Letter from Khartoum

Cairo was only my way station to Khartoum, still sealed off from the press: The coup against the U.S.’s man, General Gaafar Nimeiry, was still underway. At the Sudan embassy, the ambassador received me. A few perfunctory courtesies; then he invited me for a drink.

I recognized him from all of Doris Lessing’s stories about Africa and the several Ousmane Sembene films I’d seen about the African bourgeoisie. Harris tweeds, very cultivated, westernized, charming, but African all the same, chivalry just the other side of a raging sense of male superiority and what I imagined he thought was the “easiness” of the western woman. I begged off with a vague excuse.

I moved out of my hotel, the General, and stayed with friends in Zamalek, waiting. One evening, they entertained me by taking me to hear Angela Davis address Egyptian feminists. The Egyptians came dressed in skirts and blouses with pearls, pumps, and stockings—the sort of thing League of Women Voters might have worn in the 1950s. Angela herself was sleek, with short-cropped hair, enormous studious glasses, a graceful drop of long white beads over an equally graceful drop of long coverall black sweater.

“She’s lovely!” a pale beige Egyptian lady to my right exclaimed in English. “I thought she would be much darker.”

Angela spoke with a sort of British inflection, bringing “greetings from people all over the U.S. involved in the struggle against Reaganism.” Much happy applause. “We worked night and day, but were unable to prevent his reelection.”

There followed a long incantation—“interventionist imperialist Zionist policies of the Reagan administration…” “I can’t be a woman without being black at the same time…” “standing in relationship to the working class….” Finally, she mentioned an essay she’d been commissioned to do for an anthology about women visiting countries not their own.

Her task seemed pretty convoluted. The editors had determined that the chapter on Egyptian women would be called “Egyptian Women and Sexuality.” They had decided on less loaded topics for other countries (the one on English women was “English Women and Politics”). Angela assured her listeners that she disagreed with the premise of her assignment—that Egyptian women and sex went together hand in glove. Being black, female, and thus Third-World identified, she was on the Egyptian women’s wavelength. In the body of her essay, she’d take care to rectify the distorted view of Arab women given by the title.

This bid for the audience’s commiseration got mistranslated. Soon the Egyptians were on their feet, verbally assaulting Angela: “You must not write about Egyptian women and sexuality! It is very insulting to Egyptian women! We are not to be equated with sex!”

On it went throughout the evening, Angela declining into futile apologies. I promised myself that, once in Khartoum, I’d express no judgments and would steer clear of preconceptions.

• • •

Khartoum, April 1985

Compared with Cairo’s overcrowding, dirt, and noise, at first Khartoum was a pleasure—apart from the brownish dusty heat that made my clothes cling to me as if I’d jumped into a swimming pool. The press said “middle-aged, middle-class people” had staged the overthrow of General Nimeiry, so I spent a good deal of time wandering around the shady whitewashed compounds of Khartoum University meeting certain organizers of “the revolution.”

Professor Abul (not his real name) sprang up from his desk to greet me. He was a charming lively man in his fifties with polished oak skin and flyaway gray hair like Einstein’s. “Ah! So you’re a friend of Judith’s! Well. In that case I will invite you home to lunch. Come! We shall have a good chat there.”

The professor’s English had the perfection usual in the Sudanese intelligentsia. The British pulled out of the Sudan in 1956, bequeathing an educational system with English mandatory from grade school on. Traditionally, many intellectuals go to college either in Great Britain or the United States. Professor Abul had studied at Johns Hopkins. He was chatty and charming.

Out in the blinding sunlight and dust stood two eager girl students. One was dressed in a tobe, a coverall worn above other clothes when a woman leaves the house. Inside she can wear hot pants for all anyone cares. The tobe is a sari with a cowl over the head. Very pretty and graceful. It has the effect of Grecian drapery, but it produces a small nervous gesture in all the women, one hand continually adjusting the tobe’s folds around the head and neck. After seeing it all the time, I absorbed this nervous gesture and found myself compulsively doing up the top buttons of my blouses whenever I was in public places.

The other young woman was dressed in a dowdy long gray garment with a nun-like wimple. The only things missing were black oxfords. The professor beamed fondly at the young women and chatted with them in his sprightly way.

“They are both students at our girls’ college, Ahfad. It is the best, and these are two very intelligent girls,” he said. “She”—he inclined his head towards Wimple—“is not a Moslem Sister, no! You can’t tell the Moslem Sisters just by looking, you know!”

This cultural lesson accomplished, he whisked me off to his house. At lunch, I was treated as an “honorary man” (I’d been prepared by other women journalists for this.)  Only men sat with me—Professor Abul; a man some 25 years younger named Ahmed, whom the Professor introduced as his brother; and Yasir, the professor’s son.

