de force.
