How Abir Ibrahim’s Photo Book “Love Letters to Sudan” Celebrates Sudan’s Culture and Strength
From all 18 states, the Sudanese-American historian showcases Sudan’s beauty and strength in her book, challenging decades of negative perceptions.
AmunaWagner
Kassala, Ibrahim’s family home, is a significant center for Sufism in Africa.by Abir Ibrahim
“So many people in Sudan don’t know that we have pyramids,” Abir Ibrahim tells OkayAfrica. “It’s not in the [educational] curriculum. The only thing they [children] study is the Mahdi and the Islamic Revolution, and that’s it.”
The Sudanese American development economist and author was raised in a family of historians; her grandfather started Sudan’s first national library in the eastern town of Kassala.
“Growing up in the US, my parents always instilled a sense of responsibility,” says Ibrahim. “You are privileged to be here. You work hard to build yourself, and you have to give back to your community in the same way they have contributed to get you to where you are.”by Abir Ibrahim/Ahmed Ibrahim
In 2019, Ibrahim was asked to return to Sudan and lead private sector engagement at UNICEF. It was a time of hope, right after the ouster of Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year-long dictatorship. Young people were excited to rebuild their country after al-Bashir had cut them off from the international community, which seemed to have forgotten about Sudan.
Even before war would eventually engulf the country in 2023, the days of the revolution ushered in long overdue conversations around the different lives Sudanese people were able to live, depending on their location.
“Any Sudanese will tell you that we know very little about the country. You grow up in Khartoum, it's a bubble. What does the rest of the country look like?” says Ibrahim. Through her work, she got to travel to all 18 states in Sudan and found herself face-to-face with systemic division.
“I was confronted with the extraction and marginalization of our people, and the conditions that were put in place from the colonial time until now,” she recalls. “That’s why we continue to be fragmented.”by Abir Ibrahim/Keeta Mohamed
From Tigray to Darfur to Kordofan, Ibrahim began documenting the places and people she encountered, finding out about the volcanoes in Darfur’s Jebel Marra or the ancient kingdom of Tagali.
Through UNICEF’s networks, she was able to collaborate with people on the ground, collecting a wealth of pictures and local histories that Sudanese all over the country would tell her over cups of tea when they invited her to stay in their homes.
“If you know anything about Sudan, it’s that people love a good story,” Ibrahim says with a smile. “‘Let me bring out the photo album or call my neighbor who's four houses down, you have to meet them tomorrow.’ They're the most hospitable people I've ever met.”by Abir Ibrahim/Ahmed el Mokhtar
When the counter-revolutionary war broke out, Ibrahim moved to Geneva. Whenever she met with African government officials or business people, they would remember Sudan’s prime, before al-Bashir’s rule, fondly.
“There’s so much ‘But Sudan was so great, what happened?’ in the older generation, but after 1989, this knowledge was wiped out amongst us younger people,” says Ibrahim. “It’s so sad. I wanted to do something about it.”
She decided to consolidate her years of documentation into Love Letters to Sudan, the first book to include histories and people from all 18 states.
“I started contacting some of the elders [I had met on my travels] who are actual historians, and I would say, ‘I would love to have you collaborate on this book,’” says Ibrahim. “They would say, ‘No, I'm not interested. I just do this for fun.’”
She pauses, then chuckles. “The way some of the older generations share knowledge is so funny to me, because why are you spending all your time on Facebook when you could easily write a book about this?”
It could be a Sudanese quirk, or a commitment to oral history that has not yet succumbed to the Western/colonial need to document everything through writing, but this unwillingness to document history is particularly interesting in light of the ongoing counter-revolutionary war.
Young Sudanese people, both in the country and the diaspora, are extremely frustrated with the world’s disregard of the war: the worst humanitarian crisis, famine, genocide, and extreme displacement.
Until 2011, Sudan was Africa’s biggest country. It’s the cradle of civilization and home to more pyramids than Egypt. Yet, many people have never heard its name, let alone know about the possible connection between their government and the warring parties currently destroying the country.by Abir Ibrahim
“Sudan doesn’t tell its own story well, so the world doesn’t hear much about it. We need a rebrand,” a young Sudanese person told OkayAfrica for an article titled Why Does the World Not Care About the Genocide in Sudan? Ibrahim’s experience offers one more missing piece to answering this question.
While many in the older generation are rooted in oral histories that don’t travel outside of their immediate locality, younger people like Ibrahim take it upon themselves to carry Sudan’s stories into the world.
“It’s not just about stories, but also documenting that in a way that can live on for future generations to come,” she says, and makes an important first step with Love Letters to Sudan, a meticulously researched historical account of the country’s cultural and geographic wealth.
Like Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s writing and Omer Al Tijani’s The Sudanese Kitchen Cookbook, Ibrahim wants to inspire others to archive their histories and preserve Sudan for those who will eventually rebuild it.by Abir Ibrahim/Keeta Mohamed
As she flicks through the book, she smiles at the different memories and struggles to pick a favorite. Perhaps her time in Darfur, where the people welcomed her with unmatched generosity and kindness.
“One of the most distinct memories I have was a guy on a camel in the desert who was curious about what we were filming in the middle of nowhere. He explained to me that because of desertification, people have to travel further distances to get water,” she remembers. “A lot of people don't have the physical ability to do so, so people like him will travel the distance, sometimes for days, to bring back water for the community. That kind of communal connection is so rare nowadays.”
Underwater scuba diving in Port Sudan.by Abir Ibrahim
Or perhaps her time in the North, where she witnessed ancient histories in the tombs of Kushite queens. Or maybe scuba diving off Port Sudan’s coast, where she marveled at the purest ocean life she’s seen. “Some of the pictures in the book show sharks and endangered species that only exist there,” she says.
Beyond Ibrahim’s personal journey, she is distributing Love Letters to Sudan in an effort to support Sobajo, an NGO founded by Ofgair and Mehira, which preserves Sudanese folklore and heritage while creating livelihoods for refugee and displaced women through craft and cultural preservation.
“100% of the proceeds go to Sobajo, because they are truly the real heroes of preserving Sudan’s heritage,” says Ibrahim.by Abir Ibrahim/Noory Taha
Love Letters to Sudan is not only an archive that challenges simplistic narratives about Sudan being a place of endless war and genocide, it’s also an invitation for Sudanese people to rediscover their own histories and take part in each other’s cultures.
“If each and every one of us can capture our family oral traditions and put them together for us to learn, that's the only way we can collectively reunify our country,” says Ibrahim.
