by Levison Wood
‘What is it, Lev?’
Moez was already up, refastening our packs to the bicycles.
‘Do you know what today is, Moez?’
‘Another fine day in the Republic of the Sudan?’
‘No,’ I said, tramping to the bicycles. ‘Today is the first fifth of May in my adult life that I won’t be able to get hold of a cold beer.’
Moez just looked at me, dumbly.
‘Today is my birthday,’ I said woefully, wiping the sand out of my matted hair and grimy beard. With shock, I realised it was now well over an inch long.
Moez reached out and pumped my hand vigorously. ‘Happy New Year!’ he declared. ‘Today is a great day! You will not forget this birthday. Here you are, in the middle of Sudan, surrounded by beautiful desert and friendly people . . .’ He grinned wildly. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-two,’ I conceded.
Moez let go of my hand, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I thought you would be thirty-seven, thirty-eight. More like my age?’
I took a deep breath, squinting into the morning sun. Thirty-two, and had it not been for the diary in my pack, I would have forgotten. There had to be something better than this. Unknown months of walking still lay between me and the river delta. I couldn’t spend every day of them in abject misery and self-pity. I drew myself up, fixed my eyes on the road ahead, and spoke out loud: ‘Lev, you are walking the Nile. You have set out to do it. You will do it. It will be shit at times, but you will reach the end. Nothing you can do will make it any easier, or any quicker. Just accept it.’
Moez drew his bicycle alongside mine. ‘Lev, what are you doing?’
‘I am giving myself a birthday present, Moez.’
He looked at me, perplexed. ‘What present?’
‘I am becoming a fatalist. Fatalism is my present to myself.’
As Moez walked off, up the road, he looked back down. ‘You could get yourself a new pair of boots, too,’ he said, grinning, and the day’s walk began.
By the time we reached Khartoum, another week had passed. Moez’s body seemed to be in a better state, and so too did my mind. Somehow, reaching that epiphany on my birthday had transformed me. Whatever black clouds had been smothering me since the failure to make it through South Sudan had parted, and slowly, I began to see the real beauty in the road along the river.
Perhaps because I’d read so much about its history, the name Khartoum evoked in me images of towering minarets, bustling souqs, dusty back streets choked with camels, donkeys and the crumbling remains of a colonialism that had been thrown out with the rubbish. I thought of the great siege, of battlefields and whirling dervishes, of Winston Churchill’s last great cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman, when the British reclaimed the Sudan in 1898; of shifty-looking Bedouin coming in from the desert to trade in gum Arabic, silks and cotton. But, whilst all of this is there, the reality is that Khartoum is also surprisingly modern, with wide avenues, modern banks and hotels sitting on the lush riverside. After months of walking through the wilderness, this was the first metropolis I’d seen since Kampala – and I entered the city with a sense of relief, even joy, at the prospect of being surrounded by people, cars and a ready supply of food.
Khartoum began its existence as an outpost for the Egyptian army after Sudan had been incorporated into Egypt in 1821. Soon, what was a resupply outpost for soldiers became a centre for other kinds of trade as well, and Khartoum exploded as a thriving community. Here, all the goods of Africa could be transported and traded – and, most infamous of all, Khartoum became one of the hearts of the slave trade in central Africa. Key to this was the river along which I had been walking – for it is in Khartoum that the White Nile merges with its sister river, the Blue Nile.
The Blue Nile first erupts from Lake Tana in the heart of Ethiopia, and has already flowed for 900 miles by the time it reaches Omdurman, the suburb of greater Khartoum that sits on the west bank of the river. This confluence of the two great rivers makes Khartoum unique in Africa, a natural melting pot of peoples and cultures. It also marked the last transformation in the river before the long trek to the delta, and I was eager to see it for myself.
