Nubians

Nubia, Sudan, Travel

The Hungarian Kendaka

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The Hungarian Kendaka

Ancient Nubia drew its power from its women.

Even when the King was male, as the Arab historian Ibn Abd al Zahir wrote, “it is the tradition that the Nubian kings be directed by women in affairs of the state.”  Leo Africanus records of his visit to Nubia “they are governed by women, and they call their Queen Gaua.” Ancient Nubia was a matrilineal society, with family identity and inheritance passed through mothers.

After what the scholars of Egypt called the late period, including the 25th and 26th Dynasties in which all of Egypt was reunited and the culture revived by Nubian pharaohs, Egypt regained its lost territory and the Nubians retreated further south.  Egyptian power eventually declined, and it came under the rule of a series of foreign rulers, including Persians, Greeks and Romans. Nubia at this time was known as the kingdom of Kush.

These foreign invaders knew that Kush was the source of Egypt’s gold, and as such made many attempts to invade and conquer this land.  They were repelled time and again.  In this era Nubia’s military reputation was earned both by its famous archers – one of the historical names of Nubia was “Ta Seti”, or “land of the bow” –  and by warrior queens known as Kendaka.  These queens not only held their ground; they would ever so often venture north and attack Egypt to put in check any ideas of military misadventures on the part of the foreign invaders.

One story has it that the Nubian Kendaka Amanitori, riding elephants at the head of impressive battle formations of the famous Nubian archers, intimidated Alexander the Great from venturing southward despite the known abundance of gold.

While little is known about Alexander’s misadventure, more is known about the attempts the Romans made to subjugate Nubia. The historian Strabo recorded that the Nubian Queen Amanishekhato attacked a Roman garrison in Aswan, defeated it, and moved further north to Thebes and defeated yet another Roman garrison.  According to Strabo the Queen “enslaved the inhabitants, and threw down the statues of Caesar.” She lopped off the head of one statue of Caesar and buried it under the floor of her temple at Meroe so that every visitor would walk over it. This head now resides in a museum in London.  The Romans would in fact later sign an agreement in which the Romans paid tribute to the Nubians in order stop attacking Egypt’s southern flank.

The Persian king Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, also made the journey up the Nile, occupying but ultimately failing in his attempt to conquer Kush.

It is clear from these stories that Nubian women could hold their own. Centuries later, society has been transformed, but women still play a prominent role.  I think of modern Kendakas like my late grandmother whose century-long journey from the Nubian village to Cairo to California included not a day of rest, my mother who was managed to raise us after my father’s stroke, my other grandmother Miska who recovered from the early passing of my grandfather, and prominent women in the larger family who are or were fighters for social justice such as Souad Ibrahim Ahmed, Magda Mohamed Ahmed Ali, and countless others.

It is fair to say that in all societies, women are frequently the carriers of deep culture and social capital.  So we asked to meet older Nubian Kandaka who I was told had much of the history of Nubia before the flood in her memory. I was told her memory was still vivid. For this important meeting I put away my western clothing and wear my only formal Sudanese jellabia.

We found her in a house surrounded by friends, wearing a blue thob and chatting with lots of energy.  The biggest surprise to us was that she had blue eyes, and was part of the Magyarab tribe.  The Magyarab are the descendants of a Hungarian regiment of the Ottoman army that was brought in to hold Southern Egypt in 1517.  General Ibrahim, who was from Buda (the old part of Budapest), his five sons and many of his troops married local Nubian women and occupied an island within the Nile near Wadi Halfa.  For hundreds of years this tribe lived in relative isolation, retaining parts of the Hungarian language and customs, but forgotten by Hungary itself until it was discovered by Europeans in 1935.  In fact an offshoot of the Hungarian group was recently found in Congo with even more of the Hungarian language still intact.

