A New Sudan

Long before I met Bruno, he visited Sudan. He told me of following sandy tracks along the banks of the fertile Nile River; of encountering nomads in the Sahara Desert after days without spotting another human; of his inability to spend his money, such was the hospitality of the Sudanese people.

Of Bruno’s enormous pile of travel photos, one stands out: it is a photo of the Toyota parked on the edge of the Red Sea, on a tiny white side beach surrounded by coral reef. Here, he told me, he’d snorkelled for hours each day, reburied turtle eggs that were vulnerable to predators, and slept undisturbed under starry skies, the sand dunes of the Sahara sparkling behind.

This picture was far different from the Sudan I knew. I had a Darfur, secession-of-the-south, Omar-al-Bashir-war-criminal, What is the What kind of image of Sudan.

Bruno wanted me to know his Sudan, not the BBC’s.

Atop the dashboard of Totoyaya sits a pink bunny. At least it was pink before fifteen years of direct sunlight bleached it white. The bunny had been a gift to Bruno from Isaac, the Sudanese man who ran a campsite along the Nile River just outside of Khartoum. Bruno had spent weeks here, befriending Isaac, helping him renovate the campsite, and sharing meals with his family. When Bruno finally left, not only had Isaac refused to let him pay a single pound, but he’d offered him the pink bunny.

The pink bunny had completed an around-the-world trip, now that we were in Khartoum. Bruno was excited to take me to Isaac Camp and to show off his well-traveled bunny to his old Sudanese friend.

Isaac Camp was no more. Or, at least, our GPS point was wrong. We drove around, Bruno searching his memory for a familiar landmark. But Khartoum was much-changed. We stopped to ask people for directions, some of whom seemed to know of Isaac, but language was always a barrier, and their directions were always incomplete. It was to no avail. The pink bunny wouldn’t revisit his original home.

When we left Khartoum ten days later, after Sufi dancing and souqs, the confluence of the Nile and multi-course dinners with Josu and Ana, Bruno was excited to show me the pyramids of Sudan. He’d told me of driving through desert dunes to reach the ruins of a hundred small pyramids, drawing triangles in the sand to passing locals in order to find the spot. The pyramids sounded breathtakingly romantic.

So I’d done my homework. I had gone to the National Museum of Sudan to learn about the ancient history of the region. I had learned about the Egyptian Occupation of Nubia (as was then called Sudan) between 1500 – 1070BC and seen the hieroglyphics, sarcophagi, obelisks, and sphinxes that had been found in and around the temples – dedicated to Amun (Amon Ra, the Egyptian God of the Sun) – all across Nubia. And I had learned about the Meroitic Period, several hundred years later, that promoted a revival of Egyptian culture. It was during this period that the pyramids of Meroë were built.

We were driving along the tarred highway, and Meroë was getting close. We had our eyes open for a dirt path that would cut into the desert and to the pyramids. It wasn’t necessary to look closely, however. The highway cut through the center of this important ancient site – the pyramids on one side, the Royal City on the other.

We drove up to the pyramids. They were surrounded by fencing. A few children ran up to our arriving car, and by the time we’d killed the engine, an informal marketplace of kitsch goods had been set up for us. We continued to the ticket counter, purchased our tickets, refused a few offers of camel rides, and walked the southern cemetery, the older of the two (700-300BC).

The pyramids weren’t at all like the ones I’d seen in Egypt. These were much smaller (less than 30m tall), and their angle much more steep. Instead of building the pyramid around the burial tomb, the bodies of Meroë’s royals were buried under the ground, and the pyramid quickly erected overtop. And, instead of only a few pyramids, there were close to a hundred! (There are, in fact, more pyramids in Sudan than in Egypt!)

We sat in the shade of one of the pyramids, waiting for the overland truck and the minibus full of people to vacate the northern cemetery. Then, we walked across the dunes, the sun fading to our left, and took in the large site of 2500-year-old ruins, pretending we had the site to ourselves, as the guide book told us we would. As we walked out, the informal market took up again with much fervor.

The pyramids of Meroë were not as Bruno had remembered, but we did visit the nearby temple ruins of Naqa and Mussawarat es Sufra, which Bruno hadn’t seen on his last trip (thanks, GPS!). Both sites, built between 200BC-100AD, had temples dedicated to Amun, and Lion Temples dedicated to Apedemak, a very important lion-headed home-grown God. The temples were in various states of ruin, but they still showed detailed carvings on their walls. Pictures of the king and queen offering slaves, held by their hair, to the Gods; lions beneath waiting to devour anything that falls; snakes with lion heads flowing out of lotus flowers; the Goddess Isis posing next to tall-hatted Amun; and a triple-headed Apedemak receiving offerings from the mortals.

