A Reason to Believe (8 page)

Temperatures were well over 100 degrees during the day, and my clothes seemed to be melting. So did my skin. I still bear scars from the blisters that appeared on my arms just below my T-shirt sleeves. I had been warned about drinking the water, so I had iodine pills to kill the bacteria in my water bottle. They also made the water taste foul, which deterred me from drinking as much as I should have. I was so lightheaded and parched after one day of wandering around the city that I literally stumbled into the lobby of a hotel and collapsed into a booth in the dark, cool bar, disoriented and barely able to speak. I hated beer, but I asked for one anyway. They brought a tall brown bottle without a label that the waiter called
Bira Jamil
, camel’s beer. It was icy cold. And divine.

Because I couldn’t speak the language and knew no one, conversation was rare, giving me plenty of time to think. My father was on my mind a lot in Cairo. In a manifestation of his militancy, he associated himself with ancient Egyptian culture and took pride that advances in science, engineering, architecture, and art originated among Africans who looked like him. I shared that pride. I also learned to see that what looked like chaos (such as
the ride on that bus or the customs in the market) had an internal order once you broke the code.

I felt a new pride in America, too. I had always known the lump-in-the-throat patriotism when the national anthem was played at official occasions or when we said the Pledge of Allegiance at Cub Scout meetings. And certainly the tangible appreciation that people on the street expressed for America’s role in the Camp David Accords helped me see that our real power is moral authority. I was proud of that. Still am. But also in Cairo, for the first time in my life, I experienced what it was like to be seen as simply an American, not a category of American. Just as every traveler learns to think anew about home, it was the first time I was ever able to look back at my own home without the filter of race, to reflect on my country as a fully invested citizen, because that was how I was treated by Egyptians.

After several days, I took a train south, traveling along the Nile to Luxor, to see the Valley of the Kings, where some five hundred years ago tombs were built for royalty and nobles. I then headed farther south to Aswan, where I booked space on the open deck of a ferry to float south on Lake Nasser to the Sudanese border. The ferry consisted of several flatbed barges lashed together, groaning and listing under the weight of too many people and too much of their livestock and cargo. Even a small wave could have swamped us—which in fact has happened on occasion.

I was a curiosity, but not a scary one. Travelers, I was
learning, bond quickly. We shared food, water, and tea, as well as conversation, and the calm of the other passengers surprised me. Still, the boat’s safety was clearly precarious. If we sank and drowned, no one would have known. My last message home was a newsy letter sent from the Aswan post office just before we boarded. But the other passengers did not seem afraid, so taking my cue from them, neither was I. The evening indeed brought peace, a relief from the day’s glaring sun and searing heat. The engine purred smoothly and the vessel rocked gently under shimmering stars. I slept soundly on deck.

The voyage took three days. We finally beached; and the crew, pointing south across the dunes toward absolutely nothing, announced we had arrived in Sudan. I strapped on my backpack and followed the others about a mile or two over the dunes to a small nineteenth-century building surrounded by desert, where a single train track marched bravely into the infinite sand and nameless heat. A narrow-gauge train sat idle and waiting. After a day or two of loading the train with everyone and everything from the barges, we set off south, through the Nubian Desert to Khartoum. The sand on the tracks, combined with the weight of the bodies and cargo, forced the train to a crawl. Dust billowed through the windows on gusts of hot air, mixing with the nutty brine of human odors and the shit smell of live chickens and guinea hens. We stopped five times each day so that the men could alight and pray.

We arrived in Khartoum many days later. Having gone more than a week without a bath, I looked like a piece of the dusty desert we had just crossed. Khartoum was a sprawling version of the tiny towns we had passed through—red mud-brick buildings with corrugated tin roofs, just more of them, punctuated by larger colonial edifices with red tile roofs that signaled officialdom. The occasional electric wire hung from a building’s edge, delivering power occasionally. Small white pickup trucks and market lorries (cargo trucks) shared the streets with donkeys, camels, bikes, and men in their
gallabiyas
and skullcaps. The chaotic din, especially in the marketplace (
souk
), and the pungent breeze of animals, musk, and cumin flooded the senses.

