“At this juncture, greeting parties from Dongola came out with gifts for the king and congratulated him on the ghaza [booty raid]. I realized now how stingy this Berberi king was, since he only gave five or ten sheep each from those countless flocks to the ulema notables…And he drank camel’s milk and ate millet bread in his tent. His food and drink were always mean and miserable. He was always drinking boza [millet beer]. I paid no attention however, and continued being sociable, humbly conforming to my surroundings in this place of exile.”
-from Evliya Çelebi’s Matchless Pearl, his map of Sudan and Book of Travels
We arrived at the Nile some 75 km south of town, watered our camels, all 150 of them, and walked over to a school at the invitation of teachers Abd al-Maula and al-Fadil, so we told their first graders that Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer just like all their fathers were.
It was Day 21 on the Way of the Forty and I was ready for some R and R. Dave and I waved over a truck- “Are you going to Dongola? Without stopping?” “If God wills.” Good enough for me- and got aboard, which promptly broke down far short of where we wanted to get. We arrived long after dark when Dongola was deep asleep, so we paid for beds in the hotel’s common room and went out for dinner.
Not millet bread but whole wheat round loaves made over the night shift by flour-faced bakers from the Nuba Mountains who by oven-light looked like friendly ghosts. 15 piasters a loaf. Fresh bread is never mean and miserable, but I could have used some jelly. But no need for boza, they gave us tea in return for us telling them what had brought two Americans to Dongola at midnight. Whatever answer they may have expected, ours was way crazier.
Next day we had to get our exit stamps. Dongola’s military post doesn’t see many land crossers since Egypt is far away and most people leave by ferry through a different border check. The officer was amused, his three soldiers took turns approaching his desk having traded back and forth their sole army cap before saluting the sergeant and delivering the dusty registers, none of which was the right one. So he let us go without signature or stamp.
We had been told to wait for KhairAllah in al-Amiri Yasin’s market stall. Al-Amiri hadn’t been told we’d be coming, so it took a bit of explaining. The name of my friend Hajj Bashir abu Jaib, al-Amiri’s biggest client for his drover resupply business, then and still does open many doors in Sudan.
I remember watching al-Amiri and his fellow merchants weighing dates and rice and sugar by the kilo as they listened closely to KhairAllah and the other trail boss Muhammad al-Himri tell their tales of armed camel thieves and lost desert wells….and thinking, in Dongola they measure out their lives in tea spoons…on the Way of the Forty we drink water by the goatskin.
