Sarra
To begin, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do?
My name is Sarra, and I’m originally from Sudan. Initially, I worked in the field of medicine but, for various reasons, I no longer see medicine as the dominant science to explain the relationship between illness and wellness in human beings. Recently, I’ve been on a journey exploring what other sciences do in this regard – healing. For context, this journey started years ago when I came down with a sudden illness that no one could figure out or understand. Especially as a doctor specialising in public health, epidemiology, and biostatistics, that was really hard for me. Overnight, I developed this swelling in my left knee and excruciating pain throughout my body. I became really depressed; I just couldn’t accept it.
At some point, I ended up applying, at the request of a friend, for a women-only music workshop. In the past, I had a really weird relationship with music; I was born and raised in a country where music was deemed forbidden. There was this war within me. I wanted to do it, but I thought that I shouldn’t. In the end, I didn’t even give it another thought. I applied and I went there almost crawling. Two days later, while the workshop was happening, I had this AHA! moment. It struck me just like a slap in the face when I realised that while I was doing the workshop, there was no pain. I had a feeling that I really can’t describe. So, I said to myself then and there that I would never question music again. I understood that, for whatever reason, at least for my body, music is essential for its well-being
Has your journey inspired you to develop any creative projects?
“After this experience, I began to see the gaps in the research methodologies I had learned. They have trouble measuring, for example, the exact placebo effect and nocebo effect. That is, how much of a person’s belief actually affects what is happening to them? Searching around, I stumbled upon a study that talks about flow – the state of the mind that is actually a healing state. This sparked my current project called ZaMaKan. ZaMaKan combines the Arabic words for Time and Space because I wanted to capture the experience of losing both – the ‘flow’ state. ZaMaKan is designed to be a ‘flow-state experience’ exhibition – a space where people can come and try out different activities that promote their healing. It’s a space where they’re given the allowance to actively be in that state. Think of it like cleaning up your house – when you clean up your mind, you also clean up your body from all of those negative energies pulling it out of alignment. I think this flow state creates the space within our experiences where we’re not analysing anything nor doing anything; we’re just being. Sometimes this is all we need – this silence in between sounds.
Currently, I find myself in Ethiopia and, thankfully, far away from the war in Sudan. At some point, I ended up in Kassala, Sudan where there was this huge mountain, Touteel. When I was in that city, I formed a relationship with that mountain. I would always look up at the mountain and feel like it was running the whole city with such mightiness. There’s no place in Kassala where you can’t see the mountain – it’s always there seeing and knowing everything. It gave me so much energy, so I started asking the locals about their stories surrounding the mountain. There were many that indicated how special it was.
I imagine, one day, owning a piece of land up upon a mountain. I would love to build an artistic residency space there where artists from all around the world can live, work, and collaborate together. There would be community dormitories, fields, studios, and workshops for all art forms. I want to build a self-sufficient space where we all can work together and eat the food that we grow in our fields. The mountains would produce fresh and clean water year long. It would be very healing. The mountain would love to see us running around.”
Is there a person or a piece of content that has profoundly impacted the way you view and/or work in this field?
“This particular instance happened in 2021. I was invited to participate in a musical theatre workshop called Kurras Hissab, ‘The Accounting Notebook.’. It was the first time that I had ever acted, and it was all so new to me! The director was this creative healer called Walid El-Alfi, and he shared his expertise with all of us. The play was co-written and directed by victims of police brutality during the recent Sudanese Revolution and Khartoum Massacre in June of 2019, and the workshop was designed to be a community effort at healing. The audience for the show wasn’t charged for entry, but they paid in donations of food or clothing for victims of the massive floods that took place in September 2020. Meanwhile we, the performers, were not paid to perform. I paid out of my own pocket to participate, much to the discontent of my family, but I came to learn a lot from the class. It felt like my calling.
During the performance, one of the most profound moments I experienced was when we were mimicking the sound of the rain after the Khartoum Massacre. The rain was symbolic of clearing out the sins of the massacre from the earth while allowing life to continue and start over. Everyone on stage started clapping quietly with only two fingers on the palm of their other hand. When 40 people on a stage all do this in a random pattern, it really starts to sound like rain. Coincidentally, at the same moment, it started to rain outside. We were performing on an old half-open/half-closed stage and, although we didn’t see the rain as performers, I remember feeling the breeze accompanying the rain. It was so cool, cutting through the air.
After the performance, we met with people from the audience who were crying. They said that it was healing to them. One man talked about how he buried himself in the gym trying to cope with what had happened at the massacre and with the death of his friends. He said he finally only felt released that night, and he cried a lot. Overall, we felt a strong synchronicity between us and the universe – the rain we had just acted out then poured from the sky. How can you forget that? The audience felt it too. It was very beautiful to see how many dimensions came together.”
Could you describe for us an emotionally-impactful moment that has influenced your work?
“Now that I’ve left Sudan because of the war, I can see that I’ve been depressed for a long time. I was grieving all of the losses that happened around us. Art did help me when I was in the conflict zone; it gave me motivational hope. There was this picture taken maybe ten years or so ago of me and this other girl. She was learning to play the violin while I was learning to play the guitar, so we took a picture with our instruments together as friends. Because of the war in my country, I had recently been jumping from city to city to escape the conflict until I found myself near the border to Eritrea. While I was there, I reconnected with this friend from the photo. She told me that she was going into Eritrea and then onto Uganda. We only met for a few hours, but she gave me the idea that there’s another possibility for me other than what I was waiting for.”
Why do you believe that storytelling is important?
“When we tell stories, we call attention. When you share personal stories with people, you do it to make connections. You want to feel seen and heard; you want someone to say that everything is going to be OK, to give you ideas, or even just to listen. We’re all humans with different stories and agendas. People live by telling stories. It’s important to document our existence by documenting our emotions at specific times. Storytelling is about channelling information that is not just factual, but emotional as well. It keeps a record of an intense life moment.
In the end, I want to say, yes, life comes with struggle. We do learn from it, but we don’t have to only learn through pain. Learning can also happen through presence, through connection – to ourselves, to others, to life, and to the Almighty. When we’re deeply connected, we can listen to guidance, whether it comes from within ourselves or through others. We can absorb lessons without having to go through hardship ourselves. This takes awareness, a strong connection, practicing presence, and embodiment.”