We sat eating while Professor Abul lectured about the revolution, its background, Sudan’s religion and politics, the country’s extraordinary Arab-African character, and the penetration of Islam here. Meanwhile, a dark-skinned lovely young woman padded in and out bearing plates of food. Occasionally the professor would halt his lively explanations to call out in peremptory tones, “Moia! [Water!] More water! More bread!”

He clapped his hands while issuing these orders. The dining area and study were a single large expanse giving onto a brilliantly sunny garden with cacti and (miraculous in dusty Khartoum) grass. Lining the walls were bookshelves packed with volumes in English and Arabic. Most of these seemed to be about Africa, its economy, history, colonial experience, and liberation struggles. Hanging on the walls were African masks and brightly colored cloth tapestries.

After lunch, the professor stretched and took me back to meet the women of the family. They were seated on cots in a room with a stone floor, an expanse completely barren of any furniture but the cots and a few plastic-seated chairs. Two babies and a kitten were crawling around. Outside, a chicken clucked drowsily in the dusty heat. Later, I was told that the living-dining areas of middle-class houses in Sudan are for everyone, while the back rooms are for cooking, sleeping, and so on. But at first glance, it seemed as if the men dominated the western, sophisticated world of the front, while right behind was the female part, the village.

None of the women spoke English except the youngest, 19, who was taking it at school. She frowned in deep, bewildered concentration whenever I said anything more complicated than “I am Ellen. What is your name?” We spent a lot of time nodding and grinning at each other until Ahmed came in to translate.

Everyone was charmingly patient with my density about family relationships. “But,” I persisted while everyone laughed cheerfully, “surely you’re not the professor’s brother?” “Our father married two women,” Ahmed explained considerately, as if to a two-year-old. “My brother is the son of wife number one; I am the son of wife number two.”

“How many wives does Islam allow?”

“Four. Not many men do that these days. It is not economically possible.”

“What about four husbands?”

Shocked silence. Then, “Not possible! The Koran says nothing on this matter!”

“But why?”

“Because”—this said patiently —“you wouldn’t know who the father was.”

Ahmed, it turned out, was an ardent Moslem Brother (the Brotherhood is Sudan’s right-wing fundamentalist Islamic group.) After lunch, he had a shouting match with the professor, who had been a Communist when he was younger. Politics in the Sudan is a mongrel family affair, people intermarrying across unlikely political divides. For instance, the head of the Moslem Brotherhood, Hassan Turaby, is married to the sister of the head of the centrist Umma (National) Party.

• • •

I recognized him from all of Doris Lessing’s stories about Africa and the several Ousmane Sembene films I’d seen about the African bourgeoisie. Harris tweeds, very cultivated, westernized, charming, but African all the same, chivalry just the other side of a raging sense of male superiority and what I imagined he thought was the “easiness” of the western woman. I begged off with a vague excuse.

I moved out of my hotel, the General, and stayed with friends in Zamalek, waiting. One evening, they entertained me by taking me to hear Angela Davis address Egyptian feminists. The Egyptians came dressed in skirts and blouses with pearls, pumps, and stockings—the sort of thing League of Women Voters might have worn in the 1950s. Angela herself was sleek, with short-cropped hair, enormous studious glasses, a graceful drop of long white beads over an equally graceful drop of long coverall black sweater.

“She’s lovely!” a pale beige Egyptian lady to my right exclaimed in English. “I thought she would be much darker.”

Angela spoke with a sort of British inflection, bringing “greetings from people all over the U.S. involved in the struggle against Reaganism.” Much happy applause. “We worked night and day, but were unable to prevent his reelection.”

There followed a long incantation—“interventionist imperialist Zionist policies of the Reagan administration…” “I can’t be a woman without being black at the same time…” “standing in relationship to the working class….” Finally, she mentioned an essay she’d been commissioned to do for an anthology about women visiting countries not their own.

Her task seemed pretty convoluted. The editors had determined that the chapter on Egyptian women would be called “Egyptian Women and Sexuality.” They had decided on less loaded topics for other countries (the one on English women was “English Women and Politics”). Angela assured her listeners that she disagreed with the premise of her assignment—that Egyptian women and sex went together hand in glove. Being black, female, and thus Third-World identified, she was on the Egyptian women’s wavelength. In the body of her essay, she’d take care to rectify the distorted view of Arab women given by the title.

This bid for the audience’s commiseration got mistranslated. Soon the Egyptians were on their feet, verbally assaulting Angela: “You must not write about Egyptian women and sexuality! It is very insulting to Egyptian women! We are not to be equated with sex!”

On it went throughout the evening, Angela declining into futile apologies. I promised myself that, once in Khartoum, I’d express no judgments and would steer clear of preconceptions.

