Author: Magdi

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A frayed social fabric

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A frayed social fabric

We woke up knowing that we had a long journey ahead of us back to Khartoum.  Word had gotten around from our evening visit that we were interested in knowing more about New Halfa and old Nubia from the elders.

Ustaz Rushdie came to see us again, and was far more emotional than the evening before, explaining that we had provoked in him a longing for home.  Madame Amina came back wearing the traditional Nubian dress, the jirjar, so that we could photograph her as we had asked.   In a few hours we manage to see five or six more families.

We went to see the farms and the water supply that we described in an earlier post.   With a lot of blessings and well wishes from the elders, the best kind of blessing, we were off.

Salah Zekki shares his view
Salah Zekki shares his view

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On the route back to Khartoum we stop in Gedaref, the agricultural center of Eastern Sudan.  It is a busy day at the market, despite it being a Saturday, since the sesame crop has been harvested, and many sacks of it are being exchanged.  It was a few days before Mawlid al Nabi, the birthday of the Prophet, and the markets were full of colorful decorations and sweets.  We stop momentarily to meet the lovely family of the driver in Gedaref.  It is a brief visit, and it is clear that the children miss their dad. A few tears were shed.

We spend a little time in the town, seeing people meeting and greeting, and getting ready for the holiday.

At the market in Gedaref
At the market in Gedaref

Seeing this town reminded me of a trip I had taken as a 20 year old.  Back in 1987, as university student, I had won a small scholarship to travel to Sudan in order to research my senior thesis comparing traditional and modern agriculture.  I had spent a few days in Gedaref with Wagdi in 1987 to better understand the more modern parfo The question was whether the semi-mechanized model in the rain-fed agriculture sector around Gedaref would flourish as an alternative to the traditional agriculture that was practiced among the Sudanese who lived in scattered villages.

Later that summer I wanted to see what traditional agriculture was like.  I decided to go to see a small town called Umm Ruwaba, which is half way between Khartoum and Darfur. My relatives did not want me to go alone, so they sent an older cousin who is now a school teacher.  But there was only one seat left on the bus.  I had nowhere to sit since a merchant was transporting six large jerrycans (five gallon plastic jugs) of cooking oil on the bus that he wanted to sell in the village.  Feeling a little guilty for taking all of the space, he offered me to sit on one of his large plastic containers.  I sat down and grabbed a pole as we made our way to El Obeid.    As the road bumped along, I held on to the roof of the bus and bounced on the large jerrycan.

The city gave way to the greenbelt, which in turn gave way to the dusty desert as the long path of asphalt stretched forward to the West. Abruptly, after two hours, the asphalt simply ended.  Undounted, the driver slowed down, eased the minibus off of the asphalt, and pressed on into the desert.  At this point the road became a roller coaster, lifting me off of the plastic, into the air, and back down on to the plastic jug.  I became dizzy, my head throbbing, nausea growing as the minibus drove over sand dunes.  After another hour I looked down and saw a patch of darkness on the edge of my thigh.  I turned to look at the source and saw that my pants were fully soaked in oil, as well as the back of my shirt and my body.

After hours of this we finally stopped.  I stumbled out into the dusty street in a daze, about to collapse.  I became ill in the street. I found a faucet and washed my face.  I had a piece of paper with an address on it, and I asked someone to guide me there.  It was easy to find, since everyone knew everyone else.  I knocked, a little kid opened the gate and let me in.  The mother of the family, seeing what a mess I was in, led me to a guest room; they showed me a bathroom and shower and I promptly changed and fell asleep until late the next morning.  I woke up, and my clothes soaked in cooking oil had been laundered and were folded next to me.  They gave me a wonderful breakfast, only a little of which I could eat.  He suggested we see a doctor.  We went, and under a dim lightbulb the doctor drew a drop of blood, spread it on a glass slide and examined it under a microscope.  He gave me the news. I had Malaria.  We got some medicine and went back home at he insisted that I go back to bed, which I did because Malaria makes one very sleepy. At that point, before I dozed off, he had a question he was longing to ask.  “Who are you?” he asked.  His family had taken me in, saved me from a deeper illness, fed me and washed my clothes, without ever asking my name.  When I told him, he was quite happy.  I stayed for days until I was strong enough to do a little of my research. But it was a sign of the strength of the social fabric, and the depth of relations between people, that one could literally trust your life with it, and that he would have done so much for me without ever asking my name.