I thought of the trips I had made back in the States, on planes, trains, or buses, where I would sit alone and rarely connect with anyone around me. That was no longer an option, and I was forced to communicate with people I would have tried to ignore under other circumstances. Desperation, it turns out, is a great icebreaker. A man on the train, for example, had taught me a few Arabic phrases in exchange for my teaching him a few in English. He introduced me to other men, who showed me how to order food at the trackside stands and how to drink hot tea loaded with sugar and mint instead of my nasty, iodinated water. By the time we reached Khartoum, we were an inarticulate posse, talking animatedly around and above one
another, comprehending only a fraction of what was said. But connections had been made, and their friendship, however improvised, was a blessing.

With their help, I found the office of the man with whom I had been corresponding about working in Khartoum. The office was in a one-story building off a main street, opposite the sprawling United Nations compound. On a front porch, wooden stools strung with hemp sat around a low wooden table, a place to share tea with colleagues and visitors. The back garden, just visible from the path to the front door, held a latrine and a faucet, which dripped rust-colored water. Sudanese women swept the dirt along the path outside and worked as clerical staff in the office, too, alongside the expatriate Europeans and the development and diplomatic staff. The Westerners wore khaki bush clothes with lots of pockets and dusty boots. The Sudanese women wore colorful fabrics tied around their bodies and draped modestly over their heads. They were warm but indirect, rarely looking you right in the eye.

I was greeted by bad news. The man I had been writing to had left the week before to spend two years in Long Beach, California, and had said nothing to his colleagues about my coming or his plans for me. I sat there, stunned, while the ex-pat staff apologized briskly for the confusion and returned to their work. The Sudanese staff, however, were embarrassed because I was a guest. They beckoned me to sit at the little table on the front porch, served me
tea, and inquired with real interest about my travels. They told me where I could rest and wash up. One young man met me after evening prayers and walked me to the
souk
for a simple meal of beans, cheese, and bread.

After several days of trying to recover from the trip and considering what to do next, the Sudanese staff helped me talk my way onto a project. It turned out that there was a youth training initiative intended to provide construction skills to secondary school dropouts in the Darfur region west of Khartoum, near the Chadi frontier. The project was failing, and senior U.N. officials wanted to know why. I was assigned to travel with Kamal Tayfour, another new employee who had just graduated from the University of Khartoum and whose command of English was only a little better than mine of Arabic. Kamal had been hired as part of the U.N. commitment to bring indigenous talent onto the professional staff. Our job was to do field research in the little villages of El Fasher and Nyala. I believed it was essential work. The more likely truth was that the ex-pat staff was just trying to get both of us out of the way.

Kamal and I didn’t take to each other initially. The language barrier was only part of the problem. We were about the same age, but he was the son of a senior government official, while I appeared to have few credentials. He wore Western clothes on his thin frame, plastic sandals, and a big fake Rolex. His skin was dark brown and smooth, with no signs of hardship, and he had bright brown eyes and the whitest smile. Kamal was quite
formal and polite with me, as with other Westerners and educated Sudanese, but he could be condescending and abrupt with the workers and beggars. When we were together, he did not pray according to strict ritual, but he otherwise deferred to the customs of Islam in a secular setting. He never drank or smoked or spoke immodestly to a woman.

Our first destination was El Fasher, but getting there—a distance about the same as that from Boston to Cleveland—was not simple. The town had a small airstrip built during the Second World War, but it was not fenced, and aircraft had no place to refuel. Sudan Airways flew old prop planes with enough range to get from Khartoum to El Fasher and back, but only if the pilot made one approach for taking off and landing and had no trouble en route. Any mistakes would leave the aircraft running on vapors. Meanwhile, goat and camel herders regularly crossed the strip to water their animals. One small plane, while landing, had recently crashed into a camel, which temporarily closed the airstrip. There was no train either. So most people traveled on the lorries that rumbled through the countryside loaded with supplies. Kamal and I asked around the Omdurman
souk
for a lorry that was going to El Fasher. This too required understanding of method and custom. The
souk
was immense, a maze of narrow, mile-long, intersecting lanes lined with shops. No space was wasted. Goods were crammed into every crevice, with produce and spices stacked in neat pyramids. Every category had its own
precinct: one area for the vegetable sellers, another for the rug dealers, another for men selling olives in large, briny barrels. One shop or stand would be squeezed right next to another selling the same items, not more than six feet away. Through these passages snaked thousands of people, each yelling at and across one another, engaging or ignoring the insistent offers of rice or typewriters or brightly colored fabric from Belgium.

