Khartoum

Christmas holidays, December 1975: not much to do on a cold winter's day and, back then, only three TV channels to choose from on our recently-acquired colour TV. The film Khartoum on BBC2, starring Charlton Heston as Gordon and (in retrospect the absurdly-cast) Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi. For a 13-year old boy, despite the longueurs of political debate, it was gripping stuff, made all the more poignant by Gordon's final and heroic defeat......

I did not imagine then that 17 years later I would relocate to Khartoum, as Oxfam’s Finance and Administration Manager for Sudan. I arrived in the sweltering heat of the Sudanese summer on 29 June 1992. It was an inauspicious start: my luggage failed to arrive with me. Perhaps because it was my first expatriate home, I have special, vivid and affectionate memories of Khartoum. It is an ugly, sprawling city, redeemed only by the Nile, but also exotic, a place of great excitement for a young man whose ideals were not yet sullied by the shades of grey of experience.

I remember the environment: the horrors of the rainy season, when the city roads fill with stagnant water, mosquitoes abound and the humidity is almost unbearable; my first haboob (sandstorm), which sounds almost romantic, after a Lawrence of Arabia fashion, but which in fact is desperately unpleasant; and the white-robed men and elegant women, resplendent in gaudy toobs, walking together in family groups along the banks of the Blue Nile.

I remember food and drink: the delights of Sudanese fresh grapefruit (often the only fruit available in the market), unparalleled in their sweet yet astringent flavour and juice; the joy of the short Sudanese winter, when a glut of fresh vegetables appeared in the market, grown on the white Nile flood plain; drinking jugfuls of karkade (hibiscus juice) at the Sudan Club after a breathless game of squash in the baking heat; delighting in the morning fathur (a mid-morning breakfast) at about 10 am, of ful, taammiyya and delicious baba ghanoush; and feasting on fried chicken from Khartoum 2.

I remember friends: Rachel Lyon whose energy, determination and commitment at the Sudan Council of Churches was testament to her zest for life; Robert Maletta, photographer, writer and sometime Country Representative for Oxfam; Manal Hassanein, proud Nubian first, Sudanese second, my Arabic Teacher, lessons at her family home in dusty Erkowit; and evenings at Tom and Olivier’s apartment in Khartoum 2, eating, drinking, playing bridge and solving the problems of the world, before the hasty departure to beat the midnight curfew.

I remember places: a visit to the sad township of Jebel Awlia on the outskirts of the city, where the displaced from the civil war in southern Sudan lived in the most miserable of conditions; the neatness of Khartoum University with its incongruous statue of Gordon; driving across the Omdurman bridge, past Mogren point and its decrepit fairground attractions, towards the silver dome of the Mahdi’s tomb; the turmoil of Omdurman souk; and the Friday evening drive to witness the strange sunset sufi darweesh whirling dances and ceremonies.

I remember events: the excitement of Pope John Paul’s visit to Khartoum in early 1993 and his celebratory mass at Green Park, attended by hundreds of thousands of Sudanese Christians, in reverence and quiet pride; meeting Helen Fielding, before she became famous for the creation of Bridget Jones, researching her prescient satire of the aid industry in the much under-rated novel Cause Celeb; the heat and boredom of the interminable opening of the Ministry of Agricultural and Livestock Resources; and the drums and exuberance of an Eritrean wedding reception.

Oddly, despite these, and many more, vivid memories, I have not enjoyed my occasional return visits to Khartoum in the intervening years. For the most part, my memories are of the good, of a selective set of snapshots, impossible to recapture, and no more real than the fictional cinema depiction of Gordon’s last stand in Khartoum which so fired my 13 year old imagination.

The reality is that there are many bad things too, and these have not changed.