In the 28 years since that summer, the Sudan has changed dramatically.  The population was around 18 million then, and now it has more than doubled to around 37 million.  At that time the Sudanese Prime Minister had been democratically elected, but the government was struggling with the economy.  A coup ended the regime and the brief second try at democracy.  Wars became the norm.  In 1983 Southern rebels led by John Garang resumed a war that had been in hiatus since a 1972 peace agreement, and other conflicts emerged in the East and West.  Agriculture was the central focus, and the country had just come out of the devastating droughts in 1984 that were the subject of various concerts around the world.

During the 1990s the new regime, at the time a combination of Islamist and military, largely isolated from international lenders, had deeply cut subsidies and public sector wages to bring budgets under control.  To its credit, it stabilized the economy, but this broke the back of the middle class as consumers of staples that had become dramatically more expensive, and as teachers, doctors and civil servants who could no longer make ends meet.

Late in the decade Sudan started to export petroleum and, for the first time in recent memory, the currency strengthened rather than fell.  As a result, business started to focus on imports and consumption, Khartoum grew both because of the spending in the capital, and because Sudanese living in the conflict zones fled there for safety. Khartoum for a short while became one of the biggest markets in the world for passenger vehicles.  But an oil sector might support increased consumption, but it does not create many middle-class jobs.  It tends to concentrate a lot of wealth in a few pockets and in the government.  It can help the country develop, and indeed the countries roads were far better.  But far too often it can fuel conflict by shifting more resources to security, create opportunities for corruption, make governments unresponsive to society, and create more inequality.

In Sudan, it seemed that the newfound wealth created a new elite, but one that didn’t seem to be fully accepted by society, and a new set of values that don’t seem to fit the people.  It seemed that the social fabric of the country had been torn up and sewn in a patchwork pattern; you could recognize the individual pieces of the old Sudan here and there but the overall texture, look and feel of the cloth had changed. Many of the pieces are frayed and tattered.

So it was of great pleasure to see as we passed through the market in Gedaref, and a sesame milling plant that was at capacity; agriculture was back.  It is again creating jobs and livelihoods for ordinary Sudanese, as well as migrants from Ethiopia and Eritrea. People were working.

As we drove the five hours back to Khartoum, I wondered if the succession of South Sudan would have a silver lining.  I had always seen it as both a victory for self determination and a failure of imagination –  a failure for ordinary people to see each other’s humanity, and a failure of leadership to help them see it.  Without oil income, and with a return to agriculture, would the older egalitarian values that come from hard work return?  Would that torn social fabric begin to heal itself?

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Home

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Home

The loss of Nubia for some is no tragedy, no great loss.  Just a set of villages that were standing in the way of progress.  Time will erase the sounds, the smells, the tastes of home.

As we wrapped up and reflected on our visit to New Halfa, the site where my father’s family was resettled, and walked through my father’s house, the question lingered.  Was this home for the Nubians or part of a long, incomplete journey.

Throughout history, Nubians have always made journeys.  Nubian archers were always a part of the ancient Egyptian armies, and more recently British colonial armies.  Nubian fathers have often journeyed to distant cities to earn a living for their families.  But the value of these journeys was always measured by the sweetness of coming home.  Perhaps this entire episode is just another of those journeys, and around the corner will be a forest of the familiar date palms and the silvery water, contrasted with the vast desert and wide sky.

Our history is made by journeys.  Moses had his exodus to the promised land.  The Prophet Mohammed fled Mecca and established Medina as a capital of tolerance.  American settlers had their manifest destiny.  MLK walked to Birmingham, and Selma, and saw the mountaintop.  These were all painful journeys, but fueled by a mission; the idea and hope for a new beginning in a destination that would be called home.

