just happened to be:
Just happened to be on a plane flying from Khartoum to London. I had said goodbye to Abdullah the previous day and had now left Sudan, probably for good. The orange-brown Egyptian desert could be made out below through the window of the plane and the air-conditioning hissed as most passengers slept or tried to.
I was in motion again but sadness scraped away at the pit of my stomach. I tried to avoid it by thinking of arrival at Heathrow. However, the prospects were gloomy. It was late March, I had no jersey or coat and only one hundred US dollars and no particular destination.
Nevertheless, I was glad I had found Abdullah, given him the dosh and thus become an ex-money bags in the process.
Abdullah was a teacher at Kadulgi primary school, which meant his salary was very meagre. In the three years I had lived near the town, he and his cousin Kubiah had been very friendly to me. Kubiah lived in a series of huts just off the potholed road northwards to Dilling and El Obeid, about an hour’s walk from the town. He lived with his family, his sister-in-law and her children (Kubiah’s nephews and nieces). Kubiah’s brother had disappeared in mysterious circumstances a few years earlier and had probably been killed by the Sudanese army.
Perhaps the circumstances had not been so mysterious. The Kadugli area and the Nuba Mountains were known to the Khartoum government as War Zone II. Some Nuba (people) secretly belonged to the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
Although most Nuba in the Kadugli area had converted to Islam and had Islamic names, they resented the “Arabisation” of their land by northern tribes and the use of religion as a justification for land seizures. Kubiah and his brother had once been members of the Kordofan Communist Party, a political organisation with a crudely Marxist line and basically a political expression of resentment against the northerners.
Both Kubiah and his brother had often been arrested in Kadugli and they and their families had been threatened on several occasions. The two cousins therefore thought it would be safest for all of them if they went to Khartoum. However, in Khartoum they were arrested again for demonstrating against the regime of Jaffaar Nimeiri, a corrupt president who introduced a distorted form of Islamic law to the whole of Sudan to win support of Islamist parties in the north. The brothers had been beaten and then separated. Kubiah never saw his brother again.
He was loaded onto a lorry with around fifty other Nuba people and southern Sudanese and transported by the army desertwards to a point a couple of hundred kilometres northwest of Khartoum. There, the prisoners were dumped and left to their fate. Kubiah would have died if a couple of lorries travelling in the opposite direction had not appeared a few hours later and taken the former detainees back to the capital. From there, Kubiah decided to flee to Communist Ethiopia, which was considered to be a safe haven for southern Sudanese rebels.
He made it to Addis Ababa and thereafter travelled to Moscow and then on to Kazakstan, where he lived for several years and learnt helicopter maintenance.
Kubiah had shown me photos of grey Soviet-design blocks of flats where he had dwelled and felt homesick.
After the fall of Nimeiri, a brief period of “democracy” produced slightly better conditions and so some exiles were able to return. The family of Kubiah’s brother was suffering hardships and the children were too young to look after the crops and animals. Amina, Kubiah’s sister-in-law managed to convince the chief of police in Kadulgi to give her brother-in-law a written amnesty and thus Kubiah was persuaded to go home.
When he returned, he worked both on the farm and as a driver for international aid agencies. They only helicopter maintenance required was on machines used by the Sudanese army for operations against the Nuba people. Kubiah, naturally, was not prepared to work on them
I was in motion again but sadness scraped away at the pit of my stomach. I tried to avoid it by thinking of arrival at Heathrow. However, the prospects were gloomy. It was late March, I had no jersey or coat and only one hundred US dollars and no particular destination.
Nevertheless, I was glad I had found Abdullah, given him the dosh and thus become an ex-money bags in the process.
Abdullah was a teacher at Kadulgi primary school, which meant his salary was very meagre. In the three years I had lived near the town, he and his cousin Kubiah had been very friendly to me. Kubiah lived in a series of huts just off the potholed road northwards to Dilling and El Obeid, about an hour’s walk from the town. He lived with his family, his sister-in-law and her children (Kubiah’s nephews and nieces). Kubiah’s brother had disappeared in mysterious circumstances a few years earlier and had probably been killed by the Sudanese army.
Perhaps the circumstances had not been so mysterious. The Kadugli area and the Nuba Mountains were known to the Khartoum government as War Zone II. Some Nuba (people) secretly belonged to the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
Although most Nuba in the Kadugli area had converted to Islam and had Islamic names, they resented the “Arabisation” of their land by northern tribes and the use of religion as a justification for land seizures. Kubiah and his brother had once been members of the Kordofan Communist Party, a political organisation with a crudely Marxist line and basically a political expression of resentment against the northerners.
Both Kubiah and his brother had often been arrested in Kadugli and they and their families had been threatened on several occasions. The two cousins therefore thought it would be safest for all of them if they went to Khartoum. However, in Khartoum they were arrested again for demonstrating against the regime of Jaffaar Nimeiri, a corrupt president who introduced a distorted form of Islamic law to the whole of Sudan to win support of Islamist parties in the north. The brothers had been beaten and then separated. Kubiah never saw his brother again.
He was loaded onto a lorry with around fifty other Nuba people and southern Sudanese and transported by the army desertwards to a point a couple of hundred kilometres northwest of Khartoum. There, the prisoners were dumped and left to their fate. Kubiah would have died if a couple of lorries travelling in the opposite direction had not appeared a few hours later and taken the former detainees back to the capital. From there, Kubiah decided to flee to Communist Ethiopia, which was considered to be a safe haven for southern Sudanese rebels.
He made it to Addis Ababa and thereafter travelled to Moscow and then on to Kazakstan, where he lived for several years and learnt helicopter maintenance.
Kubiah had shown me photos of grey Soviet-design blocks of flats where he had dwelled and felt homesick.
After the fall of Nimeiri, a brief period of “democracy” produced slightly better conditions and so some exiles were able to return. The family of Kubiah’s brother was suffering hardships and the children were too young to look after the crops and animals. Amina, Kubiah’s sister-in-law managed to convince the chief of police in Kadulgi to give her brother-in-law a written amnesty and thus Kubiah was persuaded to go home.
When he returned, he worked both on the farm and as a driver for international aid agencies. They only helicopter maintenance required was on machines used by the Sudanese army for operations against the Nuba people. Kubiah, naturally, was not prepared to work on them
posted by Bob @ 12:09 pm
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