There is life only by the Nile. If a man were to leave the river he might journey westward and find no human habitation nor the smoke of a cooking fire, except the lonely tent of a Kababish Arab or the encampment of a trader’s caravan, until he reached the coastline of America.
-The River War, Winston Churchill
Sir Winston was more confused about African geography than KhairAllah, for even he knew that by travelling westward from the Nile, from Dongola for instance, you would find many habitations, both Khayma and Tukul, Tent and Hut, whether in Wadi al-Milk, Wadi Howar, Jebel Meidob, or beyond in Chad, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania, and to reach America you must cross the Muhīt, the Ocean, which to KhairAllah was as big as the Bahr, the Sea, as he called the Nile.