On Being Seen

would you beg for it?

by Mutaz Al-Fateh - short video on his work at the end of the piece

Most of the time, I’m fine.

I walk through the world doing life, answering emails, chatting with friends, editing copy, writing. I do such a good job of showing up, that most of the time people forget.

Forget that I’m from Sudan. That I’m really from Sudan, not in the ‘I have an exotic backstory’ kinda way, but in the ‘I was born there and got married there and my entire family was still living there until—’

Forget Sudan is currently experiencing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis ever recorded, and it feels like no-one gives a damn.

Let me repeat that. The biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded is happening in my home country. Right now.

But you wouldn’t know it, would you?

You wouldn’t know it if you were looking at the headlines on any major paper in English, French or even Arabic.

You wouldn’t know it if you were paying attention to what politicians and global leaders were talking about.

You might not even know where Sudan is—

how many of Sudan’s neighbours can you name?

I hesitated writing this piece, because ultimately I am tired of baring our wounds in an effort to make the ‘world’ care. Who cares if the world cares, I wonder. What difference would the world’s attention make? I tweet about this despair and brace myself for the awkward, ‘I’m so sorry about what’s happening to your people,’ as if an earthquake or tsunami has hit our shores, as if we’re experiencing natural disaster rather than man-made, funded, genocidal devastation.

I hesitated writing this piece, because I don’t know what to say to you.

Shall I beg? For your pity? For your attention? For your care?

I’ve spent a lifetime as contortionist, an effort to make myself legible, to make myself human, to make people care.

But over and over again, I am struck by how rarely that effort succeeds.

People only see what they want to (cue my evergreen TED talk). A mixture of their biases, prejudices, misunderstandings, personal projections. It’s all understandable. I ain’t mad.

But if people can’t see me - and most people can’t seem to be able to - how in the hell are they going to see my whole damn country?

How are we going to be able to see ourselves?

It occurred to me recently that the place where I’m most honest, or perhaps, the place that I am most myself, is on the page.

Maybe that is why I keep returning to it.

As a place to process, sure. But also as a place to speak in a way where people will actually listen. As a way to be heard, without having to deal with the audience’s reaction in the moment - their shame, their confusion, their anxiety, their fear. As much as this is a conversation, it is also a lecture, a monologue, a missive - a one way communication tool that allows me to voice without interruption, without the expression in your eyes changing as you register hurt, defensiveness, affront. Your lack of seeing hurts, the erasure is painful, and while it is a pain I am accustomed to, one needs a place to speak without being punished. And yes, there are retributions for the written word - I have paid the price, I know - for me, it is worth the cost.

I gave up my engineering career in order to write.

(there was an ultimatum, and I made a choice).

I gave up a nation I loved to continue to speak.

And while I have never considered myself a ‘free speech advocate’, as that phrase comes with such racist-and-cissexist shaped baggage, when I look at my actions, I wonder what story I’m writing.

Such a high price, all to be seen.

If not by anyone else, than at least by me.

Khair, inshallah.

May Allah protect us all.

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Please consider donating to Sudan Solidarity Collective.

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