Leila Aboulela’s River Spirit — a crescendo of resilience and rebellion

The Sudanese author's latest novel is set during the Mahdist War in the 1800s. It's a heartbreaking, rich and evocative journey

Leila Aboulela puts her home country's history under the microscope in her latest novel. Photo: Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela’s new novel River Spirit gives readers a snapshot of Sudan in the late 1800s.

The Ottoman Empire is shrinking and Egypt, which is under British occupation, governs Sudan. A man emerges claiming to be the Mahdi, a religious figure who Muslims believe will appear towards the end of time to help eradicate injustice. Many flock to him and become his supporters, while others who deny his claims face imprisonment, conquest or worse.

Within this historical context, Sudanese author Aboulela, who won acclaim for previous titles Minaret and Bird Summons, creates a cast of seven fictional characters and tells a compelling story of resilience and rebellion. The novel was recently published by Saqi Books.

Aboulela grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and studied the history of the period when the city was under siege by the armies of Muhammad Ahmad, making it a familiar backdrop for her novel. Her great-grandfather, an immigrant from the south of Egypt, was staunchly opposed to Ahmad. And when his forces entered the city of Omdurman, he dug a pit in his yard to hide his five daughters, fearing they would be raped if found.

“This fear and sense of impending chaos was always something that struck me,” Aboulela tells The National.

Panic and despair are expressed throughout River Spirit, which at times reads like a crescendo of anarchy as the Mahdi’s forces draw closer. At one point, Aboulela describes a pregnant woman in a slave caravan who stops by the side of the road to give birth. The baby dies minutes later, and the mother “pokes the Earth with her fingers” to bury him before continuing to march on, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

Heartbreaking moments such as these are described with rich detail and through evocative prose as Aboulela transports readers back in time.

River Spirit captures the Muslim community at a crossroads during a period when the power and prestige of the Ottoman Empire was waning, leaving a vacuum filled by European colonialism. This tilt in world power dynamics was destabilising for many Muslims, leading to an eventual disillusionment with nationalism, and a turn towards religion.

The character Yaseen, for instance, studies to be an Islamic jurist at Egypt’s prestigious Al Azhar University, and remains firmly opposed to Ahmad, while Musa is easily swept up in the leader’s promises of salvation.

“Musa is vulnerable to what we would now call radicalisation. Both men are driven to eradicate injustice, but they are going about it in different ways,” says Aboulela, who has a penchant for painting a pluralistic picture of Muslims throughout her work.

One can’t help but draw similarities between these themes and conflicts today, for example the case of Shamima Begum, now 23. She was 15 when she travelled from Britain to Syria to join ISIS in 2015.

“While I was researching and writing, I realised that I was seeing echoes and parallels. Certainly, the past gives us a better understanding of the present. A severe sense of injustice can cause Muslim revolutionaries to rise up," she says.

"This is extreme, ungrounded in Islamic law and dangerous because it gives such groups a green card to wage civil war and disrupt society."

In this hyper-patriarchal context, she also highlights female empowerment and agency. As the lives of the seven characters become inextricably linked, one decades-long love story emerges during the holy war, which Aboulela tells from both male and female perspectives.

“Throughout the Mahdist wars, women accompanied the army. They cooked, nursed and set up market stalls every step of the way. They also played a part in espionage, gathering data and passing it on. However, they are merely footnotes in the historical records — I never found a first-person account from a woman’s perspective," she says.

"This presents an opportunity for the creative writer to fill the gaps with fiction, to imagine the lives of these women and give them space and a voice."