Sudan: Pyramids, Permits, Porridge

The police officer grabs my arm roughly and tries to drag me behind him. Being Arab, rather than African, he's extremely short in stature and I tower over him. I resist. He shouts roughly in Arabic - I don't catch the exact meaning, but the sense is clear. He squeezes my arm tighter, so tight I can feel his nails digging in and drawing blood. For a second I consider smashing his face with my fist - perhaps wisely, I restrain myself. He pulls himself up to his full height, around 5 foot 5, and brings his face very close to mine. I mime as if to bite his nose, and he backs off, cowering in fear. "Inta mejnoon, inta mejnoon", he shouts in Arabic - "You are crazy, you are crazy", and unmistakably mimes a handcuffing maneouvre. My German travelling companions, Peter and Tariq, laugh contemptuously at him. "There's nothing he can do, we have done nothing wrong", says Peter, grinning. For all my external bravado I don't quite share his optimism, in fact I feel quite frightened. We are, after all, under arrest in Sudan.

Ah, Sudan. In his epic account of the British reconquest of the Sudan in 1898, With Kitchener to Khartoum, the Victorian journalist G.W. Steevens memorably described the country as "a God-accursed wilderness, an empty limbo of torment for ever and ever". The ancient Egyptians knew it simply as "Kush" - "the wretched"; both are descriptions with which I have more than a little sympathy. In many ways Sudan is exactly as might be expected: very big, very hot, very dusty, and very poor. The roads are awful. The hotels are awful. The food is awful. The bureaucracy is simply staggering. Barring a few broken down pyramids scattered across the desert, there isn't even much in the way of things to see. And yet...

When locals engage travellers in conversation, which they do with an incredible regularity, one of the first questions they ask is invariably, "why are you here?". This is usually followed by a verbatim regurgitation of the country's well-publicised ills: poverty, war, government-sponsored genocide, famine and the like. The question is quite a difficult one to answer - and one I have asked myself regularly in the last ten days, usually following a muttered exhortation of "fucking Sudan".

Yet Sudan is charming. It might take ten hours to travel 100 miles, it might be impossible to eat anything except felafel and laughing cow cheese, and it might need two hours a day just to negotiate the bureaucratic jungle of travel permits, photo permits, security registration, and army checkpoints, but... Sudan is like a woman who plays hard to get. Coquettish, manipulative, evasive, sometimes downright unpleasant, but every so often, just as all patience is finally being exhausted, she does something so beautiful, alluring, and beguiling that she reels you right back in again.

And so it proved with the saga of my arrest in the exquisitely-named town of "Dongola". The town itself sits on the west bank of the Nile, while its bus station is on the east; the two are linked by a small ferry. Upon arrival at the bus station the previous day, I had simply boarded the waiting ferry and crossed. After a couple of hours jumping through hoops at the town's security office, I had the requisite permits to stay in town, and was able to check in to a hotel and go about my business unmolested. Leaving, however, was a different story. A jumped-up little man with a moustache (why do third world government officials always have a moustache?) demanded a permit. Sensing a scam - aside from the previous day's successful ferry crossing without any such permit, he wore no uniform and carried no identification - I ignored him and boarded the ferry.

Enter another jumped-up little man with a moustache, a hugely umpleasant-looking growth on his cheek, and the light blue uniform of the Sudanese police. I was in no mood to cooperate with him, and his aggressive demeanour and physical man-handling did not help matters. Upon reaching the east bank of the Nile we were hauled off to a nearby police station, harangued in Arabic (which for once I made great theatre of not speaking a single word of) and intimidated by a very public production of handcuffs and a tour of the cells - all the while my assailant bristling with indignation in the margins, strange growth quivering with unrestrained outrage.

Finally an English speaker was produced. This man was not an official, merely a bystander from the nearby market who has been commandeered to act as an interpreter. In full earshot of the assembled police and army officers, who, unusually for heavily anglophone Sudan, did not understand a word, he offered reassurances.

"I am sorry you have been treated like this. You see what we must deal with from our government? You must have a permit to cross the Nile - without it you cannot board the ferry. If you do not argue, accept the permit, you will be released. If you do not, they will keep you here. This will be bad for you I think."

Despite the fact that this would indeed be "bad for you", my German companions and I were not to be placated so easily, however.

"But yesterday we crossed the Nile on this exact fucking ferry, without a permit. So what the fuck are you talking about?"

"Ah but that was crossing east to west. For this you need no permit. Crossing west to east is a different story. For this you must have permit. I am sorry. You must wait here, the man with the permits will come from the office in Dongola, and you will go with him back to the office, to get a permit."

