“They didn’t buy any art but they still left with a piece of me with them.
And I am left feeling treacherous.
Full of words, unsaid.”
He stood in front of my stall in knee length cargo shorts and a polo shirt. He had strong rugged hands and a stocky build. His white hair was brushed back casually behind his ears and he was looking down at my art prints with a smile, deep laugh lines cascading from the corners of his eyes.
“You made these?” He asked.
“Yeah!” I replied enthusiastically, assessing his clothes, his stance, his attention level- do I give him the full spiel or the surface level cliff notes?
He picks up an A4 print of “She is a country” to get a closer look.
Okay, mid-length spiel, I think, and launch-
“So, that piece is actually what the whole series of works is named after,” I notice him squinting at the A4 copy. I pick up the A3 version and hand it to him before continuing.
“That’s my mother, sitting in the passenger side of a car, as we are being driven through Khartoum, Sudan. I was in the back seat when I snapped the pic-“
“Ah, so driver in the left side of the car - like America, okay.”
“Yes-” I say, pausing, his interjection throws me off a little. Do I sense him trying to determine which nation colonized us? Chill out, Leena, he’s just old making an old people observation. They like facts.
I continue, “the piece represents how mums are so often cultural caretakers, guiding us, pointing out the sites, teaching us about our culture, heritage, who we are. I might not be able to go back since the war, but in so many ways I’ve realized she is a country-“ this is usually where they smile appreciatively, and comment on the meaning of the piece. He just continues looking at the piece.
“So, South Sudan?”
“No, North Sudan”
“So that would be the main one that South Sudan broke away from?”
“…Yes… in 2011-“
“Right, yeah and they’ve been fighting ever since?” He says,
“In South Sudan?”
“Yeah.”
“They’ve had a civil war, yes” I can feel myself shrinking a little.
“Yeah, that’s about all I know about it. Constant fighting. It’s a shame.”
“Right….” I can see his eyes glazing over.
I can hear his thoughts:
These are a people at war.
Then and now. Always.
North and South,
then South on South,
now North on North.
No context, no recognition of a colonial history of divide and conquer, no interest in the nuance of our people and their struggles, no curiosity to learn more.
No follow-up questions, nothing but a statement of his limited knowledge. And a sense of comfort in this gap.
What else could there be to know?
They fight, these people, always fighting.
My mouth begins moving before I have time to consider my words, “but these pieces, these colours - this is the Sudan I remember. It is bright, it’s about family and culture, connection. It’s about joy and love and togetherness” I see his wife, silent this whole time, begin to nod. Yes, yes. I hear her think. Bright Africa, joyous, smiling Africans, this is an Africa I know.
They compliment my work and head to the next stall.
All I did was swing them from one two-dimensional stereotype of war and famine to another one of smiling, joyous Africans.
They didn’t buy any art but they still left with a piece of me with them.
And I am left feeling treacherous.
Full of words, unsaid.
I wish I’d said, “these pieces speak to the struggles of retaining your sense of self in foreign lands. It uses the Sudanese toub as a metaphor that equates the slipping of the toub from heads and shoulders, and the constant need to tug and tweak and adjust it to the feeling of being in diaspora and experiencing that same constant state of adjustment to ‘keep the toub on’, or retain a sense of cultural identity.”
I wish I’d said, “my work is about the diasporic condition. It’s about our complicated relationship to home.”
I wish I’d said, “my work is about having conversations like these, celebrating my people and my culture while drawing attention to all that we’ve lost over the last couple of decades and especially in the last year.”
I wish I’d said, “my work began with the onset of the war in April last year because I missed the home that had been stolen, lost to the whims of greedy men.”
I wish I’d said “these gluttonous men and those before them learnt these tools of oppression, theft and greed somewhere.”
I wish I’d said, “your very presence in this country is evidence of that.”
Instead, I am left bursting at the seams with these unsaid words wondering at the irony of my predicament:
How is it that Sudanese people have spent the better part of two years collectively trying to grab the world’s attention and turn eyes towards our invisibilised war (as Yassmin Abdelmagied so eloquently put it recently), trying to impress upon an unmoved world the scale of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Sudan, and yet...
Today, I felt like it’s not all eyes I want on the war in Sudan. Not these eyes that see this crisis as validation of their beliefs.
I don’t have an answer or a lesson.
All I know is that, today, I had several poignant moments of connection over my art stall with people from all walks of life. Many of them walked away with prints they connected with, whether they were in diaspora themselves, or Pakeha (European New Zealander).
But, the conversation that stuck with me the most wasn’t the longest conversation of the day, or the shortest.
It was the one that made me feel smaller.
I hope that next time I take the time to honour our stories properly. Even if the eyes looking at me, looking through me, framed in carefree laugh lines, don’t have the capacity or desire to understand.