Central to this story is the tobe, a popular, modest form of dress that wrapped around a woman’s body and head…northern Sudanese women manipulated the tucks, folds, and social messages of the tobe to deftly negotiate the competing pulls of modernization and cultural authenticity.
-from the back cover of Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan
Compared to their neighbors, Sudanese women were relatively resistant to Western fashions…No matter what they wore underneath, in public women continued to wear the tobe- an entirely Sudanese fashion not shared by other women…The best quality tobes were white or very light pastel. Each new season brought subtle shifts in the pattern of dots, tufts, and borders. And each new style was matched with a creative name.
Khartoum at Night is…the name of a popular 1950s tobe…used to convey the sentiments of possibility, momentum, rupture, and danger.
-Khartoum at Night, Marie Grace Brown
Arriving in Khartoum from Cairo was like the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. The world suddenly went from black and white to technicolor. Egyptian women then wore black outer wraps called malayyas, sheets. Sudanese women wore tobes, gowns, in electric colors. Egyptian men were also seemingly in black, always bellowing about something or other, whether a street altercation or a simple greeting. They answered the telephone by shouting into the receiver, Meen, Who? Sudanese men on the contrary were very, very chilled out even when they should have been heated up. As if they were living in pastels.
I remember arriving in Khartoum on a flight at 2am in the company of a Sudanese man. He said he would get us a taxi, me to my hotel, then on to his house. There was only one cab waiting at the airport and the driver wanted too much money, as my friend said. In Egypt this would have led to a horrific shouting match. In Khartoum at 2am it led to a silent stand-off, the driver and my friend facing opposite ways and calmly stating their prices, sotto voce, as if they were talking to other people. Finally their prices matched up and we got in the taxi.
There are frequent dust storms in Khartoum which turn everything the dun color of sand. Even the men’s galabiyyas, usually bright white cotton, turn dull. But ladies’ tobes keep their electric colors as bright as when new. When I was there the first time, in 1984, the taste must have been for deep, strong pastels, not light, because their strength of color amazed me. From a distance, when everything else was half masked by blown sand, a tobe stood out like a neon sign, flashing… Here. I. Am.
