0:01

I'm directing a documentary film

0:03

called Finding Nubia, which is about

0:06

a group of young Nubian Egyptians

0:08

who've never seen Nubia and who grew up

0:10

in Cairo, about their efforts

0:13

to both educate other Egyptians

0:15

about Nubia and also to educate themselves

0:17

at the same time. So Nubians in Egypt

0:19

encounter a lot of everyday

0:22

racism from other Egyptians, and

0:24

there's a lot of stereotypes

0:26

and misinformation about their culture

0:29

and their history, and they're often seen as foreigners,

0:31

even though Nubians have been continuously

0:33

in Egypt for millennia. So the film

0:36

follows this group of young cultural activists

0:38

as they go around putting on plays or

0:40

putting on performances or crafts

0:43

shows or storytelling shows. And

0:46

it shows how in trying to teach

0:48

other people about Nubia, they're really finding

0:51

Nubia for themselves, because Egyptian

0:54

schools do not teach about Nubian history, they

0:56

don't teach about Nubian languages. So

0:58

oftentimes you have to take it upon yourself as

1:00

a Nubian to go and find out information about

1:02

your heritage and your tradition. So

1:05

the film is about their struggle to find Nubia,

1:07

and also then the reaction of

1:09

an older generation to their efforts. So it's

1:11

also about intergenerational dynamics and

1:13

contestations over what it means to find Nubia.

1:16

Hi, my name is Yasmin Moll, and I'm

1:18

an Egyptian Nubian anthropologist

1:21

currently at the University of Michigan, where I live in

1:23

Ann Arbor, but I grew up in Cairo,

1:25

Egypt.

1:29

Many

1:29

people have heard the term Nubian, but

1:31

may not know exactly who it describes

1:34

or where the people come from. Like

1:36

many of the cultures we've discussed on this show,

1:39

it's a culture that exists both in antiquity

1:41

and in our modern day. What's perhaps

1:43

unique about the Nubian culture though, is

1:46

how recently they went through an event that so

1:48

acutely altered their way of life.

1:50

Welcome to Lost Cultures, Living

1:53

Legacies, a podcast from Travel

1:55

and Leisure. I'm your host, Alisha

1:57

Prakash.

1:59

learn about a place by delving into the people

2:02

who once lived there. In what ways

2:04

do cultures build upon each other as populations

2:07

come and go? How do they complement

2:09

each other, interact, and leave their marks

2:12

on the people that come after them? And

2:14

are cultures truly ever lost, even

2:16

if the people move on?

2:31

The Nubian people, like so many

2:33

others we've discussed, have endured a massive

2:35

event. An event that, in many

2:38

ways, cut them off from parts of their culture.

2:40

But

2:40

the experience of the Nubian people

2:43

and the ways in which they've adjusted to their circumstances

2:46

have only shown the strength of their culture.

2:49

It's also shown that the whole history of the

2:51

people can be carried within their identities

2:53

if they're able to continue engaging with it,

2:56

and the Nubian people have done just that.

2:59

At the start of the episode, we heard from Yasmin

3:02

Moll. Now, let's hear from two other

3:04

guests who will help us better understand the

3:06

history and culture of the Nubian people.

3:09

My

3:29

name is Mona Nelson.

3:42

Known in America

3:45

as Mona Nelson. Known in the village

3:48

as Mona Mohitin, Hassan Sharif,

3:50

Ali Dawood, Ahmed Khalil, Di Babaik Akay.

3:54

And so far in the Social Security

3:57

office, they decided that my name is

3:59

Mona

3:59

I am Nubian,

4:02

I'm Fadicha Nubian from the village

4:04

of Abu Simbel. I am married to American

4:07

and I have two kids, son

4:09

Shamsa Dien and my daughter

4:12

Nabrasha.

4:13

She is also the founder of the Nubian Foundation.

4:16

And Mona Sharif Nelson has spent her lifetime

4:19

studying and documenting Fadicha Nubian

4:21

culture, so we'll return to her in just

4:23

a moment for some cultural history.

4:32

Our history starts with

4:34

Noah of the Ark, who had Ham,

4:37

one of his kids. Ham had

4:40

three sons. One of them is Kush,

4:42

the oldest one, and he sent him

4:44

to start a kingdom in the upper

4:46

Nile, the white Nile and the blue Nile

4:49

connect. And then he sent his second

4:51

son, Vasarim, to start

4:53

the kingdom of Egypt in the lower

4:55

Nile, in the north. And then he sent

4:58

his third son, Khan, where

5:00

now it is known as Iraq, where

5:02

they started the three kingdoms. And

5:05

we always knew the Egyptians as our cousin.

5:07

Our land, our ancestral land, is

5:10

the area in the south of Egypt, north of

5:12

Sudan, according to the political

5:15

borders that the British put

5:18

later on. And our kingdom,

5:20

the Nubian kingdom, or the Kushite kingdom,

5:23

we had three main languages

5:26

and three main groups of people. Fadicha,

5:29

us, we were the owner of the land.

5:31

We had lots of very

5:33

hard rocks like basalt and

5:36

really lots of rocks formations,

5:38

which the Egyptians also took for

5:41

building their temples and sculptures

5:43

and stuff. And between the Nile

5:46

and those rock formations, there was a small

5:49

area where it was for cultivation.

5:51

And Fadicha Nubian, we lived in that

5:53

area.

5:54

The owners of the land are the ones who ruled

5:57

Africa and Nubia. And then there is

5:59

Dungla,

5:59

the Kinsey people, they

6:02

were able to navigate the Nile. And

6:04

the Nile was very difficult to navigate. And

6:06

one of the reasons why we were very protected

6:08

because not too many people, they

6:10

can navigate the Nile in our area because

6:12

of the underwater waterfalls,

6:15

they called it cataract. And

6:17

those underwater waterfalls, they

6:20

make a pool, which you have to avoid

6:22

them. And only the Kinsey,

6:25

those Nubian, they are the one who were

6:27

able to figure it out and

6:29

avoid

6:29

them and work around them. And

6:32

they were merchant. So they would go up

6:34

and lower the Nile, taking

6:36

stuff and trading and so

6:39

on. So they left as a trader to

6:41

move all the time. Then the other

6:43

side of the Nile, which is considered

6:45

the west bank of the Nile, that

6:48

is a desert, sand, dunes, and

6:50

completely bright desert. And

6:53

there is left of Alasha or

6:55

the people who were trader, but

6:58

through the desert.

