Down Memory Lane: As violence rages, writer reminisces about his past trip to Sudan

Sudan is a difficult country to get into – and also to get out of. You need an exit visa to leave the godforsaken land. Welcome to Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. Several years ago, as the Gondwanaland Expedition drove from the Indian Himalayas to Cape Agulhus, the southernmost point of Africa, we were informed, the day before we were to leave the city that we had to obtain exit visas.

We went to the Immigration Office and got embroiled, right away, in red tape. An “agent” had to be hired to guide us through the bureaucratic muddle. Yet, we had to wait for almost three hours.

As I sat waiting in the front seat of my Scorpio, a tall, lean, middle-aged man dressed in a white jelabiya robe, speaking good English, approached me, asking questions about our expedition. Convinced that I could do him no harm, he asked me if I would like to buy some ivory items.

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“Of course not!” said I, instinctively. “It is illegal.”

“It is all right. You don’t have to worry. This is not Sudan ivory. It comes from Congo. And from Central African Republic. Some are from South Sudan. You don’t have to buy big tusks. Only small souvenirs. No one will know. The Chinese people here buy all the time.”

My investigative impulses began to flicker. Let me at least find out how this racket works, I thought to myself.

“You have some to show here?” I asked.

“Yes.” He reached out under his robe.

I stopped him before he could take anything out. “Wait! The police might catch you.”

“Don’t worry. These are supplied by the military and police.”

“What?”

He laughed. “Poachers in South Sudan kill elephants with military guns and ammunition. The tusks are transported to Khartoum in military vehicles. Even those smuggled out of Congo.”

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“What do they do with them in Khartoum?”

“The tusks are sold to traders.”

“For how much”

“$50-$150 per kilo. The traders get the craftsmen to make small items out of them.”

“Don’t take them out to show me, but what have you got here?”

“A ring for $3. A pendant for $4. Chopsticks only $15. Very cheap. You buy more, I give you good price.”

“Ivory chopsticks?”

“Yes. Specially made for Chinese.”

“No thanks. I cannot buy.”

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He insisted that I buy a few things at least. And that I need not fear. He had friends at the Galabat border with Ethiopia who would ensure that the Customs did not catch me. “And what about the borders of eight other countries we have to cross?” I asked. He put his hands up.

“Do you do this full-time, or do you have a job?” I wanted to know.

“Not many tourists come to Sudan. This is not enough. I have a job, man.”

“What do you do?”

“I am in the police.”

My laughter caused earthquakes on the street.

***

We rolled into the pack and jam of Omdurman bazaar. It was a bewildering, bewitching, enchanting place, a continuously moving show of picturesque natives of all shades of dark and shining complexions, buying or selling or shifting through the multitudinous crowds. Women draped in shocking pink, peacock blue and rainbow-hued tobe walked with easy grace and dignity. Men, their heads wrapped in white turbans, skullcaps or red fez, made an inspiring sight. Bright and vibrant hoardings promoted mobile services. Indian-made three-wheeler scooter taxis provided the confusion.

The Liaison Officer from the Indian Embassy, a recently recruited young man from Darfur, interrupted our photography, saying that we must return to our vehicles at once as the police were here. With our tails between our legs, we got into the Scorpios. The Darfurman sat next to me by the driver’s seat. Three athletic men in plain clothes stood outside his door talking to him in a firm manner. Refusing to let us go, they took away Darfurman’s ID.

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“What’s the problem? What do they want,” I enquired.

“They say you can’t take photos. It is prohibited,” explained the Darfurman.

“We are sorry. We did not know. Who gives permission for photography?”

“The Foreign Ministry.”

“Tell him that we will be meeting the foreign minister in a little while from now at the Indian Ambassador’s reception. We will explain to him what happened.”

The Darfurman translated what I said but it did not cut much ice with our captor. Instead, he called someone on his mobile and asked us to stay put. He gave a stern lecture to the anguished Darfurman who kept nodding his sweaty head in agreement.

