(In)Visible Borders in Nubian Poetry of Mohy El-Deen Saleh

The massive displacement of Nubians due to the construction of the High Dam in Aswan led to significant geopolitical consequences and shaped new ideological views. Those views, such as the “right to return,” had their impact on Nubian literature as well. But there is more to diaspora than isolation, despair, and political demands. Egyptian Nubians form part of the Egyptian anthropological texture and surely enhance its widely known diversity through the course of history. So it is time to regard Nubia, our border with Africa, as this “place in between,” as an interlude or even as a bridge that sustains two cultures at a time; bringing hybrid motifs together. As a contemporary example of this “border literature,” the Egyptian Nubian writer Mohy El-Deen Saleh composes poetry in Arabic and roves from traditional to modern subjects and from collective reminiscences to individual concerns. This chapter shifts the traditional scope that studies Nubian literature exclusively as a cultural product of a forgotten minority, and analyzes in depth the mutable borders of Nubian identity.