Journal Entry for May 19, 2004: An Evening with Another El Madhi

Attended a speech by Sadiq El Mahdi this evening. It was part of a regular Wednesday evening gathering of the Umma Party faithful at the party HQ in Omdurman. It was really hot and I hunkered down for two hours of Arabic. Desert cooling once again put to the test. Crowd numbered maybe two thousand on the veranda and lawn of the building. Some guy kept popping up from the side singing praise. At one point he seemed to get very agitated and appeared to be pointing to me, the only gringo on the scene. He may have been singing my praise or calling down the wrath of God or neither.

Until Sadiq showed up, Mr. Kalifa sat next to me and we chatted in English. Kalifa is the grandson of the Kalifa, the follower of The Mahdi who took over at his death and ruled Sudan until the British defeated him. Kalifa the Younger is now #3 in the Umma Party.

Sadiq -- the former Prime Minister overthrown in 1989 -- arrived to great ovation and sat next to me. He asked me how much of the speeches I was following. I said "none at all" although I think I did hear an occasional salaam (peace) and Ameriki. He got his niece to translate for me during his speech. (He spoke about Darfur and peace.) When he was done, and after two hours of sweating steadily but gently and watching little tiny moths land on my white shirt, I took my leave. Another wonderful night in Sudan.

Note:  Previous El Mahdi encounter here.

04 Khartoum 0490: Dinner with the Grandson of the Mahdi*

* Note:  The State Department archives did not contain the full text of this cable so part between paras 4 & 5 is missing.  But here follows the entry for my journal for May 13:

"Last night I spent three hours dining with the grandson of The Mahdi. (If you don't know who that is, rent the DVD of the movie Khartoum starring Charleton Heston & Laurence Oivilier.)

We dined on the veranda of the Imam El Mahdi's palace overlooking the Nile River. It was grand. There was just enough breeze for desert cooling (evaporating sweat). The Imam told me the story of his father, the only one of The Mahdi's ten sons to survive the war with the British. Abdel-Rahman was 13 when he was wounded in a battle that killed two of his brothers. By the time he died in 1959, he had helped his country reach independence from the British and had met Winston Churchill, who had fought with the British in the 1890s. Just the two of us talking under the stars about The Mahdi's effort to reform Islam and the sect's continued efforts to do the same without violence. The Imam is head of the Ansar, the descendants of the warriors – who the British called the Dervishes – of The Mahdi. A high point. The West has much to learn about Islam and they of us. Most want to have this exchange. The common enemy is the terrorists.

Most Sudanese are too polite to mention their outrage over the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American forces. (The Imam didn’t.) But it is a real black mark against us."

Journal Entry for March 4, 2004: An evening with the Sufi -- Sophist Night

Tonight I went to a “Sophist Night” in old Omdurman. The occasion was to mark the death of the founder of a school of Islamic jurisprudence who was also the progenitor of the extended clan that traced their descent back to him. A prominent human rights activist and secularist – Ghazi Sulieman – was this year’s organizer of the celebration and invited me. The sophists came out of a 9^th century movement within Islam to base one’s relationship to God on reasoned knowledge of the Koran. Various schools of thought developed over the centuries and there are many, many schools that differ in ways that I’ll never understand. Sufism came from this movement.