But the journey to New Halfa was different.  There was no will to leave the beloved home, so closely tied to their identities, beliefs, stories, myths, not for hundreds of years but for thousands.  In so many words the elders explain that they are hoping, searching for the cool, clean water of home, and find none and remain parched.  They are weary, understandably. Few understand what it is like to roam the earth in exodus but without a promised land, like itinerant soldiers with no possibility of relief or recuperation, to wander not for forty days and forty nights, but for fifty years.

In the great tradition of jazz music, a composition starts with a recognizable melody, a chord progression and cadence that is well understood and familiar.  Say, Miles Davis with the call and response with the bass at the beginning of So What.  We all recognize these few bars, connect them to some experience in our past; and anticipate the journey to something new.  He then drops an octave and joined by cymbal crash, announcing the start of the journey; the musicians step into the wilderness, drawing from their inner depths passion, anger, whimsy, or indifference as the case may be.  The tension builds as the journey wanders off into changes of chords and moods, silence, virtuoso riffs, or less so.  But in the end, the musicians look up, acknowledge to each other that it is time to bring it home.  They return to a few bars of the melody of the opening.  By returning to the familiar, we comforted and grateful for the journey.

What is home?    Home is not a roof, or walls or even a location. Home is belonging, legitimacy, authenticity, a place to set roots, to leave a trace of one’s existence on the face of this earth.  Home is a place to realize ones dreams and rest one’s soul.  As this generation of Nubians passes from this world to the next, I sense that their souls are not at rest.

At the same time their commitment to the new land is too tenuous.  This land is capable of providing, but this sense that they are in a land not of their own choosing may ultimately seal their fate.  Only by committing to the land will they prosper.  The younger generation appears ready, but it is not clear what it would take, after fifty years, to make this land home.

For the Nubians in the diaspora, the improvisation does not seem to end.  The music goes on and on, pain for some, joy for others, they struggle to return to the original bars, but the notes are gradually forgotten.  What is not clear is if the new song will at all reflect the sound of the water wheel and the birds, the wind flowing through the date palms, the spirit of the river and of Nubia.

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In their own words

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In their own words

A series of three videos in Arabic filmed in New Halfa.  All are of Nubian elders who are reflecting on their lives since the Hijra.

Ustaz Rushdie, an educator, reflects on his longing for home, and how after fifty years he still dreams of the life he had.

He married in the new country and raised his family.  His children have not seen Old Halfa, yet in his dreams they only appear in the old country.  Nothing in the new land resembles the old, whether the trees, the agriculture, the houses.  Also, old Nubia was isolated from other tribes.  Conflicts may arise from use of land between pastoralists and farmers, which in older times were easily resolved because everyone knew each other.

The land that was provided is larger, but requires mechanized farming and is less productive.  In old Nubia, the plots were smaller but more productive.  He commented on the loss of the language, especially in the towns between the villages.

Abdel Aziz Shelabi talks of being betrayed and fooled by the authorities in 1964, and compensated at a fraction of what was lost in the flood.  He talks about the unrealized plans, and that agriculture worked well initially but that the land has grown tired.  He complains that the project really is for the benefit of others and not the Nubians.

Hassan Abdel Halim talks about the neglect of the village and its infrastructure, including an unfinished road.

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New Halfa

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New Halfa

After driving east for six hours from Khartoum, our driver Khatir, Tariq and I arrive in New Halfa.   We meet my cousin Amir in the market, and he guides us to his home.

Each of the 25 resettlement villages is known by a number, not a name.  Each has 250 houses, a school, mosque and some shops within a communal area.    Our destination is village No 18, representing the village where my father’s family was relocated.  Each house is a yellow-brown color, walls of molded concrete blocks formed into four rooms, a slanted asbestos roof, and a courtyard surrounded by a fence.  There were no kitchens in the original homes, many homes have been modified.  The traditional Nubian decorations are absent from the gates, but some are painted brightly.

We arrive at around 3 pm, and are greeted with a wonderful Sudanese lunch by cousins, Amir and Mohamed Abdel Bashir.  We have never met before, but it is like a long-awaited reunion.  We share our condolences, since their mother, my aunt, has recently passed away.  We see old pictures, including one of my sister visiting the common grandmother that we share, another of my mother in college around 1960.  There is a painting of the train that took them on their exodus.  They are extremely hospitable, and we will stay with them.

