An intimate portrait of Sudanese youth on the brink of adulthood, revolution, and war

Set in the dusty wrestling arenas and tea houses of Sudan’s capital, Wrestlers of Khartoum is a richly textured ethnography of Sudanese wrestling and the young men who devote their bodies, hopes, and futures to it. Drawing on fieldwork conducted on the eve of Sudan’s 2018–2019 revolution, Paul R. Hayes traces the emergence of the sabi—a locally celebrated ideal of masculine strength, courage, and morality—among youth navigating poverty, delayed marriage, and political uncertainty.

Hayes shows how an ethnically diverse community cultivates masculinity through disciplined bodily techniques, visual self‑representation, spiritual protection, and intimate fraternal bonds. Wrestling becomes a temporary solution to prolonged waiting, offering young underemployed men dignity, visibility, and fame in a society that stigmatizes bodily labor and marginalizes the poor.

Moving between the visceral immediacy of the wrestling arena and broader debates on masculinity, embodiment, religion, ethnicity, and neoliberal precarity, Wrestlers of Khartoum challenges reductive portrayals of Muslim men and working class African youth. It is a powerful account of bodies in motion, identities in formation, and a nation suspended between revolution and ruin.