“This is your last day. Be strong. Don’t hesitate. Cut and run. An exit with no return.” This is how Nubian writer Idris Ali opens his novel Poor (2005). Read without any context, one may assume that the sentences describe a hopeful situation: a coming of age, a leap of faith, or the culmination of years of effort to reach an ultimate goal. Yet, what Ali was truly describing was a situation of helplessness and pure vulnerability. At that moment, the Nubian narrator has decided — determinedly — to end his life. Penniless and shoeless, the narrator utters these sentences as he wanders around the crowded streets of Cairo on a scorching August afternoon, where he contemplates his life after being exiled from his hometown in Nubia. The death of Ali’s narrator is likened to the death of a fly — while it may be seen as utterly insignificant, it can also be catastrophic. The opening of the novel, thus, poses the question: how much should we worry about what we kill and squash, even if it seems as small, and as trivial, as a fly? Speaking through silence The…