7:01

According to Sharif, Nelson, her people,

7:03

the Fadicha Nubians, were the ones who ruled

7:06

over Nubia, building more pyramids

7:08

and temples than their Egyptian cousins.

7:11

And while their pyramids were smaller in height

7:13

and footprint than the Egyptian ones, they

7:15

were just as magnificent and important

7:17

to their culture. So why is it then

7:19

that the Egyptian pyramids and culture have

7:22

been so popular among archaeologists and

7:24

even the general public as compared to those

7:26

of Nubia?

7:27

The reason the Nubian history or

7:30

the Nubian archaeology is not as

7:32

glamorous as the Egyptian one is because

7:35

Nubians, we believed, is that our rulers,

7:37

they are only people on earth.

7:39

They are not like the pharaohs, a god on

7:41

earth. Because Pharaoh

7:44

is a god on earth, part of the

7:46

ceremony or the prayer, it is

7:49

to record everything that

7:51

God did on earth, including

7:53

what was happening, how he ate, what

7:55

did he fight with, his name,

7:58

all kinds of things. Egyptian

7:59

temple is an open book, they don't

8:02

have to guess. It is absolutely

8:04

more fascinating than what they will

8:06

find in the Nubian side, which is a

8:08

prayer. So they have to figure out

8:11

who is doing this prayer during

8:13

the era of who's king and

8:16

all kinds of things, which is in the end, it is

8:18

not as exciting

8:20

as how the Egyptians, they put

8:22

it. Yeah, while ancient Egypt

8:25

may be more readily accessible due to the

8:27

more thorough records it left of itself, there's

8:29

also much to be found in the history of Nubia

8:32

and its people for those who take the time

8:34

to look. Nubians are a

8:36

linguistic and ethnic group that has

8:38

lived for millennia in northeast Africa.

8:41

And Nubians have their own complex

8:44

ancient civilization that rivals

8:47

that of Pharaonic Egypt, which is much better

8:49

known. But in fact, Nubians

8:51

ruled over Pharaonic Egypt as a 25th dynasty.

8:55

They also had a rich and flourishing culture in the

8:57

medieval times.

8:59

5000 years ago, the first

9:01

kingdoms were developing side by side

9:03

in Egypt and Nubia.

9:05

Over the centuries though, the histories

9:07

of Nubia and Egypt were as closely

9:09

intertwined as you might expect, given

9:11

how close they were in geography. But

9:14

something else worth emphasizing is this.

9:17

Nubians are one of the

9:20

oldest communities that are

9:22

still living on this earth. But

9:24

also it is a black peoplehood.

9:27

It's a black community that kind of

9:29

sits between two different countries

9:31

that are identified as Middle Eastern, North

9:34

African, which is Egypt and Sudan. In

9:36

fact, Nubians these days are

9:38

largely either citizens of Egypt

9:40

or Sudan, or perhaps they are part

9:42

of the wider diaspora that has spread out

9:44

across the world, especially in the last

9:47

100 years or so. And it's this

9:49

dispersal of people away from their

9:51

ancestral homeland, along with its cause

9:54

and the ways in which the culture and people endure

9:56

that will mainly be focusing on in this

9:58

episode. Nubian

9:59

culture.

9:59

like any culture is always changing,

10:02

it's always dynamic. No culture ever

10:04

stays the same. But there was a

10:06

dramatic shift in the modern

10:08

period with the loss

10:10

of Nubian's ancestral homeland

10:13

by the dam.

10:14

The dam she's referring to is the Aswan

10:17

High Dam, which holds in Lake Nassar,

10:19

itself the sixth largest reservoir

10:21

in the world by volume. The

10:24

dam was built between 1960 and 1970 and

10:27

is, in its way, the descendant of the

10:29

Aswan Low Dam further upstream,

10:32

which was first completed in 1902

10:34

before being heightened twice in the following

10:36

decades for greater capacity.

10:39

The community has been

10:42

through many hardships in

10:44

the past hundred years since the building of

10:46

the Aswan Low Dam, taking out agricultural

10:48

land and taking out buildings and houses

10:51

up until 1964 when the post-colonial

10:54

state in Egypt built the high dam,

10:56

which submerged almost the entirety

10:58

of Nubian land within the Egyptian border

11:00

and a lot of Nubian land in

11:02

the Halfa Valley in Sudan.

11:05

The Egyptian Revolution of 1952

11:08

had toppled the constitutional monarchy that

11:10

was previously in place while

11:12

also ending the seven-decade occupation

11:14

of the country by the British. But

11:17

while this may have ended the colonization of

11:19

greater Egypt, the Nubians in the country

11:21

now found themselves at odds with Egypt's

11:23

desire to modernize.

11:25

Egypt became a post-colonial state

11:27

and we are no longer quote-unquote

11:29

colonized. It was the Egyptian state that thought

11:32

there is a need for modernization, electricity

11:34

is needed. Essentially, the British-built

11:37

Lower Dam stood as an example of

11:39

success that the incoming government in Egypt

11:42

wished to emulate, or it at least stood

11:44

as a quote-unquote success, as perceived

11:46

by a new government which yearned for further

11:49

industrialized modernity. And

11:50

again, Nubian people, Nubian

11:53

culture, Nubian land was deemed an acceptable

11:55

sacrifice. And Dr.

11:57

Aga says again because the Nubian people

11:59

had faced similar treatment under the

12:02

British as the Lower Dam was built.

12:04

Nubian displacement in the 1960s had

12:06

a huge impact for many

12:08

reasons. Before that, it was the

12:10

British colonizer basically

12:12

dispossessing people's land for

12:14

extraction reasons. They just wanted to

12:17

control irrigation for their agricultural

12:19

purposes, and we were a

12:22

sacrifice deemed appropriate.