No one paid the asking price. Haggling was expected, shopping its own art form. You look, you admire, you handle. You ask with amusement, “How much?” and then scoff at the reply, whatever it is. The merchant crisply recites the merits of his product, why his rug weaving is tighter or softer, why her tomatoes are sweeter. You make a counteroffer and wait for a reaction. If the merchant turns away, which is rare, there is nothing more to discuss. If he reacts with almost anything more, you are duty bound to try to agree on a price. Insults are traded. You say the product is garbage. The merchant says the offer is demeaning. If the item is significant (almost anything more than basic food) and the exchanges become heated (which they often do), someone, usually a little boy in rags, is sent for hot tea with sugar and mint so that you can visit awhile, exchange pleasantries, and cool off. Eventually the conversation returns to the item for sale, and there is more haggling. By the time you agree on a price, everyone is laughing. The merchant almost invariably throws in something else as
baksheesh
, a little gift for being a good sport.

The Omdurman
souk
, like every other market I have visited in Africa, had its own transportation hub as well. It was in the center, at the end of what paved road there was. Scores of lorries loaded and unloaded there, refueled or got repairs, the parts often taken and adapted from other vehicles or machines. The drivers were generally the “big men”—literally—of the
souk
, strong and athletic, as they moved cargo and climbed quickly over and across their lorries. They were also men of significance, perhaps because owning one of these trucks was itself a sign of status, and they employed a younger man or two to help with the loading and unloading and the general management of the business.

Each lorry sold passage on top of its cargo. The trick was finding the right destination and the preferred cargo. In our case, we relied on word of mouth to find a lorry going where we needed to go and in good repair with a reputable driver. Once found, we made our own quick inspection of the vehicle, though neither of us really knew what to look for. Finding the right cargo was another matter. Sacks of dried dates, for example, were better than cartons of pots and pans because the dates would provide some cushion for the passengers. After a day or two of interviewing drivers, Kamal settled on a lorry with a mixed cargo of clothing, cookware, and dried spices going our way, and we bargained for space on top. The price settled, we were told to come back before dawn the next day, once all the cargo was loaded, for what would be a four- to five-day ride. We
spent the balance of the day gathering enough dates, nuts, bread, and water for the trip and returned the next morning to find the truck piled high and teetering with its cargo lashed under a loose tarp. We set off at daybreak with at least a dozen others high above the cargo.

From the edge of the city, the road west consisted of tracks through the sand. It was well over 100 degrees at midday. Nothing moved on the landscape except us. We were young and old, wearing both Western and indigenous garb, united by our common discomfort. Everyone wore a towel or a broad hat to shield ourselves from the intense sun. We spoke little, as if we were trying to conserve our strength. Communication consisted mostly of smiles of understanding when we hit an especially hard bump. The strain of the engine, downshifting and upshifting, was the only sound for hours.

Early that first evening, several miles outside Khartoum, a freak rainstorm hit. Everything turned to mud, and the truck sank to its axles. We sat there, huddled against the rain, until morning. We were soaked, but no one complained. There were just the same occasional understanding and reassuring smiles. By daybreak, the hard rain stopped, the sun burst back, and things quickly dried out. Passengers and crew worked together to dig out, rocking the lorry to and fro until it was free. Miles later, we went into a skid, and the top heavy vehicle rolled over with a thud, littering the desert with cargo and people. Everybody was shaken up. A few passengers had broken bones.