In the Acropole Hotel, I waited for Moez to pick me up. Our task for today was simple: head north, through the city, to the point at which the rivers meet. From there, we would cross into Omdurman on the west bank. There was one more provision we needed before continuing the trek north – from Khartoum, we would enter the edges of the Sahara Desert, and the bicycles we had fought doggedly to roll from the border would no longer suffice. From here on in, we were going to need something more stalwart to ferry our packs – and only camels would suffice.
As I waited for Moez, I leafed through a copy of The Times, left behind by another guest on his return to the UK. On the front page, not for the first time, events in Sudan had made world news. Beneath a damning headline lay the story of Meriam Ibrahim, a twenty-seven-year-old Sudanese woman who also happened to be a doctor. After marrying a Christian Sudanese man, educated in the USA, she had been accused of adultery and apostasy – the formal renunciation of religion – and sentenced, first to the lash for adultery, and then to death for the crime of abandoning Islam. The fact that her Muslim father had abandoned her as a child and she had grown up a Christian under the faith of her mother was apparently deemed irrelevant by the judge. The international community, incensed at this disregard for basic human rights, was pushing for Ibrahim to be pardoned – but, so far, Sudan had remained silent.
Lost in the article, I didn’t see Moez appear at my side.
‘Have you seen this?’ I asked.
Moez nodded, grimly. ‘Bashir will not listen, Lev. It is not the way.’
Omar al-Bashir had been the President of Sudan since 1989, rising to power at the head of a military coup, and had then been elected three times in succession, each time in elections under international scrutiny for corruption. Bashir’s record on human rights had always been in question, but never more so than in 2009, when he ordered a systematic campaign of pillage, rape and mass murder against the citizens of Darfur in the west of Sudan. The crisis in Darfur led to Bashir being the very first incumbent president of any nation on Earth to be indicted by the International Criminal Court – but, partly due to the unwillingness of other African states, the warrant for his arrest has never been executed.
I flung the newspaper down, eager to think of better things.
‘It has always been the way in Sudan,’ said Moez as we stepped, blinking, into the blinding light. ‘We fought a war with the South because they are Christians. We fight little wars every day, because we are Muslims and Christians trying to live together.’
Together we crossed the city, through concrete skyscrapers and gaudy hotels, past university buildings and boutique shops, through crowds of men in smart designer gear and sunglasses, women in loose-fitting hijabs and skinny jeans. It all seemed so surreal. After the wooden huts and mud shacks, even the traffic lights and pedestrian crossings seemed absurd. At last, we reached a leafy park nestled between the two rivers – the White Nile surging by on my left, the Blue closing in on my right. A rickety-looking Ferris wheel rose out of the bushes of the Blue Nile riverbank, its deadly carriages containing young couples. A miniature roller coaster, equally lethal, twirled alongside the White. All around, families and couples were having picnics as the fierce sun shone down.
Up ahead, where the park tapered to a point as the two rivers met, security guards manned a barrier. Reaching out a hand to stop me, Moez uttered, ‘Stay here,’ and strode ahead to shake hands with one of the moustachioed guards. After a few minutes, he returned. ‘It’s okay. We can go through and film the river – but we have to be quick. If you see anyone wearing a suit, hide the camera and smile.’
‘Moez, isn’t this just a family amusement park?’
Moez shot me a look and, without another word, I followed him through the barrier.
The path ran through entangled bushes, down
to a headland overlooking the river. Standing at its pinnacle, where the White Nile rose from the south and the Blue Nile from the east, we could see fishermen arrayed along the grassy bank, their rods projecting out into the flow. At the point where the two waterways converged, the liquid was slow, the brown water gently lapping against a muddy shore. The fishermen ignored us as we ventured to the bank to dip our hands and symbolically wash our faces. This was a special moment, and in an instant, I felt as if I was back at the beginning, stooping down to drink from the headwaters with Boston in the Nyungwe Forest. Moez must have done this a hundred times already, but he took to the ritual with such obvious relish that I liked him all the more.
‘I am Nubian,’ he said. ‘We’re the people of the Nile. We wouldn’t exist without it.’
