Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside and makes a handsome Appearance…Uncle Mumford [Twain’s boatmate] said that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri…Partialities often make people see more than really Exists.
-Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
I first met Mahdi in Omdurman in 1988. He was dressed like most Sudanese there so I greeted him in Arabic. He returned my greeting in American-accented English. He asked me where I was from and I said USA. He said, I can tell. Whereabouts in the States? I said St. Louis. He said, Ya, I know St. Louis. So I asked him where he was from and he said, the Cape.
My mind started working…The Cape? Which cape? Cape of Good Hope. Cape Verde. Cape Town. Those I knew but all seemed unlikely. Maybe he was translating from Arabic the word “ra’s”, meaning “head”, which Arabs use to mean cape. I only knew Ra’s Muhammad, at the end of the Sinai Penninsula, but that was in Egypt. In Sudan there is Ra’s Abu Shagara, Cape of the Father of the Tree, but nothing else is there. The tip of the Horn of Africa has Ra’s Guardafui, what Strabo the Geographer called Aromata Promontorium for its incense trade, which got its later name from Italian mariners saying “Guarda!”, Look Out!, and “Fui!”, Get Away!, but that is in Somalia, now the breakaway Republic of Puntland.
So I asked him. Which Cape? He said, Cape Girardeau, I go to school there. Wow, I thought. Leaving Omdurman to go to school in the Cape, that Cape. So Mark Twain’s boatmate was right. The Athens of Missouri. But being Rush Limbaugh’s hometown, if you ask me it should be renamed Cape Look Out! Get Away!
The Nile from Omdurman
