Mythic Reterritorialization In The Nubian Literature

Like Solar Storms, King in Green Grass, Running Water applies the technique of telling stories as a way of trying to get things right for American Indians after being reterritorialized. In addition to the stories being told by the four American Indian mythical figures, he uses the technique of "singing" in order to mythic reterritorialize the lives of his protagonists. Paula Gunn Allen in "The Sacred Hoop" states that songs are a form of address in ceremonies (249), and that: "Ceremonial literature includes songs for many occasions: healing; initiating; planting, harvesting, and other agricultural pursuits; hunting; blessing new houses, journeys, and undertakings" (259). In GGRW, four mythic figures use songs to reterritorialize the lives of

For Nubians also use stories from their past and their heritage as a way of preserving their past, their memories, their habits and customs, and how life used to be back home before the building of the High Dam. While tracing what made the Nubian community unique, the Nubian literature aims at not only providing them with a record of that life of theirs back in Nubia before the loss of their homeland, but also mythically reterritorializing them by giving them a part of their home with them in their reservations as well as helping them to hold onto their ever-present dream of a return to their life by the banks of the River

Nubian vocabulary is blended with Arabic ones "as a means of highlighting the distinctiveness of the Nubian experience" (Gilmore 65). Nubian words such as : adila (farewell), angareeb (a bed made of palm stalks), gorbati/-ya (a pejorative term for anything non-Nubian), ka kummo (this phrase negates what precedes it), wo nor (exclamation of praise to, or fear of, God), garri (foolish, ridiculous), adamir (human beings), amon nutto (the good inhabitants of the river), amon dugur (the evil enhabitants of the river), uburty (ashes), mas kag ru (greetings), hamboul (the river course), farky (a depression in the land along the edge of the river); Nubian names such as Awada, Zeinab Uburty, Asha Ashry; as well as aspects of Nubian lifestyle and food: kabid (a kind of bread), ittir (a soup made from the green leaf of the Jew's mallow; mulukhiya in Arabic), dulka (a kind of fragrant oil), are integrated by Oddoul in the Arabic text as a mythic reterritorializing technique in order to foreground and descriptively record the uniqueness of the Nubian environment, culture, and history. In the Arabic text, Oddoul sometimes supplies the explanation of these terms in footnotes, and in other occasions he defines the term only after its mention within the text.

Dongola

To contrast Oddoul's homesickness, Idris Ali in Dongola "exhibits no such nostalgia about Old Nubia" (Gilmore 68). The researcher agrees in part