When I was in Sudan I plead guilty to having imbibed more Aragi than I had drank in my whole life previously; I sometimes took even a pint a day without feeling any effects of intoxication.
-Wanderings around the Aethiopian Desert from Sawakin to Chartum, James Hamilton, 1857
In 1988 Mustapha smuggled a bottle of whiskey through Sudanese customs. Because I didn’t want us to drink alcohol in the presence of the drovers, we paid our Khartoum hotel bill with it in lieu of cash, but when we met the Khabīr Bilal and saw that he drank Aragi like water, I wished we’d brought it after all, a peg for him and a peg for us after each day’s ride.