Voices from Elsewhere

I consider my role to be a kind of bridge between different worlds

Fatin Abbas is an author and intellectual of Sudanese origin, raised in New York and currently residing in Berlin. She moves between continents, languages, and ideological borders with her sharp thought, rooted in the experience of diaspora and projected towards new forms of belonging. She crosses the fault lines of contemporary times – colonialism that has never fully disappeared, forgotten wars, and the violence of borders – and finds in literature a space of resistance and truth.
Her Black Time. Writings on the Invisible books is dedicated to the most innovative voices of Africa and of the Afro-descendant. The book collects the author’s reflections during her stay in Venice. Far from any picturesque exoticism, Abbas investigates the inequalities of urban landscape and history, the persistence of colonial privileges, the forms of waiting and suspended time experienced by those forced to flee. On the occasion of her participation in Incroci di Civiltà, and thanks to publisher wetlands books, we spoke with her about politics, migration, memory, and her book.

You first met Venice thanks to a wetlands residency. In Black Time, Venice is more than a background, it is a presence that ignites reflection. What kind of resonance had Venice had in your evolution as an author and as a thinker?
Venice appeared at a moment in my evolution when I was deeply preoccupied with politics, mainly because of geopolitical developments: the war in Sudan, the genocide in Gaza, the rise of the far right globally and so on. Given its many intersecting histories, cultures, stories and so much art, the city offered a canvas through which I could clarify and articulate my own ideas about what is happening in the world today. The cityscape inspired me to reflect on topics as varied as capitalism, war and genocide, environmentalism, racism, migration, and so much more.

At Incroci di Civiltà, you and Elgas have been guest discussants in the “Africa Plurale” event at Fondaco dei Tedeschi. How did that meeting inspire you? What contributions can this kind of festival give to the global confrontation on current topics and events?
For me as a writer with roots in East Africa, it’s always inspiring to be in dialogue with writers from other parts of the continent, partly to consider how our experiences across the continent are different or similar. It’s also an opportunity to remember how plural and diverse Africa is – Senegal, where Elgas is from, has a history and a context very distinct from Sudan, where I’m from. That said, there are also our common experiences, such as colonialism, which Elgas and I agree continues even into today, though under different modes and guises. This kind of festival is very important in bringing together different global voices and perspectives, and connecting the dots between those of us living in the Global North and those in the Global South. Often, especially if we are in the North, we may feel that what is happening in places like Sudan or Senegal is very far away and unrelated to us here in the Global North, and I think this kind of festival encourages us to consider these transnational relationships more deeply.

There’s a healthy presence of politics in your writings, though it is never programme-oriented. In what sense is writing an act of resistance for you? How do you relate to a European or North American audience?
We are living in a time where there is a concerted effort to disassociate language from reality. For instance, we have been told repeatedly by the most powerful governments in the world that the Israeli genocide in Gaza is not a genocide. There is a line from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” I think in times like the ones we’re living through, writing can be a very important act of resistance because it insists on naming the truth, naming and describing reality accurately, when certain powers try to re-shape and re-name reality to suit their own ends. As a writer with roots in Sudan, but who is also an American, and now also connected to Europe, I consider my role to be a kind of bridge between these different worlds. Therefore, I relate to my North American and European audiences both as an insider and an outsider: someone who is embedded in these societies but who also maintains a critical distance from them, as a result of my roots in Sudan.

You were born in Khartoum, grew up in New York, live in Berlin, and work in Boston… What is your relationship with space and time? And most importantly, what is ‘home’ to you?
My lived experience is quite transnational and transcultural, that’s true, and that has to do with formative experiences of displacement and migration. My family left Sudan in 1990 at the beginning of the Omar al-Bashir dictatorship, and ended up in the US. That experience has shaped my relationship to space and time in profound ways. In terms of space, it has meant that I am connected to many places, continents, cultures – that I have established roots across multiple geographies. I also have a sense of time across multiple geographies, which means I’m aware of the extent to which time itself is culturally determined. For instance, time is experienced and used very differently in Khartoum and in New York, as I argue in my book Black Time. For me, home is not one specific place, it is many places, as well as a set of relationships, friendships, alliances that transcend geography. Another way I like to think of home is in the writer John Berger’s terms. He described himself as a “citizen of elsewhere.” This idea of being “a citizen of elsewhere” is very beautiful, because it suggests a kind of utopian home or country that one can belong to that is still only imagined, an ideal home still to be realized.

Writing can be a very important act of resistance because it insists on naming the truth, naming and describing reality accurately, when certain powers try to re-shape and re-name reality to suit their own ends

Recently, movements and governments in African countries – I’m thinking of the Sahel and the AES – broke away from the French colonial identity and models imposed from without. These signals of new political constructs are rarely analyzed by our media. What is your interpretation of these decolonization trends? Do you consider them part of the self-determination process, or are they more ambiguous? And as a diaspora author, how do you relate to these transformations taking place in Africa?
On one level I think that these decolonization trends are important, because they highlight the fact that colonialism never really ended with the official independence of African states from European rule. The decolonization struggle continues and it’s necessary to carry it on against former colonial powers that continue to exert immense control through political, economic, and military policy in Africa. That said, I’m generally sceptical of the nation-state as a model of liberation. The nation-state is a framework inherited from colonialism, predicated on exclusion and violence against those deemed to be ‘other,’ or outsiders. I am more interested in structures and models that supersede the nation-state, for instance the still-to-be-realized potential of something like the African Union, a framework that can take into account the interests of the entire continent. In contrast to the aging Global North, Africa is the youngest continent – in Sudan, for example, 61% of the population is under the age of 25. To truly decolonize and liberate, we need to think beyond the narrow political and ideological models inherited from colonizers and come up with new models that can allow this extremely youthful population to fulfil its potential.

In Black Time you wrote how war does not only destroy homes, but also shared time: the time of long visits, of meals cooked together, of quiet life with our dear. Today, Sudan is wounded again, and is the theatre of one of the most serious humanitarian crises of the last several years. How do you carry on during this suspension? How does the relationship with writing, distance, and memory change for you?
It’s been difficult to carry on, because while on the one hand I am very lucky to live in a safe place, many members of my family have been uprooted because of the war. So feelings of anxiety, guilt, and helplessness have become a part of my daily life. But while the catastrophe in Sudan feels overwhelming, I still try to do what I can – raise awareness about what’s happening there, support people financially, and organize and protest to bring about an end to the war. I find that I am thinking more and more about what sort of a language, and what sort of literature, I need to write to address some of the troubles we are witnessing in the world today. At the same time, in a war that has destroyed so much (including, for example, my grandfather’s house in Khartoum), writing has been important in allowing me to preserve some family stories and memories, as well as a sense of Sudan before this war.