Sudanese or American? (2) A Sudanese Village Boy
I returned from the most civilized and contemplative experience in my life: 12 days in a luxurious Caribbean cruise. A Sudanese village boy among about 3,000 civilized White Christians. Who am I? And how I relate to this American civilization that I live in?
Washington: Mohammad Ali Salih
During my first ten years in the US, I planned to go back to Sudan – with my American wife and our US-born children. I spent years day-dreaming about a house that I would build, not in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, but in Argo, where I was born, on the Nile River, in northern Sudan, south of the borders with Egypt.
I was more exact: the house would be in “Hilat Al-Arab” (Arabs Village), about three miles south of Argo. That was where my father was born, in a straws hut, among camels, goats and donkeys. He belongs to a Kababish Arab family, part of “Dongola Arabs”, a branch of the main Kababish tribe in Kordofan, in central Sudan that, long time ago, moved northwards, along the Nile River, to Dongola, and nearby Argo, in the heartland of the Danagla Nubian tribe.
When my father was a teenager, he seemed to have disliked the Bedouin life and dreamed of leaning how to read and write; nobody did that in the history of his sub-tribe. But, his father refused to let him enroll in Argo Elementary School which was built by the British who colonized Sudan for half a century until 1956. His father needed him to take care of the camels and hire them for the locals to carry goods and sell wood and wood-coal for cooking.
So, my father lowered his expectations from modern to traditional education, and was able to convince his father to go to a “khalwa” (Koranic school, madrassa) in nearby village of Wadi Haj, to pray and study Koran. After a day with camels, as the sun set, he rode a donkey to the “khalwa” and returned before mid-night.
A generous family close to the “khalwa” noticed this dedicated young man, and offered him a bed whenever the studies went late into the night. It was probably because this family was like my father’s, “alien” and not part of the dominant local Danagla tribe. This family belonged to the Bidairiya tribe, about 300 miles up the River Nile, next to the dominant Shaygiya tribe.
Within a year, my father fell in love with one of the family beautiful daughters and married her inspite of his family rejection because she was from outside the tribe. She is my mother.
Thirty years later, and inspite of my father’s objection, I married a beautiful girl, not only from outside the tribe, but, also, from outside the country, the race and the religion – my White Christian American wife.
As I mentioned earlier, during my first ten years in the US, I dreamed, of going, with my American family, back to my village and build a house and live happily ever after. In my dreams, the house was “civilized,” with electricity from an adjacent generator, hot water from a charcoal-burned furnace and a phone wire from the town. Those were 1980’s dreams, before satellite dishes, cell phones and the Internet.
So, during the 12-day luxurious cruise in the Caribbean abroad the “Christian White Ship,” the most civilized experience in my life, I just smiled when I remembered the village’s dream house.
But, what is civilization?