12:25

Now, though, the balance being weighed

12:27

was between the Nubian ancestral homeland

12:30

and a push toward industrialization by

12:32

an emerging regional power thinking about

12:34

its future power base.

12:36

We were asked to move so

12:39

we wouldn't be flooded, which did

12:41

not make any sense to us since we are flooded

12:43

every year, but we didn't know that

12:45

this is going to be a reservoir. So we agreed,

12:48

assuming we would go back again after

12:50

the Nile would recede as it

12:52

usually does, and then we'll come back. Of

12:55

course, that did not happen. But the government,

12:57

they built us homes or villages,

13:00

keeping the same name of the villages, but

13:03

changed the kind of relation of the

13:05

villages to each other. But we moved all

13:07

our villages to areas

13:09

which are away from the Nile.

13:11

And Nubian life before

13:13

the dam was really tied to the Nile.

13:16

I can't overstate the importance of the Nile

13:18

to the Nubian economy, Nubian agriculture,

13:20

but also Nubian rituals, right? There are so

13:23

many rituals. All the key life

13:25

cycle rituals were tied to the Nile. If you had a

13:27

baby on the seventh day, you would often

13:29

take the baby to the Nile and you would put

13:32

lovely fragrant things, incense, and

13:34

perfume, and henna. You would throw it

13:36

into the Nile and ask the Nile to

13:38

watch over your baby. Another important

13:41

ritual was after their wedding night,

13:43

a married couple

13:43

would often go bathe in the Nile together.

13:46

And you can imagine what a lovely image you have, the

13:49

mountains and the moon shining down, and

13:51

you're swimming in the warm waters of the Nile. So

13:53

all these wonderful, lovely rituals that were

13:55

tied to the Nile obviously formed

13:57

such an important part of Nubian culture. they

14:00

couldn't be done anymore once Nubians were resettled

14:03

in the desert far away from the Nile. At

14:05

the same time though Nubians began adapting

14:07

to the new circumstances that they found themselves. Which

14:11

would come as no surprise really. The

14:13

Nubian people have been around for millennia

14:16

and their culture has survived, flourished,

14:18

and changed as needed over the years.

14:21

After all, adaptability must surely

14:23

be among the arsenal of traits belonging

14:25

to any people who have endured as long as they

14:28

have.

14:29

But let's return for a moment to the treatment

14:31

of the Nubian people by their ancestral cousins.

14:34

After the Egyptians had just revolted against

14:36

their oppressors and their colonial backers,

14:39

why would they treat their own citizens so poorly?

14:41

To

14:43

me it's a long history

14:46

that's entangled with issues of

14:48

race in Africa but also it's

14:50

not just an African issue. The

14:52

dams or development projects displace 50

14:55

million people every year according

14:58

to the World Bank. So Nubians were not

15:00

the first or the last people who had to be displaced

15:02

by development projects. Development,

15:05

dams, irrigation, mining.

15:07

All these projects displace people who

15:10

are often minorities, who are often racialized,

15:12

who are often rendered into poverty

15:15

all across this world to this day. So

15:18

we join or we are part of

15:20

the aftermath of a global project

15:22

of development that has to have

15:24

a sacrificial lamb in the process.

15:29

But even in the face of mass displacement,

15:31

carried out for reasons having to do with industrialization

15:34

and modernization entangled with issues

15:37

of race, the Nubian culture

15:39

survives. It's important

15:41

to realize though that many of the people

15:43

carrying the culture forward never

15:45

had the chance to know their ancestral lands

15:48

because of the submersion caused by the dam.

15:50

So it's not just that the culture survives

15:52

but that it also finds new ways to thrive.

15:55

And one way it does both of those is through

15:57

the sort of collective remembrance that from

16:00

storytelling.

16:03

For me personally, it's about the history

16:05

or the land that we refuse to let

16:08

go. The fact that I was born

16:10

in the 80s and my land was submerged in

16:12

the 60s and I still

16:14

identify as a Nubian from that ancestral

16:17

land. Me and an entire generation, several

16:19

generations, identify as this place

16:21

from somewhere that we have never ever been

16:23

to. Our modes of remembrance

16:26

somehow are a way for us to sustain

16:28

our land, even if it's in our consciousness,

16:31

and sustain our peoplehood, and sustain our

16:33

culture, and sustain ourselves to

16:35

just be and become. There are

16:37

lots of stories of displacement that

16:40

were documented by the AUC or

16:42

the American University in Cairo, many

16:44

other anthropologists, but I always

16:46

see that people forget and

16:48

overlook the stories of resistance and

16:50

resilience, stories of women who

16:53

took care of their communities, stories

16:55

of women who formed all these alliances

16:57

and counter governance, ways of

16:59

taking care of their community outside of what

17:02

the states said it should be.

17:04

People who didn't have their homes ready yet

17:07

when they went into this basement village and they were

17:09

told that they're going to go into this modern

17:11

place where everything is ready for them and they

17:13

go there and most of their houses are not even

17:15

built. Nobody had doors or roofs,

17:18

so this is a disaster waiting to

17:20

happen. Who gets what house? Is it the stronger

17:23

person? Are there fights that are going to

17:25

erupt? Which would have been normal, but this

17:27

community sustained itself and

17:29

managed to peacefully and in

17:31

solidarity take care of

17:33

each other until they got out

17:35

of these first years of displacement. They

17:37

were actually a decade of building and a

17:39

decade of precarity until they

17:41

could feel settled and it took

17:43

a lot of work from their side. So

17:46

Nubians had a very tough second

17:48

half of the 20th century, but the

17:50

first half of the 20th century was not really

17:53

easy as well with all the submersions

17:55

from the Aswondo Dam. I grew

17:57

up with my grandmothers with stories.

17:59

This is not only an Ubyen thing, it's an African

18:02

kind of knowledge device stories

18:05

and how they take you to your

18:07

history and how they sustain things, but also

18:09

how they become spaces of imagination,

18:11

how we tell stories about the places that

18:13

were, but also the places that we want to

18:15

be. And the story of displacement

18:18

becomes an account, but also a mode of resistance,

18:21

becomes a mode of sustenance to us,

18:23

generations after the displacement, generations

18:25

ago, I'd never even seen the ancestral

18:28

land.

