We had left Sudan, three days before. He only had a small leftover bag of tombak 1 that had been in his pocket for the past week, brought from the Capital. Mohamed had mentioned in several occasions that, given the time, he would buy the kit in a dry version. One that could easily be assembled once back to Oslo. However we had left Sudan in a hurry. Between institutional visits and his obligations as a host, the spare time seemed too scarce to carry out this task.
Seven days had now gone by since Khartoum, his blood addiction for nicotine had made his reactions untimely and his patience shorter. The last ball of tombak had long ago been drenched with saliva, extracting the nefast nectar that relieved his uneasiness and anxiety through an influx of immediate pleasure.
I can’t really remember now, but I think it was our second night in Cairo. A city that I only knew from the books of the Egyptian modernist writer Albert Cossery; a city I knew only for its slums and suburban neighbourhoods, its thieves and lazy property owners. Obviously, my expectations were high, nevertheless Cossery’s self-biographical fiction did not let me down. Cairo revealed itself splendorous, vibrant, an enormous urban chaos of slums and upper class quarters that regurgitates decadent historical glory and the passage of one hundred armies; a place were different cultures and rites meet, now in abrupt halt due to its seemingly genuine, popular uprising of 2011.
That night, me and Mohamed got into a black&white taxi (used for short runs in between city points) with the promise of getting some snuff from his “Sudanese contacts in Cairo”. I didn’t know what to expect but I jumped in with the hope of getting something like a more authentic experience of the city, since I was traveling with a member of the ostracized community in Egypt.
(It seems that we tend to compare and contrast to create a relation between our previous experiences and what we presently experience, in short, trying to make sense of the world. For some reason, It was easy for me to relate to the situation of the Sudanese in Egypt. Due to the country’s economical and political situation, many young Sudanese, turn their back to their country in search for better opportunities in richer neighbour places. The youth, they too are proud of their ancestral culture and mistakenly taken for less. People often forget that economical power tends to shift and in this case, the country had its long hegemonic period as well; strangely they find themselves now, oppressed by their social and economical status, as being part of a wide vocabulary of social discrimination. Furthermore, these structures tend to create all sorts of clashing feelings of segregation and misplacement on the ones that choose to leave their country behind, as I could observe during this period.)
The car was a decades-old beater. I sat on the back while Mohamed sat in front with the driver. They talked for the whole trip in Arabic while the driver insisted in changing song after song, gradually increasing the volume of his car’s stereo. After about twenty minutes we stopped at a busy square, somewhere downtown. He paid the man while I stared at the local dried-fruits vendor. After the car left, noticing that I was looking at the huge mount of sunflower seeds, he bought a bag and offered me some. I thanked him and asked - Why was the driver being so friendly? - I was then aware that he had before felt discrimination as a Sudanese in Egypt. It also came as a natural continuation of the conversation we had earlier that night. I knew then that the Sudanese skin tone is often darker and though their branch of Arabic is the same, one can easily identify changes in the accent; it was clear to me that his origin was identifiable. Furthermore, the music that the driver insisted on changing while loudly singing, sounded profoundly familiar, somehow synced with the previous days in the desert on our way to city of Halfa.
Mohamed replied to my question with a dose of suspicion and irony, apparently the cabbie was married to a Sudanese woman and had had, ever since, an interest for the country’s musical legacy.
In a relaxed pace we crossed the street, involuntarily participating in a sort of game, where both cars and passers try to ignore each others existence. We waited for five minutes and two tall individuals approached us. I could see in Mohamed’s eyes a shy happiness in meeting these friends. Later that night I understood that these were good friends of his and that they had last seen him eleven years prior, when he escaped to Norway in search for political asylum.
We then continued down the large avenue, shortcutting whenever possible. My mind shifted between the possibility of getting lost and the conversation with these two strangers so eager to know more about me.
The way this meeting was arranged created an atmosphere that led me to think that they were smugglers, trafficking Sudanese goods and who knows what else. However, these thoughts quickly vanished once we started talking about each others interests and for my surprise we were being led to their cultural centre. One of the few pièce de résistance of the Sudanese cultural front in Egypt.
Due to its current situation, one cannot say that the arts practice in Sudan are of the most contemporary character. Fortunately or unfortunately the art learning process is still very embed in the craft and the Classical model of teaching. At the eyes of Egyptian cultural authorities, Sudan and its young artists do not seem to represent a challenge worthy enough of developing and encouraging, either due to its geographical proximity and lack of exoticism or its absent contemporary discourse. Either way, Sudanese artists are often left without the opportunity of exhibiting in major venues, punctually selling a couple of paintings to some compassionate soul able to reach out.
