In 'Samahani,' Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin Asks if Evil Can be Combated with Goodness and Love

But is forgiveness ever possible in a society that does not willingly give up slavery, theft, and humiliation? Samahani opens with the Swahili proverb, “Nothing can stand in a lover’s way,” stoking hope where logic tells us there cannot be any.

“I was reading Omani literature and came across two books,” says Sakin, referring to Memoirs of an Arab Princess (1886) and An Omani Adventurer in the African Jungles. “The princess’ memoir started like this: Omani people are living happily in paradise in Zanzibar. They do nothing, except to enjoy their life. The Africans cultivate and plant and work in all the houses, helping [Omani] people with things they should be doing themselves. She described all of that, but then said that Africans are lazy and ‘when you hit them, they cry.’”

Sakin laughs. “It’s something of a contradiction. They used to do everything for Omani people who were living like kings and queens while Africans were living in inferno. So who was lazy? I told myself that it’s high time for the lion, not the hunter, to write the history of the jungle.”

Having read about 36 books detailing the history of Omani-occupied Zanzibar, Sakin gave himself one year to forget the facts and remember only the emotions he felt while learning about the Indian Ocean slave trade. “I wrote the history of the agony, the suffering, the very sad time that Africans underwent in the Omani Sultanate, based on the feelings that lasted inside me,” he says.

Researching the everyday lives of Africans under Omani rule was a difficult task, because historians rarely document ordinary people. Weaving together songs, poetry, historical facts and sorcery to paint an image of Zanzibar as a “Heaven for the Occupiers and Hell for the Natives,” Sakin has written a book of contradicting emotions and turns. “You know, that’s the spirit of writing the history of my people,” he says. “It’s like taking revenge.”

“The Blessed Princess loved the scents of the marketplace, particularly the fermented coconut when the breeze mixed it with the scent of cloves, fresh ginger, and lemon, and carried it to her delicate nose.” (Samahani, p19.)

“The princess loved the din of the market: the pedlars’ cries, the slavers’ auction bells, the call to prayer, the braying of donkeys, the hammering of ironsmiths, the shrieking of saws on wood, the roaring of mills operated by heavyset slaves whose hands grew sore and cracked, the bleating of goats being led to slaughter.” (Samahani p.20)

Mayada Ibrahim and Adil Babikir, two Sudanese translators who co-translated Samahani from its original Arabic to English, consider Samahani to be one of the few novels that grant Africans subjectivity when telling stories of the East African slave trade. They were drawn to it, because “Sakin transforms the slave into the protagonist, envisions his past, situates him within society, unearths his lost culture, and restores his voice.”

At the same time, Sakin stresses that he writes fiction, not history. “Everyone can write a story,” he says. “But to write a novel is the art of writing a story. You need to use a lot of tools, one of them is the characters. I created characters that help me tell the stories that I think are forgotten, or ignored, or historians just have blind eyes to them.”

The protagonists in Samahani are intelligent and complex, aware of their socio-political circumstances, sometimes content, sometimes angry. The eunuch is trying to undo his mutilation; the princess knows that her people are “barbaric,” but does that mean she would give up her privileges?

Upon its publication in Arabic in 2022, Samahani was banned in Oman for its portrayal of the horrific colonial realities of Omani rule. Sakin is used to that by now — his writing has been repeatedly banned in Sudan ever since his first short story in 2005, but his books were smuggled into the country and widely read regardless. “There is a curse chasing my books,” he laughs. “But I don’t get angry. If they ban the paperback, people can find my work through the internet.”

On a more serious note, Sakin has been living in exile since 2012. After his award-winning book The Jungo: Stakes of the Earth, which tells a story at the margins of society in a women’s prison in El Gedaref, was banned by the Sudanese regime, he had to leave the country. In his writing, he keeps returning to Sudan.

“I live in every part of Africa. Nobody can be cut from his history and memory,” he says. “I live in Europe only as a body. Actually, I’m living in Sudan and if I ever got a chance to return, the only place I’d like to live in is my village.”

While the setting of Samahani is dark and cruel, the novel is written with the humor and irony often found in Sudanese storytelling. “It’s part of my character,” says Sakin. “For Sudanese, if they don’t have this spirit of humor, they can't live. We’re always at war, even before independence. We’re living in such horrible times, with coup d’etats, the soldiers and governments and now the Janjaweed. We’re living in sad moments, so we use humor to protect ourselves from collapse.”

“... the novel delves into the story of the Blessed Sultan, eternal ruler of the islands of Unguja and Bimba and the surrounding isles, self-proclaimed commander of all that is in the heavens, except God of course, and all that is on earth, except China, since it’s too far away.” (Sahamani, p.14)

Returning to the topic of forgiveness, Sakin believes that any conversation about forgiving must begin with the perpetrator asking for it. “Omani people, or the British, who enslaved Africans have to ask for forgiveness first,” he says. “You have to get your rights. Then we can talk about moving forward.”

With his brilliant storytelling that compels the reader from the first page, unable to predict the protagonists’ fate until the very last page, Sakin has done his part in forging a path towards sincere conversations and reparations by shedding light on lives and experiences that history has not taken into account.

“My people, you are well aware that killing a villain means their soul attaches itself to you for eternity. The soul penetrates your body. It sees through your eyes. It devours your tongue. You become more wicked than a demon. Your body will smell like decayed flesh. You’ll be incapable of doing any good. Your heart will speak only of evil.” (Samahani, p. 179).

Samahani by Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin, with translation by Mayada Ibrahim and Adil Babikir, is out through Foundry Editions.