Marawi Bookshop: How the facts were mixed and falsified
August 15, 2022 (KHARTOUM) – Did the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo aka Hemetti buy the property that houses the Maroe Bookshop and then send an order to the owner of the bookshop to evict it?
This story began with a question mark, as rumours began to circulate on social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. This induced pages with a large number of followers to repost the news, thereby expanding its reach and popularity. Before we delve into the subject, another series of questions arise. Who actually owns the renowned Marawi library? And does Hemetti, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), really have a hand in this?
In 2019, President of the Transitional Military Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan made a change to the law that resulted in the abolition of Article 5 of the Constitutional Document, as it existed at the time. Within only 5 years of its economic and political independence, the Rapid Support Militia is attempting to separate from the state apparatus in general and the armed forces in particular. On April 8, 2022, documents were published that the RSF Commander, had issued an order establishing a special commission for the land and real estate of his forces.
There’s a possibility that the city whisperers are not mistaken about the Dagalo family’s acquisition of Sheikh Mustafa al-Amin’s building in a huge commercial deal. Hemetti’s acquisition of some of the dissolved National Congress Party’s houses and headquarters throughout the country, as well as the camps and headquarters of the Special Operations Force, which were affiliated with the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), led to these speculations.
Toward the end of the 1960s, “Iskander Fahmy Georges” legitimised his activities in the book trade by opening a library that supplied a wide range of stationery, office supplies, educational materials, books, and magazines to companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. He chose a property in the French market on the corner of Parliament Street in Khartoum as his headquarters, renting the facility from the Greek community and naming it “Marawi Bookshop” after the ancient civilization of Marawi. There was a special bond and nostalgia that drew the library’s founder to those parts of northern Sudan, where his family had lived for a long time in the city of Qinti, which was administratively affiliated with the Marawi Administrative Centre at the time.
However, the library, whose business thrived and commercial and cultural activity flourished, withered and was affected by the terrible economic deterioration that affected all aspects of life in Sudan. For the first time, in May 2015, a tweet posted on Twitter by “Mohammed Ali” expressed the current state of affairs of the library, saying: “A call to save Sudan’s oldest library to ensure that Marawi bookshop does not transform into a cafeteria or grocery store.” His tweet continued to state: “The Marawi Bookshop warned that the decline in book purchasing power and the scarcity of the bookshop visitors will put it on the verge of closure and abandonment.”
Al-Haj Mohammed Al-Amin, the general manager and owner of “Central Bookshop”, which was adjacent to Marawi Bookshop, stated in an exclusive interview with the Sudan Tribune, “For about three years, we all faced the same circumstances that led to Marawi Bookshop’s closure, after ownership of the property these bookshops occupy was transferred to a new owner.” He identified the new owner as a “doctor with a Greek wife.”
“The new owner raised the rent of the bookshops to $1,000 before the matter went to court, where he and his lawyers reached a settlement allowing him to remain in the contract for a time limit of one year, after which he would evict the property,” al-Hajj al-Amin added.
According to al-Amin, Marawi Bookshop closed and Central Bookshop moved to a new location but the struggle continues: “Currently our most popular sales are textbooks and university course books, but I have a cultural commitment, I will never close this bookstore no matter how sluggish the sales are. Some days, I come to the bookshop to look at the books on the shelves and return home with no sales.”
Dr Ahmed Ibrahim Abu Shouk wrote an article for the Sudanile website titled “Marawi Bookshop: A Sad Chapter in a History Inherited from Ancestors” in September of 2020. “Seven years after Iskandar’s death, the Marawi library began to face the spectre of closure, as purchasing power declined, demand for books declined, and half of the workers were released,” he stated.
The library administration halted book imports due to a drop in demand caused by the depreciation of the Sudanese pound against the US dollar. Following that, the library was subjected to a legal battle in order to vacate the premises in which it was housed. Finally, on February 11, 2017, police forced the library administration to vacate the headquarters in order to carry out a court order to expropriate the property from Khartoum’s “Greek community.”
Ambassador Jamal Muhammad Ibrahim was the preceding to the obituary of Marawi Bookshop, as he published an article in the same newspaper on October 5, 2017, under the title: “When the City Hides in the Library,” in which he proved his testimony to what happened: “In late 2021, I released my novel “The Notebooks of the Last Copt.” As is customary for most writers, I attempted to give copies to Ikhlas Sobhi, who now runs the Marawi Library following the passing of its beloved owner, beloved Girgis. A few months later, I went to the Marawi bookshop to check on the sales of my novel, and I was surprised to find that the library itself had vanished from its place, but I soon learned that the library had been clearly forcibly expelled. I noticed stacks of books on the sideways of Parliament Street and the bookshop headquarters shut. I knew that was the death certificate for Marawi Bookshop which we had proudly known in that location for more than thirty years.”
“We published on the channel’s page a news story about the closure of the Marwa Bookshop library after the Daglo family purchased the building, and we have confirmed that this news in its previous form is inaccurate,” stated the page of (Sudan Bukra Channel), which received the false news as soon as it appeared and published it. It further stated that Marawi Bookshop closed in 2017 after a judicial order was issued to expropriate the property located in it (on Parliament Street) from its Greek owners, and Sudanese police ordered the library’s owners to vacate it. Following the death of its owner, the late Iskandar Fahmy, the library’s organisers transferred the books at the time (2017) to stores in a building Sheikh Mustafa Al-Amin.
The connection between the Marawi Bookshop and Hemetti’s attempts to take possession of the Mustafa Al-Amin building arose from an earlier process of transferring books and storing them in warehouses in that building. After the purchase agreement, in which the Daglo family was one of the parties, was sent, the facts were mixed in such a way that fake news about the Daglo family’s eviction and closure of the Marawi Bookshop was spread right after the real estate sale transaction was completed.
To view Parliament Street without the Marawi Bookshop and Central Library is to feel a deep sense of grief, and this is a shared feeling among many writers, readers, and intellectuals, who were gathering in these spaces.
(ST)