One of the things that motivated me to take on this assignment in Khartoum is this city's location on the great river Nile. A place got to be interesting if it sits at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles.
So with the holidays difficult to spend with family back home, I decided to Airbnb-hop from a place in Khartoum central to this place by the Nile in Khartoum North. The place had been vacant for a while evidenced by pigeon poo all around the house. But there is the garden with a gazebo by the Nile and the balcony with a view of the Shambat bridge connecting Khartoum North and Omdurman.
A triad of cities around a confluence and me just a little bit north of that point of merging, on the right bank of the united Nile flowing on, as it did for eons, towards Cairo. That much I know for now, at least situating myself geographically.
At this point where I'll stay put while the river flows on, I found among the dusty shelves of a little library at the entrance to the apartment, a paperback titled "Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure" by Tim Jeal. How fitting, I thought, for my desire to connect to the river.
Because the Nile stuck to my head in my reading of Tayeb Salih's classic "Season of Migration to the North" as the story of Mustafa Sa'eed weaves into the ebb and flow of the river. I always try, as a way of understanding a new country I'm going to, to read literature produced by its people. Salih's novels may or may not say much to the current Sudan humanitarian situation that I am supposed to support but his stories connect me to a past that the Nile was a witness to.
I'll sit under the gazebo by the river and listen to what it tells me while I read Explorers of the Nile....
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