•ISSUE NUMBS  ONE • 1997 •

An Hour of Signs

Harry Garuba

Jamal Mahjoub. IN THE HOUR OF SIGNS, Heinemann. Oxford,  1996,
252 pp.

On the many occasions in later years when the Khalifa Abdullahi  al Ta'aishi  was
asked to describe the circumstances under which, in the very regions where he himself
would eventually be hunted down and killed, he had first encountered the man known
as the Mahdi, he always told the same story. It happened like this:

scholar and searcher, who captures this pleni-
tude of meanings, after listening to many tales
about the Mahdi, with the simple statement:
'There are many stories in the world'. Thereaf-
ter he senses what it must  have been  like at
the twilight of the birth of religion when local
lore and superstition  become so much part of
the message that the unalloyed purity of'truth'
fades.

In  the Hour of Signs  is, of course, a title
that tantalizes, echoing, as it does, the vocabu-
lary of contemporary  critical  theory and set-
ting off a trail of signifiers  and significations,
undecideability,  slippages  of meaning and
aporias. But the  signs of the title are only in-
directly  textual.  They  refer,
more immediately, to the physi-
cal signs inscribed in the skies
and on the body of the Expected
One:  the stars and comets that
herald  his coming and 'the mole
on his right cheek and the gap
between the front  teeth' which
identify  his difference  and set
him apart  in this land teeming
with mystics and seers.

H 

^ ^^ 

Difference  and  interpreta-
tion stand at the centre of this
narrative. Signs which belong to
different  orders of experience,
different  discourses are brought together cre-
ating a semiotic  spiral in which  astrological
and semiological signs exist in uneasy co-habi-
tation  and  contestation.  In  this  re-
textualisation of the colonial encounter, differ-
ent  conceptions of history by different  inter-
pretive communities collide. Even though al-
ways implied, not much attention is given to
the epistemic violence which has become the
standard fare in intellectual discourses on the
dialectics of tradition  and modernity in rela-
tion to Africa. It is as if the discourse of Islam
in Africa  does not actively partake of this but

Thus  begins  Jamal  Mahjoub's  latest

novel, an epic tale of clashing creeds,
of campaigns and conquests, of com
munities caught in the tidal currents
of history; and individuals - pilgrims, proph-
ets,  soldiers and administrators - struggling to
salvage some meaning from this vast canvass
of chaos. Set in 19th century Sudan in an arid
landscape of dust-clouds and desert heat, where
nature  seems  almost as relentless  in its  de-
mands as the historical forces which propel the
combatants along in the savage drama of war
and bloodletting, the novel pulsates with his-
tory, myth and a thick pall of superstition.

03.1
Jamal Mahjoub

In the Hour of Signs  sets an oral tone right

from  the  first  sentence of the
prologue  and the syntactical
twists of the sentence itself sig-
nal the convolutions of narrative
which the tale later unfurls. Be-
ginning in media res like every
epic  worthy of the name, the
novel focuses on an imperial mo-
ment in Sudanese history when
a  religious rebellion  challenges
the colonial hegemony of the Ot-
toman  and British  empires. A
series of military campaigns en-
sue which surprisingly result in
a string of initial victories for the
Mahdi's  forces.  The colonial  armies  later re-
group and in the final battles conquer the worn
and weary warriors of the Mahdi's successors.
The Khalifa Abdullahi, the successor, may
have told the same story of his first encounter
with the Mahdi again and again, casting him-
self in the role of pilgrim and sojourner seek-
ing after an eternal truth, but in this novel rip-
pling with  stories  and signs, a multitude of
other  voices  and perspectives  is evoked to
colour, and/or counter the basic outlines of this
historical reconstruction of Mahdi Mohammed
Ahmad's uprising. It is perhaps Al Hawi, the

03.1

Glendora  Books  Supplement

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ISSUE NUMBER ONE*  1997

belongs to a different order of contesting creeds.
All  said  however,  these  grand  themes
merely act as a backdrop to the more interest-
ing delineation  of the  personal  thoughts and
actions of the leading characters in the novel.
It is a pity that not much  attention is given to
detailing the circumstances of the personal life
of the Mahdi and a few other characters, but
in the instances where this is done, truly hu-
man stories emerge. The personal aspirations
and frustrations of the characters, the moments
of doubt and  despair,  and their suffering  are
revealed.

