The Sudan Handbook

224 thE sudan handbook

The shebab, the young people of fighting age that the song talks about,

who are today dressed in fashionable jeans, begin to jump as high as

possible, taking it in turns or two at a time, spraying the audience with

sand. The Masalit are famous for these jumping dances. But the song

they sing incorporates a litany of other ethnic groups from Darfur, Arab

and non-Arab alike:

I’m Masalit, I’m Fur, I’m Zaghawa, I’m Dajo,

I’m Jebel, I’m Erenga, I’m Berti, I’m Tunjur,

I’m Goran, I’m Gimir, I’m Rizeigat, I’m Habbaniya,

We won’t go back to Omar Bashir!

‘The aim of my poetry is to unify the people of Darfur,’ explains

Abdallah Idris ‘because they have the same problems. The tribe is not

the goal, unity is the sole objective.’ ‘All Darfurians,’ he adds, ‘must unite

and fight the government of Khartoum.’

In conversation, he recalls the brief period – he was not 20 years old

• when Ahmed Ibrahim Diraige was governor of Darfur, from 1981 to

1983. This was the first time since the pre-colonial period that a member
      of Darfur’s majority ethnic group, the Fur, had been at the head of the
      local government. ‘At the time, there was peace everywhere, you could
      travel from Nyala to Ed-Daein [the main towns in South Darfur] without
      any trouble. But the National Congress Party injected tribalism into
      the whole country. It segregated people in the form of tribes: Arab,
      Fur, Masalit. I ask, on the contrary, that we unite as we did during the
      Diraige rule.’

Fluid Identities

Although the name Darfur means ‘land of the Fur’ in Arabic, the region,

today as big as France (500,000 square kilometres) is populated by

numerous ethnic groups besides the Fur. These include non-Arab peoples

and Arab groups, the latter also divided into many branches, such as the

Rizeigat and the Habbaniya mentioned in Abdallah’s song. Historically

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors Darfurian identity transcended ethnic boundaries. Before the present

(www.riftvalley.net).