18:30

Another way in which the Nubian culture continues

18:33

is through its influence on and incorporation

18:35

into the wider cultural landscape.

18:38

Nubians before the dam lived in

18:40

villages all along the Nile

18:42

that stretched from the first cataract to the sixth

18:44

cataract. So from Egypt all the way to

18:47

Sudan. And Nubians, the

18:49

houses, the windows always faced the Nile

18:51

because that is a million dollar view, right?

18:54

And the houses were very big. People

18:56

tended to live with an open courtyard. People tended

18:59

to live in multi-generational households. And

19:02

Nubians were farmers and

19:04

traders.

19:06

The Nubian architecture is very

19:08

iconic in Egypt. A lot of Egyptian

19:10

architects have very famous ones like Hassan Fathay

19:12

have been inspired by Nubian architecture.

19:15

And if you go to a lot of resorts

19:16

in Egypt, you'll see that they're built in a Nubian

19:18

fashion because the architecture

19:20

was domed and it was really good about keeping the

19:22

hot air outside and the cool

19:25

air inside.

19:26

That said, Nubians are able to keep

19:28

some details for themselves.

19:30

One really distinctive thing about Nubian

19:32

architecture that everybody always notices immediately

19:35

is the houses were always decorated on

19:37

the outside with drawings. Drawings

19:40

of animals, drawings of fish,

19:42

a flora, of trees. It

19:45

was always women who were the artists of the family who

19:47

always did these drawings and each house had its own

19:49

distinctive drawing. And this is something

19:52

that today, if you go to Aswan

19:55

and you see a traditional Nubian home, you'll always notice

19:57

these drawings on the outside, which again makes

19:59

Nubian.

19:59

homes very distinctive in Egypt. Most Egyptian

20:02

homes are not decorated in this way.

20:05

But while traditional homes still exist

20:07

in areas where displaced Nubians were

20:09

originally relocated to after construction

20:11

of the dam, many people eventually

20:14

found it necessary over the years to further

20:16

uproot in order to survive.

20:20

Nobody stays the same. It's

20:22

a continuous flux of human beings and

20:24

human communities across time. I

20:26

think the Nubian community had centralized

20:29

the sense of community and its togetherness,

20:32

even with diasporas. And then this

20:34

becomes a central

20:38

matter. It's more geographic even because

20:40

with life in the basement villages, people

20:42

started struggling with the economy. There was

20:45

no enough economic prosperity

20:47

for everybody and ended up with

20:49

having many generations like my father's

20:52

leave and seek work and seek

20:54

employment in urban centers

20:56

inside Egypt. But also there are many

20:58

Nubians outside of Egypt in angled

21:00

countries. Gia F

21:01

I

21:26

don't speak the language or I speak it with

21:29

difficulty and with an accent.

21:32

You can imagine, of course, it is what you

21:34

call it fish out of water. I have to figure

21:36

out how to fit in, and

21:38

fitting in, it meant to straighten

21:40

my hair and to dress

21:43

with color. Don't wear any gold because

21:45

the Egyptians didn't have all that gold

21:48

we had as Nubians.

21:50

So it was a kind of mark. So

21:52

I kind of refused to wear

21:54

gold. And the most destructive

21:57

one, it is stop speaking the Nubian

21:59

I completely forbid

22:02

even my family member to speak it because

22:06

I felt that it is a

22:08

way for the rest of the people

22:10

in Egypt to see us as not a part

22:12

of Egypt. I didn't care to be an

22:14

Egyptian, but I wanted to be a

22:17

part of this place

22:19

where I'm sitting in.

22:21

I didn't want to be different, but all Nubians

22:24

finished schooling and we finished universities.

22:27

And of course, I did my number

22:29

of masters and all my family members did. So

22:33

we are very well educated, including

22:35

those who suffered the most,

22:37

like my father and his generation.

22:40

They are the one who suffered the most because

22:43

they are the one who had to try

22:45

to make a place for us between

22:47

those two societies to

22:50

focus on holding on the

22:52

Nubianity inside them and

22:54

at the same time to be

22:56

able to get us to understand

22:59

and to help us to survive.

23:01

My father's generation,

23:04

they

23:05

were one foot in Nubia

23:07

and one foot in Egypt. The older

23:09

generation, the elderly, like my

23:12

grandfather, they were all of

23:14

them in Nubia, in my opinion. Even though

23:16

you were in Egypt, everything about them,

23:18

their clothes, their way of thinking,

23:21

their homes, everything, it has to be

23:23

a labric of Nubia. Our

23:25

apartment in Cairo, we wanted to

23:28

be accepted as the rest

23:30

of the modern Egyptians with

23:33

sofa and fridge and

23:35

whatever other Egyptians they had, a bed and all kinds

23:37

of things. But at

23:39

the same time, we would make

23:41

sure to insert all kinds of Nubian

23:44

articles and decor and

23:46

colors, wherever we are able to kind

23:49

of squeeze it into

23:51

our new place in Cairo. One

23:54

of the most important things is the gathering

23:56

of the Nubian people. Every Thursday,

23:59

Friday, usually... usually in Egypt it is a day

24:01

off. So starting Thursday

24:04

afternoon, Nubian men mostly,

24:06

they were fogged into our house

24:09

if they have uniform or if they have to wear

24:11

a modern suits or something like that.

24:13

All of them, since they would take off that and

24:16

dress up in complete Nubian clothes

24:18

and proudly walk the street

24:20

of Cairo. And I remember

24:23

our house chairs and everything

24:25

would become like a circle. And

24:27

as you sit down and suddenly

24:30

we would start hearing them talking about

24:32

their

24:33

memories. And

24:35

I'm telling you, I

24:36

can feel the sand under my feet

24:39

when they would talk about how

24:41

they would play in the village and

24:43

they would joke about it and who is better

24:46

than who and how they enjoyed

24:48

feasts together or all

24:51

good time and bad time. And all

24:53

of us, including the young one,

24:56

we would join the songs.

