Walking the Nile

by Levison Wood

  Behind a sheer cliff of black basalt, a small trail wound into a narrow gully. We snaked along its length, emerging again onto the plain west of the volcanoes.

  I stared into the distance. At first, all I saw was the same unyielding black and grey, the plateau extending into the west. Then, my eyes lit on a passage in the rock another mile away, a place where the volcanic mounds rose up, and a ravine was the only way through.

  At the other end of the passage, there was green.

  ‘There!’ I shouted out, with the last of my remaining energy.

  ‘You’re not bloody wrong,’ said Will, climbing to a gravel mound to see for himself.

  ‘Trees!’ screamed Moez.

  ‘Water?’ asked Ash, in utter disbelief.

  Awad rode level with Will and, high up on Burton, stared into the distant tree-line.

  ‘Moya,’ he said, with sheer relief. ‘Water.’

  With renewed vigour, we made for the cleft in the rock, emerging onto a small cluster of acacia bushes clinging to the base of the pitch-black mountainside. Pillars of rock rose like ancient monoliths out of the scree and there, to my utter disbelief, stood two boys.

  By the looks of them they were Arab, Bedouin like Awad and Ahmad, dressed in simple jellabiyas with beads around their necks. At our sudden appearance, they started, exchanging a panicked look. The first tightened his hold around the rope by which they were leading a diminutive donkey. It took me a moment to realise what I was seeing in their eyes. It wasn’t quite fear, and it wasn’t quite shock; they were bewildered, staring at a collection of rough, sand-blasted vagabonds who seemed to have stepped straight out of some desert past.

  Ahmad was the first to speak. From up on Burton, he cried out, ‘You, lads! We are Bedouin of the Hawawir tribe. We come in peace. Now tell us . . .’ He leaned forward, half mischievous, half menacing: ‘Is there a well near?’

  In silence, the boys exchanged a look, their faces transforming from nervous horror to relief. The first lifted his hand and pointed towards a crevice, only a few hundred metres to our west. Raising his whip in thanks, Ahmad reined Burton around and took off.

  Summoning what vestiges of energy we had left, we hurried into the valley. For the first time in a hundred miles, the desert plain opened up with trees and bushes, tall and green, growing thicker and more verdant with every step. Between the trees stood crudely constructed stone corrals, seasonal pens for whatever nomadic herders used this route through the desert. We rounded the corrals, dropped into a crevice between the rocks – and there, surrounded by stones carved in intricate design, stood the well. A rope trailed out of its open mouth, a single bucket beckoning us to come and drink our fill.

  Ash and Moez hurtled forward. The camels, too, must have smelt water – for suddenly there was no stopping them as they charged towards it. Dumping our bags under the shade of an acacia, Will and I dragged the jerry cans to the lip of the well. My entire body was telling me to dive into its sweet depths and never come up again, but Moez, Awad and Ahmad were already praying and we waited for them to finish.

  After that: we drank, and drank, and drank.

  For the first time that day, I felt human, my tongue no longer numb and shrivelled. Just a few seconds was all it took for the water to touch every corner of my body. I was alive again.

  ‘Well done, Wood.’ Ash winked, finishing his second litre. ‘I never doubted you.’

  Alongside us, Awad was digging a small pit, laying a tarpaulin inside and filling it with water for the camels to drink their fill. Burton, Speke and Gordon – in that order – hustled each other to the pit and I watched as the water brought life back to their eyes.

  Once I had regained my senses, I turned to the well. Here we were, miles and miles away from the Nile, in the middle of the desert – and yet, somehow, someone, hundreds of years ago, had known to dig here and provide water for the generations to come. We, very simply, owed them our lives.

  ‘But where does it come from?’ I asked, turning to Moez.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Let me ask.’ Turning to Ahmad, he posed the question in Arabic. Ahmad smiled, busy smoking one of his cigarettes in triumph; and when he replied, I did not need a translator to understand the answer:

  ‘Allah.’

