Novels Aborted by War and Stories of Irreplaceable Years: The Tale of Muhannad Rajab Aldabi and His Lost Works
09 June, 2025
Portsudan,(Sudanow)_ The poorest people are those who cannot imagine or think beyond the next minute. War is born from this poverty of imagination. Muhannad Rajab Aldabi, the grandson of the Funj kings of the Sennar Sultanate in southeastern Sudan, told "Sudanow" magazine: "Before the war, I lived a peaceful life in Khartoum, I studied Business Administration, and then Information Technology.
Muhannad is the founder and the general director of Nirvana cultural foundation since 2017, his relationship with storytelling began early; he used to write stories for himself since he was a child. His professional journey culminated when he won the Tayeb Salih Award for Creative Writing in 2015."
Muhannad published four novels and two other books. He has received several local and international awards. The dearest work to his heart is "Shadow" the novel that won the Tayeb Salih Award – the mother prize – from the Abdel Karim Mirghani Cultural Center in Omdurman.
Muhannad always loves what he does; he enjoys every letter he writes, and with every word, he finds himself in this craft that has grown from a mere experience into a profession. He is a dreamer, and his mind never stops thinking, even when he sleeps, it continues to find new stories. Muhannad said: "Perhaps I would be dead if I weren't constantly occupied with these stories. Writing is a journey filled with joy and responsibility."
"After the war broke out on April 15, 2023, my family and I moved to live in the city of Salalah, in the Sultanate of Oman."
Muhannad expressed his sadness, stating: "What happened to most Sudanese inside the country happened to me; our lives turned to ruins, and we began to live with the constant expectation of death at any moment." Muhannad added: "I learned that the Janjaweed looted my house, just like most Khartoum residents, and among the priceless stolen items was my writing laptop, which had been with me since approximately 2010. The device contained a large number of unpublished works, including:
My first novel, titled "SAHARA" tells the story of an isolated village besieged by mines and the sea in the far east of Sudan. The novel narrates the worlds of fishermen, their legends, and their relationship with the mines left over from World War II, which claim their lives and their children's lives every day. I did not publish this novel, and it was a complete work ready for publication.
Muhannad also lost the novel "The Devil Mood" which tells the story of a girl suffering from schizophrenia, leading her family to confine her to a closed room, accusing her of shameful acts. Her family plans to get rid of her but seeks a suitable method that would not expose them to legal accountability or scandal. They agree to throw her into a well, but the arrival of one of their relatives from Libya to live with them after a long absence changes everything, intertwining the past with the present and altering beliefs and attitudes. This novel was also complete and ready for publication.
Among the stolen novels is "The Deer "w" " which recounts the tragedy of the war in the South. It's the story of a young man whose mother is from South Sudan and his father from North Sudan. His parents separated when he was a child, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother in North Sudan. After the official separation of the South, the young man, who was on the verge of entering university, discovers that his mother is alive and that he has a twin sister. He embarks on a journey to find them, experiencing multiple inspiring human experiences during this amazing journey.
Among the stolen items is also the novel "Kosti Black Hole" which, through a strong friendship between two farmers, tells the story of Anbar Jawda from an investigative perspective, introducing new names for that old incident that claimed the lives of about 300 Sudanese citizens. This was also a complete work and ready for publication, and I was considering changing its name to avoid confusion with Stella Bozic's book.
Muhannad also lost the concluding novel of the "Henry Wellcome Specttra's " trilogy, "The Builder House", this was a complete work whose publication he delayed significantly to allow "Henry Wellcome " to be read, and then "The Chronicles of Moya Mountain" Muhannad wished he had published it. He now regret not publishing this work more than any of the other lost works.And the novel "Hallucinations of a Betrayed Being," written in 2019, revolves around the Free Officers Movement in Sudan. It is 65% complete, and fortunately, he sent a copy of it to a friend, so it survived, being the only novel to escape this great loss.
There are also hundreds of short stories, dozens of incomplete novels, poems, memoirs, articles, screenplays, and business projects.
Muhannad said: "Losing this device makes me lose a large part of my output and my memory, as it contained even my childhood and adolescent writings and letters that survived the harsh nineties era."
Muhannad added to Sudanow: "I could have kept these wounds to myself in silence, but I chose to tell this part to bring attention to my lost writings. Firstly, in the hope of finding them, if this thief sells the device, I hope it reaches someone who understands the extent of my suffering. I also try to prove my ownership of these works in case they appear as literary works by another author or are disposed of in other ways, such as publishing them online, hoping to track their digital and informational footprint."
With the loss of this device. Muhannad is truly at a loss and is willing to do anything to retrieve the device or its contents. These lost novels, stories, and writings mean a lot. They are the product of much work, thousands of hours over many years, with Muhannad sitting in front of the keyboard, writing, silently, dispassionately, and abandoning everything that was not writing and living within it.
Muhannad has no hope of recovering what he lost, because some things cannot be replaced. The most valuable thing is time. Muhannad has lost crucial years of his life and youth—precious time taken from his already short life. Time that, once gone, never returns. So what then of the things he has lost? When he hears of people who lost their lives or loved ones forever, he feels his own loss is simple and insignificant. He faces it all with the courage he has left, and with beautiful memories.
Muhannad plans to dedicate part of his future to training young people in Sudan and the Arab and African region in artistic expression and imaginative thinking. I concluded his story by saying: "(There are always novels, even if they are not yet written, that's why our role is critical now—to engage everyone through cultural institutions and spread the 'contagion' of culture, knowledge, aesthetic awareness, and creative thinking. I hope that through this, we can avoid future wars that may be even more devastating)."
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