In a few minutes, a siren-blazing police pick-up came tearing through the street, screeching to a halt in front of my Scorpio. Policemen in blue camouflage fatigues jumped off the truck with their automatic weapons and took positions next to all three expedition vehicles. A brawny, flamboyant officer sitting in front of the pick-up got out in great style and walked slowly towards us.

“Who is he?” I asked the Darfurman.

“The earlier people were from the intelligence. They have called the police.”

The intelligence agents briefed the police officer. The Darfurman was summoned. Again, he was snapped and barked at, and he took all the chidings calmly and sedately, his head bent in repentance. More phone calls were made. Finally, after being detained for forty-five minutes, they let us go.

“Ever since Americans bombed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in 1998, our security agencies have become extremely hyper,” said the Darfurman, wiping away the sweat pouring down his cheeks. Retaliating against the truck bomb attacks on its embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the US made a precision strike with cruise missiles on the Al-Shifa plant, which it claimed was producing VX, a deadly nerve agent, and had links with Osama bin Laden. Later, it was established that the factory produced nothing more harmful than aspirin and it had no links with Al-Qaeda. Though the radical Islamist regime in Sudan had sheltered international terrorists like Carlos the Jackal and Osama, they had ditched them when they were found to be indulging in un-Islamic practices. Carlos was boozing and womanising. Osama had a commercial interest in an illegal marijuana farm in Sudan. Carlos was exchanged for loan waivers and French communication sets. Osama was deported.

***

One night in Gedaref, in southern Sudan, Doc, Rajeev and I went for a walk through a dark alley next to our hotel. Some loud music playing in the distance attracted our attention and we followed the sound.

At the end of another shadowy lane, in a sandy courtyard lit with tubelights and halogen lamps powered by a portable generator, sat men and women in separate clusters listening to a live band playing a mix of Western and African instruments. We stood outside the gate absorbing the scene until the welcoming hosts noticed us and invited us inside. Then in ones and twos, the menfolk got up to dance singly and with each other in front of the band, some clambering up on the stage to boogie with the willing musicians. They bounced and spun with increasing energy, looking like dervishes in their flowing, white jelabia robes.

Women, festooned in colourful clothes and flashy headscarves, looked on from steps and doorways and open windows, clapping their hands to the beat of the drums, sometimes breaking out into the ‘ulug-dhvani’, the wail of the owl, the same sound we hear at Bengali, Kurdish and Syrian weddings.

When the music was over, the men quietly returned to their seats. When the band struck again, giggling women, holding hands, took the floor. Boy! To photograph veiled women dancing before men in Islamic Sudan – that would be something! None of us had our cameras.

Speaking excitedly in sign language I asked some men if it would be “no problem” for us to take pictures. They didn’t seem to have any objections at all. We told them we would go back to our hotel and return with the cameras. We jogged all the way, got Rohit up from bed to shoot video, collected our cameras and took along Manibhai, a third-generation Indian settled in Sudan, to interpret. Halfway to the venue we were intercepted by the intelligence police. They knew exactly our intentions. Manibhai tried to plead our case. But in a gruff manner, they asked us to return to the hotel and gave Manibhai a mouthful. Unnerved, he herded us back.

“What did they say?” I asked him later.

“They said they would break your cameras if we tried to go to the wedding.”

That didn’t seem to be all. “What else?”

Still badly shaken, Manibhai hissed: “They said they would grate pungent onions in my arse!”

The next morning, we hit the dirt road towards the Ethiopian border and stepped on the gas, wishing the good people of Sudan a relief from the petty quarrels and squabbles of their stifling leaders who had steered them to a dead end, and wishing them a new beginning in which they could paint their dreams and live and work in a land of peace and opportunity.

Our good wishes for the Sudanese people have not been answered. The ongoing conflict between the two army factions, once allies who orchestrated the 2021 coup, has killed over 500 people, wounded more than 4,000, displaced about 100,000 and flattened large parts of Khartoum.

Main/Featured picture on top: Author Akhil Bakshi with Nubians in Soleb village in northern Sudan; The News Porter cannot independently verify or endorse the accuracy of this report. The views expressed here are entirely the author’s own and The News Porter bears no responsibility, whatsoever, for the same.