Sufi Chanting


Welcome to Khartoum! This is the first of what I hope will be a long line of blog posts on life in Sudan. So far, everything is very new, and I have been spending most of my time either at work or attempting to recover from jet lag. I was just lagged for almost a week after I arrived, but I think I am finally back on a regular sleep schedule. Of course, there is one think that I think will likely give me a permanent since of jet lag: the fact that weekends here are Friday-Saturday rather than Saturday-Sunday. Consequently, I currently feel like I'm one day off.

But anyway, yesterday, Friday, I finally got out to experience a bit of Sudanese culture. Three of my new colleagues (we all started during the last two weeks), Junko (from Japan), Alexandra (from Germany), and Sahar (from Egypt), and I headed off to Omdurman, another city on the opposite side of the Nile from Khartoum, for the day. Despite the sweltering heat, we spent the latter half of the afternoon wandering around the souk or main market. This market is especially large, and you can find everything from tomatoes to mattresses within its streets. Other items included shoes, make-up, and traditional pottery.

Just as we were all about to collapse from heat stroke, we decided to venture on to our next destination--the mosque/temple where sufis chant on Friday evenings. The location is called Hamad al-Nil, and is in fact the location of the tomb of Sheik Hamad al-Nil. Those gathered are members of the Quadriya sect. See Wikipedia.

Sufi's are Muslim mystics. See Wikipedia. However, the term Sufi encompasses a wide range of beliefs and practices. Sufism is fairly common in Sudan.



The group started small at around 5 pm. I would say there were probably about 20-30 of us there when the chanting began. The chanters gathered around a microphone and began pounding their drums and chanting as the rest of us looked on. Then, almost spontaneously, a man started dancing furiously to the beat. The first man danced only briefly before returning to the circle. Others quickly took his place. During the first 15-20 of the ceremony, the dancers invited this American tourist, Dean from Nebraska, to join them in the center. His dancing certainly evoked laughter from the onlookers, not the least of all from me.



But as entertaining as all this was, at one point shortly thereafter, an even larger group gathered around myself, Junko, and Alexandra. This group, made-up entirely of men, began to speak quickly in Arabic. This left me utterly confused. Alexandra, fortunately, understands a little Arabic and tried her best to translate. Finally, Sahar, who of course is fluent in Arabic, came over and translated. She then said something to the group which succeeded in dispersing them and redirecting attention to the chanters. But, in any case, apparently the gist of what they were trying to say to us is that we should stay in Sudan, marry Sudanese men, convert to Islam, and die here. I'm not so sure I'm ready to make that kind of a commitment.

Unfortunately, it is obscenely hot here, and I had to leave the circle after a while and return to some trees where a woman was selling tea. Having already consumed all of the water in my Camelbak, I was feeling dehydrated and in need of refreshment. As luck might have it, this turned out to me one of the better parts of the whole experience. When I returned to the tea lady, a few Sudanese women, who were seated on a mat under the trees, invited me to join them. Not only did they order my tea for me (and later pay for it), but them invited me to share their food with them. Not all of them spoke English, but they were very kind, and one of them was an elementary English teacher, so she translated for the rest. They also had two kids with them, and the girl was especially gregarious. In any case, they told me that they were from Damazin, one of the towns where I will be working (I'll explain that later.) and that I could call them when I was there.



By the time I returned to the chanting, the circle around the chanters, the group had grown ten-fold. The dancers, moreover, no longer seemed to be spontaneously reacting to the music. Instead, several were wearing elaborate costumes and seemed to be interacting with each other in a predetermined manner.