  For three days, we followed the trails west. Though our water had been replenished, by the final day, our food was running low; with all ration packs spent, we kept hunger at bay with dried dates and tins of pineapple. The sight of the distant Nile was like a mirage, appearing on the horizon as a ribbon of emerald green. The mountain of Jebel Barkal rose from the plain and, in its shadow, stood the remnants of yet more pyramids, like the ones we had seen at Meroe. As we drew close, heading into the agricultural land flanking the Nile, the head of a sandstone cobra could just be seen poking out from the cliff – the crown on the head of the old god Amun, sculpted from the rock two-and-a-half-thousand years ago.

  The farmland bounding the Nile was a surreal place of sorghum fields and irrigation channels. We saw people tending to their crops. We trudged along paths between undulating waves of grain, and no longer did the air taste of sand and grit; no longer did we keep our eyes half shut against the reflected glare of the sun.

  We had not yet reached the banks of the river when a farmer hailed us from his field. Waving for us to slow down, he careened through the grain to catch us.

  ‘You!’ he cried, in disbelief. ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘We came across the desert,’ said Moez, wearied.

  The farmer tried to take this in, gazing back east, as if he could see the enormity of the expanse. Shaking his head, he began to laugh. ‘No, no one could do that . . .’ He paused. ‘Where are these from?’ he asked, gesturing at Will, Ash and myself. ‘Pakistan?’

  ‘No,’ said Moez, ‘they’re from England.’

  Something close to realisation settled across the farmer’s face. He nodded, sagely. ‘England? Like the English who were here before?’

  At first, I thought he meant other travellers, but of course, he was referring to the British administration that had ruled Sudan until 1956. It had been fifty-eight years since Sudan had gained independence, but he spoke about it as if was yesterday.

  ‘Yes,’ said Moez, solemnly.

  ‘Well,’ the farmer went on, ‘that’s different. Of course I believe you, now. The English can do anything, my friend, even cross the desert.’ Earnestly, he looked to me. ‘Please, sir,’ he began, ‘tell your Queen she must return. The Sudan has gone to ruin since you left . . .’

  Sometime later, we reached the bank of the Nile. Here the river, continuing its bend around the Bayuda, swung south-west, before curling north again.

  ‘What did he mean, that man?’ I asked.

  ‘It is not an uncommon thing to hear. Since Sudan gained independence, there have been thirty-nine years of civil wars. That’s less than twenty years of peace. And . . .’

  What Moez wasn’t saying was that even those years of peace had hardly been peaceful. Sudan may have been famous for its hospitality, but I hadn’t forgotten the story of the woman condemned to death for converting from Islam, nor Moez’s own stories of thousands of Nubian people continually being displaced by a government extending its infrastructure and power. This was a world in which a strict code of hospitality sat side by side with daily human-rights’ abuse.

  ‘Don’t get used to it, Lev,’ said Will as we tramped, one final mile, down the river. ‘It isn’t every day you’ll hear an African begging for the British to come back . . .’

  The town of Karima stretched out in front of us, surrounded on all sides by date plantations. Through the trees ran a single railway track – still plied by Sudanese trains, but yet another relic left behind by the British. I realised, then, that we had been seeing it everywhere, the stamp the British had left on this land – and not only in the railways and roads, the decaying barracks buildings or the brass plaques in the towns that harked back to the English companies who
had once worked here: SHEFFIELD STEEL, STOKE-ON-TRENT CERAMIC, WATERWORKS OF BIRMINGHAM. We were seeing it in the hearts and minds of the people as well, the memories of those old enough to have been there then, and the stories handed down to those who had not.

  Old British tractors rotted in fields and old British steam engines lay overgrown with weeds. By the Nile old English water pumps formed a rusting metal memorial to a bygone age. It had been the Golden Age for Sudan. In spite of defeat at the hands of Kitchener, the Sudan had become a breadbasket for North Africa, producing wheat and a seemingly endless supply of cotton for a needy Empire. Here the Nile looked verdant, especially after three hundred miles of barren desert. I’d fallen in love with the river once more, and with, I hoped, only a fortnight of walking to reach the Egyptian border, I was doubly excited.