24:59

And I remember all the songs as the folkloric

25:01

songs. They would leave everyone

25:04

smiling and so

25:07

happy and so calm. And

25:10

as if

25:11

they renewed Nubianity

25:13

inside them, they completely

25:16

renewed it. And suddenly

25:18

they are satisfied, happy and

25:20

full of acceptance to whatever life

25:23

is going to bring to them after that day. Nubians,

25:26

they were known between the Egyptians

25:28

to have a smile with

25:30

brighten any room. Our smile,

25:33

it was full of that satisfaction

25:35

and full of that acceptance

25:38

and full of that happiness of

25:40

who we are and what

25:43

are we all about.

25:46

We'll be back with more after the break.

25:59

Tinfoil swans food and wine

26:02

has led the conversation around food

26:04

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26:07

swans continues that legacy with

26:09

a new series of intimate informative

26:12

Surprising and uplifting interviews with

26:14

the biggest names in the culinary industry

26:17

like Guy Fieri Padma Lakshmi, Mashama

26:19

Bailey and many many more

26:22

they share never before heard stories about

26:24

the successes Struggles and fork in

26:26

the road moments that made them who they are

26:28

today new episodes

26:29

every Tuesday Follow tinfoil

26:32

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26:34

don't miss a single bite

26:43

I'm

26:43

Alicia Prakash and you're listening

26:45

to lost cultures living legacies a

26:47

podcast from travel and leisure So as people

26:51

moved away from the displacement villages in search of better opportunities

26:53

They were forced to balance their identities

26:56

as Nubians against their identities as

26:58

Egyptians Despite

27:02

this perhaps necessary balancing act

27:04

though or maybe even because of it people

27:06

found ways in which to express and emphasize their culture in their adopted environments

27:10

Yasmin mole described one way in which she

27:12

was able to stay connected to her culture while living in Egypt's

27:15

capital city The

27:17

main way in which we experience

27:21

Nubian culture living in Cairo was through

27:23

attending weddings The wedding

27:25

season is a huge season in Nubian culture It

27:29

lasts all summer and for Nubians who are diasporic

27:31

or living away from a swan away from the resettlement villages It's

27:36

often the only space we have in Cairo to sing

27:38

our songs and dance to our own music And

27:42

it's often a space where people reconnect where

27:44

you meet cousins you haven't seen in many

27:47

years Relatives who are living abroad and other Arab

27:49

cities and who just come back home for the wedding season So

27:54

that was a huge

27:59

part of my sense of what it

28:02

meant to be Nubian, which is that we love dancing

28:04

and we had amazing, amazing songs.

28:07

There was a lot of other customs

28:10

that went along with attending weddings

28:12

that also then became important. One

28:14

thing, and this is a custom that

28:16

is obviously shared by other cultures, South

28:18

Asian cultures, other Arab cultures,

28:20

but the Hennonites, Nubian

28:22

weddings traditionally were always seven nights,

28:25

but with the hectic pace of modern

28:27

life, it's been compressed into just two nights.

28:30

And one of these nights is the Hennonite, where the

28:32

bride would gather with her female relatives

28:35

and we would again put on a lot of songs

28:37

and dance and then have our hands decorated

28:39

with Hennah. This is again a wedding

28:41

custom that was really associated with Nubians

28:44

in Egypt, but now has become common

28:46

to other Egyptian weddings as well.

28:48

And I think that's great that we were able to kind

28:51

of pass on this cultural tradition, which

28:53

itself is obviously one that's

28:55

not just only available to Nubians.

28:58

So I mean, the upshot is growing up,

29:00

I always associated being Nubian and

29:03

participating in Nubian culture through events

29:05

that were happy, that were all about

29:08

coming together with family and all about

29:10

celebrating key life events. So

29:13

there's always a lot of positive associations

29:16

with our Nubian heritage and our Nubian

29:18

side of the family, even though we were living

29:20

as a minority within Cairo.

29:22

And I think even with all the loss, for

29:24

example, most Nubians no longer speak our

29:27

languages, there's been a language shift towards Arabic.

29:29

What has stayed the same is the love for Nubia

29:32

and then coming together as Nubia. And then we

29:34

try to remember Nubia in creating dishes

29:36

that our grandmothers may have talked

29:38

about growing up or in

29:40

singing songs that date back hundreds

29:43

of years or in doing kinds of dances

29:45

that people used to do in old Nubia. So

29:48

there's still a lot of creativity

29:51

and resilience and a lot of

29:53

hope for the future that Nubia

29:55

will still continue to exist as long

29:57

as Nubians exist and as long as Nubians care

29:59

for it.

29:59

remember it.

30:01

And speaking of food, mole has definitely

30:03

experienced the importance that can have in

30:05

helping to sustain her culture.

30:07

I think sometimes the only way to experience

30:10

a culture or a homeland that has either

30:13

been lost or that you are far away

30:15

from is through eating. I

30:17

just want to say something more general about the importance

30:20

of food as a medium of connection

30:22

to a homeland, especially when you're living far away

30:24

from that homeland or to a heritage, especially when it's a heritage that's marginal on the island.

30:26

And I think that's a very important thing to think about. I

30:30

think that's something that everyone can identify

30:32

with at some level. So my mom's one of the first Nubian women, the

30:35

first black Egyptian women to have her own regular cooking slot on

30:37

Egyptian television.

30:37

My mom has always loved cooking and she's a great

30:40

cook. But like so many Nubians who live in

30:42

the north, she actually doesn't

30:44

know much about Nubian. So when she would

30:46

go on her cooking show, she would introduce

30:48

herself as Nubian. She was visibly Nubian. So people

30:50

would always ask her, well, can you make

30:53

a Nubian dish? And she found herself wondering, well, why

30:55

don't I actually know any Nubian dishes? So

30:57

she asked me if we could work together to research

30:59

what we could do. And she said, well, I think that's

31:01

a very important thing to think about. And

31:05

she would ask, well,

31:07

can you make a Nubian dish? And she

31:09

would ask herself, well, why don't I actually

31:11

know any Nubian dishes? So she

31:14

asked

31:14

me if we could work together to research

31:16

some recipes. And because

31:18

I'm an anthropologist, I'm very interested in the social

31:20

relations around these recipes and the food

31:22

cultures around them, and to create a cookbook.