‘It looks so . . . ordinary,’ I admitted. ‘The water from one river’s just the same as the next.’ I lifted my camera to take pictures of the confluence, and the vast sprawl of Omdurman on the opposite bank.
‘It’s different in the rainy season. The Blue Nile is usually much clearer than the White. The White Nile should really be called the Brown Nile, but it doesn’t have the same ring to it.’
One of the fishermen laid out a rug on the grass and stood with his hands upturned. Facing the east, the Qiblah – the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca – he began to pray. Closing his eyes, he began to recite verses from the Koran. It was a mystical vision and suddenly I felt very humble to be in his presence. It seemed that the world around this man no longer mattered. The city, the fairground, the sudden plop as a fish jumped to evade a fisherman’s line, the history of a city born out of slavery and destruction, even the constant surging of the Nile – all of this was nothing compared to the thought of this man’s God. To him, this special place was just a piece of dirt on which to prostrate himself. I was watching him, transfixed, when suddenly Moez grabbed me by the arm.
‘Move!’ he said. ‘Let’s go. Now.’
There was something in the tone of his voice that made me obey. Watched by the inquisitive eyes of the fishermen, I took after him up the bank.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Put the camera inside your shirt . . .’
I fumbled to hide it away.
‘Now smile and look back cross the water.’
At the top of the bank, Moez pointed and grinned, beginning to talk loudly about the beauty of the water and the greenery of Tuti Island, the three miles of citrus orchard, vegetable farms and arable land that sits in the middle of the river and provides Khartoum with so much of its fresh food.
I barely noticed a speedboat in the distant water of the Blue Nile slow down and then speed up. After it had passed, Moez stopped his oration and whispered as we hurried back along the path.
‘It’s security. They were watching us.’
‘Moez, they barely glanced at us. They hardly slowed down at all . . .’
‘They saw.’
‘Who gives a damn if they did? What were we doing?’
‘Lev, you don’t understand. They are everywhere. They watch everything. They don’t like foreigners at all – especially English ones with cameras. Do you know how many times I’ve been arrested, for no reason at all? I’ve been with tourists who’ve had their cameras smashed in front of their faces. I had a security agent try to stab me with a bayonet in the Nuba mountains . . .’
The Nuba mountains lay in the south, close to the border with South Sudan. ‘That’s different, surely? Moez, this is Khartoum, not some half-forgotten backwater . . .’
‘You’d be a fool to think so. You’ll find the people of Sudan welcoming and friendly – but the government is another matter. I don’t need any trouble, Lev. They’ll close my business and lock me up. They’re already following me for my other activities . . .’
At last, we had reached the fairground. The rollercoaster tumbled by on my left, children in the front seats screaming in hedonistic abandon.
‘What do you mean . . . other activities?’
‘I’ll tell you later . . .’
We hustled across the fairground. Every time I thought Moez was mad, things twisted in the corner of my vision – and everything looked suspicious. Every man in black shoes became a spy. The slightest look in my direction made me imagine secret policemen. Sideways glances, women in burqas, even teenage boys – they all seemed out of the ordinary now.
‘Before we go for the camels, we should get jellabiyas,’ Moez said. ‘We’ll look less like tourists. With your beard, you’ll pass for Sudanese – or at least an Arab . . .’
I stopped dead. ‘Moez, is there something you’re not telling me?’
At the edge of the fairground, Moez relented. When he looked me in the eyes, I saw a man who was scared.
‘I’m Vice President of the Nubian Front,’ he said. ‘And Secretary of the Anti-Dams Coalition. We . . .’ At first, he did not have the words. ‘We campaign against the dams they build along the river. You have heard of the Aswan High Dam? In 1964, they submerged the entire Nile valley south of Aswan in Egypt for 450km – it wiped out the Nubian heartland, even here in Sudan. It was the biggest forced migration in history – 50,000 of my fellow Nubians had to leave their homes or else be drowned.’ He paused. ‘I can’t tell you how many times the security have tried to take me away – but I’ve always managed to talk my way out of it. I don’t want to take any risks, Lev. The only reason I’m helping you with this expedition is because I think it’s good for Sudan. I’m a patriot. I love this country more than the government that gives it a bad reputation. I want to show the world that it’s a beautiful place, full of beautiful people, not just the government and its terrors – and you, Lev, you can help do that. But I need you to understand: I’m risking everything here, so, please, just do as you’re told.’