Immersed in the conversation, I hadn’t noticed that we had stopped outside their building. The stairways were beautiful and large like almost all the buildings in Cairo that I had the opportunity of visiting. At first it slightly reminded me of Portugal, but once in, I immediately felt that something went terribly wrong; I felt like being in an uncanny place out of space or time. We went up. I remember going up and getting in the apartment. It was a simple place, it looked like it could have been an office of some sort long time ago. The waiting room was transformed into an exhibiting area and an adjacent room, possibly the doctors office, was being used at the time as a studio for one of the members, the only female member that I met. We were kindly invited to move to the “office” (a prominence in the far corner of the living room) with the rest of the members, and for the next fifteen minutes most of the conversation was held in Arabic. During this time I had the chance of taking a better look at the paintings and try to decipher some of the Arabic being spoken. After all the “axes buried” and Mohamed’s wishes of reaching out to his fellow compatriots were spelled (as apart of a master plan to save the cultural scene of Sudan), I quickly suggested a beer with the rest of the group waiting for us in another part of town.
We got to the bar later that evening, It was an old 40’s cafe with small stone tables packed with young people. One of the bar tenders walked around waving hands full of beer bottles, screaming “Beer anyone? Beer!”. Our group was sitting in a circle around three or four tables filled with empty bottles of Stella. They had been sitting there for at least one or two hours.
We were about fourteen traveling together, a large dysfunctional group. I invited the Sudanese to sit with us and they politely accepted, shyly pulling unattended chairs from surrounding tables. Perhaps due to the consumption of alcohol or the opportunity of talking with Sudanese instead of Egyptians, our group quickly embraced and drowned the guests with questions and meaningless conversations. With the passage of time, like a living organism, our circle grew shorter without loosing members. The Sudanese slowly isolated themselves out of the circle and possibly out of insecurity or politeness, inadvertently illustrating their reality of segregation; like small islands.
I feel that by victimizing, I deny their possibility of reinventing themselves. One has the possibility not only to be a product but also a producer of reality. Nature cannot afford to be cornered, it always finds a way of sprouting and always through the quickest path. These men and women grow wiser due to their position and are obliged to think “outside the box” to sustain their living.
Two months have now gone by, we are back to rainy Oslo and I’m writing this wondering if Mohamed’s project of structuring an alternative education for young Sudanese will ever come to see the light of the day.
Seven days had now gone by since Khartoum, his blood addiction for nicotine had made his reactions untimely and his patience shorter. The last ball of tombak had long ago been drenched with saliva, extracting the nefast nectar that relieved his uneasiness and anxiety through an influx of immediate pleasure.
I can’t really remember now, but I think it was our second night in Cairo. A city that I only knew from the books of the Egyptian modernist writer Albert Cossery; a city I knew only for its slums and suburban neighbourhoods, its thieves and lazy property owners. Obviously, my expectations were high, nevertheless Cossery’s self-biographical fiction did not let me down. Cairo revealed itself splendorous, vibrant, an enormous urban chaos of slums and upper class quarters that regurgitates decadent historical glory and the passage of one hundred armies; a place were different cultures and rites meet, now in abrupt halt due to its seemingly genuine, popular uprising of 2011.
That night, me and Mohamed got into a black&white taxi (used for short runs in between city points) with the promise of getting some snuff from his “Sudanese contacts in Cairo”. I didn’t know what to expect but I jumped in with the hope of getting something like a more authentic experience of the city, since I was traveling with a member of the ostracized community in Egypt.
(It seems that we tend to compare and contrast to create a relation between our previous experiences and what we presently experience, in short, trying to make sense of the world. For some reason, It was easy for me to relate to the situation of the Sudanese in Egypt. Due to the country’s economical and political situation, many young Sudanese, turn their back to their country in search for better opportunities in richer neighbour places. The youth, they too are proud of their ancestral culture and mistakenly taken for less. People often forget that economical power tends to shift and in this case, the country had its long hegemonic period as well; strangely they find themselves now, oppressed by their social and economical status, as being part of a wide vocabulary of social discrimination. Furthermore, these structures tend to create all sorts of clashing feelings of segregation and misplacement on the ones that choose to leave their country behind, as I could observe during this period.)