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My cousins work the land that the families were allocated in the resettlement.  Mohamed was elected by a people’s committee to manage the water supply, which is unfiltered and used for everything from agriculture to human use.  Every day he goes to the well, which is fed by an irrigation canal from dam and puts in 30 water purification tablets to reduce the chance for water-borne diseases.  The same happens in all 25 villages.  An electric pump elevates the water so that it can be distributed to the houses.

30 of these tablets are used every day in the water well that supplies village 18.
30 of these tablets are used every day in the water well that supplies village 18.

Neighbors in Wadi Halfa were resettled together to the extent possible.  We set out to visit to the neighbors, taking time especially to talk to the elders who are old enough to relate the experience of “Al Hijra”.

It was an emotional day.  The conversations with the older Nubians evoked a deep sense of loss over a world and community that they loved.  Amina Hassan spoke about a place with no diseases, with easier agriculture, of date palms and orange trees, gardens, fresh water and clean air, the closeness of people to one another, and peace.

In New Halfa longing for the old life
In New Halfa longing for the old life

“Even if I go to heaven,” said Abdel Aziz Saleh Shalabi, “I will still long for the Nubia that I lost.”

“When I dream at night, the world I see is the Nubia of his youth 50 years ago,” Hassan Abdel Halim explained,  “My children are there with me, although they were born in New Halfa. The new land never appears.” Ustaz Rushdi, a retired educator, was brought to tears by his own reflections of how life was, and how it is.

It is hard to express the deep sorrow that resides in the hearts of those that experienced the exodus.  The hearts of the older generation, those who carry forward the culture, have simply been shattered.  There is no other way to put it.

They sense that they were betrayed by fellow Sudanese and Egyptians, and that no one cares about their fate today; that they were fooled by many promises that went unfulfilled.

They explained that the Sudan was newly independent and unprepared in the years ahead of the exodus.  The President came to visit the Nubians after signing the agreement that sealed their fate, only then realizing the value of what he lost.  The President promised them that they would choose their new home.  The Nubians formed a committee, visited all of the sites and selected one.  But the government chose another.  Many chose to relocate to the capital, Khartoum, or like my family even further.  We visited the house allocated to my father.  Two guava trees grow in its courtyard; one bitter, one sweet.

Father's house, in which one date palm and two guava trees grow
Father’s house, in which one date palm and two guava trees grow

As Tariq explained, agriculture is different.  In Nubia, families were able to get high yields from small plots because of the fertile soil and water, and the weather that allowed year-round rotations of crops.   In New Halfa, plots of land are very large, and required much more labor.  After a few good years, the land now requires frequent fallow and is less productive.

Irrigated Field New Halfa

Some of the younger Nubians who were born after 1964 did not know the old country and don’t see the need to look back.  There is value in this – those who look forward seem more ready to build a better future, and there is clearly opportunity in this productive area.  But among others is a clear sign of a lack of hope; young men standing around without purpose.

Anyone displaced must feel a sense of injustice. The Nubians chose neither migration nor their destination.  Words were spoken at the time of the migration to put them at ease.  There was the idea that the Nubians were sacrificing their homeland for the greater good of Egypt and an Arab nation emerging from a long history of colonization.  The unity of the Nile Valley resonates with many Sudanese.  Winston Churchill once said that the Nile is as a palm tree, with its roots in Africa and its fronds and fruit in the delta.  But to the Nubians I met, those words must now seem as hollow as the reeds that line the Nile.

It is clear that the culture is dying. The language is rarely spoken, replaced by Arabic.  The traditional dress of Nubian women, the “jirjaar,” a long black dress with a train behind, is gone. A train was possible in old Nubia because the ground was sandy and would fall off easily. But in New Halfa, they tried to shorten it to account for the more muddy soil, and then gave up.  They still enjoy Nubian music and weddings, but this is rare now.

Only 85 of the original 250 houses in Village 18 still belong to Nubians.   As this generation of older Nubians pass from this world to the next, I sense that the idea of Nubia will go with them.  Only then will have realized what we have lost.

