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| Told By : Montasir - Sudan |
They say cities are like people, some embrace you the moment your eyes meet them, while others seem to spit you out as soon as your feet touch their ground. And then there are cities that greet you with neutrality, offering no warmth nor aversion. That was exactly how I felt when I visited Kassala, a city in eastern Sudan, for the first time.
I didn’t feel at home, nor did I feel out of place. My job didn’t leave much room for exploration or socializing, so I barely got to know the neighbors next door, let alone the rest of the city.
One moonlit night, I went to bed early, unusual for me. That’s when I had a strange dream.
A dark-skinned man with a thick mustache appeared to me and addressed me by name:
" Montasir… You don’t know me, but I know you. I live just two blocks away from your house. I slipped into a coma, but my family thought I was dead and buried me too soon, while I was still alive. Please, go to my house and tell my eldest son what I’ve told you. Tell him to come back and get me out."
I didn’t sleep the rest of that night. At dawn, I rushed to the house the man in the dream had described. Strangely enough, it wasn’t hard to find. A crowd of men was gathered outside, and cries of mourning came from inside, where women had filled the home.
I approached the group and asked about the deceased man’s eldest son. A young man in his thirties stepped forward. I took him aside and told him about the dream, relaying every detail as it was revealed to me.
"I’m only the messenger," I said.
He called over his two brothers to consult with them. But they refused, firmly, to even consider opening their father’s grave.
"Even if, and that’s a big if, our father is somehow still alive and manages to emerge from the grave, people will label him a Ba‘ati. That’s a shame we cannot bear."
The term Ba‘ati refers to someone who returns from the dead, an undead being. It carries a deep social stigma in Sudanese culture.
So they turned down the possibility of exhuming their father, even if it meant losing the chance to save him. They also asked me, politely but firmly, never to mention this dream to anyone, for the sake of the family’s dignity.
They thanked me for coming and for delivering the message.
But I still wonder,
Did they make a mistake?
Did I ?
Was it the fault of the society ?
Or was I merely the victim of an intense, meaningless dream ?
Narrated by Montasir, 37, Sudan
What Is the Ba‘ati ? The Sudanese “Undead”
In Sudanese folklore, the Ba‘ati (or al-Ba‘ati, plural ba‘atiya) is a mysterious and fearsome figure, a person believed to return from the grave, not as a ghost, but in their own reanimated body.
This figure is similar in nature to the zombie in Haitian Vodou or the revenant in medieval European lore, but with distinct cultural elements. Sudanese elders, particularly grandmothers, have passed down tales of the Ba‘ati to children in bedtime stories and riddles for generations.
The idea revolves around a tragic twist of fate: someone mistakenly buried alive, who later finds their way out of the grave. Instead of being welcomed, the returned person is feared and shunned, believed to be unholy, cursed, or even possessed by spirits. The label Ba‘ati comes with deep social rejection.
Unlike Western zombie myths where the focus is on horror and contagion, the Sudanese Ba‘ati is more tragic than terrifying, a soul caught between life and death, punished by society’s fear of the unknown.
This story raises poignant questions about culture, belief, and the unseen boundaries between life and death.
And perhaps more unsettling, what if some of those stories were true ?
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