It was to achieve bureaucratic tidiness that in 1933 Ali al-Tum [nazir, or paramount chief] was told his tribe “should be more under control”. It was “useless”, a new young District Commissioner reported, “to suppose that the Kababish could lead an isolated existence.”…It was decided as a matter of utmost importance that the Kababish be “brought within the fold”.
-Imperial Sudan:The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, 1934-1956, M.W. Daly
A lot had happened to Dar al-Kababish in the fifty years between first being brought into the fold and my own two trips up the Darb. No longer so isolated…some of the drovers carried passports and they were heading to Africa’s largest city, paid for their work in the export trade in Sudanese pounds which although not tendered on foreign currency exchanges could buy whatever they wanted in Khan al-Khalili. And when they were finished with us on the trail they knew enough English to repeat what they often had heard us saying, things like More Water, or Bad Food, or No Sleep, words understood in the best hotels in London and Paris.