Coming back to a place after years away can be a deeply emotional experience. For Waleed Alasad '91, who studied mechanical engineering at AUC and is now the CEO of NAPESCO Petroleum, visiting Ewart Memorial Hall in the spring of 2024 for a memorial event triggered strong feelings of nostalgia. After the service, he went home and wrote the following in honor of the space and the memories it holds.
Read the original Arabic version on Substack.
I still remember the summer morning in July nearly four decades ago when I stepped into Ewart Memorial Hall to sit for the aptitude test required for admission to AUC. That grand hall -- with its vast space between the seats, the ceiling and the stage adorned with European Rococo ornaments -- bears an inscription in Latin that seemed to have been crafted by Egyptian calligraphers trained in Ottoman script, merging the two worlds. It read:
"Let knowledge grow from more to more, but more of reverence in us dwell."
Ewart Hall, whose construction was funded in the 1920s by a granddaughter of William Dana Ewart -- the American inventor of the chain belt -- became a small homeland for us Sudanese students while we were far from our country. Our connection to it was through the Sudanese Students Association at AUC, an active organization and close-knit family centered around identity. The hall often hosted rehearsals for our choral group, and its majestic walls echoed with our pentatonic scale as we sang and learned who "Azza" was, as "Azza" in our poetry and songs means Sudan:
"Azza, I have not forsaken the land of beauty,
Nor have I sought a substitute, none but perfection.
My heart never swayed to another.
Embrace me with your right hand, for I lie resting on your left."
The hall's Western murals would smile back at us, replying salaamat (greetings) after each line.
The 1980s were full of both sorrow and splendor. What more can be said of those times?
Ewart Hall couldn't close the chapter of the 1980s without adding the crown jewel of that era: the Akad El-Galad band.
In the hall, we organized a grand concert for the band, inviting Sudanese students from all the universities. The aisles were packed after the seats were filled, and Sheikh Rihan Street overflowed with people of dark skin from every direction, their hearts longing for the words of Mohamed Taha Al Gaddal, Amal Dunqul and Al-Madah Al-Makkawi. The concert began, and the hall erupted. The voices of the students overpowered the band, chanting.
The hall reciprocated our enthusiasm with its timeless word engraved above the stage: "Reverence."
Today, after all those decades have passed, after calendar pages have fluttered away, after the disappearance of newspaper vendors, after Koshary El-Tahrir turned into a franchise, after the crowds vanished from Tahrir Square and after the unruly growth of a McDonald's branch across from the green gate on Mohamed Mahmoud Street -- I return to enter Ewart Hall, this time to attend a memorial event for the dean of Sudanese journalists, Mahjoub Mohamed Salih.
I return to find Ewart Hall unchanged, welcoming us as always, with the same distinctive scent. I can almost hear its sigh of reproach for our long absence, for the absence of the echoes of our pentatonic songs from its walls all this time.
The doors of the Main Campus opened from both sides, and the guests filed in with commendable order, organized for a memorial worthy of that towering figure who departed just as our bodies, too, were forced to leave:
"Embrace me with your right hand, for I lie resting on your left."
It was truly a remarkable evening, filled with the essence of home, interspersed with profound words from Sudanese and foreign journalists, from the family of the late Mahjoub, and especially that tender speech from his granddaughter.
Ewart Hall gave us today the same echo we had known years ago as the audience sang for Sudan along with the band to the words of the late Abdul Kareem Al-Kabli:
We shall rejoice with our children and sing,
To our origin, our beginning.
Oh, the sweetness of the stage of our youth,
And our memories, our longing."
Ewart Memorial Hall, I dedicate this to you on behalf of all the Sudanese you sheltered in their exile. In my heart, after the music fades and the guests leave, I return to you in secret to offer the last refrain as a toast to you and to those beautiful years. I sing for you:
Oh, the sweetness of the stage of our youth,
And our memories, our longing.