  Still sand-blasted and bedraggled, we followed the tracks into town. It was time for another snatch at civilisation before we followed the river onwards.

  THE LAND OF GOLD

  Nubia, Sudan, June 2014

  ‘We Nubians love the river,’ said Moez. ‘We are not like those Bedouin. Nubians are the truest people of the Nile. Those Bedouin are Arabs, only ever at home in the desert.’

  We made camp at the edge of the river, close to the village of Korti. Since Karima, we had followed the river on its curve south, past the ruins of the Ancient Nubian city of Napata and tonight we were to rest here too – for this was to be Will and Ash’s last night.

  We watched Awad and Ahmad tramp away, muttering darkly, with the camels. ‘Leave them.’ Moez grinned. ‘Those Bedouin can’t bear to be near the river at night. Do you know what a Bedouin hates worse than the thought of dying of thirst in the desert?’ He shook his head, laughing. ‘A mosquito. They can’t bear the insects down by the water . . .’

  In Korti, a local man had offered us the use of his house for the night – but, tonight, more than ever, we wanted to be close to the river. As we broke open ration packs and listened to the water’s constant flow, the man reappeared out of the darkness, carrying in each arm string beds, a package of dates, fresh water and chai.

  ‘If you dishonour me by not being my guests, you must, at least, have my beds!’ he declared, before retreating into the night.

  Will, Ash and I looked at each other, still bewildered. The strangest thing was, this wasn’t even the most extreme hospitality we had seen since leaving the desert two days before. In one dusty little shanty, where we had stopped to buy soda and water the camels, a shopkeeper – within ten minutes of discovering I was English – had offered to give me some land, build me a house, and find me a wife. One man actually threatened to divorce his wife if we refused to stay for lunch, and I swear that a Sudanese host would rather die than drink before a guest. The fact that virtually every household sees it as their duty to provide a ceramic urn full of water for passing travellers is testament to the national pride in revering guests.

  ‘Why do the people here treat foreigners so well?’ I asked, turning to Moez.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, half dismissive, ‘I’m sure it would be the same in your country.’

  I wondered what the folk in my home town would do if a group of Sudanese came tramping down the street, and politely declined to answer.

  In the morning, Will and Ash disappeared the same way they had come: in a cloud of dust and a taxi, taking them all the way back to Khartoum. It was bittersweet to see them go, but the river beckoned – and, with the Egyptian border only three weeks to our north, it did not seem so long until I would see them again.

  After they had gone, we continued our trek along the bend in the Nile, walking through the date plantations and – after our sojourn in the desert – refusing to let the river out of sight. After another two days the Nile turned north again, plunging straight into the enormity of the Nubian desert, itself part of the Sahara. Two more, and we had reached the town of Dongola, the capital of Sudan’s Northern State and the scene of one of Kitchener’s most notable victories against the Mahdists in 1896.

  North of Dongola, the Nile truly collided with the desert. Here, agriculture no longer flourished on its banks; sand dunes tumbled straight into the water, forming sheer cliffs of gold – a stark contrast to the glittering, clear blue waters. The Nile had a clarity here like never before: this was a scene straight out of The Arabian Nights, the crystal blue broken only by an occasional palm tree growing on the banks.

  Two days north, Moez bent down and plucked something from the sand. When he handed it to me, I saw what looked like a long, twisted tube of rock.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Coral,’ said Moez, smiling like a wise old professor. I recalled the various pieces of stone that had decorated his office back in Khartoum. ‘Proof, Lev, that the Sahara was not always a sea of sand. What you’re holding, there, is two hundred million years old.’

  Further along the sandbank, Ahmad and Awad trailing behind with complete uninterest, Moez pointed out more of the stuff – some thin, some thick, some gnarled like the branches of a tree, some full of holes. In the middle of the coral field, he bent down again and picked something else up. Holding it at eye level, he asked, ‘Well, Lev? What do you think this one is?’

  Undoubtedly, it was a piece of wood; I could even see the grain and bark on the outside. Yet, when he put it into my hand, it was hot to the touch. I couldn’t quite believe the sensation. Wood doesn’t get that hot. What I was holding could only be stone.