This Hungarian Kendaka, peering at us with the blue eyes of her Hungarian forefathers, explains with pride about their society prior to the flood.  Life was wonderful; society was harmonious, and people were happy.  As the video shows, she speaks only in the Nubian language, but with some Arabic thrown in and yet more meaning from her hands gestures.  In one of the few Arabic words she uses, punctuated with her hands, she described the extent to which they were “Mabsooooot” or truly happy.

She explains about the various traditions, and what happened when news came of the coming flood.   She speaks about wedding ceremonies and births, and how the earth was formed and covered with a cloth to form a cradle for the newborn.   She explains that life was communal; multiple families would eat together as rather than in their individual homes, what was grown by one family was available to another.  She explains that Fakir Yusuf, a religious figure she holds with a great deal of respect, came to live among the Magaryab and built the first Mosque which became a key part of their community.

The flood meant that the Magyar island would be lost, and they needed to find new homes.  At this time many foreigners came to document the lifestyle of this offshoot of Hungarian society, and she charmingly depicts the motions of photography.  Small samples of earth were taken from various parts of Nubia, including Magyarab island, and she boasts that only the soil from her land was able to be replanted overseas.

This video would be great to have subtitled, if any Nubian speakers would like to help I would be grateful.

I come away from this encounter amazed that there was such a thing as a Magyarab tribe still intact, privileged to have had a chance to be learn from her, grateful to be able to share a little of her story, and honored to have been in the presence of a true Nubian Hungarian Kendaka.

A wonderful meeting

Nubia, Sudan, Travel

The Lost Water Wheel

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The Lost Water Wheel

Emerging from the home of my mother’s parents and grandparents, we follow the path out toward the river, through the cultivated field, through the grove of date palms, and to the edge of the water.   On the way, I ask to see the water wheel.

The farms of the village were watered by a Saqia, the old water wheel that Hamza al Din used to sing about in his gravelly old voice.

http://www.nonesuch.com/albums/nubia-escalay-the-water-wheel-oud-music

The Eskale as it was called the local Rutana language, was powered by an ox, a gorondi, who turned a wooden wheel around its axis, which was geared to a vertical wheel, a goshor, that in its course dipped clay pots, Feshai, into Nile water that, having traveled from the mountains of Ethiopia or Rwanda, found its destiny in irrigating the small but intensively cultivated fields.  The rhythm of the Saqia, the oxen slowly turning the wooden wheel, the sound of the ropes on wood, the sound of clay pots entering the river, lifting, pouring out just enough water and not more, marked time in those villages, marked the day into two shifts of agricultural work, carved the week into work days, the year into the three seasons – the flood, summer and the bitter, cold winter.  And so in the valleys carved by the Nile grew date palms, wheat, oranges and okra (oyai) in abundance, which sustained a civilization, a people called Nubians, since before there were pharaohs or great men or anything called history.

For such a society to persist for seven millennia in such a confined space, it required deep reserves of what Buddhists might call Dhamma-vinaya, or Western philosophers might much more simply call ethics, as a basis for social harmony.   There was a balance between nature, on the one hand, and man’s desire to accumulate wealth on the other; a desire called “Al Takathur” in Islam.  In Nubia this was determined by the simple technology handed down the same way since before the Romans.  The Saqia and the ox turned at a speed that determined how much water could be drawn, and therefore how far away from the river the canals could stretch; and therefore how much land could be worked, and therefore how much each could accumulate and own.  Man’s animal spirits were held in check by the animal’s speed.

Courtesy of Nubian House in Abu Simbel, here is an example:

Water wheel in Nubian House, Abu Simbel

These natural limits forced Nubians to adopt social rules that emphasized cooperation while also maximizing the output from those small plots.  The water wheels and canals could not be built, and the scarce land could not be productive if every individual worked for themselves.  Success required some harmony.  Grandfather Abbas’ father Mohamed and the other families worked together to maintain the Saqia, and the sons and men of those families also helped with the farming.  The farmers that worked would receive their due for their labor, along with the investors that shared in its cost. As such a system which combined community ownership and individual effort emerged.  The Nubians figured a way to jointly invest and build assets, maintain records of the shares that belonged to each, and even trade these shares.  This way the village avoided the fate of many societies, the curse of inheritance dividing and fragmenting the land into smaller and smaller plots, until it could not be farmed productively and left the young generation little choice but to leave for want of a chance.

