"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."