31:25

So that's been really fun and doing the research

31:27

for this. I got to know really interesting

31:29

stories and memories that my mother

31:32

had of cooking with my grandmother.

31:34

So for example, dried okra

31:36

powder is a really key ingredient in a lot

31:38

of Nubian dishes, as is common with a

31:40

lot of Northeast African cuisines. And

31:43

usually people

31:44

use it to add bulk to a dish to make

31:46

it kind of more hefty. And so

31:48

now you can buy

31:49

dried okra powder online

31:51

in any African food store.

31:53

But back then, you had to make your own. So my mom

31:56

says that a few afternoons every summer, my grandmother would go

31:58

to a restaurant and say, well, I'm going to make a Nubian dish.

31:59

gather her daughters and they would get the fresh

32:02

okra and then string it together and she said

32:04

we would make okra necklaces and then we

32:06

would just kind of either hang them on the balcony

32:08

for them to dry in the sun or more often than not we

32:10

would end up playing with them but the point is they would end

32:12

up drying and then my grandmother would pulverize

32:15

them. And I thought that was such a beautiful memory

32:17

because it showed how in the preparation of

32:19

all these different foods it required a lot

32:21

of being together that was intergenerational which

32:24

is something that I think now

32:25

if you just go to supermarket and just buy

32:27

something you're going to be losing that.

32:28

So I love hearing stories

32:30

like that around dishes and trying

32:33

to think about how do you make dishes in the

32:36

modern kitchen today because

32:38

we have now a lot of appliances that our

32:40

grandmothers and great-grandmothers didn't have that was

32:42

very time consuming so trying to adapt the dishes

32:44

for today's kitchen as well.

32:47

Familial or communal experience is of course

32:49

an important way of sustaining any culture

32:52

but it takes on heightened importance when so

32:54

many people are displaced and dispersed

32:57

and you have to imagine that such experiences

32:59

sparked certain memories for those who

33:01

have moved away from Aswan while they

33:03

may also spark a particular longing

33:06

for those who've never lived there in the first

33:08

place. So even as the gravitational

33:10

pull of those previously mentioned economic

33:13

opportunities caused further dispersal

33:15

of the Nubian people the emotional

33:17

pull of their homeland at once missing

33:19

and displaced has also endured

33:22

through a sort

33:22

of mobile communal experience.

33:25

So we have all these diasporic

33:27

Nubians who create all these traditions.

33:30

There is a beautiful tradition that I was a part

33:32

of when I was younger. Nubians

33:34

kind of have this collaboration with the

33:36

National Rail where they rent entire

33:39

trains and they put village names on these

33:41

trains. So you would find your village you would be

33:43

booking a ticket with all the people of your village

33:46

and the whole car in the train is

33:48

basically you and your cousins and your village people

33:51

and trains upon trains go to the

33:53

village for a feast.

33:55

It's a big undertaking. It's

33:57

thousands of Nubians moving at the same time.

33:59

It's a big

34:01

kind of carnivilist event.

34:04

People are happy to see each other. It's as

34:06

if the train itself becomes

34:08

the villages that they lost, it becomes the

34:10

land that they lost. And then they go

34:12

to the displacement villages and they go to celebrate

34:15

with their elders for the feast. So

34:17

this becomes a big part of Nubians

34:19

trying to preserve what is not there.

34:22

Many of the ways in which our guests have so

34:24

far described the Nubian culture enduring

34:26

in the modern era have been about the community

34:29

sharing and participating in activities

34:31

with each other. That said, many

34:34

of these practices are also undoubtedly observed

34:36

by the non-Nubian people around them.

34:39

But the technology that is available today also

34:41

allows for projections of the culture out

34:44

into the world more easily and perhaps

34:46

even more intentionally than ever before.

34:48

Today, I would say Nubians and descendants

34:51

of that culture are really united

34:53

by a shared loss, the

34:56

loss of our homeland to the Aswan Haidem

34:58

in 1964. But

35:00

still, we like to say that Nubia still lives

35:02

inside of us, Goena, and it

35:04

lives in our songs about it. It lives

35:07

in our dances for it. It

35:09

lives in our stories about it. And Lao lives on

35:11

in social media. So Nubians

35:14

are very proud of this history. We're very proud

35:16

of this culture that's

35:18

often, I think, misunderstood

35:21

or marginalized or seen as only

35:23

belonging to the ancient past as not really

35:25

part of the present. And Nubians,

35:28

in recent decades, have become

35:29

much more active about trying to share that culture

35:31

and that history on social media

35:34

with others. Because Nubians now,

35:37

we're everywhere. I mean, we're a diasporic

35:40

population. And social media

35:42

has become a key site of coming

35:44

together to reminisce,

35:47

to share songs, to share photos

35:50

of old Nubia, as we call it, with

35:52

people who are living in Australia, in DC,

35:56

in the Gulf.

35:57

We're living all over the world.

35:59

Social media has been really key to cultivating

36:02

attachment to Nubia for new generations

36:04

who are digital natives and who are very interested

36:06

in learning about their history but don't

36:09

have a grandparent to ask anymore. So

36:11

social media

36:12

starts performing that role of being kind

36:14

of repository of collective memory. Women

36:18

are, of course, important in any culture,

36:20

though whether their importance is actually valued

36:22

and recognized has often been another matter.

36:25

In the case of the Nubians, though, women

36:27

have been revered from early on. The

36:30

goddess Isis was at one point the

36:32

most important deity worshipped by the Nubians,

36:35

and their queens tended to be more powerful than

36:37

was often the case in other ancient societies.

36:40

So it's no surprise that, even as we've

36:42

already heard, women continue to be

36:44

a source of strength throughout the displacement

36:46

of the last century and now into the current

36:49

one.

36:50

It is a society run by women. I

36:52

don't know if this is good or bad. I

36:54

think it is brilliant. But having

36:57

a strong woman in the family, it is held

37:00

really high in the village. The men

37:02

in the family actually feel very

37:04

proud that they have a strong woman in the

37:07

family.