We walked toward the river, on a path between the fields. Through the grove they point to the place where the water wheel stood.  There is no water wheel.  Only a small remnant of the wheel remains intact, and this piece is being pressed down by a black water pipe that leads directly from the river to the field.

This wonderful technology was gone, and the remnant was now holding up a black pipe. The power of the ox has been replaced by the power of a diesel pump.  it brought water with ease; it surely allows more land to be cultivated, and saves time. But there is no beauty in this black pipe.

What remains of the Escalay
The last remnant of the water wheel, pressed down by a pipe from a diesel pump bringing water from the Nile

I reflect on this.

I wonder how much of our culture and identity was tied to the water wheel. We know culture as the set of beliefs, artistic expressions, knowledge, morals and customs that we acquire as a result of being part of a particular society; it is our collective inheritance. Part of the culture of the Nubians, since at least 200 BC and until very recent times, was this water wheel. But would many small changes like this eventually have eliminated what we knew of the culture of Nubia even without the high dam?

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I cannot blame anyone for wanting to use modern technology.  Nubian men often worked away from their village and left the farming to the families left behind, led by their wives.  It was difficult work.  A diesel pump would make life easier.

But just as this imported technology displaced something genius and home grown, does this imply that the ideas, culture and identity would also be displaced, or would it have been integrated and absorbed into a new Nubian culture?  Has it eliminated some of what bound Nubians to each other; the need for collective effort to maintain the canals and the water wheel?  I don’t imagine songs will ever be written about this black pipe or the beating sound of the diesel pump.

We make some more visits, see stop by a house where another family recalls my older brother Semir who had visited this village in the late 1950s or early 1960s.  We enjoy a wonderful tea and the typically Nubian dried sweetened bread, gargosh, which is taken with tea.  We enjoy a conversation, a recollection of old times.  The people are here for each other.

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Through these changes I still see the outlines of a beautiful culture, a village called Serkametto where 50 years later one can visit and ask about their deceased ancestors, and still find their friends walking around and recalling them fondly.

There is change, but there is continuity.

Nubia, Travel

Sarkamatto

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Sarkamatto

It was a dazzlingly bright day, as we got back on the highway.  As the last six hours of our journey to Wadi Halfa the night before had been conducted in darkness, we only now noticed the dark hills on either side of the valley, or Wadi, gradually etched through the hills by the Nile.  The hills had strange shapes; some of which look like naturally carved pyramids; others in black granite stood in contrast against the tan desert sand and cloudless sky.

We retraced our route south toward Khartoum for around 150 km just east of the Nile, until we saw a small green sign, I think it was for the village of Diabeen.  We turned off the main highway and on to a gravel road, heading west toward the river.  Tariq and I were filled with anticipation as we saw, through an opening between the hills, the palm trees lining the glistening water.We passed the village.  A second green sign appeared, in Arabic and English,spelled in a way I haven’t seen, announcing our arrival in Sarkamatto.

Arrival in Sarkamatto

I’ve heard this word all of my life.  My grandfather Abbas and grandmother Ruqaia were born in this village.  Until she departed this world in 2013, probably around 100 years old (I say probably because no one actually wrote down the year or day she was born) she probably told 10,000 stories about life in Sarkamatto.  I thought it was a myth; now we find ourselves walking through the very home of her childhood, and in fact the village lives on.

My grandfather Abbas was the son of a farmer, Hassan, a hard-working man of faith, who was the son of a farmer, Mohammed. I imagine that before the fajr prayer at dawn, Abbas rose in the dark to help his father till the soil, pull weeds, feed the oxen, tighten the ropes around the water wheel, just as Mohammed had helped his father Anno Hassan, and Anno Hassan had helped his father Yusuf (Joseph), and Yusuf had helped his father Daud (David) back in the nineteenth century, and so on over centuries.

