Beware the Frankenstein Monster!

Dr Al-Khidir Haroun
In 1984, American cinema produced a film entitled Gremlins. It was perhaps intended as a horror film for younger audiences, yet its events contained warnings and moral lessons. In this sense, it resembled the dozens of films inspired by Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, written by the English author Mary Shelley in 1818. Since 1931, the novel has inspired scores of horror films, including productions combining horror with comedy.
I was reminded of all this by the veteran journalist Mohamed Ali Salih. In our early youth, we used to eagerly await his dispatches from America, published in the daily newspaper Al-Sahafa, founded by the self-made journalist Abdelrahman Mukhtar, may God have mercy upon him.
The residents of the Al-Sahafa neighbourhood in Khartoum perhaps owe Abdelrahman Mukhtar a lasting debt of gratitude. He worked tirelessly to help them secure that quiet residential district, which later became home to many of our hardworking relatives and neighbours from the historic Al-Sajana neighbourhood. Their residential plots were enlarged by a full additional one hundred square metres—a considerable concession.
The story itself is revealing of how financial hardship may compel people to prefer restriction over abundance and limited vision over wider possibility. The British authorities had initially granted them plots measuring four hundred square metres on which to build their homes in the vast, seemingly endless open land behind the predominantly white residential districts of eastern Khartoum and the areas known as Number One and Number Two. Yet they objected to the size of the plots and complained loudly, preferring smaller spaces because they could not afford to build on such large areas. The plots were consequently reduced to two hundred square metres.
Al-Mutanabbi once wrote:
“It is enough for death that it should become a wish.”
We also have a story involving Abdelrahman Mukhtar. On one occasion, he published a report claiming that we had caused disturbances at Wad Madani Secondary School, that I, as president of the Students’ Union, and the Union’s secretary had been expelled, and that classes had been suspended as a result.
None of this had actually occurred.
Our headmaster, the distinguished educator Mohamed Al-Amin Kaoura, therefore brought a legal action against Al-Sahafa, as the report had caused considerable commotion in that affectionate city, of which the respected headmaster was one of its cherished sons.
The court hearing happened to take place shortly after the May 1969 coup. Abdelrahman Mukhtar travelled from Khartoum, while I accompanied the headmaster to court in his car together with Jamil Mohamed Abdelhalim, who was then the Union’s secretary and later became a major-general.
The defendant justified publishing the false report—which had alarmed the city—by arguing that the miserable democratic era preceding the dawn of freedom brought by the glorious May Revolution had made even the impossible seem likely to occur. I no longer remember what judgement the court delivered.
Before it was nationalised alongside the daily Al-Ayyam, Al-Sahafa was published in tabloid format. It was widely read and attracted many of the leading intellectuals of the time. On its pages, we followed the sharp exchanges between the late Omar Mustafa Al-Makki and Salah Ahmed Ibrahim. Mohamed Ali Salih’s dispatches from Washington possessed a distinctive flavour of their own, for America in those days seemed extraordinarily distant—both geographically and in stature.
Mohamed Ali Salih recently wrote a lively piece, in both Arabic and English, about the curse of the Frankenstein monster: the danger of tampering with sound creation by manufacturing ever more entities for the purposes of concealment, political manoeuvring, or prolonging intrigue and deception.
Then the scheme escapes control. The magic turns against the magician. The artificial creatures multiply without limit, like amoebae, until every attempt to contain them becomes futile. The resulting flood grows into a tsunami, sweeping away everyone’s peace and perhaps threatening their very existence.
The film Gremlins appears to belong to the same tradition. In the story, a scientist obsessed with experimentation creates a small, ugly creature in his laboratory that nevertheless appears harmless and endearing. He gives it to his son, warning him never to pour water on it and never to feed it after midnight.
Predictably, disaster follows.
The creature begins multiplying geometrically and subjects the household to unimaginable horrors. Strange and terrifying beings leap out of the refrigerator, the washing machine, the water taps, and every conceivable corner. They then spread throughout the entire town like lice, locusts, or the grasshoppers that once invaded Wad Madani. A state of emergency is declared, police cars are overturned, and people die before the situation is eventually brought under control.
It seems that the Frankenstein monster has long since taken up residence in our country.
Read, if you wish, the memoirs of Slatin Pasha from the period when he governed Darfur. There you will see the remarkable skill with which entities were created—entities that quickly multiplied and, before long, seized one another by the throat.
We write and continue to write, knowing that it may be of no avail. The entire world, as a friend of mine used to say, is “completely oblivious”: it neither hears nor sees.
Even so, we take consolation in the words of God:
“As an excuse before our Lord, and perhaps they may desist.”

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