The Face of Truth: The Most Beautiful Part of the Story…
Ibrahim Shaglawi
In people’s lives there are big things that occupy the headlines, and other small things that pass quietly without anyone paying attention to them. Yet the truth we discover with the passing of days and years is that what ultimately brings people together is not those huge events that dominate the news and occupy public attention, but rather those small details that slip gently into their lives without noise, leaving a deep imprint on memory, on the human spirit, and on life itself.
Nations, too, have their own details. Between geography, politics, and borders, simple cultural habits grow and shape the spirit of society. A warm theatre evening, a passing cultural seminar, or a reading session in a well-filled library may appear small on the surface, yet in reality they form an essential part of collective awareness, and may even become a turning point in the consciousness and behavior of societies.
Anyone who has experienced something of Omdurman’s cultural evenings realizes how the city would transform at night into a space of dialogue and beauty.
There, where the voices of poetry blend with music, and faces gather around an idea, a book, or a theatrical performance, people discovered that culture is not a luxury, but a way of life and a hidden bridge connecting hearts. In such atmospheres the awareness of entire generations was shaped, and names that later became landmarks in Sudanese culture passed through those nights: poets who carried the burden of the word such as Mustafa Sand and Seif Al-Dusouqi; thinkers and writers such as Tayeb Salih and Hamadna Allah Abdel Qader; and later intellectual voices such as Abu Al-Qasim Haj Hamad, among others who saw in the word a responsibility before it was merely literary expression.
Among those small things that remain forever in memory is an unforgettable moment when we went, as part of a student participation, to the Friendship Hall to attend a concert by the artist Mohammed Wardi, where he was to sing one of his timeless musical masterpieces, “Al-Huzn Al-Qadeem” (The Old Sadness), written by the distinguished poet Omar Al-Tayeb Al-Doush. It was a complete sensory experience that embodied how words, melody, and feeling can create a small moment that nonetheless becomes eternal in a person’s memory: “You are neither the old sadness… nor the color of joy… nor the longing I walked with… and failed to stop… nor did you show mercy…” and so the creative poem continues.
The song was rising from the voices of the audience before its words reached Wardi himself, as if it had already become part of everyone’s conscience. At that moment we realized how music can unite emotions and make the small moments of life deeper and wider. Such moments weave the fabric of society and its culture, confirming that simple details can become defining landmarks in a person’s life.
As for the National Theatre in Omdurman—an art I loved and that people have loved since its beginnings—it has always remained a mirror of society and its living memory.
On its stage stories were told with sincerity, and the audience saw themselves in the characters of the performance; sometimes they laughed, and sometimes they reflected. The theatre was a space where ideas and emotions met, reminding people that they share common ground that transcends their differences.
At the heart of this fresh cultural memory stand enduring places such as Al-Bashir Al-Rayeh Library and the Abdel Karim Mirghani Center, landmarks that for many years served as a refuge for lovers of reading and a window through which young people could look out onto the worlds of thought and knowledge. Likewise, the Sudanese House of Books preserved within its shelves the efforts of generations of writers and researchers, as if it were a quiet home guarding the memory of words and values.
Yet our small things are not limited to theatres and libraries alone. Sometimes they are an old heritage piece in the family home, or inherited belongings passed down from one generation to another, carrying within their silence stories that books do not record. At other times they are a collection of books we gathered in our youth, arranging them enthusiastically on the shelves, without realizing that those pages would later become part of our intellectual formation.
In such simple details the social fabric is formed in its purest image, where people gather around shared human ideas and emotions, far from the questions of tribe or region. Culture, in its essence, is a spacious field where differences meet because they share a passion for knowledge, beauty, and meaning.
These small details also reveal the secret of happiness possessed by some people. Those we see as happy are not living lives free of worries, but they know how to find joy in small things—a book, an idea—and how to turn these moments into gateways to daily happiness and the beginning of a more aware and attentive life.
Sometimes life exhausts us because of small habits we practice: staying up late, psychological pressure, haste, and thoughts burdened with tension. We think that a single day does not matter, yet when days accumulate they shape the form of our lives. Therefore any one of us can begin by changing a small habit today so that tomorrow it becomes a step toward balance and tranquility.
These things may seem simple in a time when the world is filled with the noise of news and the conflicts of politics. Yet experience teaches us that societies do not preserve their balance through power alone, but also through culture, thought, and shared memories, and through that feeling that there is more that unites people than divides them.
Perhaps what we have learned from the days, after years of life and experience, is that the things that once seemed ordinary to us were in fact the richest moments of our lives.
Perhaps for this reason, according to #The_Face_of_Truth, time whispers to us a simple wisdom: enjoy the small things in life, for one day you will return to the past and realize that those details that once seemed ordinary were not as we thought—they were, in truth, great things that created the most beautiful part of the story.
Wishing you well and good health.
Thursday, March 12, 2026
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