The celebration took place outside and started at 8:30 pm. I was a bit late but no matter and I was escorted to a place of honor and supplied with drink and food throughout the evening. The field was decorated like a country fair, with lights and a bandstand. But there were no rides and the bandstand was for the speakers and leaders of prayer. Rows of seats circled the stand but with a clear space in front. Various people went to the microphone to make speeches about the founding teacher (sheik), pray or chant. All during the evening, groups from other schools came to pay their respects (thus “Sophist Night”). As they arrived, Ghazi would dance over to them with his ceremonial stick held high in his right hand, pumping it up and down as he went. (The fist or stick pumped this way while dancing by all the men to be greeted is the custom in Sudan for important gatherings.) The group would then dance by “in review.” They dressed colorfully – some all white, some green or red – and usually had percussion sections. The schools reminded me very much of the traditional samba schools of Brazil. And the chanting often reminded me of blues music. Indeed, both the samba schools, the blues and Sufi schools share a common African culture. The Sudanese Sufi’s are Islamic by faith but African by impulse. The Sudanese in prayer can barely refrain from dancing and some don’t even try. I saw little children – it was a family get together although the women sat on the side and did not take part in the ceremonies – breaking into a spontaneous dance that clearly served as precursor to the grownup version called worship. Once the schools danced through, they went over to the side where some really got into the spirit of things through chanting and dancing to their own music.

The evening was warm but not oppressive and the people were very friendly. Ghazi was dressed in his trademark white pants with blue suit-jacket. His hair slanted upwards as usual and I often saw him dancing with his stick in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Two teenage girls (his daughters?) wore jeans and no head-coverings and seemed to serve as his messengers, running here and there. At the end of the ceremony, a small group of people gathered around me to talk. One was a retired general who had trained in the U.S. in the 70s. Another was an opposition politician. Ghazi explained to me that what I had seen that evening was Sudan’s “civil society”, a people united by a shared faith that was their own, varied and apolitical. He also explained that he had dressed in his suit to make a point to the government that a secularist could be a sheik. The small group I was with all agreed that the radicals who mixed religion with politics have to go because they are “alien” to Sudan. On Sophist Night, I could feel what they mean.

Journal Entry for January 31: Visit to Sufi Mosque

Last evening I went to a Sufi mosque in Omdurman to watch part of their worship service. The Sheikh of the Summaniyya sect invited me when I first met him last year. The Sufis are a major tradition in Islam going back several hundred years. There are many Sufi “schools”, or sects, each founded by a particular sheikh (teacher). Sufi sects are various disciplines of worship usually seeking some sort of mystical (or inner) union with God (Allah). Some achieve this through music and dance. The “whirling dervishes” come from those Sufi sects that find mystical transport through dance. Sufism is popular in Sudan and fits the mostly gentle and tolerant approach of the Sudanese people. Sufism is pretty much the exact opposite of Islamist extremism.

The three largest sects in Sudan – the Mahdiyya, Khatmiyya and Summaniyya – are Sufi. Sheikh Hassan Qaribullah invited me to attend part of the prayer ceremony that actually started in the early afternoon and went on until late night. I arrived at 5:30 as they started the chanting phase and left – after a cup of tea with the Sheikh’s son – as they went into quiet prayer and discussion.

The ceremony took place outside of the Mosque on a street closed for the event on every Friday. The ground was spread with carpets and I took my shoes off to enter. Carpets were hung also on the fences and walls. Younger men were on one side and the sect’s elders on the other. They were chanting and bowing when I got there. Summaniyya is popular in Islamic Africa and I can see why. The chanting and movement was very African. The men did not dance in the sense of moving around but they did in place every dance step I’d ever seen in Africa or from Africa. There was even a brief moment I thought I was watching a long line of The Four Tops. The rhythm was African and there was even a touch of blues and jazz. The Sheikh or one of the elders led the chants – invocations of Allah – using microphones to be sure to encourage others in the neighborhood to join them. One of the younger men also had a mike to emphasize the various vocalizations they made along with their movements. There was no music per se but it was quite hypnotic and though I sat there for almost two hours, I didn’t want it to end. But at sunset, an elder called evening prayer and – after the Sheikh formally thanked me for attending -- I was invited inside for tea. Everyone was very nice and quite pleased the American Charge attended their prayers. They were also anxious to tell me that they are not political and like America. They don’t understand why America doesn’t like Sudan. I assured them that while we had problems with the fundamentalist government of the 90’s, we want better relations now. It was a very pleasant and moving evening. 

 Ascending....