Translation: Ali Elmak

Commentary by by Mustafa Mudathir

While Shane was hailed by such prestigious filmmakers like Sergio Leone and Woody Allen as a masterpiece , Ali Elmak's invocation of its basic idea of the need for a savior has passed without notice by critics of his collection of short stories which included it, as it is indeed the least mentioned in any review of that book. The catchphrase "Come back, Shane" has been thought of as a means by which Elmak was trying to boast living in a semi-metropole where jargon was a virtue and cinema was a source of that jargon! But Elmak was simply tackling the unrest in the presence of colonial administrative power. He cleverly employed this wide-spread positive reception of the catchphrase which sounded like Ya Aboumreuwa يا أبو مروة, to put it in a common Sudanese term. He was criticizing the weakness of the struggle against the British colonial rule of his country and the two faces of the bourgeois.

Arabic Forum