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Tariq’s Notes from New Halfa

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Tariq’s Notes from New Halfa

We arrived in New Halfa around 3 pm and spent the day in visits. My son Tariq took good notes, so I’m sharing them directly.

Ustaz Rushdi, a high-school teacher in Old Nubia, was eager to share his impressions. These are my notes from meeting him.

Although villagers are given more land here, the smaller amount of land that they were given in Old Halfa was more valuable to them. It was easier to farm, and the yields were higher. Farms were more prosperous in Old Halfa, due to rich/fertile land near the Nile River.

New Halfa only contains of mountains and far ranging desert, in comparison to Old Halfa which had the Nile River flowing through it. The river provided silt and fertile land within its vicinity, which in effect resulted in high-quality fruit trees. They grew oranges, dates, okra and wheat.

The date trees were easy income for them on top of their crops and livestock. They are no longer given that opportunity of easy income. They now have to work much harder to gain higher income; especially with the issue of harder farming land.

The villages were closer together. In New Halfa, a village of 250 houses is separated by 6 or 7 kilometers from the next village, so it is difficult to maintain friendships across villages.
“The friendships, the river, the fruit trees could not be replicated.”

The native language, the Rotana is starting to alter as Arabic words are mixing into it.

The total compensation given to the Nubians for the lives that they lost, including the housing, factories, date palms, was 15 million pounds; far less than the value of what they lost. One of the men explained that he would not have chosen to emigrate to New Halfa if his place of work, a workshop, was not shut down.

Nubians appreciated the fact that everyone that resided in Old Halfa was Nubian. They were isolated from other tribes. They were united and friendly with each other. Disputes would be settled in a quick and fair manner. In New Halfa, several tribes of Sudanese are settled, some are shepherds, some are farmers. There are sometimes misunderstandings; arguments escalate very quickly. They need to find better ways to resolve conflicts.

Most of the older villagers desired that their children were born in Old Halfa instead of New Halfa; One of the men explained that he still dreamt of Old Halfa despite the fact that it has been decades since he has been there.

The Elderly villagers seemed to appreciate Old Halfa far more than New Halfa; the family that we are staying with contains younger people. They are more satisfied with their current life than they were with Old Halfa’s lifestyle.

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Khartoum and an overland journey

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Khartoum and an overland journey

Arrival in Khartoum was unexpectedly pleasant. The weather in December is cool, and my cousin Wagdi and his son arranged a nice arrival and put us up in a new apartment at his mother’s house. From one of the important Nubian families, he treated us in an extremely generous and kind way throughout the trip.

On our first day in Khartoum we visited relatives. Visiting is a time-honored tradition; almost an art form. It can be entertaining, especially with someone with a good sense of humor. Visits reinforce the social network, which is built around the large extended family, by spreading news about weddings, births, graduations, illnesses or deaths, and general well-being of the whole family. The visits help maintain friendships over generations. An aunt in Port Sudan, far from our route, asked us to visit. She grew emotional when she found out that this was not possible, explaining through her tears that my visit would be like a visit from my father, who she dearly missed.

As a sign of hospitality, one is offered a sweet and a glass of cool water at the start of the visit. One might be offered tea, one of the Sudan’s traditional drinks, made from hibiscus flower or baobab, or mango, grapefruit or guava juice. Sudan has the best of these, despite what Indians or Filipinos may tell you about their mangoes. Greetings ensue, which include blessings of various types, checking on the well-being and news about brothers, sisters, cousins and their children. There may be two rounds of greetings. Then conversation begins, sharing perspectives on the US, and we learn about Sudan.

However important, Tariq was dead tired of these visits by nightfall.

In the morning we visited the national Museum. The entrance fee was two pounds each, something like 30 cents. The museum contains colossal statues of the great Nubian Pharoah Taharqa, who unfortunately lost the empire by taking on the Assyrians in support of Jerusalem. Nubian jewelry, paintings from the Christian temples, and Kerma pottery that would make any artist proud are on display. But what we came to see were the Buhen and Semna temples, built by Queen Hatshepsut and Pharaoh Thutmose III, that were removed from Nubia at the time of flood, and rebuilt in the garden of the museum. Tariq and I were able to walk through, and enjoy walls full of hieroglyphics, some still painted in their original colors.

