Focus Area – Africa; Focus Country – South Sudan
A writer with Sudanese roots, Bushra al-Fadil, has been conferred with the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. The 65 year-old won this prestigious award for his short story titled, ‘The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away’. His work has been translated by Max Shmookler, with support from Najlaa Osman Eltom, and has been published in The Book of Khartoum – A City in Short Fiction. He currently resides in Saudi Arabia and his most recent collection, Above a City’s Sky, was published in 2012.
In this short story, al-Fadil explores how a young Sudanese girl and her sister fall prey to harassment while travelling in a bus. The writer conveys the problems facing Sudanese women through lines such as this: “I got on board the bus with them again. The passengers’ eyes, like glass saws, flew over the thighs and eyes and faces of the young girls. I turned.” While the story ends in a tragedy, the image of the two beautiful young girls conjured by the writer remains, like a haunting reminder of the reality in countries torn by civil conflicts. Bushra al-Fadil’s short story is a very powerful one which will compel the readers to imagine the plight of women in some of the most vulnerable countries in the world.
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