Primary balloting is begun in Sudan. Five week long voting process is first step toward self-rule. Voters get free beer.
-Kennett Love, New York Times, November 3, 1953
My cousin Kennett knew better than to bury the lede when covering Sudan’s first staggering steps toward independence. Here he was talking about merissa, millet beer, a word whose triliteral root M-R-S Lane gives as meaning To Macerate, Steep, or Soak, and its cognate Mutamarras as Scratching Post, the manner in which Bilal Bakhīt liked best to relieve his itch when on the Darb with KhairAllah and me thirty five years later. Kennett told me his own favorite Sudanese scratching post was duty free.