Next to Naqa’s Lion Temple was a well. A family was there, using their donkeys to pull the water up from the deep hole. We had to move our car to clear the area so that the donkeys could run – the well’s rope attached to their hinds – the fifty meters required for the water bag to be lifted to the well’s surface. The children here were too busy fishing their livelihood from the well to sell us anything.

We drove further north into the Sahara Desert. Near Atbara, we turned east, past a giant desert garbage dump, and headed toward the coast. The tarred road ran parallel to the train tracks, and Bruno reminisced about following those very tracks on off-road trails on his several-day drive to Port Sudan. There had been no tar road, then.

Luckily, we managed to find a place to camp in the middle of the desert, far away from the heaps of garbage and the highway trucks.  Tucked behind a sand dune, we were a world away from this new Sudan.

When Bruno had arrived fifteen years ago in Erkowit, a 1,1000 meter English colonial retreat near the Red Sea, he’d revelled in the humidity, morning mist, and greenness of the place. He’d just come from months of travel through Egypt and Libya, Algeria and Niger, after all.

We had a single photo of his time in Erkowit. Now, when we located the exact spot where it had been taken, the image wasn’t as pretty. There was a tarred road (again!) instead of the dirt track, and the greenness was sufficiently diminished.

Still, we spent the afternoon hiking around the hills. We saw, across the horizon, some ruined brick homes, so we hiked there. After visiting the old English colonial homes, we spotted a modern tomb on a hill over yonder. So we hiked there. The freedom to walk exactly where we wanted – no bush or river or village in the way – was wonderful. If it hadn’t been for the humid cold that seeped into our bones, we might have stayed a few nights. I understood why the English liked coming here – it reminded them of home.

On we drove on to the Red Sea coast, to find the location of another photo, the infamous Totoyaya-on-the-beach photo. We re-read Bruno’s old journal for hints of its location, but only knew that it was around Arous, a town 40km or so north of Port Sudan. We spent parts of three days trying to find the exact location of this beach haven, but it began to feel like finding a needle in a haystack.

The thing was, though, we really wanted to find it. Out here, where the desert meets the sea, you are completely exposed to the elements. The wind is fierce and biting. There is no shelter from the sun. We needed the protection of some barrier – like the coral reef surrounding Totoyaya in the photo – in order to stay here.

Eventually, we found a massive sand dune, several kilometers from the water, that could shield us from the wind. We set up camp. We climbed the dune – a difficult feat! – and watched the sun set over an endless terrain, and then cooked a simple dinner with the crescent moon as our only light. We fell asleep to silence.

On the 1^st of January, we woke up to one of those rare perfect mornings – when the breeze is light and the sun is soft and it smells fresh and full of promise. We surveyed the wind situation for a few hours, and finally concluded that we could emerge from our sand dune hiding spot and head for the water. We were going to snorkel in the Red Sea, at last – just like the Totoyaya photo promised!

I am walking out, waist-deep, to the coral reef. I place my mask and tube carefully onto my head and submerge my face under water. Thousands – I mean, thousands! – of fish surround me. Fish that, a moment ago, I didn’t know were there!

Bruno and I swim to the edge of the reef, where the water suddenly plunges deep and dark blue. Fish curiously surround us. I make out movement in the deep blue water. I squint my eyes and the form sharpens. It’s not one, but two, turtles! It’s my first time snorkelling with turtles, and it’s something I’ve wanted for a long time!

One of the turtle floats slowly closer to me. Bruno backs up to allow me a moment with him. We stare at one another, a mere meter apart, in curiosity and awe. He catches a fright and tears off. I give an underwater smile to Bruno, and we continue fish-watching. But then, the turtle returns, his curiosity getting the better of him. He swims with us along the edge of the reef, always a few meters ahead. When we stop to look at something, he waits, and when we move forward, he does too.

As I swim in the cool waters of the Red Sea that January 1^st morning, I feel the turtle showing us our path. We can’t recreate an old trip, he is saying. Bruno’s old Sudan is no more. But together, we can create a new image of Sudan, one of desert bush camping and ancient ruins and Christmas dinners with friends, of visits to giant markets and Sufi dance celebrations and sunsets over the Sahara. We just have to let go what we think we want, and follow the turtle. He will show us the way.