The real Soudan, known to the statesman and the explorer, lies far to the south- moist, undulating, and exuberant. But there is another Soudan, which some mistake for the true, whose solitudes oppress the Nile from the Egyptian frontier to Omdurman. Destitute of wealth or future, it is rich in history. The names of its squalid villages are familiar to distant and enlightened peoples. The barrenness of its scenery has been drawn by skillful pen and pencil. Its ample deserts have tasted the blood of brave men. Its hot, black rocks have witnessed famous tragedies. It is the scene of the war.
-The River War, Winston Churchill
“Moist, undulating, and exuberant”…Sir Winston certainly seemed seduced by Sudan’s lower parts, but it was its upper half- deserts hot, barren, and oppressive- that wanted to kick him out of bed. Once at the Khalifa Museum in Omdurman, I came across a student video team conducting interviews with visitors, asking them the significance of the year 1898, when Great Britain established its sixty year long Sudanese imperium. They were surprised to find a foreigner with a different kind of answer.
I told them about the US invasion of the Philippines that same year, the beginning of American colonialism and the first of its many long wars against foreign nationalism. The students didn’t know any of this, I spoke to them in mixed Arabic and English but I got the idea across….that the year 1898 was a turning point both for the United States in the Philippines and for the United Kingdom in the Sudan. The Battle of Manila Bay took place only four months before the Battle of Omdurman.
Sir Winston wrote The River War in 1899, with emotions still high for taking revenge for the death of Gordon. That same year Mark Twain wrote that the American invasion of the Philippines was a “quagmire”- sound familar?- and said American soldiers- “uniformed assassins” he called them- were firing “the Golden Rule into those people…piling glory upon glory” . I don’t know if what I told the student journalists made it onto Sudanese television.