37:08

So Nubian women, after

37:10

displacement, created

37:12

all these alliances within the community

37:15

with which activating trust

37:18

and the relationships that they have been cultivating

37:20

all their lives, they kind of collected funds

37:23

and built what are akin to community

37:25

houses. When this treatment happened, they

37:28

needed funds to build these houses

37:30

that were not complete. They sold their

37:32

gold. Nubian women were so proud of their gold that an average Nubian

37:35

woman would have around 300 grams of

37:37

gold that is inherited generation

37:39

after generation. And a family heirloom

37:41

of a piece of gold that travels several

37:43

generations were very common. And

37:45

all that had to be sold so that they can

37:48

finance the building process. So

37:50

imagine looking at all these houses

37:53

and thinking, well, this material was

37:55

my great grandmother's pieces of gold

37:58

that are probably 300 years old.

37:59

and I'm using craft that is extinct.

38:02

It doesn't exist anymore. So the

38:04

values that they had to give up and the wealth

38:07

they had to give up,

38:08

gladly to take care of their communities and their

38:10

families have always been invisibleized in telling

38:12

that story. They were also hands on

38:14

in the building process. So there are

38:17

photographs from that time where you can

38:19

see women building, but then when the narrative

38:21

starts, nobody speaks about women building.

38:24

So you'll find all these stories of

38:26

Nubian women making an altering

38:29

and taking care of the built environment. A

38:31

big part of this is cleaning. Nubian

38:33

women clean their house and their street.

38:36

And it's important because your street is a part

38:38

of your house. It's this kind

38:40

of ownership through care and

38:42

maintenance and sustenance of space that

38:45

Nubian women have been doing for

38:47

centuries and they started doing

38:49

in the displacement village as well. So

38:52

these are all place making activities,

38:54

even if it's an everyday live activity like

38:56

cleaning, or if it's a one time activity

38:58

like building or thatching or framing

39:01

the window or something. It's just the whole

39:04

micro stories and they insidiously

39:07

and intentionally are

39:08

invisibleized. It's not an accident. It's because

39:10

our narratives and our ways of looking at the

39:12

world's are male centered. And when we

39:15

tried to look the other way, it was very easy

39:17

for me. The minute I just asked questions

39:19

about what women did, I got all these stories.

39:21

The minute I asked who built our house

39:24

and they said, your grandmother, I didn't dismiss

39:26

it. Oh yeah, she

39:28

must have funded this or something. When

39:30

I followed up with another question, how? I

39:33

got all these stories about how she was

39:35

there building and decision making through

39:37

care and through kind of emotional

39:40

labor.

39:41

And of course, all three of our guests

39:43

are themselves women who are obviously

39:45

following the examples of the women who came

39:47

before them by leading others toward

39:50

knowledge and preservation of their culture. Specifically,

39:53

Yasmin Mole is involved in a project

39:55

at the University of Michigan called Narrating

39:58

Nubia that seeks to bridge the gap that

40:00

sometimes exists between the people of a culture

40:02

and the archaeologists, anthropologists,

40:05

and other scholars that study it. As

40:07

she told us, one way they're doing this

40:09

is by connecting those researching Nubia

40:11

with community stakeholders like artists,

40:13

singers, and storytellers.

40:15

One story that we've been telling is the story

40:18

of Nubia before it drowned using

40:21

photos taken of Nubia in the 1960s

40:23

by anthropologists. This is the only visual

40:26

record of Nubia. So when people remember

40:28

Nubia, they're remembering these photos. So

40:31

we wanted to create an animation of

40:33

these photos to make Nubia come alive

40:35

again for a new generation. We worked

40:37

with a Nubian musician to record a song

40:40

for this animation, and it's been circulating on

40:42

Nubian social media. So we thought this

40:44

was an important project to make academic

40:45

knowledge and academic research relevant

40:48

and accessible to the communities to which

40:50

this research really matters the most.

40:52

Meanwhile, Dr. Mena Aga's Nubian

40:54

identity has informed her work as an architect.

40:58

I was trying to figure out what it means to

41:00

be Nubian in this time because I'm a trained

41:03

architect, and I've always been taught

41:05

to have this rift between my

41:07

identity and my performance of my profession

41:10

as if my culture does not have the

41:12

capacity to feed into

41:14

this profession, which is completely not

41:16

true. And I grew up in a Nubian house with Nubian

41:18

women. If I practice architecture,

41:21

it has to be community oriented. It has to be

41:23

community oriented. It has to be land

41:26

oriented. It has to be people

41:28

oriented, just like how my four mothers

41:30

did it.

41:31

And her work as an architect has come to

41:33

inform her identity as a Nubian woman.

41:37

I think every Nubian that gets

41:39

the chance, and it's not afforded to

41:41

all of us, we're a community that has been so

41:43

dispossessed that it's very rare to find people

41:45

who have access to research

41:48

and facilities that I have the privilege

41:51

of being in right now. But once

41:53

we get them, we start asking these questions,

41:55

we start thinking about serving our own communities.

41:59

For her part,

41:59

Mona Sharif Nelson is a founder

42:02

of the Nubian Foundation, which is committed

42:04

to preserving, spreading awareness,

42:06

and fostering appreciation of Nubian culture,

42:09

arts, and history. And unsurprisingly,

42:11

her daughter has become very involved in

42:13

the foundation as well.

42:15

We asked her and our other guests to

42:17

tell us how the idea behind the title of

42:19

our show, Lost Culture's Living Legacies,

42:22

applies to her people and culture.

42:25

Being a Nubian, it is the state

42:27

of mind, in my opinion. It has nothing

42:29

to do with the land itself.

42:31

Our land is lost, but I don't think our

42:33

culture is. And I think this is

42:36

a case of colonial imaginaries.

42:39

You know, we killed you, you should stay dead,

42:41

kind of thing. That there is this

42:44

image of what Nubia is, and if

42:46

we don't meet this image, that means we don't

42:48

exist. But we as a community

42:51

are resilient, and we

42:53

are reproducing our environments

42:56

and we are reproducing our cultural performance

42:58

to kind of cope with the precarities we

43:00

have. Even if you take a Nubian away

43:03

from the river, that doesn't mean that you take the

43:05

river out of the Nubian. So I

43:07

don't think Nubian cultures are lost.