And so they worked the alluvial soils on the mighty river winding down from Ethiopia, Eastern Sudan, Lake Victoria, Southern Sudan and Uganda, that started as a trickle in the hills of Rwanda.  Together with the other villages up and down the Nile they drew life from this river, with respect, as it made its way to Egypt and on to the Mediterranean and to all that it touches.

Farms of Sarkamatto

We pulled up and found two ladies walking, and they direct us further down the road.  We find Gornas Abdu Ali Shelabi.  We explained who we were and the purpose of our journey. He immediately recognized the names of our family, which brings him nearly to tears.  He offers to show us around the village.  What was in my mind cluster of small houses next to each other along the river was transformed, as in fact the houses were spread out, each having a large vegetable garden and were at some distance from the Nile.  Closer to the river were the large working fields, planted in lubia beans, behind which were the palm groves, and then the Nile.

Hospitable residents of Sarkamatto

I want to see my grandparents’ house.  We walk on, another 10 minutes or so. Tariq is followed by a donkey, probably amused to see Tariq holding a book over his head to create some shade.

In Sarkamatto, villagers guide our way
In Sarkamatto, villagers guide our way

There we found Suad Ali Himmat, who was just heading out with her daughter to tend to the field.  We asked her if she knew my grandparents.  Immediately, she replied “Of course I knew them! How could I not know them?  They were great, may God rest their souls.  How are you, and how is your mother Loula and your brother and sister?”  She has a bright smile, as the wind whips her scarf, and she holds the hand of her daughter as well as a small scythe for her tasks ahead.  I am amazed by her vivid recollection of someone who hasn’t been to that village in nearly half a century.

Sarkametto conversation

She points to a particular house, deteriorated but standing proudly.  It has a grand entrance, three arches, and the walls all around the compound are carved with a series of triangle openings.  The entrance way is carved, one could imagine flowers lining the entrance. All of the walls are intact, but there are no windows, and the plaster that covers the walls has faded away.  The roof is in patches, exposing the beams and the thatch, but the structure of the house is intact.  It was a large house; I had imagined my grandmother to have lived more modestly for some reason.  After the entrance where visitors were greeted, there is a large courtyard.  Opposite the courtyard is a series of rooms from left to right with windows facing inward.  Tariq walks through an arched doorway and finds himself in the bathroom.  We see what must have been several bedrooms.  We step back outside, and take note of the view; looking out over the farms and toward the river.

Grandmother's House
Grandmother’s House

 The roof, still largely intact

I recall some of the stories Nena would tell us of her childhood in this village.  As a child, she had explained, anyone could walk into anyone’s house and drink from the water aman horki cooled in the tall clay containers; eat of their food; get scolded by the parents of that home if need be.  Everyone knew everyone else, so a mother could straighten out someone else’s kid and would expect another mother to do the same with hers if the need arose.

After school (for boys at the time), or a day on the farm, the kids would run through the village, play with a ball made from wrapped up rags and leaves, while the young ones played with the goats or puppies, or build little model houses from sticks and mud.  All of them, boys, girls, young and old, almost always end up with a swim, korkid, in the river.  Before doing so they would gather some eggs, Kombo, from someone’s yard, and bury them in the sand to cook while they swam and played.  When they returned from the river, the eggs would be fully cooked and they would enjoy them.

She told us of her fall from climbing one of the date trees, and would complain of it whenever her shoulder gave her pain.

She told us stories of coming in to play one day, at the age of six, and being told that she was promised in marriage to the only husband she ever knew.  They did not live together until she was older, when he took her to a life they built in old Cairo.

My thoughts return to the village.  Gornas, Amir and Tariq are taking pictures in front of the house, and I join them.  One of the pictures is the cover photo of this blog.

At the entrance

We follow the path out toward the river, through the cultivated field, through the grove of date palms, and to the edge of the water.

Farms of Sarkamatto

View of the Nile from Sarkamatto

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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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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.