The soldiers of the vagrant Ninth Company
of the Khedive's irregular calvary are seen  from
their human and monstrous, sides; the Khalifa's
manipulation  of power  to  his  advantage  ex-
poses his  primitive,  megalomaniac  instincts,
Nejumi,  the  brilliant  general,  continues  the
battle even when he knows that all is lost, trust-
ing simply in the unshakeable faith of going to
heaven when he dies. The fated generals, Wil-
liams Hicks and Charles Gordon, are swept into
the  cauldron  of  the  war  while  Captain
Hamilton Ellesworth goes through a scorching
experience from which he never recovers. The
liberal journalist Sherwood Louth is taken pris-
oner of war and experiences firsthand the many
horrors of war which his lackadaisical nature
and intellectual cynicism had not prepared him
for.

Within this bristling book of signs, it is the
vagrant  orphan  of  the  irregular  calvary,
Kadaro, and  Hawi, the itinerant  scholar and
seeker of truth, who are given a fitful glimpse
into the nature and meaning of this profoundly
disturbing historical experience. When Kadaro

is taken prisoner  by the colonial army and he
sees the engineers and engines and  machine
rails and 'the mountains of bale wire and fish-
plates and spare broilers and machine tools and
trolleys  and  a  thousand  other  things  whose
purpose he could not even guess' he suddenly
realises  that  the  armies  of the  Khalifa,  built
on faith rather than tools and  weapons, could
never  have withstood  this  force.  'And  he  un-
derstood them that the battle was not between
men of different colours or faiths, but between
two different  ages.'  He sums it all up by say-
ing: 'This  was  a war  between  yesterday  and
tomorrow'.

In the end, Kadaro chooses tomorrow and
becomes a railway stationmaster. Hawi, on the
other hand, pairs up with Noon, the  unusual
girl who is some kind of spirit-child, once again
choosing the mystical  and  metaphysical  over
the rational and scientific. But having seen so
much,  having  been  a  participant  in  the
Khalifa's brief reign when the new leader had
inherited the obscene splendour and opulence
of colonialism, he had  also, without  realising
it, lost his faith. His final crucifixion  on a tele-
graph pole for the sin of apostasy serves as  a
fitting conclusion to this tale. With Kadaro pre-
siding over his hanging, the direction to tomor-
row seems clearly stated.

This is the real lesson of this  novel, a les-
son that modern day Sudan can benefit  from.
Otherwise these signs may turn out to be mere
delusions, detailing a historical tragedy about
to repeat itself.

Harry Garuba, poet and literary critic lectures in the
Department of English, University of Ibadan.

Nigerian Book Publishing Index

L.  I.  Ehigiator

Ranti Osunfowora,  Evans Madu, Leo Osuji,
Ramon Akinbode  (compiled)  NIGERIAN
BOOKS IN PRINT. Nigerian  Publishers Asso-
ciation, Ibadan,  1996, 456 pp.

tions. Sections are further sub-
divided  into  pre-primary,  pri-
mary  secondary,  tertiary,  re-
search  publications  and  gen-
eral.

Entries  are  made  under
author's name or title. Each of
the sections are arranged in a

single alphabetical order un-
der  subject  according to  the
main  entry.  Word  by word
order is maintained in the ar-
rangement of all the entries.
Each  entry  is  allocated  a
number. A total of five thou-
sand, seven hundred and sev-

T HIS is the first edi

tion of the Nigerian
Books-in-print,  a
bold attempt by the
Nigerian Publishers Associa-
tion at giving a list of all pub-
lished books in Nigeria as at
December 1995.

With entries from some 65
local  publishers,  this  index
will be found a good reference
material  by students,  book-
sellers,  librarians  and  re-
searchers on available books
in Nigeria and how they can
be obtained.

The  Nigerian-Books-in-
print is divided into four sec-

Glendon  Booh*  Supplement