The car was a decades-old beater. I sat on the back while Mohamed sat in front with the driver. They talked for the whole trip in Arabic while the driver insisted in changing song after song, gradually increasing the volume of his car’s stereo. After about twenty minutes we stopped at a busy square, somewhere downtown. He paid the man while I stared at the local dried-fruits vendor. After the car left, noticing that I was looking at the huge mount of sunflower seeds, he bought a bag and offered me some. I thanked him and asked - Why was the driver being so friendly? - I was then aware that he had before felt discrimination as a Sudanese in Egypt. It also came as a natural continuation of the conversation we had earlier that night. I knew then that the Sudanese skin tone is often darker and though their branch of Arabic is the same, one can easily identify changes in the accent; it was clear to me that his origin was identifiable. Furthermore, the music that the driver insisted on changing while loudly singing, sounded profoundly familiar, somehow synced with the previous days in the desert on our way to city of Halfa.
Mohamed replied to my question with a dose of suspicion and irony, apparently the cabbie was married to a Sudanese woman and had had, ever since, an interest for the country’s musical legacy.
In a relaxed pace we crossed the street, involuntarily participating in a sort of game, where both cars and passers try to ignore each others existence. We waited for five minutes and two tall individuals approached us. I could see in Mohamed’s eyes a shy happiness in meeting these friends. Later that night I understood that these were good friends of his and that they had last seen him eleven years prior, when he escaped to Norway in search for political asylum.
We then continued down the large avenue, shortcutting whenever possible. My mind shifted between the possibility of getting lost and the conversation with these two strangers so eager to know more about me.
The way this meeting was arranged created an atmosphere that led me to think that they were smugglers, trafficking Sudanese goods and who knows what else. However, these thoughts quickly vanished once we started talking about each others interests and for my surprise we were being led to their cultural centre. One of the few pièce de résistance of the Sudanese cultural front in Egypt.
Due to its current situation, one cannot say that the arts practice in Sudan are of the most contemporary character. Fortunately or unfortunately the art learning process is still very embed in the craft and the Classical model of teaching. At the eyes of Egyptian cultural authorities, Sudan and its young artists do not seem to represent a challenge worthy enough of developing and encouraging, either due to its geographical proximity and lack of exoticism or its absent contemporary discourse. Either way, Sudanese artists are often left without the opportunity of exhibiting in major venues, punctually selling a couple of paintings to some compassionate soul able to reach out.
Immersed in the conversation, I hadn’t noticed that we had stopped outside their building. The stairways were beautiful and large like almost all the buildings in Cairo that I had the opportunity of visiting. At first it slightly reminded me of Portugal, but once in, I immediately felt that something went terribly wrong; I felt like being in an uncanny place out of space or time. We went up. I remember going up and getting in the apartment. It was a simple place, it looked like it could have been an office of some sort long time ago. The waiting room was transformed into an exhibiting area and an adjacent room, possibly the doctors office, was being used at the time as a studio for one of the members, the only female member that I met. We were kindly invited to move to the “office” (a prominence in the far corner of the living room) with the rest of the members, and for the next fifteen minutes most of the conversation was held in Arabic. During this time I had the chance of taking a better look at the paintings and try to decipher some of the Arabic being spoken. After all the “axes buried” and Mohamed’s wishes of reaching out to his fellow compatriots were spelled (as apart of a master plan to save the cultural scene of Sudan), I quickly suggested a beer with the rest of the group waiting for us in another part of town.
We got to the bar later that evening, It was an old 40’s cafe with small stone tables packed with young people. One of the bar tenders walked around waving hands full of beer bottles, screaming “Beer anyone? Beer!”. Our group was sitting in a circle around three or four tables filled with empty bottles of Stella. They had been sitting there for at least one or two hours.
We were about fourteen traveling together, a large dysfunctional group. I invited the Sudanese to sit with us and they politely accepted, shyly pulling unattended chairs from surrounding tables. Perhaps due to the consumption of alcohol or the opportunity of talking with Sudanese instead of Egyptians, our group quickly embraced and drowned the guests with questions and meaningless conversations. With the passage of time, like a living organism, our circle grew shorter without loosing members. The Sudanese slowly isolated themselves out of the circle and possibly out of insecurity or politeness, inadvertently illustrating their reality of segregation; like small islands.
I feel that by victimizing, I deny their possibility of reinventing themselves. One has the possibility not only to be a product but also a producer of reality. Nature cannot afford to be cornered, it always finds a way of sprouting and always through the quickest path. These men and women grow wiser due to their position and are obliged to think “outside the box” to sustain their living.
Two months have now gone by, we are back to rainy Oslo and I’m writing this wondering if Mohamed’s project of structuring an alternative education for young Sudanese will ever come to see the light of the day.
Oslo, 24th of April of 2012.
1 A kind of moist snuff consumed in Sudan, made from ground or pulverized tobacco leaves.
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