Quotes by Sudanese Authors

Often, then, the stories came pouring out, and often they were set before us slowly and quietly like tea. These slow stories were told with understatement that made my eyes and voice fill as I translated; for when people seem to have no emotion remaining for such stories, your own heart must supply it.
Daoud Hari
I entered the water as naked as when my mother bore me. When I first touched the cold water I felt a shudder go through me, then the shudder was transformed into a sensation of wakefulness.
Tayeb Salih
Because of my schooling, my fate would always be a little different from my friends.
Daoud Hari
What is more important for the world right now than preserving ways of living in balance with the earth?
Daoud Hari
If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It must not be allowed to work. The people of Darfur need to go home now. I write this for them, and for that day, ... and for those still living who might yet have beautiful lives on the earth.
Daoud Hari
We teach people in order to open up their minds and release their captive powers. But we cannot predict the result. Freedom - we free their minds from superstition. We give the people the keys of the future to act therein as they wish.
Tayeb Salih
I like talking to you,' he said, slowly.'Why?' That was the way to hear nice things. Ask why.
Leila Aboulela
The Mercy of Allah is an Ocean, Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean.It only has to open it's beak
Leila Aboulela
As best I could I had answered their many questions. They were surprised when I told them that Europeans were, with minor differences, exactly like them, marrying and bringing up their children in accordance with principles and traditions, that they had good morals and were in general good people."Are there any farmers among them?" Mahjoub asked me."Yes, there are some farmers among them. They’ve got everything—workers and doctors and farmers and teachers, just like us." I preferred not to say the rest that had come to my mind: that just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the  cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak. I did not say this to Mahjoub, though I wish I had done so, for he was intelligent; in my conceit I was afraid he would not understand.
Tayeb Salih
The day here is a something without value, a mere torment suffered by living creatures as they await the night. Night is deliverance.
Tayeb Salih
I wanted to be good but I wasn't sure if I was prepared
Leila Aboulela
Who would care if I became pregnant, who would be scandalized? Aunty Eva, Anwar's flatmates. Omar would never know unless I wrote to him. Uncle Saleh was across the world. A few years back, getting pregnant would have shocked Khartoum society, given my father a heart attack, dealt a blow ti my mother's marriage, and mild, modern Omar, instead of beating me, would called me a slut. And now nothing, no one. This empty space was called freedom.
Leila Aboulela
I heard Mansour say to Richard, ‘You transmitted to us the disease of your capitalist economy. What did you give us except for a handful of capitalist companies that drew off our blood — and still do?’ Richard said to him, ‘All this shows that you cannot manage to live without us. You used to complain about colonialism and when we left you created the legend of neo-colonialism. It seems that our presence, in an open or undercover form, is as indispensable to you as air and water.’ They were not angry: they said such things to each other as they laughed, a stone’s throw from the Equator, with a bottomless historical chasm separating the two of them.
Tayeb Salih
Can I aske forgiveness for someone else, someone whose already dead?Yes, you can. Of course you can. And you can give charity in their name and you can recite the Qur'an for their sake. All these things will reach them, your prayers will ease the hardship and loneliness of their grave or it will reach them in bright, beautiful gifts. Gifts to unwrap and enjoy and they will know that this gift is from you.
Leila Aboulela
Control yourself, it is not worth it. You will regret your rudeness afterwards, your sensitive nature will be troubled
Leila Aboulela
Makana stared up at the stars and marvelled at how clear they were out here, so far from human habitation. It was remarkable, just how many there were. They felt comforting, despite his situation. They took him back to his life with Muna, the happiest time he could remember, when the world had been simple. Sitting out in the yard in the evenings, watching the sky revolve slowly around them. It seemed like another world.
Parker Bilal
What ages you faster, suffering or experience?
Leila Aboulela
I know most people want others to have good lives, and, when they understand the situation, they will do what they can to steer the world back toward kindness. This is when human beings, I believe, are most admirable.
Daoud Hari
I am touched by her life, how it moves forward, pulses and springs. There is no fragmentation, nothing stunted or wedged. I circle back, I regress, the past doesn't let go. It might as well be a malfunction, a scene repeating itself, a scratched vinl record, a stutter.
Leila Aboulela
And why is it that so many years later it is so easy to distinguish the bullies from their prey? Adult bodies surrounding the children of long ago. The years have changed nothing.
Leila Aboulela
If only there was a way to escape this reality, if only there was a way to erase all this formality, if only there was a way to figure out your mentality, if only there was a way to rid all the theatricality,if only...however sadly all we think of is practicality, so we will never reach any finality.
Dalal Gabara
In the distant past, Muslim doctors advised nervous people to look up at the sky. Forget the tight earth. Imagine that the sky, all of it, belonged to them alone. Crescent, low moon, more stars than the eyes looking up at them. But the sky was free, without any price, no one I knew spoke of it, no one competed for it. Instead, one by one those who could afford it began to sleep indoors in cool air-conditioned rooms, away from the mosquitoes and the flies...
Leila Aboulela
My look, mind you, is not chocolate like Lauryn Hill, Whoopi Goldberg, or Naomi Campbell - it is pitch black and shimmering like the purple outer space of the universe. I am the charcoal that creates diamonds. I am the blackest black woman (41).
Kola Boof
Wad Rayyes, you're a man who talks. rubbish. Your whole brain's in the head of your penis and the head of your penis is as small as your brain.
Tayeb Salih
You are entitled to wonder and to doubt - you're free.
Tayeb Salih
The blood of the setting sun suddenly spilled out on the western horizon like that of millions of people who have died in some violent war that has broken out between Earth and Heaven. Suddenly the war ended in defeat and all-embracing darkness descended and pervaded all four corners of the globe, wiping out the sadness and shyness that was in her eyes.
Tayeb Salih
Everyone who is educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we shall have with us a bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality of our life...
Tayeb Salih
The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, When Allah loves a people, He tries them.
Leila Aboulela
Allah tests our patience and our fortitude. He tests out strength of faith. be patient and there will endless rewards for you, insha'Allah" - Utaz Badr
Leila Aboulela
All through life there were distinctions - toilets for men, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women - then, at the end, the graves are identical.
Leila Aboulela
But somehow, once you start playing behind the steering wheel of God, you realize just how powerful it is to be the imagination driving the natural world (64).
Kola Boof