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PRIVAT
TRAVEL
KINGDOMS
IN THE
SAND
Egypt may boast the world’s
most famous pyramids, but those
in northern Sudan are more
haunting, says Mike Carter.
Photography by Don McCullin
KHARTOUM IS DOUBLY BLESSED. A RIVER IN THE
desert is a godsend and Sudan’s capital city of six million
has not only the wide, lazy White Nile slithering in from
the fl atlands of the south, but also the Blue Nile, rich in
dark, alluvial silt, which tumbles in from the Ethiopian
highlands to the east. At the northern tip of the city’s Tuti
Island, the two bodies of water merge, retaining their
distinct colours for a few hundred metres before blending to
become the single, indomitable Nile.
Th e confl uence acts as a metaphor for Khartoum, and
indeed Sudan, which since ancient times has been an
economic crossroads, a meeting point between the Arabs
and the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa. A walk through the
vast, labyrinthine souk in the Omdurman district off ers a
vivid illustration of Sudan’s unique Afro-Arabic culture,
which led the former US president Jimmy Carter to talk of
the ‘essential humanity of Sudan’.
Here, men in dazzling white djellabas and taqiyah prayer
caps sell 19th-century Mahdi-era swords or grind sesame
seeds into tahini by hand; other traders, dressed in rainbow
dashiki shirts and with skin the colour of teak, sell beads or
snakeskin shoes. In dusty alleyways, burka-clad women pour
chai infused with cardamom. Alongside them, Dinka women
in tight-fi tting batiks, with henna tattoos on their ankles, sell