KHARTOUM – Sudan is a country which struggles with identity and image. That it is almost always referred to as the Sudan is problematic; the notion that it is a modern state—it is celebrating its fiftieth year of independence—has escaped it, even by name. It is an enormous region, a young country, and its name exemplifies this. It is a direct translation from the Arabic al-Suda— the name of the region predating the Anglo-Egyptian-Sudanese imperial condominium—but since the European powers carved up the continent with their imaginary lines, there has been opportunity to lose the prefix. The appendage is still in place, however, and it is comical to the ear. For example, we may say in French le Canada, but if one said, in English, the Canada, it would be met with deserved smirks.
Despite its juvenile handle, the name is more indicative of what I think of as anachronistically colonial and inherited (but probably accidental) state propaganda. The Sudan implies a unified entity, a succinct idea. It is rigid, denotes homogeneity, and defies the demographic differences that—naturally—exist within 7,687 kilometres of borders and seashore. It attempts to draw together the country’s various societies and cultures and join them under one banner—the Sudan. The very name of the country single-handedly purports blind nationalism.
Semantics aside, the reality is that Sudan is many things. It is an enigmatic country shackled by imaginative but unfounded borders. It is also a country that, without trying, puts Canada’s modern multiculturalism credo to shame; pluralism is an inherent trait of Sudan’s population. A walk through Khartoum’s souqs reveals a miscellany of faces and sounds: at least 132 languages are spoken within the national boundaries.
Unfortunately, those boundaries are ruled by corrupt ethnocentric bureaucrats propped up, since the 1989 Islamic revolution, on a religio-nationalist fantasy. This has created three very contentious dichotomies: Arabic versus English, Islam versus Christianity, and Arab versus black. These all correspond to the long-standing geographical divide between north and south—the few Arab-African Muslims dominate the former, while Christian and pagan black Africans, who make up the vast majority of Sudan’s population, occupy the latter. The southerners have been fighting for any sort of autonomy for decades. The northerners, in turn, have done their best to forcefully suppress any success. These are the forces of separation which have kept Sudan locked in a decades-long civil war—the longest such conflict on the continent.
I arrived in North Khartoum equipped with an address for a cheap hotel in the central souq furnished me by a fellow passenger on the train. I spent an hour or two finding it, a span of time which could easily have been longer if it wasn’t al-Juma (the Islamic sabbath), except for which the souq would have been swarming in customary chaos. I must have been an odd sight: a soiled, dishevelled, haggardly white man staggering about on a Friday afternoon. The thirty-six-hour journey from the Egyptian border crosses the Nubian Desert, and there had been many sandstorms. I’ve never been dirtier.
Once I found the hotel, the galabiyya-clad receptionist gave me a price higher than that which a man on the train had told me he’d paid. I angrily took to the lobby-cum-salon, where an impeccably dressed man (was he—could he be—a guest?) was watching television. I interrupted him with my broken Arabic and accompanying gestures, asking him if the quoted price was really the price or if it was a “special” price for khawajas (white foreigners). I had, after all, just come from Egypt, where extortion seems to be a national pastime. The man serenely regarded my hectic state and filthy appearance and calmly replied, in slow (deliberately, I thought), articulate English that he, too, was a foreigner and that the quoted price was indeed the honest price. I returned to the reception. The clerk, who knew no English, didn’t smirk in satisfaction as my belligerent self expected. He was unyielding but withdrawn, as if embarrassed for me. I paid for the night and solemnly went up to my room, head bowed.
Over the next couple days, I would randomly see the man from the lobby in my comings and goings from the hotel. He always dressed extremely well—not formally but sensibly, the cool-coloured dress shirts and light grey slacks befitting the 45ºC afternoons. He had an exalted air about him. I didn’t know whether it was smugness or condescension or contempt, and I didn’t know if it was directed at me. But I wondered what he was doing in that dive, possibly the cheapest hotel in the city. Perhaps, I thought, he wondered what I was doing in that dive. In any case, he succumbed to his curiosity first and introduced himself—in French.
Although he had mentioned that he was a foreigner when I accosted him in the lobby, I had completely forgotten. His French was monotone and crisp yet difficult to understand, if only because I had never met anyone from Chad before. My French was even more alien to him, and it took a few comical repetitions (although he didn’t laugh) to explain that my name was Chad. He invited me to an open-air café (a rarity in Khartoum) not far from the hotel. And so, over cold bottles of local soft drinks and a shisha (equally rare), I became acquainted with Ibrahim Wardougou.
Paradoxically, Ibrahim wasn’t interested in me, or at least he took great pains to make his indifference obvious. He was less than verbose as he sat on the plastic chair placidly, with one leg over the other, the crocodile-skin shoe dangling knowingly off his toes. His gaze was always toward an elusive portion of night sky. His shirt was casually unbuttoned to expose a gleaming chest. His constitution was too cool, too affected. The result wasn’t so much conversation but interrogation. At least he answered some of my questions.
Ibrahim’s head and beard were clean-shaven, and his exceptionally smooth skin belied his age; I guessed he was in his thirties. His face, after I finally took note of it, was peculiar to me. But then, there are so many ethnicities in Sudan that I doubt if even a local could confidently rule out that he wasn’t a foreigner, that he wasn’t Sudanese. That no one would know the difference, in fact, is exactly why he’s here.
Lieutenant Wardougou told me he had been hired by Sudan’s intelligence service as a spy. No war is won without the indispensable assistance of espionage, and in Sudan’s civil war, the official, national, northern government, composed entirely of Arabs, made use of spying to combat the South’s exclusively black resistors. But the North can hardly rely on its own to spy; it’s difficult to be inconspicuous when you’re not even of the same skin colour. And they can’t very well hire black Sudanese, for how can they be sure to trust them? Khartoum therefore likely relies on importing spies from surrounding countries such as Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda.
The people of these countries, even if they don’t speak the Arabic dialects of northern Sudan (or any Arabic at all), more closely resemble the non-Arab Sudanese. If they are from areas close to Sudan’s southern border, they could even be from the same tribe or nation. The Arabs of the north, thousands of kilometres away, share little in common—yet share the same citizenship. If it seems nonsensical, that’s because it is.
It raises these questions: What is a country? What does a country contain? A nation? A single people? Modern immigration aside, not even European nation-states can claim a uniform populace: the United Kingdom comprises at least four nations, not to mention the distinct island peoples such as the Manx; French may not even be the mother tongue of some French citizens, if they hail from Breton or Provence—regions which once upon a time found themselves waving a different flag. Or ask a Basque nationalist or Catalan speaker if they are Spanish. The point is that political boundaries have little to do with geographical, demographic realities.
Considering this, perhaps Sudan should not consist of 2.5 million square kilometres of land and encapsulate dozens of different nations. It only creates scrambles for power and control among the diverse people who have found themselves lumped together for no practical or logical reason. Perhaps Sudan should not be a country. Perhaps every ethnic group should have its own country. Moreover, since Sudan is hardly unique, perhaps there should be no countries.
For the time being, however, there are. And the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement is fighting for its own. Wardougou, for his part, remains impartial and oblivious. He has a wife and children in Riyadh, he told me, a new wife in Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, and a paycheque in Khartoum. As borders indiscriminately shape our world, Ibrahim is one of the lucky few who can live as if they don’t exist—an impossibility for the overwhelming majority of humanity.
Between travels, Chad Berscheid studies the human environment and politcal science at Concordia University.