This paper focuses on the relationship between memory, music and space in the Nubian displaced villages, near Kom Ombo. The construction of the Aswan High Dam (1964) and the displacement of 113 000 Nubians has left them facing trauma of loss and sorrow. A new genre in Nubian music called aghânî al-tahgîr or songs of displacement is a result of the hardships of displacement, in which Nubians lament the loss of their homes. These songs form a living archive and contribute in telling a history that is only told by Nubians in their bedtime stories, in gâ'da gatherings, in Nubian Clubs and through social media platforms. Through analysis of poetry, music and lyrics collected throughout my MA fieldwork (2018-2020), I give examples of how 1964 and Old Nubia are remembered and lamented differently by various groups of Nubians living inside and outside the displaced villages of Nubia. Inside these villages, I collected songs by three ethnic groups that I share here: the Kunûz, the Fâdîkkâ and the Arabs of 'Ulayqât. Outside Kom Ombo, I analyse songs by an Alexandrian Nubian band called High Dam Band and by Al Sarah & the Nubatones, a Sudanese American band.
The proposed text is a collection of memories; they tell visceral politics stories in a Nubian displacement village. The stories are my attempt to understand the effect of different power institutions on our bodies as Nubian women. I position myself, my Cairo education, and my presuppositions concerning the spaces of our village of Qustul, one of the state-built displacement settlements that fell victim to the high dam and its reservoir in the 60s. I recall three scenes of tension between myself, women of my kin, and the built environment's flesh to inspect the buildings' complicity in the struggle of Nubian womanhood. The three scenes are located in a Nubian house, a state-built dwelling, the school, and the state-built community centre. Through these scenes, I try to make sense of our experiences after 50 years of displacement and capture the struggle of state, religion, and indigenous politics while they take place on Nubian women's bodies.
For decades, the twin issues of remembering and memorialising space on one hand, and forgetting and neglecting on the other hand, have been intertwined with attempts at carving spaces for memory. While many initiatives and actions have grappled with these questions, this special issue asks: What animates these endeavours? What does the act of remembering promise? How does forgetting operate as an ever-present looming threat? How are the stories of the past told? Where? By whom? Within which contexts? And to what effects? These concerns are by no means new. In asking these questions we acknowledge that spaces of memory are complex: actors include the state and its staging of its official story, different articulations of nationalism, various spaces of nostalgia, academics like us who are ever-so-fascinated by writing ourselves in the question of the past and its afterlives, as well as activists, practitioners, and social media users. The past, as many have noted, is not only contested, but it also haunts the present and provides certain promises for an imagined future. This issue responds to the increasing awareness of the fragmented and incomplete nature of storytelling, the lack of accessibility of archives, and the overwhelming dominance of specific regimes of memory. The contributors reflect on the fragmentary practices and articulations that compel various actors, or "memory agents", to do memory work: political, academic, artistic, activist or otherwise.
Umm Bîjû was among the few people who decided not to leave Suez after the 1967 war when almost 70% of the inhabitants had to leave the city because of the war. During my fieldwork in November 2018, she decided to walk me around her neighborhood in Suez, al-Kassâra. This article follows three decisions of Umm Bîjû. First, the decision of taking me on a tour comes as part of her interest in maintaining a personal archive of the period of the war and displacement in Suez and points to the centrality of space in the process of remembering. The second decision concerns how and why she chose the streets we walked. The tour reveals an intimate history of al-Kassâra interlaced with her personal life history and her present interaction with the neighborhood and its inhabitants. Suez opened after the end of 101-days siege in February 1974, and many of the original inhabitants managed to return. However, Suez never returned to how it was before the war. In light of the narrative of Umm Bîjû during this tour, her third decision, this article argues that the war years represent a ghost that still haunts the geography, memory, and everyday experience of the inhabitants of Suez.