• • •

Khartoum, April 1985

Compared with Cairo’s overcrowding, dirt, and noise, at first Khartoum was a pleasure—apart from the brownish dusty heat that made my clothes cling to me as if I’d jumped into a swimming pool. The press said “middle-aged, middle-class people” had staged the overthrow of General Nimeiry, so I spent a good deal of time wandering around the shady whitewashed compounds of Khartoum University meeting certain organizers of “the revolution.”

Professor Abul (not his real name) sprang up from his desk to greet me. He was a charming lively man in his fifties with polished oak skin and flyaway gray hair like Einstein’s. “Ah! So you’re a friend of Judith’s! Well. In that case I will invite you home to lunch. Come! We shall have a good chat there.”

The professor’s English had the perfection usual in the Sudanese intelligentsia. The British pulled out of the Sudan in 1956, bequeathing an educational system with English mandatory from grade school on. Traditionally, many intellectuals go to college either in Great Britain or the United States. Professor Abul had studied at Johns Hopkins. He was chatty and charming.

Out in the blinding sunlight and dust stood two eager girl students. One was dressed in a tobe, a coverall worn above other clothes when a woman leaves the house. Inside she can wear hot pants for all anyone cares. The tobe is a sari with a cowl over the head. Very pretty and graceful. It has the effect of Grecian drapery, but it produces a small nervous gesture in all the women, one hand continually adjusting the tobe’s folds around the head and neck. After seeing it all the time, I absorbed this nervous gesture and found myself compulsively doing up the top buttons of my blouses whenever I was in public places.

The other young woman was dressed in a dowdy long gray garment with a nun-like wimple. The only things missing were black oxfords. The professor beamed fondly at the young women and chatted with them in his sprightly way.

“They are both students at our girls’ college, Ahfad. It is the best, and these are two very intelligent girls,” he said. “She”—he inclined his head towards Wimple—“is not a Moslem Sister, no! You can’t tell the Moslem Sisters just by looking, you know!”

This cultural lesson accomplished, he whisked me off to his house. At lunch, I was treated as an “honorary man” (I’d been prepared by other women journalists for this.)  Only men sat with me—Professor Abul; a man some 25 years younger named Ahmed, whom the Professor introduced as his brother; and Yasir, the professor’s son.

We sat eating while Professor Abul lectured about the revolution, its background, Sudan’s religion and politics, the country’s extraordinary Arab-African character, and the penetration of Islam here. Meanwhile, a dark-skinned lovely young woman padded in and out bearing plates of food. Occasionally the professor would halt his lively explanations to call out in peremptory tones, “Moia! [Water!] More water! More bread!”

He clapped his hands while issuing these orders. The dining area and study were a single large expanse giving onto a brilliantly sunny garden with cacti and (miraculous in dusty Khartoum) grass. Lining the walls were bookshelves packed with volumes in English and Arabic. Most of these seemed to be about Africa, its economy, history, colonial experience, and liberation struggles. Hanging on the walls were African masks and brightly colored cloth tapestries.

After lunch, the professor stretched and took me back to meet the women of the family. They were seated on cots in a room with a stone floor, an expanse completely barren of any furniture but the cots and a few plastic-seated chairs. Two babies and a kitten were crawling around. Outside, a chicken clucked drowsily in the dusty heat. Later, I was told that the living-dining areas of middle-class houses in Sudan are for everyone, while the back rooms are for cooking, sleeping, and so on. But at first glance, it seemed as if the men dominated the western, sophisticated world of the front, while right behind was the female part, the village.

None of the women spoke English except the youngest, 19, who was taking it at school. She frowned in deep, bewildered concentration whenever I said anything more complicated than “I am Ellen. What is your name?” We spent a lot of time nodding and grinning at each other until Ahmed came in to translate.

Everyone was charmingly patient with my density about family relationships. “But,” I persisted while everyone laughed cheerfully, “surely you’re not the professor’s brother?” “Our father married two women,” Ahmed explained considerately, as if to a two-year-old. “My brother is the son of wife number one; I am the son of wife number two.”

“How many wives does Islam allow?”

“Four. Not many men do that these days. It is not economically possible.”

“What about four husbands?”

Shocked silence. Then, “Not possible! The Koran says nothing on this matter!”

“But why?”

“Because”—this said patiently —“you wouldn’t know who the father was.”

Ahmed, it turned out, was an ardent Moslem Brother (the Brotherhood is Sudan’s right-wing fundamentalist Islamic group.) After lunch, he had a shouting match with the professor, who had been a Communist when he was younger. Politics in the Sudan is a mongrel family affair, people intermarrying across unlikely political divides. For instance, the head of the Moslem Brotherhood, Hassan Turaby, is married to the sister of the head of the centrist Umma (National) Party.

• • •