Supervision was lax. Similar temples at the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum in New York are behind glass. Here, nothing prevents you from touching the raised hieroglyphics, 3,500 years old, bearing the original paint. It is painful to see the carved inscriptions of Turkish, Greek and British soldiers who left their marks in the 1800s, and modern visitors who leave their marks in Arabic, English and Chinese.

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We then visited what Tariq used to call the “egg building” while it was under construction, a modern building in the shape of a sail. Now the Corinthia hotel, we went up to the 18th floor and got a panoramic view of Khartoum. He had a thick mango juice and I had a spicy Sudanese coffee in a traditional clay pot.

I have mixed views on this building. When it was started the only large hotel was an ex-Hilton, with seven star rates and a three-star facility. Something better was needed. Col. Ghaddafi of Libya decided to finance a hotel costing around $100 million! The government removed the national zoo to make way for it.

It was developed in a moment of euphoria in the wake of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with Southern Sudan, and a partial agreement in Darfur. I would have appreciated this hotel more if Libya had diverted some funds in parallel to projects, such as livestock exports, water or electricity that might have created jobs, better lives, hope, and a greater chance that the peace would have been sustained. The euphoria and the peace didn’t survive. Neither did Ghaddafi.

The next morning, after the dawn prayers we set out to visit New Halfa, where the Sudanese Nubians living in the flood zone were resettled.

The sun rises, the crowds are already at the various bus stops. We pass by factories, auto dealerships, markets, and more bus stops. Gradually, the sights of the city give way to the scenes of the countryside. Three girls walk chatting, each with a dark dress and different colored headscarf. An old sheik stands by the side of the road, his arms crossed, waiting. A soldier tries to hitch a ride. The bus fills up, slowing down traffic, we pass.   Across a field a boy rides on a cart pulled by a horse, it tosses its head and gallops along.

We pass a village called Kamleen, another called or “Heesa Heesa”. Three ladies cross the road, each carrying firewood. Five hours pass in similar scenes.

Mesquite trees line the horizon. Introduced by German donors who spread the seeds to combat desertification, the trees spread quickly and now the government has spent millions to eradicate this tree.  As we get closer, Gum Arabic trees line the road. Native to Sudan, the trees provide income to poor farmers, fodder for animals, and improve the soil. Sometimes we need to appreciate local solutions.

The mud brick houses look tenuous, as if the next big rain might take them away.  We turn off the main highway around Kassala, and approach New Halfa.

A shepherd guides a bull toward some pasture, a herd of cows follow. A group of boys Tariq’s age swims in the irrigation canal, laughing, and another warms himself sprawled out on the black asphalt, until the last second, when he springs up away from incoming traffic.

Heavy traffic on our path to new Halfa, we wait patiently.
Heavy traffic on our path to new Halfa, we wait patiently.

The land is green, irrigated farms on either side. A donkey stands in the middle of the road, undecided.

It is said that when the Nubians were resettled, they found a large herd of donkeys milling about in the agricultural area. The British had used them in World War II in mine clearing operations against the Italians and then set them free. They multiplied. Each Nubian family took one to use to help cultivate their plots.

A pool of irrigation water to the side of the road, and a flock of white herons drinks. The land area is simply massive, there is flat earth in all directions as far as the eye can see.

The outlines of the standardized housing built for the Nubian migrants start to appear.

We’re approaching New Halfa, the resettlement area that the government chose against the will of the Nubians fifty years ago.

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And so it begins …

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And so it begins …

I woke up this morning in a room overlooking the Nile, a bright, clear day. The water glistens.

My son Tariq is asleep, making evident to me that, among the most important things one loses in 34 years, our difference in age, is the ability to sleep uninterrupted for eight or ten hours straight irrespective of jetlag.

It is the first day of a journey that, for the moment, seems more important to me than to him. We are going to Sudan, the first time for me in five years, and the first time for him in perhaps seven. But we’re going further. We’re are going to explore the villages of my now-deceased grandparents and ancestors in Nubia.