Not once, in the weeks we had spent together, had I heard Moez speak like this. Without another word, I nodded in assent.
Moez smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘And while we’re at it,’ he said, ‘you can double my pay . . .’
THE GREAT BEND
Eastern Sahara, Sudan, May 2014
‘Ships of the desert,’ said Moez. ‘That’s what we call them. Somali beasts aside, Sudanese camels are the best in the world.’
Moez and I arrived at Omdurman’s Souq al-Muwelih after midday, when the sun was at its zenith and most sane people stayed in the relative cool of their huts. The souq wasn’t so much a market as a vast expanse of sand, with a small collection of shacks where local Sudanese men lounged on string beds drinking chai. We’d already passed the goat market, but here the scene was less frantic. Hundreds of camels stood around, chewing the scrub like cows. Gathered in groups, with the females clinging together and the males tied up in clots of four or five, they didn’t seem to mind the heat at all. In front of us, one of the males tried to stand but, finding his legs tethered together, all he could do was hop comically about in search of tufts of grass poking out of the sand. I could have watched him carousing all day.
From the midst of the camels there appeared a man in a long white shirt and blue waistcoat, his head wrapped loosely in a turban.
‘This must be Bala,’ I said, and we made our way to meet him.
I had first heard of Bala from the great explorer Michael Asher, whose home I had visited in Kenya just before my expedition began. A noted desert explorer, Michael had spent three years living with a nomadic tribe in Sudan, becoming as familiar as any man on earth with the deserts I was about to traverse. His advice had been invaluable: camels were a necessity, but a bad camel was worth less than no camel at all.
‘Whatever you do,’ he had said, ‘don’t get a Sharaat.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a runner. They’ll try and sell you one, but tell them no. If a camel does a runner with all your water in the desert, you’ll be dead in a day. And look serious when you’re buying – look like you know what you’re doing. Otherwise, they’ll sell you something old and feckless. Check
their teeth – you can tell their age by the teeth. You want a male, four to eight years old. Anything under and it’ll be too weak and inexperienced. Older and it won’t be up to the journey. You need a strong camel – so ask to see it stand up and get back down. If it trembles at the knees, don’t go near it. You want one that’s up to carrying two, even three, hundred kilos. You’ll probably need two just for the food and water . . .’
Asher had had other advice: the Sudanese, he promised, were an honest people and, for the most part, wouldn’t intentionally rip a buyer off. ‘They’ll probably presume you’ve bought camels before. I mean, who in their right mind goes into a camel market in Sudan who knows nothing about camels?’ He winked at me, gleefully. ‘Look, there’s a man I know, name of Bala. He joined me on several jaunts across the Sahara. Give him a call when you get there. Mention my name . . .’
‘Salaam Alaikum,’ I said respectfully as Bala approached.
‘You are Asher’s friend?’ he asked, without any apparent emotion.
‘Yes.’
‘Come for chai.’
Bala, the overseer for a market where many different traders brought their camels, led us to one of the huts and clicked his fingers at an Ethiopian serving girl. Everything about Bala had an air of authority: he swaggered as he walked, his pockets bulged with cash and he kept having to shake the gold watch around his wrist back into position. Carefully, he laid three phones out on the carpet in front of me. I guessed it was his way of showing how important he was.
‘You’ve come at a bad time for camels,’ he said, slurping sugary tea. I had to wait a moment for Moez to translate: Bala’s English was even worse than my Arabic. ‘Saturday is market day and we sell all the best camels before lunch.’
‘Well, there seem to be a lot of camels out there,’ I said. ‘You must have one for sale?’