The man duly arrived, half an hour later, permits in hand. Could he not just issue the permit there and then, to save us two more crossings of the river, one with permit, one without? Of course not. That would be unforgivable. We must accompany him back to his office forthwith. Peter, who has not been to Venezuela, took his turn to vent his feelings of disgust at Sudan's Monty Pythonesque bureaucracy:

"This is the worst country I have ever been to. This is just ridiculous. We will return to Europe and tell everyone how terrible Sudan is and no-one else will come here. Why do you victimise us like this?"

Our interpreter just smiled sadly and shrugged.

"This is the Sudanese government, not the Sudanese people"

An hour later, permits in hand, and fresh from a lecture from the chief of police about the extreme danger of crossing the Nile from west to east without a permit (presumably he was not referring to the likelihood of assault by his officers, though that appeared the only remotely dangerous aspect of the crossing to me), we approached the ferry ticket office, muttering curses on Sudan and all its ridiculousness. Our interpretor appeared from nowhere, and in a stroke reminded us of what's so great about this country.

"I am so sorry for what has happened. I have bought your ferry tickets for you. Please do not think badly about Sudan and its people."

How could I disagree?

Interrogation at Immigration

So when exactly did you go to Syria?” asked Jacques.

“Jacques”, was, at a guess, a Haitian immigrant, now working for the Immigration and Naturalisation Service at Miami Airport. “Poacher turned gamekeeper” I thought to myself, a little cynically. Perhaps it was the complimentary Daily Mail I’d read on the plane (actually I mean “complementary”, as in “free” – there’s little complimentary about the Mail, unless you tend to agree that National Socialism had a point on the issue of immigration) Anyway, the fact is, whatever his origins, and whatever my Daily Mail brainwashed mind thought of the situation, Jacques held all the aces here. He stopped flicking and looked at me, then looked back at the passport, then looked at me again. Shaking his head slightly, he asked the question again. “Er, I haven’t actually been yet, I’m going in September, but I had to get the visa already” “And why would you want to go to Syria?” “I’m going to learn Arabic.” “Why do you want to learn Arabic?”

At this point, my mind was racing; an incorrect answer and I’d be deported; no holiday in the Keys, no trip to South America, and no return, probably ever, to the USA; it was imperative I made him believe my answer. In this respect I should have been assisted by the convenient coincidence that it happened to be true. This was little consolation, however, given the rather annoying fact that all I could think of was amusing, though inappropriate responses along the lines of “so I can read the word of Allah, the one true god, and slay the apostate infidels”. Granted, this would probably not have been the best course of action in the long run, but there would undeniably have been a moment of real comedy there, presumably just before the red lights started flashing and the men with moustaches and uniforms came to lead me away for a spot of “waterboarding”. For the record, I’m not entirely sure what that involves, but since it’s against the Geneva Convention, I have a sneaking suspicion I wouldn’t like it a great deal.

In the end he believed my answer. In the circumstances, perhaps suggesting “I want to learn Arabic so I can work for the government” while giving him a conspirational, “us against them” look was a little risky; he responded with precisely the same facial expression I used to reserve for those naïve enough to inform me they’d “love to work for Credit Suisse”.

To be fair, I don’t decry Jacques’ initial suspicion of me. I hadn’t shaved or slept in a week, and I’d spent the previous three days attempting to pickle my liver in cheap Bulgarian booze on a stag do in Sofia. Though had Jacques (or anyone else for that matter) actually been to Sofia, they’d fully understand the reasons for my parlous mental and physical state. With all due respect to any Bulgarians who may be reading this, I have to say that my experience of their capital was not overwhelmingly positive. Indeed, in my three, admittedly hazy, days there, I saw little to contradict a succinct description I heard before my visit from an old friend: “a post-Soviet hellhole with amazingly cheap vice”. Actually, that’s not strictly true: while beer, food and lodging were undoubtedly a bargain, as a couple of nameless members of our party can confirm, Bulgarian vice is not so cheap. £1,300 for a couple of bottles of champagne is expensive in anyone’s money, but in a country where beer goes for 40 pence a pint, that’s extortion. To add insult to injury, the drunken buffoons in question didn’t even get to see any nudity for their 4,000 levs. Aside from the three musketeers and their late night aberration, the weekend was largely incident free, though the local populace did seem a little bemused by the fancy dress outfits, ranging from a number of cads and bounders to a large bear (don’t ask), Rod Stewart, Gordon Ramsay, Colin Montgomery an anti-globalisation protestor, a failed boy band reject, and a schoolboy. A couple of humorous pics are attached here, more as a test of my ability to upload photos to the web than any belief they’ll be of great interest – like all the best jokes you probably had to be there. Suffice to say, however, I shan’t be rushing back to Bulgaria, as a gravelly-voiced ageing Scottish rockstar or otherwise.

I will, however, shortly be heading to Bogota to commence my Spanish studies; in the meantime I’m having some much earned r&r with the family in the Florida Keys. Sun, sea, and scuba diving – it’s a tough life…