43:10

It's alive and well, but it looks different

43:12

now.

43:14

I think it's so important to spotlight

43:16

when it comes to Nubian culture, the

43:18

fact that it's still a living,

43:21

real, contemporary culture. I think

43:23

a lot of people in the US, when they think

43:25

of Nubia, they think of ancient Nubia.

43:28

They think of the Black Pharaohs. They think of queens

43:30

like Amina Ross, who fought off Roman

43:33

armies 3,000 years ago. And that's great. That's

43:36

a really important history to tell. But I also think it's

43:38

super important to learn that there

43:40

are people who are Nubian, who

43:43

identify as Nubians, who

43:45

have a distinctive culture, who continue

43:47

to live today in Egypt and Sudan, and

43:49

to not let this glorious or

43:52

prestigious ancient past

43:53

overwhelm this contemporary culture.

43:56

And I think it would also be important to not

43:59

make it a monolithic culture.

43:59

I think sometimes when we think about

44:02

cultures that seem distant or

44:05

very different from our own, we tend

44:07

to think of them as homogenous in some

44:09

way. But Nubian culture is very

44:12

internally diverse. Nubians speak not

44:14

just one language. They speak

44:15

different kinds of Nubian languages. Their architecture

44:18

is not just one kind of architecture. Their

44:20

cuisine is not one kind of cuisine. There's

44:22

a lot of internal diversity and complexity

44:25

and richness to Nubian culture, and I

44:27

would hope we wouldn't flatten that out

44:29

into just one thing. And

44:32

that is a crucially important point. Much

44:34

of what we've heard in this episode is specific

44:36

to these three women or the people they've known

44:39

or observed. The Nubian culture,

44:41

like any other, contains multitudes.

44:44

If you'd like to hear, see, and experience

44:47

more, we asked our guests for travel recommendations

44:49

that offer a close-up perspective. So

44:53

if you want to learn about Nubia, you have to go to Aswan,

44:56

which is the major city in the south of

44:58

Egypt. And there you have to visit

45:00

the Nubian Museum, which is the only official

45:02

museum in Egypt dedicated to Nubian

45:05

heritage and Nubian history. This

45:07

museum is actually super popular with

45:09

Nubians themselves because there they have

45:11

dioramas and replications of

45:13

traditional homes. Most Nubians

45:15

today live in modern apartment blocks. So

45:18

oftentimes, Nubians will go and take their own

45:20

children there to teach them about the way

45:22

Nubian life used to be

45:23

before the dam. Another that

45:25

I want to recommend is a small museum called

45:28

Anamalia. It is run

45:30

by the community by

45:32

a professional Nubian tour guide

45:34

who turned his house into a sort of community

45:37

museum. And there you'll find

45:39

everyday objects from old Nubia,

45:41

like cooking utensils or mud stoves

45:44

or how people used to decorate their living room. And

45:46

it's called Anamalia because he also has a huge collection

45:49

of stuffed animals that

45:52

were part of the Nile

45:53

ecosystem. So it's always a big hit

45:55

with kids, including the crocodile. The crocodile

45:58

is huge. It's very similar to the Nubian

45:59

symbolic in Nubian culture. And then he has

46:02

his grandkids give you a tour and you can sit on

46:04

their terrace, overlook the Nile and have a great Nubian

46:06

lunch. So Anamaya is a really great

46:08

museum to visit if you want an alternative,

46:10

more grassroots experience of

46:12

Nubia.

46:14

Visitors to Aswan will go to

46:16

the Nubian village in

46:18

Raugu Suhail, which is really

46:20

a very touristic, commercially

46:23

driven area where you can buy

46:25

a lot of Nubian crafts

46:27

and take a lot of fun pictures of colorful

46:30

Nubian houses. That's definitely

46:32

an experience. At the same time though, I

46:34

feel if you're looking for something a little bit

46:36

more low key, a little bit less commodified,

46:39

I would recommend visiting Haysa Island.

46:42

Haysa Island has one of

46:44

the only Nubian communities not to be resettled.

46:47

So Nubians who are not affected by the dam. And

46:49

there you get these panoramic views

46:51

of the Nile and you get to really interact

46:54

with people in a less touristic way,

46:56

but there's also still amenities. So you could still have

46:58

lunch and there's also guest rooms, you could spend

47:00

the night. I'd really recommend Haysa Island.

47:03

Put money back into the economy.

47:05

Put money back into Nubian's pockets,

47:08

put money back into people's pockets

47:10

and in people's hands. And my advice

47:13

is find people, find real houses.

47:16

You're gonna get the best food. They're going to

47:18

get the warmest reception

47:20

and you're going to have friends for life. Try

47:22

to learn a bit of the language.

47:25

Try to make an effort. Try to

47:28

educate yourself around the history. I know

47:30

you're going for a vacation, but you are

47:32

on displaced land. You are amongst

47:35

very precarious histories. It's

47:38

out of respect that you learn these histories

47:40

and you ask about them. Try

47:43

to enjoy the environment,

47:45

but also learn what does this environment mean to

47:47

people. Learn what does the Nile mean to

47:50

Nubians and respect that body

47:52

of water that has been the

47:54

vein of existence. The main aspect

47:57

of Nubian culture and Nubian history.

49:59

travelandleisure.com slash lost

50:02

cultures. In our next episode,

50:04

we'll explore the Taino culture of the Caribbean,

50:07

so make sure to come back for that. Until

50:09

then, enjoy your travels.

50:19

Lost Cultures Living Legacies is a

50:21

production of Travel and Leisure and Dot Dash

50:24

Meredith. I'm your host, Alicia

50:26

Prakash, Associate Editorial Director

50:28

at Travel and Leisure. Lottie LeMarie

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is our Executive Producer. Jeremiah

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50:36

Dominique Arciero is our Audio

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50:40

is our Researcher. Kyle Avalone

50:43

is our Fact Checker. This episode

50:45

was reviewed by Brian Ahern, a panelist

50:47

on Dot Dash Meredith's Anti-Bias Review

50:50

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50:52

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