Fifty years ago, two years before I was born, the last trains left the villages in Nubia for New Halfa, leaving behind a civilization, a way of life, and a land that sustained a people continuously for seven thousand years.  This emigration, called al Hijra by the Nubians, resulted from the inundation of the homeland of the Nubians by Lake Nasser and the Aswan High Dam. All said, 50,000 Nubians were resettled on the Sudanese side of the border and 70,000 on the Egyptians side.  I have never set foot in Nubia, yet I feel compelled to make this journey, and make sure my son is with me.

Perhaps because Nubians come from Upper Egypt, which is among its poorest regions, perhaps because of their darker complexion, or perhaps because of the traditional role that many Nubian men have played as doormen or servants in the palaces of Ottoman Pashas, the Nubians, in the popular imagination, often seen as simple country folk by the cosmopolitan Cairo or Alexandria crowd.

As a result, Nubia is not understood as a source of civilization, a cradle of history, but as the end of the road – a road on which played out an enlightened Mediterranean civilization of Pharaohs and Moses, Hyksos and Assyrians, Romans and Greeks, Turks and Brits, an Elizabeth Taylor-like Cleopatra and Richard Burton-like Anthony. At the end of this cul-de-sac, in the popular imagination, there is a Nubian house where country folk live, beyond which is a barren landscape, wilderness, primitive darkness and Africa.

But the stones tell a different story. The history of this region is long, and the relationship between Nubia and Cairo has ebbed and flowed like the Nile that glistens below. In Nubia has existed poverty but also fabulous wealth, simple rural lives, and the seats of complex empires. In fact civilization flowed in both directions; Nubia was not a cul-de-sac but an intersection of cultures, trade and ideas.

Nubia’s place in history has been chronicled in the Old Testament, the writings of the Greeks including Homer, Diodorus, and Flavius, in the stones and the clay artifacts unearthed by archeologists. As early as 13,000 BC, organized social structures and a complex civilization emerged, supported by a cattle-based economy, with strikingly modern-looking clay pottery the world’s first cemeteries an unmatched ritual devotion to their gods and kings.

By 3,000 BC, society flourished, and traded with distant lands.  As early as the sixth dynasty (2,300-2,400 BC) there were diplomatic, cultural and economic relations between the capital of Nubia, Kerma, and the capital of ancient Egyptian, called Memphis (near Cairo). Ancient Egypt and Kush vied for supremacy for millennia; Kush grew more powerful when Egypt was weakened by invaders from the north; Kush in turn grew weaker through its conflicts with neighbors to the south.

Around 750 BC the Nubians were in the ascendancy, and finally conquered the Nile Valley in which is now called the 25th and 26th dynasties. The Nubian Pharoahs, starting with Piankhy, revived the religious traditions and culture of the Nile Valley and extended Nubian power from Khartoum to the Delta. In fact, the Nubian Pharaohs projected power beyond their borders; it was a battle in support of the Jewish kings of Jerusalem against the Assyrians that ultimately brought down the dynasties.

It is difficult to imagine today. History ended 50 years ago, before we could fill in the details. The better part of Nubia was submerged by the Aswan High Dam.

To discover the truth – the source of the dignity, piety and humility that courses through Nubian blood – requires a journey. As John Garang said at the outset of his speech at the end of Africa’s longest civil war, understanding Sudan requires us to first withdraw, to step back, as a tsunami first withdraws and gathered strength before issuing forth in its full fury. This is our moment of quiet.

The plane takes off and we lift into a dusty Cairo sky, as if into a “Haboob” dust cloud rather than the low atmosphere of a normal day. There are in fact no clouds, but visibility is limited by the winter haze of Cairo, a mixture of burning agricultural waste, pollution and dust from the teeming masses below.

The glaring sun through the window fades into an angry red-orange line across the horizon, splitting the vast grey desert and the deep cobalt sky, in which one star and a crescent moon stand watch. On the other side, a British-Sudanese family makes its way back home with heavy London accents.

Anticipation

Two hours later, we start our descent.