الأستاذ محمود محمد طه: أحتفالا بـ 18 يناير: يا أنت!! يا ذا!! - صور/ تعليقات

Quote: Authenticity and poverty Taha's movement was ascetic, intellectual and mystical, but it also tried to celebrate Sudan and Sudanese simplicity. Taha's meals were plain, but he followed the elaborate rules of northern Sudanese hospitality carefully, washing the hands of guests and arranging the dishes for them . Asceticism was linked to Sudaneseness - Taha preferred kisra and a thin mulah, he would travel fourth class: even travelling in the packed-to-bursting trains, as opposed to the faster lorries and buses, was taken by some Republicans to be "authentically" Sudanese . Taha's preference for African fermented foods was noted in chapter 1. Hamid Dirar's history of these foods notes how colonialists tended to promote the use of European wheat breads against sorghum pancakes. This prejudice was taken up by the Sudanese elite, who have spent huge sums since independence subsidising wheat, and denigrating sorghum. Wheat was explicitly associated with progress, and sorghum was labelled a "killer food" by a senior politician in the late 1960s . According to Dirar, food was one of a number of markers for culture and identity, in a country conventionally bifurcated into Arab and African. This shorthand does little justice to Sudan's diversity, and to the fact that someone like Taha wanted to identify with the Sudanese or the African even when he had a fluent and appreciative understanding of Middle Eastern culture and religion . For him, railways, hospitality and sufism had a Sudaneseness that he desired.