  ‘Petrified driftwood,’ said Moez, rather too smugly. ‘Once there was a sea here, and then there was forest . . .’

  What we were walking through, I realised, was nothing less than the history of the world – not just the history of Sudan or its peoples, the Ancient Nubians, or even the prehistoric people who had come before. Everywhere we looked, there were reminders of how recent mankind’s appearance on this planet has been – and of how the earth has been transformed and transformed again across its lifetime. The further north we went, the more artefacts we collected: more fragments of petrified wood and coral, small balls of lava that harked back to the region’s violent, volcanic past. Between them – a jumble of different time periods, all thrown together – lay shards of pottery. ‘Three thousand years old,’ said Moez as he picked up, then flung away, a beautifully painted piece of Nubian art. ‘Two thousand,’ he said, kicking the remains of a bowl. ‘Egyptian,’ he said, with mock disgust.

  Then, he paused. ‘Ah! This is more like it . . .’ Bending over, he scooped up a rough square of pottery, black on one side and dyed red on the other. ‘This is from the Deffufas at Kerma,’ he said. ‘Five thousand years old.’

  Kerma was one of the earliest Sudanese states, emerging almost five thousand years ago. What Moez was holding was a fragment of that distant, unknowable past. The historian in me screamed out to touch it.

  ‘This belongs in a museum,’ I said, in disbelief.

  But Moez simply tossed it back to the sand, where it lay among yet more piles of relics. ‘There’s loads of it!’ He grinned. ‘Tell the British Museum they can come and get some if they want it.’

  A short walk upriver lay the site of the ancient city of Kerma itself, millennia older than Old Dongola. Surrounding the bare ruins lay petrified gazelle bones, Palaeolithic hand tools made from flint, and yet more mountains of pottery. Moez barely flinched as we passed it all. At last, north of the ruin, his eyes sought out an old camel track leading into the dunes, and he beckoned me to follow. There was new light in his eyes, giddy at being in tour-guide mode once again. ‘Let me show you something, Lev. I haven’t brought anyone here – only some scientists who came five years ago . . .’

  Along the trail, the desert was pocked with large boulders. According to Moez, these rocks had once been underwater mountains, eroded over millions of years until they had gained the appearance of giant, polished marbles. Moez picked his way between the piles until, over the top of a procession of steep dunes, we stood in the shadow of one boulder as big as a car.


  ‘Can you make it out?’ he asked.

  I stared at the sandstone but, at first, could see nothing. Then, gradually, it came alive. Lines scratched into the surface began to join together and, though I questioned my sanity, soon I began to pick out the giant picture of an elephant.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Wait,’ said Moez. ‘There’s more.’

  We walked a circuit through the boulder field. All around were more rock carvings: a lion, larger than life; an unmistakeable giraffe; horses, antelopes, and stick figures of men bearing spears.

  ‘Six, maybe seven thousand years old,’ said Moez.

  Behind us had been proof that the Sahara Desert was once the bottom of an ocean. Now, all around us, was proof that it was once a vast, lush savannah, home to primitive man and big game. In the last few days, we seemed to have tramped from one aeon to the next, covering not only a hundred miles but a million years. We had watched the sea recede, the forests flourish, primitive man living in hunter-gatherer tribes, then civilisations – like the Ancient Nubians – rising and falling. All of it leaving its mark on the land.

  ‘It’s even more than that,’ said Moez. ‘Think about it, Lev. It’s simple. All this – what would we call it, climate change? – is how civilisation started.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Imagine when there were forests here, and savannah, and all these hunter tribes lived independently, foraging the land, just living for the day. Then imagine how the forests start to wither and the savannah dries up and, five thousand years ago, all of this turns into desert. The game dies away, or migrates, and the only place left for those tribesmen to go is to the big river they all know, the one that goes north. The Nile valley was the only place left with water, or any greenery at all . . .’

  I began to understand what Moez was saying. ‘So, suddenly, all those disparate tribes have to live in the same thin strip of land. They have to start relying on the same resources, coming into contact with each other daily. They have to start living in communities.’